"And see here, look what I've got in my pocket and never let go
of"--Pepin, with merry eyes, shows us some silver table-things. "They
belonged," he says, "to the ugly trollop where we were quartered at
Grand-Rozoy."
"Perhaps they still belong to her?"
Pepin made an uncertain gesture, in which pride mingled with modesty;
then, growing bolder, he smiled and said, "I knew her, the old sneak.
Certainly, she'll spend the rest of her life looking in every corner
for her silver things."
"For my part," says Volpatte, "I've never been able to rake in more
than a pair of scissors. Some people have the luck. I haven't. So
naturally I watch 'em close, though I admit I've no use for 'em."
"I've pinched a few bits of things here and there, but what of it? The
sappers have always left me behind in the matter of pinching; so what
about it?"
"You can do what you like, you're always got at by some one in your
turn, eh, my boy? Don't fret about it."
"I keep my wife's letters," says Blaire.
"And I send mine back to her."
"And I keep them, too. Here they are." Eudore exposes a packet of worn
and shiny paper, whose grimy condition the twilight modestly veils. "I
keep them. Sometimes I read them again. When I'm cold and humpy, I read
'em again. It doesn't actually warm you up, but it seems to."
There must be a deep significance in the curious expression, for
several men raise their heads and say, "Yes, that's so."
By fits and starts the conversation goes on in the bosom of this
fantastic barn and the great moving shadows that cross it; night is
heaped up in its corners, and pointed by a few scattered and sickly
candles.
I watch these busy and burdened flitters come and go, outline
themselves strangely, then stoop and slide down to the ground; they
talk to themselves and to each other, their feet are encumbered by the
litter. They are showing their riches to each other. "Tiens,
look!"--"Great!" they reply enviously.
What they have not got they want. There are treasures among the squad
long coveted by all; the two-liter water-bottle, for instance,
preserved by Barque, that a skillful rifle-shot with a blank cartridge
has stretched to the capacity of two and a half liters; and Bertrand's
famous great knife with the horn handle.
Among the heaving swarm there are sidelong glances that skim these
curiosities, and then each man resumes "eyes right," devotes himself to
his belongings, and concentrates upon getting it in order.
They are mournful belongings, indeed. Everything made for the soldier
is commonplace, ugly, and of bad quality; from his cardboard boots,
attached to the uppers by a criss-cross of worthless thread, to his
badly cut, badly shaped, and badly sewn clothes, made of shoddy and
transparent cloth--blotting-paper--that one day of sunshine fades and
an hour of rain wets through, to his emaciated leathers, brittle as
shavings and torn by the buckle spikes, to his flannel underwear that
is thinner than cotton, to his straw-like tobacco.
Marthereau is beside me, and he points to our comrades: "Look at them,
these poor chaps gaping into their bags o' tricks. You'd say it was a
mothers' meeting, ogling their kids. Hark to 'em. They're calling for
their knick-knacks. Tiens, that one, the times he says 'My knife!' same
as if he was calling 'Lon,' or 'Charles,' or 'Dolphus.' And you know
it's impossible for them to make their load any less. Can't be did. It
isn't that they don't want--our job isn't one that makes us any
stronger, eh? But they can't. Too proud of 'em."
The burdens to be borne are formidable, and one knows well enough,
parbleu, that every item makes them more severe, each little addition
is one bruise more.
For it is not merely a matter of what one buries in his pockets and
pouches. To complete the burden there is what one carries on his back.
The knapsack is the trunk and even the cupboard; and the old soldier is
familiar with the art of enlarging it almost miraculously by the
judicious disposal of his household goods and provisions. Besides the
regulation and obligatory contents--two tins of pressed beef, a dozen
biscuits, two tablets of coffee and two packets of dried soup, the bag
of sugar, fatigue smock, and spare boots--we find a way of getting in
some pots of jam, tobacco, chocolate, candles, soft-soled shoes; and
even soap, a spirit lamp, some solidified spirit, and some woolen
things. With the blanket, sheet, tentcloth, trenching-tool,
water-bottle, and an item of the field-cooking kit, [note 1] the burden
gets heavier and taller and wider, monumental and crushing. And my
neighbor says truly that every time he reaches his goal after some
miles of highway and communication trenches, the poilu swears hard that
the next time he'll leave a heap of things behind and give his
shoulders a little relief from the yoke of the knapsack. But every time
he is preparing for departure, he assumes again the same overbearing
and almost superhuman load; he never lets it go, though he curses it
always.
"There are some bad boys," says Lamuse, "among the shirkers, that find
a way of keeping something in the company wagon or the medical van. I
know one that's got two shirts and a pair of drawers in an adjutant's
canteen [note 2]--but, you see, there's two hundred and fifty chaps in
the company, and they're all up to the dodge and not many of 'em can
profit by it; it's chiefly the non-coms.; the more stripes they've got,
the easier it is to plant their luggage, not forgetting that the
commandant visits the wagons sometimes without warning and fires your
things into the middle of the road if he finds 'em in a horse-box where
they've no business--Be off with you!--not to mention the bully-ragging
and the clink."
"In the early days it was all right, my boy. There were some
chaps--I've seen 'em--who stuck their bags and even their knapsacks in
baby-carts and pushed 'em along the road."
"Ah, not half! Those were the good times of the war. But all that's
changed."
Volpatte, deaf to all the talk, muffled in his blanket as if in a shawl
which makes him look like an old witch, revolves round an object that
lies on the ground. "I'm wondering," he says, addressing no one,
"whether to take away this damned tin stove. It's the only one in the
squad and I've always carried it. Oui, but it leaks like a cullender."
He cannot decide, and makes a really pathetic picture of separation.
Barque watches him obliquely, and makes fun of him. We hear him say,
"Senile dodderer!" But he pauses in his chaffing to say, "After all, if
we were in his shoes we should be equally fatheaded."
Volpatte postpones his decision till later. "I'll see about it in the
morning, when I'm loading the camel's back."
After the inspection and recharging of pockets, it is the turn of the
bags, and then of the cartridge-pouches, and Barque holds forth on the
way to make the regulation two hundred cartridges go into the three
pouches. In the lump it is impossible. They must be unpacked and placed
side by side upright, head against foot. Thus can one cram each pouch
without leaving any space, and make himself a waistband that weighs
over twelve pounds.
Rifles have been cleaned already. One looks to the swathing of the
breech and the plugging of the muzzle, precautions which trench-dirt
renders indispensable.
How every rifle can easily be recognized is discussed. "I've made some
nicks in the sling. See, I've cut into the edge."
"I've twisted a bootlace round the top of the sling, and that way, I
can tell it by touch as well as seeing."
"I use a mechanical button. No mistake about that. In the dark I can
find it at once and say, 'That's my pea-shooter. Because, you know,
there are some boys that don't bother themselves; they just roll around
while the pals are cleaning theirs, and then they're devilish quick at
putting a quiet fist on a popgun that's been cleaned; and then after
they've even the cheek to go and say, 'Mon capitaine, I've got a rifle
that's a bit of all right.' I'm not on in that act. It's the D system,
my old wonder--a damned dirty dodge, and there are times when I'm fed
up with it, and more."
And thus, though their rifles are all alike, they are as different as
their handwriting.
* * * * *
"It's curious and funny," says Marthereau to me "we're going up to the
trenches to-morrow, and there's nobody drunk yet, nor that way
inclined. Ah, I don't say," he concedes at once, "but what those two
there aren't a bit fresh, nor a little elevated; without being
absolutely blind, they're somewhat boozed, pr'aps--"
"It's Poitron and Poilpot, of Broyer's squad."
They are lying down and talking in a low voice. We can make out the
round nose of one, which stands out equally with his mouth, close by a
candle, and with his hand, whose lifted finger makes little explanatory
signs, faithfully followed by the shadow it casts.
"I know how to light a fire, but I don't know how to light it again
when it's gone out," declares Poitron.
"Ass!" says Poilpot, "if you know how to light it you know how to
relight it, seeing that if you light it, it's because it's gone out,
and you might say that you're relighting it when you're lighting it."
"That's all rot. I'm not mathematical, and to hell with the gibberish
you talk. I tell you and I tell you again that when it comes to
lighting a fire, I'm there, but to light it again when it's gone out,
I'm no good. I can't speak any straighter than that."
I do not catch the insistent retort of Poilpot, but--"But, you damned
numskull," gurgles Poitron, "haven't I told you thirty times that I
can't? You must have a pig's head, anyway!"
Marthereau confides to me, "I've heard about enough of that." Obviously
he spoke too soon just now.
A sort of fever, provoked by farewell libations, prevails in the
wretched straw-spread hole where our tribe--some upright and hesitant,
others kneeling and hammering like colliers--is mending, stacking, and
subduing its provisions, clothes, and tools. There is a wordy growling,
a riot of gesture. From the smoky glimmers, rubicund faces start forth
in relief, and dark hands move about in the shadows like marionettes.
In the barn next to ours, and separated from it only by a wall of a
man's height, arise tipsy shouts. Two men in there have fallen upon
each other with fierce violence and anger. The air is vibrant with the
coarsest expressions the human ear ever hears. But one of the
disputants, a stranger from another squad, is ejected by the tenants,
and the flow of curses from the other grows feebler and expires.
"Same as us," says Marthereau with a certain pride, "they hold
themselves in!"
It is true. Thanks to Bertrand, who is possessed by a hatred of
drunkenness, of the fatal poison that gambles with multitudes, our
squad is one of the least befouled by wine and brandy.
They are shouting and singing and talking all around. And they laugh
endlessly, for in the human mechanism laughter is the sound of wheels
that work, of deeds that are done.
One tries to fathom certain faces that show up in provocative relief
among this menagerie of shadows, this aviary of reflections. But one
cannot. They are visible, but you can see nothing in the depth of them.
* * * * *
"Ten o'clock already, friends," says Bertrand. "We'll finish the
camel's humps off to-morrow. Time for by-by." Each one then slowly
retires to rest, but the jabbering hardly pauses. Man takes all things
easily when he is under no obligation to hurry. The men go to and fro,
each with some object in his hand, and along the wall I watch Eudore's
huge shadow gliding, as he passes in front of a candle with two little
bags of camphor hanging from the end of his fingers.
Lamuse is throwing himself about in search of a good position; he seems
ill at ease. To-day, obviously, and whatever his capacity may be, he
has eaten too much.
"Some of us want to sleep! Shut them up, you lot of louts!" cries
Mesnil Joseph from his litter.
This entreaty has a subduing effect for a moment, but does not stop the
burble of voices nor the passing to and fro.
"We're going up to-morrow, it's true," says Paradis, "and in the
evening we shall go into the first line. But nobody's thinking about
it. We know it, and that's all."
Gradually each has regained his place. I have stretched myself on the
straw, and Marthereau wraps himself up by my side.
Enter an enormous bulk, taking great pains not to make a noise. It is
the field-hospital sergeant, a Marist Brother, a huge bearded simpleton
in spectacles. When he has taken off his greatcoat and appears in his
jacket, you are conscious that he feels awkward about showing his legs.
We see that it hurries discreetly, this silhouette of a bearded
hippopotamus. He blows, sighs, and mutters.
Marthereau indicates him with a nod of his head, and says to me, "Look
at him. Those chaps have always got to be talking fudge. When we ask
him what he does in civil life, he won't say 'I'm a school teacher' he
says, leering at you from under his specs with the half of his eyes,
'I'm a professor.' When he gets up very early to go to mass, he says,
'I've got belly-ache, I must go and take a turn round the corner and no
mistake.'"
A little farther off, Papa Ramure is talking of his homeland: "Where I
live, it's just a bit of a hamlet, no great shakes. There's my old man
there, seasoning pipes all day long; whether he's working or resting,
he blows his smoke up to the sky or into the smoke of the stove."
I listen to this rural idyll, and it takes suddenly a specialized and
technical character: "That's why he makes a paillon. D'you know what a
paillon is? You take a stalk of green corn and peel it. You split it in
two and then in two again, and you have different sizes. Then with a
thread and the four slips of straw, he goes round the stem of his
pipe--"
The lesson ceases abruptly, there being no apparent audience.
There are only two candles alight. A wide wing of darkness overspreads
the prostrate collection of men.
Private conversation still flickers along the primitive dormitory, and
some fragments of it reach my ears. Just now, Papa Ramure is abusing
the commandant.
"The commandant, old man, with his four bits of gold string, I've
noticed he don't know how to smoke. He sucks all out at his pipes, and
he burns 'em. It isn't a mouth he's got in his head, it's a snout. The
wood splits and scorches, and instead of being wood, it's coal. Clay
pipes, they'll stick it better, but he roasts 'em brown all the same.
Talk about a snout! So, old man, mind what I'm telling you, he'll come
to what doesn't ever happen often; through being forced to get
white-hot and baked to the marrow, his pipe'll explode in his nose
before everybody. You'll see."
Little by little, peace, silence, and darkness take possession of the
barn and enshroud the hopes and the sighs of its occupants. The lines
of identical bundles formed by these beings rolled up side by side in
their blankets seem a sort of huge organ, which sends forth diversified
snoring.
With his nose already in his blanket, I hear Marthereau talking to me
about himself: "I'm a buyer of rags, you know," he says, "or to put it
better, a rag merchant. But me, I'm wholesale; I buy from the little
rag-and-bone men of the streets, and I have a shop--a warehouse mind
you!--which I use as a depot. I deal in all kinds of rags, from linen
to jam-pots, but principally brush-handles, sacks, and old shoes; and
naturally, I make a specialty of rabbit-skins."
And a little later I still hear him: "As for me, little and
queer-shaped as I am, all the same I can carry a bin of two hundred
pounds' weight to the warehouse, up the steps, and my feet in sabots.
Once I had a to-do with a person--"
"What I can't abide," cries Fouillade, all of a sudden, "is the
exercises and marches they give us when we're resting. My back's
mincemeat, and I can't get a snooze even, I'm that cramped."
There is a metallic noise in Volpatte's direction. He has decided to
take the stove, though he chides it constantly for the fatal fault of
its perforations.
One who is but half asleep groans, "Oh, la, la! When will this war
finish!"
A cry of stubborn and mysterious rebellion bursts forth--"They'd take
the very skin off us!"
There follows a single, "Don't fret yourself!" as darkly inconsequent
as the cry of revolt.
I wake up a long time afterwards, as two o'clock is striking; and in a
pallor of light which doubtless comes from the moon, I see the agitated
silhouette of Pinegal. A cock has crowed afar. Pinegal raises himself
halfway to a sitting position, and I hear his husky voice: "Well now,
it's the middle of the night, and there's a cock loosing his jaw. He's
blind drunk, that cock." He laughs, and repeats, "He's blind, that
cock," and he twists himself again into the woolens, and resumes his
slumber with a gurgle in which snores are mingled with merriment.
Cocon has been wakened by Pinegal. The man of figures therefore thinks
aloud, and says: "The squad had seventeen men when it set off for the
war. It has seventeen also at present, with the stop-gaps. Each man has
already worn out four greatcoats, one of the original blue, and three
cigar-smoke blue, two pairs of trousers and six pairs of boots. One
must count two rifles to each man, but one can't count the overalls.
Our emergency rations have been renewed twenty-three times. Among us
seventeen, we've been mentioned fourteen times in Army Orders, of which
two were to the Brigade, four to the Division, and one to the Army.
Once we stayed sixteen days in the trenches without relief. We've been
quartered and lodged in forty-seven different villages up to now. Since
the beginning of the campaign, twelve thousand men have passed through
the regiment, which consists of two thousand."
A strange lisping noise interrupts him. It comes from Blaire, whose new
ivories prevent him from talking as they also prevent him from eating.
But he puts them in every evening, and retains them all night with
fierce determination, for he was promised that in the end he would grow
accustomed to the object they have put into his head.
I raise myself on my elbow, as on a battlefield, and look once more on
the beings whom the scenes and happenings of the times have rolled up
all together. I look at them all, plunged in the abyss of passive
oblivion, some of them seeming still to be absorbed in their pitiful
anxieties, their childish instincts, and their slave-like ignorance.
The intoxication of sleep masters me. But I recall what they have done
and what they will do; and with that consummate picture of a sorry
human night before me, a shroud that fills our cavern with darkness, I
dream of some great unknown light.
------------
[note 1] There is a complete set for each squad--stoves, canvas
buckets, coffee-mill, pan, etc--and each man carries some item on
march.--Tr.
[note 2] Cantine vivres, chest containing two days' rations and cooking
utensils for four or five officers.--Tr.