Page:Rolland - Clerambault, tr. Miller, 1921.djvu/218



"How about the present?" asked Clerambault.

"Now? There is no going, back, but I often think that if I had to begin over again--"

"When did you change your mind about all these things?"

"That was the funniest thing of all. It was as soon as I was wounded. It was like getting out of bed in the morning. I had hardly slipped a leg out of life than I wanted to draw it in again. I had been so well off, and never thought of it, ass that I was! I can still see myself, as I came to. The ground was all torn up around me, worse even than the bodies themselves lying in heaps, mixed pell-mell like a lot of jack-straws; the ground simply reeked, as if it was itself bleeding. It was pitch dark, and at first I did not feel anything but the cold, except that I knew I was hit, all right.... I didn't know exactly what piece of me was missing, but I was not in a hurry to find out; I was afraid to know, afraid to stir, there was only one thing I was sure of, that I was alive. If I had only a minute left, I meant to hold on to it.... There was a rocket in the sky; I never thought what it meant, I didn't care, but the curve it made, and the light, like a bright flower.... I can't tell you how lovely it seemed. I simply drank it in.... I remembered when I was a child, one night near La Samaritaine. There were fireworks on the river. That child seemed to be someone else, who made me laugh, and yet I was sorry for him; and then I thought that it was a good thing to be alive, and grow up, and have something, somebody, no matter who to love ... even that rocket; and then the pain came on, and I began to howl, and didn't know any more till I found myself in the ambulance. There wasn't much fun in living then; it felt as if a dog was gnawing my bones ... might as well have stayed at the bottom of the hole ... but even then how fine it seemed to live the way I used to, just live on every day without