Books: The New Book Of Martyrs
G >>
Georges Duhamel >> The New Book Of Martyrs
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS
From the French of GEORGES DUHAMEL
BY FLORENCE SIMMONDS
CONTENTS
THROUGHOUT OUR LAND
THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU
MEMORIES OF THE MARTYRS
THE DEATH OF MERCIER
VERDUN
THE SACRIFICE
THE THIRD SYMPHONY
GRACE
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS
THE NEW BOOK OF MARTYRS
THROUGHOUT OUR LAND
From the disfigured regions where the cannon reigns supreme, to
the mountains of the South, to the ocean, to the glittering shores
of the inland sea, the cry of wounded men echoes throughout the
land, and a vast kindred cry seems to rise responsive from the
whole world.
There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the
battle-field are not bleeding. Not one which has not accepted the
duty of assuaging something of the sum of suffering, just as it
bears its part in the sum of mourning; not one which may not hear
within its own walls an echo of the greater lamentation swelling
and muttering where the conflict seems to rage unceasingly. The
waves of war break upon the whole surface of the country, and like
the incoming tide, strew it with wreckage.
In the beds which the piety of the public has prepared on every
side, stricken men await the verdict of fate. The beds are white,
the bandages are spotless; many faces smile until the hour when
they are flushed with fever, and until that same fever makes a
whole nation of wounded tremble on the Continent.
Some one who had been visiting the wounded said to me: "The beds
are really very white, the dressings are clean, all the patients
seem to be playing cards, reading the papers, eating dainties;
they are simple, often very gentle, they don't look very unhappy.
They all tell the same story ... The war has not changed them
much. One can recognise them all."
Are you sure that you recognise them? You have just been looking
at them, are you sure that you have seen them?
Under their bandages are wounds you cannot imagine. Below the
wounds, in the depths of the mutilated flesh, a soul, strange and
furtive, is stirring in feverish exaltation, a soul which does not
readily reveal itself, which expresses itself artlessly, but which
I would fain make you understand.
In these days, when nothing retains its former semblance, all
these men are no longer those you so lately knew. Suffering has
roused them from the sleep of gentle life, and every day fills
them with a terrible intoxication. They are now something more
than themselves; those we loved were merely happy shadows.
Let us lose none of their humble words, let us note their
slightest gestures, and tell me, tell me that we will think of
them together, now and later, when we realise the misery of the
times and the magnitude of their sacrifice.
THE STORY OF CARRE AND LERONDEAU
They came in like two parcels dispatched by the same post, two
clumsy, squalid parcels, badly packed, and damaged in transit. Two
human forms rolled up in linens and woollens, strapped into
strange instruments, one of which enclosed the whole man, like a
coffin of zinc and wire.
They seemed to be of no particular age; or rather, each might have
been a thousand and more, the age of swaddled mummies in the
depths of sarcophagi.
We washed, combed, and peeled them, and laid them very cautiously
between clean sheets; then we found that one had the look of an
old man, and that the other was still a boy.
Their beds face each other in the same grey room. All who enter it
notice them at once; their infinite misery gives them an air of
kinship. Compared with them, the other wounded seem well and
happy. And in this abode of suffering, they are kings; their
couches are encircled by the respect and silence due to majesty.
I approach the younger man and bend over him.
"What is your name?"
The answer is a murmur accompanied by an imploring look. What I
hear sounds like: Mahihehondo. It is a sigh with modulations.
It takes me a week to discover that the boyish patient is called
Marie Lerondeau.
The bed opposite is less confused. I see a little toothless head.
From out the ragged beard comes a peasant voice, broken in tone,
but touching and almost melodious. The man who lies there is
called Carre.
They did not come from the same battlefield, but they were hit
almost at the same time, and they have the same wound. Each has a
fractured thigh. Chance brought them together in the same distant
ambulance, where their wounds festered side by side. Since then
they have kept together, till now they lie enfolded by the blue
radiance of the Master's gaze.
He looks at both, and shakes his head silently; truly, a bad
business! He can but ask himself which of the two will die first,
so great are the odds against the survival of either.
The white-bearded man considers them in silence, turning in his
hand the cunning knife.
We can know nothing till after this grave debate. The soul must
withdraw, for this is not its hour. Now the knife must divide the
flesh, and lay the ravage bare, and do its work completely.
So the two comrades go to sleep, in that dreadful slumber wherein
each man resembles his own corpse. Henceforth we enter upon the
struggle. We have laid our grasp upon these two bodies; we shall
not let them be snatched from us easily.
The nausea of the awakening, the sharp agony of the first hours
are over, and I begin to discover my new friends.
This requires time and patience. The dressing hour is propitious.
The man lies naked on the table. One sees him as a whole, as also
those great gaping wounds, the objects of so many hopes and fears.
The afternoon is no less favourable to communion, but that is
another matter. Calm has come to them, and these two creatures
have ceased to be nothing but a tortured leg and a screaming
mouth.
Carre went ahead at once. He made a veritable bound. Whereas
Lerondeau seemed still wrapped in a kind of plaintive stupor,
Carre was already enfolding me in a deep affectionate gaze. He
said:
"You must do all that is necessary."
Lerondeau can as yet only murmur a half articulate phrase:
"Mustn't hurt me."
As soon as I could distinguish and understand the boy's words, I
called him by his Christian name. I would say:
"How are you, Marie?" or "I am pleased with you, Marie."
This familiarity suits him, as does my use of "thee" and "thou" in
talking to him. He very soon guessed that I speak thus only to
those who suffer most, and for whom I have a special tenderness.
So I say to him: "Marie, the wound looks very well today." And
every one in the hospital calls him Marie as I do.
When he is not behaving well, I say:
"Come, be sensible, Lerondeau."
His eyes fill with tears at once. One day I was obliged to try
"Monsieur Lerondeau," and he was so hurt that I had to retract on
the spot. However, he now refrains from grumbling at his orderly,
and screaming too loudly during the dressing of his wound, for he
knows that the day I say to him "Be quiet, Monsiuer"--just
Monsiuer--our relations will be exceedingly strained.
From the first, Carre bore himself like a man. When I entered the
dressing ward, I found the two lying side by side on stretchers
which had been placed on the floor. Carre's emaciated arm emerged
from under his blanket, and he began to lecture Marie on the
subject of hope and courage.... I listened to the quavering voice,
I looked at the toothless face, lit up by a smile, and I felt a
curious choking in my throat, while Lerondeau blinked like a child
who is being scolded. Then I went out of the room, because this
was a matter between those two lying on the ground, and had
nothing to do with me, a robust person, standing on my feet.
Since then, Carre has proved that he had a right to preach courage
to young Lerondeau.
While the dressing is being prepared, he lies on the ground with
the others, waiting his turn, and says very little. He looks
gravely round him, and smiles when his eyes meet mine. He is not
proud, but he is not one of those who are ready to chatter to
every one. One does not come into this ward to talk, but to
suffer, and Carre is bracing himself to suffer as decently as
possible.
When he is not quite sure of himself, he warns me, saying:
"I am not as strong as usual to-day."
Nine times, out of ten, he is "as strong as usual," but he is so
thin, so wasted, so reduced by his mighty task, that he is
sometimes obliged to beat a retreat. He does it with honour, with
dignity. He has just said: "My knee is terribly painful," and the
sentence almost ends in a scream. Then, feeling that he is about
to howl like the others, Carre begins to sing.
The first time this happened I did not quite understand what was
going on. He repeated the one phrase again and again: "Oh, the
pain in my knee!" And gradually I became aware that this lament
was becoming a real melody, and for five long minutes Carre
improvised a terrible, wonderful, heart-rending song on "the pain
in his knee." Since then this has become a habit, and he begins to
sing suddenly as soon as he feels that he can no longer keep
silence.
Among his improvisations he will introduce old airs. I prefer not
to look at his face when he begins: "Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon
verre." Indeed, I have a good excuse for not looking at it, for I
am very busy with his poor leg, which gives me much anxiety, and
has to be handled with infinite precautions.
I do "all that is necessary," introducing the burning tincture of
iodine several times. Carre feels the sting; and when, passing by
his corner an hour later, I listen for a moment, I hear him slowly
chanting in a trembling but melodious voice the theme: "He gave me
tincture of iodine."
Carre is proud of showing courage.
This morning he seemed so weak that I tried to be as quick as
possible and to keep my ears shut. But presently a stranger came
into the ward. Carre turned his head slightly, saw the visitor,
and frowning, began to sing:
"Il n'est ni beau ni grand mon verre."
The stranger looked at him with tears in his eyes but the more he
looked, the more resolutely Carre smiled, clutching the edges of
the table with his two quivering hands.
Lerondeau has good strong teeth. Carre has nothing but black
stumps. This distresses me, for a man with a fractured thigh needs
good teeth.
Lerondeau is still at death's door, but though moribund, he can
eat. He attacks his meat with a well-armed jaw; he bites with
animal energy, and seems to fasten upon anything substantial.
Carre, for his part, is well-inclined to eat; but what can he do
with his old stumps?
"Besides," he says, "I was never very carnivorous."
Accordingly, he prefers to smoke. In view of lying perpetually
upon his back, he arranged the cover of a cardboard box upon his
chest; the cigarette ash falls into this, and Carre smokes without
moving, in cleanly fashion.
I look at the ash, the smoke, the yellow, emaciated face, and
reflect sadly that it is not enough to have the will to live; one
must have teeth.
Not every one knows how to suffer, and even when we know, we must
set about it the right way, if we are to come off with honour. As
soon as he is on the table, Carre looks round him and asks:
"Isn't there any one to squeeze my head to-day?"
If there is no answer, he repeats anxiously:
"Who is going to squeeze my head to-day?"
Then a nurse approaches, takes his head between her hands and
presses.... I can begin; as soon as some one is "squeezing his
head" Carre is good.
Lerondeau's method is different. He wants some one to hold his
hands. When there is no one to do this, he shrieks: "I shall
fall."
It is no use to tell him that he is on a solid table, and that he
need not be afraid. He gropes about for the helpful hands, and
cries, the sweat breaking out on his brow: "I know I shall fall."
Then I get some one to come and hold his hands, for suffering, at
any rate, is a reality....
Each sufferer has his characteristic cry when the dressing is
going on. The poor have only one, a simple cry that does service
for them all. It makes one think of the women who, when they are
bringing a child into the world, repeat, at every pain, the one
complaint they have adopted.
Carre has a great many varied cries, and he does not say the same
thing when the dressing is removed, and when the forceps are
applied.
At the supreme moment he exclaims: "Oh, the pain in my knee!"
Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes his head and repeats:
"Oh, that wretched knee!"
When it is the turn of the thigh, he is exasperated.
"Now it's this thigh again!"
And he repeats this incessantly, from second to second. Then we go
on to the wound under his heel, and Carre begins:
"Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?"
Finally, when he is tired of singing, he murmurs softly and
regularly:
"They don't know how that wretched knee hurts me... they don't
know how it hurts me."
Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a little boy compared with
Carre, is very poor in the matter of cries. But when he hears his
complaints, he checks his own cries, Borrows them. Accordingly, I
hear him beginning:
"Oh, my poor knee! ... They don't know it hurts!"
One morning when he was shouting this at the top of his voice, I
asked him gravely:
"Why do you make the same complaints as Carre?"
Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me a face that was really
offended:
"It's not true. I don't say the same things."
I said no more, for there are no souls so rugged that they cannot
feel certain stings.
Marie has told me the story of his life and of his campaign. As he
is not very eloquent, It was for the most part a confused murmur
with an ever-recurring protestation:
"I was a good one to work, you know, strong as a horse."
Yet I can hardly imagine that there was once a Marie Lerondeau who
was a robust young fellow, standing firm and erect between the
handles of a plough. I know him only as a man lying on his back,
and I even find it difficult to picture to myself what his shape
and aspect will be when we get him on his feet again.
Marie did his duty bravely under fire. "He stayed alone with the
wagons and when he was wounded, the Germans kicked him with their
heavy boots." These are the salient points of the interrogatory.
Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, and he looks up to the
ceiling, for this takes the place of distance and horizon to those
who lie upon their backs. After a long, light silence, he looks at
me again, and repeats:
"I must have been pretty brave to stay alone with the wagons!"
True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I take care to let people
know it. When strangers come in during the dressings, I show them
Marie, who is making ready to groan, and say:
"This is Marie--Marie Lerondeau, you know. He has a fractured
thigh, but he is a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with the
wagons."
The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and Marie controls
himself. He blushes a little, and the muscles of his neck swell
with pride. He makes a sign with his eyes as if to say: "Yes,
indeed, alone, all alone with the wagons." And meanwhile, the
dressing has been nearly finished.
The whole world must know that Marie stayed alone with the wagons.
I intend to pin a report of this on the Government pension
certificate.
Carre was only under fire once, and was hit almost immediately. He
is much annoyed at this, for he had a good stock of courage, and
now he has to waste it within the walls of a hospital.
He advanced through a huge beetroot field, and he ran with the
others towards a fine white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he fell!
His thigh was fractured. He fell among the thick leaves, on the
waterlogged earth.
Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, and said to him:
"We are going back to our trench, they shall come and fetch you
later."
Carre merely said:
"Put my haversack under my head."
Evening was coming on; he prepared, gravely, to spend the night
among the beetroots. And there he spent it, alone with a cold
drizzling rain, meditating seriously until morning.
It was fortunate that Carre brought such a stock of courage into
hospital, for he needs it all. Successive operations and dressings
make large drafts upon the most generous supplies.
They put Carre upon the table, and I note an almost joyful
resolution in his look. To-day he has "all his strength, to the
last ounce."
But just to-day, I have but little to do, not much suffering to
inflict. He has scarcely knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten
up the apparatus again.
Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a smile, and he exclaims:
"Finished already? Put some more ether on, make it sting a bit at
least."
Carre knows that the courage of which there was no need to-day
will not, perhaps, be available to-morrow.
And to-morrow, and for many days after, Carre will have to be
constantly calling up those reserves of the soul which help the
body to suffer while it waits for the good offices of Nature.
The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and
strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is
he to do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?
This leg, infected to the very marrow, seems to be slowly
devouring the man to whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, and
the white-haired Master fixes two small light-blue eyes upon it,
eyes accustomed to appraise the things of life, yet, for the
moment, hesitant.
I speak to Carre in veiled words of the troublesome, gangrenous
leg. He gives a toothless laugh, and settles the question at once.
"Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, we shall have to get
rid of it."
After this consent, we shall no doubt make up our minds to do so.
Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily towards healing.
Lying on his back, bound up in bandages and a zinc trough, and
imprisoned by cushions, he nevertheless looks like a ship which
the tide will set afloat at dawn.
He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to say, he seems to get
lighter and lighter. He is learning not to groan, not because his
frail soul is gaining strength, but because the animal is better
fed and more robust.
His ideas of strength of mind are indeed very elementary. As soon
as I hear his first cry, in the warm room where his wound is
dressed, I give him an encouraging look, and say:
"Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!"
Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, and asks:
"Ought I to say 'By God!'?"
The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered leg has been lying has
lost its shape; it has become oxydised and is split at the edges;
so I have decided to change it.
I take it away, look at it, and throw it into a corner. Marie
follows my movements with a scared glance. While I am adjusting
the new trough, a solid, comfortable one, but rather different in
appearance, he casts an eloquent glance at the discarded one, and
his eyes fill with copious tears.
This change is a small matter; but in the lives of the sick, there
are no small things.
Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc fragment for two days, and it
will be a long time before he ceases to look distrustfully at the
new trough, and to criticise it in those minute and bitter terms
which only a connoisseur can understand or invent.
Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed in carrying along his
body by the generous impulse of his soul. Everything about him
save his eyes and his liquid voice foreshadow the corpse.
Throughout the winter days and the long sleepless nights, he looks
as if he were dragging along a derelict.
He strains at it ... with his poignant songs and his brave words
which falter now, and often die away in a moan.
I had to do his dressing in the presence of Marie. The amount of
work to be got through, and the cramped quarters made this
necessary. Marie was grave and attentive as if he were taking a
lesson, and, indeed, it was a lesson in patience and courage. But
all at once, the teacher broke down. In the middle of the
dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in spite of himself, began to
complain without restraint or measure, giving up the struggle in
despair.
Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and Carre, knowing that
Marie was listening, continued to lament, like one who has lost
all sense of shame.
Lerondeau called me by a motion of his eyelids. He said:
"Carre!..."
And he added:
"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad."
Lerondeau has a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's
slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel;
but the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye is certainly
for Carre.
And then, he knows, he feels that HIS wounds are going to heal.
But it is bad for Marie to hear another complaining before his own
turn.
He comes to the table very ill-disposed. His nerves have been
shaken and are unusually irritable.
At the first movement, he begins with sighs and those "Poor
devils!" which are his artless and habitual expressions of self-
pity. And then, all at once, he begins to scream, as I had not
heard him scream for a long time. He screams in a sort of frenzy,
opening his mouth widely, and shrieking with all the strength of
his lungs, and with all the strength of his face, it would seem,
for it is flushed and bathed in sweat. He screams unreasonably at
the lightest touch, in an incoherent and disorderly fashion.
Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with gentle and
compassionate words, I raise my voice suddenly and order the boy
to be quiet, in a severe tone that admits of no parleying...
Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a bubble at the touch of
a finger. The ward still rings with my imperious order. A good
lady who does not understand at once, stares at me in
stupefaction.
But Marie, red and frightened, controls his unreasonable emotion.
And as long as the dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously
to prevent him from suffering in vain, just as others hold and
grasp his wrists.
Then, presently, it is all over. I give him a fraternal smile that
relaxes the tension of his brow as a bow is unbent.
A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came to visit the wounded.
She exhaled such a strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have
distinguished the odour of suffering that pervades this place.
Carre was shown to her as one of the most interesting specimens of
the house. She looked at him with a curious, faded smile, which,
thanks to paint and powder, still had a certain beauty.
She made some patriotic remarks to Carre full of allusions to his
conduct under fire. And Carre ceased staring out of the window to
look at the lady with eyes full of respectful astonishment.
And then she asked Carre what she could send him that he would
like, with a gesture that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the
earth and the glory of them.
Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; he considered for a
moment and then said modestly:
"A little bit of veal with new potatoes."
The handsome lady thought it tactful to laugh. And I felt
instinctively that her interest in Carre was suddenly quenched.
An old man sometimes comes to visit Carre. He stops before the
bed, and with a stony face pronounces words full of an overflowing
benevolence.
"Give him anything he asks for.... Send a telegram to his family."
Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? I have no one but my poor
old mother; it would frighten her."
The little old gentleman emerges from his varnished boots like a
variegated plant from a double vase.
Carre coughs--first, to keep himself in countenance, and,
secondly, because his cruel bronchitis takes this opportunity to
give him a shaking.
Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his medals hang out from
his tunic like little dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing and
pouting, without removing his gold-trimmed KEPI, and lays a deaf
ear on Carre's chest with an air of authority.
Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole limb has gone, leaving
a huge and dreadful wound level with the trunk.
It is very surprising that the rest of Carre did not go with the
leg.
He had a pretty hard day.
O life! O soul! How you cling to this battered carcase! O little
gleam on the surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it die down
and kindle again. And it seemed too suffering, too weak, too
despairing ever to reflect anything again save suffering,
weakness, and despair.
During the long afternoon, I go and sit between two beds beside
Lerondeau. I offer him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that we
say nothing, or very little.... But it is not necessary to speak
when one has a talk with Lerondeau.
Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what he likes still better
is that I should come and sit by him for a bit. When I pass
through the ward, he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, as one taps
upon a bench to invite a friend to a seat.
Since he told me about his life at home and his campaign, he has
not found much to say to me. He takes the cakes with which his
little shelf is laden, and crunches them with an air of enjoyment.
"As for me," he says, "I just eat all the time," and he laughs.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8