Under Fire. Henri Barbusse

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ in his turn by this alien and unusual visitation, grunts, giggles, and reddens, and the gentleman says, "He, he!" Then, with a slight motion of the head, he withdraws backwards.

      The assemblage, with its neutral shades of civilian cloth and its sprinkling of bright military hues—like geraniums and hortensias in the dark soil of a flowerbed—oscillates, then passes, and moves off the opposite way it came. One of the officers was heard to say, "We have yet much to see, messieurs les journalistes."

      When the radiant spectacle has faded away, we look at each other. Those who had fled into the funk-holes now gradually and head first disinter themselves. The group recovers itself and shrugs its shoulders.

      "They're journalists," says Tirette.

      "Journalists?"

      "Why, yes, the individuals that lay the newspapers. You don't seem to catch on, fathead. Newspapers must have chaps to write 'em."

      "Then it's those that stuff up our craniums?" says Marthereau.

      Barque assumes a shrill treble, and pretending that he has a newspaper in front of his nose, recites—"'The Crown Prince is mad, after having been killed at the beginning of the campaign, and meanwhile he has all the diseases you can name. William will die this evening, and again to-morrow. The Germans have no more munitions and are chewing wood. They cannot hold out, according to the most authoritative calculations, beyond the end of the week. We can have them when we like, with their rifles slung. If one can wait a few days longer, there will be no desire to forsake the life of the trenches. One is so comfortable there, with water and gas laid on, and shower-baths at every step. The only drawback is that it is rather too hot in winter. As for the Austrians, they gave in a long time since and are only pretending.' For fifteen months now it's been like that, and you can hear the editor saying to his scribes, 'Now, boys, get into it! Find some way of brushing that up again for me in five secs, and make it spin out all over those four damned white sheets that we've got to mucky.'"

      "Ah, yes!" says Fouillade.

      "Look here, corporal; you're making fun of it—isn't it true what I said?"

      "There's a little truth in it, but you're too slashing on the poor boys, and you'd be the first to make a song about it if you had to go without papers. Oui, when the paper-man's going by, why do you all shout, 'Here, here'?"

      "And what good can you get out of them all?" cries Papa Blaire. "Read 'em by the tubful if you like, but do the same as me—don't believe 'em!"

      "Oui, oui, that's enough about them. Turn the page over, donkey-nose."

      The conversation is breaking up; interest in it follows suit and is scattered. Four poilus join in a game of manille, that will last until night blacks out the cards. Volpatte is trying to catch a leaf of cigarette paper that has escaped his fingers and goes hopping and dodging in the wind along the wall of the trench like a fragile butterfly.

      Cocon and Tirette are recalling their memories of barrack-life. The impressions left upon their minds by those years of military training are ineffaceable. Into that fund of abundant souvenirs, of abiding color and instant service, they have been wont to dip for their subjects of conversation for ten, fifteen, or twenty years. So that they still frequent it, even after a year and a half of actual war in all its forms.

      I can hear some of the talk and guess the rest of it. For it is everlastingly the same sort of tale that they get out of their military past;—the narrator once shut up a bad-tempered N.C.O. with words of extreme appropriateness and daring. He wasn't afraid, he spoke out loud and strong! Some scraps of it reach my ears—

      "Alors, d'you think I flinched when Nenoeil said that to me? Not a bit, my boy. All the pals kept their jaws shut but me; I spoke up, 'Mon adjudant,' I says, 'it's possible, but—'" A sentence follows that I cannot secure—"Oh, tu sais, just like that, I said it. He didn't get shirty; 'Good, that's good,' he says as he hops it, and afterwards he was as good as all that, with me."

      "Just like me, with Dodore, 'jutant of the 13th, when I was on leave—a mongrel. Now he's at the Pantheon, as caretaker. He'd got it in for me, so—"

      So each unpacks his own little load of historical anecdote. They are all alike, and not one of them but says, "As for me, I am not like the others."

      The post-orderly! He is a tall and broad man with fat calves; comfortable looking, and as neat and tidy as a policeman. He is in a bad temper. There are new orders, and now he has to go every day as far as Battalion Headquarters. He abuses the order as if it had been directed exclusively against himself; and he continues to complain even while he calls up the corporals for the post and maintains his customary chat en passant with this man and that. And in spite of his spleen he does not keep to himself all the information with which he comes provided. While removing the string from the letter-packets he dispenses his verbal news, and announces first, that according to rumor, there is a very explicit ban on the wearing of hoods.

      "Hear that?" says Tirette to Tirloir. "Got to chuck your fine hood away!"

      "Not likely! I'm not on. That's nothing to do with me," replies the hooded one, whose pride no less than his comfort is at stake.

      "Order of the General Commanding the Army."

      "Then let the General give an order that it's not to rain any more. I want to know nothing about it."

      The majority of Orders, even when less peculiar than this one, are always received in this way—and then carried out.

      "There's a reported order as well," says the man of letters, "that beards have got to be trimmed and hair got to be clipped close."

      "Talk on, my lad," says Barque, on whose head the threatened order directly falls; "you didn't see me! You can draw the curtains!"

      "I'm telling you. Do it or don't do it—doesn't matter a damn to me."

      Besides what is real and written, there is bigger news, but still more dubious and imaginative—the division is going to be relieved, and sent either to rest—real rest, for six weeks—or to Morocco, or perhaps to Egypt.

      Divers exclamations. They listen, and let themselves be tempted by the fascination of the new, the wonderful.

      But some one questions the post-orderly: "Who told you that?"

      "The adjutant commanding the Territorial detachment that fatigues for the H.Q. of the A.C."

      "For the what?"

      "For Headquarters of the Army Corps, and he's not the only one that says it. There's—you know him—I've forgotten his name—he's like Galle, but he isn't Galle—there's some one in his family who is Some One. Anyway, he knows all about it."

      "Then what?" With hungry eyes they form a circle around the story-teller.

      "Egypt, you say, we shall go to? Don't know it. I know there were Pharaohs there at the time when I was a kid and went to school, but since—"

      "To Egypt!" The idea finds unconscious anchorage in their minds.

      "Ah, non," says Blaire, "for I get sea-sick. Still, it doesn't last, sea-sickness. Oui, but what would my good lady say?"

      "What about it? She'll get used to it. You see niggers, and streets full of big birds, like we see sparrows СКАЧАТЬ