Suite Francaise (17 page)

From the young women he learned what had happened that week. As they spoke about it, in their slightly harsh accent, all those terribly serious events lost their tragic element. “It’s really sad,” they would say and, “It’s not very nice to see things like that” . . . “Oh, Monsieur! It’s really upsetting!” He wondered if all the people here spoke like them, or whether it was something much deeper, rooted in the very souls of these girls, in their youth, some instinct that told them that wars end and invaders leave, that even when distorted, even when mutilated, life goes on. His own mother, knitting while the soup was cooking, would sigh and say, “Nineteen-fourteen? That’s the year your father and I got married. We were miserable by the end of it, but very happy at the beginning.” Even that bleak year was sweetened, bathed in the reflection of their love.

In the same way, he thought, the summer of 1940 would remain in the memories of these young women as the summer they were twenty, in spite of everything. He didn’t want to think; thinking was worse than physical pain, but everything flooded back, everything went round and round in his head endlessly: being called back from leave on 15 May, those four days in Angers, no trains running any more, soldiers lying on wooden boards, being bitten by insects, then the air raids, the bombings, the battle of Rethel, the retreat, the battle of the Somme, another retreat, days when they had fled from city to city, without officers, without orders, without weapons, and finally the train compartment in flames. He tossed and turned, groaning. He didn’t know if the fighting was real, or if it was all a confusing dream born of his thirst and high fever. Come on, it wasn’t possible . . . There are some things that just aren’t possible . . . Hadn’t someone said something about Sédan? That was in 1870. He could picture it still: it was at the top of the page, in the history book with the reddish cloth cover. It was . . . He quietly pronounced the words: “Sédan, the defeat at Sédan . . . the disastrous battle of Sédan decided the outcome of the war . . .” On the wall above him the image on the calender, the smiling rosy-cheeked soldier with the two women from Alsace who were showing off their white stockings . . . Yes, all that was a dream, the past and he . . . he started trembling and said, “Thank you, it’s nothing, thank you, please don’t trouble yourself . . .” while they slipped a hot-water bottle under his heavy, stiff legs.

“You seem better tonight.”

“I feel better,” he replied.

He asked for a mirror and smiled when he saw the black beard on his chin.

“I’ll have to shave tomorrow . . .”

“If you’re strong enough. Who do you want to look handsome for?”

“For you.”

They laughed and moved closer. They were curious to know where he came from, where he’d been wounded. Now and again, feeling guilty, they would stop talking. “Oh, but you mustn’t let us chatter on . . . you’ll get tired . . . then we’ll start arguing, we will . . . It’s Michaud, your name? . . . Jean-Marie?”

“Yes.”

“Are you from Paris? What do you do? Are you a worker? Of course not! I can tell by your hands. You work in business or maybe in the government?”

“Just a student.”

“Oh! You study? Why?”

“My goodness,” he said after thinking a moment, “I wonder why myself sometimes!”

It was funny . . . he and his friends had worked, sat and passed exams, earned diplomas, all the time knowing it was pointless, it wouldn’t do them any good because there would be a war . . . Their future had been mapped out in advance, their careers were made in heaven, just like they used to say that “marriages were made in heaven.” He had been conceived while his father was home on leave in 1915. He was born out of the war and (he had always known it) war would be his fate. There was nothing morbid in this idea; he shared it with many boys his age; it was simply logical and reasonable. But, he said to himself, the worst is over now, and that changes everything. Once again there is a future. The war is over—terrible, shameful, but over. And . . . there is hope . . .

“I wanted to write books,” he said shyly, expressing to these country girls, these strangers, a wish buried deep in his heart that had barely taken shape in his mind.

Then he wanted to know the name of the place, the farm where he was.

“It’s far from everywhere,” said Cécile, “the middle of nowhere. Oh, it’s not usually much fun, I can tell you. The more we look after the animals, the more like them we become, right, Madeleine?”

“Have you been here a long time, Mademoiselle Madeleine?”

“I was three weeks old. Cécile’s mother brought the two of us up together. We’re sisters, ’cause we nursed from the same mother.”

“I can see you get along well together.”

“We don’t always think alike,” said Cécile. “She’d like to become a nun!”

“Sometimes . . .” said Madeleine, smiling.

She had a pretty smile, unhurried and a little shy.

I wonder where she came from, Jean-Marie thought. Her hands were red but they were graceful, like her ankles and legs. A foster-child . . . He felt a little curious and a bit sorry for her. He was grateful to her for the hazy daydreams she inspired in him. They were a diversion, they prevented him from thinking about himself, about the war. It was just a shame he felt so weak. It was difficult to laugh, to joke with them . . . and that must be what they were hoping for. In the countryside, it was commonplace for young girls and boys to tease one another . . . It was their custom, it was what they did. They would be disappointed and upset if he didn’t laugh with them.

He made an effort to smile.

“A boy will come along who will make you change your mind, Mademoiselle Madeleine. Then you won’t want to be a nun any more!”

“It’s true, it comes over me sometimes, it does . . .”

“When?”

“Oh, I don’t know . . . on sad days . . .”

“As for boys, well, there aren’t many around here,” said Cécile. “I told you we’re in the middle of nowhere. The few there are get taken by the war. So then what? Oh, it’s really bad luck being a girl!”

“Everyone,” said Madeleine, “has some bad luck.” She had sat down next to the wounded young man, but suddenly she got up. “Cécile, did you forget! The floor’s not been washed.”

“It’s your turn.”

“Oh, really! You’ve got some nerve! It’s
your
turn!”

They argued for a few minutes, then did the job together. They were amazingly skilful and lively. Soon the cool water made the red flagstones shine. The smell of grass, milk and wild mint drifted in from the doorway. Jean-Marie rested his cheek on his hand. It was strange, the contrast between this absolute serenity and the turmoil within him, for the unbearable din of the last six days had remained in his ears and it only took a moment of silence for it all to rise up again: the sound of twisting metal, the dull, slow beating of an iron hammer on an enormous anvil . . . He winced and started sweating all over . . . train compartments being machine-gunned, the crash of collapsing beams drowning out people’s screams.

“Even so,” he said out loud, “I just have to put that out of my mind, don’t I?”

“What’s that? Do you need something?”

He didn’t reply. Suddenly he didn’t recognise Cécile and Madeleine. They shook their heads, dismayed.

“It’s his fever getting worse.”

“And you made him talk too much!”

“Are you having me on! He didn’t say a word. We were the ones talking the whole time!”

“It wore him out.”

Madeleine leaned down over him. He saw her pink cheek right next to his, caught its scent of strawberries and kissed it. She stood back blushing and laughing, fixing some locks of hair that had fallen down.

“All right, all right now, you scared me . . . You’re not as sick as all that!”

“Who on earth is this girl?” he thought. He had kissed her as if he were bringing a glass of cool water to his lips. He was on fire. His throat, the inside of his mouth seemed to crack from the heat, dried out by the intensity of the flames. This bright, soft skin quenched his thirst. At the same time he felt totally lucid, with the kind of lucidity that comes from sleeplessness and fever. He had forgotten the names of these young girls and his own. The mental effort it took to understand his present condition, in this place he didn’t recognise, was too difficult for him. He wore himself out trying, but in the meantime his soul drifted light and serene, like a fish in the water, like a bird blown along by the wind. He didn’t see himself, Jean-Marie, but someone else, a nameless soldier, defeated, but refusing to give up hope, a wounded young man who did not want to die, a desperate man who refused to despair. “Even so, we have to make it through . . . we have to get away, from this blood, from this mud dragging us down . . . We’re not just going to lie down and die . . . Are we, well, are we? That would be too ridiculous. We have to hang on . . . hang on . . . hang on . . .” he muttered, and when he came to, eyes wide open, clinging to his bolster, sitting up in bed, he gazed at the night with its full moon, the silent, sweet-smelling night, the sparkling night, so gentle after the heat of the day and which, for once, the farmhouse welcomed through its open doors and windows so it could refresh and bring peace to the suffering man.

25

When Father Péricand found himself forced to continue the journey on foot, the boys filing after him, each carrying a blanket and haversack and dragging their feet in the dust, he had decided to head away from the Loire, an area fraught with danger, towards the woods; but soldiers had already set up camp there and, since planes were bound to spot them from the air, the danger seemed just as great amid the trees as on the river banks. And so, leaving the main road, he took a path covered with stones, virtually a footpath, trusting his instinct to lead him to some isolated house, just as when, in the mountains, he led his group of skiers towards a refuge hidden by the fog or snowstorm. It was a beautiful June day, so brilliant and hot that the boys felt intoxicated. Silent until now and well-behaved, too well-behaved, they began jostling each other, shouting, and Father Péricand could hear laughter and snatches of whispered songs. He listened more closely and, hearing an obscene refrain mumbled behind him, as if through half-closed lips, he suggested they all sing a song together. He struck up, energetically enunciating the words, but only a few voices joined in. After some moments everyone fell silent. He too walked on without speaking, wondering what this sudden freedom might awaken within these poor children, what disturbing desires? What dreams? One of the younger ones stopped suddenly and cried, “A lizard, oh! A lizard! Look!” In the sunshine, between two rocks, agile tails appeared, disappeared; they could see their delicate flat heads; their throats pulsating in and out to a rapid, frightened beat. The boys watched, entranced. Some of them even knelt down on the path. The priest waited a few moments, then waved to them to move on. The children meekly got up, but at that very moment pebbles flew out of their hands with such dexterity, such surprising speed, that two of the lizards—the most beautiful, the biggest, their skin a delicate blue-grey colour—were killed on the spot.

“Why did you do that?” the priest exclaimed, upset.

No one replied.

“Well, why? What a spineless act!”

“But they’re like snakes, they bite,” said a boy with a long pointed nose and a pale, dazed expression.

“Don’t be ridiculous! Lizards are harmless.”

“Oh! We didn’t know, Father,” he replied in a sly voice, with a feigned innocence that didn’t fool the priest.

But he knew it was neither the time nor the place to insist; he just nodded briefly as if he were satisfied with the answer and added, “Well, now you know.”

He organised them into lines to follow him. Until now he had let them walk as they liked, but he suddenly thought that some of them might try to run away. They obeyed him so perfectly, so mechanically—no doubt used to hearing the whistle blow, to standing in line, to being docile, to enforced silence—that it broke his heart. He glanced at their faces, which had suddenly became glum and lifeless—as closed as a house when the door is locked, the life within withdrawn, absent or dead.

“We’d better hurry up if we want to find shelter tonight,” he said. “As soon as I know where we’ll be sleeping and after we eat (you’ll be getting hungry soon!) we can make a campfire and you can stay outdoors as long as you like.”

He walked among them, talked to them about his young boys from the Auvergne, about skiing, mountain climbing, trying to interest them, to get closer to them. All in vain. They didn’t even seem to be listening; he realised that anything he said to them—encouragement, reprimands, information—would never sink in, for their souls were shut off, walled up, secret and silent.

“If only I could look after them for longer,” he thought to himself. But in his heart he knew he didn’t really want to. He only wanted one thing: to be rid of them as soon as possible, to be relieved of his responsibility and this feeling of unease he felt weighing down on him. The duty of love which, until now, he had felt was almost simple, so great was the Grace of God within him, now seemed almost impossible to feel. “Even though,” he thought humbly, “it would mean that, for the first time perhaps, I would really have to try, it would be a true sacrifice. How weak I am!”

He called over one of the younger boys who was always lagging behind. “Are you tired? Do your shoes hurt?”

Yes, he had guessed correctly: the lad’s shoes were too tight and hurting him. He took his hand to help him, talking to him quietly and, since the boy was slouching—his shoulders stooped, his back round—the priest gently placed two fingers round his neck and pulled him up straight. The young boy didn’t resist. In fact, with a distant, indifferent look on his face, he leaned his neck against the hand that held it, and this light, insistent pressure, this strange, ambiguous caress (or rather this expectation of a caress) made the priest blush. He took the child by the chin and tried to look into his eyes, but his eyelids were lowered and he couldn’t see into them.

He walked faster, trying to collect himself with an internal dialogue, as he always did at sad moments. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a prayer. Often it wasn’t even a collection of words recognisable ashuman speech. It was a kind of intangible meditation from which heemerged bathed in joy and peace. But both abandoned him today. Thepity he felt was corrupted by a stirring of anxiety and bitterness. It wasonly too clear that these poor wretches were lacking Grace: His Grace.He wanted to be able to shower them with Grace, inundate their barrenhearts with love and faith. It would take but a sigh from our CrucifiedLord, the flutter of a wing from one of His angels to bring about themiracle, but nevertheless he, Philippe Péricand, had been chosen by Godto soften them, to unlock their souls, to prepare them to receive God. Hesuffered because he was incapable of bringing it about. He had beenspared the moments of doubt and the sudden hardening of the soul thattake hold of some believers, abandoning them, not in the hands of theprinces of this world, but in a terrible darkness halfway between Satanand God.