Under Fire (Historical Novel). Henri Barbusse
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is no reason," Lamuse avers.
"Yes, there is," says Cocon. "It's—or rather, there are several."
"Shut it up! Much better to have no reason, as long as we've got to stick it."
"All the same," comes the hollow voice of Blaire, who lets no chance slip of airing his pet phrase—"All the same, they'd like to steal the very skin off us!"
"At the beginning of it," says Tirette, "I used to think about a heap of things. I considered and calculated. Now, I don't think any more."
"Nor me either."
"Nor me."
"I've never tried to."
"You're not such a fool as you look, flea-face," says the shrill and jeering voice of Mesnil Andre. Obscurely flattered, the other develops his theme—
"To begin with, you can't know anything about anything."
Says Corporal Bertrand, "There's only one thing you need know, and it's this; that the Boches are here in front of us, deep dug in, and we've got to see that they don't get through, and we've got to put 'em out, one day or another—as soon as possible."
"Oui, oui, they've got to leg it, and no mistake about it. What else is there? Not worth while to worry your head thinking about anything else. But it's a long job."
An explosion of profane assent comes from Fouillade, and he adds, "That's what it is!"
"I've given up grousing," says Barque. "At the beginning of it, I played hell with everybody—with the people at the rear, with the civilians, with the natives, with the shirkers. Yes, I played hell; but that was at the beginning of the war—I was young. Now, I take things better."
"There's only one way of taking 'em—as they come!"
"Of course! Otherwise, you'd go crazy. We're dotty enough already, eh, Firmin?"
Volpatte assents with a nod of profound conviction. He spits, and then contemplates his missile with a fixed and unseeing eye.
"You were saying?" insists Barque.
"Here, you haven't got to look too far in front. You must live from day to day and from hour to hour, as well as you can."
"Certain sure, monkey-face. We've got to do what they tell us to do, until they tell us to go away."
"That's all," yawns Mesnil Joseph.
Silence follows the recorded opinions that proceed from these dried and tanned faces, inlaid with dust. This, evidently, is the credo of the men who, a year and a half ago, left all the corners of the land to mass themselves on the frontier: Give up trying to understand, and give up trying to be yourself. Hope that you will not die, and fight for life as well as you can.
"Do what you've got to do, oui, but get out of your own messes yourself," says Barque, as he slowly stirs the mud to and fro.
"No choice"—Tulacque backs him up. "If you don't get out of 'em yourself, no one'll do it for you."
"He's not yet quite extinct, the man that bothers about the other fellow."
"Every man for himself, in war!"
"That's so, that's so."
Silence. Then from the depth of their destitution, these men summon sweet souvenirs—"All that," Barque goes on, "isn't worth much, compared with the good times we had at Soissons."
"Ah, the Devil!"
A gleam of Paradise lost lights up their eyes and seems even to redden their cold faces.
"Talk about a festival!" sighs Tirloir, as he leaves off scratching himself, and looks pensively far away over Trenchland.
"Ah, nom de Dieu! All that town, nearly abandoned, that used to be ours! The houses and the beds—"
"And the cupboards!"
"And the cellars!"
Lamuse's eyes are wet, his face like a nosegay, his heart full.
"Were you there long?" asks Cadilhac, who came here later, with the drafts from Auvergne.
"Several months."
The conversation had almost died out, but it flames up again fiercely at this vision of the days of plenty.
"We used to see," said Paradis dreamily, "the poilus pouring along and behind the houses on the way back to camp with fowls hung round their middles, and a rabbit under each arm, borrowed from some good fellow or woman that they hadn't seen and won't ever see again."
We reflect on the far-off flavor of chicken and rabbit. "There were things that we paid for, too. The spondu-licks just danced about. We held all the aces in those days."
"A hundred thousand francs went rolling round the shops."
"Millions, oui. All the day, just a squandering that you've no idea of, a sort of devil's delight."
"Believe me or not," said Blaire to Cadilhac, "but in the middle of it all, what we had the least of was fires, just like here and everywhere else you go. You had to chase it and find it and stick to it. Ah, mon vieux, how we did run after the kindlings!"
"Well, we were in the camp of the C.H.R. The cook there was the great Martin Cesar. He was the man for finding wood!"
"Ah, oui, oui! He was the ace of trumps! He got what he wanted without twisting himself."
"Always some fire in his kitchen, young fellow. You saw cooks chasing and gabbling about the streets in all directions, blubbering because they had no coal or wood. But he'd got a fire. When he hadn't any, he said, 'Don't worry, I'll see you through.' And he wasn't long about it, either."
"He went a bit too far, even. The first time I saw him in his kitchen, you'd never guess what he'd got the stew going with! With a violin that he'd found in the house!"
"Rotten, all the same," says Mesnil Andre. "One knows well enough that a violin isn't worth much when it comes to utility, but all the same—"
"Other times, he used billiard cues. Zizi just succeeded in pinching one for a cane, but the rest—into the fire! Then the arm-chairs in the drawing-room went by degrees—mahogany, they were. He did 'em in and cut them up by night, case some N.C.O. had something to say about it."
"He knew his way about," said Pepin. "As for us, we got busy with an old suite of furniture that lasted us a fortnight."
"And what for should we be without? You've got to make dinner, and there's no wood or coal. After the grub's served out, there you are with your jaws empty, with a pile of meat in front of you, and in the middle of a lot of pals that chaff and bullyrag you!"
"It's the War Office's doing, it isn't ours."
"Hadn't the officers a lot to say about the pinching?"
"They damn well did it themselves, I give you my word! Desmaisons, do you remember Lieutenant Virvin's trick, breaking down a cellar door with an ax? And when a poilu saw him at it, he gave him the door for firewood, so that he wouldn't spread it about."
"And poor old Saladin, the transport officer. He was found coming out of a basement in the dusk with two bottles of white wine in each arm, the sport, like a nurse with two pairs of twins. When he was spotted, they made him go back down to the wine-cellar, and serve out bottles for everybody. But Corporal Bertrand, who is a man of scruples, wouldn't have any. Ah, you remember that, do you, sausage-foot!"
"Where's that cook now that always found wood?" asks Cadilhac.
"He's dead. A bomb fell in his stove. He didn't get it, but he's dead all the same—died of shock when he saw his macaroni with its legs in the air. Heart seizure, so the doc' said. His heart was weak—he was only strong on wood. They gave him a proper funeral—made him a coffin out of the bedroom floor, and got the picture nails out of the walls to fasten 'em together, and used bricks to drive 'em in. While they were carrying him off, I thought to myself, 'Good thing for him he's dead.