The Shadow Of The Mole

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

That evening, the German forces started their offensive with a round of shells hitting Bois de Bolante. It was freezing. The sky was a dome of cobalt blue, pin-pricked with blazing-white crystals. A night in which wolves would hunt, the men muttered to each other.

As the biggest mortar shells exploded, their vicious sparks pierced the night sky with red and turquoise; trees were etched like charcoaled skeletons against metallic dark. When mortars fell into the woods, they exploded with yellow-blue flames which extinguished themselves slowly in the snow. Waves of green light were broken by shards of exploding shrapnel, whistling through the air like tiny red suns. Bullets whizzed like angry bees, softly thudding when they clashed into the frozen ground. The salvoes of the new, quick-firing German artillery were heart-stopping. They made a hellish sound: a lightning-fast roll on a giant drum. And in all that dazzling, reflected light, now and then the shapes of the soldiers in their trenches were sharply outlined, then torn apart in the play of light and shadow through the succession of flashes, colour, reflections.

Enfin, it was a motley funfair, the French told each other breezily, to puff up their courage.

The cries of the wounded were weak and pitiful in this cacophony.

After a few hours it became clear that the lazaretto had to be abandoned. Denis did what he could to help evacuate the wounded. The whole regiment had to retreat. The worst injured were left behind. It was a death sentence and everybody knew it.

The stretchers creaked in the brittle winter air. The wounded sighed and moaned. The shelling resumed: a razor-sharp sound in the sky, vibrating in their bowels. A word materialized in Denis’s mind: banshees. When had he read about those keening female spirits, wailing their grief in the face of death? He couldn’t remember. His mind was drowning in the ear-splitting sound. The exploding shells transformed the wood into an incomprehensible labyrinth. Were they heading for the Ravin des Meurissons, or in the direction of Fille Morte?

The retreat had started in orderly fashion but was now in disarray. The bombardment sapped their energy. Separated groups, following the Captain’s orders, tried to reach the Ravin, but they lost contact with each other. The fighting platoons, under command of Réviron, would do all they could to slow down the advancing Germans, but nobody in the shattered medical platoon could tell if it was working. The men existed in a shrunken world, hearing only the roar of war, seeing only the mesmerizing shafts of light, as fierce grenades ripped the trees apart. Denis fixed his gaze on the stalwart back of The Mole, striding in front of him. He noticed the man’s swagger, unexpected at such a moment, as his head swung rhythmically from right to left. He wanted to speak to that broad, strong back, so ominous one moment and so pitiful the next. I want to live because there is no alternative to living, he wanted to tell The Mole.

Or was there an alternative? Had The Mole’s mind retreated into some bizarre state of non-living? What was the madness that froze his features? The young doctor was reminded of Gogol’s Diary of a Madman.

Madness becomes a different kind of reason, a wisdom which reveals the truth, unseen by a sane person.

When had he read that? Surely during his studies. And was it even Gogol who had penned this observation?

They stumbled on, not a military unit anymore, but a pack of exhausted animals, in flight. Their bodies were cold as stone, their hearts haunted by fear.

There were not enough gurneys to transport all the wounded, so they kept switching. Those who were still able to move at all, tried to cover as much distance as possible.

With his one arm, Denis supported a soldier who had lost a leg.

Sanity was challenged by the wisdom of the mad.

Yes. That was Gogol, wasn’t it?

Time became erratic. Sometimes it sped up, then slowed down to the point of stalling. The din of war had not lessened: on the contrary. The medical platoon pushed on until, under an ephemeral morning sky, it reached the right bank of the river L’Aire.

The water was coated with greyish ice. Some men tested it. They muttered their uncertainty. A few of them wanted to follow the bank to the north. Others argued that this would render them too visible. The Germans would launch a gas attack the minute they discovered a group following the river. Marie Estrange, her pale face partly hidden by the hood of her raincoat, stood apart from the rest, gazing at the left bank of the river.

“We don’t have much choice, do we?”

The brisk daylight caused the wounded on the stretchers to sneeze. Marie’s eyes shone fiercely. Her voice, though soft and without emphasis, carried weight.

“We have to choose between fire and ice.”

It happened as in a dream, swift and intense.

A few meters from the other bank, the ice cracked beneath Denis’s feet.

A sliding sensation, his stomach lurching into his throat.

Someone yelled.

The water underneath the ice was black.

The water seemed to throw itself at Denis and the one-legged soldier.

Afterwards, Denis would remember the episode as if a vicious animal had indeed jumped out of the hole in the ice.

Slipping, the young doctor instinctively let go of the wounded man. Hands pulled him away from the hole into which the one-legged soldier disappeared without a sound.

Denis got to his feet, helped by the hands. He stared at the almost perfect circle of oily black water. A tingling sensation in his chest. He looked up. The Mole held him like he was a child. “I was prepared to die,” the patient said with that mechanical voice, “but now I realize I have to fulfil a duty: I must tell my story. It has to be chronicled.”

Before Denis could answer, Marie Estrange slid past The Mole, holding a blanket in her hands, wrapping it around Denis’s body.

“You have to keep on moving or you’ll die of frostbite,” she said.

Only then did Denis notice that his body was trembling uncontrollably.