The joy of their reunion did not last long, though. Anthime swiftly realized that without his sight, Padioleau as well no longer had the heart for much of anything. Deprived of his livelihood, never having imagined an alternative to the art, science, and style of carving up meat, Padioleau was reduced to zero, in despair over the absence of any possible vocational rehabilitation, unable to envisage a future or comfort himself with the idea that some people can overcome their handicaps and do so in many fields, even in the most sophisticated professions, where they may even reach the heights of genius—although it is true that among the blind, one runs into more pianists than butchers.
Once these two men had found each other again, they were obliged to try passing the time together. Cards being out of the question for Padioleau, reading aloud from the newspaper having finally lost its charm for Anthime, they once more found themselves seriously at loose ends. Attempting to dispel this ennui, they would often evoke the boredom they’d felt at the front and which, edged with terror, had been frankly worse, after all. They distracted themselves by recalling how they’d come up with distractions, and talked about the pastimes they’d invented in the past. D’you remember? D’you remember?
Arcenel used to busy himself sculpting bas-reliefs from the veins of white stone that surfaced in places from the clay of the trenches. Bossis had taken an interest in creating rings, watch charms, eggcups out of scavenged metals: aluminum from spent enemy shells, copper and brass from the shell casings, cast iron from the lemon and egg grenades. Drawing on his civilian background in shoes, Anthime had begun by cutting laces from abandoned leather straps. Then he’d had an idea and turned those same straps, knotted and furnished with a clasp, into wristbands to which he could attach pocket watches via small loops soldered on at six and twelve o’clock. Believing he’d invented the wrist-watch, Anthime had cherished the magnificent dream of copyrighting this invention when he got home—only to learn that ten years earlier, Louis Cartier had come up with the same idea to help out his friend Santos-Dumont, a pilot who’d complained how hard it was to consult his pocket watch while flying.
Yes, they’d had some good times in spite of everything. Even though delousing wasn’t heaps of fun, still, between alerts it was always a distraction for the men— albeit a vain and temporary one—to hunt down lice, to pry them loose from their skin and clothing, but that arthropod always leaves behind innumerable and constantly renewed eggs, which in clothes could only be killed by a firm pressing with a nice hot iron, an accessory not provided in the trenches. In addition to learning how to use conventional weapons, they’d acquired practical experience with slingshots, and one of their funniest memories, for example, was of winging tin cans full of urine over the barbed wire to the guys across the way. The concerts given by the regimental musicians had been entertaining in a different sense, and then there’d been the accordion the captain sent someone to buy in Amiens: he’d made sure it was played every evening, and the orderlies and liaison officers had danced to the music. And the days when mail was distributed, whenever possible—they had been fun, because the men had sent off a lot of mail and received a lot, too, tremendous numbers of postcards but also letters, among which had been the short note informing Anthime of Charles’s death. And now it was too late for Charles to take advantage of an advertisement that appeared two years into the conflict: “Le Miroir will pay any price for photographic documents of particular interest relating to the war.”
15
WE ALL KNOW THE REST. The first two months of the spring offensives in the fourth year of the war consumed vast numbers of soldiers. The army’s reliance on mass tactics required the permanent replenishment of large battalions, an ever-higher level of recruitment, and ever-younger recruits, which supposed a considerable renewal of uniforms and matériel—including shoes— through large orders placed with suppliers, from which Borne-Sèze profited handsomely.
The pace and urgency of such orders, combined with the unscrupulousness of manufacturers, led to the production of questionable service shoes. A certain stinginess crept in regarding leather of so-so quality; insufficiently tanned sheepskin was often selected, less expensive but mediocre in terms of thickness and durability, and in other words, pretty close to cardboard. Laces were now square cut, easier to manufacture but more fragile than round ones, and they lacked finished ends. Thread was skimped on in the same way and eyelets were no longer made of copper but of iron— which rusts—of the cheapest kind available. It was the same with the rivets, pegs, nails. Bluntly put, they were slashing the cost of materials without any care for the solidity and water resistance of the product.
The quartermaster corps soon raised an outcry about the shoddy performance of these service shoes, which quickly took on water and buckled, not lasting even two weeks in the mud of the front. Too often, the stitches in their uppers began giving way after three days. Headquarters finally complained; an inquiry was swiftly launched. During a review of the accounts of army suppliers, those of Borne-Sèze were carefully examined—and quickly revealed an extraordinary gap between the army’s expenditures for these clodhoppers and their actual manufacturing cost. The discovery of such a gaping margin having produced a fine scandal, Eugène pretended not to know anything about it, Monteil feigned outrage, threatening to resign, and the company wriggled out of it by dismissing Mme. Prochasson and her husband, who had been in charge of purchasing raw materials: the couple agreed to carry the can, in return for a financial consideration. Everything was finally hushed up thanks to more bribes—Monteil’s connections were once again called into play—but in the end Borne-Sèze was unable to prevent the affair from going all the way to Paris, where they were summoned to appear before a commercial court: purely a matter of form, but an unavoidable one. To excuse themselves from representing the business in the capital, Eugène cited his age, Monteil his practice; when Blanche was selected, she proposed that Anthime accompany her, and everyone said yes.
Back to Anthime: after his return to civilian life, he had grown used to the absence of his arm even if, in some vague way, he lived as if he still possessed it: an arm as present as if it were really there, which he actually thought whenever he glanced at the right side of his chest, returning to the truth of its absence only when his gaze lingered too long. Assuming at first that these effects would gradually fade away, he soon realized that the opposite was happening.
In fact, after a few months he felt the return of a right arm that was imaginary but seemed just as real as the left one. The existence of this arm, indeed even its autonomy, became increasingly manifest through various unpleasant sensations: shooting and searing pains, contractions, cramps, itching—Anthime would have to stop short at the last moment to keep from trying to scratch himself—and even the old ache in his wrist. The impression of reality was intense and detailed, even to the perception of the signet ring weighing down his little finger, and the discomfort could worsen depending on the circumstances: moments of depression, changes in the weather, as can happen with arthritis, especially on cold and damp days.
Sometimes this absent arm became even more present than the other one, insistent, vigilant, as mocking as a guilty conscience; Anthime felt he could make it perform important or contemptuous gestures that no one would see. He was perfectly certain that he could lean on furniture with both elbows, shake his right fist, control each finger individually, and he even tried to pick up the telephone or wave good-bye, waving—or believing he was waving—when someone was leaving, which made that person think him rather cold and unfeeling.