Three Soldiers (11 page)

“What for you do that? I ain’t goin’ to hurt you,” said Eisenstein.

Fuselli looked at them both with a disgusted interest.

“I’ll tell you what you’d better do, kid,” he said condescendingly. “You get transferred to our company. It’s an A1 bunch, ain’t it, Eisenstein? We’ve got a good loot an’ a good top-kicker, an’ a damn good bunch o’ fellers.”

“Our top-kicker was in here a few minutes ago,” said Eisenstein.

“He was?” asked Fuselli. “Where’d he go?”

“Damned if I know.”

Yvonne and the French soldier were talking in low voices, laughing a little now and then. Fuselli leaned back in his chair looking at them, feeling out of things, wishing despondently that he knew enough French to understand what they were saying. He scraped his feet angrily back and forth on the floor. His eyes lit on the white hyacinths. They made him think of florists’ windows at home at Eastertime and the noise and bustle of San Francisco’s streets. “God, I hate this rotten hole,” he muttered to himself. He thought of Mabe. He made a noise with his lips. Hell, she was married by this time. Anyway Yvonne was the girl for him. If he could only have Yvonne to himself; far away somewhere, away from the other men and that damn frog and her old mother. He thought of himself going to the theatre with Yvonne. When he was a sergeant he would be able to afford that sort of thing. He counted up the months. It was March. Here he’d been in Europe five months and he was still only a corporal, and not that yet. He clenched his fists with impatience. But once he got to be a non-com it would go faster, he told himself reassuringly.

He leaned over and sniffed loudly at the hyacinths.

“They smell good,” he said. “Que disay vous, Yvonne?”

Yvonne looked at him as if she had forgotten that he was in the room. Her eyes looked straight into his, and she burst out laughing. Her glance had made him feel warm all over, and he leaned back in his chair again, looking at her slender body so neatly cased in its black dress and at her little head with its tightly-done hair, with a comfortable feeling of possession.

“Yvonne, come over here,” he said, beckoning with his head.

She looked from him to the Frenchman provocatively. Then she came over and stood behind him.

“Que voulez vous?”

Fuselli glanced at Eisenstein. He and Stockton were deep in excited conversation with the Frenchman again. Fuselli heard that uncomfortable word that always made him angry, he did not know why, “Revolution.”

“Yvonne,” he said so that only she could hear, “what you say you and me get married?”

“Marriés … moi et toi?” asked Yvonne in a puzzled voice.

“We we.”

She looked him in the eyes a moment, and then threw back her head in a paroxysm of hysterical laughter.

Fuselli flushed scarlet, got to his feet and strode out, slamming the door behind him so that the glass rang. He walked hurriedly back to camp, splashed with mud by the long lines of grey motor trucks that were throbbing their way slowly through the main street, each with a yellow eye that lit up faintly the tailboards of the truck ahead. The barracks were dark and nearly empty. He sat down at the sergeant’s desk and began moodily turning over the pages of the little blue book of Army Regulations.

The moonlight glittered in the fountain at the end of the main square of the town. It was a warm dark night of faint clouds through which the moon shone palely as through a thin silk canopy. Fuselli stood by the fountain smoking a cigarette, looking at the yellow windows of the Cheval Blanc at the other end of the square, from which came a sound of voices and of billiard balls clinking. He stood quiet letting the acrid cigarette smoke drift out through his nose, his ears full of the silvery tinkle of the water in the fountain beside him. There were little drifts of warm and chilly air in the breeze that blew fitfully from the west. Fuselli was waiting. He took out his watch now and then and strained his eyes to see the time, but there was not light enough. At last the deep broken note of the bell in the church spire struck once. It must be half past ten.

He started walking slowly towards the street where Yvonne’s grocery shop was. The faint glow of the moon lit up the grey houses with the shuttered windows and tumultuous red roofs full of little dormers and skylights. Fuselli felt deliciously at ease with the world. He could almost feel Yvonne’s body in his arms and he smiled as he remembered the little faces she used to make at him. He slunk past the shuttered windows of the shop and dove into the darkness under the arch that led to the court. He walked cautiously, on tiptoe, keeping close to the moss-covered wall, for he heard voices in the court. He peeped round the edge of the building and saw that there were several people in the kitchen door talking. He drew his head back into the shadow. But he had caught a glimpse of the dark round form of the hogshead beside the kitchen door. If he only could get behind that as he usually did, he would be hidden until the people went away.

Keeping well in the shadow round the edge of the court, he slipped to the other side, and was just about to pop himself in behind the hogshead when he noticed that someone was there before him.

He caught his breath and stood still, his heart thumping. The figure turned and in the dark he recognised the top sergeant’s round face.

“Keep quiet, can’t you?” whispered the top sergeant peevishly.

Fuselli stood still with his fists clenched. The blood flamed through his head, making his scalp tingle.

Still the top sergeant was the top sergeant, came the thought. It would never do to get in wrong with him. Fuselli’s legs moved him automatically back into a corner of the court, where he leaned against the damp wall; glaring with smarting eyes at the two women who stood talking outside the kitchen door, and at the dark shadow behind the hogshead. At last, after several smacking kisses, the women went away and the kitchen door closed. The bell in the church spire struck eleven slowly and mournfully. When it had ceased striking, Fuselli heard a discreet tapping and saw the shadow of the top sergeant against the door. As he slipped in, Fuselli heard the top sergeant’s good-natured voice in a large stage whisper, followed by a choked laugh from Yvonne. The door closed and the light was extinguished, leaving the court in darkness except for a faint marbled glow in the sky.

Fuselli strode out, making as much noise as he could with his heels on the cobble stones. The streets of the town were silent under the pale moon. In the square the fountain sounded loud and metallic. He gave up his pass to the guard and strode glumly towards the barracks. At the door he met a man with a pack on his back.

“Hullo, Fuselli,” said a voice he knew. “Is my old bunk still there?”

“Damned if I know,” said Fuselli; “I thought they’d shipped you home.”

The corporal who had been on the Red Sox outfield broke into a fit of coughing.

“Hell, no,” he said. “They kep’ me at that goddam hospital till they saw I wasn’t goin’ to die right away, an’ then they told me to come back to my outfit. So here I am!”

“Did they bust you?” said Fuselli with sudden eagerness.

“Hell, no. Why should they? They ain’t gone and got a new corporal, have they?”

“No, not exactly,” said Fuselli.

Meadville stood near the camp gate watching the motor trucks go by on the main road. Grey, lumbering, and mud-covered, they throbbed by sloughing in and out of the mud holes in the worn road in an endless train stretching as far as he could see into the town and as far as he could see up the road.

He stood with his legs far apart and spat into the center of the road; then he turned to the corporal who had been in the Red Sox outfield and said:

“I’ll be goddamned if there ain’t somethin’ doin’!”

“A hell of a lot doin’,” said the corporal, shaking his head. “Seen that guy Daniels who’s been to the front?”

“No.”

“Well, he says hell’s broke loose. Hell’s broke loose!”

“What’s happened? … Be gorry, we may see some active service,” said Meadville, grinning. “By God, I’d give the best colt on my ranch to see some action.”

“Got a ranch?” asked the corporal.

The motor trucks kept on grinding past monotonously; their drivers were so splashed with mud it was hard to see what uniform they wore.

“What d’ye think?” asked Meadville. “Think I keep store?”

Fuselli walked past them towards the town.

“Say, Fuselli,” shouted Meadville. “Corporal says hell’s broke loose out there. We may smell gunpowder yet.”

Fuselli stopped and joined them.

“I guess poor old Bill Grey’s smelt plenty of gunpowder by this time,” he said.

“I wish I had gone with him,” said Meadville. “I’ll try that little trick myself now the good weather’s come on if we don’t get a move on soon.”

“Too damn risky!”

“Listen to the kid. It’ll be too damn risky in the trenches. … Or do you think you’re goin’ to get a cushy job in camp here?”

“Hell, no! I want to go to the front. I don’t want to stay in this hole.”

“Well?”

“But ain’t no good throwin’ yerself in where it don’t do no good. … A guy wants to get on in this army if he can.”

“What’s the good o’ gettin’ on?” said the corporal. “Won’t get home a bit sooner.”

“Hell! but you’re a non-com.”

Another train of motor trucks went by, drowning their talk.

Fuselli was packing medical supplies in a box in a great brownish warehouse full of packing cases where a little sun filtered in through the dusty air at the corrugated sliding tin doors. As he worked, he listened to Daniels talking to Meadville who worked beside him.

“An’ the gas is the goddamndest stuff I ever heard of,” he was saying.

“I’ve seen fellers with their arms swelled up to twice the size like blisters from it. Mustard gas, they call it.”

“What did you get to go to the hospital?” said Meadville.

“Only pneumonia,” said Daniels, “but I had a buddy who was split right in half by a piece of a shell. He was standin’ as near me as you are an’ was whistlin’ ‘Tipperary’ under his breath when all at once there was a big spurt o’ blood an’ there he was with his chest split in half an’ his head hangin’ by a thread like.”

Meadville moved his quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other and spat on to the sawdust of the floor. The men within earshot stopped working and looked admiringly at Daniels.

“Well; what d’ye reckon’s goin’ on at the front now?” said Meadville.

“Damned if I know. The goddam hospital at Orleans was so full up there was guys in stretchers waiting all day on the pavement outside. I know that. … Fellers there said hell’d broke loose for fair. Looks to me like the Fritzies was advancin’.”

Meadville looked at him incredulously.

“Those skunks?” said Fuselli. “Why they can’t advance. They’re starvin’ to death.”

“The hell they are,” said Daniels. “I guess you believe everything you see in the papers.”

Eyes looked at Daniels indignantly. They all went on working in silence.

Suddenly the lieutenant, looking strangely flustered, strode into the warehouse, leaving the tin door open behind him.

“Can anyone tell me where Sergeant Osler is?”

“He was here a few minutes ago,” spoke up Fuselli.

“Well, where is he now?” snapped the lieutenant angrily.

“I don’t know, sir,” mumbled Fuselli, flushing.

“Go and see if you can find him.”

Fuselli went off to the other end of the warehouse. Outside the door he stopped and bit off a cigarette in a leisurely fashion. His blood boiled sullenly. How the hell should he know where the top sergeant was? They didn’t expect him to be a mind-reader, did they? And all the flood of bitterness that had been collecting in his spirit seethed to the surface. They had not treated him right. He felt full of hopeless anger against this vast treadmill to which he was bound. The endless succession of the days, all alike, all subject to orders, to the interminable monotony of drills and line-ups, passed before his mind. He felt he could-n’t go on, yet he knew that he must and would go on, that there was no stopping, that his feet would go on beating in time to the steps of the treadmill.

He caught sight of the sergeant coming towards the warehouse, across the new green grass, scarred by the marks of truck wheels.

“Sarge,” he called. Then he went up to him mysteriously. “The loot wants to see you at once in Warehouse B.”

He slouched back to his work, arriving just in time to hear the lieutenant say in a severe voice to the sergeant:

“Sergeant, do you know how to draw up court-martial papers?”

“Yes, sir,” said the sergeant, a look of surprise on his face. He followed the precise steps of the lieutenant out of the door.

Fuselli had a moment of panic terror, during which he went on working methodically, although his hands trembled. He was searching his memory for some infringement of a regulation that might be charged against him. The terror passed as fast as it had come. Of course he had no reason to fear. He laughed softly to himself. What a fool he’d been to get scared like that, and a summary court-martial couldn’t do much to you anyway. He went on working as fast and as carefully as he could, through the long monotonous afternoon.

That night nearly the whole company gathered in a group at the end of the barracks. Both sergeants were away. The corporal said he knew nothing, and got sulkily into bed, where he lay, rolled in his blankets, shaken by fit after fit of coughing.

At last someone said:

“I bet that kike Eisenstein’s turned out to be a spy.”

“I bet he has too.”

“He’s foreign born, ain’t he? Born in Poland or some goddam place.”

“He always did talk queer.”

“I always thought,” said Fuselli, “he’d get into trouble talking the way he did.”

“How’d he talk?” asked Daniels.

“Oh, he said that war was wrong and all that goddamned pro-German stuff.”

“D’ye know what they did out at the front?” said Daniels. “In the second division they made two fellers dig their own graves and then shot ’em for sayin’ the war was wrong.”

“Hell, they did?”

“You’re goddam right, they did. I tell you, fellers, it don’t do to monkey with the buzz-saw in this army.”

“For God’s sake shut up. Taps has blown. Meadville, turn the lights out!” said the corporal angrily. The barracks was dark, full of a sound of men undressing in their bunks, and of whispered talk.

The company was lined up for morning mess. The sun that had just risen was shining in rosily through the soft clouds of the sky. The sparrows kept up a great clattering in the avenue of plane trees. Their riotous chirping could be heard above the sound of motors starting that came from a shed opposite the mess shack.

The sergeant appeared suddenly; walking past with his shoulders stiff, so that everyone knew at once that something important was going on.

“Attention, men, a minute,” he said.

Mess kits clattered as the men turned round.

“After mess I want you to go immediately to barracks and roll your packs. After that every man must stand by his pack until orders come.” The company cheered and mess kits clattered together like cymbals.

“As you were,” shouted the top sergeant jovially.

Gluey oatmeal and greasy bacon were hurriedly bolted down, and every man in the company, his heart pounding, ran to the barracks to do up his pack, feeling proud under the envious eyes of the company at the other end of the shack that had received no orders.

When the packs were done up, they sat on the empty hunks and drummed their feet against the wooden partitions, waiting.

“I don’t suppose we’ll leave here till hell freezes over,” said Meadville, who was doing up the last strap on his pack.

“It’s always like this. … You break your neck to obey orders an’…”

“Outside!” shouted the sergeant, poking his head in the door. “Fall in! Atten-shun!”

The lieutenant in his trench coat and in a new pair of roll puttees stood facing the company, looking solemn.

“Men,” he said, biting off his words as a man bites through a piece of hard stick candy; “one of your number is up for court-martial for possibly disloyal statements found in a letter addressed to friends at home. I have been extremely grieved to find anything of this sort in any company of mine; I don’t believe there is another man in the company … low enough to hold … entertain such ideas. …”

Every man in the company stuck out his chest, vowing inwardly to entertain no ideas at all rather than run the risk of calling forth such disapproval from the lieutenant. The lieutenant paused:

“All I can say is if there is any such man in the company, he had better keep his mouth shut and be pretty damn careful what he writes home. … Dismissed!”

He shouted the order grimly, as if it were the order for the execution of the offender.

“That goddam skunk Eisenstein,” said someone.

The lieutenant heard it as he walked away.

“Oh, sergeant,” he said familiarly; “I think the others have got the right stuff in them.”

The company went into the barracks and waited.

The sergeant-major’s office was full of a clicking of typewriters, and was overheated by a black stove that stood in the middle of the floor, letting out occasional little puffs of smoke from a crack in the stove pipe. The sergeant-major was a small man with a fresh boyish face and a drawling voice who lolled behind a large typewriter reading a magazine that lay on his lap.

Fuselli slipped in behind the typewriter and stood with his cap in his hand beside the sergeant-major’s chair.

“Well what do you want?” asked the sergeant-major gruffly.

“A feller told me, Sergeant-Major, that you was lookin’ for a man with optical experience;” Fuselli’s voice was velvety.

“Well?”

“I worked three years in an optical-goods store at home in Frisco.”

“What’s your name, rank, company?”

“Daniel Fuselli, Private 1st-class, Company C, medical supply warehouse.”

“All right, I’ll attend to it.”

“But, sergeant.”

“All right; out with what you’ve got to say, quick.” The sergeant-major fingered the leaves of his magazine impatiently.

“My company’s all packed up to go. The transfer’ll have to be today, sergeant.”

“Why the hell didn’t you come in earlier? … Stevens, make out a transfer to headquarters company and get the major to sign it when he goes through. … That’s the way it always is,” he cried, leaning back tragically in his swivel chair. “Everybody always puts everything off on me at the last minute.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Fuselli, smiling.

The sergeant-major ran his hand through his hair and took up his magazine again peevishly.

Fuselli hurried back to barracks where he found the company still waiting. Several men were crouched in a circle playing craps. The rest lounged in their bare bunks or fiddled with their packs. Outside it had begun to rain softly, and a smell of wet sprouting earth came in through the open door. Fuselli sat on the floor beside his bunk throwing his knife down so that it stuck in the boards between his knees. He was whistling softly to himself. The day dragged on. Several times he heard the town clock strike in the distance.

At last the top sergeant came in, shaking the water off his slicker, a serious, important expression on his face.

“Inspection of medical belts,” he shouted. “Everybody open up their belt and lay it on the foot of their bunk and stand at attention on the left side.”

The lieutenant and a major appeared suddenly at one end of the barracks and came through slowly, pulling the little packets out of the belts. The men looked at them out of the corners of their eyes. As they examined the belts, they chatted easily, as if they had been alone.

“Yes,” said the major. “We’re in for it this time. … That damned offensive.”

“Well, we’ll be able to show ’em what we’re good for,” said the lieutenant, laughing. “We haven’t had a chance yet.”

“Hum! Better mark that belt, lieutenant, and have it changed. Been to the front yet?”

“No, sir.”