Bouchenton was not very communicative. We knew nothing of his past
history. As to his future plans, he revealed them by one day presenting
to the head doctor for his signature a paper asking leave to open a
Moorish cafe at Medea after his recovery, a request the head doctor felt
himself unable to endorse.
Bouchenton had undergone a long martyrdom in order to preserve an arm
from which the bone had been partially removed, but from which a certain
amount of work might still be expected. He screamed like the others, and
his cry was "Mohabdi! Mohabdi!" When the forceps came near, he cried:
"Don't put them in!" And after this he maintained a silence made up of
dignity and indolence. During the day he was to be seen wandering about
the wards, holding up his ghostly muffled arm with his sound hand.
In the evening, he learned to play draughts, because it is a serious,
silent game, and requires consideration.
Now one day when Bouchenton, seated on a chair, was waiting for his
wound to be dressed, the poor adjutant Figuet began to complain in a
voice that was no more than the shadow of a voice, just as his body was
no more than the shadow of a body.
Figuet was crawling at the time up the slopes of a Calvary where he was
soon to fall once more, never to rise again.
The most stupendous courage and endurance foundered then in a despair
for which there seemed henceforth to be no possible alleviation.
Figuet, I say, began to complain, and every one in the ward feigned to
be engrossed in his occupation, and to hear nothing, because when such a
man began to groan, the rest felt that the end of all things had come.
Bouchenton turned his head, looked at the adjutant, seized his flabby
arm carefully with his right hand, and set out. Walking with little
short steps he came to the table where the suffering man lay.
Stretching out his neck, his great bowed body straining in an effort of
attention, he looked at the wounds, the pus, the soiled bandages, the
worn, thin face, and his own wooden visage laboured under the stress of
all kinds of feelings.
Then Bouchenton did a very simple thing; he relaxed his hold on his own
boneless arm, held out his right hand to Figuet, seized his transparent
fingers and held them tightly clasped.
The adjutant ceased groaning. As long as the silent pressure lasted, he
ceased to complain, ceased perhaps to suffer. Bouchenton kept his right
hand there as long as it was necessary.
I saw this, Bouchenton, my brother. I will not forget it. And I saw,
too, your aching, useless left arm, which you had been obliged to
abandon in order to have a hand to give, hanging by your side like a
limp rag.