Gabriel Chevallier - Fear

‘The delicate little dears! What they need is a hero in their beds, a real live hero with a bloody face, to make them squeal with pleasure!’

‘They don’t know…’

‘They don’t know anything, I agree. When all’s said and done, women — and I’ve known plenty of them — are females, stupid and cruel. Behind all their airs and graces, they are just wombs. What will they have done during the war? They’ll have egged on men to go and get their heads blown off. And the men who will have disembowelled lots of the enemy will receive their reward: the love of a charming, right-thinking young woman. What sweet little bitches!’

While he’s talking I am watching the women going about their duties. Mademoiselle Bergniol is energetic in a methodical way, busying herself with studied cheerfulness: she seems transformed by the sense of duty that she upholds. Mademoiselle Heuzé is a big girl, homely and rather awkward, but the shape of her large mouth gives her a kindly appearance. Mademoiselle Reignier is full of goodwill, clumsy, a bit daft, and already too fat; in a few years she’ll make ‘a good, plump mother’ without a trace of ill-nature. With Madame Bard, her nonchalance and the way she swings her strong hips, suggests desire; with the rather sultry gaze of a woman lacking a husband, her eyes linger on our bodies, a little covetously, perhaps. I avoid the attentions of grey-haired Madame Sabord, a fussy woman with dry fingers whose touch is unpleasant. Mademoiselles Barthe and Doré, one blonde the other brunette, both with bruised eyes, are almost inseparable, wrapping their arms round each other’s waists, whispering confidences which make them burst into shrill laughter, like giggles, in a way men find irritating. There is something a bit too voluptuous in their sisterly embraces. Mademoiselle Odet offers everyone her sad smile, her veiled words and the ardour of her feverish eyes. She is too pale, too thin; her frail shoulders already bent beneath the weight of life at its start. You can see she will not have the strength to bear this life for long. We are grateful to her for sharing this short future with all of us, for caring for us when she needs someone to care for her, and the least we can do is to give a smile of encouragement in return for her smile, so full of self-denial.

I know nothing of them apart from these impressions and that’s enough for me. I don’t try to understand what brought them here. I am simply thankful that they are here, gliding gracefully around the ward, filling it with flowers and their various charms. I’m thankful, too, that they have lost that little edge of bourgeois arrogance they had at the start, when they spoke to us as if they were addressing their staff. I even allow myself the forbidden pleasure of catching them unawares with the ghost of a blush on their cheeks which they hide by turning away, or of suddenly looking deep into their eyes and finding the trace of some illicit emotional agitation which makes their hearts beat differently. But I stop myself on the threshold of this disquiet, like a gentleman at the door of a boudoir.

And above all I am delighted that we have become such good friends, that these young ladies (it’s the young ones who display the most curiosity) spare me an hour of their time every day. The clamour of war is silenced by the murmur of their voices. Their words may not always be true, may be empty, but they are kind and gentle, and this pulls me back into life outside the battle zone — though it strikes me every now and then that my return here is unlikely to be permanent.

Every now and then the door of the ward silently opens, and a dark shadow appears beside one of the beds, mumbling unctuous words over the occupant. It’s the hospital chaplain, the former head of the Saint-Gilbert school.

Now, I respect all faiths (and occasionally envy them) but I am always surprised at the furtive approach of some of these people, at their unconvincing smiles. If they are truly performing a holy and noble ministry then why do they behave like touts, and give the impression that they are soliciting your soul with a ‘psst!’ from the end of some dark alleyway. This particular chaplain is of the type that seem to impose themselves on you by calculating your faults. Under their embarrassing gaze I suddenly feel like a monster of depravity, and I’m always waiting for them to say: ‘Come, my son, and confide in me all your filthy little sins…’

Father Ravel took a particular interest in me in the beginning, and I suppose that the nurses, knowing my religious background, must have told him about me. In the period just after I arrived he would visit me every day and asked me to come and see him as soon as I could walk. I put this off as long as I could.

But he managed to drag a promise out of me, in a way that I find unfair. On the evening after my operation, seeing me weak and no more capable of resistance than a dying man, he persisted at great length and, still lost in the fog of chloroform, I said yes. Afterwards he kept reminding me of this promise and repeating: ‘I am waiting for you’, in a reproving tone that made it seem like I was the one acting in bad faith.

He did this so much that last week I eventually followed him out of the ward. He took me to his room and sat himself down in the chair beside the prie-dieu, where penitents kneel before Christ. But I’ve known that old trick with the furniture for a long time. So instead of kneeling on the prie-dieu, I sat on it. Once he had recovered from his astonishment, he questioned me, rather clumsily.

‘So, my dear son, what do you have to tell me?’

‘I don’t have anything to tell you, sir.’

I realised that I should not expect any sophisticated conversation from him and that the only reason he’d brought me there was to catch me off guard and steal my sins. For him, every soul must be healed by absolution, rather in the way that some doctors use purges for every illness. I let him go on. He reminded me of my Christian childhood, and asked:

‘Do you not want to come back to God? Do you not have sins to repent?’

‘I don’t have sins any more. The greatest sin, in the eyes of the Church and the eyes of men, is to kill your brother. And today the Church is ordering me to kill my brothers.’

‘They are the enemies of our nation.’

‘They are nonetheless the children of the same God. And God, the father, presides over the fratricidal struggle of his own children, and the victories on both sides. He’s just as happy whichever army sings the Te Deum . And you, one of the just, you pray to him to ruin and annihilate other just men. How do you expect me to make sense of that?’

‘Evil comes from men, not from God.’

‘So God is powerless?’

‘His plans are beyond our comprehension.’

‘We have that saying in the army, too: “Don’t try to understand.” It’s the logic of a corporal.’

‘I implore you, my child, for it is written: “Pride is the beginning of all sin: He that holdeth it, shall be filled with maledictions, and it shall ruin him in the end.”’

‘Yes, I know: “Beati pauperes spiritu”.[23] It’s a form of blasphemy, since He created us in his image and likeness!’

He got up and showed me the door. We did not exchange another word. Instead of the affliction at the sight of this lost sheep that should have been in his eyes, all I could see was a glint of hatred, the fury of a man who had been defeated and whose pride (yes, he too!) was wounded. I wondered how this fury could relate to the divine…

Still, I would have liked it if this priest had given me a few words of hope, indicated a possibility of belief, explained things to me. Alas, God’s poor ministers are just as much in the dark as we are. You must believe like old women believe, the ones that look like witches, who mumble to themselves in churches under the nose of cheap, plaster saints. As soon as you start to use your reason, to look for a rainbow, you always run up against the great excuse, mystery. You will be advised to light some candles, put coins in the box, say a few rosaries, and make yourself stupid.