Three Soldiers - John Dos Passos (books to read fiction txt) 📗

the hell’s the use of talking about it, Chris? We can’t be any lower than we are, can we?” Andrews laughed.

“There’s that plane again.”

“Where?”

“There, just goin’ down behind the piece o’ woods.”

“That’s where their field is.”

“Ah bet them guys has a good time. Ah put in an application back in trainin’ camp for Aviation. Ain’t never heard nothing from it though. If Ah had, Ah wouldn’t be lower than dirt in this hawg-pen.”

“It’s wonderful up here on the hill this evening,” said Andrews, looking dreamily at the pale orange band of light where the sun had set. “Let’s go down and get a bottle of wine.”

“Now yo’re talkin’. Ah wonder if that girl’s down there tonight.”

“Antoinette?”

“Um-hum…. Boy, Ah’d lahk to have her all by ma-self some night.”

Their steps grew brisker as they strode along a grass-grown road that led through high hedgerows to a village under the brow of the hill. It was almost dark under the shadow of the bushes on either side. Overhead the purple clouds were washed over by a pale yellow light that gradually faded to grey. Birds chirped and rustled among the young leaves.

Andrews put his hand on Chrisfield’s shoulder.

“Let’s walk slow,” he said, “we don’t want to get out of here too soon.” He grabbed carelessly at little cluster of hawthorn flowers as he passed them, and seemed reluctant to untangle the thorny branches that caught in his coat and on his loosely wound puttees.

“Hell, man,” said Chrisfield, “we won’t have time to get a bellyful. It must be gettin’ late already.”

They hastened their steps again and came in a moment to the first tightly shuttered houses of the village.

In the middle of the road was an M.P., who stood with his legs wide apart, waving his “billy” languidly. He had a red face, his eyes were fixed on the shuttered upper window of a house, through the chinks of which came a few streaks of yellow light. His lips were puckered up as if to whistle, but no sound came. He swayed back and forth indecisively. An officer came suddenly out of the little green door of the house in front of the M.P., who brought his heels together with a jump and saluted, holding his hand a long while to his cap. The officer flicked a hand up hastily to his hat, snatching his cigar out of his mouth for an instant. As the officer’s steps grew fainter down the road, the M.P. gradually returned to his former position.

Chrisfield and Andrews had slipped by on the other side, and gone in at the door of a small ramshackle house of which the windows were closed by heavy wooden shutters.

“I bet there ain’t many of them bastards at the front,” said Chris.

“Not many of either kind of bastards,” said Andrews laughing, as he closed the door behind them. They were in a room that had once been the parlor of a farmhouse. The chandelier with its bits of crystal and the orange-blossoms on a piece of dusty red velvet under a bell glass on the mantelpiece denoted that. The furniture had been taken out, and four square oak tables crowded in. At one of the tables sat three Americans and at another a very young olive-skinned French soldier, who sat hunched over his table looking moodily down into his glass of wine.

A girl in a faded frock of some purplish material that showed the strong curves of her shoulders and breasts slouched into the room, her hands in the pocket of a dark blue apron against which her rounded forearms showed golden brown. Her face had the same golden tan under a mass of dark blonde hair. She smiled when she saw the two soldiers, drawing her thin lips away from her ugly yellow teeth.

“Ca va bien, Antoinette?” asked Andrews.

“Oui,” she said, looking beyond their heads at the French soldier who sat at the other side of the little room.

“A bottle of vin rouge, vite,” said Chrisfield.

“Ye needn’t be so damn vite about it tonight, Chris,” said one of the men at the other table.

“Why?”

“Ain’t a-goin’ to be no roll call. Corporal tole me hisself. Sarge’s gone out to git stewed, an’ the Loot’s away.”

“Sure,” said another man, “we kin stay out as late’s we goddam please tonight.”

“There’s a new M.P. in town,” said Chrisfield…. “Ah saw him maself…. You did, too, didn’t you, Andy?”

Andrews nodded. He was looking at the Frenchman, who sat with his face in shadow and his black lashes covering his eyes. A purplish flash had suffused the olive skin at his cheekbones.

“Oh, boy,” said Chrisfield. “That ole wine sure do go down fast…. Say, Antoinette, got any cognac?”

“I’m going to have some more wine,” said Andrews.

“Go ahead, Andy; have all ye want. Ah want somethin’ to warm ma guts.”

Antoinette brought a bottle of cognac and two small glasses and sat down in an empty chair with her red hands crossed on her apron. Her eyes moved from Chrisfield to the Frenchman and back again.

Chrisfield turned a little round in his chair and looked at the Frenchman, feeling in his eyes for a moment a glance of the man’s yellowish-brown eyes.

Andrews leaned back against the wall sipping his dark-colored wine, his eyes contracted dreamily, fixed on the shadow of the chandelier, which the cheap oil-lamp with its tin reflector cast on the peeling plaster of the wall opposite.

Chrisfield punched him.

“Wake up, Andy, are you asleep?”

“No,” said Andy smiling.

“Have a li’l mo’ cognac.”

Chrisfield poured out two more glasses unsteadily. His eyes were on Antoinette again. The faded purple frock was hooked at the neck. The first three hooks were undone revealing a V-shape of golden brown skin and a bit of whitish underwear.

“Say, Andy,” he said, putting his arm round his friend’s neck and talking into his ear, “talk up to her for me, will yer, Andy?… Ah won’t let that goddam frog get her, no, I won’t, by Gawd. Talk up to her for me, Andy.”

Andrews laughed.

“I’ll try,” he said. “But there’s always the Queen of Sheba, Chris.”

“Antoinette, j’ai un ami,” started Andrews, making a gesture with a long dirty hand towards Chris.

Antoinette showed her bad teeth in a smile.

“Joli garcon,” said Andrews.

Antoinette’s face became impassive and beautiful again. Chrisfield leaned back in his chair with an empty glass in his hand and watched his friend admiringly.

“Antoinette, mon ami vous…vous admire,” said Andrews in a courtly voice.

A woman put her head in the door. It was the same face and hair as Antoinette’s, ten years older, only the skin, instead of being golden brown, was sallow and wrinkled.

“Viens,” said the woman in a shrill voice.

Antoinette got up, brushed heavily against Chrisfield’s leg as she passed him and disappeared. The Frenchman walked across the room from his corner, saluted gravely and went out.

Chrisfield jumped to his feet. The room was like a white box reeling about him.

“That frog’s gone after her,” he shouted.

“No, he ain’t, Chris,” cried someone from the next table. “Sit tight, ole boy. We’re bettin’ on yer.”

“Yes, sit down and have a drink, Chris,” said Andy. “I’ve got to have somethin’ more to drink. I haven’t had a thing to drink all the evening.” He pulled him back into his chair. Chrisfield tried to get up again. Andrews hung on him so that the chair upset. Then both sprawled on the red tiles of the floor.

“The house is pinched!” said a voice.

Chrisfield saw Judkins standing over him, a grin on his large red face. He got to his feet and sat sulkily in his chair again. Andrews was already sitting opposite him, looking impassive as ever.

The tables were full now. Someone was singing in a droning voice.

“O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree, O green grows the grass in God’s countree!”

“Ole Indiana,” shouted Chris. “That’s the only God’s country I know.” He suddenly felt that he could tell Andy all about his home and the wide cornfields shimmering and rustling under the July sun, and the creek with red clay banks where he used to go in swimming. He seemed to see it all before him, to smell the winey smell of the silo, to see the cattle, with their chewing mouths always stained a little with green, waiting to get through the gate to the water trough, and the yellow dust and roar of wheat-thrashing, and the quiet evening breeze cooling his throat and neck when he lay out on a shack of hay that he had been tossing all day long under the tingling sun. But all he managed to say was:

“Indiana’s God’s country, ain’t it, Andy?”

“Oh, he has so many,” muttered Andrews.

“Ah’ve seen a hailstone measured nine inches around out home, honest to Gawd, Ah have.”

“Must be as good as a barrage.”

“Ah’d like to see any goddam barrage do the damage one of our thunder an’ lightnin’ storms’ll do,” shouted Chris.

“I guess all the barrage we’re going to see’s grenade practice.”

“Don’t you worry, buddy,” said somebody across the room.

“You’ll see enough of it. This war’s going to last damn long….”

“Ah’d lak to get in some licks at those Huns tonight; honest to Gawd Ah would, Andy,” muttered Chris in a low voice. He felt his muscles contract with a furious irritation. He looked through half-closed eyes at the men in the room, seeing them in distorted white lights and reddish shadows. He thought of himself throwing a grenade among a crowd of men. Then he saw the face of Anderson, a ponderous white face with eyebrows that met across his nose and a bluish, shaved chin.

“Where does he stay at, Andy? I’m going to git him.”

Andrews guessed what he meant.

“Sit down and have a drink, Chris,” he said, “Remember you’re going to sleep with the Queen of Sheba tonight.”

“Not if I can’t git them goddam….” his voice trailed off into an inaudible muttering of oaths.

“O the oak and the ash and the weeping willow tree, O green grows the grass in God’s countree!”

somebody sang again.

Chrisfield saw a woman standing beside the table with her back to him, collecting the bottles. Andy was paying her.

“Antoinette,” he said. He got to his feet and put his arms round her shoulders. With a quick movement of the elbows she pushed him back into his chair. She turned round. He saw the sallow face and thin breasts of the older sister. She looked in his eyes with surprise. He was grinning drunkenly. As she left the room she made a sign to him with her head to follow her. He got up and staggered out the door, pulling Andrews after him.

In the inner room was a big bed with curtains where the women slept, and the fireplace where they did their cooking. It was dark except for the corner where he and Andrews stood blinking in the glare of a candle on the table. Beyond they could only see ruddy shadows and the huge curtained bed with its red coverlet.

The Frenchman, somewhere in the dark of the room, said something several times.

“Avions boches…ss-t!”

They were quiet.

Above them they heard the snoring of aeroplane motors, rising and falling like the buzzing of a fly against a window pane.

They all looked at each other curiously. Antoinette was leaning against the bed, her face expressionless. Her heavy hair had come undone and fell in smoky gold waves about her shoulders.

The older woman was giggling.

“Come on, let’s see what’s doing, Chris,” said Andrews.

They went out into the dark village street.

“To hell with women,