I’m losing patience with the old idiot!
“That’ll do!…” I say… “That’s enough!… Enough fooling around!… I want to go back to the lines!… All right?… I want to do my duty over again… That’s definite!… All alone, if necessary!… I want to kill everything!… Be careful, doc!… You won’t get away with that!… I don’t want to go back to Paris!… I want to go back to the lines!… Like Lucien-the-Gent!… Benoît-the-Moustache!…”
“But you can’t, my boy! You’ve got eighty per cent!…”
“Then I’m going to murder you!…” I snap back. “Hand me a sabre!…”
And I dash to the poker that I see right near me… in the coal bucket… I’m going to run the phoney through!… Him and his goatee!…
Then four of them jump on me!… They knock me down!… They beat me up!… I kick and struggle!… I bite them!… They get the better of me!… They drag me… they wipe up the floor with me! I’m polishing the corridor!… Held by my arms and legs… We pass an open bay window… the place in the big dark salon!… Who’s that I’m seeing?… There in the back, all pale… All ghostly… “I give up! I give up!” I yell to my murderers… to those cowards pulling at me, knocking me out of joint…
Stop! Attention! I see them!… I see them all!… Over there! In the back!… My old friends!… Standing there in the dark!… Motionless!… All together!… One… two… three… four… five… six!… Standing straight up! “Hello!” I yell to them! “Hello! Hi, men! Hello all… Stand up, my hearties!”… I absolutely saw them! Ah! That’s a fact! Motionless! Just standing there! Nestor, not so tall, in the back of the room… with his big head cut off, in his hands!… He was carrying it on his belly!… A pimp from the Leicester!… He’d left the week before!… And Big Fatso next to him!… And Motorbike Fred!… And Little-Arm Pierrot!… And Pretty-Kiss Jojo!… And No-Dough René, with his belly wide open!… They were all bleeding somewhere!… That was the queer thing!… And Lucien-the-Gent and Lily-Boy!… Fly-Killer in a Marine Light Infantry uniform!… And Redheaded Lu as an artilleryman!… All lined up perfectly at the back of the salon! In the darkness… they weren’t saying anything!… All standing there!… In uniform but bareheaded… Their faces were all pale!… White… white… as if there were livid glints under their skins… a gleam…
“Hi, men!” I call again! “Hi, men!… Hi, chumps!… Hi, buddies!… How’s it going in there?”
They don’t answer… They don’t move!…
“Shit, they’re frozen!…”
I drag everyone along with me!… I want to go and talk to them myself! Talk to them from close up!… Right to their faces… Ah! No use gripping me!… I’m stronger than anything! They twist me!… I scream!… At least fourteen clerks!… And two… three old maids!… Who grab me by the balls!… I’ve got the strength of ten!… The whole staff!… The ushers!… I drag them along! The whole human bundle!… Towards the back!… The dark!… I want to talk to my pals!… Where they’re standing all bleeding!… All pale there!… At attention… I want to touch them!… It’s done!… I touch them!… They’ve disappeared!… Hell!… What d’you know! I yell it out loud!… A fake!… Another low-down lousy trick!… They’ve fled!… Evaporated!… Their tough luck, damn it!… They’ll pay!… They won’t find anyone in the big Hole!… They’re all cannon fodder!… I’d recognized all of them!… All the pals from the Leicester!… They’d seen me too!… They simply disappeared!… With their guts around their waists… in the back of the Consulate room!…
“Come on! Downstairs!… Go on down!… Get him out of here!”
That’s how I’m treated! How the ushers do their job! Ah! But it’s a fight! I want to stay there on the floor, musing, thinking. I throw myself under a bench. They grab me, yank me, pull me apart. Ah! They’re furious! I’ve driven them to the limit! Even the dear, kind doctor… No one’s got any patience left!… All of them charge at me together!… All the Consul’s employees!… All of them furious, men, women, girls!… I stagger! I roll! I collapse!… I go crashing down to the bottom of the stairs!… “Vive la France!” I yell in spite of it all… Vive Bedford Square!… Vive l’Angleterre!”
“Get out!… Get out!” they yell back… That’s how they answer me!… And they all start viciously tearing at me again!… Pulling me apart!… Ripping my jacket!… The ushers, the secretaries, the Vice-Consul, the Consul himself!…
“I’m the Consul!” he warns me.
Ah! The dog!… He wears glasses like the rest of them!… He comes to insult me!…
“Get the hell out of here, you bum!”
Impossible to be cruder.
“You’re being coarse!” I answer… “Hurray for the French Army!…”
Ah! He won’t stand for that! He rears! He stamps! Rage! He jumps up and down!…
“Get him out of here!… Get him out!” he says to the four “commissioners” on duty… Real huskies, Herculeses, who act then and there!… I’m lifted up!… The door wide open!… The street!… I leave in a trajectory!… A projectile!… I have a commanding view!… Hanging in the air!… A rocket!… I soar high above the pavement, a new weapon, over the crowd!… And plop!… I fall smack into it!… Right into the Russians… Ah! A mess!… They gurgle awful when they get me!… I’ve knocked five of them clean out!… They’re lying there! All five!… The women start pounding me!… Tearing away what’s left!… I stagger into their bellies… emigrants with kerchiefs, peasants bound for America… I’m being sworn at by an entire people!… I can’t free myself from the tangle of limbs and bodies. I walk on the bodies lying there… People are walking all over one another… The bodies are yelling at me horribly, in Russian, in Italian, in Czech… The meanest loudest bellyacher lying there knocked over is a little Chinaman, a little guy in a grey silk robe with a thick roll of papyrus stuck under him, a big papyrus with seals! He picks it all up in a fury, he stands up… and his umbrella and his big artist’s hat… his chestnut stove… he adjusts his bow!… And he starts giving me hell!… He takes me aside!… He was a Frenchman, and no mistake!… Not the slightest accent… dressed up like a Chinaman!…
At first I stood there dumbfounded… then I pulled myself together… and then I let him have it!…
“You stinker!… Keep quiet!…” I snap at him.
“You vandal! You hooligan!…” he answers back.
“Who’re you talking to?…” I ask.
“To a brute!… To a murderer!…”
“You’re quite right, Monsieur!…” I agree with him right off! I go him one better!… Am I proud of being a murderer!… Ah! He hit it on the head! Boy, have I killed!… Let him say it!… Ah! And how!… Ah! I’m rarin’ to go!… I start reeling it off!… “I killed ten of ’em!… I killed a thousand!… I fell from the sky!… You saw it! You saw with your own eyes, you phoney Chink!…” Boy, am I laughing!… What an act!… “You stinker!” I was yelling in the middle of Bedford Square!… We were having a good time now!… Not only me… the whole crowd!…
Then I take a good look at the little hothead… I begin to get the feeling he’s not so dumb as the others… I grab hold of him! Whoop! I drag him along!… By the sleeve… This time it’s me taking the initiative!… I had something to say to him!… We’re still being shoved and whirled around… flattened… rolled… finally pushed out!… He starts adjusting his hat… with its big brim… I had to explain things to him… confess in detail!… I suddenly felt the urge!… It was also a kind of excuse… to let him know how things stand!… Everything that’s happened to me… And that it’s out of the ordinary!… Some of the whys and wherefores of my trouble!… So that I shouldn’t keep the whole business for myself… He reties his bow!… Very carefully… We’d sat down on the kerb under the sycamore on the square…
“Hmm!… Hmm!…” he kept saying as I told my story… pretty sceptical, I could see! He had doubts about what I was telling him… “Listen to that
big talk!” he was thinking… “A young man showing off… wanting to dazzle an old fellow like me!” Ah! Still and all I wanted to convince him! I’m stubborn about it! So I start all over from the beginning!… How at the Hazebrouck Hospital they thought my leg was done for, that they were ready to amputate it… and my arm at the same time!… That shows what a beating I’d taken… my head, besides… meningitis… a small splinter in my left ear… it was so serious and feverish that they wondered from one day to the next… on the verge of going haywire, just about ready to kick off… I’d made a real friend in the hospital ward in Hazebrouck… Saint-Eustache Ward!… Exactly!… Raoul Farcy, left hand wounded… Raoul Farcy of the Second African Battalion… Like me!… Same ward… two beds away! Saint-Eustache Ward… They operated on his hand. He also yelled the same thing after his operation… He took a liking to me… we’d made great plans… We were exactly the same age. “We’ll both go to London!…” It was settled!… He talked about when it would be over!… He was looking forward to it for the winter!…
“You’ll get an idea at Uncle Cascade’s!… About the way things work!… You’ll see something of life!… You’ll see his place!… Uncle Cascade’s been in the African Battalion too!” He was always talking about this Cascade… In short, bright prospects!… Real attractive plans!… I needed some… Life looked shitty to me!… I was even falling more and more to pieces!… Saint-Eustache Ward!… Pus was coming out of me everywhere!… They’d done three eburnations of the humerus and the tibia, all of that had been attacked… I had my fun I’m telling you! And then the drains, tents and plasters… bits of bone pasted together… it hurt so much that I’d howl almost every night… Finally, little by little like that, from one good plan to another, it was Raoul who really perked me up!… By morale, got to admit it! I needed it!
“Don’t worry, pal!… Don’t worry!…” That’s how he used to talk to me… “We’ll never come back here again!… Just wait’ll you see London!… You’ll get a hell of a lift!… Wait’ll I’m out on convalescence!” It was really swell of him.
I was being nicely encouraged along the sores and sutures… and I was getting my share of them!… Please believe me… Then crash!… It all collapsed!… One morning they come asking for Raoul Farcy!… He’d been in another ward having his wound dressed and was on his way back… The military police want him and take him away!… Handcuffs!…
“Where are you going?” I blurt it out!… “Down with the cops!” he yells to me… “Down with the cops!…” right in front of the whole hospital… and he reminds me from way across the room… with the cops dragging him… “Cascade! You hear!… Cascade!… Don’t crap around! Down with the cops!…” Those were his words!… The last I heard… That same evening we learnt the rest… Court-martialled!… They let him have it two days later!… Raoul Farcy… self-inflicted wound!… 2nd African!… Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t!… They do as they like!… They don’t worry too much… A detachment came up, convalescents from the hospital, they marched in front of his body… They shot him at dawn, in the courtyard, the Barnabé courtyard, the name of the military prison. He didn’t break down. “Down with the cops!” he yelled at them as they fired. That’s the story.
Ah! That really made me feel bad… Not much affects me… Me, a little chump by birth, son of my parents, working people, submissive, decent, good-natured… he’d taught me a thing or two, opened my eyes, I missed him, got to admit it… Raoul… he wasn’t much when it came to writing… I wrote everything for him… with my left hand… I was the one who always wrote to London, to his Uncle Cascade… Cascade Farcy… two letters a week… Cascade Farcy, Leicester Street… it was all settled… He was expecting both of us… absolutely, fully agreed!… We were supposed to get leave at the same time, we were married there… both of us… to English girls! All phoney!… And with papers, licenses, everything!… Everything was attended to… fixed up! Nice and faked! And then crash!… Raoul! Some break!… With me just getting a little better… I didn’t die, after all… Shit! Tough luck!… I recovered… I wrote to his uncle! Cascade Farcy, Leicester Street…
“Come!” he wrote right back… “Come, I want to talk to you!” And he knew me only from the letters!… Ah! I was scared about Raoul… I was so panicky I was pissing in my pants!… He’d disgusted me with the army!… “Don’t go home!” he’d also yelled at the last moment… “They’ll nab you!… Just take a look!… They’re sweeping out the crumbs!…” He meant himself…
“Go to London!… Don’t forget Cascade!…” Ah! those were his very words!… They haunted me! His last words!…
That pulled me through!… I was stubborn… “Come!… Come!…” All I thought about was London!… Then the three months of convalescence… Ah! No cold feet, I shipped off. I’m invited! I take advantage! The right moment! Luck!
I arrive!… Ah! A nice atmosphere!… Ah! Real brothers… pals to the death… those are the words for it!… Cascade asks me for news right away… I explain to Cascade about Raoul… Boy, it knocked him over!… He made me explain it at least ten times in a row!… He didn’t believe it!… He never got tired of my explanation!… Had to start all over!… Then again!… He really loved him like a son!… Raoul Farcy… it staggered him!… That was my arrival in London!… Providential circumstances… my luck to have known Raoul, poor Raoul, and his Uncle Cascade…
I tell my story to the Chinaman, sitting on the kerb… I wanted him to know all about it… it did me good…
“Now you know what’s happened to me!… It’s your turn now!… Tell me your story!… I’ll tell you the rest later on!… I’ve got lots left!… I can’t tell you everything all at once!… Just falling on your head that way!… In confidence!”
Ah! It sure was funny!… Time out for a laugh!
“You realize,” I add, “that he’d have liked to hand everything over to Raoul… the whole works… all his business… the entire Leicester… He’d have gone off to the Midi, that was Cascade’s plan… to grow daisies… that was what he had in mind… The Leicester’s no joke! Overworking day and night… needs quite a guy to keep it going!… It’s like running an army!…”
My Chinaman didn’t answer.
Ah! It was getting annoying…
“Say, guy! You don’t talk much!…” I said… “You’re not going to double-cross me maybe?…”
The little stinker suddenly got me worried… Had I talked too much?
“Oh! Don’t worry, young man!… I’m far too concerned with my personal enterprises! I’ve got other things on my mind than making trouble for you!… I’m no longer a child! Perhaps you’ve noticed it!… A plaything of passion!… A victim of enthusiasms! Thank God! I’m no longer a spring chicken! Young, effervescent! Not an acrobat whisking hither and yon! God no! Rubbish!… Be careful! Don’t be contemptuous! Clothes make the man!…”
My phoney Chinaman was starting to strut.
“You were speaking of quality! Well, well! A while ago!… Regarding those poor people!… You don’t have the slightest idea… I understood at once!… You’ll learn to know me!… Perhaps!…”
And the little superior smile…
“I don’t want to intimidate you!… Oh! No intention!… To dazzle you with my scientific and noble titles!… Certainly not!… Weakness!… An old man’s weakness you’re thinking!…” He was meditating… “What will you do with your opportunity, young man?… You’re a hero, it seems… so you claim!… Hm! A war hero!… An easy prey!… A heroic plaything!… A child!…”
I’d annoyed him.
“At your age everything is permissible!… Valour! Valour!… As for me, and don’t forget it, I’ve other fish to fry than to go rushing under tanks!… I’ve been through all the ordeals!… All!… The war is merely fireworks! Life is short!… An amusement!… What remains of it?…” He whispers into my ear… “Nothing, eh?”
He’s enjoying the effect… He brushes away my
whole confession with a flip of his hand…
“In short, you teach me nothing!…”
The windbag.
“Listen to me! You have everything to learn! Are you initiable?…”
Initiable?…
“Just what am I?… Don’t you know?… I attract you… You entrust me with your secrets? Is it my robe?… Are you captivated by my fluid?… So soon?…”
I look idiotic.
“A Frenchman! Indeed I am! Be careful!… And of good stock! I flatter myself! But without boasting! And that’s how it is! A just pride!… But initiated! That’s another matter! Ah! That’s the heart of it! I’ve done much for my country!… An explorer, my young friend!… An explorer… Must I die?… Look at my costume!… Initiated, young man!… Initiated!…”
He comes closer, he whispers it to me… eagerly! Rattling away!…
“Tibet! Ah, Tibet! I dreamt of it… Yes!… I dreamt of it!… I admit… a grave crime… at the first calls of the horn!… In the riflery, young man… Riflery!… Reserve officer!… To go back into service!… In my fifty-seventh year!… You’ll see it on my record… to run and offer myself to Galliéni… I knew him!… At the Polytechnic!… And then… then I thought it over… I’ve got better things to do! With my gifts!… My work! My labours!… To perish just at that moment when the darkness is rent asunder?… You’ll know later on!… Trivial duty!… It would be suicide!… And what a suicide!… Perhaps you’ll learn about it some day… Be careful!… Down to business!… This is me!”
He hands me his card.
HERVÉ SOSTHÈNE DE RODIENCOURT
Certified Mining-Prospector
Explorer of Occult Hearths
Initiated Engineer
“Doesn’t that name mean anything to you? Obviously!…”
I was nonplussed…
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