A Fable

When light returned, the van had stopped. It would be St Mihiel; they had told her St Mihiel and this would be it, even if there had not been that sixth sense, even after almost four years, that tells people when they are nearing home. So as soon as the van stopped, she had started to get up, saying to the American sergeant: ‘St Mihiel?’ because at least he should understand that, then in a sort of despair of urgency she even said, began, ‘Mon homme à moi—mon mari’ before she stopped, the sergeant speaking himself now, using one or two more of the few other words which were his French vocabulary:

‘No no no. Attention. Attention,’ even in the van’s darkness motioning downward at her with his hands as a trainer commands a dog to sit. Then he was gone, silhouetted for another instant against the paler door, and they waited, huddled together now for warmth in the cold spring dawn, the girl between them, whether asleep or not, whether she had ever slept during the night or not, Marthe could not tell though by her breathing Marya, the other sister, was. It was full light when the sergeant returned; they were all three awake now, who had slept or not slept; they could see the first of Saturday’s sun and hear the eternal and perennial larks. He had more coffee, the pot filled again, and this time he had bread too, saying, very loud: ‘Monjay. Monjay’ and they—she—could see him now—a young man with a hard drafted face and with something else in it—impatience or commiseration, she anyway could not tell which. Nor did she care, thinking again to try once more to communicate with him except that the French sergeant at Chalons had said that it was all arranged, and suddenly it was not that she could trust the American sergeant because he must know what he was doing since he had obviously come along with them under orders, but because she—they—could do little else.

So they ate the bread and drank the hot sweet coffee again. The sergeant was gone again and they waited; she had no way to mark or gauge how long. Then the sergeant sprang or vaulted into the van again and she knew that the moment was here. This time the six soldiers who followed him were Americans; the three of them rose and stood and waited again while the six soldiers slid the coffin to the door then dropped to the ground, invisible to them now, so that the coffin itself seemed to flee suddenly through the door and vanish, the three of them following to the door while the sergeant dropped through the door; there was another box beneath the door for them to descend by, into another bright morning, blinking a little after the darkness in the sixth bright morning of that week during which there had been no rain nor adumbration at all. Then she saw the cart, her own or theirs, her husband standing beside the horse’s head while the six American soldiers slid the coffin into the cart, and she turned to the American sergeant and said ‘Thank you’ in French and suddenly and a little awkwardly he removed his hat and shook her hand, quick and hard, then the other sister’s and put his hat back on without once looking at or offering to touch the girl, and she went on around the cart to where her husband stood—a broad strong man in corduroy, not as tall as she and definitely older. They embraced, then all four of them turned to the cart, huddling for a moment in that indecision, as people will. But not for long; there would not be room for all four of them on the seat but the girl had already solved that, climbing up over the shafts and the seat and into the body of the cart, to crouch, huddle beside the coffin, huddled into the shawl, her face worn and sleepless and definitely needing soap and water now.

‘Why, yes, Sister,’ Marya, the older sister said in her voice of happy astonishment, almost of pleasure as though at so simple a solution: ‘I’ll ride back there too.’ So the husband helped her up onto the shaft then over the seat, where she sat also on the opposite side of the coffin. Then Marthe mounted strongly and without assistance to the seat, the husband following with the lines.