The Debacle - Emile Zola [25]
nearly forgotten. The baby was tied into it and was secured on top amongst legs of upturned chairs and tables. Round at the back they were roping poor old sick grand-dad to a cupboard and carting him off like a piece of furniture. Then there were those who did not possess a cart, but piled their belongings on a wheelbarrow, and yet others were moving off with a load of clothing in their arms, others had only thought of saving the clock, which they clasped to their bosom like a child. They could not take everything, and abandoned furniture or bundles of clothing that had proved to be too heavy were left in the gutters. Some people shut everything up before leaving and the houses looked dead, with doors and windows fastened, but the majority, in their haste and certainty that everything was bound to be destroyed, left their old homes wide open, with doors and windows gaping showing rooms stripped bare, and these were the saddest ones, with the dreadful sadness of a sacked town depopulated by fear – miserable homes open to the four winds, from which the very cats had fled in terror of what was coming. With every village the harrowing sight was more depressing, the numbers of fugitives and people moving out got larger in a growing confusion accompanied by clenched fists, curses and tears.
But it was above all along the main road in the open country that Maurice was choked with grief, for as they approached Belfort the straggle of refugees grew thicker and became an uninterrupted procession. Poor devils who thought they could find safety behind the walls of the fortress! The man belaboured his horse, the wife followed behind, dragging the children. Families pushed ahead, weighed down under their burdens, losing each other, tiny tots unable to keep up with the rest, and all in the blinding whiteness of the road on which the sun poured down like molten lead. Many had taken off their boots and were going barefoot so as to get along faster, and without slackening their pace half dressed mothers were giving the breast to whimpering babies. Scared faces glanced behind and hands gestured wildly as if to shut out the horizon as the wind of panic tousled heads and whipped up hastily put-on clothes. Others, farmers with all their labourers, marched straight across the fields, driving their flocks ahead – sheep, cows, oxen, horses that they had driven out of sheds and stables with their sticks. These were making for the deep valleys, the high plateaux and lonely forests, throwing up the dust-clouds of the great migrations of ancient times, when peoples abandoned their lands to the advancing, all-conquering barbarians. They were all going to live under canvas in some deserted rock fastness, so far from any road that not a single enemy soldier would dare risk his life there. The moving clouds enveloping them disappeared behind clumps of fir trees with the diminishing noise of lowing and trampling herds, whilst the stream of carts and people on foot still flowed along the road, upsetting the march of the troops, and on the outskirts of Belfort it became so concentrated, with its current as irresistible as a river in spate, that several times a halt had to be called.
It was during one of these short halts that Maurice witnessed a scene which stayed in his memory like a slap in the face.
By the roadside there was an isolated house, the dwelling of some poor peasant, the whole of whose little property lay stretched out behind it. He had refused to leave his field, where his roots were too deeply sunk in the soil,