Now my seven hands—out of eight, I’m missing one thanks to Jean-Baptiste’s pranks—now my seven hands have lost their individual characteristics. They’re all the same, tanned and smoothed like camel leather, they have no more hair, blond or red or black. God’s truth, they have no red spots or beauty marks. They’re all a dark brown. Mummified. There’s no chance their flesh will rot now. Nobody will be able to sniff them out, except the rats. They are in a safe place.
I thought how I had only seven because my friend Jean-Baptiste, the trickster, the joker, had stolen one, and I’d let him, because it was my first severed hand and it was beginning to rot. I didn’t know yet what to do with it. I hadn’t yet had the idea to dry them the way the fishermen’s wives in Gandiol dry fish.
In Gandiol, we dry fish from the river or the sea in the sun and with smoke after salting it very, very well. Here, there isn’t any real sun. There’s only a cold sun that doesn’t dry anything. Mud remains mud. Blood never dries. Our uniforms only dry by the fire. That’s why we make fires. Not only to try to warm ourselves. Mostly to dry ourselves.
But our fires in the trench are minuscule. Big fires are forbidden, the captain said. Because there is no smoke without fire, the captain said. As soon as they see smoke rising from our home, as soon as they notice the smallest thread of smoke, even from a cigarette, with their piercing blue eyes, the enemies on the other side will adjust their artillery and bombard us. Like us, the enemy on the other side bombards trenches at random. Like us, the enemy launches random salvos even on truce days, when there are no infantry attacks. So, best not to provide any targets to the enemy artillerymen. So, God’s truth, best to avoid revealing our position with the blue smoke from a fire! So now our uniforms are never dry, so now our dirty uniforms and all of our clothes are always damp. So we try to make small fires without smoke. We position the kitchen stovepipe at the rear. So, God’s truth, we try to be cleverer than our enemy with the piercing blue eyes. And so the kitchen stove was the only place where I could dry the hands. God’s truth, I saved them all, even the second and the third, which were already half-gone.
At first, my trench-mates were so happy that I was bringing them enemy hands, they even touched them. From the first to the third, they dared to touch them. Some even spit on them, laughing. By the time I returned to the belly of the earth with my second enemy hand, my friend Jean-Baptiste had rifled through my things. He’d stolen my first hand, and I let him because it was beginning to spoil and to attract rats. I never liked the first hand, it wasn’t pretty. It had long red hairs on its backside and I’d cut it off poorly, I had severed it roughly from the arm because I hadn’t yet formed the habit. God’s truth, my machete wasn’t sharp enough yet. But then, with experience, by the fourth one I was able to separate the hand from an enemy arm in a single slice, in a single very clean cut with the blade of my machete that I spent hours sharpening before the captain would whistle for us to attack.
So, my friend Jean-Baptiste rifled through my things to steal the first enemy hand, which I didn’t like. Jean-Baptiste was my only real white friend in the trench. He was the only Toubab who came to console me after the death of Mademba Diop. The others had touched my shoulder, the Chocolats had recited ritual prayers before they took Mademba’s body to the Rear. The Chocolat soldiers didn’t speak to me again about it because for them Mademba’s was one death among the rest. They too had lost friends, more-than-brothers. They too wept inside for their dead. Only Jean-Baptiste had done more than place a hand on my shoulder when I brought Mademba Diop’s disemboweled body back to the trench. Jean-Baptiste, with his round head and his clear blue eyes, had taken care of me. Jean-Baptiste, with his narrow waist and small hands, had helped me to wash my dirty clothes. Jean-Baptiste had given me tobacco. Jean-Baptiste had shared his bread with me. Jean-Baptiste had made me laugh.
And so, when Jean-Baptiste rifled through my things to steal my first enemy hand, I let him do it.
Jean-Baptiste had a lot of fun with that severed hand. Jean-Baptiste laughed a lot with the enemy hand that had begun to rot. From the first morning when he stole it, from that first breakfast, he shook all of our hands with that hand, one after the other. And when he saluted any of us, we knew, we understood, that he was extending the severed hand of the enemy instead of his own, which was hidden beneath the sleeve of his uniform.
It was Albert who got stuck with the enemy hand. Albert screamed when he realized that Jean-Baptiste had left the enemy hand behind in his. Albert screamed even as he threw the enemy hand on the ground and everyone laughed and everyone made fun of him, even noncommissioned officers, and even the captain, God’s truth. So Jean-Baptiste cried out, “Bunch of idiots! Every one of you has shaken the hand of the enemy, you will all be court-martialed!” So everyone laughed again, even the elder Croix de Guerre Chocolat Ibrahima Seck, who translated for us what Jean-Baptiste had said.
XI
BUT, GOD’S TRUTH, that first severed hand brought no luck to Jean-Baptiste. Jean-Baptiste didn’t stay my friend for long. Not because we stopped liking each other but because Jean-Baptiste died. He died a very, very ugly death. He died with my enemy hand attached to his helmet. Jean-Baptiste liked to joke, to play the idiot, too much. There are limits, it isn’t good to play with the hands of the blue-eyed enemy in front of enemies with blue eyes doubled by binoculars. Jean-Baptiste shouldn’t have provoked them, he shouldn’t have made fun of them. The enemies from the other side resented him. They didn’t like seeing their friend’s hand stuck to the point of a Rosalie bayonet. They were sick and tired of watching it wave in the sky above our trench. God’s truth, they’d had enough of Jean-Baptiste’s antics, like when he would cry out, at the top of his lungs, with their friend’s hand on the end of his bayonet, “Filthy Krauts! Filthy Krauts!” It was as if Jean-Baptiste had gone mad, and I knew, I understood why.
Jean-Baptiste had become a provocateur. Jean-Baptiste had been trying to draw the attention of the blue-eyed enemies behind their binoculars ever since he received a certain perfumed letter. I knew, I understood, when I saw his face as he read that letter. Jean-Baptiste’s face was alive with laughter and light before he opened the perfumed letter. When he finished reading the perfumed letter, Jean-Baptiste’s face had become gray. No more light. Only the laugh remained. But his laugh was no longer a laugh of happiness. His laugh had become the laugh of misery. A laugh that was like tears, an unpleasant laugh, a false laugh. After the perfumed letter, Jean-Baptiste helped himself to my first enemy hand so he could make crude gestures at the enemies on the other side. Jean-Baptiste made asses of them by waving it in the sky above our trench, stuck on the end of his rifle’s Rosalie: the enemy hand whose middle finger he had raised. He’d yell, “Up your ass, Krauts, go fuck yourselves!” shaking his rifle so that the enemy’s matching blue eyes would be sure to receive his message, so that there was no way his middle finger would go unnoticed.
Captain Armand told him to stop. To act out like Jean-Baptiste wasn’t good for anyone. Jean-Baptiste might as well be setting fires inside the trench. His insults had the power of smoke. The power to help the enemy from the other side adjust their aim. It was as if he had given himself over to the enemy. There was no point in dying if it wasn’t at the captain’s command. God’s truth, I knew, I understood, as did the captain and the others, that Jean-Baptiste wanted to die, to torment the blue-eyed enemies and become their target.