The Book of Susan: A Novel

by Lee Wilson Dodd

And that is all I just then clearly remember. . . . I am told that nine bombs fell in a sweeping circle throughout this district; one of them, in the very courtyard of the War Office; one of them—of 300 kilos—perhaps a square from where we stood. There was a rush past of hurtling fragments—glass, chimney-tiles, chips of masonry, que sais-je?—and even this I report only because I have been credibly so informed.

What next I experienced was pain, unlocalized at first, yet somehow damnably concentrated: pure, white-hot essence of pain. And through the stiff hell of it I was, and was not, aware of someone—some one—some one—murmuring love and pity and mortal anguish. . . .

"Ambo—you wouldn't leave me—not you! Not you, Ambo—not alone. . . ."

The pain dimmed off from me in an ebbing, dull-red wave; great coils of palpable darkness swirled down upon me to smother me; I struggled to rise from beneath them—fling them off. . . . From an infinite distance, a woman's cry threaded through them, like a needle through mufflings of wool, and pricked me to an instant, a single instant, of clear consciousness. I opened my eyes on Susan's; I strove to answer them, tell her I understood. Susan says that I did answer them—that I even smiled. But I can feel back now only to a vast sinking away, depth under depth under depth, down—down—down—down. . . .

XI

The rest, however, I thank God, is not yet silence; though it is high time to make an end of this long and all too faulty record.

They did various things to me at the hospital, from time to time; they removed hard substances from me that were distinctly out of place in my interior; they also removed certain portions of my authentic anatomy—three fingers of my left hand, among others, and my left leg to the knee. This was not in itself agreeable, and I shall always regret their loss; yet those weeks of progressive operation and tardy recuperation were, up to that period, the happiest, the most fulfilled weeks of my life. And surely egotism can go no farther! For these weeks of my triumphant happiness were altogether the darkest, saddest, cruellest weeks of the war. In a world without light, my heart sang in my breast, sang hallelujahs, and would not be cast down. Susan loved me—me—had always loved me! Rheims soon might fall, Amiens might fall, the channel ports, Paris, London, the Seven Seas—the World! What did it matter! Susan loved me—loved me!

And even now—though Susan is ashamed for me that I can say it—though I feel that I ought to be ashamed that I can say it—though I wonder that I am not—though I try to be—well, I am not ashamed!

Final Note, by Susan—insisted upon: "But all the same, secretly, he is ashamed. For there's nobody in the world like Ambo, whether for dearness or general absurdity. Why shouldn't he have been a little happy, if he could manage it, throughout those interminable weeks of physical pain? He suffered day and night, preferring not to be kept under morphine too constantly. I won't say he was a hero; he was, but there's nothing to be puffed up about nowadays in that. If the war has proved anything, it is that in nearly every man, when his particular form of Zero Hour sounds for him, some kind of a self-despising hero is waiting, and ready to act or endure or be broken and cast away. We all know that now. It's the cornerstone for a possible Utopia: no, it's more than that—it's the whole foundation. But I didn't mean to say so when I started this note.

"All I meant to say was that you must never take Ambo au pied de la lettre. I'm not in the least as he's hymned me—but that, surely, you've guessed between the lines. What is much more important is that he's not in the least as he has painted himself. But unless I were to rewrite his whole book for him—which wouldn't be tactful in an otherwise spoiled and contented wife—I could never make this clear, or do my strange, too sensitive man the full justice he deserves. He's—oh, but what's the use! There isn't anybody in the world like Ambo."