The Red Collar Read Online Free PDF Page B

been to pass the time.
    â€œSalonika,” he said, not looking up from his work, “was a strange place.”
    He’d made a plump cigarette and was flattening it between fingers blackened by manual labor.
    â€œI’ve never seen so many different people. French, English, Italian, Greek, Serbian, Senegalese, Annamite, Armenian, Albanian, Turkish . . . ”
    â€œBut it was mostly the French in command of the expeditionary force, wasn’t it?”
    â€œIn command! In command of what, that’s what I’d like to know. No one spoke the same language. No one knew what he was meant to be doing or where he was meant to be going. And down in the port was worse than anywhere else. In all that mess, a dog had nothing to worry about at all. It was heaven, even. Piles of garbage on the quay, carcasses of every sort of animal rotting in the sun, people sitting on the ground to eat and throwing bones and peelings behind them: He didn’t even have to chase rats anymore.”
    â€œBut you didn’t stay in the port?” Lantier asked.
    â€œWell, yes, for a few days, until everything was unloaded by ancient cranes that kept breaking down. The officers fussed around on their horses. Headquarters sent orders and counterorders. Nobody understood a thing.”
    â€œThen were you transferred to Salonika itself?”
    â€œAnd how! They made us parade through the city, with music and flags. We liked it because it was a beautiful place, at least around the center. There were wide avenues with palm trees, and plane trees. But afterwards we had to go through the filthy suburbs, and eventually we were out in the country, marching northwards. The marching raised these hellish clouds of dust that never settled. Mind you, when you go to war in the infantry you have to be prepared to put up with everything.”
    He looked away as he said this, as if to hide his distress. All at once Lantier felt very close to him. He was assailed by jumbled images of endless marching and exhausting watches, memories of appalling fear, hunger, cold and thirst. During the ensuing silence, he got the impression the other man was shuddering.
    â€œWell, anyway,” Morlac concluded, “let’s say it was hot.”
    He took a long drag on his cigarette.
    â€œThere was a large camp on the plain to the north of the city. It was well organized but we only passed through. Every time we arrived somewhere we thought it was over, that we’d be setting up camp. But we always set off again and always heading north. The terrain was getting more and more mountainous, the tracks were full of stones, and we had to heave our equipment up through all that. We could see what they were doing: It was going to be the front for us.”
    â€œWas the front far from Salonika?”
    â€œWhat did we know when we set out? Luckily, there were boys coming back down who told us about the fighting. It was only thanks to them that we knew Serbia had given in and was occupied by the Austrians and the Bulgarians, and we were going up there to try to take it back. We found this out by chance, in snatches, and there were plenty of rumors thrown in too. We couldn’t tell the truth from the lies. In Salonika we’d heard talk of a spring offensive. We eventually realized it had been delayed and would be starting now. It was going to depend directly on us. That’s why everyone already knew what to expect when we were sent to the front line.”
    The evening meal had arrived. It was prepared at the hospital with the food for the sick, and a nurse’s aide delivered four servings in a can to the prison: two for the prisoner and two for Dujeux. The jailer was mortified disturbing the officer, but he felt that a meal was genuinely more important: He liked to eat his food hot and, until the prisoner was served, he had orders not to touch his own meal. Lantier suspended his questioning and left the prison, promising himself he