They telephoned from the cantine that the baby of the girl Alice was
dead at the hospital, and that the funeral was to be from there that
afternoon at three o'clock, and that Alice wanted me to come.
Mademoiselle Renée, the économe, who telephoned, said it was the apache
girl with the ear-rings.
I don't know why she wanted me to come to the funeral of her baby. Of
the nearly three hundred women who came twice every day to the cantine,
she had never been especially my friend. Her baby had been a sick
little thing, and I had been touched by her wild love of it. It had no
father, she told me. We never ask questions at the cantine, but she had
been pleased to tell me that. She had said she was glad, because, so,
it was all her own. She had rocked it as she held it wrapped in the
folds of her red shawl, and shaken her long bright ear-rings, laughing
down at it, over her bowl of soup. And now it is dead.
Claire came to me. We had just time, if we took a taxi, to get to the
hospital, stopping on the way for some flowers. It was raining more or
less, and very dark.
At the hospital they sent us round to the back, to a sort of shed
opening on a street that was being built up, or had been torn down, I
don't know which, desolate in the rain.
In the room of the shed there were two families in black, two mothers
with dingy crape veils, and two dead babies in unpainted pine boxes
that were open.
The baby in the box on the right was quite big, the size of the most
expensive doll one could get for a rich little girl at Christmas. There
was a quite fine white tin wreath on the floor, tilted up against the
pine box. The family of the bigger baby was quite numerous, half a
dozen women, an old man, and several children. They all had shoes, and
several of the women had umbrellas, and one of them had a hat.
In the smaller box was the baby of Alice, very, very small and pinched
and blue, even more small and pinched and blue than when she used to
bring it to the cantine. The family of Alice consisted of a small boy
with bare feet and no hat, a small girl with a queer colored skirt and
felt slippers and a bit of black crape over her red hair, and a boy of
perhaps seventeen, also in felt slippers, with his coat collar turned
up and a muffler round his chin and his cap dragged down over his
eyes. Alice had a hat and a crape veil and a black coat and skirt, and
down-trodden, shapeless shoes much too big for her.
There was a small bunch of violets in the pine box with the baby.
We put our roses down on the floor at the foot of the box.
Both babies had on the little white slips that the hospital gives.
The family of the bigger baby, and the brother and sister of Alice,
stared at us.
The mother of the bigger baby stood leaning against the wall, her head
against the whitewash, her two hands over her eyes. She was making a
queer little noise through her teeth. She kept it up all the time we
were in the shed, a sort of hissing. She never once uncovered her eyes.
Alice was standing close, close beside her baby in the pine box, just
looking down at it. She never took her eyes from it. She is a tall,
straight girl, but she was bent over, as if she were feeble and old.
Her veil was pushed back from her face. It had been wet, and the black
had run over her face. But it must have been the rain, for she was not
crying at all. All the time in the shed she never moved or cried at all.
Her little brother and sister stood back as if they were afraid of her.
Claire and I waited near the door of the shed.
For a long time we waited like that.
Then two croquemorts came, in their shining black clothes. One of them
had a sort of hammer in his hand.
They went to the box of the bigger baby, and one of them picked up the
cover of the box and put it on, and the other began to drive the nails
in.
When he drove the first nail in, the woman with her eyes covered so she
could not see him, heard, and knew what it was, and began to shriek.
With her hands over her eyes she stood against the wall and shrieked.
The croquemort drove in all the nails, and the woman kept on shrieking.
Then the other croquemort put the tin wreath on the lid of the box, and
then both of them came over to our baby.
Alice had been just looking and looking at her baby. When the men came,
and one of them took up the lid of the box from the floor, and the
other stood with his hammer, she gathered herself up as if she would
spring upon the men who would take her little dead thing from her and
put it away for ever. I thought she would fight over it, quite mad. The
little brother and sister stood away from her, shivering.
But what she did was to stoop and take up our roses from where they
lay on the floor, and put them into the pine box with the baby. She
put them all in about the baby, covering it with them. She hid it away
under roses and then stood close, close to it, while the croquemort
drove the nails in, all the nails, one by one.
Then one of the croquemorts took up the box of the bigger baby and
carried it out of the shed and put it, with the tin wreath on the top
of it, into a hearse that there was waiting on the left of the door.
And the other croquemort took up the box of Alice's baby and carried it
out, and put it into a hearse that was waiting on the right of the door.
The family of the bigger baby followed away, after the hearse and one
of the croquemorts, toward the depths of the city, two of the women
leading the baby's mother, who still kept her hands over her eyes, but
was not shrieking any more, only sobbing. I know no more of them after
that.