"that's doing very well—very well indeed!" it was bujard, the house-surgeon, who was speaking. "if everyone got on as quickly as you——"
i no longer felt any pain. my gaze wandered round the huge room. it was warm and prettily decorated—the smoking-room in the m—— hotel, which had been converted into a hospital. my temperature was normal again and i experienced a sensation of relief and deliverance. how delightful it was to rest on this pliant mattress, in these cool sheets, to distinguish the prattle of my neighbours, and the patter of the sister's feet standing out from the subdued hubbub in the ward.
when the light tired me, i closed my eyes on this scene, and went over the vicissitudes of the nightmare i had just left behind....
my long prostration in a dying condition, on that deserted plateau; swoons from which i awoke at intervals; that deadly cycle; two days and two nights.[pg 486] ... ah! faces were leaning over me. they pick me up and carry me away. where am i? a stretcher, a motor.... heavens, how my leg tears me! how thirsty i am!
in the train now, on some straw. round me those poor unfortunates, spectres, drawing their last breath, can they be men? but i am like them! that first dressing in the train.... they snip and tear my trouser and drawers; my wound is exposed, all soiled; matter and congealed blood. there is some question of detraining me. a red-beard opposes the suggestion, i am put back on to the same straw, in a state of decay. the train starts again, and rolls on and on for days. unexpected or unknown names of stations. the feeling of being tossed about from one end of france to the other. oh, this heat, this jolting, this acrid, fetid odour of humanity.... i am sleeping, or dying, unconscious....
a very different period follows—vichy. a hospital ward, this; and the same bed on which i am still lying. washed and cared for, i am born anew. i joke with the sister, a cheery soul, an ex-nurse in the expeditionary corps in china; with the house-surgeon—he and i have mutual friends.
my wound is certainly severe—the fibula is shattered, the tibia fractured. i shall limp. but what matter? they have cut away a lot and extracted splinters of bone, and scraps of clothes.... barring complications, i shall have five or six weeks of it, not more.
heavens, how beautiful life is! the battle of the marne has just been fought. what inspiriting reading the newspapers make. the intoxication of victory; our victory. the very day i arrived i was able to[pg 487] have two telegrams sent—their destinations will easily be guessed. jeannine answered at once, by the ardent letter i had wished for. a promise in it makes my heart leap. the landrys will arrange to come round by vichy on their way to the south, where they spend each winter. there is only one slight shadow—an allusion to certain worries of the grandmother's, money matters, from what i can gather.
as to my father: here he is installed at my bedside.
my thoughts are pleasing ones, and linger over such memories. and then—and then!
a saturday evening. ever since the morning my leg seems to me to have got heavier.... thirst dries the very marrow in my bones. my temperature suddenly rises 101.2°. when it is taken again 102.2°. what does it mean? sunday at eight o'clock 104°. professor gauthier, who is called in for a consultation, examines me and seems put out. these confounded leg wounds!
more incisions, and a drainage tube is put back again, and we must wait and see.
what a day! i am consumed with thirst, and burning hot. my leg on fire right up to the hip, paroxysms of suffering, infernal shooting pains. pus is forming in it. exhaustion soon follows. my tongue is green, and i vomit. i no longer digest anything. delirium sets in. i call maman, i call jeannine, in a despairing voice....
those silhouettes of doctors. that consultation round my bed. a haze envelops me ... i hear music! then bujard's voice:
"well, old chap...?"
halloa, he's very affectionate!
[pg 488]
"we may have to—amputate...!"
from the depths of my torpor, i have understood. "yes, take it off! take it off!" i implore them.
"that's right! very sensible!" he nodded. "a leg! they make such excellent substitutes! and then...."
he emphasised this point: "you'll suffer no more, you know!"
oh, how well he knows my weak spot. no more suffering—or fever....
how did it all happen? i had no notion of anything. i came round from the chloroform to find myself in my bed. my father said to me, with tears in his eyes:
"that's all over, michel, you're saved!"
i slept and slept. i come to life again. i open my eyes. have i been dreaming? i should be tempted to think so. i have difficulty in persuading myself of the reality of my misfortune. my gaze never rests without astonishment on the fold in my bed-clothes, where it sinks down over the stump of my excised thigh.
stupefaction, yes: rather than distress. i am less crushed by it than i should have expected. what an abominable thing the existence of beings mutilated in this way used formerly to seem to me. to-day the fate which awaits me does not make me revolt. i smile, without too much melancholy, at the motherly words of encouragement from the excellent nun. i take note, almost with amusement of the sensations of itching in my missing sole and big toe, common in patients who have had a leg amputated.
the secret of my serenity is to be found in the fact that my thoughts return to the decisive engagement when leading my men. i had consented to the sacri[pg 489]fice. intoxicating moments which could only be paid for with my life! and this last week again, i had seen my coffin open; death flowed in my veins. now destiny had had mercy on me. i might well consider myself blest!
but this period did not last long. at the end of a few days, the memory of my recent tortures paled. the withdrawal of this shadow robbed my present condition of its tinge of consolation.
there were ten of us in this ward, all seriously wounded, and operated on under favourable conditions. the general atmosphere was one of cheerfulness. i was soon out of sympathy with it.
i had made friends with my next-door neighbour, a recruit of twenty, cadieu, by name. he was always in the most uproarious spirits and quite irresistible. i compared him with judsi. what vitality there must be in a race which produces such men by thousands! his leg amputated too, and like mine, in the "upper third," he gaily made the best of it. first of all there was the pension. and then as an adjuster of scales it wouldn't worry him so much as all that! and then, what was a leg more or less after all?
he told me how he had been hit. when he had got the splinter in his leg, he had said to himself: "well done! of course you would just go and get in the light!" lying down in a furrow he was waiting quietly for—what? blimey! the end o' the war! the crackling was still going on as hard as ever. suddenly, paf! oh, my eye! a bullet in the foot. but 'e'd 'ad one bit o' luck. it was the one on the same side!
the boy had at once confided his love affairs to me. his lady friend was a housemaid to some people of good[pg 490] position. her name was margaret. "it all began by that there song, you remember 'ow it goes, 'margaret, give me your 'eart.' i 'ummed it to 'er—." one child brought up in the country by her parents, good old things. he expected her to come and see him at the beginning of next month: "you're kept at it pretty 'ard in 'er trade! but 'er missus' 'usband 'as just bin 'napoohed' too. she bolted off to 'im in double-quick time, an' w'en margaret was seein' 'er orf at the station, she up and told 'er that 'er boy was knocked out, too, and blowed if the lidy didn't feel sorter touched by it, and offered 'er a fortnight's 'oliday!"
his outpourings at an end, cadieu, seeing i was still depressed, watched me out of the corner of his eye.
"and wot abaht you? an' your sweet'eart?" he said to me one day.
i smiled. "not married, old chap, or attached in any way. no, seriously!"
how much to the point his guess had been, though!
o jeannine! sleeping and waking i had thought of my love. the other week her fair image presided over my revival. it was with my heart dedicated to her that i had put myself into the hands of the surgeons, and when i had opened my eyes again, amid the giddiness and sickness, it was the light of her face that had been the first thing to pierce the veil of my torpor.
i have said that i had telegraphed, that i had received a reply. but since then, what a striking change there had been. on the threshold of a new era, i tremblingly encouraged myself not to mistrust her. i remember the tone in which de valpic had spoken of his unchanging love, when just on the point of death.
[pg 491]
i waited to write to her until i had recovered my strength to a certain extent. a week! how long the time must seem to her. a second letter came from her. she demanded news.... what a piece of news i had to announce to her!
i made up my mind to it, however.
my first sentence revealed everything to her. it was a mutilated man, i told her, who was tracing these lines to her.... i stopped short, and turned over to bury my head in my pillow. tears rose to my eyes! then i recovered myself. i so much wanted this letter to appear a normal continuation of the others. when i re-read it, i was struck by the deadly heart-break depicted in it, in spite of myself! i was on the point of tearing the pages to pieces. i stayed for a long time, balancing them in my hands. then i finally decided to slip them into the envelope; my salvation lay entirely in the pity i should inspire.
some days passed by in boredom, and overwhelming anxiety, the reason of which i now forbade myself to specify. i tried in vain to distract my thoughts. my father read the papers aloud to me—those around me profited by it. with the monotonous delivery of an officer giving the order of the day, he sometimes stirred us all in pronouncing the word victory. he had to take off his glasses which were dimmed.
but the press no longer reflected the same enthusiasm evinced for the "battle of the marne." the thankless battle of the aisne was dragging on, and becoming endless. we began to feel that the enemy would hold out for a long time on this stolen territory. there was heavy fighting going on in the north. our left and the german right struggling to outstrip each other in their race for the coast—fierce cavalry[pg 492] encounters round aire and hazebrouck.... and there were already sinister rumours abroad concerning the probable fate of anvers.
i bore myself a grudge for not being more thrilled. i urged myself to lose sight of my individual misery, in order to continue in communion with my noble nation. i tried hard to do it, but my efforts were in vain!
an epistle from guillaumin reached me. he was safe and sound, and was anxious to be reassured on my account. his letter contained some details. yes, poor de valpic had fallen. his body had been identified, and was reposing in hallowed ground, beneath a cross. the platoon had been reduced to half its strength the day after nanteuil, but reinforcements had arrived during the following days. they had been engaged over and over again since then, and were fighting nearly every day; yesterday again at guennevières. they did not forget me in all that! guillaumin enclosed in his letter a joint card signed by each poilu. one shaky scrawl was from the hand of poor donnadieu, hit by a splinter in the abdomen, and who, so my friend told me, had succumbed during the night.
who would believe that i put off answering him. and, for that matter, my sister-in-law, too, who had sent me several affectionate missives. sometimes it was enervation which tortured me, as i lay there, sometimes a gloomy atony.
margaret, cadieu's friend, had arrived, a pretty, fair-haired girl of the soubrette and ingénue type. her presence exhilarated my neighbour to such an extent that our corner was one long roar of laughter. i alone did not cheer up. he cast sorrowful looks at me, and the girl took to bringing me flowers in the[pg 493] morning when she brought them for her julot. how sorry they were for me!
and my father! he certainly would not have questioned me. but his speech which was usually abrupt, softened, and his gaze grew more gentle when it rested on me. i was grateful to him for his tacit compassion, and i felt inclined to cry.
