Chapter XVI: Part SIX: Under the Wheels (1)

I

The uncovered garbage cans clattered as they were thrown one by one into the truck. Dust, and a smell of putrid things, hung in the air about the men as they worked. A guard stood by with his legs wide apart, and his rifle-butt on the pavement between them. The early mist hung low, hiding the upper windows of the hospital. From the door beside which the garbage cans were ranged came a thick odor of carbolic. The last garbage can rattled into place on the truck, the four prisoners and the guard clambered on, finding room as best they could among the cans, from which dripped bloody bandages, ashes, and bits of decaying food, and the truck rumbled off towards the incinerator, through the streets of Paris that sparkled with the gaiety of early morning.

The prisoners wore no tunics; their shirts and breeches had dark stains of grease and dirt; on their hands were torn canvas gloves. The guard was a sheepish, pink-faced youth, who kept grinning apologetically, and had trouble keeping his balance when the truck went round corners.

“How many days do they keep a guy on this job, Happy?” asked a boy with mild blue eyes and a creamy complexion, and reddish curly hair.

“Damned if I know, kid; as long as they please, I guess,” said the bull-necked man next him, who had a lined prize fighter's face, with a heavy protruding jaw.

Then, after looking at the boy for a minute, with his face twisted into an astonished sort of grin, he went on: “Say, kid, how in hell did you git here? Robbin' the cradle, Oi call it, to send you here, kid.”

“I stole a Ford,” the boy answered cheerfully.

“Like hell you did!”

“Sold it for five hundred francs.”

Happy laughed, and caught hold of an ash can to keep from being thrown out of the jolting truck.

“Kin ye beat that, guard?” he cried. “Ain't that somethin'?”

The guard sniggered.

“Didn't send me to Leavenworth 'cause I was so young,” went on the kid placidly.

“How old are you, kid?” asked Andrews, who was leaning against the driver's seat.

“Seventeen,” said the boy, blushing and casting his eyes down.

“He must have lied like hell to git in this goddam army,” boomed the deep voice of the truck driver, who had leaned over to spit s long squirt of tobacco juice.

The truck driver jammed the brakes on. The garbage cans banged against each other.

The Kid cried out in pain: “Hold your horses, can't you? You nearly broke my leg.”

The truck driver was swearing in a long string of words.

“Goddam these dreamin', skygazin' sons of French bastards. Why don't they get out of your way? Git out an' crank her up, Happy.”

“Guess a feller'd be lucky if he'd break his leg or somethin'; don't you think so, Skinny?” said the fourth prisoner in a low voice.

“It'll take mor'n a broken leg to git you out o' this labor battalion, Hoggenback. Won't it, guard?” said Happy, as he climbed on again.

The truck jolted away, trailing a haze of cinder dust and a sour stench of garbage behind it. Andrews noticed all at once that they were going down the quais along the river. Notre Dame was rosy in the misty sunlight, the color of lilacs in full bloom. He looked at it fixedly a moment, and then looked away. He felt very far from it, like a man looking at the stars from the bottom of a pit.

“My mate, he's gone to Leavenworth for five years,” said the Kid when they had been silent some time listening to the rattle of the garbage cans as the trucks jolted over the cobbles.

“Helped yer steal the Ford, did he?” asked Happy.

“Ford nothin'! He sold an ammunition train. He was a railroad man. He was a mason, that's why he only got five years.”

“I guess five years in Leavenworth's enough for anybody,” muttered Hoggenback, scowling. He was a square-shouldered dark man, who always hung his head when he worked.

“We didn't meet up till we got to Paris; we was on a hell of a party together at the Olympia. That's where they picked us up. Took us to the Bastille. Ever been in the Bastille?”

“I have,” said Hoggenback.

“Ain't no joke, is it?”

“Christ!” said Hoggenback. His face flushed a furious red. He turned away and looked at the civilians walking briskly along the early morning streets, at the waiters in shirt sleeves swabbing off the cafe tables, at the women pushing handcarts full of bright-colored vegetables over the cobblestones.

“I guess they ain't nobody gone through what we guys go through with,” said Happy. “It'd be better if the ole war was still a' goin', to my way o' thinkin'. They'd chuck us into the trenches then. Ain't so low as this.”

“Look lively,” shouted the truck driver, as the truck stopped in a dirty yard full of cinder piles. “Ain't got all day. Five more loads to get yet.”

The guard stood by with angry face and stiff limbs; for he feared there were officers about, and the prisoners started unloading the garbage cans; their nostrils were full of the stench of putrescence; between their lips was a gritty taste of cinders.

The air in the dark mess shack was thick with steam from the kitchen at one end. The men filed past the counter, holding out their mess kits, into which the K. P.'s splashed the food. Occasionally someone stopped to ask for a larger helping in an ingratiating voice. They ate packed together at long tables of roughly planed boards, stained from the constant spilling of grease and coffee and still wet from a perfunctory scrubbing. Andrews sat at the end of a bench, near the door through which came the glimmer of twilight, eating slowly, surprised at the relish with which he ate the greasy food, and at the exhausted contentment that had come over him almost in spite of himself. Hoggenback sat opposite him.

“Funny,” he said to Hoggenback, “it's not really as bad as I thought it would be.”

“What d'you mean, this labor battalion? Hell, a feller can put up with anything; that's one thing you learn in the army.”

“I guess people would rather put up with things than make an effort to change them.”

“You're goddam right. Got a butt?”

Andrews handed him a cigarette. They got to their feet and walked out into the twilight, holding their mess kits in front of them. As they were washing their mess kits in a tub of greasy water, where bits of food floated in a thick scum, Hoggenback suddenly said in a low voice:

“But it all piles up, Buddy; some day there'll be an accountin'. D'you believe in religion?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. I come of folks as done their own accountin'. My father an' my gran'father before him. A feller can't eat his bile day after day, day after day.”

“I'm afraid he can, Hoggenback,” broke in Andrews. They walked towards the barracks.

“Goddam it, no,” cried Hoggenback aloud. “There comes a point where you can't eat yer bile any more, where it don't do no good to cuss. Then you runs amuck.” Hanging his head he went slowly into the barracks.

Andrews leaned against the outside of the building, staring up at the sky. He was trying desperately to think, to pull together a few threads of his life in this moment of respite from the nightmare. In five minutes the bugle would din in his ears, and he would be driven into the barracks. A tune came to his head that he played with eagerly for a moment, and then, as memory came to him, tried to efface with a shudder of disgust.

“There's the smile that makes you happy,
There's the smile that makes you sad.”

It was almost dark. Two men walked slowly by in front of him.

“Sarge, may I speak to you?” came a voice in a whisper.

The sergeant grunted.

“I think there's two guys trying to break loose out of here.”

“Who? If you're wrong it'll be the worse for you, remember that.”

“Surley an' Watson. I heard 'em talkin' about it behind the latrine.”

“Damn fools.”

“They was sayin' they'd rather be dead than keep up this life.”

“They did, did they?”

“Don't talk so loud, Sarge. It wouldn't do for any of the fellers to know I was talkin' to yer. Say, Sarge...” the voice became whining, “don't you think I've nearly served my time down here?”

“What do I know about that? 'Tain't my job.”

“But, Sarge, I used to be company clerk with my old outfit. Don't ye need a guy round the office?” Andrews strode past them into the barracks. Dull fury possessed him. He took off his clothes and got silently into his blankets.

Hoggenback and Happy were talking beside his bunk.

“Never you mind,” said Hoggenback, “somebody'll get that guy sooner or later.”

“Git him, nauthin'! The fellers in that camp was so damn skeered they jumped if you snapped yer fingers at 'em. It's the discipline. I'm tellin' yer, it gits a feller in the end,” said Happy.

Andrews lay without speaking, listening to their talk, aching in every muscle from the crushing work of the day.

“They court-martialled that guy, a feller told me,” went on Hoggenback. “An' what d'ye think they did to him? Retired on half pay. He was a major.”

“Gawd, if I iver git out o' this army, I'll be so goddam glad,” began Happy. Hoggenback interrupted:

“That you'll forgit all about the raw deal they gave you, an' tell everybody how fine ye liked it.”

Andrews felt the mocking notes of the bugle outside stabbing his ears. A non-com's voice roared: “Quiet,” from the end of the building, and the lights went out. Already Andrews could hear the deep breathing of men asleep. He lay awake, staring into the darkness, his body throbbing with the monotonous rhythms of the work of the day. He seemed still to hear the sickening whine in the man's voice as he talked to the sergeant outside in the twilight. “And shall I be reduced to that?” he was asking himself.

Andrews was leaving the latrine when he heard a voice call softly, “Skinny.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Come here, I want to talk to you.” It was the Kid's voice. There was no light in the ill-smelling shack that served for a latrine. Outside they could hear the guard humming softly to himself as he went back and forth before the barracks door.

“Let's you and me be buddies, Skinny.”

“Sure,” said Andrews.

“Say, what d'you think the chance is o' cuttin' loose?”

“Pretty damn poor,” said Andrews.

“Couldn't you just make a noise like a hoop an' roll away?”

They giggled softly.

Andrews put his hand on the boy's arm.

“But, Kid, it's too risky. I got in this fix by taking a risk. I don't feel like beginning over again, and if they catch you, it's desertion. Leavenworth for twenty years, or life. That'd be the end of everything.”

“Well, what the hell's this?”

“Oh, I don't know; they've got to let us out some day.”

“Sh... sh....”

Kid put his hand suddenly over Andrews's mouth. They stood rigid, so that they could hear their hearts pounding.

Outside there was a brisk step on the gravel. The sentry halted and saluted. The steps faded into the distance, and the sentry's humming began again.

“They put two fellers in the jug for a month for talking like we are.... In solitary,” whispered Kid.

“But, Kid, I haven't got the guts to try anything now.”

“Sure you have, Skinny. You an' me's got more guts than all the rest of 'em put together. God, if people had guts, you couldn't treat 'em like they were curs. Look, if I can ever get out o' this, I've got a hunch I can make a good thing writing movie scenarios. I want to get on in the world, Skinny.”

“But, Kid, you won't be able to go back to the States.”

“I don't care. New Rochelle's not the whole world. They got the movies in Italy, ain't they?”

“Sure. Let's go to bed.”

“All right. Look, you an' me are buddies from now on, Skinny.”

Andrews felt the Kid's hand press his arm.

In his dark, airless bunk, in the lowest of three tiers, Andrews lay awake a long time, listening to the snores and the heavy breathing about him. Thoughts fluttered restlessly in his head, but in his blank hopelessness he could only frown and bite his lips, and roll his head from side to side on the rolled-up tunic he used for a pillow, listening with desperate attention to the heavy breathing of the men who slept above him and beside him.

When he fell asleep he dreamed that he was alone with Genevieve Rod in the concert hall of the Schola Cantorum, and that he was trying desperately hard to play some tune for her on the violin, a tune he kept forgetting, and in the agony of trying to remember, the tears streamed down his cheeks. Then he had his arms round Genevieve's shoulders and was kissing her, kissing her, until he found that it was a wooden board he was kissing, a wooden board on which was painted a face with broad forehead and great pale brown eyes, and small tight lips, and all the while a boy who seemed to be both Chrisfield and the Kid kept telling him to run or the M.P.'s would get him. Then he sat frozen in icy terror with a bottle in his hand, while a frightful voice behind him sang very loud:

“There's the smile that makes you happy,
There's the smile that makes you sad.”

The bugle woke him, and he sat up with such a start that he hit his head hard against the bunk above him. He lay back cringing from the pain like a child. But he had to hurry desperately to get his clothes on in time for roll call. It was with a feeling of relief that he found that mess was not ready, and that men were waiting in line outside the kitchen shack, stamping their feet and clattering their mess kits as they moved about through the chilly twilight of the spring morning. Andrews found he was standing behind Hoggenback.

“How's she comin', Skinny?” whispered Hoggenback, in his low mysterious voice.

“Oh, we're all in the same boat,” said Andrews with a laugh.

“Wish it'd sink,” muttered the other man. “D'ye know,” he went on after a pause, “I kinder thought an edicated guy like you'd be able to keep out of a mess like this. I wasn't brought up without edication, but I guess I didn't have enough.”

“I guess most of 'em can; I don't sec that it's much to the point. A man suffers as much if he doesn't know how to read and write as if he had a college education.”

“I dunno, Skinny. A feller who's led a rough life can put up with an awful lot. The thing is, Skinny, I might have had a commission if I hadn't been so damned impatient.... I'm a lumberman by trade, and my dad's cleaned up a pretty thing in war contracts jus' a short time ago. He could have got me in the engineers if I hadn't gone off an' enlisted.”

“Why did you?”

“I was restless-like. I guess I wanted to see the world. I didn't care about the goddam war, but I wanted to see what things was like over here.”

“Well, you've seen,” said Andrews, smiling.

“In the neck,” said Hoggenback, as he pushed out his cup for coffee.

In the truck that was taking them to work, Andrews and the Kid sat side by side on the jouncing backboard and tried to talk above the rumble of the exhaust.

“Like Paris?” asked the Kid.

“Not this way,” said Andrews.

“Say, one of the guys said you could parlay French real well. I want you to teach me. A guy's got to know languages to get along in this country.”

“But you must know some.”

“Bedroom French,” said the Kid, laughing.

“Well?”

“But if I want to write a movie scenario for an Eytalian firm, I can't just write 'voulay-vous couchezavecmoa' over and over again.”

“But you'll have to learn Italian, Kid.”

“I'm goin' to. Say, ain't they taking us a hell of a ways today, Skinny?”

“We're goin' to Passy Wharf to unload rock,” said somebody in a grumbling voice.

“No, it's a cement... cement for the stadium we're presentin' the French Nation. Ain't you read in the 'Stars and Stripes' about it?”

“I'd present 'em with a swift kick, and a hell of a lot of other people, too.”

“So we have to sweat unloadin' cement all day,” muttered Hoggenback, “to give these goddam frawgs a stadium.”

“If it weren't that it'd be somethin' else.”

“But, ain't we got folks at home to work for?” cried Hoggenback. “Mightn't all this sweat be doin' some good for us? Building a stadium! My gawd!”

“Pile out there.... Quick!” rasped a voice from the driver's seat.

Through the haze of choking white dust, Andrews got now and then a glimpse of the grey-green river, with its tugboats sporting their white cockades of steam and their long trailing plumes of smoke, and its blunt-nosed barges and its bridges, where people walked jauntily back and forth, going about their business, going where they wanted to go. The bags of cement were very heavy, and the unaccustomed work sent racking pains through his back. The biting dust stung under his finger nails, and in his mouth and eyes. All the morning a sort of refrain went through his head: “People have spent their lives... doing only this. People have spent their lives doing only this.” As he crossed and recrossed the narrow plank from the barge to the shore, he looked at the black water speeding seawards and took extraordinary care not to let his foot slip. He did not know why, for one-half of him was thinking how wonderful it would be to drown, to forget in eternal black silence the hopeless struggle. Once he saw the Kid standing before the sergeant in charge in an attitude of complete exhaustion, and caught a glint of his blue eyes as he looked up appealingly, looking like a child begging out of a spanking. The sight amused him, and he said to himself: “If I had pink cheeks and cupid's bow lips, I might be able to go through life on my blue eyes”; and he pictured the Kid, a fat, cherubic old man, stepping out of a white limousine, the way people do in the movies, and looking about him with those same mild blue eyes. But soon he forgot everything in the agony of the heavy cement bags bearing down on his back and hips.

In the truck on the way back to the mess the Kid, looking fresh and smiling among the sweating men, like ghosts from the white dust, talking hoarsely above the clatter of the truck, sidled up very close to Andrews.

“D'you like swimmin', Skinny?”

“Yes. I'd give a lot to get some of this cement dust off me,” said Andrews, without interest.

“I once won a boy's swimmin' race at Coney,” said the Kid. Andrews did not answer.

“Were you in the swimmin' team or anything like that, Skinny, when you went to school?”

“No.... It would be wonderful to be in the water, though. I used to swim way out in Chesapeake Bay at night when the water was phosphorescent.”

Andrews suddenly found the Kid's blue eyes, bright as flames from excitement, staring into his.

“God, I'm an ass,” he muttered.

He felt the Kid's fist punch him softly in the back. “Sergeant said they was goin' to work us late as hell tonight,” the Kid was saying aloud to the men round him.

“I'll be dead if they do,” muttered Hoggenback.

“An' you a lumberjack!”

“It ain't that. I could carry their bloody bags two at a time if I wanted ter. A feller gets so goddam mad, that's all; so goddam mad. Don't he, Skinny?” Hoggenback turned to Andrews and smiled.

Andrews nodded his head.

After the first two or three bags Andrews carried in the afternoon, it seemed as if every one would be the last he could possibly lift. His back and thighs throbbed with exhaustion; his face and the tips of his fingers felt raw from the biting cement dust.

When the river began to grow purple with evening, he noticed that two civilians, young men with buff-colored coats and canes, were watching the gang at work.

“They says they's newspaper reporters, writing up how fast the army's being demobilized,” said one man in an awed voice.

“They come to the right place.”

“Tell 'em we're leavin' for home now. Loadin' our barracks bags on the steamer.”

The newspaper men were giving out cigarettes. Several men grouped round them. One shouted out:

“We're the guys does the light work. Blackjack Pershing's own pet labor battalion.”

“They like us so well they just can't let us go.”

“Damn jackasses,” muttered Hoggenback, as, with his eyes to the ground, he passed Andrews. “I could tell 'em some things'd make their goddam ears buzz.”

“Why don't you?”

“What the hell's the use? I ain't got the edication to talk up to guys like that.”

The sergeant, a short, red-faced man with a mustache clipped very short, went up to the group round the newspaper men.

“Come on, fellers, we've got a hell of a lot of this cement to get in before it rains,” he said in a kindly voice; “the sooner we get it in, the sooner we get off.”

“Listen to that bastard, ain't he juss too sweet for pie when there's company?” muttered Hoggenback on his way from the barge with a bag of cement.

The Kid brushed past Andrews without looking at him.

“Do what I do, Skinny,” he said.

Andrews did not turn round, but his heart started thumping very fast. A dull sort of terror took possession of him. He tried desperately to summon his will power, to keep from cringing, but he kept remembering the way the room had swung round when the M.P. had hit him, and heard again the cold voice of the lieutenant saying: “One of you men teach him how to salute.” Time dragged out interminably.

At last, coming back to the edge of the wharf, Andrews saw that there were no more bags in the barge. He sat down on the plank, too exhausted to think. Blue-grey dusk was closing down on everything. The Passy bridge stood out, purple against a great crimson afterglow.

The Kid sat down beside him, and threw an arm trembling with excitement round his shoulders.

“The guard's lookin' the other way. They won't miss us till they get to the truck.... Come on, Skinny,” he said in a low, quiet voice.

Holding on to the plank, he let himself down into the speeding water. Andrews slipped after him, hardly knowing what he was doing. The icy water closing about his body made him suddenly feel awake and vigorous. As he was swept by the big rudder of the barge, he caught hold of the Kid, who was holding on to a rope. They worked their way without speaking round to the outer side of the rudder. The swift river tugging savagely at them made it hard to hold on.

“Now they can't see us,” said the Kid between clenched teeth. “Can you work your shoes an' pants off?”'

Andrews started struggling with one boot, the Kid helping to hold him up with his free hand.

“Mine are off,” he said. “I was all fixed.” He laughed, though his teeth were chattering.

“All right. I've broken the laces,” said Andrews.

“Can you swim under water?”

Andrews nodded.

“We want to make for that bunch of barges the other side of the bridge. The barge people'll hide us.”

“How d'ye know they will?”

The Kid had disappeared.

Andrews hesitated a moment, then let go his hold and started swimming with the current for all his might.

At first he felt strong and exultant, but very soon he began to feel the icy grip of the water bearing him down; his arms and legs seemed to stiffen. More than against the water, he was struggling against paralysis within him, so that he thought that every moment his limbs would go rigid. He came to the surface and gasped for air. He had a second's glimpse of figures, tiny like toy soldiers, gesticulating wildly on the deck of the barge. The report of a rifle snapped through the air. He dove again, without thinking, as if his body were working independently of his mind.

The next time he came up, his eyes were blurred from the cold. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. The shadow of the bridge was just above him. He turned on his back for a second. There were lights on the bridge. A current swept him past one barge and then another. Certainty possessed him that he was going to be drowned. A voice seemed to sob in his ears grotesquely: “And so John Andrews was drowned in the Seine, drowned in the Seine, in the Seine.”

Then he was kicking and fighting in a furious rage against the coils about him that wanted to drag him down and away. The black side of a barge was slipping up stream beside him with lightning speed. How fast those barges go, he thought. Then suddenly he found that he had hold of a rope, that his shoulders were banging against the bow of a small boat, while in front of him, against the dull purple sky, towered the rudder of the barge. A strong warm hand grasped his shoulder from behind, and he was being drawn up and up, over the bow of the boat that hurt his numbed body like blows, out of the clutching coils of the water.

“Hide me, I'm a deserter,” he said over and over again in French. A brown and red face with a bristly white beard, a bulbous, mullioned sort of face, hovered over him in the middle of a pinkish mist.

II

“Oh, qu'il est propre! Oh, qu'il a la peau blanche!” Women's voices were shrilling behind the mist. A coverlet that felt soft and fuzzy against his skin was being put about him. He was very warm and torpid. But somewhere in his thoughts a black crawling thing like a spider was trying to reach him, trying to work its way through the pinkish veils of torpor. After a long while he managed to roll over, and looked about him.

“Mais reste tranquille,” came the woman's shrill voice again.

“And the other one? Did you see the other one?” he asked in a choked whisper.

“Yes, it's all right. I'm drying it by the stove,” came another woman's voice, deep and growling, almost like a man's.

“Maman's drying your money by the stove. It's all safe. How rich they are, these Americans!”

“And to think that I nearly threw it overboard with the trousers,” said the other woman again.

John Andrews began to look about him. He was in a dark low cabin. Behind him, in the direction of the voices, a yellow light flickered. Great dishevelled shadows of heads moved about on the ceiling. Through the close smell of the cabin came a warmth of food cooking. He could hear the soothing hiss of frying grease.

“But didn't you see the Kid?” he asked in English, dazedly trying to pull himself together, to think coherently. Then he went on in French in a more natural voice:

“There was another one with me.”

“We saw no one. Rosaline, ask the old man,” said the older woman.

“No, he didn't see anyone,” came the girl's shrill voice. She walked over to the bed and pulled the coverlet round Andrews with an awkward gesture. Looking up at her, he had a glimpse of the bulge of her breasts and her large teeth that glinted in the lamplight, and very vague in the shadow, a mop of snaky, disordered hair.

“Qu'il parle bien francais,” she said, beaming at him. Heavy steps shuffled across the cabin as the older woman came up to the bed and peered in his face.

“Il va mieux,” she said, with a knowing air.

She was a broad woman with a broad flat face and a swollen body swathed in shawls. Her eyebrows were very bushy, and she had thick grey whiskers that came down to a point on either side of her mouth, as well as a few bristling hairs on her chin. Her voice was deep and growling, and seemed to come from far down inside her huge body.

Steps creaked somewhere, and the old man looked at him through spectacles placed on the end of his nose. Andrews recognized the irregular face full of red knobs and protrusions.

“Thanks very much,” he said.

All three looked at him silently for some time. Then the old man pulled a newspaper out of his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and fluttered it above Andrews's eyes. In the scant light Andrews made out the name: “Libertaire.”

“That's why,” said the old man, looking at Andrews fixedly, through his spectacles.

“I'm a sort of a socialist,” said Andrews.

“Socialists are good-for-nothings,” snarled the old man, every red protrusion on his face seeming to get redder.

“But I have great sympathy for anarchist comrades,” went on Andrews, feeling a certain liveliness of amusement go through him and fade again.

“Lucky you caught hold of my rope, instead of getting on to the next barge. He'd have given you up for sure. Sont des royalistes, ces salauds-la.”

“We must give him something to eat; hurry, Maman.... Don't worry, he'll pay, won't you, my little American?”

Andrews nodded his head.

“All you want,” he said.

“No, if he says he's a comrade, he shan't pay, not a sou,” growled the old man.

“We'll see about that,” cried the old woman, drawing her breath in with an angry whistling sound.

“It's only that living's so dear nowadays,” came the girl's voice.

“Oh, I'll pay anything I've got,” said Andrews peevishly, closing his eyes again.

He lay a long while on his back without moving.

A hand shoved in between his back and the pillow roused him. He sat up. Rosaline was holding a bowl of broth in front of him that steamed in his face.

“Mange ca,” she said.

He looked into her eyes, smiling. Her rusty hair was neatly combed. A bright green parrot with a scarlet splash in its wings, balanced itself unsteadily on her shoulder, looking at Andrews out of angry eyes, hard as gems.

“Il est jaloux, Coco,” said Rosaline, with a shrill little giggle.

Andrews took the bowl in his two hands and drank some of the scalding broth.

“It's too hot,” he said, leaning back against the girl's arm.

The parrot squawked out a sentence that Andrews did not understand.

Andrews heard the old man's voice answer from somewhere behind him:

“Nom de Dieu!”

The parrot squawked again.

Rosaline laughed.

“It's the old man who taught him that,” she said. “Poor Coco, he doesn't know what he's saying.”

“What does he say?” asked Andrews.

“'Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!' It's from a song,” said Rosaline. “Oh, qu'il est malin, ce Coco!”

Rosaline was standing with her arms folded beside the bunk. The parrot stretched out his neck and rubbed it against her cheek, closing and unclosing his gem-like eyes. The girl formed her lips into a kiss, and murmured in a drowsy voice:

“Tu m'aimes, Coco, n'est-ce pas, Coco? Bon Coco.”

“Could I have something more, I'm awfully hungry,” said Andrews.

“Oh, I was forgetting,” cried Rosaline, running off with the empty bowl.

In a moment she came back without the parrot, with the bowl in her hand full of a brown stew of potatoes and meat.

Andrews ate it mechanically, and handed back the bowl.

“Thank you,” he said, “I am going to sleep.”

He settled himself into the bunk. Rosaline drew the covers up about him and tucked them in round his shoulders. Her hand seemed to linger a moment as it brushed past his cheek. But Andrews had already sunk into a torpor again, feeling nothing but the warmth of the food within him and a great stiffness in his legs and arms.

When he woke up the light was grey instead of yellow, and a swishing sound puzzled him. He lay listening to it for a long time, wondering what it was. At last the thought came with a sudden warm spurt of joy that the barge must be moving.

He lay very quietly on his back, looking up at the faint silvery light on the ceiling of the bunk, thinking of nothing, with only a vague dread in the back of his head that someone would come to speak to him, to question him.

After a long time he began to think of Genevieve Rod. He was having a long conversation with her about his music, and in his imagination she kept telling him that he must finish the “Queen of Sheba,” and that she would show it to Monsieur Gibier, who was a great friend of a certain concert director, who might get it played. How long ago it must be since they had talked about that. A picture floated through his mind of himself and Genevieve standing shoulder to shoulder looking at the Cathedral at Chartres, which stood up nonchalantly, above the tumultuous roofs of the town, with its sober tower and its gaudy towers and the great rose windows between. Inexorably his memory carried him forward, moment by moment, over that day, until he writhed with shame and revolt. Good god! Would he have to go on all his life remembering that? “Teach him how to salute,” the officer had said, and Handsome had stepped up to him and hit him. Would he have to go on all his life remembering that?

“We tied up the uniform with some stones, and threw it overboard,” said Rosaline, jabbing him in the shoulder to draw his attention.

“That was a good idea.”

“Are you going to get up? It's nearly time to eat. How you have slept.”

“But I haven't anything to put on,” said Andrews, laughing, and waved a bare arm above the bedclothes.

“Wait, I'll find something of the old man's. Say, do all Americans have skin so white as that? Look.”

She put her brown hand, with its grimed and broken nails, on Andrews's arm, that was white with a few silky yellow hairs.

“It's because I'm blond,” said Andrews. “There are plenty of blond Frenchmen, aren't there?”

Rosaline ran off giggling, and came back in a moment with a pair of corduroy trousers and a torn flannel shirt that smelt of pipe tobacco.

“That'll do for now,” she said. “It's warm today for April. Tonight we'll buy you some clothes and shoes. Where are you going?”

“By God, I don't know.”

“We're going to Havre for cargo.” She put both hands to her head and began rearranging her straggling rusty-colored hair. “Oh, my hair,” she said, “it's the water, you know. You can't keep respectable-looking on these filthy barges. Say, American, why don't you stay with us a while? You can help the old man run the boat.”

He found suddenly that her eyes were looking into his with trembling eagerness.

“I don't know what to do,” he said carelessly. “I wonder if it's safe to go on deck.”

She turned away from him petulantly and led the way up the ladder.

“Oh, v'la le camarade,” cried the old man who was leaning with all his might against the long tiller of the barge. “Come and help me.”

The barge was the last of a string of four that were describing a wide curve in the midst of a reach of silvery river full of glittering patches of pale, pea-green lavender, hemmed in on either side by frail blue roots of poplars. The sky was a mottled luminous grey with occasional patches, the color of robins' eggs. Andrews breathed in the dank smell of the river and leaned against the tiller when he was told to, answering the old man's curt questions.

He stayed with the tiller when the rest of them went down to the cabin to eat. The pale colors and the swishing sound of the water and the blue-green banks slipping by and unfolding on either hand, were as soothing as his deep sleep had been. Yet they seemed only a veil covering other realities, where men stood interminably in line and marched with legs made all the same length on the drill field, and wore the same clothes and cringed before the same hierarchy of polished belts and polished puttees and stiff-visored caps, that had its homes in vast offices crammed with index cards and card catalogues; a world full of the tramp of marching, where cold voices kept saying:--“Teach him how to salute.” Like a bird in a net, Andrews's mind struggled to free itself from the obsession.

Then he thought of his table in his room in Paris, with its piled sheets of ruled paper, and he felt he wanted nothing in the world except to work. It would not matter what happened to him if he could only have time to weave into designs the tangled skein of music that seethed through him as the blood seethed through his veins.

There he stood, leaning against the long tiller, watching the blue-green poplars glide by, here and there reflected in the etched silver mirror of the river, feeling the moist river wind flutter his ragged shirt, thinking of nothing.

After a while the old man came up out of the cabin, his face purplish, puffing clouds of smoke out of his pipe.

“All right, young fellow, go down and eat,” he said.

Andrews lay flat on his belly on the deck, with his chin resting on the back of his two hands. The barge was tied up along the river bank among many other barges. Beside him, a small fuzzy dog barked furiously at a yellow mongrel on the shore. It was nearly dark, and through the pearly mist of the river came red oblongs of light from the taverns along the bank. A slip of a new moon, shrouded in haze, was setting behind the poplar trees. Amid the round of despairing thoughts, the memory of the Kid intruded itself. He had sold a Ford for five hundred francs, and gone on a party with a man who'd stolen an ammunition train, and he wanted to write for the Italian movies. No war could down people like that. Andrews smiled, looking into the black water. Funny, the Kid was dead, probably, and he, John Andrews, was alive and free. And he lay there moping, still whimpering over old wrongs. “For God's sake be a man!” he said to himself. He got to his feet.

At the cabin door, Rosaline was playing with the parrot.

“Give me a kiss, Coco,” she was saying in a drowsy voice, “just a little kiss. Just a little kiss for Rosaline, poor little Rosaline.”

The parrot, which Andrews could hardly see in the dusk, leaned towards her, fluttering his feathers, making little clucking noises.

Rosaline caught sight of Andrews.

“Oh, I thought you'd gone to have a drink with the old man,” she cried.

“No. I stayed here.”

“D'you like it, this life?”

Rosaline put the parrot back on his perch, where he swayed from side to side, squawking in protest: “Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!”

They both laughed.

“Oh, it must be a wonderful life. This barge seems like heaven after the army.”

“But they pay you well, you Americans.”

“Seven francs a day.”

“That's luxury, that.”

“And be ordered around all day long!”

“But you have no expenses.... It's clear gain.... You men are funny. The old man's like that too.... It's nice here all by ourselves, isn't it, Jean?”

Andrews did not answer. He was wondering what Genevieve Rod would say when she found out he was a deserter.

“I hate it.... It's dirty and cold and miserable in winter,” went on Rosaline. “I'd like to see them at the bottom of the river, all these barges.... And Paris women, did you have a good time with them?”

“I only knew one. I go very little with women.”

“All the same, love's nice, isn't it?”

They were sitting on the rail at the bow of the barge. Rosaline had sidled up so that her leg touched Andrews's leg along its whole length.

The memory of Genevieve Rod became more and more vivid in his mind. He kept thinking of things she had said, of the intonations of her voice, of the blundering way she poured tea, and of her pale-brown eyes wide open on the world, like the eyes of a woman in an encaustic painting from a tomb in the Fayoum.

“Mother's talking to the old woman at the Creamery. They're great friends. She won't be home for two hours yet,” said Rosaline.

“She's bringing my clothes, isn't she?”

“But you're all right as you are.”

“But they're your father's.”

“What does that matter?”

“I must go back to Paris soon. There is somebody I must see in Paris.”

“A woman?”

Andrews nodded.

“But it's not so bad, this life on the barge. I'm just lonesome and sick of the old people. That's why I talk nastily about it.... We could have good times together if you stayed with us a little.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder and put a hand awkwardly on his bare forearm.

“How cold these Americans are!” she muttered, giggling drowsily.

Andrews felt her hair tickle his cheek.

“No, it's not a bad life on the barge, honestly. The only thing is, there's nothing but old people on the river. It isn't life to be always with old people.... I want to have a good time.”

She pressed her cheek against his. He could feel her breath heavy in his face.

“After all, it's lovely in summer to drowse on the deck that's all warm with the sun, and see the trees and the fields and the little houses slipping by on either side.... If there weren't so many old people.... All the boys go away to the cities.... I hate old people; they're so dirty and slow. We mustn't waste our youth, must we?”

Andrews got to his feet.

“What's the matter?” she cried sharply.

“Rosaline,” Andrews said in a low, soft voice, “I can only think of going to Paris.”

“Oh, the Paris woman,” said Rosaline scornfully. “But what does that matter? She isn't here now.”

“I don't know.... Perhaps I shall never see her again anyway,” said Andrews.

“You're a fool. You must amuse yourself when you can in this life. And you a deserter.... Why, they may catch you and shoot you any time.”

“Oh, I know, you're right. You're right. But I'm not made like that, that's all.”

“She must be very good to you, your little Paris girl.”

“I've never touched her.”

Rosaline threw her head back and laughed raspingly.

“But you aren't sick, are you?” she cried.

“Probably I remember too vividly, that's all.... Anyway, I'm a fool, Rosaline, because you're a nice girl.”

There were steps on the plank that led to the shore. A shawl over her head and a big bundle under her arm, the old woman came up to them, panting wheezily. She looked from one to the other, trying to make out their faces in the dark.

“It's a danger... like that... youth,” she muttered between hard short breaths.

“Did you find the clothes?” asked Andrews in a casual voice.

“Yes. That leaves you forty-five francs out of your money, when I've taken out for your food and all that. Does that suit you?”

“Thank you very much for your trouble.”

“You paid for it. Don't worry about that,” said the old woman. She gave him the bundle. “Here are your clothes and the forty-five francs. If you want, I'll tell you exactly what each thing cost.”

“I'll put them on first,” he said, with a laugh.

He climbed down the ladder into the cabin.

Putting on new, unfamiliar-shaped clothes made him suddenly feel strong and joyous. The old woman had bought him corduroy trousers, cheap cloth shoes, a blue cotton shirt, woollen socks, and a second-hand black serge jacket. When he came on deck she held up a lantern to look at him.

“Doesn't he look fine, altogether French?” she said.

Rosaline turned away without answering. A little later she picked up the perch and carried the parrot, that swayed sleepily on the crosspiece, down the ladder.

“Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!” came the old man's voice singing on the shore.

“He's drunk as a pig,” muttered the old woman. “If only he doesn't fall off the gang plank.”

A swaying shadow appeared at the end of the plank, standing out against the haze of light from the houses behind the poplar trees.

Andrews put out a hand to catch him, as he reached the side of the barge. The old man sprawled against the cabin.

“Don't bawl me out, dearie,” he said, dangling an arm round Andrews's neck, and a hand beckoning vaguely towards his wife.

“I've found a comrade for the little American.”

“What's that?” said Andrews sharply. His mouth suddenly went dry with terror. He felt his nails pressing into the palms of his cold-hands.

“I've found another American for you,” said the old man in an important voice. “Here he comes.” Another shadow appeared at the end of the gangplank.

“Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!” shouted the old man.

Andrews backed away cautiously towards the other side of the barge. All the little muscles of his thighs were trembling. A hard voice was saying in his head: “Drown yourself, drown yourself. Then they won't get you.”

The man was standing on the end of the plank. Andrews could see the contour of the uniform against the haze of light behind the poplar trees.

“God, if I only had a pistol,” he thought.

“Say, Buddy, where are you?” came an American voice.

The man advanced towards him across the deck.

Andrews stood with every muscle taut.

“Gee! You've taken off your uniform.... Say, I'm not an M.P. I'm A.W.O.L. too. Shake.” He held out his hand.

Andrews took the hand doubtfully, without moving from the edge of the barge.

“Say, Buddy, it's a damn fool thing to take off your uniform. Ain't you got any? If they pick you up like that it's life, kid.”

“I can't help it. It's done now.”

“Gawd, you still think I'm an M.P., don't yer?... I swear I ain't. Maybe you are. Gawd, it's hell, this life. A feller can't put his trust in nobody.”

“What division are you from?”

“Hell, I came to warn you this bastard frawg's got soused an' has been blabbin' in the gin mill there how he was an anarchist an' all that, an' how he had an American deserter who was an anarchist an' all that, an' I said to myself: 'That guy'll git nabbed if he ain't careful,' so I cottoned up to the old frawg an' said I'd go with him to see the camarade, an' I think we'd better both of us make tracks out o' this burg.”

“It's damn decent. I'm sorry I was so suspicious. I was scared green when I first saw you.”

“You were goddam right to be. But why did yous take yer uniform off?”

“Come along, let's beat it. I'll tell you about that.”

Andrews shook hands with the old man and the old woman. Rosaline had disappeared.

“Goodnight...Thank you,” he said, and followed the other man across the gangplank.

As they walked away along the road they heard the old man's voice roaring:

“Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!”

“My name's Eddy Chambers,” said the American.

“Mine's John Andrews.”

“How long've you been out?”

“Two days.”

Eddy let the air out through his teeth in a whistle.

“I got away from a labor battalion in Paris. They'd picked me up in Chartres without a pass.”

“Gee, I've been out a month an' more. Was you infantry too?”

“Yes. I was in the School Detachment in Paris when I was picked up. But I never could get word to them. They just put me to work without a trial. Ever been in a labor battalion?”

“No, thank Gawd, they ain't got my number yet.”

They were walking fast along a straight road across a plain under a clear star-powdered sky.

“I been out eight weeks yesterday. What'd you think o' that?” said Eddy.

“Must have had plenty of money to go on.”

“I've been flat fifteen days.”

“How d'you work it?”

“I dunno. I juss work it though.... Ye see, it was this way. The gang I was with went home when I was in hauspital, and the damn skunks put me in class A and was goin' to send me to the Army of Occupation. Gawd, it made me sick, goin' out to a new outfit where I didn't know anybody, an' all the rest of my bunch home walkin' down Water Street with brass bands an' reception committees an' girls throwing kisses at 'em an' all that. Where are yous goin'?”

“Paris.”

“Gee, I wouldn't. Risky.”

“But I've got friends there. I can get hold of some money.”

“Looks like I hadn't got a friend in the world. I wish I'd gone to that goddam outfit now.... I ought to have been in the engineers all the time, anyway.”

“What did you do at home?”

“Carpenter.”

“But gosh, man, with a trade like that you can always make a living anywhere.”

“You're goddam right, I could, but a guy has to live underground, like a rabbit, at this game. If I could git to a country where I could walk around like a man, I wouldn't give a damn what happened. If the army ever moves out of here an' the goddam M.P.'s, I'll set up in business in one of these here little towns. I can parlee pretty well. I'd juss as soon marry a French girl an' git to be a regular frawg myself. After the raw deal they've given me in the army, I don't want to have nothin' more to do with their damn country. Democracy!”

He cleared his throat and spat angrily on the road before him. They walked on silently. Andrews was looking at the sky, picking out constellations he knew among the glittering masses of stars.

“Why don't you try Spain or Italy?” he said after a while.

“Don't know the lingo. No, I'm going to Scotland.”

“But how can you get there?”

“Crossing on the car ferries to England from Havre. I've talked to guys has done it.”

“But what'll you do when you do get there?”

“How should I know? Live around best I can. What can a feller do when he don't dare show his face in the street?”

“Anyway, it makes you feel as if you had some guts in you to be out on your own this way,” cried Andrews boisterously.

“Wait till you've been at it two months, boy, and you'll think what I'm tellin' yer.... The army's hell when you're in it; but it's a hell of a lot worse when you're out of it, at the wrong end.”

“It's a great night, anyway,” said Andrews.

“Looks like we ought to be findin' a haystack to sleep in.”

“It'd be different,” burst out Andrews, suddenly, “if I didn't have friends here.”

“O, you've met up with a girl, have you?” asked Eddy ironically.

“Yes. The thing is we really get along together, besides all the rest.”

Eddy snorted.

“I bet you ain't ever even kissed her,” he said. “Gee, I've had buddies has met up with that friendly kind. I know a guy married one, an' found out after two weeks.”

“It's silly to talk about it. I can't explain it.... It gives you confidence in anything to feel there's someone who'll always understand anything you do.”

“I s'pose you're goin' to git married.”

“I don't see why. That would spoil everything.”

Eddy whistled softly.

They walked along briskly without speaking for a long time, their steps ringing on the hard road, while the dome of the sky shimmered above their heads. And from the ditches came the singsong shrilling of toads. For the first time in months Andrews felt himself bubbling with a spirit of joyous adventure. The rhythm of the three green horsemen that was to have been the prelude to the Queen of Sheba began rollicking through his head.

“But, Eddy, this is wonderful. It's us against the universe,” he said in a boisterous voice.

“You wait,” said Eddy.