The Debacle - Emile Zola [205]
As ill-luck would have it Pache tripped over a stone and went down. Already the three others had caught up, swearing, yelling and worked up by the chase, like a pack of wolves let loose on their prey.
‘Give us that, fuck you,’ shouted Lapoulle, ‘or I’ll do you in.’
He was raising his fist again when Chouteau handed him the knife, ready open, with which he had bled the horse.
‘Here you are, here’s the knife!’
Jean rushed forward to stop a murder, and he lost his head, too, and talked of turning them all in, which brought on him a nasty sneer from Loubet, who called him a Prussian because there were no higher ranks any more, and the Prussians were the only ones who issued orders.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ roared Lapoulle, ‘are you going to give it me?’
In spite of the terror that had drained the colour from his face Pache held the bread to his chest tighter still, with the obstinacy of a hungry peasant who won’t give up anything that is his.
‘No!’
Then it was all over, the brute thrust the knife into his throat so violently that the poor devil did not even make a sound. His arms slackened, the bit of bread fell to the ground into the blood that had spurted out.
In the face of this stupid, insane murder Maurice, who had not moved until then, seemed to go suddenly out of his mind as well. He threatened the three men with his fists and called them murderers with such vehemence that his whole body was shaking. But Lapoulle did not seem even to hear. He stayed on the ground, crouching by the body, devouring the bread, red splashes of blood and all, with a wild, brutish look as though besotted by the noise of his own jaws, while Chouteau and Loubet, seeing how terrible he was as he appeased his hunger, did not even dare to ask for their shares.
The real night had come, but it was a bright night with a beautiful starlit sky, and Maurice and Jean, who had come back to their copse, could now only see Lapoulle prowling to and fro along the Meuse. The two others had gone, no doubt back to the canal towpath, worried about the body they had left behind. But Lapoulle seemed afraid to go back there and rejoin his mates. Clearly what with the shock of the murder and the heavy discomfort after bolting the big hunk of bread too fast, he was overcome with uneasiness, and that kept him on the move but he did not dare to go back along the path blocked by the corpse, hesitating, unable to make up his mind. Was it remorse awakening in his muddled soul, or merely fear of being discovered? So he roamed up and down like an animal behind the bars of its cage, with a sudden, growing urge to run away, an urge that hurt like a physical pain which he felt would kill him if he did not satisfy it. He must run, run at once and get away from this prison in which he had killed a man. But he threw himself down and for a long time he stayed there cowering in the grass on the river bank.
Maurice too was in a restless state and said to Jean:
‘Look, I can’t stand it here any longer. I tell you I shall go mad… I’m surprised how my body has stood up to it. I feel pretty fit, but my mind is going, yes it is, I’m sure. If you keep me one more day in this hell I’m done for… Please, I beg of you, let’s get out, and at once!’
He began to develop extravagant plans for escape. They would swim across the Meuse, throw themselves upon the sentries and strangle them with a bit of string he had in his pocket, or again knock them out with bits of rock, or again buy them over with money, put on their uniforms and go through the Prussian lines.
‘Stop it, chum,’ said Jean, very worried. ‘It frightens me when you talk such rubbish. Is any of that sensible, is it possible? We’ll see tomorrow, chuck it.’
Although he too felt sick