Books: The New Book Of Martyrs
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Georges Duhamel >> The New Book Of Martyrs
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"You sleep too much, my poor Croquelet."
He answers me with his rugged accent, but in a feeble voice:
"Don't listen to him; it's not true. You know quite well that I
can't sleep, and that you won't give me a draught to let me get a
real nap. This afternoon, I read a little. ... But it wasn't very
interesting. ... If I could have another book. ..."
"Show me your book, Croquelet."
He thrusts out his chin towards a little tract. I strike a match,
and I read on the grey cover: "Of the Quality of Prayers addressed
to God."
"All right, Croquelet, I'll try to get you a book with pictures in
it. How do you feel this evening?"
"Ah! bad! very bad! They're thawing now. ..."
He has had frost-bite in his feet, and is beginning to suffer so
much from them that he forgets the wound in his side, which is
mortal, but less active.
IV
I have come to take refuge among my wounded to smoke in peace, and
meditate in the shadow. Here, the moral atmosphere is pure. These
men are so wretched, so utterly humiliated, so absorbed in their
relentless sufferings that they seem to have relinquished the
burden of the passions in order to concentrate their powers on the
one endeavour: to live.
In spite of their solidarity they are for the time isolated by
their individual sufferings. Later on, they will communicate; but
this is the moment when each one contemplates his own anguish, and
fights his own battle, with cries of pain. ...
They are all my friends. I will stay among them, associating
myself with all my soul in their ordeal.
Perhaps here I shall find peace. Perhaps all ignoble discord will
call a truce on the threshold of this empire.
But a short distance from us the battle-field has thundered
unceasingly for days. Like a noisy, complicated mechanism which
turns out the products of its internal activity, the stupid
machine of war throws out, from minute to minute, bleeding men. We
pick them up, and here they are, swathed in bandages. They have
been crushed in the twinkling of an eye; and now we shall have to
ask months and years to repair or palliate the damage.
How silent they are this evening! And how it makes one's heart
ache to look at them! Here is Bourreau, with the brutal name and
the gentle nature, who never utters a complaint, and whom a single
bullet has deprived of sight for ever. Here is Bride, whom we fear
to touch, so covered is he with bandages, but who looks at us with
touching, liquid eyes, his mind already wandering. Here is
Lerouet, who will not see next morning dawn over the pine-trees,
and who has a gangrened wound near his heart. And the others, all
of whom I know by their individual misfortunes.
How difficult it is to realise what they were, all these men who a
year ago, were walking in streets, tilling the land, or writing in
an office. Their present is too poignant. Here they lie on the
ground, like some fair work of art defaced. Behold them! The
creature par excellence has received a great outrage, an outrage
it has wrought upon itself.
We are ignorant of their past. But have they a future? I consider
these innocent victims in the tragic majesty of the hour, and I
feel ashamed of living and breathing freely among them.
Poor, poor brothers! What could one do for you which would not be
insufficient, unworthy, mediocre? We can at least give up
everything and devote ourselves heart and soul to our holy and
exacting work.
But no! round the beds on which your solitary drama is enacted,
men are still taking part in a sinister comedy. Every kind of
folly, the most ignoble and also the most imbecile passions,
pursue their enterprises and their satisfactions over your heads.
Neither the four corpses we buried this morning, nor your daily
agonies will disarm these appetites, suspend these calculations,
and destroy these ambitions the development and fruition of which
even your martyrdom, may be made to serve.
I will spend the whole evening among my wounded, and we will talk
together, gently, of their misery; it will please them, and they
will make me forget the horrible atmosphere of discussion that
reigns here.
Alas! during the outburst of the great catastrophe, seeing the
volume of blood and fire, listening to the uproar, smelling the
stench of the vast gangrene, we thought that all passions would be
laid aside, like cumbersome weapons, and that we should give
ourselves up with clean hearts and empty hands to battle against
the fiery nightmare. He who fights and defends himself needs a
pure heart: so does he who wanders among charnel houses, gives
drink to parched lips, washes fevered faces and bathes wounds. We
thought there would be a great forgetfulness of self and of former
hopes, and of the whole world. O Union of pure hearts to meet the
ordeal!
But no! The first explosion was tremendous, yet hardly had its
echoes died away when the rag-pickers were already at work among
the ruins, in quest of cutlet-bones and waste paper.
And yet, think of the sacred anguish of those first hours!
Well, so be it! For my part, I will stay here, between these
stretchers with their burdens of anguish.
At this hour one is inclined to distrust everything, man and the
universe, and the future of Right. But we cannot have any doubts
as to the suffering of man. It is the one certain thing at this
moment.
So I will stay and drink in this sinister testimony. And each time
that Beal, who has a gaping wound in the stomach, holds out his
hands to me with a little smile, I will get up and hold his hands
in mine, for he is feverish, and he knows that my hands are always
icy.
V
Bride is dead. We had been working all day, and in the evening we
had to find time to go and bury Bride.
It is not a very long ceremony. The burial-ground is near. About a
dozen of us follow the lantern, slipping in the mud, and stumbling
over the graves. Here we are at the wall, and here is the long
ditch, always open, which every day is prolonged a little to the
right, and filled in a little to the left. Here is the line of
white crosses, and the flickering shadows on the wall caused by
the lantern.
The men arrange the planks, slip the ropes, and lower the body,
disputing in undertones, for it is not so easy as one might think
to be a grave-digger. One must have the knack of it. And the night
is very dark and the mud very sticky.
At last the body is at the bottom of the trench, and the muddy
ropes are withdrawn. The little consumptive priest who stands at
the graveside murmurs the prayer for the dead. The rain beats in
our faces. The familiar demon of Artois, the wind, leaps among the
ancient trees. The little priest murmurs the terrible words: Dies
irae, dies illa. ...
And this present day is surely the day of wrath ... I too utter my
prayer: "In the name of the unhappy world, Bride, I remit all thy
sins, I absolve thee from all thy faults! Let this day, at least,
be a day of rest."
The little priest stands bare-headed in the blast. An orderly who
is an ecclesiastic holds the end of an apron over his head. A man
raises the lantern to the level of his eye. And the rain-drops
gleam and sparkle furtively.
Bride is dead. ...
Now we meet again in the little room where friendship reigns.
Pierre and Jacques, gallant fellows, I shall not forget your
beautiful, painful smile at the moment which brings discouragement
to the experienced man. I shall not forget.
The beef and rice, which one needs to be very hungry to swallow,
is distributed. And a gentle cheerfulness blossoms in the circle
of lamplight, a cheerfulness which tries to catch something of the
gaiety of the past. Man has such a deep-seated need of joy that he
improvises it everywhere, even in the heart of misery.
And suddenly, through the steam of the soup, I see Bride's look
distinctly.
It was no ordinary look. The extremity of suffering, the approach
of death, perhaps, and also the hidden riches of his soul, gave it
extraordinary light, sweetness, and gentleness. When one came to
his bedside, and bent over him, the look was there, a well-spring
of refreshment.
But Bride is dead: we saw his eyes transformed into dull,
meaningless membranes.
Where is that well-spring? Can it be quenched?
Bride is dead. Involuntarily, I repeat aloud: "Bride is dead."
Have I roused a responsive echo in these sympathetic souls? A
religious silence falls upon them. The oldest of all problems
comes and takes its place at the table like a familiar guest. It
breathes mysteriously into every ear: "Where is Bride? Where is
Bride's look?"
VI
A lantern advances, swinging among the pines. Who is coming to
meet us?
Philippe recognises the figure of Monsieur Julien. Here is the
man, indeed, with his porter's livery, and his base air as of an
insolent slave. He waves a stable-lantern which throws grotesque
shadows upwards on his face; and he is obviously furious at having
been forced to render a service.
He brandishes the lantern angrily, and thrusts out his chin to
show us the advancing figures: two men are carrying a stretcher on
which lies a big body wrapped in a coarse winding sheet. The two
men are weary, and set the stretcher down carefully in the mud.
"Is it Fumat?"
"Yes. He has just died, very peacefully."
"Where are you going?"
"There is no place anywhere for a corpse. So we are taking him to
the chapel in the burial-ground. But he is heavy."
"We will give you a hand."
Philippe and I take hold of the stretcher. The men follow us in
silence. The body is heavy, very heavy. We drag our sabots out of
the clay laboriously. And we walk slowly, breathing hard.
How heavy he is! ... He was called Fumat ... He was a giant. He
came from the mountains of the Centre, leaving a red-tiled village
on a hill-side, among juniper-bushes and volcanic boulders. He
left his native place with its violet peaks and strong aromatic
scents and came to the war in Artois. He was past the age when men
can march to the attack, but he guarded the trenches and cooked.
He received his death-wound while he was cooking. The giant of
Auvergne was peppered with small missiles. He had no wound at all
proportionate to his huge body. Nothing but splinters of metal.
Once again, David has slain Goliath.
He was two days dying. He was asked: "Is there anything you would
like?" And he answered with white lips: "Nothing, thank you." When
we were anxious and asked him "How do you feel?" he was always
quite satisfied. "I am getting on very well." He died with a
discretion, a modesty, a self-forgetfulness which redeemed the
egotism of the universe.
How heavy he is! He was wounded as he was blowing up the fire for
the soup. He did not die fighting. He uttered no historic word. He
fell at his post as a cook. ... He was not a hero.
You are not a hero, Fumat. You are only a martyr. And we are going
to lay you in the earth of France, which has engulfed a noble and
innumerable army of martyrs.
The shadow of the trees sweeps like a huge sickle across space. An
acrid smell of cold decay rises on the night. The wind wails its
threnody for Fumat.
"Open the door, Monsieur Julien."
The lout pushes the door, grumbling to himself. We lay the body on
the pavement of the chapel.
Renaud covers the corpse carefully with a faded flag. And
suddenly, as if to celebrate the moment, the brutal roar of guns
comes to us from the depths of the woods, breaks violently into
the chapel, seizes and rattles the trembling window-panes. A
hundred times over, a whole nation of cannon yells in honour of
Fumat. And each time other Fumats fall in the mud yonder, in their
appointed places.
VII
They ought not to have cut off all the light in this manner, and
it would not have been done, perhaps, if ...
There is a kind of mania for organisation which is the sworn enemy
of order; in its efforts to discover the best place for
everything, it ends by diverting everything from its right
function and locality, and making everything as inopportune as
itself. It was a mistake to cut off all the lights this evening,
on some pretext or the other. The rooms of the old mansion are not
packed with bales of cotton, but with men who have anxious minds
and tortured bodies.
A mournful darkness suddenly reigned; and outside, the incessant
storm that rages in this country swept along like a river in
spate.
Little Rochet was dreaming in the liquid light of the lamp, with
hands crossed on his breast, and the delicate profile of an
exhausted saint.
He was dreaming of vague and exquisite things, for cruel fever has
moments of generosity between two nightmares. He was dreaming so
sweetly that he forgot the abominable stench of his body, and that
a smile touched the two deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth,
set there by a week of agony.
But all the lamps have been put out, and the noise of the
hurricane has become more insistent, and the wounded have ceased
talking, for darkness discourages conversation.
There are some places where the men with whom the shells have
dealt mercifully and whose wounds are only scratches congregate.
These have only the honour of wounds, and what may be called their
delights. ... But here, we have only the worst cases; and here
they have to await the supreme decision of death.
Little Rochet awoke to a reality full of darkness and despair. He
heard nothing but laboured breathing round him, and rising above
it all, the violent breath of the storm. He was suddenly conscious
of his lacerated stomach, of his lost leg, and he realised that
the fetid smell in the air was the smell of his flesh. And he
thought of the loving letter he had received in the morning from
his four big sisters with glossy hair, he thought of all his lost,
ravished happiness....
Renaud hurries up, groping his way among the dark ambushes of the
corridor.
"Come, come quickly. Little Rochet has thrown himself out of bed."
Holding up a candle, I take in the melancholy scene. We have to
get Rochet into bed again, readjust his bandages, wipe up the
fetid liquid spilt on the floor.
Rochet's lips are compressed. I stoop to his ear and ask softly:
"Why did you do this?"
His face remains calm, and he answers gently, looking me full in
the eyes: "I want to die."
I leave the room, disarmed, my head bowed, and go in search of
Monet, who is a priest and an excellent orderly. He is smoking a
pipe in a corner. He has just had news that his young brother has
been killed in action, and he had snatched a few minutes of
solitude.
"Monet," I say, "I think Rochet is a believer. Well, go to him. He
may want you."
Monet puts away his pipe, and goes off noiselessly.
As to me, I go and wander about outside. On the poplar-lined road,
in company with the furious rain and the darkness, I shall perhaps
be able to master the flood of bitterness that sweeps over me.
At the end of an hour, my anxiety brings me back to Rochet's
bedside. The candle is burning away with a steady flame. Monet is
reading in a little book with a clasp. The profile of the wounded
man has still the pitiful austerity of a tortured saint.
"Is he quieter now?"
Monet lifts his fine dark eyes to my face, and drops his book.
"Yes. He is dead."
VIII
Why has Hell been painted as a place of hopeless torture and
eternal lamentation?
I believe that even in the lowest depths of Hell, the damned sing,
jest, and play cards. I am led to imagine this after seeing these
men rowing in their galleys, chained to them by fever and wounds.
Blaireau, who has only lost a hand, preludes in an undertone:
Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur....
This timid breath kindles the dormant flame. Houdebine, who has a
fractured knee, but who now expects to be fairly comfortable till
the morning, at once responds and continues:
Marguerite! Marguerite!
The two sing in unison, with delighted smiles:
Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur
Marguerite! Marguerite!
Maville joins in at the second verse, and even Legras, whose two
legs are broken, and the Chasseur Alpin, who has a hole in his
skull.
Panchat, the man who had a bullet through his neck, beats time
with his finger, because he is forbidden to speak.
All this goes on in low tones; but faces light up, and flush, as
if a bottle of brandy had been passed round.
Then Houdebine turns to Panchat and says: "Will you have a game of
dummy manilla, Panchat?"
Dummy manilla is a game for two; and they have to be content with
games for two, because no one in this ward can get up, and
communication is only easy for those in adjacent beds.
Panchat makes a sign of consent. Why should he not play dummy
manilla, which is a silent game. A chair is put between the two
beds, and he shuffles the cards.
The cards are so worn at the corners that they have almost become
ovals. The court cards smile through a fog of dirt; and to deal,
one has to wet one's thumb copiously, because a thick, tenacious
grease makes the cards stick together in an evil-smelling mass.
But a good deal of amusement is still to be got out of these
precious bits of old paste-board.
Panchat supports himself on his elbow, Houdebine has to keep on
his back, because of his knee. He holds his cards against his
chin, and throws them down energetically on the chair with his
right hand.
The chair is rather far off, the cards are dirty, and sometimes
Houdebine asks his silent adversary: "What's that?"
Panchat takes the card and holds it out at arm's length.
Houdebine laughs gaily.
He plays his cards one after the other, and dummy's hand also:
"Trump! Trump! Trump! And ace of hearts!"
Even those who cannot see anything laugh too.
Panchat is vexed, but he too laughs noiselessly. Then he takes out
the lost sou from under his straw pillow.
Meanwhile, Mulet is telling a story. It is always the same story,
but it is always interesting.
An almost imperceptible voice, perhaps Legras', hums slowly:
Si tu veux fair' mon bonheur.
Who talks of happiness here?
I recognise the accents of obstinate, generous life. I recognise
thine accents, artless flesh! Only thou couldst dare to speak of
happiness between the pain of the morning and that of the evening,
between the man who is groaning on the right, and the man who is
dying on the left.
Truly, in the utmost depths of Hell, the damned must mistake their
need of joy for joy itself.
I know quite well that there is hope here.
So that in hell too there must be hope.
IX
But lately, Death was the cruel stranger, the stealthy-footed
visitor.... Now, it is the romping dog of the house.
Do you remember the days when the human body seemed made for joy,
when each of its organs represented a function and a delight? Now,
each part of the body evokes the evil that threatens it, and the
special suffering it engenders.
Apart from this, it is well adapted for its part in the laborious
drama: the foot to carry a man to the attack; the arm to work the
cannon; the eye to watch the adversary or adjust the weapon.
But lately, Death was no part of life. We talked of it covertly.
Its image was at once painful and indecent, calculated to upset
the plans and projects of existence. It worked as far as possible
in obscurity, silence and retirement. We disguised it with
symbols; we announced it in laborious paraphrases, marked by a
kind of shame.
To-day Death is closely bound up with the things of life. And this
is true, not so much because its daily operations are on a vast
scale, because it chooses the youngest and the healthiest among
us, because it has become a kind of sacred institution, but more
especially because it has become a thing so ordinary that it no
longer causes us to suspend our usual activities, as it used to
do: we eat and drink beside the dead, we sleep amidst the dying,
we laugh and sing in the company of corpses.
And how, indeed, can it be otherwise? You know quite well that man
cannot live without eating, drinking, and sleeping, nor without
laughing and singing.
Ask all those who are suffering their hard Calvary here. They are
gentle and courageous, they sympathise with the pain of others;
but they must eat when the soup comes round, sleep, if they can,
during the long night; and try to laugh again when the ward is
quiet, and the corpse of the morning has been carried out.
Death remains a great thing, but one with which one's relations
have become frequent and intimate. Like the king who shows himself
at his toilet, Death is still powerful, but it has become familiar
and slightly degraded.
Lerouet died just now. We closed his eyes, tied up his chin, then
pulled out the sheet to cover the corpse while it was waiting for
the stretcher-bearers.
"Can't you eat anything?" said Mulet to Maville. Maville, who is
very young and shy, hesitates: "I can't get it down."
And after a pause, he adds: "I can't bear to see such things."
Mulet wipes his plate calmly and says: "Yes, sometimes it used to
take away my appetite too, so much so that I used to be sick. But
I have got accustomed to it now."
Pouchet gulps down his coffee with a sort of feverish eagerness.
"One feels glad to get off with the loss of a leg when one sees
that."
"One must live," adds Mulet.
"Well, for all the pleasure one gets out of life...."
Beliard is the speaker. He had a bullet in the bowel, yet we hope
to get him well soon. But his whole attitude betrays indifference.
He smokes a great deal, and rarely speaks. He has no reason to
despair, and he knows that he can resume his ordinary life. But
familiarity with Death, which sometimes makes life seem so
precious, occasionally ends by producing a distaste for it, or
rather a deep weariness of it.
X
A whole nation, ten whole nations are learning to live in Death's
company. Humanity has entered the wild beast's cage, and sits
there with the patient courage of the lion-tamer.
Men of my country, I learn to know you better every day, and from
having looked you in the face at the height of your sufferings, I
have conceived a religious hope for the future of our race. It is
mainly owing to my admiration for your resignation, your native
goodness, your serene confidence in better times to come that I
can still believe in the moral future of the world.
At the very hour when the most natural instinct inclines the world
to ferocity, you preserve, on your beds of suffering, a beauty, a
purity of outlook which goes far to atone for the monstrous crime.
Men of France, your simple grandeur of soul redeems humanity from
its greatest crime, and raises it from its deep abyss.
We are told how you bear the misery of the battle-field, how in
the discouraging cold and mud, you await the hour of your cruel
duty, how you rush forward to meet the mortal blow, through the
unimaginable tumult of peril.
But when you come here, there are further sufferings in store for
you; and I know with what courage you endure them.
The doors of the Chateau close on a new life for you, a life that
is also one of perpetual peril and contest. I help you in this
contest, and I see how gallantly you wage it.
Not a wrinkle in your faces escapes me. Not one of your pains, not
one of the tremors of your lacerated flesh. And I write them all
down, just as I note your simple words, your cries, your sighs of
hope, as I also note the expression of your faces at the solemn
hour when man speaks no more.
Not one of your words leaves me unmoved; there is not one of your
actions which is not worthy of record. All must contribute to the
history of our great ordeal.
For it is not enough to give oneself up to the sacred duty of
succour. It is not enough to apply the beneficent knife to the
wound, or to change the dressings skilfully and carefully.
It is also my mission to record the history of those who have been
the sacrificial victims of the race, without gloss, in all its
truth and simplicity; the history of the men you have shown
yourselves to be in suffering.
If I left this undone, you would, no doubt, be cured as perfectly,
or would perish none the less; but the essence of the majestic
lesson would be lost, the most splendid elements of your courage
would remain barren.
And I invite all the world to bow before you with the same
attentive reverence, WITH HEARTS THAT FORGET NOTHING.
Union of pure hearts to meet the ordeal! Union of pure hearts that
our country may know and respect herself! Union of pure hearts for
the redemption of the stricken world!
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