I opened my eyes at dawn. That first morning I lay motionless for a
moment, studying the large gray room. A foggy light came through the
dirty windows. The rain beat on the panes and staggered down. The room
must at one time have been a library, for there were empty shelves all
around the walls, and the vacant shelves somehow made me think of blind
eye sockets.
I could make out the figures of the other women in the narrow camp beds;
here and there a head, a mass of hair, or an arm protruded from under a
gray blanket. There were no sheets. There had even been a shortage of
cots, and two girls were asleep on straw pallets on the floor; one of
them snored. I thought, This is my life now, and I didn’t mind; I felt
rather proud.
I realized that Ursula was awake, and looking at me with her large quiet
eyes. Mickey woke up yawning, and as she stretched she threw a joyful
“Hello, baby!” to Ursula. This awakened all the others, and presently
the entire room was alive with movement.
“I dreamed that the corporal made me scrub the roof,” Jacqueline
announced, “and I was terrified that I was going to fall. I was so
frightened that I woke up.”
The bell began to ring, and none of us knew whether it was ringing for
reveille or for breakfast. The room was freezing cold, for the furnace
had not yet been lighted. The building that had been turned into a
barracks for us was an old mansion, abandoned many years ago, and almost
impossible to heat properly at any time.
Most of the girls were parading back and forth to the bathroom in their
dressing gowns. Ursula was dressing under her covers, complaining that
she was too cold to emerge. Jacqueline went over to her, in that
protective way that she had, and knotted Ursula’s tie, like some society
matron taking care of a waif.
The door opened and the prune-faced corporal appeared. “Everybody in the
hall for inspection!”
Although it was seven in the morning, the main hall was still so dark
that the electricity had to be turned on, but there was only a small
yellowish bulb that gave very little light.
All of us were formed into a circle. The sergeant, two corporals, and
Petit, the warrant officer, stood in the center, and called out the
names of the recruits. Each of us had to reply, “Present,” and come to
attention.
After the roll call, the corporal whispered something to the warrant
officer, who thereupon turned to glare at our little group from the
“Virgins’ Room.”
Petit approached Ginette, commanding her to raise her skirt. Her hefty
thighs appeared; high up they were rimmed in khaki. I thought of the
pieces cut off from all of our regulation drawers, scattered upstairs in
a corner of the dormitory. Petit said nothing to Ginette, and passed on
to the next woman. Then she went beyond our group, with the same
inspection. And it became evident that not only in our room, but in
practically all of the dormitories, the women had had the same idea, and
shortened their underwear. Petit returned to the center of the circle.
“All those who have desecrated their uniforms will be deprived of
liberty during the entire week,” she announced. “They will receive
another pair of drawers and are required to wear them according to
regulations. I am aware that they are not in the latest style, but you
are soldiers, and not ladies of fashion, damn it!”
We scattered, some laughing, some muttering.
“The dirty bitch!” said Ginette, with a look at the corporal. Ann’s deep
voice growled a second to Ginette’s outburst.
Nevertheless, a few moments later in the dining room, I noticed Ann
gossiping gaily with the corporal. Ursula was sitting with me, and she
too remarked on the sudden change. Like me, she was wondering whether
Ann were just an opportunist, sincere only in seeking her own
advancement. I took it that Ann knew how to get along with people, but
as Ann came toward us I saw that sensitive little Ursula was blushing.
Ann was a likable person, and I suppose, like all of us, Ursula was
sorry to recognize an imperfection in someone whom she wanted to admire.
Ann sat on the other side of Ursula, setting down her plate, in which
the porridge had mingled with a dollop of orange marmalade. Ann shrugged
over the disagreeable mess. There simply weren’t enough plates;
everything had to go on one. “Well, little Ursula,” she boomed, “is
everything all right this morning? Do you like the soldier’s life?”
Her deep voice was filled with warm comradeliness, and Ursula instantly
recovered from her doubts of a moment before. She smiled at Ann, but
didn’t seem to know what to answer.
In general, Ursula didn’t know how to make conversation. This was
probably due to the queer childhood she had had. The lone daughter of
divorced parents who had wandered separately in different parts of the
world, she was the little girl of no one. She had been born in France
and had lived almost everywhere, raised by servants and left largely to
herself. For her, France had provided an illusion not only of a
homeland, but of a home. Little Ursula, as we came to know, worshiped
France with all her soul, because she had nothing else to worship.
At the time of the Franco-German armistice, her mother was in America
and her father in China. No one was especially interested in Ursula. In
the drift of refugees from Paris, she had found her way onto a British
ship that was evacuating troops from Brest. And so she had gravitated to
Down Street like the rest of us.
Her heart was filled with dreams and longings, with love, with a sense
of the intimacies she had missed, and all this was mingled with a
strange fear of life itself. She had never felt equal to things, neither
with her mother, nor with servants, nor with strangers, nor in the
schools to which she had been sent, in one country or another. And here
in the barracks she continued to feel lost and terrified, without
knowing why. It seemed to her that all her life would be like
yesterday’s problem of scrubbing the floor—she would never know at what
corner to begin, and no one would ever take her seriously.
“When I am grown up,” she would say, and then suddenly she would realize
that she was already grown up, that she was nearly sixteen and she was a
soldier. And she would look terrified.
* * * * *
Mickey was at the end of our table; she was laughing loudly over one of
Ginette’s rough jokes. Mickey’s teeth were slightly pointed, like those
of a puppy, and her mouth pouted forward, very red, heart-shaped in the
form of a kiss. She was so eager to be part of everything.
“... and what a _conne_!” Ginette ended her tale.
“What does that mean, _conne_?” Mickey asked, opening wide her large
blue eyes.
There was a roar of laughter, and one of the women undertook an
explanation.
* * * * *
That day, too, we were assigned to house cleaning.
Toward evening, a truck unloaded straw for mattresses—and also a batch
of five new recruits, who were immediately sent off to peel vegetables
in the kitchen. Ursula and I had just finished cleaning the three
bathrooms. She had been chattering rather easily most of the day, and I
had begun to feel that I understood this frail girl, who nevertheless
was streaked through with decided, even passionate elements of
character.
As we came out on the stairway we noticed one of the newcomers crossing
the hall, laden with a huge pile of straw. It was a lady. A lady such as
one saw in films. At first glance, the lady appeared fairly young—thirty
or thirty-two. But on closer scrutiny one saw that she was somewhat
older.
Ursula stood still and murmured, “Isn’t she beautiful?”
The woman was tall and extremely blonde—a peroxide blonde. Her hair
curled in ringlets over her forehead and fell in waves alongside her
face. Her nose was fairly long, but quite narrow and very slightly
arched, giving her an air of distinction. She was heavily made up.
Ursula stood stock-still, a wisp of a girl wrapped in her long beige
smock, watching the passage of this beautiful creature. The woman had
such a marvelous scent! And in passing she threw Ursula a smile that was
as perfumed as the woman herself.
At that moment our sergeant-cook appeared, roaring, “Hey, you there, the
new one—Claude! What are you doing with that straw? You’re supposed to
be in the kitchen!”
To our astonishment, we beheld the one called Claude raise a snarling
face over her pile of straw, and from her beautifully made-up mouth
there came forth one of the most violent replies that I had ever heard.
As for Ursula, she stood agape. “You can go to hell!” the lady spat at
the sergeant. “Just because you’re a sergeant, don’t think you can get
away with anything! First, I’m going to fix my bed, and when I’m
through, I’ll come and peel your potatoes, and if you don’t like it you
can kiss my behind!”
The sergeant-cook must have realized that this was no little girl from
Brittany, for she went away without saying a word.
Now Claude turned toward us. “Can you imagine, talking to me in such a
tone of voice! What does she take me for—her servant? More likely, she’d
be mine! I volunteered out of patriotism, and not to be treated like an
inferior by a conne like that!”
It was strange, but the coarse words with which her speech was peppered
seemed to lose their vulgarity when they were spoken by Claude. She had
a very beautiful voice, cultured and modulated, the sort that could
permit itself the use of slang.
“Can you tell me where to find the switchboard room?” Claude then asked.
“That’s where I’m to bunk. I’ve got to take charge of the telephone.”
An assignment of this sort seemed prodigiously important to us. Full of
respect for Claude, we showed her the little room near the entrance that
had been set aside for the telephone operator.
Claude dropped the straw on the floor, went to the window, opened it,
and leaned on her elbows, looking out into the street.
Facing our barracks was a large hotel, and in front of the hotel
entrance stood the doorman, very tall, very thin, with graying hair and
thin lips. His cheeks were highly rouged, his eyelids were painted a
bright blue, and he bowed with feminine grace before every man who
entered the hotel. Then he resumed his haughty nonchalant stance,
staring directly before him at the windows of our barracks.
“You could take him for the ambassador of Peru,” murmured Claude. We had
no idea why “ambassador” and why “Peru,” but the phrase enchanted Ursula
and she started to laugh.
“How old are you, child?” Claude asked her.
This time Ursula replied, “Seventeen,” without hesitation.
Claude placed her hand on Ursula’s head and stroked her soft hair. I
felt as though I were intruding. “You have the air of a tiny little
girl, and you’re ravishing—you’re like a little bird,” Claude said.
It was obvious that this was the first time anyone had told Ursula she
was ravishing. And yet, because it was said in another person’s
presence—mine—it was quite normal, almost a conventional remark.
Ursula never forgot her feelings at this first meeting. When she spoke
about it to me later she said that Claude’s voice was so gentle,
Claude’s hand was so soft that she felt the very inside of her heart
melting. She wanted to reply, “Oh, and you are so beautiful!” but she
didn’t dare, and she uttered the first banality that came to her. “I’ve
been here since yesterday. I’m from Paris. Where are you from?”
Claude was about to answer when a corporal appeared—a third one. We
seemed surrounded by corporals. This was a large girl, rather gentle and
reserved; she had charge of the office. She had some forms in her hand
and she gave them to Claude to fill out.
Ursula tugged at me, and we left.