For indeed we spent too many days hoping together, enduring
together, and if you will allow me to say so, my comrade,
suffering together. We spent too many days wishing for the end of
the fever, examining the wound, searching after the deeply rooted
cause of the disaster--both tremulous, you from the effort to bear
your pain, I sometimes from having inflicted it.
We spent so many days, do you remember, oh, body without a soul
... so many days fondly expecting the medal you had deserved. But
it seems that one must have given an eye or a limb to be put on
the list, and you, all of a sudden, you gave your life. The medal
had not come, for it does not travel so quickly as death.
So many days! And now we are together again, for the last time.
Well! I came for a certain purpose. I came to learn certain things
at last that your body can tell me now.
I open the case. As before, I cut the dressings with the shining
scissors. And I was just about to say to you, as before: "If I
hurt you, call out."
XXVII
At the edge of the beetroot field, a few paces from the road, in
the white sand of Champagne, there is a burial-ground.
Branches of young beech encircle it, making a rustic barrier that
shuts out nothing, but allows the eyes and the winds to wander at
will. There is a porch like those of Norman gardens. Near the
entrance four pine-trees were planted, and these have died
standing at their posts, like soldiers.
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