Books: The New Book Of Martyrs
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Georges Duhamel >> The New Book Of Martyrs
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Leglise's leg was taken off at the thigh this morning. He was
still unconscious when we carried him into the dark room to
examine his other leg under the X-rays.
He was already beginning to moan and to open his eyes, and the
radiographer was not hurrying. I did all I could to hasten the
business, and to get him back into his bed. Thus he regained
consciousness in bright sunshine.
What would he, who once again was so close to the dark kingdom,
have thought if he had awakened in a gloom peopled by shadows,
full of whisperings, sparks and flashes of light?
As soon as he could speak, he said to me:
"You have cut off my leg?"
I made a sign. His eyes filled, and as his head was low, the great
tears trickled on to the pillow.
To-day he is calmer. The first dressings were very painful. He
looked at the raw, bloody, oozing stump, trembling, and said:
"It looks pretty horrible!"
We took so many precautions that now he is refreshed for a few
hours.
"They say you are to have the Military Medal," the head doctor
told him.
Leglise confided to me later, with some hesitation:
"I don't suppose they would really give me the medal!"
"And why not?"
"I was punished; one of my men had some buttons off his overcoat."
Oh, my friend, scrupulous lad, could I love my countrymen if they
could remember those wretched buttons for an instant?
"My men!" he said gravely. I look at his narrow chest, his thin
face, his boyish forehead with the serious furrow on it of one who
accepts all responsibilities, and I do not know how to show him my
respect and affection.
Leglise's fears were baseless. General G----arrived just now. I
met him on the terrace. His face pleased me. It was refined and
intelligent.
"I have come to see Corporal Leglise," he said.
I took him into the ward, full of wounded men, and he at once went
towards Leglise unhesitatingly, as if he knew him perfectly.
"How are you?" he asked, taking the young man's hand.
"Mon General, they've cut off my leg ..."
"Yes, yes, I know, my poor fellow. And I have brought you the
Military Medal."
He pinned it on to Leglise's shirt, and kissed my friend on both
cheeks, simply and affectionately.
Then he talked to him again for a few minutes.
I was greatly pleased. Really, this General is one of the right
sort.
The medal has been wrapped in a bit of muslin, so that the flies
may not soil it, and hung on the wall over the bed. It seems to be
watching over the wounded man, to be looking on at what is
happening. Unfortunately, what it sees is sad enough. The right
leg, the only leg, is giving us trouble now. The knee is diseased,
it is in a very bad state, and all we have done to save it seems
to have been in vain. Then a sore has appeared on the back, and
then another sore. Every morning, we pass from one misery to
another, telling the beads of suffering in due order.
So a man does not die of pain, or Leglise would certainly be dead.
I see him still, opening his eyes desperately and checking the
scream that rises to his lips. Oh! I thought indeed that he was
going to die. But his agony demands full endurance; it does not
even stupefy those it assails.
I call on every one for help.
"Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of you."
Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, to support Leglise,
to hold him, to soothe him. A minute of his endurance is equal to
ten years of such effort as ours.
Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the
heaviest burden alone.
All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every
minute aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to
its aid?
We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our
chief, who muttered almost inaudibly between his teeth:
"He must be prepared for another sacrifice."
Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated.
But Leglise understood. He no longer weeps. He has the weary and
somewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the
storm. I steal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear,
calm, resolute voice:
"I would much rather die."
I go into the garden. It is a brilliant morning, but I can see
nothing, I want to see nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro:
"He would much rather die."
And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps.
All the poplars rustle softly. With one voice, the voice of Summer
itself, they say: "No! No! He is not right!"
A little beetle crosses the path before me. I step on it
unintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste. It too has
answered in its own way: "No, really, your friend is not right."
"Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of insects that buzz about
the lime-tree.
And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the
landscape seems to say gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!"
During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to
him with the same mournful gravity:
"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die."
We go down into the garden, and the chief says a strange thing to
me:
"Try to convince him. I begin at last to feel ashamed of demanding
such a sacrifice from him."
And I too ... am I not ashamed?
I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am quite sure now that he
is wrong, but I don't know how to tell him so. What can I offer
him in exchange for the thing I am about to ask him? Where shall I
find the words that induce a man to live? Oh you, all things
around me, tell me, repeat to me that it is sweet to live, even
with a body so grievously mutilated.
This morning I extracted a little projectile from one of his
wounds. He secretly concluded that this would perhaps make the
great operation unnecessary, and it hurt me to see his joy. I
could not leave him this satisfaction.
The struggle began again; this time it was desperate. For we have
no time to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A
few days more, and there will be no choice open to him: only
death, after a long ordeal. ...
He repeats:
"I am not afraid, but I would rather die."
Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate of Life. Who gave me
this right? Who gave me eloquence? The things I said were just the
right things, and they came so readily that now and then I was
afraid of holding out so sure a promise of a life I am not certain
I can preserve, of guaranteeing a future that is not in man's
hands.
Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. There is something in
Leglise which involuntarily sides with me and pleads with me.
There are moments when he does not know what to say, and
formulates trivial objections, just because there are others so
much weightier.
"I live with my mother," he says. "I am twenty years old. What
work is there for a cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty and
misery?"
"Leglise, all France owes you too much, she would blush not to pay
her debt."
And I promise again, in the name of our country, sure that she
will never fall short of what I undertake for her. The whole
French nation is behind me at this moment, silently ratifying my
promise.
We are at the edge of the terrace; evening has come. I hold his
burning wrist in which the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury.
The night is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets rise above the
hills, and fall slowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The
lightning of the guns flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In
spite of all this, in spite of war, the night is like waters dark
and divine. Leglise breathes it in to his wasted breast in long
draughts, and says:
"Oh, I don't know, I don't know! ... Wait another day, please,
please. ..."
We waited three whole days, and then Leglise gave in. "Well, do
what you must. Do what you like."
On the morning of the operation, he asked to be carried down to
the ward by the steps into the park. I went with him, and I saw
him looking at all things round him, as if taking them to witness.
If only, only it is not too late!
Again he was laid on the table. Again we cut through flesh and
bones. The second leg was amputated at the thigh.
I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, and he was so light,
so light....
This time when he woke he asked no question. But I saw his hands
groping to feel where his body ended.
A few days have passed since the operation. We have done all it
was humanly possible to do, and Leglise comes back to life with a
kind of bewilderment.
"I thought I should have died," he said to me this morning, while
I was encouraging him to eat.
He added:
"When I went down to the operation-ward, I looked well at
everything, and I thought it was for the last time."
"Look, dear boy. Everything is just the same, just as beautiful as
ever."
"Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, "I had made up my mind
to die."
To make up one's mind to die is to take a certain resolution, in
the hope of becoming quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man
who makes up his mind to die severs a good many ties, and indeed
actually dies to some extent.
With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I were asking a question:
"It is always good to eat, to drink, to breathe, to see the light.
..."
He does not answer. He is dreaming. I spoke too soon. I go away,
still anxious.
We have some bad moments yet, but the fever gradually abates. I
have an impression that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely,
like one who has given all he had to give, and fears nothing
further.
When I have finished the dressing, I turned him over on his side,
to ease his sore back. He smiled for the first time this morning,
saying:
"I have already gained something by getting rid of my legs. I can
lie on my side now."
But he cannot balance himself well; he is afraid of falling.
Think of him, and you will be afraid with him and for him.
Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad daylight and dozes for a few
minutes. He has shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of
gauze over his face, as one does to a child, to keep the flies
off. I bring him a little bottle of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they
help him to bear the final assaults of the fever.
He begins to smoke again. We smoke together on the terrace, where
I have had his bed brought. I show him the garden and say: "In a
few days, I will carry you down into the garden."
He is anxious about his neighbours, asks their names, and
inquires about their wounds. For each one he has a compassionate
word that comes from the depths of his being. He says to me:
"I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor Camus!"
His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad to see them. He had
not cried for so long. He adds:
"Excuse me, I used to see Camus sometimes. It's so sad."
He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is touched by all he sees
around him, by the sufferings of others, by their individual
misfortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, exalted by a great
crisis.
When he speaks of his own case, it is always to make light of his
misfortune:
"Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's lucky for me that none of my
organs are touched; I can't complain."
I watch him with admiration, but I am waiting for something more,
something more. ...
His chief crony is Legrand.
Legrand is a stonemason with a face like a young girl. He has lost
a big piece of his skull. He has also lost the use of language,
and we teach him words, as to a baby. He is beginning to get up
now, and he hovers round Leglise's bed to perform little services
for him. He tries to master his rebellious tongue, but failing in
the attempt, he smiles, and expresses himself with a limpid
glance, full of intelligence.
Leglise pities him too:
"It must be wretched not to be able to speak."
To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed heartily, Leglise, the
orderlies and I.
We were talking of his future pension while the dressings were
being prepared, and someone said to him:
"You will live like a little man of means."
Leglise looked at his body and answered:
"Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man."
The dressing went off very well. To make our task easier, Leglise
suggested that he should hold on to the head of the bed with both
hands and throw himself back on his shoulders, holding his stumps
up in the air. It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but he
began to laugh, and the spectacle became comic. We all laughed.
But the dressing was easy and was quickly finished.
The stumps are healing healthily. In the afternoon, he sits up in
bed. He begins to read and to smoke, chatting to his companions.
I explain to him how he will be able to walk with artificial legs.
He jokes again:
"I was rather short before; but now I can be just the height I
choose."
I bring him some cigarettes that had been sent me for him, some
sweets and dainties. He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to
me, and says very softly:
"I have far too many things. But Legrand is very badly off; his
home is in the invaded district, and he has nothing, they can't
send him anything."
I understand. I come back presently with a packet in which there
are tobacco, some good cigarettes, and also a little note. ...
"Here is something for Legrand. You must give it to him. I'm off."
In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and perplexed.
"I can't give all this to Legrand myself, he would be offended."
So then we have to devise a discreet method of presentation.
It takes some minutes. He invents romantic possibilities. He
becomes flushed, animated, interested.
"Think," I say, "find a way. Give it to him yourself, from some
one or other."
But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding Legrand's
susceptibilities. He ruminates on the matter till evening.
The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's bed. Leglise calls
my attention to it with his chin, and whispers:
"I found some one to give it to him. He doesn't know who sent it.
He has made all sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" Oh,
Leglise, can it be that there is still something amusing, and that
it is to be kind? Isn't this alone enough to make it worth while
to live?
So now we have a great secret between us. All the morning, as I
come and go in the ward, he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to
himself. Legrand gravely offers me a cigarette; Leglise finds it
hard not to burst out laughing. But he keeps his counsel.
The orderlies have put him on a neighbouring bed while they make
his. He stays there very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and
sings a little song, like a child's cradle-song. Then, all of a
sudden, he begins to cry, sobbing aloud.
I put my arm round him and ask anxiously: "Why? What is the
matter?"
Then he answers in a broken voice: "I am crying with joy and
thankfulness."
Oh! I did not expect so much. But I am very happy, much comforted.
I kiss him, he kisses me, and I think I cried a little too.
I have wrapped him in a flannel dressing-gown, and I carry him in
my arms. I go down the steps to the park very carefully, like a
mother carrying her new-born babe for the first time, and I call
out: "An arm-chair! An arm-chair."
He clings to my neck as I walk, and says in some confusion:
"I shall tire you."
No indeed! I am too well pleased. I would not let any one take my
place. The arm-chair has been set under the trees, near a grove. I
deposit Leglise among the cushions. They bring him a kepi. He
breathes the scent of green things, of the newly mown lawns, of
the warm gravel. He looks at the facade of the mansion, and says:
"I had not even seen the place where I very nearly died."
All the wounded who are walking about come and visit him; they
almost seem to be paying him homage. He talks to them with a
cordial authority. Is he not the chief among them, in virtue of
his sufferings and his sacrifice?
Some one in the ward was talking this morning of love and
marriage, and a home.
I glanced at Leglise now and then; he seemed to be dreaming and he
murmured:
"Oh, for me, now..."
Then I told him something I knew: I know young girls who have
sworn to marry only a mutilated man. Well, we must believe in the
vows of these young girls. France is a country richer in warmth of
heart than in any other virtue. It is a blessed duty to give
happiness to those who have sacrificed so much. And a thousand
hearts, the generous hearts of women, applaud me at this moment.
Leglise listens, shaking his head. He does not venture to say
"No."
Leglise has not only the Military Medal, but also the War Cross.
The notice has just come. He reads it with blushes.
"I shall never dare to show this," he says; "it is a good deal
exaggerated."
He hands me the paper, which states, in substance, that Corporal
Leglise behaved with great gallantry under a hail of bombs, and
that his left leg has been amputated.
"I didn't behave with great gallantry," he says; "I was at my
post, that's all. As to the bombs, I only got one."
I reject this point of view summarily.
"Wasn't it a gallant act to go to that advanced post, so near the
enemy, all alone, at the head of all the Frenchmen? Weren't they
all behind you, to the very end of the country, right away to the
Pyrenees? Did they not all rely on your coolness, your keen sight,
your vigilance? You were only hit by one bomb, but I think you
might have had several, and still be with us. And besides, the
notice, far from being exaggerated, is really insufficient; it
says you have lost a leg, whereas you have lost two! It seems to
me that this fully compensates for anything excessive with regard
to the bombs."
"That's true!" agrees Leglise, laughing. "But I don't want to be
made out a hero."
"My good lad, people won't ask what you think before they
appreciate and honour you. It will be quite enough to look at your
body."
Then we had to part, for the war goes on, and every day there are
fresh wounded.
Leglise left us nearly cured. He left with some comrades, and he
was not the least lively of the group.
"I was the most severely wounded man in the train," he wrote to
me, not without a certain pride.
Since then, Leglise has written to me often. His letters breathe a
contented calm. I receive them among the vicissitudes of the
campaign; on the highways, in wards where other wounded men are
moaning, in fields scoured by the gallop of the cannonade.
And always something beside me murmurs, mutely:
"You see, you see, he was wrong when he said he would rather die."
I am convinced of it, and this is why I have told your story. You
will forgive me, won't you, Leglise, my friend?
THE THIRD SYMPHONY
Every morning the stretcher-bearers brought Vize-Feldwebel Spat
down to the dressing ward, and his appearance always introduced a
certain chill in the atmosphere.
There are some German wounded whom kind treatment, suffering, or
some more obscure agency move to composition with the enemy, and
who receive what we do for them with a certain amount of
gratitude. Spat was not one of these. For weeks we had made
strenuous efforts to snatch him from death, and then to alleviate
his sufferings, without eliciting the slightest sign of
satisfaction from him, or receiving the least word of thanks.
He could speak a little French, which he utilised strictly for his
material wants, to say, for instance, "A little more cotton-wool
under the foot, Monsieur," or, "Have I any fever to-day?"
Apart from this, he always showed us the same icy face, the same
pale, hard eyes, enframed by colourless lashes. We gathered, from
certain indications, that the man was intelligent and well
educated; but he was obviously under the domination of a lively
hatred, and a strict sense of his own dignity.
He bore pain bravely, and like one who makes it a point of honour
to repress the most excusable reactions of the martyred flesh. I
do not remember ever hearing him cry out, though this would have
seemed to me natural enough, and would by no means have lowered
Monsieur Spat in my opinion. All I ever heard from him was a
stifled moan, the dull panting of the woodman as he swings his
axe.
One day we were obliged to give him an anaesthetic in order to
make incisions in the wounds in his leg; he turned very red and
said, in a tone that was almost imploring: "You won't cut it off,
gentlemen, will you?" But no sooner did he regain consciousness
than he at once resumed his attitude of stiff hostility.
After a time, I ceased to believe mat his features could ever
express anything but this repressed animosity. I was undeceived by
an unforeseen incident.
The habit of whistling between one's teeth is a token, with me as
with many other persons, of a certain absorption. It is perhaps
rather a vulgar habit, but I often feel impelled to whistle,
especially when I have a serious piece of work in hand.
One morning accordingly, I was finishing Vize-Feldwebel Spat's
dressing, and whistling something at random. I was looking at his
leg, and was paying no attention to his face, when I suddenly
became curiously aware that the look he had fixed upon me had
changed in quality, and I raised my eyes.
Certainly, something very extraordinary had taken place: the
German's face glowed with a kind of warmth and contentment, and
was so smiling and radiant that I hardly recognised it. I could
scarcely believe that he had been able to improvise this face,
which was sensitive and trustful, out of the features he generally
showed us.
"Tell me, Monsieur," he murmured, "it's the Third Symphony, isn't
it, that you are ... what do you call it?--yes ... whistling."
First, I stopped whistling. Then I answered: "Yes, I believe it is
the Third Symphony"; then I remained silent and confused.
A slender bridge had just been flung across the abyss.
The thing lasted for a few seconds, and I was still dreaming of it
when once more I felt an icy, irrevocable shadow falling upon me--
the hostile glance of Herr Spat.
GRACE
It is a common saying that all men are equal in the presence of
suffering, but I know very well that this is not true.
Auger! Auger! humble basket-maker of La Charente, who are you, you
who seem able to suffer without being unhappy? Why are you touched
with grace, whereas Gregoire is not? Why are you the prince of a
world in which Gregoire is merely a pariah?
Kind ladies who pass through the wards where the wounded lie, and
give them cigarettes and sweet-meats, come with me.
We will go through the large ward on the first floor, where the
windows are caressed by the boughs of chestnut-trees. I will not
point out Auger, you will give him the lion's share of the
cigarettes and sweets of your own accord; but if I don't point out
Gregoire, you will leave without, noticing him, and he will get no
sweets, and will have nothing to smoke.
It is not because of this that I call Gregoire a pariah. It is
because of a much sadder and more intimate thing ... Gregoire
lacks endurance, he is not what we call a good patient.
In a general way those who tend the wounded call the men who do
not give them much trouble "good patients." Judged by this
standard, every one in the hospital will tell you that Gregoire is
not a good patient.
All day long, he lies on his left side, because of his wound, and
stares at the wall. I said to him a day or two after he came:
"I am going to move you and put you over in the other corner;
there you will be able to see your comrades."
He answered, in his dull, surly voice:
"It's not worth while. I'm all right here."
"But you can see nothing but the wall."
"That's quite enough."
Scarcely have the stretcher-bearers touched his bed, when Gregoire
begins to cry out in a doleful, irritable tone:
"Ah! don't shake me like that! Ah, you mustn't touch me."
The stretcher-bearers I give him are very gentle fellows, and he
always has the same: Paffin, a fat shoe-maker with a stammer, and
Monsieur Bouin, a professor of mathematics, with a grey beard and
very precise movements.
They take hold of Gregoire most carefully to lay him on the
stretcher. The wounded man criticises all their movements
peevishly:
"Ah! don't turn me over like that. And you must hold my leg better
than that!"
The sweat breaks out on Baffin's face. Monsieur Bouin's eye-
glasses fall off. At last they bring the patient along.
As soon as he comes into the dressing ward, Gregoire is pale and
perspiring. His harsh tawny beard quivers, hair by hair. I divine
all this, and say a few words of encouragement to him from afar.
"I shan't be long with you this morning, Gregoire. You won't have
time to say 'oof'!"
He preserves a sulky silence, full of reservations. He looks like
a condemned criminal awaiting execution. He is so pre-occupied
that he does not even answer when the sarcastic Sergeant says as
he passes him:
"Ah! here's our grouser."
At last he is laid on the table which the wounded men call the
"billiard-table."
Then, things become very trying. I feel at once that whatever I
do, Gregoire will suffer. I uncover the wound in his thigh, and he
screams. I wash the wound carefully, and he screams. I probe the
wound, from which I remove small particles of bone, very gently,
and he utters unimaginable yells. I see his tongue trembling in
his open mouth. His hands tremble in the hands that hold them, I
have an impression that every fibre of his body trembles, that the
raw flesh of the wound trembles and retracts. In spite of my
determination, this misery affects me, and I wonder whether I too
shall begin to tremble sympathetically. I say:
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