Women's Barracks

by Tereska Torres

  In the evening they went out again with Doc and his mistress, who obviously accepted them as lovers. Afterward, Philippe took Ursula to the theatre. They went to the station for her valise and brought it back to Philippe's apartment, for Ursula still had two days of leave.

  During those two days she lived at Philippe's, treated like a little sister; he never attempted again to make love to her.

  Philippe would take her on his knees and say to her, "You remind me of the sea, the sun, and the sand. You do me good. You make me a better person. You've got rid of the Popaul in me. Someday you will love a man, and he'll marry you, and when you have a flock of children you'll think about old Philippe. As for me, you see I could never marry you because my only bride will always be the sea. And so it's better the way we are."

  He had the most tender affection for her, and above anything, did not want to hurt her in any way. Now that he knew she was still a little girl, he told her that it seemed to him that it would have been a sacrilege to change her, and then to leave her, as he knew he would have to do soon enough.

  During those two days, Ursula was like a normal woman who busies herself with a man and lives with him. She found this to her liking and amused herself with shopping and preparing his meals.

  Despite the setback of this last experience, she no longer had any fears about herself. It was a strange thing, but in spite of everything, she now felt herself to be normal. And she was at peace. She couldn't understand why, but it was so. Perhaps it was because Philippe treated her as he did, and because he didn't seem to find anything strange in her, or to believe that she was anything but normal.

  On the last day, Philippe took her to the station. He installed her in her compartment and bought her some sandwiches for the journey. Ursula leaned out of the window for his last kiss. Both knew that they would never see each other again and that they had lived through a strange episode together.

  The train began to move. She saw Philippe on the platform in his blue uniform, standing straight, watching the train disappear.

  Chapter 25

  In spite of everything, Down Street, when Ursula entered again after a week of absence, had something of an aspect of home for her. She glanced into the assembly room, cold and somber as ever, and then went up to the dormitory with its uncovered beds and the photograph of General de Gaulle on the wall. Ursula listened, and as she had expected, the phonograph was playing "Violetta." Machou's raucous voice was heard from the kitchen, and the sound of a typewriter came from the Captain's office.

  It was the barracks; it was the unhappy barracks, in this country of exile, with everyone longing for the end of this period of military life that had brought nothing but a series of disillusions.

  And still in that immense and strange city of London, it was the only refuge any of us had. It was at least a lively place, filled every night with French voices and familiar faces, with smoke and babble. We had all in a measure become part of this house, which seemed to have taken flesh, not only through our physical presence, but through the private life of each one of us, through each one's history, through each one's pain and joy.

  And yet, what had we succeeded in accomplishing? Nothing, nothing at all. We had become classified numerals. Not one of us really believed she had done any real soldiering. Even the lucky few who, like myself, had jobs in which they were interested could not help but feel that they were doing little to free their country. It was said in some quarters that De Gaulle was against a women's section in the Army. Sometimes we reasoned that our presence in the service freed the male recruits for more useful activities. Very well, then, as Ursula used to say with her touching, pessimistic wisdom, that meant that three or four hundred soldiers were thus free to go and get themselves killed. The whole thought was maddening.

  We had imagined that the uniform would somehow put us right into the middle of the war, but it was not at all like that. The war was taking place far from us; we were not participating in it. Bombs were bursting over our heads, but no more over ours than the civilians', and we worked in offices with civilian women who were much better paid and who were free to do what they wished when the office day was over.

  And what was the use of all this? What was the use of going on blindly for months, living in the midst of all these women, not one of whom felt any real reason or purpose in what she was doing?

  Still Down Street was our barracks, almost a corner of France.

  It was five o'clock in the afternoon when Ursula came home; most of us were not yet free from our jobs. Ursula noticed that there was a suitcase on what had once been Jacqueline's bed, and that the chemistry student's books were no longer behind that bed, but in another corner of the room. So there had been a change during her absence. Ursula began to arrange her things. The door opened and someone cried out, "Ursula baby!"

  She turned. It was Jacqueline.

  She looked as fresh and pretty as ever. She threw herself on Ursula's neck, and they sat down on the bed, both talking at once, delighted to see each other again.

  Jacqueline was cured. She had found the hospital extremely tiresome, but she had been a great success there, too. Her doctor and several of the patients had, naturally, fallen in love with her. Fortunately, De Prade, now a captain, with a car at his command, had been able to come and see her often. He had been simply marvelous to her, bringing her fruit, flowers, and other gifts.

  Jacqueline chattered on, bringing Ursula up to date in the affairs with which we were all so familiar. De Prade was still her great love, but she still enjoyed getting every man she met to pay court to her. And there still wasn't a man who failed to succumb as soon as he laid eyes on Jacqueline's rosy face with her pretty mouth, her regular teeth, and her shining hazel eyes. For she, too, couldn't live without at least an illusion of love, and she used all of her power to create this illusion, employing her expert eyes, her sensual mouth, and her supple young Body.

  But now Jacqueline turned all her attention on Ursula, resuming her old protective air. "You don't look well, my dear child, you've become thinner. I'm sure you don't eat at all. It's a good thing I've come back. I'm going to take care of you."

  Ursula, of course, detested having anyone officiously take care of her; this had always irritated her in Jacqueline, but she said nothing, for life in the barracks had already made her more indulgent toward the faults of others. After all, it was part of Jacqueline's character.

  Now the-girls began to come home, one after the other.

  I scarcely had a moment to talk with Ursula before Mickey arrived, shouting, "Ursula! How glad I am to see you!" She danced around Ursula, with her excited, disjointed gestures, and then sat down on the edge of the bed, swinging a long khaki-clad leg. Ursula was delighted to see her, to hear Mickey talk with her slight English accent, and to hear her laugh. Mickey had a gift for making a room seem warm.

  Ginette asked Ursula if she had had a good time, and if she had gone out with any boys. Ginette had already set herself to polishing the buttons of her uniform. When they were bright enough to suit her, she began to clean her shoes for tomorrow; she was meticulously neat. And Ursula was duly surprised at Ginette's new hair-do; but actually the new arrangement only made Ginette's face, her eyes, her nose, and her mouth seem rounder and flatter than ever.

  The dinner bell sounded. We took our places in the queue, plates in one hand, mugs and utensils in the other. Machou was shouting as usual, "Move along, move along! That's enough, there's someone else here besides you! If you don't like it, go to the Ritz!"

  So Ursula was resuming her life, her real life, her life in war.

  After dinner, she sat in the assembly room with us. Mickey and Jacqueline were there. Jacqueline decided that we ought to have a drink in honor of Ursula's return, and of her own, and she went to order Dubonnets at the bar. Her walk was as distinguished, as worldly as ever.

  Just then Claude entered. According to the new schedule, she was on twenty-four-hour duty on alternate days, from eight in th
e evening to eight the following evening; she had just finished her stint. Ursula had not seen her at dinner. Now Ursula studied Claude as she stood at the door, talking to Ann. Claude carried herself straight, as always, with her blonde hair pushed back, and she gestured gracefully with her hands as she talked. She noticed Ursula and made her a distant sign, smiling. Ursula rose and went toward her, and suddenly, as she was approaching Claude, she told me later, it was as though someone had at that instant cut a cord between them. Suddenly Ursula had a physical sensation as of a weight dropping away from her, setting her free. It was over in a second; she was advancing toward Claude, and in the next instant she knew that it was finished, that she was not in love with her any more.

  And as Claude went on talking, Ursula saw her for the first time objectively.

  Claude's magic power no longer worked on her. Ursula saw nothing more than a woman of forty, a handsome woman, very well made up, but with little lines at the sides of her mouth and a scattering of white hair. Her voice was feverish. What Claude was saying no longer interested her. When Claude began to recount her last dispute with one of the girls, Ursula found the story tiresome and felt that Claude made trouble over nothing.

  Claude left for the switchboard room, and Ursula remained standing where she was. She had the impression of having suddenly grown. It was a strange impression, leaving her with a sort of pride in no longer being a little girl.

  She looked around.

  Now she was free.

  Chapter 26

  Claude soon noticed that Ursula was no longer in love with her. She was delighted. An adventure with a woman was amusing to her so long as it wasn't serious, so long as it was only a game, considered as an unusual excitement by both partners; but the mute and passionate love of this child who was too young, too pure, and too sincere had embarrassed and irritated Claude. This love affair had confronted her with utterly unwanted problems, needlessly complicating her existence. There were indeed moments when Ursula's clear little face, so filled with love and admiration for her, flattered Claude and even touched her. There had indeed been days when Ursula had reawakened in her that desperate tenderness which needed to be directed toward children, and as she had caressed the girl's glistening hair, her own heart had been filled with hunger and regret. But most of the time Claude had felt only one desire, and that was to discharge all of her irritation upon the nearest victim, and the victim had nearly always been Ursula.

  And so the change that had taken place delighted her. At last she found a good little comrade in Ursula. Claude liked to watch the girl's serious face. And she found again the silent little girl to whom she had been attracted that first day, but now purged of all sexual desire. That side was quite finished for Claude too. After all, the pleasure of watching the child's first reactions to love, and the enjoyment she had experienced in educating the girl in this direction, had passed. She was not a man; she couldn't marry Ursula. She was not Petit; the idea would never have occurred to Claude to live in union with a woman. Therefore, she told me in one of her surprisingly candid moments, everything had "fortunately gone back the way it should be."

  But I sensed that in the depths of her being, Claude retained a vague remorse over having initiated Ursula to a vice for which there was no true natural leaning in the girl. And I wondered what it was that Claude sought so devouringly in one girl after another, since it was clear that she did not seek to develop a Lesbian liaison. First she had seduced Ursula, then Mickey, and recently there had been a fresh young recruit, Renee. What was this unappeasable hunger for the young, the innocent?

  And then I remembered a story Claude had confided to Ursula, in their most intimate days. They had been talking inconsequentially about things that made one feel guilty, and Claude had told, first, of a cat she had once picked up on the street and brought home, a skinny half-grown cat with no charm whatever. Her lover of the moment had leaped with disgust at the sight of the animal, and had advised Claude to throw it out the window. Finally she had put it out in the street. Her guilt over abandoning that cat had haunted her for years, Claude told Ursula, just like her guilt over an abortion.

  And then, in the tumbling way in which Claude had of linking the most trivial and the most consequential of events, as though they were of equal importance, Claude had related how she had once found herself pregnant, and had suppressed the birth of the child. She had been living with the same lover who had objected to the cat—a dissipated journalist whom she had met shortly before her divorce from her first husband. When she found herself pregnant she vacillated for two months, unsure in her own mind about having the child. Not that she had any fear of scandal. But the inconvenience... Still, she had been tempted, feeling something marvelously warm growing within her. Day by day she had studied her breasts, which seemed to grow fuller and harder, and her belly, which was soon to fill itself with child. She had almost decided to have the baby; and then suddenly, after the incident with the cat, she had sought out a doctor and had an abortion. She had done that like almost everything she did, on impulse, without reflection. When she found herself stretched on the operating table, with two nurses strapping down her legs and the doctor bending over her with the chloroform, she had realized that she was about to kill her child, and it was too late. Remorse had entered her with the odor of the chloroform, and she awakened, empty and alone, with this remorse within her. Since then, Claude had tried to have another child-she had tried with lovers, with her second husband—but she had never again conceived.

  As I recalled this story, it seemed to me that Claude's first instincts toward Ursula, and probably to all of her girls, had been nothing but maternal. And while with girls like Mickey the adventure quickly turned to erotic sport, there had been in Ursula a truly childlike response, and this had touched Claude more than she knew. It seemed to me that she felt guilty toward Ursula and at the same time resented the girl for having let her have her way, for having allowed herself to be drawn into the game. It was almost a motherly resentment over the bad behavior of her child. Claude would have loved to find an Ursula who was faithful to her childhood, and who would remain only a child for her—her little girl.

  All these unhappy feelings in Claude were augmented by her boredom in the little switchboard room where she had spent the last two years. Almost daily she was becoming more irritable. Her rages were proverbial in Down Street. One encountered less of the charming, smiling, and beautiful Claude, as her place was taken by a nervous, aging woman, always quarreling with someone or other. All the discontented souls of the barracks came to her switchboard room to complain and conspire. Claude was continually discovering new enemies.

  At the same time, her liaison with the colonel continued. She went out often with him, and drank a good deal. Several times she had been brought back to Down Street dead drunk. Officers in foreign uniforms would be seen taking her out of a taxi in their arms. She would be put to bed and would immediately fall asleep, to wake up in the morning in bad humor, because she was ashamed of herself. Her name was often seen on the punishment list for having returned to the barracks drunk. Claude pretended to consider this amusing, especially since the noncommissioned officers were rather in awe of her, and rarely carried out the sentences they gave her. Corporal Pruneface didn't dare send her to the kitchen, and Machou wouldn't ask for her. They all knew that Claude was Colonel Max's mistress, and they preferred to be in her good graces. Aside from Max, Claude went to bed occasionally with one woman or another, at Down Street and elsewhere.

  The most extraordinary thing in all this was that Claude was essentially a good woman, with an astonishing childlike purity. She could take drugs, get drunk, go to bed with the first man who came along, but she never uttered a cynical word, and she was never blasé. A bouquet of flowers gave her more pleasure than the most luxurious of gifts. One might tell her the most naive and innocent tales, and her face would immediately light up. If someone were to say, "The Holy Virgin came down onto the altar in the barracks chapel
and told Mickey to put on a blue dress," Claude would certainly have been the only woman in Down Street to believe in the miraculous tale.

  If any of the girls needed money, she could always ask Claude for it. Claude would give away her last sou, just as readily to a new recruit who had arrived at the barracks only the night before as to her best friend.

  And there was another side to Claude. She had gathered among her friends in Down Street an altogether weird collection of women, as different as possible from herself. These friendships were utterly platonic, and these women possessed qualities that Claude alone could see. For instance, there was Paula, the only recruit totally unaffected by the vogue of sex at Down Street. She was the typical old maid of all the ages, the same anywhere in the world. Even in uniform she succeeded in dressing like the "woman in the green hat." Her khaki skirt dragged nearly to her heels. Her cap fell over her nose. A grayish bun bounced against her neck. She was ageless and colorless and even her voice had no recognizable character.

  Claude declared that Paula was an exceptional patriot. The Captain was highly embarrassed when she tried to find an occupation for this patriot, for besides all her other shortcomings, she had no training or aptitude for office work, and she was in ill health and couldn't work in the kitchen or in the household. Finally they made a sacristan of Paula. She appeared only at the hours of religious observances, and no one knew what she did in between times. Besides, no one was concerned. Claude was the only person to take the slightest interest in Paula. She even attempted to persuade us that Paula was attractive, and she was continually finding new ways for Paula to arrange her hair, which Paula obstinately rejected.

  There was another old maid—an Alsatian, dry, dark, and always in bad humor. Claude pretended that she was good nature itself, and dragged this woman from bar to bar to distract her. The Alsatian opened her soul to no one but Claude. She worshiped her, mending her stockings, making her bed, polishing her buttons. With everyone else she was acid-tempered and always dissatisfied. But with Claude she was completely transformed. The celebrated charm had worked on her too.