by Paul Busson
All the sticks were raised in the air. Two non-commissioned officers passed behind us along the rows to see that we did not keep back our blows.
The drums beat a sudden signal, and the man was pushed forward. He had to run the gauntlet. The sticks whizzed as he ran, sounding loud against his back. Pieces of rag flew off. He screamed something we could not understand. I struck him on the shoulder and saw the blood spatter. But he was through, and he fell down, beyond the lines, on all fours.
He was caught up, and dragged to his feet again. He groaned terribly.
“Forward!” cried the jailer.
Kregel’s eyes stood out of their sockets, the spittle ran out of his open mouth. His lips were bitten through. He ran again. The sticks fell, blood ran and fragments flew. The man hopped or doubled up as he ran, wailing loudly like a dog, and stretching his bruised and swollen hands out as though begging for mercy. But he drew them back with a scream, for a blow fell cruelly on his knuckles. When he staggered to the end of the double row he collapsed like a sack and lay motionless.
The army-surgeon approached and held his hand to the deserter’s side for a moment; then he beckoned to two soldiers, and told them to turn the body over, face down. Then he took out a flask of spirits from his pocket and poured its contents over the mutilated back. With a piercing cry of pain Kregel returned to his senses.
“There he is, squeaking again,” said my neighbour, Wetzlaff. “Let’s give him another taste of the palm leaves.”
In spite of all his resistance, the man was put on his legs and pushed between the rows of men for the third and the last time. He did not go far. He had not reached half-way when he fell down and remained motionless, heedless of all the blows that, as he lay there, came showering upon him from his comrades, who were themselves urged on by blows from the other soldiers behind them.
“It’s all over with him,” said one man, and at once the rain of sticks was suspended.
But suddenly the fallen man sprang up and sped away like an arrow. Only a few flying blows struck him, and the enraged corporals turned on the men who had allowed themselves to be deceived.
“The false dog, the treacherous scum,” they muttered, scowling at Kregel, who had come to a stop at the other end of the corridor, smiling in spite of all his pain.
A sound of giggling came from above. We looked up. At the windows of the officers’ quarters were several finely dressed ladies; they held handkerchiefs to their mouths as if they were dying of laughter. Then drums called us back to the barracks.
Chapter Seventeen
A flickering lamp barely lit the guardroom. The walls were spotted thickly with squashed bedbugs. The brandy bottles were empty; tobacco smoke hung blue beneath the smoke-darkened roof. Taps had sounded long ago, but no one had stretched out on the plank beds.
“Let’s hope she comes, Kinner,” said Corporal Holmfuss. “Bitches like that are sly.”
Hardly had he finished speaking, however, when the door opened, and Wetzlaff entered with the girl.
The lieutenant nodded, cast a half glance around the room, and, as if for no particular reason, left the room. The door was immediately barred and chained behind him.
Katherine, the soldiers’ whore, now stood in the midst of the soldiers, looking from one to the other. Her bold smile became fearful and suspicious. Her hood was crushed, her striped calico coat was soiled and dirty, and her shoes were worn at the heel. She scratched herself on the buttocks. When everyone remained silent, she became frightened and made a movement as if to escape.
But then she saw the bolted door, and said with a gulp, “Well, boys. Aren’t you going to let me out?”
“That’s right,” said the corporal, and laid a burning piece of fungus-tinder on his pipe. “You lied to us, didn’t you?”
“Me? God forbid,” she said. “What are you talking about. How did I lie to you.”
“We asked you plenty of times if you was clean, didn’t we? If you wasn’t, no dice. Now look at Beverov! Beverov, come here.”
One of the soldiers stepped up. The corporal opened his coat, vest, and shirt. The man’s chest was covered with festering red spots.
“Do you know what that is, Katy?” asked the corporal, with heavy irony.
“Those are real Frenchmen!”
Fear, horror and anger passed in turn over the girl’s face.
“From me? From me?” she shrieked and put her hands on her hips. “You lousy bastards, you dirty gut-eaters. I’m going to the lieutenant. You’ll see!”
“Shut up,” said the corporal, cracking her across the mouth with the back of his hand, so that she cried with pain. Then she stood quiet, with a drop of blood on her lower lip.
“Off with her pants!”
She screamed and squealed like a rat, kicked out and bit. But it was to no avail against the heavy hands that fell on her from all sides. In a few minutes she stood, pitifully naked, twisting against the hard hands that held her arms and wrists.
“Lamp!”
The corporal held the lamp close to her. A drop of hot oil fell on her skin, and she screamed.
“Don’t be afraid. You’re not going to be burned,” the corporal said, to calm her. “See, comrades.”
With his finger he pointed out many white spots, which stood out against the brownish skin of her neck and shoulders.
“Do you deny that you’ve got the Frenchies, and that you’re poisoned, you dirty pig?”
She did not answer. Then she raised her head and spit bloody saliva right in the middle of the corporal’s face.
“Wait, you whore,” said the corporal calmly.
He wiped his sleeve across his face.
“What do you think, comrades? I’m for belt work.”
“Let’s go,” the soldier shouted. “Belts!”
“You’ve been a pig from your birth,” said the corporal, blowing hot, biting smoke into her face. “Now what do you want to be, a fox?”
“Damned pig,” she hissed back, bending and trying to bite the hands that held her. “Let me go! Let me out!”
“‘Red is the colour of my true love,'” shouted the corporal.
“Bring the boot bag over here.”
The voice of the desperate woman was lost in the coarse laughter of the soldiers, who spat in their clean-up boxes, pulled out coarse boot brushes and started on the girl. Up to now I had sat half-dazed on my bunk, and watched without understanding the incomprehensible things that were happening. But now horror and pity for the woman seized me. I saw my comrades seize her, heard her scream and shriek as they held her by her hair and stepped with clumsy boots on her naked feet. She twisted like an eel, screamed as a soldier approached with a whip, whimpered for pity, and in the same breath screamed out the most frightful curses.
“What are you doing with her?”
I cried to Wetzlaff and seized him by the sleeve.
“She’s going to be washed clean,” he laughed in my ear.
“And then she is going to run the gauntlet, until she drops. That’s what we call horseplay!”
A shrill cry broke from her. The corporal seized her from behind and held her fast, no matter how much she struggled.
“At her, men,” said the corporal.
I sprang up, tore his hands from her trembling body, and stood in front of her.
“Let her go,” I shouted. “Let her go!”
“Oho,” I heard the outcry. “Look at Dronte!”
With balled fists and raging face Wetzlaff came at me. I looked at him calmly and firmly. His angry eye turned away from mine, his balled fists opened. The others were silent, and looked at me in astonishment.
“Comrades,” I said. “Have mercy. She is not to blame. She is just as miserable and down-trodden as all of us.”
No one answered. I went to the door without being hindered, and opened it. Then I bent down, picked up the whore’s rags and gave them to her.
“Go, Katharine,” I heard myself say.
It was deathly sti
ll. She looked at me with great eyes, bent as if she wanted to kiss my hand, then laughed hoarsely and leaped out of the room. We heard the plat of her naked feet on the stone pavement of the courtyard. No one said anything. Slowly the soldiers put away their boxes and brushes in their proper places. Someone yawned loudly. Then Wetzlaff laughed in a strange way, stood before me, wagged his head back and forth and looked at me.
“It is true,” he grumbled. “Dronte has the eye. Power in his eye…”
No one made any further observation. Silently the soldiers stretched out on the hard bunks to get some sleep before their shift came on.
Chapter Eighteen
Kregel had been gone for a week again, and no one knew any more than that he had received a letter from his home which had obviously upset him. Kregel was one of the Germans abandoned by their nation; he lived in the stolen land, in the neighbourhood of Colmar.
One day a Crown forester came to the colonel, and reported that some children had seen a soldier hanging from a tree. They had been so frightened that they had run away at once, and were consequently unable to point to the dreadful place. A company or two were sent out to scour the surrounding neighbourhood to find the corpse.
I was one of those who went out in search of Kregel through the great fir forest. As I made my way through the thickets and copses I lost the rest of the party, and though I shouted out, in accordance with our army instructions, I received no answer.
Now that I was alone I could not help thinking about Kregel, who was delivered of all pain and suffering. Surely he had done the more sensible thing, getting rid of this dog’s life in a few moments! I recalled how, only yesterday, Junker von Denwitz, a boy of eighteen, had struck me with his lead-weighted sword for leaving a chalk mark on my coat after whiting my gaiters. I remembered how the corporals would flog us just for the fun of it; and how wretched was our food, which was served to us in large leaden vats as though we were pigs the bread crunched with sand when we cut it. All this was to be endured. But the worst was that there was no hope that things would get better. The days went by with a load of curses and despair, one giving place to yet another as hideous. This was the worst thing of all. For a man must have some sort of hope if he is not to dry up inside.
In this harsh and brutal school, through whose doors God’s hand had pushed me, I learned to discipline myself. I showed no sign when my heart ached with burning compassion for those who were being bullied. I kept silent and did not change expression when I heard the vilest abuse which I got as my share from everyone who was exalted above me by his galloons or by the finer cloth of his uniform. Perhaps, I felt, this was the punishment God had assigned to me. And yet it was incompatible with eternal justice that men much worse than myself lived on to their end in joy and affluence. Why then had this burden of suffering fallen upon me? What did the Supreme Powers (if they existed) intend to make of me, that they should thus heap on me the weight of my own and others’ punishment? I had been endowed with a nature that felt keenly any kind of injustice; I had a far more delicate sensibility than my comrades in the army. They went on cracking their jokes even when they had been subjected to the most unbearable bullying; they found consolation in their glass of schnapps and in the embraces of barrack-girls.
When I became a recruit I lost everything that had helped and consoled me, and at the sight of all that went on before me, day after day, I could no longer believe in the divine reason.
What is a man to do when he finds himself alone in a room with hostile, rough, violent, wicked, cowardly and unkind men, not one of whom would or could stand up for law and justice? Surely a man will escape from such company. He will shut the door behind him, relieved to have escaped the horrible life that goes on within.
So, I resolved, would I shut my door. Kregel, the luckless lad from Alsace, had shown me the way. There were trees around me, I would tie my belt to one of the boughs.
I was about to cross the little sunlit clearing and carry out my resolve in the tall leaf-wood, when suddenly I was brought to a halt. Before me appeared a man, and he was not alone.
It was the man in the reddish-brown mantle and black turban. He was resting against the trunk of a tree, and his staff lay beside him in the moss. His noble hands held a string of amber beads. It was Evli.
The strange man whose little statue had stood under the tall glass case in the bedroom of my childhood was with me again. How came this queerly-clad stranger here? Unseen by the village children when the Prussian recruiters were carting me away with my fellow-sufferers, he had watched me from under the wayside cross. Neither then nor, earlier on, in the crowded church had I been able to ask him what he sought of me. On both occasions he had suddenly vanished. But now, I vowed, he must speak to me before I went about my work of self-destruction.
And lo, I was unable to move a step! The Man from the East was not alone. Before him stood a deer of the forest, rubbing its small head caressingly against his knee. A jay with a pink-grey head and blue wings was perched on the hand that held the beads. Countless little birds were chirruping in the bramble bushes around him. Two squirrels, one brown and the other black, were climbing after each other up and down his body, hiding in the folds of his mantle, cooing and chattering. I was astonished to see one of them disappear in his mantle, as if it had melted away into the similar colour of the coarse stuff; and then the other squirrel crawled into his black turban, lost its outline and did not emerge again.
I stared into his face, held by the splendour of his eyes. Were those eyes looking at me? Or were they two dark stars fixed on a far-off distance? I could not tell, I only felt the air about me warmed with the rays of a divine love.
Then he slowly rose up, walked across the clearing, and was lost among the tall trees.
My senses returned to me: I could move again. I ran forward. Where were the animals? The birds, the deer… they had disappeared. Where was Evli? I hastened among the tall trees and found myself among my comrades.
They had just found Kregel and cut the rope that held him. There he lay. His face was a shocking sight; black and swollen, his tongue hung out, his eyes were staring, complaining. The rope was still round his neck. No one took any notice of me. I had rejoined them without once being questioned.
They had brought spades, and they buried Kregel in the deep, soft earth, where the moles and the snakes dig their way among the roots.
It was late when we finished. An interminable procession of crows flew noiselessly past us in the red twilight.
“That means war,” said Wetzlaff, turning to me.
Chapter Nineteen
How long were the Hussars in the field? No one kept count any more, no one knew.
When war came it was winter. I was billeted with four comrades. We had found miserable accommodation in a burnt-down peasant’s cottage. We shared between us two bundles of rotten and damp straw and a blanket that had been singed by the camp-fire. We took great care of these miserable possessions, lest others still more wretched thieved them from us.
Our muskets had to be cleaned incessantly, or by the next morning they would be red with rust. One man, Zulkow, had his toes frozen on both feet. They were black and stank like the plague. Another, named Repke, had a wound on his back and I would wash it with gunpowder and spirits, being the only man willing to do so; he screamed with pain during the operation. Then there was Wetzlaff, who had dysentery. During the night he groaned in such a way that no one could sleep. He would stagger out of the hut every five minutes. Where he squatted, the ground was red with blood from his stool. My mates, despite his suffering, would throw everything in reach at him to silence him.
The quietest man among us, a low-spirited fellow named Kuhlemiek, sat near the fire as often as he could, reading a little tattered hymn-book and murmuring from time to time:
“O Lord, be merciful to the sinner I am.”
I had just bandaged Repke’s back with old rags and stuffed his pipe with hazel leaves. He was comfortable and talkative
.
“The King said… “he began in his Low German dialect.
But Wetzlaff interrupted him with a snort.
“The King! The King! Whenever he farts, that King of yours, you wretches are as happy as dogs and wag your tails! You skeletons, you cannon fodder! What is so great about a king like this?”
“Fredericus Rex is the greatest war hero of all times, you poisonous traitor!” declared Zulkow. “You dare sneer at his Majesty!”
“Dear brethren in Christ,” implored Kuhlemiek, “direct your thoughts to Him who holds our lives in His mercy-dispensing hands.”
“Hold your tongue, you damned psalm singer,” cried Repke. “Let Wetzlaff have his say.”
“O… O… O… “groaned Wetzlaff, and ran out of doors in a hurry.
We heard the noise of his discharge and his groans. His face was white as chalk when he came back, and he dropped down on the straw. Zulkow was the first to continue.
“As I was saying: the common man must look up to his king and master. But there are some who forget their oath …”
“Do you mean me?” asked Wetzlaff, raising himself with difficulty. “Look at your freezing dogs, you fool. To make your Fredericus a great hero you leave your toes in your shoes, I bleed to death, and thousands are shovelled into graves. If all the men in the Austrian army and in ours would think as I do, we’d get rid of both King and Empress before the cock crows to-morrow morning, and there’d be no more war and no more butchery. But you are all too stupid to understand such things. All the kings and generals, princes and counts and barons and officers down to our arse-faced junker thrive on your foolishness, and strut about like peacocks in their magnificence, while we are treated like cattle and driven to the slaughter-house with sounding of trumpets and beating of drums. You damned fools! You horse-bun heads...”