Journal of Small Things

by Helen Mackay

Hospital, Thursday, November 11th

The sparrows were all talking together in the trees of the great central court of the hospital.

I met Madame Bayle as usual in the first court. We almost always meet there, as I arrive and she is crossing to the store-house on the other side of the entrance. Usually we stop and stand a minute, listening to the conversation of the sparrows.

Madame Bayle is the chief of the linen-room of our pavilion. She is a dreadful fat shining shuffling person, who hates me because I wear white shoes. Also because once I made her unlock the linen-room for me to take out some things I thought were mine, and the things were not mine, and she was angry with me. She is always trying to get me into trouble to pay me back. But we both love the birds in the courtyard. When we meet in the courts these days we say to one another, "Voilà nos pauvres petits pierrots!" and are friends for a moment.

This morning I ran past. I was afraid if I stopped she might give me news of my ward.

The buildings of the second court have not been militarised. It is the pavilion of the defective children. None of the children were out in the court this morning. The lights in their rooms were still burning, it was so dark a morning; I could see some of the children making up the rows of little cots, and some of them clearing away the bowls and pitchers from the long table. There are some who always sit with their hands in their laps and their heads hanging. They have dreadful little faces. Some of the children can do lessons a little, and some of them seem quite bright, and play always the same game, hands around in a ring, in a corner of the refectory.

The third court is for the wounded of our service. The recreation-room and various offices and kitchens open on to it, and the windows of the two storeys of wards look over it.

The lift was down, and Cordier called to me; but I ran past, and up the two flights of stairs, away from him as from Madame Bayle.

Cordier had been given charge of the lift. He is one of the wounded in the face. It is not his eyes. It is the lower part of his face. They are beginning to take off some of the bandages. He did not mind so much while the bandages quite hid it. But now he minds dreadfully. This morning I hated dreadfully the sounds he made calling to me. They say he will never be able to speak distinctly again. I was afraid he would be hurt because I ran by. But I would have known from his eyes if what I had dreaded had happened in my ward.

I took off my things in the patronne's bureau, and went across the passage to the door of the ward where I help every day with the surgical dressings.

It is always strange to open the door of the ward when one first comes on. So much may have happened in the night.

I stood outside the door. The door has glass panes that are washed over with white paint so one cannot see through. There are places where the paint has not held at the edges, and one can stoop and look in.

I could not see the bed of Number 29 from there, but I would know from the look of the men in the ward.

As I stooped, the patronne came out from the chief's bureau.

I heard her step and turned.

She said, "He is very bad. If they amputate he will probably die of the shock. It will have to be the left leg too, at the thigh. It is you who must tell him. If they do not do it he will die of poisoning certainly."

She stamped her foot at me and said, "Now don't look like that. You've got to tell him. He will take it better from you." The blotches of her arms were very purple. She said, "They are going to do it this morning. Go and tell him." Then she went back into the chief's bureau.

I went into the ward. I still could not see the Number 29 because of the hoop, like a little tent, that keeps the weight of the blankets from his legs.

Madame Marthe, the panseuse, was not in the ward. The infirmière, Madame Alice, was cleaning the night-tables down by the other door.

Every one called, "Bonjour, Madame; bonjour, Madame!"

"Bonjour, les embusqués!"

That is our great joke, that they are all embusqués.

I went across to Number 29 and looked at him over the hoop.

He was lying with his eyes wide open. They are like the eyes of deer and oxen. He is a very big man, very ugly, with an old scar over half of his face. Such an ugly, funny face; the shadow of death has no right to be upon such a ridiculous face. His face was made for making people laugh. He always kept the whole ward laughing. He used to make me laugh in the midst of his horrible pansements. No matter what he suffered, he never used to make a sound. I almost cannot bear it when they suffer silently. If they scream, I really don't care much. He used to try to wink at me to make me laugh.

I knew this about him, that his people are woodcutters in the mountains between the valleys of the Maurienne and the Tarentaise. I do not know why he went away to strange new countries. He must be thirty-five years old. In wildernesses he heard of the war three months after it began. He was wounded seven months ago, and was sent from hospital to hospital, getting always worse. He is not the sort of creature to be in a hospital. He looks absurd in a bed. He used to tell me of throwing one's blanket over a heap of pine boughs and sweet fern. He had much fever, and he would tell me about the clear, cool, perfect water of a certain forest spring.

I thought, standing there, how he would be wanting to drag himself into some hole of rocks and great tree-trunks, where no one saw.

The clock was striking eight. They would not begin to operate before ten. He would have to think of it for two hours, lying there. He looked at me very steadily. I thought, "It is I who must tell him, it is I who must tell him." He tried to wink at me, and then he shut his eyes. I thought, "I will wait a little."

I went to the apparatus in the middle of the ward and began to get things ready for the panseuse.

I tried to talk to the men in the beds near, the 9, Barbet, whose fever had gone down nicely; and 10, the pepère, who has had his right hand amputated; and 6 and 7 opposite, who are both young and gay and getting well fast. But I could not talk.

He is only one of thousands and thousands. In the hospitals, in the dreadful fields, along the roads, they are dying.

Those of the men who could sit up and use their hands were folding compresses.

Twenty-one started a song and some of the others took it up. They sing softly, many of them have very nice voices.

Père Mathurin
N'a pas de chaussons!
Il en aura;
Il n'en aura pas.
Roulons-le, Père Mathurin,
Roulons-le
Jusqu'à demain!

I got everything ready on the dressing-table. I kept all the time looking at the clock. Every few minutes I passed where I could see Number 29. He lay always with his eyes shut. Madame Alice had finished her cleaning and had gone to tidy up. Madame Marthe would come back and we would have to begin the dressings.

Dans une brouette
Père Mathurin
Roulons-le
Jusqu'à demain.

When I was unrolling the big cotton, I felt sure, suddenly, that 29 was waiting for me. It was odd, for I could not see him round the hoop; I went to him.

His eyes were open and he tried to say something. His mouth was black with fever.

I leaned down close.

I was thinking, "I've got to tell him."

But he said, "Don't worry, I know."

I stood there and I did not say anything. I did not even look at him. I looked quite away out of the windows to the treetops and the blue roofs and the wet close sky.

He lay perfectly still, and I just stood there.

The men went on singing—

Père Mathurin,
Il en aura,
Il n'en aura pas——

Madame Marthe had come in and was going about her work. She did not call me. It was nice of her not to call me.

She is quick and very clever and nervous and bad-tempered. She is rather horrid for me usually, but to-day she has been so nice that I shall always remember.

She went on with the dressings. I stood quite silently by the bed of 29.

After a while the chief came in with the patronne and all the doctors. They came to Number 29 Madame Marthe came, and I left her with them. They talked for a few minutes with her and then went out.

I helped her get him ready, and then Joseph came with the stretcher.

I went with him down the corridor to wait at the door of the operating room. They give the chloroform usually at the door. It seemed dreadfully long.

I said, "You don't mind my waiting with you, do you? I'd like to."

It was such a silly thing to say that he tried to laugh at me.

I thought they would give him the chloroform here at the door of the operating room and that I would run when he was once under. But they threw open the doors, and wheeled the stretcher cart in, and called to me to help lift him to the table. And then to help with this, with that, quickly. And I stayed and helped through it all. They thought he was going to die there on the table. Afterwards I realized how horrible it had been. When we got back to the ward, the patronne was there with Madame Marthe.

The patronne is a wonderful nurse. If any one can get a man through it, she can. She is dreadful. She screams from one end of the ward to the other and stamps her foot, and uses hideous words. But she can storm a man back into life. And suddenly all the rage will be a coaxing, and you know that she cares about it. "J'ai cela dans la peau," she says.

She shouted the "cinq lettres" at me, "What are you staring at? Get on with your work. He's through that, and he's not going to die."

Number 14
Sunday, December 5th

The mother of little 14, Louis, has come to see him.

When I came into the ward this morning, I was frightened to see that there were people about the bed of little Louis.

I don't know why we always call him little Louis, for he is a great long boy as he lies there in his bed; he must have stood splendidly tall and strong before.

But it was only that Madame Marthe and Madame Alice were standing there, talking with a tall fine woman, who wore the black shawl and small black ribbon cap of the country of Arles. The shawl and the cap gave to the mother of little Louis that special dignity the peasant costume always gives, oddly touching in the lonely city and in this huge strange house of grief.

She was sitting quietly by the bed of little Louis in the corner, talking to him and smiling, and talking to the nurses.

Little Louis was smiling with big tears rolling down his cheeks.

Madame Alice had the pail of dirty water on the floor beside her and stood leaning on the handle of her mop. She is a big well-built woman, handsome and sullen. She is sullen even when she does kind things. You would not believe that she was kind. She had her skirt pinned up to her knees and wore the huge wooden sabots she always puts on when she scrubs the floors.

Madame Marthe stood cleaning her nails with the pansement scissors. She had not yet put on her cap with the black streamers and the ribbon of three colours. She has great coils of pale hair.

Once she said to me, "I suppose you wear a hat in the street?" I said, "Usually." And she said, "I would not wear a hat if I went to see a king."

She and Madame Alice and the mother of little Louis were all laughing together over our especial joke, that Louis will be very wicked as soon as he is a little better, and will make us great trouble in the ward.

Louis' father died two months ago, and Louis does not know. He is so ill that he cannot be allowed to know. His mother had to answer all his questions about home, and explain that his father had not been able to come because it was lambing time. She had to smile, and make it seem that everything was going well in the house that little Louis would never see again. She had to make it seem as if the patronne had not told her that little Louis was dying.

He would have liked to have had her left alone with him. But she was grateful when one or another of us found a minute to come and stand there and smile also.