Yes, letters pass between us. When I read their letters I try to imagine their surroundings and the crass details of their life; the fir-trees of the Argonne, the name of a regiment which I know by heart like a prayer, frost-bitten feet, the incessant thunder, and the arrival of the postman which draws us a little closer together. Then there is Carency—the place makes no difference—the light cavalry.... Attack, formation, the first rank mowed down, the second, the third; he alone standing upright in the front of the fourth rank, a struggle lasting a century, the confused subsidence, and my portrait snug under his blue jacket. And that night last week when he was nearly dying of thirst and crawled out over the open field, groping for something to drink. A miracle, a pool! He fills his mess cup and empties it at one draught. He spits out thick threads, they hang from his mouth—bits of brains.... A pool of human blood from which he has quenched his thirst.
I receive a letter nearly every morning. The envelope burns in my fingers: the written lines make a pretense of talking and telling you things, as if I were not standing in front of him as you stand in front of a window-pane which you frost with your breath so that you can't see what's on the other side.
I write to them before I go to bed. Nothing important ever turns up, so I make a lot of the little everyday affairs—what happens at the office or at lunch in the restaurant where the people discuss and wrangle and the smells turn you sick. I tell them how forlorn the house looks, and how well the child is getting along in the country, that I do some work after dinner to make a little more money. Besides, there's always some anecdote to relate.... Twelve strokes cutting into the metallic night.... Sometimes when I fold my letter I have a sense of having written about somebody else.
Nevertheless, the thought of them is an obsession; it is a red point about which I develop and revolve and add to myself.
And sometimes, too, when I shut my eyes, bizarre notions swoop down on me, a horrid swarm of bats. "How many women are there to-night," I wonder, "who are tossing about in the thin warmth of their beds, distracted creatures, tormented, empty-armed, who, however, are the bigger for all this, easy in their minds and free already in their bitter freedom?"
Yes there are many women to-night without husbands or lovers who wonder as they lie in bed; then they sit up and lean on their elbows ... they don't know yet or suspect anything ... but they don't sleep, they can't sleep; it's too absurd to think that a woman can live all alone, sleep alone, even breathe. And then it might be that the closest union is a prison after all.
At last I fall asleep, and in the morning, in the bald, shivering twilight, I go back to my doings of the day before, somewhat cowardly doings. Dull habit, which greases the machinery of life, leads me blindly along the streets to the office.
Was it only two months ago that with despair in my heart I passed this corner where the chestnut-stand sends up its whistling steam? His letter in my bosom had told of the night attack and of his possible death; a brief, heart-rending farewell. Is he in less danger this morning, is he less cold, less hungry? I just passed the same corner worried for fear I might be late. The whole way I had been thinking of my dress and winter hat.
That's how you get used to the martyrdom of others.
Even if it is the flesh of your flesh that undergoes the martyrdom, even if it is the man of your love—ah, don't say no—you get used to it. In suffering one person cannot take the place of another, and pain cannot be shared. The first day, because grief turns your head, you think you are sharing the other person's pain, but the other days, all the other days?