Three Soldiers

  “If any man knows anything about the whereabouts of Private 1st-class William Grey, report at once, as otherwise we shall have to put him down A.W.O.L. You know what that means?” The lieutenant spoke in short shrill periods, chopping off the ends of his words as if with a hatchet.

  No one said anything.

  “I guess he’s S.O.L.”; this from someone behind Fuselli.

  “And I have one more announcement to make, men,” said the lieutenant in his natural voice. “I’m going to appoint Fuselli, 1st-class private, acting corporal.”

  Fuselli’s knees were weak under him. He felt like shouting and dancing with joy. He was glad it was dark so that no one could see how excited he was.

  “Sergeant, dismiss the company,” said the lieutenant bringing his voice back to its military tone.

  “Companee dis-missed!” said out the sergeant jovially.

  In groups, talking with crisp voices, cheered by the occurrence of events, the company straggled across the great stretch of mud puddles towards the mess shack.

  IV

  Yvonne tossed the omelette in the air. It landed sizzling in the pan again, and she came forward into the light, holding the frying pan before her. Behind her was the dark stove and above it a row of copper kettles that gleamed through the bluish obscurity. She flicked the omelette out of the pan into the white dish that stood in the middle of the table, full in the yellow lamplight.

  “Tiens,” she said, brushing a few stray hairs off her forehead with the back of her hand.

  “You’re some cook,” said Fuselli getting to his feet. He had been sprawling on a chair in the other end of the kitchen, watching Yvonne’s slender body in tight black dress and blue apron move in and out of the area of light as she got dinner ready. A smell of burnt butter with a faint tang of pepper in it, filled the kitchen, making his mouth water.

  “This is the real stuff,” he was saying to himself,—“like home.”

  He stood with his hands deep in his pockets and his head thrown back, watching her cut the bread, holding the big loaf to her chest and pulling the knife towards her. She brushed some crumbs off her dress with a thin white hand.

  “You’re my girl, Yvonne; ain’t yer?” Fuselli put his arms round her.

  “Sale bête,” she said, laughing and pushing him away.

  There was a brisk step outside and another girl came into the kitchen, a thin yellow-faced girl with a sharp nose and long teeth.

  “Ma cousine. … Mon ’tit americain.” They both laughed. Fuselli blushed as he shook the girl’s hand.

  “Il est beau, hein?” said Yvonne gruffly.

  “Mais, ma petite, il est charmant, vot’ americain!” They laughed again. Fuselli who did not understand laughed too, thinking to himself, “They’ll let the dinner get cold if they don’t sit down soon.”

  “Get maman, Dan,” said Yvonne.

  Fuselli went into the shop through the room with the long oak table. In the dim light that came from the kitchen he saw the old woman’s white bonnet. Her face was in shadow but there was a faint gleam of light in her small beady eyes.

  “Supper, ma’am,” he shouted.

  Grumbling in her creaky little voice, the old woman followed him back into the kitchen.

  Steam, gilded by the lamplight, rose in pillars to the ceiling from the big tureen of soup.

  There was a white cloth on the table and a big loaf of bread at the end. The plates, with borders of little roses on them, seemed, after the army mess, the most beautiful things Fuselli had ever seen. The wine bottle was black beside the soup tureen and the wine in the glasses cast a dark purple stain on the cloth.

  Fuselli ate his soup silently understanding very little of the French that the two girls rattled at each other. The old woman rarely spoke and when she did one of the girls would throw her a hasty remark that hardly interrupted their chatter.

  Fuselli was thinking of the other men lining up outside the dark mess shack and the sound the food made when it flopped into the mess kits. An idea came to him. He’d have to bring Sarge to see Yvonne. They could set him up to a feed. “It would help me to stay in good with him,”

  He had a minute’s worry about his corporalship. He was acting corporal right enough, but he wanted them to send in his appointment.

  The omelette melted in his mouth.

  “Damn bon,” he said to Yvonne with his mouth full.

  She looked at him fixedly.

  “Bon, bon,” he said again.

  “You. … Dan, bon,” she said and laughed. The cousin was looking from one to the other enviously, her upper lip lifted away from her teeth in a smile.

  The old woman munched her bread in a silent preoccupied fashion.

  “There’s somebody in the store,” said Fuselli after a long pause. “Je irey.” He put his napkin down and went out wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Eisenstein and a chalky-faced boy were in the shop.

  “Hullo! are you keepin’ house here?” asked Eisenstein.

  “Sure,” said Fuselli conceitedly.

  “Have you got any chawclit?” asked the chalky-faced boy in a thin bloodless voice.

  Fuselli looked round the shelves and threw a cake of chocolate down on the counter.

  “Anything else?”

  “Nothing, thank you, corporal. How much is it?”

  Whistling “There’s a long, long trail a-winding,” Fuselli strode back into the inner room.

  “Combien chocolate?” he asked.

  When he had received the money, he sat down at his place at table again, smiling importantly. He must write Al about all this, he was thinking, and he was wondering vaguely whether Al had been drafted yet.

  After dinner the women sat a long time chatting over their coffee, while Fuselli squirmed uneasily on his chair, looking now and then at his watch. His pass was till twelve only; it was already getting on to ten. He tried to catch Yvonne’s eye, but she was moving about the kitchen putting things in order for the night, and hardly seemed to notice him. At last the old woman shuffled into the shop and there was the sound of a key clicking hard in the outside door. When she came back, Fuselli said good-night to everyone and left by the back door into the court. There he leaned sulkily against the wall and waited in the dark, listening to the sounds that came from the house. He could see shadows passing across the orange square of light the window threw on the cobbles of the court. A light went on in an upper window, sending a faint glow over the disorderly tiles of the roof of the shed opposite. The door opened and Yvonne and her cousin stood on the broad stone doorstep chattering. Fuselli had pushed himself in behind a big hogshead that had a pleasant tang of old wood damp with sour wine. At last the heads of the shadows on the cobbles came together for a moment and the cousin clattered across the court and out into the empty streets. Her rapid footsteps died away. Yvonne’s shadow was still in the door:

  “Dan,” she said softly.

  Fuselli came out from behind the hogshead, his whole body flushing with delight. Yvonne pointed to his shoes. He took them off, and left them beside the door. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to eleven.

  “Viens,” she said.

  He followed her, his knees trembling a little from excitement, up the steep stairs.

  The deep broken strokes of the town clock had just begun to strike midnight when Fuselli hurried in the camp gate. He gave up his pass jauntily to the guard and strolled towards his barracks. The long shed was pitch black, full of a sound of deep breathing and of occasional snoring. There was a thick smell of uniform wool on which the sweat had dried. Fuselli undressed without haste, stretching his arms luxuriously. He wriggled into his blankets feeling cool and tired, and went to sleep with a smile of self-satisfaction on his lips.

  The companies were lined up for retreat, standing stiff as toy soldiers outside their barracks. The evening was almost warm. A little playful wind, oozing with springtime, played with the swollen buds on the plane trees. The sky was a drowsy violet color, and the bloo
d pumped hot and stinging through the stiffened arms and legs of the soldiers who stood at attention. The voices of the non-coms were particularly harsh and metallic this evening. It was rumoured that a general was about. Orders were shouted with fury.

  Standing behind the line of his company, Fuselli’s chest was stuck out until the buttons of his tunic were in danger of snapping off. His shoes were well-shined, and he wore a new pair of puttees, wound so tightly that his legs ached.

  At last the bugle sounded across the silent camp.

  “Parade rest!” shouted the lieutenant.

  Fuselli’s mind was full of the army regulations which he had been studying assiduously for the last week. He was thinking of an imaginary examination for the corporalship, which he would pass, of course.

  When the company was dismissed, he went up familiarly to the top sergeant:

  “Say, Sarge, doin’ anything this evenin’?”

  “What the hell can a man do when he’s broke?” said the top sergeant.

  “Well, you come down town with me. I want to introduce you to somebody.”

  “Great!”

  “Say, Sarge, have they sent that appointment in yet?”

  “No, they haven’t, Fuselli,” said the top sergeant. “It’s all made out,” he added encouragingly.

  They walked towards the town silently. The evening was silvery-violet. The few windows in the old grey-green houses that were lighted shone orange.

  “Well, I’m goin’ to get it, ain’t I?”

  A staff car shot by, splashing them with mud, leaving them a glimpse of officers leaning back in the deep cushions.

  “You sure are,” said the top sergeant in his good-natured voice. They had reached the square. They saluted stiffly as two officers brushed past them.

  “What’s the regulations about a feller marryin’ a French girl?” broke out Fuselli suddenly.

  “Thinking of getting hitched up, are you?”

  “Hell, no.” Fuselli was crimson. “I just sort o’ wanted to know.”

  “Permission of C. O., that’s all I know of.”

  They had stopped in front of the grocery shop. Fuselli peered in through the window. The shop was full of soldiers lounging against the counter and the walls. In the midst of them, demurely knitting, sat Yvonne.

  “Let’s go and have a drink an’ then come back,” said Fuselli.

  They went to the café where Marie of the white arms presided. Fuselli paid for two hot rum punches.

  “You see it’s this way, Sarge,” he said confidentially, “I wrote all my folks at home I’d been made corporal, an’ it’ld be a hell of a note to be let down now.”

  The top sergeant was drinking his hot drink in little sips. He smiled broadly and put his hand paternal-fashion on Fuselli’s knee.

  “Sure; you needn’t worry, kid. I’ve got you fixed up all right,” he said; then he added jovially, “Well, let’s go see that girl of yours.”

  They went out into the dark streets, where the wind, despite the smell of burnt gasoline and army camps, had a faint suavity, something like the smell of mushrooms; the smell of spring.

  Yvonne sat under the lamp in the shop, her feet up on a box of canned peas, yawning dismally. Behind her on the counter was the glass case full of yellow and greenish-white cheeses. Above that shelves rose to the ceiling in the brownish obscurity of the shop where gleamed faintly large jars and small jars, cans neatly placed in rows, glass jars and vegetables. In the corner, near the glass curtained door that led to the inner room, hung clusters of sausages large and small, red, yellow, and speckled. Yvonne jumped up when Fuselli and the sergeant opened the door.

  “You are good,” she said. “Je mourrais de cafard.” They laughed.

  “You know what that mean—cafard?”

  “Sure.”

  “It is only since the war. Avant la guerre on ne savais pas ce que c’etait le cafard. The war is no good.”

  “Funny, ain’t it?” said Fuselli to the top sergeant, “a feller can’t juss figure out what the war is like.”

  “Don’t you worry. We’ll all get there,” said the top sergeant knowingly.

  “This is the sargon, Yvonne,” said Fuselli.

  “Oui, oui, je sais,” said Yvonne, smiling at the top sergeant.

  They sat in the little room behind the shop and drank white wine, and talked as best they could to Yvonne, who, very trim in her black dress and blue apron, perched on the edge of her chair with her feet in tiny pumps pressed tightly together, and glanced now and then at the elaborate stripes on the top sergeant’s arm.

  Fuselli strode familiarly into the grocery shop, whistling, and threw open the door to the inner room. His whistling stopped in the middle of a bar.

  “Hello,” he said in an annoyed voice.

  “Hello, corporal,” said Eisenstein. Eisenstein, his French soldier friend, a lanky man with a scraggly black heard and burning black eyes, and Stockton, the chalky-faced boy, were sitting at the table that filled up the room, chatting intimately and gaily with Yvonne, who leaned against the yellow wall beside the Frenchman and showed all her little pearly teeth in a laugh. In the middle of the dark oak table was a pot of hyacinths and some glasses that had had wine in them. The odor of the hyacinths hung in the air with a faint warm smell from the kitchen.

  After a second’s hesitation, Fuselli sat down to wait until the others should leave. It was long after pay-day and his pockets were empty, so he had nowhere else to go.

  “How are they treatin’ you down in your outfit now?” asked Eisenstein of Stockton, after a silence.

  “Same as ever,” said Stockton in his thin voice, stuttering a little. … “Sometimes I wish I was dead.”

  “Hum,” said Eisenstein, a curious expression of understanding on his flabby face. “We’ll be civilians some day.”

  “I won’t” said Stockton.

  “Hell,” said Eisenstein. “You’ve got to keep your upper lip stiff. I thought I was goin’ to die in that troopship coming over here. An’ when I was little an’ came over with the emigrants from Poland, I thought I was goin’ to die. A man can stand more than he thinks for. … I never thought I could stand being in the army, bein’ a slave like an’ all that, an’ I’m still here. No, you’ll live long and be successful yet.” He put his hand on Stockton’s shoulder. The boy winced and drew his chair away.

  “What for you do that? I ain’t goin’ to hurt you,” said Eisenstein.

  Fuselli looked at them both with a disgusted interest.

  “I’ll tell you what you’d better do, kid,” he said condescendingly. “You get transferred to our company. It’s an A1 bunch, ain’t it, Eisenstein? We’ve got a good loot an’ a good top-kicker, an’ a damn good bunch o’ fellers.”

  “Our top-kicker was in here a few minutes ago,” said Eisenstein.

  “He was?” asked Fuselli. “Where’d he go?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  Yvonne and the French soldier were talking in low voices, laughing a little now and then. Fuselli leaned back in his chair looking at them, feeling out of things, wishing despondently that he knew enough French to understand what they were saying. He scraped his feet angrily back and forth on the floor. His eyes lit on the white hyacinths. They made him think of florists’ windows at home at Eastertime and the noise and bustle of San Francisco’s streets. “God, I hate this rotten hole,” he muttered to himself. He thought of Mabe. He made a noise with his lips. Hell, she was married by this time. Anyway Yvonne was the girl for him. If he could only have Yvonne to himself; far away somewhere, away from the other men and that damn frog and her old mother. He thought of himself going to the theatre with Yvonne. When he was a sergeant he would be able to afford that sort of thing. He counted up the months. It was March. Here he’d been in Europe five months and he was still only a corporal, and not that yet. He clenched his fists with impatience. But once he got to be a non-com it would go faster, he told himself reassuringly.

  He leaned over and sn
iffed loudly at the hyacinths.

  “They smell good,” he said. “Que disay vous, Yvonne?”

  Yvonne looked at him as if she had forgotten that he was in the room. Her eyes looked straight into his, and she burst out laughing. Her glance had made him feel warm all over, and he leaned back in his chair again, looking at her slender body so neatly cased in its black dress and at her little head with its tightly-done hair, with a comfortable feeling of possession.

  “Yvonne, come over here,” he said, beckoning with his head.

  She looked from him to the Frenchman provocatively. Then she came over and stood behind him.

  “Que voulez vous?”

  Fuselli glanced at Eisenstein. He and Stockton were deep in excited conversation with the Frenchman again. Fuselli heard that uncomfortable word that always made him angry, he did not know why, “Revolution.”

  “Yvonne,” he said so that only she could hear, “what you say you and me get married?”

  “Marriés … moi et toi?” asked Yvonne in a puzzled voice.

  “We we.”

  She looked him in the eyes a moment, and then threw back her head in a paroxysm of hysterical laughter.

  Fuselli flushed scarlet, got to his feet and strode out, slamming the door behind him so that the glass rang. He walked hurriedly back to camp, splashed with mud by the long lines of grey motor trucks that were throbbing their way slowly through the main street, each with a yellow eye that lit up faintly the tailboards of the truck ahead. The barracks were dark and nearly empty. He sat down at the sergeant’s desk and began moodily turning over the pages of the little blue book of Army Regulations.

  The moonlight glittered in the fountain at the end of the main square of the town. It was a warm dark night of faint clouds through which the moon shone palely as through a thin silk canopy. Fuselli stood by the fountain smoking a cigarette, looking at the yellow windows of the Cheval Blanc at the other end of the square, from which came a sound of voices and of billiard balls clinking. He stood quiet letting the acrid cigarette smoke drift out through his nose, his ears full of the silvery tinkle of the water in the fountain beside him. There were little drifts of warm and chilly air in the breeze that blew fitfully from the west. Fuselli was waiting. He took out his watch now and then and strained his eyes to see the time, but there was not light enough. At last the deep broken note of the bell in the church spire struck once. It must be half past ten.