The Debacle - Emile Zola [43]
Gaude sounded rations straight away and Jean had to run, for the corporal was the chief supplier and had to be always ready. He took Lapoulle with him and they returned after half an hour loaded with a rib of fresh-killed beef and a bundle of wood. Three animals out of the herd in the rear had already been slaughtered and cut up. Lapoulle had to go back for the bread which had been baking since noon at Dontrien itself, in the village ovens. On this first day everything was really in abundance except wine and tobacco, and as a matter of fact there never would be any issue of these.
When he got back Jean found Chouteau putting up the tent, assisted by Pache. He watched them for a minute like an experienced old soldier who wouldn’t give tuppence for the job they were doing.
‘All right if it keeps fine tonight.’ he said. ‘Otherwise, if there were any wind we should all go down into the river… Here, let me show you.’
He wanted to send Maurice for water in the big can, but he was sitting on the grass with his boot off, examining his right foot.
‘Hallo, what’s up with you?’
‘It’s the stiffening that’s taken the skin off my heel… My other boots were done in and I was silly enough to buy these at Rheims because they were a good fit. I ought to have chosen a pair of boats.’
Jean knelt down, took up the foot and turned it over very gently, like a child’s foot, shaking his head.
‘You know, this isn’t funny at all… Mind what you do. A soldier who’s lost his feet is no use for anything but the scrap-heap. My captain in Italy always used to say that you win battles with your legs.’
So he ordered Pache to go and fetch the water. Anyhow the river was only fifty metres away. And while he was doing so Loubet kindled the wood in the hole he had dug in the ground so that he could at once put the stew over it – the big dixie of water into which he placed the meat, neatly tied up with string. Then it was sheer bliss just to watch the stew bubbling. The whole squad, now free of fatigues, lay stretched out on the grass round the fire like a family, full of tender care for the cooking meat, while Loubet solemnly skimmed the pot with his spoon. Like children and savages, their only instinct was to eat and sleep in this rush towards the unknown with no tomorrow.
But Maurice had found in his pack a paper he had bought in Rheims, and Chouteau asked:
‘Any news about the Prussians? Read it to us.’
Under the growing authority of Jean they were sharing the jobs well. Maurice obligingly read out the interesting bits of news while Pache, the housewife of the outfit, mended his cape for him and Lapoulle cleaned his rifle. First it was a great victory for Bazaine, who had knocked out a whole Prussian army corps in the Jaumont quarries, and this work of imagination was served up with dramatic details – men and horses crushed to death among the rocks, total annihilation, not even any corpses left intact to bury. Then there were plentiful details on the pitiful state of the German troops since they had been in France: soldiers ill fed, badly equipped, reduced to absolute destitution, dying in hordes along the roads, struck down by fell diseases. Another article reported that the King of Prussia had diarrhoea and that Bismarck had broken his leg as he leaped out of the window of an inn in which the Zouaves had nearly caught him. That’s grand! Lapoulle grinned from ear to ear, and Chouteau and the others, without showing the slightest sign of doubt, were cock-a-hoop at the idea of soon picking up Prussians like sparrows in a field after a hailstorm. They were especially tickled about Bismarck’s going arse over tip. Oh those Zouaves and Turcos weren’t half a lot, they were! All sorts of fairy tales went round – Germany was terrified and angry, saying it was unworthy of a civilized nation to get savages like that to defend her. Although