There is an uproar, too, among some shadows that are visible against a luminous background; they seem to be wildly agitated in the gloom of the crypt. The light of a candle shows us several men shaken with their efforts to hold a wounded soldier down on his stretcher. It is a man whose feet are gone. At the end of his legs are terrible bandages, with tourniquets to restrain the hemorrhage. His stumps have bled into the linen wrappings, and he seems to wear red breeches. His face is devilish, shining and sullen, and he is raving. They are pressing down on his shoulders and knees, for this man without feet would fain jump from the stretcher and go away.
“Let me go!” he rattles in breathless, quavering rage. His voice is low, with sudden sonorities, like a trumpet that one tries to blow too softly. “By God, let me go, I tell you! Do you think I’m going to stop here? Let go, let me be, or I’ll jump over you on my hands!”
So violently he contracts and extends himself that he pulls to and fro those who are trying to restrain him by their gripping weight, and I can see the zigzags of the candle held by a kneeling man whose other arm engirdles the mutilated maniac, who shouts so fiercely that he wakes up the sleepers and dispels the drowsiness of the rest. On all sides they turn towards him; half rising, they listen to the incoherent lamentations which end by dying in the dark. At the same moment, in another corner, two prostrate wounded, crucified on the ground, so curse each other that one of them has to be removed before the frantic dialogue is broken up.
I go farther away, towards the point where the light from outside comes through among the tangled beams as through a broken grating, and stride over the interminable stretchers; they take up all the width of the underground alley whose oppressive confinement chokes me. The human forms prone on the stretchers are now hardly stirring under the Jack-o’-lanterns of the candles; they stagnate in their rattling breath and heavy groans.
On the edge of a stretcher a man is sitting, leaning against the wall. His clothes are torn apart, and in the middle of their darkness appears the white, emaciated breast of a martyr. His head is bent quite back and veiled in shadow, but I can see the beating of his heart.
The daylight that is trickling through at the end, drop by drop, comes in by an earth-fall. Several shells, falling on the same spot, have broken through the heavy earthen roof of the Refuge.
Here, some pale reflections are cast on the blue of the greatcoats, on the shoulders and along the folds. Almost paralysed by the darkness and their own weakness, a group of men is pressing towards the gap, like dead men half awaking, to taste a little of the pallid air and detach themselves from the sepulchre. This corner at the extremity of the gloom offers itself as a way of escape, an oasis where one may stand upright, where one is lightly, angelically touched by the light of heaven.
“There were some chaps there that were blown to bits when the shells burst,” said some one to me who was waiting there in the sickly ray of entombed light. “You talk about a mess! Look, there’s the padre hooking down what was blown up.”
The huge Red Cross sergeant, in a hunter’s chestnut waistcoat which gives him the chest of a gorilla, is detaching the pendent entrails twisted among the beams of the shattered woodwork. For the purpose he is using a rifle with fixed bayonet, since he could not find a stick long enough; and the heavy giant, bald, bearded and asthmatic, wields the weapon awkwardly. He has a mild face, meek and unhappy, and while he tries to catch the remains of intestines in the corners, he mutters a string of “Oh’s!” like sighs. His eyes are masked by blue glasses; his breathing is noisy. The top of his head is of puny dimensions, and the huge thickness of his neck has a conical shape. To see him thus pricking and unhanging from the air strips of viscera and rags of flesh, you could take him for a butcher at some fiendish task.
But I let myself fall in a corner with my eyes half-closed, seeing hardly anything of the spectacle that lies and palpitates and falls around me. Indistinctly I gather some fragments of sentences—still the horrible monotony of the story of wounds: “God’s truth! In that place I should think the bullets were touching each other.”—“His head was bored through from one temple to the other. You could have passed a thread through.”—“Those beggars were an hour before they lifted their fire and stopped peppering us.” Nearer to me some one gabbles at the end of his story, “When I’m sleeping I dream that I’m killing him over again!”
Other memories are called up and buzz about among the buried wounded; it is like the purring of countless gear-wheels in a machine that turns and turns. And I hear afar him who repeats from his seat, “What’s the use of worrying?” in all possible tones, commanding or pitiful, sometimes like a prophet and anon like one shipwrecked; he metrifies with his cry the chorus of choking and plaintive voices that try so terribly to exalt their suffering.
Some one comes forward, blindly feeling the wall with his stick, and reaches me. It is Farfadet! I call him, and he turns nearly towards me to tell me that one eye is gone, and the other is bandaged as well. I give him my place, take him by the shoulders and make him sit down. He submits, and seated at the base of the wall waits patiently, with the resignation of his class, as if in a waiting-room.
I come to anchor a little farther away, in an empty space where two prostrate men are talking to each other in low voices; they are so near to me that I hear them without listening. They are two soldiers of the Foreign Legion; their helmets and greatcoats are dark yellow.
“It’s not worth while to make-believe about it,” says one of them banteringly. “I’m staying here this time. It’s finished—my bowels are shot through. If I were in a hospital, in a town, they’d operate on me in time, and it might stick up again. But here! It was yesterday I got it. We’re two or three hours from the Béthune road, aren’t we? And how many hours, think you, from the road to an ambulance where they can operate? And then, when are they going to pick us up? It’s nobody’s fault, I dare say; but you’ve got to look facts in the face. Oh, I know it isn’t going to be any worse from now than it is, but it can’t be long, seeing I’ve a hole all the way through my parcel of guts. You, your foot’ll get all right, or they’ll put you another one on. But I’m going to die.”
“Ah!” said the other, convinced by the reasoning of his neighbour. The latter goes on—
“Listen, Dominique. You’ve led a bad life. You pinched things, and you were quarrelsome when drunk. You’ve dirtied your ticket in the police register, properly.”
“I can’t say it isn’t true, because it is,” says the other; “but what have you got to do with it?”
“You’ll lead a bad life again after the war, inevitably; and then you’ll have bother about that affair of the cooper.”
The other becomes fierce and aggressive. “What the hell’s it to do with you? Shut your jaw!”
“As for me, I’ve no more family than you have. I’ve nobody, except Louise—and she isn’t a relation of mine, seeing we’re not married. And there are no convictions against me, beyond a few little military jobs. There’s nothing on my name.”
“Well, what about it? I don’t care a damn.”
“I’m going to tell you. Take my name. Take it—I give it you; as long as neither of us has any family.”
“Your name?”
“Yes; you’ll call yourself Leonard Carlotti, that’s all. ’Tisn’t a big job. What harm can it do you? Straight off, you’ve no more convictions. They won’t hunt you out, and you can be as happy as I should have been if this bullet hadn’t gone through my magazine.”
“Oh Christ!” said the other, “you’d do that? You’d—that—well, old chap, that beats all!”
“Take it. It’s there in my pocket-book in my greatcoat. Go on, take it, and hand yours over to me—so that I can carry it all away with me. You’ll be able to live where you like, except where I come from, where I’m known a bit, at Longueville in Tunis. You’ll remember that? And anyway, it’s written down. You must read it, the pocket-book. I shan’t blab to anybody. To bring the trick off properly, m
um’s the word, absolutely.”
He ponders a moment, and then says with a shiver, “I’ll p’raps tell Louise, so’s she’ll find I’ve done the right thing, and think the better of me, when I write to her to say good-bye.”
But he thinks better of it, and shakes his head with an heroic effort. “No—I shan’t let on, even to her. She’s her, of course, but women are such chatterers!”
The other man looks at him, and repeats, “Good Lord!”
Without being noticed by the two men I leave the cramped drama to develop, in the jostling traffic and commotion of that lamentable corner.
Now I touch the composed and convalescent chat of two poor wretches—
“Ah, my boy, the affection he had for that vine of his! You couldn’t find anything wrong among the branches of it——”
“That little nipper, that wee little kid, when I went out with him, holding his tiny fist, it felt as if I’d got hold of the little warm neck of a swallow, you know.”
And alongside this sentimental avowal, here is the passing revelation of another mind: “Don’t I know the 547th! Rather! Listen, it’s a funny regiment. They’ve got a poilu in it who’s called Petitjean, another called Petitpierre, and another called Petitlouis. Old man, it’s as I’m telling you; that’s the kind of regiment it is.”
As I begin to pick out a way with a view to leaving the cavern, there is a great noise down yonder of a fall and a chorus of exclamations. It is the hospital sergeant who has fallen. Through the breach that he was clearing of its soft and bloody relics, a bullet has taken him in the throat, and he is spread out full length on the ground. His great bewildered eyes are rolling and his breath comes foaming. His mouth and the lower part of his face are quickly covered with a cloud of rosy bubbles. They place his head on a bag of bandages, and the bag is instantly soaked with blood. An attendant cries that the packets of lint will be spoiled, and they are needed. Something else is sought on which to put the head that ceaselessly makes a light and discoloured froth. Only a loaf can be found, and it is slid under the spongy hair.
While they hold the sergeant’s hand and question him, he only slavers new heaps of bubbles, and we see his great black-bearded head across this rosy cloud. Laid out like that, he might be a deep-breathing marine monster, and the transparent red foam gathers and creeps up to his great hazy eyes, no longer spectacled.
Then his throat rattles. It is a childish rattle, and he dies moving his head to right and to left as though he were trying very gently to say “No.”
Looking on the enormous inert mass, I reflect that he was a good man. He had an innocent and impressionable heart. How I reproach myself that I sometimes abused him for the ingenuous narrowness of his views, and for a certain clerical impertinence that he always had! And how glad I am in this distressing scene—yes, happy enough to tremble with joy—that I restrained myself from an angry protest when I found him stealthily reading a letter I was writing, a protest that would unjustly have wounded him! I remember the time when he exasperated me so much by his dissertation on France and the Virgin Mary. It seemed impossible to me that he could utter those thoughts sincerely. Why should he not have been sincere? Has he not been really killed to-day? I remember, too, certain deeds of devotion, the kindly patience of the great man, exiled in war as in life—and the rest does not matter. His ideas themselves are only trivial details compared with his heart—which is there on the ground in ruins in this corner of Hell. With what intensity I lamented this man who was so far asunder from me in everything!
Then fell the thunder on us! We were thrown violently on each other by the frightful shaking of the ground and the walls. It was as if the overhanging earth had burst and hurled itself down. Part of the armour-plate of beams collapsed, enlarging the hole that already pierced the cavern. Another shock—another pulverised span fell in roaring destruction. The corpse of the great Red Cross sergeant went rolling against the wall like the trunk of a tree. All the timber in the long framework of the cave, those heavy black vertebræ, cracked with an ear-splitting noise, and all the prisoners in the dungeon shouted together in horror.
Blow after blow, the explosions resound and drive us in all directions as the bombardment mangles and devours the sanctuary of pierced and diminished refuge. As the hissing flight of shells hammers and crushes the gaping end of the cave with its thunderbolts, daylight streams in through the clefts. More sharply now, and more unnaturally, one sees the flushed faces and those pallid with death, the eyes which fade in agony or burn with fever, the patched-up white-bound bodies, the monstrous bandages. All that was hidden rises again into daylight. Haggard, blinking and distorted, in face of the flood of iron and embers that the hurricanes of light bring with them, the wounded arise and scatter and try to take flight. All the terror-struck inhabitants roll about in compact masses across the miserable tunnel, as if in the pitching hold of a great ship that strikes the rocks.
The aviator, as upright as he can get and with his neck on the ceiling, waves his arms and appeals to God, asks Him what He is called, what is His real name. Overthrown by the blast and cast upon the others, I see him who, bare of breast and his clothes gaping like a wound, reveals the heart of a Christ. The greatcoat of the man who still monotonously repeats “What’s the use of worrying?” now shows itself all green, bright green, the effect of the picric acid no doubt released by the explosion that has staggered his brain. Others—the rest, indeed—helpless and maimed, move and creep and cringe, worm themselves into the corners. They are like moles, poor, defenceless beasts, hunted by the hellish hounds of the guns.
The bombardment slackens, and ends in a cloud of smoke that still echoes the crashes, in a quivering and burning after-damp. I pass out through the breach; and still surrounded and entwined in the clamour of despair, I arrive under the free sky, in the soft earth where heavy planks have sunk, and your legs entangle with them. I catch myself on some wreckage; it is the embankment of the trench. At the moment when I plunge into the communication trenches they are visible a long way; they are still gloomily stirring, still filled by the crowd that overflows from the trenches and flows without end towards the refuges. For whole days, for whole nights, you will see the long rolling streams of men plucked from the fields of battle, from the plain over there that also has feelings of its own, though it bleeds and rots without end.
XXII
GOING ABOUT
We have been along the Boulevard de la République and then the Avenue Gambetta, and now we are debouching into the Place du Commerce. The nails in our polished boots ring on the pavements of the capital. It is fine weather, and the shining sky glistens and flashes as if we saw it through the frames of a greenhouse; it sets a-sparkle all the shop-fronts in the square. The skirts of our well-brushed greatcoats have been let down, and as they are usually fastened back, you can see two squares on the floating lappets where the cloth is bluer.
Our sauntering party halts and hesitates for a moment in front of the Café de la Sous-Préfecture, also called the Grand-Café.
“We have the right to go in!” says Volpatte.
“Too many officers in there,” replies Blaire, who has lifted his chin over the guipure curtains in which the establishment is dressed up and risked a glance through the window between its golden letters.
“Besides,” says Paradis, “we haven’t seen enough yet.”
We resume our walk and, simple soldiers that we are, we survey the sumptuous shops that encircle the Place du Commerce; the drapers, the stationers, the chemists, and—like a General’s decorated uniform—the display of the jeweller. We have put forth our smiles like ornaments, for we are exempt from all duty until the evening, we are free, we are masters of our own time. Our steps are gentle and sedate; our empty and swinging hands are also promenading, to and fro.
“No doubt about it, you get some good out of this rest,” remarks Paradis.
It is an abundantly impressive city which expands before our steps. One is in touch with life, with the li
fe of the people, the life of the Rear, the normal life. How we used to think, down yonder, that we should never get here!
We see gentlemen, ladies, English officers, aviators—recognisable afar by their slim elegance and their decorations—soldiers who are parading their scraped clothes and scrubbed skins and the solitary ornament of their engraved identity discs, flashing in the sunshine on their greatcoats; and these last risk themselves carefully in the beautiful scene that is clear of all nightmares.
We make exclamations as they do who come from afar: “Talk about a crowd!” says Tirette in wonder. “Ah, it’s a wealthy town!” says Blaire.
A work-girl passes and looks at us. Volpatte gives me a jog with his elbow and swallows her with his eyes, then points out to me two other women farther away who are coming up, and with beaming eye he certifies that the town is rich in femininity—“Old chap, there’s a buttock for you!”
A moment ago Paradis had a certain timidity to overcome before he could approach a cluster of cakes of luxurious lodging, and touch and eat them; and every minute we are obliged to halt in the middle of the pavement and wait for Blaire, who is attracted and detained by the displays of fancy jumpers and caps, neck-ties in pale blue drill, slippers as red and shiny as mahogany. Blaire has reached the final height of his transformation. He who held the record for negligence and grime is certainly the best groomed of us all, especially since the further complication of his ivories, which were broken in the attack and had to be re-made. He affects an off-hand demeanour. “He looks young and youthful,” says Marthereau.
We find ourselves suddenly face to face with a toothless creature who smiles to the depth of her throat. Some black hair bristles round her hat. Her big, unpleasant features, riddled with pock-marks, recall the ill-painted faces that one sees on the coarse canvas of a travelling show. “She’s beautiful,” says Volpatte. Marthereau, at whom she smiled, is dumb with shock.
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