Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (86 page)

The Germans are very uncertain in their minds now, they decided to-day to give us the curfew at ten instead of six in the evening, it was posted up at the mairie and everybody was happy and then at half past five they sent the local policeman around to announce that they had changed their minds and it was back to six o’clock again, then a half hour afterwards they sent him around again to announce that it was changed back to ten and that is where it is now, or so we hope. But that is the way they are about everything, they come and go and they are afraid of their shadow, it is very hard to believe but it is true, and now everybody knows it, guerrilla warfare gets on their nerves it is so darn individual and being individual is what they do not like that is to say what they can not do.

It is exciting to me to hear over the radio about Lake Trasimena, when my brother and I were still at college we spent one summer some weeks in Perugia at a pension and there were lots of us there and one day some of us went off to see Lake Trasimena because there was supposed to be a whole army at the bottom well an army of ancient days naturally with gold chariots, and we thought we would like a swim in the lake, and the young men took the boatmen with them at one end of a little island in the middle of the lake and we girls went to the other end to swim, and we swam without clothes in the sunset in Lake Trasimena, and I have swum in lots of lakes and oceans but there was something special about that and now well it is being mentioned every day. And Cherbourg, when my eldest brother was coming to Paris with his family, my brother and I had been living there some years already, my eldest brother was a little nervous about the trip and he had not much confidence in the ability of my brother and myself getting to the station in time to meet his train from Cherbourg, and so for several months my eldest brother wrote letters and each one of them ended up with a post-script it is six and a half hours from Cherbourg to Paris, six hours and a half. We used to laugh about it, it was a family joke six hours and a half from Cherbourg to Paris. Well perhaps, anyway it is Cherbourg, yes it is.

Everybody is excited so very excited and all around us there are explosions, we do not know what they are whether they are cannon or bridges blowing up or avions or just thunder but there is a lot of it and everybody hears and tells of a different lot, the Germans in French local trucks, not having any of their own, rush forward and back, and nobody seems to know just why or where. When I was out yesterday, I met five Germans with guns on bicycles and they were followed by a truck from Grenoble with soldiers having mitraillettes pointing in every direction and then followed by a local taxi-cab containing two officers of a higher rank than we are accustomed to see around here, and where they were going nobody knows, do they, and then there was a
private car that went to Aix, and in this was an officer who had been here and was not popular and he was in a car with two soldiers each carrying a gun and the officer was driving and the car swerved and one of the soldiers dropped his gun which went off and killed the officer. And then there was his funeral with all the officers present. Then I have been seeing a German soldier working lately in the local carpenter shop, and I asked the carpenter why, well he said he told me in his own country he was owner of a carpenter shop and had six men working under him and he said as he has nothing to do he would like to handle tools and as I am short handed I let him, he says the war has settled his hash all right, when and if he gets back to his home he certainly will find nothing there for him.

It’s a funny life all right, so far we ourselves have not seen any maquis, I went on a long walk yesterday and went over a road that had been barricaded, just trees pulled to the side of the road, all the telegraph and telephone wires down, they had not fought there but it was certainly like a battle field, it is hard to tell who is maquis and who isn’t, they have an arm-band but naturally when they come home to see their people and they all do they keep it in their pocket and then there are still some firm reactionaries who are convinced that all maquis are terrorists, we have some charming neighbors who are like that and it worries me because after all people get angry and things might happen to them and we are very fond of them, it kind of reminds me of the description of the marauding bands in Cooper’s Spy, but that of course is the extraordinary thing about this war it is so historical not recent history but fairly ancient history, not I suppose where the armies are actually fighting but here where we are. The mayor keeps us pretty well fed, there are no more tickets because there is no contact with the authorities, there is only the mayor, there are no police but we are all peaceable and we are very well fed, we seem to have everything but sugar. We even had a lemon and an orange which should have gotten to Switzerland but did not, the bridges keep being blown up and nobody wants to go out to repair them it is
too dangerous, the Germans tried to pass an armored train through the other day, but did it get there, nobody seems to know.

They just blew up the electric line between here and Chambery and now everybody is walking, they walk to Grenoble they walk to Lyon, even children of three and five walk along with their elders, and sometimes somebody lends them a bicycle and sometimes the children fall off but not often they stick on holding on to anything in front of them, and so they still move around, everybody has to go somewhere and French people always find a way, they are wonders at always finding a way. The death of Henriot killed by the militia or somebody in their uniform has been an immense excitement, it is hard to make any one who has not lived with them realise how really tormented the population has been in its opinions and Henriot did perhaps more than anybody to turn Frenchmen against Frenchmen, he was a very able propagandist, he used the method not of a politician but of a churchman, he had that education, and he knew how to appeal like a revivalist sermon, and he did do it awfully well, and he held the middle classes they could not get away from him, what said I to one friend whose mother always listened to him, what will your mother do now, oh she mourns but at least for a week she will be busy with all the funeral orations, but after that, good gracious after that what will she do. A great many of the middle classes feel like that, of course the immense majority of French people are delighted at his putting off, they breathe more freely, there was no one else in the government who had the power he had, no one else. I do not think outside of France this was realised, I do not think so.

And now he is dead and except a few of the die hards everybody is happy and relieved and everybody can now get ready for the end of the war that is to say for the evacuation of France by the Germans.

One of our friends wants to be taught to say to a parachutist who comes to her door, and upon whom she has closed the door, she wants to say to him in English through the keyhole please break down the door and come in by force and
take everything you want by force in that way you will have what you need and the Germans and the government cannot blame me and now said she just how can I say that to the parachutist through the keyhole. The rest of the population just wants to be taught to say we are glad to see you, and some of them are learning to say it very nicely, every one is certain that a large party of Canadians have been parachuted somewhere in our neighborhood and that they are only waiting the arrival of an English general expected any day this is the first of July for the advance to begin. As a matter of fact the forty-odd Germans who are here and who no longer get their pay are getting more and more peaceful, they ask for work they wander around unarmed and they used never to stir without a gun on their back and never less than three together, now they wander all about the country alone and unarmed. It certainly is a change this conquering army this occupying army now wandering around hoping some one will speak to them and that some one will give them a job. It certainly does look like the beginning of the end. The breathlessness of the situation is a bit on everybody’s nerves but the most selfish of all the women here did to-day in a great burst announced that it was all right there must be no bread, no money no anything and then the Germans would leave, that is the way it was going to be. There are no more trains here any more, and this Culoz where we are was a very important railroad junction for Italy, Switzerland the Savoys and Lyon, but not a train not one single or solitary train not one. No wonder the Germans are meek, here they are and here they must stay until the maquis come and take them away.

They are getting away from here, the last lot that were in Artemarre are leaving and they are trying to sell the wagons that they had attached to their horses and all that is left in the region are right here in Culoz, we still have forty odd and when will they leave very soon we are hoping, they do not do anything very disagreeable here but oh dear what a relief it will be when they are gone, as everybody says even when they are not doing anything they are an oppressive burden, they are.

The Germans still eat sausages, just like the old jokes, the Hitler regime has not changed that, they borrow a sausage machine from an old woman here who is called the old Maria, and they tell her all their troubles and how they are all going home very soon now, and the soldier who accidentally killed his adjutant and who has been crying ever since locked up in a room and he wanted to commit suicide but the officers decided instead of shooting him he would be sent to the Russian front and we all laughed and said by the time he gets there there wont be any Russian front.

And now the cook has just come up to say that the maquis are on their way and may get here at Culoz not any day but at any moment of to-day. I wonder. It is now the fourth of July and things certainly are moving.

It’s the fourth of July and everybody is on the broad grin. The French black troops with regular French officers are now within eight kilometers of us, they have been parachuted in the region and the Germans scared to death are packing up their bags and moving away and everybody stands around and laughs and with reason. It is a happy day.

To-day I took a long walk and all along there were groups of people telling each other all sorts of things, some had seen Canadians and some had seen English and some had heard on the radio that this department of the Ain was going to be completely emptied of Germans by the fourteenth of July and others had seen the black troops and anyway there was a sound of cannon firing and somebody had heard one of the German soldiers say; the only thing to do to shorten this war is to kill our chiefs, and sometimes when you realise that there have been twenty-four German generals killed or imprisoned in three weeks are they doing it, are they.

There is one thing certain now it is very bad form to mention maquis or mountain boys, you speak respectfully of the French army, in two days the word maquis no longer exists it is with great pride the French army. There are such funny things the new prefect was talking of having he himself been condemned to death by the maquis and the wife of the mayor said yes he will write about it in his memoirs and then
she added meditatively condemned to death we are all condemned to death.

It is very pleasant to have a new army with an old name or an old army with a new name, very pleasant.

We were in Belley yesterday and there everybody was excited the night before the maquis had come into the town and walked off with the sous-prefect with the chief of police with a thousand kilos of sugar that one of the cake shops had and lots of other material, and everybody of course was excited and upset, six of us had gone over in a taxi including our mayor, and it was very exciting and then we came home and then that evening the maquis came very near to Culoz and the Germans took out cannon to shoot at them and all to-day they were firing around the mountain and we all stood around talking and everybody said if the maquis come they bring food but if the maquis come and do not succeed then the Germans will take hostages and burn up the farms, oh dear do they want maquis or do they not want maquis, it all is very exciting we now have one hundred and sixty Germans in the town and they are not leaving, we all hoped that they would leave and that would be very comfortable for everybody and they would like to leave but Hitler likes everybody to stay where they are until they are all killed, he likes it like that, so I suppose even these few will stay until they are killed so that now that the railroad is not working any more there is no use in staying but their orders are to stay anyway. A lot get killed when there is a lot and a few get killed when there are a few but the idea is to always stay and get killed. That is the way to create the last battalion which will then be killed and we will all be happy, yes quite happy.

I had seen many things in this war a great many but I had never seen an armored train and to-day as I passed the railroad track I saw one, with the engine with a sort of tea cosy made of metal over it and behind cars with sand bags and Germans and we wondered because there was no way to go the railroad being all broken up except just to Chambery and I came home to tell about it and it was almost nine
o’clock of summer night just a little later and Basket barked and I looked out and there was a German officer and a soldier and they said in French they wanted to sleep and I said have you a paper from the mayor because they are always supposed to have and he said like an old time German officer I must see the house, certainly I said, you go around to the back and they will open, and I called the servants and told them to attend to them, I thought with that kind of a German it was just as well to keep our American accents out of it, and then they were at it, the German said he wanted two rooms for officers and mattresses for six men and he did not want any answering back and he did not care how much he upset the ladies of the house, and the servants said very well sir and he left and as soon as he left the soldiers were amiable and they carried around mattresses and they had three dogs and we locked up as much as we could and took Basket upstairs and went to bed, finally there were fifteen men sleeping on the six mattresses and the two dogs the third one would not come in and in the morning after they all left we could not find my umbrella it turned out that it was used by a poor devil of an Italian whom they kept outside all night in the rain to sit with the horses, and they took away a new pair of slippers of one of the servants and they broke the lock and stole all our peaches and they took away with them why nobody knows except to be disagreeable the two keys of the front and back doors, and then they left but the third dog would not go with them and he is here now, there were six hundred of them in the village and they are supposed to be on their way to fight the maquis, but actually they themselves thought they were going home, they were sixteen and seventeen years of age and when they were alone any one of them with the servants they told about how hard their life was and what an unhappy country it was where there were maquis, and one of them said, now the Russians are getting in to our country we will have to go to our country we will have to go back to Berlin to defend it and we will have to leave you French people to defend yourselves as best you can against the English. The servants just listened and then when another German came in then the one who was crying
got the same brutal expression on his face as the others, oh said the servants the miserable assassins. We heard firing all this afternoon and the rumor is the maquis had mined the road they went over and caught them, anyway that is the last we saw of them and that was only yesterday. All the same said the mayor they are not quite what they were, they threatened to shoot the mayor of the next village because he had not notified the Germans that the maquis were there, but how could I said the poor mayor when they imprisoned me and, said our mayor, four months ago they would not have listened to him but now they did and let him go. The rumor to-night is that they are all quitting the country and they should go the ill-omened birds that they are, say the country people. So far we none of us have seen any maquis, nor the Canadians that are supposed to be with them, but we will they all say we will. Everybody is worried and a little confused in their minds except about the Germans that they will go, that they will only go, where does not interest anybody.