1914 by Jean Echenoz Read Free Book Online

flesh, dirt-crusted scraps rats were already snatching off them and fighting over among the bodily remains here and there: a head without its lower jaw, a hand wearing its wedding ring, a single foot in its boot, an eye.
    So silence seemed intent on returning—when a tardy piece of shrapnel showed up, from who knows where and one wonders how, as clipped as a postscript: an iron fragment shaped like a polished Neolithic ax, smoking hot, the size of a man’s hand, fully as sharp as a large shard of glass. Without even a glance at the others, as if it were settling a personal score, it sped directly toward Anthime as he was getting to his feet and, willy-nilly, lopped off his right arm clean as a whistle, just below the shoulder.
    Five hours later, everybody at the field hospital congratulated Anthime, showing him how they envied him this “good wound,” one of the best there was: serious, of course, crippling, but not more than many others, really, and coveted by all as one of those that ship you away forever from the front. Such was the enthusiasm of his comrades propped up on their elbows at the edge of their cots, waving their kepis—at least those whoweren’t too damaged to wave—that Anthime almost didn’t dare complain or weep from pain, or lament the loss of his arm, the disappearance of which he was not actually fully aware. Not fully aware either, in truth, of the pain or the state of the world in general, no more than he could envisage—looking at the others without seeing them—never being himself able ever again to lean on his elbows except on one side. Out of his coma and then out of what served as a surgical unit, his eyes open but focused on nothing, it simply seemed to him— although he didn’t really know why—that given the laughter, there must be some reason to be happy. Reason enough for him to feel almost ashamed of his condition, again without fully understanding why: so as if he were reacting automatically to the other patients’ applause, to join in the merriment he gave a laugh that came out like a long spasm and sounded like braying, which shut everyone up instanter. A serious shot of morphine then returned him to the absence of all things.
    And six months after that, the folded sleeve of his jacket affixed to his right side with a safety pin, another pin anchoring a new Croix de Guerre on the other side of his chest, Anthime was strolling along a quay by theLoire. It was Sunday again and he’d passed his remaining arm through the right arm of Blanche, who, with her left hand, was pushing a carriage containing Juliette, asleep. Anthime was in black, Blanche in mourning as well, with everything around them blending rather well with that color in touches of gray, chestnut brown, hunter green, save for the tarnished gilding on the shops, which gleamed dully in the early June sunshine. Anthime and Blanche were not saying much, except to mention briefly the news in the papers. At least you’ve avoided Verdun, 11 she had just said, but he had not thought it advisable to reply.
    After almost two years of fighting, with increased recruitment a constant drain on the country, there were even fewer people in the streets, whether it was Sunday or not. And not even many women or children anymore, given the cost of living and the difficulties in shopping, because women received only the wartime allowance at best and in the absence of husbands and brothers, many had had to find work: posting bills, delivering mail, punching tickets, or driving locomotives, when they didn’t wind up in factories, armaments plants in particular. No longer going to school, the children hadplenty to keep them busy too: much in demand from the age of eleven on, they replaced their elders in businesses as well as in the fields outside the city, where they worked horses, threshed grain, cared for livestock. That left mostly the elderly, the marginal, a few invalids like