Books: The New Book Of Martyrs
G >>
Georges Duhamel >> The New Book Of Martyrs
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8
"Try to be patient, my poor Gregoire."
He replies in a voice hoarse with pain and terror: "I can't help
it."
I add, just to say something: "Courage, a little courage."
He does not even answer, and I feel that to exhort him to show
courage, is to recommend an impossible thing, as if I were to
advise him to have black eyes instead of his pale blue ones.
The dressing is completed in an atmosphere of general discomfort.
Nothing could persuade me that Gregoire does not cordially detest
me at this moment. While they are carrying him away, I ask myself
bitterly why Gregoire is so deficient in grace, why he cannot
suffer decently?
The Sergeant says, as he sponges the table: "He's working against
one all the time." Well, the Sergeant is wrong. Gregoire is not
deliberately hostile. Sometimes I divine, when he knits his brows,
that he is making an effort to resist suffering, to meet it with a
stouter and more cheerful heart. But he does not know how to set
about it.
If you were asked to lift a railway-engine, you would perhaps make
an effort; but you would do so without confidence and without
success. So you must not say hard things of Gregoire.
Gregoire is unable to bear suffering, just as one is unable to
talk an unknown language. And, then, it is easier to learn Chinese
than to learn the art of suffering.
When I say that he is unable to bear suffering, I really mean that
he has to suffer a great deal more than others. ... I know the
human body, and I cannot be deceived as to certain signs.
Gregoire begins very badly. He reminds one of those children who
have such a terror of dogs that they are bound to be bitten.
Gregoire trembles at once. The dogs of pain throw themselves upon
this defenceless man and pull him down.
A great load of misery is heavy for a man to bear alone, but it is
supportable when he is helped. Unfortunately Gregoire has no
friends. He does nothing to obtain them, it almost seems as if he
did not want any.
He is not coarse, noisy and foul-mouthed, like the rascal Groult
who amuses the whole ward. He is only dull and reserved.
He does not often say "Thank you" when he is offered something,
and many touchy people take offence at this.
When I sit down by his bed, he gives no sign of any pleasure at my
visit. I ask him:
"What was your business in civil life?"
He does not answer immediately. At last he says: "Odd jobs; I
carried and loaded here and there."
"Are you married?"
"Yes."
"Have you any children?"
"Yes."
"How many?"
"Three."
The conversation languishes. I get up and say: "Good-bye till to-
morrow, Gregoire."
"Ah! you will hurt me again to-morrow."
I reassure him, or at least I try to reassure him. Then, that I
may not go away leaving a bad impression, I ask:
"How did you get wounded?"
"Well, down there in the plain, with the others. ..."
That is all. I go away. Gregoire's eyes follow me for a moment,
and I cannot even say whether he is pleased or annoyed by my
visit.
Good-bye, poor Gregoire. I cross the ward and go to sit down by
Auger.
Auger is busy writing up his "book."
It is a big ledger some one has given him, in which he notes the
important events of his life.
Auger writes a round schoolboy hand. In fact, he can just write
sufficiently well for his needs, I might almost say for his
pleasure.
"Would you care to look at my book?" he says, and he hands it to
me with the air of a man who has no secrets.
Auger receives many letters, and he copies them out carefully,
especially when they are fine letters, full of generous
sentiments. His lieutenant, for instance, wrote him a remarkable
letter.
He also copies into his book the letters he writes to his wife and
his little girl. Then he notes the incidents of the day: "Wound
dressed at 10 o'clock. The pus is diminishing. After dinner Madame
la Princesse Moreau paid us a visit, and distributed caps all
round; I got a fine green one. The little chap who had such a bad
wound in the belly died at 2 o'clock. ..."
Auger closes his book and puts it back under his bolster.
He has a face that it does one good to look at. His complexion is
warm and fresh; his hair stiff and rather curly. He has a youthful
moustache, a well-shaped chin, with a lively dimple in the middle,
and eyes which seem to be looking out on a smiling landscape, gay
with sunshine and running waters.
"I am getting on splendidly," he says with great satisfaction.
"Would you like to see Mariette?"
He lifts up the sheet, and I see the apparatus in which we have
placed the stump of his leg. It makes a kind of big white doll,
which he takes in both hands with a laugh, and to which he has
given the playful name of "Mariette."
Auger was a sapper in the Engineers. A shell broke his thigh and
tore off his foot. But as the foot was still hanging by a strip of
flesh, Auger took out his pocket-knife, and got rid of it. Then he
said to his terror-stricken comrades: "Well, boys, that's all
right. It might have been worse. Now carry me somewhere out of
this."
"Did you suffer terribly?" I asked him.
"Well, Monsieur, not as much as you might think. Honestly, it did
not hurt so very, very much. Afterwards, indeed, the pain was
pretty bad."
I understand why every one is fond of Auger. It is because he is
reassuring. Seeing him and listening to him one opines that
suffering is not such a horrible thing after all. Those who live
far from the battle-field, and visit hospitals to get a whiff of
the war, look at Auger and go away well satisfied with everything:
current events, him, and themselves. They are persuaded that the
country is well defended, that our soldiers are brave, and that
wounds and mutilations, though they may be serious things, are not
unbearable.
Yet pain has come to Auger as to the rest. But there is a way of
taking it.
He suffers in an enlightened, intelligent, almost methodical
fashion. He does not confuse issues, and complain
indiscriminately. Even when in the hands of others, he remains the
man who had the courage to cut off his own foot, and finish the
work of the shrapnel. He is too modest and respectful to give
advice to the surgeon, but he offers him valuable information.
He says:
"Just there you are against the bone, it hurts me very much. Ah!
there you can scrape, I don't feel it much. Take care! You're
pressing rather too hard. All right: you can go on, I see what
it's for. ..."
And this is how we work together.
"What are you doing? Ah, you're washing it. I like that. It does
me good. Good blood! Rub a little more just there. You don't know
how it itches. Oh! if you're going to put the tube in, you must
tell me, that I may hold on tight to the table."
So the work gets on famously. Auger will make a rapid and
excellent recovery. With him, one need never hesitate to do what
is necessary. I wanted to give him an anaesthetic before scraping
the bone of his leg. He said:
"I don't suppose it will be a very terrible business. If you don't
mind, don't send me to sleep, but just do what is necessary. I
will see to the rest."
True, he could not help making a few grimaces. Then the Sergeant
said to him:
"Would you like to learn the song of the grunting pigs?"
"How does your song go?"
The Sergeant begins in a high, shrill voice:
Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne
On entend les cochons ...
Cela prouve d'une facon certai-ai-ne
Qu'ils non pas l'trooo du ... bouche.
Auger begins to laugh; everybody laughs. And meanwhile we are
bending over the wounded leg and our work gets on apace.
"Now, repeat," says the Sergeant.
He goes over it again, verse by verse, and Auger accompanies him.
Quand en passant dedans la plai-ai-ne ...
Auger stops now and then to make a slight grimace. Sometimes, too,
his voice breaks. He apologises simply:
"I could never sing in tune."
Nevertheless, the song is learnt, more or less, and when the
General comes to visit the hospital, Auger says to him:
"Mon General, I can sing you a fine song."
And he would, the rascal, if the head doctor did not look
reprovingly at him.
It is very dismal, after this, to attend to Gregoire, and to hear
him groaning:
"Ah! don't pull like that. You're dragging out my heart."
I point out that if he won't let us attend to him, he will become
much worse. Then he begins to cry.
"What do I care, since I shall die anyhow?"
He has depressed the orderlies, the stretcher-bearers, everybody.
He does not discourage me; but he gives me a great deal of
trouble.
All you gentlemen who meet together to discuss the causes of the
war, the end of the war, the using-up of effectives and the future
bases of society, excuse me if I do not give you my opinion on
these grave questions. I am really too much taken up with the
wound of our unhappy Gregoire.
It is not satisfactory, this wound, and when I look at it, I
cannot think of anything else; the screams of the wounded man
would prevent me from considering the conditions of the decisive
battle and the results of the rearrangement of the map of Europe
with sufficient detachment.
Listen: Gregoire tells me he is going to die. I think and believe
that he is wrong. But he certainly will die if I do not take it
upon myself to make him suffer. He will die, because every one is
forsaking him. And he has long ago forsaken himself.
"My dear chap," remarked Auger to a very prim orderly, "it is no
doubt unpleasant to have only one shoe to put on, but it gives one
a chance of saving. And now, moreover, I only run half as much
risk of scratching my wife with my toe-nails in bed as you do.
..."
"Quite so," added the Sergeant; "with Mariette he will caress his
good lady, so to speak."
Auger and the Sergeant crack jokes like two old cronies. The
embarrassed orderly, failing to find a retort, goes away laughing
constrainedly.
I sat down by Auger, and we were left alone.
"I am a basket-maker," he said gravely. "I shall be able to take
up my trade again more or less. But think of workers on the land,
like Groult, who has lost a hand, and Lerondeau, with his useless
leg! ... That's really terrible!"
Auger rolls his r's in a way that gives piquancy and vigour to his
conversation. He talks of others with a natural magnanimity which
comes from the heart, like the expression of his eyes, and rings
true, like the sound of his voice. And then again, he really need
not envy any one. Have I not said it! He is a prince.
"I have had some very grand visitors," he says. "Look, another
lady came a little while ago, and left me this big box of sweets.
Do take one, Monsieur, it would be a pleasure to me. And please,
will you hand them round to the others, from me?"
He adds in a lower tone:
"Look under my bed. I put everything I am given there. Really,
there's too much. I'm ashamed. There are some chaps here who never
get anything, and they were brave fellows who did their duty just
as well as I did."
It is true, there are many brave soldiers in the ward, but only
one Military Medal was given among them, and it came to Auger. Its
arrival was the occasion of a regular little fete; his comrades
all took part in it cordially, for strange to say, no one is
jealous of Auger. A miracle indeed! Did you ever hear of any other
prince of whom no one was jealous?
"Are you going?" said Auger. "Please just say a few words to
Groult. He is a bit of a grouser, but he likes a talk."
Auger has given me a lesson. I will go and smoke a cigarette with
Groult, and above all, I will go and see Gregoire.
Groult, indeed, is not altogether neglected. He is an original, a
perverse fellow. He is pointed out as a curious animal. He gets
his share of presents and attention.
But no one knows anything about Gregoire; he lies staring at the
wall, and growing thinner every day, and Death seems the only
person who is interested in him.
You shall not die, Gregoire! I vow to keep hold of you, to suffer
with you, and to endure your ill-temper humbly. You, who seem to
be bearing the misery of an entire world, shall not be miserable
all alone.
Kind ladies who come to see our wounded and give them picture-
books, tri-coloured caps and sweetmeats, do not forget Gregoire,
who is wretched. Above all, give him your sweetest smiles.
You go away well pleased with yourselves because you have been
generous to Auger. But there is no merit in being kind to Auger.
With a single story, a single clasp of his hand, he gives you much
more than he received from you. He gives you confidence; he
restores your peace of mind.
Go and see Gregoire who has nothing but his suffering to give, and
who very nearly gave his life.
If you go away without a smile for Gregoire, you may fear that you
have not fulfilled your task. And don't expect him to return your
smile, for where would your liberality be in that case?
It is easy to pity Auger, who needs no pity. It is difficult to
pity Gregoire, and yet he is so pitiable.
Do not forget; Auger is touched with grace; but Gregoire will be
damned if you do not hold out your hand to him.
God Himself, who has withheld grace from the damned, must feel
pity for them.
It is a very artless desire for equality which makes us say that
all men are equal in the presence of suffering. No! no! they are
not. And as we know nothing of Death but that which precedes and
determines it, men are not even equal in the presence of Death.
NIGHTS IN ARTOIS
I
One more glance into the dark ward, in which something begins to
reign which is not sleep, but merely a kind of nocturnal stupor.
The billiard-table has been pushed into a corner; it is loaded
with an incoherent mass of linen, bottles, and articles of
furniture. A smell of soup and excrements circulates between the
stretchers, and seems to insult the slender onyx vases that
surmount the cabinet.
And now, quickly! quickly! Let us escape on tiptoe into the open
air.
The night is clear and cold, without a breath of wind: a vast
block of transparent ice between the snow and the stars. Will it
suffice to cleanse throat and lungs, nauseated by the close
effluvium of suppurating wounds?
The snow clings and balls under our sabots. How good it would be
to have a game. ... But we are overwhelmed by a fatigue that has
become a kind of exasperation. We will go to the end of the lawn.
Here is the great trench in which the refuse of the dressing-ward,
all the residuum of infection, steams and rots. Further on we come
to the musical pines, which Dalcour the miner visits every night,
lantern in hand, to catch sparrows, Dalcour, the formidable
Zouave, whom no one can persuade not to carry about his stiff leg
and the gaping wound in his bandaged skull in the rain.
Let us go as far as the wall of the graveyard, which time has
caused to swell like a protuberance on the side of the park, and
which is so providentially close at hand.
The old Chateau looms, a stately mass, through the shadows. To-
night, lamps are gleaming softly in every window. It looks like a
silent, illuminated ship, the prow of which is cutting through an
ice-bank. Nothing emerges from it but this quiet light. Nothing
reveals the nature of its terrible freight.
We know that in every room, in every storey, on the level of every
floor, young mutilated bodies are ranged side by side. A hundred
hearts send the over-heated blood in swift pulsations towards the
suffering limbs. Through all these bodies the projectile in its
furious course made its way, crushing delicate mechanisms, rending
the precious organs which make us take pleasure in walking,
breathing, drinking....
Up there, this innocent joy of order no longer exists; and in
order to recapture it, a hundred bodies are performing labours so
slow and hard that they call forth tears and sighs from the
strongest.
But how the murmurs of this centre of suffering are muffled by the
walls! How silently and darkly it broods in space!
Like a dressing on a large inflamed wound, the Chateau covers its
contents closely, and one sees nothing but these lamps, just such
lamps as might illuminate a studious solitude, or a conversation
between intimate friends at evening, or a love lost in self-
contemplation.
We are now walking through thickets of spindle-wood, resplendent
under the snow, and the indifference of these living things to the
monstrous misery round them makes the impotent soul that is
strangling me seem odious and even ridiculous to me. In spite of
all protestations of sympathy, the mortal must always suffer alone
in his flesh, and this indeed is why war is possible. ...
Philippe here thinks perhaps as I do; but he and I have these
thoughts thrust on us in the same pressing fashion. Men who are
sleeping twenty paces from this spot would be wakened by a cry;
yet they are undisturbed by this formidable presence, inarticulate
as a mollusc in the depths of the sea.
In despair, I stamp on the soft snow with my sabot. The winter
grass it covers subsists obstinately, and has no solidarity with
anything else on earth. Let the pain of man wear itself out; the
grass will not wither. Sleep, good folks of the whole world. Those
who suffer here will not disturb your rest.
And suddenly, beyond the woods a rocket rises and bursts against
the sky, brilliant as a meteor. It means something most certainly,
and it warns some one; but its coarse ingenuity does not deceive
me. No barbarous signal such as this could give me back confidence
in my soul to-night.
II
The little room adjoining the closet where I sleep has been set
apart for those whose cries or effluvia make them intolerable to
the rest. As it is small and encumbered, it will only admit a
single stretcher, and men are brought in there to die in turn.
But lately, when the Chateau was reigning gracefully in the midst
of verdure, the centre of the great star of alleys piercing its
groves of limes and beeches, its owners occasionally entertained a
brilliant society; and if they had under their roof some gay and
lovely milk-white maiden, they gave her this little room at the
summit of the right wing, whence the sun may be seen rising above
the forests, to dream, and sleep, and adorn herself in.
To-day, the facade of the Chateau seems to be listening, strained
and anxious, to the cannonade; and the little room has become a
death-chamber.
Madelan was the first we put there. He was raving in such a brutal
and disturbing manner, in spite of the immobility of his long,
paralysed limbs, that his companions implored us to remove him. I
think Madelan neither understood nor noticed this isolation, for
he was already given over to a deeper solitude; but his incessant
vociferation, after he was deprived of listeners, took on a
strange and terrible character.
For four days and four nights, he never ceased talking vehemently;
and listening to him, one began to think that all the life of the
big body that was already dead, had fled in frenzy to his throat.
For four nights I heard him shouting incoherent, elusive things,
which seemed to be replies to some mysterious interlocutor.
At dawn, and from hour to hour throughout the day, I went to see
him where he sprawled on a paillasse on the floor, like some red-
haired stricken beast, with out-stretched limbs, convulsed by
spasms which displaced the dirty blanket that covered him.
He lost flesh with such incredible rapidity that he seemed to be
evaporating through the gaping wound in the nape of his neck.
Then I would speak to him, saying things that were kindly meant
but futile, because conversation is impossible between a man who
is being whirled along by the waters of a torrent, and one who is
seated among the rushes on the bank. Madelan did not listen to me,
and he continued his strange colloquy with the other. He did not
want us or any one else; he had ceased to eat or to drink, and
relieved himself as he lay, asking neither help nor tendance.
One day, the wind blew the door of the room to, and there was no
key to open it. A long ladder was put up to the window, and a pane
of glass was broken to effect an entrance. Directly this was done,
Madelan was heard, continuing his dream aloud.
He died, and was at once replaced by the man with his skull
battered in, of whom we knew nothing, because when he came to us
he could neither see nor speak, and had nothing by way of history
but a red and white ticket, as large as the palm of a child's
hand.
This man spent only one night in the room, filling the silence
with painful eructations, and thumping on the partition which
separated him from my bed.
Listening alertly, with the cold air from the open window blowing
on my face, I heard in turn the crowing of the cocks in the
village, the irregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping the sleep
of exhaustion not far from me, and the blows and the death-rattle
of the man who took so long to die. He became silent, however, in
the morning, when the wind began to drop, and the first detonation
of the day boomed through the vault-like quiet of the darkness.
Then we had as our neighbour the hospital orderly, Sergeant Gidel,
who was nearing his end, and whose cruel hiccough we had been
unable to alleviate for a week past. This man knew his business,
he knew the meaning of probe, of fever, of hardened abdomen. He
knew too that he had a bullet in the spinal cord. He never asked
us for anything, and as we dared not tell him lies, we were
overcome by a kind of shame in his presence. He stayed barely two
days in the room, looking with dim eyes at the engravings on the
walls, and the Empire bureau on which vases were piled.
But what need is there to tell of all those whom this unhappy room
swallowed up and ejected?
III
We have no lights this evening. ... We must learn to do without
them. ... I grope my way along the passages, where the wind is
muttering, to the great staircase. Here there is a fitful lamp
which makes one prefer the darkness. I see the steps, which are
white and smeared with mud, pictures and tapestries, a sumptuous
scheme of decoration flooded at the bottom by filth and
desolation. As I approach the room where the wounded are lying, I
hear the calm sound of their conversation. I go in quietly. They
cease talking; then they begin to chat again, for now they know
me.
At first one can only distinguish long forms ranged upon the
ground. The stretchers seem to be holding forth with human voices.
One of these is narrating:
"We were all three sitting side by side ... though I had told the
adjutant that corner was not a good place. ... They had just
brought us a ration of soup with a little bit of meat that was all
covered with white frost. Then bullets began to arrive by the
dozen, and we avoided them as well as we could, and the earth flew
about, and we were laughing, because we had an idea that among all
those bullets there was not one that would find its billet. And
then they stopped firing, and we came back to sit on the ledge.
There were Chagniol and Duc and I, and I had them both to the
right of me. We began to talk about Giromagny, and about
Danjoutin, because that's the district we all came from, and this
went on for about half an hour. And then, all of a sudden, a
bullet came, just a single one, but this time it was a good one.
It went through Chagniol's head, then through Duc's, and as I was
a little taller than they, it only passed through my neck. ..."
"And then?"
"Then it went off to the devil! Chagniol fell forward on his face.
Duc got up, and ran along on all fours as far as the bend in the
trench, and there he began to scratch out the earth like a rabbit,
and then he died. The blood was pouring down me right and left,
and I thought it was time for me to go. I set off running, holding
a finger to each side of my neck, because of the blood. I was
thinking: just a single bullet! It's too much! It was really a
mighty good one! And then I saw the adjutant. So I said to him: 'I
warned you, mon adjutant, that that corner was not a good place!'
But the blood rushed up into my mouth, and I began to run again."
There was a silence, and I heard a voice murmur with conviction:
"YOU were jolly lucky, weren't you?"
Mulet, too, tells his story:
"They had taken our fire ... 'That's not your fire,' I said to
him. 'Not our fire?' he said. Then the other came up and he said:
'Hold your jaw about the fire ...' 'It's not yours,' I said. Then
he said: 'You don't know who you're talking to.' And he turned his
cap, which had been inside out ... 'Ah! I beg your pardon,' I
said, 'but I could not tell ...' And so they kept our fire. ..."
Maville remarks calmly: "Yes, things like that will happen
sometimes."
Silence again. The tempest shakes the windows with a furious hand.
The room is faintly illuminated by a candle which has St. Vitus'
dance. Rousselot, our little orderly, knits away industriously in
the circle of light. I smoke a pipe at once acrid and consoling,
like this minute itself in the midst of the infernal adventure.
Before going away, I think of Croquelet, the silent, whose long
silhouette I see at the end of the room. "He sleeps all the time,"
says Mulet, "he sleeps all day." I approach the stretcher, I bend
over it, and I see two large open eyes, which look at me gravely
and steadily in the gloom. And this look is so sad, so poignant,
that I am filled with impotent distress.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8