People often say to me, you are quite morbid about the war, about your experiences in the War Zone. Surely, surely, in all those long months, you must have seen something that was not grim and horrible—something that was noble, or inspiring, or amusing, something that was human. Certainly, I say—I did—there was Esmeralda. So now I will tell you about Esmeralda, so that you won’t think I have a quite morbid mind, unable to see anything but tragedy, unable to recognize nice things when I see them.
As I have told you, we were shut up in our field, with the wounded, with small politics and intrigues of sorts, with small gossipings, and above all, there was the noise of the guns. So much noise was there of that kind, that we all learned to distinguish the difference in sound between an arrivé and a départ. An arrivé being a shell that arrived from the enemy’s side and fell near us, and a départ being a shell that departed from our side and arrived somewhere else. On the days of the arrivés, we jumped and started at each concussion, and wondered whether the next one would not arrive on us. The départs made much more noise, being fired from quite close, but we reassured ourselves, they will not fall on us. It is not my nose that is going to be removed.
Therefore, to offset the tension caused on the days of the arrivés, and to offset the relaxation of those days when we knew other people were feeling as we had felt yesterday—being comforted by the knowledge that it was ourselves who were firing—we bought Esmeralda. Esmeralda was a baby goat, young, soft and pliable, with stiff legs sticking out from her four corners, and a soft, yielding body to which they were attached. She came from a farm near by—they were glad to be rid of her for five francs, which we later discovered was an exorbitant sum. She had to be carried away from the farm—she refused to lead, chewing up her retaining string, and trying desperately hard to remain with her mother. So she had to be carried, and was dumped down in the middle of the dining-room floor, for the rest of us to admire. Her four stiff legs came down with a clack on the floor, and she clacked continually, ever after. As for her soft, yielding body, covered with soft gray hair, we found that body to vary in size, in the course of the day. In the morning, when we fished her out of the packing box where she spent her nights, that small, soft body was quite collapsed. Her spine stuck out on top, and her two hairy sides were separated from each other by only a few inches—only a few inches prevented their quite touching. She went off in the night considerably, did Esmeralda. But when released into the hospital enclosure, with a whole day before her to eat the tall, green winter grass, she swelled. Swelled sideways. Bulged amazingly. Became so bulged and distended by the amount of long grass that she took into herself, that her stiff legs refused to support her grandiose form, except at intervals. Therefore, some hours after her release from the packing box, she became unable to stand, and was obliged to sit down upon the cold grass and eat it away from herself, in a circle. After which, she gathered enough strength to move on and sit down in another spot. By nightfall she became completely waterlogged, and offered little resistance to being carried back to her box. The task of taking her back to bed usually fell to me—not because she was my goat, specially, but because I loved and defended her whenever she got into trouble.
She was always in trouble, was poor Esmeralda—first one thing and then another.
Elvira, the Belgian woman who came up from the village every morning to light our stoves and bring us jugs of hot water, used to let Esmeralda out of her box. Elvira was a nice woman, with red cheeks and a tender heart, and a husband with a horse and cart who went to market in the neighboring villages, and brought back all sorts of news and scandal. Elvira, primed with this news, used to retail it to us as she lit our stoves. When she came in with the coal bucket and an armful of wood, she stood and gossiped a while before she made up the fires. If she lingered too long, Esmeralda set up a great outcry. So much outcry that she waked up those others, the doctors and the Directrice, who were not obliged to rise as early as we did. On the other hand, if Esmeralda was liberated before Elvira came in to us, she took advantage of it. There was always an open doorway and a warm room for her to enter. Particularly the dining-room.
Elvira always arrived every morning with bunches of flowers. Heaven knows where she got them, but she brought in a fresh lot every morning—big bunches of dahlias and nameless yellow flowers, all very stiff and awkward, but full of color. These she placed in a cartridge shell on our dining-room table—the big cartridge case of a seventy-five.1 These gifts were quite a nuisance, for the cartridge case being tall, the tall flowers made it top-heavy and it was continually being upset. It was sweet and thoughtful of Elvira to bring us these flowers every morning—but a nuisance to mop up the water when the top-heavy lot fell over. Naturally, we could not tell Madame Elvira that these flowers were a bother—some of us even admired them, and spoke of Elvira’s warm and generous heart, that matched her red cheeks. But those who admired them most—the flowers—and said wasn’t it wonderful to have flowers like that, right under the guns, were generally absent when the tall vase upset.
But when we got Esmeralda, our little goat, things were different. She assumed that these daily offerings, fresh each morning on the dining-room table, were made to herself. It was a sight to warm your heart, on a winter’s morning, to run across from the baraque2 where Elvira’s fire was only giving out smoke, into the cheery heat of the dining-room. And to find there soft, pliant Esmeralda, not yet distended, mounted on the breakfast table devouring those flowers. I used to say to her—Hurry, hurry, Esmeralda—be quick about it—some one will soon come in to pick you off the table. If you can’t finish them all, at least destroy enough of them to save us trouble during the day, mopping up the water. Sometimes she got through—sometimes she didn’t—she always started, anyway. But there was always some one who came in, furious, and pitched her out into the snow.
Esmeralda did other things which also caused annoyance. When the days grew short and the nights closed in early, she would return to the baraque of her own volition, without waiting to be fetched. But she did not seek her packing box—oh, no. It was our dining room–sitting room baraque that attracted her, with its warmth and shelter. Its circle of easy chairs around the stove. Not easy chairs measured by any luxurious standard, but canvas chairs with arms, somewhat more comfortable than the hard, upright chairs upon which we sat at meals. Into a canvas armchair then, Esmeralda managed to raise herself—somehow she managed to get her fat, distended body into an armchair, and with closed eyes sat before the fire chewing her cud. Warm and cozy, she was a pleasant sight.
But do you think they liked it, some of those others? They dumped her right off, and said she was wet and muddy and quite ruined the chair.
Esmeralda’s finish came about in this wise. You know, I have already told you that the various shacks or baraques are connected with one another by plank walks, about three feet wide. Down these narrow walks or trottoirs Esmeralda used to gallop, making a great clacking by reason of her rattling little hoofs. From time to time she would leave the trottoir and dash up the incline leading to this ward or that, trying to enter. She was sociable, full of confidence in herself, and quite sure some one wanted to speak to her and pat her. Nobody did, it seems. Therefore, at any time of the day, you could see Esmeralda being shoved away from the front door of a baraque. Sometimes the push was by hand, and sometimes by foot, but whichever it was, it was always resisted. Resisted by all the force of a small, obstinate body, turned tailwise towards the door, refusing to believe she was not welcome.
On the occasion of her undoing, Esmeralda was galloping down the trottoir one morning, making a fine clacking of little hoofs, tossing herself with little playful jumps, because of her extreme youth and inexperience. She encountered an obstacle, however. Her passage, her joyous, springing passage along the trottoir, was obstructed by two figures which completely occupied the three-foot wide plank walk. This left Esmeralda with no alternative but to run through them—it never occurred to her to leap from the walk and run around them. The obstacle was an august one, but Esmeralda was not aware of its augustness. It consisted of the Directrice, in her immaculate starched skirts, and of the great General commanding all that region. He was walking with short steps, keeping pace with the short steps of the Directrice, and they were talking over hospital affairs and quite unconscious of the clacking sound behind them. The General’s long, thin legs were beautifully clad in shiny, high boots, spurred, but not dangerously so. Esmeralda beheld the obstacle in her path, but in her small goat mind decided that it was not impassable. The wide, starched skirts of the Directrice were impassable, of course, but not so the tall, thin legs of the General, clad in shiny boots, spurred, but not dangerously so. What she failed to notice, however, was the General’s sword, dangling down beside his tall, thin legs, making a third leg, as it were, thinner than the others. In her haste and inexperience, she tried to dash through the two recognizable legs. The third, thin leg, dangling, she did not see. There was an awful crash on the trottoir. A General of France fell to the ground.
That evening, acting upon orders, I carried Esmeralda down to the laundry, before the Belgian women went home for the night.
“Will one of you accept a small goat?” I asked.
Two days later, in the rain, I went down to the laundry again. I felt very anxious about Esmeralda.
“You to whom I have given my goat,” I inquired, “my precious, beloved little goat—is it well with her, my little pet?”
“A thousand thanks, Mademoiselle—a thousand thanks. Last evening we had a delicious meal.”
This story was not in the original edition of The Backwash of War. It was added to the new edition published in 1934.
1. Seventy-five millimeter field gun.
2. An alternate spelling of baracque, wooden shack.