The Debacle - Emile Zola [162]
‘Ah,’ said Rochas, still keeping his fine, unshakable confidence, ‘we’ll get our breath back here for a minute before going back to the offensive.’
But with the very first steps they all felt they were entering an inferno; they could not go back again, but had to go on through the wood, their only line of retreat. It was now a terrifying wood, a wood of despair and death. Realizing that troops were falling back through it, the Prussians were riddling it with bullets and raking it with gunfire. It was being lashed by a hurricane, all movement and howling and shattering of branches. Shells cut trees in two, bullets brought leaves down like rain, groans seemed to come out of the split trunks and sobs come down with branches wet with sap. It was like the distress of a fettered mob of men, the terror and cries of thousands of people nailed to the ground and unable to flee from the hail of bullets. No anguish ever moaned so loud as in a bombarded forest.
At once Maurice and Jean, who had rejoined their mates, lost their nerve. At that moment they were going through a glade of tall trees and could run. But the bullets were whistling in a cross-fire, from which directions it was impossible to tell and so dart safely from tree to tree. Two men were killed, hit in the back, hit in the front. Right in front of Maurice an age-old oak had its trunk pulverized by a shell and crashed down with the majesty of a tragic hero, smashing everything around it. And as he jumped back a colossal beech on his left had its head knocked off by another shell, broke and collapsed like a pillar in a cathedral. Where could they run? Which was the best direction to go? On all sides nothing but falling branches, it was like being in a huge building threatened with collapse as in room after room the ceilings were falling in. Then, when they had leaped into a thicket to escape from this crashing of big trees, it was Jean’s turn to be almost cut in two by a projectile which mercifully did not explode. This time they could not make any headway through the inextricable tangle of bushes. Twigs caught their shoulders and tall grasses clung round their feet, sudden walls of brushwood brought them to a standstill, while foliage flew round them as the giant scythe swept through the wood. By their side another man was killed instantly by a bullet through the forehead, but he remained standing, jammed between two birches. A score of times as they were held prisoners by this thicket they felt death pass by.
‘Christ!’ said Maurice. ‘We’ll never get out of here!’
He was ashen and his trembling had come back, and Jean, so brave as a rule, who had comforted him that morning, was going pale, too, and feeling as cold as ice. It was fear, horrible fear, catching and irresistible. Once again they were parched with thirst, an intolerable dryness in the mouth, a contracting of the throat with an acute, strangling pain. And with it other discomforts, a feeling of sickness in the pit of the stomach, pins and needles pricking their legs. In this wholly physical sensation of fear that crushed their heads as in a vice, they could see thousands of black dots rushing past as if they could pick out the bullets in the flying cloud.
‘Oh what bloody awful luck!’ muttered Jean. ‘I mean, it makes you wild being here and getting killed for other people when those other people are somewhere quietly smoking their pipes.’
Maurice, his face drawn and wild-looking, went on:
‘Yes, why me and not somebody else?’
It was the revolt of the self, the self-centred rage of the individual unwilling to sacrifice himself for mankind and cease to be.
‘And besides,’ added Jean, ‘if only we knew the reason, if there was any point in it!’
Then, looking up at the sky:
‘And then this bleeding sun won’t make up its mind to fuck off! When it’s set and it’s dark they’ll stop fighting, maybe.’
For ages now, with no means of knowing the time and not