In the corner of the ward there is a little plank bed which is like all
the other little beds. But buried between its sheets there is the smile
of Mathouillet, which is like no other smile.
Mathouillet, after throwing a good many bombs, at last got one himself.
In this disastrous adventure, he lost part of his thigh, received
several wounds, and gradually became deaf. Such is the fate of
bombardier-grenadier Mathouillet.
The bombardier-grenadier has a gentle, beardless face, which for many
weeks must have expressed great suffering, and, which is now beginning
to show a little satisfaction.
But Mathouillet hears so badly that when one speaks to him he only
smiles in answer.
If I come into the ward, Mathouillet's smile awaits and welcomes me.
When the dressing is over, Mathouillet thanks me with a smile. If I
look at the temperature chart, Mathouillet's smile follows me, but not
questioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but his smile says a
number of unspoken things that I understand perfectly. Conversation
is difficult, on account of this unfortunate deafness--that is to say,
conversation as usually carried on. But we two, happily, have no need of
words. For some time past, certain smiles have been enough for us. And
Mathouillet smiles, not only with his eyes or with his lips, but with
his nose, his beardless chin, his broad, smooth forehead, crowned by the
pale hair of the North, with all his gentle, boyish face.
Now that Mathouillet can get up, he eats at the table, with his
comrades. To call him to meals, Baraffe utters a piercing cry, which
reaches the ear of the bombardier-grenadier.
He arrives, shuffling his slippers along the floor, and examines all the
laughing faces. As he cannot hear, he hesitates to sit down, and this
time his smile betrays embarrassment and confusion.
Coming very close to him, I say loudly:
"Your comrades are calling you to dinner, my boy."
"Yes, yes," he replies, "but because they know I am deaf, they sometimes
try to play tricks on me."
His cheeks flush warmly as he makes this impromptu confidence. Then
he makes up his mind to sit down, after interrogating me with his most
affectionate smile.
X
Once upon a time, Paga would have been called un type; now he is un
numero. This means that he is an original, that his ways of considering
and practising life are unusual; and as life here is reduced entirely to
terms of suffering, it means that his manner of suffering differs from
that of other people.
From the very beginning, during those hard moments when the wounded
man lies plunged in stupor and self-forgetfulness, Paga distinguished
himself by some remarkable eccentricities.
Left leg broken, right foot injured, such was the report on Paga's
hospital sheet.
Now the leg was not doing at all well. Every morning, the good head
doctor stared at the swollen flesh with his little round discoloured
eyes and said: "Come, we must just wait till to-morrow." But Paga did
not want to wait.
Flushed with fever, his hands trembling, his southern accent exaggerated
by approaching delirium, he said, as soon as we came to see him.
"My wish, my wish! You know my wish, doctor."
Then, lower, with a kind of passion:
"I want you to cut it off, you know. I want you to cut this leg. Oh! I
shan't be happy till it is done. Doctor, cut it, cut it off."
We didn't cut it at all, and Paga's business was very successfully
arranged. I even feel sure that this leg became quite a respectable limb
again.
I am bound to say Paga understood that he had meddled with things which
did not concern him. He nevertheless continued to offer imperative
advice as to the manner in which he wished to be nursed.
"Don't pull off the dressings! I won't have it. Do you hear, doctor?
Don't pull. I won't have it."
Then he would begin to tremble nervously all over his body and to say:
"I am quite calm! Oh, I am really calm. See, Michelet, see, Brugneau, I
am calm. Doctor, see, I am quite calm."
Meantime the dressings were gradually loosening under a trickle of
water, and Paga muttered between his teeth:
"He's pulling, he's pulling.... Oh, the cruel man! I won't have it, I
won't have it."
Then suddenly, with flaming cheeks:
"That's right. That's right! See, Michelet, see, Brugneau: the dressings
have come away. Sergeant, Sergeant, the dressings are loosened."
He clapped his hands, possessed by a furtive joy; then he suddenly
became conscious, and with a deep furrow between his brows, he began to
give orders again.
"Not any tincture of iodine to-day, doctor. Take away those forceps,
doctor, take them away."
Meanwhile the implacable forceps did their work, the tincture of iodine
performed its chilly function; then Paga yelled:
"Quickly, quickly. Kiss me, kiss me."
With his arms thrown out like tentacles, he beat upon the air, and
seized haphazard upon the first blouse that passed. Then he would
embrace it frantically.
Thus it happened that he once showered kisses on Michelet's hands,
objects by no means suitable for such a demonstration. Michelet said,
laughing:
"Come, stop it; my hands are dirty."
And then poor Paga began to kiss Michelet's bare, hairy arms, saying
distractedly:
"If your hands are dirty, your arms are all right."
Alas, what has become of all those who, during days and nights of
patient labour, I saw gradually shaking off the dark empire of the night
and coming back again to joy? What has become of the smouldering faggot
which an ardent breath finally kindled into flame?
What became of you, precious lives, poor wonderful souls, for whom I
fought so many obscure great battles, and who went off again into the
realm of adventure?
You, Paga, little fellow, where are you? Do you remember the time when I
used to dress your two wounds alternately, and when you said to me with
great severity:
"The leg to-day, only the leg. It's not the day for the foot."