Paths of Glory (28 page)

“Haven't you one?” he said to Férol.

“No.”

“No one to write to? No family at all? Not even a friend?”

“Yes, I had a friend,” said Férol, still stretched out in his corner. “She was a whore in Marseille, but I've forgotten her name.”

“So your best friend is a whore whose name you've forgotten?” said the priest. He said it with compassion, reflectively. “Poor fellow.”

“You can keep your pity,” said Férol. “A man's best friend is often a whore. Better than a lot of wives I've seen.”

“Shut your dirty face,” said Didier. The priest noticed a queer glint in his eye, then decided it was the saltiness of dried tears.

“All right,” said Férol. “Nothing personal.”

“Better not be, or I'll do the work of one firing-squad for it right here.”

“Keep your shirt on,” said Férol, not without affability. “You haven't got much time to wear it anyway, and it's going to need mending before long. Ha, ha!” Férol was delighted with his own wit.

“Leave him alone,” said the priest.

There was silence for a while in the guard-house except for the monotonous tramp of Langlois's feet as he paced the length of the room, turned, paced, and turned. . . .

The priest wanted to open up the subject of confession and extreme unction, but he didn't quite know how to go about it. Nor did he seem to be getting much encouragement from the men for whom these rites were intended. Their attitude, he felt, was one of friendliness towards him as a man, of hostility as a priest. He decided he would recite a prayer out loud.

“Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee—”

“Look here, sergeant,” Didier interrupted, “you're a good fellow and a pal and all that. But don't start unloading that stuff around here. I don't want any of it, see. If the others want it, give it to them quietly in a corner. I'm sick enough to my stomach as it is.”

“Didier,” said the priest, and there was some sternness in his voice, “you can be an unbeliever, if you want to, but you should have enough respect for my feelings and my office not to be a blasphemous one.”

“You and your office! You and your Jesus! A fine fix he's let us into. You make me laugh. You make me vomit.”

“Don't, don't, my son. You don't know what you're saying—”

“Yes, I do, by God! I say God and all his works are lies, lies.... And I say too that if you don't shut up that tripe, I'll make you.” Didier glared at the priest and shook a slightly trembling hand at him. Langlois and Férol both looked at Didier, surprised by his sudden loss of imperturbability.

“You haven't the right to deprive your comrades of the comfort I can bring them.”

“Don't fool around with me, though. Go ahead and comfort them, if they want it. God! Jesus! Devils, I say. . . .” Didier subsided, muttering to himself.

The priest overlooked the outburst and accepted the suggestion it contained in spite of its ungraciousness. He turned to Férol.

“My son, would you like to make your confession?”

“No, I wouldn't. Besides it would take too long.”

“It's never too late to repent . . .”

“Well, I'll wait a while longer. I have already for over thirty years.”

“Don't you believe in God and in Jesus Christ, his only son, who—”

“I may have once. I don't remember. But just now I'd like a big swig of cognac. That would do me more good than all the only sons in creation.”

“In spite of you, and in the name of the Redeemer, I forgive your stupid blasphemy.”

“And I forgive you for keeping me from taking a nap.”

Langlois was still pacing the floor when the priest approached him and put himself in step. Didier, sitting against the wall, watched them go back and forth, a slight sneer on his face.

“Please, please, father,” Langlois said before Picard had a chance to begin. “It's quite useless, and I don't want to have to hurt your feelings. I was brought up a Catholic. I know exactly what you're going to say. I respect your faith, but this is no time to try to thrust it on me. I have no use for it.”

“But my son, you are an intelligent, educated man. Your mind is therefore open to reason . . .”

“Precisely, father, and the stuff you talk is not reasonable. It's just superstition. Cruelly ironical superstition, under the circumstances.” Langlois smiled a faintly bitter smile, then went on. “You can't do a thing for me. Please understand that. I mean it in all kindness, just as I know you do. But I have to live through this night alone. If my wife could only be with me. . . .” Tears came into Langlois's eyes and he quickened his pace for a while.

Helpless, full of profound sorrow, perplexed, the priest moved away from Langlois and went to the middle of the room. He knelt down on the concrete and began to repeat the general absolution out loud.

Didier watched him for a while, then got up slowly and advanced with deliberation upon the kneeling man. Langlois turned in his pacing just in time to see Didier give the priest a vicious kick in the stomach.

“Stop it!” Didier shrieked, then fell upon the crumpled form of the priest. “Get out, you sniveling black pig, and take your mutterings with you!”

He started to drag the priest over to the door, at the same time yelling to the guard to open it. Langlois came to from his surprise at the viciousness and the fury of the attack on Picard and jumped on Didier's back. They went down in a pile upon the prostrate body of the priest and in so doing knocked over the urine bucket. Didier shook himself free of Langlois, pulled him to a kneeling position and gave him a knockout punch on the jaw. Langlois fell backwards, teetering on his calves, his mouth wide open and bleeding, then collapsed into a huddle. Férol sat up and began to take a spectator's interest in the brawl. He wondered what would happen next.

Didier was still shouting: “Open the door, Name of God, you swine, and take this buzzard out of here!” He had stepped back from the door and was now standing with the empty bucket held over his head.

The door burst open under the pressure of the guard, who started to rush in. Didier hurled the heavy bucket into their faces and two men went down. Didier was yelling at the top of his lungs. He looked like a madman, and he acted like one, too, for he charged into the solid mass of men who were pushing through the doorway. He charged heedless of the rifle muzzles, heedless of the leveled bayonets. The men apparently had their orders for they pulled their bayonets upwards so that Didier would not impale himself upon them, then forced him back into the room, clubbing him with their rifle stocks.

Didier fought in a frenzy, clawing, punching, kicking—foaming a little at the mouth.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain above his knee, started to fall, and instantly thereafter lost consciousness. He had received simultaneously one rifle-butt blow which broke his leg and another on the head which knocked him out.

As soon as Didier was subdued, the guard collected themselves, picked the unconscious priest off the floor, and carried him away without looking at Langlois, who still lay on the cement, or at Férol, who was still sitting up in his corner very much regretting that the fun seemed to be over.

 

At ten minutes to four in the morning Didier began to come to. By four o'clock he had recovered consciousness enough to be roaring with pain.

The sergeant of the guard came in and saw that there was something the matter with the man's leg, very much the matter, in fact, for it seemed to have developed an extra joint half-way between the knee and the hip. The sergeant went out and sent a runner for the doctor.

Three quarters of an hour later the doctor showed up. He was young, sleepy, and irritable. He looked at Didier and saw at a glance that his left thigh bone was broken.

“Couldn't you have waited a few more hours,” he said, thinking of his interrupted sleep. “You fellows have no sense of the fitness of things. Think of managing to break your leg just before you're never going to have any more use for it.” Didier never heard the gibe, for his ears were filled with the roar going on in his own head. Férol and Langlois drew near and watched the doctor begin to cut the trouser leg off. He did it roughly, and Didier started to bellow again.

The doctor gave up cutting and went over and got his kit. He took a loaded hypodermic needle out of it, held it up and squeezed the air bubbles and some drops out, then felt around Didier's chest for a fleshy spot and shot the dose into him. He took an indelible pencil out of his pocket, moistened the point on his tongue, and made some symbols on Didier's forehead which would inform the initiated that he had been given a quarter grain of morphine at five o'clock.

“How did this happen?” he asked the sergeant.

The sergeant told him.

“Huh,” said the doctor. “Hunt around and get me something that I can use for a splint.”

Didier's bellows had already quieted down to groans. He felt, vaguely, that something in him was taking a departure, slowly, pleasantly, fading away like a landscape which is being effaced by an in-rolling bank of fog. He did not have time to distinguish, indeed he did not even try to, whether this soothing erasure which was going on in him with such neatness was mental or physical. All he knew was that it felt good to him. And then he became unconscious.

By the time the sergeant came back with the splint, the doctor had cut Didier's trouser leg off and had pulled and jerked the two ends of the thigh bone into an aligned contact again. He took the splint and bound it on with Langlois's puttees which he found conveniently at hand.

“That'll have to do,” he said, rising and collecting his stuff. “Of course he can't stand up with a broken thigh. I'll have to report this to the colonel and let you know. And by the way, have a couple of men come in and swab up that mess there. It stinks.”

About an hour later the doctor was back again.

“How is he?” he asked the sergeant.

“Quiet, sir. Seems to be sleeping.”

“That's the morphine. Hope I didn't give him too much.”

“What are we to do with him, sir?”

“I routed the colonel out and told him about it. He was furious with you for letting such a thing happen.”

“Name of God, sir, I couldn't help it. The man was fighting mad.”

“I know, I know. But why didn't you complete the job while you were at it? Anyway, the colonel called up Division and got the general out of bed. He tried to get this fellow's execution postponed. The conversation was short and not too sweet, I gathered, and the general hung up on him. The colonel looked like a thundercloud. All he said to me was: ‘The general says the medical officer will know how to put this man on his feet so that he can face the firing-squad. Go ahead and do it, if you can!'

“Well, of course, I can't. I can't perform miracles. This is what we'll have to do then. I'm having a stretcher sent over here. It's a folding one, the only kind we have. You must have a solid cross-piece nailed at both ends, just below the handles. Put the fellow on it and rope him to it securely by passing the rope under his armpits and over the cross-piece so that he will be supported when the stretcher is tilted up vertically. Do it as soon as the stretcher arrives, while he's still under the narcotic. I'll probably be here myself when they start out and I'll go up with them. But if I'm not, you will have to bring him to if he is still under. The way to do it is to give him a good slapping. If he doesn't answer to that, give his leg a couple of jabs with your thumb, right here, see, where it's discoloured and swollen. That'll bring him round. For some reason that I've never been able to fathom, a man has to be brought to consciousness before he's executed. Now I'm going to try to finish my sleep. . . .”

“Doctor,” said Langlois in a voice which came very close to quavering, “will it be terribly painful? Supposing they only wound us? . . .”

“That's what the sergeant-major's for,” said the doctor, and walked out.

“Nice little fellow!” said Férol.

Langlois smiled, a faint, slightly fatuous smile.

 

Sergeant Gounod arrived at the guard-house with an escort which had been increased by eight stretcher-bearers. He took four of them with him and went into the prisoners' room. Langlois and Férol were standing up, waiting for him. Didier lay muttering on his stretcher, semi-conscious.

“Well,” said Sergeant Gounod, and that was all he could bring himself to say for a while. Langlois and Férol looked at him. He looked at them, and what he saw was two terrified animals at bay.

“Well,” said Gounod again, “let's get busy. What's the use of hanging around.”

“Yes,” said Langlois. “Quickly, quickly. Where to? Is it far? Let's run there, what d'you say?” Langlois was smiling and Gounod had to look away.

“For Christ's sake, haven't you got a drink for us?” said Férol.

“Of course,” said Gounod, relieved to have the talk brought back from the slightly insane direction he felt it was getting away to. “I almost forgot. Here you are.”

Férol took a pull at the canteen, such a long one that Gounod had to grab it away.

“Leave some for somebody else, will you?”

“Yes, for the sergeants as usual, I suppose.”

Gounod said nothing and handed the canteen to Langlois.

Langlois took a mouthful and swallowed it with an effort. The cognac descended slowly, warming a column down the centre of his icy, trembling body, past his pounding heart to a point where it began to spread sideways.