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.
‘All right,’ Picklock said. ‘Get it inside. One of you get the hammer out of the lorry.’ Luckily their orders had been not to drive the nails home but merely to secure the lid temporarily (apparently the body was to be transferred to something a little more elegant or anyway commensurate with its purpose when it reached Paris) so they could draw them without difficulty. Which they did and removed the lid and then recoiled from the thin burst, gout of odor which rushed up at them almost visibly, like thin smoke—one last faint thin valedictory of corruption and mortality, as if the corpse itself had hoarded it for three years against this moment or any similar one with the gleeful demonic sentience of a small boy. Then the old woman returned, clasping two bottles against her breast, still running or at least trotting, panting now, shaking, almost as though from physical exhaustion because she couldn’t even climb the steps when she reached the door, so that two of them dropped to the ground and lifted her bodily into the carriage. A third one took the bottles from her, though she didn’t seem to notice it. For a second or so she couldn’t even seem to see the coffin. Then she saw it and half knelt half collapsed at the head of it and turned the tarpaulin back from what had been a face. They—the speaker—had been right; she could have told nothing from the face because it was no longer man. Then they knew that she was not even looking at it: just kneeling there, one hand resting on what had been the face and the other caressing what remained of its hair. She said:
‘Yes. Yes. This is Theodule. This is my son.’ Suddenly she rose, strongly now, and faced them, pressing back against the coffin, looking rapidly from face to face until she found Picklock; her voice was calm and strong too. ‘I must have him.’
‘You said just to look at him,’ Picklock said.
‘He is my son. He must go home. I have money. I will buy you a hundred bottles of brandy. Or the money itself, if you want it.’
‘How much will you give?’ Picklock said. She didn’t even hesitate. She handed him the unopened reticule.
‘Count it yourself,’ she said.
‘But how are you going to get it—him away from here? You cant carry it.’
