“Ah was right smart ’askeered ye wouldn’t find it, Andy.”
“So this is where you live?”
“Um hum, a bunch of us lives here.”
A wide bed without coverings, where a man in olive-drab slept rolled in a blanket, was the only furniture of the room.
“Three of us sleeps in that bed,” said Chrisfield.
“Who’s that?” cried the man in the bed, sitting up suddenly.
“All right, Al, he’s a buddy o’ mine,” said Chrisfield. “He’s taken off his uniform.”
“Jesus, you got guts,” said the man in the bed.
Andrews looked at him sharply. A piece of towelling, splotched here and there with dried blood, was wrapped round his head, and a hand, swathed in bandages, was drawn up to his body. The man’s mouth took on a twisted expression of pain as he let his head gradually down to the bed again.
“Gosh, what did you do to yourself?” cried Andrews.
“I tried to hop a freight at Marseilles.”
“Needs practice to do that sort o’ thing,” said Chrisfield, who sat on the bed, pulling his shoes off. “Ah’m goin’ to git back to bed, Andy. Ah’m juss dead tired. Ah chucked cabbages all night at the market. They give ye a job there without askin’ no questions.”
“Have a cigarette” Andrews sat down on the foot of the bed and threw a cigarette towards Chrisfield. “Have one?” he asked Al.
“No. I couldn’t smoke. I’m almost crazy with this hand. One of the wheels went over it… I cut what was left of the little finger off with a razor.” Andrews could see the sweat rolling down his cheek as he spoke. “Christ, that poor beggar’s been havin’ a time, Andy. We was ’askeert to get a doctor, and we all didn’t know what to do.”
“I got some pure alcohol an’ washed it in that. It’s not infected. I guess it’ll be all right.”
“Where are you from, Al?” asked Andrews.
“‘Frisco. Oh, I’m goin’ to try to sleep. I haven’t slept a wink for four nights.”
“Why don’t you get some dope?”
“Oh, we all ain’t had a cent to spare for anythin’, Andy.”
“Oh, if we had kale we could live like kings-not,” said Al in the middle of a nervous little giggle.
“Look, Chris,” said Andrews, “I’ll halve with you. I’ve got five hundred francs.”
“Jesus Gawd, man, don’t kid about anything like that.”
“Here’s two hundred and fifty… It’s not so much as it sounds.”
Andrews handed him five fifty-franc notes.
“Say, how did you come to bust loose?” said Al, turning his head towards Andrews.
“I got away from a labor battalion one night. That’s all.”
“Tell me about it, buddy. I don’t feel my hand so much when I’m talking to somebody… I’d be home now if it wasn’t for a gin mill in Alsace. Say, don’t ye think that big headgear they sport up there is awful good looking? Got my goat every time I saw one… I was comin’ back from leave at Grenoble, an’ I went through Strasburg. Some town. My outfit was in Coblentz. That’s where I met up with Chris here. Anyway, we was raisin’ hell round Strasburg, an’ I went into a gin mill down a flight of steps. Gee, everything in that town’s plumb picturesque, just like a kid I used to know at home whose folks were Eytalian used to talk about when he said how he wanted to come overseas. Well, I met up with a girl down there, who said she’d just come down to a place like that to look for her brother who was in the foreign legion.”
Andrews and Chrisfield laughed.
“What you laughin’ at?” went on Al in an eager taut voice. “Honest to Gawd. I’m goin’ to marry her if I ever get out of this. She’s the best little girl I ever met up with. She was waitress in a restaurant, an’ when she was off duty she used to wear that there Alsatian costume… Hell, I just stayed on. Every day, I thought I’d go away the next day… Anyway, the war was over. I warn’t a damn bit of use… Hasn’t a fellow got any rights at all? Then the M.P.’s started cleanin’ up Strasburg after A.W.O.L.’s, an’ I beat it out of there, an’ Christ, it don’t look as if I’d ever be able to get back.”
“Say, Andy,” said Chrisfield, suddenly, “let’s go down after some booze.”
“All right.”
“Say, Al, do you want me to get you anything at the drug store?”
“No. I won’t do anythin’ but lay low and bathe it with alcohol now and then, against infection. Anyways, it’s the first of May. You’ll be crazy to go out. You might get pulled. They say there’s riots going on.”
“Gosh, I forgot it was the first of May,” cried Andrews. “They’re running a general strike to protest against the war with Russia and… ”
“A guy told me,” interrupted Al, in a shrill voice, “there might be a revolution.”
“Come along, Andy,” said Chris from the door.
On the stairs Andrews felt Chrisfield’s hand squeezing his arm hard.
“Say, Andy,” Chris put his lips close to Andrews’ ear and spoke in a rasping whisper. “You’re the only one that knows… you know what. You an’ that sergeant. Doan you say anythin’ so that the guys here kin ketch on, d’ye hear?”
“All right, Chris, I won’t, but man alive, you oughtn’t to lose your nerve about it. You aren’t the only one who ever shot an… ”
“Shut yer face, d’ye hear?” muttered Chrisfield savagely.
They went down the stairs in silence. In the room next to the bar they found the Chink reading a newspaper.
“Is he French?” whispered Andrews.
“Ah doan know what he is. He ain’t a white man, Ah’ll wager that,” said Chris, “but he’s square.”
“D’you know anything about what’s going on?” asked Andrews in French, going up to the Chink.
“Where?” The Chink got up, flashing a glance at Andrews out of the corners of his slit-like eyes.
“Outside, in the streets, in Paris, anywhere where people are out in the open and can do things. What do you think about the revolution?”
The Chink shrugged his shoulders.
“Anythin’s possible,” he said.
“D’you think they really can overthrow the army and the government in one day, like that?”
“Who?” broke in Chrisfield.
“Why, the people, Chris, the ordinary people like you and me, who are tired of being ordered round, who are tired of being trampled down by other people just like them, who’ve had the luck to get in right with the system.”
“D’you know what I’ll do when the revolution comes?” broke in the Chink with sudden intensity, slapping himself on the chest with one hand. “I’ll go straight to one of those jewelry stores, rue Royale, and fill my pockets and come home with my hands full of diamonds.”
“What good’ll that do you?”
“What good? I’ll bury them back there in the court and wait. I’ll need them in the end. D’you know what it’ll mean, your revolution? Another system! When there’s a system there are always men to be bought with diamonds. That’s what the world’s like.”
“But they won’t be worth anything. It’ll only be work that is worth anything.”
“We’ll see,” said the Chink.
“D’you think it could happen, Andy, that there’d be a revolution, an’ there wouldn’t be any more armies, an’ we’d be able to go round like we are civilians? Ah doan think so. Fellers like us ain’t got it in ’em to buck the system, Andy.”
“Many a system’s gone down before; it will happen again.”