The watch—I stop short—is it a fancy, a dream? It seems to me—yes, I am sure now—that three days ago, the night when we were so tired out, before I went to sleep I heard what sounded like the ticking of a watch and even wondered where it could come from.
"It was very likely that watch you heard all the same, through the earth," says Paradis, whom I have told some of my thoughts; "they go on thinking and turning round even when the chap stops. Damn, your own ticker doesn't know you—it just goes quietly on making little circles."
I asked, "There's blood on his hands; but where was he hit?"
"Don't know; in the belly, I think; I thought there was something dark underneath him. Or perhaps in the face—did you notice the little stain on the cheek?"
I recall the hairy and greenish face of the dead man. "Yes, there was something on the cheek. Yes, perhaps it went in there—"
"Look out!" says Paradis hurriedly, "there he is! We ought not to have stayed here."
But we stay all the same, irresolutely wavering, as Mesnil Joseph comes straight up to us. Never did he seem so frail to us. We can see his pallor afar off, his oppressed and unnatural expression; he is bowed as he walks, and goes slowly, borne down by endless fatigue and his immovable notion.
"What's the matter with your face?" he asks me—he has seen me point out to Paradis the possible entry of the bullet. I pretend not to understand and then make some kind of evasive reply. All at once I have a torturing idea—the smell! It is there, and there is no mistaking it. It reveals a corpse; and perhaps he will guess rightly.
It seems to me that he has suddenly smelt the sign—the pathetic, lamentable appeal of the dead. But he says nothing, continues his solitary walk, and disappears round the corner.
"Yesterday," says Paradis to me, "he came just here, with his mess-tin full of rice that he didn't want to eat. Just as if he knew what he was doing, the fool stops here and talks of pitching the rest of his food over the bank, just on the spot where—where the other was. I couldn't stick that, old chap. I grabbed his arm just as he chucked the rice into the air, and it flopped down here in the trench. Old man, he turned round on me in a rage and all red in the face, 'What the hell's up with you now?' he says. I looked as fat-headed as I could, and mumbled some rot about not doing it on purpose. He shrugs his shoulders, and looks at me same as if I was dirt. He goes off, saying to himself, 'Did you see him, the blockhead?' He's bad-tempered, you know, the poor chap, and I couldn't complain. 'All right, all right,' he kept saying; and I didn't like it, you know, because I did wrong all the time, although I was right."