An icy moonless night. From the bottom of the hollow boyau one could see the cold sky and the fixed stars. Bullets rattled on the hard ground. Maxime and his friend sat huddled up in the trench, smoking with their chins on their knees. The lad had come back that day from Paris. He was depressed, would not answer questions, shut himself up in a sulky silence. The other had left him all the afternoon to bear his trouble alone. Now here in the darkness he felt that the moment had come, and sat a little closer, for he knew that the boy would speak of his own accord. A bullet over their heads glanced off, knocking down a lump of frozen turf.
“Hullo, old gravedigger,” said the other, “don’t get too fresh.”
“Might as well make an end of it now,” said Maxime. “That’s what they all seem to want.”
“Give the Boche your skin for a present? I’ll say you’re generous!”
“It’s not only the Boches; they all have a hand in it.”
“Who, all?”
“All of them back there where I come from, in Paris, friends and relations; the people on the other side of the grave, the live ones.—As for us, we are as good as dead.”
In the long silence that followed they could hear the scream of a shell across the sky. Maxime’s comrade blew out a mouthful of smoke. “Well, youngster,” he said, “it didn’t go right, back there this time, did it?—I guessed as much!”
“I don’t know why.”
“When one is hurt, and the other isn’t, they haven’t much to say to one another.”
“Oh, they suffer too.”
“Not the same. You can’t make a man know what a toothache is unless he feels it. Can’t be done. Go to them all snuggled up in their beds, and make them understand how it is out here! … It’s nothing new to me. I didn’t have to wait for the war. Always have lived like this. But do you believe when I was working in the soil, sweating all the fat off my bones, that any of them bothered their heads about me? I don’t mean that there’s any harm in them, nor much good, either, but like anybody else, they don’t see how it is. To understand a thing properly you’ve got to take hold of it yourself, take the work, and the hurt. If not, and that’s what it is, you know—might as well make up your mind—no use trying to explain. That’s the way things are, and we can’t do anything about it.”
“Life would not be worth living, if it were as bad as that.”
“Why not, by gosh? I’ve stuck it out all this time, and you’re just as good as me, better, because you’ve got more brains and can learn. That’s the way to get on, the harder it is the more it teaches you. And then when you’re together, like us here, and things are rocky, it’s not a pleasure, exactly, but it ain’t all pain. The worst is to be off by yourself; and you’re not lonesome, are you, boy?” Maxime looked him in the face, as he answered:
“I was back there, but I don’t feel it here with you.”
The man who lay on the bed said nothing of what had been passing before his closed eyes. He turned them tranquilly on the father, whose agonised look seemed to implore him to speak. And then, with an awkward kindness, he tried to explain that if the boy was downhearted it was probably because he had just left home, but they had cheered him up as well as they could; they knew how he felt. He had never known what it was to have a father himself, but when he was a kid he used to think what luck it would be to have one. … “So I thought I might try. I spoke to him, Sir, like you would yourself, … and he soon quieted down. He said, all the same, there was one thing we got out of this blooming war; that there were lots of poor devils in the world who don’t know each other, but are all made alike. Sometimes we call ’em our brothers, in sermons and places like that, but no one takes much stock in it. If you want to know it’s true, you have to slave together like us—He kissed me then, Sir.”
Clerambault rose, and bending over the bandaged face, kissed the wounded man’s rough cheek.
“Tell me something that I can do for you,” he said.
“You are very good, Sir, but there’s not much you can do now. I am so used up. No legs, and a broken arm. I’m no good—what could I work at? Besides, it’s not sure yet that I shall pull through. We’ll have to leave it at that. If I go out, goodbye. If not, can’t do anything but wait. There are plenty of trains.”
As Clerambault admired his patience, he repeated his refrain: “I’ve got the habit. There’s no merit in being patient when there’s nothing else to do. … A little more or less, what does it matter? … It’s like life, this war is.”
Clerambault saw that in his egotism he had asked the man nothing about himself. He did not even know his name.
“My name? It’s a good fit for me—Courtois Aimé is what they call me—Aimé, that’s the Christian name, fine for an unlucky fellow like me, and Courtois on the top of it. Queer enough, isn’t it? … I never had a family, came out of an Orphan Asylum; my foster-father, a farmer down in Champagne, offered to bring me up; and you can bet he did it! I had all the training I wanted; but anyhow it learned me what I had to expect. I’ve had all that was coming to me!”
Thereupon he told in a few brief dry phrases, without emotion, of the series of
