Under Fire: The Story of a Squad by Henri Barbusse (miss read books txt) 📖

so near us."

"His arm's just against the spot where I put my head."

"Yes," says Paradis, "his right arm, where there's a wrist-watch."

The watch--I stop short--is it a fancy, a dream? It seems to me--yes, I am sure now--that three days ago, the night when we were so tired out, before I went to sleep I heard what sounded like the ticking of a watch and even wondered where it could come from.

"It was very likely that watch you heard all the same, through the earth," says Paradis, whom I have told some of my thoughts; "they go on thinking and turning round even when the chap stops. Damn, your own ticker doesn't know you--it just goes quietly on making little circles."

I asked, "There's blood on his hands; but where was he hit?"

"Don't know; in the belly, I think; I thought there was something dark underneath him. Or perhaps in the face--did you notice the little stain on the cheek?"

I recall the hairy and greenish face of the dead man. "Yes, there was something on the cheek. Yes, perhaps it went in there--"

"Look out!" says Paradis hurriedly, "there he is! We ought not to have stayed here."

But we stay all the same, irresolutely wavering, as Mesnil Joseph comes straight up to us. Never did he seem so frail to us. We can see his pallor afar off, his oppressed and unnatural expression; he is bowed as be walks, and goes slowly, borne down by endless fatigue and his immovable notion.

"What's the matter with your face?" he asks me--he has seen me point out to Paradis the possible entry of the bullet. I pretend not to understand and then make some kind of evasive reply. All at once I have a torturing idea--the smell! It is there, and there is no mistaking it. It reveals a corpse; and perhaps he will guess rightly.

It seems to me that he has suddenly smelt the sign--the pathetic, lamentable appeal of the dead. But he says nothing, continues his solitary walk, and disappears round the corner.

"Yesterday," says Paradis to me, "he came just here, with his mess-tin full of rice that he didn't want to eat. Just as if he knew what he was doing, the fool stops here and talks of pitching the rest of his food over the bank, just on the spot where--where the other was. I couldn't stick that, old chap. I grabbed his arm just as he chucked the rice into the air, and it flopped down here in the trench. Old man, he turned round on me in a rage and all red in the face, 'What the hell's up with you now?' he says. I looked as fat-headed as I could, and mumbled some rot about not doing it on purpose. He shrugs his shoulders, and looks at me same as if I was dirt. He goes off, saying to himself, 'Did you see him, the blockhead?' He's bad-tempered, you know, the poor chap, and I couldn't complain. 'All right, all right,' he kept saying; and I didn't like it, you know, because I did wrong all the time, although I was right."

We go back together in silence and re-enter the dugout where the others are gathered. It is an old headquarters post, and spacious. Just as we slide in, Paradis listens. "Our batteries have been playing extra hell for the last hour, don't you think?"

I know what he means, and reply with an empty gesture, "We shall see, old man, we shall see all right!"

In the dug-out, to an audience of three, Tirette is again pouring out his barrack-life tales. Marthereau is snoring in a corner; he is close to the entry, and to get down we have to stride over his short legs, which seem to have gone back into his trunk. A group of kneeling men around a folded blanket are playing with cards--

"My turn!"--"40, 42--48--49!--Good!"

"Isn't he lucky, that game-bird; it's imposs', I've got stumped three times I want nothing more to do with you. You're skinning me this evening, and you robbed me the other day, too, you infernal fritter!"--"What did you revoke for, mugwump?"--"I'd only the king, nothing else."

"All the same," murmurs some one who is eating in a corner, "this Camembert, it cost twenty-five sous, but you talk about muck! Outside there's a layer of sticky glue, and inside it's plaster that breaks."

Meanwhile Tirette relates the outrages inflicted on him during his twenty-one days of training owing to the quarrelsome temper of a certain major: "A great hog he was, my boy, everything rotten on this earth. All the lot of us looked foul when he went by or when we saw him in the officers' room spread out on a chair that you couldn't see underneath him, with his vast belly and huge cap, and circled round with stripes from top to bottom, like a barrel--he was hard on the private! They called him Loeb--a Boche, you see!"

"I knew him!" cried Paradis; "when war started he was declared unfit for active service, naturally. While I was doing my term he was a dodger already--but he dodged round all the street corners to pinch you--you got a day's clink for an unbuttoned button, and he gave it you over and above if there was some bit of a thing about you that wasn't quite O.K.--and everybody laughed. He thought they were laughing at you, and you knew they were laughing at him, but you knew it in vain, you were in it up to your head for the clink."

"He had a wife," Tirette goes on, "the old--"

"I remember her, too," Paradis exclaimed. "You talk about a bitch!"

"Some of 'em drag a little pug-dog about with 'em, but him, he trailed that yellow minx about everywhere, with her broom-handle hips and her wicked look. It was her that worked the old sod up against us. He was more stupid than wicked, but as soon as she was there he got more wicked than stupid. So you bet they were some nuisance--"

Just then, Marthereau wakes up from his sleep by the entry with a half-groan. He straightens himself up, sitting on his straw like a gaol-bird, and we see his bearded silhouette take the vague outline of a Chinese, while his round eye rolls and turns in the shadows. He is looking at his dreams of a moment ago. Then he passes his hand over his eyes and--as if it had some connection with his dream--recalls the scene that night when we came up to the trenches--"For all that," he says, in a voice weighty with slumber and reflection, "there were some half-seas-over that night! Ah, what a night! All those troops, companies and whole regiments, yelling and surging all the way up the road! In the thinnest of the dark you could see the jumble of poilus that went on and up--like the sea itself, you'd say--and carrying on across all the convoys of artillery and ambulance wagons that we met that night. I've never seen so many, so many convoys in the night, never!" Then he deals himself a thump on the chest, settles down again in self-possession, groans, and says no more.

Blaire's voice rises, giving expression to the haunting thought that wakes in the depths of the men: "It's four o'clock. It's too late for there to be anything from our side."

One of the gamesters in the other corner yelps a question at another: "Now then? Are you going to play or aren't you, worm-face?"

Tirette continues the story of his major: "Behold one day they'd served us at the barracks with some suetty soup. Old man, a disease, it was! So a chap asks to speak to the captain, and holds his mess-tin up to his nose."

"Numskull!" some one shouts in the other corner. "Why didn't you trump, then?"

"'Ah, damn it,' said the captain, 'take it away from my nose, it positively stinks.'"

"It wasn't my game," quavers a discontented but unconvinced voice.

"And the captain, he makes a report to the major. But behold the major, mad as the devil, he butts in shaking the paper in his paw: 'What's this?' he says. 'Where's the soup that has caused this rebellion, that I may taste it?' They bring him some in a clean mess-tin and he sniffs it. 'What now!' he says, 'it smells good. They damned well shan't have it then, rich soup like this!'"

"Not your game! And he was leading, too! Bungler! It's unlucky, you know."

"Then at five o'clock as we were coming out of barracks, our two marvels butt in again and plank themselves in front of the swaddies coming out, trying to spot some little thing not quite so, and he said, 'Ah, my bucks, you thought you'd score off me by complaining of this excellent soup that I have consumed myself along with my partner here; just wait and see if I don't get even with you. Hey, you with the long hair, the tall artist, come here a minute!' And all the time the beast was jawing, his bag-o'-bones--as straight and thin as a post--went 'oui, oui' with her head."

"That depends; if he hadn't a trump, it's another matter."

"But all of a sudden we see her go white as a sheet, she puts her fist on her tummy and she shakes like all that, and then suddenly, in front of all the fellows that filled the square, she drops her umbrella and starts spewing!"

"Hey, listen!" says Paradis, sharply, "they're shouting in the trench. Don't you hear? Isn't it 'alarm!' they're shouting?"

"Alarm? Are you mad?"

The words were hardly said when a shadow comes in through the low doorway of our dug-out and cries--"Alarm, 22nd! Stand to arms!"

A moment of silence and then several exclamations. "I knew it," murmurs Paradis between his teeth, and he goes on his knees towards the opening into the molehill that shelters us. Speech then ceases and we seem to be struck dumb. Stooping or kneeling we bestir ourselves; we buckle on our waist-belts; shadowy arms dart from one side to another; pockets are rummaged. And we issue forth pell-mell, dragging our knapsacks behind us by the straps, our blankets and pouches.

Outside we are deafened. The roar of gunfire has increased a hundredfold, to left, to right, and in front of us. Our batteries give voice without ceasing.

"Do you think they're attacking?" ventures a man. "How should I know?" replies another voice with irritated brevity.

Our jaws are set and we swallow our thoughts, hurrying, bustling, colliding, and grumbling without words.

A command goes forth--"Shoulder your packs."--"There's a counter-command--" shouts an officer who runs down the trench with great strides, working his elbows, and the rest of his sentence disappears with him. A counter-command! A visible tremor has run through the files, a start which uplifts our heads and holds us all in extreme expectation.

But no; the counter-order only concerns the knapsacks. No pack; but the blanket rolled round the body, and the trenching-tool at the waist. We unbuckle our blankets, tear them open and roll them up. Still no word is spoken; each has a steadfast eye and the mouth forcefully shut. The corporals and sergeants go here and there, feverishly spurring the silent haste in which the men are bowed: "Now then, hurry up! Come, come, what the hell are you doing? Will you hurry, yes or no?"

A detachment of soldiers with a badge of crossed axes on their sleeves clear themselves a fairway