The Outrage Part 26

He sang this a great many times, and the waiter Max, who was lying on the floor among the broken gla.s.ses, applauded loudly. You never heard such clapping; it went right through one's head. But Melanie did not give him anything to drink, and the Water-corpse--he suddenly remembered that she never allowed any one to speak to Melanie--turned on him furiously and bit him in the arm. He howled with pain, and then Melanie 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, Melanie and the Water-corpse had been at this man too. To keep them away he had to go on singing with his parched throat--

"Die Flundern "Werden sich wundern...."

"Die Flundern "Werden sich wundern...."

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.

From where he was he could see the outstretched figure lying to the left of him, the limp legs, the helpless, upturned feet in their thick muddy boots; and he heard the sound of the rattling breath still repeating brokenly, "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_...."

An overwhelming sense of pity came over him; pity for the broken figure beside him, pity for himself, pity for the world. With an immense effort, for he felt as if every bone were broken, he turned on his side and, struggling slowly along the ground, dragged himself towards the dying man. When he reached him and could touch him with his outstretched hand he rested awhile; then he fumbled for his brandy-flask, found it, unscrewed it and held it near the man's face.

"_Tiens! bois_," he said. But the German did not move to take it; and soon the rattling breath stopped.

Florian wriggled a little closer, slipped his right arm under the man's head and raised it. Then by the grey April starlight he saw something bubble and gush over the man's face from a wound in his forehead. The German opened his eyes. What were those fiendish women doing to him now?

Pouring warm wine over his head.... Through the tepid scarlet veil his wild eyes blinked up at Florian in childish terror and bewilderment. A wave of sickening faintness overcame Florian; his arm slackened, and his enemy's ghastly crimson face fell back upon it as Florian himself sank beside him in a swoon.

There they lay all through the night, side by side, like brothers, the living and the dead; the German soldier with his head on the Belgian officer's arm. And thus two German Red Cross men found them in the chilly dawn as they slid down the crater-side, carrying a folded stretcher between them. They were very young, the two Red Cross men; they had not finished studying philosophy in the Bonn University when the war had broken out, and they had left Kant and Hebel for a quick course of surgery. The youngest one, who had very fair hair, wrote foolish Latin poems, said to be after the style of Lucretius.

They dropped the stretcher and stood silently looking down at those two motionless figures in their fraternal embrace, whose att.i.tude told their tale. Florian's hand, holding the open brandy-flask, lay on the dead German's breast; the ghastly dead face of their comrade was pillowed easily on the enemy's encircling arm.

Something rose in the throat of the two who gazed, and the younger one--the one who wrote Latin verse--bent down and laid his hand lightly, as if invoking a blessing on Florian's pale forehead. Then he turned with a start to his companion. "He is alive!"

The other in his turn touched the man's brow, then lifted the limp hand to feel his pulse. They knelt beside him and poured brandy down his throat. Then they worked over him for a long while, until a breath of life fluttered through the ashen lips, and the vague blue eyes opened and looked into theirs.

The Germans rose to their feet. The Belgian, when he had lain unconscious with his arm around their fallen comrade, had been to them a hero and a friend. Now, alive, with open eyes, he was their foe and their prisoner.

They spoke to him at first, not unkindly, in German; then, somewhat brusquely, in French; but he gave them no reply. His brain was benumbed and stupefied. He could not speak and he could not stand. So they lifted him and placed him on the stretcher.

"Poor devil!" murmured the younger man as he extended the two limp arms along the rec.u.mbent body and pointed out to his companion the right sleeve of the Belgian uniform sodden and stiff with the German soldier's blood.

"Poor devil! What have we saved him for? To send him to the h.e.l.l of Wittemberg!..."

"Hard lines," murmured the other one.

"_Gerechter Gott!_" exclaimed the foolish fair-haired poet, "I wish we could give him a chance."

They gave him a chance.

Florian never knew how it was that he found himself lying on a blanket on the stone floor of a half-demolished farm building, a sort of dilapidated cow-house.

As he raised his aching head he saw that milk, bread, and brandy had been left on the floor beside him; also a packet of cigarettes, some matches, and a tablet of chocolate. He drank greedily of the milk; then he took a sip of brandy and staggered to his feet. Though giddy and trembling, he found he could stand. And as he stood he noticed that he was stripped to the skin. There was not a st.i.tch of clothing on him, nor was there a vestige of his own uniform anywhere to be seen. There was nothing but a pair of muddy yellow boots standing in the middle of the floor--boots that reminded him of those he had seen on the dying German on the hill-side. These and the grey blanket he had lain on were all that one could possibly clothe oneself in. Nothing that had been his was there. Even the brandy was not in his own flask.

Florian looked round the deserted place, the crumbling walls which bomb and sh.e.l.l had battered. There was a rusty, broken plough in a corner, a few tools and some odd pots and pans. After brief reflection Florian put on the boots; then he finished the bread, the milk, and the brandy.

Finally, having knotted in one corner of the blanket the chocolate, the cigarettes, and the matches, he wound the rough grey covering round his body and stepped out to face the world.

It was an empty, desolate world; a dead horse lay not far off on the muddy road leading across the plain. By the sun, Florian judged it to be about seven o'clock in the morning. He seemed to recognize the locality; it might be a mile or two from the fighting ground of the preceding day. Yes. There to the left was the straight white road from Poperinghe to Ypres; he recognized the double line of trees ... where was he to go? In what direction were the Belgian lines, he wondered. He still felt weak, and his knees trembled; his mind was vacant except for a jumble of meaningless sounds. The words the dying German had repeated through the night rang in his head continually. He found himself murmuring over and over again, "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern_...."

He also had to make a strenuous mental effort to realize that he actually was wandering about the world in nothing but a pair of boots and a blanket. Everything seemed like an insensate dream. Perhaps he was still suffering from shock and dreaming all this? Perhaps he was really lying in hospital with concussion of the brain.... Who on earth could have stolen all his clothes and left him in exchange the milk, the chocolate, and the cigarettes?

There was something base and treacherous in robbing an unconscious man, he said to himself. On the other hand, there was a touch of friendliness and kindness in the chocolate and the cigarettes. The whole thing was absurd and fantastic.

"Either," reasoned Florian, stumbling along in his blanket in the direction of a distant wood, "either I have been the prey of some demented creature, or I am at this very moment light-headed myself...."

"_Die Flundern werden sich wundern._" He had to make an effort not to say those crazy words aloud. He felt he would go mad if he did so. As long as he kept them shut up in his brain he was their master; but if he let them out he felt they would get the better of him, and he would go on saying them over and over and over again like the delirious German.

Decidedly he was weak in his head, and must try to keep a firm hold on his brain. "_Die Flundern ... werden sich wundern._"

A few moments later he saw some mounted soldiers riding out of the wood; he saw at once that it was a German patrol. He thought of turning back and hiding in the shed again, but it was too late. They had caught sight of him, and were riding down towards him at full speed.

Well, the game was up, said Florian to himself; he would be taken. He could neither kill others nor himself with a piece of chocolate and a packet of Josetti.

So he stood stock-still, folded his arms, and awaited their arrival.

("_Die Flundern werden sich wundern...._")

As the eight or ten men galloped up, Florian noted from afar their looks of amazement at the sight of him. They hailed him in German, and he did not reply. He stood like a statue; he said to himself that he would meet his fate with dignity. But he had not reckoned with the ludicrous effect of his attire. Two of the men dismounted, and one of them addressed him in German with a broad grin on his face; but the other--a young officer--silenced the first one abruptly, and turning a grim countenance to Florian, asked him in French why he was in that array.

"What have you done with your uniform?" he asked, scowling.

Florian scowled back at him, and gave no reply. He had made up his mind that he would not speak. ("_Die Flundern werden sich wundern._")

The officer gave an order, and two soldiers took him by the arms and dragged his blanket from him. He stood there in his muddy boots, bare in the sunshine, his face and hands and hair caked with mud. But he was a fine and handsome figure for all that.

The officer and the men had turned their attention to the knot in the blanket. They undid it and took out the contents of the improvised pocket.

Then they looked at the figure before them and at each other. The chocolate was German; the cigarettes were German; the boots were German.

What was the man?

"_Meschugge_," murmured the lieutenant in explanation, not of Florian's nationality, but of his condition of mind.

"_Meschugge! Meschugge!_" repeated the others, laughing.

The officer seemed uncertain. He turned and spoke in a low voice to the others. Florian knew they were discussing him. Would they arrest him as a cunning Belgian who had discarded his uniform, stolen the boots and the blanket, and was shamming to be insane and dumb? Or would they think him a German gone daft and send him to an infirmary? He hoped so. It would be easier to make one's escape from an infirmary than from a German prison. A German prison! Florian clenched his teeth. He saw that the officer seemed inclined to adopt this course.

"_Die Flundern werden_--" He almost said it aloud. The sound of these guttural German voices round him seemed to drag the words out of him. He felt his lips moving and he saw them watching him closely.... Suddenly the crazy words ran out of his mouth. "_Die Flundern werden sich wundern!_"

He was not prepared for the effect of those words. The soldiers burst into loud laughter; even the officer's hard face relaxed and he smiled broadly. The others repeated it with comments. "Did you hear? '_Die Flundern_'!... He has the Ueberbrettel on the brain!" And they roared with laughter and clapped him on the bare shoulders and asked him in what _Kabarett_ he had left his heart and his senses.

Florian understood not a word, but he knew he was safe. At least, for the present.