Fable, A - William Faulkner [204]
Then, the corporal with his torch leading now and the foremost man carrying the stretcher, they went on again between the sweating walls, the floor itself beneath the feet viscous and greasy so that there was a tendency to slip, passing the doorless orifices in the walls beyond which they could see the tiered bunks in which in time during those five months in men had actually learned to sleep beneath the muted thunder and the trembling of the earth, the smell which above ground had had a sort of vividness, as though even yet partaking indomitably still of something of that motion which is life, not increasing so much as becoming familiar-an old stale dead and worn accustomedness which man would never eradicate and so in time would even get used to and even cease to smell it-a smell subterrene and claustrophobe and doomed to darkness, not alone of putrefaction but of fear and old sweat and old excrement and endurance; fear attenuated to that point where it must choose between coma and madness and in the intermittent coma no longer feared but merely stank.
More soldiers in pairs with masked faces and heaped barrows or stretchers passed them; suddenly more sweating and viscid stairs plunged away beneath them; at the foot of the stairs the tunnel made a sharp angle, no longer floored and walled and roofed with concrete; and, turning the corner behind the corporal, it was no longer a tunnel even but an excavation a cavern a cave a great niche dug out of one wall in which during the height of the battle, when there had been no other way to dispose of them, the bodies which had merely been killed and the ones which had been killed and dismembered too in the fort or the connecting machine-gun pits had been tumbled and covered with earth, the tunnel itself continuing on beyond it: a timber-shored burrow not even high enough for a man to stand erect in, through or beyond which they now saw a steady white glare which would have to be electricity, from which as they watched, two more hooded and aproned soldiers emerged, carrying a stretcher with what would be an intact body this time.
'Wait here,' the corporal said.
'My orders say-' the sergeant said.
'.... your orders,' the corporal said. We got a system here. We do things our way. Down here, you're on active service, pal. Just give me two of your men and the stretcher. Though you can come too, if you think nothing less will keep your nose clean,'
'That's what I intend to do,' the sergeant said. 'My orders say-' But the corporal didn't wait, going on, the two with the stretcher, the sergeant stooping last to enter the farther tunnel, the valise still clasped against his breast like a sick child. It did not take them long, as if there were plenty in the next traverse to choose from; almost at once, it seemed to the remaining ten, they saw the sergeant come stooping out of the burrow, still clasping the valise, followed by the two men with the burdened stretcher at a sort of stumbling run, then last the corporal who didn't even pause, walking around the stretcher where the two bearers had dropped it, already going on toward the stairs until the sergeant stopped him. 'Wait,' the sergeant said, the valise now clasped under one arm while he produced his order and a pencil from inside his coat and shook the folded order open. 'We got systems in Paris too. It's a Frenchman,'
'Right,' the corporal said.
'It's all here. Nothing missing,'
'Right,' the corporal said.
'No identification of name regiment or rank,'
'Right,' the corporal said.
'Then sign it,' the sergeant said, holding out the pencil as the corporal approached. 'You,' he said to the nearest man. 'About face and bend over,' Which the man did, the sergeant holding the paper flat on his bowed back while the corporal signed. 'Your lieutenant will have to sign too,' the sergeant said, taking the pencil from the corporal. 'You might go on ahead and tell him,'
'Right,' the corporal said, going on again.
'All right,' the sergeant said to the stretcher bearers. 'Get it out of here,'
'Not yet,' the first stretcher bearer said.