Three Soldiers (39 page)

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:

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.

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.

“Funny,” he said to Hoggenback, “it’s not really as bad as I thought it would be.”

“What d’you mean, this labor battalion? Hell, a feller can put up with anything; that’s one thing you learn in the army.”

“I guess people would rather put up with things than make an effort to change them.”

“You’re goddam right. Got a butt?”

Andrews handed him a cigarette. They got to their feet and walked out into the twilight, holding their mess kits in front of them. As they were washing their mess kits in a tub of greasy water, where bits of food floated in a thick scum, Hoggenback suddenly said in a low voice:

“But it all piles up, Buddy; some day there’ll be an accountin’. D’you believe in religion?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. I come of folks as done their own accountin’. My father an’ my gran’father before him. A feller can’t eat his bile day after day, day after day.”

“I’m afraid he can, Hoggenback,” broke in Andrews. They walked towards the barracks.

“Goddam it, no,” cried Hoggenback aloud. “There comes a point where you can’t eat yer bile any more, where it don’t do no good to cuss. Then you runs amuck.”

Hanging his head he went slowly into the barracks.

Andrews leaned against the outside of the building, staring up at the sky. He was trying desperately to think, to pull together a few threads of his life in this moment of respite from the nightmare. In five minutes the bugle would din in his ears, and he would be driven into the barracks. A tune came to his head that he played with eagerly for a moment, and then, as memory came to him, tried to efface with a shudder of disgust.

It was almost dark. Two men walked slowly by in front of him.

“Sarge, may I speak to you?” came a voice in a whisper.

The sergeant grunted.

“I think there’s two guys trying to break loose out of here.”

“Who? If you’re wrong it’ll be the worse for you, remember that.”

“Surley an’ Watson. I heard ’em talkin’ about it behind the latrine.”

“Damn fools.”

“They was sayin’ they’d rather be dead than keep up this life.”

“They did, did they?”

“Don’t talk so loud, Sarge. It wouldn’t do for any of the fellers to know I was talkin’ to yer. Say, Sarge … ” the voice became whining, “don’t you think I’ve nearly served my time down here?”

“What do I know about that? ’Tain’t my job.”

“But, Sarge, I used to be company clerk with my old outfit. Don’t ye need a guy round the office?”

Andrews strode past them into the barracks. Dull fury possessed him. He took off his clothes and got silently into his blankets.

Hoggenback and Happy were talking beside his bunk.

“Never you mind,” said Hoggenback, “somebody’ll get that guy sooner or later.”

“Git him, nauthin’! The fellers in that camp was so damn skeered they jumped if you snapped yer fingers at ’em. It’s the discipline. I’m tellin’ yer, it gits a feller in the end,” said Happy.

Andrews lay without speaking, listening to their talk, aching in every muscle from the crushing work of the day.

“They court-martialled that guy, a feller told me,” went on Hoggen-back. “An’ what d’ye think they did to him? Retired on half pay. He was a major.”

“Gawd, if Oi iver git out o’ this army, Oi’ll be so goddam glad,” began Happy. Hoggenback interrupted:

“That you’ll forgit all about the raw deal they gave you, an’ tell everybody how fine ye liked it.”

Andrews felt the mocking notes of the bugle outside stabbing his ears. A non-com’s voice roared: “Quiet,” from the end of the building, and the lights went out. Already Andrews could hear the deep breathing of men asleep. He lay awake, staring into the darkness, his body throbbing with the monotonous rhythms of the work of the day. He seemed still to hear the sickening whine in the man’s voice as he talked to the sergeant outside in the twilight. “And shall I be reduced to that?” he was asking himself.

Andrews was leaving the latrine when he heard a voice call softly, “Skinny.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Come here, I want to talk to you.” It was the Kid’s voice. There was no light in the ill-smelling shack that served for a latrine. Outside they could hear the guard humming softly to himself as he went back and forth before the barracks door.

“Let’s you and me be buddies, Skinny.”

“Sure,” said Andrews.

“Say, what d’you think the chance is o’ cuttin’ loose?”

“Pretty damn poor,” said Andrews.

“Couldn’t you just make a noise like a hoop an’ roll away?”

They giggled softly.

Andrews put his hand on the boy’s arm.

“But, Kid, it’s too risky. I got in this fix by taking a risk. I don’t feel like beginning over again, and if they catch you, it’s desertion. Leavenworth for twenty years, or life. That’ld be the end of everything.”

“Well, what the hell’s this?”

“Oh, I don’t know; they’ve got to let us out some day.”

“Sh … sh. …”

Kid put his hand suddenly over Andrews’s mouth. They stood rigid, so that they could hear their hearts pounding.

Outside there was a brisk step on the gravel. The sentry halted and saluted. The steps faded into the distance, and the sentry’s humming began again.

“They put two fellers in the jug for a month for talking like we are. … In solitary,” whispered Kid.

“But, Kid, I haven’t got the guts to try anything now.”

“Sure you have, Skinny. You an’ me’s got more guts than all the rest of ’em put together. God, if people had guts, you couldn’t treat ’em like they were curs. Look, if I can ever get out o’ this, I’ve got a hunch I can make a good thing writing movie scenarios. I want to get on in the world, Skinny.”

“But, Kid, you won’t be able to go back to the States.”

“I don’t care. New Rochelle’s not the whole world. They got the movies in Italy, ain’t they?”

“Sure. Let’s go to bed.”

“All right. Look, you an’ me are buddies from now on, Skinny.”

Andrews felt the Kid’s hand press his arm.

In his dark, airless bunk, in the lowest of three tiers, Andrews lay awake a long time, listening to the snores and the heavy breathing about him. Thoughts fluttered restlessly in his head, but in his blank hopelessness he could only frown and bite his lips, and roll his head from side to side on the rolled-up tunic he used for a pillow, listening with desperate attention to the heavy breathing of the men who slept above him and beside him.

When he fell asleep he dreamed that he was alone with Geneviève Rod in the concert hall of the Schola Cantorum, and that he was trying desperately hard to play some tune for her on the violin, a tune he kept forgetting, and in the agony of trying to remember, the tears streamed down his cheeks. Then he had his arms round Geneviève’s shoulders and was kissing her, kissing her, until he found that it was a wooden board he was kissing, a wooden board on which was painted a face with broad forehead and great pale brown eyes, and small tight lips, and all the while a boy who seemed to be both Chrisfield and the Kid kept telling him to run or the M.P.’s would get him. Then he sat frozen in icy terror with a bottle in his hand, while a frightful voice behind him sang very loud: