Part 9

The potatoes have been peeled. Now for the turnips. The soldiers cut slices and chew them raw while they are at work. Poor devils!

The task is done. They sweep up the peelings. How limp are their movements! To think that they are all men between twenty and thirty years of age. The Lenting curé told us in one of his sermons: “You have been welcomed here as friends.” Major von Stengel hit the mark more aptly one Sunday. Apropos of the fact that all through the week, from matins to compline, the religious services had been diligently said, he remarked: “Sie würden lieber etwas mehr Brot haben, als so viele christliche Seelensorge.”[20]

But d’Arnoult has kept his principal item of news for a tit-bit. A man named Schieder, one of the two grocers of Hepperg, house number 31, jealous at finding that his trade rival was exclusively patronized for the clandestine purchases made on our behalf by the soldiers of the guard, has just written a furious letter to Commanding Officer Major Baron von Stengel. His first complaint is that the commandant’s boot-cleaning orderly has insulted his (the commandant’s) wife, “going to the length of making indecent and public observations upon the imperfections of her face and figure—conduct unworthy of the German army and the German name.” The letter proceeds: “Further, it is an open secret that the aforesaid orderly returns daily from the village of Hepperg laden with a huge bundle of rolls, sticks of chocolate, boxes of cigarettes and of cigars, not to mention butter, sausages, smoked ham, and roast goose—conduct even more scandalous, if possible, than the insults offered to your honoured lady, for it transforms into an abode of bliss a national fortress where it is intended that the petulant pride of the French should experience salutary suffering.” The worthy grocer, in order to give vent to his spleen, had pirated all the grandiloquence he could find in the local papers. It was extremely laughable. But d’Arnoult and I saw another side as well as the amusing one. Were we to be cut off from our extra supplies? The commandant had already summoned his _Wichser_, and after administering a temperate reprimand, had forbidden him to revisit Hepperg. Without losing his head, Georg (we, his patrons, speak of him thus familiarly) pointed out to the _Herr Major_ that it was necessary to go somewhere for his honour’s marketing. “You will go to Kösching!”—“At your orders, _Herr Major_, but Kösching is an hour’s walk!”—“Very well, you will go to Kösching for three days; Hepperg is out of bounds for three days!”

Le Chasseur concluded by saying: “But after all, I am convinced that the commandant will let the matter drop. This laborious letter reeks too much of the counter. Von Stengel has no fancy to see his gentility contaminated by association with the greasy scales of Schieder the grocer!”

It is already ten o’clock. I shall hardly get any more work done to-day. The “salon” is becoming a forum. My comrades are very good. They say: “I don’t want to bother you. I’ve only just looked in to shake hands.” But they ask for news; they give me their own; they retail the latest canard. There is always a canard in the fort. To-day, for example, the talk in the courtyards is that the Russians have taken Breslau. To pay the Germans out for the famous _Paris kaput_, those of us who are least able to speak German do not hesitate to greet the gentle Stheer, the assistant quartermaster, with a cheerful “_Breslau kaput_.” Naturally I protest, for the news is too utterly ridiculous. So here I am sketching a map of the military operations. Dutrex breaks off his reading of Ibsen’s _John Gabriel Borkmann_ to quote the latest issues of the _Münchener_. Durupt mingles his invincible hope with the debate. It is interminable! And my poor studies lie neglected.

I HAVE A PALLIASSE

_October 17, 1914._

When I went out at seven o’clock there was a mist. It had the same smell, piquant and wholesome, as at Dully. The landscape was Japanese. I could have imagined myself looking at the right-hand kakemono in the drawing-room which gives on to the conservatory. The pretty village of Hepperg, brought near by a curious optical illusion, was stumped out in a long silhouette in the background, a delicate piece of filigree work seen through the soft, silky vapour. Here and there in the foreground crows made rich black markings. It was exquisite. There was no one else on the parapets. I walked for some time along the northern rampart. It was impossible to have too much of this autumn morning.

Two or three images rose to my mind. Chief of all was that of a walk in the Bois which we made just at the last with Guite, to talk about you. A thick mist was hovering over the lake. Invisible boats passed to and fro. Their lanterns were like large red moons gliding softly through the darkness. The island was illuminated; strains of music floated across to us. We were seated near the water. Close at hand was a tree, bending over and dipping its long locks into the lake. It recalled Hokusai’s pictures. Next day I was to leave for Trouville.

It is strange. I had forgotten my captivity. I had forgotten the war, the battlefields of Lorraine, Belgium, and Poland. I had forgotten the terrible nights spent upon the bloody field of Kerprich. As I looked at the slender steeple of Hepperg church rising above the morning mist-wreaths, the only visions I had were those of a world at peace. The little yellowing birches on the slopes had transported me to Dully. The splendid purples of the oaks at la Lignière, the ruddy golden tints of the horse-chestnut avenue, the Virginia creeper garlanding with vermilion the windows of the house, and all the familiar noises of this corner of earth where I have spent so many sweet and happy autumns—filled with these visions, I looked and listened with rapture.

But little by little the sun had dispersed the mist. The slopes were thronged with prisoners. Their groups formed bright spots of colour in the pearly light. A sort of calm languor, of slow and melancholy serenity, seemed to have passed from nature into their hearts and their gestures.

The sunlight was so sweet that I had delayed upon the ramparts beyond my usual hour. When I went indoors again I brought with me a bouquet of autumn leaves—the leaves of your poplars.

“What on earth are you going to do with that?” cried Ancey Redbeard, whom we tease here because he looks like a Bavarian.

Le Second stood beside him, engaging little Le Second, the designer to Poiret, the costumier. He answered for me:

“Riou, at length you will help me to get even with this wretch of an Ancey. He makes fun of me because I pick flowers. There will be two of us now to scrub his German hide for him!”

I filled my pipe and was about to set to work, when Ploss, the German quartermaster, commonly as rough as a bulldog, came in and seized me by the arm, saying:

“I have a palliasse for you. Come at once.”

He had just said the same thing to Dutrex. We hastened upstairs behind him, and followed him into a windowless storeroom, the only entrance to which was from the crypt beneath the great paved passage. Here, in the darkness, I groped for the heap of straw, and finding it, I unfastened a truss and began to stuff the sack of ticking. The material felt strong and hard as leather. I pricked my fingers with the thistles in the straw. “Whatever you do, stuff the corners well,” said my co-minister, thoroughly enjoying his good luck. He stuffed with the dexterity of a man who had never had anything else to do all his life. The quartermaster, evidently coming to the conclusion after a moment that I was a very awkward hand, shoved me to one side, cursing in his Franconian patois in a way intended to show me that he was furiously angry. Then to see him at the stuffing! I have been told that his trade is that of mason. He worked even faster than Dutrex. At length, “_Das ist fertig_”—“There you are!” he cried, giving a vigorous smack to the belly of my sack. Then, unceremoniously, he pushed his gift on to my shoulder, this great sack, tight and paunchy as heart could wish.

The acquisition of the palliasse is a revolution in my life. I was sufficiently delighted, on entering the storeroom, at the thought that I had said farewell to my wretched bedding. A restless sleeper, I always awaken with my back on the floor, stiff and aching, burrowing in the black chaff, having scratched up my dust like a fowl. I was uneasy at the approach of winter. How should I be able to endure the Swabian frosts upon this moving mattress? I should mention that it was obviously diminishing in size, and that in proportion as the few intact straws disappeared from the heap, the bedding of one of my good companions in the casemate seemed to undergo a commensurate increase. Quite exceptional virtue would have been required to enable him to resist the temptation. I was occupied all day at my table in No. 22, so that my little piece of property was left utterly defenceless.

Nevertheless, in the busy obscurity of the storeroom my joy resembled that which we take in forbidden fruit. Though lively, it was not wholly unalloyed. It is impossible to accept a great favour, even if the acceptance does not involve any injury to another, without a certain perturbation in one’s sense of equality. My energy at the work was diminished by a shadow of remorse.

But Dutrex, gay as a blackbird, stuffing his palliasse with the fury of an assault, said to me: “Old chap, we are to sleep in No. 22 from to-night onwards!” This suited me very well. I should never have been bold enough to plant my palliasse, all new and tight as it was, among the humble litters in the casemate. As soon as I accepted the Teuton’s offer (and what could I do but accept it?), my precarious tenure in No. 17 was broken. In any case, I had become almost a stranger there. Since my installation at the ministerial table, except for a daily visit to my friends Guido, Bertrand, and Boude, I never crossed the threshold until bedtime.

All the same, my palliasse and my change of lodging induced feelings of sorrow as well as joy. I might say to myself as often as I pleased that the quartermaster, a surly Franconian who detests the French, had done me this kindness solely through inspiration from above (his only superior here is the commandant); that a refusal in such conditions would have been mere rudeness; that one need not be so fastidious as to decline an offer involving the enjoyment of a sleeping apartment with but one companion, and involving also, during the winter nights, the company of the still warm stoves; that, for the rest, it was the act of wisdom to terminate at the first opportunity, and when it could be done without shock or violence, certain chance associations devoid of all charm. Reasons for accepting the palliasse and the accompanying train of benefits surged abundantly in my mind without setting my conscience at rest.

Not in vain does a man drink in the gospel with his mother’s milk; not in vain does he from childhood onwards have instilled into him by accomplished parents the dogmas of the republic. Be it worth what it may, the motto of France is to me an article of faith. I fail to act up to my principles in this respect, but the failure makes me unhappy. Inequality, especially inequality that redounds to my own advantage, does injury to some profound fibre of my being. The enjoyment of material comfort produces periodical fits of remorse. The logic of my heart would have me a Franciscan. Yet God knows that my whole being and all my senses clamour for joy and loathe the ugliness of poverty!

But I keep my palliasse. The bulk of my effects had already been removed to the kitchen in No. 22. Maître Lambert, usher at the law-court of N., for whom I have secured employment in the kitchen as one of the assistant cooks, went to fetch for me what remained at No. 17. He found that my flask had disappeared. He forgot my nightcap, which Guido has just brought me. Now, therefore, I have everything here—all my baggage, personal property and national property, republican goods and royal goods.

THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGRY

_October 21, 1914._

Yesterday was a great day! Perhaps the greatest of my imprisonment, if I except that of my first “teube.”[21] Oh, that first teube! After I had worn my clothes continuously for so many days and nights, the clandestine undressing at early dawn, beside the sink in Dutrex’s kitchen; the forbidden and unhoped-for sensation, to be, as if at home, naked beneath the steaming water; the lather of soap everywhere, on the hair, the neck, the chest, the arms, the legs, the feet; the douche with the aid of a bailer; the dry rub! At length to have a clean skin and clean linen! Then to stride up to the slopes in the delightful morning solitude, repeating as it were involuntarily: “I am clean; what a luxury! I am in their hands; but I have managed to get clean. They ration our water, and I have had water. I am a prisoner; but I have secretly divested myself of my coating of filth, a burden almost as heavy as that of hunger! I am by no means wholly wretched!”

It was a month since my last bath, at Tonnoy, about a week before we were taken prisoner. We had had a long and rough journey, from Chaouilley, at the foot of the hill celebrated by Barrès, to the Moselle. The dirt of three interminable nights in a cattle truck, in which we were herded pell-mell; the dust of the complicated movement towards the front; the stiffness of the opening march, the sweat and the fatigue—I had got rid of it all in the river. It was a beautiful evening, bright and warm. The sun was setting. The Moselle flowed rapidly among the islets of shingle and the sandbanks. Groups of men, officers and soldiers, men newly called up and reservists, indiscriminately mingled, naked as worms, the fat, the tall, and the short, the pot-bellied and the thin, fringed the bank with a strip of flesh-coloured humanity. We looked like a colony of Mormons.

After leaving the water, I challenged Soulier at ducks and drakes. Do you recall, little Darry, how we played ducks and drakes on the shore at Dully? I got the better of Soulier. One of my flat stones, skimming the water briskly, flying across the brown river, made its way right over the stream to strike the rocks on the other side.

When I think the matter over, this delightful bathe remains my most agreeable souvenir of Lorraine. I grieve to have to admit (notwithstanding Barrès, whose style would ennoble the most worthless materials) that all the villages we passed through, from Mont Sion to the frontier, and above all the village of Tonnoy, left on me an impression of penurious and squalid melancholy, of ugliness and filth.

Yes, yesterday evening was epic.

The morning had passed as usual: an early walk; then work until dinner-time. There was nothing to foreshadow a storm. I had been for a stroll after dinner with Dutrex, Durupt, and Foch. A typical Bavarian day: a moist sky softening the harsh outlines of the landscape; a half light, uncertain and dreamy, as if longing for the rich azure of Piedmont and Provence; a piercing little wind which, even in the sunshine, continues to suggest melting snow and cold, almost a bise, whose very caresses sting.

For the last few days I had been working hard. My faculties were blunted. I had a vague inclination to idle. I was suffering a little from boredom, a state of mind by which, happily, I am rarely afflicted. I was discouraged. I wanted a rest, and yet lacked energy to make up my mind to lay aside my work.

As I was returning to my task, I encountered little Brissot. Lately he has taken to wearing the Bavarian cap, a sort of Phrygian cap which I have made the fashion at Fort Orff. Mine is green—you know whose colour green is. Brissot’s is blue, and this tint sets off admirably his energetic blond countenance. Seeing that I was a little out of sorts, and not so cheerful as usual, he prevented me from going down.

“Abandon your kitchen for a while,” he said. “It reeks of sulphur, drains, burned fat, and vegetable refuse. You are getting mildewed amid the steam. The fires draw badly, and when I pay you a visit there your eyes are watering from the smoke. Besides, you have slaved quite enough this week under cover of your famous notice. You can be quite easy in your mind, you will have more than enough time to finish your studies. The Russian generals will secure you months and months for reflection. If that does not suffice, our diplomatists will see to it that you have an extension of time. This evening you must put aside your philosophies and your histories. We will go the round of the slopes together. The weather is fine. We will have a talk with my little friend across the ditch; you can’t think how sorry she is for us. Here is one, at any rate, who is utterly unconcerned as to questions of state. What does she care about French, Germans, English, Belgians, Russians? She knows men only. Her heart has skipped several centuries, and without an effort has attained the era of thoroughgoing internationalism. I can assure you that if she had to choose between a _hübscher Franzose_ and a _böser Deutscher_,[22] there would be no hesitation.”

Brissot is light-hearted, firm, bold, definite, gently peremptory, perfectly self-reliant; he is a surprising compound of boy and of leader, of artist and tradesman, endowed with a lively will; how can any one who is in the dumps resist Brissot? I accompany him to the parapet. Positively she is there, a sort of Munich Flora, short and plump, with great black eyes, whom he calls his “bonne amie,” walking upon the footpath of the glacis, accompanied by three bare-headed village girls and a troop of children. “Damn the escort!” says my _hübscher Franzose_ in an aside. The conversation is opened; it is as innocent as the arched forehead and rounded cheeks of the three slatterns. One of them is in high spirits to know that her affianced is safe. He has been made prisoner, and she has just received her first letter, dated from Gap. She asks if I am betrothed, if the ring I wear (Véron, the corporal in the engineers, cast it for me a few days back out of one of the metal buttons of the coat of a chausseur à pied) is an engagement ring, and why it is made of silver. Brissot takes the initiative in the reply, saying with an air of disgust that it is not silver but platinum, a metal far more costly than gold. She is astonished. She has never heard of platinum.

The conversation continues, agreeably stupid. Then the children ask for French pfennigs. “You shall have some if you will give us a newspaper in exchange.” The answer is not new to them; of course they have one ready. They roll it round a stone and throw it across the great ditch. The paper is four days old, but we throw back some sous which fall behind them some way down the glacis. Children and slatterns rush greedily to pick them up. Brissot, profiting by this moment of freedom, says to his Flora of the great eyes: “Come again to-morrow, and without your companions, who are not worthy of you!”

“My dear fellow,” I say to him, “I leave you to your love affairs. Farewell.”

The splendid reds of autumn flame on the great oaks along the border of the pine-wood—a strategic wood, designed to mask the west battery. The parapets are packed with soldiers, fine blue-and-red spots upon a dull yellowish-green ground. Some, chisel in hand, silently bent over their work, are carving pebbles. Others are wearing out their finger-nails and wearing down the corner stones in polishing tablets of white chalk destined for employment as ex votos. The cries of men playing at ball and at prisoner’s base resound from the ramparts. At the foot of a slope adorned with a clump of birches, men are busily engaged in cooking their extra provender. There is a circle round each improvized kitchen: some dry and break up the small branches rifled from the trees of the fort; some tend the refractory fire, for the wood will not flame; some agitate the contents of the mess-tins—fragments of stolen meat, choice morsels of vegetable peelings, coffee dregs begged from the kitchen, potatoes pocketed when the dinner was being prepared, edible snails found on the grass on rainy mornings and kept fasting in an old cigar-box, cheese-rind, plum mushrooms, wild chicory. Soldier-priests walk up and down reading their breviaries. On one of the slopes, a crowd surrounds Le Second, who is displaying his latest cubist composition; at the “kitchen windows” a number of poor devils whose stomachs are empty are patiently sniffing the thin odours that rise from the cooking-pots. Here and there are to be seen the dealers, their wares hidden beneath their coats, passing from group to group, and offering for sale at three or four times its value a cigarette, a lump of sugar, or a stick of chocolate. The blue-and-red ants have all emerged from the subterranean galleries of their ant-hill. On this October afternoon they produce a sad impression of mingled gaiety and wretchedness.

Yet amid this chaos I seem also to have before my eyes the picture of a city, a city of very ancient days. Characteristics of civic order are plainly manifest. A semblance of social life declares itself. Broken to pieces a few months ago by the sudden call to arms, flattened out and pulverized by the forces of hunger and tedium, the world that existed before the mobilization begins to reconstitute itself. By a sort of spontaneous generation, the eternal society rises anew from the void, with its groups of leaders and of poets, of traders and of artisans, with its classes of profiteers and of exploited, of originators and of simple executants. It is reborn, but in a less intricate form, with plainer contrasts, accentuated to caricature. Here, temperament, initiative, and energy have replaced tradition. There are no privileged positions. Social functions are not acquired as a right, but are seized. There is free competition. We all start from scratch. Each man takes his place in the natural hierarchy by the sole right of conquest. He can retain it only by cunning, force, or the power of genius, and at the price of a persistent victory.

Hence there have been strange changes of fortune. A man who arrived without a farthing, sold for sixpence a cigar he had been given, bought chocolate with the sixpence, resold it at 1,000 per cent., and, continually bargaining, always turning over his money with increased profit, has succeeded in this way in amassing a capital. I have several times come across this brilliant trader on the slopes at nightfall, when he believed himself alone. Leaning forward on his hands, he was contemplating his greasy handkerchief stretched out on the grass, covered with little piles of silver. Another, who was scullion in a drinking-booth, has taken to writing poems; at the Saturday concerts in No. 7 he sings them to well-known airs, amid universal applause. A man named Tarbouriech, a farmer from the Agen district, has made himself graving tools and carves pebbles for French and Bavarian customers. He gets a mark for each carving, and can thus from time to time buy himself a supplementary loaf. He is a real decorative artist, a good sculptor, and he did not know it.

As I lounge in the last rays of sunshine, I admire the spontaneous manifestation of creative energy. I am astonished at the superabundance of talents in so restricted a group. Yet there is a sadness in the sight of this poor primitive city which has set itself to sprout upon the levelled bed of servile equality.