Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor Read Free Book Online

your Mr. Mason and your Mr. Slidell are still on this side of the Atlantic, and I wish them well, and I also would like to have you shipping to us cotton and rice and tobacco and other good things, but I don’t want to go to war with the Americans about it. And I assume also that when the old friend of my student days appears, and lo and behold he is
Captain
Henry Wirz— I assume that he has possibly some business with Mr. Slidell in France? But I don’t give it more thought than that. It’s a physical and mental impossibility. Do you forgive me, Henry?
    Wirz nodded. My arm is particularly troublesome tonight.
    Come, I’ve just ordered cognac.
    I have no head for cognac. You should remember.
    Well, perhaps we should call it the poor man’s sulphate of morphia or— Do you have cognac in the Confederate States, Henry?
    Only what is left in a few people’s cellars. Some we get from the Yankees. Damn this thing, Pierre. I think you injured the nerves when you removed the
sequestra.
    Hush, you very stupid fellow! The great Dr. Bucheton does not go about butchering nerves with his scalpel. Do you wish me to draw another diagram? Here, upon the tablecloth; give me your pencil—
    Nonsense. I want no more of your diagrams. I want only for the pain to go away.
    In time, Henry, in time. You must needs be patient. You’ve undergone a great deal of treatment—some of it very inept and messy, according to what I found when I got into that wrist of yours last Monday. This is merely Old Dame Nature’s way of saying, My God, I’ve been stabbed, I’ve been raped, I’ve been slaughtered. Watch closely. The drainage has already decreased to a bare trickle. The efflorescence has decreased as well. And the seropurulent matter which came out of there! Where did you say you got this wound? In the battle of Louisiana?
    No, no, no, Louisiana is my
home.
Or was. The wound I received in the fighting near Richmond, our capital. That was a year ago last summer. They called the place Seven Pines. God damn the Yankee who did this to me.
    The fortunes of war, Henry. You know, I did some soldiering myself in ’48. Have I yet told you about—?
    Fortune of war or no fortune of war, may the good God damn the Yankee who did this to me. I say, Give him to me. Let me meet him face to face. Who are you, Yankee? Was it your fingers on the lanyard which did the wickedness? Show them to me; I will show you my hand, or my arm which you did such cruelty to; now show me, Yankee, your own evil hand which performed the act. So what is that hand like, and where is the Yankee? Is it a young man’s hand—lively, tanned, hairy, a strong right hand? Or maybe the Yankee was left-handed?
    Henry Wirz was speaking with such passion that Madame bent down from her smoky perch under the archway and gave him a searching look. An idle old waiter had drawn near, in alarm at having to deal with a foreign inebriate; a party of students and girls from the half-world had given up all conversation of their own and were united in attention.
    Henry, said Bucheton in disquiet.
    I tell you, I should like to meet that hand, and the man to whom it is attached! Ah—
    No doubt you should, no doubt you should. Here, waiter, we’ll both have another cognac. Immediately, if you please!
    In his sudden outpouring of frenzy, Wirz had thudded his bandaged forearm against the table, and the act brought forth a single exclamation of agony. He sat silently, his glance turned down, the sweat standing like fragile pebbled topaz bulbs upon his high bony forehead.
    Bucheton began chattering in rapid sequence punctuated by low laughter intended to be soothing. He spoke a string of gossip and reminiscence concerning their mutual student past. Not for one moment did he think that Wirz was imagining or magnifying the misery dancing amid the nerves of his right arm. Pierre Bucheton had seen the slivered radius and ulna exposed, and his own small bright tongs had tightened on crumbs of corroded bone