Under Fire (10 page)

And she looks like one allured, too. Brief glimpse though it was of her face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was serious, thoughtful, absentminded.

Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it evades him like a Will-o'-th'-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are on business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt with the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the matter to heart. He is trembling--you can see it in his dusty scalp. He guides us, nose to the wind. He suggests that we make an attempt on that yellow door over there. Forward!

Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent. Blaire, his foot on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his knife, and plaster-like debris is falling fast. He might be engaged in sculpture.

"You never had your feet so white before," jeers Barque. "Rotting apart," says Blaire, "you don't know where it is, that special van?" He goes on to explain: "I've got to look up the dentist-van, so they can grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that's left. Oui, seems it's stationed here, the chop-caravan."

He folds up his knife, pockets it, and goes off alongside the wall, possessed by the thought of his jaw-bones' new lease of life.

Once more we put up our beggars' petition: "Good-day, madame; you haven't got a little corner where we could feed? We would pay, of course, we would pay--"

Through the glass of the low window we see lifted the face of an old man--like a fish in a bowl, it looks--a face curiously flat, and lined with parallel wrinkles, like a page of old manuscript.

"You've the little shed there."

"There's no room in the shed, and when the washing's done there--"

Barque seizes the chance. "It'll do very likely. May we see it?"

"We do the washing there," mutters the woman, continuing to wield
her broom.

"You know," says Barque, with a smile and an engaging air, "we're not like those disagreeable people who get drunk and make themselves a nuisance. May we have a look?"

The woman has let her broom rest. She is thin and inconspicuous. Her jacket hangs from her shoulders as from a valise. Her face is like cardboard, stiff and without expression. She looks at us and hesitates, then grudgingly leads the way into a very dark little place, made of beaten earth and piled with dirty linen.

"It's splendid," cries Lamuse, in all honesty.

"Isn't she a darling, the little kiddie!" says Barque, as he pats the round cheek, like painted india-rubber, of a little girl who is staring at us with her dirty little nose uplifted in the gloom. "Is she yours, madame?"

"And that one, too?" risks Marthereau, as he espies an over-ripe infant on whose bladder-like cheeks are shining deposits of jam, for the ensnaring of the dust in the air. He offers a half-hearted caress in the direction of the moist and bedaubed countenance. The woman does not deign an answer.

So there we are, trifling and grinning, like beggars whose plea
still hangs fire.

Lamuse whispers to me, in a torment of fear and cupidity, "Let's hope she'll catch on, the filthy old slut. It's grand here, and, you know, everything else is pinched!"

"There's no table," the woman says at last.

"Don't worry about the table," Barque exclaims. "Tenez! there, put away in that corner, the old door; that would make us a table."

"You're not going to trail me about and upset all my work!" replies the cardboard woman suspiciously, and with obvious regret that she had not chased us away immediately.

"Don't worry, I tell you. Look, I'll show you. Hey, Lamuse, old
cock, give me a hand."

Under the displeased glances of the virago we place the old door on
a couple of barrels.

"With a bit of a rub-down," says I, "that will be perfect."

"Eh, oui, maman, a flick with a brush'll do us instead of
tablecloth."

The woman hardly knows what to say; she watches us spitefully: "There's only two stools, and how many are there of you?"

"About a dozen."

"A dozen. Jesus Maria!"

"What does it matter? That'll be all right, seeing there's a plank here--and that's a bench ready-made, eh, Lamuse?"

"Course," says Lamuse.

"I want that plank," says the woman. "Some soldiers that were here before you have tried already to take it away."

"But us, we're not thieves," suggests Lamuse gently, so as not to irritate the creature that has our comfort at her disposal.

"I don't say you are, but soldiers, vous savez, they smash everything up. Oh, the misery of this war!"

"Well then, how much'll it be, to hire the table, and to heat up a thing or two on the stove?"

"It'll be twenty sous a day," announces the hostess with restraint, as though we were wringing that amount from her.

"It's dear," says Lamuse.

"It's what the others gave me that were here, and they were very kind, too, those gentlemen, and it was worth my while to cook for them. I know it's not difficult for soldiers. If you think it's too much, it's no job to find other customers for this room and this table and the stove, and who wouldn't be in twelves. They're coming along all the time, and they'd pay still more, if I wanted. A dozen!--"

Lamuse hastens to add, "I said 'It's dear,' but still, it'll do, eh, you others?" On this downright question we record our votes.

"We could do well with a drop to drink," says Lamuse. "Do you sell
wine?"

"No," said the woman, but added, shaking with anger, "You see, the military authority forces them that's got wine to sell it at fifteen sous! Fifteen sous! The misery of this cursed war! One loses at it, at fifteen sous, monsieur. So I don't sell any wine. I've got plenty for ourselves. I don't say but sometimes, and just to oblige, I don't allow some to people that one knows, people that knows what things are, but of course, messieurs, not at fifteen sous."

Lamuse is one of those people "that knows what things are." He grabs at his water-bottle, which is hanging as usual on his hip. "Give me a liter of it. That'll be what?"

"That'll be twenty-two sous, same as it cost me. But you know it's just to oblige you, because you're soldiers."

Barque, losing patience, mutters an aside. The woman throws him a surly glance, and makes as if to hand Lamuse's bottle back to him. But Lamuse, launched upon the hope of drinking wine at last, so that his cheeks redden as if the draught already pervaded them with its grateful hue, hastens to intervene--

"Don't be afraid--it's between ourselves, la mere, we won't
give you away."

She raves on, rigid and bitter, against the limited price on wine; and, overcome by his lusty thirst, Lamuse extends the humiliation and surrender of conscience so far as to say, "No help for it, madame! It's a military order, so it's no use trying to understand it."

She leads us into the store-room. Three fat barrels occupy it in impressive rotundity. "Is this your little private store?"

"She knows her way about, the old lady," growls Barque.

The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ways at once."

"How?" insists Barque.

"I can see you're not going to risk your money!"

"That's right--we only risk our skins."

We intervene, disturbed by the tone of menace for our present concern that the conversation has assumed. But the door of the wine-cellar is shaken, and a man's voice comes through. "Hey, Palmyra!" it calls.

The woman hobbles away, discreetly leaving the door open. "That's all right--we've taken root!" Lamuse says.

"What dirty devils these, people are!" murmurs Barque, who finds his reception hard to stomach.

"It's shameful and sickening," says Marthereau.

"One would think it was the first time you'd had any of it!"

"And you, old gabbler," chides Barque, "that says prettily to the wine-robber, 'Can't be helped, it's a military order'! Gad, old man, you're not short of cheek!"

"What else could I do or say? We should have had to go into mourning for our table and our wine. She could make us pay forty sous for the wine, and we should have had it all the same, shouldn't we? Very well, then, got to think ourselves jolly lucky. I'll admit I'd no confidence, and I was afraid it was no go."

"I know; it's the same tale everywhere and always, but all the
same--"

"Damn the thieving natives, ah, oui! Some of 'em must be making fortunes. Everybody can't go and get killed."

"Ah, the gallant people of the East!"

"Yes, and the gallant people of the North!"

"Who welcome us with open arms!"

"With open hands, yes--"

"I tell you," Marthereau says again, "it's a shame and it's
sickening."

"Shut it up--there's the she-beast coming back." We took a turn round to quarters to announce our success, and then went shopping. When we returned to our new dining-room, we were hustled by the preparations for lunch. Barque had been to the rations distribution, and had managed, thanks to personal relations with the cook (who was a conscientious objector to fractional divisions), to secure the potatoes and meat that formed the rations for all the fifteen men of the squad. He had bought some lard--a little lump for fourteen sous--and some one was frying. He had also acquired some green peas in tins, four tins. Mesnil Andre's tin of veal in jelly would be a hors-d'oeuvre.

"And not a dirty thing in all the lot!" said Lamuse, enchanted.

* * * * * *

We inspected the kitchen. Barque was moving cheerfully about the iron Dutch oven whose hot and steaming bulk furnished all one side of the room.

"I've added a stewpan on the quiet for the soup," he whispered to me. Lifting the lid of the stove--"Fire isn't too hot. It's half an hour since I chucked the meat in, and the water's clean yet."

A minute later we heard some one arguing with the hostess. This extra stove was the matter in dispute. There was no more room left for her on her stove. They had told her they would only need a casserole, and she had believed them. If she had known they were going to make trouble she would not have let the room to them. Barque, the good fellow, replied jokingly, and succeeded in soothing the monster.

One by one the others arrived. They winked and rubbed their hands together, full of toothsome anticipation, like the guests at a wedding-breakfast. As they break away from the dazzling light outside and penetrate this cube of darkness, they are blinded, and stand like bewildered owls for several minutes.

"It's not too brilliant in here," says Mesnil Joseph. "Come, old chap, what do you want?" The others exclaim in chorus, "We're damned well off here." And I can see heads nodding assent in the cavern's twilight.

An incident: Farfadet having by accident rubbed against the damp and dirty wall, his shoulder has brought away from it a smudge so big and black that it can be seen even here. Farfadet, so careful of his appearance, growls, and in avoiding a second contact with the wall, knocks the table so that his spoon drops to the ground. Stooping, he fumbles among the loose earth, where dust and spiders' webs for years have silently fallen. When he recovers his spoon it is almost black, and webby threads hang from it. Evidently it is disastrous to let anything fall on the ground. One must live here with great care.

Lamuse brings down his fat hand, like a pork-pie, between two of the places at table. "Allons, a table!" We fall to. The meal is abundant and of excellent quality. The sound of conversation mingles with those of emptying bottles and filling jaws. While we taste the joy of eating at a table, a glimmer of light trickles through a vent-hole, and wraps in dusty dawn a piece of the atmosphere and a patch of the table, while its reflex lights up a plate, a cap's peak, an eye. Secretly I take stock of this gloomy little celebration that overflows with gayety. Biquet is telling about his suppliant sorrows in quest of a washerwoman who would agree to do him the good turn of washing some linen, but "it was too damned dear." Tulacque describes the queue outside the grocer's. One might not go in; customers were herded outside, like sheep. "And although you were outside, if you weren't satisfied, and groused too much, they chased you off."

Any news yet? It is said that severe penalties have been imposed on those who plunder the population, and there is already a list of convictions. Volpatte has been sent down. Men of Class '93 are going to be sent to the rear, and Pepere is one of them.

When Barque brings in the harvest of the fry-pan, he announces that our hostess has soldiers at her table--ambulance men of the machine-guns. "They thought they were the best off, but it's us that's that," says Fouillade with decision, lolling grandly in the darkness of the narrow and tainted hole where we are just as confusedly heaped together as in a dug-out. But who would think of making the comparison?

"Vous savez pas," says Pepin, "the chaps of the 9th, they're in clover! An old woman has taken them in for nothing, because of her old man that's been dead fifty years and was a rifleman once on a time. Seems she's even given them a rabbit for nix, and they're just worrying it jugged."

"There's good sorts everywhere. But the boys of the 9th had famous luck to fall into the only shop of good sorts in the whole village."

Palmyra comes with the coffee, which she supplies. She thaws a little, listens to us, and even asks questions in a supercilious way: "Why do you call the adjutant 'le juteux'?"

Barque replies sententiously, "'Twas ever thus."

When she has disappeared, we criticize our coffee. "Talk about clear! You can see the sugar ambling round the bottom of the glass."--"She charges six sous for it."--"It's filtered water."

The door half opens, and admits a streak of light. The face of a little boy is defined in it. We entice him in like a kitten and give him a bit of chocolate.

Then, "My name's Charlie," chirps the child. "Our house, that's close by. We've got soldiers, too. We always had them, we had. We sell them everything they want. Only, voila, sometimes they get drunk."