The Debacle - Emile Zola [113]
Lapoulle opened his eyes wide, put one finger in front of his nose, while Pache was fingering the scapular he always had on him and would have liked to spread it out to make a breast-plate to cover all his chest.
Rochas, who had remained standing, called out in his chaffing way:
‘No harm in saying hallo to shells, my boys, but it’s no use for bullets – too many of ’em!’
Just then a piece of shell smashed in the head of a soldier in the front rank. Not even a cry – a jet of blood and brains, that was all.
‘Poor bugger,’ Sergeant Sapin said simply. He was very calm and very pale. ‘Whose turn next?’
But after that nobody could hear anybody else speak. The frightful din was what upset Maurice most. The battery near-by was firing incessantly, with a continual roar that shook the very ground, and the mitrailleuses were worse still, rending the air, intolerable. Were they going to stay like this a long time, lying in the middle of the cabbages? They still could see nothing and knew nothing. It was impossible to have the slightest conception of the battle as a whole – was it even a real big battle? Above the bare line of the fields the only thing Maurice recognized was the round wooded top of Le Hattoy, a long way away and still unoccupied. Not that a single Prussian could be seen anywhere on the horizon, just puffs of smoke going up and floating for a moment in the sunshine. As he looked round he was very surprised to see down in a lonely valley, isolated by steep slopes, a peasant unhurriedly ploughing, guiding his plough behind a big white horse. Why lose a day’s work? The corn wouldn’t stop growing or people living just because there was fighting going on.
Overcome with impatience Maurice stood up. Casting his eyes round he again saw the batteries at Saint-Menges which were bombarding them, surmounted by lurid smoke, and in particular he saw once again the road from Saint-Albert black with Prussians, a milling horde of invaders. Already Jean was pulling at his legs and bringing him roughly down to the ground again.
‘Are you crazy? You’ll leave your body here!’
Rochas swore at him too:
‘Will you lie down! Who landed me with a lot of bloody fools getting themselves killed without orders?’
‘But sir,’ Maurice said, ‘you’re not lying down, are you?’
‘Oh, it’s different for me, I have to know!’
Captain Beaudoin was also courageously standing, but he never opened his mouth, for he was out of touch with his men, and seemed unable to stand still, but kept on walking from end to end of the field.
Still waiting, nothing happening. Maurice felt suffocated beneath the weight of his pack which was pressing on his back and chest in this prone posture, so painful for any length of time. The men had been urged not to jettison their packs except in the very last resort.
‘Look here, are we going to stay like this all day?’ he finally asked Jean.
‘May well be! At Solferino it was in a field of carrots, and we stayed there for five hours with our noses to the ground.’
Then, being a practical fellow, he went on:
‘What are you complaining about? We aren’t too bad here, and we shall have plenty of time to expose ourselves a bit more. We all get our turn, I can tell you. If you all got killed at the beginning, well, there wouldn’t be anyone left for the end!’
‘Oh,’ Maurice suddenly cut in, ‘look at that smoke on Le Hattoy… They’ve taken Le Hattoy, now we’re for it.’
For a short time his anxious curiosity, in which there was an element of his original fear, had some real reason. He kept his eyes fixed on the round top of the hill, the only mound he could see above the flat stretch of great fields on his eye level. Le Hattoy was much too far away for him to make out the crews of the batteries the Prussians had just installed there, and all he could really see was the puffs of smoke at each discharge over a copse in which the guns must be concealed. As he had felt earlier, it was a really serious thing that the enemy had taken this position that General Douay had had to give up defending. It commanded all the surrounding