No Man's Land (55 page)

‘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
!'

‘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!'

‘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.

Through my questions, I lead the nurses into traps of logic, and ensnare them in syllogisms that completely undermine their principles. They struggle like flies in a spider's web, but refuse to surrender to the mathematical rigour of reason. They are led by the sentiments that a long passage of generations, ruled by dogma, has incorporated into the very substance of their being – sentiments that they have got from a line of women, housewives and mothers, who were alive in their early years and then crushed by domestic drudgery, worn out by the daily round, who crossed themselves with holy water to exorcise any thoughts they might have.

They are surprised to learn that duty, as they understand it, can be opposed to other duties, that there are seditious ideas vaster and more elevated than theirs, and which could be more beneficial to humanity.

Nonetheless, Mademoiselle Bergniol declared:

‘No son of mine will be brought up to think like you.'

‘I know that, mademoiselle. You could bear flaming torches as well as babies, but you'll only give your son the guttering candle that you were given; its wax is dripping and burning your fingers. It is candles like that which have set the world ablaze instead of illuminating it. Blind men's candles, and you can be sure that tomorrow they'll relight the braziers that will consume the sons of your loins. And their pain will be nothing but ash, and at the moment their sacrifice is consummated, they will know this and will curse you. With your principles, if the occasion presents itself, then you in turn will be inhuman mothers.'

‘Do you deny that there are heroes, then, Dartemont?'

‘The action of a hero is a paroxysm and we don't know what causes it. At the height of fear, you can see men becoming brave; it is a terrifying kind of bravery because you know that it's hopeless. Pure heroes are as rare as geniuses. And if in order to get one hero you have to blow ten thousand men to pieces, then we can do without heroes. You should remember that you would probably be unable to carry out the mission you give us. You can only be sure of how calmly you'll face death when you're facing it.'

When Mademoiselle Bergniol has gone, Nègre, who was following our conversation, shared his opinion:

‘The delicate little dears! What they need is a hero in their beds, a real live hero with a bloody face, to make them squeal with pleasure!'

‘They don't know…'

‘They don't know anything, I agree. When all's said and done, women – and I've known plenty of them – are females, stupid and cruel. Behind all their airs and graces, they are just wombs. What will they have done during the war? They'll have egged on men to go and get their heads blown off. And the men who will have disembowelled lots of the enemy will receive their reward: the love of a charming, right-thinking young woman. What sweet little bitches!'

While he's talking I am watching the women going about their duties. Mademoiselle Bergniol is energetic in a methodical way, busying herself with studied cheerfulness: she seems transformed by the sense of duty that she upholds. Mademoiselle Heuze is a big girl, homely and rather awkward, but the shape of her large mouth gives her a kindly appearance. Mademoiselle Reignier is full of goodwill, clumsy, a bit daft, and already too fat; in a few years she'll make ‘a good, plump mother' without a trace of ill-nature. With Madame Bard, her nonchalance and the way she swings her strong hips suggests desire; with the rather sultry gaze of a woman lacking a husband, her eyes linger on our bodies, a little covetously, perhaps. I avoid the attentions of grey-haired Madame Sabord, a fussy woman with dry fingers whose touch is unpleasant. Mademoiselles Barthe and Doré, one blonde the other brunette, both with bruised eyes, are almost inseparable, wrapping their arms round each other's waists, whispering confidences which make them burst into shrill laughter, like giggles, in a way men find irritating. There is something a bit too voluptuous in their sisterly embraces. Mademoiselle Odet offers everyone her sad smile, her veiled words and the ardour of her feverish eyes. She is too pale, too thin; her frail shoulders already bent beneath the weight of life at its start. You can see she will not have the strength to bear this life for long. We are grateful to her for sharing this short future with all of us, for caring for us when she needs someone to care for her, and the least we can do is to give a smile of encouragement in return for her smile, so full of self-denial.

I know nothing of them apart from these impressions and that's enough for me. I don't try to understand what brought them here. I am simply thankful that they are here, gliding gracefully around the ward, filling it with flowers and their various charms. I'm thankful, too, that they have lost that little edge of bourgeois arrogance they had at the start, when they spoke to us as if they were addressing their staff. I even allow myself the forbidden pleasure of catching them unawares with the ghost of a blush on their cheeks which they hide by turning away, or of suddenly looking deep into their eyes and finding the trace of some illicit emotional agitation which makes their hearts beat differently. But I stop myself on the threshold of this disquiet, like a gentleman at the door of a boudoir.

And above all I am delighted that we have become such good friends, that these young ladies (it's the young ones who display the most curiosity) spare me an hour of their time every day. The clamour of war is silenced by the murmur of their voices. Their words may not always be true, may be empty, but they are kind and gentle, and this pulls me back into life outside the battle zone – though it strikes me every now and then that my return here is unlikely to be permanent.

*

Every now and then the door of the ward silently opens, and a dark shadow appears beside one of the beds, mumbling unctuous words over the occupant. It's the hospital chaplain, the former head of the Saint-Gilbert school.

Now, I respect all faiths (and occasionally envy them) but I am always surprised at the furtive approach of some of these people, at their unconvincing smiles. If they are truly performing a holy and noble ministry then why do they behave like touts, and give the impression that they are soliciting your soul with a ‘psst!' from the end of some dark alleyway. This particular chaplain is of the type that seem to impose themselves on you by calculating your faults. Under their embarrassing gaze I suddenly feel like a monster of depravity, and I'm always waiting for them to say: ‘Come, my son, and confide in me all your filthy little sins…' Father Ravel took a particular interest in me in the beginning, and I suppose that the nurses, knowing my religious background, must have told him about me. In the period just after I arrived he would visit me every day and asked me to come and see him as soon as I could walk. I put this off as long as I could.