"Genest, Barrassin, Prevot, come, all of you."
Yes, let ten of us do our best if necessary, to support Leglise, to hold
him, to soothe him. A minute of his endurance is equal to ten years of
such effort as ours.
Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the
heaviest burden alone.
All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every minute
aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid?
We made an examination of the wounded man, together with our chief, who
muttered almost inaudibly between his teeth:
"He must be prepared for another sacrifice."
Yes, the sacrifice is not yet entirely consummated.
But Leglise understood. He no longer weeps. He has the weary and
somewhat bewildered look of the man who is rowing against the storm.
I steal a look at him, and he says at once in a clear, calm, resolute
voice:
"I would much rather die."
I go into the garden. It is a brilliant morning, but I can see nothing,
I want to see nothing. I repeat as I walk to and fro:
"He would much rather die."
And I ask despairingly whether he is not right perhaps.
All the poplars rustle softly. With one voice, the voice of Summer
itself, they say: "No! No! He is not right!"
A little beetle crosses the path before me. I step on it
unintentionally, but it flies away in desperate haste. It too has
answered in its own way: "No, really, your friend is not right."
"Tell him he is wrong," sing the swarm of insects that buzz about the
lime-tree.
And even a loud roar from the guns that travels across the landscape
seems to say gruffly: "He is wrong! He is wrong!"
During the evening the chief came back to see Leglise, who said to him
with the same mournful gravity:
"No, I won't, Monsieur, I would rather die."
We go down into the garden, and the chief says a strange thing to me:
"Try to convince him. I begin at last to feel ashamed of demanding such
a sacrifice from him."
And I too... am I not ashamed?
I consult the warm, star-decked night; I am quite sure now that he is
wrong, but I don't know how to tell him so. What can I offer him in
exchange for the thing I am about to ask him? Where shall I find the
words that induce a man to live? Oh you, all things around me, tell me,
repeat to me that it is sweet to live, even with a body so grievously
mutilated.
This morning I extracted a little projectile from one of his wounds.
He secretly concluded that this would perhaps make the great operation
unnecessary, and it hurt me to see his joy. I could not leave him this
satisfaction.
The struggle began again; this time it was desperate. For we have no
time to lose. Every hour of delay exhausts our man further. A few days
more, and there will be no choice open to him: only death, after a long
ordeal....
He repeats:
"I am not afraid, but I would rather die."
Then I talk to him as if I were the advocate of Life. Who gave me this
right? Who gave me eloquence? The things I said were just the right
things, and they came so readily that now and then I was afraid of
holding out so sure a promise of a life I am not certain I can preserve,
of guaranteeing a future that is not in man's hands.
Gradually, I feel his resistance weakening. There is something in
Leglise which involuntarily sides with me and pleads with me. There
are moments when he does not know what to say, and formulates trivial
objections, just because there are others so much weightier.
"I live with my mother," he says. "I am twenty years old. What work is
there for a cripple? Ought I to live to suffer poverty and misery?"
"Leglise, all France owes you too much, she would blush not to pay her
debt."
And I promise again, in the name of our country, sure that she will
never fall short of what I undertake for her. The whole French nation is
behind me at this moment, silently ratifying my promise.
We are at the edge of the terrace; evening has come. I hold his burning
wrist in which the feeble pulse beats with exhausted fury. The night
is so beautiful, so beautiful! Rockets rise above the hills, and fall
slowly bathing the horizon in silvery rays. The lightning of the guns
flashes furtively, like a winking eye. In spite of all this, in spite of
war, the night is like waters dark and divine. Leglise breathes it in to
his wasted breast in long draughts, and says:
"Oh, I don't know, I don't know!... Wait another day, please,
please...."
We waited three whole days, and then Leglise gave in. "Well, do what you
must. Do what you like."
On the morning of the operation, he asked to be carried down to the ward
by the steps into the park. I went with him, and I saw him looking at
all things round him, as if taking them to witness.
If only, only it is not too late!
Again he was laid on the table. Again we cut through flesh and bones.
The second leg was amputated at the thigh.
I took him in my arms to lay him on his bed, and he was so light, so
light....
This time when he woke he asked no question. But I saw his hands groping
to feel where his body ended.
A few days have passed since the operation. We have done all it was
humanly possible to do, and Leglise comes back to life with a kind of
bewilderment.
"I thought I should have died," he said to me this morning, while I was
encouraging him to eat.
He added:
"When I went down to the operation-ward, I looked well at everything,
and I thought it was for the last time."
"Look, dear boy. Everything is just the same, just as beautiful as
ever."
"Oh!" he says, going back to his memories, "I had made up my mind to
die."
To make up one's mind to die is to take a certain resolution, in the
hope of becoming quieter, calmer, and less unhappy. The man who makes
up his mind to die severs a good many ties, and indeed actually dies to
some extent.
With secret anxiety, I say gently, as if I were asking a question:
"It is always good to eat, to drink, to breathe, to see the light. ..."
He does not answer. He is dreaming. I spoke too soon. I go away, still
anxious.
We have some bad moments yet, but the fever gradually abates. I have an
impression that Leglise bears his pain more resolutely, like one who has
given all he had to give, and fears nothing further.
When I have finished the dressing, I turned him over on his side, to
ease his sore back. He smiled for the first time this morning, saying:
"I have already gained something by getting rid of my legs. I can lie on
my side now."
But he cannot balance himself well; he is afraid of falling.
Think of him, and you will be afraid with him and for him.
Sometimes he goes to sleep in broad daylight and dozes for a few
minutes. He has shrunk to the size of a child. I lay a piece of gauze
over his face, as one does to a child, to keep the flies off. I bring
him a little bottle of Eau de Cologne and a fan, they help him to bear
the final assaults of the fever.
He begins to smoke again. We smoke together on the terrace, where I have
had his bed brought. I show him the garden and say: "In a few days, I
will carry you down into the garden."
He is anxious about his neighbours, asks their names, and
inquires about their wounds. For each one he has a compassionate word
that comes from the depths of his being. He says to me:
"I hear that little Camus is dead. Poor Camus!"
His eyes fill with tears. I was almost glad to see them. He had not
cried for so long. He adds:
"Excuse me, I used to see Camus sometimes. It's so sad."
He becomes extraordinarily sensitive. He is touched by all he
sees around him, by the sufferings of others, by their individual
misfortunes. He vibrates like an elect soul, exalted by a great crisis.
When he speaks of his own case, it is always to make light of his
misfortune:
"Dumont got it in the belly. Ah, it's lucky for me that none of my
organs are touched; I can't complain."
I watch him with admiration, but I am waiting for something more,
something more....
His chief crony is Legrand.
Legrand is a stonemason with a face like a young girl. He has lost a big
piece of his skull. He has also lost the use of language, and we teach
him words, as to a baby. He is beginning to get up now, and he hovers
round Leglise's bed to perform little services for him. He tries to
master his rebellious tongue, but failing in the attempt, he smiles, and
expresses himself with a limpid glance, full of intelligence.
Leglise pities him too:
"It must be wretched not to be able to speak."
To-day we laughed, yes, indeed, we laughed heartily, Leglise, the
orderlies and I.
We were talking of his future pension while the dressings were being
prepared, and someone said to him:
"You will live like a little man of means."
Leglise looked at his body and answered:
"Oh, yes, a little man, a very little man."
The dressing went off very well. To make our task easier, Leglise
suggested that he should hold on to the head of the bed with both hands
and throw himself back on his shoulders, holding his stumps up in the
air. It was a terrible, an unimaginable sight; but he began to laugh,
and the spectacle became comic. We all laughed. But the dressing was
easy and was quickly finished.
The stumps are healing healthily. In the afternoon, he sits up in bed.
He begins to read and to smoke, chatting to his companions.
I explain to him how he will be able to walk with artificial legs. He
jokes again:
"I was rather short before; but now I can be just the height I choose."
I bring him some cigarettes that had been sent me for him, some sweets
and dainties. He makes a sign that he wants to whisper to me, and says
very softly:
"I have far too many things. But Legrand is very badly off; his home
is in the invaded district, and he has nothing, they can't send him
anything."
I understand. I come back presently with a packet in which there are
tobacco, some good cigarettes, and also a little note....
"Here is something for Legrand. You must give it to him. I'm off."
In the afternoon I find Leglise troubled and perplexed.
"I can't give all this to Legrand myself, he would be offended."
So then we have to devise a discreet method of presentation.
It takes some minutes. He invents romantic possibilities. He becomes
flushed, animated, interested.
"Think," I say, "find a way. Give it to him yourself, from some one or
other."
But Leglise is too much afraid of wounding Legrand's susceptibilities.
He ruminates on the matter till evening.
The little parcel is at the head of Legrand's bed. Leglise calls my
attention to it with his chin, and whispers:
"I found some one to give it to him. He doesn't know who sent it. He has
made all sorts of guesses; it is very amusing!" Oh, Leglise, can it be
that there is still something amusing, and that it is to be kind? Isn't
this alone enough to make it worth while to live?
So now we have a great secret between us. All the morning, as I come and
go in the ward, he looks at me meaningly, and smiles to himself. Legrand
gravely offers me a cigarette; Leglise finds it hard not to burst out
laughing. But he keeps his counsel.
The orderlies have put him on a neighbouring bed while they make his.
He stays there very quietly, his bandaged stumps in view, and sings
a little song, like a child's cradle-song. Then, all of a sudden, he
begins to cry, sobbing aloud.