Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (91 page)

It is wonderful to go down to the village square on Sunday evening and to see it full of maquis in their nice shorts and khaki shirts with the tricolor on their shoulders talking to the girls everybody smiling and only ten days ago everybody was staying in the house and the Germans were in the square, only ten days ago, what a week, and nobody is really used to it, and yet it is hard to believe that it was not always so, we have one hundred and fifty maquis stationed in our town and it is a pleasure.

Yesterday I was out on the road and there was a tremendous
thunderstorm and I went into a roadside café, there were two men sitting at a table with F.F.I. on their breasts and I said how do you do and Basket and I were very wet, and they said how do you do but not quite like Frenchmen, we talked a little more and then I knew from their accent they were Spaniards, I said I was American and we solemnly shook hands and we began to talk, one of them was the typical Barcelona intellectual he reminded me of Picasso’s friend Sabartes, he and his comrade with two hundred and fifty other Spanish refugees have been with the maquis for two years now, since said they we cannot fight for freedom in our own country we fight for freedom wherever we can, they have been at it for ten years now, they know about Hemingway and when I told them that I knew Picasso they stood up and solemnly shook hands, all over again. Then I asked where they had come from and they said Annecy and I said you must have seen my compatriots and they said yes and a woman journalist interviewed them and said to them what are you Spaniards doing here, and when they told her she said she was glad to meet them and that they were heroes. They were going to Artemarre to see their wives who were refugeed there and then they were going back to Annecy. If said I you see the journalist again tell her that I want to see her, and I told them my name but they wont remember but anyway it was a pleasure to send word. It is very tantalising Americans all over the place sometimes only twenty kilometers away and we do not see them, how we want to see them and send word to America and have news from them. To-night I was all bitten by mosquitoes trying to get more news of them. I went down to the Pont de la Lois which is the only bridge left over the Rhone, it strangely enough was not destroyed in ’40 and now again it has not been destroyed. It was near there that our little battle was fought and it was near there that the bombs were dropped the other day or was it only yesterday. Well anyway I was talking to the maquis that were guarding the bridge, among them a boy I knew in Cezerieu and they told me that a car with American officers had passed over the bridge, when I told Alice Toklas about it tonight she said she would take her typewriting down
there and await them but when I told her about mosquitoes she weakened, well anyway, one of the train hands who was also there said that they had received orders to repair the train tracks between Chambery and Culoz and that it had to be done in three days, because he said the Americans want to use it and he promised me that when the first train carrying Americans was signaled, night or day, he would leave all and come up and let me know. Dear Americans how we do want to see them.

It’s wonderful in the evening hearing the voices of the children playing, for such a long time they played quietly they were afraid to play in the streets or on the sidewalk but now they are let loose and the elders smile indulgently and all of a sudden you hear a childish voice cry pomm pomm pomm, pomm pomm pomm, pomm pomm pomm that’s that, of course that is a mitraillette killing the Boches, everybody calls them Boches now, and everybody is easy very easy in their minds, except of course those who made money off the Germans, and there are some, and naturally they are nervous. The maquis of course do revenge themselves a little the French are not naturally a revengeful people but the Germans did commit such awful atrocities in the mountain regions that when the mountain boys caught the S.S. troops in Annecy naturally enough they made them parade the town with their hands in the air and then took them up into the hills and there nobody knows what did happen to them, and naturally the young ones who had seen farms burned with men women and children inside them as well as the beasts, when they take a German prisoner they cannot help giving him a kick in the behind. But the French are not a vengeful people and they will soon now that they feel their strength they will not feel revengeful.

Our friend Monsieur Godet came yesterday and said he was going to try to get through to Switzerland, he has business there, and so we are hoping that he will be able to cable to America for us and tell all our friends that we are all right, he left on his bicycle with a permit from the F.F.I. and once he gets to Saint Julien, the way we always used to drive into Switzerland, he thinks he will have no trouble. It will be
nice when he comes back and brings us news of the Americans. We have asked him to bring back with him a newspaper man or a newspaper woman, or two of them, if he did that would be nice. There are American cars and officers that pass so they say from time to time but I have not seen them and of course seeing is believing, because with the population, the wish is so much the father of the thought, but they will come, bless them.

I met to-day Monsieur Burtin whose daughter is at the University of Grenoble and who kept telling him when he worried about her student activities but my dear father you do not understand, this is our war not your war, and now that the F.F.I. have covered themselves with glory she said to her father, you see we were right, to be sure people of your age are less credulous than people of our age, but this time we were right in persisting in our credulity, look at the results, they are magnificent said the father, yes said the daughter you can understand it was no work for veterans.

A little later I was talking to a young fellow who is now in Culoz but whom I had often seen in Belley where he was in the first battalion of Chasseurs before they were demobilised when the Southern zone no longer existed. I had not seen him since those days. So naturally I asked him if he had been in the movement. He said because of his health, his lungs are not very strong he had not been able to be but actually all his comrades in the battalion were in the movement, not the officers, he said, this was not an officers movement, regular army officers did not in general have the kind of intelligence that makes a maquis. No I said, all the army officers that I know who were patriots, all managed somehow to get to Africa and join the regular army, yes he said they did not have the kind of quality that makes maquis, the non-commissioned officers yes lots of them were in the movement, it was said he marvelously secret, you do not know perhaps he said that one of the leaders of the Paris F.F.I. was hidden for three months in Culoz, no I said did you know at the time, oh no he said, I knew his sister very intimately but she never mentioned it, how old is he, I said, oh about twenty-four and the Germans got on his track two of the crowd were taken by
the Germans but the rest of the leaders escaped, and the two who were captured in spite of frightful tortures did not give their comrades away, after three months they heard that the Germans had lost trace of them so they all went back, and continued their work, now that it is all over his sister told me all about it. And where said I did all the arms come from that the Parisians seem to have had, oh he laughed most of those have been hidden since ’40, not possibly I said, yes he said I do assure you. Well honneur aux maquis, one cannot say it too often, it is nice to have two countries to be proud of that belong to you, mine of course are America and France.

To-day the village is excited terribly excited because they are shaving the heads of the girls who kept company with the Germans during the occupation, it is called the coiffure of 1944, and naturally it is terrible because the shaving is done publicly, it is being done to-day. It is as I have often said, life in the middle ages, it certainly is most interesting and logical it certainly is.

Speaking of all this there is this about a Jewish woman, a Parisienne, well known in the Paris world. She and her family took refuge in Chambery when the persecutions against the Jews began in Paris. And then later, when there was no southern zone, all the Jews were supposed to have the fact put on their carte d’identité and their food card, she went to the prefecture to do so and the official whom she saw looked at her severely Madame he said, have you any proof with you that you are a Jewess, why no she said, well he said if you have no actual proof that you are a Jewess, why do you come and bother me, why she said I beg your pardon, no he said I am not interested unless you can prove you are a Jewess, good day he said and she left. It was she who told the story. Most of the French officials were like that really like that.

And now everybody says all the time that American officers are passing through Culoz, you can tell them they all say because of their large hats. Do American officers wear large hats, oh yes they say. Do they, I wonder, or is it only a sort of cowboy idea that the population have. Perhaps the American do wear large hats, we are so eagerly waiting to see.

What a day what a day of days, I always did say that I would end this book with the first American that came to Culoz, and to-day oh happy day yesterday and to-day, the first of September 1944. There have been six of them in the house, two of them stayed the night and then three were there besides the first three not here at Culoz but at Belley. Oh happy day, that is all that I can say oh happy day.

This is the way it happened. We go to Belley about once a month to go shopping and the bank and things like that and yesterday Thursday was the day, so we went over in a taxi, and when we got to Belley as I got out of the taxi several people said to me, Americans are here. I had heard that so often that I had pretty well given up hope and I said oh nonsense but yes they said, and then the son of the watchmaker who had been the most steadfast and violent pro-ally even in the darkest days came up to me and said the Americans are here. Really I said yes he said well I said lead me to them, all right he said they are at the hotel so we went on just as fast as we could and when we got to the hotel they tried to stop me but we said no and went in. I saw the proprietor of the hotel and I said is it true there are Americans, yes he said come on, and I followed and there we were Alice Toklas panting behind and Basket very excited and we went into a room filled with maquis and the mayor of Belley and I said in a loud voice are there any Americans here and three men stood up and they were Americans God bless them and were we pleased. We held each other’s hands and we patted each other and we sat down together and I told them who we were, and they knew, I always take it for granted that people will know who I am and at the same time at the last moment I kind of doubt, but they knew of course they knew, they were lieutenant Walter E. Oleson 120th Engineers and private Edward Landry and Walter Hartze, and they belonged to the Thunderbirds and how we talked and how we patted each other in the good American way, and I had to know where they came from and where they were going and where they were born. In the last war we had come across our first American soldiers and it had been nice but nothing like this,
after almost two years of not a word with America, there they were, all three of them. Then we went to look at their car the jeep, and I had expected it to be much smaller but it was quite big and they said did I want a ride and I said you bet I wanted a ride and we all climbed in and there I was riding in an American army car driven by an American soldier. Everybody was so excited.

Then we all said good-bye and we did hope to see them again, and then we went on with our shopping, then suddenly everybody got excited army trucks filled with soldiers were coming along but not Americans, this was the French army in American cars and they were happy and we were happy and tired and happy and then we saw two who looked like Americans in a car standing alone and I went over and said are you Americans and they said sure, and by that time I was confident and I said I was Gertrude Stein and did they want to come back with us and spend the night. They said well yes they thought that the war could get along without them for a few hours so they came, Alice Toklas got into the car with the driver and the colonel came with me, oh a joyous moment and we all drove home and the village was wild with excitement and they all wanted to shake the colonel’s hand and at last we got into the house, and were we excited. Here were the first Americans actually in the house with us, impossible to believe that only three weeks before the Germans had been in the village still and feeling themselves masters, it was wonderful. Lieutenant-Colonel William O. Perry Headquarters 47th Infantry Division and private John Schmaltz, wonderful that is all I can say about it wonderful, and I said you are going to sleep in beds where German officers slept six week ago, wonderful my gracious perfectly wonderful.

How we talked that night, they just brought all America to us every bit of it, they came from Colorado, lovely Colorado, I do not know Colorado but that is the way I felt about it lovely Colorado and then everybody was tired out and they gave us nice American specialties and my were we happy, we were, completely and truly happy and completely and entirely worn out with emotion. The next morning while they breakfasted we talked some more and we patted each
other and then kissed each other and then they went away. Just as we were sitting down to lunch, in came four more Americans this time war correspondents, our emotions were not yet exhausted nor our capacity to talk, how we talked and talked and where they were born was music to the ears Baltimore and Washington D.C. and Detroit and Chicago, it is all music to the ears so long long long away from the names of the places where they were born. Well they have asked me to go with them to Voiron to broadcast with them to America next Sunday and I am going and the war is over and this certainly this is the last war to remember.

Write about us they all said a little sadly, and write about them I will. They all said good-bye Gerty as the train pulled out and then they said, well we will see you in America, and then they said we will stop on our way back, and then they said we will see you in California and then one said, you got to get to New York first.