Under Fire: The Story of a Squad. Henri Barbusse

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a note-book upon a jutting crag in the trench wall. Apparently in the grip of an inspiration, he writes on and on, with his eyes in bondage and the concentrated expression of a horseman at full gallop.

      When once Lamuse—who lacks imagination—has sat down, placed his little writing-block on the padded summit of his knees, and moistened his copying-ink pencil, he passes the time in reading again the last letters received, in wondering what he can say that he has not already said, and in fostering a grim determination to say something else.

      A sentimental gentleness seems to have overspread little Eudore, who is curled up in a sort of niche in the ground. He is lost in meditation, pencil in hand, eyes on paper. Dreaming, he looks and stares and sees. It is another sky that lends him light, another to which his vision reaches. He has gone home.

      In this time of letter-writing, the men reveal the most and the best that they ever were. Several others surrender to the past, and its first expression is to talk once more of fleshly comforts.

      Through their outer crust of coarseness and concealment, other hearts venture upon murmured memories, and the rekindling of bygone brightness: the summer morning, when the green freshness of the garden steals in upon the purity of the country bedroom; or when the wind in the wheat of the level lands sets it slowly stirring or deeply waving, and shakes the square of oats hard by into quick little feminine tremors; or the winter evening, with women and their gentleness around the shaded luster of the lamp.

      But Papa Blaire resumes work upon the ring he has begun. He has threaded the still formless disc of aluminium over a bit of rounded wood, and rubs it with the file. As he applies himself to the job, two wrinkles of mighty meditation deepen upon his forehead. Anon he stops, straightens himself, and looks tenderly at the trifle, as though she also were looking at it.

      "You know," he said to me once, speaking of another ring, "it's not a question of doing it well or not well. The point is that I've done it for my wife, d'you see? When I had nothing to do but scratch myself, I used to have a look at this photo"—he showed me a photograph of a big, chubby-faced woman—"and then it was quite easy to set about this damned ring. You might say that we've made it together, see? The proof of that is that it was company for me, and that I said Adieu to it when I sent it off to Mother Blaire."

      He is making another just now, and this one will have copper in it, too. He works eagerly. His heart would fain express itself to the best advantage in this the sort of penmanship upon which he is so tenaciously bent.

      As they stoop reverently, in their naked earth-holes, over the slender rudimentary trinkets—so tiny that the great hide-bound hands hold them with difficulty or let them fall—these men seem still more wild, more primitive, and more human, than at all other times.

      You are set thinking of the first inventor, the father of all craftsmen, who sought to invest enduring materials with the shapes of what he saw and the spirit of what he felt.

      "People coming along," announces Biquet the mobile, who acts as hall-porter to our section of the trench—"buckets of 'em." Immediately an adjutant appears, with straps round his belly and his chin, and brandishing his sword-scabbard.

      "Out of the way, you! Out of the way, I tell you! You loafers there, out of it! Let me see you quit, hey!" We make way indolently. Those at the sides push back into the earth by slow degrees.

      It is a company of Territorials, deputed to our sector for the fortification of the second line and the upkeep of its communication trenches. They come into view—miserable bundles of implements, and dragging their feet.

      We watch them, one by one, as they come up, pass, and disappear. They are stunted and elderly, with dusty faces, or big and broken-winded, tightly enfolded in greatcoats stained and over-worn, that yawn at the toothless gaps where the buttons are missing.

      Tirette and Barque, the twin wags, leaning close together against the wall, stare at them, at first in silence. Then they begin to smile.

      "March past of the Broom Brigade," says Tirette.

      "We'll have a bit of fun for three minutes," announces Barque.

      Some of the old toilers are comical. This one whom the file brings up has bottle-shaped shoulders. Although extremely narrow-chested and spindle-shanked, he is big-bellied. He is too much for Barque. "Hullo, Sir Canteen!" he says.

      When a more outrageously patched-up greatcoat appears than all the others can show, Tirette questions the veteran recruit. "Hey, Father Samples! Hey, you there!" he insists.

      The other turns and looks at him, open-mouthed.

      "Say there, papa, if you will be so kind as to give me the address of your tailor in London!"

      A chuckle comes from the antiquated and wrinkle-scrawled face, and then the poilu, checked for an instant by Barque's command, is jostled by the following flood and swept away.

      When some less striking figures have gone past, a new victim is provided for the jokers. On his red and wrinkled neck luxuriates some dirty sheep's-wool. With knees bent, his body forward, his back bowed, this Territorial's carriage is the worst.

      "Tiens!" bawls Tirette, with pointed finger, "the famous concertina-man! It would cost you something to see him at the fair—here, he's free gratis!"

      The victim stammers responsive insults amid the scattered laughter that arises.

      No more than that laughter is required to excite the two comrades. It is the ambition to have their jests voted funny by their easy audience that stimulates them to mock the peculiarities of their old comrades-in-arms, of those who toil night and day on the brink of the great war to make ready and make good the fields of battle.

      And even the other watchers join in. Miserable themselves, they scoff at the still more miserable.

      "Look at that one! And that, look!"

      "Non, but take me a snapshot of that little rump-end! Hey, earth-worm!"

      "And that one that has no ending! Talk about a sky-scratcher! Tiens, la, he takes the biscuit. Yes, you take it, old chap!"

      This man goes with little steps, and holds his pickax up in front like a candle; his face is withered, and his body borne down by the blows of lumbago.

      "Like a penny, gran'pa?" Barque asks him, as he passes within reach of a tap on the shoulder.

      The broken-down poilu replies with a great oath of annoyance, and provokes the harsh rejoinder of Barque: "Come now, you might be polite, filthy-face, old muck-mill!"

      Turning right round in fury, the old one defies his tormentor.

      "Hullo!" cries Barque, laughing, "He's showing fight; the ruin! He's warlike, look you, and he might be mischievous if only he were sixty years younger!"

      "And if he wasn't alone," wantonly adds Pepin, whose eye is in quest of other targets among the flow of new arrivals.

      The hollow chest of the last straggler appears, and then his distorted back disappears.

      The march past of the worn-out and trench-foul veterans comes to an end among the ironical and almost malevolent faces of these sinister troglodytes, whom their caverns of mud but half reveal.

      Meanwhile, the hours slip away, and evening begins to veil the sky and darken the things of earth. It comes to blend itself at once with the blind fate and the ignorant dark minds of the multitude there enshrouded.

      Through СКАЧАТЬ