Maurice Level - Thirty Hours with a Corpse, and Other Tales of the Grand Guignol

Then suddenly the sky became black, the trees tossed, the wind bent the small ones double and whistled among the great oaks with a noise like bullets. She said:

“A storm is coming. We must hurry home.”

“Why? It is so pleasant here.”

In fact, they were happy there, in spite of the storm—happy to be alone in the wood, so alone that the wood seemed to belong to them. She smiled as they made a little detour from the main path.

“If I were not with a soldier I should be afraid.”

These words filled him with pride and he pressed her arm softly. Then the rain began to fall, and they sought shelter under some trees. With her thin dress and her light taffeta mantle she could not help trembling. They thought that they were sheltered, but the drops reached them gradually and then the shower turned into a steady downpour. He expressed concern about her being so lightly clothed. She answered:

“That is nothing. But how about you?”

“Me? I have been in worse storms than this.”

She excused herself for having asked him such a question.

“It was foolish, of course. You are a soldier.”

Time passed. The rain beat through their leafy covering. The far-off street lamps seemed enveloped in a watery haze. No conveyances were in sight.

“We must go home, all the same,” she said.

“You are right,” he replied. “But you cannot walk through the rain this way. You are already drenched. You are cold. It is dark. Nobody will see you. I am going to put my cloak over your shoulders.”

She refused.

“And how about yourself ?”

“Nonsense. Let me do it, please.”

He unbuttoned his cloak and softly laid it over her. This time it was he who was maternal in manner. They hurried along, smiling, through the rain, but each one worried about the other.

“Are you all right?”

“All right. And you? Aren’t you cold?”

“Not at all.”

“I should never forgive myself if you were taken ill again.”

At a roadhouse they found a carriage. As he shivered a little she put her hand on his jacket.

“You are wet through.”

“It is nothing at all.”

“When you get home you must change your clothes at once.”

“I promise you that I will.”

She heard his teeth chatter.

“I am heartbroken. If you should fall ill—”

“But you didn’t catch cold; that was the only important thing.”

He thought of nothing else than of gazing at her, of cuddling up against her, stroking affectionately the big cloak which for a few minutes had sheltered her. On parting with him she said:

“Above all, let me hear from you soon.”

Then he kissed her hand and let her enter her house.

A week went by without her hearing anything from him. She did not dare to go herself and inquire about him. One day she passed by the house in which he lived. They had put straw in the street. That evening she decided to telephone.

They told her that the little soldier was ill—in fact, very ill. And one morning she received a letter, the envelope bordered in black. He was dead. Stupefied, she read and re-read that frightful line:

“Jean Louis Verrier, corporal of the 7th Infantry.”

Her little soldier! Her poor little soldier! She followed the funeral procession, her eyes fixed on the hearse, which went jolting along draped with a tri-color bunting and with the blue cloak with which he had covered her.

Afterward a desire to know something more about this poor youth, of whom she really knew so little, led her to pass again by the house in which he had lived. Some men had just removed the furnishings. She approached the janitress and said to her:

“My God, but he went quickly.”

“Alas!” sighed the good woman. “They had little hope that he would pull through.”

“It was his wound, I suppose?”

“Oh! his wound—that would never have carried him off. That would have healed. But he had weak lungs. In spite of that, they could never prevent him from taking risks. All those fatigues, all those hardships—they were too much for him. He got pneumonia. He was passed along for six months from one hospital to another, refusing always to be mustered out. They thought that he was better. He must have committed some imprudence. He got pneumonia again, and that finished him.”

She answered:

“Thank you, madame.”

And thinking of the spirit of that adolescent, who had marched toward death for a beautiful ideal, and then, for the simple joy of being gallant toward a woman, had carried with him to the tomb no other trophies than a piece of ribbon and a woman’s smile, she sighed:

“He was a man.”

AVOICE mounted from the depths of the obscurity in which the main floor of the theatre was left, despite the glare of the six dusty stage lamps.

“That’s not the way, Monsieur Fanjard. Won’t you do it over again?”

Fanjard, who had been perched on a chair, which represented the staircase of a château, jumped down and made his way to the front of the stage. Respectfully, yet not without a certain hauteur—his foot on the prompter’s cubbyhole, his elbow on his knee and his hand held to his ear like an ear trumpet—he asked:

“What is it, monsieur?”

The author called back at the top of his voice, as if making head against a tumult:

“I should like to have in that passage more ardor, more passion, more grief. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” answered Fanjard, with a bow.

The author would have been glad to elaborate his meaning. But Fanjard, having already returned to his chair staircase and said to his comrades, “Let us do it over, my friends,” played the climax of the scene again just as he had played it before.

“That’s not right yet! That’s not right yet!” cried the author. “You are on the first step. Mlle. Ravignan lifts her arms toward you. You stop her with a gesture. ‘What is it?’ A silence, you understand, mademoiselle? A silence, a simple silence! You, Monsieur Fanjard, you ask her, almost in a whisper: ‘Your brother? My son?’ You bow your head, mademoiselle. That is enough. He has understood you. Then you, Monsieur Fanjard, you utter a cry, a harrowing cry; all the rest of the scene is only a sob. You see what I want. Let’s try it again!”

With a glacial patience Fanjard played the scene over. But this time his articulation was hardly any more impassioned, and his gestures, barely sketched out, seemed to die away, as if succumbing to some invisible obstacle.

Five o’clock sounded and the players left the stage. The author rejoined Fanjard in the wings. After having gesticulated, shouted, and fumed for three hours, he had a moist skin, a dry tongue, and a hoarse voice. Fanjard, as he made his way toward his dressing room, listened to the other composedly. He was an old actor, reckoned as one of the glories of the stage, and all its noblest traditions survived in him. The author had thrown an arm across his shoulders and talked to him as they walked along.

“It is the capital scene, my dear sir. If it doesn’t go the whole piece will fail. What it needs is emotion, grandeur, despair. Don’t hesitate to let yourself go. You can make, and you ought to make, something sensational out of it. It is just the scene for you.”

“I see—I see very well what you wish. But at rehearsal I can’t let myself go. I need costume, light, atmosphere. But don’t worry.”

Still the author insisted, timid and firm at the same time:

“Certainly I won’t worry. Certainly. But I should like to have you, once before the first night, only once, show me your real quality. Only once; just once. Think of it. We are only three days from the première.”