Journey to the End of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

patrol, Lieutenant de SainteEngence[13] swore to the other officers that he hadn't made it up. "I carved 'em I tell you. Two of them!" he insisted, showing everybody his saber, and true enough, the little groove was full of caked blood, that's what it's made for.
    Captain Ortolan backed him up. "He was splendid! Bravo, Sainte-Engence! ... Ah, messieurs, if you'd only seen him! What a charge!"
    Ortolan was in command of the squadron.
    "I saw every bit of it! I wasn't far away! A thrust to the right ... Zing! The first one drops! ... A thrust full in the chest! ... Left! Cross! Championship style! ... Bravo again, Sainte-Engence! Two lancers! Less than a mile from here! Still lying there! In a plowed field! The war's over for them, eh, Sainte-Engence? ... A double thrust! Beautiful! I bet they spilled their guts like rabbits!"
    Lieutenant de Sainte-Engence, whose horse had galloped a long way, received his comrades' compliments with modesty. Now that Ortolan had authenticated his exploit, his mind was at rest, so he rode off some distance and cooled off his mare by circling slowly around the assembled squadron as if he were just coming in from a steeplechase.
    "We must send another patrol over there!" cried Captain Ortolan. "Immediately!" He was terribly excited. "Those two poor devils must have been lost to come this way, but there must be more behind them ... Ah, Corporal Bardamu. Go take a look, you and your four men!"
    The captain was talking to me.
    "And when they fire at you, try to make a note of their position and come right back and tell me where they are! They must be Brandenburgers! ..."
    The regular army men told me that in peacetime this Captain Ortolan hardly ever showed up for duty. Now that a war was on, he made up for it. He was indefatigable. His vigor and verve, even among all those other lunatics, were getting more unbelievable from day to day. It was rumored that he sniffed cocaine. Pale, rings under his eyes, always dashing around on his fragile legs ... Whenever he set foot on the ground, he'd stagger at first but then he'd get hold of himself and stride angrily over the furrowed fields in search of some new feat of daring. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd sent us to get a light from the muzzles of the enemy's guns. He was in cahoots with death. I'd have sworn they had a contract, death and Captain Ortolan.
    He'd spent the first part of his life (I had made it my business to find out) breaking his ribs in horse shows several times a year. And his legs, because of also being broken and not being used for walking, had lost their calves. When he walked, it was with nervous, pigeon-toed steps, as though walking on eggs. Seeing him in his enormous greatcoat, stooped over in the rain, you'd have taken him for the phantom hindquarters of a race horse. It needs to be said, though, that at the start of that monstrous enterprise, during the month of August and through September, certain hours, whole days now and then, certain stretches of road and parts of forest were still propitious to the doomed ... In those places you could toy with the illusion that you were more or less safe, you could finish eating your bread and bully beef without being too much plagued by the foreboding that this was the last time. But from October on there were no more of these little lulls, the hail fell thicker and sharper and faster, spiced with shot and shell. Soon we'd be at the heart of the storm, and the very thing we were trying not to see, our death, would be so close to our noses that we couldn't see anything else.
    The night, which had terrified us at first, seemed almost pleasant by comparison. In the end we longed for the night and waited for it. It was harder for them to shoot at us then than in the daytime. That was the only difference that counted.
    It's hard to face the facts, even in connection with war the imagination holds its own for a long time.
    Cats who've been threatened by fire for too long end up by jumping