Three Soldiers (8 page)

“Gee whiz!”

“It’s a great war, I tell you, Sarge. It’s a great war. I wouldn’t have missed it.”

Across the room someone was singing.

“Let’s drown ’em out,” said the top sergeant boisterously.

“Well, I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” said wild Dan Cohen, after a minute. “I’ve got a Jane waitin’ for me. I’m all fixed up, … Compree?”

He swaggered out singing:

The door slammed behind him, leaving the café quiet.

Many men had left. Madame had taken up her knitting and Marie of the plump white arms sat beside her, leaning her head back among the bottles that rose in tiers behind the bars.

Fuselli was staring at a door on one side of the bar. Men kept opening it and looking in and closing it again with a peculiar expression on their faces. Now and then someone would open it with a smile and go into the next room, shuffling his feet and closing the door carefully behind him.

“Say, I wonder what they’ve got there,” said the top sergeant, who had been staring at the door. “Mush be looked into, mush be looked into,” he added, laughing drunkenly.

“I dunno,” said Fuselli. The champagne was humming in his head like a fly against a window pane. He felt very bold and important.

The top sergeant got to his feet unsteadily.

“Corporal, take charge of the colors,” he said, and walked to the door. He opened it a little, peeked in; winked elaborately to his friends and skipped into the other room, closing the door carefully behind him.

The corporal went over next. He said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” and walked straight in, leaving the door ajar. In a moment it was closed from the inside.

“Come on, Bill, let’s see what the hell they got in there,” said Fuselli.

“All right, old kid,” said Bill Grey.

They went together over to the door. Fuselli opened it and looked in. He let out a breath through his teeth with a faint whistling sound.

“Gee, come in, Bill,” he said, giggling.

The room was small, nearly filled up by a dining table with a red cloth. On the mantel above the empty fireplace were candlesticks with dangling crystals that glittered red and yellow and purple in the lamplight, in front of a cracked mirror that seemed a window into another dingier room. The paper was peeling off the damp walls, giving a mortuary smell of mildewed plaster that not even the reek of beer and tobacco had done away with.

“Look at her, Bill, ain’t she got style?” whispered Fuselli.

Bill Grey grunted.

“Say, d’ye think the Jane that feller was tellin’ us he raised hell with in Paris was like that?”

At the end of the table, leaning on her elbows, was a woman with black frizzy hair cut short, that stuck out from her head in all directions. Her eyes were dark and her lips red with a faint swollen look. She looked with a certain defiance at the men who stood about the walls and sat at the table.

The men stared at her silently. A big man with red hair and a heavy jaw who sat next her kept edging up nearer. Someone knocked against the table making the bottles and liqueur glasses clustered in the center jingle.

“She ain’t clean; she’s got bobbed hair,” said the man next to Fuselli.

The woman said something in French.

Only one man understood it. His laugh rang hollowly in the silent room and stopped suddenly.

The woman looked attentively at the faces round her for a moment, shrugged her shoulders, and began straightening the ribbon on the hat she held on her lap.

“How the hell did she get here? I thought the M.P.’s ran them out of town the minute they got here,” said one man.

The woman continued plucking at her hat.

“You venay Paris?” said a boy with a soft voice who sat near her. He had blue eyes and a milky complexion, faintly tanned, that went strangely with the rough red and brown faces in the room.

“Oui, de Paris,” she said after a pause, glancing suddenly in the boy’s face.

“She’s a liar, I can tell you that,” said the red-haired man, who by this time had moved his chair very close to the woman’s.

“You told him you came from Marseilles, and him you came from Lyon,” said the boy with the milky complexion, smiling genially. “Vraiment de ou venay vous?”

“I come from everywhere,” she said, and tossed the hair back from her face.

“Travelled a lot?” asked the boy again.

“A feller told me,” said Fuselli to Bill Grey, “that he’d talked to a girl like that who’d been to Turkey an’ Egypt. … I bet that girl’s seen some life.”

The woman jumped to her feet suddenly screaming with rage. The man with the red hair moved away sheepishly. Then he lifted his large dirty hands in the air.

“Kamarad,” he said.

Nobody laughed. The room was silent except for feet scraping occasionally on the floor.

She put her hat on and took a little box from the chain bag in her lap and began powdering her face, making faces into the mirror she held in the palm of her hand.

The men stared at her.

“Guess she thinks she’s the Queen of the May,” said one man, getting to his feet. He leaned across the table and spat into the fireplace. “I’m going back to barracks.” He turned to the woman and shouted in a voice full of hatred, “Bon swar.”

The woman was putting the powder puff away in her jet bag. She did not look up; the door closed sharply.

“Come along,” said the woman, suddenly, tossing her head back. “Come along; who go with me?”

Nobody spoke. The men stared at her silently. There was no sound except that of feet scraping occasionally on the floor.

The oatmeal flopped heavily into the mess-kit. Fuselli’s eyes were still glued together with sleep. He sat at the dark greasy bench and took a gulp of the scalding coffee that smelt vaguely of dish rags. That woke him up a little. There was little talk in the mess shack. The men, that the bugle had wrenched out of their blankets but fifteen minutes before, sat in rows, eating sullenly or blinking at each other through the misty darkness. You could hear feet scraping in the ashes of the floor and mess kits clattering against the tables and here and there a man coughing. Near the counter where the food was served out one of the cooks swore interminably in a whiny sing-sing voice.

“Gee, Bill, I’ve got a head,” said Fuselli.

“Ye’re ought to have,” growled Bill Grey. “I had to carry you up into the barracks. You said you were goin’ back and love up that goddam girl.”

“Did I?” said Fuselli, giggling.

“I had a hell of a time getting you past the guard.”

“Some cognac! … I got a hangover now,” said Fuselli.

“I’m goddamned if I can go this much longer.”

“What?”

They were washing their mess-kits in the tub of warm water thick with grease from the hundred mess-kits that had gone before, in front of the shack. An electric light illumined faintly the wet trunk of a plane tree and the surface of the water where bits of oatmeal floated and coffee grounds,—and the garbage pails with their painted signs:
WET GARBAGE
,
DRY GARBAGE
; and the line of men who stood waiting to reach the tub.

“This hell of a life!” said Bill Grey, savagely.

“What d’ye mean?”

“Doin’ nothin’ but pack bandages in packin’ cases and take bandages out of packin’ cases. I’ll go crazy. I’ve tried gettin’ drunk; it don’t do no good.”

“Gee; I’ve got a head,” said Fuselli.

Bill Grey put his heavy muscular hand round Fuselli’s shoulder as they strolled towards the barracks.

“Say, Dan, I’m goin’ A.W.O.L.”

“Don’t ye do it, Bill. Hell, look at the chance we’ve got to get ahead. We can both of us get promoted if we don’t get in wrong.”

“I don’t give a hoot in hell for all that. … What d’ye think I got in this goddamned army for? Because I thought I’d look nice in the uniform?”

Bill Grey thrust his hands into his pockets and spat dismally in front of him.

“But, Bill, you don’t want to stay a buck private, do you?”

“I want to get to the front. … I don’t want to stay here till I get in the jug for being spiffed or get a court-martial. … Say, Dan, will you come with me?”

“Hell, Bill, you ain’t goin’. You’re just kiddin’, ain’t yer? They’ll send us there soon enough. I want to get to be a corporal,”—he puffed out his chest a little—“before I go to the front, so’s to be able to show what I’m good for. See, Bill?”

A bugle blew.

“There’s fatigue, an’ I ain’t done my bunk.”

“Me neither. … They won’t do nothin’, Dan. … Don’t let them ride yer, Dan.”

They lined up in the dark road feeling the mud slopping under their feet. The ruts were full of black water, in which gleamed a reflection of distant electric lights.

“All you fellows work in Storehouse A today,” said the sergeant, who had been a preacher, in his sad, drawling voice. “Lieutenant says that’s all got to be finished by noon. They’re sending it to the front today.”

Somebody let his breath out in a whistle of surprise.

“Who did that?”

Nobody answered.

“Dismissed!” snapped the sergeant disgustedly.

They straggled off into the darkness towards one of the lights, their feet splashing confusedly in the puddles.

Fuselli strolled up to the sentry at the camp gate. He was picking his teeth meditatively with the splinter of a pine board.

“Say, Phil, you couldn’t lend me a half a dollar, could you?” Fuselli stopped, put his hands in his pockets and looked at the sentry with the splinter sticking out of a corner of his mouth.

“Sorry, Dan,” said the other man; “I’m cleaned out. Ain’t had a cent since New Year’s.”

“Why the hell don’t they pay us?”

“You guys signed the pay roll yet?”

“Sure. So long!”

Fuselli strolled on down the dark road, where the mud was frozen into deep ruts, towards the town. It was still strange to him, this town of little houses faced with cracked stucco, where the damp made grey stains and green stains, of confused red-tiled roofs, and of narrow cobbled streets that zigzagged in and out among high walls overhung with balconies. At night, when it was dark except for where a lamp in a window spilt gold reflections out on the wet street or the light streamed out from a store or a café, it was almost frighteningly unreal. He walked down into the main square, where he could hear the fountain gurgling. In the middle he stopped indecisively, his coat unbuttoned, his hands pushed to the bottom of his trousers pockets, where they encountered nothing but the cloth. He listened a long time to the gurgling of the fountain and to the shunting of trains far away in the freight yards. “An’ this is the war,” he thought. “Ain’t it queer? It’s quieter than it was at home nights.” Down the street at the end of the square a band of white light appeared, the searchlight of a staff car. The two eyes of the car stared straight into his eyes, dazzling him, then veered off to one side and whizzed past, leaving a faint smell of petrol and a sound of voices. Fuselli watched the fronts of houses light up as the car made its way to the main road. Then the town was dark and silent again.

He strolled across the square towards the Cheval Blanc, the large café where the officers went.

“Button yer coat,” came a gruff voice. He saw a stiff tall figure at the edge of the curve. He made out the shape of the pistol holster that hung like a thin ham at the man’s thigh. An M.P. He buttoned his coat hurriedly and walked off with rapid steps.

He stopped outside a café that had “Ham and Eggs” written in white paint on the window and looked in wistfully. Someone from behind him put two big hands over his eyes. He wriggled his head free.

“Hello, Dan,” he said. “How did you get out of the jug?”

“I’m a trusty, kid,” said Dan Cohen. “Got any dough?”

“Not a damn cent!”

“Me neither. … Come on in anyway,” said Cohen. “I’ll fix it up with Marie.” Fuselli followed doubtfully. He was a little afraid of Dan Cohen; he remembered how a man had been court-martialed last week for trying to bolt out of a café without paying for his drinks.

He sat down at a table near the door. Dan had disappeared into the back room. Fuselli felt homesick. He was thinking how long it was since he had had a letter from Mabe. “I bet she’s got another feller,” he told himself savagely. He tried to remember how she looked, but he had to take out his watch and peep in the back before he could make out if her nose were straight or snub. He looked up, clicking the watch in his pocket. Marie of the white arms was coming laughing out of the inner room. Her large firm breasts, neatly held in by the close-fitting blouse, shook a little when she laughed. Her cheeks were very red and a strand of chestnut hair hung down along her neck. She picked it up hurriedly and caught it up with a hairpin, walking slowly into the middle of the room as she did so with her hands behind her head. Dan Cohen followed her into the room, a broad grin on his face.

“All right, kid,” he said. “I told her you’ld pay when Uncle Sam came across. Ever had any Kümmel?”

“What the hell’s that?”

“You’ll see.”

They sat down before a dish of fried eggs at the table in the corner, the favoured table, where Marie herself often sat and chatted, when wizened Madame did not have her eye upon her.

Several men drew up their chairs. Wild Dan Cohen always had an audience.

“Looks like there was going to be another offensive at Verdun,” said Dan Cohen. Someone answered vaguely.

“Funny how little we know about what’s going on out there,” said one man. “I knew more about the war when I was home in Minneapolis than I do here.”

“I guess we’re lightin’ into ’em all right,” said Fuselli in a patriotic voice.

“Hell! Nothin’ doin’ this time o’ year anyway,” said Cohen. A grin spread across his red face. “Last time I was at the front the Boche had just made a coup de main and captured a whole trenchful.”

“Of who?”

“Of Americans—of us!”

“The hell you say!”

“That’s a goddam lie,” shouted a black-haired man with an ill-shaven jaw, who had just come in. “There ain’t never been an American captured, an’ there never will be, by God!”

“How long were you at the front, buddy,” asked Cohen coolly. “I guess you been to Berlin already, ain’t yer?”

“I say that any man who says an American’ld let himself be captured by a stinkin’ Hun, is a goddam liar,” said the man with the ill-shaven jaw, sitting down sullenly.

“Well, you’d better not say it to me,” said Cohen laughing, looking meditatively at one of his big red fists.

There had been a look of apprehension on Marie’s face. She looked at Cohen’s fist and shrugged her shoulders and laughed.

Another crowd had just slouched into the café.

“Well if that isn’t wild Dan! Hello, old kid, how are you?”

“Hello, Dook!”

A small man in a coat that looked almost like an officer’s coat, it was so well cut, was shaking hands effusively with Cohen. He wore a corporal’s stripes and a British aviator’s fatigue cap. Cohen made room for him on the bench.

“What are you doing in this hole, Dook?”

The man twisted his mouth so that his neat black mustache was a slant.

“G. O. 42,” he said.

“Battle of Paris?” said Cohen in a sympathetic voice.

“Battle of Nice! I’m going back to my section soon. I’d never have got a court-martial if I’d been with my outfit. I was in the Base Hospital 15 with pneumonia.”

“Tough luck!”

“It was a hell of a note.”

“Say, Dook, your outfit was working with ours at Chamfort that time, wasn’t it?”

“You mean when we evacuated the nut hospital?”

“Yes, wasn’t that hell?” Dan Cohen gulped down half a glass of red wine, smacked his thick lips, and began in his story-telling voice:

“Our section had just come out of Verdun where we’d been getting hell for three weeks on the Bras road. There was one little hill where we’d have to get out and shove every damn time, the mud was so deep, and God, it stank there with the shells turning up the ground all full of mackabbies as the poilu call them. … Say, Dook, have you got any money?”

“I’ve got some,” said Dook, without enthusiasm.

“Well, the champagne’s damn good here. I’m part of the outfit in this gin mill; they’ll give it to you at a reduction.”

“All right!”

Dan Cohen turned round and whispered something to Marie. She laughed and dived down behind the curtain.

“But that Chamfort was worse yet. Everybody was sort o’ nervous because the Germans had dropped a message sayin’ they’d give ’em three days to clear the hospital out, and that then they’d shell hell out of the place.”

“The Germans done that! Quit yer kiddin’,” said Fuselli.

“They did it at Souilly, too,” said Dook.

“Hell, yes. … A funny thing happened there. The hospital was in a big rambling house, looked like an Atlantic City hotel. … We used to run our car in back and sleep in it. It was where we took the shell-shock cases, fellows who were roarin’ mad, and tremblin’ all over, and some of ’em paralysed like. … There was a man in the wing opposite where we slept who kept laughin’. Bill Rees was on the car with me, and we laid in our blankets in the bottom of the car and every now and then one of us’ld turn over and whisper: ‘Ain’t this hell, kid?’ ’cause that feller kept laughin’ like a man who had just heard a joke that was so funny he couldn’t stop laughin’. It wasn’t like a crazy man’s laugh usually is. When I first heard it I thought it was a man really laughin’, and I guess I laughed too. But it didn’t stop. … Bill Rees an’ me laid in our car shiverin’, listenin’ to the barrage in the distance with now and then the big noise of an aeroplane bomb, an’ that feller laughin’, laughin’, like he’d just heard a joke, like something had struck him funny.” Cohen took a gulp of champagne and jerked his head to one side. “An that damn laughin’ kept up until about noon the next day when the orderlies strangled the feller. … Got their goat, I guess.”

Fuselli was looking towards the other side of the room, where a faint murmur of righteous indignation was rising from the dark man with the unshaven jaw and his companions. Fuselli was thinking that it wasn’t good to be seen round too much with a fellow like Cohen, who talked about the Germans notifying hospitals before they bombarded them, and who was waiting for a court-martial. Might get him in wrong. He slipped out of the café into the dark. A dank wind blew down the irregular street, ruffling the reflected light in the puddles, making a shutter bang interminably somewhere. Fuselli went to the main square again, casting an envious glance in the window of the Cheval Blanc, where he saw officers playing billiards in a well-lighted room painted white and gold, and a blond girl in a raspberry-colored shirtwaist enthroned haughtily behind the bar. He remembered the M.P. and automatically hastened his steps. In a narrow street the other side of the square he stopped before the window of a small grocery shop and peered inside, keeping carefully out of the oblong of light that showed faintly the grass-grown cobbles and the green and grey walls opposite. A girl sat knitting beside the small counter with her two little black feet placed demurely side by side on the edge of a box full of red beets. She was very small and slender. The lamplight gleamed on her black hair, done close to her head. Her face was in the shadow. Several soldiers lounged awkwardly against the counter and the jambs of the door, following her movements with their eyes as dogs watch a plate of meat being moved about in a kitchen.