Part 3
Sometimes, unutterably wearied by so much suffering, I asked for work outside the camp, in order to sort out my ideas and renew the theme of my reflections. It was always with a sigh of comfort that I got away from the city of tents. I contemplated, from a distance, this sinister agglomeration, which certainly bore comparison with an itinerant fair. I tried to distinguish amid the white canvas and red crosses the tops of these little “mosques.” I gazed also at the cemetery where hundreds and hundreds of bodies had been buried; and, realising the sum of the misery, despair and rage accumulated on that spot of the earth, I thought of the people who, far away in the heart of France, were crowding the concert cafés, the drawing-rooms, the cinemas, the brothels, finding brazen enjoyment in themselves, in the world, in the weather; and, sheltered by this quivering rampart of the sacrificed, will not share in this universal anguish. I thought of these people with more shame than resentment.
The excursions in the open freshened me a little, and I found some comfort in the sight of healthy men spared by the battle.
Sometimes I went as far as the English sector. Masses of long-range artillery were to be seen there. The guns were served by soldiers in shirt-sleeves and long trousers stained by oil and cart-grease. They looked more like factory workers than soldiers. You felt then how war has become an industry--an engineering business devoted to mechanical slaughter and massacre.
One night, walking along the Albert road, I overheard the conversation of some men who were sitting on the upturned earth of a pit. By their accent they were peasants from the north and must have belonged to the regiments which had just been under fire.
“After the war,” said one of them, “those who are going to dabble in politics, they’ll have to say they had a hand in this confounded war.”
But this frank opinion, caught in passing one night along a road in the front--this inconsequent, unanswered comment was lost in the tumult of the gunfire.
* * * * *
I gained much by being stretcher-bearer. I came to know the men better than I had ever done until then--to know them bathed in a purer light, _naked_ before death, stripped even of the instincts which disfigure the divine beauty of simple souls.
In the midst of the greatest trials our race of peasants has remained vigorous, pure, worthy of the noblest human traditions. I have known them--Rebic, Louba, Ratier, Freyssinet, Calmel, Touche, and so many others whom I must not name if I am not to mention the whole country. It cannot be said that pain chose its victims, and yet, when I used to pass by their beds where their destiny struggled--when I looked at their faces, each one of them, they all seemed to me good, patient, energetic men, and all of them deserved to be loved.
Did Rebic, that grey-haired sergeant, not richly deserve that a loving family waited longingly for him at home? One day we came to dress the big gash in his side, and we hastened to bring him white linen and made him a warm bed; he began to weep, good and simple man, and we asked him why, and he made this sublime answer:
“I cry because of the agony and misery I am giving you.”
As for Louba, we could not expect to hear him speak: a shell had smashed in his face. There remained nothing of it except one immense cruel gash; an eye displaced, twisted; and forehead--a humble peasant forehead. Yet one day, as we whispered some brotherly words, Louba wished to show how pleased he was, and he smiled to us. They will remember, those who saw the soul of Louba smiling faceless.
Freyssinet, child of twenty, often lapsed into delirium, and was aware of it in his conscious moments, and asked pardon of those whom it might have disturbed. The hour came when he sank into the peace everlasting. A much-decorated personage was making the round of the wards attended by an imposing suite. He stopped at the foot of each bed and uttered, in a fitting voice, words conferring whatever honour which they represented in the minds of the patients. He stopped before Freyssinet’s bed and began his speech. As he was an important and methodical man, he said what he had to say without noticing the many signs that were being made to make him desist. Having spoken, he nevertheless asked those who were looking on:
“You wanted to tell me something?”
“Yes,” replied someone; “it is that the man is dead.”
But Freyssinet was so modest, so timid, that the very attitude of his corpse betrayed respect and confusion.
It is there, also, that I made the acquaintance of Touche.
He came to us, poor Touche! his head broken, having had to leave a temporary hospital owing to its catching fire. I saw him turning out with his groping hands a bag which contained all his possessions.
“No, no,” he was saying, “they are all lost, and I’ll never find them.”
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I am looking for the little photos of my two boys and of my wife. Unfortunately, they are lost. I shall miss them.”
I helped him in his search, and then I saw that Touche was blind.
Poor Touche! He easily recognised me by my voice and always had a smile for me. He was awkward at table, as a man would naturally be who is not yet accustomed to his infirmity. But he tried to manage by himself, and used to tell us in a quiet voice:
“I am doing my best, you see: I scrape my plate until I feel there is nothing more.”
Could I forget the name of the man who was brought in, one night, with his two legs smashed, and who murmured simply:
“It’s hard to have to die! But come! I’ll be brave.”
But Calmel, Calmel! No one who knew him will ever wish to forget him. Never did a man more passionately desire to live! Never did a man attain greater nobility by his endurance and resignation! He suffered mortal wounds which at every moment the light of the life within him repudiated. It was he who, during a night bombardment, addressed his hospital comrades, exhorting them to be calm, with his authoritative moribund voice.
“Come, come!” he used to say; “we are all men here, are we not?”
Such is the strength of the spirit that these words alone, uttered by such a man, were capable of restoring order and confidence in the hearts of everyone.
It was to Calmel that a plump civilian, entrusted with some business or other with the armies, said one day with jubilant conviction:
“You appear to be badly hit, my brave man. But if you knew what wounds we inflict on them, with our 75! Terrible wounds, old boy, terrible!”
Each day brought visitors to Hill 80. They came from Amiens in sumptuous motor cars. They chatted as they traversed the great canvas hall, as if at a prize exhibition of agricultural produce: to the wounded they addressed a few words that were in keeping with their personal station, their opinions and dignity. They wrote notes on memorandum-books and sometimes accepted invitations to supper from the officers. There were foreigners, philanthropists, politicians, actresses, millionaires, novelists, and “penny-a-liners.” Those who were looking for strange sensations were sometimes admitted to the “mosque” or the operation-room.
They went away, well content with their day when the weather was fine, in the sure knowledge that they had seen some queer things, heroic fighters, and a model establishment.
* * * * *
But silence! I have pronounced their names--Freyssinet, Touche, Calmel--and the memories which they leave in my heart are too noble to be mingled with bitterness.
What has become of Hill 80 deserted? The battle has advanced towards the east. Winter has come; the city of tents has furled its canvas, as a fleet of sailing ships which must prepare for new destinies.
Often, in imagination, I see again the bare plateau and the immense burial ground left derelict in the fields and the mists, like the wreckage of innumerable ships down in the depths of the sea.
RÉCHOUSSAT’S CHRISTMAS
Réchoussat repeated in a shrill, strained voice: “I tell you, they’re not coming after all.”
Corporal Têtard turned a deaf ear to this. He was sorting out his stock on a table: lints, oil, rubber gloves reminiscent of the fencer, probes enclosed in a tube like vanilla cornets, a basin of enamelled sheet-iron resembling a big bean, and a bulging vase with a wide gaping mouth, looking like anything at all.
Réchoussat affected an air of indifference. “They needn’t come if they don’t wish to. Anyway, I don’t care.”
Corporal Têtard shrugged his shoulders. “But I tell you they will come,” he said.
The wounded man obstinately shook his head. “Here, old boy! nobody’ll come here. All those who visit downstairs never come up here. I’m only telling you. I don’t really care, you know.”
“You may be sure they will come.”
“Really, I don’t know why I have been placed here alone in the room.”
“Probably because you must have quiet.”
“Whether they come or not, it’s all one to me.”
Réchoussat frowned to show his pride, then he added, sighing:
“You can begin now with your bag of tricks.”
As a matter of fact Corporal Têtard was ready. He had lighted a candle-end and in one movement drew back the sheets.
Réchoussat’s body was revealed, extraordinarily thin, but Têtard scarcely noticed it, and Réchoussat had for three months now been fairly accustomed to his misery. He knew quite well that to have a piece of shell in the back is a serious matter, and that, when a man’s legs and abdomen are paralysed, he is not going to recover quickly.
“Feeling better?” asked Têtard in the course of his operation.
“Yes,” he replied. “Now it’s six o’clock and they haven’t come. Good thing! I don’t mind.”
The corporal did not reply; with a weary expression he rubbed together his rubber gloves. Riveted to the wick, the candle-flame leaped and struggled, like a wretched prisoner yearning to escape and fly up alone in the blackness of the room, and beyond, higher, higher, in the winter sky, in regions where the sounds of the war of man are no longer heard. Both the patient and the orderly watched the flame in silence, with wide-open vague eyes. Every second a gun, far away, snapped at the panes, and each time the flame of the candle started nervously.
“It takes a long time! You’re not cold?” asked Têtard.
“The lower part of my body does not know what cold means.”
“But it will, one day.”
“Of course it will. It’s dead now, but it must become alive again. I am only twenty-five; it’s an age when the flesh has plenty of vigour.”
The corporal felt awkward, shaking his head. Réchoussat seemed to him worn out; he had large sores in the places where the body rested on the bed. He had been isolated in order that his more fortunate comrades should be spared the sight of his slow, dragging death.
A long moment went by. The silence was so oppressive that for a moment they felt their small talk quite inadequate. Then, as if he was continuing a mental discussion, Réchoussat suddenly remarked:
“And yet, you know, I’m so easily satisfied. If they came for two minutes only.”
“Hush!” said Têtard. “Hush!”
He leaned, listening, towards the door. Obscure sounds came from the passage.
“Ah, here they are!” said the orderly.
Réchoussat craned his neck. “Bah! No, I tell you.”
Suddenly a wonderful light, rich in reflections of gold and crimson--a strange fairy light--filled the passage. The wall in front stood out; ordinarily as pale as December woods, now it suddenly exhibited the splendour of an eastern palace or of a princess’ gown. In all this light there was sound of happy voices and of laughter. No one could be heard singing, yet the light itself seemed to be singing a magnificent song. Réchoussat, who could not move, stretched his neck the more vigorously, and raised his hands a little above the sheets, as if he wanted to feel this beautiful sound and light.
“You see, you see,” said Têtard. “I told you they would come.”
Then there was a big blaze. Something stopped before the door: it was a tree--a real fir-tree from the forests, planted in a green box. There were so many Chinese lanterns and pink candles hanging from its branches that it looked like an enormous torch. But there was something grander to come: the wise and learned kings now entered. There was Sorri, a Senegalese gunner, Moussa and Cazin. Wrapped in cloaks from Adrianople, they wore long white beards made of cotton wool.
They walked right into Réchoussat’s room. Sorri carried a little packet tied with ribbon. Moussa waved aloft two cigars, and Cazin a bottle of champagne. The three of them bowed punctiliously, as they had been told, and Réchoussat found himself suddenly with a box of chocolates in his right hand, two cigars in his left, and a glass of foaming wine on his little table.
“Ah, boys! No, no; you’re joking, boys.”
Moussa and Cazin laughed. Sorri showed his teeth.
“Ah! boys,” repeated Réchoussat, “I don’t smoke, but I’m going to keep the cigars as a souvenir. Pass me the wine.”
Sorri took the goblet and offered it as if it were a sacred cup. Réchoussat drank gently and said:
“It’s some wine! Good stuff!”
There were more than a score of faces at the door, and they all smiled at the gentle naïve Réchoussat.
Afterwards, a veritable sunset! The wonderful tree receded, jolting into the passage. The venerable kings disappeared, with their flowing cloaks and their sham beards. Réchoussat still held the goblet and gazed at the candle as if all the lights existed there. He laughed, slowly repeating, “It’s some wine!” Then he continued to laugh and never said a word.
Quite gently the darkness entered the room again, and lodged itself everywhere, like an intimate animal disturbed in its habits.
With the darkness, something very sad insinuated itself everywhere, which was the odour of Réchoussat’s illness. A murmuring silence rested on every object, like dust. The face of the patient ceased to reflect the splendour of the Christmas tree; his head sunk down, he looked at the bed, at his thin ulcerated legs, the glass vessel full of unclean liquid, the probe, all these incomprehensible things, and he said, stammering with astonishment:
“But ... but ... what is the matter then? What is the matter?”
LIEUTENANT DAUCHE
It was in the month of October 1915 that I made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Dauche.
I can never recall that time without deep emotion. We had been living, before Sapigneul, through weeks of fire. The Champagne offensive had for long been rumbling on our right, and its farthest eddies seemed to break on our sector, as the waves scattered by a hurricane that spends itself in the open sea. For three days our guns had made reply to those of Pouilleuse, and we had waited, rifles at hand, for an order which never came. Our minds were uneasy and vacant, still reeling from that kind of resonant drunkenness which results from a prolonged bombardment. We were glad at not having to make a murderous attack, and at the same time we worried over the causes which had prevented it.
It was then that I was wounded for the first time. Some chance evacuation took me to the Château de S----, which is, for the Rheims country, an indifferent piece of architecture. It stands in the midst of soft verdure and looks, across the slope of the hill, upon the delicate valley of the Vesle.
My wound, though not serious, was painful enough. It made me a little feverish and long for silence and solitude. It gave me pleasure to remain, for long hours, in the presence of a pain which, while endurable, made me test my patience and reflect on the vulnerable nature of an organism in which, up till then, I had placed an unshakable confidence.
I occupied a bright room, decorated with Jouy tapestry and delicate paintings. My bed was placed there together with that of another officer, who walked silently up and down the room, and who respected my reticence. The day came, however, when I was told to take solid food, and that day we began chatting, no doubt because the most ancient human traditions dispose those who eat together to enter into conversation.
In spite of the moods which I then experienced, this talk was a pleasure and gave me what I must have needed.
I was absorbed in melancholy reflections, and brooded over the misery of the times. Lieutenant Dauche from the first appeared to me to show a serenity of mind and a quiet cheerfulness of spirit. Later, I saw that he deserved to be greatly admired for maintaining such an attitude in the face of an unending misfortune which had not spared him any trials.
We were both natives of Lille; it gave us a point of contact. The event of an inheritance, and the requirements of his position, early led Dauche to settle in the Meuse district and set up a home there.
His marriage was happy, and his young wife was mother of two fine children. A third was about to be born when the German invasion swept over the face of France, unsettling the world, ruining a prosperous industry, violently separating Dauche from his children and his pregnant wife, of whom, since, he had only heard uncertain and disquieting news.
I, too, had left in the invaded country those I loved, and also my possessions. I felt, therefore, in the presence of Dauche the effect of that solidarity which is aroused by a common misfortune. I ought, however, to admit that my comrade had suffered more terrible calamities than mine with greater fortitude, though he was more sensitive, as I observed on several occasions.
Of pleasing height, Dauche had the pink complexion and the fair hair characteristic of my country. A delicate beard adorned and prolonged a face full of gentleness and life, like those young men whom Flemish artists have portrayed, often so happily, wearing a frilled collar and a heavy golden chain gleaming on a waistcoat of dark velvet.
A light bandage passed over his forehead. He seemed so little disturbed by it that I did not trouble for some time to talk to him about his wound. Besides, he never referred to it himself. I saw him once change the dressing, and it was then that he explained to me in a few words how a piece of grenade had struck him during a skirmish. He seemed to treat the incident with the most perfect indifference.
“Nothing draws me away from the front,” he added, with a melancholy smile, “and I was intending forthwith to return to my corps; but the doctor is flatly opposed to it.”
He confessed it was not without pleasure that he looked forward to spending the period of convalescence in the Château de S----, which autumn adorned so nobly.
From the second week, in spite of the state of my wound on my shoulder, I was given permission to walk a little. Dauche helped me with a brotherly tenderness, and it was through his encouragement that I was able soon to venture in the avenues of the park.
The doctor who looked after us both said to me in rather an embarrassed tone:
“You are going out with Lieutenant Dauche? See that you don’t go too far.”
This doctor was of a reticent nature. I did not ask for explanations; I was confident in my recovered strength. It never struck me--naturally enough--that the doctor was in fact thinking of Dauche.
Several days went by, blessed with all that is warm, young, affectionate in a growing friendship. The war, among a thousand other miseries, has compelled us to live occasionally in the company of men whom in time of peace we should have carefully avoided. It was, then, with a trembling joy that I recognised in Dauche those qualities which would move my nature to love and affection--a nature which had ever perhaps been unduly difficult and uneasy. I thought that a deep predestined purpose operated there: the men of this age who can become my friends are marked, and determined, in the universe with the same mysterious sign; but I may not know them all, and perhaps I shall never be fated to meet my best friend.
The times when it did not rain we passed in long conversations on the hillside, under a plantation of pines and beech trees. My young friend perceived and judged natural objects with the innocence, freshness and originality of a child. He spoke of his scattered family with a stubborn faith in their safety--a faith that usually is found only in religious fanatics or in men unbalanced by fame or success.
In the evening, when the approach of darkness tended to bring back to the mind the awful things one had experienced and made one withdraw into oneself, he used cheerfully to ask me to have a game of chess, and this game of skill took us on to the threshold of sleep.
* * * * *
The pleasure I had in the company of Dauche led me one day to tell the doctor how much I admired his character.
The doctor, who was ceasing to be young, was tall, rather bent and bald, with a sad, timid, and kind smile on his face half-hidden by a straggling beard.
“Fate,” I said, “is no respecter of victims. It is terrible to find it striking down natures so generous, and it is a marvel that it has failed to produce worse effects than it has.”
We began chatting as we walked with measured steps along a narrow pathway hidden away among the hazel trees.
My companion made a queer little movement with his shoulders and looked round to make sure that we were alone.
“You appear to take great pleasure in Dauche’s company,” he said to me, “and it is very natural. But I have already begged you never to prolong your walks with him too far from the Château, and I must repeat the warning.”
The tone of his voice at once made me rather anxious, and I did not hide my amazement.
“Dauche,” I began, “seems to me to be convalescing slowly but surely. Can there be anything serious in that scar on his forehead?”
The doctor had stopped. He was trying to dislodge, with the tip of his boot, a stone embedded in the road.
“This scratch,” he said very quickly, still looking down, “is very much more serious than you imagine.”
A painful silence ensued, and as I remained quiet, the doctor went on, with frequent pauses:
“We are beginning to understand these injuries of the skull. Your friend does not know, and must not know, how serious his condition is. He doesn’t even know that we have failed to extract the projectile which struck him. And even if the thing was possible....”
Then suddenly the doctor went off into a philosophical dissertation in which he seemed to be both at his ease and at a loss, as in a familiar labyrinth.
“We have accomplished much--very much. We have even restored the dead to life; but we cannot restore all the dead to life. There are a few very difficult problems.... We think we have solved them.... I do not speak of God. The very idea of God seems to be detached from this immense calamity. I do not speak of God, but of men. They must be told quite simply: there are wounds which we cannot cure. Therefore, let them stop inflicting such wounds, and the question will not arise again. That is a solution; but the members of my profession are too proud to make that suggestion to the world, and the world is too mad to listen.”
My respect for this digression prevented me from interrupting; when, however, he had finished, I whispered:
“Really, you say this missile----?”
“You can’t get at it, you understand. Beyond reach! It’s rather degrading for a proud man to admit it, but at least it’s honest. And, besides, it’s a fact. Man placed it there; and it is beyond his power to remove it.”
Though embarrassed by the presence of the doctor, I was deeply moved by his words.
“Yet, in spite of it, one can live----”
“No,” he said in a grave voice, “one can only die.”
We walked as far as the edge of the wood. The clear light of an open meadow seemed to bring the doctor back within the bounds of professional etiquette; for he said in a different tone: