THE BEST INDIA-RUBBER

By JEAN-JACQUES BERNARD

ISTILL use it. Nor would I part with it. I don't know the make, but I've never seen its equal for getting out ink without tearing the paper. Where did I get it? This is the story.

It was at the beginning of the War. A slight illness had banished me to the depot at Langres, where I spent some months. If it was the least glorious period of my war-service, it was also the most irksome. I learnt to pity those who spent the whole war at the depot. Because there were days when you wondered whether the dangers and hardships of the front were not preferable to being cooped- up in a small town; a dismal fate. And the jobs we did!

After having been employed on the most varied tasks I was called one day to the company orderly-room. The com- pany commander was there. He was writing. Standing at a not over-earnest and rather slackening attention, I waited by the door. He looked up at last and discovered me.

"That man wants a hair-cut . . . Oh, it's you! "

Odd professional kink: the man saw people's hair before he noticed their faces.

" I'm going to find you a job," he went on. " What can you do? "

I seemed a little puzzled. He asked for my conduct book.

" Oh, you're a man of letters! Why, that's splendid! Splendid! As you're a man of letters, you shall help the post-serjeant."

A tiny room in which four unfortunate wretches huddled together and caught cold between an overheated stove and the icy draught that flowed in through the chinks of the door. Such was the post-serjeant's office.

" It's not very comfortable," my companions warned me. " We'll get on all right, though. Which do you prefer, the stove or the door?"

I answered that, well wrapped up, I should prefer the door. But it turned out that this choice upset a thousand arrange- ments, and I saw that I should have to fit myself in within range of the stove. As a newcomer I had to be careful not to unsettle all the little habits these poor chaps had already formed, and we did, indeed, get on very well together.

" What are we going to give him to do? " someone asked the post-serjeant.

He looked me over, pondered, and then, pointing to a great pile of letters in the corner, heaped-up, overflowing, toppling- down, said quite simply: " We'll put him on the killed.' " It was then three months since the war started, and some grievous things had happened. Families lacking other news had carelessly been allowed to learn the fate of their men from letters returned with the brutal inscription: " Dead " or " Missing " or " Killed in action." And so strict orders had been sent to the battalions. Dead men's letters were to be kept for two months, nothing was to be written on them, and, if anything had been written, it was to be rubbed-out. And this was my job : to rub-out that . . .

How many such letters were there by that time, in this little office alone? I hesitate to say. . . . They were no longer to be counted in hundreds. There could not have been far short of three thousand, written by wives or mothers still unaware of their bereavement. We divided them into two heaps. One, of those on which the sender's address was written, and that we could return direct. The other, of letters with no such visible indication. These we sent on to a distant and more secret department, where people better fitted for such necessary indiscretions had to open them. But, if the envelope were not stuck down, we were aflowed to look inside for an address. And this often happened just then. It was thus that, unwillingly, often with aching heart and tears in my eyes, I sometimes drew from these mournful envelopes their humble un- answered letters.

" My darling boy, Still no letter from you. . . ."

" Paul, my dearest, I'm dreadfully anxious. . . ."

One mother had never had a letter. And she went on writing. Her anxious pleadings went up to the front and, cast away, came back to me. Oh, how often I longed to defy orders and tell these mothers and wives! " Stop writing ! Stop writing! " Of how many private tragedies was I the reluctant witness! How many of these letters in the same hand-writing have I seen arrive week after week, a monotonous and unechoed cry!. And then, one week, nothing : the poor woman knew.

Others were gay and confident, and that was more heart- breaking still.

" How happy I am to hear you're so well. . . ."

She had received one letter, and she did not know yet that it was the letter, the one that, weeping, she would later fold away with the last photograph.

Thus, all day long, from envelopes that hid these dreads or these hopes, I removed the battalion post-serjeant's fatal inscription. It was ticklish work. The scratching was not to be evident. This precaution, however, we had taken it upon ourselves to observe. The frigid orders from the rear did not breathe a word of it. Relatives must not learn the truth from an envelope. But it had occurred to no one what dreadful anxiety might be caused by an obvious erasure.

So I did this work as thoroughly as I could. It was easy enough with ordinary pencil. Unfortunately, some battalion post-serjeants used indelible leads or fountain-pens. The best known india-rubbers, the sharpest knives, were called into service. Unseen onlookers, it was all we could do to temper these miseries. It seemed to me sometimes that I was weighing one grief against another: too much scratched- out would be suspect, too little, alarming. By a stroke more or less I might sway some heart either towards the brutal truth, or to a torturing anxiety.

It was then I discovered, at a little stationer's shop in the town, some ink-erasers that did me great service. There are a good many families unaware of what they owe to them. . . . I still have one of those rubbers left, and it was of it I spoke just now. It's a faithful friend. But the words it now rubs out are words of peace. Distant feelings are in no more danger from it than is the paper. I might easily forget where it came from. And yet. . . .

Yes, and yet, sometimes, when I hold it in my fingers, I feel them relax and let go, as on the paper beneath it, sud- denly, in a kind of dream, I see a word : " Dead."