Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos (books to read to be successful txt) 📕

The girl slapped his head good-naturedly.

At that moment a man stamped noisily into the cafe, a tall broad-shouldered man in a loose English tunic, who had a swinging swagger that made the glasses ring on all the tables. He was humming under his breath and there was a grin on his broad red face. He went up to the girl and pretended to kiss her, and she laughed and talked familiarly with him in French.

“There’s wild Dan Cohan,” said the dark-haired sergeant. “Say, Dan, Dan.”

“Here, yer honor.”

“Come over and have a drink. We’re going to have some fizzy.”

“Never known to refuse.”

They made room for him on the bench.

“Well, I’m confined to barracks,” said Dan Cohan. “Look at me!” He laughed and gave his head a curious swift jerk to one side. “Compree?”

“Ain’t ye scared they’ll nab you?” said Fuselli.

“Nab me, hell, they can’t do nothin’ to me. I’ve had three court-martials already and they’re gettin’ a fourth up on me.”

Dan Cohan pushed his head to one side and laughed. “I got a friend. My old boss is captain, and he’s goin’ to fix it up. I used to alley around politics chez moy. Compree?”

The champagne came and Dan Cohan popped the cork up to the ceiling with dexterous red fingers.

“I was just wondering who was going to give me a drink,” he said. “Ain’t had any pay since Christ was a corporal. I’ve forgotten what it looks like.”

The champagne fizzed into the beer-glasses.

“This is the life,” said Fuselli.

“Ye’re damn right, buddy, if yer don’t let them ride yer,” said Dan.

“What they got yer up for now, Dan?”

“Murder.”

“Murder, hell! How’s that?”

“That is, if that bloke dies.”

“The hell you say!”

“It all started by that goddam convoy down from Nantes…Bill Rees an’ me…. They called us the shock troops.—Hy! Marie! Ancore champagne, beaucoup.—I was in the Ambulance service then. God knows what rotten service I’m in now…. Our section was on repo and they sent some of us fellers down to Nantes to fetch a convoy of cars back to Sandrecourt. We started out like regular racers, just the chassis, savey? Bill Rees an’ me was the goddam tail of the peerade. An’ the loot was a hell of a blockhead that didn’t know if he was coming or going.”

“Where the hell’s Nantes?” asked the top sergeant, as if it had just slipped his mind.

“On the coast,” answered Fuselli. “I seen it on the map.”

“Nantes’s way off to hell and gone anyway,” said wild Dan Cohan, taking a gulp of champagne that he held in his mouth a moment, making his mouth move like a cow ruminating.

“An’ as Bill Rees an’ me was the tail of the peerade an’ there was lots of cafes and little gin-mills, Bill Rees an’ me’d stop off every now and then to have a little drink an’ say ‘Bonjour’ to the girls an’ talk to the people, an’ then we’d go like a bat out of hell to catch up. Well, I don’t know if we went too fast for ‘em or if they lost the road or what, but we never saw that goddam convoy from the time we went out of Nantes. Then we thought we might as well see a bit of the country, compree?… An’ we did, goddam it…. We landed up in Orleans, soused to the gills and without any gas an’ with an M. P; climbing up on the dashboard.”

“Did they nab you, then?”

“Not a bit of it,” said wild Dan Cohen, jerking his head to one side. “They gave us gas and commutation of rations an’ told us to go on in the mornin’. You see we put up a good line of talk, compree?… Well, we went to the swankiest restaurant…. You see we had on those bloody British uniforms they gave us when the O. D. gave out, an’ the M. P.‘s didn’t know just what sort o’ birds we were. So we went and ordered up a regular meal an’ lots o’ vin rouge an’ vin blank an’ drank a few cognacs an’ before we knew it we were eating dinner with two captains and a sergeant. One o’ the captains was the drunkest man I ever did see…. Good kid! We all had dinner and Bill Rees says, ‘Let’s go for a joy-ride.’ An’ the captains says, ‘Fine,’ and the sergeant would have said, ‘Fine,’ but he was so goggle-eyed drunk he couldn’t. An’ we started off!… Say, fellers, I’m dry as hell! Let’s order up another bottle.”

“Sure,” said everyone.

“Ban swar, ma cherie, Comment allez vous?”

“Encore champagne, Marie, gentille!”

“Well,” he went on, “we went like a bat out of hell along a good state road, and it was all fine until one of the captains thought we ought to have a race. We did…. Compree? The flivvers flivved all right, but the hell of it was we got so excited about the race we forgot about the sergeant an’ he fell off an’ nobody missed him. An’ at last we all pull up before a gin-mill an’ one captain says, ‘Where’s the sergeant?’ an’ the other captain says there hadn’t been no sergeant. An’ we all had a drink on that. An’ one captain kept sayin’, ‘It’s all imagination. Never was a sergeant. I wouldn’t associate with a sergeant, would I, lootenant?’ He kept on calling me lootenant…. Well that was how they got this new charge against me. Somebody picked up the sergeant an’ he got concussion o’ the brain an’ there’s hell to pay, an’ if the poor buggar croaks…. I’m it…. Compree? About that time the captains start wantin’ to go to Paris, an’ we said we’d take ‘em, an’ so we put all the gas in my car an’ the four of us climbed on that goddam chassis an’ off we went like a bat out of hell! It’ld all have been fine if I wasn’t lookin’ cross-eyed…. We piled up in about two minutes on one of those nice little stone piles an’ there we were. We all got up an’ one o’ the captains had his arm broke, an’ there was hell to pay, worse than losing the sergeant. So we walked on down the road. I don’t know how it got to be daylight. But we got to some hell of a town or other an’ there was two M. P.‘s all ready to meet us…. Compree?… Well, we didn’t mess around with them captains. We just lit off down a side street an’ got into a little cafe an’ went in back an’ had a hell of a lot o’ cafe o’ lay. That made us feel sort o’ good an’ I says to Bill, ‘Bill, we’ve got to get to headquarters an’ tell ‘em that we accidentally smashed up our car, before the M. P.‘s get busy.’ An’ he says, ‘You’re goddamned right,’ an’ at that minute I sees an M. P. through a crack in the door comin’ into the cafe. We lit out into the garden and made for the wall. We got over that, although we left a good piece of my pants in the broken glass. But the hell of it was the M. P.‘s got over too an’ they had their pop-guns out. An’ the last I saw of Bill Rees was—there was a big fat woman in a pink dress washing clothes in a big tub, an’ poor ole Bill Rees runs head on into her an’ over they both goes into the washtub. The M. P.‘s got him all right. That’s how I got away. An’ the last I saw of Bill Rees he was squirming about on top of the washtub like he was swimmin’, an’ the fat woman was sittin’ on the ground shaking her fist at him. Bill Rees was the best buddy I ever had.”

He paused and poured the rest of the champagne in his glass and wiped the sweat off his face with his big red hand.

“You ain’t stringin’ us, are you?” asked Fuselli.

“You just ask Lieutenant Whitehead, who’s defending me in the court-martial, if I’m stringin’ yer. I been in the ring, kid, and you can bet your bottom dollar that a man’s been in the ring’ll tell the truth.”

“Go on, Dan,” said the sergeant.

“An’ I never heard a word about Bill Rees since. I guess they got him into the trenches and made short work of him.”

Dan Cohan paused to light a cigarette.

“Well, one o’ the M. P.‘s follows after me and starts shootin’. An’ don’t you believe I ran. Gee, I was scared! But I was in luck ‘cause a Frenchman had just started his camion an’ I jumped in and said the gendarmes were after me. He was white, that frog was. He shot the juice into her an’ went off like a bat out of hell an’ there was a hell of a lot of traffic on the road because there was some damn-fool attack or other goin’ on. So I got up to Paris…. An’ then it’ld all have been fine if I hadn’t met up with a Jane I knew. I still had five hundred francs on me, an’ so we raised hell until one day we was havin’ dinner in the cafe de Paris, both of us sort of jagged up, an’ we didn’t have enough money to pay the bill an’ Janey made a run for it, but an M. P. got me an’ then there was hell to pay…. Compree? They put me in the Bastille, great place…. Then they shipped me off to some damn camp or other an’ gave me a gun an’ made me drill for a week an’ then they packed a whole gang of us, all A. W. O. L’s, into a train for the front. That was nearly the end of little Daniel again. But when we was in Vitry-le-Francois, I chucked my rifle out of one window and jumped out of the other an’ got on a train back to Paris an’ went an’ reported to headquarters how I’d smashed the car an’ been in the Bastille an’ all, an’ they were sore as hell at the M. P.‘s an’ sent me out to a section an’ all went fine until I got ordered back an’ had to alley down to this goddam camp. Ah’ now I don’t know what they’re goin’ to do to me.”

“Gee whiz!”

“It’s a great war, I tell you, Sarge. It’s a great war. I wouldn’t have missed it.”

Across the room someone was singing.

“Let’s drown ‘em out,” said the top sergeant boisterously.

“O Mademerselle from Armenteers, Parley voo?”

“Well, I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” said wild Dan Cohan, after a minute. “I’ve got a Jane waitin’ for me. I’m all fixed up,… Compree?”

He swaggered out singing:

“Bon soir, ma cherie, Comment alley vous? Si vous voulez Couche avec moi….”

The door slammed behind him, leaving the cafe quiet.

Many men had left. Madame had taken up her knitting and Marie of the plump white arms sat beside her, leaning her head back among the bottles that rose in tiers behind the bars.

Fuselli was staring at a door on one side of the bar. Men kept opening it and looking in and closing it again with a peculiar expression on their faces. Now and then someone would open it with a smile and go into the next room, shuffling his feet and closing the door carefully behind him.

“Say, I wonder what they’ve got there,” said the top sergeant, who had been staring at the door. “Mush be looked into, mush be looked into,” he added, laughing drunkenly.

“I dunno,” said Fuselli. The