Shall we sleep while waiting? Fouillade is sleepy no longer; the
hope of wine has shaken him up. And then, if one sleeps in the day,
he will not sleep at night. No! To lie with your eyes open is worse
than a nightmare. The weather gets worse; wind and rain increase,
without and within.
Then what? If one may not stand still, nor sit down, nor lie down,
nor go for a stroll, nor work--what?
Deepening misery settles on the party of benumbed and tired
soldiers. They suffer to the bone, nor know what to do with their
bodies. "Nom de Dieu, we're badly off!" is the cry of the
derelicts--a lamentation, an appeal for help.
Then by instinct they give themselves up to the only occupation
possible to them in there--to walk up and down on the spot, and thus
ward off anchylosis.
So they begin to walk quickly to and fro in the scanty place that
three strides might compass; they turn about and cross and brush
each other, bent forward, hands pocketed--tramp, tramp. These human
beings whom the blast cuts even among their straw are like a crowd
of the wretched wrecks of cities who await, under the lowering sky
of winter, the opening of some charitable institution. But no door
will open for them--unless it Le four days hence, one evening at the
end of the rest, to return to the trenches.
Alone in a corner, Cocon cowers. He is tormented by lice; but
weakened by the cold and wet he has not the pluck to change his
linen; and he sits there sullen, unmoving--and devoured.
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