13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [19]
I can feel them, their pure animal terror as they await the next explosion—
this ill black mire they fight in—can you smell it?
Can you smell the fluids from all the bodies
of the fallen
seeping into this mud
as they decompose:
human rot corrupting the very earth.
And this poor makeshift hospital unclean and filled with the groans of our pointless suffering. In this place, we run out of even the doubtful succor of morphia’s oblivion. Do you know they hack at our bones?
Through our flesh, when the limb cannot be saved—
the doctors saw it off.
We are shells and we are shrapnel—we are the surprise detonation arcing in from the sky, showering all in slicing bits of metal and fire. We are howls of bewildered agony as we crumple to the ground—blown open—bits of our gore everywhere—
our blood seeping.
This is if we are lucky: if there are recognizable parts of us that can be found. Sometimes, when the thing comes right for us—right on top of us—it turns us into Nothing—we cannot be foraged, not even a single chunk of our obliterated meat.
(Such attrition would make even victory a pallid thing.)
Our shell shock and our thousand-yard stare—we are stunned into quiet by the images that cannot be erased and thus erase all else—our gaze so still and so quiet that it can be ignored, if you wish, you do not have to
listen to our silence.
Digging this trench so hard, the muscle fibers in our backs bursting with the hurt of this: our last ditch effort.
Our shell shock and our thousand-yard stare—
I gaze ever farther than that.
For miles and miles I stare, through everything and straight to you. As I fight, I keep my eyes always on you: I cannot bear the stricken look on your face should you be told that I have died—
your face—
it is the only reason I am still alive.]
Un Souvenir
A POSTCARD:
*, 11
Look at what the ornate white type says, at the corner of the postcard: “Un Souvenir.” A memory.12
This is a funny thing in our time: the thought of sending a postcard home depicting ourselves in the battlefield being attacked, cringing for cover, with our weapons and our packs close to our bodies—postcards are a thing to send home from a vacation, are they not?
Still, look at this postcard. It declares unabashedly that it is a memory, and it is right, for butchery is often what memories are made of. Since you have it in your hand, why not flip it over and find out whom it is from?
It reads, simply:
A thousand kisses,
Camille
It is addressed, of course, to his beloved Louise. It was dashed off quickly because, as you can perhaps see, the boy’s signature bleeds a little, the curve of the C and the dot in the i especially. It is unlike him to be so careless with his writing implements; he must have been on his way somewhere. He had time to send only the fastest thought, the one thing he truly needed to dispense to Louise before shooting off to a dangerous place: a thousand kisses.
There is another object—(No, please! Save us! Have pity on us! Not another of those painful souvenirs! Spare us the searing burn of another memory!)
This is the last one for a little while, I promise. Besides, you really should see it. It is an interesting artifact.
*
You see? This is the present that Camille sent to Louise the day after his letter dated 31 October 1915: “a little package containing 1 penholder made with 2 fused German cartridges, and engraved.” Look, the pencil is still inside, after all this time.
The two bullet shells are welded together, butt to butt, to make a sort of useful thing, an object made to amuse instead of kill. Isn’t it sweet, to make captured weaponry into a memory, into a writing implement? You could pick up this killing metal and write a story with it. Look at the engraving along the metal shaft. It reads:
VICTOR
CAMILLE—
SOUVENIR
on one side, and on the other
1914
CAMPAGNE
1915
DE L’YSER
Go on, you can put the tip of the bullet back in and pick up the object to take a better look at it, like so: