Part 17

Throughout the evening there was an intoxication of generosity. Thrifty men at ordinary times, the French now gave all they had. Il Poverello could not have done better. The huge round loaves kneaded in the family kneading-trough and baked in the village oven, the apples and nuts of the last harvest, old sausages spiced with garlic and thyme, everything, even the “surprises” secretly prepared by the maman for her boy in captivity—everything was handed over. Little Stéphanus of Saint-Denis, who has lost his hearing through a wound in the head, and who, being an orphan, would receive nothing from France were it not for you and Mme. Weiss, had only his fifth of a loaf of potato bread. He gave it. The comrades from the invaded regions, who have to live on the provisions of their “adopted brothers,” were greatly distressed that they had nothing to share out but their poverty.

But if charity was lively, gaiety was insane. The little fathers were stupefied with astonishment. They looked upon us as legendary _bariny_ (seigneurs), as Crœsuses flowing with milk and honey, as magicians proof against misfortune, able to make the desert, and even the prison pavement, blossom like the rose. What a change for them! They had been the serfs of the Boche sergeants in the Lechfeld camp, their backs were still smarting from the canings administered to revenge the loss of Przemysl, and from this they were suddenly transported to become guests at the feast of the parable! Rich and poor, beggars and lords, all were equal, all were friends, all were brothers at this primitive Christian agape, which lacked nothing, not even good cigars. Such plenty and such brotherhood turned their heads. Bewildered and mute, ignorant of our language as we were ignorant of theirs, and having no other means of showing us their gratitude, they kissed us in season and out, and they prostrated themselves before us as before their own icons.

I have spoken to you about Graby, one of the two famous comic cyclists known in Paris, and indeed throughout Europe, under the name of the Brothers Abbins. His wound is healed. He is as lithe as ever, gay, martial, a jolly fellow. “_Ein lustiger Gesell_,” the _Feldwebel_ calls him, adding, “There’s a typical Frenchman for you!” In Dumoulin’s room I am being melted almost to tears under the Russian kisses, when Graby bursts open the door, and, quite out of breath, exclaims: “Riou, old chap, my Slav poilus are making ready to dance. I invite you to the party.” He drags me off. His casemate is at the other end of the fort. On the way he explains that he has discovered a sort of interpreter, a Pole who has been in New York, and who knows a few words of English. “You’ll see, we’re going to have high jinks to-night!”

There are indeed high jinks. An assemblage of képis and fur caps beneath a huge candelabra, improvised by the hosts, and ornamented with aeroplanes and flags cut out of paper. A horrible menagerie odour fills the room. The banquet is over. Tea is being handed round in old tins. Graby, looking even more like a street arab than usual, is doing the honours, assisted by big Ménard, erect, smart, as clean shaven as a British guardsman, and with the suspicion of an English accent. Prompted by Abbins, the Pole introduces me as a French writer familiar with Russian authors.

“Friends!”

“Friends!”

“Comrades!”

“_Sayousniki!_”

“Bravo!”

“Hurrah!”

“Now,” says Graby, sketching a figure, “let us dance.”

A circle is formed. Two youths as lean as cats confront one another. At first they make a feint of sparring. They seem as if engaged in a slow and weary pyrrhic dance. The onlookers’ eyes sparkle; an indefinite measure is beaten with the hands. This lasts for two minutes. Then the rhythm becomes brisker, the partners draw themselves up to their full height and keep their arms closely pressed to their sides; they are motionless like fakirs. But with their heels they make a noise which sounds like that of distant castanets, a muted crackling in an ever-accelerating tempo. A sudden pause. The dancers squat on their hams. There follows the famous step which we have beheld at the Russian ballet, the strange dance whose savage rhythm is punctuated by the clacking of boots on the boards. At the very end, the Russians give an abrupt “Hurrah!” It is over. Graby congratulates his men by patting their cheeks, by commendatory gurgles, by the “boo, boo, boo,” and other labial interjections that mothers use to their nurslings.

More tea, more cigarettes. We ask for the Russian national anthem. You know it. It seems to me as heavy as a convict’s fetters. To relieve my ears I demand the _Marseillaise_. Boude sings the couplets and we take up the chorus. The swing of it, the decision, the thrill, as of a victorious charge, astonish the Russians. My neighbour the Pole weeps.

“You are crying?” I say to him in English.

“You can’t understand,” he makes answer. “That air represents liberty. You possess it; you don’t know the value of it. We dream of it.” His debased English was interspersed with Polish phrases which rang with a sort of Latin sweetness. “Don’t you know that we are slaves?”

“This war will free you.”

“You think so? We have fought well enough! My comrades stood firm when they were being mown down before Lowicz. Yes, we have fought fiercely for the Czar, even while feeling that his victory would serve only to make our chains heavier. Poor Poland! Poor Poland!”

The name of Poland attracts the attention of a big artilleryman with a bull neck, a flat nose, a hard and suspicious expression.

“What are you saying about Poland?” he asks me in German.

“That this war will liberate the country. You have the Czar’s promise.”

* * * * *

His fixed look, fierce and defiant, his turned-up chin, his tanned and robust visage, contrast with the noble passion of his words. Never before have I witnessed real despair, that despair which hardens the features and vulcanizes the soul, despair transformed into a motive for living.

This Pole is as tragic as one of Wyspianski’s heroes.

Around us the others are enjoying themselves like brothers reunited. Graby is begging Ménard to sing the American _Row! Row! Row!_ I long to take my companion out on to the slopes, and there, amid the silence, to let him talk at length, to listen, and to make him feel that I share his dreams, that France is the friend of every nation that yearns for freedom.

* * * * *

The Pole makes no accusations against France. She has deceived his people, but he loves her just the same. He believes in her, despite her faults, as the great champion of justice.

Ménard is singing. The French and the Russians are taking up in chorus the refrain, “Row! Row! Row!” Elbows on knees, head in hands, expression disdainful, my Pole says no more, but sits like a colossus, making the best of his impotence.

The Russians have suddenly started a new air. A tenor sings the first phrase in solo. A bass joins in. Then the other voices take up their parts. It is beautiful, with a rough, serious, wild beauty. I ask the title. _The Song of the War against Japan._ Then they give some love songs. It seems to me that all voice the same music, a powerful and melancholy, and yet simple music, with the sweet notes of infinite submission. I think of a grand Gregorian chant encompassing all the pleasures and all the wrongs of earth in an atmosphere of the eternal. The strains have a bourdon of lamentation, like that of a woman spent with suffering asking sympathy and consolation.

* * * * *

Next day the Bavarians of the guard could hardly believe their eyes. In the courts, in the ditches, everywhere, among basins and heaps of underclothing, quite a tribe of naked little fathers were glistening in the sunshine. How thin they were! To what skeletons they had been reduced by two months in Germany. Smiling, making awkward little gestures, each one of them allowed himself to be manipulated by a Frenchman, who soaped him all over, rubbed him down, pummelled him, dried him, and finally dressed him as a French infantryman. “Now, then, we must wash your duds. Come along.” And the French mamma led his great little Slav to the well, helped him to pump some water, arranged him a bench. Then both set to work and scrubbed.

In the evening, when the roll was called, the _Hauptmann_ exclaimed: “But where on earth are the Russians?”

“There they are,” answered Junot, sergeant-major of No. 46.

“But what is the meaning of this masquerade?”

“Mon commandant, their clothes are drying on the slopes, and you see they could not attend muster in a loin cloth.”

These first days were pleasant. It was good to make friends. To share without thought of the morrow, to live without calculation, to act solely as the heart dictated—it was like paradise. Yes, paradise within prison walls. We were brothers. Even the veterans of Manchuria and the Afghanistan campaigns, with all their tinsmith’s shop of commemorative medals and their grizzled heads, even the sergeants with three stripes, had become our little brothers. “You are hungry? Here is some white bread from France; here is some home-made jam; here are some apples from my orchard. Eat, Russki.” Or it would be: “You old zebra, what are you doing that for, digging the lice out of the seams of your clothes with a knife? You’re sowing them all over the place. That kind of grain sprouts. Look, this is the way. Tic! Tic! Take your thumbs to it and press the beast between the two nails. Kill, kill! It’s inhumane? Never mind. Kill away. Have no compunction.” So the Russian “zebra” sets to work to crush his live-stock. They now divest themselves of lice quite after the French manner, and no longer swarm with vermin as when they arrived. But they can still while away their long hours of leisure in parasitological investigations and in slaughter.

* * * * *

Every evening the French and the Russians walk arm in arm on the slopes. In less than no time a conventional language has sprung into being. It does not lead very far. No matter. When the mimic vocabulary is exhausted, the friends walk side by side in silence. But if a Bavarian sentry passes, the conversation is resumed, the same things being emphatically repeated; they clap one another on the back, they exchange head-gear, képi for toque, fatigue-cap for its Russian equivalent. After a few days the Russian buttons stamped with the two-headed eagle had found their way on to our coats, while the French grenade buttons were displayed upon the huge Russian earth-coloured cloaks. Tartar feet were encased in French army shoes; while red trousers were tucked into the supple boots of Ukraine leather. Early Christian communism prevailed. Every one dressed as he fancied, mixing the uniform of the two armies. For an entire week the height of the fashion in Nos. 44 and 46, aristocratic regions, was to walk out in moujiks’ blouses. Le Second, Poiret’s pupil, had work after his own heart. Little Mitka’s blouse, a brilliant grey-green, embroidered in black at the collar and wristbands, was his great triumph.

Gradually the little fathers came to understand that they must not kiss our hands, and that genuflexions were by no means to our taste. It must be admitted that they found this repugnance somewhat troublesome, the repugnance of men who make a cult of equality. They love direct demonstrations. They are nearer to the days of the Iliad than to ’89, fond of physical endearments like children and the early Greeks, and a trifle fawning. But so winsomely! Besides, they had to show us their gratitude. If instead of the forbidden gestures they made us an oration, we raised our hands to heaven, saying: “_Nye ponimayu_—I don’t understand!” What were they to do? Yesterday one of them, in despair, threw himself upon the ground, kissing my footsteps in a transport of delight. Impatiently I seized him, and dragged him to his feet rather roughly. You should have seen him, awkward, speechless, and motionless. His silence seemed to say: “Why do you forbid me to embrace you, to kiss the dust beneath your feet? Do you not care for my gratitude? And yet you are kindly. Or do you prefer our simple ‘thanks,’ our _spasiba_, to which your French jokers invariably respond by a long word which I can’t understand, saying, ‘Non, pas si bas! Plus haut!’ Do you really think that a word has any _body_ in it if it be unaccompanied by action?”

It was thus that they reasoned within themselves, timid and embarrassed, when we repelled their embraces. Then, struck with a sudden idea, they took the brooms from our hands, they seized the shoes that we were polishing, they ran to fetch water for us. In order to give body to their _spasiba_, they did all our work for us. Soon it was impossible for the Frenchmen to find any occupation for their hands. In the dark corridor leading to the great well, where the prisoners have to wait in a long queue for their turn, shouldering pitchers stamped with blue lozenges, one now saw none but Russians; in the kitchens, when the potatoes were being peeled, none but Russians; in the corner of the courts where the laundrymen install buckets and tables, none but Russians. We had to take severe measures, and to insist that France should take a hand in all the hard work.

But, amid this fine zeal, the Moslem Tartars take their ease on their palliasses, quiet and blissful. Let others perform all the arduous tasks. Christians and Jews can scour the cement floors of the casemates, shake the rugs, fold up the bedding, carry the _Kartoffelbrot_[32] from the tumbrel to the storeroom. Impassive, crushing you by the glassy immobility of their introspective gaze, indolent as mandarins (whom they resemble in their yellow tint, their wide cheek-bones, and their fine, shining moustaches), it seems as if the Prophet had furnished them with an opiate against all the accidents of life. Nothing moves them. They ask for nothing. They never share anything. They never pray. Do them a service; give them something from your own narrow resources; they take it all as a matter of course. Some of them have two or three wives. Without a sign of tenderness, they show you the portraits of these wives, fraternizing in a single photograph. Plenty, scarcity; cold, heat; a concourse, solitude; war, exile—everything is alike to them. Life breaks impotently against the bovine torpor of their fatalism.

But when the Christian Russians say their morning prayer, standing bare-headed, multiplying triple signs of the cross, kissing the Testament, and abasing themselves before the little painted icon in a glass case fixed to the wall above their palliasse, it sometimes happens that their inhuman eyes blaze. They utter a raucous cry: “Your Lord Jesus Christ, he’s no good!” Thereupon the devotees break off their Paternosters, and attack the scoffers with foot or with fist in order to avenge the insult to their deity.

In casemate 34 there are ten Frenchmen, twelve Russians, and one Jew. Thin, sickly, with a stoop, a sallow complexion, a timid and plaintive expression, this Jew is the most unobtrusive of men. He seems afraid of taking up too much room. When spoken to he is abashed and stammers. He never asks for anything. He is always content. If you merely smile at him, he looks at you humbly, with a dumb, gentle gratitude.

As he knows some German, I have been able to talk to him. He is a good little soul, peaceful and inoffensive, rather dull-witted. He contemplates the knout and the pogroms without indignation, accepting them as a farmer accepts hail. The only pleasure he knows is the negative one of being left unnoticed, of being forgotten, but this pleasure he welcomes as a wonderful act of grace. In a word, he is one of the humble of heart to whom the Rabbi rejected of the rabbis has promised the kingdom of heaven.

One day, when I was bringing him an orange, his compatriots leapt upon me from their palliasses, surrounding me and restraining me by force from approaching the Jew, pointing him out with a gesture of disgust, as if to preserve me from a horrible contagion.

“Jew! Jew!” they cried with flashing eyes.

They were all speaking at once, so that I was bewildered by their volubility and their passionate gesticulations. Desiring to clear up the difficulty, I sought an interpreter, and as soon as we returned, the cries were redoubled.

“What are they all saying?” I demanded of Issajoff, the interpreter. “Why are they holding me back like this?”

Issajoff smiled. “Here is something,” he said, “which wins me over to France! You’re astonished that these Russians prevent you giving help to a Jew, that they insist on assuring you that he is a Jew. To them it seems self-evident that as soon as you know him to be a Jew you will no longer wish to give him anything, but will treat him as a leper, a pariah, a damned soul!”

The Russians continued to scream, to look murderously at the Jew, to shake their fists at him. As for him, with his customary air of dull indifference, he remained quietly in his own corner behind the door, beside the dustbin and the spittoon, the dirtiest and dampest corner of the casemate.

Said Issajoff: “They say to him, ‘You have crucified our Lord Jesus Christ’—‘I have defiled your mother’—this is the grossest insult in our language. They also say to him, ‘You love the Germans; if you could, you would have shot us.’ They also say: ‘If you accept the Frenchman’s present, we will flay you alive!’”

Issajoff is a revolutionist—and a Jew, although he keeps this last fact to himself. Coldly and deliberately he reported to me his comrades’ words. But the vague smile which played over his large features indicated irony and contempt.

“You really find this scene surprising?” he resumed.

I contemplated these disciples of the Christ, all yapping at this poor wretch. For the first time in my life I found my Christianity a heavy burden.

I went up to Kajedan. I pressed him by the hand and gave him the orange. I wanted to give him the contents of my cigarette case, but he said he did not smoke. “Well, give them to your friends.” He did so. The Russians greedily seized the _papirosy_. They threw themselves on their palliasses, and, forgetting to avenge their God any longer, they gave themselves up to the delights of tobacco.

VASSILI

_July 1, 1915._

I am Vassili’s _barin_ (seigneur). He polishes my shoes; every morning, in the court, he brings me water for my “teube”; he picks up balls for me in our extemporized game of tennis; if I am thirsty, he runs to the well; if the cloth of my worn trousers, too skimpy for me (the government has never been able to supply me with trousers suited to my figure), gives way during an unusually vigorous movement of Swedish gymnastics, he promptly threads a needle and repairs the damage; he watches over me as one watches milk on the boil; no valet has ever served me so well. But what constrains him?

Were I to forbid him to serve me, he would shed bitter tears. Have I ever given him an order? Have I ever been short with him? Is Vassili my valet or my friend? He no longer kisses my hands, he no longer kisses my lips, he no longer kisses the ground where I have trod. He has given up these moujik ways. He simply shakes hands with me. When I am at work, he sits on my ration-chest or stands at the window, smoking _papirosy_ (cigarettes), and looking at the illustrations in my books. When he likes them he exclaims “_Harosho, harosho!_” (good, good). But always I feel his faithful Siberian eye upon me. He divines the least of my wishes. Do I need a book? He knows perfectly to whom it has been lent. He jumps up, runs along the corridors, finds the man, maybe in his casemate, maybe beneath the shade of a poplar, maybe in one of the ditches, explains himself in nigger talk, and, breathless and perspiring, comes back to me with the prize. It can hardly be said that we converse; the difficulties are too great. We look at one another, and we smile. He gives me everything he can; I respond in kind. He works; I work. He serves me; I serve him. I know how to read and write; I can influence the _Feldwebel_; and I can ask my relatives and friends in France to send me things. For his part, he knows how to darn, patch, fetch water, wash up. Thus, side by side, each at his own task, we both work. He imagines that I am a _barin_, in which he is mistaken, and that I love him, in which he is not mistaken. For my part, I regard him as a good fellow from Tomsk, who pines for his _izba_ (cottage) and his wife, and I would like to send him back to them in good condition when his imprisonment is over.

THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR

_July 7, 1915._

It has lasted for eleven months. How much longer will it continue?

Our sentries are even more impatient than we are ourselves. They grumble and faultfind. “It is too bad!” they exclaim. “Do you think it will be over in a month?” they ask us. “Pooh!” we answer; “in a year perhaps, or maybe two, when we have conquered the autocracy which tyrannizes over you!” They stare at us blankly, utterly disheartened.

These poor fellows are suffering. They have many children, six, seven, or eight. Their savings are exhausted, and the wolf is at the door. When we are marching to work, they recount their troubles to Brissot and to me, confidingly and deferentially, as they would to an elder brother. They are good by nature, simple-minded, somewhat subservient, weighted by innumerable centuries of silent submission. One perceives so clearly that they have not effected their revolution, and that despite parliamentary suffrage and the Reichstag they are still under the dominion of the feudal age.

Through studying them closely, and through talking with them, it seems to me that I am beginning to understand this huge and mysterious Germany. I knew something of the élite of the country, but was quite ignorant of the common people, workmen, peasants, and lower middle class. But these are the backbone of Germany.

How different is their world from ours! In France we read the paper; we have political ideas; we influence the appointment of ministers; we take sides passionately, for or against Pelletan, for or against Clemenceau, for or against Poincaré; every one of our village orators has good advice to give to our admirals, our generals, and our diplomats. How unlike Germany! Nothing can equal the ignorance of these folk in public matters. Think of a French agriculturist of the days of Louis XIV, hardworking and kindly, engrossed in domestic cares, knowing that it is hard to gain a livelihood and occupied in this pursuit by day and by night; accepting princes, seigneurs, taxes, corvées, and wars as one accepts sunshine, rain, hail, and frost, without venturing to pass any judgment upon them; saying that these things have been, are, and will be, that he himself is but a poor man, that every one has his own trade, that it is the king’s to govern and his to provide a living for his family; there you have the political essence of the German peasant and the German workman. Monarchy, republic, foreign relations, double alliance or triple alliance—don’t waste your time talking to him about these. Should you do so, he will listen, he will express a civil assent, and will fall asleep over his beer.