They looked at the midden, then at the low orifice in the dun stone through which the two soldiers with the barrow had seemed to plunge, drop as though into the bowels of the earth; they did not know yet that in their eyes too now was that fixed assuageless glare of nightmares. ‘Christ,’ one said. ‘Let’s grab one off that dump there and get the hell out of here.’
‘No,’ the sergeant said; there was something behind his voice not vindictiveness so much as repressed gleeful anticipation—if they had known it. He had worn his uniform ever since September 1914 without ever having become a soldier; he could remain in it for another decade and still would not be one. He was an office man, meticulous and reliable; his files were never out of order, his returns never late. He neither drank nor smoked; he had never heard a gun fired in his life save the amateur sportsmen banging away at whatever moved on Sunday morning around the little Loire village where he had been born and lived until his motherland demanded him. Perhaps all this was why he had been given this assignment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The order says, Proceed to Verdun and thence with expedition and despatch to the catacombs beneath the Fort of Valaumont and extricate therefrom one complete cadaver of one French soldier unidentified and unidentifiable either by name regiment or rank, and return with it. And that’s what we’re going to do. Get on with you: forward.’
‘Let’s have a drink first,’ one said.
‘No,’ the sergeant said. ‘Afterward. Get it loaded into the lorry first.’
‘Come on, Sarge,’ another said. ‘Think what that stink will be down that hole.’
‘No, I tell you!’ the sergeant said. ‘Get on there! Forward!’ He didn’t lead them; he drove, herded them, to bow their heads one by one into the stone tunnel, to drop, plunge in their turn down the steep pitch of the stone stairs as though into the bowels of the earth, into damp and darkness, though presently, from beyond where the stairs flattened at last into a tunnel, they could see a faint unsteady red gleam not of electricity, it was too red and unsteady, but from torches. They were torches; there was one fastened to the wall beside the first doorless opening in the wall and now they could see one another binding across their nostrils and lower faces what soiled handkerchiefs and filthy scraps of rag which they found on themselves (one who apparently had neither was holding the collar of his coat across his face), huddling and then halting here because an officer, his face swatched to the eyes in a silk one, had emerged from the opening; huddling back against the wall of the narrow tunnel while the sergeant with his valise came forward and saluted and presented his order to the officer, who opened it and glanced briefly at it, then turned his head and spoke back into the room behind him, and a corporal carrying an electric torch and a folded stretcher came out; he had a gas-mask slung about his neck.
Then, the corporal with his torch leading now and the foremost man carrying the stretcher, they went on again between the sweating walls, the floor itself beneath the feet viscous and greasy so that there was a tendency to slip, passing the doorless orifices in the walls beyond which they could see the tiered bunks in which in time during those five months in 1916 men had actually learned to sleep beneath the muted thunder and the trembling of the earth, the smell which above ground had had a sort of vividness, as though even yet partaking invincibly still of something of that motion which is life, not increasing so much as becoming familiar—an old stale dead and worn accustomedness which man would never eradicate and so in time would even get used to and even cease to smell it—a smell subterrene and claustrophobe and doomed to darkness, not alone of putrefaction but of fear and old sweat and old excrement and endurance; fear attenuated to that point where it must choose between coma and madness and in the intermittent coma no longer feared but merely stank.
More soldiers in pairs with masked faces and heaped barrows or stretchers passed them; suddenly more sweating and viscid stairs plunged away beneath them; at the foot of the stairs the tunnel made a sharp angle, no longer floored and walled and roofed with concrete; and, turning the corner behind the corporal, it was no longer a tunnel even but an excavation a cavern a cave a great niche dug out of one wall in which during the height of the battle, when there had been no other way to dispose of them, the bodies which had merely been killed and the ones which had been killed and dismembered too in the fort or the connecting machine-gun pits had been tumbled and covered with earth, the tunnel itself continuing on beyond it: a timber-shored burrow not even high enough for a man to stand erect in, through or beyond which they now saw a steady white glare which would have to be electricity, from which as they watched two more hooded and aproned soldiers emerged, carrying a stretcher with what would be an intact body this time.
‘Wait here,’ the corporal said.
‘My orders say——’ the sergeant said.
‘.… your orders,’ the corporal said. ‘We got a system here. We do things our way. Down here, you’re on active service, pal. Just give me two of your men and the stretcher. Though you can come too, if you think nothing less will keep your nose clean.’
‘That’s what I intend to do,’ the sergeant said. ‘My orders say——’ But the corporal didn’t wait, going on, the two with the stretcher, the sergeant stooping last to enter the further tunnel, the valise still clasped against his breast like a sick child. It did not take them long, as if there were plenty in the next traverse to choose from; almost at once, it seemed to the remaining ten, they saw the sergeant come stooping out of the burrow, still clasping the valise, followed by the two men with the burdened stretcher at a sort of stumbling run, then last the corporal who didn’t even pause, walking around the stretcher where the two bearers had dropped it, already going on toward the stairs until the sergeant stopped him. ‘Wait,’ the sergeant said, the valise now clasped under one arm while he produced his order and a pencil from inside his coat and shook the folded order open. ‘We got systems in Paris too. It’s a Frenchman.’
‘Right,’ the corporal said.
‘It’s all here. Nothing missing.’
‘Right,’ the corporal said.
‘No identification of name regiment or rank.’
‘Right,’ the corporal said.
‘Then sign it,’ the sergeant said, holding out the pencil as the corporal approached. ‘You,’ he said to the nearest man. ‘About face and bend over.’ Which the man did, the sergeant holding the paper flat on his bowed back while the corporal signed. ‘Your lieutenant will have to sign too,’ the sergeant said, taking the pencil from the corporal. ‘You might go on ahead and tell him.’
‘Right,’ the corporal said, going on again.
‘All right,’ the sergeant said to the stretcher bearers. ‘Get it out of here.’
‘Not yet,’ the first stretcher bearer said. ‘We’re going to have that drink first.’
‘No,’ the sergeant said. ‘When we get it into the lorry.’ He had not wanted the assignment and indeed he did not belong here because this time they simply took the valise away from him in one concerted move of the whole twelve of them, not viciously, savagely, just rapidly: with no heat at all but almost impersonal, almost inattentive, as you might rip a last year’s calendar from the wall to kindle a fire with it; the ex-picklock didn’t even pretend to conceal his action this time, producing his instrument in plain view, the others crowding around him as he opened the valise. Or they thought the rapidity and ease of the valise’s rape had been because they were too many for the sergeant, staring down at the single bottle it contained with shock then outrage and then with something like terror while the sergeant stood back and over them, laughing steadily down at them with a sort of vindictive and triumphant pleasure.
‘Where’s the rest of it?’ one said.
‘I threw it away,’ the sergeant said. ‘Poured it out.’
‘Poured it out, hell,’ another said. ‘He sold it.’
‘When?’ another said. ‘When did he have a chance to? Or pour it out either.’
‘While we were all asleep in th
e lorry coming out here.’
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ the second said.
‘All right, all right,’ the ex-picklock said. ‘What does it matter what he did with it? It’s gone. We’ll drink this one. Where’s your corkscrew?’ he said to a third one. But the man already had the corkscrew out, opening the bottle. ‘Okay,’ the ex-picklock said to the sergeant, ‘you go on and report to the officer and we’ll take it up and be putting it into the coffin.’
‘Right,’ the sergeant said, taking up the empty valise. ‘I want to get out of here too. I dont even need to want a drink to prove I dont like this.’ He went on. They emptied the bottle rapidly, passing it from one to another, and flung it away.
‘All right,’ the ex-picklock said. ‘Grab that thing up and let’s get out of here.’ Because already he was the leader, none to say or know or even care when it had happened. Because they were not drunk now, not inebriates but madmen, the last brandy lying in their stomachs cold and solid as balls of ice as they almost ran with the stretcher up the steep stairs.
‘Where is it, then?’ the one pressing behind the ex-picklock said.
‘He gave it to that corporal riding up front,’ the ex-picklock said. ‘Through that panel while we were asleep.’ They burst out into the air, the world, earth and sweet air again where the lorry waited, the driver and the corporal standing with a group of men some distance away. They had all heard the ex-picklock and dropped the stretcher without even pausing and were rushing toward the lorry until the ex-picklock stopped them. ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’ But the missing bottles were nowhere in the lorry. The ex-picklock returned to the stretcher.
‘Call that corporal over here,’ one said. ‘I know how to make him tell where it is.’
‘Fool,’ the ex-picklock said. ‘If we start something now, dont you know what’ll happen? He’ll call the M.P.’s and put us all under arrest and get a new guard from the adjutant in Verdun. We cant do anything here. We’ve got to wait till we get back to Verdun.’
‘What’ll we do in Verdun?’ another said. ‘Buy some liquor? With what? You couldn’t get one franc out of the whole lot of us with a suction pump.’
‘Morache can sell his watch,’ a fourth said.
‘But will he?’ a fifth said. They all looked at Morache.
‘Forget that now,’ Morache said. ‘Picklock’s right; the first thing to do is to get back to Verdun. Come up. Let’s get this thing into that box.’ They carried the stretcher to the lorry and lifted the sheeted body into it. The lid of the coffin had not been fastened down; a hammer and nails were inside the coffin. They tumbled the body into it, whether face-up or facedown they didn’t know and didn’t bother, and replaced the top and caught the nails enough to hold it shut. Then the sergeant with his now empty valise climbed through the rear door and sat again on the coffin; the corporal and the driver obviously had returned too because at once the lorry moved, the twelve men sitting on the straw against the walls, quiet now, outwardly as decorous as well-behaved children but actually temporarily insane, capable of anything, talking occasionally among themselves, peacefully, idle and extraneous while the lorry returned to Verdun, until they were actually in the city again and the lorry had stopped before a door beside which a sentry stood: obviously the commandant’s headquarters: and the sergeant began to get up from the coffin. Then Picklock made one last effort:
‘I understood orders said we were to have brandy not just to go to Valaumont and get the body out, but to get it back to Paris. Or am I wrong?’
‘If you are, who made you wrong?’ the sergeant said. He looked down at Picklock a moment longer. Then he turned toward the door; it was as though he too had recognised Picklock as their leader: ‘I’ll have to sign some bumf here. Take it on to the station and load it into the carriage and wait for me there. Then we’ll have lunch.’
‘Right,’ Picklock said. The sergeant dropped to the ground and vanished; at once, even before the lorry had begun to move again, their whole air, atmosphere changed, as if their very characters and personalities had altered, or not altered but rather as if they had shed masks or cloaks; their very speech was short, rapid, succinct, cryptic, at times even verbless, as if they did not need to communicate but merely to prompt one another in one mutual prescient cognizance.
‘Morache’s watch,’ one said.
‘Hold it,’ Picklock said. ‘The station first.’
‘Tell him to hurry then,’ another said. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, starting to get up.
‘Hold it, I said,’ Picklock said, gripping him. ‘Do you want M.P.’s?’ So they stopped talking and just sat, immobile and in motion, furious in immobility like men strained against a pyramid, as if they were straining at the back of the moving lorry itself with the urgency of their passion and need. The lorry stopped. They were already getting out of it, the first ones dropping to the ground before it had stopped moving, their hands already on the coffin. The platform was empty now, or so they thought, would have thought if they had noticed, which they didn’t, not even looking that way as they dragged the coffin out of the lorry, almost running again across the platform with it toward where the carriage waited on the siding; not until a hand began to tug at Picklock’s sleeve, an urgent voice at his elbow saying:
‘Mister Corporal! Mister Corporal!’ Picklock looked down. It was the old woman of the morning whose son had died in the Verdun battle.
‘Beat it, grandma,’ Picklock said, twitching his arm free. ‘Come on. Get that door open.’
But the old woman still clung to him, speaking still with that terrible urgency: ‘You’ve got one. It might be Theodule. I will know. Let me look at him.’
‘Beat it, I tell you!’ Picklock said. ‘We’re busy.’ So it was not Picklock at all, leader though he was, but one of the others who said suddenly and sharply, hissing it:
‘Wait.’ Though in the next second the same idea seemed to occur to them all, one end of the box resting now on the floor of the carriage and four of them braced to shove it the rest of the way, all of them paused now looking back while the speaker continued: ‘You said something this morning about selling a farm.’
‘Selling my farm?’ the woman said.
‘Money!’ the other said in his hissing undertone.
‘Yes! Yes!’ the old woman said, fumbling under her shawl and producing an aged reticule almost as large as the sergeant’s valise. Now Picklock did take charge.
‘Hold it,’ he said over his shoulder, then to the old woman: ‘If we let you look at him, will you buy two bottles of brandy?’
‘Make it three,’ a third said.
‘And in advance,’ a fourth said. ‘She cant tell anything from what’s in that box now.’
‘I can!’ she said. ‘I will know! Just let me look.’
‘All right,’ Picklock said. ‘Go and get two bottles of brandy, and you can look at him. Hurry now, before the sergeant gets back.’
‘Yes yes,’ she said and turned, running, stiffly and awkwardly, clutching the reticule, back across the platform.
‘All right,’ Picklock said. ‘Get it inside. One of you get the hammer out of the lorry.’ Luckily their orders had been not to drive the nails home but merely to secure the lid temporarily (apparently the body was to be transferred to something a little more elegant or anyway commensurate with its purpose when it reached Paris) so they could draw them without difficulty. Which they did and removed the lid and then recoiled from the thin burst, gout of odor which rushed up at them almost visibly, like thin smoke—one last faint thin valedictory of corruption and mortality, as if the corpse itself had hoarded it for three years against this moment or any similar one with the gleeful demonic sentience of a small boy. Then the old woman returned, clasping two bottles against her breast, still running or at least trotting, panting now, shaking, almost as though from physical exhaustion because she couldn’t even climb the steps when she reached the door, so that two of them dropped to the ground and lifted her bodily into th
e carriage. A third one took the bottles from her, though she didn’t seem to notice it. For a second or so she couldn’t even seem to see the coffin. Then she saw it and half knelt half collapsed at the head of it and turned the tarpaulin back from what had been a face. They—the speaker—had been right; she could have told nothing from the face because it was no longer man. Then they knew that she was not even looking at it: just kneeling there, one hand resting on what had been the face and the other caressing what remained of its hair. She said:
‘Yes. Yes. This is Theodule. This is my son.’ Suddenly she rose, strongly now, and faced them, pressing back against the coffin, looking rapidly from face to face until she found Picklock; her voice was calm and strong too. ‘I must have him.’
‘You said just to look at him,’ Picklock said.
‘He is my son. He must go home. I have money. I will buy you a hundred bottles of brandy. Or the money itself, if you want it.’
‘How much will you give?’ Picklock said. She didn’t even hesitate. She handed him the unopened reticule.
‘Count it yourself,’ she said.
‘But how are you going to get it—him away from here? You cant carry it.’
‘I have a horse and cart. It’s been behind the station yonder ever since we heard yesterday what you were coming for.’
‘Heard how?’ Picklock said. ‘This is official business.’
‘Does that matter?’ she said, almost impatiently. ‘Count it.’
But Picklock didn’t open the reticule yet. He turned to Morache. ‘Go with her and get the cart. Bring it up to the window on the other side. Make it snappy. Landry’ll be back any minute now.’ It didn’t take long. They got the window up; almost immediately Morache brought the cart up, the big farm-horse going at a heavy and astonished gallop. Morache snatched it to a halt; already the others in the carriage had the sheeted body balanced on the window sill. Morache handed the lines to the old woman on the seat beside him and vaulted over the seat and snatched the body down into the cart and vaulted to the ground beside it; at that moment Picklock inside the carriage tossed the reticule through the window, into the cart.