The Debacle - Emile Zola [91]
Oh, those white sheets, sheets so desperately longed for! They were all Jean could see. He had not taken off his clothes properly or slept in a bed for six weeks. It felt like the impatient greed of a child, an irresistible passion to slip into this cool whiteness and lose himself. As soon as they left him alone he stripped down to his shirt and had his feet bare, and went to bed and satisfied this hunger with the grunt of a contented animal. The pale morning light came in through the high window, and as he was sinking into sleep he half opened his eyes and had one more vision of Henriette, an even more vague and disembodied Henriette tiptoeing back to put on a table at his side a carafe and glass she had forgotten. She seemed to pause there a few seconds looking at them both, her brother and him, with her gentle smile, infinitely kind. Then she faded away. And he slept between the white sheets dead to everything.
Hours, years went by. Jean and Maurice no longer existed, dreamless, not even conscious of the faint pulse in their veins. Ten years or ten minutes, time no longer counted; it was like the revenge of their overwrought bodies, satisfying themselves in the death of their whole being. Suddenly, jerked back by the same shock, they both woke up. What was the matter? What was going on? How long had they been asleep? The same pale light was falling from the high window. They felt knocked out, with stiff joints, and their limbs felt more tired and their mouths more dry than when they had gone to bed. Fortunately they couldn’t have slept for more than an hour. So they were not surprised to see Weiss on the same chair, apparently waiting for them to wake up, and still in the same attitude of dejection.
‘Oh Lord,’ muttered Jean, ‘we must get up and get back to the regiment by noon.’
He jumped to the floor with a little exclamation of pain and pulled on his clothes.
‘By noon!’ Weiss repeated. ‘Do you realize it’s seven in the evening, and you’ve been sleeping for about twelve hours?’
Seven o’clock, good God! This was terrifying. Jean, already fully dressed, was for running. But Maurice, still in bed, was moaning that he had lost the use of his legs. How were they to get back to their mates? Hadn’t the army moved on? They both began to get angry, they shouldn’t have been allowed to sleep on so long. But Weiss made a gesture of despair.
‘Good Lord, considering all they’ve done you’ve been wise to stay in bed.’
He had been wandering round Sedan and its outskirts all day. He had only just come in, disgusted at the inaction of the troops this whole day, the 31st, so valuable and lost in some inexplicable delay. There was only one possible excuse, the extreme fatigue of the men, and even then he didn’t see why the retreat had not continued after the few essential hours of rest.
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I don’t presume to understand, but I have the feeling, yes, I feel that the army is very badly placed in Sedan… The 12th corps is at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting this morning; the 1st is strung out all along the Givonne from the village of La Moncelle to the Garenne woods; while the 7th is camping on the plateau of Floing and the 5th, already half destroyed, is huddled right under the ramparts of the castle… And that’s what frightens me, knowing that they are all standing round the town like that, just waiting for the Prussians. If it had been me, I’d have got away at once towards Mézières. I know the country, and there’s no other line of retreat, or else we shall be pitched back into Belgium… And then besides, come and see something…’
He took Jean’s hand and led him to the window.
‘Look over there, on the crest of those hills.’
The window looked out over the ramparts and the near-by buildings to the valley of the Meuse south of Sedan. The river was winding