1914 by Jean Echenoz

Author:Jean Echenoz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781595589248
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2012-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

11

ONE FOLLOWING MORNING, much like the others, snow decided to fall along with the shells—at a different rhythm, naturally, for the shells had been less plentiful than usual, only three so far that day—whereas Padioleau decided to complain.

I’m hungry, Padioleau was moaning, I’m cold, I’m thirsty and also I’m tired. Well sure, said Arcenel, just like the rest of us. But I feel very low, too, continued Padioleau, plus I’ve got a stomachache. It’ll pass, your stomachache, predicted Anthime, we’ve all got one, more or less. Yes but the worst part, insisted Padioleau, it’s that I can’t figure out if I feel low because of the stomachache (You’re beginning to piss us off, observed Bossis) or if I’ve a stomachache because I feel low, if you see what I mean. Fuck off, announced Arcenel.

That’s when the first three shells that had flown too far, exploding uselessly behind the lines, were followed by a fourth and more carefully aimed 105-millimeter percussion-fuse shell that produced better results in the trench: after blowing the captain’s orderly into six pieces, it spun off a mess of shrapnel that decapitated a liaison officer, pinned Bossis through his solar plexus to a tunnel prop, hacked up various soldiers from various angles, and bisected the body of an infantry scout lengthwise. Stationed not far from the man, Anthime was for an instant able to see all the scout’s organs— sliced in two from his brain to his pelvis, as in an anatomical drawing—before hunkering down automatically and half off balance to protect himself, deafened by the god-awful din, blinded by the torrent of rocks and dirt, the clouds of ash and fine debris, vomiting meanwhile from fear and revulsion all over his lower legs and onto his feet, sunk up to the ankles in mud.

After that everything seemed just about over. As the smoke and dust gradually cleared from the trench, a kind of quiet returned, even though other massive detonations still sounded solemnly all around but at a distance, as if in an echo. Those who’d been spared stood up fairly spattered with bits of military flesh, dirt-crusted scraps rats were already snatching off them and fighting over among the bodily remains here and there: a head without its lower jaw, a hand wearing its wedding ring, a single foot in its boot, an eye.

So silence seemed intent on returning—when a tardy piece of shrapnel showed up, from who knows where and one wonders how, as clipped as a postscript: an iron fragment shaped like a polished Neolithic ax, smoking hot, the size of a man’s hand, fully as sharp as a large shard of glass. Without even a glance at the others, as if it were settling a personal score, it sped directly toward Anthime as he was getting to his feet and, willy-nilly, lopped off his right arm clean as a whistle, just below the shoulder.

Five hours later, everybody at the field hospital congratulated Anthime, showing him how they envied him this “good wound,”

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