1921
I
It was purplish dusk outside the window. The rain fell steadily making long flashing stripes on the cracked panes, beating a hard monotonous tattoo on the tin roof overhead. Fuselli had taken off his wet slicker and stood in front of the window looking out dismally at the rain. Behind him was the smoking stove into which a man was poking wood, and beyond that a few broken folding chairs on which soldiers sprawled in attitudes of utter boredom, and the counter where the "Y" man stood with a set smile doling out chocolate to a line of men that filed past.
"Gee, you have to line up for everything here, don't you?" Fuselli muttered.
"That's about all you do do in this hell-hole, buddy," said a man beside him.
The man pointed with his thumb at the window and said again:
"See that rain? Well, I been in this camp three weeks and it ain't stopped rainin' once. What d'yer think of that fer a country?"
"It certainly ain't like home," said Fuselli. "I'm going to have some chauclate."
"It's damn rotten."
"I might as well try it once."
Fuselli slouched over to the end of the line and stood waiting his turn. He was thinking of the steep streets of San Francisco and the glimpses he used to get of the harbor full of yellow lights, the color of amber in a cigarette holder, as he went home from work through the blue dusk. He had begun to think of Mabe handing him the five-pound box of candy when his attention was distracted by the talk of the men behind him. The man next to him was speaking with hurried nervous intonation. Fuselli could feel his breath on the back of his neck.
"I'll be goddamned," the man said, "was you there too? Where d'you get yours?"
"In the leg; it's about all right, though."
"I ain't. I won't never be all right. The doctor says I'm all right now, but I know I'm not, the lyin' fool."
"Some time, wasn't it?"
"I'll be damned to hell if I do it again. I can't sleep at night thinkin' of the shape of the Fritzies' helmets. Have you ever thought that there was somethin' about the shape of them goddam helmets...?"
"Ain't they just or'nary shapes?" asked Fuselli, half turning round. "I seen 'em in the movies." He laughed apologetically.
"Listen to the rookie, Tub, he's seen 'em in the movies!" said the man with the nervous twitch in his voice, laughing a croaking little laugh. "How long you been in this country, buddy?"
"Two days."
"Well, we only been here two months, ain't we, Tub?"
"Four months; you're forgettin', kid."
The "Y" man turned his set smile on Fuselli while he filled his tin cup up with chocolate.
"How much?"
"A franc; one of those looks like a quarter," said the "Y" man, his well-fed voice full of amiable condescension.
"That's a hell of a lot for a cup of chauclate," said Fuselli.
"You're at the war, young man, remember that," said the "Y" man severely. "You're lucky to get it at all."
A cold chill gripped Fuselli's spine as he went back to the stove to drink the chocolate. Of course he mustn't crab. He was in the war now. If the sergeant had heard him crabbing, it might have spoiled his chances for a corporalship. He must be careful. If he just watched out and kept on his toes, he'd be sure to get it.
"And why ain't there no more chocolate, I want to know?" the nervous voice of the man who had stood in line behind Fuselli rose to a sudden shriek. Everybody looked round. The "Y" man was moving his head from side to side in a flustered way, saying in a shrill little voice:
"I've told you there's no more. Go away!"
"You ain't got no right to tell me to go away. You got to get me some chocolate. You ain't never been at the front, you goddam slacker." The man was yelling at the top of his lungs. He had hold of the counter with two hands and swayed from side to side. His friend was trying to pull him away.
"Look here, none of that, I'll report you," said the "Y" man. "Is there a non-commissioned officer in the hut?"
"Go ahead, you can't do nothin'. I can't never have nothing done worse than what's been done to me already." The man's voice had reached a sing-song fury.
"Is there a non-commissioned officer in the room?" The "Y" man kept looking from side to side. His little eyes were hard and spiteful and his lips were drawn up in a thin straight line.
"Keep quiet, I'll get him away," said the other man in a low voice. "Can't you see he's not...?"
A strange terror took hold of Fuselli. He hadn't expected things to be like that. When he had sat in the grandstand in the training camp and watched the jolly soldiers in khaki marching into towns, pursuing terrified Huns across potato fields, saving Belgian milk-maids against picturesque backgrounds.
"Does many of 'em come back that way?" he asked a man beside him.
"Some do. It's this convalescent camp." The man and his friend stood side by side near the stove talking in low voices.
"Pull yourself together, kid," the friend was saying.
"All right, Tub; I'm all right now, Tub. That slacker got my goat, that was all."
Fuselli was looking at him curiously. He had a yellow parchment face and a high, gaunt forehead going up to sparse, curly brown hair. His eyes had a glassy look about them when they met Fuselli's. He smiled amiably.
"Oh, there's the kid who's seen Fritzies' helmets in the movies.... Come on, buddy, come and have a beer at the English canteen."
"Can you get beer?"
"Sure, over in the English camp." They went out into the slanting rain. It was nearly dark, but the sky had a purplish-red color that was reflected a little on the slanting sides of tents and on the roofs of the rows of sheds that disappeared into the rainy mist in every direction. A few lights gleamed, a very bright polished yellow. They followed a board-walk that splashed mud up from the puddles under the tramp of their heavy boots.
At one place they flattened themselves against the wet flap of a tent and saluted as an officer passed waving a little cane jauntily.
"How long does a fellow usually stay in these rest camps?" asked Fuselli.
"Depends on what's goin' on out there," said Tub, pointing carelessly to the sky beyond the peaks of the tents.
"You'll leave here soon enough. Don't you worry, buddy," said the man with the nervous voice. "What you in?"
"Medical Replacement Unit."
"A medic are you? Those boys didn't last long at the Chateau, did they, Tub?"
"No, they didn't."
Something inside Fuselli was protesting; "I'll last out though. I'll last out though."
"Do you remember the fellers went out to get poor ole Corporal Jones, Tub? I'll be goddamned if anybody ever found a button of their pants." He laughed his creaky little laugh. "They got in the way of a torpedo."
The "wet" canteen was full of smoke and a cosy steam of beer. It was crowded with red-faced men, with shiny brass buttons on their khaki uniforms, among whom was a good sprinkling of lanky Americans.
"Tommies," said Fuselli to himself.
After standing in line a while, Fuselli's cup was handed back to him across the counter, foaming with beer.
"Hello, Fuselli," Meadville clapped him on the shoulder. "You found the liquor pretty damn quick, looks like to me."
Fuselli laughed.
"May I sit with you fellers?"
"Sure, come along," said Fuselli proudly, "these guys have been to the front."
"You have?" asked Meadville. "The Huns are pretty good scrappers, they say. Tell me, do you use your rifle much, or is it mostly big gun work?"
"Naw; after all the months I spent learnin' how to drill with my goddam rifle, I'll be a sucker if I've used it once. I'm in the grenade squad."
Someone at the end of the room had started singing:
"O Mademerselle from Armenteers, Parley voo!"
The man with the nervous voice went on talking, while the song roared about them.
"I don't spend a night without thinkin' o' them funny helmets the Fritzies wear. Have you ever thought that there was something goddam funny about the shape o' them helmets?"
"Can the helmets, kid," said his friend. "You told us all about them onct."
"I ain't told you why I can't forgit 'em, have I?"
"A German officer crossed the Rhine;
Parley voo?
A German officer crossed the Rhine;
He loved the women and liked the wine;
Hanky Panky, parley voo.... "
"Listen to this, fellers," said the man in his twitching nervous voice, staring straight into Fuselli's eyes. "We made a little attack to straighten out our trenches a bit just before I got winged. Our barrage cut off a bit of Fritzie's trench an' we ran right ahead juss about dawn an' occupied it. I'll be goddamned if it wasn't as quiet as a Sunday morning at home."
"It was!" said his friend.
"An' I had a bunch of grenades an' a feller came runnin' up to me, whisperin', 'There's a bunch of Fritzies playin' cards in a dugout. They don't seem to know they're captured. We'd better take 'em pris'ners!"
"'Pris'ners, hell,' says I, 'We'll go and clear the buggars out.' So we crept along to the steps and looked down.... "
The song had started again:
"O Mademerselle from Armenteers,
Parley voo?
"Their helmets looked so damn like toadstools I came near laughin'. An' they sat round the lamp layin' down the cards serious-like, the way I've seen Germans do in the Rathskeller at home."
"He loved the women and liked the wine,
Parley voo?
"I lay there lookin' at 'em for a hell of a time, an' then I clicked a grenade an' tossed it gently down the steps. An' all those funny helmets like toadstools popped up in the air an' somebody gave a yell an' the light went out an' the damn grenade went off. Then I let 'em have the rest of 'em an' went away 'cause one o' 'em was still moanin'-like. It was about that time they let their barrage down on us and I got mine."
"The Yanks are havin' a hell of a time,
Parley voo?
"An' the first thing I thought of when I woke up was how those goddam helmets looked. It upsets a feller to think of a thing like that." His voice ended in a whine like the broken voice of a child that has been beaten.
"You need to pull yourself together, kid," said his friend.
"I know what I need, Tub. I need a woman."
"You know where you get one?" asked Meadville. "I'd like to get me a nice little French girl a rainy night like this."
"It must be a hell of a ways to the town.... They say it's full of M. P.'s too," said Fuselli.
"I know a way," said the man with the nervous voice, "Come on; Tub."
"No, I've had enough of these goddam frog women."
They all left the canteen.
As the two men went off down the side of the building, Fuselli heard the nervous twitching voice through the metallic patter of the rain:
"I can't find no way of forgettin' how funny the helmets looked all round the lamp... I can't find no way.... "
Bill Grey and Fuselli pooled their blankets and slept together. They lay on the hard floor of the tent very close to each other, listening to the rain pattering endlessly on the drenched canvas that slanted above their heads.
"Hell, Bill, I'm gettin' pneumonia," said Fuselli, clearing his nose.
"That's the only thing that scares me in the whole goddam business. I'd hate to die o' sickness... an' they say another kid's kicked off with that—what d'they call it?—menegitis."
"Was that what was the matter with Stein?"
"The corporal won't say."
"Ole Corp. looks sort o' sick himself," said Fuselli.
"It's this rotten climate" whispered Bill Grey, in the middle of a fit of coughing.
"For cat's sake quit that coughin'. Let a feller sleep," came a voice from the other side of the tent.
"Go an' get a room in a hotel if you don't like it."
"That's it, Bill, tell him where to get off."
"If you fellers don't quit yellin', I'll put the whole blame lot of you on K. P.," came the sergeant's good-natured voice.
"Don't you know that taps has blown?"
The tent was silent except for the fast patter of the rain and Bill Grey's coughing.
"That sergeant gives me a pain in the neck," muttered Bill Grey peevishly, when his coughing had stopped, wriggling about under the blankets.
After a while Fuselli said in a very low voice, so that no one but his friend should hear:
"Say, Bill, ain't it different from what we thought it was going to be?"
"Yare."
"I mean fellers don't seem to think about beatin' the Huns at all, they're so busy crabbin' on everything."
"It's the guys higher up that does the thinkin'," said Grey grandiloquently.
"Hell, but I thought it'd be excitin' like in the movies."
"I guess that was a lot o' talk."
"Maybe."
Fuselli went to sleep on the hard floor, feeling the comfortable warmth of Grey's body along the side of him, hearing the endless, monotonous patter of the rain on the drenched canvas above his head. He tried to stay awake a minute to remember what Mabe looked like, but sleep closed down on him suddenly.
The bugle wrenched them out of their blankets before it was light. It was not raining. The air was raw and full of white mist that was cold as snow against their faces still warm from sleep. The corporal called the roll, lighting matches to read the list. When he dismissed the formation the sergeant's voice was heard from the tent, where he still lay rolled in his blankets.
"Say, Corp, go an' tell Fuselli to straighten out Lieutenant Stanford's room at eight sharp in Officers' Barracks, Number Four."
"Did you hear, Fuselli?"
"All right," said Fuselli. His blood boiled up suddenly. This was the first time he'd had to do servants' work. He hadn't joined the army to be a slavey to any damned first loot. It was against army regulations anyway. He'd go and kick. He wasn't going to be a slavey.... He walked towards the door of the tent, thinking what he'd say to the sergeant. But he noticed the corporal coughing into his handkerchief with an expression of pain on his face. He turned and strolled away. It would get him in wrong if he started kicking like that. Much better shut his mouth and put up with it. The poor old corp couldn't last long at this rate. No, it wouldn't do to get in wrong.
At eight, Fuselli, with a broom in his hand, feeling dull fury pounding and fluttering within him, knocked on the unpainted board door.
"Who's that?"
"To clean the room, sir," said Fuselli. "Come back in about twenty minutes," came the voice of the lieutenant.
"All right, sir."
Fuselli leaned against the back of the barracks and smoked a cigarette. The air stung his hands as if they had been scraped by a nutmeg-grater. Twenty minutes passed slowly. Despair seized hold of him. He was so far from anyone who cared about him, so lost in the vast machine. He was telling himself that he'd never get on, would never get up where he could show what he was good for. He felt as if he were in a treadmill. Day after day it would be like this,—the same routine, the same helplessness. He looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes had passed. He picked up his broom and moved round to the lieutenant's room.
"Come in," said the lieutenant carelessly. He was in his shirtsleeves, shaving. A pleasant smell of shaving soap filled the dark clapboard room, which had no furniture but three cots and some officers' trunks. He was a red-faced young man with flabby cheeks and dark straight eyebrows. He had taken command of the company only a day or two before.
"Looks like a decent feller," thought Fuselli.
"What's your name?" asked the lieutenant, speaking into the small nickel mirror, while he ran the safety razor obliquely across his throat. He stuttered a little. To Fuselli he seemed to speak like an Englishman.
"Fuselli."
"Italian parentage, I presume?"
"Yes," said Fuselli sullenly, dragging one of the cots away from the wall.
"Parla Italiano?"
"You mean, do I speak Eyetalian? Naw, sir," said Fuselli emphatically, "I was born in Frisco."
"Indeed? But get me some more water, will you, please?"
When Fuselli came back, he stood with his broom between his knees, blowing on his hands that were blue and stiff from carrying the heavy bucket. The lieutenant was dressed and was hooking the top hook of the uniform carefully. The collar made a red mark on his pink throat.
"All right; when you're through, report back to the Company." The lieutenant went out, drawing on a pair of khaki-colored gloves with a satisfied and important gesture.
Fuselli walked back slowly to the tents where the Company was quartered, looking about him at the long lines of barracks, gaunt and dripping in the mist, at the big tin sheds of the cook shacks where the cooks and K. P.'s in greasy blue denims were slouching about amid a steam of cooking food.
Something of the gesture with which the lieutenant drew on his gloves caught in the mind of Fuselli. He had seen peoople make gestures like that in the movies, stout dignified people in evening suits. The president of the Company that owned the optical goods store, where he had worked, at home in Frisco, had had something of that gesture about him.
And he pictured himself drawing on a pair of gloves that way, importantly, finger by finger, with a little wave, of self-satisfaction when the gesture was completed.... He'd have to get that corporalship.
"There's a long, long trail a-winding Through no man's land in France."
The company sang lustily as it splashed through the mud down a grey road between high fences covered with great tangles of barbed wire, above which peeked the ends of warehouses and the chimneys of factories.
The lieutenant and the top sergeant walked side by side chatting, now and then singing a little of the song in a deprecating way. The corporal sang, his eyes sparkling with delight. Even the sombre sergeant who rarely spoke to anyone, sang. The company strode along, its ninety-six legs splashing jauntily through the deep putty-colored puddles. The packs swayed merrily from side to side as if it were they and not the legs that were walking.
"There's a long, long trail a-winding Through no man's land in France."
At last they were going somewhere. They had separated from the contingent they had come over with. They were all alone now. They were going to be put to work. The lieutenant strode along importantly. The sergeant strode along importantly. The corporal strode along importantly. The right guard strode along more importantly than anyone. A sense of importance, of something tremendous to do, animated the company like wine, made the packs and the belts seem less heavy, made their necks and shoulders less stiff from struggling with the weight of the packs, made the ninety-six legs tramp jauntily in spite of the oozy mud and the deep putty-colored puddles.
It was cold in the dark shed of the freight station where they waited. Some gas lamps flickered feebly high up among the rafters, lighting up in a ghastly way white piles of ammunition boxes and ranks and ranks of shells that disappeared in the darkness. The raw air was full of coal smoke and a smell of freshly-cut boards. The captain and the top sergeant had disappeared. The men sat about, huddled in groups, sinking as far as they could into their overcoats, stamping their numb wet feet on the mud-covered cement of the floor. The sliding doors were shut. Through them came a monotonous sound of cars shunting, of buffers bumping against buffers, and now and then the shrill whistle of an engine.
"Hell, the French railroads are rotten," said someone.
"How d'you know?" snapped Eisenstein, who sat on a box away from the rest with his lean face in his hands staring at his mud-covered boots.
"Look at this," Bill Grey made a disgusted gesture towards the ceiling. "Gas. Don't even have electric light."
"Their trains run faster than ours," said Eisenstein.
"The hell they do. Why, a fellow back in that rest camp told me that it took four or five days to get anywhere."
"He was stuffing you," said Eisenstein. "They used to run the fastest trains in the world in France."
"Not so fast as the 'Twentieth Century.' Goddam, I'm a railroad man and I know."
"I want five men to help me sort out the eats," said the top sergeant, coming suddenly out of the shadows. "Fuselli, Grey, Eisenstein, Meadville, Williams... all right, come along."
"Say, Sarge, this guy says that frog trains are faster than our trains. What d'ye think o' that?"
The sergeant put on his comic expression. Everybody got ready to laugh.
"Well, if he'd rather take the side-door Pullmans we're going to get aboard tonight than the 'Sunset Limited,' he's welcome. I've seen 'em. You fellers haven't."
Everybody laughed. The top sergeant turned confidentially to the five men who followed him into a small well-lighted room that looked like a freight office.
"We've got to sort out the grub, fellers. See those cases? That's three days' rations for the outfit. I want to sort it into three lots, one for each car. Understand?"
Fuselli pulled open one of the boxes. The cans of bully beef flew under his fingers. He kept looking out of the corner of his eye at Eisenstein, who seemed very skilful in a careless way. The top sergeant stood beaming at them with his legs wide apart. Once he said something in a low voice to the corporal. Fuselli thought he caught the words: "privates first-class," and his heart started thumping hard. In a few minutes the job was done, and everybody stood about lighting cigarettes.
"Well, fellers," said Sergeant Jones, the sombre man who rarely spoke, "I certainly didn't reckon when I used to be teachin' and preachin' and tendin' Sunday School and the like that I'd come to be usin' cuss words, but I think we got a damn good company."
"Oh, we'll have you sayin' worse things than 'damn' when we get you out on the front with a goddam German aeroplane droppin' bombs on you," said the top sergeant, slapping him on the back. "Now, I want you five men to look out for the grub." Fuselli's chest swelled. "The company'll be in charge of the corporal for the night. Sergeant Jones and I have got to be with the lieutenant, understand?"
They all walked back to the dingy room where the rest of the company waited huddled in their coats, trying to keep their importance from being too obvious in their step.
"I've really started now," thought Fuselli to himself. "I've really started now."
The bare freight car clattered and rumbled monotonously over the rails. A bitter cold wind blew up through the cracks in the grimy splintered boards of the floor. The men huddled in the corners of the car, curled up together like puppies in a box. It was pitch black. Fuselli lay half asleep, his head full of curious fragmentary dreams, feeling through his sleep the aching cold and the unending clattering rumble of the wheels and the bodies and arms and legs muffled in coats and blankets pressing against him. He woke up with a start. His teeth were chattering. The clanking rumble of wheels seemed to be in his head. His head was being dragged along, bumping over cold iron rails. Someone lighted a match. The freight car's black swaying walls, the packs piled in the center, the bodies heaped in the corners where, out of khaki masses here and there gleamed an occasional white face or a pair of eyes—all showed clear for a moment and then vanished again in the utter blackness. Fuselli pillowed his head in the crook of someone's arm and tried to go to sleep, but the scraping rumble of wheels over rails was too loud; he stayed with open eyes staring into the blackness, trying to draw his body away from the blast of cold air that blew up through a crack in the floor.
When the first greyness began filtering into the car, they all stood up and stamped and pounded each other and wrestled to get warm.
When it was nearly light, the train stopped and they opened the sliding doors. They were in a station, a foreign-looking station where the walls were plastered with unfamiliar advertisements. "V-E-R-S-A-I-L-L-E-S"; Fuselli spelt out the name.
"Versales," said Eisenstein. "That's where the kings of France used to live."
The train started moving again slowly. On the platform stood the top sergeant.
"How d'ye sleep," he shouted as the car passed him. "Say, Fuselli, better start some grub going."
"All right, Sarge," said Fuselli.
The sergeant ran back to the front of the car and climbed on. With a delicious feeling of leadership, Fuselli divided up the bread and the cans of bully beef and the cheese. Then he sat on his pack eating dry bread and unsavoury beef, whistling joyfully, while the train rumbled and clattered along through a strange, misty-green countryside,—whistling joyfully because he was going to the front, where there would be glory and excitement, whistling joyfully because he felt he was getting along in the world.
It was noon. A pallid little sun like a toy balloon hung low in the reddish-grey sky. The train had stopped on a siding in the middle of a russet plain. Yellow poplars, faint as mist, rose slender against the sky along a black shining stream that swirled beside the track. In the distance a steeple and a few red roofs were etched faintly in the greyness.
The men stood about balancing first on one foot and then on the other, stamping to get warm. On the other side of the river an old man with an oxcart had stopped and was looking sadly at the train.
"Say, where's the front?" somebody shouted to him.
Everybody took up the cry; "Say, where's the front?"
The old man waved his hand, shook his head and shouted to the oxen. The oxen took up again their quiet processional gait and the old man walked ahead of them, his eyes on the ground.
"Say, ain't the frogs dumb?"
"Say, Dan," said Bill Grey, strolling away from a group of men he had been talking to. "These guys say we are going to the Third Army."
"Say, fellers," shouted Fuselli. "They say we're going to the Third Army."
"Where's that?"
"In the Oregon forest," ventured somebody.
"That's at the front, ain't it?"
At that moment the lieutenant strode by. A long khaki muffler was thrown carelessly round his neck and hung down his back.
"Look here, men," he said severely, "the orders are to stay in the cars."
The men slunk back into the cars sullenly.
A hospital train passed, clanking slowly over the cross-tracks. Fuselli looked fixedly at the dark enigmatic windows, at the red crosses, at the orderlies in white who leaned out of the doors, waving their hands. Somebody noticed that there were scars on the new green paint of the last car.
"The Huns have been shooting at it."
"D'ye hear that? The Huns tried to shoot up that hospital train."
Fuselli remembered the pamphlet "German Atrocities" he had read one night in the Y. M. C. A. His mind became suddenly filled with pictures of children with their arms cut off, of babies spitted on bayonets, of women strapped on tables and violated by soldier after soldier. He thought of Mabe. He wished he were in a combatant service; he wanted to fight, fight. He pictured himself shooting dozens of men in green uniforms, and he thought of Mabe reading about it in the papers. He'd have to try to get into a combatant service. No, he couldn't stay in the medics.
The train had started again. Misty russet fields slipped by and dark clumps of trees that gyrated slowly waving branches of yellow and brown leaves and patches of black lace-work against the reddish-grey sky. Fuselli was thinking of the good chance he had of getting to be corporal.
At night. A dim-lighted station platform. The company waited in two lines, each man sitting on his pack. On the opposite platform crowds of little men in blue with mustaches and long, soiled overcoats that reached almost to their feet were shouting and singing. Fuselli watched them with a faint disgust.
"Gee, they got funny lookin' helmets, ain't they?"
"They're the best fighters in the world," said Eisenstein, "not that that's sayin' much about a man."
"Say, that's an M. P.," said Bill Grey, catching Fuselli's arm. "Let's go ask him how near the front we are. I thought I heard guns a minute ago."
"Did you? I guess we're in for it now," said Fuselli. "Say, buddy, how near the front are we?" they spoke together excitedly.
"The front?" said the M. P., who was a red-faced Irishman with a crushed nose. "You're 'way back in the middle of France." The M. P. spat disgustedly. "You fellers ain't never goin' to the front, don't you worry."
"Hell!" said Fuselli.
"I'll be goddamned if I don't get there somehow," said Bill Grey, squaring his jaw.
A fine rain was falling on the unprotected platform. On the other side the little men in blue were singing a song Fuselli could not understand, drinking out of their ungainly-looking canteens.
Fuselli announced the news to the company. Everybody clustered round him cursing. But the faint sense of importance it gave him did not compensate for the feeling he had of being lost in the machine, of being as helpless as a sheep in a flock. Hours passed. They stamped about the platform in the fine rain or sat in a row on their packs, waiting for orders. A grey belt appeared behind the trees. The platform began to take on a silvery gleam. They sat in a row on their packs, waiting.
II
The company stood at attention lined up outside of their barracks, a long wooden shack covered with tar paper, in front of them was a row of dishevelled plane trees with white trunks that looked like ivory in the faint ruddy sunlight. Then there was a rutted road on which stood a long line of French motor trucks with hunched grey backs like elephants. Beyond these were more plane trees and another row of barracks covered with tar paper, outside of which other companies were lined up standing at attention.
A bugle was sounding far away.
The lieutenant stood at attention very stiffly. Fuselli's eyes followed the curves of his brilliantly-polished puttees up to the braid on his sleeves.
"Parade rest!" shouted the lieutenant in a muffled voice.
Feet and hands moved in unison.
Fuselli was thinking of the town. After retreat you could go down the irregular cobbled street from the old fair-ground where the camp was to a little square where there was a grey stone fountain and a gin-mill where you could sit at an oak table and have beer and eggs and fried potatoes served you by a girl with red cheeks and plump white appetizing arms.
"Attention!"
Feet and hands moved in unison again. They could hardly hear the bugle, it was so faint.
"Men, I have some appointments to announce," said the lieutenant, facing the company and taking on an easy conversational tone. "At rest!... You've done good work in the storehouse here, men. I'm glad I have such a willing bunch of men under me. And I certainly hope that we can manage to make as many promotions as possible—as many as possible."
Fuselli's hands were icy, and his heart was pumping the blood so fast to his ears that he could hardly hear.
"The following privates to private first-class, read the lieutenant in a routine voice: "Grey, Appleton, Williams, Eisenstein, Porter...Eisenstein will be company clerk.... " Fuselli was almost ready to cry. His name was not on the list. The sergeant's voice came after a long pause, smooth as velvet.
"You forget Fuselli, sir."
"Oh, so I did," the lieutenant laughed—a small dry laugh.—"And Fuselli."
"Gee, I must write Mabe tonight," Fuselli was saying to himself. "She'll be a proud kid when she gets that letter."
"Companee dis... missed!", shouted the sergeant genially.
"O Madermoiselle from Armenteers,
Parley voo?
O Madermoiselle from Armenteers,
struck up the sergeant in his mellow voice.
The front room of the cafe was full of soldiers. Their khaki hid the worn oak benches and the edges of the square tables and the red tiles of the floor. They clustered round the tables, where glasses and bottles gleamed vaguely through the tobacco smoke. They stood in front of the bar, drinking out of bottles, laughing, scraping their feet on the floor. A stout girl with red cheeks and plump white arms moved contentedly among them, carrying away empty bottles, bringing back full ones, taking the money to a grim old woman with a grey face and eyes like bits of jet, who stared carefully at each coin, fingered it with her grey hands and dropped it reluctantly into the cash drawer. In the corner sat Sergeant Olster with a flush on his face, and the corporal who had been on the Red Sox outfield and another sergeant, a big man with black hair and a black mustache. About them clustered, with approbation and respect in their faces, Fuselli, Bill Grey and Meadville the cowboy, and Earl Williams, the blue-eyed and yellow-haired drug-clerk.
"O the Yanks are having the hell of a time, Parley voo?"
They pounded their bottles on the table in time to the song.
"It's a good job," the top sergeant said, suddenly interrupting the song. "You needn't worry about that, fellers. I saw to it that we got a good job.... And about getting to the front, you needn't worry about that. We'll all get to the front soon enough.... Tell me—this war is going to last ten years."
"I guess we'll all be generals by that time, eh, Sarge?" said Williams. "But, man, I wish I was back jerkin' soda water."
"It's a great life if you don't weaken," murmured Fuselli automatically.
"But I'm beginnin' to weaken," said Williams. "Man, I'm homesick. I don't care who knows it. I wish I could get to the front and be done with it."
"Say, have a heart. You need a drink," said the top sergeant, banging his fist on the table. "Say, mamselle, mame shows, mame shows!"
"I didn't know you could talk French, Sarge," said Fuselli.
"French, hell!" said the top sergeant. "Williams is the boy can talk French."
"Voulay vous couchay aveck moy.... That's all I know."
Everybody laughed.
"Hey, mamzelle," cried the top sergeant. "Voulay vous couchay aveck moy? We We, champagne." Everybody laughed, uproariously.
The girl slapped his head good-naturedly.
At that moment a man stamped noisily into the cafe, a tall broad-shouldered man in a loose English tunic, who had a swinging swagger that made the glasses ring on all the tables. He was humming under his breath and there was a grin on his broad red face. He went up to the girl and pretended to kiss her, and she laughed and talked familiarly with him in French.
"There's wild Dan Cohan," said the dark-haired sergeant. "Say, Dan, Dan."
"Here, yer honor."
"Come over and have a drink. We're going to have some fizzy."
"Never known to refuse."
They made room for him on the bench.
"Well, I'm confined to barracks," said Dan Cohan. "Look at me!" He laughed and gave his head a curious swift jerk to one side. "Compree?"
"Ain't ye scared they'll nab you?" said Fuselli.
"Nab me, hell, they can't do nothin' to me. I've had three court-martials already and they're gettin' a fourth up on me."
Dan Cohan pushed his head to one side and laughed. "I got a friend. My old boss is captain, and he's goin' to fix it up. I used to alley around politics chez moy. Compree?"
The champagne came and Dan Cohan popped the cork up to the ceiling with dexterous red fingers.
"I was just wondering who was going to give me a drink," he said. "Ain't had any pay since Christ was a corporal. I've forgotten what it looks like."
The champagne fizzed into the beer-glasses.
"This is the life," said Fuselli.
"Ye're damn right, buddy, if yer don't let them ride yer," said Dan.
"What they got yer up for now, Dan?"
"Murder."
"Murder, hell! How's that?"
"That is, if that bloke dies."
"The hell you say!"
"It all started by that goddam convoy down from Nantes...Bill Rees an' me.... They called us the shock troops.—Hy! Marie! Ancore champagne, beaucoup.—I was in the Ambulance service then. God knows what rotten service I'm in now.... Our section was on repo and they sent some of us fellers down to Nantes to fetch a convoy of cars back to Sandrecourt. We started out like regular racers, just the chassis, savey? Bill Rees an' me was the goddam tail of the peerade. An' the loot was a hell of a blockhead that didn't know if he was coming or going."
"Where the hell's Nantes?" asked the top sergeant, as if it had just slipped his mind.
"On the coast," answered Fuselli. "I seen it on the map."
"Nantes's way off to hell and gone anyway," said wild Dan Cohan, taking a gulp of champagne that he held in his mouth a moment, making his mouth move like a cow ruminating.
"An' as Bill Rees an' me was the tail of the peerade an' there was lots of cafes and little gin-mills, Bill Rees an' me'd stop off every now and then to have a little drink an' say 'Bonjour' to the girls an' talk to the people, an' then we'd go like a bat out of hell to catch up. Well, I don't know if we went too fast for 'em or if they lost the road or what, but we never saw that goddam convoy from the time we went out of Nantes. Then we thought we might as well see a bit of the country, compree?... An' we did, goddam it.... We landed up in Orleans, soused to the gills and without any gas an' with an M. P; climbing up on the dashboard."
"Did they nab you, then?"
"Not a bit of it," said wild Dan Cohen, jerking his head to one side. "They gave us gas and commutation of rations an' told us to go on in the mornin'. You see we put up a good line of talk, compree?... Well, we went to the swankiest restaurant.... You see we had on those bloody British uniforms they gave us when the O. D. gave out, an' the M. P.'s didn't know just what sort o' birds we were. So we went and ordered up a regular meal an' lots o' vin rouge an' vin blank an' drank a few cognacs an' before we knew it we were eating dinner with two captains and a sergeant. One o' the captains was the drunkest man I ever did see.... Good kid! We all had dinner and Bill Rees says, 'Let's go for a joy-ride.' An' the captains says, 'Fine,' and the sergeant would have said, 'Fine,' but he was so goggle-eyed drunk he couldn't. An' we started off!... Say, fellers, I'm dry as hell! Let's order up another bottle."
"Sure," said everyone.
"Ban swar, ma cherie,
Comment allez vous?"
"Encore champagne, Marie, gentille!"
"Well," he went on, "we went like a bat out of hell along a good state road, and it was all fine until one of the captains thought we ought to have a race. We did.... Compree? The flivvers flivved all right, but the hell of it was we got so excited about the race we forgot about the sergeant an' he fell off an' nobody missed him. An' at last we all pull up before a gin-mill an' one captain says, 'Where's the sergeant?' an' the other captain says there hadn't been no sergeant. An' we all had a drink on that. An' one captain kept sayin', 'It's all imagination. Never was a sergeant. I wouldn't associate with a sergeant, would I, lootenant?' He kept on calling me lootenant.... Well that was how they got this new charge against me. Somebody picked up the sergeant an' he got concussion o' the brain an' there's hell to pay, an' if the poor buggar croaks.... I'm it.... Compree? About that time the captains start wantin' to go to Paris, an' we said we'd take 'em, an' so we put all the gas in my car an' the four of us climbed on that goddam chassis an' off we went like a bat out of hell! It'ld all have been fine if I wasn't lookin' cross-eyed.... We piled up in about two minutes on one of those nice little stone piles an' there we were. We all got up an' one o' the captains had his arm broke, an' there was hell to pay, worse than losing the sergeant. So we walked on down the road. I don't know how it got to be daylight. But we got to some hell of a town or other an' there was two M. P.'s all ready to meet us.... Compree?... Well, we didn't mess around with them captains. We just lit off down a side street an' got into a little cafe an' went in back an' had a hell of a lot o' cafe o' lay. That made us feel sort o' good an' I says to Bill, 'Bill, we've got to get to headquarters an' tell 'em that we accidentally smashed up our car, before the M. P.'s get busy.' An' he says, 'You're goddamned right,' an' at that minute I sees an M. P. through a crack in the door comin' into the cafe. We lit out into the garden and made for the wall. We got over that, although we left a good piece of my pants in the broken glass. But the hell of it was the M. P.'s got over too an' they had their pop-guns out. An' the last I saw of Bill Rees was—there was a big fat woman in a pink dress washing clothes in a big tub, an' poor ole Bill Rees runs head on into her an' over they both goes into the washtub. The M. P.'s got him all right. That's how I got away. An' the last I saw of Bill Rees he was squirming about on top of the washtub like he was swimmin', an' the fat woman was sittin' on the ground shaking her fist at him. Bill Rees was the best buddy I ever had."
He paused and poured the rest of the champagne in his glass and wiped the sweat off his face with his big red hand.
"You ain't stringin' us, are you?" asked Fuselli.
"You just ask Lieutenant Whitehead, who's defending me in the court-martial, if I'm stringin' yer. I been in the ring, kid, and you can bet your bottom dollar that a man's been in the ring'll tell the truth."
"Go on, Dan," said the sergeant.
"An' I never heard a word about Bill Rees since. I guess they got him into the trenches and made short work of him."
Dan Cohan paused to light a cigarette.
"Well, one o' the M. P.'s follows after me and starts shootin'. An' don't you believe I ran. Gee, I was scared! But I was in luck 'cause a Frenchman had just started his camion an' I jumped in and said the gendarmes were after me. He was white, that frog was. He shot the juice into her an' went off like a bat out of hell an' there was a hell of a lot of traffic on the road because there was some damn-fool attack or other goin' on. So I got up to Paris.... An' then it'ld all have been fine if I hadn't met up with a Jane I knew. I still had five hundred francs on me, an' so we raised hell until one day we was havin' dinner in the cafe de Paris, both of us sort of jagged up, an' we didn't have enough money to pay the bill an' Janey made a run for it, but an M. P. got me an' then there was hell to pay.... Compree? They put me in the Bastille, great place.... Then they shipped me off to some damn camp or other an' gave me a gun an' made me drill for a week an' then they packed a whole gang of us, all A. W. O. L's, into a train for the front. That was nearly the end of little Daniel again. But when we was in Vitry-le-Francois, I chucked my rifle out of one window and jumped out of the other an' got on a train back to Paris an' went an' reported to headquarters how I'd smashed the car an' been in the Bastille an' all, an' they were sore as hell at the M. P.'s an' sent me out to a section an' all went fine until I got ordered back an' had to alley down to this goddam camp. Ah' now I don't know what they're goin' to do to me."
"Gee whiz!"
"It's a great war, I tell you, Sarge. It's a great war. I wouldn't have missed it."
Across the room someone was singing.
"Let's drown 'em out," said the top sergeant boisterously.
"O Mademerselle from Armenteers,
Parley voo?"
"Well, I've got to get the hell out of here," said wild Dan Cohan, after a minute. "I've got a Jane waitin' for me. I'm all fixed up,... Compree?"
He swaggered out singing:
"Bon soir, ma cherie,
Comment alley vous?
Si vous voulez
Couche avec moi...."
The door slammed behind him, leaving the cafe quiet.
Many men had left. Madame had taken up her knitting and Marie of the plump white arms sat beside her, leaning her head back among the bottles that rose in tiers behind the bars.
Fuselli was staring at a door on one side of the bar. Men kept opening it and looking in and closing it again with a peculiar expression on their faces. Now and then someone would open it with a smile and go into the next room, shuffling his feet and closing the door carefully behind him.
"Say, I wonder what they've got there," said the top sergeant, who had been staring at the door. "Mush be looked into, mush be looked into," he added, laughing drunkenly.
"I dunno," said Fuselli. The champagne was humming in his head like a fly against a window pane. He felt very bold and important.
The top sergeant got to his feet unsteadily.
"Corporal, take charge of the colors," he said, and walked to the door. He opened it a little, peeked in; winked elaborately to his friends and skipped into the other room, closing the door carefully behind him.
The corporal went over next. He said, "Well, I'll be damned," and walked straight in, leaving the door ajar. In a moment it was closed from the inside.
"Come on, Bill, let's see what the hell they got in there," said Fuselli.
"All right, old kid," said Bill Grey. They went together over to the door. Fuselli opened it and looked in. He let out a breath through his teeth with a faint whistling sound.
"Gee, come in, Bill," he said, giggling.
The room was small, nearly filled up by a dining table with a red cloth. On the mantel above the empty fireplace were candlesticks with dangling crystals that glittered red and yellow and purple in the lamplight, in front of a cracked mirror that seemed a window into another dingier room. The paper was peeling off the damp walls, giving a mortuary smell of mildewed plaster that not even the reek of beer and tobacco had done away with.
"Look at her, Bill, ain't she got style?" whispered Fuselli.
Bill Grey grunted.
"Say, d'ye think the Jane that feller was tellin' us he raised hell with in Paris was like that?"
At the end of the table, leaning on her elbows, was a woman with black frizzy hair cut short, that stuck out from her head in all directions. Her eyes were dark and her lips red with a faint swollen look. She looked with a certain defiance at the men who stood about the walls and sat at the table.
The men stared at her silently. A big man with red hair and a heavy jaw who sat next her kept edging up nearer. Someone knocked against the table making the bottles and liqueur glasses clustered in the center jingle.
"She ain't clean; she's got bobbed hair," said the man next Fuselli.
The woman said something in French.
Only one man understood it. His laugh rang hollowly in the silent room and stopped suddenly.
The woman looked attentively at the faces round her for a moment, shrugged her shoulders, and began straightening the ribbon on the hat she held on her lap.
"How the hell did she get here? I thought the M. P.'s ran them out of town the minute they got here," said one man.
The woman continued plucking at her hat.
"You venay Paris?" said a boy with a soft voice who sat near her. He had blue eyes and a milky complexion, faintly tanned, that went strangely with the rough red and brown faces in the room.
"Oui; de Paris," she said after a pause, glancing suddenly in the boy's face.
"She's a liar, I can tell you that," said the red-haired man, who by this time had moved his chair very close to the woman's.
"You told him you came from Marseilles, and him you came from Lyon," said the boy with the milky complexion, smiling genially. "Vraiment de ou venay vous?"
"I come from everywhere," she said, and tossed the hair back from her face.
"Travelled a lot?" asked the boy again.
"A feller told me," said Fuselli to Bill Grey, "that he'd talked to a girl like that who'd been to Turkey an' Egypt I bet that girl's seen some life."
The woman jumped to her feet suddenly screaming with rage. The man with the red hair moved away sheepishly. Then he lifted his large dirty hands in the air.
"Kamarad," he said.
Nobody laughed. The room was silent except for feet scraping occasionally on the floor.
She put her hat on and took a little box from the chain bag in her lap and began powdering her face, making faces into the mirror she held in the palm of her hand.
The men stared at her.
"Guess she thinks she's the Queen of the May," said one man, getting to his feet. He leaned across the table and spat into the fireplace. "I'm going back to barracks." He turned to the woman and shouted in a voice full of hatred, "Bon swar."
The woman was putting the powder puff away in her jet bag. She did not look up; the door closed sharply.
"Come along," said the woman, suddenly, tossing her head back. "Come along one at a time; who go with me first?"