IV
LE NOUVEAU
_"Vous ne voulez pas de cafe?"_
The threatening question recited in a hoarse voice woke me like a shot.
Sprawled half on and half off my _paillasse_, I looked suddenly up into a
juvenile pimply face with a red tassel bobbing in its eyes. A boy in a
Belgian uniform was stooping over me. In one hand a huge pail a third
full of liquid slime. I said fiercely: "_Au contraire, je veux bien._"
And collapsed on the mattress.
"_Pas de quart, vous?_" the face fired at me.
"_Comprends pas_," I replied, wondering what on earth the words meant.
"English?"
"American."
At this moment a tin cup appeared mysteriously out of the gloom and was
rapidly filled from the pail, after which operation the tassel remarked:
"Your friend here" and disappeared.
I decided I had gone completely crazy.
The cup had been deposited near me. Not daring to approach it, I boosted
my aching corpse on one of its futile elbows and gazed blankly around. My
eyes, wading laboriously through a dark atmosphere, a darkness gruesomely
tactile, perceived only here and there lively patches of vibrating
humanity. My ears recognised English, something which I took to be
low-German and which was Belgian, Dutch, Polish, and what I guessed to be
Russian.
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