Three Soldiers Part 85

"And to think that I nearly threw it overboard with the trousers," said the other woman again.

John Andrews began to look about him. He was in a dark low cabin. Behind him, in the direction of the voices, a yellow light flickered. Great dishevelled shadows of heads moved about on the ceiling. Through the close smell of the cabin came a warmth of food cooking. He could hear the soothing hiss of frying grease.

"But didn't you see the Kid?" he asked in English, dazedly trying to pull himself together, to think coherently. Then he went on in French in a more natural voice:

"There was another one with me."

"We saw no one. Rosaline, ask the old man," said the older woman.

"No, he didn't see anyone," came the girl's shrill voice. She walked over to the bed and pulled the coverlet round Andrews with an awkward gesture. Looking up at her, he had a glimpse of the bulge of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her large teeth that glinted in the lamplight, and very vague in the shadow, a mop of snaky, disordered hair.

"Qu'il parle bien francais," she said, beaming at him. Heavy steps shuffled across the cabin as the older woman came up to the bed and peered in his face.

"Il va mieux," she said, with a knowing air.

She was a broad woman with a broad flat face and a swollen body swathed in shawls. Her eyebrows were very bushy, and she had thick grey whiskers that came down to a point on either side of her mouth, as well as a few bristling hairs on her chin. Her voice was deep and growling, and seemed to come from far down inside her huge body.

Steps creaked somewhere, and the old man looked at him through spectacles placed on the end of his nose. Andrews recognized the irregular face full of red k.n.o.bs and protrusions.

"Thanks very much," he said.

All three looked at him silently for some time. Then the old man pulled a newspaper out of his pocket, unfolded it carefully, and fluttered it above Andrews's eyes. In the scant light Andrews made out the name: "Libertaire."

"That's why," said the old man, looking at Andrews fixedly, through his spectacles.

"I'm a sort of a socialist," said Andrews.

"Socialists are good-for-nothings," snarled the old man, every red protrusion on his face seeming to get redder.

"But I have great sympathy for anarchist comrades," went on Andrews, feeling a certain liveliness of amus.e.m.e.nt go through him and fade again.

"Lucky you caught hold of my rope, instead of getting on to the next barge. He'd have given you up for sure. Sont des royalistes, ces salauds-la."

"We must give him something to eat; hurry, Maman.... Don't worry, he'll pay, won't you, my little American?"

Andrews nodded his head.

"All you want," he said.

"No, if he says he's a comrade, he shan't pay, not a sou," growled the old man.

"We'll see about that," cried the old woman, drawing her breath in with an angry whistling sound.

"It's only that living's so dear nowadays," came the girl's voice.

"Oh, I'll pay anything I've got," said Andrews peevishly, closing his eyes again.

He lay a long while on his back without moving.

A hand shoved in between his back and the pillow roused him. He sat up.

Rosaline was holding a bowl of broth in front of him that steamed in his face.

"Mange ca," she said.

He looked into her eyes, smiling. Her rusty hair was neatly combed. A bright green parrot with a scarlet splash in its wings, balanced itself unsteadily on her shoulder, looking at Andrews out of angry eyes, hard as gems.

"Il est jaloux, Coco," said Rosaline, with a shrill little giggle.

Andrews took the bowl in his two hands and drank some of the scalding broth.

"It's too hot," he said, leaning back against the girl's arm.

The parrot squawked out a sentence that Andrews did not understand.

Andrews heard the old man's voice answer from somewhere behind him:

"Nom de Dieu!"

The parrot squawked again.

Rosaline laughed.

"It's the old man who taught him that," she said. "Poor Coco, he doesn't know what he's saying."

"What does he say?" asked Andrews.

"'Les bourgeois a la lanterne, nom de dieu!' It's from a song," said Rosaline. "Oh, qu'il est malin, ce Coco!"

Rosaline was standing with her arms folded beside the bunk. The parrot stretched out his neck and rubbed it against her cheek, closing and unclosing his gem-like eyes. The girl formed her lips into a kiss, and murmured in a drowsy voice:

"Tu m'aimes, Coco, n'est-ce pas, Coco? Bon Coco."

"Could I have something more, I'm awfully hungry," said Andrews.

"Oh, I was forgetting," cried Rosaline, running off with the empty bowl.

In a moment she came back without the parrot, with the bowl in her hand full of a brown stew of potatoes and meat.

Andrews ate it mechanically, and handed back the bowl.

"Thank you," he said, "I am going to sleep."

He settled himself into the bunk. Rosaline drew the covers up about him and tucked them in round his shoulders. Her hand seemed to linger a moment as it brushed past his cheek. But Andrews had already sunk into a torpor again, feeling nothing but the warmth of the food within him and a great stiffness in his legs and arms.

When he woke up the light was grey instead of yellow, and a swis.h.i.+ng sound puzzled him. He lay listening to it for a long time, wondering what it was. At last the thought came with a sudden warm spurt of joy that the barge must be moving.

He lay very quietly on his back, looking up at the faint silvery light on the ceiling of the bunk, thinking of nothing, with only a vague dread in the back of his head that someone would come to speak to him, to question him.