Fable, A - William Faulkner [46]
'All right,' he said. 'What do I do now?'
But the man didn't even answer. 'Corporal of the guard!' he shouted. Tost Number Four!' Then the corporal appeared.
'Second Lieutenant Levine,' he said. 'My aeroplane's in this hangar-'
'Not if you're General Haig and your sword's in there,' the corporal said.
'Right,' he said, and turned. And for a moment he even thought of Conventicle, the Flight Sergeant, he had been a soldier long enough by now to have learned that there were few, if any, military situations which the simple cry of 'Sergeant!' would not re-solve. It was mainly this of course, yet there was a little of something else too: the rapport, not between himself and Conventicle perhaps, but between their two races-the middle-aged bog-com-plected man out of that race, all of whom he had ever known were named Evans or Morgan except the two or three named Deuter-onomy or Tabernacle or Conventicle out of the Old Testament-that morose and musical people who knew dark things by simply breathing, who seemed to be born without dread or concern into knowledge of and rapport with man's sunless and subterrene origins which had better never have seen light at all, whose own misty and musiced names no other men could pronounce even, so that when they emerged from their fens and fastnesses into the rational world where men still tried to forget their sombre beginnings, they permitted themselves to be designated by the jealous and awesome nouns out of the old fierce Hebraic annals in which they as no other people seemed at home, as Napoleon in Austria had had his Monday (the child's) people with their unpronounceable names fetched before him and said Tour name is Wolf or 'Hoff' or 'Fox' or 'Berg or 'Schneider,' according to what they looked like or where they lived or what they did. But he considered this only a moment. There was only one sure source, knowing now that even this one would not be too certain. But nothing else remained: Bridesman's and Cowrie's hut (That was one of the dangled prerequisites for being brave enough to get to be a captain: half a hut to yourself. The major had a whole one.), Cowrie looking at him from the pillow as Bridesman sat up in the other cot and lit the candle and told him.
'Certainly it's not over. It's so far from over that you're going on jobs tomorrow. Does that satisfy you?'
'All right,' he said. 'But what happened? What is it? An armed sentry stopped me at the hangars thirty minutes ago and turned out the guard and the hangar doors were locked and a light inside and I could hear people doing something, only I couldn't pass the bayonet and when they drove me away I heard a lorry and saw a torch moving about down at that archie battery this side the village and of course that's fresh ammo being hurried up since archie quit at noon today too and naturally they'll need a lot of ammo to quit with too-'
'If I tell you, will you let be and go to your hut and go to bed?'
'Right,' he said. 'That's all I ever wanted: just to know. If they've beat us, I want to stand my share too-'
'Beat us be blowed. There's nobody in this war any longer capable of beating anyone, unless the Americans might in time---'
'And welcome,' Cowrie said. But Bridesman was still talking: 'A French regiment mutinied this morning-refused to go over. When they-the French-began to poke about to learn why, it seems that-But it's all right.'
'How all right?'
'It was only their infantry disaffected. Only troops holding the line. But the other regiments didn't do anything. The others all seemed to know in advance that the one was going to refuse, but all the others seemed to be just waiting about to see what was going to happen to it. But they-the French-took no chances. They pulled the regiment out and replaced it and moved up guns and put down a heavy