THE dim road which rises through the middle of the night-bound wood is
so strangely full of obstructing shadows that the deep darkness of the
forest itself might by some magic have overflowed upon it. It is the
regiment on the march, in quest of a new home.
The weighty ranks of the shadows, burdened both high and broad, hustle
each other blindly. Each wave, pushed by the following, stumbles upon
the one in front, while alongside and detached are the evolutions of
those less bulky ghosts, the N.C.O.'s. A clamor of confusion, compound
of exclamations, of scraps of chat, of words of command, of spasms of
coughing and of song, goes up from the dense mob enclosed between the
banks. To the vocal commotion is added the tramping of feet, the
jingling of bayonets in their scabbards, of cans and drinking-cups, the
rumbling and hammering of the sixty vehicles of the two
convoys--fighting and regimental--that follow the two battalions. And
such a thing is it that trudges and spreads itself over the climbing
road that, in spite of the unbounded dome of night, one welters in the
odor of a den of lions.
In the ranks one sees nothing. Sometimes, when one can lift his nose
up, by grace of an eddy in the tide, one cannot help seeing the
whiteness of a mess-tin, the blue steel of a helmet, the black steel of
a rifle. Anon, by the dazzling jet of sparks that flies from a pocket
flint-and-steel, or the red flame that expands upon the lilliputian
stem of a match, one can see beyond the vivid near relief of hands and
faces to the silhouetted and disordered groups of helmeted shoulders,
swaying like surges that would storm the sable stronghold of the night.
Then, all goes out, and while each tramping soldier's legs swing to and
fro, his eye is fixed inflexibly upon the conjectural situation of the
back that dwells in front of him.
After several halts, when we have allowed ourselves to collapse on our
haversacks at the foot of the stacked rifles--stacks that form on the
call of the whistle with feverish haste and exasperating delay, through
our blindness in that atmosphere of ink-dawn reveals itself, extends,
and acquires the domain of Space. The walls of the Shadow crumble in
vague ruin. Once more we pass under the grand panorama of the day's
unfolding upon the ever-wandering horde that we are.
We emerge at last from this night of marching, across concentric
circles as it seems, of darkness less dark, then of half-shadow, then
of gloomy light. Legs have a wooden stiffness, backs are benumbed,
shoulders bruised. Faces are still so gray or so black, one would say
they had but half rid themselves of the night. Now, indeed, one never
throws it off altogether.
It is into new quarters that the great company is going--this time to
rest. What will the place be like that we have to live in for eight
days? It is called, they say--but nobody is certain of
anything--Gauchin-l'Abbe. We have heard wonders about it--"It appears
to be just it."
In the ranks of the companies whose forms and features one begins to
make out in the birth of morning, and to distinguish the lowered heads
and yawning mouths, some voices are heard in still higher praise.
"There never were such quarters. The Brigade's there, and the
court-martial. You can get anything in the shops."--"If the Brigade's
there, we're all right."--
"Think we can find a table for the squad?"--"Everything you want, I
tell you."
A pessimist prophet shakes his head: "What these quarters'll be like
where we've never been, I don't know," he says. "What I do know is that
it'll be like the others."
But we don't believe him, and emerging from the fevered turmoil of the
night, it seems to all that it is a sort of Promised Land we are
approaching by degrees as the light brings us out of the east and the icy
air towards the unknown village.
At the foot of a bill in the half-light, we reach some houses, still
slumbering and wrapped in heavy grayness.
"There it is!"
Poof! We've done twenty-eight kilometers in the night. But what of
that? There is no halt. We go past the houses, and they sink back again
into their vague vapors and their mysterious shroud.
"Seems we've got to march a long time yet. It's always there, there,
there!"
We march like machines, our limbs invaded by a sort of petrified
torpor; our joints cry aloud, and force us to make echo.
Day comes slowly, for a blanket of mist covers the earth. It is so cold
that the men dare not sit down during the halts, though overborne by
weariness, and they pace to and fro in the damp obscurity like ghosts.
The besom of a biting wintry wind whips our skin, sweeps away and
scatters our words and our sighs.
At last the sun pierces the reek that spreads over us and soaks what it
touches, and something like a fairy glade opens out in the midst of
this gloom terrestrial. The regiment stretches itself and wakes up in
truth, with slow-lifted faces to the gilded silver of the earliest
rays. Quickly, then, the sun grows fiery, and now it is too hot. In the
ranks we pant and sweat, and our grumbling is louder even than just
now, when our teeth were chattering and the fog wet-sponged our hands
and faces.
It is a chalk country through which we are passing on this torrid
forenoon--"They mend this road with lime, the dirty devils!" The road
has become blinding--a long-drawn cloud of dessicated chalk and dust
that rises high above our columns and powders us as we go. Faces turn
red, and shine as though varnished; some of the full-blooded ones might
be plastered with vaseline. Cheeks and foreheads are coated with a
rusty paste which agglutinates and cracks. Feet lose their dubious
likeness to feet and might have paddled in a mason's mortar-trough.
Haversacks and rifles are powdered in white, and our legion leaves to
left and right a long milky track on the bordering grass. And to crown
all--"To the right! A convoy!"
We bear to the right, hurriedly, and not without bumpings. The convoy
of lorries, a long chain of foursquare and huge projectiles, rolling up
with diabolical din, hurls itself along the road. Curse it! One after
another, they gather up the thick carpet of white powder that
upholsters the ground and send it broadcast over our shoulders! Now we
are garbed in a stuff of light gray and our faces are pallid masks,
thickest on the eyebrows and mustaches, on beards, and the cracks of
wrinkles. Though still ourselves, we look like strange old men.
"When we're old buffers, we shall be as ugly as this," says Tirette.
"Tu craches blanc," declares Biquet. [note 1]
When a halt puts us out of action, you might take us for rows of
plaster statues, with some dirty indications of humanity showing
through.
We move again, silent and chagrined. Every step becomes hard to
complete. Our faces assume congealed and fixed grimaces under the wan
leprosy of dust. The unending effort contracts us and quite fills us
with dismal weariness and disgust.
We espy at last the long-sought oasis. Beyond a hill, on a still higher
one, some slated roofs peep from clusters of foliage as brightly green
as a salad. The village is there, and our looks embrace it, but we are
not there yet. For a long time it seems to recede as fast as the
regiment crawls towards it.
At long last, on the stroke of noon, we reach the quarters that had
begun to appear a pretense and a legend. In regular step and with
rifles on shoulders, the regiment floods the street of Gauchin-l'Abbe
right to its edges. Most of the villages of the Pas du Calais are
composed of a single street, but such a street! It is often several
kilometers long. In this one, the street divides in front of the mairie
and forms two others, so that the hamlet becomes a big Y, brokenly
bordered by low-built dwellings.
The cyclists, the officers, the orderlies, break away from the long
moving mass. Then, as they come up, a few of the men at a time are
swallowed up by the barns, the still available houses being reserved
for officers and departments. Our half-company is led at first to the
end of the village, and then--by some misunderstanding among the
quartermasters--back to the other end, the one by which we entered.
This oscillation takes up time, and the squad, dragged thus from north
to south and from south to north, heavily fatigued and irritated by
wasted walking, evinces feverish impatience. For it is supremely
important to be installed and set free as early as possible if we are
to carry out the plan we have cherished so long--to find a native with
some little place to let, and a table where the squad can have its
meals. We have talked a good deal about this idea and its delightful
advantages. We have taken counsel, subscribed to a common fund, and
decided that this time we will take the header into the additional
outlay.
But will it be possible? Very many places are already snapped up. We
are not the only ones to bring our dream of comfort here, and it will
be a race for that table. Three companies are coming in after ours, but
four were here before us, and there are the officers, the cooks of the
hospital staff for the Section, and the clerks, the drivers, the
orderlies and others, official cooks of the sergeants' mess, and I
don't know how many more. All these men are more influential than the
soldiers of the line, they have more mobility and more money, and can
bring off their schemes beforehand. Already, while we march four
abreast towards the barn assigned to the squad, we see some of these
jokers across the conquered thresholds, domestically busy.
Tirette imitates the sounds of lowing and bleating--"There's our
cattle-shed." A fairly big barn. The chopped straw smells of
night-soil, and our feet stir up clouds of dust. But it is almost
enclosed. We choose our places and cast off our equipment.
Those who dreamed yet once again of a special sort of Paradise sing
low--yet once again. "Look now, it seems as ugly as the other
places."--"It's something like the same."--"Naturally."
But there is no time to waste in talking. The thing is to get clear and
be after the others with all strength and speed. We hurry out. In spite
of broken backs and aching feet, we set ourselves savagely to this last
effort on which the comfort of a week depends.
The squad divides into two patrols and sets off at the double, one to
left and one to right along the street, which is already obstructed by
busy questing poilus; and all the groups see and watch each other--and
hurry. In places there are collisions, jostlings, and abuse.
"Let's begin down there at once, or our goose'll be cooked!" I have an
impression of a kind of fierce battle between all the soldiers, in the
streets of the village they have just occupied. "For us," says
Marthereau, "war is always struggling and fighting--always, always."
We knock at door after door, we show ourselves timidly, we offer
ourselves like undesirable goods. A voice arises among us, "You haven't
a bit of a corner, madame, for some soldiers? We would pay."
"No--you see, I've got officers--under-officers, that is--you see, it's
the mess for the band, and the secretaries, and the gentlemen of the
ambulance--"
Vexation after vexation. We close again, one after the other, all the
doors we had half-opened, and look at each other, on the wrong side of
the threshold, with dwindling hope in our eyes.
"Bon Dieu! You'll see that we shan't find anything," growls Barque.
"Damn those chaps that got on the midden before us!"
The human flood reaches high-water mark everywhere. The three streets
are all growing dark as each overflows into another. Some natives cross
our path, old men or ill-shapen, contorted in their walk, stunted in
the face; and even young people, too, over whom hovers the mystery of
secret disorders or political connections. As for the petticoats, there
are old women and many young ones--fat, with well-padded cheeks, and
equal to geese in their whiteness.
Suddenly, in an alley between two houses, I have a fleeting vision of a
woman who crossed the shadowy gap--Eudoxie! Eudoxie, the fairy woman
whom Lamuse hunted like a satyr, away back in the country, that morning
we brought back Volpatte wounded, and Fouillade, the woman I saw
leaning from the spinney's edge and bound to Farfadet in a mutual
smile. It is she whom I just glimpsed like a gleam of sunshine in that
alley. But the gleam was eclipsed by the tail of a wall, and the place
thereof relapsed upon gloom. She here, already! Then she has followed
our long and painful trek! She is attracted--?
And she looks like one allured, too. Brief glimpse though it was of her
face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was serious,
thoughtful, absentminded.
Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell
him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that
lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it evades
him like a Will-o'-th'-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are on
business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt with
the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the matter to
heart. He is trembling--you can see it in his dusty scalp. He guides
us, nose to the wind. He suggests that we make an attempt on that
yellow door over there. Forward!
Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent. Blaire, his foot
on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his knife, and
plaster-like debris is falling fast. He might be engaged in sculpture.
"You never had your feet so white before," jeers Barque. "Rotting
apart," says Blaire, "you don't know where it is, that special van?" He
goes on to explain: "I've got to look up the dentist-van, so they can
grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that's left.
Oui, seems it's stationed here, the chop-caravan."
He folds up his knife, pockets it, and goes off alongside the wall,
possessed by the thought of his jaw-bones' new lease of life.
Once more we put up our beggars' petition: "Good-day, madame; you
haven't got a little corner where we could feed? We would pay, of
course, we would pay--"
Through the glass of the low window we see lifted the face of an old
man--like a fish in a bowl, it looks--a face curiously flat, and lined
with parallel wrinkles, like a page of old manuscript.
"You've the little shed there."
"There's no room in the shed, and when the washing's done there--"