Fable, A - William Faulkner [133]
'So the commandant didn't need to choose him: only accept him; and at sunset the garrison paraded and the man stepped out of ranks; and now the commandant should have taken the decoration from his own breast and pinned it on that of the sacrifice, except that the commandant had not got the ribbon yet (oh yes, I've thought of the locket too: to remove the chain from his own neck and cast it about the condemned's, but that is reserved for some finer, more durable instant in that rocket's course than the abolishment of a blackguard or the preservation of a flyspeck). So without doubt that would be the moment when he gave him the signed paper setting him free of his past, the man not knowing then that that first step out of ranks had already set him free of whatever else breathing could do to him more; and the man saluted and about faced and marched out the gate into darkness. Into death. And I thought for a moment you had spoken again, were about to ask how, if the ultimatum would not take effect until dawn tomorrow, did the Riff chief discover that a scout would attempt to get out that night, and so have an ambush ready at the mouth of the wadi through which the scout would pass. Yes, how: the man himself probably asking that in the one last choked cry or scream remaining to him of indic'I'ment and repudiation, because he didn't know about the ribbon then either.
'Into darkness: night: the wadi. Into hell; even Hugo didn't think of that. Because from the looks of what remained of him, it took him most of that night to die; the sentry above the gate challenged at dawn the next morning, then the camel (not the plump missing one of course but an old mangy one, because the dead woman was valuable; and besides, one camel looks just like another in a Transport Office return) cantered in with the body tied on it, stripped of clothing and most of the flesh too. So the siege, the inves'I'ment, was lifted; the enemy retired and that sunset the commandant buried its lone casualty (except for the better camel: and after all, the woman had been valuable) with a bugle and a firing squad, and you relieved him and he departed, a lieutenant-colonel with the rosette in a Himalayan lamasery, leaving nothing behind him but that little corner of France which he saved, to be mausoleum and cenotaph of the man whom he tricked into saving it. A man,' the other said, watching him. 'A human being.'
'A murderer,' he said. 'A murderer twice-'
'Spawned into murder by a French cesspool.'
'But repudiated by all the world's cesspools: nationless twice, without fatherland twice since he had forfeited life, worldless twice since he was already forfeit to death, belonging to no man since he was not even his own-'
'But a man,' the other said.
'-speaking, thinking in French only because, nationless, he must of necessity use that tongue which of all is international; wearing that French uniform because inside a French uniform was the only place on earth where a murderer could be safe from his murder-'
But bearing it, bearing at least without complaint his rewardless share of the vast glorious burden of empire where few other men Wednesday Night dared or could; even behaving himself in his fashion: nothing in his record but a little drunkenness, a little thievery-'
'Until now,' he cried, '-only thievery, buggery, sodomy-until now,'
'-which were his sole defense against the corporal's or sergeant's warrant which would have been his death sentence. Asking nothing of none until his blind and valueless fate tangled with that of him who had already exhausted the Comite de Ferrovie and the French Army, and was now reduced to rooting about among the hogwal-lows and cesspools of the human race itself; who, already forfeit of life, owed nothing to France save the uniform he wore and the rifle he oiled and tended,