Three Soldiers

  “Do you think it is so important?” said Geneviève, leaning towards him to make herself heard above the clatter of the train.

  “Perhaps it isn’t. I don’t know.”

  “I think it always comes sooner or later, if you feel intensely enough.”

  “But it is so frightful to feel all you want to express getting away beyond you. An idea comes into your head, and you feel it grow stronger and stronger and you can’t grasp it; you have no means to express it. It’s like standing on a street corner and seeing a gorgeous procession go by without being able to join it, or like opening a bottle of beer and having it foam all over you without having a glass to pour it into.”

  Geneviève burst out laughing.

  “But you can drink from the bottle, can’t you?” she said, her eyes sparkling.

  “I’m trying to,” said Andrews.

  “Here we are. There’s the cathedral. No, it’s hidden,” cried Geneviève.

  They got to their feet. As they left the station, Andrews said:

  “But after all, it’s only freedom that matters. When I’m out of the army! … ”

  “Yes, I suppose you are right … for you that is. The artist should be free from any sort of entanglement.”

  “I don’t see what difference there is between an artist and any other sort of workman,” said Andrews savagely.

  “No, but look.”

  From the square where they stood, above the green blur of a little park, they could see the cathedral, creamy yellow and rust color, with the sober tower and the gaudy tower, and the great rose window between, the whole pile standing nonchalantly, knee deep in the packed roofs of the town.

  They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at it without speaking.

  In the afternoon they walked down the hill towards the river, that flowed through a quarter of tottering, peak-gabled houses and mills, from which came a sound of grinding wheels. Above them, towering over gardens full of pear trees in bloom, the apse of the cathedral bulged against the pale sky. On a narrow and very ancient bridge they stopped and looked at the water, full of a shimmer of blue and green and grey from the sky and from the vivid new leaves of the willow trees along the bank.

  Their senses glutted with the beauty of the day and the intricate magnificence of the cathedral, languid with all they had seen and said, they were talking of the future with quiet voices.

  “It’s all in forming a habit of work,” Andrews was saying. “You have to be a slave to get anything done. It’s all a question of choosing your master, don’t you think so?”

  “Yes. I suppose all the men who have left their imprint on people’s lives have been slaves in a sense,” said Geneviève slowly. “Everyone has to give up a great deal of life to live anything deeply. But it’s worth it.” She looked Andrews full in the eyes.

  “Yes, I think it’s worth it,” said Andrews. “But you must help me. Now I am like a man who has come up out of a dark cellar. I’m almost too dazzled by the gorgeousness of everything. But at least I am out of the cellar.”

  “Look, a fish jumped,” cried Geneviève.

  “I wonder if we could hire a boat anywhere. … Don’t you think it’ld be fun to go out in a boat?”

  A voice broke in on Geneviève’s answer:

  “Let’s see your pass, will you?”

  Andrews turned round. A soldier with a round brown face and red cheeks stood beside him on the bridge. Andrews looked at him fixedly. A little zigzag scar above his left eye showed white on his heavily tanned skin.

  “Let’s see your pass,” the man said again; he had a high pitched, squeaky voice.

  Andrews felt the blood thumping in his ears.

  “Are you an M.P.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well I’m in the Sorbonne Detachment.”

  “What the hell’s that?” said the M.P., laughing thinly.

  “What does he say?” asked Geneviève, smiling.

  “Nothing. I’ll have to go see the officer and explain,” said Andrews in a breathless voice. “You go back to your Aunt’s and I’ll come as soon as I’ve arranged it.”

  “No, I’ll come with you.”

  “Please go back. It may be serious. I’ll come as soon as I can,” said Andrews harshly.

  She walked up the hill with swift decisive steps, without turning round.

  “Tough luck, buddy,” said the M.P. “She’s a good-looker. I’d like to have a half-hour with her myself.”

  “Look here. I’m in the Sorbonne School Detachment in Paris, and I came down here without a pass. Is there anything I can do about it?”

  “They’ll fix you up, don’t worry,” cried the M.P. shrilly. “You ain’t a member of the General Staff in disguise, are ye? School Detachment! Gee, won’t Bill Huggis laugh when he hears that? You pulled the best one yet, buddy. … But come along,” he added in a confidential tone. “If you come quiet I won’t put the handcuffs on ye.”

  “How do I know you’re an M.P.?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  They turned down a narrow street between grey stucco walls leprous with moss and water stains.

  At a chair inside the window of a small wine shop a man with a red M.P. badge sat smoking. He got up when he saw them pass and opened the door with one hand on his pistol holster.

  “I got one bird, Bill,” said the man, shoving Andrews roughly in the door.

  “Good for you, Handsome; is he quiet?”

  “Um.” Handsome grunted.

  “Sit down there. If you move you’ll git a bullet in your guts.” The M.P. stuck out a square jaw; he had a sallow skin, puffy under the eyes that were grey and lustreless.

  “He says he’s in some goddam School Detachment. First time that’s been pulled, ain’t it?”

  “School Detachment. D’you mean an O.T.C?” Bill sank laughing into his chair by the window, spreading his legs out over the floor.

  “Ain’t that rich?” said Handsome, laughing shrilly again.

  “Got any papers on ye? Ye must have some sort of papers.”

  Andrews searched his pockets. He flushed.

  “I ought to have a school pass.”

  “You sure ought. Gee, this guy’s simple,” said Bill, leaning far back in the chair and blowing smoke through his nose.

  “Look at his dawg-tag, Handsome.”

  The man strode over to Andrews and jerked open the top of his tunic. Andrews pulled his body away.

  “I haven’t got any on. I forgot to put any on this morning.”

  “No tag, no insignia.”

  “Yes, I have, infantry.”

  “No papers. … I bet he’s been out a hell of a time,” said Handsome meditatively.

  “Better put the cuffs on him,” said Bill in the middle of a yawn.

  “Let’s wait a while. When’s the loot coming?”

  “Not till night.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes. Ain’t no train.”

  “How about a side car?”

  “No, I know he ain’t comin’,” snarled Bill.

  “What d’you say we have a little liquor, Bill? Bet this bloke’s got money. You’ll set us up to a glass o’ cognac, won’t you, School Detachment?”

  Andrews sat very stiff in his chair, staring at them.

  “Yes,” he said, “order up what you like.”

  “Keep an eye on him, Handsome. You never can tell what this quiet kind’s likely to pull off on you.”

  Bill Huggis strode out of the room with heavy steps. In a moment he came back swinging a bottle of cognac in his hand.

  “Tole the Madame you’d pay, Skinny,” said the man as he passed Andrews’s chair. Andrews nodded.

  The two M.P.’s drew up to the table beside which Andrews sat. Andrews could not keep his eyes off them. Bill Huggis hummed as he pulled the cork out of the bottle.

  “It’s the smile that makes you happy,

  It’s the smile that makes you sad.”

  Handsome watched him, grinning.
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  Suddenly they both burst out laughing.

  “An’ the damn fool thinks he’s in a school battalion,” said Handsome in his shrill voice.

  “It’ll be another kind of a battalion you’ll be in, Skinny,” cried Bill Huggis. He stifled his laughter with a long drink from the bottle.

  He smacked his lips.

  “Not so goddam bad,” he said. Then he started humming again:

  “It’s the smile that makes you happy,

  It’s the smile that makes you sad.”

  “Have some, Skinny?” said Handsome, pushing the bottle towards Andrews.

  “No, thanks,” said Andrews.

  “Ye won’t be gettin’ good cognac where yer goin’, Skinny, not by a damn sight,” growled Bill Huggis in the middle of a laugh.

  “All right, I’ll take a swig.” An idea had suddenly come into Andrews’s head.

  “Gee, the bastard kin drink cognac,” cried Handsome.

  “Got enough money to buy us another bottle?”

  Andrews nodded. He wiped his mouth absently with his handkerchief; he had drunk the raw cognac without tasting it.

  “Get another bottle, Handsome,” said Bill Huggis carelessly. A purplish flush had appeared in the lower part of his cheeks. When the other man came back, he burst out laughing.

  “The last cognac this Skinny guy from the school detachment’ll git for many a day. Better drink up strong, Skinny. … They don’t have that stuff down on the farm. … School Detachment; I’ll be goddamned!” He leaned back in his chair, shaking with laughter.

  Handsome’s face was crimson. Only the zigzag scar over his eye remained white. He was swearing in a low voice as he worked the cork out of the bottle.

  Andrews could not keep his eyes off the men’s faces. They went from one to the other, in spite of him. Now and then, for an instant, he caught a glimpse of the yellow and brown squares of the wall paper and the bar with a few empty bottles behind it.

  He tried to count the bottles; “one, two, three … ” but he was staring in the lustreless grey eyes of Bill Huggis, who lay back in his chair, blowing smoke out of his nose, now and then reaching for the cognac bottle, all the while humming faintly, under his breath:

  “It’s the smile that makes you happy,

  It’s the smile that makes you sad.”

  Handsome sat with his elbows on the table, and his chin in his beefy hands. His face was flushed crimson, but the skin was softly moulded, like a woman’s.

  The light in the room was beginning to grow grey.

  Handsome and Bill Huggis stood up. A young officer, with clearly-marked features and a campaign hat worn a little on one side, came in, stood with his feet wide apart in the middle of the floor.

  Andrews went up to him.

  “I’m in the Sorbonne Detachment, Lieutenant, stationed in Paris.”

  “Don’t you know enough to salute?” said the officer, looking him up and down. “One of you men teach him to salute,” he said slowly.

  Handsome made a step towards Andrews and hit him with his fist between the eyes. There was a flash of light and the room swung round, and there was a splitting crash as his head struck the floor. He got to his feet. The fist hit him in the same place, blinding him, the three figures and the bright oblong of the window swung round. A chair crashed down with him, and a hard rap in the back of his skull brought momentary blackness.

  “That’s enough, let him be,” he heard a voice far away at the end of a black tunnel.

  A great weight seemed to be holding him down as he struggled to get up, blinded by tears and blood. Rending pains darted like arrows through his head. There were handcuffs on his wrists.

  “Git up,” snarled a voice.

  He got to his feet, faint light came through the streaming tears in his eyes. His forehead flamed as if hot coals were being pressed against it.

  “Prisoner, attention!” shouted the officer’s voice. “March!”

  Automatically, Andrews lifted one foot and then the other. He felt in his face the cool air of the street. On either side of him were the hard steps of the M.P.’s. Within him a nightmare voice was shrieking, shrieking.

  PART SIX

  UNDER THE WHEELS

  I

  The uncovered garbage cans clattered as they were thrown one by one into the truck. Dust, and a smell of putrid things, hung in the air about the men as they worked. A guard stood by with his legs wide apart, and his rifle-butt on the pavement between them. The early mist hung low, hiding the upper windows of the hospital. From the door beside which the garbage cans were ranged came a thick odor of carbolic. The last garbage can rattled into place on the truck, the four prisoners and the guard clambered on, finding room as best they could among the cans, from which dripped bloody bandages, ashes, and bits of decaying food, and the truck rumbled off towards the incinerator, through the streets of Paris that sparkled with the gaiety of early morning.

  The prisoners wore no tunics; their shirts and breeches had dark stains of grease and dirt; on their hands were torn canvas gloves. The guard was a sheepish, pink-faced youth, who kept grinning apologetically, and had trouble keeping his balance when the truck went round corners.

  “How many days do they keep a guy on this job, Happy?” asked a boy with mild blue eyes and a creamy complexion, and reddish curly hair.

  “Damned if I know, kid; as long as they please, I guess,” said the bull-necked man next him, who had a lined prize fighter’s face, with a heavy protruding jaw. Then, after looking at the boy for a minute, with his face twisted into an astonished sort of grin, he went on: “Say, kid, how in hell did you git here? Robbin’ the cradle, Oi call it, to send you here, kid.”

  “I stole a Ford,” the boy answered cheerfully.

  “Like hell you did!”

  “Sold it for five hundred francs.”

  Happy laughed, and caught hold of an ash can to keep from being thrown out of the jolting truck.

  “Kin ye beat that, guard?” he cried. “Ain’t that somethin’?”

  The guard sniggered.

  “Didn’t send me to Leavenworth ’cause I was so young,” went on the kid placidly.

  “How old are you, kid?” asked Andrews, who was leaning against the driver’s seat.

  “Seventeen,” said the boy, blushing and casting his eyes down.

  “He must have lied like hell to git in this goddam army,” boomed the deep voice of the truck driver, who had leaned over to spit a long squirt of tobacco juice.

  The truck driver jammed the brakes on. The garbage cans banged against each other.

  The Kid cried out in pain: “Hold your horses, can’t you? You nearly broke my leg.”

  The truck driver was swearing in a long string of words.

  “Goddam these dreamin’, skygazin’ sons of French bastards. Why don’t they get out of your way? Git out an’ crank her up, Happy.”

  “Guess a feller’d be lucky if he’d break his leg or somethin’; don’t you think so, Skinny?” said the fourth prisoner in a low voice.

  “It’ll take mor’n a broken leg to git you out o’ this labor battalion, Hoggenback. Won’t it, guard?” said Happy, as he climbed on again.

  The truck jolted away, trailing a haze of cinder dust and a sour stench of garbage behind it. Andrews noticed all at once that they were going down the quais along the river. Notre Dame was rosy in the misty sunlight, the color of lilacs in full bloom. He looked at it fixedly a moment, and then looked away. He felt very far from it, like a man looking at the stars from the bottom of a pit.

  “My mate, he’s gone to Leavenworth for five years,” said the Kid when they had been silent some time listening to the rattle of the garbage cans as the trucks jolted over the cobbles.

  “Helped yer steal the Ford, did he?” asked Happy.

  “Ford nothin’! He sold an ammunition train. He was a railroad man. He was a mason, that’s why he only got five years.”

  “I guess five years in Leavenworth’s enough for anybody
,” muttered Hoggenback, scowling. He was a square-shouldered dark man, who always hung his head when he worked.

  “We didn’t meet up till we got to Paris; we was on a hell of a party together at the Olympia. That’s where they picked us up. Took us to the Bastille. Ever been in the Bastille?”

  “I have,” said Hoggenback.

  “Ain’t no joke, is it?”

  “Christ!” said Hoggenback. His face flushed a furious red. He turned away and looked at the civilians walking briskly along the early morning streets, at the waiters in shirt sleeves swabbing off the café tables, at the women pushing handcarts full of bright-colored vegetables over the cobblestones.

  “I guess they ain’t nobody gone through what we guys go through with,” said Happy. “It’ld be better if the ole war was still a’ goin’, to my way o’ thinkin’. They’d chuck us into the trenches then. Ain’t so low as this.”

  “Look lively,” shouted the truck driver, as the truck stopped in a dirty yard full of cinder piles. “Ain’t got all day. Five more loads to get yet.”

  The guard stood by with angry face and stiff limbs; for he feared there were officers about, and the prisoners started unloading the garbage cans; their nostrils were full of the stench of putrescence; between their lips was a gritty taste of cinders.

  The air in the dark mess shack was thick with steam from the kitchen at one end. The men filed past the counter, holding out their mess kits, into which the K.P.’s splashed the food. Occasionally someone stopped to ask for a larger helping in an ingratiating voice. They ate packed together at long tables of roughly planed boards, stained from the constant spilling of grease and coffee and still wet from a perfunctory scrubbing. Andrews sat at the end of a bench, near the door through which came the glimmer of twilight, eating slowly, surprised at the relish with which he ate the greasy food, and at the exhausted contentment that had come over him almost in spite of himself. Hoggenback sat opposite him.