I do not know why I loved Rabot. Every morning as I went to and fro at
my usual work in the ward, I saw Rabot, or rather Rabot’s head, or less
still Rabot’s eye, hiding in a hurly-burly of sheets. He was a little
like a guinea-pig that rubs its nose in the straw and watches you
anxiously.
Every time I passed I made a familiar sign to Rabot. This sign
consisted in shutting the left eye energetically and pressing the lips
together. At once Rabot’s eye shut itself, digging a thousand little
wrinkles in the withered face of the sick man. And that was all; we had
exchanged our salutations and our confidences.
Rabot never laughed. He had spent his babyhood in a foundling hospital
and had not had enough milk. This under-feeding in infancy can never be
made up for afterwards.
Rabot was sandy-haired, with a pale complexion splashed with freckles.
He had so little brain that he looked like a rabbit or a bird. Directly
a stranger spoke to him his underlip began to tremble and his chin
wrinkled all over like a walnut. You had first of all to explain to him
that you were not going to beat him.
Poor Rabot! I would have given anything to see him laugh. Everything,
on the contrary, seemed to conspire to make him cry: there were the
terrible endless dressings that had to be renewed every day for months;
then he was compelled to lie so quiet and motionless that he was never
able to play with his comrades. And after all, the fact remained
that Rabot had never learned to play at all, and really was not much
interested in anything.
I was, I think, the only one who became at all intimate with him; and,
as I said before, this intimacy consisted chiefly in shutting my left
eye when I passed near his bed.
Rabot did not smoke. When cigarettes were handed round he would join in
with the others and play with them for a moment, moving his great thin
fingers, deformed and emaciated. Long illness seems to rob the fingers
of manual labourers of all beauty and significance: directly they lose
their hardness and their healthy appearance they look like nothing at
all in the world.
I think that Rabot would have willingly offered his good cigarettes to
his neighbours; but it is so difficult to talk sometimes, especially
to give something to some one. The cigarettes got slowly covered with
dust on the table, and Rabot lay flat on his back, quite thin and
straight, like a bit of straw carried away by the torrent of war, and
understanding nothing of what was happening all around him.
One day a staff officer came into the ward and went up to Rabot.
“That is the man,” he said. “Well, I have brought him the Military
Medal and the Croix de Guerre.”
He made Rabot sign a little paper and left him alone with his
playthings. Rabot did not laugh. He put the case out on the bedclothes
in front of him, and he looked at it from nine o’clock in the morning
till three in the afternoon.
At three the officer returned, and said:
“I made a mistake. The decorations were not for Rabot, but for Raboux.”
Then he took the jewel-case, tore up the receipt, and went away.
Rabot cried from three o’clock in the afternoon till nine o’clock in
the evening. Then he went to sleep. The next morning he began to cry
again. M. Gossin, who is a good Director, went to Headquarters and came
back with a medal and a cross just like the last; he even made Rabot
sign another paper.
Rabot stopped crying. But his face was still haunted by a shadow--the
shadow of a constant dread, as if he feared that one day or other they
would come and take away all his treasures.
Some weeks passed. I often looked at Rabot’s face, and I tried to
imagine what laughter would make of it. I imagined and looked in vain;
it was obvious that Rabot did not know how to laugh, and that his face
was not made that way.
It was then that the lady in green arrived.
She came in one fine morning through one of the doors, like everybody
else. On the other hand, she was not like everybody else: she was
more like an angel, a queen, or a doll. She was not dressed like the
nurses who worked in the wards, or like the mothers and wives who came
to visit their wounded husbands and sons. She was not even like the
women one meets in the streets. She was much more beautiful, much more
majestic. She made one think of the fairies of one’s childhood, or of
those splendid forms one sees on great coloured calendars under which
the artist has written “Reveries,” or “Melancholy,” or “Poetry.” She
was surrounded by well-dressed, good-looking officers, who attended
to her slightest word, and who lavished on her the most extravagant
compliments.
“Come in, then, Madame,” said one of them, “since you wish to see some
of our wounded.”...
She made two steps into the room, stopped short, and said in a deep
voice:
“The poor things!”
Every one in the ward opened his eyes and pricked up his ears. Mery
put down his pipe; Tarrissant changed his crutches from one hand to
the other, which, with him, is a sign of emotion; Domenge and Burnier
stopped playing and pressed their cards against their bodies to hide
them. Poupot did not move, because he is paralysed, but one could
easily see that he was listening with all his might.
The lady in green went first to Sorri, the negro.
“Your name is Sorri?” she asked, reading his card.
The negro moved his head; the lady in green went on in a voice as sweet
and melodious as an actress:
“You have come to fight for France, Sorri; and you have left your
beautiful country--the fresh and smiling oasis in an ocean of burning
sand. Ah, Sorri! how beautiful are the African evenings, at the hour
when the young woman returns along the avenue of palm trees, carrying
on her head an aromatic pitcher full of honey and cocoanut milk!”
The officers murmured their appreciation, and Sorri, who understands
French, repeated, nodding his head, “Cocoa! cocoa!”
Already the lady in green was gliding away over the tiled floor. She
came to Rabot, and sat down on the end of his bed, like a swallow on a
telegraph wire.
“Rabot,” she said, “you are a brave man!”
Rabot did not answer; but in his usual way he blinked his eyes, like a
child who fears a blow.
“Ah, Rabot!” said the lady in green, “what gratitude do we not owe
you, who have guarded safely for us our dear France! But, Rabot, you
have already gained the great reward. Glory! The joy of battle! The
exquisite agony of plunging forward, your bayonet shining in the sun!
The pleasure of plunging the iron of vengeance into the bleeding side
of the enemy! And then the suffering--divine suffering to be endured
for the sake of all; the sacred wound which, of a hero, makes a god!
Ah! wonderful memories, Rabot!”
The lady in green ceased, and a religious silence reigned in the ward.
Then something unexpected happened.
Rabot stopped looking like himself. All his features contracted,
changing in an almost tragic way. A hoarse noise burst forth in spasms
from his fleshless chest, and all the world realised that Rabot was
laughing.
He laughed for over three-quarters of an hour. Long after the lady in
green had gone, Rabot was still laughing--in fits, as one coughs, with
a rattling noise.
After that the life of Rabot changed a little. When he was on the verge
of tears and misery one could sometimes distract his attention and get
a little laugh out of him if one said at the right moment:
“Rabot! they are going to bring the lady in green to see you.”