It was a morning in early spring and the shower had passed over. The countryside was refreshed by the rains and the landscape seemed just on the point of breaking out its delicate greens. The two men stopped to light cigarettes, then went on again, taking their time and finding an unexpected pleasure in doing so. They had plenty of time anyway.
The regiment came to the crossroads, made a quarter circle round the café which stood there, and swung off the main road to the right. Some of the men lifted their gaze from the calves of the men ahead of them and looked at the Café du Carrefour. Their interest in it was not an abstract one, for it was the first house they had seen in three weeks that was intact; more than that, it was a drinking place, forerunner of similar drinking places, farther on, among which they hoped to end their march.
“We’re almost there,” said Didier.
“Where?” said Lejeune.
“Where we’re going, of course.”
“How do you know where we’re going?”
“I don’t. But I know we’re almost there because when a regiment marches down a main road for four hours on end and then suddenly turns off it, it’s getting somewhere.”
Other voices were heard in the ranks.
“Ah, rest! I could do with a bit of rest . . .”
“Me too, my boy. You’re not the only one . . .”
“Sleep, that’s what I need, sleep; long, quiet sleep . . .”
“And to get my clothes off. They’re stiff. I’ve got a strong stomach, I tell you—you have to have in this war—but I can hardly stand my own stink . . .”
“You have my sympathies, my friend,” said the man behind him. “I don’t find it any too sweet either.”
“At that, I prefer mine to yours,” the first one retorted.
The lieutenant, marching alongside the sergeant at the head of the platoon, said to him:
“That sounds better. Now they’re beginning to come out of it. It’s when the men give up joking that it makes me anxious.”
“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant without fully getting the officer’s meaning.
A light rain began to come down, and the talk, which had bubbled up suddenly at the turn off the main road, began to dwindle away. The men lowered their heads to keep the rain off their faces, then hunched their shoulders to keep it from going down their necks. Little waves of private verbal sighs beat up upon the lieutenant’s ears: “Rest . . . my feet . . . rest . . . what a march . . . sleep . . . rest . . .”
“Their resistance is certainly low,” the lieutenant said to himself. “So’s their morale. But who can blame them? How much farther have we got to go? If they’d only tell you beforehand how far you had to go, you could brace yourself for the march. You might know it would start to rain just as we got on the dirt road . . .” Suddenly furious with the eternal minor perversities of life, the lieutenant stopped thinking and began instead to let a series of blasphemous and obscene words tumble about in his mind, and, when they had exhausted themselves, he started to force them through again. His lips moved in time to his vehement inner language, but no sound came from them until, soothed by his silent outburst, he turned once more to the sergeant and said:
“They’ll have to give us ten at least, I should think.”
“At least ten, sir,” the sergeant agreed.
They spoke elliptically, as men do when powerfully absorbed in a vital and pervasive subject, as they will when it does not occur to them that anyone could be thinking of any other than the common topic. Neither one, however, quite succeeded in convincing either himself or the other that they would really get ten days’ rest.
The regiment passed through a hamlet and over a stream, then up a wooded hill where the mud lay rutted on the road. Men stumbled, slipped, jostled each other, and swore, and the ranks lost what little formation they had had. The wood ended abruptly and neatly on the brow of the hill and they came out onto a low plateau of fields. They crossed the plateau, cursing the road for leading them on an S-shaped route instead of going straight. Quick to note that no natural obstacle had caused its deviation, they cursed it all the harder for having curved itself into an S wantonly.
“Things like that do make you angrier than the devil,” the lieutenant reflected. “The hostility of inanimate objects begins to seem a real thing, especially when you’re tired out. And the angrier you get the more exhausted you get, and vice versa.” He was just beginning to wind himself up for another convulsion of private profanity when the regiment turned sideways and began to fall away down a road into a shallow valley. Voices broke out behind them:
“Here we are at last.”
“Interesting ruins, no doubt . . .”
“Ruins nothing. Look! The houses have roofs.”
“Then they’re not for us.”
But this time, as always sooner or later he was likely to be, the professional sceptic was wrong. The village on the floor of the valley was to be their village; the houses with the roofs were to be their houses. The pace quickened as the men slithered down the road to a destination finally in sight. Talk became general, and louder than it had been for many days. What with the slope of the road and its sliminess, the men were going almost at a run in their eagerness to get there. Then suddenly the mass of blue buckled, closed up like an accordion, and came to a dead stop. The colonel, at the head of the column, was talking to the billeting officer who was standing by the roadside with his billeting party drawn up behind him like a guard of honour.
Soon the line began to move again, slowly and in jerks. As each company came up, a man of the billeting party detached himself from it, saluted the company commander and said: “This way, sir. I’ll show the platoons their billets, and then they can fall in again at once to draw a hot meal from the rolling kitchens. The colonel’s orders are, sir, that the men are off duty till noon tomorrow.”
At the Café du Carrefour Langlois wrote a note to his wife. He took some pains to convey his information in such a way that it would be vague enough to ensure the letter a quick passage past the censor.
Just a line, my dearest, to tell you that I shall not be going up to the front for a week or ten days more at least. So you need not worry about me for a while yet. In fact you need not worry about me at all for, as I have often told you, I have an absolute conviction that I am destined to come through this war alive. Some of us are bound to, you know, and I am certain that I am one of them. There is no German shell or bullet that has my number on it . . .
He quite knew the fatuousness of writing such stuff, also its futility. But what was a man to do when he caught that look in his wife’s eyes; when he felt those spasmodic pressures of her hand clasped in his; when he saw her, more and more often, suddenly drop whatever she was doing, come to him, take him in her arms and hold him, hold him with terrible tenderness?
. . . I’m glad we decided as we did last Thursday. [He counted on his fingers.] Perhaps you will have a hint for me by the time we come out of our next trip into the trenches? [He thought for a long time, staring at his letter without seeing it, then decided to risk the phrase, so filled with implications.] I hope it will be a girl. No more now. I’ll write again soon. All my love, my darling . . .
He sealed the letter and put it away in his pocket-book, intending to mail it at the regimental field post office that evening. “I hope it will be a girl.” He wondered if the censor would consider that as evidence of defeatist tendencies. He wondered what his wife might read into that hope, what conclusions she might draw. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said it after all. It had been her wish, broached unexpectedly two days before his leave was up, to have a child. It was a complete reversal of their previous feeling and agreement about the subject, but he quite understood her change of heart—all the better because she had refrained from giving any reason for it.
The door of the café opened, and a corporal came in. He was covered with mud, the spattered mud of the roads though, not the caked mud of the trenches. He took in Duval and Langlois at a
glance, his eye lighting first on their insignia, then shifting to their faces. He seemed to be in a hurry.
“Where’s your regiment?” he said, instinctively discriminating between the recruit Duval and the veteran Langlois, and addressing himself to the latter. “I’ve been looking for them all up and down the front.”
“I don’t know,” said Langlois. “I’ve been trailing them myself. The old woman here says a line regiment turned down that road this morning. Sounds as if that’s our gang, all right. What’s up anyway?”
“Have a drink,” said Duval who had had enough of it himself to make him feel friendly to a stranger.
It is doubtful if the corporal heard him, however, for he was already half-way out the door (which he didn’t stop to close) when Duval spoke. And, if the roar of his cut-out and the skid with which his motor cycle took the corner was any indication, it is still more doubtful if he would have accepted the offer, even if he had heard it.
“Whew! What a tornado!” said Duval. “What’s eating him, anyway?”
“He’s a dispatch rider,” said Langlois. “They always act important. Sometimes they are.”
“What’s all the rush about? D’you think the Boche have broken through somewhere, or what?”
“My God, no. It’s probably an invitation to our Old Man to dine at the Divisional Mess. Or maybe it’s a flock of medals for the lottery . . .”
“So that’s how you got yours, eh, in a lottery?” said Duval, expecting a prompt denial and slightly shocked when it didn’t come.
“Practically, yes. Listen, young fellow, don’t get the medal bee in your bonnet. It makes you do foolish things, and if you’re patient you’ll probably get the medal anyway without doing the foolish things for it. Don’t look so indignant. What else can it be but a lottery? All those men deserve medals, if you’re going to give medals at all, for what they stood at Souchez. But only some of them will get them. So it’s a lottery, isn’t it?”
“Well, you’ve been pretty lucky, drawing down a croix de guerre with two palms, not to mention your médaille militaire also. You shouldn’t complain about it.”
“I’m not. I simply say it’s a lottery. But it’s different from the usual lotteries in this way—your chances of winning prizes increase each time you win a prize. Anyway, that’s the way it seems to work. Or perhaps it’s more like making money. After the first million, the rest comes easier. . . . Say, it’s getting late. Let’s shove off.”
Duval paid for the drinks, and they went out into a landscape upon which the declining sun was laying long shadows side by side with strips that had a golden glow. The air was soft, and the light, too, was becoming imperceptibly softer. The evening had the ephemeral quality of a caress, and Duval expanded himself to it, opened his city eyes, his city lungs, his city flesh to its grateful touch. “What a country to fight for!” he thought, his sensibilities made keen by just the right amount of wine. One more drink, he realized, and he might have spoilt it all, made himself ridiculous, by shouting “Vive la France!” But that was the way he really felt, he admitted privately.
Langlois purposely took a couple of steps out of his way to satisfy the whim of planting his boot on the scar which the whizzing motor-cycle wheel had left in the mud. “What the devil did that fellow have in his dispatch case?” he wondered. “I’ve never known a corporal to pass up a drink before, especially if it’s free. Oh, well! We’ll soon find out. Or, better still, we’ll never find out.”
Rounding the corner, the two men set off along the dirt road. They passed through a hamlet and over a stream, then up a wooded hill, falling one behind the other and picking their way through mud which lay rutted underfoot. The wood ended abruptly and neatly on the brow of the hill and they came out onto a low plateau of fields. The road led them, now walking side by side again, on an S-shaped route across the plateau. That, Langlois thought, was a pleasantly informal habit for roads to have. The slight elevation on which he found himself had the effect of bringing back the evening, which had already made one departure while he was in the wood. The curving of the road seemed to prolong the second leave-taking, and he was grateful to it for doing so.
On the far side of the plateau the road began to fall away downwards to a shallow valley. Langlois stopped at this point and turned for a last look at the twilight before moving down into the shadow that would soon be night. He gazed, but not as long as he wanted to, at the silent, lovely countryside upon which the afterglow of the sunset lay so peacefully.
“That’s it,” he formulated the thought, “peace, peacefulness. This that I am looking at is the very essence of it. I myself am the only evidence that the picture is an illusion.” Turning away, and forgetful of Duval’s presence for the moment, he looked down at his own uniform as if to verify its inharmoniousness. He saw the butt of his rifle pushing itself forward on the sling, he saw the bluish cloth on his knee, then his black army boot. He watched his boot far enough along on its first step to see that, on its second, he could bring it down again on the track of a motor-cycle wheel.
“What the devil did that corporal . . .” his thought began once more. But, before it had been completed, the question was this time answered by a bugle call which came up to him from the valley below.
It was sounding the assembly.
Had the notes of the bugle been resonant enough to carry some ten kilometres to the southward, they would have reached a divisional headquarters installed in the mairie of a town there, and they would have told the elder of two men alone in a ground-floor room that his orders were being obeyed.
He was a man in that period of life when appearance can be the most distinguished because although mature, it is not, at the same time, in the least decrepit. That he was aware of this could be seen in the decorousness of his uniform and in his way of wearing it; also in the correctness of his face, clean-shaved except for his moustache—a dash of white on a background of healthy pink. His eyes were blue, steady, and kindly, yet there was no hint there of the sanguine spirit which lay behind them. His mouth and chin were not quite strong, yet by no means were they weak. There were two rows of ribbons on his left breast, and on his right four little loops to which the star of a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour could be attached for formal or ceremonial occasions. He was the Commander of the Fifteenth Army.
The other man, General of Division Assolant, did not at the first moment look as though he deserved the nickname by which he was known among the staffs—General Insolent. His attitude was too respectful, and it surprised the Army Commander, who had expected something different in this formidable subordinate, well known to him by report, unseen till today. The Army Commander looked at Assolant with an interest which he took little pains to disguise.
What he saw was a stocky body set firmly on a pair of solid cavalry legs, legs whose heels could meet but whose knees couldn’t. He saw a uniform that was as unconventional as it was serviceable. The boots and spiral puttees were those of the rank and file, and the breeches had obviously come from an artillery quartermaster’s stores. The tunic was second-hand but of good vintage; it looked enviably loose and comfortable. No one glancing at the uniform would have thought the wearer an officer until his eyes had chanced to light on the three stars worn in a triangle just above the cuffs. But the face was the face of a man of action, of a man who would be satisfied only with a position of command. It was distinctly of the type that is called strong; that is, it was hard, aquiline, brutal even. A close-cropped black moustache suggested that the slit beneath it was a mouth. The slit bent downwards at the corners, the moustache following along, and gave the impression of forcing the flesh of the jaws down with it. This helped to square off a chin that was already square. The nose was arched and prominent, and hairs bristled in a pair of impertinent nostrils. The eyes were bent downwards at the ends and accentuated the scornfulness of the expression. Thick black hair, brushed to an erect pompadour, began at a level which seemed a trifle too near the line of the eyebrows. The
Army Commander did not miss the point that the pompadour was there to add height to a forehead which could have been higher.
“No,” the Army Commander was thinking, “respectful attention does not suit him. It’s temporary. He’s all right, though. He’ll do.” Aloud he said:
“I think you served under me in Algeria, didn’t you, Assolant?”
“Yes, sir. When you were chief of staff of the Nineteenth Army Corps. I was a major then, stationed at Aïn-Sefra.”
“Ah yes, I remember now,” said the Army Commander, then moved quickly away from the subject before it became apparent that he didn’t remember at all. “This is what I came to see you about. I couldn’t go into it over the telephone. By the way, are all your troops on the move?”
“All the ones that are available, except the 181st, and they should be getting off by now. My messenger had a hard time finding them. If I may be permitted to say—”
“Yes, yes, I know. But just wait till I’ve outlined the situation to you, then I’ll hear you. Did you read this morning’s communiqué ?”
“I don’t read communiqués, sir, I make them,” said Assolant with a smile which he hoped would temper his impudence.
“Humph,” said the Army Commander, ignoring both the smile and the impudence. “Well, a regrettable error has occurred, which I shall explain to you. You know that the C.-in-C. has for some time been complaining because the Pimple wasn’t captured. Lately he’s been insisting on it for a reason which I’ll tell you presently. Several attempts to take it have been made, the last one yesterday morning by the Tirailleurs. They’ve all failed.”
“No wonder, it’s a miniature Gibraltar.”
“The reason I asked about the communiqué is that it seems that through some mistake the Pimple was reported as having been taken yesterday. I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I mean that that has nothing to do with—”
Paths of Glory Page 4