AT the end of the yard of the Muets farm, among the outbuildings, the
barn gapes like a cavern. It is always caverns for us, even in houses!
When you have crossed the yard, where the manure yields underfoot with
a spongy sound or have gone round it instead on the narrow paved path
of difficult equilibrium, and when you have arrived at the entrance to
the barn, you can see nothing at all.
Then, if you persist, you make out a misty hollow where equally misty
and dark lumps are asquat or prone or wandering from one corner to
another. At the back, on the right and on the left, the pale gleams of
two candles, each with the round halo of a distant moon allow you at
last to make out the human shape of these masses, whose mouths emit
either steam or thick smoke.
Our hazy retreat, which I allow carefully to swallow me whole, is a
scene of excitement this evening. We leave for the trenches to-morrow
morning, and the nebulous tenants of the barn are beginning to pack up.
Although darkness falls on my eyes and chokes them as I come in from
the pallid evening, I still dodge the snares spread over the ground by
water-bottles, mess-tins and weapons, but I butt full into the loaves
that are packed together exactly in the middle, like the paving of a
yard. I reach my corner. Something alive is there with a huge back,
fleecy and rounded, squatting and stooping over a collection of little
things that glitter on the ground, and I tap the shoulder upholstered
in sheepskin. The being turns round, and by the dull and fitful gleam
of a candle which a bayonet stuck in the ground upholds, I see one half
of a face, an eye, the end of a mustache, and the corner of a half-open
mouth. It growls in a friendly way, and resumes the inspection of its
possessions.
"What are you doing there?"
"I'm fixing things, and clearing up."
The quasi-brigand who appears to be checking his booty, is my comrade
Volpatte. He has folded his tent-cloth in four and placed it on his
bed--that is, on the truss of straw assigned to him--and on this carpet
he has emptied and displayed the contents of his pockets.
And it is quite a shop that he broods over with a housewife's
solicitous eyes, watchful and jealous, lest some one walks over him.
With my eye I tick off his copious exhibition.
Alongside his handkerchief, pipe, tobacco-pouch (which also contains a
note-book), knife, purse, and pocket pipe-lighter, which comprise the
necessary and indispensable groundwork, here are two leather laces
twisted like earthworms round a watch enclosed in a case of transparent
celluloid, which has curiously dulled and blanched with age. Then a
little round mirror, and another square one; this last, though broken,
is of better quality, and bevel-edged. A flask of essence of
turpentine, a flask of mineral oil nearly empty, and a third flask,
empty. A German belt-plate, bearing the device, "Gott mit uns"; a
dragoon's tassel of similar origin; half wrapped in paper, an aviator's
arrow in the form of a steel pencil and pointed like a needle; folding
scissors and a combined knife and fork of similar pliancy; a stump of
pencil and one of candle; a tube of aspirin, also containing opium
tablets, and several tin boxes.
Observing that my inspection of his personal possessions is detailed,
Volpatte helps me to identify certain items--
"That, that's a leather officer's glove. I cut the fingers off to stop
up the mouth of my blunderbuss with; that, that's telephone wire, the
only thing to fasten buttons on your greatcoat with if you want 'em to
stay there; and here, inside here, d'you know what that is? White
thread, good stuff, not what you're put off with when they give you new
things, a sort of macaroni au fromage that you pull out with a fork;
and there's a set of needles on a post-card. The safety-pins, they're
there, separate."
"And here, that's the paper department. Quite a library."
There is indeed a surprising collection of papers among the things
disgorged by Volpatte's pockets--the violet packet of writing-paper,
whose unworthy printed envelope is out at heels; an Army squad-book, of
which the dirty and desiccated binding, like the skin of an old tramp,
has perished and shrunk all over: a note-book with a chafed moleskin
cover, and packed with papers and photographs, those of his wife and
children enthroned in the middle.
Out of this bundle of yellowed and darkened papers Volpatte extracts
this photograph and shows it to me once more. I renew acquaintance with
Madame Volpatte and her generous bosom, her mild and mellow features;
and with the two little boys in white collars, the elder slender, the
younger round as a ball.
"I've only got photos of old people," says Biquet, who is twenty years
old. He shows us a portrait holding it close to the candle, of two aged
people who look at us with the same well-behaved air as Volpatte's
children.
"I've got mine with me, too," says another; "I always stick to the
photo of the nestlings."
"Course! Every man carries his crowd along," adds another.
"It's funny," Barque declares, "a portrait wears itself out just with
being looked at. You haven't got to gape at it too often, or be too
long about it; in the long run, I don't know what happens, but the
likeness mizzles."
"You're right," says Blaire, "I've found it like that too, exactly.''
"I've got a map of the district as well, among my papers," Volpatte
continues. He unfolds it to the light. Illegible and transparent at the
creases, it looks like one of those window-blinds made of squares sewn
together.
"I've some newspaper too"--he unfolds a newspaper article upon
poilus--"and a book"--a twopence-half-penny novel, called Twice a
Maid--"Tiens, another newspaper cutting from the Etampes Bee. Don't
know why I've kept that, but there must be a reason somewhere. I'll
think about it when I have time. And then, my pack of cards, and a set
of draughts, with a paper board and the pieces made of sealing-wax."
Barque comes up, regards the scene, and says, "I've a lot more things
than that in my pockets." He addresses himself to Volpatte. "Have you
got a Boche pay-book, louse-head, some phials of iodine, and a
Browning? I've all that, and two knives."
"I've no revolver," says Volpatte, "nor a Boche pay-book, but I could
have had two knives or even ten knives; but I only need one."
"That depends," says Barque. "And have you any mechanical buttons,
fathead?"
"I haven't any," cries Becuwe.
"The private can't do without 'em," Lamuse asserts. "Without them, to
make your braces stick to your breeches, the game's up."
"And I've always got in my pocket," says Blaire, "so's they're within
reach, my case of rings." He brings it cut, wrapped up in a gas-mask
bag, and shakes it. The files ring inside, and we hear the jingle of
aluminium rings in the rough.
"I've always got string," says Biquet, "that's the useful stuff!"
"Not so useful as nails," says Pepin, and he shows three in his hand,
big, little, and average.
One by one the others come to join in the conversation, to chaffer and
cadge. We are getting used to the half-darkness. But Corporal Salavert,
who has a well-earned reputation for dexterity, makes a hanging lamp
with a candle and a tray, the latter contrived from a Camembert box and
some wire. We light up, and around its illumination each man tells what
he has in his pockets, with parental preferences and bias.
"To begin with, how many have we?"
"How many pockets? Eighteen," says some one--Cocon, of course, the man
of figures.
"Eighteen pockets! You're codding, rat-nose," says big Lamuse.
"Exactly eighteen," replies Cocon. "Count them, if you're as clever as
all that."
Lamuse is willing to be guided by reason in the matter, and putting his
two hands near the light so as to count accurately, he tells off his
great brick-red fingers: Two pockets in the back of the greatcoat; one
for the first-aid packet, which is used for tobacco; two inside the
greatcoat in front; two outside it on each side, with flaps; three in
the trousers, and even three and a half, counting the little one in
front.
"I'll bet a compass on it," says Farfadet.
"And I, my bits of tinder."
"I," says Tirloir, "I'll bet a teeny whistle that my wife sent me when
she said, 'If you're wounded in the battle you must whistle, so that
your comrades will come and save your life.'"
We laugh at the artless words. Tulacque intervenes, and says
indulgently to Tiloir, "They don't know what war is back there; and if
you started talking about the rear, it'd be you that'd talk rot."
"We won't count that pocket," says Salavert, "it's too small. That
makes ten."
"In the jacket, four. That only makes fourteen after all."
"There are the two cartridge pockets, the two new ones that fasten with
straps."
"Sixteen," says Salavert.
"Now, blockhead and son of misery, turn my jacket back. You haven't
counted those two pockets. Now then, what more do you want? And yet
they're just in the usual place. They're your civilian pockets, where
you shoved your nose-rag, your tobacco, and the address where you'd got
to deliver your parcel when you were a messenger."
"Eighteen!" says Salavert, as grave as a judge. "There are eighteen,
and no mistake; that's done it."
At this point in the conversation, some one makes a series of noisy
stumbles on the stones of the threshold with the sound of a horse
pawing the ground--and blaspheming. Then, after a silence, the barking
of a sonorous and authoritative voice--"Hey, inside there! Getting
ready? Everything must be fixed up this evening and packed tight and
solid, you know. Going into the first line this time, and we may have a
hot time of it."
"Right you are, right you are, mon adjutant," heedless voices answer.
"How do you write 'Arnesse'?" asks Benech, who is on all fours, at work
with a pencil and an envelope. While Cocon spells "Ernest" for him and
the voice of the vanished adjutant is heard afar repeating his
harangue, Blaire picks up the thread, and says--
"You should always, my children--listen to what I'm telling you--put
your drinking-cup in your pocket. I've tried to stick it everywhere
else, but only the pocket's really practical, you take my word. If
you're in marching order, or if you've doffed your kit to navigate the
trenches either, you've always got it under your fist when chances
come, like when a pal who's got some gargle, and feels good towards you
says, 'Lend us your cup,' or a peddling wine-seller, either. My young
bucks, listen to what I tell you; you'll always find it good--put your
cup in your pocket."
"No fear," says Lamuse, "you won't see me put my cup in my pocket;
damned silly idea, no more or less. I'd a sight sooner sling it on a
strap with a hook."
"Fasten it on a greatcoat button, like the gas-helmet bag, that's a lot
better; for suppose you take off your accouterments and there's any
wine passing, you look soft."
"I've got a Boche drinking-cup," says Barque; "it's flat, so it goes
into a side pocket if you like, or it goes very well into a
cartridge-pouch, once you've fired the damn things off or pitched them
into a bag."
"A Boche cup's nothing special," says Pepin; "it won't stand up, it's
just lumber."
"You wait and see, maggot-snout," says Tirette, who is something of a
psychologist. "If we attack this time, same as the adjutant seemed to
hint, perhaps you'll find a Boche cup, and then it'll be something
special!"
"The adjutant may have said that," Eudore observes, "but he doesn't
know."
"It holds more than a half-pint, the Boche cup," remarks Cocon, "seeing
that the exact capacity of the half-pint is marked in the cup
three-quarters way up; and it's always good for you to have a big one,
for if you've got a cup that only just holds a half-pint, then so that
you can get your half-pint of coffee or wine or holy water or what not,
it's get to be filled right up, and they don't ever do it at
serving-out, and if they do, you spill it."
"I believe you that they don't fill it," says Paradis, exasperated by
the recollection of that ceremony. "The quartermaster-sergeant, he
pours it with his blasted finger in your cup and gives it two raps on
its bottom. Result, you get a third, and your cup's in mourning with
three black bands on top of each other."
"Yes," says Barque, "that's true; but you shouldn't have a cup too big
either, because the chap that's pouring it out for you, he suspects
you, and let's it go in damned drops, and so as not to give you more
than your measure he gives you less, and you can whistle for it, with
your tureen in your fists."
Volpatte puts back in his pockets, one by one, the items of his
display. When he came to the purse, he looked at it with an air of deep
compassion.
"He's damnably flat, poor chap!" He counted the contents. "Three
francs! My boy, I must set about feathering this nest again or I shall
be stony when we get back."
"You're not the only one that's broken-backed in the treasury."
"The soldier spends more than he earns, and don't you forget it. I
wonder what'd become of a man that only had his pay?"