1914 (8 page)

The joy of their reunion did not last long, though. Anthime swiftly realized that without his sight, Padioleau as well no longer had the heart for much of anything. Deprived of his livelihood, never having imagined an alternative to the art, science, and style of carving up meat, Padioleau was reduced to zero, in despair over the absence of any possible vocational rehabilitation, unable to envisage a future or comfort himself with the idea that some people can overcome their handicaps and do so in many fields, even in the most sophisticated professions, where they may even reach the heights of genius—although it is true that among the blind, one runs into more pianists than butchers.

Once these two men had found each other again, they were obliged to try passing the time together. Cards being out of the question for Padioleau, reading aloud from the newspaper having finally lost its charm for Anthime, they once more found themselves seriously at loose ends. Attempting to dispel this ennui,
they would often evoke the boredom they'd felt at the front and which, edged with terror, had been frankly worse, after all. They distracted themselves by recalling how they'd come up with distractions, and talked about the pastimes they'd invented in the past. D'you remember? D'you remember?

Arcenel used to busy himself sculpting bas-reliefs from the veins of white stone that surfaced in places from the clay of the trenches. Bossis had taken an interest in creating rings, watch charms, eggcups out of scavenged metals: aluminum from spent enemy shells, copper and brass from the shell casings, cast iron from the lemon and egg grenades. Drawing on his civilian background in shoes, Anthime had begun by cutting laces from abandoned leather straps. Then he'd had an idea and turned those same straps, knotted and furnished with a clasp, into wristbands to which he could attach pocket watches via small loops soldered on at six and twelve o'clock. Believing he'd invented the wrist-watch, Anthime had cherished the magnificent dream of copyrighting this invention when he got home—only to learn that ten years earlier, Louis Cartier had come
up with the same idea to help out his friend Santos-Dumont, a pilot who'd complained how hard it was to consult his pocket watch while flying.

Yes, they'd had some good times in spite of everything. Even though delousing wasn't heaps of fun, still, between alerts it was always a distraction for the men— albeit a vain and temporary one—to hunt down lice, to pry them loose from their skin and clothing, but that arthropod always leaves behind innumerable and constantly renewed eggs, which in clothes could only be killed by a firm pressing with a nice hot iron, an accessory not provided in the trenches. In addition to learning how to use conventional weapons, they'd acquired practical experience with slingshots, and one of their funniest memories, for example, was of winging tin cans full of urine over the barbed wire to the guys across the way. The concerts given by the regimental musicians had been entertaining in a different sense, and then there'd been the accordion the captain sent someone to buy in Amiens: he'd made sure it was played every evening, and the orderlies and liaison officers had danced to the music. And the days when mail was distributed, whenever possible—they had been fun, because the
men had sent off a lot of mail and received a lot, too, tremendous numbers of postcards but also letters, among which had been the short note informing Anthime of Charles's death. And now it was too late for Charles to take advantage of an advertisement that appeared two years into the conflict:
“Le Miroir
will pay any price for photographic documents of particular interest relating to the war.”

15

W
E ALL KNOW THE REST
. The first two months of the spring offensives in the fourth year of the war consumed vast numbers of soldiers. The army's reliance on mass tactics required the permanent replenishment of large battalions, an ever-higher level of recruitment, and ever-younger recruits, which supposed a considerable renewal of uniforms and matériel—including shoes— through large orders placed with suppliers, from which Borne-Sèze profited handsomely.

The pace and urgency of such orders, combined with the unscrupulousness of manufacturers, led to the production of questionable service shoes. A certain stinginess crept in regarding leather of so-so quality; insufficiently tanned sheepskin was often selected, less expensive but mediocre in terms of thickness and
durability, and in other words, pretty close to cardboard. Laces were now square cut, easier to manufacture but more fragile than round ones, and they lacked finished ends. Thread was skimped on in the same way and eyelets were no longer made of copper but of iron— which rusts—of the cheapest kind available. It was the same with the rivets, pegs, nails. Bluntly put, they were slashing the cost of materials without any care for the solidity and water resistance of the product.

The quartermaster corps soon raised an outcry about the shoddy performance of these service shoes, which quickly took on water and buckled, not lasting even two weeks in the mud of the front. Too often, the stitches in their uppers began giving way after three days. Headquarters finally complained; an inquiry was swiftly launched. During a review of the accounts of army suppliers, those of Borne-Sèze were carefully examined—and quickly revealed an extraordinary gap between the army's expenditures for these clodhoppers and their actual manufacturing cost. The discovery of such a gaping margin having produced a fine scandal, Eugène pretended not to know anything about it,
Monteil feigned outrage, threatening to resign, and the company wriggled out of it by dismissing Mme. Prochasson and her husband, who had been in charge of purchasing raw materials: the couple agreed to carry the can, in return for a financial consideration. Everything was finally hushed up thanks to more bribes—Monteil's connections were once again called into play—but in the end Borne-Sèze was unable to prevent the affair from going all the way to Paris, where they were summoned to appear before a commercial court: purely a matter of form, but an unavoidable one. To excuse themselves from representing the business in the capital, Eugène cited his age, Monteil his practice; when Blanche was selected, she proposed that Anthime accompany her, and everyone said yes.

Back to Anthime: after his return to civilian life, he had grown used to the absence of his arm even if, in some vague way, he lived as if he still possessed it: an arm as present as if it were really there, which he actually thought whenever he glanced at the right side of his chest, returning to the truth of its absence only when his gaze lingered too long. Assuming at first that these
effects would gradually fade away, he soon realized that the opposite was happening.

In fact, after a few months he felt the return of a right arm that was imaginary but seemed just as real as the left one. The existence of this arm, indeed even its autonomy, became increasingly manifest through various unpleasant sensations: shooting and searing pains, contractions, cramps, itching—Anthime would have to stop short at the last moment to keep from trying to scratch himself—and even the old ache in his wrist. The impression of reality was intense and detailed, even to the perception of the signet ring weighing down his little finger, and the discomfort could worsen depending on the circumstances: moments of depression, changes in the weather, as can happen with arthritis, especially on cold and damp days.

Sometimes this absent arm became even more present than the other one, insistent, vigilant, as mocking as a guilty conscience; Anthime felt he could make it perform important or contemptuous gestures that no one would see. He was perfectly certain that he could lean on furniture with both elbows, shake his right fist, control
each finger individually, and he even tried to pick up the telephone or wave good-bye, waving—or believing he was waving—when someone was leaving, which made that person think him rather cold and unfeeling.

As if equally possessed by two opposite certainties and at the same time completely aware of these anomalies, Anthime was afraid that others could see this and that pitying him, no one dared mention it—just as Anthime himself didn't dare confide in Padioleau, who was precisely the only one of his companions unable to notice these problems. Problems that worsened and complicated Anthime's life, becoming so invasive that he could no longer confront them alone, no longer grapple with them without asking for help. He finally admitted his misgivings to Blanche, who revealed that she had indeed seen what was going on and then encouraged him, naturally, to consult Monteil.

So Anthime found himself again in the doctor's office, explaining things to him while pointing with his left hand to his missing right arm the way one points at a silent witness, an accomplice a trifle ashamed to be there—while Monteil, frowning attentively as he
listened, stared out his office window at a view in which nothing, as usual, was going on or past. Anthime having stated his case, Monteil looked thoughtful for a while before delivering himself of a little speech. This sort of thing happens frequently, he began, and a great deal of anecdotal evidence exists. It's the old story of the phantom limb. It can happen that the perception and sensation of a lost body part will linger on, then disappear after a few months. But it can also happen—which seemed to be Anthime's case—that this body part reasserts its presence in the body long after its loss.

The doctor then developed this speech in the classic manner by calling upon statistics (the upper right limb is, for eight out of ten of us, the most adroit), historical anecdotes (Admiral Nelson, after losing his right arm in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and experiencing the same suffering bedeviling Anthime, considered it proof of the existence of the soul), dull jokes (one places a wedding band on the ring finger of the left hand, which then requires the right one to help remove it: the dilemma of the one-armed adulterer), bloodcurdling comparisons (certain penis amputees have spoken of phantom
erections and ejaculations), clinical frankness (the cause of these pains is as mysterious as the phenomenon itself), and perspectives that are both semi-reassuring (it will go away on its own, it usually diminishes with time) and semi-worrisome (although it can also last for twenty-five years, that's not unheard-of).

Oh, by the way, Paris, wound up Monteil, when are you going there with Blanche? And the following week they arrived in the Gare Montparnasse, after Anthime had read every last newspaper on the train. Upon his return home from the front, he hadn't wanted to keep up with the news, or at least hadn't shown the slightest interest in the press—although he would sometimes leaf through a paper on the sly—but now, in their compartment, he borrowed the dailies from Blanche and plunged into the events of the day, focused entirely on the war. We were then in its fourth year, well after the particularly murderous business of the Chemin des Dames, the explosive events in Russia, and the first mutinies.
¹³
Anthime read about all that with close attention.

Blanche had reserved two rooms at the other end of Paris in a hotel run by some family cousins, so they
took a taxi at Montparnasse and, as it passed in front of the Gare de l'Est, they saw groups of men on leave milling about, either arriving from the battlefield or on their way back, possibly drunk but certainly vehement, looking angry, singing songs the couple could not clearly hear. Anthime asked the driver to stop the taxi for a moment, got out, and went over to the main entrance hall of the station, where he watched the bands of soldiers for a few minutes. Some of them were singing seditious songs off-key, and Anthime recognized “The Internationale”, which opens martially in an ascending fourth, as do quite a few songs and hymns of a patriotic, bellicose, or partisan nature. Anthime stood perfectly still and his face showed no expression as he raised his right fist in solidarity, but no one saw him do it.

At the hotel the cousins showed them to their rooms, which were across the corridor from each other. Leaving their luggage there, Blanche and Anthime freshened up, then went out for a walk before going to dinner. Later, after each had retired to bed, there was every indication that they would both sleep in their separate rooms except that in the middle of the night Anthime woke up. He rose, crossed the corridor, pushed open Blanche's
door, and went in the darkness toward the bed where she wasn't sleeping either. He lay down beside her, took her in his arm, then entered and impregnated her. And the following autumn, during the very battle at Mons
¹⁴
that turned out to be the last one, a male infant was born who was given the name Charles.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1
.
Euntes:
Some parish priests practiced trades to supplement their incomes, and Raphaël Vanni, the curate at Bourgneuf in the département of Charente-Maritime, produced a line of bicycles named after Matthew 28:19,
euntes ergo docete omnes gentes
: go ye therefore, and teach all nations.

2
.
Aures Habet et non Audiet:
Victor Hugo took the title of chapter 2 in book 4 of his last novel,
Ninety-Three
, from Psalms 115:6,
aures habent et non audient:
they have ears, but they hear not. The novel appeared in 1874, soon after the bloody uprising of the Paris Commune, and deals with the equally ferocious Royalist rebellions that began in the Vendée region in 1793, midway through the French Revolution, and spread through twelve of the freshly created western départements of France. When Anthime goes off to war on a troop train to the Ardennes in
1914
, he leaves from Nantes, which was the scene of major military engagements during the rebellion and such horrific Royalist reprisals against the populace that French universities today still debate the issue of
un génocide vendéen
. The excesses of the Terror are well known, but the appalling butchery of these revolts against the
Revolutionary government still inspires revulsion and is the backdrop, perhaps most famously, of Balzac's
Les Chouans
and Poulenc's
Dialogues des carmélites
.