The Debacle - Emile Zola [185]
‘Oh Christ, it makes you wild to have only one boy and then have him taken away!’
But when some sort of calm was restored Fouchard was very put out to hear Silvine still talking about going to find Honoré’s body out there. She was quite set now in a desperate, unshakable silence, with no more lamenting, and he hardly recognized her, normally so docile, doing everything with resignation, for her big submissive eyes that alone gave her such beauty had taken on a fierce decision in her pale face under the thick, dark hair. She had snatched off a red scarf from round her shoulders and was all in black like a widow. He pointed out the difficulties of the search, the risks she might run, how little hope there was of finding the body, but all in vain. She gave up even anwering him, and he realized that she would go off on her own and do something silly unless he did something about it, and that worried him still more because of the possible complications he might run into with the Prussian authorities. So in the end he decided to go and see the Mayor of Remilly, who was a distant cousin of his, and between them they made up a tale: Silvine was given out to be the real widow of Honoré and Prosper became her brother, and on the strength of that the Bavarian colonel, billeted at the lower end of the village in the Hôtel de la Croix de Malte, agreed to issue a pass for the brother and sister authorizing them to bring back the husband’s body if they could find it. By now it was dark, and the utmost they could get out of Silvine was that she would wait until daylight before setting out.
Next morning Fouchard said he would never consent to having one of his horses harnessed for fear of not seeing it again. Who could say that the Prussians wouldn’t confiscate the horse and cart? He did at last consent with a very bad grace to lend the donkey, a little grey donkey, whose small trap was just big enough to take a man’s body. He gave lengthy instructions to Prosper, who had slept well but was rather uneasy about the expedition now that, after a good rest, he was trying to get his memory clear. At the last minute Silvine ran and fetched the bedspread from her own bed, which she folded and put on the floor of the trap. As she was going she ran back to kiss Charlot.
‘Daddy Fouchard, I am entrusting him to you, mind he doesn’t play with the matches.’
‘Yes, yes, don’t you worry.’
Preparations had taken a long time, and it was nearly seven when Silvine and Prosper, walking behind the little trap drawn by the grey donkey with its head down, descended the steep slopes of Remilly. It had rained heavily during the night, and the roads had turned into rivers of mud, and great angry clouds were racing across the dreary, depressing sky. Prosper had made up his mind to take the shortest route by going straight through Sedan. But just before Pont-Maugis a Prussian post stopped the trap and held it up for over an hour, and when the pass had been through the hands of several officers the donkey was allowed to go on its way on condition that it went the long way round through Bazeilles by taking a side road to the left. No reason was given – perhaps they were afraid of adding to the traffic in the town. When Silvine crossed the Meuse by the railway bridge, that fatal bridge that had not been blown up, and which incidentally had cost the Bavarians so many lives, she saw the body of an artilleryman floating down as though he were having a nice swim. He was caught by a tuft of grass, stayed still a moment, then turned over and set off again.
In Bazeilles, which the donkey walked slowly through from end to end, it was total destruction, all the abominable ruin that war can inflict when it passes over like a mad, devastating hurricane. The dead had already been collected, so there was not a single corpse left on the road, and the rain was washing the blood away, though there were still some red puddles and remains that couldn’t be looked at too closely, fragments of flesh on which you thought you