"We do the washing there," mutters the woman, continuing to wield her
broom.
"You know," says Barque, with a smile and an engaging air, "we're not
like those disagreeable people who get drunk and make themselves a
nuisance. May we have a look?"
The woman has let her broom rest. She is thin and inconspicuous. Her
jacket hangs from her shoulders as from a valise. Her face is like
cardboard, stiff and without expression. She looks at us and hesitates,
then grudgingly leads the way into a very dark little place, made of
beaten earth and piled with dirty linen.
"It's splendid," cries Lamuse, in all honesty.
"Isn't she a darling, the little kiddie!" says Barque, as he pats the
round cheek, like painted india-rubber, of a little girl who is staring
at us with her dirty little nose uplifted in the gloom. "Is she yours,
madame?"
"And that one, too?" risks Marthereau, as he espies an over-ripe infant
on whose bladder-like cheeks are shining deposits of jam, for the
ensnaring of the dust in the air. He offers a half-hearted caress in
the direction of the moist and bedaubed countenance. The woman does not
deign an answer.
So there we are, trifling and grinning, like beggars whose plea still
hangs fire.
Lamuse whispers to me, in a torment of fear and cupidity, "Let's hope
she'll catch on, the filthy old slut. It's grand here, and, you know,
everything else is pinched!"
"There's no table," the woman says at last.
"Don't worry about the table," Barque exclaims. "Tenez! there, put away
in that corner, the old door; that would make us a table."
"You're not going to trail me about and upset all my work!" replies the
cardboard woman suspiciously, and with obvious regret that she had not
chased us away immediately.
"Don't worry, I tell you. Look, I'll show you. Hey, Lamuse, old cock,
give me a hand."
Under the displeased glances of the virago we place the old door on a
couple of barrels.
"With a bit of a rub-down," says I, "that will be perfect."
"Eh, oui, maman, a flick with a brush'll do us instead of tablecloth."
The woman hardly knows what to say; she watches us spitefully: "There's
only two stools, and how many are there of you?"
"About a dozen."
"A dozen. Jesus Maria!"
"What does it matter? That'll be all right, seeing there's a plank
here--and that's a bench ready-made, eh, Lamuse?"
"Course," says Lamuse.
"I want that plank," says the woman. "Some soldiers that were here
before you have tried already to take it away."
"But us, we're not thieves," suggests Lamuse gently, so as not to
irritate the creature that has our comfort at her disposal.
"I don't say you are, but soldiers, vous savez, they smash everything
up. Oh, the misery of this war!"
"Well then, how much'll it be, to hire the table, and to heat up a
thing or two on the stove?"
"It'll be twenty sous a day," announces the hostess with restraint, as
though we were wringing that amount from her.
"It's dear," says Lamuse.
"It's what the others gave me that were here, and they were very kind,
too, those gentlemen, and it was worth my while to cook for them. I
know it's not difficult for soldiers. If you think it's too much, it's
no job to find other customers for this room and this table and the
stove, and who wouldn't be in twelves. They're coming along all the
time, and they'd pay still more, if I wanted. A dozen!--"
Lamuse hastens to add, "I said 'It's dear,' but still, it'll do, eh,
you others?" On this downright question we record our votes.
"We could do well with a drop to drink," says Lamuse. "Do you sell
wine?"
"No," said the woman, but added, shaking with anger, "You see, the
military authority forces them that's got wine to sell it at fifteen
sous! Fifteen sous! The misery of this cursed war! One loses at it, at
fifteen sous, monsieur. So I don't sell any wine. I've got plenty for
ourselves. I don't say but sometimes, and just to oblige, I don't allow
some to people that one knows, people that knows what things are, but
of course, messieurs, not at fifteen sous."
Lamuse is one of those people "that knows what things are." He grabs at
his water-bottle, which is hanging as usual on his hip. "Give me a
liter of it. That'll be what?"
"That'll be twenty-two sous, same as it cost me. But you know it's just
to oblige you, because you're soldiers."
Barque, losing patience, mutters an aside. The woman throws him a surly
glance, and makes as if to hand Lamuse's bottle back to him. But
Lamuse, launched upon the hope of drinking wine at last, so that his
cheeks redden as if the draught already pervaded them with its grateful
hue, hastens to intervene--
"Don't be afraid--it's between ourselves, la mere, we won't give you
away."
She raves on, rigid and bitter, against the limited price on wine; and,
overcome by his lusty thirst, Lamuse extends the humiliation and
surrender of conscience so far as to say, "No help for it, madame! It's
a military order, so it's no use trying to understand it."
She leads us into the store-room. Three fat barrels occupy it in
impressive rotundity. "Is this your little private store?"
"She knows her way about, the old lady," growls Barque.
The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself
by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ways at
once."
"How?" insists Barque.
"I can see you're not going to risk your money!"
"That's right--we only risk our skins."
We intervene, disturbed by the tone of menace for our present concern
that the conversation has assumed. But the door of the wine-cellar is
shaken, and a man's voice comes through. "Hey, Palmyra!" it calls.
The woman hobbles away, discreetly leaving the door open. "That's all
right--we've taken root!" Lamuse says.
"What dirty devils these, people are!" murmurs Barque, who finds his
reception hard to stomach.
"It's shameful and sickening," says Marthereau.
"One would think it was the first time you'd had any of it!"
"And you, old gabbler," chides Barque, "that says prettily to the
wine-robber, 'Can't be helped, it's a military order'! Gad, old man,
you're not short of cheek!"
"What else could I do or say? We should have had to go into mourning
for our table and our wine. She could make us pay forty sous for the
wine, and we should have had it all the same, shouldn't we? Very well,
then, got to think ourselves jolly lucky. I'll admit I'd no confidence,
and I was afraid it was no go."
"I know; it's the same tale everywhere and always, but all the same--"
"Damn the thieving natives, ah, oui! Some of 'em must be making
fortunes. Everybody can't go and get killed."
"Ah, the gallant people of the East!"
"Yes, and the gallant people of the North!"
"Who welcome us with open arms!"
"With open hands, yes--"
"I tell you," Marthereau says again, "it's a shame and it's sickening."
"Shut it up--there's the she-beast coming back." We took a turn round
to quarters to announce our success, and then went shopping. When we
returned to our new dining-room, we were hustled by the preparations
for lunch. Barque had been to the rations distribution, and had
managed, thanks to personal relations with the cook (who was a
conscientious objector to fractional divisions), to secure the potatoes
and meat that formed the rations for all the fifteen men of the squad.
He had bought some lard--a little lump for fourteen sous--and some one
was frying. He had also acquired some green peas in tins, four tins.
Mesnil Andre's tin of veal in jelly would be a hors-d'oeuvre.
"And not a dirty thing in all the lot!" said Lamuse, enchanted.
* * * * *
We inspected the kitchen. Barque was moving cheerfully about the iron
Dutch oven whose hot and steaming bulk furnished all one side of the
room.
"I've added a stewpan on the quiet for the soup," he whispered to me.
Lifting the lid of the stove--"Fire isn't too hot. It's half an hour
since I chucked the meat in, and the water's clean yet."
A minute later we heard some one arguing with the hostess. This extra
stove was the matter in dispute. There was no more room left for her on
her stove. They had told her they would only need a casserole, and she
had believed them. If she had known they were going to make trouble she
would not have let the room to them. Barque, the good fellow, replied
jokingly, and succeeded in soothing the monster.
One by one the others arrived. They winked and rubbed their hands
together, full of toothsome anticipation, like the guests at a
wedding-breakfast. As they break away from the dazzling light outside
and penetrate this cube of darkness, they are blinded, and stand like
bewildered owls for several minutes.
"It's not too brilliant in here," says Mesnil Joseph. "Come, old chap,
what do you want?" The others exclaim in chorus, "We're damned well off
here." And I can see heads nodding assent in the cavern's twilight.
An incident: Farfadet having by accident rubbed against the damp and
dirty wall, his shoulder has brought away from it a smudge so big and
black that it can be seen even here. Farfadet, so careful of his
appearance, growls, and in avoiding a second contact with the wall,
knocks the table so that his spoon drops to the ground. Stooping, he
fumbles among the loose earth, where dust and spiders' webs for years
have silently fallen. When he recovers his spoon it is almost black,
and webby threads hang from it. Evidently it is disastrous to let
anything fall on the ground. One must live here with great care.
Lamuse brings down his fat hand, like a pork-pie, between two of the
places at table. "Allons, a table!" We fall to. The meal is abundant
and of excellent quality. The sound of conversation mingles with those
of emptying bottles and filling jaws. While we taste the joy of eating
at a table, a glimmer of light trickles through a vent-hole, and wraps
in dusty dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while
its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take
stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety.
Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman
who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it
was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the
grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like
sheep. "And although you were outside, if you weren't satisfied, and
groused too much, they chased you off."
Any news yet? It is said that severe penalties have been imposed on
those who plunder the population, and there is already a list of
convictions. Volpatte has been sent down. Men of Class '93 are going to
be sent to the rear, and Pepere is one of them.
When Barque brings in the harvest of the fry-pan, he announces that our
hostess has soldiers at her table--ambulance men of the machine-guns.
"They thought they were the best off, but it's us that's that," says
Fouillade with decision, lolling grandly in the darkness of the narrow
and tainted hole where we are just as confusedly heaped together as in
a dug-out. But who would think of making the comparison?
"Vous savez pas," says Pepin, "the chaps of the 9th, they're in clover!
An old woman has taken them in for nothing, because of her old man
that's been dead fifty years and was a rifleman once on a time. Seems
she's even given them a rabbit for nix, and they're just worrying it
jugged."
"There's good sorts everywhere. But the boys of the 9th had famous luck
to fall into the only shop of good sorts in the whole village."
Palmyra comes with the coffee, which she supplies. She thaws a little,
listens to us, and even asks questions in a supercilious way: "Why do
you call the adjutant 'le juteux'?"