1914 Read online

  12

  ANIMALS, WELL, ANTHIME HAD seen a lot of them, of all sorts, during those five hundred days. Because although war prefers cities—besieging, invading, bombing, burning—it is waged in large part in the countryside as well, where beasts are simply a given.

  First off, the useful animals: those one works or eats or both, currently abandoned by peasants fleeing their farms turned into combat zones, their buildings ablaze, their fields cratered by shells, their poultry and livestock left behind. In theory, the territorial soldiers were responsible for rounding up these creatures, but that was easier said than done with unclaimed cattle, soon eager to return to a wild state that quickly turned them touchy, especially the bulls, vindictive and impossible to catch. Nor was it a small job for the territorials, even those with a rural background, to gather all the sheep gone roaming along roads in ruins, the wandering pigs, the ducks, chickens, and roosters left to their own devices, the rabbits without any fixed domicile.

  These now itinerant species could at least serve, on occasion, to vary the monotonous diet of the troops. Wine was no longer a problem, since it was now widely distributed by the quartermaster corps along with brandy, for the high command was increasingly convinced that inebriating its soldiers helped bolster their courage and, above all, reduce their awareness of their condition. A chance encounter one fine day with a disoriented goose, on the other hand, made a small change from yesterday’s bread, cold soup, and tinned beef, and every animal so recuperated thus became a potential feast. Sometimes, driven by hunger and professionally assisted by Padioleau, who enjoyed exercising his butchering skills, Arcenel and Bossis would even carve a few ribs out of a living ox, then leave him to manage on his own. Foragers went so far as to slaughter and devour without qualm idle, bewildered horses, now deprived of their purpose in life, in any case, and upset at no longer having barges to haul along the canal of the Meuse River.

  It wasn’t just serviceable and edible animals that the men ran into now and then, however. They met up with more familiar ones as well, domestic and even decorative animals that were even more used to their creature comforts: cats and dogs left ownerless after the civilian exodus, without collars or the tiniest daily guaranteed saucer of food, gradually forgetting even the names they’d been given. There were caged birds as well, household pets such as turtledoves, even lawn ornaments like peacocks, for example, which no one ordinarily eats and anyway, given their lousy dispositions and hopeless narcissism, they had no chance whatsoever of pulling through on their own. In general, the military did not spontaneously come up with the idea of dining off that last category of animals, at least in the beginning. It might so happen, though, that soldiers would decide to keep one for company, sometimes for only a few days, and adopt a cat they found wandering in a communication trench as a company mascot.

  On the other hand, cavorting around or burrowed in outside the fixed, static, bogged-down ground plan of the trenches, there were wild animals too, and that was an entirely different business. Before the fields and forests had been razed and smashed to pieces by artillery fire—the fields turned to Martian deserts, the woods reduced to ragged stumps—they had harbored, at least for a little while longer, freelance animals never enslaved by men either in peacetime or in war, at liberty to live as they pleased, unfettered by any code of labor. Among these creatures a decent crop of edible bodies was still available: hares, deer, or wild boar—promptly shot even though hunting was strictly forbidden during wartime, polished off à la bayonet, chopped up with an ax or trench knife—that sometimes provided soldiers with a windfall of alimentary extras.

  The same thing happened to birds or frogs, tracked and harvested during the soldiers’ off-hours, and to every kind of trout, carp, tench, and pike they fished for with grenades whenever encamped beside running water, and to bees if by some miracle they found a hive not yet completely deserted. Last on the list came the marginal creatures, declared inedible by some vague interdict or other, such as foxes, crows, weasels, moles: as for them, although they were for obscure reasons pronounced unfit for consumption, it seems the troops became less and less finicky in this regard and that every once in a while they managed, by means of a ragout, to make an exception for hedgehogs. Like the other animals, however, these would soon become scarce on the ground after the invention and swift application of poison gases throughout the theater of operations.

  But there’s more to life than eating. Because in the case of armed conflict, the animal kingdom provides some members that can be too useful as potential warriors to be eaten and these are recruited by force for their aptitude for service, such as militarized horses, dogs, or pigeons: some beasts are ridden by noncoms or set to pulling wagons, others are trained to attack, or haul machine guns, while in the bird department, squadrons of globe-trotting pigeons are promoted to the rank of courier.

  Last of all and alas, above all, came innumerable creatures of the tiniest size and most redoubtable nature: all sorts of die-hard parasites that, not content with offering no nutritional value whatsoever, on the contrary themselves feed voraciously on the troops. First in line, the insects: fleas, bedbugs, mosquitoes, gnats, and flies that settle in clouds on the eyes—those choice bits—of corpses. And let’s not forget that parasitic arachnid, the tick. Still, the men could have coped with them all, but there was one adversary that quickly became a perpetual and utter scourge: the louse. A prolific champion, this insect in its fraternity of millions soon completely covered everybody. The other main enemy was the rat, no less gluttonous and just as omnipresent as the louse, equally expert at reproduction, but a specialist in fattening up, hell-bent on devouring the soldiers’ provisions—including those hung preventively from a nail—or nibbling on leather straps, attacking even your shoes and your very body when you’re asleep, and fighting with the flies for your eyeballs when you’re dead.

  Even if it were simply on account of those two, the louse and the rat, obstinate, meticulous, organized, as single-minded as monosyllables, both of them focused exclusively on tormenting your flesh or sucking your blood, on exterminating you each in its own style— and let’s not forget the enemy across the way, devoted through other means to the same end—you often just wanted to get the fuck on out of camp.

  Well, you don’t get out of this war like that. It’s simple: you’re trapped. The enemy is in front of you, the rats and lice are with you, and behind you are the gendarmes. Since the only solution is to become an invalid, you’re reduced to waiting for that “good wound”, the one you wind up longing for, your guaranteed ticket home (vide Anthime), but there’s a problem: it doesn’t depend on you. So that wonder-working wound, some men tried to acquire it on their own without attracting too much attention, by shooting themselves in the hand, for example, but they usually failed and were confronted with their misdeed, tried, and shot for treason. Mowed down by your own side rather than asphyxiated, burned to a crisp, or shredded by gas, flamethrowers, or shells—that could be a choice. But there was also blowing your own head off, with a toe on the trigger and the rifle barrel in your mouth, a way of getting out like any other—that could be a choice too.

  13

  IT SEEMS ARCENEL FOUND a third solution, without truly choosing it, actually; there was no premeditation, just an impulse, a mood, producing in turn a moment of pique and then—motion. It all began at the end of December, with Bossis dead and Anthime evacuated, when Arcenel could not find Padioleau either. He looked for him, inquired about him as best he could, even tried to question imperious, contemptuous, tight-lipped officers, all in vain. Arcenel faced the inevitable. Maybe Padioleau had died on the same day as Bossis, buried anonymously in mud without anyone caring or noticing in the confusion. Perhaps he’d been wounded like Anthime, sent home like him without anyone taking the trouble to inform his comrades—or just maybe, who knows why, he’d been reassigned to another company.

  Be that as it may, there was no trace of Padioleau. Thus deprived of his three pals, Arcenel b
egan to feel fed up. The war was no joke, of course, but it had been just about livable with the four of them when they’d at least been able to get together and talk among themselves, trade points of view, argue so they could make peace again. They’d never wanted to imagine their reassuring bond could possibly be severed, in spite of the increasingly obvious danger everywhere. The thought had vaguely occurred to them, true, but they hadn’t really prepared themselves to see their group broken up, dispersed, and had taken no social precautions, never attempted to make other friends.

  So Arcenel found himself alone. He did try, during the weeks and months that followed, to fit in better with the troop, but it was always a little artificial and he encountered resistance because he and his three buddies had been seen as standoffish, so the others now took revenge by ignoring him, although given the harsh conditions that winter, a certain solidarity had in the end kept everyone together as a company. When spring arrived, however, dragging its feet and with no letup in the fighting, the usual groups re-formed without Arcenel finding a place in any of them. That’s why one morning, since they were camped near the village of Somme-Suippe for a breather before rejoining the front lines, Arcenel, feeling blue, went off for a walk.

  Just a walk, for a moment, taking advantage of some anti-typhoid procedures. Reporting for a vaccination booster shot, Arcenel was one of the very first to receive his, thanks to his prime place in the alphabetical list, so since everyone was all lined up, discreetly baring their bums to the needle with a frisson of fear, Arcenel just as discreetly walked off on the spur of the moment, without any particular plan. He left the camp with an evasive wave to the sentinel as if he were just going to go pee against a tree trunk, which in fact he did, while he was at it, but then he went on. When a path appeared, he took it simply to see, before turning off onto another and another without any precise intention, advancing automatically into the countryside without really meaning to wander off.

  Relaxing instead into his appreciation of the burgeoning spring—it’s always moving to admire the spring, even when one has begun to recognize the pattern, it’s a good way to brighten a dark mood—Arcenel paid just as much attention to the silence, a silence almost untainted by the rumblings at the front, never very far away, rumblings that this morning even seemed a trifle fainter. An incomplete silence, naturally, not entirely restored but almost, and almost better than if it were perfect because it’s clawed by the cries of birds, cries that somehow amplify it and, giving depth to a background, exalt it, in the way a minor amendment gives strength to a law, a dot of contrasting color intensifies a monochrome, the tiniest splinter confirms the smoothest polish, a furtive dissonance consecrates a perfect major chord—but let’s not get carried away: let’s get back to business.

  Some animals appeared, still there, seemingly bent on showing the flag: a raptor way up in the sky, a June bug sitting on a stump, a furtive rabbit, which hopped out of a bush to stare at Arcenel for a second before promptly dashing off, spring powered, without the man instinctively grabbing for the rifle he hadn’t actually brought with him, not having brought along even his canteen: proof that he’d never planned beforehand to leave the military zone, being moved solely by the idea of ambling around a little while, abstracting himself for a moment from the horrific shit hole, not even hoping— because not even thinking of it—that this stroll would pass unnoticed, forgetting that the men were recounted all the time, and the roll call endlessly repeated.

  Beyond a bend, the fourth path broadened into a grassy clearing carpeted with cool light filtered by the freshly unfurling leaves, a delicate tableau. But on a corner of this carpet were three men on horseback, in tight uniforms of horizon blue, backs straight, mustaches brushed, expressions severe, aiming at Arcenel three examples of the 1892 8-millimeter French service revolver while ordering him to present his service record booklet, but he hadn’t brought that along with him either. They asked him for his serial number and enlisted assignments, which he recited by heart—section, company, battalion, regiment, brigade—while opting to meet the gentle, attentive, and deep gaze of the horses rather than the eyes of the gendarmes. Who did not bother asking him what he was doing there: they tied his hands behind his back and ordered him to follow, on foot, the equestrian detachment.

  Arcenel should have remembered about them, the gendarmes, so hated were they in all the camps, almost as much if not more than the fellows across the way. Their task had at first been simple: to keep the soldiers from slipping away, to make sure they would go get themselves killed properly. Positioned in lines behind the troops during combat, they’d formed a barrier to break up waves of panic and check spontaneous retreats. Soon they’d taken control of everything, intervening wherever they pleased, maintaining order along all thoroughfares in the confusion attendant on the fluctuating movements of troops, policing the military zones in their entirety, at both the front and the staging area behind the lines.

  Responsible for checking the passes of soldiers on leave and overseeing all who tried to cross the official perimeters surrounding military units—mainly the wives and whores attempting for various reasons to rejoin the men, but also (and these met with more indulgence) the tradesmen of all kinds, who, selling everything at sky-high prices, proliferated as eagerly as the other parasites on the infantry’s back—the gendarmes also tracked down soldiers overstaying their leave, drunks and troublemakers, spies, and deserters, into which last category Arcenel had just unknowingly and unwillingly placed himself. That’s how come, back in camp, Arcenel spent the rest of the day and then the night in the locked pump house for the village of Somme-Suippe, without either bread or water, and appeared the next morning before a court-martial.

  Arcenel was pushed more than led into the village schoolhouse, where this improvised tribunal sat in the largest classroom: a table and three chairs, facing a stool for the accused. A creased national flag behind the chairs, a Code of Military Justice on the table next to some empty forms. These chairs were occupied by a three-man court: the regimental commander flanked by a sublieutenant and a senior warrant officer, and they watched Arcenel enter in silence. Mustache, erect posture, and cold eyes: to Arcenel these men looked just like the ones from the day before, mounted on their horses in the clearing. Since the hour was grave and the shortage of manpower serious indeed, perhaps it had proved necessary to recruit the same actors for this scene, giving them just enough time to change uniforms.

  In any event, it all went very quickly. After a brief summary of the facts, a glance for form’s sake at the code, an exchange of looks among the officers, the court voted with a show of hands to condemn Arcenel to death for desertion. Sentence to be carried out within twenty-four hours, the court reserving the right to refuse any appeal for clemency, the idea of which had never even crossed Arcenel’s mind. He was returned to the pump house.

  The execution took place the next day near a large farm at Suippe,12 at the firing range, with the entire regiment present. Arcenel was made to kneel in front of six men lined up at attention, arms at the order. Among them, from four or five yards away, Arcenel recognized two men he knew, doing their best to look elsewhere, while a divisional chaplain stood in the background. Between them and himself, in profile, an adjutant in charge of the firing squad was waving his saber. The chaplain did his little job and after Arcenel had been blindfolded, he did not see the men he knew raise their rifles as they stepped forward with the left foot, did not see the adjutant raise his saber, he just heard four brief orders shouted, the fourth being Fire. After the coup de grâce, at the end of the ceremony, the men were ordered to march past his body so they would reflect upon his fate.

  14

  AFTER ANTHIME CAME HOME, he’d been closely watched during his convalescence: they’d nursed, bandaged, washed, and nourished him; even his sleep was monitored. “They” meaning Blanche in particular, who at first had chided him gently for having grown thinner during his five hundred days at the front, without even thinking to make an
y allowance for the almost eight pounds a lost arm would represent. Then once he seemed nicely recovered, enough even to hazard an occasional brief smile—although only with the left corner of his lips, as if the other one were linked to the missing limb—and when he was able to live an independent life again at home, Blanche and her parents wondered whatever they would do with him.

  Of course the army would pay him a pension but they couldn’t let him lie fallow, he needed an activity. Assuming that his infirmity would prevent him from carrying out his duties as an accountant with the same dexterity, Eugène Borne had an idea. While waiting to step into Eugène’s position, Charles had been the deputy plant manager, but his sudden death had left open the question of the succession. Putting off this decision for the moment, Eugène had assembled a kind of governing body for the concern, a board of directors with himself as president, which allowed him to avoid having to take all initiatives on his own and therefore sole responsibility for everything. To these weekly collegial meetings already attended by Monteil, Blanche, and Mme. Prochasson, Eugène decided to add Anthime in homage to his heroic brother and for services rendered to the firm, sweetening the deal with some director’s fees. Giving structure to Anthime’s life without constraining it, this directorship did not entail much but it was something: he was expected to attend, give an opinion—without being any more obliged to have one than the others were to listen to it—vote, and sign papers without necessarily having read them, a task he swiftly learned to carry out with his left hand. In this regard it did seem that others worried more about his handicap than he seemed to himself, for he never mentioned his missing arm.