1914 by Jean Echenoz Read Free Book Online Page A

Anthime, and some dogs on leashes or on the loose.
    One of those strays, in the excitement of its sexual arousal by another mutt across the street on the Quai de la Fosse, ran clumsily into a wheel of the baby carriage, which teetered threateningly for an instant until a swift kick from Blanche’s high heel sent the culprit off squealing. After making sure that the young woman had the situation in hand and that his niece had not awakened, Anthime watched the woebegone animal—now tacking from one curb to the other, its erection maintained but useless now that its heart’s desire had vanished during the carriage incident—until it disappeared at the corner of the Rue de la Verrerie.

12
    A NIMALS, WELL, A NTHIME HAD seen a lot of them, of all sorts, during those five hundred days. Because although war prefers cities—besieging, invading, bombing, burning—it is waged in large part in the countryside as well, where beasts are simply a given.
    First off, the useful animals: those one works or eats or both, currently abandoned by peasants fleeing their farms turned into combat zones, their buildings ablaze, their fields cratered by shells, their poultry and livestock left behind. In theory, the territorial soldiers were responsible for rounding up these creatures, but that was easier said than done with unclaimed cattle, soon eager to return to a wild state that quickly turned them touchy, especially the bulls, vindictive and impossible to catch. Nor was it a small job for the territorials, eventhose with a rural background, to gather all the sheep gone roaming along roads in ruins, the wandering pigs, the ducks, chickens, and roosters left to their own devices, the rabbits without any fixed domicile.
    These now itinerant species could at least serve, on occasion, to vary the monotonous diet of the troops. Wine was no longer a problem, since it was now widely distributed by the quartermaster corps along with brandy, for the high command was increasingly convinced that inebriating its soldiers helped bolster their courage and, above all, reduce their awareness of their condition. A chance encounter one fine day with a disoriented goose, on the other hand, made a small change from yesterday’s bread, cold soup, and tinned beef, and every animal so recuperated thus became a potential feast. Sometimes, driven by hunger and professionally assisted by Padioleau, who enjoyed exercising his butchering skills, Arcenel and Bossis would even carve a few ribs out of a living ox, then leave him to manage on his own. Foragers went so far as to slaughter and devour without qualm idle, bewildered horses, now deprived of their purpose in life, in any case, and upset atno longer having barges to haul along the canal of the Meuse River.
    It wasn’t just serviceable and edible animals that the men ran into now and then, however. They met up with more familiar ones as well, domestic and even decorative animals that were even more used to their creature comforts: cats and dogs left ownerless after the civilian exodus, without collars or the tiniest daily guaranteed saucer of food, gradually forgetting even the names they’d been given. There were caged birds as well, household pets such as turtledoves, even lawn ornaments like peacocks, for example, which no one ordinarily eats and anyway, given their lousy dispositions and hopeless narcissism, they had no chance whatsoever of pulling through on their own. In general, the military did not spontaneously come up with the idea of dining off that last category of animals, at least in the beginning. It might so happen, though, that soldiers would decide to keep one for company, sometimes for only a few days, and adopt a cat they found wandering in a communication trench as a company mascot.
    On the other hand, cavorting around or burrowedin outside the fixed, static, bogged-down ground plan of the trenches, there were wild animals too, and that was an entirely different