Three Soldiers

  Fuselli was looking towards the other side of the room, where a faint murmur of righteous indignation was rising from the dark man with the unshaven jaw and his companions. Fuselli was thinking that it wasn’t good to be seen round too much with a fellow like Cohen, who talked about the Germans notifying hospitals before they bombarded them, and who was waiting for a court-martial. Might get him in wrong. He slipped out of the café into the dark. A dank wind blew down the irregular street, ruffling the reflected light in the puddles, making a shutter bang interminably somewhere. Fuselli went to the main square again, casting an envious glance in the window of the Cheval Blanc, where he saw officers playing billiards in a well-lighted room painted white and gold, and a blond girl in a raspberry-colored shirtwaist enthroned haughtily behind the bar. He remembered the M.P. and automatically hastened his steps. In a narrow street the other side of the square he stopped before the window of a small grocery shop and peered inside, keeping carefully out of the oblong of light that showed faintly the grass-grown cobbles and the green and grey walls opposite. A girl sat knitting beside the small counter with her two little black feet placed demurely side by side on the edge of a box full of red beets. She was very small and slender. The lamplight gleamed on her black hair, done close to her head. Her face was in the shadow. Several soldiers lounged awkwardly against the counter and the jambs of the door, following her movements with their eyes as dogs watch a plate of meat being moved about in a kitchen.

  After a little the girl rolled up her knitting and jumped to her feet, showing her face,—an oval white face with large dark lashes and an impertinent mouth. She stood looking at the soldiers who stood about her in a circle, then twisted up her mouth in a grimace and disappeared into the inner room.

  Fuselli walked to the end of the street where there was a bridge over a small stream. He leaned on the cold stone rail and looked into the water that was barely visible gurgling beneath between rims of ice.

  “O this is a hell of a life,” he muttered.

  He shivered in the cold wind but remained leaning over the water. In the distance trains rumbled interminably, giving him a sense of vast desolate distances. The village clock struck eight. The bell had a soft note like the bass string of a guitar. In the darkness Fuselli could almost see the girl’s face grimacing with its broad impertinent lips. He thought of the sombre barracks and men sitting about on the end of their cots. Hell, he couldn’t go back yet. His whole body was taut with desire for warmth and softness and quiet. He slouched back along the narrow street cursing in a dismal monotone. Before the grocery store he stopped. The men had gone. He went in jauntily pushing his cap a little to one side so that some of his thick curly hair came out over his forehead. The little bell in the door clanged.

  The girl came out of the inner room. She gave him her hand indifferently.

  “Comment ça va! Yvonne? Bon?”

  His pidgin-French made her show her little pearly teeth in a smile.

  “Good,” she said in English.

  They laughed childishly.

  “Say, will you be my girl, Yvonne?”

  She looked in his eyes and laughed.

  “Non compris,” she said.

  “We, we; voulez vous et’ ma fille?”

  She shrieked with laughter and slapped him hard on the cheek.

  “Venez,” she said, still laughing. He followed her. In the inner room was a large oak table with chairs round it. At the end Eisenstein and a French soldier were talking excitedly, so absorbed in what they were saying that they did not notice the other two. Yvonne took the Frenchman by the hair and pulled his head back and told him, still laughing, what Fuselli had said. He laughed.

  “No, you must not say that,” he said in English, turning to Fuselli.

  Fuselli was angry and sat down sullenly at the end of the table, keeping his eyes on Yvonne. She drew the knitting out of the pocket of her apron and holding it up comically between two fingers, glanced towards the dark corner of the room where an old woman with a lace cap on her head sat asleep, and then let herself fall into a chair.

  “Boom!” she said.

  Fuselli laughed until the tears filled his eyes. She laughed too. They sat a long while looking at each other and giggling, while Eisenstein and the Frenchman talked. Suddenly Fuselli caught a phrase that startled him.

  “What would you Americans do if revolution broke out in France?”

  “We’d do what we were ordered to,” said Eisenstein bitterly. “We’re a bunch of slaves.” Fuselli noticed that Eisenstein’s puffy sallow face was flushed and that there was a flash in his eyes he had never seen before.

  “How do you mean, revolution?” asked Fuselli in a puzzled voice.

  The Frenchman turned black eyes searchingly upon him.

  “I mean, stop the butchery,—overthrow the capitalist government.— The social revolution.”

  “But you’re a republic already, ain’t yer?”

  “As much as you are.”

  “You talk like a socialist,” said Fuselli. “They tell me they shoot guys in America for talkin’ like that.”

  “You see!” said Eisenstein to the Frenchman.

  “Are they all like that?”

  “Except a very few. It’s hopeless,” said Eisenstein, burying his face in his hands. “I often think of shooting myself.”

  “Better shoot someone else,” said the Frenchman. “It will be more useful.”

  Fuselli stirred uneasily in his chair.

  “Where’d you fellers get that stuff anyway?” he asked. In his mind he was saying: “A kike and a frog, that’s a good combination.”

  His eye caught Yvonne’s and they both laughed. Yvonne threw her knitting ball at him. It rolled down under the table and they both scrambled about under the chairs looking for it.

  “Twice I have thought it was going to happen,” said the Frenchman.

  “When was that?”

  “A little while ago a division started marching on Paris. … And when I was in Verdun. … O there will be a revolution. … France is the country of revolutions.”

  “We’ll always be here to shoot you down,” said Eisenstein.

  “Wait till you’ve been in the war a little while. A winter in the trenches will make any army ready for revolution.”

  “But we have no way of learning the truth. And in the tyranny of the army a man becomes a brute, a piece of machinery. Remember you are freer than we are. We are worse than the Russians!”

  “It is curious! … O but you must have some feeling of civilization. I have always heard that Americans were free and independent. Will they let themselves be driven to the slaughter always?”

  “O I don’t know.” Eisenstein got to his feet. “We’d better be getting to barracks. Coming, Fuselli?” he said.

  “Guess so,” said Fuselli indifferently, without getting up.

  Eisenstein and the Frenchman went out into the shop.

  “Bon swar,” said Fuselli, softly, leaning across the table. “Hey, girlie?”

  He threw himself on his belly on the wide table and put his arms round her neck and kissed her, feeling everything go blank in a flame of desire.

  She pushed him away calmly with strong little arms.

  “Stop!” she said, and jerked her head in the direction of the old woman in the chair in the dark corner of the room. They stood side by side listening to her faint wheezy snoring.

  He put his arms round her and kissed her long on the mouth.

  “Demain,” he said.

  She nodded her head.

  Fuselli walked fast up the dark street towards the camp. The blood pounded happily through his veins. He caught up with Eisenstein.

  “Say, Eisenstein,” he said in a comradely voice, “I don’t think you ought to go talking round like that. You’ll get yourself in too deep one of these days.”

  “I don’t care!”

  “But, hell, man, you don’t want to get in the wrong that bad. They shoot fellers for less than you sa
id.”

  “Let them.”

  “Christ, man, you don’t want to be a damn fool,” expostulated Fuselli.

  “How old are you, Fuselli?”

  “I’m twenty now.”

  “I’m thirty. I’ve lived more, kid. I know what’s good and what’s bad. This butchery makes me unhappy.”

  “God, I know. It’s a hell of a note. But who brought it on? If somebody had shot that Kaiser.”

  Eisenstein laughed bitterly. At the entrance of camp Fuselli lingered a moment watching the small form of Eisenstein disappear with its curious waddly walk into the darkness.

  “I’m going to be damn careful who I’m seen goin’ into barracks with,” he said to himself. “That damn kike may be a German spy or a secret-service officer.” A cold chill of terror went over him, shattering his mood of joyous self-satisfaction. His feet slopped in the puddles, breaking through the thin ice, as he walked up the road towards the barracks. He felt as if people were watching him from everywhere out of the darkness, as if some gigantic figure were driving him forward through the darkness, holding a fist over his head, ready to crush him.

  When he was rolled up in his blankets in the bunk next to Bill Grey, he whispered to his friend:

  “Say, Bill, I think I’ve got a skirt all fixed up in town.”

  “Who?”

  “Yvonne—don’t tell anybody.”

  Bill Grey whistled softly.

  “You’re some highflyer, Dan.”

  Fuselli chuckled.

  “Hell, man, the best ain’t good enough for me.”

  “Well, I’m going to leave you,” said Bill Grey.

  “When?”

  “Damn soon. I can’t go this life. I don’t see how you can.”

  Fuselli did not answer. He snuggled warmly into his blankets, thinking of Yvonne and the corporalship.

  In the light of the one flickering lamp that made an unsteady circle of reddish glow on the station platform Fuselli looked at his pass. From Reveille on February fourth to Reveille on February fifth he was a free man. His eyes smarted with sleep as he walked up and down the cold station platform. For twenty-four hours he wouldn’t have to obey anybody’s orders. Despite the loneliness of going away on a train in a night like this in a strange country Fuselli was happy. He clinked the money in his pocket.

  Down the track a red eye appeared and grew nearer. He could hear the hard puffing of the engine up the grade. Huge curves gleamed as the engine roared slowly past him. A man with bare arms black with coal dust was leaning out of the cab, lit up from behind by a yellowish red glare. Now the cars were going by, flat cars with guns, tilted up like the muzzles of hunting dogs, freight cars out of which here and there peered a man’s head. The train almost came to a stop. The cars clanged one against the other all down the train. Fuselli was looking into a pair of eyes that shone in the lamplight; a hand was held out to him.

  “So long, kid,” said a boyish voice. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but so long; good luck.”

  “So long,” stammered Fuselli. “Going to the front?”

  “Yer goddam right,” answered another voice.

  The train took up speed again; the clanging of car against car ceased and in a moment they were moving fast before Fuselli’s eyes. Then the station was dark and empty again, and he was watching the red light grow smaller and paler while the train rumbled on into the darkness.

  A confusion of gold and green and crimson silks and intricate designs of naked pink-fleshed cupids filled Fuselli’s mind, when, full of wonder, he walked down the steps of the palace out into the faint ruddy sunlight of the afternoon. A few names, Napoleon, Josephine, the Empire, that had never had significance in his mind before, flared with a lurid gorgeous light in his imagination like a tableau of living statues at a vaudeville theatre.

  “They must have had a heap of money, them guys,” said the man who was with him, a private in Aviation. “Let’s go have a drink.”

  Fuselli was silent and absorbed in his thoughts. Here was something that supplemented his visions of wealth and glory that he used to tell Al about, when they’d sit and watch the big liners come in, all glittering with lights, through the Golden Gate.

  “They didn’t mind having naked women about, did they?” said the private in Aviation, a morose foul-mouthed little man who had been in the woolen business.

  “D’ye blame them?”

  “No, I can’t say’s I do. … I bet they was immoral, them guys,” he continued vaguely.

  They wandered about the streets of Fontainebleau listlessly, looking into shop windows, staring at women, lolling on benches in the parks where the faint sunlight came through a lacework of twigs purple and crimson and yellow, that cast intricate lavender-grey shadows on the asphalt.

  “Let’s go have another drink,” said the private in Aviation.

  Fuselli looked at his watch; they had hours before train time.

  A girl in a loose dirty blouse wiped off the table.

  “Vin blank,” said the other man.

  “Mame shows,” said Fuselli.

  His head was full of gold and green mouldings and silk and crimson velvet and intricate designs in which naked pink-fleshed cupids writhed indecently. Some day, he was saying to himself, he’d make a hell of a lot of money and live in a house like that with Mabe; no, with Yvonne, or with some other girl.

  “Must have been immoral, them guys,” said the private in Aviation, leering at the girl in the dirty blouse.

  Fuselli remembered a revel he’d seen in a moving picture of “Quo Vadis,” people in bath robes dancing around with large cups in their hands and tables full of dishes being upset.

  “Cognac, beaucoup,” said the private in Aviation.

  “Mame shows,” said Fuselli.

  The café was full of gold and green silks, and great brocaded beds with heavy carvings above them, beds in which writhed, pink-fleshed and indecent, intricate patterns of cupids.

  Somebody said, “Hello, Fuselli.”

  He was on the train; his ears hummed and his head had an iron band round it. It was dark except for the little light that flickered in the ceiling. For a minute he thought it was a goldfish in a bowl, but it was a light that flickered in the ceiling.

  “Hello, Fuselli,” said Eisenstein. “Feel all right?”

  “Sure,” said Fuselli with a thick voice. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “How did you find that house?” said Eisenstein seriously.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” muttered Fuselli. “I’m goin’ to sleep.”

  His mind was a jumble. He remembered vast halls full of green and gold silks, and great beds with crowns over them where Napoleon and Josephine used to sleep. Who were they? O yes, the Empire,—or was it the Abdication? Then there were patterns of flowers and fruits and cupids, all gilded, and a dark passage and stairs that smelt musty, where he and the man in Aviation fell down. He remembered how it felt to rub his nose hard on the gritty red plush carpet of the stairs. Then there were women in open-work skirts standing about, or were those the pictures on the walls? And there was a bed with mirrors round it. He opened his eyes. Eisenstein was talking to him. He must have been talking to him for some time.

  “I look at it this way,” he was saying. “A feller needs a little of that to keep healthy. Now, if he’s abstemious and careful …”

  Fuselli went to sleep. He woke up again thinking suddenly: he must borrow that little blue book of army regulations. It would be useful to know that in case something came up. The corporal who had been in the Red Sox outfield had been transferred to a Base Hospital. It was t. b. so Sergeant Osler said. Anyway they were going to appoint an acting corporal. He stared at the flickering little light in the ceiling.

  “How did you get a pass?” Eisenstein was asking.

  “Oh, the sergeant fixed me up with one,” answered Fuselli mysteriously.

  “You’re in pretty good with the sergeant, ain’t yer?” said Eisenstein.

  Fuselli smiled de
precatingly.

  “Say, d’ye know that little kid Stockton?”

  “The white-faced little kid who’s clerk in that outfit that has the other end of the barracks?”

  “That’s him,” said Eisenstein. “I wish I could do something to help that kid. He just can’t stand the discipline. … You ought to see him wince when the red-haired sergeant over there yells at him. … The kid looks sicker every day.”

  “Well, he’s got a good soft job: clerk,” said Fuselli.

  “Ye think it’s soft? I worked twelve hours day before yesterday getting out reports,” said Eisenstein, indignantly. “But the kid’s lost it and they keep ridin’ him for some reason or other. It hurts a feller to see that. He ought to be at home at school.”

  “He’s got to take his medicine,” said Fuselli.

  “You wait till we get butchered in the trenches. We’ll see how you like your medicine,” said Eisenstein.

  “Damn fool,” muttered Fuselli, composing himself to sleep again.

  The bugle wrenched Fuselli out of his blankets, half dead with sleep.

  “Say, Bill, I got a head again,” he muttered.

  There was no answer. It was only then that he noticed that the cot next to his was empty. The blankets were folded neatly at the foot. Sudden panic seized him. He couldn’t get along without Bill Grey, he said to himself, he wouldn’t have anyone to go round with. He looked fixedly at the empty cot.

  “Attention!”

  The company was lined up in the dark with their feet in the mud puddles of the road. The lieutenant strode up and down in front of them with the tail of his trench coat sticking out behind. He had a pocket flashlight that he kept flashing at the gaunt trunks of trees, in the faces of the company, at his feet, in the puddles of the road.