THE weather was appalling. Water and wind attacked the passers-by;
riddled, flooded, and upheaved the roads.
I was returning from fatigue to our quarters at the far end of the
village. The landscape that morning showed dirty yellow through the
solid rain, and the sky was dark as a slated roof. The downpour flogged
the horse-trough as with birchen rods. Along the walls, human shapes
went in shrinking files, stooping, abashed, splashing.
In spite of the rain and the cold and bitter wind, a crowd had gathered
in front of the door of the barn where we were lodging. All close
together and back to back, the men seemed from a distance like a great
moving sponge. Those who could see, over shoulders and between heads,
opened their eyes wide and said, "He has a nerve, the boy!" Then the
inquisitive ones broke away, with red noses and streaming faces, into
the down-pour that lashed and the blast that bit, and letting the hands
fall that they had upraised in surprise, they plunged them in their
pockets.
In the center, and running with rain, abode the cause of the
gathering--Fouillade, bare to the waist and washing himself in abundant
water. Thin as an insect, working his long slender arms in riotous
frenzy, he soaped and splashed his head, neck, and chest, down to the
upstanding gridirons of his sides. Over his funnel-shaped cheeks the
brisk activity had spread a flaky beard like snow, and piled on the top
of his head a greasy fleece that the rain was puncturing with little
holes.
By way of a tub, the patient was using three mess-tins which he had
filled with water--no one knew how--in a village where there was none;
and as there was no clean spot anywhere to put anything down in that
universal streaming of earth and sky, he thrust his towel into the
waistband of his trousers, while the soap went back into his pocket
every time he used it.
They who still remained wondered at this heroic gesticulation in the
face of adversity, and said again, as they wagged their heads, "It's a
disease of cleanliness he's got."
"You know he's going to be carpeted, they say, for that affair of the
shell-hole with Volpatte." And they mixed the two exploits together in
a muddled way, that of the shell-hole, and the present, and looked on
him as the hero of the moment, while he puffed, sniffled, grunted,
spat, and tried to dry himself under the celestial shower-bath with
rapid rubbing and as a measure of deception; then at last he resumed
his clothes.
* * * * *
After his wash, Fouillade feels cold. He turns about and stands in the
doorway of the barn that shelters us. The arctic blast discolors and
disparages his long face, so hollow and sunburned; it draws tears from
his eyes, and scatters them on the cheeks once scorched by the mistral;
his nose, too, weeps increasingly.
Yielding to the ceaseless bite of the wind that grips his ears in spite
of the muffler knotted round his head, and his calves in spite of the
yellow puttees with which his cockerel legs are enwound, he reenters
the barn, but comes out of it again at once, rolling ferocious eyes,
and muttering oaths with the accent one hears in that corner of the
land, over six hundred miles from here, whence he was driven by war.
So he stands outside, erect, more truly excited than ever before in
these northern scenes. And the wind comes and steals into him, and
comes again roughly, shaking and maltreating his scarecrow's slight and
flesh-less figure.
Ye gods! It is almost uninhabitable, the barn they have assigned to us
to live in during this period of rest. It is a collapsing refuge,
gloomy and leaky, confined as a well. One half of it is under water--we
see rats swimming in it--and the men are crowded in the other half. The
walls, composed of laths stuck together with dried mud, are cracked,
sunken, holed in all their circuit, and extensively broken through
above. The night we got here--until the morning--we plugged as well as
we could the openings within reach, by inserting leafy branches and
hurdles. But the higher holes, and those in the roof, still gaped and
always. When dawn hovers there, weakling and early, the wind for
contrast rushes in and blows round every side with all its strength,
and the squad endures the hustling of an everlasting draught.
When we are there, we remain upright in the ruined obscurity, groping,
shivering, complaining.
Fouillade, who has come in once more, goaded by the cold, regrets his
ablutions. He has pains in his loins and back. He wants something to
do, but what?
Sit down? Impossible; it is too dirty inside there. The ground and the
paving-stones are plastered with mud; the straw scattered for our
sleeping is soaked through, by the water that comes through the holes
and by the boots that wipe themselves with it. Besides, if you sit
down, you freeze; and if you lie on the straw, you are troubled by the
smell of manure, and sickened by the vapors of ammonia. Fouillade
contents himself by looking at his place, and yawning wide enough to
dislocate his long jaw, further lengthened by a goatee beard where you
would see white hairs if the daylight were really daylight.
"The other pals and boys," said Marthereau, "they're no better off than
we are. After breakfast I went to see a jail-bird of the 11th on the
farm near the hospital. You've to clamber over a wall by a ladder
that's too short--talk about a scissor-cut!" says Marthereau, who is
short in the leg; "and when once you're in the hen-run and rabbit-hutch
you're shoved and poked by everybody and a nuisance to 'em all. You
don't know where to put your pasties down. I vamoosed from there, and
sharp."
"For my part," says Cocon, "I wanted to go to the blacksmith's when
we'd got quit of grubbing, to imbibe something hot, and pay for it.
Yesterday he was selling coffee, but some bobbies called there this
morning, so the good man's got the shakes, and he's locked his door."
Lamuse has tried to clean his rifle. But one cannot clean his rifle
here, even if he squats on the ground near the door, nor even if he
takes away the sodden tent-cloth, hard and icy, which hangs across the
doorway like a stalactite; it is too dark. "And then, old chap, if you
let a screw fall, you may as well hang yourself as try to find it,
'specially when your fists are frozen silly."
"As for me, I ought to be sewing some things, but--what cheer!"
One alternative remains--to stretch oneself on the straw, covering the
head with handkerchief or towel to isolate it from the searching stench
of fermenting straw, and sleep. Fouillade, master of his time to-day,
being on neither guard nor fatigues, decides. He lights a taper to seek
among his belongings, and unwinds the coils of his comforter, and we
see his emaciated shape, sculptured in black relief, folding and
refolding it.
"Potato fatigue, inside there, my little lambs!" a sonorous voice
bellows at the door. The hooded shape from which it comes is Sergeant
Henriot. He is a malignant sort of simpleton, and though all the while
joking in clumsy sympathy he supervises the evacuation of quarters with
a sharp eye for the evasive malingerer.
Outside, on the streaming road in the perpetual rain, the second
section is scattered, also summoned and driven to work by the adjutant.
The two sections mingle together. We climb the street and the hillock
of clayey soil where the traveling kitchen is smoking.
"Now then, my lads, get on with it; it isn't a long job when everybody
sets to--Come--what have you got to grumble about, you? That does no
good."
Twenty minutes later we return at a trot. As we grope about in the
barn, we cannot touch anything but what is sodden and cold, and the
sour smell of wet animals is added to the vapor of the liquid manure
that our beds contain.
We gather again, standing, around the props that hold the barn up, and
around the rills that fall vertically from the holes in the roof--faint
columns which rest on vague bases of splashing water. "Here we are
again!" we cry.
Two lumps in turn block the doorway, soaked with the rain that drains
from them--Lamuse and Barque, who have been in quest of a brasier, and
now return from the expedition empty-handed, sullen and vicious. "Not a
shadow of a fire-bucket, and what's more, no wood or coal either, not
for a fortune." It is impossible to have any fire. "If I can't get any,
no one can," says Barque, with a pride which a hundred exploits justify.
We stay motionless, or move slowly in the little space we have, aghast
at so much misery. "Whose is the paper?"
"It's mine," says Becuwe.
"What does it say? Ah, zut, one can't read in this darkness!"
"It says they've done everything necessary now for the soldiers, to
keep them warm in the trenches. They've got all they want, and blankets
and shirts and brasiers and fire-buckets and bucketsful of coal; and
that it's like that in the first-line trenches."
"Ah, damnation!" growl some of the poor prisoners of the barn, and they
shake their fists at the emptiness without and at the newspaper itself.
But Fouillade has lost interest in what they say. He has bent his long
Don Quixote carcase down in the shadow, and outstretched the lean neck
that looks as if it were braided with violin strings. There is
something on the ground that attracts him.
It is Labri, the other squad's dog, an uncertain sort of mongrel
sheep-dog, with a lopped tail, curled up on a tiny litter of
straw-dust. Fouillade looks at Labri, and Labri at him. Becuwe comes up
and says, with the intonation of the Lille district, "He won't eat his
food; the dog isn't well. Hey, Labri, what's the matter with you?
There's your bread and meat; eat it up; it's good when it's in your
bucket. He's poorly. One of these mornings we shall find him dead."
Labri is not happy. The soldier to whom he is entrusted is hard on him,
and usually ill-treats him--when he takes any notice of him at all. The
animal is tied up all day. He is cold and ill and left to himself. He
only exists. From time to time, when there is movement going on around
him, he has hopes of going out, rises and stretches himself, and
bestirs his tail to incipient demonstration. But he is disillusioned,
and lies down again, gazing past his nearly full mess-tin.
He is weary, and disgusted with life. Even if he has escaped the bullet
or bomb to which he is as much exposed as we, he will end by dying
here. Fouillade puts his thin hand on the dog's head, and it gazes at
him again. Their two glances are alike--the only difference is that one
comes from above and the other from below.
Fouillade sits down also--the worse for him!--in a corner, his hands
covered by the folds of his greatcoat, his long legs doubled up like a
folding bed. He is dreaming, his eyes closed under their bluish lids;
there is something that he sees again. It is one of those moments when
the country from which he is divided assumes in the distance the charms
of reality--the perfumes and colors of l'Herault, the streets of Cette.
He sees so plainly and so near that he hears the noise of the shallops
in the Canal du Midi, and the unloading at the docks; and their call to
him is distinctly clear.
Above the road where the scent of thyme and immortelles is so strong
that it is almost a taste in the mouth, in the heart of the sunshine
whose winging shafts stir the air into a warmed and scented breeze, on
Mont St. Clair, blossoms and flourishes the home of his folks. Up
there, one can see with the same glance where the Lake of Thau, which
is green like glass, joins hands with the Mediterranean Sea, which is
azure; and sometimes one can make out as well, in the depths of the
indigo sky, the carven phantoms of the Pyrenees.
There was he born, there he grew up, happy and free. There he played,
on the golden or ruddy ground; played--even--at soldiers. The eager joy
of wielding a wooden saber flushed the cheeks now sunken and seamed. He
opens his eyes, looks about him, shakes his head, and falls upon regret
for the days when glory and war to him were pure, lofty, and sunny
things.
The man puts his hand over his eyes, to retain the vision within.
Nowadays, it is different.
It was up there in the same place, later, that he came to know
Clemence. She was just passing, the first time, sumptuous with
sunshine, and so fair that the loose sheaf of straw she carried in her
arms seemed to him nut-brown by contrast. The second time, she had a
friend with her, and they both stopped to watch him. He heard them
whispering, and turned towards them. Seeing themselves discovered, the
two young women made off, with a sibilance of skirts, and giggles like
the cry of a partridge.
And it was there, too, that he and she together set up their home. Over
its front travels a vine, which he coddled under a straw hat, whatever
the season. By the garden gate stands the rose-tree that he knows so
well--it never used its thorns except to try to hold him back a little
as he went by.
Will he return again to it all? Ah, he has looked too deeply into the
profundity of the past not to see the future in appalling accuracy. He
thinks of the regiment, decimated at each shift; of the big knocks and
hard he has had and will have, of sickness, and of wear--
He gets up and snorts, as though to shake off what was and what will
be. He is back in the middle of the gloom, and is frozen and swept by
the wind, among the scattered and dejected men who blindly await the
evening. He is back in the present, and he is shivering still.
Two paces of his long legs make him butt into a group that is
talking--by way of diversion or consolation--of good cheer.
"At my place," says one, "they make enormous loaves, round ones, big as
cart-wheels they are!" And the man amuses himself by opening his eyes
wide, so that he can see the loaves of the homeland.
"Where I come from," interposes the poor Southerner, "holiday feasts
last so long that the bread that's new at the beginning is stale at the
end!"
"There's a jolly wine--it doesn't look much, that little wine where I
come from; but if it hasn't fifteen degrees of alcohol it hasn't
anything!"
Fouillade speaks then of a red wine which is almost violet, which
stands dilution as well as if it had been brought into the world to
that end.
"We've got the jurancon wine," said a Bearnais, "the real thing, not
what they sell you for jurancon, which comes from Paris; indeed, I know
one of the makers."
"If it comes to that," said Fouillade, "in our country we've got
muscatels of every sort, all the colors of the rainbow, like patterns
of silk stuff. You come home with me some time, and every day you shall
taste a nonsuch, my boy."
"Sounds like a wedding feast," said the grateful soldier.
So it comes about that Fouillade is agitated by the vinous memories
into which he has plunged, which recall to him as well the dear perfume
of garlic on that far-off table. The vapors of the blue wine in big
bottles, and the liqueur wines so delicately varied, mount to his head
amid the sluggish and mournful storm that fills the barn.
Suddenly he calls to mind that there is settled in the village where
they are quartered a tavern-keeper who is a native of Beziers, called
Magnac. Magnac had said to him, "Come and see me, mon camarade, one of
these mornings, and we'll drink some wine from down there, we will!
I've several bottles of it, and you shall tell me what you think of it."
This sudden prospect dazzles Fouillade. Through all his length runs a
thrill of delight, as though he had found the way of salvation. Drink
the wine of the South--of his own particular South, even--drink much of
it--it would be so good to see life rosy again, if only for a day! Ah
yes, he wants wine; and he gets drunk in a dream.
But as he goes out he collides at the entry with Corporal Broyer, who
is running down the street like a peddler, and shouting at every
opening, "Morning parade!"
The company assembles and forms in squares on the sticky mound where
the traveling kitchen is sending soot into the rain. "I'll go and have
a drink after parade," says Fouillade to himself.
And he listens listlessly, full of his plan, to the reading of the
report. But carelessly as he listens, he hears the officer read, "It is
absolutely forbidden to leave quarters before 5 p.m. and after 8 p.m.,"
and he hears the captain, without noticing the murmur that runs round
the poilus, add this comment on the order: "This is Divisional
Headquarters. However many there are of you, don't show yourselves.
Keep under cover. If the General sees you in the street, he will have
you put to fatigues at once. He must not see a single soldier. Stay
where you are all day in your quarters. Do what you like as long as no
one sees you--no one!"
We go back into the barn.
* * * * *
Two o'clock. It is three hours yet, and then it will be totally dark,
before one may risk going outside without being punished.
Shall we sleep while waiting? Fouillade is sleepy no longer; the hope
of wine has shaken him up. And then, if one sleeps in the day, he will
not sleep at night. No! To lie with your eyes open is worse than a
nightmare. The weather gets worse; wind and rain increase, without and
within.
Then what? If one may not stand still, nor sit down, nor lie down, nor
go for a stroll, nor work--what?
Deepening misery settles on the party of benumbed and tired soldiers.
They suffer to the bone, nor know what to do with their bodies. "Nom de
Dieu, we're badly off!" is the cry of the derelicts--a lamentation, an
appeal for help.
Then by instinct they give themselves up to the only occupation
possible to them in there--to walk up and down on the spot, and thus
ward off anchylosis.
So they begin to walk quickly to and fro in the scanty place that three
strides might compass; they turn about and cross and brush each other,
bent forward, hands pocketed--tramp, tramp. These human beings whom the
blast cuts even among their straw are like a crowd of the wretched
wrecks of cities who await, under the lowering sky of winter, the
opening of some charitable institution. But no door will open for
them--unless it be four days hence, one evening at the end of the rest,
to return to the trenches.
Alone in a corner, Cocon cowers. He is tormented by lice; but weakened
by the cold and wet he has not the pluck to change his linen; and he
sits there sullen, unmoving--and devoured.
As five o'clock draws near, in spite of all, Fouillade begins again to
intoxicate himself with his dream of wine, and he waits, with its gleam
in his soul. What time is it?--A quarter to five.--Five minutes to
five.--Now!
He is outside in black night. With great splashing skips he makes his
way towards the tavern of Magnac, the generous and communicative
Biterrois. Only with great trouble does he find the door in the dark
and the inky rain. By God, there is no light! Great God again, it is
closed! The gleam of a match that his great lean hand covers like a
lamp-shade shows him the fateful notice--"Out of Bounds." Magnac,
guilty of some transgression, has been banished into gloom and idleness!
Fouillade turns his back on the tavern that has become the prison of
its lonely keeper. He will not give up his dream. He will go somewhere
else and have vin ordinaire, and pay for it, that's all. He puts his
hand in his pocket to sound his purse; it is there. There ought to be
thirty-seven sous in it, which will not run to the wine of Prou, but--
But suddenly he starts, stops dead, and smites himself on the forehead.
His long-drawn face is contracted in a frightful grimace, masked by the
night. No, he no longer has thirty-seven sous, fool that he is! He has
forgotten the tin of sardines that he bought the night before--so
disgusting did he find the dark macaroni of the soldiers' mess--and the
drinks he stood to the cobbler who put him some nails in his boots.
Misery! There could not be more than thirteen sous left!
To get as elevated as one ought, and to avenge himself on the life of
the moment, he would certainly need--damn'ation--a liter and a half, In
this place, a liter of red ordinary costs twenty-one sous. It won't go.
His eyes wander around him in the darkness, looking for some one.
Perhaps there is a pal somewhere who will lend him money, or stand him
a liter.
But who--who? Not Becuwe, he has only a marraine [note 1:] who sends
him tobacco and note-paper every fortnight. Not Barque, who would not
toe the line; nor Blaire, the miser--he wouldn't understand. Not
Biquet, who seems to have something against him; nor Pepin who himself
begs, and never pays, even when he is host. Ah, if Volpatte were there!
There is Mesnil Andre, but he is actually in debt to Fouillade on
account of several drinks round. Corporal Bertrand? Following on a
remark of Fouillade's, Bertrand told him to go to the devil, and now
they look at each other sideways. Farfadet? Fouillade hardly speaks a
word to him in the ordinary way. No, he feels that he cannot ask this
of Farfadet. And then--a thousand thunders!--what is the use of seeking
saviors in one's imagination? Where are they, all these people, at this
hour?
Slowly he goes back towards the barn. Then mechanically he turns and
goes forward again, with hesitating steps. He will try, all the same.
Perhaps he can find convivial comrades. He approaches the central part
of the village just when night has buried the earth.
The lighted doors and windows of the taverns shine again in the mud of
the main street. There are taverns every twenty paces. One dimly sees
the heavy specters of soldiers, mostly in groups, descending the
street. When a motor-car comes along, they draw aside to let it pass,
dazzled by the head-lights, and bespattered by the liquid mud that the
wheels hurl over the whole width of the road.
The taverns are full. Through the steamy windows one can see they are
packed with compact clouds of helmeted men. Fouillade goes into one or
two, on chance. Once over the threshold, the dram-shop's tepid breath,
the light, the smell and the hubbub, affect him with longing. This
gathering at tables is at least a fragment of the past in the present.
He looks from table to table, and disturbs the groups as he goes up to
scrutinize all the merrymakers in the room. Alas, he knows no one!
Elsewhere, it is the same; he has no luck. In vain he has extended his
neck and sent his desperate glances in search of a familiar head among
the uniformed men who in clumps or couples drink and talk or in
solitude write. He has the air of a cadger, and no one pays him heed.
Finding no soul to come to his relief, he decides to invest at least
what he has in his pocket. He slips up to the counter. "A pint of
wine--and good."
"White?"
"Eh, oui."
"You, mon garcon, you're from the South," says the landlady, handing
him a little full bottle and a glass, and gathering his twelve sous.
He places himself at the corner of a table already overcrowded by four
drinkers who are united in a game of cards. He fills the glass to the
brim and empties it, then fills it again.
"Hey, good health to you! Don't drink the tumbler!" yelps in his face a
man who arrives in the dirty blue jumper of fatigues, and displays a
heavy cross-bar of eyebrows across his pale face, a conical head, and
half a pound's weight of ears. It is Harlingue, the armorer.
It is not very glorious to be seated alone before a pint in the
presence of a comrade who gives signs of thirst. But Fouillade pretends
not to understand the requirements of the gentleman who dallies in
front of him with an engaging smile, and he hurriedly empties his
glass. The other turns his back, not without grumbling that "they're
not very generous, but on the contrary greedy, these Southerners."
Fouillade has put his chin on his fists, and looks unseeing at a corner
of the room where the crowded poilus elbow, squeeze, and jostle each
other to get by.
It was pretty good, that swig of white wine, but of what use are those
few drops in the Sahara of Fouillade? The blues did not far recede, and
now they return.
The Southerner rises and goes out, with his two glasses of wine in his
stomach and one sou in his pocket. He plucks up courage to visit one
more tavern, to plumb it with his eyes, and by way of excuse to mutter,
as he leaves the place, "Curse him! He's never there, the animal!"
Then he returns to the barn, which still--as always--whistles with wind
and water. Fouillade lights his candle, and by the glimmer of the flame
that struggles desperately to take wing and fly away, he sees Labri. He
stoops low, with his light over the miserable dog--perhaps it will die
first. Labri is sleeping, but feebly, for he opens an eye at once, and
his tail moves.
The Southerner strokes him, and says to him in a low voice, "It can't
be helped, it--" He will not say more to sadden him, but the dog
signifies appreciation by jerking his head before closing his eyes
again. Fouillade rises stiffly, by reason of his rusty joints, and
makes for his couch. For only one thing more he is now hoping--to
sleep, that the dismal day may die, that wasted day, like so many
others that there will be to endure stoically and to overcome, before
the last day arrives of the war or of his life.
------------
[note 1:] French soldiers have extensively developed a system of
corresponding with French women whom they do not know from Eve and
whose acquaintance they usually make through newspaper advertisements.
As typical of the latter I copy the following: "Officier artilleur, 30
ans, desire correspondance discrete avec jeune marraine, femme du
monde. Ecrire," etc. The "lonely soldier" movement in this country is
similar.--Tr.