Then, when the anguish abates, he shakes his head and repeats:
"Oh, that wretched knee!"
When it is the turn of the thigh, he is exasperated.
"Now it's this thigh again!"
And he repeats this incessantly, from second to second. Then we go on to
the wound under his heel, and Carre begins:
"Well, what is wrong with the poor heel?"
Finally, when he is tired of singing, he murmurs softly and regularly:
"They don't know how that wretched knee hurts me... they don't know how
it hurts me."
Lerondeau, who is, and always will be, a little boy compared with Carre,
is very poor in the matter of cries. But when he hears his complaints,
he checks his own cries, Borrows them. Accordingly, I hear him
beginning:
"Oh, my poor knee!... They don't know it hurts!"
One morning when he was shouting this at the top of his voice, I asked
him gravely:
"Why do you make the same complaints as Carre?"
Marie is only a peasant, but he showed me a face that was really
offended:
"It's not true. I don't say the same things."
I said no more, for there are no souls so rugged that they cannot feel
certain stings.
Marie has told me the story of his life and of his campaign. As he is
not very eloquent, It was for the most part a confused murmur with an
ever-recurring protestation:
"I was a good one to work, you know, strong as a horse."
Yet I can hardly imagine that there was once a Marie Lerondeau who was
a robust young fellow, standing firm and erect between the handles of a
plough. I know him only as a man lying on his back, and I even find it
difficult to picture to myself what his shape and aspect will be when we
get him on his feet again.
Marie did his duty bravely under fire. "He stayed alone with the wagons
and when he was wounded, the Germans kicked him with their heavy boots."
These are the salient points of the interrogatory.
Now and again Lerondeau's babble ceases, and he looks up to the ceiling,
for this takes the place of distance and horizon to those who lie upon
their backs. After a long, light silence, he looks at me again, and
repeats:
"I must have been pretty brave to stay alone with the wagons!"
True enough, Lerondeau was brave, and I take care to let people know it.
When strangers come in during the dressings, I show them Marie, who is
making ready to groan, and say:
"This is Marie--Marie Lerondeau, you know. He has a fractured thigh, but
he is a very brave fellow. He stayed alone with the wagons."
The visitors nod their heads admiringly, and Marie controls himself. He
blushes a little, and the muscles of his neck swell with pride. He makes
a sign with his eyes as if to say: "Yes, indeed, alone, all alone with
the wagons." And meanwhile, the dressing has been nearly finished.
The whole world must know that Marie stayed alone with the wagons. I
intend to pin a report of this on the Government pension certificate.
Carre was only under fire once, and was hit almost immediately. He is
much annoyed at this, for he had a good stock of courage, and now he has
to waste it within the walls of a hospital.
He advanced through a huge beetroot field, and he ran with the others
towards a fine white mist. All of a sudden, crack, he fell! His thigh
was fractured. He fell among the thick leaves, on the waterlogged earth.
Shortly afterwards his sergeant passed again, and said to him:
"We are going back to our trench, they shall come and fetch you later."
Carre merely said:
"Put my haversack under my head."
Evening was coming on; he prepared, gravely, to spend the night among
the beetroots. And there he spent it, alone with a cold drizzling rain,
meditating seriously until morning.
It was fortunate that Carre brought such a stock of courage into
hospital, for he needs it all. Successive operations and dressings make
large drafts upon the most generous supplies.
They put Carre upon the table, and I note an almost joyful resolution in
his look. To-day he has "all his strength, to the last ounce."
But just to-day, I have but little to do, not much suffering to inflict.
He has scarcely knitted his brows, when I begin to fasten up the
apparatus again.
Then Carre's haggard face breaks into a smile, and he exclaims:
"Finished already? Put some more ether on, make it sting a bit at
least."
Carre knows that the courage of which there was no need to-day will not,
perhaps, be available to-morrow.
And to-morrow, and for many days after, Carre will have to be constantly
calling up those reserves of the soul which help the body to suffer
while it waits for the good offices of Nature.
The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives
with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when
there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it?
This leg, infected to the very marrow, seems to be slowly devouring the
man to whom it belongs; we look at it anxiously, and the white-haired
Master fixes two small light-blue eyes upon it, eyes accustomed to
appraise the things of life, yet, for the moment, hesitant.
I speak to Carre in veiled words of the troublesome, gangrenous leg. He
gives a toothless laugh, and settles the question at once.
"Well, if the wretched thing is a nuisance, we shall have to get rid of
it."
After this consent, we shall no doubt make up our minds to do so.
Meanwhile Lerondeau is creeping steadily towards healing.
Lying on his back, bound up in bandages and a zinc trough, and
imprisoned by cushions, he nevertheless looks like a ship which the tide
will set afloat at dawn.
He is putting on flesh, yet, strange to say, he seems to get lighter
and lighter. He is learning not to groan, not because his frail soul is
gaining strength, but because the animal is better fed and more robust.
His ideas of strength of mind are indeed very elementary. As soon as I
hear his first cry, in the warm room where his wound is dressed, I give
him an encouraging look, and say:
"Be brave, Marie! Try to be strong!"
Then he knits his brows, makes a grimace, and asks:
"Ought I to say 'By God!'?"
The zinc trough in which Marie's shattered leg has been lying has lost
its shape; it has become oxydised and is split at the edges; so I have
decided to change it.
I take it away, look at it, and throw it into a corner. Marie follows my
movements with a scared glance. While I am adjusting the new trough, a
solid, comfortable one, but rather different in appearance, he casts
an eloquent glance at the discarded one, and his eyes fill with copious
tears.
This change is a small matter; but in the lives of the sick, there are
no small things.
Lerondeau will weep for the old zinc fragment for two days, and it will
be a long time before he ceases to look distrustfully at the new trough,
and to criticise it in those minute and bitter terms which only a
connoisseur can understand or invent.
Carre, on the other hand, cannot succeed in carrying along his body by
the generous impulse of his soul. Everything about him save his eyes and
his liquid voice foreshadow the corpse. Throughout the winter days
and the long sleepless nights, he looks as if he were dragging along a
derelict.
He strains at it... with his poignant songs and his brave words which
falter now, and often die away in a moan.
I had to do his dressing in the presence of Marie. The amount of work to
be got through, and the cramped quarters made this necessary. Marie was
grave and attentive as if he were taking a lesson, and, indeed, it was a
lesson in patience and courage. But all at once, the teacher broke down.
In the middle of the dressing, Carre opened his lips, and in spite of
himself, began to complain without restraint or measure, giving up the
struggle in despair.
Lerondeau listened, anxious and uneasy; and Carre, knowing that Marie
was listening, continued to lament, like one who has lost all sense of
shame.
Lerondeau called me by a motion of his eyelids. He said:
"Carre!..."
And he added:
"I saw his slough. Lord! he is bad."
Lerondeau has a good memory for medical terms. Yes, he saw Carre's
slough. He himself has the like on his posterior and on his heel; but
the tear that trembles in the corner of his eye is certainly for Carre.
And then, he knows, he feels that HIS wounds are going to heal.
But it is bad for Marie to hear another complaining before his own turn.
He comes to the table very ill-disposed. His nerves have been shaken and
are unusually irritable.
At the first movement, he begins with sighs and those "Poor devils!"
which are his artless and habitual expressions of self-pity. And then,
all at once, he begins to scream, as I had not heard him scream for a
long time. He screams in a sort of frenzy, opening his mouth widely, and
shrieking with all the strength of his lungs, and with all the strength
of his face, it would seem, for it is flushed and bathed in sweat.
He screams unreasonably at the lightest touch, in an incoherent and
disorderly fashion.
Then, ceasing to exhort him to be calm with gentle and compassionate
words, I raise my voice suddenly and order the boy to be quiet, in a
severe tone that admits of no parleying...
Marie's agitation subsides at once, like a bubble at the touch of a
finger. The ward still rings with my imperious order. A good lady who
does not understand at once, stares at me in stupefaction.
But Marie, red and frightened, controls his unreasonable emotion. And as
long as the dressing lasts, I dominate his soul strenuously to prevent
him from suffering in vain, just as others hold and grasp his wrists.
Then, presently, it is all over. I give him a fraternal smile that
relaxes the tension of his brow as a bow is unbent.
A lady, who is a duchess at the least, came to visit the wounded. She
exhaled such a strong, sweet perfume that she cannot have distinguished
the odour of suffering that pervades this place.
Carre was shown to her as one of the most interesting specimens of the
house. She looked at him with a curious, faded smile, which, thanks to
paint and powder, still had a certain beauty.
She made some patriotic remarks to Carre full of allusions to his
conduct under fire. And Carre ceased staring out of the window to look
at the lady with eyes full of respectful astonishment.
And then she asked Carre what she could send him that he would like,
with a gesture that seemed to offer the kingdoms of the earth and the
glory of them.
Carre, in return, gave her a radiant smile; he considered for a moment
and then said modestly:
"A little bit of veal with new potatoes."
The handsome lady thought it tactful to laugh. And I felt instinctively
that her interest in Carre was suddenly quenched.
An old man sometimes comes to visit Carre. He stops before the bed, and
with a stony face pronounces words full of an overflowing benevolence.
"Give him anything he asks for.... Send a telegram to his family."
Carre protests timidly: "Why a telegram? I have no one but my poor old
mother; it would frighten her."
The little old gentleman emerges from his varnished boots like a
variegated plant from a double vase.
Carre coughs--first, to keep himself in countenance, and, secondly,
because his cruel bronchitis takes this opportunity to give him a
shaking.
Then the old gentleman stoops, and all his medals hang out from his
tunic like little dried-up breasts. He bends down, puffing and pouting,
without removing his gold-trimmed KEPI, and lays a deaf ear on Carre's
chest with an air of authority.
Carre's leg has been sacrificed. The whole limb has gone, leaving a huge
and dreadful wound level with the trunk.
It is very surprising that the rest of Carre did not go with the leg.
He had a pretty hard day.
O life! O soul! How you cling to this battered carcase! O little gleam
on the surface of the eye! Twenty times I saw it die down and kindle
again. And it seemed too suffering, too weak, too despairing ever to
reflect anything again save suffering, weakness, and despair.
During the long afternoon, I go and sit between two beds beside
Lerondeau. I offer him cigarettes, and we talk. This means that we say
nothing, or very little.... But it is not necessary to speak when one
has a talk with Lerondeau.
Marie is very fond of cigarettes, but what he likes still better is that
I should come and sit by him for a bit. When I pass through the ward,
he taps coaxingly upon his sheet, as one taps upon a bench to invite a
friend to a seat.
Since he told me about his life at home and his campaign, he has not
found much to say to me. He takes the cakes with which his little shelf
is laden, and crunches them with an air of enjoyment.
"As for me," he says, "I just eat all the time," and he laughs.
If he stops eating to smoke, he laughs again. Then there is an agreeable
silence. Marie looks at me, and begins to laugh again. And when I get
up to go, he says: "Oh, you are not in such a great hurry, we can chat a
little longer!"
Lerondeau's leg was such a bad business that it is now permanently
shorter than the other by a good twelve centimetres. So at least it
seems to us, looking down on it from above.
But Lerondeau, who has only seen it from afar by raising his head a
little above the table while his wounds are being dressed, has noticed
only a very slight difference in length between his two legs.
He said philosophically:
"It is shorter, but with a good thick sole...."
When Marie was better, he raised himself on his elbow, and he understood
the extent of his injury more clearly.
"I shall want a VERY thick sole," he remarked.
Now that Lerondeau can sit up, he, too, can estimate the extent of the
damage from above; but he is happy to feel life welling up once more in
him, and he concludes gaily:
"What I shall want is not a sole, but a little bench."
But Carre is ill, terribly ill.
That valiant soul of his seems destined to be left alone, for all else
is failing.
He had one sound leg. Now it is stiff and swollen.
He had healthy, vigorous arms. Now one of them is covered with
abscesses.
The joy of breathing no longer exists for Carre, for his cough shakes
him savagely in his bed.
The back, by means of which we rest, has also betrayed him. Here and
there it is ulcerated; for man was not meant to lie perpetually on his
back, but only to lie and sleep on it after a day of toil.
For man was not really intended to suffer with his miserable, faithless
body!
And his heart beats laboriously.
There was mischief in the bowel too. So much so, that one day Carre was
unable to control himself, before a good many people who had come in.
In spite of our care, in spite of our friendly assurances, Carre was so
ashamed that he wept. He who always said that a man ought not to cry, he
who never shed a tear in the most atrocious suffering, sobbed with shame
on account of this accident. And I could not console him.
He no longer listens to all we say to him. He no longer answers our
questions. He has mysterious fits of absence.
He who was so dignified in his language, expresses himself and complains
with the words of a child.
Sometimes he comes up out of the depths and speaks.
He talks of death with an imaginative lucidity which sounds like actual
experience.
Sometimes he sees it... And as he gazes, his pupils suddenly distend.
But he will not, he cannot make up his mind....
He wants to suffer a little longer.
I draw near to his bed in the gathering darkness. His breathing is so
light that suddenly, I stop and listen open-mouthed, full of anxiety.
Then Carre suddenly opens his eyes.
Will he sigh and groan? No. He smiles and says:
"What white teeth you have!"
Then he dreams, as if he were dying.
Could you have imagined such a martyrdom, my brother, when you were
driving the plough into your little plot of brown earth?
Here you are, enduring a death-agony of five months swathed in these
livid wrappings, without even the rewards that are given to others.
Your breast, your shroud must be bare of even the humblest of the
rewards of valour, Carre.
It was written that you should suffer without purpose and without hope.
But I will not let all your sufferings be lost in the abyss. And so I
record them thus at length.
Lerondeau has been brought down into the garden. I find him there,
stretched out on a cane chair, with a little kepi pulled down over his
eyes, to shade them from the first spring sunshine.
He talks a little, smokes a good deal, and laughs more.
I look at his leg, but he hardly ever looks at it himself; he no longer
feels it.
He will forget it even more utterly after a while, and he will live
as if it were natural enough for a man to live with a stiff, distorted
limb.
Forget your leg, forget your sufferings, Lerondeau. But the world must
not forget them.
And I leave Marie sitting in the sun, with a fine new pink colour in his
freckled cheeks.
Carre died early this morning. Lerondeau leaves us to-morrow.