168
PARTISAN REVIEW
A: Then we'll suddenly notice that somehow they
(the
same gesture)
will have all disappeared.
Q:
Where are you yourself going?
A: Across the Loire. To join my section
(the young soldier laughed )
or
further. What do I know?
Q:
Have you lost your section?
A: I lost it or it lost me-who can tell? We lost all our officers. They
went home in a hurry to get their women
(again the same gesture).
And there they scuttle
(les v'la qui fichent le camp, les salauds).
Q:
Do you have enough gasoline?
A: Enough to get home with.
Q:
Where do you come from?
A: Corsica. I lost everything on the way, my gun too. We haven't eaten
for three days-the field kitchen didn't even have coffee. But there's
one thing I won't lose, this thing here
(he slapped his motorcycle).
Q:
Would you like a cigarette?
A: Very much. I haven't smoked one since yesterday. And the German
planes always over our heads. And not one French pla11e. I tell you,
there are no French fliers.
On n'a jamais ete si trahi--pauvre France!
We drove further, ten yards at a time. During one of the repeated
machine gun attacks
by
German planes, we came across three young girls
with their bicycles in a ditch
by
the side of the road where we
had
stretched
ourselves out.
Q:
Where do you come from?
A: Belleville, Menilmuche, Gros Cailloux
(three working-class and petty
bourgeois districts of Paris, the second of which is called Menilmon·
tant, but in argot, Menilmuche) .
Q:
Are you tired?
A: Not a bit, only dirty.
(The girls were not at all dirty, but they
had
been unable to put on make-up.)
Q:
Are you friends?
A: We first got to know each other after Montlery. The Germans born·
barded the place, and we lay in the fields together three hours, just
like here. After that we traveled together.
Q:
Where on earth are you going?
A: Makes no difference.
Q:
Why?
A: Ah bah! what can you do in Panama
(argot for Paris)?
Q:
What did you use to do there?
A:
(l)
I was a stock girl at Valrose's (a fashionable dress shop); they
would have given me the gate anyway. And then-the Boches are
there. (2) Salesgirl in the Galeries Lafayette. To hell with it! (3)
Cashier in a cafe in Montmartre. They didn't fire me, but I got out
anyway,
tant pis!
