by Emile Zola
One of their topics of conversation was the field hospital, where Henriette spent all her time except when she kept Jean company. In the evening when she came home he would question her and he knew all her patients, wanted to know who were dying and who were recovering, and she, always wanting to talk about things near her heart, went over her days in the minutest detail.
‘Oh,’ was her refrain, ‘poor boys, poor boys!’
It was no longer the ambulance station on the day of battle, when fresh blood flowed and amputations were carried out on healthy red flesh. It was now an ambulance station infected by the putrescence of the hospital, smelling of fever and death, clammy with slow convalescences and protracted death agonies. Dr Dalichamp had had the greatest difficulty in procuring the necessary beds, mattresses and sheets, and every day still he had to perform miracles to keep his patients in bread, meat and dried vegetables, to say nothing of bandages, compresses and apparatus. The Prussians who had taken over the military hospital in Sedan refused to give him anything, even chloroform, and so he had got everything from Belgium. And yet he had taken in German wounded in the same way as French, and in particular he was tending a dozen Bavarians picked up at Bazeilles. The enemies who had flown at each other’s throats were now lying side by side in the good companionship of their common suffering. And what a home of fear and misery it was – these two long halls of the old school at Remilly, with fifty beds in each, in the bright, crude light from the lofty windows!
Even ten days after the battle wounded had still been brought in, forgotten men found in odd corners. Four had stayed in an empty house at Balan with no medical attention whatever, living God knows how but probably thanks to the charity of some neighbour; and their wounds were crawling with maggots and they had died, poisoned by their own filthy sores. This purulence, which nothing could check, raged through the place and emptied rows of beds. As soon as you reached the door a smell of necrosis caught you by the throat. Drainage tubes suppurated, dripping fetid pus drop by drop. Often flesh had to be reopened to get out still more unsuspected splinters of bone. Then abscesses appeared, that were going to discharge in some other part of the body. The wretched men, exhausted, emaciated, their faces grey, endured every kind of torture. Some, prostrate and scarcely able to breathe, spent all their days on their backs with eyelids closed and black, like corpses already half decomposed. Others, the sleepless ones, plagued with restless insomnia and soaked in copious sweat, got wildly excited as though the catastrophe had driven them out of their minds. And whether they were violent or inert, once the shivering of infectious fever seized them it was all over, the poison won, flitting from the one to the other and carrying them all off in the same tide of victorious corruption.
Worst of all, there was the condemned ward, the place for men stricken with dysentery, typhus or smallpox. Many had black pox. They were never still, but raved in a continual delirium, rising up in their beds and standing like spectres. Others, affected in the lungs, were dying of pneumonia racked with dreadful coughing. Others shouted all the time and only found relief when a jet of cold water was constantly cooling their wounds. That was the longed-for time, the hour for dressing wounds, which alone brought a bit of peace, when beds were aired and some relaxation was afforded to bodies grown stiff through staying in the same position. But this also was the dreaded hour, for not a day passed when the doctor examining wounds did not grieve to see on some poor devil’s skin the bluish patches that betrayed the advancing gangrene. That meant operating the next day. Yet another bit of leg or arm cut away. Sometimes even the gangrene went higher up and the job had to be repeated until the whole limb had been eaten away. Then the whole man went, his body covered with the livid patches of typhus, and he had to be taken away, staggering, half-crazy, haggard, into the condemned ward, with his flesh dead already and smelling of putrefaction before his death agony set in.
Every evening when she came home Henriette answered Jean’s questions, and her voice always shook with the same emotion.
‘Oh, poor boys, poor boys!’
Then came the details, always similar, of the daily torments of this hell. They had amputated an arm at the shoulder, or a foot, performed the resection of a humerus, but would gangrene or septicaemia spare the patient? Or again, they had buried one of them, usually a Frenchman, but sometimes a German. Hardly a day passed when some furtive coffin, bodged up quickly out of four pieces of wood, did not leave the hospital at dusk, accompanied by one orderly and often Henriette herself, so that a man should not just be buried like a dog. In the little cemetery of Remilly two trenches had been dug, and they all slept side by side, the Germans on the left and the French on the right, reconciled in the earth.
Jean had become interested in some of the patients whom he had never seen, and he asked for news of them.
‘What about “Poor Kid”, how’s he doing today?’
This was a young trooper in the fifth regiment of the line, who had enlisted as a volunteer and was not yet twenty. The nickname ‘Poor Kid’ had stuck to him because he constantly used these words about himself, and when one day somebody had asked him why, he had answered that his mother always called him that. Poor kid, indeed, for he was dying of pleurisy, the aftermath of a wound in his left side.
‘Oh the dear boy,’ said Henriette, who had developed a motherly affection for him. ‘He’s not doing too well and has coughed all day long… It breaks my heart to hear him.’
‘And your bear, this Gutmann of yours?’ Jean went on with a wan smile. ‘Is the doctor more hopeful?’
‘Yes, they may save him. But he is in terrible pain.’
In spite of really great pity, they could not refer to Gutmann without a sort of affectionate flippancy. On the very first day she had gone to work at the hospital she had been horrified to recognize in this Bavarian soldier the man with the red beard and hair, bulging blue eyes and wide, square nose, who had carried her off in his arms at Bazeilles when they shot her husband. He recognized her too, but he could not speak, for a bullet had gone through the back of his neck and taken away half his tongue. After two days of horror and revulsion and an uncontrollable shuddering every time she went near his bed, she was won over by his most desperate and appealing look as he followed her round with his eyes. Was he no longer the monster with bloodstained hair and eyes, mad with frenzy, who haunted her with a terrible memory? It needed an effort to recognize him now in this poor wretch with such a friendly, gentle expression in spite of all his atrocious suffering. His case, an uncommon one involving this sudden incapacity, touched the whole hospital. They were not even quite sure his name was Gutmann, but that is what they called him because the only sound he could manage to get out was a growl in two syllables which made roughly that name. As far as the rest was concerned, they only thought they knew that he was married and had children, because he knew a few words of French and sometimes answered with a vigorous nod. Married? Yes, yes! Children? Yes, yes! His emotion one day when he saw some flour had also made them guess he might be a miller. But that was all. Where was the mill? Were a wife and children weeping at this very moment in some remote village in Bavaria? Was he going to die unknown, nameless, leaving his own folk over there to wait for him for ever?
‘Today,’ Henriette told Jean one evening, ‘Gutmann blew me some kisses… I can’t give him a drink now or do the slightest thing for him but he puts his fingers to his lips in a fervent gesture of gratitude… We mustn’t smile, it’s too terrible to buried alive like that before your time.’
Towards the end of October Jean was much better. The doctor agreed to take out the tube, although he was still worried; yet the wound seemed to be drying up quite quickly. Already he was convalescent and getting up, spending hours walking about the room, sitting at the window, looking sadly at the flying clouds. Then he began to get bored and talked of doing something to occupy himself and be of some help on the farm. One of his private worries was the money question, for he felt sure that in a good six weeks his
two hundred francs must have been spent. So to keep old Fouchard in a good humour Henriette must have had to pay. This thought upset him and he did not dare bring it out into the open with Henriette, and so he felt a considerable relief when it was decided that he would be given out to be a new employee whose job was indoor work with Silvine, while Prosper got on with the crops outside.
In spite of the terrible times an additional hand was not superfluous at old Fouchard’s, for his business affairs were doing well. While the whole region was in agonies and bleeding in every limb he had contrived to increase his trade as itinerant butcher to such an extent that he was now slaughtering three or four times as many animals. It was said that by 31 August he had had highly profitable dealings with the Prussians. The man who on the 30th had defended his door against the soldiers of the 7th corps, with his gun cocked and refusing to sell them a single crumb, shouting that his house was empty, had set up as a general trader on the 31st at the appearance of the first enemy soldier, and had unearthed from his cellars huge quantities of provisions, and brought back vast flocks from remote fastnesses where they had been hidden. From that day onwards he had been one of the biggest suppliers of meat to the German armies, and quite astonishing in his skill at finding a market for his goods and getting paid between two requisitions. Other people suffered from the often brutal commandeerings of the victors, but he had not yet supplied a single bushel of flour, cask of wine or quarter of beef without picking up good hard cash at the end of the transaction. This gave rise to much talk in Remilly, and it was considered pretty low on the part of a man who had just lost his son in the war and never went to visit his grave, which Silvine was the only one to look after. Yet all the same he was respected for making money when even the most astute came off so badly. And he just grinned, shrugged and growled in his straight-from-the-shoulder manner:
‘Patriotic, I’m more patriotic than all of them put together!… Is it being patriotic to bloody well fill the Prussians with food up to their eyes, free, gratis and for nothing? I make them pay for everything… we shall see, we shall see how it all works out later on!’
By the second day Jean stood too long on his feet, and the doctor’s private fears were realized – the wound reopened and there was considerable inflammation and swelling of the leg, so that he had to go back to bed. Dalichamp came to suspect that a splinter of bone must still be there and that the effort of the two days of exercise had finally freed it. He looked for it and was fortunate enough to be able to extract it, but only at the cost of a shock to the system with a very high temperature which exhausted Jean once again. He had never so far fallen into such a state of weakness. So Henriette took up her position again as faithful nurse in this room which was getting gloomier and colder with the approach of winter. It was now the beginning of November, the east wind had already brought a flurry of snow, and it was very cold on the bare tiled floor between these four bare walls. As there was no fireplace they decided to have a stove put in, and its roaring enlivened their solitude.
The days went monotonously by, and this first week of his relapse was certainly for Jean and Henriette the most miserable of their long enforced intimacy. Would the suffering never end? Was there always going to be fresh danger without their being able to hope for the end of so much wretchedness? At every moment their thoughts flew to Maurice, from whom they had had no more news. They did hear of other people who received messages, little notes brought by carrier pigeon. Perhaps the pigeon bringing joy and love to them had been killed by some German while in full flight through the great open sky. Everything seemed to withdraw from reach, wither away and disappear into this early winter. The sounds of war only reached them after long delays and the odd newspapers Dr Dalichamp still brought were often a week old. Their sadness came largely from their ignorance, from what they did not know but guessed, from the long death-cry they could hear in spite of everything in the silence of the countryside round the farm.
One morning the doctor arrived in a state of great distress, with his hands shaking. He drew a Belgian paper out of his pocket and threw it on the bed, exclaiming:
‘Oh my dear friends, France is finished, Bazaine has betrayed us!’
Jean, dozing propped up by two pillows, woke up.
‘Betrayed? What do you mean?’
‘Yes, he has handed over Metz and the army. It is Sedan all over again, but this time it is the rest of our flesh and blood.’
He picked up the paper and read:
‘A hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, a hundred and fifty-three eagles and colours, five hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six mitrailleuses, eight hundred siege guns, three hundred thousand rifles, two thousand military vehicles, equipment for eighty-five batteries…’
He went on with details. Marshal Bazaine besieged in Metz with the army, reduced to impotence, making no effort to break the iron ring enclosing him, his prolonged discussions with Prince Friedrich Karl, his ambiguous and tentative political schemings, his ambition to play a decisive part which he didn’t seem to have quite clear in his own mind; then all the complexity of the negotiations, the sending of tricky and lying envoys to Bismarck, to King William and to the Empress-Regent, who was to refuse to treat with the enemy on the basis of any cession of territory; and the unavoidable catastrophe, destiny working itself out, famine in Metz, enforced capitulation, commanders and soldiers reduced to accepting the harsh conditions of the conquerors. France no longer had an army.
‘Oh Christ!’ Jean swore softly to himself. He did not understand it all, but for him until then Bazaine had remained the great captain, the only possible saviour. So what were they going to do? What was happening to the people in Paris?
The doctor passed on to the Paris news, which was disastrous. He pointed out that the paper was dated 5 November. The surrender of Metz happened on 27 October, but the news of it was not known in Paris until the 30th. After the repulses already sustained at Chevilly, Bagneux and La Malmaison and the fight and defeat at Le Bourget, this news had burst like a bombshell in the midst of a desperate population already irritated by the weakness and ineptitude of the Government of National Defence. And so on the next day, 31 October, a full-scale insurrection had taken place, with an immense crowd packing the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, bursting into the debating chambers, taking prisoner members of the government who were later rescued by the National Guard because they feared the triumph of the revolutionaries who were demanding a Commune. The Belgian paper went on to make the most insulting reflections about this wonderful Paris, tearing itself to pieces with civil war as soon as the enemy was at the gates. Was this not the final dissolution, the morass of mud and blood into which a world was about to collapse?
‘It’s quite true,’ Jean muttered in distress, ‘we shouldn’t go for each other when the Prussians are there!’
Henriette had said nothing so far, preferring to keep her mouth shut about these political affairs, but she could not help exclaiming. All her thoughts were with her brother.
‘Oh dear, I only hope Maurice doesn’t get mixed up in all this, he’s so unreasonable!’
After a pause the doctor, a fervently patriotic man, went on:
‘Never mind, if there are no soldiers left some more will spring up. Metz has surrendered, Paris itself might give in, but France will not be finished. Yes, as our countryfolk say, if the body’s still in good shape we’ll pull through.’
But he was clearly forcing himself to hope. He spoke of the new army being formed on the Loire which, it was true, had not made a very good beginning near Arthenay, but it would find its fighting feet and march to the help of Paris. He was particularly excited by the proclamations of Gambetta, who had got away from Paris in a balloon on 7 October and two days later set himself up in Tours, calling all citizens to arms and using a style at one and the same time so virile and so moderate that the whole country was acquiescing in this dictatorship for the public safety. And wasn’t there also a question of raising another ar
my in the north and yet another in the east, conjuring soldiers up out of the ground by the sheer power of faith? In fact the awakening of the provinces, an indomitable will to create whatever was lacking, to fight on to the last sou and the last drop of blood.
‘After all,’ the doctor concluded as he stood up to go, ‘I’ve often given up patients who were back on their feet a week later!’
Jean smiled.
‘Doctor, cure me quickly so that I can go back to my post.’
Nevertheless Henriette and he remained very gloomy after this bad news. That same evening there was a snowstorm, and the next day Henriette came back very upset from the hospital and said that Gutmann was dead. This very cold spell was decimating the wounded and emptying rows of beds. The poor dumb creature, with his tongue cut out, had been moaning for two days in his last agony. During his last hours she had stayed by his bed, for he gazed at her with such imploring eyes. He was talking to her with his tear-dimmed eyes, perhaps telling her his real name and that of the far-off village in which a woman and her children were waiting. And he had departed unknown, trying with his groping fingers to send her a last kiss to thank her once again for all her care. She was the only one who went with him to the cemetery, where the frozen earth, heavy foreign earth, thudded on his deal coffin with lumps of snow.
Then once more, the very next day, Henriette said as she came in:
‘Poor Kid is dead.’
For this one she was in tears.
‘If you could have seen him in his delirium! He called me Mum, Mum! And held out his arms so affectionately that I had to take him on my lap. Oh, poor fellow, his sufferings had taken so much out of him that he weighed no more than a little boy… And I rocked him so that he could die happy. Yes, I rocked him, he called me his mother, and I was only a few years older than him… He cried and I couldn’t help crying myself, and I still am…’
