"Well?"
"Well, old chap, I've seen her again."
"You've seen her? I thought she was in the occupied country?"
"Yes, she's at Lens, with my relations. Well, I've seen her--ah, and
then, after all, zut!--I'll tell you all about it. Well, I was at Lens,
three weeks ago. It was the eleventh; that's twenty days since."
I look at him, astounded. But he looks like one who is speaking the
truth. He talks in sputters at my side, as we walk in the increasing
light--
"They told us--you remember, perhaps--but you weren't there, I
believe--they told us the wire had got to be strengthened in front of
the Billard Trench. You know what that means, eh? They hadn't been able
to do it till then. As soon as one gets out of the trench he's on a
downward slope, that's got a funny name."
"The Toboggan."
"Yes, that's it; and the place is as bad by night or in fog as in broad
daylight, because of the rifles trained on it before hand on trestles,
and the machine-guns that they point during the day. When they can't
see any more, the Boches sprinkle the lot.
"They took the pioneers of the C.H.R., but there were some missing, and
they replaced 'em with a few poilus. I was one of 'em. Good. We climb
out. Not a single rifle-shot! 'What does it mean?' we says, and behold,
we see a Boche, two Boches, three Boches, coming out of the ground--the
gray devils!--and they make signs to us and shout 'Kamarad!' 'We're
Alsatians,' they says, coming more and more out of their communication
trench--the International. 'They won't fire on you, up there,' they
says; 'don't be afraid, friends. Just let us bury our dead.' And behold
us working aside of each other, and even talking together since they
were from Alsace. And to tell the truth, they groused about the war and
about their officers. Our sergeant knew all right that it was forbidden
to talk with the enemy, and they'd even read it out to us that we were
only to talk to them with our rifles. But the sergeant he says to
himself that this is God's own chance to strengthen the wire, and as
long as they were letting us work against them, we'd just got to take
advantage of it.
"Then behold one of the Boches that says, 'There isn't perhaps one of
you that comes from the invaded country and would like news of his
family?'
"Old chap, that was a bit too much for me. Without thinking if I did
right or wrong, I went up to him and I said, 'Yes, there's me.' The
Boche asks me questions. I tell him my wife's at Lens with her
relations, and the little one, too. He asks where she's staying. I
explain to him, and he says he can see it from there. 'Listen,' he
says, 'I'll take her a letter, and not only that, but I'll bring you an
answer.' Then all of a sudden he taps his forehead, the Boche, and
comes close to me--'Listen, my friend, to a lot better still. If you
like to do what I say, you shall see your wife, and your kids as well,
and all the lot, sure as I see you.' He tells me, to do it, I've only
got to go with him at a certain time with a Boche greatcoat and a shako
that he'll have for me. He'd mix me up in a coal-fatigue in Lens, and
we'd go to our house. I could go and have a look on condition that I
laid low and didn't show myself, and he'd be responsible for the chaps
of the fatigue, but there were non-coms. in the house that he wouldn't
answer for--and, old chap, I agreed!"
"That was serious."
"Yes, for sure, it was serious. I decided all at once, without thinking
and without wishing to think, seeing I was dazzled with the idea of
seeing my people again; and if I got shot afterwards, well, so much the
worse--but give and take. The supply of law and demand they call it,
don't they?
"My boy, it all went swimmingly. The only hitch was they had such hard
work to find a shako big enough, for, as you know, I'm well off for
head. But even that was fixed up. They raked me out in the end a
lousebox big enough to hold my head. I've already some Boche
boots--those that were Caron's, you know. So, behold us setting off in
the Boche trenches--and they're most damnably like ours--with these
good sorts of Boche comrades, who told me in very good French--same as
I'm speaking--not to fret myself.
"There was no alarm, nothing. Getting there came off all right.
Everything went off so sweet and simple that I fancied I must be a
defaulting Boche. We got to Lens at nightfall. I remember we passed in
front of La Perche and went down the Rue du Quatorze-Juillet. I saw
some of the townsfolk walking about in the streets like they do in our
quarters. I didn't recognize them because of the evening, nor them me,
because of the evening too, and because of the seriousness of things.
It was so dark you couldn't put your finger into your eye when I
reached my folk's garden.
"My heart was going top speed. I was all trembling from head to foot as
if I were only a sort of heart myself. And I had to hold myself back
from carrying on aloud, and in French too, I was so happy and upset.
The Kamarad says to me, 'You go, pass once, then another time, and look
in at the door and the window. Don't look as if you were looking. Be
careful.' So I get hold of myself again, and swallow my feelings all at
a gulp. Not a bad sort, that devil, seeing he'd have had a hell of a
time if I'd got nailed.
"At our place, you know, same as everywhere in the Pas de Calais, the
outside doors of the houses are cut in two. At the bottom, it's a sort
of barrier, half-way up your body; and above, you might call it a
shutter. So you can shut the bottom half and be one-half private.
"The top half was open, and the room, that's the dining-room, and the
kitchen as well, of course, was lighted up and I heard voices.
"I went by with my neck twisted sideways. There were heads of men and
women with a rosy light on them, round the round table and the lamp. My
eyes fell on her, on Clotilde. I saw her plainly. She was sitting
between two chaps, non-coms., I believe, and they were talking to her.
And what was she doing? Nothing; she was smiling, and her face was
prettily bent forward and surrounded with a light little framework of
fair hair, and the lamp gave it a bit of a golden look.
"She was smiling. She was contented. She had a look of being well off,
by the side of the Boche officer, and the lamp, and the fire that
puffed an unfamiliar warmth out on me. I passed, and then I turned
round, and passed again. I saw her again, and she was always smiling.
Not a forced smile, not a debtor's smile, non, a real smile that came
from her, that she gave. And during that time of illumination that I
passed in two senses, I could see my baby as well, stretching her hands
out to a great striped simpleton and trying to climb on his knee; and
then, just by, who do you think I recognized? Madeleine Vandaert,
Vandaert's wife, my pal of the 19th, that was killed at the Maine, at
Montyon.
"She knew he'd been killed because she was in mourning. And she, she
was having good fun, and laughing outright, I tell you--and she looked
at one and the other as much as to say, 'I'm all right here!'
"Ah, my boy, I cleared out of that, and butted into the Kamarads that
were waiting to take me back. How I got back I couldn't tell you. I was
knocked out. I went stumbling like a man under a curse, and if any-body
had said a wrong word to me just then--! I should have shouted out
loud; I should have made a row, so as to get killed and be done with
this filthy life!
"Do you catch on? She was smiling, my wife, my Clotilde, at this time
in the war! And why? Have we only got to be away for a time for us not
to count any more? You take your damned hook from home to go to the
war, and everything seems finished with; and they worry for a while
that you're gone, but bit by bit you become as if you didn't exist,
they can do without you to be as happy as they were before, and to
smile. Ah, Christ! I'm not talking of the other woman that was
laughing, but my Clotilde, mine, who at that chance moment when I saw
her, whatever you may say, was getting on damned well without me!
"And then, if she'd been with friends or relations; but no, actually
with Boche officers! Tell me, shouldn't I have had good reason to jump
into the room, fetch her a couple of swipes, and wring the neck of the
other old hen in mourning?
"Yes, yes; I thought of doing it. I know all right I was getting
violent, I was getting out of control.
"Mark me. I don't want to say more about it than I have said. She's a
good lass, Clotilde. I know her, and I've confidence in her. I'm not
far wrong, you know. If I were done in, she'd cry all the tears in her
body to begin with. She thinks I'm alive, I admit, but that isn't the
point. She can't prevent herself from being; well off, and contented,
and letting herself go, when she's a good fire, a good lamp, and
company, whether I'm there or not--"
I led Poterloo away: "You exaggerate, old chap; you're getting absurd
notions, come." We had walked very slowly and were still at the foot of
the hill. The fog was becoming like silver as it prepared for
departure. Sunshine was very near.
* * * * *
Poterloo looked up and said, "We'll go round by the Carency road and go
in at the back." We struck off at an angle into the fields. At the end
of a few minutes he said to me, "I exaggerate, you think? You say that
I exaggerate?" He reflected. "Ah!" Then he added, with the shaking of
the head that had hardly left him all the morning, "What about it? All
the same, it's a fact--"
We climbed the slope. The cold had become tepidity. Arrived on a little
plateau--"Let's sit here again before going in," he proposed. He sat
down, heavy with the world of thought that entangled him. His forehead
was wrinkled. Then he turned towards me with an awkward air, as if he
were going to beg some favor: "Tell me, mate, I'm wondering if I'm
right."
But after looking at me, he looked at everything else, as though he
would rather consult them than me.
A transformation was taking place in the sky and on the earth. The fog
was hardly more than a fancy. Distances revealed themselves. The narrow
plain, gloomy and gray, was getting bigger, chasing its shadows away,
and assuming color. The light was passing over it from east to west
like sails.
And down there at our very feet, by the grace of distance and of light,
we saw Souchez among the trees--the little place arose again before our
eyes, new-born in the sunshine!
"Am I right?" repeated Poterloo, more faltering, more dubious.
Before I could speak he replied to himself, at first almost in a
whisper, as the light fell on him--"She's quite young, you know; she's
twenty-six. She can't hold her youth in, it's coming out of her all
over, and when she's resting in the lamp-light and the warmth, she's
got to smile; and even if she burst out laughing, it would just simply
be her youth, singing in her throat. It isn't on account of others, if
truth were told; it's on account of herself. It's life. She lives. Ah,
yes, she lives, and that's all. It isn't her fault if she lives. You
wouldn't have her die? Very well, what do you want her to do? Cry all
day on account of me and the Boches? Grouse? One can't cry all the
time, nor grouse for eighteen months. Can't be done. It's too long, I
tell you. That's all there is to it."
He stops speaking to look at the view of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, now
wholly illuminated.
"Same with the kid; when she found herself alongside a simpleton that
doesn't tell her to go and play with herself, she ends by wanting to
get on his knee. Perhaps she'd prefer that it was her uncle or a friend
or her father--perhaps--but she tries it on all the same with the only
man that's always there, even if it's a great hog in spectacles.
"Ah," he cries, as he gets up and comes gesticulating before me.
"There's a good answer one could give me. If I didn't come back from
the war, I should say, 'My lad, you've gone to smash, no more Clotilde,
no more love! You'll be replaced in her heart sooner or later; no
getting round it; your memory, the portrait of you that she carries in
her, that'll fade bit by bit and another'll come on top of it, and
she'll begin another life again.' Ah, if I didn't come back!"
He laughs heartily. "But I mean to come back. Ah, yes! One must be
there. Otherwise--I must be there, look you," he says again more
seriously; "otherwise, if you're not there, even if you're dealing with
saints and angels, you'll be at fault in the end. That's life. But I am
there." He laughs. "Well, I'm a little there, as one might say!"
I get up too, and tap him on the shoulder. "You're right, old pal,
it'll all come to an end."
He rubs his hands and goes on talking. "Yes, by God! it'll all finish,
don't worry. Oh, I know well there'll be hard graft before it's
finished, and still more after. We've got to work, and I don't only
mean work with the arms.
"It'll be necessary to make everything over again. Very well, we'll do
it. The house? Gone. The garden? Nowhere. All right, we'll rebuild the
house, we'll remake the garden. The less there is the more we'll make
over again. After all, it's life, and we're made to remake, eh? And
we'll remake our life together, and happiness. We'll make the days
again; we'll remake the nights.
"And the other side, too. They'll make their world again. Do you know
what I say?--perhaps it won't be as long as one thinks--"
"Tiens! I can see Madeleine Vandaert marrying another chap. She's a
widow; but, old man, she's been a widow eighteen months. Do you think
it's not a big slice, that, eighteen months? They even leave off
wearing mourning, I believe, about that time! People don't remember
that when they say 'What a strumpet she is,' and when, in effect, they
ask her to commit suicide. But mon vieux, one forgets. One is forced to
forget. It isn't the people that make you forget; you do it yourself;
it's just forgetfulness, mind you. I find Madeleine again all of a
sudden, and to see her frivvling there it broke me up as much as if her
husband had been killed yesterday--it's natural. But it's a devil of a
long time since he got spiked, poor lad. It's a long time since, it's
too long since. People are no longer the same. But, mark you, one must
come back, one must be there! We shall be there, and we shall be busy
with beginning again!"
On the way, he looks and winks, cheered up by finding a peg on which to
hang his ideas. He says--"I can see it from here, after the war, all
the Souchez people setting themselves again to work and to life--what a
business! Tiens, Papa Ponce, for example, the back-number! He was so
pernickety that you could see him sweeping the grass in his garden with
a horsehair brush, or kneeling on his lawn and trimming the turf with a
pair of scissors. Very well, he'll treat himself to that again! And
Madame Imaginaire, that lived in one of the last houses towards the
Chateau de Carleul, a large woman who seemed to roll along the ground
as if she'd got casters under her big circular petticoats. She had a
child every year, regular, punctual--a proper machine-gun of kids. Very
well, she'll take that occupation up again with all her might."
He stops and ponders, and smiles a very little--almost within himself:
"Tiens, I'll tell you; I noticed--it isn't very important, this," he
insists, as though suddenly embarrassed by the triviality of this
parenthesis--"but I noticed (you notice it in a glance when you're
noticing something else) that it was cleaner in our house than in my
time--"
We come on some little rails in the ground, climbing almost hidden in
the withered grass underfoot. Poterloo points out with his foot this
bit of abandoned track, and smiles; "That, that's our railway. It was a
cripple, as you may say; that means something that doesn't move. It
didn't work very quickly. A snail could have kept pace with it. We
shall remake it. But certainly it won't go any quicker. That can't be
allowed!"
When we reached the top of the hill, Poterloo turned round and threw a
last look over the slaughtered places that we had just visited. Even
more than a minute ago, distance recreated the village across the
remains of trees shortened and sliced that now looked like young
saplings. Better even than just now, the sun shed on that white and red
accumulation of mingled material an appearance of life and even an
illusion of meditation. Its very stones seemed to feel the vernal
revival. The beauty of sunshine heralded what would be, and revealed
the future. The face of the watching soldier, too, shone with a glamour
of reincarnation, and the smile on it was born of the springtime and of
hope. His rosy cheeks and blue eyes seemed brighter than ever.
We go down into the communication trench and there is sunshine there.
The trench is yellow, dry, and resounding. I admire its finely
geometrical depth, its shovel-smoothed and shining flanks; and I find
it enjoyable to hear the clean sharp sound of our feet on the hard
ground or on the caillebotis--little gratings of wood, placed end to
end and forming a plankway.
I look at my watch. It tells me that it is nine o'clock, and it shows
me, too, a dial of delicate color where the sky is reflected in
rose-pink and blue, and the fine fret-work of bushes that are planted
there above the marges of the trench.
And Poterloo and I look at each other with a kind of confused delight.
We are glad to see each other, as though we were meeting after absence!
He speaks to me, and though I am quite familiar with the singsong
accent of the North, I discover that he is singing.
We have had bad days and tragic nights in the cold and the rain and the
mud. Now, although it is still winter, the first fine morning shows and
convinces us that it will soon be spring once more. Already the top of
the trench is graced by green young grass, and amid its new-born
quivering some flowers are awakening. It means the end of contracted
and constricted days. Spring is coming from above and from below. We
inhale with joyful hearts; we are uplifted.
Yes, the bad days are ending. The war will end, too, que diable! And no
doubt it will end in the beautiful season that is coming, that already
illumines us, whose zephyrs already caress us.
A whistling sound--tiens, a spent bullet! A bullet? Nonsense--it's a
blackbird! Curious how similar the sound was! The blackbirds and the
birds of softer song, the countryside and the pageant of the seasons,
the intimacy of dwelling-rooms, arrayed in light--Oh! the war will end
soon; we shall go back for good to our own; wife, children, or to her
who is at once wife and child, and we smile towards them in this young
glory that already unites us again.
At the forking of the two trenches, in the open and on the edge, here
is something like a doorway. Two posts lean one upon the other, with a
confusion of electric wires between them, hanging down like tropical
creepers. It looks well. You would say it was a theatrical contrivance
or scene. A slender climbing plant twines round one of the posts, and
as you follow it with your glance, you see that it already dares to
pass from one to the other.
Soon, passing along this trench whose grassy slopes quiver like the
flanks of a fine horse, we come out into our own trench on the Bethune
road, and here is our place. Our comrades are there, in clusters. They
are eating, and enjoying the goodly temperature.
The meal finished, we clean our aluminium mess-tins or plates with a
morsel of bread. "Tiens, the sun's going!" It is true; a cloud has
passed over and hidden it. "It's going to splash, my little lads," says
Lamuse "that's our luck all over! Just as we are going off!"
"A damned country!" says Fouillade. In truth this Northern climate is
not worth much. It drizzles and mizzles, reeks and rains. And when
there is any sun it soon disappears in the middle of this great damp
sky.
Our four days in the trenches are finished, and the relief will
commence at nightfall. Leisurely we get ready for leaving. We fill and
put aside the knapsacks and bags. We give a rub to the rifles and wrap
them up.
It is already four o'clock. Darkness is falling quickly, and we grow
indistinct to each other. "Damnation. Here's the rain!" A few drops and
then the downpour. Oh, la, la, la! We don our capes and tent-cloths. We
go back unto the dug-out, dabbling, and gathering mud on our knees,
hands, and elbows, for the bottom of the trench is getting sticky. Once
inside, we have hardly time to light a candle, stuck on a bit of stone,
and to shiver all round--"Come on, en route!"
We hoist ourselves into the wet and windy darkness outside. I can dimly
see Poterloo's powerful shoulders; in the ranks we are always side by
side. When we get going I call to him, "Are you there, old
chap?"--"Yes, in front of you," he cries to me, turning round. As he
turns he gets a buffet in the face from wind and rain, but he laughs.
His happy face of the morning abides with him. No downpour shall rob
him of the content that he carries in his strong and steadfast heart;
no evil night put out the sunshine that I saw possess his thoughts some
hours ago.
We march, and jostle each other, and stumble. The rain is continuous,
and water runs in the bottom of the trench. The floor-gratings yield as
the soil becomes soaked; some of them slope to right or left and we
skid on them. In the dark, too, one cannot see them, so we miss them at
the turnings and put our feet into holes full of water.
Even in the grayness of the night I will not lose sight of the slaty
shine of Poterloo's helmet, which streams like a roof under the
torrent, nor of the broad back that is adorned with a square of
glistening oilskin. I lock my step in his, and from time to time I
question him and he answers me--always in good humor, always serene and
strong.
When there are no more of the wooden floor-gratings, we tramp in the
thick mud. It is dark now. There is a sudden halt and I am thrown on
Poterloo. Up higher we hear half-angry reproaches--"What the devil,
will you get on? We shall get broken up!"
"I can't get my trotters unstuck!" replies a pitiful voice.
The engulfed one gets clear at last, and we have to run to overtake the
rest of the company. We begin to pant and complain, and bluster against
those who are leading. Our feet go down haphazard; we stumble and hold
ourselves up by the walls, so that our hands are plastered with mud.
The march becomes a stampede, full of the noise of metal things and of
oaths.
In redoubled rain there is a second halt; some one has fallen, and the
hubbub is general. He picks himself up and we are off again. I exert
myself to follow Poterloo's helmet closely that gleams feebly in the
night before my eyes, and I shout from time to time, "All
right?"--"Yes, yes, all right," he replies, puffing and blowing, and
his voice always singsong and resonant.
Our knapsacks, tossed in this rolling race under the assault of the
elements, drag and hurt our shoulders.
The trench is blocked by a recent landslide, and we plunge unto it. We
have to tear our feet out of the soft and clinging earth, lifting them
high at each step. Then, when this crossing is laboriously
accomplished, we topple down again into the slippery stream, in the
bottom of which are two narrow ruts, boot-worn, which hold one's foot
like a vice, and there are pools into which it goes with a great
splash. In one place we must stoop very low to pass under a heavy and
glutinous bridge that crosses the trench, and we only get through with
difficulty. It obliges us to kneel in the mud, to flatten ourselves on
the ground, and to crawl on all fours for a few paces. A little farther
there are evolutions to perform as we grasp a post that the sinking of
the ground has set aslope across the middle of the fairway.
We come to a trench-crossing. "Allons, forward! Look out for
yourselves, boys!" says the adjutant, who has flattened himself in a
corner to let us pass and to speak to us. "This is a bad spot."
"We're done up," shouts a voice so hoarse that I cannot identify the
speaker.
"Damn! I've enough of it, I'm stopping here," groans another, at the
end of his wind and his muscle.
"What do you want me to do?" replies the adjutant, "No fault of mine,
eh? Allons, get a move on, it's a bad spot--it was shelled at the last
relief!"
We go on through the tempest of wind and water. We seem to be going
ever down and down, as in a pit. We slip and tumble, butt into the wall
of the trench, into which we drive our elbows hard, so as to throw
ourselves upright again. Our going is a sort of long slide, on which we
keep up just how and where we can. What matters is to stumble only
forward, and as straight as possible.
Where are we? I lift my head, in spite of the billows of rain, out of
this gulf where we are struggling. Against the hardly discernible
background of the buried sky, I can make out the rim of the trench; and
there, rising before my eyes all at once and towering over that rim, is
something like a sinister doorway, made of two black posts that lean
one upon the other, with something hanging from the middle like a
torn-off scalp. It is the doorway.
"Forward! Forward!"
I lower my head and see no more; but again I hear the feet that sink in
the mud and come out again, the rattle of the bayonets, the heavy
exclamations, and the rapid breathing.
Once more there is a violent back-eddy. We pull up sharply, and again I
am thrown upon Poterloo and lean on his back, his strong back and
solid, like the trunk of a tree, like healthfulness and like hope. He
cries to me, "Cheer up, old man, we're there!"
We are standing still. It is necessary to go back a little--<i>Nom de
Dieu!</i>--no, we are moving on again!
Suddenly a fearful explosion falls on us. I tremble to my skull; a
metallic reverberation fills my head; a scorching and suffocating smell
of sulphur pierces my nostrils. The earth has opened in front of me. I
feel myself lifted and hurled aside--doubled up, choked, and half
blinded by this lightning and thunder. But still my recollection is
clear; and in that moment when I looked wildly and desperately for my
comrade-in-arms, I saw his body go up, erect and black, both his arms
outstretched to their limit, and a flame in the place of his head!
------------
[note 1:] All these high roads are stone-paved, and traffic is
noisy.--Tr.