You could hear the muffled vibrations of the motor which generated the light. Filled up again to overflowing, the steriliser disturbed the world with its piercing lament. Small radiators were snorting like animals when they are stroked the wrong way. It all made a savage, flamboyant music, and the men who were moving about seemed to perform rhythmically a religious dance—a kind of austere and mysterious ballet.
The stretchers glided in between the tables like canoes in an archipelago. The instruments were set out on spotless linen and sparkled like jewels in glass cases; and the little Madagascar negroes, alert and obedient, took great care in handling their burden. They stopped on the word of command, and waited. Their dark slender necks yoked with the straps, and their fingers clutching the handles of the stretchers, reminded one of sacred apes trained to carry idols. The heads and feet of the two wan and enormous cuirassiers stuck out beyond the limits of the stretchers.
A few gestures that were almost ritualistic, and the wounded men were placed on the operating-tables.
At that moment I caught the eye of one of the negroes, and I experienced a feeling of extreme discomfort. It was the calm deep look of a child or a young dog. The savage was slowly turning his head from left to right and looked at the extraordinary men and the extraordinary things all around him. His dark eyes stopped lightly on all the wonderful parts of this workshop devoted to repairing the human machine. And those eyes, which betrayed no thought, were on that account even more disquieting. For one second I was fool enough to think “How astonished he must be!” But the absurd thought soon left me, and I was overwhelmed with unutterable shame.
The four negroes left the room. That afforded me a little comfort. The wounded looked dazed and bewildered. The ambulance men hastened to bind their hands and feet and rub them with alcohol. The masked men were giving orders and moving about the tables with the deliberate gestures of officiating priests.
“Who is the head here?” I whispered to some one.
He was pointed out to me. He was a man of medium height and was sitting down, with his gloved hands held up, dictating something to a clerk.
Fatigue, the blinding light, the booming of the guns, the rumble of the machinery acted as a sort of lucid drug on my brain. I remained fixed where I was, in a veritable whirl of thought. Everything here worked for one’s good ... it was civilisation finding within itself the supreme reply, the corrective to its destructive excesses; nothing less than this complex organism would suffice to reduce by the smallest degree the immense evil creation of the machine age. I thought again of the indecipherable look of the savage, and my emotion was a mixture of pity, anger and loathing....
The man who, as I had learnt, was in charge of the operating theatre had finished dictating. He remained fixed in the position of a heraldic messenger and seemed to be absorbed in thought. I noticed that behind his spectacles gleamed a look that was solemn, tranquil and sad, though full of purpose. Scarcely anything of his face was visible, the mask hiding his mouth and beard; but on his temples could be seen a few fresh grey hairs, and a large swollen vein marked his forehead, betraying the strained efforts of a tense will.
“The man’s unconscious,” said some one.