by Théo Varlet
“What about that?” said Thévenard, pointing to the Arabic graffiti inscribed on the walls.
“Too bad!” Renard replied. “That won’t bother anyone. What bothers me is this Machine. Inventions are all very well, but we’ve seen enough of them, haven’t we?”
“Couldn’t agree more. Get rid of it. Hold on—an idea. Dupuy can dismantle it, and we’ll take the pieces into the crater when the four shells from Metz fall every morning on the dot of eight o’clock. This evening, they’ll be gone forever.”
The office was presentable again when Dupuy and Lénac returned from their expedition with pockets full of insignia, Spanish and Arab gold, eighth banknotes, photographs of Valencians chicks and other compromising souvenirs. The gold was shared out, the rest taken to the cellar and locked away with the bundle of film canisters, posters and so on.
The dismantling of the Machine took Dupuy and Lénac the rest of the night. Renard and the major busied themselves concocting the report to the colonel. A difficult task! After long discussion, they arrived at the following text:
Report of Lieutenant Renard to Colonel Sausse
Last night at twenty-three thirty, the enemy launched an abrupt attack on our sector. Our advance posts, rapidly overrun because of the deplorable functioning of the light machine-guns, engaged in combat, but a numerous party of assailants succeeded in crossing the Seille and penetrating into our trenches, where they carried out grave depredations. Supported in admirable fashion by all the men, I took measures to hold back the movement. I must signal in this regard the heroic conduct of Adjutant Etcheverry, Sergeant Cipriani and even those whose employments dispensed them from participating in the attack: orderlies, cooks, the medical orderly. All of them were killed, victims of their devotion. My colleague, Sublieutenant de Lanselles, launched a counter-attack from his side—in the course of which he disappeared—and our combined efforts finally drove the enemy back to the other side of the Seille and beyond the barbed wire, at about one o’clock in the morning.
We have, unfortunately, to deplore an extremely high percentage of losses: eighty-one men killed, wounded, taken prisoner or unaccounted for, out of a hundred and twenty-two presently in the Company.
Notification was given during the combat of the landing in our lines of a British aircraft gone astray. Its pilot took off again a few minutes later, after having received the care of Major Thévenard in the infirmary.
In addition, at two-fifteen in the morning, the considerable shock of an earthquake—or perhaps the explosion of a mine—followed at a six-minute interval by another of similar violence, disturbed the vicinity of the sector and caused some damage. The death of several men might plausibly be attributed to that seismic phenomenon.
“That’s fine—good job!” exclaimed Thévenard, when his companion read it back to him.
“What can you do? What’s necessary is necessary,” Renard pronounced, stoically.
Dawn broke. Dupuy and Lénac, for their part, had just finished with the Machine. It was too late to carry the parts to the shell-crater. Noises could be heard I the other half of the village; the men were waking up. The unrecognizable heap of metal was therefore covered with a tarpaulin until nightfall—which would soon arrive, give that it was January. The four men, utterly exhausted, would gladly have gone to bed, but they were far from having finished yet.
“Hey, Duranton!” shouted several jovial voices outside. “Where’s the juice?”
Renard came out of the tower.
“Duranton’s dead. Don’t you know? He was killed…or taken prisoner, like many other poor chaps, last night.”
“What, Duranton?” one man groaned. “No juice, then?”
“And there’s nothing at all in the kitchens,” said a second, who had gone in through the open door.”
“Hang on, lads,” the major intervened. “I’ve got something here for you.” And he offered them a demijohn of Nénestine, from which he had just scraped off the superb label.
“Funny gnôle. No matter—it’s warming. We can have it?”
“As much as you like.”
“Let’s fill our bottles, then, lads!”
It was necessary to appoint new cooks, re-man the deserted advance posts, send a detachment for new supplies. There were still two donkeys in the battery shed. The remaining men of the company—some forty of them—were hardly sufficient for all the tours of duty. The enormous proportion of the killed and missing plunged them into amazement.
“What! Jasmin too! And Saucisson! Everybody, then!”
The attack, however, had seemed relatively benign to them.
“You’re forgetting that it wasn’t just the attack,” the major replied, making every effort to come to Renard’s aid. “You’re forgetting the earthquake that followed it. Two very violent shocks, which you mistook for the explosion of mines.”
They listened to him deferentially, but there were whispers. His very appearance provoked comment. The major had put on a lot of weight since the previous day, and the lieutenant, Dupuy and Lénac were tanned, as if bronzed by the sun!
The discovery of the bodies—very few in number! how many prisoners!—passed without too many comments, save for Nénesse’s. In the dark, the two scavengers had not noticed that in his extended left arm he was still holding the inquisitor’s hooded cape, and that the latter’s rosary was lying, along with an aspergillum, a few meters away in the barbed wire.
“He had a funny overcoat, the Boche! Are their chaplains taking part in their attacks now?” they joked, around these bizarre trophies.
“It’s probably the trench-cleaners new costume. One of them seems to have done for Nénesse.”
“Poor Nénesse—he was such a laugh!”
The radio was receiving, but the telephone wire had been cut. While awaiting its repair by Dupuy’s aides, Renard had sent a cyclist as soon as it was light to take his report to Colonel Sausse. The supply crew had just come back with abundant provisions of every sort when the reconnection of the wire was announced. Immediately, a telephone call informed Renard that the colonel intended to come in person, at about two o’clock, to assess the situation of the eighth.
While awaiting his arrival, the four escapees from Valencia had lunch in the cellar. They were famished, and the cuisine of Duranton’s successor seemed delicious to them. The presence of the man who had replaced Jasmin initially restricted their speech to discreet allusions and winks, but he was dismissed during dessert. The apples, the taste of which they had forgotten months ago, the coffee, genuine juice and no longer the ignoble substitute of roasted acorns; and the regulation gnôle all delighted them with ease. During the morning, they had already been able to smoke a pipe or two of old shag, but now—oh joy!—there were cigars.
The four accomplices considered one another in silence at first; then they all began laughing at once—laughing immoderately, in irresistible bursts, which set them writhing on their chairs for several minutes.
“Damn it!” the major finally exclaimed, wiping his eyes. “Why are you laughing, Renard?”
“I don’t know. I’m happy, free, glad to be here. What about you?”
“Me, I was thinking about the Emir.”
“Me too,” said Lénac.
“Me,” said Dupuy, “I’ve got leave coming up in a fortnight…and party time!”
Lénac had to wait a month for his turn, Renard six weeks, the major eight.
“Bah!” the last-named philosophized. “I’ve got my little chick in Landremont. I’ll go see her tomorrow. And after all, we’ve spent six months away from the war. That was overtime!”
“And how!” added Lénac.
They remembered the mates left behind, buried under the ruins of the tower. They discussed the explosion that had freed them. Had it really been Monocard’s work? And what had become of him? Dead, no doubt, with his Saint-Cyriens...
“At any rate, he’ll have difficulty rejoining us, poor fellow,” said the major. “With a handicap of several ce
nturies...”
Colonel Sausse—a short man with a gray beard—arrived sooner than expected. He came into the cellar like a blast of wind, and Lénac did not have time to put away the collection of photographs that he had just taken out of the bookcase in order to examine them. After a “Well, it seems that it was ugly last night” by way of a bonjour, however, the colonel came to an abrupt halt, his eyes wide, in front of the major, and cut off the reply commenced by Renard.
“But you’re enormous, Major! What’s happened to you, my friend? Have you copped a dose of mustard-gas?”
The three accomplices were covertly amused by the lamentable: “Yes, Colonel, I have indeed,” that Thévenard stammered.
“You’ll have to be evacuated,” Sausse went on. Then, noticing the bronzed faces of the others, he exclaimed: “And you! Your faces are burned, all three of you. The Boche must have attacked with flame-throwers!”
“Er…yes, Colonel,” Renard replied.
“You’re not suffering too much?”
“No, not too much, Colonel. It’s rather mild.”
The sight of the artistic poses destined for the Emir, distracted the officer’s attention. He cast a semi-indulgent, semi-severe eye over them.
“Always with your naked ladies? Look, she’s not bad, that little one. One might think she was a Algerian. She has a Moorish look about her...”
Beneath the snapshots he noticed half a dozen gold coins—quadruples and dinars.
“Tee hee—you have gold here. That’ll have to be sent to the Banque de France...but these are old coins. Where did you find them?”
Père Sausse was keen on numismatics.
“It was last night’s earthquake that unearthed them, Colonel,” the major replied. And, seeing the colonel’s questing gaze settle on a halberd forgotten in a corner, he added: “Along with other objects—that weapon, for example. It must be a Medieval burial-site...”
“Oh yes—your report, Lieutenant, mentioned an earthquake. You were here, then, last night, Thévenard.”
“Yes, Colonel. I stayed here.”
“Very good, very good. I noticed your zeal a long time ago…and you were gassed as well...”
They passed on to serious matters. Renard gave another detailed—and imaginary—account of the attack. He spoke again about the courage of de Lanselles, Etcheverry and Cipriani, the orderlies, and so on. But their disappearance irritated the colonel. He wanted to see the corpses arranged on a canvas sheet behind the infirmary.
“Eleven. No more than that? What about the others. How many prisoners and missing did you say?”
“Sixty-six, Colonel.”
“That makes no sense. How did it happen, then?”
“Sublieutenant de Lanselles carried them all away. I shouted at him to stop, but he pressed forward...and no one came back.”
“It’s annoying that we don’t know whether they’re alive or not…at any rate, we’ll put them down as missing.”
“Oh, in my opinion, they’re alive,” said the major, with a wink at Renard.
Having inspected the advance posts, and commented on the disappearance of the machine guns, the exhaustion of the ammunition and other damage, the colonel concluded: “I’ve rarely seen a sector so sorely tried. You can’t stay like this. I’ll send you half a company today, and then I’ll get busy having you relieved. In three or four hours, you can get some rest.”
When he went back to the office, where he had parked his bicycle, he came to a halt in front of the graffiti.
“What! That’s very odd. I’ve never noticed those inscriptions before. Have you, Renard?”
“No, Colonel—but they’ve always been there.”
“And astonishingly well-preserved, considering their antiquity. That’s ancient Arabic, there’s no doubt about it; they’re as old as the tower. I’ve always thought that the Arabs got as far as Port-sur-Seille…those coins are abundant proof of it too. I must take photographs one day, when I have time, and put together a note for the Académie des Inscriptions...”
Ready to get astride his bicycle, he considered Thévenard’s monstrous paunch one last time. “You don’t want me to have you evacuated, then?”
“I have my wounded to care for, Colonel.”
“Those are the words of a hero. I won’t insist—but I’m going to recommend you for the Légion d’honneur.”
That evening, the pieces of the Machine having been placed in the crater, the four accomplices, locked away in the cellar, proceeded with the destruction of the souvenirs of Spain. The gold, the halberds, the daggers and the photographs of women could be kept, but the banknotes were incinerated and long with the printed matter. As they went along, they reread some of the posters.
“Program for the celebrations of the coronation of His Holiness Geronimo I...”
“Proclamation of the state of reinforced siege...”
“To the people of Valencia: the cowardly assassination of two high-ranking French officials, the Chief Cupbearer Jasmin and the Chief Bread-Supplier Saucission...”
“Rise in the price of raw alcohol...”
“Workers required for the distillery...”
“Debray bicycles in guaranteed dogwood...”
“The Andalusian convoy will bring...”
“Nénestine and Progressinette, available in all good bars...”
A nearby detonation, closely followed by three others, made the accomplices jump, having become unaccustomed to them. Then they remembered: eight o’clock! The four shells from Metz! With half-smiles, they looked at one another, and the major, with a hand gesture, waved a definitive farewell to the Machine.
“Bye bye…au revoir...”
Lénac broke the silence while throwing a wad of banknotes on to the fire: “There goes another million.”
“More!” said Dupuy.
“Well, those are fake...”
The auto-da-fé came to an end. There remained the films. On a sheet, standing in for a screen, Lénac proposed to show them one last time. Once again they watched the explosion of the gate of Valencia, the triumphant entry of the Emir and the monk on the truck with the green palms, the riot at the cathedral...
“We’re there—we’re still there! Oh, they were good times, all the same.”
“Yes, but with those bastard Inquisitors, it wasn’t really tenable.”
“And we have to destroy all this? What a pity! It would be so amusing to look at them again from time to time, when we four meet again...”
“In fact,” said Dupuy, “we could keep the portions of film in which we don’t appear, or the poilus, and connect up the pieces. It would be a historical reconstruction film!”
Lénac declared the plan quite feasible. He projected all of it a second time, for the purposes of censorship, and carefully made a note of the cuts to be made.
By half past nine—twenty-four hours having gone by since they awoke in the Inquisition’s dungeon—all four of them were falling down with fatigue. Renard gave a signal to Dupuy, who went to fetch an earthenware bottle from the Henri II bookcase.
“Gentlemen,” said the lieutenant, while filling their glasses, “I found this bottle of Alicante. It was a gift from the Caliph of Cordova to the Director of Operations. I shall assume that title one last time in order to drink a probably-posthumous toast to the noble and chivalrous Monocard, to his colleague in generous madness the monk and late pope Geronimo, to Etcheverry, Cipriani, Jasmin, Saucisson, Duranton, Nénesse, and all our brave friends, the troopers who remained out there, victims of the Inquisition!”
“You’re forgetting the Emir, old chap,” the doctor replied. “He liked us a lot, although he had his faults…I shall add to those toasts, for my part, the health of the Director of Operations, who always showed himself to be on top of things…and that of the three of us who are lucky enough to be here this evening. Drink!”
The glasses clinked; they drank.
“And now,” Renard continued, “with the few drops that remain, we’re al
l going to swear a solemn oath never to mention again, except between ourselves, the adventure that united us all in good and bad fortune, without distinction of rank. This will be the Pact of Silence, a worthy pendant to the Pernod Alliance!”
Epilogue
It was four days after Colonel Sausse’s visit. The Eighth Company, so terribly tried, was sent to rest at Liverdun. A parade was held in the morning. Renard and the major, wearing the decoration of the Légion d’honneur, Dupuy the military medal and Lénac the croix de guerre, dined with a few other guests at the colonel’s residence. He congratulated them publicly, and requested a cinematic presentation from Lénac. On the way to the barracks where the poilus, notified of the windfall, had assembled in haste, Captain Loubet of the tenth came to clap Renard amicably on the shoulder.
“Well, have you still got any of it left?”
“Any what?”
“The Pernod, damn it! You haven’t emptied the cellar already, I suppose?”
“My God! Yes, I’d better confess—it’s completely empty.”
“Damn! You lot go at it hard. In ten days! There was enough of it to keep a regiment going for a month.”
The Pathé News, the grotesque misadventures of Charlie Chaplin and the exploits of the detective launched in pursuit of the odious kidnappers of the billionaire’s daughter obtained their customary success, of crazed laughter and respectful attention respectively, on the part of the poilus packing the wooden benches. On their chairs, Colonel Sausse and his guests occupied their eyes while digesting dinner. To close the session, Lénac announced one last film—a new one, he said, which he had just received: Spain under the Inquisition in the 14th Century.