I HEARD THE SINGING OF THE ENEMIES with matching blue eyes very clearly, because that evening I happened to be right next to their trench. God’s truth, I had crawled right up to them without their seeing me, and I waited until they’d finished singing before I caught one. I waited until silence fell, until they had relaxed, and I extracted one like you’d extract a tiny baby from its mother’s belly, with a violent tenderness to minimize the shock, to minimize the sound. I did it this way because I wanted to catch the master artilleryman who had killed Jean-Baptiste. That evening, God’s truth, I took many risks to avenge my friend Jean-Baptiste, who had wanted to die because of a perfumed letter.
I crawled for hours beneath the barbed wire to get right next to their trench. I covered myself in mud so they wouldn’t see me. Immediately after the shell that decapitated Jean-Baptiste, I threw myself on the ground and crawled for hours in the mud. Captain Armand had long since whistled for the attack to end when I arrived right next to the enemy trench, which was also open like the sex of an enormous woman, a woman the size of the earth. So I moved even closer to the edge of the enemy’s domain and then I waited, waited. For a long time they sang the songs of men, the songs of soldiers, beneath the stars. I waited, waited until they fell asleep. Except one. Except one who’d leaned up against the wall of the trench to smoke. You shouldn’t smoke in a war, the enemy will spot you. I spotted him because of his tobacco smoke, thanks to the blue smoke that rose into the sky from his trench.
God’s truth, I took an enormous risk. As soon as I noticed, a few steps to my left, the blue smoke rising into the black sky, I slid like a snake along the side of the trench. I was covered with mud from head to toe. I was like the mamba snake that takes on the color of the earth on which it slithers. I was invisible and I slid, slid, slid as fast as I could to get myself right next to the blue smoke the enemy soldier was blowing into the black air. I really took a big risk and that’s why what I did that night, for my white friend who wanted to die at war, I did only once.
Without knowing what was happening in the trench, without being able to see a thing, I slung my head and my arms into the enemy trench. I blindly dangled the top half of my body into the trench to capture the blue-eyed enemy who was smoking below me. God’s truth, I was lucky the trench had no roof in that spot. I was lucky the enemy soldier who was blowing blue smoke into the black sky was alone. I was lucky to be able to clap my hand over his mouth before he had a chance to scream. God’s truth, I lucked out that the proprietor of my fourth trophy was small and light, like a child of fifteen or sixteen. In my collection of hands, he gave me the smallest one. I was lucky that night not to be spotted by the friends, by the trench-mates of the little blue-eyed soldier. They must all have been sleeping, worn out by the day’s attack, in which Jean-Baptiste was killed first by the master artilleryman. After Jean-Baptiste’s head fell, they had continued to fire, enraged, without stopping to breathe. Many of my trench-mates died on that day. But I managed to run, to fire, to throw myself on my belly and crawl beneath the barbed wire. Firing as I ran, throwing myself on my belly and crawling into la terre à personne, “no-man’s-land,” as the captain said.
God’s truth, the enemies on the other side were very tired. That night, they lowered their guard after singing. I don’t know why the little enemy soldier wasn’t tired that night. Why he went to smoke his tobacco after his trench-mates had gone to sleep. God’s truth, it was fate that made me capture him and not someone else. It was written on high that it would be him I would find in the middle of the night in the hot pit of the enemy trench. Now I know, I understand that nothing is simple about what’s written on high. I know, I understand, but I don’t tell anyone because now I think what I want, for no one but myself, ever since Mademba Diop died. I believe I understand that what’s written on high is only a copy of what man writes here below. God’s truth, I believe that God always lags behind us. It’s all He can do to assess the damage. He couldn’t have wanted me to catch the little blue-eyed soldier in the hot pit of the enemy trench.
I don’t believe the proprietor of the fourth hand in my collection had done anything wrong. I could read it in his blue eyes when I gutted him in la terre à personne, “no-man’s-land,” as the captain said. I could see in his eyes that he was a good boy, a good son, still too young to have known a woman, but a good future husband, certainly. And here I had to fall on him, like death and destruction on innocence. That’s war: it’s when God lags behind the music of men, when he can’t untangle the threads of so many fates at the same time. God’s truth, you can’t blame God. Who’s to say He didn’t want to punish the parents of the little enemy soldier by making him die at war by my black hand? Who’s to say He didn’t want to punish the little enemy soldier’s grandparents because He’d run out of time to redress the suffering they’d caused their own children? Who’s to say? God’s truth, God may have lagged behind in his punishment of the little enemy soldier’s family. I am well positioned to know that he did punish them, gravely, by punishing their son or grandson. Because the little enemy soldier suffered as did the others when I extracted the insides of his body to expose them to the air outside, in a little pile next to his still-living body. But I really did come to pity him, very, very quickly. I minimized the punishment, through him, of his grandparents or parents. I let him beg me only once, tears in eyes, before I finished him off. He could not have been the one who disemboweled my more-than-brother Mademba Diop. He also could not have been the one who pulverized, with a single shell, the head of my friend Jean-Baptiste, the joker driven to despair by a perfumed letter.
And maybe the little blue-eyed enemy soldier was standing guard when I threw myself headfirst into the hot trench, arms outstretched, without knowing who I would catch. I carried him out with his gun hitched to his shoulder. A soldier standing guard shouldn’t smoke. Any blue smoke, in the darkest night, is visible. That’s how I spotted him, my little blue-eyed soldier, proprietor of my fourth trophy, of my fourth hand. But, God’s truth, I pitied him in no-man’s-land. I killed him as soon as he begged me, once, with his blue eyes filled with tears. It was God who’d made him stand guard.
It was after I returned to the trench that was our home with my fourth small hand and the gun it had cleaned, oiled, loaded, and fired that my soldier-friends, white and black, avoided me like the plague. When I returned home crawling in the mud like a black mamba returning to its nest after rat-hunting, no one dared touch me anymore. No one was happy to see me. They must have believed that the first hand brought bad luck to that little fool Jean-Baptiste and that the evil eye would fall on anyone who touched me or even looked at me. And Jean-Baptiste wasn’t there anymore to rally the others to rejoice at seeing me return alive. Everything is double: one side good, one bad. Jean-Baptiste, when he was still alive, showed the others the good side of my trophies: “Look, here’s our pal Alfa with another hand and the rifle that goes with it. Let’s celebrate, friends! This means fewer Kraut bullets aimed at us! Fewer Kraut hands, fewer Kraut bullets. Glory to Alfa!” That’s how the rest of the soldiers, black or white, Chocolat or Toubab, were rallied to congratulate me for having brought back my trophies to our dark trench, open to the sky. They all applauded me up to the third hand. I was courageous, I was a force of nature, like the captain said many times. God’s truth, they gave me good things to eat, they helped me clean up; above all Jean-Baptiste, who liked me. But on the night Jean-Baptiste died, when I returned to our trench the way a mamba slithers back into its nest after the hunt, they avoided me like the plague. The bad side of my crimes had won out over the good side. The Chocolat soldiers began to whisper that I was a soldier sorcerer, a dëmm, a devourer of souls, and the white Toubab soldiers were starting to believe them. God’s truth, each thing carries its opposite within. Up to the third hand, I was a war hero, beginning with the fourth I became a dangerous madman, a bloodthirsty savage. God’s truth, that’s how things go, that’s how the world is: each thing is double.