Part 6

The extraordinary thing was that his overcoat remained whole: it concealed from view the hideous annihilation of the body. Lifting it slightly, I saw his discipline book, on which one could decipher the name Lamailleux.

“I think,” I said, “we’ve got him all now.”

An electric lamp, perched high up, gave a fitful light and seemed to be suffering from irritating twitches.

I decided that we should take a short cut back across “The Artillery”--a huge siding where munition trains had been shunted. But, as we got near the railways, a sentry appeared:

“Halt! Who goes there?”

None of us had thought of the password. The territorial barred the way with his rifle. He was adamant:

“I am sorry, Lieutenant, but you must go another way: those are my orders.”

A long turning brought us before another sentry.

“The password, please! You can’t go through ‘The Artillery’ without it.”

“My friend, we are taking away a dead body.”

I raised the corner of the sacking and uncovered the bluish face. In the light of the acetylene a portion of the pale skin with some tattooed marks could be seen through the chaotic heap of clothes that were saturated with blood. A look of horror passed over the guard’s face, but he said again:

“Lieutenant, go along the main line! It’s not possible this way.”

We plunged back again along the network of rails, disturbed by the clatter of the signals and the rumbling convoys. Sometimes the exhausted stretcher-bearers stopped and placed their burden on the stony embankment and carefully spat on their hands. Trains went by, and we could see, in the bright compartments, women reading, tightly clasping beautiful children who had fallen asleep.

At last the station lights came into view.

“Where are we taking the corpse?” I asked Bonardent.

“I don’t know, sir.”

I finally decided to present myself at the _Petite Vitesse_. A room there had been taken to receive the wreckage cast off from the swirling activity of the railway station--lost trunks, unemployed men, riderless beasts, stores with no destination, and, when necessary, corpses. A gendarme was smoking a cigarette in front of the door.

“Lieutenant, there’s no room here to-day. It’s full of fugitives from the north, with their kids and packages.”

I uttered a few words of encouragement to my men, and made up my mind to try the “draft-pavilion.” It was occupied by detachments that were rejoining their corps. The men were sleeping in heaps on the straw.

“Oh! you must see it’s quite impossible to put it here with the men,” said an adjutant, shaking his head. He added, as if to excuse himself:

“Put yourself in my place, Lieutenant. I have no authority.... I can’t take charge of a corpse without orders....”

I sat down on a stone. The stretcher-bearers, worn out, mopped their brows and uttered the word “Drink!” I looked at the shapeless mass of Lamailleux, which seemed quite indifferent to this last cross it had to bear, and it waited for its eternal resting-place with the sovereign patience of death.

“I don’t suppose you are well acquainted with the station,” said the Adjutant to me; “but there’s a guard-room there for the transport men stationed here. I’ll go and see.”

I let him go and began to smoke, contemplating the night, which was warm and glorious. The tranquillity of the objects seemed, like the agitation of the men, to say distinctly: “Why is this man upsetting us all with this useless corpse?” And an insect, ecstatic in the rare grass, emitted a sharpening crescendo of sound like a little being who imagines that the whole earth exists and was made for him.

The Adjutant emerged from the darkness.

“It’s most unfortunate. A man is locked up there for drunkenness: he has been sick all over the place.”

“Well, all right! Let’s go and see the station-master.”

He was asleep. His deputy was reading the illustrated papers. While I stated my case he asked me to advise him what pictures he should cut out to stick on the walls from among the little women of the _Vie fantaisiste_, of which he seemed to be an inveterate reader. As I remained surly, he said, as if in parenthesis:

“As for this dreadful business, it is an awful pity that the hospital is at the other end of the town. You can’t go there at this time of night. Put the thing in a truck until to-morrow morning, old chap!”

Having, by this wonderful suggestion, relieved himself of all responsibility, the young man stuck his nose again into the illustrated paper.

At that time they had not erected at the railway stations those large hospitals of wood and cardboard which are to be seen everywhere now. The idea of the truck I did not entertain for two seconds. In imagination I saw this improvised mortuary starting out during the night and taking away the corpse. It was a mad idea!

I went to the postmen: they were sorting out the letters. They were humming: “It is I who am Nénesse.” There wasn’t room for a rat in their hutch, and at once they regarded the question as quite beyond their jurisdiction....

I came out overcome with a kind of annoyance. Really, nobody took the slightest interest in my dead man. I muttered to myself: “Why, why, Lamailleux, did you let yourself die in a place where corpses are not wanted, and at a moment when no one has time to deal with them?” But even as I said that, I felt none the less a kind of link being established between me and this wreckage, and I looked at it as at something which puzzles you, but which belongs to you in spite of everything.

“Where shall we put the poor man?” said Bonardent.

Then the simplest solution struck me.

“Follow me,” I said.

Quietly we went back towards the lamp-room.

“There’s no room there, Lieutenant.”

“Proceed, Corporal.”

I got the stretcher carried into the room reserved for my use.

“Now, put it there, alongside my mattress, and go to bed.”

The men went out, shaking their heads with amazement. I remained alone with Lamailleux and lay down on the sheets. War had already taught me to live and to sleep in the company of the dead, and I was surprised that I had not, from the first, thought of so natural a solution.

For a long time, in the light of a candle, I looked at the frightful heap which was my night companion. There was no smell yet. I blew out the candle and could think at leisure.

From the stretcher there fell softly every second a drop of something which must have been blood. For a long time I counted the drops, thinking of many things that were as mournful as the epoch I lived in. Loud whistles pierced the blackness, and I had already counted several hundreds of the drops when I fell into a sleep that was like that of my comrade--undisturbed by dreams.

THE HORSE-DEALERS

They have all been summoned to report at noon, though many of them will not be wanted until evening.

There they stand round the entrance--like a dark puddle, one would almost say; others are scattered about in the garden, gloomily walking up and down.

It is an afternoon of February. The heavy and anxious sky is surcharged in one limitless stretch. It appears to bear no relation to the little events that happen down here, so melancholy is its mood. The wind is surly. It must know what they are doing far away, but it says nothing; not even the deepest rumble of the cannon is borne along the breeze; we are far away, and must forget....

The wind swirls in between the buildings, sweeps back on itself, enraged like a wild beast caught in a trap.

The men pay no attention to the sky, or to the wind, or to the chilling light of winter; they are thinking of themselves.

They do not know each other; they have been brought here by a cause which is common to all of them. They are so bewildered and exhausted that they cannot even pretend to be indifferent.

On a closer view, there is about them something that sets them all into a class apart: a lack of physical vitality, a sickly look about the body, too much flesh or too little, eyes blazing with fever, sometimes an obvious infirmity, more often a wan skin faintly coloured with very poor blood. Never a joyous relaxation of healthy muscles: all of them have the slow, dragging movement of the snail.

Finding themselves herded together an unendurable thought, some have started a conversation to satisfy their pride; others are silent, too proud to talk.

There are wage-earners there, professional men, and long-haired intellectuals whose bitter looks are veiled by spectacles.

Everybody smokes. Never has it been so clear that tobacco is an anodyne for soul sickness.

From time to time, two or three men reach the garden gate and disappear for a few minutes. They return wiping their mouths, their breath reeking with wine.

Every few minutes the door opens. A gendarme appears and calls out some names. Those who are called push their way through the crowd, as if drawn by threads.

Their mouths twitch a little at the corners. They affect a detached, bored, or chaffing expression, and they vanish under the arch.

They no longer see the February sky; no longer do they breathe the cold odorous wind: they are pushed one against the other into a filthy corridor, from the walls of which--painted Heaven knows how!--oozes a thick, slimy sweat.

They remain there herded for some time, until another door opens. A gendarme counts them off by the dozen, like fruit or cattle, and hustles them into a large hall where the Thing is to take place....

At once a sickening smell of man makes them gasp. They cannot at first see very clearly what all the movement going on there is about. But they are left no time to think.

What indeed is the good of thinking at a time when an immense lamenting cry escapes from the entire stricken nation--a desperate call, the death-rattle of a drowning people?

Why think? Does that frenzied, roaring whirlwind which lays waste the old continent, does _that_ think? No, it is not indeed the time for thought.

The men have to undress quickly and fall in--in rows.

The hall is huge and forbidding. Its walls are decorated with texts, and there are busts of unknown men; in the centre a table, as at a tribunal.

Some big-wig, white-haired and rather arrogant, is enthroned there; he seems exhausted, but pertinacious. He is assisted by some obscure supernumeraries.

In front of the table, two doctors in white overalls--one old and wizened, the other still young, with a preoccupied, listless look.

The men advance in single files towards each of the doctors in white: they march one behind the other like suppliants proceeding to the altar of an angered God. They do not know what to do with their arms.

They are not the flower of the race: for a long time now the finest men in the land have been living up to their waists in mud, alert as cats to the dangers threatening them. It is long since the farmer found anything in his winnow except chaff and dust, and it is there still that he searches with an avaricious hand for a few scattered grains.

The men are not cold: hot blasts of air come rushing along the floor from a blazing heating apparatus. Yet many of the men shiver. Balancing sometimes on one hip, sometimes on another, they fold and unfold their arms, then drop them, failing to strike any attitude. They are ashamed of their nakedness.

In the corner, near the door, a gendarme is pushing and hustling a thin, frail little worker who is too slow in undressing: he thought he need not pull off his socks and pants. He is forced to do so, however, and he discloses two unwashed feet.

The men in overalls work with feverish haste, like scene-shifters on the stage.

They ask short, succinct questions, and at once they feel and press with their quickly moving hands.

The victim is rather pale. A warm dew comes out in beads on his temples. He mumbles and speaks entreatingly. Then, examined once again, he replies with more assurance.

“You only suffer from that. Do you cough?”

“Yes.”

“You are sure you suffer from palpitation of the heart?”

“Oh, quite sure, quite!”

“Then you have pain in talking?”

“Yes; that above all.”

“Your digestion is not good?”

“No; it never has been.”

The man seemed quite reassured. He replied with a kind of enthusiasm--like some one who is at last understood. But, all at once, the old doctor shrugs his shoulders and reveals the trap:

“You’ve got everything wrong with you--that’s quite clear. Well, you are classed A1--the fighting line.”

“But surely you are aware----”

“You have too many illnesses; there’s nothing wrong with you. Get out! The fighting line for you!”

Sometimes somebody coughs, and at once a storm of coughing breaks out among the men gathered there.

A big grey-haired fellow comes out of a dark corner. Everybody shrinks away from him, with a kind of disgust. Then he remonstrates with his neighbours:

“Hang it! D’you think that spots on the skin....”

Behind him, collapsed almost on a bench, a tall man who might be anything between twenty and sixty years of age is carefully undressing. His face makes you feel very sorry for him: he seems plunged in the depths of human despair. He takes off an incredible amount of clothing, knitted vests and woollen things; and then there appear some very touching articles: satchels, flannel fronts, scapularies, objects of devotion. All these he places on the bench. The men next to him shift suddenly, and his clothes slip on the floor and are trodden upon by those who have just come in. The man is very pale, as if people were trampling upon his intimate life and his self-respect.

A discussion suddenly breaks upon the silence. The old doctor was exclaiming in a furious tone:

“I tell you I can hear nothing!”

With both hands he was pressing down the shoulders of a poor weak wretch as thin as a poker, and who looked terrified.

With one word the poor devil was ordered into the fighting forces, and he went away, more upset, trembling and panic-stricken than he would ever be in the trenches in front of the machine-guns.

But at the other end of the hall something unusual was happening.

“I tell you I can walk,” protested a rasping voice, eaten away by goodness knows what disease.

“No,” replied the young doctor, “no; be reasonable, and go home. We’ll take you later when you’ve recovered.”

“If you don’t want me, I shall do myself in.... But I tell you I have reasons for going to the front. I am not going to stand any more insults day after day.”

A short silence takes possession of everyone in the room: the echo of a tragedy is felt. The man is obviously very ill. His chest is horrible, distorted by violent breathing. He can hardly stand on his swollen legs, which are marked with large purple veins.

“Rejected!” cries the judge.

And the unfortunate creature returns to his rags, with lowered shoulders, his eyes dazed like a bull that has been felled.

The man who followed was a fatalist: he refused to discuss his position.

“That won’t prevent you serving.”

“Bah! just as you like.”

“Then, the fighting line!”

“As you wish; I don’t care a damn.”

And he withdraws immediately, liberated like a man who stakes his future on a mere throw of the dice.

All those who go away leave behind them something of the heavy smell of unwashed bodies. Curious thing, they all have a fetid breath; for that day they have eaten too quickly, badly digested their food, smoked and drunk too much. From all these mouths comes the same warm, sour breath which betrays the same emotion--the same breakdown of the machine.

The atmosphere of the room gradually thickens. The lamps, which had been lit quite early, appear to be lined with a heavy clinging moisture that affects all the objects in the room. But above all hovers something more elusive and discordant--the air seems to be charged with nervous energy, the fragments of broken wills, the wreckage of the thoughts abandoned there by men who had to strip themselves naked, who were afraid, who yearned and did not yearn, who measured with anguish their powers of resistance and the sacrifice they had to make, who fought with all their might against the forces of destiny.

The men in overalls continue to move about among these human bodies. They do not stop feeling, manipulating, judging. They sink the ends of their fingers into the flesh of the shoulders and sides; they press the biceps with their thumb and middle finger, move joints, examine teeth and the inside of eyelids, pull hair, and tap chests as customs officers do casks. Then they make the men walk from left to right, and right to left. They make them bend, straighten themselves, kneel down, or expose the most secret parts of their person.

Sometimes a breath of fresh air seems to come into the room: two well-built young men are asking to be enlisted. One hardly understands why they are there.... The whole tribunal looks at them with astonishment, as at pieces of golden ore in a handful of mud.

They pass with a proud, rather forced smile. Again the procession begins of pathetic ugliness, terrors, despairs, incurable and ravaged fears. The tribunal made one think of a jagged cliff against which persons are dashed like sea-birds blown by a storm.

The doctors show signs of exhaustion. The oldest, who is rather deaf, throws himself doggedly into his work, like a boar into the thicket. The young doctor is obviously suffering and irritated. He has the shrinking and uneasy look of some one engaged in an odious task and who finds no relief.

And always human flesh abounds; always from the same corner of the room comes the long row of wan bodies, who walk gingerly on the floor.

Sacred human flesh, sacred substance which serves thought, art, love, everything great in life--it is now nothing but a vile, evil-smelling lump of suet which one handles with disgust to find whether it is yet ready for the slaughter.

Everybody begins to suffer from an insistent headache.

The work goes on as in a dream, with the silences, the dragging movements, and the dark gaps of bad dreams. Two hours more pass in this way. Then suddenly some one says:

“Here are the last ten.”

They come in and undress one after the other. They have waited so long they seem exhausted, emptied, crushed. They accept the verdict listlessly and mechanically, as if felled by a blow; they go away in haste, without speaking, without looking round.

The doctors wash their hands, as once did Pontius Pilate; they sign some papers ceremoniously and disappear.

Night has come. The wind has fallen. A fog that absorbs the factory smoke still hangs over the town. Leaning against a lamp-post one of the last men examined vomits, after excruciating efforts, the wine he drank in the afternoon. The road is dark and deserted.

The whole place reeks with the stench of the vomiting and the fog.

A BURIAL

As we seated ourselves at the table M. Gilbert asked:

“What time is Lieutenant Limberg’s funeral?”

“Three o’clock, Doctor,” replied the faithful Augustus; “an infantry platoon will come from his own regiment, which is at the moment leaving the firing line and is billeted at Morcourt.”

“That’s right; send for Bénezech.”

And we began to enjoy the piquancy of a cucumber salad. September was fading slowly, but the furnace on the Somme was getting ever fiercer. The roar of the cannon seemed to fill the immensity of the heavens, as if a great tragedy was happening in the heart of the world. We were slightly stupefied through having spent many nights without sleep--nights passed in trying to stem the torrent of blood, and save some of the wreckage that swept down with it.

Lieutenant Limberg was one of the saddest cases: for two weeks we tried to drag him out of the swirling eddy, when, all of a sudden, he sank rapidly, attacked by virulent meningitis, stammering and uttering aloud fantastic things, which gave his death a monstrous atmosphere of comedy.

Nothing gives greater offence or greater pain than to witness the torture and delirium suffered by men injured in the brain. How many times have I wished, when confronted with these terrible sights, that our indifferent rulers should be forced to look at them! But it is useless insisting on this. If people have no imagination, they can never learn. I had better go on with my tale.

We were struggling with a tough piece of beef when Bénezech came in.

The Abbé Bénezech, a second-grade hospital orderly, combined various functions, including those of a secretary and chaplain. He was a plump, slow-witted man, with a formidable jaw. He grew a large unkempt beard, and he badly felt the want of those cares and attentions which a devoted flock had showered on him. Much too holy a person to attach any importance to cares of the toilette, he had gradually degenerated into a slovenly old man. But it was with patience that he waited for his return to the sweet amenities of his living.

“Bénezech,” said M. Gilbert, rather familiarly, “what time do you bury Lieutenant Limberg?”

“Three o’clock, sir.”

“The body has been taken out?”

“It should be in the mortuary shed.”

“Good! Was the lieutenant a Catholic?”

“Oh! yes; he most certainly was, sir. Thank God! He took the sacrament yesterday.”

“Then everything is all right. Thank you, Bénezech.”

The chaplain went out. Relapsing again into our somnolent state, we returned to our unappetising dish of vermicelli. As we were finishing, an orderly came in and handed a card to M. Gilbert.

“The officer,” he added, “insists on seeing you at once.”

M. Gilbert repeatedly looked at the card with the strained attention of a man who feels he is falling asleep.

“Oh! well,” he sighed; “show him in.”

And he added, turning towards us:

“Second Lieutenant David? Do you know him? You don’t?”

The Second Lieutenant was already at the door. Over his frizzly hair he wore the small cap distinctive of the light infantry. He had big lips, a faint, twisted moustache, the magnificent dark eyes of a Jewish trader, a hint of corpulence, short fat hands.

“Monsieur,” he said, “my battalion is going up the line, and I’m taking advantage of my passing here to get permission to see one of your patients--Lieutenant Limberg, a friend of mine.”

M. Gilbert, who had rather an expressive little nose, showed by a convulsive movement of that organ that he was much upset.

“Give the lieutenant a chair,” he began, with the calm good sense of a man who knows how to break bad news. Then he proceeded:

“My dear friend, the news I have to give you of Lieutenant Limberg is very sad: the unfortunate man had a serious wound in the skull, and----”

“He is dead?” asked the officer, in a strangled voice.

“Yes, he is dead. We are burying him to-day at three o’clock.”

Second Lieutenant David remained for some time without moving. A nervous twitch began to work one side of his face. He looked stunned, and wiped his temples, that suddenly began to sweat profusely. We showed our respect for this evident pain. In a moment or two he got up, saluted, and was about to take leave of us.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “he was my best friend....”

In an absent way he gave each of us his plump clammy hand to shake, and he was going out, when he stopped on the doorstep.

“One word more, Doctor. My friend Limberg was a Jew--I am too--I thought it was better to tell you....”

He was gone. A short silence intervened, then M. Gilbert began to strike the table with the handle of his knife--a succession of rapid knocks.

“What did he say? Limberg a Jew? It’s really too much! Call Bénezech.”

M. Gilbert was a stubborn, explosive man, given to violent reactions. He seemed to forget the heat, his exhaustion, and his digestion. He began to throw little pellets of bread-crumbs wildly all over the room. He had the intense, expectant air of a cartridge the fuse of which has been set alight. Bénezech came to an abrupt stop at the door, overwhelmed by the might of the doctor’s vocal organs, which left no one in doubt as to what he felt.

“Ah! it’s you, is it? A fine mess you were going to get me in!”

“Doctor!”