1914

15

WE 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.