Suite Francaise (9 page)

A murmur of despair ran through the long queue.

“Nothing, they have nothing left, nothing. They’re saying ‘Come back tomorrow.’ They’re saying the Germans are getting closer, that the regiment is leaving tonight.”

“Did you go into the town to see if there’s anything there?”

“You must be joking! Everyone’s leaving, it’s like a ghost town. Some people are already hoarding, I’m sure.”

“Awful,” Florence groaned again.

In her distress she was talking to the occupants of the battered car. The woman with the child on her lap was as pale as death.

The other one shook her head gloomily. “That’s nothing. They’re all rich, they are, it’s the workers that suffer the most.”

“What are we going to do?” said Florence, turning towards Gabriel with a gesture of despair. He motioned to her to move away from the crowd and began striding along. The town was full of closed shutters and locked doors; there wasn’t a single lamp shining or a soul to be seen at the windows. But, the moon had just risen and by its light it was easy to find one’s way.

“You understand,” he whispered, “it’s farcical, all this . . . It is impossible not to find something to eat if we pay. Believe me, there’s this panic-stricken herd and then there are the sly devils who have hidden food away in a safe place. We’ve just got to find them.” He stopped. “We’re in Paray-le-Monial, aren’t we? See, here’s what I’ve been looking for. I had dinner in this restaurant two years ago. The owner will remember me, you’ll see.” He banged on the padlocked door and called out in a commanding voice, “Open up, open up, my good man! It’s a friend!”

And the miracle happened. They heard footsteps; a key turned in the lock, an anxious face appeared.

“Look here, you know who I am, don’t you? I’m Corte, Gabriel Corte. I’m famished, my friend . . . Yes, yes, I know there’s nothing, but for me . . . if you look carefully . . . Don’t you have anything left? Ah! Yes! You remember me now!”

“I’m sorry, Sir, I can’t let you in,” whispered the owner. “I’d be mobbed! Go down to the corner and wait for me. I’ll meet you there. I’d really like to help you, Monsieur Corte, but we’re so low on provisions, so desperate. But maybe if I look carefully . . .”

“Yes, that’s it, look carefully . . .”

“But you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you? You can’t imagine what’s been going on here today. It’s been madness, my wife is sick about it. They devour everything and leave without paying!”

“I’m counting on you, my friend,” said Gabriel, slipping some money into his hand.

Five minutes later he and Florence went back to the car, carrying a mysterious basket wrapped in a linen napkin.

“I have no idea what’s inside,” muttered Gabriel in the same detached, dreamy tone he used when speaking to women, to women he desired but still hadn’t conquered. “No, no idea at all . . . but I think I can smell foie gras.”

Just at that moment a shadowy figure passed between Gabriel and Florence and grabbed the basket they were holding, separating them with a blow. Florence, panic-stricken, grasped her neck with both hands, shouting, “My necklace, my necklace!” But her necklace was still there, as well as the jewellery box they were carrying. The thieves had only taken their food. She made her way back safe and sound to Gabriel, who was dabbing at his painful jaw and nose, and muttering over and over again, “It’s a jungle, we’re trapped in a jungle . . .”

15

“You shouldn’t have done it,” the woman holding the newborn baby in her arms sighed.

A bit of colour gradually returned to her cheeks. The old battered Citroën had managed quite well to manoeuvre its way out of the crowd and its occupants were resting on the mossy ground in a little wood. The moon, round and flawless, was gleaming, but even without the moon the vast fire burning in the distance would have lit up the landscape: groups of people were lying here and there, scattered beneath the pine trees; cars stood motionless; next to the young woman and the man in the cap lay the open basket of food, half empty, and the gold foil from an uncorked bottle of champagne.

“You shouldn’t have, Jules. I don’t like it, it’s upsetting to have to do a thing like that.”

The man was small and scrawny, with a big forehead and enormous eyes, a weak mouth and a little weasely chin. “What do you want?” he protested. You want us to starve to death?”

“Leave him alone, Aline, he’s right, for goodness sake!” said the woman with the bandaged head. “What do you want us to do? Those two, they don’t deserve to live, they don’t, I’m telling you!”

They stopped talking. She had been a servant until she’d married a worker from the Renault car factory. They’d managed to keep him in Paris during the first few months of the war, but he’d gone in February and now he was fighting God knows where. He’d already fought in the other war and he was the oldest of four children, but none of that had made any difference. Privileges, exemptions, connections, all that was for the middle classes. Deep in her heart were layer upon layer of hatred, overlapping yet distinct: the countrywoman’s hatred, who instinctively detests city people, the servant’s hatred, weary and bitter at having lived in other people’s houses, the worker’s hatred. For the past few months she had replaced her husband at the factory. She couldn’t get used to doing a man’s work; it had strengthened her arms but hardened her soul.

“You really got them, Jules,” she said to her brother. “I’m telling you, I didn’t think you had it in you!”

“When I saw Aline about to faint, and those bastards with all their wine, foie gras and everything, I don’t know what came over me.”

Aline, who seemed shyer and softer, ventured, “We could have just asked them for some, don’t you think, Hortense?”

“What, are you crazy?” her husband exclaimed. “For goodness sake! No, you don’t know their type. They’d rather see us die like dogs, worse! You’re crazy . . .”

“I know those two, I do,” said Hortense. “They’re the worst, they are. I saw him once at that old bag the Countess Barral du Jeu’s; he writes books and plays. A madman, according to the driver, and thick as two short planks.”

Hortense put away the rest of the food as she spoke. Her large red hands were extraordinarily nimble and agile. Then she picked up the baby and undressed him. “Poor little thing, what a journey! Oh, he’ll have learned about life early, he will. Maybe that’s better. Sometimes I don’t regret having had a hard life: knowing how to use your hands, there are some who can’t even say that. You remember, Jules, when Ma died, I was just about thirteen. I went to the wash-house no matter what the weather, breaking the ice in winter and carrying bundles of laundry on my back . . . I used to cry into my raw hands. But then, that taught me to stand on my own two feet and not to be afraid.”

“You really can cope, for sure,” said Aline with admiration.

Once the baby was changed, washed and dried, Aline unbuttoned her blouse and held her little one to her breast; the others watched her, smiling.

“At least he’ll have something to eat, poor little chap, won’t he!”

The champagne was going to their heads; they felt vaguely, sweetly intoxicated. They watched the flames in the distance in a deep stupor. Now and again they would forget why they were in this strange place, why they had left their little flat near the Gare de Lyon, rushed along the roads, crossed the forest at Fontainebleau, robbed Corte. Everything was becoming dark and cloudy, as in a dream. They’d hung the cage from a low branch and now they fed the birds. Hortense had remembered to bring a packet of seeds for them when they left. She took a few pieces of sugar from her pocket and put them into a cup of boiling hot coffee: the thermos had survived the car accident. She drank it noisily, bringing her thick lips to the cup, one hand placed on her enormous bosom to protect it from coffee stains. Suddenly, a rumour spread from group to group: “The Germans marched into Paris this morning.”

Hortense dropped her half-full cup; her round face had gone even redder. She bowed her head and began crying. “Now that hurts . . . that hurts here,” she said, touching her heart.

A few hot tears ran down her face, the tears of a hard woman who seldom pities either herself or anyone else. A feeling of anger, sadness and shame swept through her, so violently that she felt a physical pain, piercing and sharp, near her heart. Finally she said, “You know I love my husband . . . Poor Louis, it’s just the two of us and he works, doesn’t drink, doesn’t fool around, you know, we love each other, he’s all I’ve got, but even if they told me, ‘You’ll never see him again, he’s just died, but we won . . .’ well, I’d rather have that, oh, I’m telling you, I’m not kidding, I’d rather have that!”

“I know,” said Aline, trying in vain to find better words, “I know, it’s upsetting.”

Jules said nothing, thinking of his partially paralysed arm, which had allowed him to escape military service and the war. “I’ve been very lucky,” he said to himself, but at the same time there was something upsetting him, he didn’t know what, maybe remorse. “Well, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is, nothing we can do about it,” he said gloomily.

They started talking about Corte again. They thought with pleasure of the excellent dinner they had eaten instead of him. All the same, they now judged him less harshly. Hortense, who at the Countess Barral du Jeu’s house had seen writers, academics and even, one day, the Countess de Noailles, made them laugh till they cried with her stories about them.

“It’s not that they’re so bad,” said Aline. “They just don’t know about life.”

16

The Péricands couldn’t get lodgings in the town, but they did find a large room in a neighbouring village, in a house inhabited by two elderly spinsters which was opposite the church. The children were put to bed still in their clothes, utterly exhausted. Jacqueline asked in a tearful voice if she could have the cat’s basket next to her. She was obsessed by the idea he might escape, that he would be lost, forgotten, and would die of hunger on the road. She put her hand through the basket’s wicker bars, which made a kind of window for the cat allowing a glimpse of a blazing green eye and long whiskers bristling with anger. Only then did she calm down. Emmanuel was frightened by this strange, enormous room and the two old ladies running about like headless chickens. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” they groaned. “How could you not feel sorry for them . . . poor unfortunate dears . . . dear Jesus . . .” Bernard lay there watching them without batting an eye, a dazed, serious expression on his face as he sucked on a piece of sugar he’d kept hidden in his pocket for three days; the heat had melted it, so it was lumped together with a bit of lead from a pencil, a faded stamp and a piece of string. The other bed in the room was occupied by the elder Monsieur Péricand. Madame Péricand, Hubert and the servants would spend the night on chairs in the dining room.

Through the open windows you could see a little garden in the moonlight. A brilliant peaceful light glistened on the clusters of sweet-scented white lilacs and on the path’s silvery stones where a cat stepped softly. The dining room was crowded with refugees and villagers listening to the radio together. The women were crying. The men, silent, lowered their heads. It wasn’t exactly despair they were feeling; it was more like a refusal to understand, the stupor you feel when you’re dreaming, when the veil of sleep is about to lift, when you can feel the dawn light, when your whole body reaches out towards it, when you think, “It was just a nightmare, I’m going to wake up now.” They stood there, motionless, avoiding each other’s eyes. When Hubert switched off the radio, the men left without saying a word. Only the group of women remained in the room. You could hear them sighing, lamenting the misfortunes of their country, which, for them, bore the features of cherished husbands and sons still at the front. Their pain was more physical than the men’s, simpler as well and more open. They consoled themselves with recriminations: “Well . . . I don’t know why we bothered! . . . To end up here . . . It’s shameful, it is . . . we’ve been betrayed, Madame, betrayed I say . . . we’ve been sold out and now it’s the poor men who are suffering . . .”

Hubert listened to them, clenching his fists, rage in his heart. What was he doing here? Bunch of old chatterboxes, he thought. If only he were two years older! Suddenly his young and innocent mind—younger, until now, than his years—was overtaken by the passions and torment of a grown man: patriotic anguish, a burning feeling of shame, pain, anger and the desire to make a sacrifice. Finally, and for the first time in his life, he thought, he felt linked to a truly serious cause. It wasn’t enough to cry or shout traitor, he was a man; he might not be legally old enough to fight but he knew he was stronger, more robust, more able, more cunning than these old men of thirty-five and forty who had been sent to war, and
he
was free. He wasn’t held back by family ties, by love! “Oh, I want to go,” he murmured, “I want to go!”

He rushed towards his mother, grabbed her hand, took her aside. “Mummy, let me have some food and my red jumper from your bag and . . . give me a kiss,” he said. “I’m leaving.” He couldn’t breathe. Tears were streaming down his face.

His mother looked at him and understood. “Come on now, darling, you’re mad . . .”

“Mother, I’m leaving. I can’t stay here . . . I’ll die, I’ll kill myself if I have to stay here and be useless, twiddling my thumbs while . . . and don’t you realise the Germans will come and force all the boys to fight, make them fight for them. I couldn’t! Let me go.”

He had gradually raised his voice and was shouting now; he couldn’t control himself. He was surrounded by a circle of trembling, terrified old women: another young boy, scarcely older than him, the nephew of the two spinsters, rosy and fair, with curly hair and big innocent blue eyes, had joined him and repeated in a slight southern accent (his parents were civil servants—he’d been born in Tarascon), “Of course we have to go, and tonight! Look, not very far from here, in the Sainte woods, there are troops . . . all we have to do is get on our bikes and join them . . .”

“René,” moaned his aunts, holding on to him, “René, my darling, think of your mother!”