The orderly laughed. “He says the calf’s brain is for him, he’s been hoping for some for quite a while.”
“I’d rather see the brain of an old sow in his belly,” cried the topkick. Then he looked at me and, his eyes lighting up, exclaimed, “Say! You can speak French, can’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Can you handle cattle?”
“No.”
He laughed. “Never mind. Listen: tonight at 0200 hours we’re supposed to fetch a cow from a farmer two miles from here—d’you think you can manage that?”
I shrugged. “If I can have a horse and cart, some money, and two men to help.”
“Done!” cried the topkick. “And the next Cross of Merit to be handed out in this bunch is yours.”
He took the map out of the drawer; I bent over his desk and asked him to show me the place. It was a tiny hamlet, two miles northeast, toward the Somme. I was to meet the cart at the crossroads at 0200 hours, but I was also to ride over there this evening to give the farmer exact instructions. I was delighted with the assignment. Any opportunity to taste a little unscheduled freedom was more than welcome. Besides, I thought it might lead me to a cheap source of butter, for Cadette charged exorbitant prices for everything, and my money was slowly running out.
VI
Your brother was also in very good spirits that evening. During the briefing he had hinted that there was shortly to be some addition to the rations. As we went back to the bunker, I asked him, “So you know about it?” I imagined he had been referring to the scheme to buy a cow.
“No,” he said in surprise. I explained my assignment. He was delighted. “Why, that’s terrific! Then you’ll have no trouble carrying out my plan at the same time. I was thinking of buying a sheep for our base.”
I had planned to leave as soon as possible, but first there was a meeting I had to attend. We had come to the conclusion that, by extending the sentry’s shift by only half an hour every night, we could ensure that each man on the base would get one night of unbroken sleep at least once every two weeks. With a garrison of twenty-eight men, this amounted to a gain of fourteen hours’ extra sleep per day: i.e., for each man one night without sentry duty. I had volunteered to draw up the schedule; since we had to note down the individual sentries at each strongpoint every night in a sentry log, we were familiar with the technique of devising a sentry schedule. A meeting of all the NCOs—three corporals and a lance corporal—had been called. They brought along the results of a poll taken among their men: the plan had been rejected—the men suspected duplicity. In particular, a certain Töpfer, one of the older soldiers in the lance corporal’s group, had asked what would happen if someone were suddenly transferred: if he had been doing his extra half hour for a number of days, who was going to make up for his lost sleep to him?
Your brother listened calmly, then shrugged his shoulders. “Obviously I can’t force anybody. But try to explain to the men that, no matter what, we wouldn’t benefit at all. Maybe then they’ll agree.” He looked at each of the four in turn. “Oh well, perhaps the men are right. Sentry duty is as ancient as playing soldiers, and sentry hours are just as ancient. And you can be sure that if it were possible to demand more from a soldier under normal circumstances, it would be demanded. Still, it might be worth a try.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Okay, nothing doing, gentlemen. That’ll be all. And you, Nolte,” he said, turning to the youngest corporal, “please have the gap in the mine fence repaired this evening, preferably with old wire so it won’t show, right?”
Nolte blushed; we all saluted and left.
I followed your brother into his room. He opened the window, beckoned me to his side, and pointed toward the south, where the beach was mined down to the high-tide line—a broad stretch of coast reaching as far as the next company’s sector. A wonderful, still intact children’s summer camp was located there in a dense minefield close to the beach. Perhaps there had been a reluctance to blow it up because it was such a valuable piece of property. I looked in that direction but was taken aback by his question: “Haven’t you noticed anything about the outgoing mail the last couple of days?”
“Yes,” I said in surprise. “It contained a tremendous number of small parcels.”
“Right!” he went on with a laugh. “All unawares, you have been transporting, bit by bit, that children’s summer camp to Dresden, Leipzig, Glauchau, and Schneiwitzenmühl or wherever. That’s right!” he said, in response to my look of amazement. “For the last few days Nolte’s group has been systematically looting over there during their off-duty hours. Now Frieger’s group has got into the act, and soon there’s going to be a glorious free-for-all, and today or tomorrow the entire base will be sneaking through the dunes on stocking feet to make sure they’re not being done out of their share.”
“For God’s sake!” I cried. “What about the mines?”
“That’s the least of their worries; there’s no danger there, although they might bump into each other. But Nolte, that ingenious fellow, has ferreted out a sapper corporal from the regiment at Geneu, a man who originally helped lay the mines, so they have an accurate chart. Besides, mines that have had three years to rust through aren’t that dangerous anymore. I only hope Nolte got the hint. Shortly before you arrived here, one of my corporals was court-martialed for snipping through mine fences with a wire cutter: the cows smelled the high, lush grass and, naturally, in they went. Result: two badly injured cows that had to be slaughtered on the spot.” He gave another laugh. “Let’s hope Nolte is sensible—I’d find it very difficult to report anything. The embarrassing thing is, you see, that I have nothing against looting.”
He lit a cigarette, then slowly and happily blew the smoke out through the window; he seemed altogether very cheerful and relaxed that evening. “Listen,” he said. “The way I feel, it’s simply part of a soldier’s job. You can’t expect a soldier to behave like a chaplain on a summer vacation. Every occupation has its game rules. These laborers, shoemakers, electricians, they’ve been turned into soldiers, these good men have been made ferocious, proud, after having first been tamed. See what I mean?”
I saw nothing.
“Okay, then, let me explain. We stick these good men into uniform and destroy what the Prussians like to call gutlessness: a sense of human dignity and the glorious freedom of a civilian. Okay. So much for that. The barracks have—it is assumed—fulfilled their objective. Then the men are sent out to kill or get killed, and this activity makes them a bit wild—even here, where there’s no killing. And especially when these heroes don’t get enough to eat. But then they are confronted with regulations that demand more tameness from them than from a civilian, more respectability, dignity, self-sacrifice than they have ever in their lives possessed. They are forbidden to loot while at the same time they are allowed to go hungry. There you have a typical German incongruity. They rant and rave in their speeches, they want to reform the world, they call that ‘revolution,’ yet they’re so scared for their good reputation that they wet their pants when a few soldiers happen to smash some windowpanes and grab a sausage or a couple of shirts. Do you follow me?”
I could only nod, astonished at this new, reckless frankness.
“On we go, then!” he exclaimed. “I can’t wait to get this off my chest. All right, you can’t have a slaughterhouse without a lot of blood, and a person who can’t stand that should stop eating meat. And looting is, in my opinion, the inalienable right of every soldier. The point is not that looting should be prohibited but that we shouldn’t turn these men into soldiers. The whole idiotic nonsense begins with the ill-conceived, romantic notion of a ‘people’s army.’ Damn it all, soldiering is a profession, and it can be learned. And if they are forced—and they are all forced, all these good men—we shouldn’t be surprised if maybe they do turn into soldiers. Well,” he said as he walked over to his bed, “I hope you take my hints to heart and manage the job in such a way that I don’t see anything. Now, off you
go, and don’t forget that sheep.”
I left and got onto my bike.
The map given me by the topkick proved reliable. Beyond the crossing that led to the orderly room, I had to continue straight ahead for some distance and then make a right turn. Here some of the paths were already dangerous. They led past swampy patches sweltering away in the heat, saturated with silence. Twice I crossed a little stream, and after five minutes’ pedaling I admit I felt a certain uneasiness at not having seen the slightest sign of human habitation. But immediately after passing a clump of trees I saw a solitary house. The way I read the map, that must be the spot marked “Daval.” Almost every farmhouse in the world is entered from the rear, and as I turned into the yard I saw a very peaceful scene: a dark-haired woman sitting with a basket in front of her, shelling peas, a youth of about fourteen helping her, and the farmer sitting beside them smoking his pipe. I had interrupted their chat. Their laughter died away when I silently rounded the corner and stopped on the sandy ground. The woman let out a little scream; the man turned toward me without a word, and the youth looked curiously at the insignia on my sleeve.
“Good evening,” I said. “Excuse me, but is this Daval?”
They exchanged glances. I had the impression they were expecting a confiscation or something of the kind, so I said, “I have to get to Tulby.”
“Over there,” said the man, pointing his pipe in an easterly direction.
“Is this Daval, then?”
“Yes,” he said curtly.
“Do you know Monsieur Preter?”
“Yes,” came the curt reply again, “he’s her uncle.” He pointed his pipe at his wife.
“Oh, I see,” I said.
The woman glanced up briefly, and she struck me as being less hostile than the man. The farmer stared at me unabashedly. “Monsieur,” I said to him, “couldn’t you sell us a sheep?”
“Who wants to buy?” he asked frostily.
I tried to explain and mentioned a price of about thirty marks.
The husband and wife exchanged smiles; then the man said, “I suppose you mean twice that much, if—and I say, if,” he drawled, “if I were to sell one.”
“Perhaps we could talk about it.”
“This year,” he said shortly, “the weather’s been too dry. I can’t sell you a sheep. Not enough fodder for the animals.”
“All the more reason,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you haven’t enough fodder, we’ll slaughter one, and you’ll have one less mouth to feed.”
He laughed, no longer quite so hostile.
I felt like sitting down with them and helping with the peas; it was a wonderful evening, but standing there in that hated uniform, leaning on the crossbar of my bike, my cap in my hand, I felt very homeless.
“Well, what about it?” I asked.
“You’re a very stubborn fellow.”
“We’re hungry.”
His apathetic eyes lit up a bit. “You’re hungry?” he asked, almost like a child. “Doesn’t your company feed you, then?”
I was genuinely ashamed and blushed.
“Okay,” I said impatiently, “yes or no?”
“Claire”—he turned toward his wife—“what do you think?”
I knew I had won. The woman hesitated, without looking up. “At that price …” she said.
He stood up. “Follow me.”
We went into the house.
I struck a deal with him and agreed that we would come for the sheep that night. I left the equivalent of forty-five marks in francs with him. It was hard to leave the house. I stood there for a while after coming back from the stable, slowly finished my cigarette, and looked at the sky as it hung, a soft and rosy gray, over the sea. It was very quiet; there was only the distant croaking of frogs and the soft, almost musical sound of the peas as they hopped out of their shells into the tin bowl and sometimes bounced off the edge with a light ping.
I was also aware of the gentle hiss of the man’s pipe as he sucked on it; and, although that icy hostility between us had been replaced by a certain good will, I could feel that I was not only intruding but unwelcome.
So I threw my butt onto the flagstones, hastily ground it out, said “Good night,” and got back onto my bike. I soon reached the neighboring farm, situated in a dense little wood, one of those silent, dilapidated places often to be found thereabouts. The terrible part about those farms is that they look deserted whereas there are actually people living in them. What’s missing is something of the atmosphere that is part and parcel of rural life: everything is pervaded by a kind of idleness that to us seems totally unrural, an air of decadence, of almost literary melancholy that, in the context of a farm, seems quite horrifying.
The farmer and his wife were sitting in the dark kitchen, and the first thing I saw was the glow of a cigarette.
“Good evening,” I said, instinctively keeping my voice low. “I’ve come about the cow.”
“Cow?” a woman’s voice repeated slowly and sarcastically.
“That’s right,” a man’s hoarse voice replied, equally sarcastically, more to the woman than to me. “They want to buy a cow, but …”
“I thought the deal was all settled,” I broke in.
“Settled!” repeated that disagreeable male voice; I couldn’t make out the face that went with it. “Nothing is settled, nothing has been settled, d’you get me?”
I was silent. Since nobody offered me a chair, I sat down on a stool by the window and began to smoke.
“Settled!” resumed that voice, this time a little less confidently.
“I was told,” I remarked, “that the purchase had been completed. The cow’s supposed to be picked up tonight.”
“Merde!” shouted the voice. “That’s what I’d call rushing things! Nothing doing—in Paris people are paying twenty-five francs for a pound of meat, and you expect me to sell two hundred pounds for twenty-five hundred francs! I’m not crazy, not by a long shot …”
“All right,” I said evenly. “Put a rope around your cow’s neck and take it to Paris. There you might even get forty francs a pound.”
I could tell that the couple had both lifted their heads and were looking at me, but what bothered me was that I could see nothing except a pair of flashing knitting needles and the suggestion of a pale cloth cap; the cigarette had been spat out.
“After all,” I said quietly, “nobody’s forcing you to sell the cow, are they?”
The answer was a hostile silence.
These deals were a kind of legal black market, an infringement of a law that we had instituted ourselves and whose enforcement we should really have been safeguarding; but, as I already told you, soldiers who are permanently hungry don’t give a damn about such laws. Needless to say, my question was ridiculous, since I was putting it as the delegate of an enemy company, even though, legally speaking, it was the farmer’s duty to refuse the deal.
“No,” came the sarcastic voice, “nobody’s ever forced us, no indeed.”
“Very well,” I said as I stood up. “We’ll be here tonight at two o’clock. I have part of the money with me.” I opened my wallet and took from it three crisp, brand-new thousand-franc bills.
“Here you are,” I said curtly.
There are few farmers who can resist the sight of real money. The couple were on their feet in a flash; the woman rushed to the light switch and turned it on. Now for the first time I could see them both, and immediately saw how they leaned their heads toward the money. They were old, gray-haired, with pinched faces, and for a moment I thought they were brother and sister, then I saw their worn wedding rings. The man couldn’t resist; he took the bills from my hand and with a repulsive tenderness snapped them between his fingers.
We soldiers, sir, have a terrible contempt for money. Money alone is nothing. Its only value is what one can get for it at any given moment: wine, women, or tobacco. Money is no more than a means. To save it or hoard it seems to
us absurd.
The deal was closed. The woman also offered me some butter and eggs; I left the house with a pound of butter, ten eggs, and a very special acquisition: a bottle of thick cream.
It was almost dark outside; a shadowy gloom hung over the meadows and bushes. Cautiously I rode back.
I was filled with a weary disgust. With complete clarity I could see everything that lay ahead: I would reach the highway, have a beer at Cadette’s, then sit for four hours at the phone fighting sleep. I would smoke, although nothing tasted good; try to write a letter, without success; hear Kandick’s snoring. And after two hours I would be left with nothing but fatigue, hopeless fatigue, and I would keep looking at my watch to see whether it wasn’t time to waken Kandick. That’s how it would be for the next four or five weeks; then we would be relieved, and in some godforsaken little place eight miles from the coast we would be drilled. I wouldn’t even have any money left for booze, I’d have nothing to smoke, and after those six weeks I would once again be sitting in some other bunker night after night, at that phone that never rang, waiting for the moment when I would be allowed to sink into a leaden sleep.
At 2:00 a.m. I would be collecting the cow and the sheep, then sitting at the phone again from seven to eleven, riding off to company headquarters at eleven …
I dismounted for a moment because the sound of the bicycle was getting on my nerves.
In those days, sir, I still believed in what is known as coincidence. I believed that our life was an isolated fragment surrounded by other isolated fragments, each a distinct and a more or less brilliant painting; I believed in the total lack of connection between all things and in the pale, blind futility of our existence. I had as yet no inkling of that mysterious network of innumerable knotted threads, of that vast, all-encompassing fabric into which for each one of us a particular thread has been woven. I reached the highway, got back on my bike, and rode off toward Cadette’s tavern.