Monday, October 11th
I was thinking all night in the train—how can I look at them, how can I speak to them in their depth of grief? I was thinking—when the old woman comes to open the door, what can I say to her? When the old man comes to take my big dressing-case and my little dressing-case, and my strap of books, how can I face him? Their son is dead.
The son of our concierge is dead. "Mort au Champ d'Honneur."
They were so proud of him. They did so worship him. He was such a clever boy that he had gone beyond anything they had ever imagined. If you just in passing saw him with them, you thought he did not belong to them at all. You thought he was a gentleman who was waiting a minute for some reason, there in the loge. But you would have known, if you had had time for it, how he worshipped them and was proud of them; they had worked so hard, his little fat slow sweet mother in the neat black dress, and his little stumpy cross father, who made it a point to come to the door in his shirt sleeves.
In those wonderful first days the son of our concierge went away.
It was on Tuesday, the second day, in the afternoon, about five o'clock. He had to be at the Gare d'Austerlitz at seven, and getting there was difficult.
I think that day was the most cruel and most wonderful of all. I shall always remember how hot it was, and how the leaves were fallen in the garden.
They told me how it seemed as if he really could not go. He kept starting, and coming back; and starting, and coming back. He hugged his little fat old mother, in her neat black dress; and hugged her, and had to turn back to hug her again. His father was going with him, to help carry the bundles. He was in his shirt sleeves. He kept blowing and blowing his nose. His mother had said she would not come to the door. But she did come to the door. She had said she would not stand to watch him go. But she did, crying and smiling and waving to him. He got to the street corner four different times. And three of the times he came back, to hug her just once again.
And he is killed.
There will be the little stumpy father in his shirt sleeves, and the little, so very respectable mother, fat and slow.
How can I look at them? What can I say to them?
They must open the door for us, and pay the taxi, and carry up our things.
How can I tell them that I kneel before their sorrow as if it were a throne?