1914

Of medium height with an ordinary face, rarely smiling, sporting a mustache like just about all the men of his generation, twenty-three years old, wearing his new uniform with no more panache than he had in his everyday clothes, Anthime had intended to go speak to Charles: twenty-seven, no less poker-faced and mustached but more dashing, taller, more slender, turning his composed and icy gaze upon the world, apparently more bent than ever on remaining cool and distant, refusing to acknowledge anyone at all of lesser status, and doubtless Anthime in particular. Who therefore decided to forget it and rejoined his companions, if only to calm down Bossis, who was grumbling about his pants. Turning anyway to look back at Charles, Anthime saw him extract a cigar from a case he seemed about to slip back into his pocket but instead, pausing, he selected another cigar and offered it discreetly to the closest officer. Then Anthime watched him photograph that officer the way he had been photographing, for months now, everything he could get his hands on, perfecting his skills in that department to the point of having recently seen some of his pictures published in magazines like Le Miroir and L’Illustration, which accepted material from amateurs.

In the days that followed, everything moved fairly swiftly at the barracks. After the arrival of the last reservists, the territorials came in, nonprofessional soldiers organized on a local basis for home defense, old fellows between thirty-four and forty-nine years of age who were immediately called upon to stand drinks all around, and indeed, from Monday to Thursday those rounds came one after the other at a fast clip: by the end of the evening, everyone was somewhat the worse for wear. Then matters took a more serious turn when the squadrons were made up: Anthime found himself assigned to the 11th Squadron of the 10th Company, going up the chain to the 93rd Infantry Regiment, the 42nd Infantry Brigade, the 21st Infantry Division, and the 11th Army Corps of the 5th Army. Serial number 4221. The ammunition was distributed with the iron rations[3]—the emergency food supplies—and that evening, everyone again hit the bottle pretty hard. The next day was when they began to feel like soldiers: in the morning, the regiment drilled in formation for the first time, then passed in review before the colonel on the barracks square and paraded through the town that afternoon, since it was not yet time for them to leave on the troop train.

It was rather fun, that parade, with each man trying to walk tall in his uniform and look straight ahead. The 93rd marched along the avenue and then the main streets, lined by townspeople who weren’t stingy with their tossed flowers, cheers, and shouts of encouragement. Charles had of course wangled himself a spot in the front line of the procession; Anthime was in the middle of the regiment, grouped with Bossis, still ill at ease in his trousers, along with Arcenel, complaining constantly about his rear end, and Padioleau, whose mother had had time to take in the greatcoat at the shoulders and shorten the sleeves. As Anthime marched along trading muttered jokes with his pals, trying all the while to keep stepping out smartly, he thought he noticed Blanche on the left sidewalk of the avenue. At first he took her for a lookalike but then, no, it was she, Blanche, all dressed up in a lightweight pink skirt and summery mauve blouse. To protect herself from the sun she was sheltering under a big black umbrella while the troop was sweating along in cadence in their new kepis, quite tight at the temples, plus the knapsack strapped on according to regulations and which, that first day, did not weigh too heavily yet on the collarbones.

As he’d expected, Anthime had first seen Blanche smile proudly at Charles’s martial bearing and then, as he drew abreast of her in turn, he was not a little surprised when she gave him a different kind of smile, more serious and even, he felt, a trifle more emotional, pronounced, sustained, well who knows, exactly. He had neither seen nor tried to see how Charles—with his back to him, in any case—had reacted to her smile but he, Anthime, had responded only with a look, the shortest and longest one possible, forcing himself to invest it with the least amount of expression while at the same time suggesting the maximum: a novel approach, doubly paradoxical this time and which, as he strove to keep in step, was no small undertaking. After they’d filed past Blanche, Anthime preferred not to look at any more people.