When she has disappeared, we criticize our coffee. "Talk about clear!
You can see the sugar ambling round the bottom of the glass."--"She
charges six sous for it."--"It's filtered water."
The door half opens, and admits a streak of light. The face of a little
boy is defined in it. We entice him in like a kitten and give him a bit
of chocolate.
Then, "My name's Charlie," chirps the child. "Our house, that's close
by. We've got soldiers, too. We always had them, we had. We sell them
everything they want. Only, voila, sometimes they get drunk."
"Tell me, little one, come here a bit," says Cocon, taking the boy
between his knees. "Listen now. Your papa, he says, doesn't he, 'Let's
hope the war goes on,' eh?" [note 2]
"Of course," says the child, tossing his head, "because we're getting
rich. He says, by the end of May, we shall have got fifty thousand
francs."
"Fifty thousand francs! Impossible!"
"Yes, yes!" the child insists, stamping, "he said it to mamma. Papa
wished it could be always like that. Mamma, sometimes, she isn't sure,
because my brother Adolphe is at the front. But we're going to get him
sent to the rear, and then the war can go on."
These confidences are disturbed by sharp cries, coming from the rooms
of our hosts. Biquet the mobile goes to inquire. "It's nothing," says
he, coming back; "it's the good man slanging the woman because she
doesn't know how to do things, he says, because she's made the mustard
in a tumbler, and he never heard of such a thing, he says."
We get up, and leave the strong odor of pipes, wine, and stale coffee
in our cave. As soon as we have crossed the threshold, a heaviness of
heat puffs in our faces, fortified by the mustiness of frying that
dwells in the kitchen and emerges every time the door is opened. We
pass through legions of flies which, massed on the walls in black
hordes, fly abroad in buzzing swarms as we pass: "It's beginning again
like last year! Flies outside, lice inside.--"
"And microbes still farther inside!"
In a corner of this dirty little house and its litter of old rubbish,
its dusty debris of last year and the relics of so many summers gone
by, among the furniture and household gear, something is moving. It is
an old simpleton with a long bald neck, pink and rough, making you
think of a fowl's neck which has prematurely molted through disease.
His profile is that of a hen, too--no chin and a long nose. A gray
overlay of beard felts his receded cheek, and you see his heavy
eyelids, rounded and horny, move up and down like shutters on the dull
beads of his eyes.
Barque has already noticed him: "Watch him--he's a treasure-seeker. He
says there's one somewhere in this hovel that he's stepfather to.
You'll see him directly go on all-fours and push his old phizog in
every corner there is. Tiens, watch him."
With the aid of his stick, the old man proceeded to take methodical
soundings. He tapped along the foot of the walls and on the
floor-tiles.. He was hustled by the coming and going of the occupants
of the house, by callers, and by the swing of Palmyra's broom; but she
let him alone and said nothing, thinking to herself, no doubt, that the
exploitation of the national calamity is a more profitable treasure
than problematical caskets.
Two gossips are standing in a recess and exchanging confidences in low
voices, hard by an old map of Russia that is peopled with flies. "Oui,
but it's with the Picon bitters that you've got to be careful. If you
haven't got a light touch, you can't get your sixteen glasses out of a
bottle, and so you lose too much profit. I don't say but what one's all
right in one's purse, even so, but one doesn't make enough. To guard
against that, the retailers ought to agree among themselves, but the
understanding's so difficult to bring off, even when it's in the
general interest."
Outside there is torrid sunshine, riddled with flies. The little
beasts, quite scarce but a few days ago, multiply everywhere the murmur
of their minute and innumerable engines. I go out in the company of
Lamuse; we are going for a saunter. One can be at peace today--it is
complete rest, by reason of the overnight march. We might sleep, but it
suits us much better to use the rest for an extensive promenade.
To-morrow, the exercise and fatigues will get us again. There are some,
less lucky than we, who are already caught in the cogwheels of fatigue.
To Lamuse, who invites him to come and stroll with us, Corvisart
replies, screwing up the little round nose that is laid flatly on his
oblong face like a cork, "Can't--I'm on manure!" He points to the
shovel and broom by whose help he is performing his task of scavenger
and night-soil man.
We walk languidly. The afternoon lies heavy on the drowsy land and on
stomachs richly provided and embellished with food. The remarks we
exchange are infrequent.
Over there, we hear noises. Barque has fallen a victim to a menagerie
of housewives; and the scene is pointed by a pale little girl, her hair
tied behind in a pencil of tow and her mouth embroidered with fever
spots, and by women who are busy with some unsavory job of washing in
the meager shade before their doors.
Six men go by, led by a quartermaster corporal. They carry heaps of new
greatcoats and bundles of boots. Lamuse regards his bloated and horny
feet--"I must have some new sheds, and no mistake; a bit more and
you'll see my splay-feet through these ones. Can't go marching on the
skin of my tongs, eh?"
An aeroplane booms overhead. We follow its evolutions with our faces
skyward, our necks twisted, our eyes watering at the piercing
brightness of the sky.
Lamuse declares to me, when we have brought our gaze back to earth,
"Those machines'll never become practical, never."
"How can you say that? Look at the progress they've made already, and
the speed of it."
"Yes, but they'll stop there. They'll never do any better, never."
This time I do not challenge the dull and obstinate denial that
ignorance opposes to the promise of progress, and I let my big comrade
alone in his stubborn belief that the wonderful effort of science and
industry has been suddenly cut short.
Having thus begun to reveal to me his inmost thoughts, Lamuse
continues. Coming nearer and lowering his head, he says to me, "You
know she's here--Eudoxie?"
"Ah!" said I.
"Yes, old chap. You never notice anything, you don't, but I noticed,"
and Lamuse smiles at me indulgently. "Now, do you catch on? If she's
come here, it's because we interest her, eh? She's followed us for one
of us, and don't you forget it."
He gets going again. "My boy, d'you want to know what I say? She's come
after me."
"Are you sure of it, old chap?"
"Yes," says the ox-man, in a hollow voice. "First, I want her. Then,
twice, old man, I've found her exactly in my path, in mine, d'you
understand? You may tell me that she ran away; that's because she's
timid, that, yes--"
He stopped dead in the middle of the street and looked straight at me.
The heavy face, greasily moist on the cheeks and nose, was serious. His
rotund fist went up to the dark yellow mustache, so carefully pointed,
and smoothed it tenderly. Then he continued to lay bare his heart to me
"I want her; but, you know, I shall marry her all right, I shall. She's
called Eudoxie Dumail. At first, I wasn't thinking of marrying her. But
since I've got to know her family name, it seems to me that it's
different, and I should get on all right. Ah, nom de Dieu! She's so
pretty, that woman! And it's not only that she's pretty--ah!"
The huge child was overflowing with sentiment and emotion, and trying
to make them speak to me. "Ah, my boy, there are times when I've just
got to hold myself back with a hook," came the strained and gloomy
tones, while the blood flushed to the fleshy parts of his cheeks and
neck. "She's so beautiful, she's--and me I'm--she's so unlike--you'll
have noticed it, surely, you that notices--she's a country girl, oui;
eh bien, she's got a God knows what that's better than a Parisienne,
even a toffed-up and stylish Parisienne, pas? She--as for me, I--"
He puckered his red eyebrows. He would have liked to tell me all the
splendor of his thoughts, but he knew not the art of expressing
himself, so he was silent. He remained alone in his voiceless emotion,
as always alone.
We went forward side by side between the rows of houses. In front of
the doors, drays laden with casks were drawn up. The front windows
blossomed with many-hued heaps of jam-pots, stacks of tinder
pipe-lighters--everything that the soldier is compelled to buy. Nearly
all the natives had gone into grocery. Business had been getting out of
gear locally for a long time, but now it was booming. Every one,
smitten with the fever of sum-totals and dazzled by the multiplication
table, plunged into trade.
Bells tolled, and the procession of a military funeral came out. A
forage wagon, driven by a transport man, carried a coffin wrapped in a
flag. Following, were a detachment of men, an adjutant, a padre, and a
civilian.
"The poor little funeral with its tail lopped off!" said Lamuse. "Ah,
those that are dead are very happy. But only sometimes, not
always--voila!"
We have passed the last of the houses. In the country, beyond the end
of the street, the fighting convoy and the regimental convoy have
settled themselves, the traveling kitchens and jingling carts that
follow them with odds and ends of equipment, the Red Cross wagons, the
motor lorries, the forage carts, the baggage-master's gig. The tents of
drivers and conductors swarm around the vehicles. On the open spaces
horses lift their metallic eyes to the sky's emptiness, with their feet
on barren earth. Four poilus are setting up a table. The open-air
smithy is smoking. This heterogeneous and swarming city, planted in
ruined fields whose straight or winding ruts are stiffening in the
heat, is already broadly valanced with rubbish and dung.
On the edge of the camp a big, white-painted van stands out from the
others in its tidy cleanliness. Had it been in the middle of a fair,
one would have said it was the stylish show where one pays more than at
the others.
This is the celebrated "stomatological" van that Blaire was asking
about. In point of fact, Blaire is there in front, looking at it. For
some long time, no doubt, he has been going round it and gazing.
Field-hospital orderly Sambremeuse, of the Division, returning from
errands, is climbing the portable stair of painted wood which leads to
the van door. In his arms he carries a bulky box of biscuits, a loaf of
fancy bread, and a bottle of champagne. Blaire questions him--"Tell me,
Sir Rump, this horse-box--is it the dentist's?"
"It's written up there," replies Sambremeuse--a little corpulent man,
clean, close-shaven, and his chin starch-white. "If you can't see it,
you don't want the dentist to look after your grinders, you want the
vet to clean your eyesight."
Blaire comes nearer and scrutinizes the establishment. "It's a queer
shop," he says. He goes nearer yet, draws back, hesitates to risk his
gums in that carriage. At last he decides, puts a foot on the stair,
and disappears inside the caravan.
We continue our walk, and turn into a footpath where are high, dusty
bushes and the noises are subdued. The sunshine blazes everywhere; it
heats and roasts the hollow of the way, spreading blinding and burning
whiteness in patches, and shimmers in the sky of faultless blue.
At the first turning, almost before we had heard the light grating of a
footstep, we are face to face with Eudoxie!
Lamuse utters a deep exclamation. Perhaps he fancies once more that she
is looking for him, and believes that she is the gift of his destiny.
He goes up to her--all the bulk of him.
She looks at him and stops, framed by the hawthorn. Her strangely
slight and pale face is apprehensive, the lids tremble on her
magnificent eyes. She is bareheaded, and in the hollowed neck of her
linen corsage there is the dawning of her flesh. So near, she is truly
enticing in the sunshine, this woman crowned with gold, and one's
glance is impelled and astonished by the moon-like purity of her skin.
Her eyes sparkle; her teeth, too, glisten white in the living wound of
her half-open mouth, red as her heart.
"Tell me--I am going to tell you," pants Lamuse. "I like you so much--"
He outstretches his arm towards the motionless, beloved wayfarer.