COUSIN’S PROJECTS
Whenever I had a minute to spare I went and sat at the foot of Cousin’s bed. He said to me:
“See, there’s room for you now that they’ve cut my legs off. One would think they’d done it on purpose.”
This man of forty had a young and delicate face. On “shaving days,” when the razor had done its work, it did one good to see the everlasting, trustful smile of Cousin. It was a wonderful smile—rather delicate, rather ironical, rather candid, rather convulsive; the very smile of the race, made with lips discoloured by the loss of blood, and features drawn by long and weary effort. In spite of everything, Cousin had a confiding look—the air of one who trusted absolutely the whole world, and especially himself, because he lived, because he was Cousin.
One leg remained to him which, to speak frankly, was worth nothing at all. The joint of the knee had been smashed by the explosion of a torpedo. It was a bad business, of which people spoke in low voices, shaking their heads.
But, what matter? Cousin did not put his trust in his legs. Already he had abandoned one; he did not seem to care much about a leg more or less. Cousin, I think, did not put his trust in any particular part of his chest, or his head, or his limbs. With or without legs, he was himself, and in his clear green eyes burnt a generous flame that was the expression of a pure soul.
Whilst I was sitting on his bed Cousin told me all about himself. He always took up the thread of events at the point where the war had broken it off, and he had a natural inclination to unite the happy past of Peace to a future not less delicious. Across the troubled and bloody abyss he loved to stretch the life of yesterday until it touched the life of to-morrow. Never a verb in the past tense, but an eternal and miraculous present.
“I am a dealer in objets d’art,” he told me. “It’s a profitable business when one understands it. I trade mostly in candelabras and chandeliers. I work with Cohen and Co., with Marguillé, with Smithson, with all the great houses. Now, I have my own special way of working: I keep my client to myself, and I undertake to make him understand what he wants and to deliver the goods.
“Suppose that a M. Barnabé comes and asks me for a drawing-room chandelier. I say, ‘Right! I see what you want’; and I jump into a taxi. I get to Messrs. Cohen’s. ‘It’s 25 per cent. commission. Is that understood?’ Let us imagine that Cohen makes difficulties. Right! I run downstairs, jump into the taxi again, and go to Smithson’s.... Certainly it can be an expensive game. Supposing that Barnabé goes back on me—well, then, I am left with the taxi to pay for.... But it’s interesting! It’s a trade that keeps you going; it amuses you; you need to have discrimination.”
Looking at the animated face of Cousin, I smiled. His cheeks were like imitation marble, not very good; he had the swollen eyes of a man who had lain too long in bed with fever, and whose “inside” was not very healthy. At forty one may feel one’s heart young, but one’s flesh does not react from the effects of a torpedo as it does at twenty. I looked at the legless Cousin with astonishment while he explained to me how, in his trade, one rushed upstairs at Cohen’s; how one jumped about at Marguillé’s; how one ran down Smithson’s stairs.
A day came when Cousin’s leg began to bleed. The blood filtered through the bandage in great drops, like scarlet sweat, or like morning dew on the leaves of a cabbage. During four or five days Cousin’s wound bled nearly every day. Every time he was carried away in haste; they put all sorts of things into his wound, and the blood ceased to flow. Every time Cousin came back to his bed a little paler, and he said to me as he passed:
“There, you see ... one never gets any peace.”
One morning I went to sit beside Cousin, who was making his toilette. He was out of breath. In spite of the puffiness of his face, one felt it had grown thin, formless, devoured by an internal malady. Really, it reminded one of a fruit rotten with vermin.
“I have,” he told me, “good news of my boys—twelve and thirteen years old. They’re getting on! Didn’t I tell you? I am thinking of taking on, as well as the candelabras, clocks and chimneypieces. With the connection that I have, I mean to do great things. One must always aim high. Dame! I shall have to get a move on. But I’ll manage, I’ll manage. What one needs is to know the styles....”
I tried to smile, without being able to control a contraction of the heart. Cousin seemed uplifted by a sort of lyrical ecstasy. He brandished his towel in one hand, and his soap in the other. He described his great future career as if he saw it spread out, written in big letters on the whiteness of the sheets.
On the sheet, which I was just looking at, there appeared suddenly a blot—a red blot which enlarged itself rapidly into a terrifying and splendid stain.
“Oh, dear!” murmured Cousin, “it’s bleeding again. One never gets any peace.”
I had called for help. A waterproof sheet was folded round Cousin’s thigh.
He said, “It’s all right; it’s all right. No need to worry.”
He said this in a voice that was emphatic but very weak—a voice made with the lips alone.
The blood ceased to flow, and they carried Cousin once again to the operating-table. There, he had a moment’s peace. The surgeons were washing their hands. I heard them consulting in low voices on Cousin’s case, and this made my heart beat and dried the tongue in my mouth.
Cousin saw me a long way off, and made me a little sign with his eyelids. I came close to him. He said to me:
“One never gets any peace. Ah! what was it I was saying to you? Yes, I was talking to you about styles. My strong point is that I understand the different styles—the Louis XV, the Empire, the Dutch, the Modern, and all the others. But it’s difficult. I want to explain to you——”
“Go to sleep, Cousin,” said the surgeon softly.
“I will explain all that to you when these gentlemen have done with me, when I wake up.”
Then, submissively, he began to breathe in the ether.
It is now a year since all this happened. I often think of the explanations that Cousin never gave me—that he will never give me.