A Fable

‘Forget that now,’ Morache said. ‘Picklock’s right; the first thing to do is to get back to Verdun. Come up. Let’s get this thing into that box.’ They carried the stretcher to the lorry and lifted the sheeted body into it. The lid of the coffin had not been fastened down; a hammer and nails were inside the coffin. They tumbled the body into it, whether face-up or facedown they didn’t know and didn’t bother, and replaced the top and caught the nails enough to hold it shut. Then the sergeant with his now empty valise climbed through the rear door and sat again on the coffin; the corporal and the driver obviously had returned too because at once the lorry moved, the twelve men sitting on the straw against the walls, quiet now, outwardly as decorous as well-behaved children but actually temporarily insane, capable of anything, talking occasionally among themselves, peacefully, idle and extraneous while the lorry returned to Verdun, until they were actually in the city again and the lorry had stopped before a door beside which a sentry stood: obviously the commandant’s headquarters: and the sergeant began to get up from the coffin. Then Picklock made one last effort:

‘I understood orders said we were to have brandy not just to go to Valaumont and get the body out, but to get it back to Paris. Or am I wrong?’

‘If you are, who made you wrong?’ the sergeant said. He looked down at Picklock a moment longer. Then he turned toward the door; it was as though he too had recognised Picklock as their leader: ‘I’ll have to sign some bumf here. Take it on to the station and load it into the carriage and wait for me there. Then we’ll have lunch.’

‘Right,’ Picklock said. The sergeant dropped to the ground and vanished; at once, even before the lorry had begun to move again, their whole air, atmosphere changed, as if their very characters and personalities had altered, or not altered but rather as if they had shed masks or cloaks; their very speech was short, rapid, succinct, cryptic, at times even verbless, as if they did not need to communicate but merely to prompt one another in one mutual prescient cognizance.

‘Morache’s watch,’ one said.

‘Hold it,’ Picklock said. ‘The station first.’

‘Tell him to hurry then,’ another said. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, starting to get up.

‘Hold it, I said,’ Picklock said, gripping him. ‘Do you want M.P.’s?’ So they stopped talking and just sat, immobile and in motion, furious in immobility like men strained against a pyramid, as if they were straining at the back of the moving lorry itself with the urgency of their passion and need. The lorry stopped. They were already getting out of it, the first ones dropping to the ground before it had stopped moving, their hands already on the coffin. The platform was empty now, or so they thought, would have thought if they had noticed, which they didn’t, not even looking that way as they dragged the coffin out of the lorry, almost running again across the platform with it toward where the carriage waited on the siding; not until a hand began to tug at Picklock’s sleeve, an urgent voice at his elbow saying:

‘Mister Corporal! Mister Corporal!’ Picklock looked down. It was the old woman of the morning whose son had died in the Verdun battle.

‘Beat it, grandma,’ Picklock said, twitching his arm free. ‘Come on. Get that door open.’

But the old woman still clung to him, speaking still with that terrible urgency: ‘You’ve got one. It might be Theodule. I will know. Let me look at him.’

‘Beat it, I tell you!’ Picklock said. ‘We’re busy.’ So it was not Picklock at all, leader though he was, but one of the others who said suddenly and sharply, hissing it:

‘Wait.’ Though in the next second the same idea seemed to occur to them all, one end of the box resting now on the floor of the carriage and four of them braced to shove it the rest of the way, all of them paused now looking back while the speaker continued: ‘You said something this morning about selling a farm.’

‘Selling my farm?’ the woman said.

‘Money!’ the other said in his hissing undertone.

‘Yes! Yes!’ the old woman said, fumbling under her shawl and producing an aged reticule almost as large as the sergeant’s valise. Now Picklock did take charge.

‘Hold it,’ he said over his shoulder, then to the old woman: ‘If we let you look at him, will you buy two bottles of brandy?’

‘Make it three,’ a third said.

‘And in advance,’ a fourth said. ‘She cant tell anything from what’s in that box now.’

‘I can!’ she said. ‘I will know! Just let me look.’

‘All right,’ Picklock said. ‘Go and get two bottles of brandy, and you can look at him. Hurry now, before the sergeant gets back.’

‘Yes yes,’ she said and turned, running, stiffly and awkwardly, clutching the reticule, back across the platform.