A farewell to arms
“Because I don’t want to die and leave you, but I get so tired of it and
I feel I’m going to die.”
“Nonsense. Everybody feels that.”
“Sometimes I know I’m going to die.”
“You won’t. You can’t.”
“But what if I should?”
“I won’t let you.”
“Give it to me quick. _Give it to me!_”
Then afterward, “I won’t die. I won’t let myself die.”
“Of course you won’t.”
“You’ll stay with me?”
“Not to watch it.”
“No, just to be there.”
“Sure. I’ll be there all the time.”
“You’re so good to me. There, give it to me. Give me some more. _It’s
not working!_”
I turned the dial to three and then four. I wished the doctor would come
back. I was afraid of the numbers above two.
Finally a new doctor came in with two nurses and they lifted Catherine
onto a wheeled stretcher and we started down the hall. The stretcher
went rapidly down the hall and into the elevator where every one had to
crowd against the wall to make room; then up, then an open door and out
of the elevator and down the hall on rubber wheels to the operating
room. I did not recognize the doctor with his cap and mask on. There was
another doctor and more nurses.
“_They’ve got to give me something_,” Catherine said. “_They’ve got to
give me something._ Oh please, doctor, give me enough to do some good!”
One of the doctors put a mask over her face and I looked through the
door and saw the bright small amphitheatre of the operating room.
“You can go in the other door and sit up there,” a nurse said to me.
There were benches behind a rail that looked down on the white table and
the lights. I looked at Catherine. The mask was over her face and she
was quiet now. They wheeled the stretcher forward. I turned away and
walked down the hall. Two nurses were hurrying toward the entrance to
the gallery.
“It’s a Cæsarean,” one said. “They’re going to do a Cæsarean.”
The other one laughed, “We’re just in time. Aren’t we lucky?” They went
in the door that led to the gallery.
Another nurse came along. She was hurrying too.
“You go right in there. Go right in,” she said.
“I’m staying outside.”
She hurried in. I walked up and down the hall. I was afraid to go in. I
looked out the window. It was dark but in the light from the window I
could see it was raining. I went into a room at the far end of the hall
and looked at the labels on bottles in a glass case. Then I came out and
stood in the empty hall and watched the door of the operating room.
A doctor came out followed by a nurse. He held something in his two
hands that looked like a freshly skinned rabbit and hurried across the
corridor with it and in through another door. I went down to the door he
had gone into and found them in the room doing things to a new-born
child. The doctor held him up for me to see. He held him by the heels
and slapped him.
“Is he all right?”
“He’s magnificent. He’ll weigh five kilos.”
I had no feeling for him. He did not seem to have anything to do with
me. I felt no feeling of fatherhood.
“Aren’t you proud of your son?” the nurse asked. They were washing him
and wrapping him in something. I saw the little dark face and dark hand,
but I did not see him move or hear him cry. The doctor was doing
something to him again. He looked upset.
“No,” I said. “He nearly killed his mother.”
“It isn’t the little darling’s fault. Didn’t you want a boy?”
“No,” I said. The doctor was busy with him. He held him up by the feet
and slapped him. I did not wait to see it. I went out in the hall. I
could go in now and see. I went in the door and a little way down the
gallery. The nurses who were sitting at the rail motioned for me to come
down where they were. I shook my head. I could see enough where I was.
I thought Catherine was dead. She looked dead. Her face was gray, the
part of it that I could see. Down below, under the light, the doctor was
sewing up the great long, forcep-spread, thick-edged, wound. Another
doctor in a mask gave the anæsthetic. Two nurses in masks handed things.
It looked like a drawing of the Inquisition. I knew as I watched I could
have watched it all, but I was glad I hadn’t. I do not think I could
have watched them cut, but I watched the wound closed into a high welted
ridge with quick skilful-looking stitches like a cobbler’s, and was
glad. When the wound was closed I went out into the hall and walked up
and down again. After a while the doctor came out.
“How is she?”
“She is all right. Did you watch?”
He looked tired.
“I saw you sew up. The incision looked very long.”
“You thought so?”
“Yes. Will that scar flatten out?”
“Oh, yes.”
After a while they brought out the wheeled stretcher and took it very
rapidly down the hallway to the elevator. I went along beside it.
Catherine was moaning. Downstairs they put her in the bed in her room. I
sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. There was a nurse in the room. I
got up and stood by the bed. It was dark in the room. Catherine put out
her hand, “Hello, darling,” she said. Her voice was very weak and tired.
“Hello, you sweet.”
“What sort of baby was it?”
“Sh—don’t talk,” the nurse said.
“A boy. He’s long and wide and dark.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s fine.”
I saw the nurse look at me strangely.
“I’m awfully tired,” Catherine said. “And I hurt like hell. Are you all
right, darling?”
“I’m fine. Don’t talk.”
“You were lovely to me. Oh, darling, I hurt dreadfully. What does he
look like?”
“He looks like a skinned rabbit with a puckered-up old-man’s face.”
“You must go out,” the nurse said. “Madame Henry must not talk.”
“I’ll be outside,” I said.
“Go and get something to eat.”
“No. I’ll be outside.” I kissed Catherine. She was very gray and weak
and tired.
“May I speak to you?” I said to the nurse. She came out in the hall with
me. I walked a little way down the hall.
“What’s the matter with the baby?” I asked.
“Didn’t you know?”
“No.”
“He wasn’t alive.”
“He was dead?”
“They couldn’t start him breathing. The cord was caught around his neck
or something.”
“So he’s dead.”
“Yes. It’s such a shame. He was such a fine big boy. I thought you
knew.”
“No,” I said. “You better go back in with Madame.”
I sat down on the chair in front of a table where there were nurses’
reports hung on clips at the side and looked out of the window. I could
see nothing but the dark and the rain falling across the light from the
window. So that was it. The baby was dead. That was why the doctor
looked so tired. But why had they acted the way they did in the room
with him? They supposed he would come around and start breathing
probably. I had no religion but I knew he ought to have been baptized.
But what if he never breathed at all. He hadn’t. He had never been
alive. Except in Catherine. I’d felt him kick there often enough. But I
hadn’t for a week. Maybe he was choked all the time. Poor little kid. I
wished the hell I’d been choked like that. No I didn’t. Still there
would not be all this dying to go through. Now Catherine would die. That
was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You
never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and
the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed
you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldo. But
they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and
they would kill you.
Once in camp I put a log on top of the fire and it was full of ants. As
it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the
centre where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When
there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out,
their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they
were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward
the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire.
I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a
splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw
it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do
anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have
the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the
cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.
So now I sat out in the hall and waited to hear how Catherine was. The
nurse did not come out, so after a while I went to the door and opened
it very softly and looked in. I could not see at first because there was
a bright light in the hall and it was dark in the room. Then I saw the
nurse sitting by the bed and Catherine’s head on a pillow, and she all
flat under the sheet. The nurse put her finger to her lips, then stood
up and came to the door.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s all right,” the nurse said. “You should go and have your supper
and then come back if you wish.”
I went down the hall and then down the stairs and out the door of the
hospital and down the dark street in the rain to the café. It was
brightly lighted inside and there were many people at the tables. I did
not see a place to sit, and a waiter came up to me and took my wet coat
and hat and showed me a place at a table across from an elderly man who
was drinking beer and reading the evening paper. I sat down and asked
the waiter what the _plat du jour_ was.
“Veal stew—but it is finished.”
“What can I have to eat?”
“Ham and eggs, eggs with cheese, or _choucroute_.”
“I had _choucroute_ this noon,” I said.
“That’s true,” he said. “That’s true. You ate _choucroute_ this noon.”
He was a middle-aged man with a bald top to his head and his hair
slicked over it. He had a kind face.
“What do you want? Ham and eggs or eggs with cheese?”
“Ham and eggs,” I said, “and beer.”
“A demi-blonde?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I remembered,” he said. “You took a demi-blonde this noon.”
I ate the ham and eggs and drank the beer. The ham and eggs were in a
round dish—the ham underneath and the eggs on top. It was very hot and
at the first mouthful I had to take a drink of beer to cool my mouth. I
was hungry and I asked the waiter for another order. I drank several
glasses of beer. I was not thinking at all but read the paper of the man
opposite me. It was about the break through on the British front. When
he realized I was reading the back of his paper he folded it over. I
thought of asking the waiter for a paper, but I could not concentrate.
It was hot in the café and the air was bad. Many of the people at the
tables knew one another. There were several card games going on. The
waiters were busy bringing drinks from the bar to the tables. Two men
came in and could find no place to sit. They stood opposite the table
where I was. I ordered another beer. I was not ready to leave yet. It
was too soon to go back to the hospital. I tried not to think and to be
perfectly calm. The men stood around but no one was leaving, so they
went out. I drank another beer. There was quite a pile of saucers now on
the table in front of me. The man opposite me had taken off his
spectacles, put them away in a case, folded his paper and put it in his
pocket and now sat holding his liqueur glass and looking out at the
room. Suddenly I knew I had to get back. I called the waiter, paid the
reckoning, got into my coat, put on my hat and started out the door. I
walked through the rain up to the hospital.
Upstairs I met the nurse coming down the hall.
“I just called you at the hotel,” she said. Something dropped inside me.
“What is wrong?”
“Mrs. Henry has had a hemorrhage.”
“Can I go in?”
“No, not yet. The doctor is with her.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“It is very dangerous.” The nurse went into the room and shut the door.