Read Online The Fires of Autumn by Irène Némirovsky - Free Book Online

on …’ he muttered, and the wounded man smiled; at least, a slight movement of his lips made Martial understand that the man whose legs had been blown to bits was trying to smile.
    ‘The stretcher bearers will come and find us,’ the doctor thought. ‘My two lads must have got back by now and they’ll send someone.’
    If the roads weren’t blocked, the stretcher bearers would come in daylight to take the wounded men to the ambulances. Otherwise, they had to wait until dark, but night fell early at this time of year. In this rain, soon there would be only darkness, the sound of lapping water in the night, a blind and deaf battle – but relative safety, in spite of everything.
    ‘We’ll get back, my boy, won’t we? We’ll both make it back.’
    He talked to him almost tenderly; he felt almost fatherly towards this soldier, a kind of active, strong, masculine pity that no one had ever inspired in him until now. He changed the dressing on the wounds, gave him something to drink and waited.
    But no one came.
    ‘If you weren’t so big, we would manage on our own, wouldn’t we? But I can’t carry you on my back … you can see that very well … the elephant and the flea,’ he joked. ‘What did you do before the war? Farmer? Wine grower? You look like a wine grower. We’d be happier back at your place sipping a nice white wine, wouldn’t we?’
    He talked to him without expecting or wishing for any reply, he spoke for himself as much as for the wounded man, to forget, to make the time pass more quickly.
    The bombardment was incessant. Every now and again, a veritable earthquake shook the ruins. For a long time now, not a single pane of glass had remained in the windows; the wind and rain flowed freely into the room. Soon, when night fell, he would go out and find help; he knew that these ruins, which appeared deserted, gave signs of life at dusk. Soldiers returning from the front lines, the wounded, stretcher bearers, they all emerged from behind the bricks and mortar.
    He and the man were in the bedroom, near the bed with the swan-neck carvings; the walls were covered in yellow wallpaper dotted with little flowers; on the mantelpiece stood a lamp with a leafy pattern on its shade, some framed photos above and, in onecorner, a mahogany pedestal table with a bronze leg. In spite of everything, it was comforting to be surrounded by four walls with a roof over their heads. It was necessary to forget certain things, of course – the shattered windows, the ceiling that was crumbling in places, the plaster and rubble on the rug, the flooded cellar, the deep, muffled sound of explosions. But by making just a little mental effort, as he stared at the large bed – he lifted the sheets off the floor, smoothed them out, tucked them under the thick, soft mattress – he felt almost happy.
    ‘When the war is over, when I’m old, after I’ve retired, Thérèse and I …’
    He never finished his thought; it was cut through as if stabbed by a blinding light: a 105mm Howitzer shell had exploded in the bedroom, killing Martial. One entire section of the floor smashed open, crashed down, crushed deep into the earth, carrying the dead body with it. But the wounded man on his stretcher was not hit. He was found a while later by a division that had just been relieved and had left the front lines to get some rest. He was taken to an ambulance where the remains of both his legs were amputated. He survived, and is still alive today.

6
    Bernard was wounded. He was walking down a road, fleeing towards the rear, along the banks of the Aisne; the road was littered with dead bodies. Everything and everyone – columns of men, horses, trucks, cannon, long lines of refugees dragging carts full of furniture behind them, with women between the shafts, even a clump of bare trees, dead for four years, decapitated by shells or poisoned by gas that the autumn wind or a hail of bullets had violently bowed over in the direction of the