Ben Greenman - What He's Poised to Do - Stories

Here I should pause, while you think about this single point of similarity between Delvigne and yourself: both lost mothers young. For many years, this was not a point of pitiful pride with Delvigne; he had not always been a sot and a fool. Fifteen years earlier, he was a capable commander who dressed sharply, had nearly perfect recall when it came to the recent military history of the nation, and was so fleet of foot that he could outrun a horse over a distance of one kilometer. I am not employing hyperbole here. In March of 1835, Captain Henri-Gustave Delvigne outran a horse for one kilometer and had enough time left over to scramble up a tree and leap down from a branch onto the bare back of the horse he had just bested. Now that was a soldier! That was a man! He had a taste for the ladies, but the ladies had a taste for him in return. I had heard tales of Delvigne’s appetites; I remember remarking to another captain that if I had a daughter I would not object if she ended up arranged compromisingly on Delvigne’s divan. I do not feel that way any longer, but I am not as far from it as I imagined I might be when my feelings started to change. If you, my dear one, responded to this letter with a brief note, “Father: With Delvigne,” I would feel only a twinge of rage rather than the consuming spasm that would be more appropriate to the news. Delvigne was, as I have said, a man with substance.

All of this, and a designer of tools of war as well. Back in those days, Delvigne contrived of a rifle barrel with a separate gunpowder chamber located at the breech and separated from the rest of the barrel by a rigid metal lip. After powder was packed into that chamber, a round bullet was pushed down the barrel and hammered into place with a ramrod, an act which, while flattening the bullet to fit the rifling grooves, also distorted it so that it flew crooked when fired. To permit continued use of this type of barrel, Delvigne invented a new shape for the bullet — it was longer and cylindrical, and expanded more evenly when beaten with the ramrod. This was an improvement, but not enough of an improvement, and the army did not take it up. Instead, they adopted a rifle designed by Colonel Louis-Etienne de Thouvenin, who had in fact only slightly modified Delvigne’s design. It was as if a painter had added a mole to the face of a portrait and was credited with the entire canvas. Delvigne was not bitter. In those days he had no need to be. He was a man with everything around him. He went back to his perfectly tailored coats, to his wine, and to the women who awaited him when he returned home from the field of battle.

Now, we come to the irony: if Delvigne was slighted to a small degree in the popular account of the first phase of development, he was overly credited to a great degree in the second phase. I was the arms master in that northern African camp where I was stationed with Delvigne, and weekly I took several shipments of rifles and bullets, and it was not uncommon for the soldiers to complain about inaccurate flight. “I cannot listen to the carping,” Delvigne said to me. “When a man does for his army one tenth of what I have done, then I will listen to him, but only then. Meanwhile, bring me a wineglass and a nurse: you fill the one and I will fill the other.”

I took his words as a challenge. The thought of Delvigne listening! On one of those rare rainy days, I was trapped inside the tent alone. That was the moment inspiration chose to appear to me. It occurred to me that perhaps the best way to create a bullet that would keep its shape when hammered in — and not, afterward, lose its shape again when the powder blew out of the compartment near the breech and into the barrel — was to make it cylindrical, with a hollow base and a pointed tip. When the powder caught, the fire and expanding gases would enlarge the skirting of the bullet enough to align with the grooves of the inside of the barrel and seal the barrel beneath the bullet to ensure maximum accuracy. I went away from the tent through the rain to the company’s smith, and I asked him to fashion a few of these bullets. He complied, and I brought those bullets back to the tent and placed them on top of an envelope that contained a note for Delvigne. “Captain,” it began, “here is a type of bullet that I have invented. I have simultaneously built upon the foundation you laid and razed the structure erected by Thouvenin, who is a scoundrel and a traitor and, from what I hear, a silent player in the symphony of love, if you take my meaning: he endeavors with all his might to bring sound out of his instrument but cannot.” The note was folded in neat thirds like a proper letter. I was and have continued to be meticulous in that regard.

That was when Delvigne returned to the tent. He did not read my letter. (I hope that you do not make that same mistake, my dear. If this letter is down in a pile, neglected, it will cause me unimaginable pain.) He lay down in the tent, clutched his head, and told me that he was sicker than he had ever been. When I asked the telegraph operator to check the weather, Delvigne called out that he expected more rain and then lapsed back into illness. He retched off the side of the bed, filling his hat. I waited for him to ask me about my morning, at which time I would have told him that I thought I had solved the problem of the rifle bullets. But he did not ask. He moaned and clutched his head some more. As I have said, he was not the brave soldier I had heard about through my youth. He writhed as if in the grips of a fit. He called out pitifully the names of women he had loved. He prayed for them to come and save him. The one he called for most passionately was named Isabel. I never knew the woman, never even received a description of her, but the way in which Delvigne wailed for her stuck to my heart like a stubborn burr, and when I saw you that first day of your life, and my soul went out to you with the purest love I have ever known, I knew that your name should be Isabel.

Delvigne eventually stopped calling for Isabel and then for all the women. In the afternoon, a doctor stopped by: a corporal in an adjoining tent had heard Delvigne’s cries and thought to summon medical help. The doctor touched Delvigne’s forehead, felt around his neck, and then declared that there was very little he could do. Delvigne, he explained, had contracted an infection that had colonized most of his body. The second he left, Delvigne began to thrash more violently. Blood welled up in his nose. His eyes snapped open. He recognized me. “Captain Minié,” he said. “Please help me.” His entire body began to shiver. His eyes were a fearsome shade of yellow. “Captain,” he said, “reach beneath my bed and find a rifle.” I did not move, so he bent down and produced the rifle himself. “The powder is already loaded. Will you shoot me?” he said. I ignored the request and looked away. He followed my gaze, which had quite accidentally landed on the bullets that I had designed. He reached out a sweaty arm and gathered the bullets into his palm. He looked at them. “Hollow base,” he said. “Nice.” He slid one into the barrel, weakly took a ramrod into his hand, and pounded the bullet down. He was turning the rifle around when his finger slipped and pulled the trigger. The shot was deafening on the tent. The bullet came out of the barrel with a severe leftward deviation. Delvigne began to make a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. “There should be an iron plug into the base.” Then he lapsed into a silence that seemed to my untrained eye like a coma.

When the doctor returned, I did not mention the shot. It seemed undignified, at least. The doctor loaded Delvigne onto a narrow cot and carried him out of the tent. After a while I reached for a piece of paper. Delvigne’s ravings had given me an idea. With the smith’s help, I improved upon my own invention by the addition of a small iron plug in the bullet’s hollow base that, on firing, would be propelled upward to help shape the bullet and strengthen the tip as the skirting flattened out. I left northern Africa early the next week, while Delvigne was still recuperating, and though I thought for a time that he might die, I had not correctly estimated his physical capabilities. He fought his infection for weeks but recovered nearly to perfect health, was discharged from military service, and married a young woman who was an actress on the Paris stage. This was just before Delvigne took her to America and tried to make his fortune in the West, which means that it was just before he went mad. They say that the fever that almost took him in the tent may have lain in wait inside his mind for years, springing forth at a later date without any warning. His life became a series of irrational connections and concoctions. He came to believe that the Americans were fighting for French independence. He believed that his wife was also a character in a book he had yet to read. He could no longer distinguish between the real and unreal, not from the first arrival of his madness until the moment of his death. I never met his wife, but I can only assume that this changed her tune.