The Train (15 page)

Our tent seemed to stifle us with human warmth, and after we finally curled up in our corner I didn’t sleep all night.

The next day was a Sunday. Some of the refugees dressed up to go to mass. In town we saw girls in light-colored dresses, children in their Sunday best walking in front of their parents. The confectioners’ shops were open and I bought a cake which was still warm, as at Fumay.

After lunch we went to eat it beside the dock, sitting on the stone with our legs dangling above the water.

At five o’clock some German motorcyclists stopped outside the town hall and an officer asked to see Monsieur Vieiljeux.

ON MONDAY MORNING I FELT EMPTY AND depressed. Anna had had a restless night, shaken several times by those abrupt movements which I found it hard to get used to, and several times she had spoken volubly in her native language.

I got up at the same time as on the other days to make the coffee and to shave, but, instead of finding myself alone outside, I saw some groups of half-awake refugees who were watching German motorcyclists going past.

I had the impression of finding in their eyes the mournful resignation which they must have been able to read in mine, and that was a general reaction: it lasted several days, for some people several weeks.

A page had been turned. An epoch had ended, everybody felt sure of that, although nobody could foresee what was going to take its place.

It was no longer just our fate which was at stake but that of the world to which we belonged.

We had formed a more or less terrifying idea of the war, of the invasion, and now, just as war and invasion reached us in our turn, we saw that they were different from everything we had imagined. It is true that this was just the beginning.

For example, while my water was boiling on the little spirit stove on the ground and the Germans were still going by without bothering about us, very young, pink, and fresh as if they were going on parade, I could see two French soldiers, with their rifles slung over their shoulders, mounting guard at the door of the station.

No trains had arrived for two days. The platforms were deserted, as were the waiting rooms, the refreshment room, and the military commandant’s office. The two soldiers, not having received any orders, didn’t know what to do, and it wasn’t until about nine o’clock that they propped their rifles against the wall and went off.

While I was lathering my cheeks with my shaving brush I heard the familiar sound of diesel engines and some boats went out fishing. There were only three or four of them. The fact remains that, while the enemy was invading the town, some fishermen went out to sea as usual to cast their nets. Nobody stopped them.

When we went toward the town, Anna and I, the cafés, the bars, the shops were open, and shopkeepers were tidying up their window displays. I remember in particular a florist arranging carnations in some buckets in front of her shop. Did that mean there were people buying flowers on a day like that?

On the pavements people were walking along, rather worried, above all perplexed, as I was, and there were some men in uniform, Frenchmen, among the crowd.

One of them, in the middle of the Rue du Palais, was asking a policeman what he ought to do, and, judging by his gestures, I gathered that the policeman was replying that he didn’t know any more than the soldier did.

I didn’t see any Germans in the vicinity of the town
hall. To tell the truth, I don’t remember seeing any walking among the townspeople. I went to consult the lists, as on other days, then on to the post office, where I waited my turn at the
poste restante
counter while Anna stood pensively by the window.

We had said scarcely anything to each other since the morning. We were both of us equally depressed, and when I was handed a message in my name I wasn’t surprised, I thought that it was inevitable, that it was bound to happen that particular day.

But I went weak at the knees and had some difficulty in walking away from the counter.

I knew already. The form was printed on poor paper, with blanks which had been completed in purple pencil.

NAME OF MISSING PERSON:
Jeanne Marie Clementine Feron,
née
Van Straeten.

PLACE OF ORIGIN:
Fumay (Ardennes).

PROFESSION:
None.

MISSING SINCE:
_________

METHOD OF TRANSPORT:
Rail.

ACCOMPANIED BY:
Her daughter, aged four.

PRESENT WHEREABOUTS:
____________

My heart started beating wildly and I looked around for Anna.

I saw her against the light, still by the window, gazing at me without moving.

PRESENT WHEREABOUTS:
Maternity home at Bressuire.

I went over to her and held out the paper without a word. Then, without really knowing what I was doing, I made for the telephone counter.

“Is it possible to telephone to Bressuire?”

I expected to be told that it wasn’t. Contrary to all logic,
it seemed to me, the telephone was working normally.

“What number do you want?”

“The maternity home.”

“Don’t you know the number? Or the name of the street?”

“I imagine there’s only one maternity home in the town.”

In my memories of geography lessons at school, Bressuire was somewhere in a region you rarely heard about, between Niort and Poitiers, farther west, toward the Vendée.

“There’s a delay of ten minutes.”

Anna had given me back the message, which I stuffed into my pocket. I said, unnecessarily, since she knew it already:

“I’m waiting for them to put the call through.”

She lit a cigarette. I had bought her a cheap handbag as well as a little suitcase in imitation leather in which to keep her underwear and her toilet things. The floor of the post office was still marked by the drops of water which had been sprinkled on it before it was swept.

Opposite, on the other side of a little square, some men who looked like local notabilities were sitting on a café terrace, arguing and drinking white wine, and the proprietor of the café, in shirt sleeves and a blue apron, was standing near them, holding a napkin.

“Bressuire is on the line in Box 2.”

At the other end of the line a voice was getting impatient.

“Hello! La Rochelle … Speak up.”

“Is that Bressuire?”

“Yes, of course it is. I’m putting you through.”

“Hello. Is that the maternity home?”

“Who’s speaking?”

“Marcel Feron, I’d like to know if my wife is still there.”

“What name did you say?”

“Feron.”

I had to spell it out: F for Fernand, and so on.

“Has she had a baby here?”

“I suppose so. She was pregnant when …”

“Is she in a private room or a public ward?”

“I don’t know. We are refugees from Fumay and I lost her on the way as well as my daughter.”

“Hold the line. I’ll go and see.”

Through the glass pane of the phone booth I saw Anna, who was leaning on the windowsill, and it had a curious effect on me, looking at her black dress, her shoulders, her lips which were becoming unfamiliar to me again.

“Yes, she’s here. She gave birth the day before yesterday.”

“Can I speak to her?”

“There’s no telephone in the wards, but I can give her a message.”

“Tell her …”

I started searching for something to say and suddenly I heard a crackling sound on the line.

“Hello! … Hello! … Don’t cut me off, Mademoiselle …”

“Speak up, then … Hurry up.”

“Tell her that her husband is at La Rochelle, that all’s well, that he’ll come to Bressuire as quickly as he can.… I don’t know yet if I can find any transport but …”

There was nobody on the line anymore and I didn’t know if she had heard the end of my sentence. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask whether it was a boy or a girl, or whether everything had gone well.

I went to pay at the counter. Then I said automatically, as I had said so often in the course of the last few weeks:

“Come along.”

It was unnecessary, seeing that Anna always followed me. In the street she asked:

“How are you going to get there?”

“I don’t know.”

“They probably won’t get the trains running again for several days.”

I didn’t ask myself any questions. I would go to Bressuire on foot if necessary. Seeing that I knew where Jeanne was, I had to join her. It wasn’t a matter of duty. It was so natural that I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

I must have appeared very calm and sure of myself, for Anna was looking at me with a certain astonishment. On the quay I stopped at the shop where I had bought the spirit stove. It had some coarse canvas kit bags for sale and I wanted one to replace the trunk which, even empty, was too heavy to be carted along the roads.

The German soldiers were still not mixing with the passersby. A group which had camped on the outskirts of the town, on the old ramparts, around a field kitchen, had gone off again at dawn.

I went for the last time into the camp, into the green circus tent, where I stuffed the contents of the trunk into the kit bag. Noticing the spirit stove, I handed it to Anna.

“You can have this. I won’t need it anymore, and in any case I haven’t got room for it.”

She took it without protest and put it in her suitcase. I was preoccupied, wondering where and how we were going to say goodbye.

Some women were still asleep, and others, who were busy with their children, looked at us inquisitively.

“I’ll help you.”

Anna hoisted the kit bag onto my shoulder and I bent down to pick up the suitcase. She followed me, holding her case. Outside, between a couple of huts, I started clumsily:

“All my life …”

She gave me a smile which baffled me.

“I’m coming with you.”

“To Bressuire?”

I was worried.

“I want to stay with you as long as possible. Don’t worry. When we get there I’ll disappear.”

I was relieved to see our leave-taking postponed. We didn’t meet Madame Bauche and we left, like so many others, without saying goodbye to her and thanking her. Yet we were the oldest inhabitants of the center, for old Jules had been taken to hospital with an attack of delirium tremens.

We made our way toward the Place d’Armes through increasingly chaotic streets. The terrace of the Café de la Paix was crowded. Civilian cars were driving about, and at the far end of the square, near the park, you could make out the mottled camouflage of the German cars.

I didn’t expect to find a bus. Yet there were several outside the bus station, since nobody had given orders to suspend the service. I asked if there was a bus for Bressuire or for Niort. They told me no, that the road to Niort was jammed with cars and with refugees on foot, and that the Germans were finding it difficult to get through.

“There’s a bus for Fontenay-le-Comte.”

“Is that on the road to Bressuire?”

“It gets you a bit nearer.”

“When does it leave?”

“The driver’s filling up with petrol.”

We installed ourselves in the bus, in the blazing sunshine, and to begin with we were alone among the empty seats. Then a French soldier got in, a man of about forty, from the country, with his jacket over his arm, and later half a dozen people sat down around us.

Sitting side by side, and shaken by the jolting of the bus, Anna and I kept our eyes fixed on the scenery.

“Are you hungry?”

“No. What about you?”

“I’m not hungry either.”

A peasant woman sitting facing us, her eyes red with crying, was eating a slice of pâté which smelled good.

We were following a road which went from village to village, not far from the sea at first, through Nieul, Marsilly, Esnandres, and Charron, and we didn’t see many Germans, just a small group in the square of each little town, in front of the church or the town hall, with the local inhabitants watching them from a distance.

We were off the route taken by the refugees and most of the troops. Somewhere, I thought I recognized the meadow and the stop where we had slept on the last night of our journey. I am not sure, because no landscape looks the same from the railway as it does from the road.

We passed a big dairy where dozens of pails of milk were shining in the sun; then we crossed a bridge over a canal, near an inn with an arbor beside it. There were blue checked tablecloths, flowers on the tables, and a fretwork chef at the roadside, holding out a stenciled menu.

At Fontenay-le-Comte there were more Germans, and more vehicles too, including trucks, but only in the main street leading to the station. At the bus station, in a square, we were told that there was no coach for Bressuire.

The idea of hiring a taxi didn’t occur to me, first because that was something I had never done, and then because I wouldn’t have believed that it was still possible.

We went into a café in the marketplace to have a snack.

“Are you refugees?”

“Yes. From the Ardennes.”

“There are some people from the Ardennes working as woodcutters in the Mervent forest. They look a bit wild, but they’re good sorts, with plenty of guts. Are you going far?”

“To Bressuire.”

“Have you got a car?”

We were the only customers in the place, and an old man in felt slippers came to look at us through the kitchen door.

“No. We’ll walk there if need be.”

“You think you can walk all the way to Bressuire? With this little lady? Wait a minute while I ask if Martin’s truck has gone.”

We were lucky. Martin’s business, on the other side of the trees, was a wholesale ironmonger’s. It had some deliveries to make at Pouzauges and Cholet. We waited, drinking coffee, and looking out at the empty square.

There was room for both of us, squeezed together in the cab, beside the driver, and after a fairly steep hill we drove through an endless forest.

“The Ardennes people are over there,” said our driver, pointing to a clearing and a few huts around which some half-naked children were playing.

“Are there many Germans around here?”