No More Parades_ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [100]
The general said:
'Well. Has he?'
Tietjens said:
'I didn't catch, sir!'
'Are you deaf?' the general asked. 'I'm sure I speak plain enough. You've just said there are no horses attached to this camp. I asked you if there is not a horse for the colonel commanding the depot...A German horse, I understand!'
Tietjens said to himself:
'Great heavens! I've been talking to him. What in the world about?' It was as if his mind were falling off a hillside. He said:
'Yes, sir...Schomburg. But as that's a German prisoner, captured on the Marne, it is not on our strength. It is the private property of the colonel. I ride it myself...'
The general exclaimed dryly:
'You would...' He added more dryly still: 'Are you aware that there is a hell of a strafe put in against you by a R.A.S.C. second-lieutenant called Hotchkiss?...'
Tietjens said quickly:
'If it's over Schomburg, sir...it's a washout. Lieutenant Hotchkiss has no more right to give orders about him than as to where I shall sleep...And I would rather die than subject any horse for which I am responsible to the damnable torture Hotchkiss and that swine Lord Beichan want to inflict on service horses...'
The general said maleficently:
'It looks as if you damn well will die on that account!'
He added: 'You're perfectly right to object to wrong treatment of horses. But in this case your objection blocks the only other job open to you.' He quietened himself a little. 'You are probably not aware,' he went on, 'that your brother Mark...'
Tietjens said:
'Yes, I am aware...'
The general said: 'Do you know that the 19th Division to which your brother wants you sent is attached to Fourth Army now--and it's Fourth Army horses that Hotchkiss is to play with?...How could I send you there to be under his orders?'
Tietjens said:
'That's perfectly correct, sir. There is nothing else that you can do...' He was finished. There was now nothing left but to find out how his mind was going to take it. He wished they could go to his cook-houses!
The general said:
'What was I saying?...I'm dreadfully tired...No one could stand this...' He drew from inside his tunic a lapis-lazuli coloured, small be-coroneted note-case and selected from it a folded paper that he first looked at and then slipped between his belt and his tunic. He said: 'On top of all the responsibility I have to bear!' He asked: 'Has it occurred to you that, if I'm of any service to the country, your taking up my energy--sapping my energy over your affairs!--is aiding your country's enemies?...I can only afford four hours sleep as it is...I've got some questions to ask you...He referred to the slip of paper from his belt, folded it again and again slipped it into his belt.
Tietjens' mind missed a notch again...It was the fear of the mud that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under heavy fire in mud...You would think that that would not have obsessed him. But in his ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper of intense weariness, the words: Es ist nicht zu ertragen; es ist das dasz uns verloren hat...words in German, of utter despair, meaning: It is unbearable: it is that that has ruined us...The mud!...He had heard those words, standing amidst volcano craters of mud, amongst ravines, monstrosities of slime, cliffs and distances, all of slime...He had been going, for curiosity or instruction, from Verdun where he had been attached to the French--on a holiday afternoon when nothing was doing, with a guide, to visit one of the outlying forts...Deaumont?...No, Douaumont...Taken from the enemy about a week before...When would that be? He had lost all sense of chronology...In November...A beginning of some November...With a miracle of sunshine: not a cloud: the mud towering up shut you in intimately with a sky that ached for limpidity...And the slime had moved...following a French bombardier who was strolling along eating nuts, disreputably, his shoulders rolling...Déserteurs...The moving slime was German deserters...You could not see them: the leader of them--an officer!--had his glasses so thick with mud that you could not see the colour of his eyes, and his half-dozen decorations were like the beginnings of swallows' nests, his beard like stalactites...Of the other men you could only see the eyes--extraordinarily vivid: mostly blue like the sky!...Deserters! Led by an officer! Of the Hamburg Regiment! As if an officer of the Buffs had gone over!...It was incredible...And that was what the officer had said as he passed: not shamefacedly, but without any humanity left in him...Done!...Those moving saurians compacted of slime kept on passing him afterwards, all the afternoon...And he could not help picturing their immediate antecedents for two months...In advanced pill-boxes...No, they didn't have pill-boxes then...In advanced pockets of mud, in dreadful solitude amongst those ravines...suspended in eternity, at the last day of the world. And it had horribly shocked him to hear again the German language, a rather soft voice, a little suety...Like an obscene whisper...The voice obviously of the damned: hell could hold nothing curious for those poor beasts...His French guide had said sardonically: On dirait l'Inferno de Dante!...Well, those Germans were getting back on him. They were now to become an obsession! A complex, they said nowadays...The general said coolly: