‘But why lie like that?’ exploded Saber. ‘We are French officers. Had you told us the truth we would have worked twice as fast.’
All the Russian understood of course was the word ‘lie’ and he quickly handed over a bag to Saber. It contained slices of meat. The French were reluctant to deprive this family but the man rubbed his stomach and smiled. Piquebois, whey-faced, looked closely at the food.
‘It’s not beef.’
‘They wouldn’t poison us, would they?’ said Margont with a worried look.
‘It’s not horsemeat, is it? You wouldn’t have dared …’ asked Piquebois.
The Russian nodded several times. ‘Good horse, yes. Killed yesterday.’
Piquebois was a sorry sight. His slavering mouth gave him away but he declared: ‘Not for me.’
‘You won’t last long if you don’t eat as much as you can when you have the chance,’ Margont pointed out to him.
‘By chewing horsemeat I’d feel as if I were eating one of you because you and the horses are my best friends.’
He walked off, a pitiful sight, while Saber was already skewering the slices with the bayonet of a musket found lying on the ground and was holding them over the still-glowing embers of a beam.
As soon as Margont had eaten his fill, he abandoned Saber and went off in search of Lefine. He decided to do the rounds of the hospitals. He reached what had been a fine-looking square. Sappers were chopping down blackened trees to prevent them from crashing on to the buildings. The park was turning into a wasteland. Four blocks of houses gave the rectangle an elegant symmetry. But their façades were riddled with bullet holes and one of them had lost its roof. A phenomenal number of cannonballs were scattered on the ground. Württemberg gunners, easily recognisable by their black-crested helmets, were placing the ones that could still be used in a cart. They roared with laughter when someone held up a cannonball that had been flattened like a pancake or taken on a bizarre shape. This must be what Württemberg gunners found amusing.
Carts were piling up at the foot of the three buildings left intact and more were constantly arriving. They were carrying all the world’s woes: the wounded. The forest of arms raised in pleas for help, the chorus of groans, the trails of blood, the mangled bodies … Margont had the greatest admiration for those who tended to these men: medical orderlies, helpers, surgeons, physicians, pharmacists … He wondered whether Lefine was somewhere among these unfortunates. One of them escaped by hopping from a wagon as if leaving this place meant escaping death itself. Two soldiers tried to reason with him but he yelled: ‘They’re going to cut my leg off! Without my leg who’s going to look after my farm?’ How far away the fine ideas about humanism and freedom now seemed …
Margont noticed Jean-Quenin Brémond. The physician was going from cart to cart, a dazed look on his face. His dark blue uniform was spattered with bloodstains. Brémond pointed with his finger at those who were to be treated within the hour, specifying the exact order. The wounded were pleading with him, threatening him, insulting him, promising him a fortune … In exchange for an operation they were offering him a horse, a house, a daughter in marriage, a wife’s virtue … Who could blame them? When Brémond turned his gaze on a cart, the dying attempted to smile and joke in order to appear less as if they were dying, while the less seriously wounded pretended to be worse by swearing they had been bleeding for hours. It was unbearable, unbearable. Helpers took charge of those selected amidst insults, spitting and tears. ‘There’s room for all of you. We’ll settle you all in. It just needs time’ was their constant reply.
Margont called out to Brémond but the medical officer took a while to recognise him. In hell it always takes time to realise there can still be good news.
‘You’re not wounded, are you, Quentin?’
‘No. Have you seen Fernand? He’s disappeared.’
‘Yes, he was wounded on 17 August in the assault on Smolensk. What was he doing there, so far from IV Corps?’
‘It’s my fault. He’s been helping me with my investigation. I’ll never forgive myself, damn it!’
Brémond was exhausted. His intonation was dull and flat, out of keeping with what he was talking about.
‘It’s just cannon-shock syndrome. As of this morning he’s cured and he’s helping to settle in the wounded.’
Margont was not reassured by these words. ‘But what’s cannon-shock syndrome?’
‘When a cannonball passes very close, really very close, to a soldier, it sometimes happens that the blast of air can knock him over. It’s not serious from a physical point of view but feeling death come so close often affects the mind. Fernand could not speak a single word. Either he screamed or he remained silent. As he was covered in the blood of the person blown up by the cannonball he ended up here.’
‘Will he suffer any aftereffects?’
‘Possibly. But he’s cheerful and confident by nature, so we can hope he won’t. Otherwise, he may lose his zest for life and start going on about the misery he has witnessed, thinking himself damaged by life and the army.’
‘I’ll let you get on with your work.’
Brémond was so shattered that he had to struggle to keep his eyes open.
‘There are so many wounded that we’re short of everything. We’re using tow instead of lint, paper instead of linen. Even the medical orderlies are performing operations … and soldiers are being brought in who haven’t been wounded but are suffering from depression. They’ve lost their appetites, can’t sleep, don’t talk any more, cry all the time and have lost the will to live. Lost the will to live! And what about me? What am I supposed to do for them? I can’t operate on wounded minds, that’s for sure.’
At last Margont found Lefine. He was going to and fro among the carts but there was no sense of purpose about his movements. He waved his arms around as he spoke and then walked off in the middle of a sentence, picked up a shako and handed it to its owner, who couldn’t have cared less. When he spotted Margont he rushed over to him, as happy as could be.
‘My favourite captain! Come here. I’ve got some news for you!’
‘Are you sure you’re going to—’
‘I’ve spoken to some friends of Colonel Pirgnon and our Italian colonel. I was in the process of talking to one of them when—’ Lefine stopped suddenly. His high spirits had evaporated. ‘I hadn’t realised we were exposed … The Russian cannonballs suddenly began to rain down. He was talking to me …’
Margont put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Fernand, you should get some rest. We’ll talk about it tomorrow or another day.’
His friend was puzzled. ‘No. It’s better to be active rather than sit alone in a corner thinking. Otherwise I keep imagining myself back there, talking to that lieutenant from the cuirassiers.’
‘Come on then!’ exclaimed Margont, taking his friend away from the place that had such a bad effect on him.
‘Are we still a long way from Moscow, Captain?’
‘Just over two hundred and forty miles.’
‘Two hundred and forty? What a swine of a country! What about going back for a swim in the Gardon?’