1914

AFTER ANTHIME CAME HOME, he’d been closely watched during his convalescence: they’d nursed, bandaged, washed, and nourished him; even his sleep was monitored. “They” meaning Blanche in particular, who at first had chided him gently for having grown thinner during his five hundred days at the front, without even thinking to make any allowance for the almost eight pounds a lost arm would represent. Then once he seemed nicely recovered, enough even to hazard an occasional brief smile—although only with the left corner of his lips, as if the other one were linked to the missing limb—and when he was able to live an independent life again at home, Blanche and her parents wondered whatever they would do with him.

Of course the army would pay him a pension but they couldn’t let him lie fallow, he needed an activity. Assuming that his infirmity would prevent him from carrying out his duties as an accountant with the same dexterity, Eugène Borne had an idea. While waiting to step into Eugène’s position, Charles had been the deputy plant manager, but his sudden death had left open the question of the succession. Putting off this decision for the moment, Eugène had assembled a kind of governing body for the concern, a board of directors with himself as president, which allowed him to avoid having to take all initiatives on his own and therefore sole responsibility for everything. To these weekly collegial meetings already attended by Monteil, Blanche, and Mme. Prochasson, Eugène decided to add Anthime in homage to his heroic brother and for services rendered to the firm, sweetening the deal with some director’s fees. Giving structure to Anthime’s life without constraining it, this directorship did not entail much but it was something: he was expected to attend, give an opinion—without being any more obliged to have one than the others were to listen to it—vote, and sign papers without necessarily having read them, a task he swiftly learned to carry out with his left hand. In this regard it did seem that others worried more about his handicap than he seemed to himself, for he never mentioned his missing arm.

If he didn’t, it was mostly because he had managed almost too quickly to dismiss it from his mind, except when he awakened each morning and looked for it— but only for a second. Forced to become a lefty, he did so without any fuss: having successfully taught himself to write with his remaining hand—and while he was at it to draw, too, more and more, which he’d never done with his right one—he abandoned without regret certain now impractical habits, like peeling a banana or tying his shoelaces. As regards bananas, never having particularly cared for this fruit (a recent addition, incidentally, at the market), Anthime switched easily to fruits with edible skins. Regarding shoelaces, he did not find it difficult to design and commission from the factory a prototype for shoes intended for his exclusive use, a single pair, at first, until the return of peace brought home men interested once again in lighter footwear, and Anthime’s Pertinax moccasin became a great commercial success.

Anthime had also to renounce, whenever he wanted to reflect, wait patiently, seem relaxed, or appear preoccupied, those classic postures taken by crossing the arms or clasping the hands behind the back. At first he instinctively kept trying to adopt them, remembering only at the last moment that he could not follow through. Once he’d finally assumed the role of a one-armed man, however, Anthime did not capitulate so easily, using his empty right sleeve as an imaginary arm, wrapping it around his left one across his chest or grabbing the cuff firmly behind his back. However assumed this role was, though, when he automatically stretched out his arms upon awakening, he also mentally stretched the missing limb, with a tiny twitch in his right shoulder. Once fully alert, and once he’d decided that the day offered few things to do, it wasn’t unusual for him to return to sleep after eventually masturbating, which, with his left hand, had not really posed a problem.

So: frequent idleness, to reduce which as much as possible Anthime trained himself to read his paper with a single hand and even to shuffle a deck of cards before tackling a game of solitaire. Managing at last to hold his trump cards under his chin, it took him a little more time before he risked playing silent games of manille at the Cercle Républicain with other cripples back from the front as well, all tacitly agreeing never to mention what they’d seen. Of course Anthime played slower than the veterans who’d lost one or both legs, but also faster than the gas victims who didn’t have cards in Braille. But when players kept offering to help him and then peeked at his cards, he finally got fed up and stopped going to the Cercle.