“What children, monsieur?”
He seemed embarrassed and answered with a bow:
“I beg your pardon. On seeing you sitting thus absorbed in front of
this reservoir I thought you were recalling the frightful tragedy that
occurred here.”
Now I wanted to know about it, and I begged him to tell me the story.
It is very dismal and very heart-rending, my dear friend, and very
trivial at the same time. It is a simple news item. I do not know
whether to attribute my emotion to the dramatic manner in which the
story was told to me, to the setting of the mountains, to the contrast
between the joy of the sunlight and the flowers and this black,
murderous hole, but my heart was wrung, all my nerves unstrung by this
tale which, perhaps, may not appear so terribly harrowing to you as you
read it in your room without having the scene of the tragedy before your
eyes.
It was one spring in recent years. Two little boys frequently came to
play on the edge of this cistern while their tutor lay under a tree
reading a book. One warm afternoon a piercing cry awoke the tutor who
was dozing and the sound of splashing caused by something falling
into the water made him jump to his feet abruptly. The younger of the
children, eight years of age, was shouting, as he stood beside the
reservoir, the surface of which was stirred and eddying at the spot
where the older boy had fallen in as he ran along the stone coping.
Distracted, without waiting or stopping to think what was best to do,
the tutor jumped into the black water and did not rise again, having
struck his head at the bottom of the cistern.
At the same moment the young boy who had risen to the surface was waving
his stretched-out arms toward his brother. The little fellow on land lay
down full length, while the other tried to swim, to approach the wall,
and presently the four little hands clasped each other, tightened in
each other's grasp, contracted as though they were fastened together.
They both felt the intense joy of an escape from death, a shudder at the
danger past.
The older boy tried to climb up to the edge, but could not manage it,
as the wall was perpendicular, and his brother, who was too weak, was
sliding slowly towards the hole.
Then they remained motionless, filled anew with terror. And they waited.
The little fellow squeezed his brother's hands with all his might and
wept from nervousness as he repeated: “I cannot drag you out, I cannot
drag you out.” And all at once he began to shout, “Help! Help!” But his
light voice scarcely penetrated beyond the dome of foliage above their
heads.
They remained thus a long time, hours and hours, facing each other,
these two children, with one thought, one anguish of heart and the
horrible dread that one of them, exhausted, might let go the hands of
the other. And they kept on calling, but all in vain.
At length the older boy, who was shivering with cold, said to the little
one: “I cannot hold out any longer. I am going to fall. Good-by, little
brother.” And the other, gasping, replied: “Not yet, not yet, wait.”
Evening came on, the still evening with its stars mirrored in the water.
The older lad, his endurance giving out, said: “Let go my hand, I am
going to give you my watch.” He had received it as a present a few days
before, and ever since it had been his chief amusement. He was able to
get hold of it, and held it out to the little fellow who was sobbing and
who laid it down on the grass beside him.
It was night now. The two unhappy beings, exhausted, had almost loosened
their grasp. The elder, at last, feeling that he was lost, murmured once
more: “Good-by, little brother, kiss mamma and papa.” And his numbed
fingers relaxed their hold. He sank and did not rise again.... The
little fellow, left alone, began to shout wildly: “Paul! Paul!” But the
other did not come to the surface.
Then he darted across the mountain, falling among the stones, overcome
by the most frightful anguish that can wring a child's heart, and with
a face like death reached the sitting-room, where his parents were
waiting. He became bewildered again as he led them to the gloomy
reservoir. He could not find his way. At last he reached the spot. “It
is there; yes, it is there!”
But the cistern had to be emptied, and the proprietor would not permit
it as he needed the water for his lemon trees.
The two bodies were found, however, but not until the next day.
You see, my dear friend, that this is a simple news item. But if you had
seen the hole itself your heart would have been wrung, as mine was, at
the thought of the agony of that child hanging to his brother's hands,
of the long suspense of those little chaps who were accustomed only
to laugh and to play, and at the simple incident of the giving of the
watch.
I said to myself: “May Fate preserve me from ever receiving a similar
relic!” I know of nothing more terrible than such a recollection
connected with a familiar object that one cannot dispose of. Only think
of it; each time that he handles this sacred watch the survivor will
picture once more the horrible scene; the pool, the wall, the still
water, and the distracted face of his brother-alive, and yet as lost as
though he were already dead. And all through his life, at any moment,
the vision will be there, awakened the instant even the tip of his
finger touches his watch pocket.
And I was sad until evening. I left the spot and kept on climbing,
leaving the region of orange trees for the region of olive trees, and
the region of olive trees for the region of pines; then I came to a
valley of stones, and finally reached the ruins of an ancient castle,
built, they say, in the tenth century by a Saracen chief, a good man,
who was baptized a Christian through love for a young girl. Everywhere
around me were mountains, and before me the sea, the sea with an almost
imperceptible patch on it: Corsica, or, rather, the shadow of Corsica.
But on the mountain summits, blood-red in the glow of the sunset, in the
boundless sky and on the sea, in all this superb landscape that I had
come here to admire I saw only two poor children, one lying prone on the
edge of a hole filled with black water, the other submerged to his neck,
their hands intertwined, weeping opposite each other, in despair. And
it seemed as though I continually heard a weak, exhausted voice saying:
“Good-by, little brother, I am going to give you my watch.”
This letter may seem rather melancholy, dear friend. I will try to be
more cheerful some other day.