Fear (15 page)

She notes all this down and assures us that we’ll have it all in a couple of hours, then returns to her friends, looking a little astonished.

Nègre rubs his hands together.

‘Excellent, excellent! As the general always said: “Attack, attack, attack! Always go on the offensive! Get the upper hand over your adversary and demoralise him! Attack and attack again!” Any staff officer from military college who knows what he’s about would say the same.’

This is how I first hear of the famous General Baron de Poculotte, such an intimate friend of sergeant Nègre that he chose to make him his confidant. This leads me to question my neighbour on his past. I don’t get anything very precise out of him. ‘Ah well, you know, I’ve done this and that!’ Later, in the course of various conversations, I learned that he had travelled abroad, had been a man of business, sold different products, some kind of trader. I think I also understood that he’d collected bets in cafés, and he seemed impressively well informed on drug-trafficking and the ways of the demi-monde . . . In short, he was a charming companion, his head full of stories and unexpected knowledge.

Our little initiative had been pointed out to the other nurses, who observed us at a distance, and, for the first few days, didn’t come near us except to perform their medical duties.

We first made real contact when I asked for some books. When people like to read, they can readily find common ground. Preferences lead to debate, and give a rapid measure of each other’s opinions. On my bedside table I soon had Rabelais, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Jules Vallès, Stendhal naturally; some Maeterlinck, Octave Mirbeau, and Anatole France, etc., all suspect authors for the young daughters of the bourgeoisie. And I rejected, as conventional and insipid, the writers whom they’d been fed.

Once I’d won over one nurse she’d bring along another one, and so it went. The conversations began and I was surrounded and bombarded with questions. They asked me about the war:

‘What did you do at the front?’

‘Nothing worth reporting if you’re hoping for feats of prowess.’

‘You fought well?’

‘I really have no idea. What do you mean by “fought”?’

‘But you were in the trenches . . . Did you kill any Germans?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘But you saw them right in front of you?’

‘Never.’

‘How can that be? At the front line?’

‘Yes, at the front line I never saw a living, armed German before me. I only saw dead Germans: the job had been done. I think I preferred it that way . . . Anyway, I can’t tell you what I’d have done faced with some big, fierce Prussian, and how it would have turned out as regards national honour . . . There are actions you don’t plan in advance, or only plan pointlessly.’

‘So what have you actually done in the war?’

‘What I was ordered to do, no more no less. I am afraid there’s nothing very glorious in it, and none of the efforts I was compelled to make were in the least prejudicial to the enemy. I am rather afraid that I may have usurped the place I have here and the care you are bestowing on me.’

‘Oh, you
do
get on my nerves! That’s not an answer. I asked you what you
did
!’

‘Yes? . . . Well, all right, what did I do? I marched day and night without knowing where I was going. I did exercises, I had inspections, I dug trenches, I carried barbed wire, I carried sandbags, I did look-out duty. I was hungry and had nothing to eat, thirsty and had nothing to drink, was tired without being able to sleep, was cold without being able to get warm, and had lice without always being able to scratch . . . Will that do?’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes, that’s all . . . Or rather, no, that’s nothing. Would you like to know the chief occupation in war, the only one that matters: I WAS AFRAID.’

I must have said something really disgusting, something obscene. They gave a little indignant shriek and ran off. I saw the revulsion on their faces. From the looks they exchanged I could guess their thoughts: ‘What? A coward! How can this man be French!’ Mademoiselle Bergniol (twenty-one, a colonel’s daughter, with all the fervour of a Child of Mary,[
19
] but with wide hips that would predispose her to maternity) asked me insolently.

‘So, you are
afraid
, Dartemont?’

A very unpleasant word to have thrown at you, in public, by a young woman, and quite an attractive one at that. Ever since the world began, thousands and thousands of men have got themselves killed because of that word on women’s lips . . . But it isn’t a matter of making these girls happy by trumpeting out a few appealing lies like a war correspondent narrating daring deeds. It’s a matter of telling the truth, not just mine but ours, theirs, those who are still there, the poor bastards. I took a moment to let the word, with all its obsolete shame, sink in, and accepted it. I answered her slowly, looking her in the face:

‘Indeed, mademoiselle, I am afraid. Still, I am in good company.’

‘Are you claiming that others were also afraid?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is the first time I have ever heard such a thing and I must say I find it hard to accept. When you’re afraid, you run away.’

Nègre, who wasn’t asked, comes to my rescue spontaneously, with this sententious statement:

‘The man who flees has one inestimable advantage over the most heroic corpse: he can still run!’

His support is disastrous. I can feel that our situation is getting seriously out of hand and sense a collective rage rising up in these women, like the one that possessed the mobs in 1914. I quickly intervene:

‘Calm down, no one runs away in war. You can’t . . .’

‘Ah-ha! You
can’t
. . . but what if you could?’

They are looking at me. I scan their faces.

‘If you could? . . .
Everyone would take to their heels!
’

Nègre can no longer restrain himself:

‘Yes, everyone, no exceptions. French, German, Austrian, Belgian, Japanese, Turkish, African . . . the lot . . . If you could? I tell you it’d be like a great offensive in reverse, a bloody great Charleroi,[
20
] every direction, every country, every language . . . Faster, forward! The lot, I’m telling you, the whole lot!’

Mademoiselle Bergniol, standing between our beds like a gendarme at a crossroads, tries to put a stop to this rout.

‘And the officers?’ she snaps. ‘Generals were seen charging at the head of their divisions!’

‘Yes, so it’s said . . . They marched with the troops once to show off, to play to the gallery – or simply because they didn’t know what would happen, just as we didn’t the first time. Once but not twice! When you’ve tasted machine-gun fire on open ground once, you’re not going to go there again for the fun of it . . . You can bet that if generals had to go over the top, they wouldn’t launch attacks so lightly. But then they discovered defence in depth, those aggressive old chaps! That was the finest discovery of the General Staff!’

‘Oh, this is quite dreadful talk!’ says Mademoiselle Bergniol, pale with fury.

It is painful to watch her and we get the feeling it might be wise to change the subject. Then Nègre turns the tables:

‘Don’t get all het up, mademoiselle, we’re exaggerating. We have all
done our duty courageously
. It’s not so bad now that we are starting to get
covered trenches
with all the modern conveniences. There’s still no gas for cooking but we already have gas for the throat. We have running water every day that it rains, eiderdowns sprinkled with stars at night, and when our rations don’t arrive, we don’t mind at all: we eat the Boche!’

He asks the whole ward:

‘Be honest, lads, hasn’t the war been fun?’

‘It hasn’t half been fun!’

‘An absolute scream!’

‘Hey, Nègre, what does Poculotte have to say?’

‘The General told me: “I know why I see such sadness in your eyes, little soldier of France . . . Take courage, we will all soon be back to our pig-stickers. Ah, I know how you love your bayonet, little soldier!”’

‘Yay, hoorah for the bayonet! Long live
Rosalie
!’[
21
]

‘Long live Poculotte!’

‘Thank you, my children, thank you. Soldiers, you will always know I am behind you at the hour of battle, and you will always see me in front of you, boots polished and brass shining, on the parade ground. We are together, in life, in death!’[
22
]

‘Yes, yes!’

‘Soldiers, I will send you against machine guns, and will you destroy them?’

‘The machine guns don’t exist!’

‘Soldiers, I will send you against artillery and will you silence those guns?’

‘We’ll shut their mouths for good!’

‘Soldiers, I will throw you against the Imperial Guards and will you crush the Imperial Guards?’

‘We’ll crush them into meatballs, into pasties!’

‘Soldiers, will nothing stop you?’

‘Nothing, General!’

‘Soldiers, soldiers, I can feel your impatience, sense how your generous blood is boiling. Soldiers, soon I won’t be able to hold you back. Soldiers, I can see it, you want an offensive!’

‘Yes, yes, an offensive, now! Forward! Forward!

The whole room is now gripped by warlike delirium. People are imitating the rattle of machine guns, the whistle of shells, explosions. Roars and shouts of hatred and triumph evoke the frenzy of an attack. Projectiles are thrown, bedside tables shaken, and everyone joins in the furious fun. The nurses rush to calm it down and stop the noise disturbing patients in other wards.

Nègre has pulled the blankets off his thigh and stuck his leg in the air. He has put a képi on his foot and is waving it around to imitate a capering, conquering general at the head of his army.

Looking very serious, Mademoiselle Bergniol comes to my bedside:

‘Dartemont, I have been thinking about what happened yesterday and I fear I may have offended you . . .’

‘Please don’t apologise, mademoiselle. I have been thinking about it, too, and I should not have spoken to you as I did. I’ve come to realise that in this war it is just not possible for people at the front and people at the rear to see eye to eye.’

‘Still, you don’t really believe what you said, do you?’

‘I really do believe it, as do many others.’

‘But there is still such a thing as duty, they must have taught you that.’

‘I’ve been taught a great many things – like you – and I’m aware that one has to choose between them. War is nothing but a monstrous absurdity and nothing good or great will come from it.’

‘Dartemont, think of your country!’

‘My country? Another concept to which you attach from a distance a rather vague ideal. You want to know what “my country” really is? Nothing more or less than a gathering of shareholders, a form of property, bourgeois mentality, and vanity. Think about all the people in your country whom you wouldn’t go near, and you’ll see that the ties that are supposed to bind us all together don’t go very deep . . . I can assure you that none of the men I saw fall around me died thinking of his country, with “the satisfaction of having done his duty”. I don’t believe that many people went off to fight in this war with the idea of sacrifice in their heads, as real patriots should have done.’

‘This is demoralising talk!’

‘What’s really demoralising is the situation in which we soldiers are put. When I thought of dying, I saw death as a bitter mockery, since I was going to lose my life for a mistake, someone else’s mistake.’

‘That must have been terrible!’

‘Oh, it’s quite possible to die without being a mug. In the end I wasn’t so afraid of dying. A bullet in the heart or the head . . . My worst fear was mutilation and the long drawn out agony that we witnessed.’

‘But . . . what about liberty?’

‘I carry my liberty with me. It is in my thoughts, in my head. Shakespeare is one of my countries, Goethe another. You can change the badge that I wear, but you can’t change the way I think. It is through my intellect that I can escape the roles, intrusions and obligations with which every civilisation, every community would burden me. I make myself my own homeland through my affinities, my choices, my ideas, and no one can take it away from me – I may even be able to enlarge it. I don’t spend my life in the company of crowds but of individuals. If I could pick fifty individuals from each nation, then perhaps I could put together a society I’d be happy with. My first possession is myself; better to send it into exile than to lose it, to change a few habits rather than terminate my role as a human being. We only have one homeland: the world.’

‘But don’t you think, Dartemont, that this feeling of fear you talked about yesterday has helped make you lose all your ideals?’

‘That word fear shocked you, didn’t it? It’s not a word you’ll find in histories of France, and that won’t change. But I’m sure now that it will have its place in our history, as in all others. In my case I reckon convictions will overcome fear, rather than fear overcoming convictions. I think I’d die quite well for something I believed in passionately. But fear isn’t something to be ashamed of: it is a natural revulsion of the body to something for which it wasn’t made. Not many people avoid it. Soldiers know what they’re talking about because they have often overcome this revulsion, because they’ve managed to hide it from those around them who were feeling it too. I knew men who believed I was brave by nature, because I had hidden what I was going through. For even when our bodies are wriggling in the mud like slugs and our mind is screaming in distress, we still sometimes want to put on a show of bravery, by some incomprehensible contradiction. What has made us so exhausted is precisely that struggle between mental discipline and flesh in revolt, the exposed, whimpering flesh that we have to beat into submission so we can get up again . . . Conscious courage, mademoiselle, starts with fear.’

Such are our most frequent topics of conversation. They lead us, inevitably, to define our notion of happiness, our ambitions, the goals of humanity, the summits of thought, even god and religion. We re-examine the old laws of humanity, laws created for interchangeable minds, for the whole flock of bleating minds. We discuss every article of her own morality, the morality which has guided the endless procession of little souls down through the ages, indistinct little souls which twinkled like glow-worms in the darkness of the world, and were extinguished after one night of life. Today we offer our own feeble light, which isn’t even enough for us.