Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor Read Free Book Online Page B

black as coal, and honey-combed— You worked in sweat, the bottle of whiskey beside you, the scalpel cleanly wiped, the tufts of lint soaking up the liquid— You worked methodically and well, and even on that night when you were home, and your wife was ill with the female curse, and Cora had the croup and was gagging with it— You worked as your own surgeon, with a Negro bug-eyed beside you—
    —But still the leaping pain, the nerves like frogs in their jumping, the frogs bounding and saying, Let us out or we’ll burst your skin.
    —Ja.
Frogs.
    With discipline he sought to break his recollection away from the concern it held with his wound. Libby—he saw the desk, he put muster rolls into the narrow pigeon-holes when they had been checked, he heard the slam of guards’ musket butts on the stones when they halted outside the door—not his door, the other door . . . sat outside the office of Mr. Seddon’s deputy, he sat there during three whole forenoons and two and one-half afternoons, he sat motionless or nearly motionless, with his beard neatly brushed and his small gray cap held upon his knee like a bright-beaked bird he had trapped. Then he had his appointment.
Inspecting Officer of Prisons.
That sounded very well indeed.
    Special Minister Plenipotentiary in Europe.
That sounded even better. Of course he wasn’t the only one, and also he was on leave of absence officially.
    And why had they not made him a colonel? They had promised that he should be a colonel. Here he was now, doing a man-sized task with only boy-sized rank to wear. A captain!—no wonder he was treated like an errand boy. Actually he had never laid eyes on Mr. Slidell (though he pretended to Bucheton and others that he had). A secretary came into an anteroom on both occasions—once to accept the dispatches which Wirz had brought; the other time to give him an envelope of instructions.
    His German was profound and scholarly, because he was native to Zurich and educated also in Berlin. His French was fairly secure, accent or no accent, because he had learned the language when very young; but he was twenty-seven years old before he began to speak more than a few words of English, and was handicapped further (as a loyal Confederate he disliked to admit this) because he had spent most of his thirteen or fourteen American years with the soft long drawl of R-slighting of Southerners in his ears.
    So perhaps that was the reason his promotion had been passed over repeatedly? They thought that a man who talked like a Tam Tutchman wasn’t worthy of higher grade? What about that Prussian giant—what was his name?—who worked for General Stuart? Wirz had heard him laughing, bellowing delightedly, twisting up his whiskers; he stood close to him once; and Von Borcke was unmistakably of field grade, with his English nothing like so extensive as Henry’s.
    You had to know influential people, you had to know them well. You had to know—
    Ach, mein lieber Gott im Himmel!
The arm.
    He was walking, measured hurtful step by measured hurtful step, on a stone-bordered path in the Luxembourg gardens, where he had strolled so often when he was a youth; and one day he had even helped two little boys with their sailing of boats, and a great breeze blew the fountain spray loose from its jeweled column and spattered them thoroughly, and they all shrieked with laughter and so did young Henry Wirz, and kindly he took off his shoes and stockings and rolled up his dove-colored pantaloons, and he waded in to retrieve the two white sailboats which the wind had tossed upon their beam-ends—
    He was walking, grasping that slung arm which bred its torture, he was walking in midnight amid the damp Luxembourg gardens; and it did not seem real—walking in New Orleans would seem more real nowadays, if only he could walk there; and in the Luxembourg gardens all of the Parisians turned out in full force each Sunday, except for the thousands who went gabbling to the
Bois,
and