Cloudless May (60 page)

“I am Colonel Rienne. I have a message for you from Monsieur Louis Mathieu, and I should like to talk to you for a few minutes.” Rienne hesitated. “I didn't know what these huts were like. Have you a corner of your own?”

“At the far end,” the other said. “We'd better stay here. It's fresher.”

The word shocked Rienne, suffocating him by what it implied. He sent the corporal outside. Now that his eyes were used to the darkness, he could see that Mathieu's friend was of middle height and emaciated; he had dark hair, and was so unlike the Germans of Ligny's nightmare that Rienne could not help smiling: his face offered little more surface to the light of the candle in front of him than a knife. Standing close to him, Rienne felt the tension of his body—like an exposed nerve.

“Mathieu has had an accident, a broken leg and ribs. He's revovering. He's anxious about your safety.”

“None of us here is safe,” Uhland said calmly. “Are we going to be kept here until the Gestapo arrives? The authorities must know what that means. Why not let us run away? Or shoot us? There are even six German doctors here, they arrived last week, who had been working with your Red Cross.”

“Try to understand the situation,” Rienne said. “This country is in great danger.”

“I know.”

“Some of you may be enemies.”

“Five of us in this hut are full-blooded Nazis.”

“You see?”

“One of them was released a fortnight ago, he had influential French friends. . . . Forgive me—I'm not sneering at you. I understand the situation. . . . Besides, your country has allowed me a few years of happiness. It is a country to be happy in. I shall thank it for that—as long as I live.”

Rienne was seized by a painful anger. What had happened to give treachery its new powers in France? He felt a bitterness grosser than the smells of this place. If the Prussian had been abusive about his lot, Rienne would have been able to ignore him. But he could not ignore so polite a victim. With an effort he said calmly,

“I've done what I can to persuade the authorities that you ought to be moved.”

“Well?”

“If there is time, I shall try again.”

“Do you think you will succeed?” Uhland asked.

Rienne did not hesitate. “No.”

There was a scarcely perceptible pause. The Prussian said softly, “The fact is, no government can approve of revolutionaries, or feel willing to take any trouble to save them from being murdered. Not even Russia, not even a communist government. There are men in this camp who could have gone to Russia after the Spanish defeat, but they were refused. A revolutionary is always a nuisance to governments, the more uncompromising he is the less he is likely to be acceptable anywhere. It's quite natural that we should be in this place. . . . All the same I should like to feel clean again before dying. To be so filthy puts one at a disadvantage.”

“I regret I couldn't do anything,” Rienne said.

“Good of you to try. It's not your fault that our enemies are our countrymen and likely to treat us much worse. Not so much out of brutality—though we Germans are brutal—but because we are their conscience . . . their ghosts. . . . Look at me,” the German said quietly, “they'll be forced to torture me again so that they can forget the first time. Besides, who likes to meet his conscience in filthy rags, smelling of latrines? Also a great many of us are Jews, and we—you see I never know when to say 'they'—have been brought up to kill Jews on principle. A great nation must have its principles.”

He smiled slightly. Rienne was watching him for signs of that arrogance which should be natural to him. But Uhland was speaking with simplicity and calm.

“You are a soldier,” Rienne said, “you understand that a country is not itself during a war.”

“Of course,” the Prussian said quickly. “Only the soldiers are themselves, they go on doing as they're told. I have no doubt that even now you would be able to talk more easily with an enemy officer than with some of your own countrymen.”

“No,” Rienne said. He raised his voice a little. “No, the Germans are invaders. I don't respect a soldier for giving an order to destroy my village with its children and vineyards.”

“Have you never had to obey an order which offended you?”

“Of course. But it was always in defence of France. I was in the last war.”

“So was I. One night in February '17, my company raided your lines and brought back two prisoners, both of them badly wounded. They died in our trench. We nursed one of them, a boy of eighteen, for two days and nights, and he died holding my hand. At the time we felt we had murdered him. So perhaps it's merely just to keep me here. . . . But some of us are too young to have wronged you.”

“Oh,” Rienne said, “if we're going to balance wrongs, there will never be peace.” He hesitated. “Let me say one thing. I don't look on you as an enemy.”

“Our hatreds have been cancelled out,” Uhland said, smiling.

“Perhaps. In any case, I'd willingly get you out of this.”

He looked round him. Two faces were silhouetted on the little ring of light. One, very young, had high cheekbones and eyes staring fixedly and gravely: the other was a mask of Heine, held back as though already it faced a line of rifles. It needed an effort to detach these men from their dark background; Rienne shuddered at the vision of them tumbled with Uhland into some ditch, this place their closest memory. Or were they able to see behind it? At least they would know why they were dying; their murderers would only be obeying an order, with more or less stupidity.

“Have you a message you want me to deliver? Or a letter?”

“Thank you,” Uhland said. “Tell Mathieu from me to clear out before the Germans arrive, they'll have as little mercy on French Jews as on German ones, and he won't be able to count on his Government to look after him. I may be wrong, but I believe that France, the true France, is going to be defeated for a time. It's unfortunate for you French—and for Europe—that you are fighting a war when you ought to have been looking for a Renaissance. Which is overdue. . . . Give Mathieu”—he hesitated very briefly—“my warm regards. If I knew you better,” he added, smiling, “I should advise you to get used to disillusion. But you look to me like a lucky man. Probably you'll die fighting.”

Rienne could find nothing to say to a soldier whose chances of a sensible death were so much poorer than his own. He held his hand out.

The Prussian shook it warmly. “Goodbye. Very good of you to come.”

Rienne looked back from the doorway. Uhland had the candle in one hand, and he raised the other in a half salute. The light marked out his delicately arched nose and the vertical line, like a scar, between his eyebrows. He was smiling almost hospitably. ...

When Rienne was outside the barbed wire, he noticed that the light had changed, and the freshness. Still clear and precise, they were nevertheless withdrawing—like that true France Uhland had spoken about. And it was obvious that if they entered the camp they would be defeated, by the smells of fear and ordure. Except perhaps in a few of the minds waiting there to be broken into—in Uhland's, for one.

The benefits of the Loire—a light breeze smelling of seaweed, and the scent of young leaves, history, and Spanish broom—waited on Lucien Sugny. He was in the kitchen of the Manor House, leaning against the open window. The room was almost dark, Sophie had not lit the lamp. It was she who had let him in, and she was keeping her eye on him. She had given way to Catherine's coaxing so far as to send her grandson with the letter that had brought him here at ten o'clock, but she mistrusted him. All the more that she was almost certain she knew a family of his cousins. Could it be right for Mademoiselle Catherine to have to do with the son of a family whose cousins, if Sophie knew them, were a sly rough lot who once did her own aunt's nephew out of fifty francs?—it was a story about a goat. At last she said sharply,

“Are they your cousins living at Villiers, where I come from? The father has a cottage and three cows, his name is Jean-Marie Sugny and his wife was a Durieu of La Croisée.”

Lucien turned his head. “Yes.”

“Well, I know them,” the old woman grumbled. “They've
lived across the stream from us since I was a child, and that's not a year or two.”

“Jean-Marie Sugny is my uncle, my father's eldest brother. My father lives at La Croisée, he has four cows and three goats. As you see, ours is the branch of the family which has gone up in the world.”

All those Sugnys fly out as soon as look at you, Sophie thought, vexed, if you dare to ask a reasonable question. This is a bad business. She did not soften when Catherine ran into the room and flung both arms round her. “Where is he? Blessed, blessed Sophie, I love you.”

“There, he's there,” the old woman said drily, “don't make this fuss. It doesn't make me feel any better. We're both doing a wrong thing.”

Lucien had come round the corner of the tall cupboard between the windows. The girl ran to him. They stood looking at each other in silence, not even touching hands. Even in the little light, and with her weak sight, Sophie thought the young man had paled. And so he ought, she said to herself. But she was a little sorry for him. Perhaps after all, the world being what it is, a Sugny and a Mademoiselle de Freppel are not so badly matched. She shuffled to the other end of the long room.

“You can talk,” she said over her shoulder, “I shan't hear.”

Lucien and Catherine had not thought about her. They were standing there, exchanging, not promises, but eyes, ears, profiles, and, they believed, souls. . . . Catherine felt herself becoming reserved in her gestures, with a distaste for noisy emotions: every moment she was more willing to taste life in small mouthfuls, as one rolls an old brandy round the tongue before swallowing it; she was beginning to distrust enthusiasm and to think discretion and politeness a better pair of gloves; she no longer hoped that her life would make a mark on history, she would be content if it got over its difficulties decently, and the longer it lasted the more lightly she would take it, and be the readier to laugh; if sometimes she smiled a little maliciously at the lyricism of a friend who had not had her lessons in calmness and endurance, she would say nothing to wound: under all this, under the tenacity, the taciturnity and the hardness, a passion steady and quickly roused, two qualities of passion
rarely found together, except perhaps in the Vendean peasant she was becoming. . . . As for Lucien, he did not know what was happening to him, why for a moment he saw clearly without his glasses, so clearly that he could see the fine line drawn round the pupil of Catherine's eyes, and the veins crossing at the base of her throat; he saw her obstinacy and gentleness, folded together like the pair of hands thrusting through a cloud in old engravings; her fear of the cold; her selfishness of an only child, mistrustful; her modesty and good-humour, her honesty and simplicity, the strength in her immature body. . . . To end a strain which was becoming unbearable, and because he felt that the cords in his throat were being drawn so close that in another moment he would suffocate, he said—he croaked,

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow morning. We start at five o'clock.
He
made them promise to have a seat for me in the train to Bordeaux, they say it will be the last, and at Bordeaux a friend of his, I forget his name, I have it written down, is going to meet me, and the boat will be leaving at once, his wife is going on it—” her voice quickened—“Tomorrow at this time I shall be looking at the Gironde and thinking about you.”

“Are you sea-sick?” Lucien asked.

“Of course not. I don't know, I've never been on the sea.”

He took her hand and held it. Then they turned to the window and looked out at the courtyard. Catherine leaned against him, her head on his shoulder, her shoulder pressing his arm; a current of agonised happiness set out from these points to reach his throat and his chest.

“I can't breathe,” he mumbled.

“Look hard at the martins under the roof of the stables,” Catherine said. “You'll find it helps.”

“You know I can't see them.”

“But I'm seeing them for you. One of them is much larger than the others, he has a bar on his wings, I think he's the general—yes, one of the others has just saluted him.”

“I love you terribly,” Lucien said, “I don't know what I shall do.”

“Oh, my love, you'll join the army—my mother says there may not be an army much longer, but I don't believe her. Next time I see you, you'll have a dozen bars, all the other martins
will be saluting you, and I . . . I shall say something cheeky, to bring you to your senses.”

Her voice, which had set out pertly, had become more and more disorderly, until at last it was routed. She lifted her head so that her tears would fall on the window-sill and not on Lucien. “That was all we needed,” she said, “a good rain.”

Lucien put his arms round her. In defiance of Sophie, who had crept up close to them when she could not endure any longer the sound of Catherine's crying, he kissed her face and hands, holding her head between his large hands, as large and powerful as his father's, but not knotted, not distorted and blackened, not covered with old badly-healed cracks.

“Take care,” he muttered, “take care, you'll make yourself so tired . . . and since you have to start at five. ...”

“You may well say so,” Sophie said drily. “Tomorrow she'll look as though she'd slept on the floor. You must go now.”

Catherine's tears had stopped. “Not yet, Sophie, not for a minute.”

“Always not for a minute! Time to go to bed, Miss Catherine—Not for a minute—Time to wash your hands, to wake up, to go to sleep—No, no, not for a minute. . . . Come.”