"It'll be necessary to make everything over again. Very well, we'll do it. The house? Gone. The garden? Nowhere. All right, we'll rebuild the house, we'll remake the garden. The less there is the more we'll make over again. After all, it's life, and we're made to remake, eh? And we'll remake our life together, and happiness. We'll make the days again; we'll remake the nights.
"And the other side, too. They'll make their world again. Do you know what I say?—perhaps it won't be as long as one thinks—"
"Tiens! I can see Madeleine Vandaert marrying another chap. She's a widow; but, old man, she's been a widow eighteen months. Do you think it's not a big slice, that, eighteen months? They even leave off wearing mourning, I believe, about that time! People don't remember that when they say 'What a strumpet she is,' and when, in effect, they ask her to commit suicide. But mon vieux, one forgets. One is forced to forget. It isn't the people that make you forget; you do it yourself; it's just forgetfulness, mind you. I find Madeleine again all of a sudden, and to see her frivvling there it broke me up as much as if her husband had been killed yesterday—it's natural. But it's a devil of a long time since he got spiked, poor lad. It's a long time since, it's too long since. People are no longer the same. But, mark you, one must come back, one must be there! We shall be there, and we shall be busy with beginning again!"
On the way, he looks and winks, cheered up by finding a peg on which to hang his ideas. He says—"I can see it from here, after the war, all the Souchez people setting themselves again to work and to life—what a business! Tiens, Papa Ponce, for example, the back-number! He was so pernickety that you could see him sweeping the grass in his garden with a horsehair brush, or kneeling on his lawn and trimming the turf with a pair of scissors. Very well, he'll treat himself to that again! And Madame Imaginaire, that lived in one of the last houses towards the Chateau de Carleul, a large woman who seemed to roll along the ground as if she'd got casters under her big circular petticoats. She had a child every year, regular, punctual—a proper machine-gun of kids. Very well, she'll take that occupation up again with all her might."
He stops and ponders, and smiles a very little—almost within himself: "Tiens, I'll tell you; I noticed—it isn't very important, this," he insists, as though suddenly embarrassed by the triviality of this parenthesis—"but I noticed (you notice it in a glance when you're noticing something else) that it was cleaner in our house than in my time—"
We come on some little rails in the ground, climbing almost hidden in the withered grass underfoot. Poterloo points out with his foot this bit of abandoned track, and smiles; "That, that's our railway. It was a cripple, as you may say; that means something that doesn't move. It didn't work very quickly. A snail could have kept pace with it. We shall remake it. But certainly it won't go any quicker. That can't be allowed!"
When we reached the top of the hill, Poterloo turned round and threw a last look over the slaughtered places that we had just visited. Even more than a minute ago, distance recreated the village across the remains of trees shortened and sliced that now looked like young saplings. Better even than just now, the sun shed on that white and red accumulation of mingled material an appearance of life and even an illusion of meditation. Its very stones seemed to feel the vernal revival. The beauty of sunshine heralded what would be, and revealed the future. The face of the watching soldier, too, shone with a glamour of reincarnation, and the smile on it was born of the springtime and of hope. His rosy cheeks and blue eyes seemed brighter than ever.
We go down into the communication trench and there is sunshine there. The trench is yellow, dry, and resounding. I admire its finely geometrical depth, its shovel-smoothed and shining flanks; and I find it enjoyable to hear the clean sharp sound of our feet on the hard ground or on the caillebotis—little gratings of wood, placed end to end and forming a plankway.
I look at my watch. It tells me that it is nine o'clock, and it shows me, too, a dial of delicate color where the sky is reflected in rose-pink and blue, and the fine fret-work of bushes that are planted there above the marges of the trench.
And Poterloo and I look at each other with a kind of confused delight. We are glad to see each other, as though we were meeting after absence! He speaks to me, and though I am quite familiar with the singsong accent of the North, I discover that he is singing.