Under Fire. Henri Barbusse
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"Don't worry about the table," Barque exclaims. "Tenez! there, put away in that corner, the old door; that would make us a table."
"You're not going to trail me about and upset all my work!" replies the cardboard woman suspiciously, and with obvious regret that she had not chased us away immediately.
"Don't worry, I tell you. Look, I'll show you. Hey, Lamuse, old cock, give me a hand."
Under the displeased glances of the virago we place the old door on a couple of barrels.
"With a bit of a rub-down," says I, "that will be perfect."
"Eh, oui, maman, a flick with a brush'll do us instead of tablecloth."
The woman hardly knows what to say; she watches us spitefully: "There's only two stools, and how many are there of you?"
"About a dozen."
"A dozen. Jesus Maria!"
"What does it matter? That'll be all right, seeing there's a plank here—and that's a bench ready-made, eh, Lamuse?"
"Course," says Lamuse.
"I want that plank," says the woman. "Some soldiers that were here before you have tried already to take it away."
"But us, we're not thieves," suggests Lamuse gently, so as not to irritate the creature that has our comfort at her disposal.
"I don't say you are, but soldiers, vous savez, they smash everything up. Oh, the misery of this war!"
"Well then, how much'll it be, to hire the table, and to heat up a thing or two on the stove?"
"It'll be twenty sous a day," announces the hostess with restraint, as though we were wringing that amount from her.
"It's dear," says Lamuse.
"It's what the others gave me that were here, and they were very kind, too, those gentlemen, and it was worth my while to cook for them. I know it's not difficult for soldiers. If you think it's too much, it's no job to find other customers for this room and this table and the stove, and who wouldn't be in twelves. They're coming along all the time, and they'd pay still more, if I wanted. A dozen!—"
Lamuse hastens to add, "I said 'It's dear,' but still, it'll do, eh, you others?" On this downright question we record our votes.
"We could do well with a drop to drink," says Lamuse. "Do you sell wine?"
"No," said the woman, but added, shaking with anger, "You see, the military authority forces them that's got wine to sell it at fifteen sous! Fifteen sous! The misery of this cursed war! One loses at it, at fifteen sous, monsieur. So I don't sell any wine. I've got plenty for ourselves. I don't say but sometimes, and just to oblige, I don't allow some to people that one knows, people that knows what things are, but of course, messieurs, not at fifteen sous."
Lamuse is one of those people "that knows what things are." He grabs at his water-bottle, which is hanging as usual on his hip. "Give me a liter of it. That'll be what?"
"That'll be twenty-two sous, same as it cost me. But you know it's just to oblige you, because you're soldiers."
Barque, losing patience, mutters an aside. The woman throws him a surly glance, and makes as if to hand Lamuse's bottle back to him. But Lamuse, launched upon the hope of drinking wine at last, so that his cheeks redden as if the draught already pervaded them with its grateful hue, hastens to intervene—
"Don't be afraid—it's between ourselves, la mere, we won't give you away."
She raves on, rigid and bitter, against the limited price on wine; and, overcome by his lusty thirst, Lamuse extends the humiliation and surrender of conscience so far as to say, "No help for it, madame! It's a military order, so it's no use trying to understand it."
She leads us into the store-room. Three fat barrels occupy it in impressive rotundity. "Is this your little private store?"
"She knows her way about, the old lady," growls Barque.
The shrew turns on her heel, truculent: "Would you have me ruin myself by this miserable war? I've about enough of losing money all ways at once."
"How?" insists Barque.
"I can see you're not going to risk your money!"
"That's right—we only risk our skins."
We intervene, disturbed by the tone of menace for our present concern that the conversation has assumed. But the door of the wine-cellar is shaken, and a man's voice comes through. "Hey, Palmyra!" it calls.
The woman hobbles away, discreetly leaving the door open. "That's all right—we've taken root!" Lamuse says.
"What dirty devils these, people are!" murmurs Barque, who finds his reception hard to stomach.
"It's shameful and sickening," says Marthereau.
"One would think it was the first time you'd had any of it!"
"And you, old gabbler," chides Barque, "that says prettily to the wine-robber, 'Can't be helped, it's a military order'! Gad, old man, you're not short of cheek!"
"What else could I do or say? We should have had to go into mourning for our table and our wine. She could make us pay forty sous for the wine, and we should have had it all the same, shouldn't we? Very well, then, got to think ourselves jolly lucky. I'll admit I'd no confidence, and I was afraid it was no go."
"I know; it's the same tale everywhere and always, but all the same—"
"Damn the thieving natives, ah, oui! Some of 'em must be making fortunes. Everybody can't go and get killed."
"Ah, the gallant people of the East!"
"Yes, and the gallant people of the North!"
"Who welcome us with open arms!"
"With open hands, yes—"
"I tell you," Marthereau says again, "it's a shame and it's sickening."
"Shut it up—there's the she-beast coming back." We took a turn round to quarters to announce our success, and then went shopping. When we returned to our new dining-room, we were hustled by the preparations for lunch. Barque had been to the rations distribution, and had managed, thanks to personal relations with the cook (who was a conscientious objector to fractional divisions), to secure the potatoes and meat that formed the rations for all the fifteen men of the squad. He had bought some lard—a little lump for fourteen sous—and some one was frying. He had also acquired some green peas in tins, four tins. Mesnil Andre's tin of veal in jelly would be a hors-d'oeuvre.
"And not a dirty thing in all the lot!" said Lamuse, enchanted.
* * * * *
We inspected the kitchen. Barque was moving cheerfully about the iron Dutch oven whose hot and steaming bulk furnished all one side of the room.
"I've added a stewpan on the quiet for the soup," he whispered to me. Lifting the lid of the stove—"Fire isn't too hot. It's half an hour since I chucked the meat in, and the water's clean yet."
A minute later we heard some one arguing with the hostess. This extra stove was the matter in dispute. There was no more room left for her on her stove. They had told her they would only need a casserole, and she had believed them. If she had known they were going to make trouble she would not have let the room to them. Barque, the good fellow, replied jokingly, and succeeded in soothing the monster.
One by one the others arrived. They winked and rubbed their hands together, full of toothsome anticipation, like the guests at a wedding-breakfast. As they break away from the dazzling light outside and penetrate this cube of darkness, they are blinded, and stand like bewildered owls for several minutes.
"It's not too brilliant in here," says Mesnil Joseph. "Come, old chap, what do you want?" The others exclaim in chorus, "We're damned well off here." And I can see heads nodding assent in the cavern's twilight.
An incident: Farfadet having