The Debacle - Emile Zola [164]
‘Blast it all!’ he bawled. ‘Isn’t there anybody left here? Can’t you get any information in this buggering country?’
The farm people must have fled into the woods. Finally a very old woman appeared at the door, some old servant left behind and kept there by her bad legs.
‘Here, Ma, come here!… Which way’s Belgium?’
She stared at him stupidly, apparently not understanding. Then he went right off the deep-end, forgetting he was speaking to a woman and bellowing that he didn’t mean to be caught in a trap like a mug by going back to Sedan – he was going to fuck off abroad, he was, and bloody quick too! Some of the soldiers had come up and were listening.
‘But sir,’ said a sergeant, ‘you can’t get through now, there are Prussians everywhere. It was all right this morning, you could have done a bunk then.’
There were stories going the rounds already about companies cut off from their regiments who had unintentionally crossed the frontier, and others who had even managed courageously to get through the enemy lines before they had completed the encirclement.
Beside himself, the general raised his arms.
‘Come on, with some good chaps like you couldn’t we get anywhere we wanted? I can surely find fifty stalwart fellows ready to fight it out.’
Then, turning back to the old woman:
‘Oh damn it all, Ma, why can’t you answer? Where’s Belgium?’
This time she did understand. She waved her skinny hand towards the great woods:
‘That way, that way.’
‘What’s that you’re saying?… Those houses you can see beyond the fields?’
‘Oh, further than that, much further! Right over there!’
The general spluttered with rage.
‘Oh it makes you sick, a bloody hole like this. You don’t know what to make of it. Belgium was over there and you were afraid of stumbling into it without knowing, and now you want to get there it’s gone… No, no, this is the end, let ’em take me and do what they like with me, I’m going to sleep.’
He spurred his horse, bouncing in the saddle like a bladder blown up with the wind of anger, and galloped off towards Sedan.
There was a bend in the road and they went down into Fond-de-Givonne, a district shut in between steep slopes, where the road climbing towards the woods was flanked by little houses and gardens. It was so clogged by a stream of refugees that Lieutenant Rochas found himself pushed back with Pache, Lapoulle and Gaude, against a pub on a corner of the crossroads. Jean and Maurice had a job to get to them. And they were all amazed to hear a thick, drunken voice addressing them:
‘Well, fancy meeting you!… Hallo chums!… Well, it’s a small world, isn’t it?’
Behold, it was Chouteau in the pub, leaning out of one of the ground-floor windows. He was very drunk and went on between hiccups:
‘Look here, don’t worry if you’re thirsty… Plenty left for my pals.’
He waved shakily backwards, summoning somebody still at the back of the room.
‘Come here, you lazy sod… Give these gents something to drink.’
It was Loubet’s turn to appear, holding a full bottle in each hand and waving them about for fun. He wasn’t as drunk as the other one, and he shouted in his Parisian smart-aleck voice, putting on the nasal voice of a soft-drink vendor on a public holiday:
‘Nice and cool! Nice and cool! Who wants a drink?’
They had not been seen since they had gone off ostensibly to carry Sergeant Sapin to the ambulance post.