“Is he French?” whispered Andrews.
“Ah doan know what he is. He ain’t a white man, Ah’ll wager that,” said Chris, “but he’s square.”
“D’you know anything about what’s going on?” asked Andrews in French, going up to the Chink.
“Where?” The Chink got up, flashing a glance at Andrews out of the corners of his slit-like eyes.
“Outside, in the streets, in Paris, anywhere where people are out in the open and can do things. What do you think about the revolution?”
The Chink shrugged his shoulders.
“Anything’s possible,” he said.
“D’you think they really can overthrow the army and the government in one day, like that?”
“Who?” broke in Chrisfield.
“Why, the people, Chris, the ordinary people like you and me, who are tired of being ordered round, who are tired of being trampled down by other people just like them, who’ve had the luck to get in right with the system.”
“D’you know what I’ll do when the revolution comes?” broke in the Chink with sudden intensity, slapping himself on the chest with one hand. “I’ll go straight to one of those jewelry stores, rue Royale, and fill my pockets and come home with my hands full of diamonds.”
“What good’ll that do you?”
“What good? I’ll bury them back there in the court and wait. I’ll need them in the end. D’you know what it’ll mean, your revolution? Another system! When there’s a system there are always men to be bought with diamonds. That’s what the world’s like.”
“But they won’t be worth anything. It’ll only be work that is worth anything.”
“We’ll see,” said the Chink.
“D’you think it could happen, Andy, that there’d be a revolution, an’ there wouldn’t be any more armies, an’ we’d be able to go round like we are civilians? Ah doan think so. Fellers like us ain’t got it in ’em to buck the system, Andy.”
“Many a system’s gone down before; it will happen again.”
“They’re fighting the Garde Républicaine now before the Gare de l’Est,” said the Chink in an expressionless voice. “What do you want down here? You’ld better stay in the back. You never know what the police may put over on us.”
“Give us two bottles of vin blank, Chink,” said Chrisfield.
“When’ll you pay?”
“Right now. This guy’s given me fifty francs.”
“Rich, are you?” said the Chink with hatred in his voice, turning to Andrews. “Won’t last long at that rate. Wait here.”
He strode into the bar, closing the door carefully after him. A sudden jangling of the bell was followed by a sound of loud voices and stamping feet. Andrews and Chrisfield tiptoed into the dark corridor, where they stood a long time, waiting, breathing the foul air that stung their nostrils with the stench of plaster-damp and rotting wine. At last the Chink came back with three bottles of wine.
“Well, you’re right,” he said to Andrews. “They are putting up barricades on the Avenue Magenta.”
On the stairs they met a girl sweeping. She had untidy hair that straggled out from under a blue handkerchief tied under her chin, and a pretty-colored fleshy face. Chrisfield caught her up to him and kissed her, as he passed.
“We all calls her the dawg-faced girl,” he said to Andrews in explanation. “She does our work. Ah like to had a fight with Slippery over her yisterday. … Didn’t Ah, Slippery?”
When he followed Chrisfield into the room, Andrews saw a man sitting on the window ledge smoking. He was dressed as a second lieutenant, his puttees were brilliantly polished, and he smoked through a long, amber cigarette-holder. His pink nails were carefully manicured.
“This is Slippery, Andy,” said Chrisfield. “This guy’s an ole buddy o’ mine. We was bunkies together a hell of a time, wasn’t we, Andy?”
“You bet we were.”
“So you’ve taken your uniform off, have you? Mighty foolish,” said Slippery. “Suppose they nab you?”
“It’s all up now anyway. I don’t intend to get nabbed,” said Andrews.
“We got booze,” said Chrisfield.
Slippery had taken dice from his pocket and was throwing them meditatively on the floor between his feet, snapping his fingers with each throw.
“I’ll shoot you one of them bottles, Chris,” he said.
Andrews walked over to the bed. Al was stirring uneasily, his face flushed and his mouth twitching.
“Hello,” he said. “What’s the news?”
“They say they’re putting up barricades near the Gare de l’Est. It may be something.”
“God, I hope so. God, I wish they’d do everything here like they did in Russia; then we’d be free. We couldn’t go back to the States for a while, but there wouldn’t be no M.P.’s to hunt us like we were criminals. … I’m going to sit up a while and talk.” Al giggled hysterically for a moment.
“Have a swig of wine?” asked Andrews.
“Sure, it may set me up a bit; thanks.” He drank greedily from the bottle, spilling a little over his chin.
“Say, is your face badly cut up, Al?”
“No, it’s just scotched, skin’s off; looks like beefsteak, I reckon. … Ever been to Strasburg?”
“No.”
“Man, that’s the town. And the girls in that costume. … Whee!”
“Say, you’re from San Francisco, aren’t you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I wonder if you knew a fellow I knew at training camp, a kid named Fuselli from ’Frisco?”
“Knew him! Jesus, man, he’s the best friend I’ve got. … Ye don’t know where he is now, do you?”
“I saw him here in Paris two months ago.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. … God, that’s great!” Al’s voice was staccato from excitement. “So you knew Dan at training camp? The last letter from him was ’bout a year ago. Dan’d just got to be corporal. He’s a damn clever kid, Dan is, an’ ambitious too, one of the guys always makes good. … Gawd, I’d hate to see him this way. D’you know, we used to see a hell of a lot of each other in ’Frisco, an’ he always used to tell me how he’d make good before I did. He was goddam right, too. Said I was too soft about girls. … Did ye know him real well?”
“Yes. I even remember that he used to tell me about a fellow he knew who was called Al. … He used to tell me about how you two used to go down to the harbor and watch the big liners come in at night, all aflare with lights through the Golden Gate. And he used to tell you he’d go over to Europe in one, when he’d made his pile.”
“That’s why Strasburg made me think of him,” broke in Al, tremendously excited. “’Cause it was so picturesque like. … But honest, I’ve tried hard to make good in this army. I’ve done everything a feller could. An’ all I did was to get into a cushy job in the regimental office. … But Dan, Gawd, he may even be an officer by this time.”
“No, he’s not that,” said Andrews. “Look here, you ought to keep quiet with that hand of yours.”
“Damn my hand. Oh, it’ll heal all right if I forget about it. You see, my foot slipped when they shunted a car I was just climbing into, an’ … I guess I ought to be glad I wasn’t killed. But, gee, when I think that if I hadn’t been a fool about that girl I might have been home by now. …”
“The Chink says they’re putting up barricades on the Avenue Magenta.”
“That means business, kid!”
“Business nothin’,” shouted Slippery from where he and Chrisfield leaned over the dice on the tile floor in front of the window. “One tank an’ a few husky Senegalese’ll make your goddam socialists run so fast they won’t stop till they get to Dijon. … You guys ought to have more sense.” Slippery got to his feet and came over to the bed, jingling the dice in his hand. “It’ll take more’n a handful o’ socialists paid by the Boches to break the army. If it could be broke, don’t ye think people would have done it long ago?”
“Shut up a minute. Ah thought Ah heard somethin’,” said Chrisfield suddenly, going to the window.
They held their breath. The bed creaked as Al stirred uneasily in it.
“No, warn’t anythin’; Ah’d thought Ah’d heard people singin’.”
“The Internationale,” cried Al.
“Shut up,” said Chrisfield in a low gruff voice.
Through the silence of the room they heard steps on the stairs.
“All right, it’s only Smiddy,” said Slippery, and he threw the dice down on the tiles again.
The door opened slowly to let in a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a long face and long teeth.
“Who’s the frawg?” he asked in a startled way, with one hand on the door knob.
“All right, Smiddy; it ain’t a frawg; it’s a guy Chris knows. He’s taken his uniform off.”
“’Lo, buddy,” said Smiddy, shaking Andrews’s hand. “Gawd, you look like a frawg.”
“That’s good,” said Andrews.
“There’s hell to pay,” broke out Smiddy breathlessly. “You know Gus Evans and the little black-haired guy goes ’round with him? They been picked up. I seen ’em myself with some M.P.’s at Place de la Bastille. An’ a guy I talked to under the bridge where I slep’ last night said a guy’d tole him they were goin’ to clean the A.W.O.L.’s out o’ Paris if they had to search through every house in the place.”
“If they come here they’ll git somethin’ they ain’t lookin’ for,” muttered Chrisfield.
“I’m goin’ down to Nice; getting too hot around here,” said Slippery. “I’ve got travel orders in my pocket now.”
“How did you get ’em?”
“Easy as pie,” said Slippery, lighting a cigarette and puffing affectedly towards the ceiling. “I met up with a guy, a second loot, in the Knickerbocker Bar. We gets drunk together, an’ goes on a party with two girls I know. In the morning I get up bright an’ early, and now I’ve got five thousand francs, a leave slip and a silver cigarette case, an’ Lootenant J. B. Franklin’s runnin’ around sayin’ how he was robbed by a Paris whore, or more likely keepin’ damn quiet about it. That’s my system.”
“But, gosh darn it, I don’t see how you can go around with a guy an’ drink with him, an’ then rob him,” cried Al from the bed.
“No different from cleaning a guy up at craps.”
“Well?”
“An’ suppose that feller knew that I was only a bloody private. Don’t you think he’d have turned me over to the M.P.’s like winkin’?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Al. “They’re juss like you an me, skeered to death they’ll get in wrong, but they won’t light on a feller unless they have to.”
“That’s a goddam lie,” cried Chrisfield. “They like ridin’ yer. A doughboy’s less’n a dawg to ’em. Ah’d shoot anyone of ’em lake Ah’d shoot a nigger.”
Andrews was watching Chrisfield’s face; it suddenly flushed red. He was silent abruptly. His eyes met Andrews’s eyes with a flash of fear.
“They’re all sorts of officers, like they’re all sorts of us,” Al was insisting.
“But you damn fools, quit arguing,” cried Smiddy. “What the hell are we goin’ to do? It ain’t safe here no more, that’s how I look at it.”
They were silent.
At last Chrisfield said:
“What you goin’ to do, Andy?”
“I hardly know. I think I’ll go out to St. Germain to see a boy I know there who works on a farm to see if it’s safe to take a job there. I won’t stay in Paris. Then there’s a girl here I want to look up. I must see her.”
Andrews broke off suddenly, and started walking back and forth across the end of the room.
“You’d better be damn careful; they’ll probably shoot you if they catch you,” said Slippery.
Andrews shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I’d rather be shot than go to Leavenworth for twenty years, Gawd! I would,” cried Al.
“How do you fellers eat here?” asked Slippery.
“We buy stuff an’ the dawg-faced girl cooks it for us.”
“Got anything for this noon?”
“I’ll go see if I can buy some stuff,” said Andrews. “It’s safer for me to go out than for you.”
“All right, here’s twenty francs,” said Slippery, handing Andrews a bill with an offhand gesture.
Chrisfield followed Andrews down the stairs. When they reached the passage at the foot of the stairs, he put his hand on Andrews’s shoulder and whispered:
“Say, Andy, d’you think there’s anything in that revolution business? Ah hadn’t never thought they could buck the system thataway.”
“They did in Russia.”
“Then we’d be free, civilians, like we all was before the draft. But that ain’t possible, Andy; that ain’t possible, Andy.”
“We’ll see,” said Andrews, as he opened the door to the bar.
He went up excitedly to the Chink, who sat behind the row of bottles along the bar.
“Well, what’s happening?”
“Where?”
“By the Gare de l’Est, where they were putting up barricades?”
“Barricades!” shouted a young man in a red sash who was drinking at a table. “Why, they tore down some of the iron guards round the trees, if you call that barricades. But they’re cowards. Whenever the cops charge they run. They’re dirty cowards.”
“D’you think anything’s going to happen?”
“What can happen when you’ve got nothing but a bunch of dirty cowards?”
“What d’you think about it?” said Andrews, turning to the Chink. The Chink shook his head without answering. Andrews went out. When he came back he found Al and Chrisfield alone in their room. Chrisfield was walking up and down, biting his finger nails. On the wall opposite the window was a square of sunshine reflected from the opposite wall of the Court.