Chérie bowed her head and did not answer.
Louise moved nearer to her. "And have you forgotten Florian? Florian, who loves you, and hoped to make you his wife?…"
The tears welled up into Chérie's eyes, but she was silent.
Louise's voice rose to a bitter cry. "Chérie! Think of the brutal hands that bound you, of the infamous enemy that outraged you. Think, think that you, a Belgian, will be the mother of a German child!"
But Chérie cared nothing, remembered nothing, heard nothing. She heard no other voice but that child-voice asking from her the gift of life, telling her that in the land of the unborn there are no Germans and no Belgians, no victors and no vanquished, but only the innocent flowers of futurity—the white-winged doves of Jesus, and the snowy lambs of God.
BOOK III
CHAPTER XX
Feldwebel Karl Sigismund Schwarz lay on the internal slope of a crater under a red sunset sky. His eyes were shut. But he was not asleep. He was making up his mind that he must move his left arm. Something heavy seemed to be pressing it down, crushing and crunching it. He would move it, he would lift it up in the air and feel the circulation return to it and the breezes of heaven blow on it. Never was there such a hot and heavy arm.... Yes. He would certainly lift it in a moment.
After this great mental exertion, Feldwebel Schwarz went to sleep for a few moments; then he woke up again, more than ever determined to move his arm. What did one do when one wanted to move one's arm? And where was his arm? Where was everything? Where was he, Karl Sigismund Schwarz?… There was evidently a 'cello playing somewhere quite close to him; he could hear it right in his head: "Zoom … zoom-zoom … zoom-zoom."
He said to himself that he knew where he was. He was in Charlottenburg, in the Café des Westens, and the Hungarian, Makowsky, was playing on the Bassgeige. Zoom … zoom-zoom.... The rest of the orchestra would join in presently. Meanwhile, what was the matter with his arm? He groaned aloud and tried to raise himself on his right elbow. He could not do so; but in turning his head he caught sight of a man lying close beside him, a man in Belgian uniform lying flat on the ground with his profile turned to the sky. This convinced Schwarz that he was not in Charlottenburg after all. He was somewhere in Flanders near a rotten old city called Ypres; and he was lying in a hole made by a shell. He glanced sideways at the Belgian again. Then he cried out loud, "See here, what is the matter with my arm?" But the man did not answer, and Schwarz realized that he probably did not understand German. Probably, also, he was dead.
So Karl Schwarz lay back again, and listened to the 'cello buzzing in his brain.
The red sunset had faded into a drab twilight when in his turn the Belgian opened his eyes, sighed and sat up. He saw the wounded German lying beside him with limp legs outstretched, a mangled arm and a face caked with blood. The man's eyes were open, so the Belgian nodded to him and said, "Ca va, mon vieux?"
"Verfluchter Schweinehund," replied Karl Schwarz; and Florian Audet, who did not understand that he was being called a damned swine-hound, nodded back again in a friendly way. Then each was silent with his thoughts.
Florian tried to realize what had happened. He tentatively moved one arm; then the other; then his feet and legs. He moved his shoulders a little; they seemed all right. He felt nothing but a pain in the back of his neck, like a violent cramp; otherwise there seemed nothing much the matter with him. Why was he lying there? Let him remember. There had been an order to attack … a dash over the white Ypres road and across the fields to the south … then an explosion—yes. That was it. He had been blown up. This was shock or something. He wondered where the remains of his company was and how things had turned out. There were sounds of firing not far away, the spluttering of rifles and the booming of the gun.
He tried to rise to his feet, but it was as if the earth rose with him. He could not get his hands off the ground—earth and sky whirled round him, and he had to lie down again.
Soon darkness came up out of the thundering east and blew out the twilight.
Meanwhile Feldwebel Schwarz was again in the Café des Westens; the orchestra of ten thousand Bassgeigen was booming like mad, and he was beating on the table with his heavy arm, calling for the waiter Max to bring him something cold to drink. Max came hurrying up and stood before him carrying a tray laden with glasses—huge cool Schoppen of Münchner and Lager, and tall glasses of lemonade with ice clinking in it. Which would he have? He could not make up his mind which he would have. His throat burned him, his stomach was on fire with thirst, and he could not say which of the cool drinks he wanted. He felt that he must drink them all—the iced Münchner, the chilly Lager, the biting lemonade—he must drink them all together, or die. Suddenly he noticed that the Wasserleiche—you know the Wasserleiche, the "Water-corpse" of the Café des Westens—the cadaverous-looking woman whose face is of such a peculiar hue that you would vow she had been drowned and left lying in the water for a couple of days before they fished her out again—well, she had come up to the waiter and was embracing him, and all the glasses were slipping off his tray. Ping!—pang!—down they crashed! Ping!—pang! smashing and crashing all around. You never heard glasses make such a noise. There was nothing left to drink—nothing in the wide world.
Then Feldwebel Schwarz began to cry. He heard himself moaning and crying, until Max the waiter looked at him and then he saw that it was not Max the waiter at all that the Water-corpse was embracing. She never did embrace men. It was her friend Mélanie, who stood there laughing with her mouth wide open, showing the pink roof of her mouth and her tiny wolfish teeth—the two eye-teeth slightly longer than the others and very pointed.
Karl Schwarz knew that if he wanted anything to drink he must be amiable to Mélanie. He would sing her the song about "Gräfin Mélanie," beginning "Nur für Natur...."
But he could not remember it. He could only remember the Ueberbrettel song—
He sang this a great many times, and the waiter Max, who was lying on the floor among the broken glasses, applauded loudly. You never heard such clapping; it went right through one's head. But Mélanie did not give him anything to drink, and the Water-corpse—he suddenly remembered that she never allowed any one to speak to Mélanie—turned on him furiously and bit him in the arm. He howled with pain, and then Mélanie bent forward showing all her wolfish teeth, and she also bit him in the arm. They were tearing and mangling him. He could not get his arm away from the two dreadful creatures. "Verdammte Sauweiber!" he shouted at them, and his voice was so loud that it woke him.
He saw the star-strewn sky above him, and beside him the prostrate figure of the Belgian as he had seen him before. Probably, he said to himself, Mélanie and the Water-corpse had been at this man too. To keep them away he had to go on singing with his parched throat—
He imagined that these words possessed some occult power which must keep the two horrible women away from him.
So he continued to repeat them all night long.
Between two and three o'clock Florian Audet opened his eyes and turned his head to look round. The wounded German's voice had roused him from sleep—or from unconsciousness—and he lay there vaguely wondering what that continually repeated cry might mean.
"Die Flundern werden sich wundern...." The words sank into his brain and remained there. Perhaps, he mused, it was some kind of national war-cry, a shout of victory or defiance … "Death or liberty!…" or "In the name of the Kaiser," or something like that.