Every Sunday, the moment they were dismissed, the two little soldiers
made off. Once outside the barracks, they struck out to the right
through Courbevoie, walking with long rapid strides, as though they
were on a march.
When they were beyond the last of the houses, they slackened pace along
the bare, dusty roadway which goes toward Bezons.
They were both small and thin, and looked quite lost in their coats,
which were too big and too long. Their sleeves hung down over their
hands, and they found their enormous red breeches, which compelled them
to waddle, very much in the way. Under their stiff, high helmets their
faces had little character--two poor, sallow Breton faces, simple with
an almost animal simplicity, and with gentle and quiet blue eyes.
They never conversed during these walks, but went straight on, each
with the same thought in his head. This thought atoned for the lack of
conversation; it was this, that just inside the little wood near Les
Champioux they had found a place which reminded them of their own
country, where they could feel happy again.
When they arrived under the trees where the roads from Colombes and
from Chatou cross, they would take off their heavy helmets and wipe
their foreheads. They always halted on the Bezons bridge to look at the
Seine, and would remain there two or three minutes, bent double,
leaning on the parapet.
Sometimes they would gaze out over the great basin of Argenteuil, where
the skiffs might be seen scudding, with their white, careening sails,
recalling perhaps the look of the Breton waters, the harbor of Vanne,
near which they lived, and the fishing-boats standing out across the
Morbihan to the open sea.
Just beyond the Seine they bought their provisions from a sausage
merchant, a baker, and a wine-seller. A piece of blood-pudding, four
sous' worth of bread, and a liter of "petit bleu" constituted the
provisions, which they carried off in their handkerchiefs. After they
had left Bezons they traveled slowly and began to talk.
In front of them a barren plain studded with clumps of trees led to the
wood, to the little wood which had seemed to them to resemble the one
at Kermarivan. Grainfields and hayfields bordered the narrow path,
which lost itself in the young greenness of the crops, and Jean
Kerderen would always say to Luc le Ganidec:
"It looks like it does near Plounivon."
"Yes; exactly."
Side by side they strolled, their souls filled with vague memories of
their own country, with awakened images as naive as the pictures on the
colored broadsheets which you buy for a penny. They kept on
recognizing, as it were, now a corner of a field, a hedge, a bit of
moorland, now a crossroad, now a granite cross. Then, too, they would
always stop beside a certain landmark, a great stone, because it looked
something like the cromlech at Locneuven.
Every Sunday on arriving at the first clump of trees Luc le Ganidec
would cut a switch, a hazel switch, and begin gently to peel off the
bark, thinking meanwhile of the folk at home. Jean Kerderen carried the
provisions.
From time to time Luc would mention a name, or recall some deed of
their childhood in a few brief words, which caused long thoughts. And
their own country, their dear, distant country, recaptured them little
by little, seizing on their imaginations, and sending to them from afar
her shapes, her sounds, her well-known prospects, her odors--odors of
the green lands where the salt sea-air was blowing.
No longer conscious of the exhalations of the Parisian stables, on
which the earth of the banlieue fattens, they scented the perfume of
the flowering broom, which the salt breeze of the open sea plucks and
bears away. And the sails of the boats from the river banks seemed like
the white wings of the coasting vessels seen beyond the great plain
which extended from their homes to the very margin of the sea.
They walked with short steps, Luc le Ganidec and Jean Kerderen, content
and sad, haunted by a sweet melancholy, by the lingering, ever-present
sorrow of a caged animal who remembers his liberty.
By the time that Luc had stripped the slender wand of its bark they
reached the corner of the wood where every Sunday they took breakfast.
They found the two bricks which they kept hidden in the thicket, and
kindled a little fire of twigs, over which to roast the blood-pudding
at the end of a bayonet.
When they had breakfasted, eaten their bread to the last crumb, and
drunk their wine to the last drop, they remained seated side by side
upon the grass, saying nothing, their eyes on the distance, their
eyelids drooping, their fingers crossed as at mass, their red legs
stretched out beside the poppies of the field. And the leather of their
helmets and the brass of their buttons glittered in the ardent sun,
making the larks, which sang and hovered above their heads, cease in
mid-song.
Toward noon they began to turn their eyes from time to time in the
direction of the village of Bezons, because the girl with the cow was
coming. She passed by them every Sunday on her way to milk and change
the pasture of her cow--the only cow in this district which ever went
out of the stable to grass. It was pastured in a narrow field along the
edge of the wood a little farther on.
They soon perceived the girl, the only human being within vision, and
were gladdened by the brilliant reflections thrown off by the tin
milk-pail under the rays of the sun. They never talked about her. They
were simply glad to see her, without understanding why.
She was a big strong wench with red hair, burned by the heat of sunny
days, a sturdy product of the environs of Paris.
Once, finding them seated in the same place, she said:
"Good morning. You two are always here, aren't you?"
Luc le Ganidec, the bolder, stammered:
"Yes, we come to rest."
That was all. But the next Sunday she laughed on seeing them, laughed
with a protecting benevolence and a feminine keenness which knew well
enough that they were bashful. And she asked:
"What are you doing there? Are you trying to see the grass grow?"