said to himself.
He realized his sorry state. Down below, beneath his feet, beneath the spit—he spat on the trees—was the ground where Frenchmen could circulate, though they had to be somewhat careful.
“All the same, they're my brothers.”
In order to think, he used the word “brothers,” which belongs to the sentimental language of hoodlums. He felt that this thought was the center, the ideal point of his solitude. Although it lost some precision in revolving, it remained at the origin of his discouraging situation.
The following took shape around it: “I've abandoned my brothers, my family, my friends. I run around. I run in the streets. I escape to the roofs. I kill Frenchmen whenever I can. They try to kill me. I shoot at everything that served me. This evening I ought to serve for love's sake. I've sided with the monsters, with the Kings. I'm going to be killed, I'm a traitor. I'm already an outcast and condemned. I'm alone on the bridge of a sinking ship. The whole city hates me. The stones, the walls, the railing on which I'm leaning can come loose and kill me. I'm at home in a foreign country. This apartment is anenemy's, the home of a Frenchman with whom I went to school. I'm losing the benefit of all the games, of all the girls. I'm alone. My mother wants to pick me off. She's aiming at one of my eyes. I'm fighting for Germany.” As a result of revolving and thereby showing all its sides, which the speed blurred, the initial remark had become as dim as a top, light as a trail of mist, and, as the speed of the whirling made it disappear, Riton was conscious for a moment only of his solitude, of his height on the balcony. His right arm pressed his black, intelligent, crafty machine gun against his hip. He was holding it with one hand. With the other he stroked his torso, which felt lithe and fragile under its copper breastplate.
One morning, when the captain entered the militiamen's barracks before they were up, he held his nose and shouted:
“It reeks of modesty here!”
Riton thought, blushing:
“Maybe the modesty's me.”
“Eh!”
He jumped. He had thought someone was talking to him.
“I'm hearing voices. I'm like Joan of Arc.”
A girl may be a Maid, but she nevertheless has her periods. The evening before her execution, Joan put on the white robe of the doomed. The blood ran down her joined thighs. In the darkness of her cell, she washed herself gropingly in the bucket from which she drank. Having no other linen, she tore her shift to make a kind of pad, which she attached between her legs. While the left hand pulled up her white robe, the other one wrote sacred signs on the darkness, signs of the cross that merged with pentacles (or continued with them), with sketches of exorcisms. Weary, exhausted, panic-strickenby the blood that had been shed in the course of a tragedy in which the murderer and the victim remain invisible, she lay down on the straw. She modestly covered her legs with her robe and prayed, interspersing her invocations to God, Mary, and her saints with magical phrases addressed to the infernal spirits as she had been advised to do by the witches of Lorraine. She lay still, but as the pad did not stop the blood, the robe, which was already spotted with more or less definite stains and which sagged in the hollow of the prudently joined legs, was adorned in the middle with an enormous bloodstain. The following day, in the presence of the gilded bishops and the men-at-arms carrying satin banners and steel lances, Joan of Arc mounted the stake through a narrow opening between the faggots and stood exposed with that rusty rose at cunt level.
At eight o'clock, exactly when her mistress was waking up under the flowers, the little housemaid walked out by the freezing hospital amphitheater and into radiant sunlight. She walked behind the hearse. The priest had come running up. He was late, but he had come, for in villages the priest is always present at the removal of the body.
He realized his sorry state. Down below, beneath his feet, beneath the spit—he spat on the trees—was the ground where Frenchmen could circulate, though they had to be somewhat careful.
“All the same, they're my brothers.”
In order to think, he used the word “brothers,” which belongs to the sentimental language of hoodlums. He felt that this thought was the center, the ideal point of his solitude. Although it lost some precision in revolving, it remained at the origin of his discouraging situation.
The following took shape around it: “I've abandoned my brothers, my family, my friends. I run around. I run in the streets. I escape to the roofs. I kill Frenchmen whenever I can. They try to kill me. I shoot at everything that served me. This evening I ought to serve for love's sake. I've sided with the monsters, with the Kings. I'm going to be killed, I'm a traitor. I'm already an outcast and condemned. I'm alone on the bridge of a sinking ship. The whole city hates me. The stones, the walls, the railing on which I'm leaning can come loose and kill me. I'm at home in a foreign country. This apartment is anenemy's, the home of a Frenchman with whom I went to school. I'm losing the benefit of all the games, of all the girls. I'm alone. My mother wants to pick me off. She's aiming at one of my eyes. I'm fighting for Germany.” As a result of revolving and thereby showing all its sides, which the speed blurred, the initial remark had become as dim as a top, light as a trail of mist, and, as the speed of the whirling made it disappear, Riton was conscious for a moment only of his solitude, of his height on the balcony. His right arm pressed his black, intelligent, crafty machine gun against his hip. He was holding it with one hand. With the other he stroked his torso, which felt lithe and fragile under its copper breastplate.
One morning, when the captain entered the militiamen's barracks before they were up, he held his nose and shouted:
“It reeks of modesty here!”
Riton thought, blushing:
“Maybe the modesty's me.”
“Eh!”
He jumped. He had thought someone was talking to him.
“I'm hearing voices. I'm like Joan of Arc.”
A girl may be a Maid, but she nevertheless has her periods. The evening before her execution, Joan put on the white robe of the doomed. The blood ran down her joined thighs. In the darkness of her cell, she washed herself gropingly in the bucket from which she drank. Having no other linen, she tore her shift to make a kind of pad, which she attached between her legs. While the left hand pulled up her white robe, the other one wrote sacred signs on the darkness, signs of the cross that merged with pentacles (or continued with them), with sketches of exorcisms. Weary, exhausted, panic-strickenby the blood that had been shed in the course of a tragedy in which the murderer and the victim remain invisible, she lay down on the straw. She modestly covered her legs with her robe and prayed, interspersing her invocations to God, Mary, and her saints with magical phrases addressed to the infernal spirits as she had been advised to do by the witches of Lorraine. She lay still, but as the pad did not stop the blood, the robe, which was already spotted with more or less definite stains and which sagged in the hollow of the prudently joined legs, was adorned in the middle with an enormous bloodstain. The following day, in the presence of the gilded bishops and the men-at-arms carrying satin banners and steel lances, Joan of Arc mounted the stake through a narrow opening between the faggots and stood exposed with that rusty rose at cunt level.
At eight o'clock, exactly when her mistress was waking up under the flowers, the little housemaid walked out by the freezing hospital amphitheater and into radiant sunlight. She walked behind the hearse. The priest had come running up. He was late, but he had come, for in villages the priest is always present at the removal of the body.
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