The Death Instinct

Chapter Five

In October 1917, Lieutenant Dr Stratham Younger was transferred to the American field hospital in Einville, not far from Nancy, where US Army troops had finally been deployed in the front lines. At that time American soldiers served under French command; Younger ended up treating more Frenchmen than Americans. Throughout the harsh winter and the following spring, attached to the First Division and later to the Second, Younger traversed the Western Front, assigned wherever the need was greatest: the Saint-Mihiel salient, Seicheprey, Chaumont-en-Vexin, Cantigny, the Bois de Belleau.

It was there, near the woods of Belleau, on the outskirts of Chateau- Thierry, that he met Colette.

Dawn was breaking. With a reddening sky came a lull in the savage bombardments of the night. Younger, on foot, emerged from the woods into an open field, dragging a wounded old French corporal to the medical compound. The compound was intact — white tents, tables, and instrument chests all in place — but not a doctor or orderly was III sight. The medical staff had obviously decamped in a hurry.

Noises came from across the field. French infantrymen had gathered at a Red Cross truck. They reminded Younger of children crowding around an ice-cream van, except for an air of male wildness about them.

With the corporal's arm draped over his shoulder, Younger crossed the field through pockets of mist clinging to the rutted soil. A young woman stood outside the truck, hemmed in by a semicircle of boisterous men. Her back to them, she leaned through a window into the cab of the truck. The men called out — in French, which Younger understood invented maladies and mock pleas for treatment. One of them, with a particularly raucous voice, begged the girl to reach inside his shirt; his heart, he said, was pounding and swelling dangerously.

The girl emerged from the cab, a brown bag in her hands. She was slim, graceful, dark-haired, about twenty years old, chin held high, eyes unnaturally green. Dressed in a plain wool skirt and light blue sweater, she was evidently not a nurse.

She spoke to the men. Younger couldn't hear what she said, but he saw her toss her bag to the loudmouthed one, who caught it, dropping his rifle in order to do so, which provoked laughter from the others. The girl spoke again. One by one the men fell silent and, abashed, began skulking away. She had no air of triumph. She looked — weary. Beautiful, distracted, and weary. As the infantrymen dispersed, only Younger was left standing, the wounded corporal resting heavily on a shoulder of his filthy uniform. The girl saw Younger, staring at her. She brushed a lock of hair from her face.

Laying the corporal on the grass — an ancient-looking fellow, with a leather face and grizzled hair, one hand clutching his stomach — Younger strode toward the girl, who drew back a step instinctively. He passed her without a glance and opened the truck's door. Inside he saw two things that surprised him. The first was a boy, no more than eight, sitting in the rear of the cabin, reading a book in the shadows. The second was a complex radiological apparatus, complete with a large glass plate, heavy curtains, and gas ampoules.

Younger turned to the girl. 'Where's your boyfriend?' he asked in French.

'What?'

'Where's the man who operates this X-ray machine?'

'I operate it,' she answered in English.

He looked her up and down: You're one of Madame Curie's girls.'

'Yes.'

'Well, get to work. Unless you want this corporal to die.'

'It's pointless,' she said. 'There's no surgeon. They're all gone.'

'Just make him ready by nightfall.' Younger went to the corporal, said a few low words in the man's ear, and disappeared into the woods the way he had come.

The moon had risen when Younger returned. He found the encampment as it had been that morning: intact but deserted. One of the tents was illuminated by electric light. The truck was parked next to it, engine on, a set of cables running from the vehicle along the ground into the tent. The girl was using the truck's motor for power.

Younger lifted the tent's flap and walked in. All was prepared. The old corporal, whose name was Dubeney, lay asleep on an operating table, face washed, hair combed. Instruments were neatly laid out. Basins of water were at hand. The girl rose from a chair. The little boy was at her feet, still reading. Without a word, she retrieved a set of radiograms and mathematical computations, which she handed to Younger.

He held up the plates to one of the bare electric bulbs. Against a background of white bones and grayish viscera, small black dots and balls stood out with remarkable clarity. When a man took shot in the gut, the greatest danger was not organ damage; it was blood poisoning. In the old days, recovering every fragment of shot was virtually hopeless, and the man was likely to die. With a good set of radiograms, properly computed, any competent surgeon could save him.

Younger washed his hands, wrists, face, and forearms. He took a long time at it, rinsing the dirt and blood from his mind as well as his skin. Meanwhile the girl applied more chloroform to Corporal Dubeney, who pushed at her hands ineffectually until slipping off again. Younger set to work, the silence broken only by his requests for instruments and, a short time after his incision was made, the occasional plank of a metal fragment dropping into a ceramic bowl.

Sweat began to form on Younger's brow.

'Wait,' said the girl in English. It was the first word she had spoken.

While he held his knife aloft, she mopped his brow, then applied the cloth to his cheeks, his jaw, his neck. Younger gazed down at her delicate but serious features. She didn't once look into his eyes.

'What was in the bag?' asked Younger.

'I beg your pardon?'

'You threw the soldiers a bag.'

'Oh. Just groceries. Cheese, mostly. They don't get enough food; they're all hungry. Like a band of mice.'

'What did you tell them?'

'That they should be killing Germans instead of bothering a French girl.'

Younger, nodding, returned to his patient. 'We say mischief.'

The girl frowned as she rinsed the soiled cloth.

'In English,' he said, 'it's a "mischief" of mice. Was it Madame Curie herself who trained you?'

'Yes,' said the girl.

'What did you think of her?'

Her reply was immediate: 'She's the noblest woman alive.'

'Ah, an admirer. Personally, I'm surprised they allow it.'

'What do you mean?'

'An adultress, after all, training young girls-'

'She did not commit adultery,' said the girl sharply. 'He did. Monsieur Langevin is the one who was married, yet he is not blamed. They do not call for him to leave the country. They do not stone his house. Now he has another mistress. Einstein has an illegitimate child — everyone knows it. Why should Madame Curie lose her chair, why should she be threatened with death, when they do the same or worse?'

'Because she is a woman,' said Younger complacently. 'Women should be pure.'

'Men should be pure.'

'And because she's a Jew. Scalpel.'

'What?'

'Scalpel. And a Pole.'

'What does that have to do with it?'

'And her worst crime of all — she won the Nobel Prize not once, hut twice.'

She frowned again. 'I can't tell when you mean what you say.'

'If you want the truth,' said Younger, 'I'm only honest with men. With women I can't be trusted.'

She looked at him.

'Women teach men to lie,' he went on. 'But we're never as good at it as they want us to be. How did you meet Madame Curie?'

After a while, the girl answered: 'I walked into the Sorbonne and told them I wanted to apply in chemistry. I was seventeen. They all laughed at me, because I had no baccalaureate. By chance — or providence, who knows? — Madame came in at that moment. She had overheard. How she terrified them. She looks so old, but very kind. I don't know why, but she took an interest in me when she heard that my father had tutored me in math and science. She asked me questions, so I was able to show her what I knew. She arranged for me to take an entrance exam.'

'Which you passed?' asked Younger.

'I received the highest marks of the year.'

'You should be in class then, not taking X-rays of wounded soldiers.'

'I did to classes, for two years. But then I found out what Madame Was doing for the soldiers. These trucks, they were her idea. She was the first to see how many lives could be saved if we had radioscopes in the field. Everyone said it was impossible, so she designed a unit that could work inside a truck. The government, because they are so stupid, refused to pay, so Madame raised all the money herself. Then the army said it could not spare any men to operate the trucks, no Madame trained girls to do it. Then the government announced that women could not be permitted to drive, so Madame operated the first one herself, daring the government to stop her. She learned to drive; she changed tires; she took the X-rays. When they saw she was saving lives, they finally relented. Now there are over a hundred fifty of us — and our only problem is with the men.'

'The men?'

'Some of them become very — aggressive — in the presence of a woman.'

'They're at war.'

'That's no excuse. We're not the same as the filthy Germans.'

Younger looked at the girl from the corner of his eye. A hardness had come to her face; he had seen a glimmer of it before, when she was speaking to the soldiers, but now it was impenetrable. He went on with his laborious work.

After a long while, she spoke again: 'He is very sweet, this corporal. How did he come to be in your care?'

'Not by my doing,' replied Younger. 'He got lost in the night. Crossed to our line by mistake. Threw himself on me, the poor blighter.'

'Don't listen to him, Mademoiselle,' murmured Corporal Dubeney.

'What — are you awake?' said Younger. 'Nurse, the chloroform.'

'He came into no-man's-land and pulled me out,' said Dubeney. 'In the thick of it.'

'Hallucination,' said Younger.

'He sleeps at the front,' said Dubeney.

'Where's the blasted chloroform?' asked Younger.

'No need, no need, I can't feel a thing,' said Dubeney.

Younger made a sound of annoyance through closed lips. No one spoke.

'I could hardly let my best experiment go to waste,' said Younger. 'Look at his right knee.'

The girl, curious, asked Corporal Dubeney if he minded. When he.' shook his head, she rolled up one of his trouser legs and saw a nasty; wound. 'This needs antiseptic,' she said.

'I've put antiseptic on it,' said Younger. 'Every day. Now look at the other knee.'

When the girl got Dubeney's other pant leg over his knee, she let out a gasp. This knee too was wounded, but there was a seething movement on it. 'What are they?' she asked.

'Maggots. What else do you observe?' asked Younger.

'The wound is clean,' she said.

'Identical wounds, inflicted at the same time on the same man by the same causes. Yet one has healed, while the other has festered. And the wound that has healed has been treated only with maggots. It's not my idea. Men in the field have been using them for years. And this old buzzard, knowing how important his knees are to science, goes and gets himself shot in the stomach. No sense of duty whatever.'

Younger noticed that the little boy had silently taken up a position beside the girl, eyeing raptly Corporal Dubeney's maggoty knee.

'My brother,' she said to Younger. 'His name is Luc.'

The boy had dirty blond hair, quite unlike his sister's, unkempt, and for a boy quite a lot of it, down to his shoulders. His skin was much less white than hers — or perhaps simply much dirtier — but his brown ryes shared a similar severity, equally intelligent but more watchful than the girl's, less distracted. Younger had the feeling the boy saw everything. 'And how old are you, young man?' he asked.

The boy neither looked at Younger nor answered.

'Luc, you are very poorly mannered,' said the girl. 'He doesn't like to speak. So you are the one.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Younger.

'The men have been telling stories of an American doctor who refuses to leave the front lines. Who treats wounded men on the field.'

'I'm not treating them. I'm conducting experiments on them.'

'And who fights, they say.'

'Rubbish.'

'Like the devil,' said Dubeney.

The boy looked up at Younger with interest.

'Can't feel a thing, eh?' said Younger to Dubeney, repositioning his knife and prompting a howl from the old corporal.

Hours later, under the stars, they repacked the girl's truck. She was surprisingly strong for her size. An explosion shook the earth gently beneath them, its firestorm erupting far away, deep in the woods. 'You're not afraid?' asked Younger.

'Of the war?'

'Of being alone with a stranger.'

'No,' she said.

'You're trusting.'

'I never trust men,' she answered. 'That's why I'm not afraid of them.'

'Sound policy,' said Younger. He looked up at the twinkling canopy above. 'I saw something today I'll never forget. An American marine sergeant was ordering his platoon out of a trench. They were outgunned, outmanned, but the sergeant decided to attack. His marines were too afraid to come out. The sergeant said to them — well, it involves a term that shouldn't be used in polite company. Shall I say it?'

'Are you joking?' asked Colette.

'The sergeant yelled, "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" His men came out. It was a bloodbath.'

'Did he live, the sergeant?'

'Yes, he did.'

A sound like a banshee's scream was followed by another explosion. This time the blast was closer. The ground shook, and they could see fires burning perhaps a thousand yards away.

'You should get out,' said Younger. 'Tonight. If the Germans break through, they'll be here before morning. They may do worse to a French girl than your soldiers did.'

She said nothing. Younger reshouldered his gear and set off for the woods again — in the direction of the explosions.

It was July, 1918, before he saw her again. Germany had commenced a series of ferocious offensives in France, determined to seize victory before the United States could fully mobilize. Hundreds of thousands of seasoned German troops were pouring in from the east, where Russia's new Bolshevik rulers had surrendered, releasing the Kaiser's armies from the Eastern Front. By the end of May, Germany had pressed the French forces back to the Marne, only fifty miles from Paris.

But there, at Belleau, at Vaux, at Chateau-Thierry, Americans blocked the German advance, charging to their deaths with an abandon unseen in Allied troops since 1914. United States newspapers trumpeted the Yankee victories, wildly exaggerating their importance. The question was whether the new line would hold.

For forty days, the two sides threw wave after wave of firepower and young men into brutal, indecisive combat. Slowly the fighting ground to a halt, reduced to the exchange of blistering shell attacks from well-fortified entrenchments. The pause was ominous. The Germans appeared to be reinforcing again, massing yet more divisions.

In this quiet before the storm, a produce market of dubious legality had sprung up in the village of Crйzancy, overlooked by the huge, glinting American guns planted high up on the Moulin Ruinй. Bent and wizened French farmers sold whatever goods they had managed to keep back from government requisitioners.

It was Luc whom Younger saw first. He recognized at once the little boy buying cheese and milk, wordlessly shaking his head at some exorbitant demand and consenting to pay only after receiving an acceptable price. Younger greeted the boy warmly. In a burst of inspiration, he pulled from his pocket a sealed jar crawling with maggots. Luc's eyes opened wide.

'They're larvae,' said Younger in French. 'In a short time, each of these fellows will wrap himself up in a cocoon. A week or two later, the cocoon will break open, and out will crawl — do you know what will crawl out?'

The boy shook his head.

'A fly. A common, bluebottle blowfly.'

This information appeared to boost the boy's already high estimation of the seething mass inside the jar.

'Would you like to know why they're such good friends to wounded men? Because they eat only dead tissue. Living cells have no appeal to them. Here, take the jar. I have more. Very few young men have pet maggots.'

The boy accepted the present and drew something from his own pocket, offering it in exchange.

Younger raised an eyebrow. 'A grenade.'

Luc nodded.

'It's not live, is it?' asked Younger.

Setting down the grubs, Luc engaged the grenade's pin, unscrewed its cap, withdrew the spring, removed the pin, unhinged the nozzle, and held it up in the air.

Younger leaned down, smelled the dry powder within. 'I see. Excellent. Live indeed.'

The boy reversed the process, deftly reassembling the grenade, and offered it again to Younger, who accepted the gift quite carefully. He was thanking Luc when a girl's voice spoke sternly behind him.

'Did you let him touch that?' she asked.

Younger turned to see the boy's sister.

'You want him to think grenades are toys?' she went on angrily. 'So the next time he sees one on the ground, he'll pick it up and play with it?'

Younger glanced at Luc, who plainly didn't want his sister to know he'd been carrying a live grenade around. 'Quite right, Mademoiselle,' said Younger, pocketing the weapon. 'I don't know what I was thinking. Luc, a grenade is not a toy, do you hear me? Only someone completely familiar with how they work should ever touch one.'

'I'm sorry,' she said to Younger, mollified. 'He likes to play with guns and ammunition. He's forever scaring me.'

'I heard you went back to Paris,' Younger answered.

She frowned. Luc tugged her skirt. The girl excused herself, bent toward him, and the boy made hand gestures between their faces — some kind of sign language. Her answer to him was strict: 'Absolutely not. What's the matter with you?' To Younger she explained, 'Now he wants to go to the front with you.'

'I'm afraid that's impossible, given your age, young man,' said Younger. 'Although the way this war is going, you may yet have your chance. But perhaps you'd like to see an American base?'

The boy nodded.

Younger spoke to the girl: 'It would be a great service to us if you came to our base with your truck. We have an X-ray machine, but compared to yours it's primitive. There are many men I could help.'

'All right,' she said. 'I can come this afternoon. But I still — I don't know your name.'

For the next several days, Colette's truck pulled into Younger's field hospital every evening, rumbling up the dirt road in a cloud of dust. With Younger seated beside her, they would set off to various encampments as far away as Lucy-le-Bocage. Dozens of men, wounded but reinserted into their platoons, had not regained their health as they should have. Younger wanted to reexamine them all. Usually the X-rays uncovered nothing, but every now and then, as Younger suspected, the ghostly skeletons showed a minuscule fragment of shell previously missed.

The first time this happened, Colette cried out in triumph. Younger smiled. As they worked at close quarters in the back of the truck, her fingers would frequently touch his when exchanging an instrument. Or her body would brush against him. On every such occasion, she would quickly separate herself, yet Younger had the notion that the contact might have been deliberate.

With the wounded or sickly, Colette was kind, but not particularly gentle or compassionate. With the healthy, she was flint. In part, Younger could see, this brusqueness was self-protection; she was too pretty to interact with soldiers on other terms. But there was more to it. Younger wondered what it would take to soften her.

One evening when Colette was busy with her computations, Younger took advantage of the lull to work by flashlight on some equations of his own. He became conscious after a while that Luc was standing by his side.

The boy handed Younger a book. It was in English, published the previous year. The author was one Toynbee; the title was The German Terror in France. The short volume had been well-thumbed; was it possible the boy could read English?

Younger began paging through the book. It was then that the boy handed him a note saying he hated the dead — the first time Luc had ever communicated to him in this fashion. After that the boy sat down against a tire of the truck, playing with an old toy.

'Where did you get that?' asked Colette suddenly, seeing the book in Younger's hands.

'Your brother gave it to me.'

'Oh.' Her body relaxed. 'He wants me to tell you what happened to our family.'

'You needn't.'

She looked at Luc, who kept playing his game. 'You can read about it if you want,' she said, indicating a place in the book where a page had been dog-eared and a passage underlined. Younger read it:

Sommeilles was completely burnt on Sept. 6th. 'When the incendiarism started,' states the Mayor, 'M. and Mme Adnot (the latter about sixty years old), Mme X (thirty-five or thirty-six years old), whose husband is with the colours, and Mme X's jour children all took refuge in the Adnots' cellars. They were there assassinated under atrocious circumstances. The two women were violated. When the children shrieked, one of them had its head cut off, and two others one arm, while everyone in the cellar was massacred. The children were respectively eleven, five, four and one and a half years old.'

'Great God,' said Younger. 'I pray this wasn't your family.'

'No, but that was our village — Sommeilles,' she said. 'We moved there when I was little — Mother, Father, Grandmother, and I. Luc was born there. When the war started, all our young men went off to the army. The village was defenseless. The night the Germans came, Luc and I were sent to the carpenter's, because he had a hidden basement. That's the reason we lived. The Germans killed everyone, but they never found us. All night long we heard gunshots and screaming. The next day, they were gone. Our house was burned, but still standing. Mother and Father were dead on the floor. Father had put up a heroic light, you could see that. Grandmother was still alive, but not for long. Mother was naked. There was a lot of blood.'

Luc had stopped his game while his sister spoke. When it was clear that she had finished, the boy started playing again.

'Everyone assumes you have to be sad,' said Colette, 'for the rest of your life.'