They sent me to this hospital because it was the only hospital in Paris admitting women that had room for me: known officially as the city hospital for contagious diseases, among Americans it passes as “the pest-house.”
They think I’m a weird one here, because I want my window open. Twenty-nine times a day at least an infirmière will come hurrying in and bang it shut and twenty-nine times a day I crawl out of bed and open it again.
The nursing here is all done by infirmières, or untrained women under the direction of two real nurses, one in charge of this wing during the day, the other during the night. Some of these infirmières go about in curl papers, others wear sabots. They mean well enough, but they are overworked, and frankly peasant types, with little education and almost no notion of cleanliness or of much else that is supposed to pertain to nursing. Last night a fat old soul without many teeth came waddling into my room to have a look at that interesting curiosity, la pauvre petite Dame Américaine. When she saw my open window she was so overcome with astonishment that she hurried out and fetched a companion to regard the phenomenon. The two of them stood and stared at it and discussed the matter between themselves for quite a while, then the fat one turned to me and remarked with a toothless but engaging smile; it was very warm in America where I lived, was it not? When I replied that, instead, it was much colder in winter there than here in Paris, they looked aghast and flatly incredulous. Their only explanation of the matter had been, it seemed, that I was accustomed to living in the tropics and just didn’t have sense enough to suit my habits to the atmosphere.
Just outside the hospital there is a munitions factory. At night the light over the front door shines into my room and day and night the machinery keeps up an incessant thudding hum that says as plain as words over and over and over: Kill the Boches. Kill the Boches. Kill the Boches. Once in a long while the machines stop for a few moments in order, I suppose, to catch their breath and then I grow dreadfully worried, for I know that if someone doesn’t keep on killing the Boches every second, they will be breaking through the lines and pouring in over France in great drowning grey waves.
January 27. I haven’t got the measles after all; I have the German measles, only they don’t call it that in French I am glad to say. At first I was so very red and speckled that they thought I had the rougeole, but now they have decided it is only the rubeole after all. A concourse of doctors considered me yesterday morning and pronounced the verdict. “But then,” I demanded, “if it’s only the rubeole can’t I be leaving tout de suite?” For the French do not consider quarantine necessary for the rubeole. “Eight days,” they answered, and when I expostulated they turned on their collective heels and marched callously out the door, each one holding up eight fingers apiece as a parting rejoinder.
Last night I resisted a great temptation. This place is full of doors with little glass panes in them. As I lay awake in bed in the middle of the night, a wild desire grew on me to seize my big green bottle of mineral water by the neck and see how many panes of glass I could account for before they nabbed me. I had a perfect vision of myself, flying down the hall in my little flour-sack chemise of a night-gown, long legs stretching out beneath, going zip, bang, right and left into those window panes. I have seldom wanted to do anything quite so badly. And then just to top off with I was going to wring the interne’s neck. He is a little shrimp of a man—that interne, with no chin and a sort of scrawny picked-chicken neck, a neck that gets on one’s nerves.
When they sent me to this hospital I comforted myself with the thought that I would at least learn a little French while staying here, but the only thing I have learned so far is that gargariser means gargle and any goose might have guessed that.
January 28. The Chief has sent me a rose-pink cyclamen. It is a lovely thing and very elaborately done up with pink crêpe paper and a large bow of shell-pink ribbon. Now I am no longer an object of any interest. Every last doctor, nurse, interne and infirmière who comes into my room to take a look at la petite Mees, immediately turns his or her back on me and admires the cyclamen instead. I gather such objects are rare in French hospitals, for they examine and discuss it at the greatest length, always winding up with the remark that it must have “cost very dear.”
Not having anything else to do I lie with my eyes shut and think. And of course I have been thinking chiefly about Company A. I have thought among other things of a play, or rather a dramatic charade in three acts, which we might give in the hut. It is to be entitled Slum. In the first act,—Bill— three doughboys hit on a plan to encompass the Kaiser’s death and so become rich by gaining the proffered reward:—they will send him a dish of slum! The second act,—et—shows a room in the Potsdam palace with Kaiser Bill and His Side Whiskers, the Lord High Chancellor, discussing the food situation. The slum appears; the Kaiser partakes of it and falls writhing to the floor. The last act shows a typical barn-loft billet, with rats squeaking, chickens clucking et cetera, where the Soldiers Three of the first act have their lodging. They receive the tidings of the Kaiser’s death; wild rejoicings ensue, as in fancy they spend their fortunes; only to be cut short by the discovery that the cook who made the slum has already claimed the reward. I think we can stage it successfully, though the costumes for the Kaiser and His Side Whiskers present some difficulties. One thing only troubles me; will it hurt the Mess Sergeant’s feelings?