Fable, A - William Faulkner [212]
And, themselves in the lane now, they could see them both---two men obviously but, even at that distance, one of them moving not quite like a human being and, in time nearer, not like a hu-man being at all beside the other's tall and shambling gait, but at a slow lurch and heave like some kind of giant insect moving erect and seeming to possess no progress at all even before Marya said: 'He's on crutches': the single leg swinging metronome and indefatigable yet indomitable too between the rhythmic twin counterstrokes of the crutches; interminable yet indomitable too and indubitably coming nearer until they could see that the arm on that side was gone somewhere near the elbow also, and (quite near now) that what they looked at was not even a whole man, since one half of his visible flesh was one furious saffron scar beginning at the ruined homburg hat and dividing his face exactly down the bridge of his nose, across the mouth and chin, to the collar of his shirt. But this was only on the outside because the voice was strong and unpitying and the French he addressed them in was fluid and good and it was only the man with him who was sick-a tall thin cadaver of a man, whole to be sure and looking no less like a tramp, but with a sick insolent intolerable face be-Tomorrow neath a filthy hat from the band of which there stood a long and raking feather which made him at least eight feet tall.
'Madame Dumont?' the first man said.
'Yes,' Marya said with her bright and tender and unpitying smile.
The man with the crutches turned to his companion. 'All right,' he said in French. This is them. Go ahead,' But Marya had not waited for him, speaking to the man on crutches in French: 'We were waiting for you. The soup is ready and you must be hungry after your walk from the station,' Then she too turned to the other, speaking not in French now but in the old Balkan tongue of her childhood: 'You too. You will need to eat for a little while longer too,'
'What?' the sister said suddenly and harshly, then to the man with the feather in the same mountain tongue: 'You are Zsettlani?'
'What?' the man with the feather said in French harshly and loudly. 'I speak French. I will take soup too. I can pay for it. See?' he said, thrusting his hand into his pocket. 'Look,'
'We know you have money,' Marya said in French. 'Come into the house,' And, in the kitchen now, they could see the rest of the first man: the saffron colored scar not stopping at the hat's line but dividing the skull too into one furious and seared rigidity, no eye, no ear on that side of it, the corner of the mouth seized into rigidity as if it was not even the same face which talked and presently would chew and swallow; the filthy shirt held together at the throat by the frayed and faded stripes of what they did not know was a British regimental tie; the stained and soiled dinner jacket from the left breast of which two medals hung from their ribbons; the battered and filthy tweed trousers one leg of which was doubled back up and fastened below the thigh with a piece of wire; the Englishman propped on his crutches for a moment yet in the center of the kitchen, looking about the room with that alert, calm unpitying eye while his companion stood just inside the door behind him with his ravaged insolent peaceless face, still wearing the hat whose feather now almost touched the ceiling, as though he were suspended from it.
'So this is where he lived,' the man with the crutches said.
'Yes,' Marthe said. 'How did you know? How did you know where to find us?'
'Now, Sister,' Marya said. 'How could he have come for the medal if he didn't know where we were?'
'The medal?' the Englishman said.
'yes,' Marya said. 'But have your soup first. You are hungry,'
'Thanks,' the Englishman said. He jerked his head toward the man behind him. 'He too? Is he invited too?'
'Of course,' Marya said. She took two of the bowls from the table and went to the stove, not offering to help him, nor could the sister, Marthe, have moved fast or quickly enough to help him as he swung