She knew nearly every one of them personally, in fact she knew them all. Even the teetotalers and the woman-haters, for it was the only decent tavern in the place, and even the most rabid ascetic sometimes has an urge to follow up a bowl of hot bad soup with a glass of lemonade, or in the evening possibly even a glass of wine, when he finds himself trapped in a godforsaken hole consisting of thirty-seven grimy houses and two rundown châteaux, a godforsaken hole that seems about to sink into the mud and to disintegrate in sloth and boredom.…
But our company wasn’t the only one she knew; she knew all the first companies of all the battalions of the regiment, for, according to some intricately devised plan, after a certain length of time every first company of every battalion was sent back to this dreary place for a six-week period of “rest and recuperation.”
During our second period of rest and recuperation, which we spent in drill and boredom, she was starting to deteriorate. She was losing her self-respect. She usually slept now till eleven, served beer and lemonade at noon in her dressing gown, closed up the place again in the afternoon, because, with the company out drilling, the village was as empty as a drained cesspool—and didn’t open up again till around seven in the evening, after dozing away the afternoon. She had also stopped bothering about her income. She would lend money to anyone, have a drink with anyone, let her massive body be persuaded to dance, bawling out the songs and finally, with the approaching sound of taps, giving way to paroxysms of sobbing.
On our second arrival in the village I immediately reported sick. I had chosen a disease that made it imperative for the medic to allow me to go to Amiens or Paris to consult a specialist. I was in a pretty good mood as I knocked on her door around ten-thirty. There was not a sound in the village, the empty streets were deep in mud. Then came the familiar shuffling of her slippers, the rustle of the curtain, and Renée’s muttered exclamation: “Oh, it’s you.” A smile flitted across her face. “Oh, it’s you!” she repeated as the door opened, “You fellows back again?”
“That’s right,” I said, throwing my cap onto a chair and following her. “Bring me the best in the house, will you?”
“The best in the house?” she asked, looking somewhat at a loss.
She wiped her fingers on her smock. “I’m sorry, I’ve been peeling potatoes.” She held out her hand; it was still small and firm, a pretty hand. I sat down on a bar stool after bolting the door from the inside.
She was standing rather undecidedly behind the bar.
“The best in the house?” she asked, at a loss.
“Yes,” I said, “and make it snappy.”
“Hm,” she muttered, “but it’s a scandalous price.”
“Who cares, I’ve got money.”
“All right,” she said, wiping her hands again. The tip of her tongue appeared between her bloodless lips, a token of her painful dilemma.
“D’you mind if I bring my potatoes in here to peel?”
“Of course not,” I replied. “Get a move on, and have a drink with me.”
When she had vanished beyond that narrow, scratched brown door to the kitchen, I looked round the room. Nothing had changed since last year. Over the bar hung the photograph of her alleged husband, a handsome marine with a black mustache, a color photo showing the fellow framed in a lifebelt bearing the word “Patrie.” The fellow had cold eyes, a brutal chin, and a distinctly patriotic mouth. I didn’t care for him. On either side hung a few pictures of flowers and lovers exchanging saccharine kisses. It was all exactly the same as a year ago. Possibly the furniture was a bit shabbier, but could it have got any shabbier? The bar stool I was perched on had one leg glued—I clearly recalled its being broken during a fight between Friedrich and Hans, a fight about an ugly girl called Lisette and this leg still showed the depressing trickle of glue, like a runny nose, that someone had forgotten to rub off with sandpaper.
“Cherry brandy,” said Renée, a bottle in one hand and an enamel basin full of potatoes and peelings pinned to her side with her right arm.
“Any good?” I asked.
She smacked her lips. “The best there is, love, a real good one.”
“Pour us a couple then, will you?”
She stood the bottle on the counter, let the basin slide onto a little stool behind the bar, and took two glasses from the shelf. Then she filled the shallow glasses with the red liquid.
“Prost, Renée,” I said.
“Prost, my lad!”
“Now then—what’s new?”
“Nothing,” she sighed, deftly peeling her potatoes again. “A few more skedaddled without paying, some glasses got smashed. That nice Jacqueline’s having another baby and doesn’t know whose it is. The rain’s been raining and the sun’s been shining, I’m an old woman now and I’m clearing out.”
“Clearing out, Renée?”
“Yes,” she said without emotion. “Believe me, there’s no fun in it any more. The boys have less and less money and get more and more cocky, drinks go down in quality and up in price. Prost, my lad!”
“Prost, Renée!”
We drank down the fiery red stuff, it was first-rate all right, and I immediately refilled our glasses.
“Prost!”
“Prost!”
“There,” she said finally, throwing the last peeled potato into a saucepan of water, “that’ll do for today. I’ll just go and wash my hands so you don’t have the smell of potatoes hanging around you. Potatoes smell horrible—don’t you agree that potato peelings smell horrible?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re a good lad.”
She vanished once more into the kitchen.
The cherry brandy was indeed excellent. A sweet fire of cherries flowed into me, and I forgot the lousy war.
“You like me better this way, eh?”
She was standing in the doorway, properly dressed now and wearing a cream-colored blouse, and you could smell that she had washed her hands with good soap.
“Prost!” I said.
“Prost!”
“So you’re really clearing out—but you’re not serious?”
“I am,” she said, “I’m dead serious.”
“Prost,” I said, and started to fill the glasses.
“No,” she said, “if you don’t mind I’ll have a lemonade, it’s a bit early for me.”
“All right, but go on.”
“Well,” she said, “I’ve had it.” She looked at me, and in her eyes, those bleary, swollen eyes, there was a terrible fear. “D’you hear, my lad? I’ve had it. It’s driving me crazy, this silence. Just listen.” She gripped my arm so tightly that I was startled and really did listen. And it was uncanny: there wasn’t a sound, and yet it wasn’t silent either, there was an indescribable something in the air, a kind of bubbling: the sound of silence.
“D’you hear?” she asked, a note of triumph in her voice. “It sounds like a dunghill.”
“A dunghill?” I said. “Prost!”
“That’s right,” she replied, swallowing some lemonade. “It’s exactly like a dunghill, that sound. I’m from the country, you know, from a little place up north near Dieppe, and lying in bed in the evening I used to hear that sound quite distinctly: it was silent, and yet not silent, and later I found out what it was: it’s the dunghill, that queer snapping and bubbling and slurping and sucking you hear when people think there’s silence. That’s when the dunghill is working, dunghills work all the time, and that’s exactly the sound they make. Listen!” She gripped my arm tightly again, gazing at me intently, imploringly, out of those bleary, swollen eyes.…
But I refilled my glass and said: “I see what you mean,” and although I knew just what she meant and could also hear that curious, seemingly illogical sound of bubbling silence, I wasn’t scared the way she was; I felt protected, although it was pretty depressing to be sitting here in this lousy hole, in this lousy war, drinking cherry brandy with a panicky tavernkeeper at eleven in the morning.
“Ssh,??
? she said now, “Listen.” Far away I could hear the rhythmic, monotonous singing of the company on its way back to the village.
But she put her hands over her ears.
“No,” she cried, “not that! That’s worse than anything. Every morning at the same minute that dreary singing, it’s driving me crazy.”
“Prost,” I said with a laugh, filling my glass. “Snap out of it!”
“No,” she cried again, “that’s why I want to leave, it’s killing me!”
She kept her hands over her ears while I smiled at her, went on drinking, and followed the singing as it came closer and closer, and it was true, it did sound ominous in the silence of the village. Now the tramp of boots was clearly audible, the barking voices of the corporals in the intervals between singing, and the shouting of the lieutenant who always mustered enough courage and strength to call out: “Come on, men, give us another song!”
“I can’t take it any more,” whispered Renée, on the verge of tears from sheer exhaustion and still doggedly holding her hands over her ears, “it’s killing me, lying like this on the dunghill and listening to them singing.…”
This time I stood alone by the window as they marched past, row after row, face after face, hungry and tired, an almost exalted grimness in their faces, yet still apathetic and sullen and somewhere in their eyes a spark of fear.…
“Come on,” I said to Renée, when the last of them had marched by and the singing had died away. I took her hands away from her ears. “Don’t be so silly.”
“No,” she said obstinately, “I’m not silly, I’m quitting, I’m going to open a movie house somewhere, in Dieppe or Abbeville.”
“And how about us, what’s going to happen to us?”
“My niece is coming here,” she said, looking at me, “a pretty young thing, she’ll brighten up the place, I’ve made up my mind to hand it over to my niece.”
“When?” I asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” she laughed, “I tell you, she’s young and pretty. Look!” She took a photo out of the drawer, but the girl in the picture didn’t appeal to me at all; she was young and pretty, but cold, and she had the self-same patriotic mouth as the man whose picture hung over the counter with his lifebelt.…
“Prost,” I said sadly, “tomorrow, then.”
“Prost,” she said, filling her own glass too.
The bottle was empty, and I felt as if I were rocking on the bar stool like a ship on the high seas, and yet my mind was clear.
“How much,” I said.
“Three hundred,” she said.
But as I was pulling out the bills she made a sudden gesture, saying, “No, don’t, for old times’ sake. You’re the only one I cared for at all. Spend it all when my niece comes, if you feel like it. Tomorrow.”
“Good-by,” and she waved to me, and as I went out I saw her dipping her glasses into the chrome sink to rinse them, and I knew that the niece would never have such pretty hands, such small firm hands, as hers, for hands and mouth are almost the same, and it would be terrible if she had patriotic hands.…
CHILDREN ARE CIVILIANS TOO
“No, you can’t,” said the sentry gruffly.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s against the rules.”
“Why is it against the rules?”
“Because it is, chum, that’s what; patients aren’t allowed outside.”
“But,” I said with pride, “I’m one of the wounded.”
The sentry gave me a scornful look. “I guess this is the first time you’ve been wounded, or you’d know that the wounded are patients too. Go on, get back in.”
But I persisted. “Have a heart,” I said, “I only want to buy cakes from that little girl.”
I pointed outside to where a pretty little Russian girl was standing in the whirling snow peddling cakes.
“Get back inside, I tell you!”
The snow was falling softly into the huge puddles on the black schoolyard; the little girl stood there patiently, calling out over and over again, “Khakes … khakes … ”
“My God,” I told the sentry, “my mouth’s watering, why don’t you just let the child come inside?”
“Civilians aren’t allowed inside.”
“Good God, man,” I said, “the child’s just a child.”
He gave me another scornful look. “I suppose children aren’t civilians, eh?”
It was intolerable, the empty, dark street was wrapped in powdery snow, and the child stood there all alone, calling out “Khakes…” although no one passed.
I started to walk out anyway, but the sentry grabbed me by the sleeve and shouted furiously, “Get back, or I’ll call the sergeant!”
“You’re a damn fool,” I snapped back at him.
“That’s right,” said the sentry with satisfaction. “Anyone who still has a sense of duty is considered a damn fool by you fellows.”
I stood for another half minute in the whirling snow, watching the white flakes turn to mud; the whole schoolyard was full of puddles, and dotted about lay little white islands like icing sugar. Suddenly I saw the little girl wink at me and walk off in apparent unconcern down the street. I followed along the inner side of the wall.
“Damn it all,” I thought, “am I really a patient?” And then I noticed a hole in the wall next to the urinal, and on the other side of the hole stood the little girl with the cakes. The sentry couldn’t see us here. May the Führer bless your sense of duty, I thought.
The cakes looked marvelous: macaroons and cream slices, buttermilk twists and nut squares gleaming with oil. “How much?” I asked the child.
She smiled, lifted the basket toward me, and said in her piping voice, “Two marks fifty each.”
“All the same price?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
The snow fell on her fine blond hair, powdering her with fleeting silver dust; her smile was utterly bewitching. The dismal street behind her was empty, and the world seemed dead …
I took a buttermilk twist and bit into it. It was delicious, there was marzipan in it. Aha, I thought, that’s why these cost as much as the others.
The little girl was smiling.
“Good?” she asked. “Good?”
I nodded. I didn’t mind the cold, I had a thick bandage round my head that made me look very romantic. I tried a cream slice and let the delectable stuff melt slowly in my mouth. And again my mouth watered …
“Here,” I whispered, “I’ll take the lot, how many are there?”
She began counting, carefully, with a delicate, rather dirty little forefinger, while I devoured a nut square. It was very quiet, it seemed almost as if there were a soft, gentle weaving of snowflakes in the air. She counted very slowly, made one or two mistakes, and I stood there quite still, eating two more cakes. Then she raised her eyes to me suddenly, at such a startling angle that her pupils slanted upward and the whites of her eyes were the thin blue of skim milk. She twittered something at me in Russian, but I shrugged my shoulders with a smile, whereupon she bent down and with her dirty little finger wrote a 45 in the snow; I added my five, saying, “Let me have the basket too, will you?”
She nodded, carefully handing me the basket through the hole, and I passed a couple of hundred-mark bills through to her. We had money to burn; the Russians were paying seven hundred marks for a coat, and for three months we had seen nothing but mud and blood, a few whores, and money.
“Come back tomorrow, okay?” I whispered, but she was no longer listening. Quick as a wink she had slipped away, and when I stuck my head sadly through the gap in the wall, she had vanished, and I saw only the silent Russian street, dismal and empty; the snow seemed to be gradually entombing the flat-roofed houses. I stood there for a long time, like a sad-eyed animal looking out through a fence, and it was only when I felt my neck getting stiff that I pulled my head back inside the prison.
For the first
time I noticed the revolting urinal stench from the corner, and all the nice little cakes were covered with a light sugar-icing of snow. With a sigh I picked up the basket and walked toward the building; I did not feel cold, I had that romantic-looking bandage round my head and could have stood for another hour in the snow. I left because I had to go someplace. A fellow has to go someplace, doesn’t he? You can’t stand around and let yourself be buried in snow. You have to go someplace, even when you’re wounded in a strange, black, very dark country …
WHAT A RACKET
The Half-Woman, the “Woman with No Lower Half,” turned out to be one of the most delightful persons I had ever met. She was wearing a charming sombrero-type straw hat, for, like any other modest housewife, she was sitting in the sun on the little raised porch that had been attached to her trailer home. Below the porch her three children were playing a very original game known to them as “The Neanderthals.” The two youngest, a boy and a girl, were obliged to be the Neanderthal couple, while the oldest, a fair-haired youngster of eight who during performances was the Fat Lady’s son, took the part of the modern explorer who discovers the Neanderthal couple. Right at the moment he was doing his best to wrench his younger siblings’ jawbones out of their sockets so he could take them back to his museum.
The Half-Woman stamped several times on the porch floor on account of the frenzied screams that were threatening to stifle our budding conversation.
The oldest boy’s head appeared above the low railing, which was adorned with red geraniums, and he asked crossly, “Yes?”
“Stop that bullying,” said his mother, a suppressed amusement in her gentle gray eyes. “Why don’t you play Air-Raid Shelter or Bombed Out?”
The boy grumbled something that sounded like “Nuts!,” disappeared below the railing, and shouted to the others, “Fire! The whole house is on fire!” Unfortunately I was unable to follow the further course of the game known as Bombed Out, for the Half-Woman was now eyeing me somewhat more closely. In the shade of her broad-brimmed hat, with the sun shining warm and red through it, she looked much too young to be the mother of three children and to fulfill the exacting demands, five times a day, of the role of Half-Woman.