Three Soldiers Part 44

Pretty yellow hair she had, too. Gangrene.... Only lasted a day....

Well, I'm going off, I guess you guys wish you was going to be where I'm goin' to be tonight.... That's one thing you guys are lucky in, don't have to worry about propho." The orderly wrinkled his face up and winked elaborately.

"Say, will you do something for me?" asked Andrews.

"Sure, if it ain't no trouble."

"Will you buy me a book?"

"Ain't ye got enough with all the books at the 'Y'?"

"No.... This is a special book," said Andrews smiling, "a French book."

"A French book, is it? Well, I'll see what I can do. What's it called?"

"By Flaubert.... Look, if you've got a piece of paper and a pencil, I'll write it down."

Andrews scrawled the t.i.tle on the back of an order slip.

"There."

"What the h.e.l.l? Who's Antoine? Gee whiz, I bet that's hot stuff. I wish I could read French. We'll have you breakin' loose out o' here an' going down to number four, roo Villiay, if you read that kind o' book."

"Has it got pictures?" asked Applebaum. "One feller did break out o'

here a month ago,... Couldn't stand it any longer, I guess. Well, his wound opened an' he had a hemorrhage, an' now he's planted out in the back lot.... But I'm goin'. Goodnight." The orderly bustled to the end of the ward and disappeared.

The lights went out, except for the bulb over the nurse's desk at the end, beside the ornate doorway, with its wreathed pinnacles carved out of the grey stone, which could be seen above the white canvas screen that hid the door.

"What's that book about, buddy?" asked Applebaum, twisting his head at the end of his lean neck so as to look Andrews full in the face.

"Oh, it's about a man who wants everything so badly that he decides there's nothing worth wanting."

"I guess youse had a college edication," said Applebaum sarcastically.

Andrews laughed.

"Well, I was goin' to tell youse about when I used to drive a taxi. I was makin' big money when I enlisted. Was you drafted?"

"Yes."

"Well, so was I. I doan think nauthin o' them guys that are so stuck up 'cause they enlisted, d'you?"

"Not a h.e.l.l of a lot."

"Don't yer?" came a voice from the other side of Andrews, a thin voice that stuttered. "W-w-well, all I can say is, it'ld have sss-spoiled my business if I hadn't enlisted. No, sir, n.o.body can say I didn't enlist."

"Well, that's your look-out," said Applebaum.

"You're G.o.ddam right, it was."

"Well, ain't your business spoiled anyway?"

"No, sir. I can pick it right up where I left off. I've got an established reputation."

"What at?"

"I'm an undertaker by profession; my dad was before me."

"Gee, you were right at home!" said Andrews.

"You haven't any right to say that, young feller," said the undertaker angrily. "I'm a humane man. I won't never be at home in this dirty butchery."

The nurse was walking by their cots.

"How can you say such dreadful things?" she said. "But lights are out. You boys have got to keep quiet.... And you," she plucked at the undertaker's bedclothes, "just remember what the Huns did in Belgium....

Poor Miss Cavell, a nurse just like I am."

Andrews closed his eyes. The ward was quiet except for the rasping sound of the snores and heavy breathing of the shattered men all about him.

"And I thought she was the Queen of Sheba," he said to himself, making a grimace in the dark. Then he began to think of the music he had intended to write about the Queen of Sheba before he had stripped his life off in the bare room where they had measured him and made a soldier of him.

Standing in the dark in the desert of his despair, he would hear the sound of a caravan in the distance, tinkle of bridles, rasping of horns, braying of donkeys, and the throaty voices of men singing the songs of desolate roads. He would look up, and before him he would see, astride their foaming wild a.s.ses, the three green hors.e.m.e.n motionless, pointing at him with their long forefingers. Then the music would burst in a sudden hot whirlwind about him, full of flutes and kettledrums and braying horns and whining bagpipes, and torches would flare red and yellow, making a tent of light about him, on the edges of which would crowd the sumpter mules and the brown mule drivers, and the gaudily caparisoned camels, and the elephants glistening with jewelled harness.

Naked slaves would bend their gleaming backs before him as they laid out a carpet at his feet; and, through the flare of torchlight, the Queen, of Sheba would advance towards him, covered with emeralds and dull-gold ornaments, with a monkey hopping behind holding up the end of her long train. She would put her hand with its slim fantastic nails on his shoulder; and, looking into her eyes, he would suddenly feel within reach all the fiery imaginings of his desire. Oh, if he could only be free to work. All the months he had wasted in his life seemed to be marching like a procession of ghosts before his eyes. And he lay in his cot, staring with wide open eyes at the ceiling, hoping desperately that his wounds would be long in healing.

Applebaum sat on the edge of his cot, dressed in a clean new uniform, of which the left sleeve hung empty, still showing the creases in which it had been folded.

"So you really are going," said Andrews, rolling his head over on his pillow to look at him.

"You bet your pants I am, Andy.... An' so could you, poifectly well, if you'ld talk it up to 'em a little."

"Oh, I wish to G.o.d I could. Not that I want to go home, now, but ... if I could get out of uniform."

"I don't blame ye a bit, kid; well, next time, we'll know better....

Local Board Chairman's going to be my job."

Andrews laughed.

"If I wasn't a sucker...."

"You weren't the only wewe-one," came the undertaker's stuttering voice from behind Andrews.

"h.e.l.l, I thought you enlisted, undertaker."

"Well, I did, by G.o.d! but I didn't think it was going to be like this."

"What did ye think it was goin' to be, a picnic?"

"h.e.l.l, I doan care about that, or gettin' ga.s.sed, and smashed up, or anythin', but I thought we was goin' to put things to rights by comin'

over here.... Look here, I had a lively business in the undertaking way, like my father had had before me.... We did all the swellest work in Tilletsville...."