THE NAIL
It is impossible for me to say how
long my swoon lasted. Eternity is not of longer
duration than one second spent in nihility. I
was no more. It was slowly and confusedly that
I regained some degree of consciousness. I was
still asleep, but I began to dream; a nightmare started
into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a nightmare
compounded of a strange fancy which in other days
had haunted my morbid imagination whenever with my
propensity for dwelling upon hideous thoughts I had
conjured up catastrophes.
Thus I dreamed that my wife was expecting
me somewhere at Guerande, I believe and
that I was going to join her by rail. As we passed
through a tunnel a deafening roll thundered over our
head, and a sudden subsidence blocked up both issues
of the tunnel, leaving our train intact in the center.
We were walled up by blocks of rock in the heart of
a mountain. Then a long and fearful agony commenced.
No assistance could possibly reach us; even with powerful
engines and incessant labor it would take a month
to clear the tunnel. We were prisoners there with
no outlet, and so our death was only a question of
time.
My fancy had often dwelt on that hideous
drama and had constantly varied the details and touches.
My actors were men, women and children; their number
increased to hundreds, and they were ever furnishing
me with new incidents. There were some provisions
in the train, but these were soon exhausted, and the
hungry passengers, if they did not actually devour
human flesh, at least fought furiously over the last
piece of bread. Sometimes an aged man was driven
back with blows and slowly perished; a mother struggled
like a she-wolf to keep three or four mouthfuls for
her child. In my own compartment a bride and
bridegroom were dying, clasped in each other’s
arms in mute despair.
The line was free along the whole
length of the train, and people came and went, prowling
round the carriages like beasts of prey in search
of carrion. All classes were mingled together.
A millionaire, a high functionary, it was said, wept
on a workman’s shoulder. The lamps had
been extinguished from the first, and the engine fire
was nearly out. To pass from one carriage to
another it was necessary to grope about, and thus,
too, one slowly reached the engine, recognizable by
its enormous barrel, its cold, motionless flanks,
its useless strength, its grim silence, in the overwhelming
night. Nothing could be more appalling than this
train entombed alive with its passengers perishing
one by one.
I gloated over the ghastliness of
each detail; howls resounded through the vault; somebody
whom one could not see, whose vicinity was not even
suspected, would suddenly drop upon another’s
shoulder. But what affected me most of all was
the cold and the want of air. I have never felt
so chilled; a mantle of snow seemed to enwrap me; heavy
moisture rained upon my skull; I was gasping; the
rocky vault seemed to crush my chest; the whole mountain
was seemingly weighing upon me.
Suddenly a cry of deliverance sounded.
For some time past we fancied that we could hear a
dull sound, and we tried to hope that men were at
work and that help was coming, but it came not thus.
One of the passengers, however, had discovered an
air shaft in the tunnel, and, crowding round, we all
saw this shaft, above which we could discern a blue
patch about the size of a wafer. That blue patch
filled us with rapture, for it was the sky. We
stretched ourselves and stood on tiptoes to breathe
more freely. Then we distinguished some black
specks moving about, specks that must surely be workmen
about to deliver us. A furious clamor arose.
The cry “Saved! Saved!” burst from
every mouth, while trembling arms were uplifted toward
the tiny azure patch above.
That roar of voices aroused me.
Where was I? In the tunnel, of course. I
was lying at full length; hard walls were pressing
against my ribs. Then I attempted to rise and
struck my head roughly. Was it the rock closing
in on all sides? The blue speck had vanished aye,
the sky had disappeared and I was still suffocating,
shivering, with chattering teeth.
All at once I remembered. Intense
horror raised my hair on end. I felt the hideous
truth freeze me from head to foot like ice. I
had shaken off the long coma which for many hours
had stricken me with corpselike rigidity. Yes,
I could move; my hands could feel the boards of my
coffin; my lips parted; words came to me, and instinctively
I called out Marguerite’s name. It was
a scream I raised. In that deal box my voice
took so hoarse and weird a sound that it terrified
me. Oh, my God, was this thing true? I was
able to walk, speak, cry out that I was living, and
yet my voice could not be heard; I was entombed under
the earth.
I made a desperate effort to remain
calm and reflect. Was there no means of getting
out? Then my dream began afresh in my troubled
brain. The fanciful air shaft with the blue bit
of sky overhead was mingled with the real grave in
which I was lying. I stared at the darkness with
widely opened eyes; perhaps I might discover a hole,
a slit, a glimmer of light, but only sparks of fire
flitted through that night, with rays that broadened
and then faded away. I was in a somber abyss again.
With returning lucidity I struggled against these
fatal visions. Indeed, I should need all my reason
if I meant to try to save myself.
The most immediate peril lay in an
increasing sense of suffocation. If I had been
able to live so long without air it was owing to suspended
animation, which had changed all the normal conditions
of my existence, but now that my heart beat and my
lungs breathed I should die, asphyxiated, if I did
not promptly liberate myself. I also suffered
from cold and dreaded lest I should succumb to the
mortal numbness of those who fall asleep in the snow,
never to wake again. Still, while unceasingly
realizing the necessity of remaining calm, I felt maddening
blasts sweep through my brain, and to quiet my senses
I exhorted myself to patience, trying to remember
the circumstances of my burial. Probably the
ground had been bought for five years, and this would
be against my chances of self-deliverance, for I remembered
having noticed at Nantes that in the trenches of the
common graves one end of the last lowered coffins
protruded into the next open cavity, in which case
I should only have had to break through one plank.
But if I were in a separate hole, filled up above
me with earth, the obstacles would prove too great.
Had I not been told that the dead were buried six
feet deep in Paris? How was I to get through
the enormous mass of soil above me? Even if I
succeeded in slitting the lid of my bier open the mold
would drift in like fine sand and fill my mouth and
eyes. That would be death again, a ghastly death,
like drowning in mud.
However, I began to feel the planks
carefully. The coffin was roomy, and I found
that I was able to move my arms with tolerable ease.
On both sides the roughly planed boards were stout
and resistive. I slipped my arm onto my chest
to raise it over my head. There I discovered in
the top plank a knot in the wood which yielded slightly
at my pressure. Working laboriously, I finally
succeeded in driving out this knot, and on passing
my finger through the hole I found that the earth was
wet and clayey. But that availed me little.
I even regretted having removed the knot, vaguely
dreading the irruption of the mold. A second experiment
occupied me for a while. I tapped all over the
coffin to ascertain if perhaps there were any vacuum
outside. But the sound was everywhere the same.
At last, as I was slightly kicking the foot of the
coffin, I fancied that it gave out a clearer echoing
noise, but that might merely be produced by the sonority
of the wood.
At any rate, I began to press against
the boards with my arms and my closed fists.
In the same way, too, I used my knees, my back and
my feet without eliciting even a creak from the wood.
I strained with all my strength, indeed, with so desperate
an effort of my whole frame, that my bruised bones
seemed breaking. But nothing moved, and I became
insane.
Until that moment I had held delirium
at bay. I had mastered the intoxicating rage
which was mounting to my head like the fumes of alcohol;
I had silenced my screams, for I feared that if I again
cried out aloud I should be undone. But now I
yelled; I shouted; unearthly howls which I could not
repress came from my relaxed throat. I called
for help in a voice that I did not recognize, growing
wilder with each fresh appeal and crying out that
I would not die. I also tore at the wood with
my nails; I writhed with the contortions of a caged
wolf. I do not know how long this fit of madness
lasted, but I can still feel the relentless hardness
of the box that imprisoned me; I can still hear the
storm of shrieks and sobs with which I filled it; a
remaining glimmer of reason made me try to stop, but
I could not do so.
Great exhaustion followed. I
lay waiting for death in a state of somnolent pain.
The coffin was like stone, which no effort could break,
and the conviction that I was powerless left me unnerved,
without courage to make any fresh attempts. Another
suffering hunger was presently
added to cold and want of air. The torture soon
became intolerable. With my finger I tried to
pull small pinches of earth through the hole of the
dislodged knot, and I swallowed them eagerly, only
increasing my torment. Tempted by my flesh, I
bit my arms and sucked my skin with a fiendish desire
to drive my teeth in, but I was afraid of drawing
blood.
Then I ardently longed for death.
All my life long I had trembled at the thought of
dissolution, but I had come to yearn for it, to crave
for an everlasting night that could never be dark
enough. How childish it had been of me to dread
the long, dreamless sleep, the eternity of silence
and gloom! Death was kind, for in suppressing
life it put an end to suffering. Oh, to sleep
like the stones, to be no more!
With groping hands I still continued
feeling the wood, and suddenly I pricked my left thumb.
That slight pain roused me from my growing numbness.
I felt again and found a nail a nail which
the undertaker’s men had driven in crookedly
and which had not caught in the lower wood. It
was long and very sharp; the head was secured to the
lid, but it moved. Henceforth I had but one idea to
possess myself of that nail and I slipped
my right hand across my body and began to shake it.
I made but little progress, however; it was a difficult
job, for my hands soon tired, and I had to use them
alternately. The left one, too, was of little
use on account of the nail’s awkward position.
While I was obstinately persevering
a plan dawned on my mind. That nail meant salvation,
and I must have it. But should I get it in time?
Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my
limbs were losing their strength; my mind was becoming
confused. I had sucked the drops that trickled
from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit my arm
and drank my own blood! Thereupon, spurred on
by pain, revived by the tepid, acrid liquor that moistened
my lips, I tore desperately at the nail and at last
I wrenched it off!
I then believed in success. My
plan was a simple one; I pushed the point of the nail
into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could in
a straight line and working it so as to make a slit
in the wood. My fingers stiffened, but I doggedly
persevered, and when I fancied that I had sufficiently
cut into the board I turned on my stomach and, lifting
myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength
of my back against the lid. But although it creaked
it did not yield; the notched line was not deep enough.
I had to resume my old position which I
only managed to do with infinite trouble and
work afresh. At last after another supreme effort
the lid was cleft from end to end.
I was not saved as yet, but my heart
beat with renewed hope. I had ceased pushing
and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth
should bury me. I intended to use the lid as a
screen and, thus protected, to open a sort of shaft
in the clayey soil. Unfortunately I was assailed
by unexpected difficulties. Some heavy clods of
earth weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable;
I foresaw that I should never reach the surface in
that way, for the mass of soil was already bending
my spine and crushing my face.
Once more I stopped, affrighted; then
suddenly, while I was stretching my legs, trying to
find something firm against which I might rest my
feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding.
I at once gave a desperate kick with my heels in the
faint hope that there might be a freshly dug grave
in that direction.
It was so. My feet abruptly forced
their way into space. An open grave was there;
I had only a slight partition of earth to displace,
and soon I rolled into the cavity. I was saved!
I remained for a time lying on my
back in the open grave, with my eyes raised to heaven.
It was dark; the stars were shining in a sky of velvety
blueness. Now and then the rising breeze wafted
a springlike freshness, a perfume of foliage, upon
me. I was saved! I could breathe; I felt
warm, and I wept and I stammered, with my arms prayerfully
extended toward the starry sky. O God, how sweet
seemed life!