Ancey. He makes fun of me because I pick flowers. There will be two of us
now to scrub his German hide for him!”
I filled my pipe and was about to set to work, when Ploss, the German
quartermaster, commonly as rough as a bulldog, came in and seized me by
the arm, saying:
“I have a palliasse for you. Come at once.”
He had just said the same thing to Dutrex. We hastened upstairs behind
him, and followed him into a windowless storeroom, the only entrance to
which was from the crypt beneath the great paved passage. Here, in the
darkness, I groped for the heap of straw, and finding it, I unfastened a
truss and began to stuff the sack of ticking. The material felt strong
and hard as leather. I pricked my fingers with the thistles in the
straw. “Whatever you do, stuff the corners well,” said my co-minister,
thoroughly enjoying his good luck. He stuffed with the dexterity of a man
who had never had anything else to do all his life. The quartermaster,
evidently coming to the conclusion after a moment that I was a very
awkward hand, shoved me to one side, cursing in his Franconian patois in
a way intended to show me that he was furiously angry. Then to see him
at the stuffing! I have been told that his trade is that of mason. He
worked even faster than Dutrex. At length, “_Das ist fertig_”—“There you
are!” he cried, giving a vigorous smack to the belly of my sack. Then,
unceremoniously, he pushed his gift on to my shoulder, this great sack,
tight and paunchy as heart could wish.
The acquisition of the palliasse is a revolution in my life. I was
sufficiently delighted, on entering the storeroom, at the thought that I
had said farewell to my wretched bedding. A restless sleeper, I always
awaken with my back on the floor, stiff and aching, burrowing in the
black chaff, having scratched up my dust like a fowl. I was uneasy at
the approach of winter. How should I be able to endure the Swabian
frosts upon this moving mattress? I should mention that it was obviously
diminishing in size, and that in proportion as the few intact straws
disappeared from the heap, the bedding of one of my good companions in
the casemate seemed to undergo a commensurate increase. Quite exceptional
virtue would have been required to enable him to resist the temptation.
I was occupied all day at my table in No. 22, so that my little piece of
property was left utterly defenceless.
Nevertheless, in the busy obscurity of the storeroom my joy resembled
that which we take in forbidden fruit. Though lively, it was not wholly
unalloyed. It is impossible to accept a great favour, even if the
acceptance does not involve any injury to another, without a certain
perturbation in one’s sense of equality. My energy at the work was
diminished by a shadow of remorse.
But Dutrex, gay as a blackbird, stuffing his palliasse with the fury
of an assault, said to me: “Old chap, we are to sleep in No. 22 from
to-night onwards!” This suited me very well. I should never have been
bold enough to plant my palliasse, all new and tight as it was, among
the humble litters in the casemate. As soon as I accepted the Teuton’s
offer (and what could I do but accept it?), my precarious tenure in No.
17 was broken. In any case, I had become almost a stranger there. Since
my installation at the ministerial table, except for a daily visit to my
friends Guido, Bertrand, and Boude, I never crossed the threshold until
bedtime.
All the same, my palliasse and my change of lodging induced feelings
of sorrow as well as joy. I might say to myself as often as I pleased
that the quartermaster, a surly Franconian who detests the French, had
done me this kindness solely through inspiration from above (his only
superior here is the commandant); that a refusal in such conditions
would have been mere rudeness; that one need not be so fastidious as to
decline an offer involving the enjoyment of a sleeping apartment with
but one companion, and involving also, during the winter nights, the
company of the still warm stoves; that, for the rest, it was the act of
wisdom to terminate at the first opportunity, and when it could be done
without shock or violence, certain chance associations devoid of all
charm. Reasons for accepting the palliasse and the accompanying train of
benefits surged abundantly in my mind without setting my conscience at
rest.
Not in vain does a man drink in the gospel with his mother’s milk;
not in vain does he from childhood onwards have instilled into him by
accomplished parents the dogmas of the republic. Be it worth what it may,
the motto of France is to me an article of faith. I fail to act up to my
principles in this respect, but the failure makes me unhappy. Inequality,
especially inequality that redounds to my own advantage, does injury
to some profound fibre of my being. The enjoyment of material comfort
produces periodical fits of remorse. The logic of my heart would have me
a Franciscan. Yet God knows that my whole being and all my senses clamour
for joy and loathe the ugliness of poverty!
But I keep my palliasse. The bulk of my effects had already been removed
to the kitchen in No. 22. Maître Lambert, usher at the law-court of
N., for whom I have secured employment in the kitchen as one of the
assistant cooks, went to fetch for me what remained at No. 17. He found
that my flask had disappeared. He forgot my nightcap, which Guido has
just brought me. Now, therefore, I have everything here—all my baggage,
personal property and national property, republican goods and royal
goods.
THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGRY
_October 21, 1914._
Yesterday was a great day! Perhaps the greatest of my imprisonment, if I
except that of my first “teube.”[21] Oh, that first teube! After I had
worn my clothes continuously for so many days and nights, the clandestine
undressing at early dawn, beside the sink in Dutrex’s kitchen; the
forbidden and unhoped-for sensation, to be, as if at home, naked beneath
the steaming water; the lather of soap everywhere, on the hair, the neck,
the chest, the arms, the legs, the feet; the douche with the aid of a
bailer; the dry rub! At length to have a clean skin and clean linen! Then
to stride up to the slopes in the delightful morning solitude, repeating
as it were involuntarily: “I am clean; what a luxury! I am in their
hands; but I have managed to get clean. They ration our water, and I have
had water. I am a prisoner; but I have secretly divested myself of my
coating of filth, a burden almost as heavy as that of hunger! I am by no
means wholly wretched!”
It was a month since my last bath, at Tonnoy, about a week before we were
taken prisoner. We had had a long and rough journey, from Chaouilley,
at the foot of the hill celebrated by Barrès, to the Moselle. The dirt
of three interminable nights in a cattle truck, in which we were herded
pell-mell; the dust of the complicated movement towards the front; the
stiffness of the opening march, the sweat and the fatigue—I had got rid
of it all in the river. It was a beautiful evening, bright and warm. The
sun was setting. The Moselle flowed rapidly among the islets of shingle
and the sandbanks. Groups of men, officers and soldiers, men newly called
up and reservists, indiscriminately mingled, naked as worms, the fat, the
tall, and the short, the pot-bellied and the thin, fringed the bank with
a strip of flesh-coloured humanity. We looked like a colony of Mormons.
After leaving the water, I challenged Soulier at ducks and drakes. Do
you recall, little Darry, how we played ducks and drakes on the shore at
Dully? I got the better of Soulier. One of my flat stones, skimming the
water briskly, flying across the brown river, made its way right over the
stream to strike the rocks on the other side.
When I think the matter over, this delightful bathe remains my
most agreeable souvenir of Lorraine. I grieve to have to admit
(notwithstanding Barrès, whose style would ennoble the most worthless
materials) that all the villages we passed through, from Mont Sion to the
frontier, and above all the village of Tonnoy, left on me an impression
of penurious and squalid melancholy, of ugliness and filth.
Yes, yesterday evening was epic.
The morning had passed as usual: an early walk; then work until
dinner-time. There was nothing to foreshadow a storm. I had been for a
stroll after dinner with Dutrex, Durupt, and Foch. A typical Bavarian
day: a moist sky softening the harsh outlines of the landscape; a half
light, uncertain and dreamy, as if longing for the rich azure of Piedmont
and Provence; a piercing little wind which, even in the sunshine,
continues to suggest melting snow and cold, almost a bise, whose very
caresses sting.
For the last few days I had been working hard. My faculties were blunted.
I had a vague inclination to idle. I was suffering a little from
boredom, a state of mind by which, happily, I am rarely afflicted. I was
discouraged. I wanted a rest, and yet lacked energy to make up my mind to
lay aside my work.
As I was returning to my task, I encountered little Brissot. Lately he
has taken to wearing the Bavarian cap, a sort of Phrygian cap which I
have made the fashion at Fort Orff. Mine is green—you know whose colour
green is. Brissot’s is blue, and this tint sets off admirably his
energetic blond countenance. Seeing that I was a little out of sorts, and
not so cheerful as usual, he prevented me from going down.
“Abandon your kitchen for a while,” he said. “It reeks of sulphur,
drains, burned fat, and vegetable refuse. You are getting mildewed amid
the steam. The fires draw badly, and when I pay you a visit there your
eyes are watering from the smoke. Besides, you have slaved quite enough
this week under cover of your famous notice. You can be quite easy in
your mind, you will have more than enough time to finish your studies.
The Russian generals will secure you months and months for reflection. If
that does not suffice, our diplomatists will see to it that you have an
extension of time. This evening you must put aside your philosophies and
your histories. We will go the round of the slopes together. The weather
is fine. We will have a talk with my little friend across the ditch; you
can’t think how sorry she is for us. Here is one, at any rate, who is
utterly unconcerned as to questions of state. What does she care about
French, Germans, English, Belgians, Russians? She knows men only. Her
heart has skipped several centuries, and without an effort has attained
the era of thoroughgoing internationalism. I can assure you that if she
had to choose between a _hübscher Franzose_ and a _böser Deutscher_,[22]
there would be no hesitation.”
Brissot is light-hearted, firm, bold, definite, gently peremptory,
perfectly self-reliant; he is a surprising compound of boy and of leader,
of artist and tradesman, endowed with a lively will; how can any one
who is in the dumps resist Brissot? I accompany him to the parapet.
Positively she is there, a sort of Munich Flora, short and plump, with
great black eyes, whom he calls his “bonne amie,” walking upon the
footpath of the glacis, accompanied by three bare-headed village girls
and a troop of children. “Damn the escort!” says my _hübscher Franzose_
in an aside. The conversation is opened; it is as innocent as the arched
forehead and rounded cheeks of the three slatterns. One of them is
in high spirits to know that her affianced is safe. He has been made
prisoner, and she has just received her first letter, dated from Gap. She
asks if I am betrothed, if the ring I wear (Véron, the corporal in the
engineers, cast it for me a few days back out of one of the metal buttons
of the coat of a chausseur à pied) is an engagement ring, and why it is
made of silver. Brissot takes the initiative in the reply, saying with
an air of disgust that it is not silver but platinum, a metal far more
costly than gold. She is astonished. She has never heard of platinum.
The conversation continues, agreeably stupid. Then the children ask for
French pfennigs. “You shall have some if you will give us a newspaper in
exchange.” The answer is not new to them; of course they have one ready.
They roll it round a stone and throw it across the great ditch. The paper
is four days old, but we throw back some sous which fall behind them some
way down the glacis. Children and slatterns rush greedily to pick them
up. Brissot, profiting by this moment of freedom, says to his Flora of
the great eyes: “Come again to-morrow, and without your companions, who
are not worthy of you!”
“My dear fellow,” I say to him, “I leave you to your love affairs.
Farewell.”
The splendid reds of autumn flame on the great oaks along the border of
the pine-wood—a strategic wood, designed to mask the west battery. The
parapets are packed with soldiers, fine blue-and-red spots upon a dull
yellowish-green ground. Some, chisel in hand, silently bent over their
work, are carving pebbles. Others are wearing out their finger-nails
and wearing down the corner stones in polishing tablets of white chalk
destined for employment as ex votos. The cries of men playing at ball
and at prisoner’s base resound from the ramparts. At the foot of a slope
adorned with a clump of birches, men are busily engaged in cooking
their extra provender. There is a circle round each improvized kitchen:
some dry and break up the small branches rifled from the trees of the
fort; some tend the refractory fire, for the wood will not flame; some
agitate the contents of the mess-tins—fragments of stolen meat, choice
morsels of vegetable peelings, coffee dregs begged from the kitchen,
potatoes pocketed when the dinner was being prepared, edible snails found
on the grass on rainy mornings and kept fasting in an old cigar-box,
cheese-rind, plum mushrooms, wild chicory. Soldier-priests walk up and
down reading their breviaries. On one of the slopes, a crowd surrounds Le
Second, who is displaying his latest cubist composition; at the “kitchen
windows” a number of poor devils whose stomachs are empty are patiently
sniffing the thin odours that rise from the cooking-pots. Here and there
are to be seen the dealers, their wares hidden beneath their coats,
passing from group to group, and offering for sale at three or four times
its value a cigarette, a lump of sugar, or a stick of chocolate. The
blue-and-red ants have all emerged from the subterranean galleries of
their ant-hill. On this October afternoon they produce a sad impression
of mingled gaiety and wretchedness.
Yet amid this chaos I seem also to have before my eyes the picture of a
city, a city of very ancient days. Characteristics of civic order are
plainly manifest. A semblance of social life declares itself. Broken to
pieces a few months ago by the sudden call to arms, flattened out and
pulverized by the forces of hunger and tedium, the world that existed
before the mobilization begins to reconstitute itself. By a sort of
spontaneous generation, the eternal society rises anew from the void,
with its groups of leaders and of poets, of traders and of artisans, with
its classes of profiteers and of exploited, of originators and of simple
executants. It is reborn, but in a less intricate form, with plainer
contrasts, accentuated to caricature. Here, temperament, initiative, and
energy have replaced tradition. There are no privileged positions. Social
functions are not acquired as a right, but are seized. There is free
competition. We all start from scratch. Each man takes his place in the
natural hierarchy by the sole right of conquest. He can retain it only by
cunning, force, or the power of genius, and at the price of a persistent
victory.
Hence there have been strange changes of fortune. A man who arrived
without a farthing, sold for sixpence a cigar he had been given,
bought chocolate with the sixpence, resold it at 1,000 per cent., and,
continually bargaining, always turning over his money with increased
profit, has succeeded in this way in amassing a capital. I have several
times come across this brilliant trader on the slopes at nightfall,
when he believed himself alone. Leaning forward on his hands, he was
contemplating his greasy handkerchief stretched out on the grass,
covered with little piles of silver. Another, who was scullion in a
drinking-booth, has taken to writing poems; at the Saturday concerts in
No. 7 he sings them to well-known airs, amid universal applause. A man
named Tarbouriech, a farmer from the Agen district, has made himself
graving tools and carves pebbles for French and Bavarian customers. He
gets a mark for each carving, and can thus from time to time buy himself
a supplementary loaf. He is a real decorative artist, a good sculptor,
and he did not know it.
As I lounge in the last rays of sunshine, I admire the spontaneous
manifestation of creative energy. I am astonished at the superabundance
of talents in so restricted a group. Yet there is a sadness in the sight
of this poor primitive city which has set itself to sprout upon the
levelled bed of servile equality.
Everything betrays the stimulus of hunger. Hunger is here the universal
mother of artistic, commercial, and industrial inventions; it even
induces devotion to the collectivity, for the performance of a public
service commonly secures an extra ration. Work or starve, such is the
rule. Each one makes his plans, exercises his ingenuity, does the best
for himself. The aim is simple: not to die of hunger, to keep oneself
going, if possible to improve in appearance and to grow fat. Some, too,
having filled their stomachs, try to line their pockets. The strong try
to get the better of the weak; the cunning, of the stupid; those who know
a little German, of those who know none at all. Hence arises extreme
inequality, tangible, crying inequality, shown by the cheeks, the eyes,
the gait—the inequality between those who are hungry and those who are
fed. Here is one running upstairs, happy, and lively as a cricket, for he
has eaten his fill. Unashamedly he overtakes and passes a poor devil, a
man quite well off in civil life, but who has had a visit from the body
stripper when lying in a swoon on the field of battle; he makes his way
up with great difficulty, breathless, shaky, clinging to the banister,
finding the flight of stairs interminable.
Sad thoughts assail me as I walk. This battle without rifles or
artillery, exempt from immediate risk of death, baser than war because
it is more hypocritical, more crafty, and carried on under the Christian
ægis—is it not life itself? Is not life immoral in its very essence?
For, after all, one must live. First of all, one must live. Now, here
it is clear that there is not enough food to go round. What then? Then
the field is open for the craftiest and the boldest. Let us suppose that
there are twenty bold men among the thousand prisoners. From the lean
corpse of our cow they have cut their large share, the lion’s share; now
it is the turn of the little jackals to divide up what remains. Let us
suppose that one of these “lions” has a conscience. Let us suppose that
his mind is influenced by the morality of the gospels or by socialist
ideas. Is he to sacrifice his average share, the share requisite to keep
him in good health, because the others, nine hundred and eighty in the
thousand, have nothing but a famine ration, and can have nothing else,
whatever he may do? Ought he to make up his mind, as an act of goodwill,
and knowing that the general regimen will be no whit bettered, to accept
malnutrition for himself, to accept the permanent ruin of his health?
Christ, where are your beatitudes? Will the determinism of the body ever
be overcome? Will your reign, your city of justice, ever be established
upon this dreary planet? But if the world continues, and if the general
supply of goods should happen to become as greatly restricted as it is
within the limits of our fortress, I shall be sorry for the city of the
just. Let the twenty “lions,” from virtuous motives, tie up their jaws,
let us suppose that there are one thousand ascetics in place of nine
hundred and eighty, the stew will be little thicker.
The electric bell, its jarring note issuing from all the doorways, breaks
in upon these grey reflections, as much the outcome, perhaps, of personal
discouragement as of the realities of the situation. It is five o’clock.
In a twinkling the ants disappear into the under ways.
* * * * *
In kitchen No. 22, Dutrex, Durupt, and the three cooks are standing
round the vice. Half a gruyère cheese is fixed in it. This is the entire
dinner; each one of our four hundred and eighty men, those fed from the
first of the three kitchens, will have to be satisfied this evening
with the four hundred and eightieth part of this half cheese. Devèse is
usually responsible for the serious task of cutting up the cheese. He
is an expert, being accustomed every day in Paris to serve out large
quantities of ham, saveloy, and galantine. Unfortunately our cook-butcher
is confined to bed in the hospital casemate with a sore throat. Dutrex
has therefore asked little Lambert, Maître Lambert, Lambert the Good, to
do the cutting up.
The great kitchen knife passes busily through the hard, white curd. The
usher of Saint-Joseph-de-Tinée holds the knife in both hands and presses
on it with all his weight. Beads of perspiration are standing on his
besmirched forehead; his goggle eyes dilate; the ruddy skin of his face,
downy with sparse golden hairs, is deeply wrinkled. He sweats as only a
thoroughly good fellow, a man who puts all his will into his work, can
sweat. Bouquet and Pailloux look on indifferently. Durupt, who becomes
absorbed in the most trifling matters as if they were affairs of state,
gravely counts the slices and arranges them on the right-hand corner
of the kitchen table in piles of ten. Dutrex has assumed his service
manner. He stands stiffly upright at the left corner; his moustache is
brushed away from his lips, his eye is severe, he holds his check-list.
“Lambert, cut more equal slices!”
“Corporal Dutrex, I am doing my best, as you see; it is very difficult.”
“I know it. Durupt, you will give an extra piece to the rooms whose share
is obviously too small.”
Seated at my table, I contemplate this Rembrandtesque scene. The
melancholy lamp, its chimney broken, is smoking among the pale faces and
the piled up slices. The cheese is being contaminated by the foul air of
the dark casemate, in which all the stoves have gone out. The light of
the dying day still pierces the window bars, its tender blues and reds
fading slowly away. Through the closed door comes the impatient, angry,
and menacing sound of shuffling feet. The men waiting there know that
it is “cheese evening.” They detest this meal. It is cold and hard to
digest, less filling than a ladleful of hot semolina or vermicelli, and
makes extravagant demands upon their bread.
The distribution does not take long. When there is soup and meat, our
four hundred and eighty men come individually to receive their rations,
passing in a continuous stream, first in front of the cauldron to get
the soup, and then in front of the vice for the portion of meat. The
procession lasts an hour, as at a great funeral. “The holy water!”
say the jokers, stretching out their basins. “The handful of earth!”
extending their hands for the three ounces of cow-flesh. But on cheese
nights there is no procession. The twenty-three headmen of the rooms
supplied from No. 22 bring bowls, and when these are charged the headmen
go off to distribute the contents in their respective casemates.
At six everything is finished. Heaving a sigh of relief, the cooks clear
the table and draw up the two benches and the three stools. All of them,
cooks and ministers, are about to swallow their allotted rations. These
look very small, especially to Lambert, who has been sweating blood and
water.