Women's Barracks

by Tereska Torres

  All the women who had asked for leave were scattering down the street with their friends, soldiers, officers, and there were little groups of girls going out together. Ann and Petit went out arm in arm.

  Ginette was spending Christmas respectably with a married couple she knew. Jacqueline left for Kensington. Mickey, in a sudden access of remorse, had not wanted to spend Christmas night with Robert. She had asked Claude if she could come to her party.

  Hot chocolate had been prepared in the barracks for those who were staying in. Down Street went to bed late, and when the women slipped into their cold cots they sighed, "C'est la guerre."

  Others were dancing all through the night, and drinking.

  And all of us, wherever we were, were thinking, Next Christmas, surely, we'll be in France and we'll make up for all this. How glorious it will be to return in uniform, we, the volunteers of Free France! Everyone will honor us. Our parents will be so proud, the bells will ring Noel, Noel for us, Noel for liberated France, and we'll march under the Arch of Triumph! Oh, France, France, our next Christmas will be in the France that we will have freed!

  Yes, our life here was only temporary; another few months to pass, at most a year, and it would certainly be over.

  Chapter 13

  There was a little Italian restaurant that we had discovered on Greek Street. It was modest and cheap, and it was there that Michel took Ursula, for he had very little money. And yet, despite his poverty as an ordinary recruit, he never seemed to be able to think of enough things to do to give Ursula pleasure.

  Before the war he had been a student. He wanted to take his degree in philosophy, he told Ursula. In 1937, his parents had got out of Poland, and he had continued his studies in Belgium.

  That was nearly all that Ursula knew of him, and she was not enough interested in Michel to wonder about his history. She liked him well enough and she was touched by his gentleness and his discretion. Sometimes when Ursula talked to him about Claude, Michel gazed at her with his childlike eyes, so unreally pure, and the black eyes, with their thick brows always raised in a startled expression, seemed to look at her with so complete a comprehension that Ursula thought that he must know everything, must have divined everything, for he never asked her any questions.

  This evening he seemed gay. It was Christmas. Neither he nor Ursula was Catholic. Ursula was nothing at all, and Michel said he was in search of truth. And yet Christmas made them both happy.

  After dinner they went out into the black street, where groups of people passed singing. They walked without any special destination, and Michel took hold of Ursula's arm. At first she wanted to withdraw it. She couldn't understand why the slightest physical contact with Michel frightened her. But not wanting to offend him, she did nothing, and they continued to walk like that.

  "Merry Christmas!" people in the streets called out to them, and once more Ursula felt her heart heavy and sad. She wasn't thinking of Christmas in France, for she had had neither childhood nor holidays nor a family in her past. There was almost nothing. It was as though she had been born only the day before; her heart and her spirit were still unmarked and they floated in a sort of prenatal obscurity.

  But Michel was happy to feel her near him. She was so young. She was the only woman who didn't frighten him; because she seemed so defenseless, because she didn't know how to chatter or to laugh like most women, who always either had an air of being on the defensive or were aggressive. Until now he had told himself, I don't have the right to touch her, or to take her with me, for I have nothing to offer her, neither God, nor a home, nor security, nor even myself—a self that wanted only to die until I met her, a self that still wants to die. He beheld her again in the courtyard, opening the door and halting on the lighted doorstep, a black hazy shadow against a background of light. He saw her sitting on the steps and saw the little movement of fear that she had had upon noticing him—like that of a little wild animal that trembles on seeing a man. He saw again her odd, small face, framed by her glossy hair falling thick and straight like that of a little Indian. And an immense tenderness more powerful even than love invaded him again.

  He thought, do I still want to die? And Michel had to answer himself that it was still so, despite his knowing her. He loved her, but he couldn't draw from her the nourishment that he needed. She could not silence the questioning in him and the agony in him. He knew that he had found nothing and that he still wanted to die, as on that day some months ago in Switzerland, in Fribourg, when he had decided to kill himself. Solemnly, his great eyes open with their strange candor, he told her all that was in his mind.

  Michel, interned with several other Poles in a camp in Fribourg, had been granted the exceptional privilege of being permitted to take courses at the university. Scarcely seventeen, he felt as though he carried the moral weight of the whole world on his shoulders. He lived in profound despair, telling himself that there was no hope, that human stupidity and the cowardice of the human was so great that one could never change anything, that there would always be wars and barriers of hatred. He wished that somehow he could speak to mankind, explain that only humanity itself could put an end to these horrors. But how, and in the name of what could he speak? He was timid and ugly and he had no power of leadership. Then of what use was it to take part in the human farce and to love when love did not exist, and to bring children into the world in order that they might be killed in the next war in the name of some country that pretended to be more important than another? What for?

  The boy Michel had decided to kill himself. He had bought some veronal, and was on his way to his rooming house when he met a fellow student from the university. This student was a monk, and strangely enough, a Jewish monk, a convert—a huge, handsome lad who enjoyed great popularity among the other students. He walked along with Michel, his white robe brushing the boy at every step. The sun warmed the snow on the mountaintops, and the air was so clear and so pure that one might almost have washed in it. Suddenly Michel began to talk. He told the monk that he had found his own truth and that it gave him a will to die. He told of his decision.

  There are people who always talk about committing suicide but who never do it. But on Michel's face there was something so serious, his black eyes raised toward the monk were filled with such agony, that the monk realized that Michel had made up his mind.

  Instead of moralizing, he proposed a sort of bargain to Michel. "You want to die," he said. "Agreed. But you don't have the right to die in cowardice, or stupidly. There is a war going on. Every day there are men who die, though they want to live. Leave Switzerland. Go to Spain and then to England. Enlist, and let yourself be killed while fighting. Perhaps you will die in place of the father of a family. Perhaps your death will save others. Perhaps your death will hasten the peace. Go get yourself killed, Michel. But only there, through England."

  Chapter 14

  One day in January, in the midst of drill, Jacqueline fainted. Ginette, who was near me, said, "There she goes again, our fancy lady!" Others were saying, "Jacqueline must have something wrong with her heart. She ought to be discharged."

  As soon as Jacqueline had regained consciousness, Corporal Ann told Mickey and me to take her back to the barracks to rest. The doctor happened to be in the building just then, talking to the Captain. The Captain asked us why we had left drill, and we explained that Jacqueline had fainted. This was a wonderful occasion for the Captain to display her concern for "her dear girls," and she had the doctor examine Jacqueline right away.

  We took her up to the infirmary. The doctor was in a hurry. He thought Jacqueline must have had a simple attack of vertigo. But in examining her he touched her back, and she let out a cry. Then he realized that there was something wrong with her, and sent her to be X-rayed.

  Two days later Jacqueline was taken to a hospital, where she was put in a plaster cast for several months. She had a spinal fracture.

  Jacqueline's cot in the barracks was at once occupied by a new recruit, a student
, whose only passion was chemistry. Every evening, amidst the noise of the dormitory, our newcomer, Monique, calmly devoured her chemistry manuals, just as some of us read novels. During the first days the noncoms regarded her with suspicion; then they classified her as crazy but harmless, and left her in peace.

  After three days, we talked no more about Jacqueline. No one mentioned her. The hospital to which she had been taken was too far away for us to visit. The girls said, "She's just unlucky," or "How did she manage to do that to herself?" Only a few of us knew the history of that melodramatic night, before she entered the Army, when she had fled from her too ardent hosts. It was true that she now was gossiped about, like the others, for her week-end menage and her numerous suitors, but this other matter seemed to touch upon the more remote and mysterious areas of life, and it was left undiscussed. Indeed, Jacqueline was soon forgotten. Each of us had her own worries, her own preoccupations, her own problems, and then came those of one's closest friend. There was no time to think about anyone who was gone.

  Ursula had received a letter from her little soldier, Michel, filled with apologies, in which he begged to see her again. She had not replied. Just now, Ursula was happy, for Claude was in a good mood these days. Whenever Ursula was free and Claude was off duty, Ursula went to Claude's place.

  The little room was on the fifth floor, reached by a narrow stairway. Civilian dresses, blue silk sets of underwear and stockings were scattered over the chairs. Claude made toast in front of a gas radiator. On those days Claude wiped off her make-up, and then her face took on a touchingly youthful look. As soon as she was relaxed, there was a kind of childishness that returned to her face, which became fresh and clear. Despite all of her habits, her lovers, her opium, her women, her whisky, one had only to scrape off this veneer of debauch in order to uncover in her a simple little bourgeoise, filled with a foggy remainder of "principles." She had been born to be a good wife and a good mother in some provincial town, and at bottom her lack of equilibrium was due to her having been turned away from this life by a series of circumstances.

  She was religious, superstitious, and fairly well cultivated. She considered that a girl ought to be a virgin when she married. Another of her principles was that a decent woman would never permit a man to come to her place to make love. She preferred to come home alone from her lovers in the middle of the night, rather than to allow a man to sleep in her room. All the perversions seemed acceptable to her in love, but this one thing she could not allow. And why that one rather than another? Perhaps only to preserve for herself a sort of token of rectitude.

  In the afternoons, when Ursula came to her room, Claude busied herself with little womanly tasks, mending her dresses, repairing stocking runs, washing her clothes, knitting pull-overs for herself. If she had had a kitchen, she would have cooked excellent dinners. Claude was nearing forty and she had been leading a dissolute life for twenty years. Nevertheless, one felt that all that was basic in her came from her peaceful childhood and from her provincial adolescence. She was not a good drinker—even one drink went to her head right away—and yet she drank a great deal. Then she would do anything, scarcely knowing what she was doing.

  In the evenings, in the dormitory, Mickey kept us posted on her affair with Robert. She was seeing him fairly frequently. She told us that he had several other mistresses, but she wasn't jealous. Despite her excitement at the beginning of the affair, her senses were slow in awakening. She found it agreeable to make love with him, but the experience aroused no particular feeling in her. It was a sort of game, with a touch of gymnastics in it. And she practiced this sport mostly to be able to say that she had a lover.

  When spring came, everybody began to say that the second front would not take place that year either, and a wave of depression swept through Down Street. We would have to spend still another winter in London. Our exile was thickening on us like a crust. Every morning we marched through our drill, commanded by Petit; we marched around automatically, dreaming of our families, or of the landscape at home.

  Hyde Park was covered with blossoms. In her strong, deep voice, Petit called out her commands: "To the left, march!" We obeyed, expert automatons now, though sleepy after the all-night bombardments.

  And the bombardments grew in intensity. One night, as I stood fire watch on the roof with Ginette, Ann, and two other girls, we decided to relieve the monotony by telephoning down to Claude, who was on duty at the switchboard, and asking her to sing something for us. Pressed together around the receiver, we heard the distant melodious voice of Claude as she sang:

  "C'est toujours I'onde Qui m'a charme, Vagues profonds Aux fiots legers.

  Aussi toujours, La nuit, le jour, Je veux chanter, L'onde, mon seul amour.”

  And all of us on the roof joined in the refrain:

  "Bon soir, Madame la Lune, bon soir, C'est votre ami Gerbault qui vient vous voir. Bon soir, Madame la Lune, bon soir."

  One day, years later, I opened a newspaper and read that the poet Alain Gerbault had just died. In the same moment, I saw all of us again on the dark roof, and I heard myself singing, together with the distant voice that rose to us from below:

  "Bon soir, Madame la Lune, bon soir, C'est votre ami Gerbault qui vient vous voir."

  On that small roof, weren't we also afloat in a little boat, like the poet? And this night-gray stormy sky that surrounded us—wasn't it the immense sea with which Gerbault was in love?

  The noise of the planes became deafening, and the DCA sounded on all sides. When we spotted a flare falling in our vicinity, Ginette immediately telephoned down to Claude, giving the direction in which it had fallen, and Claude transmitted the information to the local ARP. We were by now so accustomed to these alerts that the bombardment at first did not seem to us heavier than usual. But presently one of the Brittany girls remarked that this time all the bombs seemed to be incendiaries, and that they were all falling some distance away into a single area. It seemed to be the part of London known as the "City." Fires began to show there.

  On the roof, we had sacks of sand ready. Ann peered out into the night, whistling the refrain from Alain Gerbault's song. From below, Claude informed us that the ARP had just come around to tell her that the entire City was on fire, that bombs were falling there like rain. The duty officer, Claude said, had ordered all the girls to get up and assemble in the kitchen. Our kitchen was in the basement and served as a shelter during the heavy raids.

  Ann said she thanked heaven she was on watch that night. She had an absolute horror of any sort of shelter. Such places filled her with a mysterious terror and a sense of suffocation. She preferred a thousand times to be out in the open where she could see what was happening; if there was any danger, she wanted to see it.

  The sky became dark red as though it were a lighted fireplace, with a flame that increased in intensity every moment. The spectacle had so extraordinary and horrible a quality of beauty that it filled all of us with awe. We all left our sandbags and forgot every principle of defense as we leaned against the railing of the roof, watching the scene.

  London was on fire.

  The sea of Gerbault was now all around us, a sea of fire. Not for a moment was any one of us free of the agonized consciousness of all those whose homes were collapsing and of those who were dying at this instant. And yet we could not take our eyes from this immense pyre whose flames seemed to be great enough to consume the world. Ann remarked that we were like Nero watching Rome burn, and because it was so conventional, her statement seemed somehow appropriate, with a historic grandeur that matched the grandeur of the scene.

  The holocaust continued all night long. And somewhere deep in that night of flame, Ann began to talk to me. Though Ann was one of those people who seem entirely explained by their very appearance, I realized that I had known little of her until that night. It was as though the purgatory all around us were the purgatory of her life.

  I recalled that other night when Mickey had come up onto the open roof, after he
r experience with Robert. But what Ann had to tell belonged to this night when all was unreal. In her husky voice, held down to a quiet monotone, Ann talked of her life as though she had to communicate it to destiny itself, in the face of this holocaust. Like most of the girls in the barracks, I had taken Ann and all Lesbians somehow as freaks, even to be considered amusing. Listening to her in that tragic purgatory, I wanted to weep.

  Ann had spent her childhood in France, raised by her mother in poverty. She was an illegitimate child. She had shown unusual sexual tendencies when she was still scarcely grown. She had left her mother, and little by little cut herself away from all her early connections as she entered the spheres of her particular passion. She had come to England with a woman. When she had broken with her, Ann had found herself alone and penniless in London. It was just at the time of the defeat of France, and Ann had volunteered for De Gaulle's forces. As soon as she had seen Petit, she had felt herself to be at home.

  Ann could not live without a liaison. It wasn't so much a need of love as a need of an affair with all its accompaniment of intrigue, mystery, and the consequent pleasure. By herself, she was not outside the normal; she was only so when she had a partner. And yet this departure from normalcy was necessary to her, as she had found out when scarcely more than a child. She could not live otherwise. Without a partner she felt as though something were amputated from her.

  Chapter 15

  A woman like Claude offered no interest either to Petit or to Ann. They rather disdained her, with the disdain of the true artist for the dilettante. They never considered her a Lesbian. They said of her, "She's a pervert, a curiosity seeker." And as to Claude's Lesbianism, this was true.