Cloudless May (55 page)

“In any case,” he said in a conciliatory voice, “I can't guarantee anything. I did my best for you over Derval, but I believe Colonel Rienne has designs on him.”

As soon as he had said this, he was ashamed. He knew that he had given Rienne away to an enemy. What possessed me? he thought, horrified. He did not recognise as his the instinct which had snatched up his foster-brother as the easiest sacrifice. What am I? he asked himself. What is wrong with me? I have ten times Bonamy's intelligence, but if it was to save his life he would not give me away.

Thiviers had risen. Satisfied that the man in front of him was broken, he wanted to avoid looking at the dead body. It embarrassed him. He tried to revive it by his warmth when he shook hands, hoping to reconcile in himself the two sides of his nature, piety and avarice, attachment to the past and hate, dread, of the future. He was disconcerted to feel Bergeot's hand resting in his as though it were really lifeless: he dropped it quickly.

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Looking into the shabby café at the foot of the Prefecture hill, Labenne saw a group of elderly men, the deputation Bergeot had talked about. He went in and spoke to them. They all knew him by sight, and admired him. If a newcomer to Seuilly asked sceptically about the Mayor's wealth, they would not pretend that he had made it all honestly: but the money, they would say, was honestly there, no mistake about it, and the Mayor was a warm man, a good family man, no scandal in that, side of his life. . . . They made room for him at the table. He threw himself, with an air of friendliness and naïveté, into the argument—all of them being slightly drunk, they were talking politics. It did not deceive Labenne that half these sober heads of families were holding extreme doctrines. He knew they were only enjoying the logical use of their minds. What they were arguing had nothing to do with their living faith, which attached them to a field, a small vineyard, the round loaves they fetched home when they were children and now saw their children fetching, a shabby schoolhouse, a café like this
one, a Café Moderne, a Café de la Poste, a Café de la Ville et de l'Univers. He made no attempt to force his opinions on them. His voice, clear and sly, held them when he chose to speak, but he was careful not to abuse it. It was not he who began talking about the Prefect; he only asked innocently what they were doing here together, and smiled broadly when he was told.

“Ah, a fine man, our Prefect,” he said affably, “a pity he lets himself be led by the nose by a Countess.” He laughed. “But that's my jealousy. I don't know any Countesses myself, I shouldn't know how to talk to them. Between you and me, I'm not going to try. Let those climb who want to, I'm not a confessor, I don't judge consciences.”

He had stirred in them their ferocious respect for the family, which their quarrels over politics never touched. Leaning back, he let them talk themselves into a serious passion, only putting in a word when it would turn the argument against Bergeot. At the end of half an hour, of their own accord entirely, they were criticising the Prefect—he was ambitious, a social climber, a good man spoiled by the company he kept. Labenne interrupted with a sudden sharpness.

“There's one man in Seuilly who is above suspicion. It's not me, it's not the Prefect, and it's not you, Gaston, you old villain! I mean General Piriac.”

They applauded as if they were at an election meeting and Gaston simpered roguishly. Labenne leaned forward.

“Why is he against the Prefect?” he asked.

“Is he?” exclaimed Gaston.

“Look!” Labenne pointed to the street, where a couple of soldiers were tearing down the Prefect's notices from trees and house walls, prising them loose with bayonets and throwing the pieces into a mule-cart.

He got up and left them gaping at one another. So much for their promises to our brave Prefect, he thought ironically. He had enjoyed himself: the use of his power to move men gave him a pleasure as sensuous as a good meal, and far sharper than anything a woman could give him. From his happiness—and his contempt for Thiviers—sprang the second impulse of pity he felt for Bergeot. At this moment, and for a moment, he would have saved him. If Bergeot had asked him for help.

Rienne was waiting in an ante-room of the hospital to see Mathieu. The room, small, dark, was crowded with relatives; he listened to phrases crawling like maggots into an air heavy with the smells of fear and poverty and curdled by the heat. The rain of the night before last had peeled off some of the spongy pressure and left a sun as hard as a flint. 'There was only one window in the room, it was shuttered; the light creeping in was already feverish. Rienne kept his head down and listened. In the ignorance and ignorant apathy of the first months of the war, news of disaster had broken like an abscess. There were elderly men in the room who had been soldiers. When they said, “They're across the Marne,” when they said, “Châlons has been taken,” they saw precise images where the others, men who were too old, and the women, saw through the shutters only a sky white with fear. All their images were images of anger, they did not understand, but they were angry. . . . “I don't bother my head with politics” . . . “Reynaud? Oh, I daresay he's paid for it like the others, I should like a squint at his bankbook” . . . “We've had too much, my man was killed in February '16, and now my two sons and my son-in-law are up there” . . . “Didn't we lose a million and a half of ours, not counting the cripples, and they ask us to begin again?” . . . “We've paid out too often” . . . “This time, I said to him, you won't come back; two wars, it's the end.” . . . A workman looked at his hands and said under his breath, but audibly, “Is it worth going on with? For the kind of Republic we pay for?” . . . “They make us pay for the time they waste in Paris, and their women” . . . “Of course we pay” . . . “Better go on fighting than let the Boches in” . . . “Always and always their wars” . . . “Better no politicians—with their mean tricks.” . . . Rienne wondered whether they would listen to him if he said: The Republic you've begun to abuse isn't simply an affair of bribes and tricks, it was once the daily bread of a people satisfied to be anonymous. Except that they were Frenchmen. If you have let all that wither, what have you in
the ground to take its place? . . . Some of them would smile ironically, and the others . . . there are only women and old men here, and children.

His name was called, he had to come out of his corner and push his way to the door in a sudden silence. They're not certain I can be trusted, he thought.

Mathieu wanted him to try to get the prisoners at Geulin released. All, not only one of them. He had forced himself to sink his friend's chance in the rest. There was no time now for a weakness. He had begun to be certain that the Germans would reach Seuilly—and find, only six miles away, some hundreds of their countrymen and nearest enemies. It was scarcely likely they would miss this chance to prove their fitness-to have enemies.

“These men must be released. You must interest Piriac. I know I'm asking you to move an immovable body——”

“Why have you given up hope?”

Mathieu moved his head. He had not given up hope for the future. It was in the present that he felt the advance of violence. And especially for his race. Especially for Jews. He could not be mistaken. The atmosphere in these days was too clear. He had, of course, the obsession with death which springs too quickly in the memory of his people, even in the young, fastened even to the youngest bones. Why, since we all die? But the Jews have to face death in its least bearable shape, the cruelty of human beings. It is its human face which makes cruelty terrible and unbearable. Mathieu had a clarity, a purity of despair; it took from him the veils that others, even of his race—who would like to be able to sacrifice a few of their own for the sake of peace (like every other people)—could stretch in front of their eyes. His memory, his instincts, his old alliance with history, warned him that the new time of sorrow would be darker than any in the past. They had often enough been afraid, but the fear to come would crush their entrails with a stone. It was perhaps the end. A people which carries so much death must one day be tired.

Mathieu himself was not much afraid. He had almost killed his fear, as he would kill his death, by despising it. He was not immune against suffering, but he had managed to sever the nerves joining it to his past; he did not seek his mother in
dreams, or dream that he was a child. He suffered as an adult, with ears and eyes open—fortunately a very rare gift.

“I'll do what I can,” Rienne said. “Tell me how you feel.”

“I'm going home tomorrow morning.”

“What! You're not fit.”

“At my own risk. My right leg is in plaster, and my ribs. With crutches, I can move about in my room, and keep an eye on the war. At the rate it's moving—if I don't keep at least an eye on it——”

He smiled. It was certainly against his will that his smile gave away so much rage and grief, and without moving his lips.

Rienne left him. Part of the hospital was now filled by soldiers evacuated from a town on the Marne. As he passed the corridor leading to it, a male nurse beckoned him. He turned back. A doctor wanted help with a German prisoner who seemed to be partly off his head. If the Colonel would speak to him as an officer. . . . There was a screen round the prisoner's bed. He was very young, and already grey in the face. His eyes open and quite lucid, he was lying quietly. Rienne spoke to him in poor German. The boy answered his questions calmly. He was nineteen, he was from Rüge in East Prussia. . . . “Rüge?” . . . “It's my village,” the young German said softly. . . . One of the orderlies took hold of his arm and the other moved forward the apparatus for the blood transfusion. Instantly the boy flung himself into a paroxysm; he wept, stammering: “No French Jewish blood,” he cried, “no tainted blood” . . . “Do you want us to let you die?” Rienne said severely. Yes, he would far sooner die. To live—with diseased blood—he would kill himself afterwards. . . . Rienne felt repulsion and pity. He's possessed, he said to himself; it's too late to save him. He advised the doctor to let him die: the doctor, an old man, worn out, agreed without interest. Rienne was left alone with the German. “You realise that you'll die?” he said gently. “Of course,” the boy answered. He was a good child again, modest, simple: he had the hands of a peasant. “Will you write for me to my father?” he asked timidly. . . . “If you like.” . . . “Tell him I was quite happy, that I thought of our house and the pond ...”

At the other end of the ward near the door a French soldier
lying on his back was muttering about tanks. Delirious, his eyes full of light and terror, he was holding a naked arm over his head to guard himself against the tank he saw rolling on him. He, too, was very young. We are all doing our best to wipe out the disgrace of youth, Rienne thought.

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General Piriac listened to him with disapproval. In his opinion, the men interned at Geulin were responsible—not alone, but wilfully—for dragging a peaceful France into war. They were against peace, and against the head of their own country; they were bad Germans.

“They were against Hitler,” Rienne said.

“Your conclusion is false,” Piriac said coldly. As always, anger gave him a new energy: when he was in a rage, he was almost alive. “I don't choose to have anything to do with bad citizens. In any case, it was the civilian authorities who found them undesirable. You can consult the Mayor. Not the Prefect, I don't trust him. If the Mayor wants to get them moved I shan't object.”

Rienne had to see his immediate chief. General Ligny was lying in bed in his own room, after a heart attack—in the worst taste, he told Rienne. To be old and to die of heart trouble during a war—contemptible! He kept Rienne with him every day for three or four hours, as the only person on the staff who was not stupid and would not bore him to death. “I prefer,” he said, “to die in my own way.”

“One reason, my dear Rienne, why I like you so much is that General Woerth doesn't.”

“But you can't say he's stupid,” Rienne said, smiling.

Ligny's face was suddenly distorted by anger. It was the first time he had given way to an undisciplined emotion, he must really be ill.

“No. But I detest him. Do you know he has intrigued against me since we were young officers? But for him I might have been at G.H.Q. And if I were there, I should fight. . . .” He recovered himself and spoke calmly. “No, no, it's too late for me. I shouldn't fight now.”

“Why not, sir?”

Ligny closed his eyes; when they disappeared, you saw that
they were the seat of his irony. The rest of his face was purely delicate and gentle.

“War has become too appalling,” he murmured. “For young men to sacrifice themselves, that's bad enough—and bearable, because so many of them die without fear, which is the only way of overcoming physical death. But the air-raids on villages, the women and children dying—no nation could have let that loose except one which has become purely a State. A thing. If the Germans had not become eyeless and mindless, they would have looked at their future and been turned to stone.”

“So the civilised peoples must give way to the barbarians,” Rienne said, “and the gross Nazi body kill our French mind? After it has killed its own,” he added, thinking of the dying boy. “Or do you believe that in two or five hundred years they will have become civilised only by living in France?”

He imagined a German taking over his house at Thouédun and giving himself up to the old walls. His ears when he sat in the garden would be brushed by words from the past, he would eat Agathe's herbs, and when death caught up with him in a French bed it would loose on him all the spectres of a French death, as a French childhood would spring out on his children when they knocked themselves against the edge of the loft stairs.