I am Piotr—’ adding something in a harsh almost musical middle-eastern tongue so full of consonants as to be almost unintelligible. Then he turned to the corporal, going rapidly onto his knees, grasping the corporal’s hand and saying something else in the incomprehensible tongue, to which the corporal answered in it though the man still crouched, clinging to the corporal’s hand, the corporal speaking again in the tongue, as if he had repeated himself but with a different object, noun perhaps, and then a third time, a third slight alteration in its construction or context or direction, at which the man moved, rose and stood now rigid at attention facing the corporal, who spoke again, and the man turned, a smart military quarter-turn, the four captors moving quickly in again until the corporal said in French:
‘You dont need to hold him. Just unlock the gate.’ But still the old general didn’t move, motionless within the cloak’s dark volume, composed, calm, not even bemused: just inscrutable, saying presently in that voice not even recapitulant: not anything:
‘ “Forgive me, I didn’t know what I was doing”. And you said, “Be a man”, but no move. Then you said “Be a Zsettlani” and no move. Then you said “Be a soldier” and he became one.’ Then he turned and got back into the car, the soft voluminous smother of the coat becoming motionless again about him in the corner of the seat; the sergeant came rapidly back across the pavement and stood again just behind the corporal’s shoulder; now the old general himself spoke in the rapid unvoweled tongue:
‘And became one. No: returned to one. Good night, my child.’
‘Goodbye, Father,’ the corporal answered him.
‘Not goodbye,’ the old general said. ‘I am durable too; I dont give up easily either. Remember whose blood it is that you defy me with.’ Then in French to the driver: ‘Let us go home now.’ The car went on. Then he and the sergeant turned together, the sergeant once more at and just behind his shoulder, not touching him, back to the iron gate which one of the sentries held open for them to pass through and then closed and locked.
Again, so grooved and locked in old assumption, he had begun to turn down the corridor toward the cell when the sergeant once more checked and turned him, this time into a passage only wide enough for one and barely tall enough for any — a one-way secret duct leading as though into the very bowels of incarceration; the sergeant unlocked a solid door this time and closed it between himself and the corporal upon a cell indeed this time, little larger than a big closet containing one endless man-width wooden bench for sleeping and an iron bucket for latrine and two men, all bathed in one fierce glare of light.
One of them did have the swaggering face this time, reckless and sardonic, incorrigible and debonair, even to the thin moustache; he even wore the filthy beret and the knotted handkerchief about his throat, even the limp dead cigarette in the corner of his mouth, his hands in his pockets and one foot crossed negligently over the other as he had leaned against the wall of his narrow Montmartre alley, the other shorter man standing beside him with the peaceful and patient fidelity of a blind dog — a squat simian-like man whose tremendous empty and peaceful hands hung almost to his knees as if they were attached to strings inside his sleeves, with a small quite round simian head and a doughy face itself like one single feature, drooling a little at the mouth.
‘Pray to enter,’ the first said. ‘So they tapped you for it, did they? Call me Lapin; anybody in the Prêfecture will validate it.’ Without removing his hand from the pocket, he indicated the man beside him with a nudge of his elbow. ‘This is Cassetête — Horse for short. We’re on our way to town, hey, Horse?’ The second man made a single hoarse indistinguishable sound.
‘Hear that?’ the first said. ‘He can say “Paris” as good as anybody. Tell him again, Uncle — where we’re going tomorrow.’ Again the other made the thick wet sound. It was quite true; the corporal could recognise it now.
‘What’s he doing in that uniform?’ the corporal said.
‘Ah, the sons of bitches scared him,’ the first said. ‘I dont mean Germans either. You dont mean they are going to be satisfied to shoot just one of you out of that whole regiment.’
‘I dont know,’ the corporal said. ‘He hasn’t always been like this?’
‘Got a fag?’ the other said. ‘I’m out.’ The corporal produced a pack of cigarettes. The other spat the stub from his mouth without even moving his head, and took one from the pack. ‘Thanks.’
The corporal produced a lighter. ‘Thanks,’ the other said. He took the lighter and snapped it on and lit the cigarette, already — or still — talking, the cigarette bobbing, his arms now crossed in front of him, each hand grasping lightly the opposite elbow. ‘What was that you said? Has he always been like this? Naah. A few flies upstairs, but he was all right until — What?’ The corporal stood facing him, his hand extended.
‘The lighter,’ the corporal said.
‘I beg pardon?’
‘My lighter,’ the corporal said. They looked at one another. Lapin made a slight motion with his wrists and up-turned his empty palms. The corporal faced him, his hand extended.
‘Jesus,’ the other said. ‘Dont break my heart. Dont tell me you even saw what I did with it. If you did, then they are right; they just waited one day too late.’ He made another rapid movement with one hand; when it opened again, the lighter was in it. The corporal took it.
‘Beats hell, dont it?’ the other said. ‘A man aint even the sum of his vices: just his habits. Here we are, after tomorrow morning neither one of us will have any use for it and until then it wont matter which one of us has it.
Yet you’ve got to have it back just because you are in the habit of owning it, and I have to try to cop it just because that’s one of my natural habits too. Maybe that’s what all the bother and trouble they’re getting ready to go to tomorrow morning is for — parading a whole garrison just to cure three lousy bastards of the bad habit of breathing. Hey, Horse?’ he said to the second man.
‘Paris,’ the second man said hoarsely.
‘You bet,’ the other said. ‘That’s the one they’re going to cure us of tomorrow: the bad habit of not getting to Paris after working for four years at it. We’ll make it this time though; the corporal here is going with us to see that we do.’
‘What did he do?’ the corporal said.
‘That’s all right,’ the other said. ‘Say we. Murder. It was the old dame’s fault; all she had to do was just tell us where the money was hidden and then behave herself, keep her mouth shut. Instead she had to lay there in the bed yelling her head off until we had to choke her or we never would have got to Paris — —’
‘Paris,’ the second said in his wet hoarse voice.
‘Because that’s all we wanted,’ the other said. ‘All he was trying to do: we were trying to do: just to get to Paris. Only folks kept on steering him wrong, sending him off in the wrong direction, sicking the dogs on him, cops always saying Move on, move on — you know how it is.
So when we threw in together that day — that was at Clermont Ferrand in ‘14 — we didn’t know how long he had been on the road because we didn’t know how old he was. Except that it had been a good while, he hadn’t been nothing but a kid then — You found out you were going to have to go to Paris before you even found out you were going to have to have a woman, hey, Horse?’
‘Paris,’ the second said hoarsely.
‘ — working a little whenever he could find it, sleeping in stables and hedgerows until they would set the dogs or the police on him again, telling him to move on without even bothering to tell him which way he wanted to go until you would have thought nobody else in France ever heard of Paris, let alone wanted — had — to go there. Hey, Horse?’
‘Paris,’ the second said hoarsely.
‘Then we run into one another that day in Clermont and decided to throw in together and then it was all right, there was a war on then and all you had to do was get yourself inside a government blue suit and you were free of cops and civilians and the whole human race; all you needed was just to know who to salute and do it quick enough. So we took a bottle of brandy to a sergeant I knew — —’
‘The human race?’ the corporal said.
‘Sure,’ the other said. ‘You might not think it to look at him, but he can move in the dark as quiet as a ghost and even see in it like a cat; turn this light off
