Cloudless May (45 page)

On his way that evening to call on Mathieu, Rienne heard behind him a familiar and unwanted voice intoning his name. Abbé Garnier's face wore its most affable smile. To look up at the tall officer, he tilted his head on one side, like a bird imitating a man.

“Ah, my dear Colonel. Why have you hidden yourself? You weren't at dear Monsieur de Thiviers's dinner-party, you weren't at the Huets'. You mustn't let yourself become antisocial.”

Rienne answered that he was busy.

“Quite, quite. The war—I know. And that a-ah reminds me. Is it true that General Woerth considers we are losing the war?”

“I'm not in General Woerth's confidence,” Rienne said. “It's certainly a lie.”

He walked on. A moment later when he crossed the road he saw from the corner of his eye the Abbé standing in the same spot on the pavement, looking about him with the acted indifference of a peasant at market. He was looking for bargains among the passers-by. Which of them was worth accosting? . . . Rienne lengthened his stride. He was irritated because he could not speak to Garnier with civility. It humiliated him.

Mathieu was waiting for him at a table in Marie's little café. He had taken the table at the back, between the end of the counter and the inner door. From this sort of alcove he could watch the room, and speaking in a low voice he would not be overheard. He spoke of Bergeot. He knew everything about Rienne's love for his foster-brother and he did not let it soften him. If Rienne was weak in this way, so much the worse for him. Mathieu despised tenderness as a form of weak will: he despised the Germans not so much because they were the enemy—for that he hated them—as because of their childish longing to be loved: he had spotted it in them the more easily that, since his mother died, no one had shown any wish to love him.

“Émile,” he said, “is too thick with Thiviers. I've learned, by the way, that Monsieur de Thiviers is holding up the manufacture of bombing sights because he won't hand over one of his patents except at a royalty which would stagger even an American——”

“That isn't Émile's fault,” Rienne said.

“Of course not. But why does he protect Thiviers, who is no better than a defeatist? I tell you, Bonamy, your Émile is weak. You must know—don't you?—that he hasn't put into effect his own orders—about food-hoarding and sending away children. It's cowardice!”

“He may have his reasons,” Rienne murmured.

“Exactly!”

They were silent. What was Mathieu thinking? He had spoken about Émile with his usual intransigence but without passion, almost as though he were filling in time. Rienne thought: He has something else to tell me. Watching Mathieu's face, he saw it change as though an acid at work under the skin were dissolving both bone and intractable thoughts. Another moment and he would be human, even graceful. The
change stopped short of that. A new bitterness sharpened the contours again. He said, almost whispered,

“You remember my friend in Geulin?—Uhland—Joachim von Uhland.” He laid the name down between them, slowly. Very slowly.

“Yes.”

“The order to release him was sent to the camp. Three days ago. And cancelled an hour after it arrived. After Uhland had been told—when he was packing . . .” Mathieu lifted his hand. “You can imagine he hadn't much to pack.”

Rienne tried to avoid noticing the other's despair. It was too naked and uncivilised.

“Who cancelled it?”

“The police. Acting on a word from Labenne.”

“When did you hear this?”

“An hour ago.”

“How?” Rienne asked.

Glancing at him with a slight contempt, Mathieu did not answer. Rienne felt vexed. It was like Louis to get his information from the police themselves—or probably he had found something out about one of the camp guards: that he needed money badly or he was soft-hearted.

“Labenne can't overrule the Prefect,” he said drily.

“Of course not.”

“Well?”

“The order has been cancelled.”

Another silence. Mathieu stared in front of him with an expression he had omitted—or he was much too tired—to mask. Rienne was at first startled. Then he guessed the truth. Mathieu despised mankind because he despised himself—his own weakness. How could he respect a man, a Frenchman, who had fallen in love with another and that man a Prussian? Rienne felt a deep revulsion, then pity.

But why injure with pity a man who feels none at all for himself—no more than for his fellow-men? Did Louis, he wondered, pity his Boche friend? Probably not; he only loved him.

“I don't know,” Mathieu said slowly, “whether Émile agreed or didn't.”

“I'm certain he didn't. He can't know.”

“How can you be certain?”

Rienne hesitated. “I know Émile,” he said, with reluctance. “When he has arranged something he doesn't like it to fall flat.”

Mathieu did not say: Yes, Émile is vain. He nodded without speaking.

“Do you want me to tell him?” Rienne said unkindly.

“If you will.”

Rienne caught the undernote of mistrust. It meant: No doubt you'll let Émile talk you round. He was going to reassure Mathieu, but they were interrupted.

Marie had been standing behind the counter, elbow on the zinc, eyes seeking in every poor familiar object in the room the meaning of a life that forced her to fall asleep every night in a room blacked out by terror, and every morning wake frightened, gripping her pillow. . . . The other clients left: only Colonel Rienne and his friend were still there. Timidly, stopping at each empty table to pick up a further reason for going on, she approached theirs. Mathieu glanced at her without interest.

“I'm sorry,” she muttered.

Rienne turned his head. As soon as he smiled at her, she began crying—quietly, so that he should not think she was in serious trouble. But in fact it was very serious, so serious, so hard to explain, that she had spent the night before wandering from her bedroom to the kitchen looking for help. She found a tiny field-mouse. Tormented as she was, she let it run away.

“What's the matter, Marie? Is Pierre . . .?”

Shaking her head, she held a letter out to Rienne: it had been creased and re-creased until it was like a child's screw of paper. Rienne spread it on the table.

“I simply ask you why you wanted it. Didn't you think of me? You could have been sure I should know. In any case I should have known when I touched you. You see I remember you, what else have I in my head, all these nights after I left what else had I? When I come back tell me the truth. If you can put the reason into my head. I may put my arms round you. Or the war may end.—Pierre.”

Marie was smiling. You would not have known it from looking at her.

“Is he ill?” she murmured. “Pierre.”

“No,” Rienne said. He could not tell her what he thought had happened. That Pierre—who had seemed to him slow-witted and good, a good soldier—had been stunned by the brute fact of the war; it had invaded his nerves; his mind, not used to interfering with his body, could not throw it out. He was carrying a monstrous nightmare about with him, and the only thought he had about his wife, all he could feel about her, was that she was not there, she had left him. Rienne hesitated. Could he say to her: Your husband is living in a hell of absence, his life now is only absence, which is worse than solitude?

“Don't be anxious,” he said calmly. “When men are fighting, they can't find the words to write about it. He'll be able to talk to you when he comes. When he sees you it will be all right.”

Marie took the letter back. She shook her head slightly. Because what Rienne said did not convince her she felt alarmed. And embarrassed. She was only anxious now to hide from him that he had failed her. He was always kind and it would disappoint him. Her eyes went from Rienne to Mathieu like the eyes of a child hoping that one parent will restore the happiness the other has taken away. She shivered.

“You may be right,” she said.

The door of the café opened sharply. Marie spun round. It was only a customer. An old man—one of those who filled her with impatient pity, it was so obvious that never in his life had he made anyone tremble, with love, with terror.

The next day and for three more days, the heat grew more pitiless. Unless you enjoy the sensation of a scorched throat it was impossible to breathe freely in the sun at noon. It was too hot even for sunflowers and lizards. Towards evening, the sky, colourless until now, began to reflect acidly the greens and yellows of the bruised ground. A lassitude which was not coolness came from it.

Was it believable that, up there, refugees were dying on
the roads of anything worse than the heat? When bombs fell among them, the youngest, the most ignorant, did not know that they were pressing themselves against fields which have borne a heavier weight of human suffering and courage than any in the world. Dead, they knew as much as the ground itself. . . . The Germans may have had bodies as immune to heat and fatigue as their spirits were to disobedience. At dawn that day, June 5th, the cracked feverish ground hatched out thousands of tanks, tens of thousands of winged tanks. In earlier wars the enemy had paid out almost as many lives to destroy a town as its houses held memories of births, effort, patience, death; at the end some sort of equality had been established between victor and defeated. It was almost justice. Groping in the earth, the hands of the dead villager were as likely to touch an enemy hand as the hands of one of his. Nor in that place would the difference vex him. Today, high explosive and tanks have upset this delicate balance. Five seconds wipe out a house which cost as many centuries.

In short, General Woerth's idea of war as mathematics had come up against another which reduced it to nonsense. In this new theory, defeat equalled defeat and victory victory. It gave no support, either, to Ligny's idea of war as art. The answer was grossly simple. War equalled war.

On the evening of this day Labenne invited two people, M. de Thiviers and M. Huet, to dine at a small hotel-restaurant famous for its good food—the St. Maur at Geulin.

The road from Seuilly to Geulin follows the Loire closely. A false breeze, made up of heat and dust, came through the windows of the car; arched from bank to bank by the groined flight of martins, the river gave an air of coolness. Only an air. The little St. Maur, built at the edge of the Loire, was gasping for breath. There were two dining-rooms, both crammed with good citizens of Seuilly, immune, when it came to eating, to heat and shortness of breath. Mme Leglard, the proprietress, took Labenne and his party into her own sitting-room. As he always did, Labenne wondered if she would have looked so much like a procuress if she had been one.

“Here you are, Mr. Mayor,” she smiled, “you're at home here.”

Labenne tapped her arm. He took as much trouble to charm
a restaurant-owner as a Minister: it was part of his recipe for success. And, of course, the only sensual pleasure he rated almost as highly as the pleasure of using power, was food and wine. . . . He took Mme Leglard aside to order the meal. Looking politely through the window on to the rough lawn with the sunflowers, his guests heard her say, chuckling,

“Restrictions! What do you think? We take a lot of notice of them here!”

During the meal Labenne did not take any trouble to hide his excitement. He helped himself, before passing them to his guests, from each of ten dishes of hors d'œuvre. The table, a round one, was pushed against the open window. He had seated Huet so that he faced it—not that any light would penetrate below the surface of Huet's eyes: the impalpable intrigues tumbling over each other there kept it out. Set deeply in his head, his eyes reflected nothing except his self-admiration and his suspicions. Labenne was amused by seeing him squirm sideways in his eagerness to avoid too much daylight. M. de Thiviers, on the other hand, stared at the sunflowers with a gentle smile. He withdrew it when Labenne said,

“You've heard the news, of course. The Germans are across the Somme.”

He announced it as though it were a triumph. Thiviers, he noted, did not give away anything, you could not tell whether he were anxious or relieved. But Huet seized his chance to show off. He is a male prima donna, Labenne thought. It was obvious that he had spent the afternoon telephoning to Paris to important men; more likely to their secretaries. He could not keep it to himself. The second course, a truffled foie gras, came in; full of words, he left it untouched.

“. . . I was saying to a certain personage less than an hour ago, that since we are forced to end the war, we should be infinitely wiser to end it on the Somme than on the Seine, or on the Seine than on the Loire. He quite agreed with me. You can take it, my dear Georges, that peace will be made; at long last we shall do what I've always advised—come to terms with Germany. Without boasting, I may say that my affiliations, my friends in the German Government. . .”

You have everything in your favour, Labenne thought, except yourself. If for one single week you could bring yourself
to walk straight towards your object. . . . But, no, you must play the Richelieu. You a Richelieu! A bellows of vanity, egoism, wasted industry. . . .

“Eat, eat,” he said.

The deputy took up his fork. “You're not in your right place in Seuilly,” he said pleasantly. “As soon as my position is settled I'll do what I can. An Under-Secretaryship, eh?”

“You're too kind,” Labenne said.

He had difficulty in swallowing his laughter. His certainty that Huet would be disappointed set an edge, a sharp edge, on his own joy. Yet he had never felt so nearly kind. It bothered him that Huet had not yet tasted Mme Leglard's famous pâté. He urged him again and again to eat, filling his glass from the second bottle of Brézé. And it was a little from this unusual kindness that he began flattering Huet. Your important friends, he told him, will do anything for you; you have only to ask and go on asking. . . .