Here Lies
CHARLES-ANDRÉ NARCY
Born April 27, 1878
Died December 21, 1908.
December 21, 1908 ... or January 22, 1909.... January 22, 1909—that’s today! Just a month ... no, not quite a month ... a month less one day.... I have been here on this tomb, on my tomb, waiting for death, my second death....
A month.... One month.... And all the while my eyes have been gazing down under this flagstone ... my eyes? those other eyes, I mean ... which see ... which insist on seeing ... implacably ... gazing down under this flagstone upon a coffin ... my coffin.... The coffin is quite new and undecayed.... But it holds only a skeleton ... a naked skeleton, without clothing ... its clothes ... my clothes, were far too thin ... they fell to dust immediately. Nothing except the bones are left; and they too are all but vanishing. On them, however, I can see something ... the letter of the colonel of artillery ... they buried it by mistake with the corpse ... it is still quite legible....
Yes, a skeleton ... a skeleton about to fall away to dust ... nothing but a skeleton.... How can I continue living if I am nothing, after all, but that skeleton plus this ruin of wasted flesh and bone that has collapsed on this grave here? Impossible, assuredly! Impossible, fortunately....
A month.... one month! The earth came up around the edges of this flagstone ... so heavy that it sank into the loosened ground.... Some workmen came and levelled the mound again, tamping the earth down under the stone ... so heavy the stone ... and heavy the earth under it.... Oh, my tired body cannot support such burdens longer....
* * * * * * * * *
Tomorrow when they come to bury me they will put me in another grave.... And I shall have that other earth and another stone to bear! No man surely was ever tormented thus!