MARS
519
familiar terrain and soon found themselves in that part of the
Ar–
dennes Forest where he had had a different experience of war, as
a cook and waiter, carrying the evening wine from the ruined terrace
to the soldiers at their orgies. He saw himself, he was standing before
the magic mirror of his past, and suddenly he touched the glass.
It
was the evening on which he returned from the valley and
slowly climbed the hill to the chateau. The house was so wreathed
with bluish ribbons which floated through the night sky that he
could not tell whether it was a natural phenomenon-St. Elmo's fire
or sheet lightning-or searchlights, flares, the errant smile of war, that
lit up the rows of windows and made the chalk-white panels of the
folding doors visible from top to bottom. No light came from within;
as usual, the heavy damask curtains were drawn for fear of planes,
and the evening was being passed by the light of candles, which
were plentiful. It may have been due to this that the house looked
uninhabited, abandoned, and all the more ghostly as wisps of military
music seeped through its walls. The stone nymphs, mysteriously beau–
tiful even in their mutilation, were marvelously alive-one even
stepped forth from their circle and leaned her disheveled head against
the livid wall. She was a young peasant woman whose husband had
died on the field of Flanders. He himself knew her slightly; no
better, however, than he did any of the others who came and went
every night. She looked at
him,
exhausted, and the sight of her weak–
ness inflamed him. He rushed toward her and when she, ready at
once, ripped the shirt from her shoulders, he saw that like the nymphs
she too was no longer intact, but had been wounded in the embrace
of Mars. He gripped her hair and bent her head back-the cords
of her neck sprang out sharply and gleamed with light sweat. She
screamed twice, three times, briefly and wildly, in the dark, threw
herself against him and drove him toward the steps, wedging her leg
between his knees so that he foundered and fell backward. In the
flickering light, now closer, he saw her face with the spade-like teeth
hovering passionately over him. He grasped both her shoulders and
tried. to draw her down-but suddenly the folding doors swung open
and drunken officers who must have heard the fall surrounded them,
shouting....
Confound it-he heard them laugh and scold him for his care–
lessness. The squares on the map wavered before his eyes, while he
