The Debacle - Emile Zola [85]
8
IN the crush in the Place de Torcy at the end of the Wadelincourt road, Jean became separated from Maurice, and he ran madly about in the milling throng but could not find him. This was a real blow because he had accepted the young man’s offer to take him to his sister’s, where they could have a rest and even sleep in a proper bed. There was such confusion, with all the regiments mixed up and no route orders or officers left, that the men were more or less free to do what they liked. There would still be time to sort yourself out and find your own lot again when you had had a few hours’ sleep.
Really alarmed, Jean found himself on the Torcy viaduct above the broad meadows that the governor had had flooded with water from the river. Then, having gone through another gate, he crossed the Meuse bridge and it seemed to him, in spite of the growing daylight, that it was getting dark again in this constricted town, hemmed in between its ramparts, with dank streets between tall buildings. He couldn’t even remember the name of Maurice’s brother-in-law. Where should he go? Whom could he ask? His feet were only carrying him on now because of the automatic movement of walking, and he felt he would fall down if he stopped. Like a drowning man, all he could hear was a dull roaring in his ears, and all he could see was the continual flow of the tide of men and animals carrying him forward. As he had had something to eat at Remilly his main trouble was lack of sleep, and all round him fatigue was more powerful than hunger, and the herd of shadows was staggering along the unknown streets. At every step a man collapsed on the pavement, fell into a doorway and stayed there as if dead, fast asleep.
Looking up, Jean read a name-plate: Avenue de la Sous-Préfecture. At the far end there was a monument in a garden. And at the corner of the avenue he saw a cavalryman, a Chasseur d’Afrique, whom he thought he knew. Wasn’t it Prosper, the chap from Remilly he had seen at Vouziers with Maurice? The man had dismounted, and the horse, sick-looking and unsteady on his legs, was suffering so much from hunger as to be on the point of stretching his neck to eat the planks of the baggage-wagon drawn up at the kerb. The horses had had no rations for two days and were dying of exhaustion. His big teeth were grating like a file on the wood and the man was in tears.
Jean went on, but turned back thinking this man might know the address of Maurice’s relatives, but he had gone. Then he was in despair, and wandered from street to street, found himself at the Sub-Prefecture, pushed on as far as the Place Turenne. There he thought for one moment he was saved when he saw Lieutenant Rochas and a few men of the company in front of the Hôtel de Ville at the foot of the statue of Turenne. If he couldn’t rejoin his friend he would link up with the regiment again and at any rate sleep in a tent. Captain Beaudoin not having reappeared – he had been carried along and landed somewhere else – the lieutenant was trying to collect his men together, asking for information and trying in vain to find out where their camp was. But as they advanced into the town the company, far from growing, was fading away. One soldier gesturing wildly, went into a pub and never reappeared. Three others stopped at the door of a grocer’s, their interest held by some Zouaves who had banged a hole in a little cask of spirits. Quite a few were already stretched out across the gutter, others set off to go somewhere, but fell down again, overcome with fatigue and quite dazed. Chouteau and Loubet, nudging each other, disappeared down a dark alley behind a fat woman carrying a loaf of bread. By then only Pache and Lapoulle, with a handful of others, were left with the lieutenant.
At the foot of the bronze statue of Turenne Rochas was making a great effort to stay on his feet with his eyes open. When he saw Jean he muttered:
‘Oh, it’s you, corporal. What about your men?’
Jean waved a vague arm to indicate that he didn’t know. But Pache, pointing at Lapoulle, answered,