The Debacle - Emile Zola [217]
His voice faltered and his eyes filled with tears.
‘Kiss me, boy.’
They kissed each other, and as in the woods the day before there was in this kiss a brotherly love born of dangers shared, of these few weeks of heroic life in common which had united them more intimately than years of ordinary friendship could have done. Days without food, nights without sleep, exhaustion, ever-present death, all played a part in their affection. Can two hearts ever take themselves back again when a mutual gift has thus welded them to each other? But the kiss exchanged in the darkness among the trees had been full of the new hope opened up by escape, whereas this one now was full of the anguish of parting. Would they see each other again some day? And how, in what circumstances of grief or joy?
Dr Dalichamp was already in his trap and calling Maurice, who put all his soul into a final embrace with his sister Henriette. She looked at him through silent tears, very pale in her widow’s black.
‘I’m putting my brother in your care… Look after him and love him as I do.’
4
IT was a big room with a tiled floor and plainly whitewashed, which had formerly been used for storing fruit. You could still smell the good smell of apples and pears, and the only furniture consisted of an iron bedstead, a whitewood table and two chairs and an old walnut chest with cavernous depths containing a whole world of things. But in this room there was a deep peaceful calm, the only sounds to be heard were faint noises from the cowshed nearby, a distant clatter of sabots or lowing of cattle. The sunshine came in through the window which faced south. All that could be seen was part of a hill-slope, a cornfield bordered by some woodland. This private, mysterious room was so well concealed from all eyes that nobody in the world could suspect it was there.
Henriette quickly settled the routine: it was understood that to avoid suspicion only she and the doctor would go in and see Jean. Silvine was never to go in unless she was asked to. First thing in the morning the two women tidied up, and then all day long the door might have been walled up. If the patient needed something in the night he would only have to knock on the wall, for Henriette’s room was adjoining. And so, after weeks of living in a turbulent mob, Jean suddenly found himself cut off from the world, seeing nobody but this young woman who was so gentle that her light step made no sound. He saw her again just as he had seen her for the first time in Sedan, like a vision, with her rather wide mouth, small, neat features and beautiful hair the colour of ripe grain, looking after him with infinite kindness.
During the first days he had such a high temperature that Henriette hardly ever left him. Every morning on his rounds Dr Dalichamp looked in, on the pretext of taking her to the hospital, and he examined Jean and dressed his wound. As the bullet had come out again after breaking the tibia, he was surprised at the ugly look of the wound and was afraid that the presence of a splinter of bone, which he could not find with the probe, might necessitate a resection of the bone. He had discussed it with Jean, who was horrified at the thought of a short leg which would make him lame – no, no, he’d rather die than be permanently disabled! And so the doctor, keeping the wound under observation, simply went on dressing it with a pad soaked in olive oil and carbolic, after inserting a drain, a rubber tube to take away the pus. But the doctor had warned him that if he did not intervene it might take a very long time indeed to heal. But by the second week the temperature did go down and things improved so long as complete immobility was maintained.
And so Jean and Henriette settled down to a regular life together. They fell into a routine and it seemed as though they had never lived any other way and would go on living like this. All the time she was not at the hospital