The First of July(103)

But the man gave no sign that he’d heard him at all. Was he waiting for something on the river? Eventually Jean-Baptiste moved toward him; but even when he was only an arm’s length from the man, he did not turn around. Instinctively Jean-Baptiste moved to the right so that he could approach the soldier from the side, again seeking not to startle him, letting himself appear in his eyeline rather than tapping him on the shoulder.

He drew level and finally stood in front of him. The corporal looked like a dead man. He held his body like a monster in a children’s story, his face strangely immobile, his eyes unfocused, his pupils huge. His lips and nose were blistered with sunburn and he was covered in tiny cuts, dirt, and, farther down, dark blood. Jean-Baptiste put up a hand in greeting but withdrew it immediately, realizing that the apparatus he had taken for a weapon was, in fact, part of a damaged folding bicycle strapped on the corporal’s back. As he drew closer, he could also see that both of the man’s hands were behind him, clasping the sides of the cycle, taking its weight, and were covered in blood.

He approached him slowly. Talking, all the time. “Let’s get this off,” and “Don’t worry. I’m here now.”

Meanwhile his own heart missed a beat. Parts of the machine were embedded in the man’s flesh: he could see that now. People said that if you were stabbed, sometimes it was only the knife staying put that kept you from bleeding to death. But until the bicycle was off him, this man could not lie down. Sooner or later he would collapse and the metal be driven farther through him, and until then he was condemned to stay upright.

But how to part them? He uncurled his fists and undid the holding strap. The machine began to fall away with its own weight, and he could imagine it tearing at the man’s flesh. The soldier gave a terrible groan as if his entrails were coming out and sagged, heavily, into his arms. There was no return now. The machine crashed to the ground and the sight of clots of blood on the brake handle made him feel giddy for a second. The cyclist’s legs finally folded under him, and Jean-Baptiste caught him around the waist. He dragged the man across the yard, feeling a burning in his own damaged muscles. As he did so, he became aware of warm, wet blood and the smell of urine. He laid him on the mattress on the kitchen floor. The man was trembling but unconscious. Jean-Baptiste fetched the soldier’s pack from outside. He opened the man’s tunic and blood-sodden shirt, then took out his knife, cut through his vest, and looked down. The blood was coming from small puncture wounds: one, to the left, looked deep and had penetrated under his ribs. He turned him partly on to his side, though it evidently caused him pain. The edges of the wound caused by the bicycle had rolled inward and the cut was thin, slender enough for a bayonet.

He took the metal bowl out to the pump to get water to clean the injuries, and when he returned the soldier’s eyes were flickering. He set down the bowl, wiped the blood off the man’s mouth, and poured a little water into it. The man retched almost immediately, but Jean-Baptiste was relieved, and quite surprised, that there was no blood in it. The second time he lifted the bowl, the man actually drank a little. His eyes opened and then closed. He muttered something incomprehensible. Jean-Baptiste shook his head. Military cyclists usually had their machines strapped on their backs when they weren’t using them. But then what? A shell, he guessed. A massive blast, at that. Why hadn’t the shock killed him? How far had he walked in that condition, how much dirt was in his wounds? Émilie had told him it was the dirt, not the shell fragment or bullet, that made your leg go black and stink; that was what killed you. Dr. Vignon’s hands were raw from scrubbing.

He turned to the man’s pack, hoping it would contain a field dressing or something that he could use to cover the deeper wound, which continued to ooze black blood. Then he remembered Vignon’s lotion. The one he was to use if his own wounds opened up. It was, miraculously, still in his pocket and unbroken; but what he pulled out with it made his stomach lurch. Next to it were his papers. Sodden. He eased them out of the envelope. They were legible only in one corner. Vignon had written in ink, and Jean-Baptiste had fallen in the marshes. He stared down at them and realized that his sole officially justified reason for returning to Corbie had as good as been eradicated.

The soldier was watching him, he thought. His eyes were certainly open. Jean-Baptiste pulled the cork out with his teeth. The smell took him straight back to the hospital at Royaumont; it reached the back of his throat. He looked at the label: Solution Carrel-Dakin, it said. For wound irrigation. He poured a little into the deeper injury, which made the soldier start, and patted it on the other injuries until the bottle was empty. Then he gave the man a drink and was glad when he took a mouthful and swallowed.