Anarchistbanjo's World

The Rebirth of Melchior Dronte by Paul Busson and translated by Joe E Bandel

He was a tall, very young boy with sunken cheeks. Apart
from his pants and shoes, he was wearing only a dress shirt.
He was shivering from frost and fear. Kregel was his
name.
All the sticks stood steeply in the air. Two sergeants
walked at our backs to see who would be casual about the
beating.
The drums started pounding and the man was pushed into
the alley. He ran. The sticks whistled, clapped down on him,
the tatters flew off his shirt and skin. He shouted something
that you couldn’t understand. I hit him on the neck, and saw
raw flesh splattering. But he was through, and outside he fell
down on all fours. They grabbed him and pulled him up. He
groaned.
“Forward!” shouted the provost.
The deserter’s eyes protruded out of their sockets, saliva
ran from his open mouth. His lips were torn. He was running
again. The sticks struck smacking, blood ran, and chunks flew.
The man jumped, bent down while running, whined like a dog,
stretched out his beaten and swollen hands, pulled them back
screaming when a blow hit the knuckles, fell to the ground and
collapsed like a sack at the end of the double row. He lay
motionless, gray in the face. One could see his heart beating
furiously under the bleeding skin; under the back, on which he
was lying, a dark pool formed.
The army doctor came, took a breath and laid his hand on
the ribs of the prone man, then beckoned two soldiers and told
them to turn the unconscious man over. Then he pulled out a
bottle of wine spirit from his bag and poured it on the torn back.
With a piercing cry of pain, the runner came to.
“He’s beeping again!” said the man next to me, Wetzlaff.
“They always recover their strength with the palm leaf!”
They picked up the senselessly slurring man and pushed
him into the alley for the third and last time.
But this time he did not get far. After a third of the way
he fell down, and as much as his comrades tried, even from
behind by beating him with a stick urging him on, he did not
move any longer.
“Now he is done for!” said one of them, and the sticks
lowered.
But all of a sudden the fallen man jumped up and shot
like an arrow through the alley. A few blows hit, the others
missed. Furious, the corporals beat those who had allowed
themselves to be fooled.
“Such a false dog – such a cunning scoundrel!” they
scolded.
Outside the alley, the runner stood still and smiled in
spite of his pain.
From above came a peculiar giggling sound. We looked
up. At the windows of the officers’ quarters stood a number of
preened ladies, holding handkerchiefs in front of their mouths
and laughing their heads off.
“Plum – plum – berum!” Warned the drums, urging us to
move in.

In the guardroom, an oil sparkle was burning. The wall
was thickly stained with squashed bugs. The bottles of brandy
were empty, and the tobacco smoke drifted in blue clouds
under the sooty ceiling. It had been a retreat for a long time,
but no one stretched out on the cot.
“If only she comes, Kinner!” said Private Hahnfuss, “but
such prizes are smarter than clever!”
But he had not yet finished speaking when the door
opened and Wetzlaff entered with the girl.
The sergeant nodded, looked at the thing with a half a
glance, and then, as if by chance, walked quickly out of the
guardroom. Behind him the door was immediately locked and
barred.
The soldier-Catherine now stood alone among the many
men in the middle of the room and looked from one to the other.
Her cheeky smile became anxious and shy. Her hood was
crumpled, the striped skirt was stained, and the heels on her
shoes were badly worn. She scratched her hip. But when
everyone remained silent, she became afraid and made a
movement as if she wanted to run away. She threw a stray
glance at the closed door and then she said with a gulp in her
throat:
“Well, you won’t let me out, boys?”
“That’s the way it is, girl,” said the corporal, putting the
burning sponge to his pipe.
“You lied to us. Didn’t you?”
“I keep my mouth shut,” she said, “what’s this all about?
What am I supposed to have lied about?”
“We asked you once how it was with your internal health,
girl – didn’t we? Because otherwise – we would not touch you!
And now look at Beverov! – Come here to me, Beverov!”
One of the guards stepped forward. The corporal opened
his coat, vest and shirt.
The man’s chest was covered with nasty red spots.
“Do you know what that is, little Cathrine?” the corporal
asked treacherously. “They are – real Frenchmen aren’t they!”
In the girl’s face shock alternated with fear and anger.
“From me? From me?” she shrieked and put her hands on
her hips. “You pack of louses, you tripe eaters – I’m still with
the sergeant – let’s see if -“
“It’s the same!” the corporal interrupted her and at the
same time hit her so hard on the mouth that she cried out.
But then she was silent. A drop of blood stood on her
lower lip.
“Down with the skirt!”
She screamed, squealed like a rat, kicked her feet and bit.
But it did her no good against the fists that were angrily
attacking her from all sides. In a few moments she was
standing in the pathetic nakedness of her spent body, writhing
under the hard hands that held her wrists and arms.
“Bring the lamp!”
The corporal shone the oil sparkler all around her. A hot
drop fell on her skin, making her cry out.
“Don’t worry – you’re not going to be roasted!” he
reassured her. “Look, comrades there -!”
And he pointed with his finger to many white spots,
which clearly stood out from the brownish skin of the neck and
the shoulders.
“Do you still want to deny that you have the French, are
contaminated and infectious, you lout, you?”
She did not answer. But then she raised her head and spat
her reddish saliva right into the corporal’s face.
“Well wait, you human!” He said calmly and wiped his
face with his sleeve.
“What do you think comrades? I’m for some horseplay.”
“Do it!” everyone shouted. “Horseplay!”
“You are a fungus from birth,” continued the corporal,
blowing the stinging smoke of his smoldering pipe into her
face. “What do you want to be? A fox – or what?”
“Damned pig,” she hissed and cringed, snatching at the
restraining hands and snapping.
“I want out! Let me out! Let me out!”
“Black is my favorite color!” the private shouted into the
hubbub. “Give me the boot polish -!”
Amidst roaring laughter, in which the voice of the
desperate creature was drowned, they spat into the jerk-off
boxes, dipped the coarse brushes into them and went to it.
So far I had sat on a cot as in half anesthesia and watched
the incomprehensible to me happenings. But now I was seized
with horror and agonizing pity for the miserable, broken and
destroyed creature. I saw how they reached for her, heard the
insane shrieks and screams of the martyred woman, as they
dragged her by the hair and stepped on her bare feet with their
clumsy shoes. She squirmed like an eel, screamed with a squeal
when one of them approached with a whip in his hand,
whimpered for mercy and in one breath uttered the most vile
curses.
“What do you want with the wench?!”
I shouted at Wetzlaff and held him by the sleeve.
“Well first she must be scrubbed shiny,” he grinned in my
ear. “And then she must run at the long leash until she can no
longer. That’s our horseplay, boy!”
A shrill scream went up. The corporal had grabbed her
from behind and held her tightly, however much she resisted.
“Go for it, comrades!” he encouraged the others.
Then I jumped over, tore his hands from her trembling
body and stood wide in front of her.
“Let her go!” I shouted loudly. “Let her go!”
“Oho!” he roared back at me. “Look! Dronte!”
With his fists clenched and his face contorted in anger
Wetzlaff stepped toward me.
I looked at him firmly and calmly.
His angry eye strayed from mine, his clenched fists
opened.
The others fell silent, looking at me as if amazed.
“Comrades,” I said, “have mercy. She is not guilty. And
she is as poor and abandoned as the rest of us!”
No one answered.
I went to the door, without anyone trying to hinder me
and opened it. Then I bent down, picked up the prostitute’s rags
and gave them to her.
“Go, Cathrine!” I heard myself speak, in the surrounding
silence.
She stared at me with wide eyes, bent down as if to kiss
my hand, then laughed hoarsely and was out in one leap. We
heard her walk on bare soles along the stone-paved courtyard.
Nobody said anything.
Slowly, people put boxes and brushes to their designated
places. One of them yawned loudly.
Then Wetzlaff laughed strangely, stood in front of me,
swayed his head back and forth and looked at me penetratingly.
“It is so,” he growled. “Dronte has it in the gaze- He has
the power in his eye.”
No one remarked anything to it.
Silently they stretched out on the hard cots to get some
more sleep before Ronde arrived.