Suite Francaise (2 page)

Only the elder Monsieur Péricand and Albert the cat remained in the drawing room. It had been a lovely day. The evening light softly illuminated the thick chestnut trees; Albert, a small grey tomcat who belonged to the children, seemed ecstatic. He rolled around on his back on the carpet. He jumped up on to the mantelpiece, nibbled at the edge of a peony in a large midnight-blue vase, delicately pawed at a snapdragon etched into the bronze corner-mount of a console table, then in one leap perched on the old man’s wheelchair and miaowed in his ear. The elder Monsieur Péricand stretched a hand towards him; his hand was always freezing cold, purple and shaking. The cat was afraid and ran off. Dinner was about to be served. Auguste appeared and pushed the invalid into the dining room.

They were just sitting down at the table when the mistress of the house stopped suddenly, Jacqueline’s spoon of tonic suspended in mid-air. “It’s your father, children,” she said as the key turned in the lock.

It was indeed Monsieur Péricand, a short, stocky man with a gentle and slightly awkward manner. His normally well-fed, relaxed and rosy-cheeked face looked, not frightened or worried, but extraordinarily shocked. He wore the expression found on people who have died in an accident, in a matter of seconds, without having had time to be afraid or suffer. They would be reading a book or looking out of a car window, thinking about things, or making their way along a train to the restaurant car when, all of a sudden, there they were in hell.

Madame Péricand rose quietly from her chair. “Adrien?” she called out, her voice anguished.

“It’s nothing. Nothing,” he muttered hastily, glancing furtively at the children, his father and the servants.

Madame Péricand understood. She nodded at the servants to continue serving dinner. She forced herself to swallow her food, but each mouthful seemed as hard and bland as a stone and stuck in her throat. Nevertheless, she repeated the phrases that had become ritual at mealtimes for the past thirty years. “Don’t drink before starting your soup,” she told the children. “Darling, your knife . . .”

She cut the elderly Monsieur Péricand’s filet of sole into small strips. He was on a complicated diet that allowed him to eat only the lightest food and Madame Péricand always served him herself, pouring his water, buttering his bread, tying his napkin round his neck, for he always started drooling when he saw food he liked. “I don’t think poor elderly invalids can bear to be touched by servants,” she would say to her friends.

“We must show grandfather how much we love him, my darlings,” she instructed the children, looking at the old man with terrifying tenderness.

In his later years, Monsieur Péricand had endowed various philanthropic projects, one of which was especially dear to his heart: the Penitent Children of the 16th Arrondissement, a venerable institution whose goal was to instil morals in delinquent minors. It had always been understood that the elder Monsieur Péricand would leave a certain sum of money to this organisation, but he had a rather irritating way of never revealing exactly how much. If he hadn’t enjoyed his meal, or if the children made too much noise, he would suddenly emerge from his stupor and say in a weak but clear voice, “I’m going to leave them five million.”

A painful silence would follow.

On the other hand, if he’d had a lovely meal and a good sleep in his chair by the window, in the sunshine, he would look up at his daughter-in-law with the pale, distant eyes of a small child, or a newborn puppy.

Charlotte was very tactful. She never replied, as others might, “You’re absolutely right, Father.” Instead, she would say sweetly, “Good Lord, you have plenty of time to think about that!”

The Péricand fortune was considerable, but it would be unjust to accuse them of coveting the elder Monsieur Péricand’s inheritance. They didn’t care about money, not at all, but money cared about them, so to speak! There were certain things that they deserved, including the Maltête-Lyonnais millions; they would never manage to spend it all but they would save it for their children’s children. As for the Penitent Children of the 16th Arrondissement, they were so involved with this charity that, twice a year, Madame Péricand organised classical music concerts for the unfortunate children; she would play the harp and was gratified to notice that, at certain passages, sobbing could be heard in the darkened concert hall.

Monsieur Péricand followed his daughter-in-law’s hands attentively. She was so distracted and upset that she forgot his sauce. His white beard waved about alarmingly. Madame Péricand came back to reality and quickly poured the parsley butter over the ivory flesh of the fish, but it was only after she placed a slice of lemon at the side of his plate that the old man was calm again.

Hubert leaned towards his brother and muttered, “It’s not going well, is it?”

“No,” he replied with a gesture and a look. Hubert dropped his trembling hands on to his lap. He was lost in thought, vividly imagining scenes of battle and victory. He was a Boy Scout. He and his friends would form a group of volunteers, sharpshooters who would defend their country to the end. In a flash, his mind raced through time and space. He and his friends: a small group bound by honour and loyalty. They would fight, they would fight all night long; they would save their bombed-out, burning Paris. What an exciting, wonderful life! His heart leapt. And yet, war was such a savage and horrifying thing. He was intoxicated by his imaginings. He clutched his knife so tightly in his hand that the piece of roast beef he was cutting fell on to the floor.

“Clumsy oaf,” whispered Bernard. He and Jacqueline were eight and nine years old, respectively, and were both thin, blond and stuck-up. The two of them were sent to bed after dessert and the elder Monsieur Péricand fell asleep at his usual place by the open window. The tender June day persisted, refusing to die. Each pulse of light was fainter and more exquisite than the last, as if bidding farewell to the earth, full of love and regret. The cat sat on the window ledge and looked nostalgically towards an horizon that was the colour of green crystal.

Monsieur Péricand paced up and down the room. “In a few days, maybe even tomorrow, the Germans will be on our doorstep. I’ve heard the High Command has decided to fight outside Paris, in Paris, beyond Paris. No one knows it yet, thank goodness, because after tomorrow there will be a stampede on the roads and at the train stations. You must leave for your mother’s house in Burgundy as early as possible tomorrow morning, Charlotte. As for me,” Monsieur Péricand said rather proudly, “I will share the fate of the treasures entrusted to my care.”

“I thought everything in the museum had been moved out in September,” said Hubert.

“Yes, but the temporary hiding place they chose in Brittany isn’t suitable; it turns out it’s as damp as a cellar. I just don’t understand it. A Committee was organised to safeguard national treasures. It had three sections and seven subsections, each of which was supposed to appoint a panel of experts responsible for hiding works of art during the war, yet just last month an attendant in the provisional museum points out that suspicious stains are appearing on the canvases. Yes, a wonderful portrait of Mignard with his hands rotting away from a kind of green leprosy. They quickly sent the valuable packing cases back to Paris and now I’m waiting for an order to rush them off to somewhere even further away.”

“But what about us? How will we travel? By ourselves?”

“You’ll leave tomorrow morning, calmly, with the children and the two cars, and any furniture and luggage you can carry, of course. We can’t pretend that, by the end of the week, Paris might not be destroyed, burned down and thoroughly pillaged.”

“You are amazing!” exclaimed Charlotte. “You talk about it so calmly!”

Monsieur Péricand turned towards his wife, his face gradually returning to its normal pinkish colour—a matte pink, the colour of pigs who have been recently slaughtered. “That’s because I can’t really believe it,” he explained quietly. “Here I am, speaking to you, listening to you; we’ve decided to flee, to leave our home, yet I cannot believe that it is all
real
. Do you understand? Now go and get everything ready, Charlotte. Everything must be ready by tomorrow morning; you could be at your mother’s in time for dinner. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

Madame Péricand’s face wore the same resigned, bitter look as when the children were ill and she was forced to put on an apron and nurse them; they all usually managed to be ill at the same time, though with different maladies. When this happened, Madame Péricand would come out of the children’s rooms with a thermometer in her hand, as if she were brandishing the crown of martyrdom, and everything in her bearing seemed to cry out: “You will reward your servants on Judgement Day, kind Jesus!”

“What about Philippe?” was all she asked.

“Philippe cannot leave Paris.”

Madame Péricand left the room, head held high. She refused to bow beneath the burden. She would see to it that the entire household was ready to leave in the morning: the elderly invalid, four children, the servants, the cat, plus the silver, the most valuable pieces of china, the fur coats, food and medicine in case of emergencies. She shuddered.

In the sitting room, Hubert was pleading with his father. “Please let me stay. I can stay here with Philippe. And . . . don’t make fun of me! Can’t you see that if I went and got my friends we could form a company of volunteers; we’re young, strong, ready for anything . . . We could . . .”

Monsieur Péricand looked at him. “My poor boy!” was all he said.

“It’s all over? We’ve lost the war?” stammered Hubert. “Is . . . is it true?”

And suddenly, to his horror, he felt himself burst into tears. He cried like a baby, like Bernard would have cried, his large mouth twisted, tears streaming down his face. Night was falling, soft and peaceful. A swallow flew by, lightly brushing against the balcony in the dark night air. The cat let out a frustrated little cry of desire.

3

The writer Gabriel Corte was working on his terrace, between the dark, swaying woods and the golden green setting sun fading over the Seine. How peaceful everything was around him! Beside him were his well-trained faithful friends, great white dogs who were awake yet motionless, their noses pressed against the cool paving stones, their eyes half closed. At his feet his mistress silently picked up the sheets of paper he dropped. His servants, the secretary, were all invisible behind the shimmering windows; they were hidden somewhere in the background of the house, in the wings of his life, a life he desired to be as brilliant, luxurious and disciplined as a ballet. He was fifty years old and had his favourite games. Depending on the day, he was either Lord of the Heavens or a miserable writer crushed by hard work and labouring in vain. On his desk he had had engraved, “To lift such a heavy weight, Sisyphus, you will need all your courage.” His fellow writers were jealous of him because he was rich. He himself bitterly told the story of his first candidature to the Académie Française: one of the electors implored to vote for him had sarcastically replied, “He has three telephone lines!”

He was handsome, with the cruel, languid movements of a cat, expressive soft hands and a slightly full Roman face. Only Florence, his official mistress, was allowed to remain in his bed until morning (the others never spent the night with him). Only she knew how many masks he could put on, this old flirt with dark circles under his eyes and thin arched eyebrows, too thin, like a woman’s.

That evening he was working as he normally did, half-naked. His house in Saint-Cloud had been specially built to be hidden away from prying eyes, right down to the vast, wonderful terrace, planted with blue cinerarias. Blue was Gabriel Corte’s favourite colour. He could only write if he had a small glass bowl of deep lapis lazuli beside him. He would look at it now and again, and caress it like a mistress. What he liked best in Florence, as he often told her, were her clear blue eyes, which gave him the same feeling of coolness as his glass bowl. “Your eyes quench my thirst,” he would murmur. She had a soft, slightly flabby chin, a contralto voice that was still beautiful and, Gabriel Corte confided to his friends, something cow-like in her expression. I like that. A woman should look like a heifer: sweet, trusting and generous, with a body as white as cream. You know, like those old actresses whose skin has been softened by massage, make-up and powder.

He stretched his delicate fingers in the air and clicked them like castanets. Florence handed him a lemon, then an orange and some glacé strawberries; he consumed an enormous amount of fruit. She gazed at him, almost kneeling before him on a suede pouffe, in that attitude of adoration that pleased him so much (though he couldn’t have imagined any other). He was tired, but it was that good tiredness which comes from doing enjoyable work. Sometimes he said it was better than the tiredness that comes after making love.

He looked benevolently at his mistress. “Well, that’s not gone too badly, I think. And you know, the midpoint.” (He drew a triangle in the air indicating its top.) “I’ve got past it.”

She knew what he meant. Inspiration flagged in the middle of a novel. At those moments, Corte struggled like a horse trying in vain to pull a carriage out of the mud. She brought her hands together in a gracious gesture of admiration and surprise. “Already! I congratulate you, my dear. Now it will go smoothly, I’m sure.”

“God willing!” he murmured. “But Lucienne worries me.”

“Lucienne?”

He looked at her scornfully, his eyes hard and cold. When he was in a good mood, Florence would say, “You still have that killer look in your eye . . .” and he would laugh, flattered. But he hated being teased when in the throes of creativity.

She couldn’t even remember who Lucienne was.

“Of course,” she lied. “I don’t know what I was thinking!”

“I don’t know either,” he said in a wounded voice.

But she seemed so sad and humble that he took pity on her and softened. “I keep telling you, you don’t pay enough attention to the minor characters. A novel should be like a street full of strangers, where no more than two or three people are known to us in depth. Look at writers like Proust. They knew how to use minor characters to humiliate, to belittle their protagonists. In a novel, there is nothing more valuable than teaching the lesson of humility to the heroes. Remember, in
War and Peace,
the little peasant girls who cross the road, laughing, in front of Prince Andrei’s carriage? He speaks to them, directly, and the reader’s imagination is at once lifted; now there is not just one face, not just one soul. He portrays the many faces of the crowd. Wait, I’ll read you that passage, it’s remarkable. Put the light on,” he said, for night had fallen.