The Project Gutenberg EBook of Light, by Henri Barbusse

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Light

Author: Henri Barbusse

Release Date: July 14, 2004 [EBook #12904]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIGHT ***

Produced by David S. Miller

LIGHT

BY

HENRI BARBUSSE AUTHOR OF "UNDER FIRE" "WE OTHERS," ETC.

TRANSLATED BY FITZWATER WRAY 1919

CONTENTS

I. MYSELF II. OURSELVES III. EVENING AND DAWN IV. MARIE V. DAY BY DAY VI. A VOICE IN THE EVENING VII. A SUMMARY VIII. THE BRAWLER IX. THE STORM X. THE WALLS XI. AT THE WORLD'S END XII. THE SHADOWS XIII. WHITHER GOEST THOU? XIV. THE RUINS XV. AN APPARITION XVI. DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI XVII. MORNING XVIII. EYES THAT SEE XIX. GHOSTS XX. THE CULT XXI. NO! XXII. LIGHT XXIII. FACE TO FACE

LIGHT

CHAPTER I

MYSELF

All the days of the week are alike, from their beginning to their end.

At seven in the evening one hears the clock strike gently, and then the instant tumult of the bell. I close the desk, wipe my pen, and put it down. I take my hat and muffler, after a glance at the mirror—a glance which shows me the regular oval of my face, my glossy hair and fine mustache. (It is obvious that I am rather more than a workman.) I put out the light and descend from my little glass-partitioned office. I cross the boiler-house, myself in the grip of the thronging, echoing peal which has set it free. From among the dark and hurrying crowd, which increases in the corridors and rolls down the stairways like a cloud, some passing voices cry to me, "Good-night, Monsieur Simon," or, with less familiarity, "Good-night, Monsieur Paulin." I answer here and there, and allow myself to be borne away by everybody else.

Outside, on the threshold of the porch which opens on the naked plain and its pallid horizons, one sees the squares and triangles of the factory, like a huge black background of the stage, and the tall extinguished chimney, whose only crown now is the cloud of falling night. Confusedly, the dark flood carries me away. Along the wall which faces the porch, women are waiting, like a curtain of shadow, which yields glimpses of their pale and expressionless faces. With nod or word we recognize each other from the mass. Couples are formed by the quick hooking of arms. All along the ghostly avenue one's eyes follow the toilers' scrambling flight.

The avenue is a wan track cut across the open fields. Its course is marked afar by lines of puny trees, sooty as snuffed candles; by telegraph posts and their long spider-webs; by bushes or by fences, which are like the skeletons of bushes. There are a few houses. Up yonder a strip of sky still shows palely yellow above the meager suburb where creeps the muddy crowd detached from the factory. The west wind sets quivering their overalls, blue or black or khaki, excites the woolly tails that flutter from muffled necks, scatters some evil odors, attacks the sightless faces so deep-drowned beneath the sky.

There are taverns anon which catch the eye. Their doors are closed, but their windows and fanlights shine like gold. Between the taverns rise the fronts of some old houses, tenantless and hollow; others, in ruins, cut into this gloomy valley of the homes of men with notches of sky. The iron-shod feet all around me on the hard road sound like the heavy rolling of drums, and then on the paved footpath like dragged chains. It is in vain that I walk with head bent—my own footsteps are lost in the rest, and I cannot hear them.

We hurry, as we do every evening. At that spot in the inky landscape where a tall and twisted tree seems to writhe as if it had a soul, we begin suddenly to descend, our feet plunging forward. Down below we see the lights of Viviers sparkle. These men, whose day is worn out, stride towards those earthly stars. One hope is like another in the evening, as one weariness is like another; we are all alike. I, also. I go towards my light, like all the others, as on every evening.

* * * * * *

When we have descended for a long time the gradient ends, the avenue flattens out like a river, and widens as it pierces the town. Through the latticed boughs of the old plane trees—still naked on this last day of March—one glimpses the workmen's houses, upright in space, hazy and fantastic chessboards, with squares of light dabbed on in places, or like vertical cliffs in which our swarming is absorbed. Scattering among the twilight colonnade of the trees, these people engulf themselves in the heaped-up lodgings and rooms; they flow together in the cavity of doors; they plunge into the houses; and there they are vaguely turned into lights.

I continue to walk, surrounded by several companions who are foremen and clerks, for I do not associate with the workmen. Then there are handshakes, and I go on alone.

Some dimly seen wayfarers disappear; the sounds of sliding locks and closing shutters are heard here and there; the houses have shut themselves up, the night-bound town becomes a desert profound. I can hear nothing now but my own footfall.

Viviers is divided into two parts—like many towns, no doubt. First, the rich town, composed of the main street, where you find the Grand Café, the elegant hotels, the sculptured houses, the church and the castle on the hill-top. The other is the lower town, which I am now entering. It is a system of streets reached by an extension of that avenue which is flanked by the workmen's barracks and climbs to the level of the factory. Such is the way which it has been my custom to climb in the morning and to descend when the light is done, during the six years of my clerkship with Messrs. Gozlan & Co. In this quarter I am still rooted. Some day I should like to live yonder; but between the two halves of the town there is a division—a sort of frontier, which has always been and will always be.

In the Rue Verte I meet only a street lamp, and then a mouse-like little girl who emerges from the shadows and enters them again without seeing me, so intent is she on pressing to her heart, like a doll, the big loaf they have sent her to buy. Here is the Rue de l'Etape, my street. Through the semi-darkness, a luminous movement peoples the hairdresser's shop, and takes shape on the dull screen of his window. His transparent door, with its arched inscription, opens just as I pass, and under the soap-dish,[1] whose jingle summons customers, Monsieur Justin Pocard himself appears, along with a rich gust of scented light. He is seeing a customer out, and improving the occasion by the utterance of certain sentiments; and I had time to see that the customer, convinced, nodded assent, and that Monsieur Pocard, the oracle, was caressing his white and ever-new beard with his luminous hand.

[Footnote 1: The hanging sign of a French barber.—Tr.]

I turn round the cracked walls of the former tinplate works, now bowed and crumbling, whose windows are felted with