Journey to the End of the Night (6 page)

"Never fear," he went on. "I saw my chance, and I took it. Robinson, I says to myself?

Robinson's my name, Leon Robinson?it's now or never, I say to myself. This is the time to get going ... Right? So I started through a little clump of woods and pretty soon, what do you think, I run into our captain ... he's leaning against a tree, in very bad shape! ... Dying! ... He was holding his pants in both hands and vomiting ... Bleeding all over and rolling his eyes ... There was nobody with him. He was through ... 'Mama! Mama!' he was sniveling, all the while dying and pissing blood ...

" 'Shut up! I tell him. Mama! Mama! Fuck your mama!' ... Just like that, on my way past, out of the corner of my mouth! ... I bet that made him feel good, the bastard! ... What do you think of that! ... It's not every day you can tell the captain what you think ... Too good to miss ... A rare opportunity! ... To get out of there faster I chucked my pack and gun ... dropped 'em in a duck pond ... You see, I don't take to killing people, I never learned to ... even in peacetime, I never cared for fights ... I'd walk away ... See what I mean? ... In civilian life I tried to go to the factory regularly ... I was kind of an engraver, but I didn't like it because of the arguments, I was happier selling the evening papers in a quiet neighborhood where I was known, around the Bank of France ... Place des Victoires, if you want to know ... Rue des Petits-Champs ... that was my territory ... I never went beyond the Rue du Louvre and the Palais-Royal on one side, get the idea? ... In the morning I'd run errands for shopkeepers ... sometimes a delivery in the afternoon, odd jobs, see? ... kind of unskilled ... But one thing I don't want is weapons ... If the Germans see you with a weapon, you're cooked ... But if you're dressed free and easy like I am now ... Nothing in your hands ... nothing in your pockets ... they get the idea that it won't be hard to take you prisoner, see? They know who they're dealing with ... If you go up to the Germans mother naked, that would be even better ... Like a horse! They wouldn't know what army you belong to ..."

"That's a fact!"

I caught on that being older is good for the mind. It puts sense into you.

"So you say they're down there?" We figured, we estimated our chances and looked for our future in the great luminous expanse of the silent city as though consulting the cards ...

"Let's get started!"

First we'd have to cross the railroad tracks. If there were sentries, they'd see us. Or maybe they wouldn't. We'd soon find out. Maybe there'd be an overpass, or maybe we'd take the tunnel.

"We'll have to hurry," said Robinson ... "Gotta do these things at night, people aren't friendly in the daytime, everybody plays to the gallery in the daytime, even in the war, the daytime is a circus ... You taking your horse?"

I took the horse. A precaution ... to get away quicker if the reception was bad. We got to the grade crossing, the big red and white arms were up. I'd never seen that kind of gate before. They weren't like that around Paris.

"Think they've moved in already?"

"Positive!" he says. "Anyway, keep going."

Now we were forced to be as brave as the brave, because of the horse who was plodding slowly behind us and seemed to be pushing us with his noise, we couldn't hear anything else. Clop! clop! went his hooves. He'd put his foot down in the middle of the echo, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

So this Robinson was counting on the night to save us ... The two of us were walking down the middle of the street, with no attempt at concealment, in step what's more, we could have been drilling ...

Robinson was right, the daytime was pitiless, from the earth to the sky. The way we were walking in the street, we must have looked perfectly harmless, as innocent as if we'd been coming back from a leave. "Did you hear about the 1st Hussars, taken prisoner in Lille, every last one of them ... Marched right in ... the way I heard it ... they didn't know ... the colonel in the lead ... Down the main street, boy oh boy! ... And then the trap closed! ... In front of them ... behind them ... Germans everywhere! ... At the windows! ... Everywhere! ... There they were! ... Caught like rats! ... Like rats! Talk about luck!"

"The bastards!"

"Yeah, wasn't that something! ..." We couldn't get over that marvelous capture, so neat, so conclusive ... It really floored us ... The shops had all their shutters closed, so did the houses, with their little gardens in front, all so neat and prim. But after the post office we saw a house, a little whiter than the rest, with all the lights on at all the windows, upstairs and down. We went and rang the doorbell, we still had our horse behind us. A thickset man with a beard opened. "I am the mayor of Noirceur," he told us right away without our asking, "and I am expecting the Germans!" This mayor steps out into the moonlight to look at us. When he saw we weren't Germans but still French, he wasn't so solemn any more. Friendly yes, but embarrassed. Obviously he hadn't been expecting us, we didn't quite fit in with the arrangements he must have made, the decisions he'd taken. The Germans were supposed to enter Noirceur that night, he'd been notified and he'd settled everything with the Prefecture, their colonel here, their field hospital there, etc. And what if they turned up now? With us there? There'd certainly be trouble! Dreadful complications! ... He didn't come out and say all that, but we could see what he was thinking.

So there in the darkness he starts talking to us about the interests of the public at large ... in that enveloping silence ... the public at large, that's all he would talk about ... the material interests of the community ... the artistic patrimony of Noirceur, entrusted to his care, a sacred trust if ever there was one ... especially the fifteenth century church ... suppose they burned it down! ... like the one in Condé-sur-Yser! ... Had we thought of that? ... In a fit of temper ... annoyed at finding us there ... He impressed us with the full extent of our responsibility ... harebrained youngsters that we were! ... the Germans had no use for unsavory towns with enemy soldiers still prowling around in them. That was common knowledge ...

While he was lecturing us like that in an undertone, his wife and two daughters, luscious hefty blondes, put in a word here and there to back him up ... The long and the short, they didn't want us there ... In the air between us there hovered sentimental and archaeological considerations, suddenly sprung to life since there was no one in Noirceur that night to contest them ... patriotic, ethical, word-propelled considerations, ghosts that the mayor tried to hold fast, but they faded away, undone by our fear and selfishness, and by the plain truth for that matter.

The mayor of Noirceur himself was knocking himself out with his touching effort to convince us that our Duty was to clear out instantly ... he wasn't as brutal about it as our Major Pinçon, but in his way he was every bit as determined.

The only argument we could have pitted against all those wielders of power was our contemptible little wish not to die and not to be burned alive. Which didn't amount to much, especially when you consider that you can't come out with sentiments like that in the middle of a war. So we wandered off into other deserted streets. Everyone I'd met that night had bared his soul to me.

"Just my luck!" said Robinson as we were pushing off. "If only you'd been a German, you're an obliging sort, you'd have taken me prisoner and we'd be all set ... It's hard for a man to get rid of himself in a war!"

"What about you?" said I. "Wouldn't
you
have taken
me
prisoner if you had been a German? Maybe they'd have given you the Médaille Militaire! Some funny word the Germans must have for their Médaille Militaire ..."

Seeing there was absolutely no demand for us as prisoners, we finally sat down on a bench in a little park and opened up the can of tuna fish Robinson had been warming in his pocket since morning. Now we could hear gunfire far in the distance, very far. If only both sides could have stayed in the distance where they were and left us alone!

Then we walked by the river, and alongside of some half-unloaded barges we urinated long streams into the water ... We were still leading the horse by the bridle, he tagged behind us like a great big dog ... Near the bridge, in the ferryman's one-room house, there was a dead man stretched out on a mattress all alone, a Frenchman, a major of light cavalry, actually he looked something like Robinson.

"Ugly son of a bitch!" says Robinson. "I don't know about you, but I don't like dead people."

"The funny part of it," I said, "is that he looks something like you. The same long nose, and you're not much older ..."

"Well, you see, it's being so tired that makes us all look alike, but oh if you'd seen me before! ... In the days when I went bicycle riding every Sunday! ... I was really handsome!

You should have seen the calves on me! You can't beat bicycling! It develops the thighs too ..."

We left the house, the match we'd lit to look at the stiff had gone out.

"You see? ... it's too late ... you see?"

Already, in the darkness at the end of the town, a long gray and green line marked the crest of the hill: Day! One more! One less! We'd have to try and get through this one the same as the rest, the days had got to be like hoops, tighter and tighter to get through, and filled with bursts of shrapnel.

"Coming back this way tomorrow night?" he asked before we separated.

"Tomorrow night? There's no such thing ... What do you think you are, a general?"

"I don't think about anything," he says. "No thoughts at all! I think about not getting killed ... that keeps me busy ... One more day is one more day?that's what I think!"

"You're right ... So long, pal, and good luck!"

"Good luck to you too! Maybe we'll meet again!"

We each went back to his own war. And then things happened, and a lot more things that it's not easy to tell about now, because people nowadays wouldn't understand them anymore.

If you wanted to be respected and looked up to, you had to hurry up quick and pal up with the civilians, because they were becoming more and more vicious as the war went on. I saw that as soon as I got back to Paris. It also became clear to me that the women had ants in their pants and that the old men were talking big, and their fingers were all over the place, in assholes, in pockets ...

The civilians back home were infected with the idea of glory, they picked it up from the soldier boys and soon learned how to bear up under it, bravely and painlessly. Nurses and martyrs by turns, mothers were never without their long dark veils and those little diplomas the Ministry never failed to send by special messenger. In short, the home front was getting organized.

At a well-conducted funeral, you're sad too, but you think of other things, the will, your next vacation, the widow, who's a good-looker and said to be passionate, and your plans for continuing to live a great deal longer by contrast, and maybe never dying ... You never can tell.

And as you follow the hearse, everybody lifts his hat to you. It's heart-warming. Then's the time to behave properly, to look dignified, not to laugh out loud, to gloat only internally. That's permissible. Everything's permissible internally.

During the war, instead of dancing on the mezzanine, you danced in the cellar. The boys had no objection, in fact they were all for it. They demanded it as soon as they got to town, and nobody thought it indecent. The one thing that's really indecent is bravery. You expect physical bravery? Then ask a worm to be brave, he's pink and pale and soft, just like us. For my part, I had nothing to complain of. Actually, thanks to the Médaille Militaire I'd won and my wound and all, I was about to lose my innocence. They'd brought me the medal while I was in the hospital convalescing. And that same night I went to the theater, to let the civilians see it during intermissions. A triumph! Those were the first medals seen in Paris. It floored them!

That was when I met little Lola from America in the lobby of the Opéra-Comique, and it was thanks to her that I really found out what was what.

There are certain dates that stand out after months and months when you might just as well have been dead. That evening at the Opera-Comique with my medal was a turning point in my life.

Lola made me curious about the United States, because of the questions I started asking right away and that she hardly answered at all. When you start traveling that way, you never know when or how you'll get back ...

At the time I'm speaking of, everybody in Paris wanted a uniform. Practically nobody was without one, except neutrals and spies, which to all intents and purposes were identical. Lola had a genuine official uniform, and it was really natty, decorated with little crosses all over, on the sleeves and on the tiny cap that she perched at a rakish angle on her wavy hair. She'd come to help us save France, as she told the hotel manager, to the best of her humble ability but with all her heart! We understood each other right away, but not completely, because the transports of the heart were beginning to give me a pain, I was more interested in the transports of the body. You can't trust the heart, not at all. I'd learned that in the war, and I wasn't going to forget it in a hurry.

Lola's heart was tender, weak, and enthusiastic. Her body was sweet, it was adorable, so what could I do but take her all together as she was? Lola was a good kid all right, but between us stood the war, the monstrous frenzy that was driving half of humanity, lovers or not, to send the other half to the slaughterhouse. Naturally this interfered with our relationship. For me, who was dragging out my convalescence as long as possible and wasn't the least bit eager to go back on duty in the flaming graveyards of no man's land, the absurdity of our massacre was glaringly obvious at every step I took in town. Whichever way I looked, I saw cynical grasping cunning.

Still, I hadn't much chance of keeping out of it, I lacked the indispensable connections. The people I knew were all poor, people whose death is of no interest to anybody. And I could hardly count on Lola to keep me safe at home. Even if she was a nurse, I couldn't have conceived of anyone more bellicose than that sweet young thing? except maybe Ortolan. If I hadn't been through the muddy fricassee of heroism myself, her little Joan of Arc number might have stirred and converted me, but since my enlistment on the Place Clichy I had grown phobically allergic to heroism, verbal or real. I was cured. Radically cured. For the convenience of the ladies of the American Expeditionary Force, the group of nurses Lola belonged to were quartered in the Hôtel Paritz[15] and, to make things even more delightful for her personally, she had been put in charge (she had connections) of a special service, whose mission it was to supply the Paris hospitals with apple fritters. Every morning thousands of dozens of them were handed out. Lola performed this benign duty with a touching zeal, which, as it turned out, was later to have disastrous consequences. Lola, it has to be admitted, had never made a fritter in all her life. She therefore hired a number of mercenary cooks, and after a few trials the fritters were ready for delivery, as juicy and sweet and golden as anyone could wish for. All Lola actually had to do was taste them before they were delivered to the various hospital wards. Every morning Lola got up at the stroke of ten, took her bath, and went down to the kitchens, which were situated deep in the basement. This, I repeat, she did every morning, clad only in a black-and-yellow Japanese kimono that a boyfriend in San Francisco had given her the day before she left. In short, everything was running smoothly, and we were happily winning the war, when one fine day at lunch I found her shattered, refusing to touch so much as a single dish. I was seized with foreboding: what misfortune or sudden illness had befallen her? I begged her to entrust herself to my watchful affection.