Cloudless May (8 page)

Later in the morning, Mme de Freppel came into his room from the Prefect's. He jumped up, dropping a file of papers; it opened, they slid over the floor and he had to stoop, knocking his glasses off on the edge of the chair. He groped for them with a cry of horror.

“Are they broken?” Mme de Freppel asked.

“I don't know. No. Thank heaven.”

“But, child, they could have been mended,” she said, laughing at him.

Lucien did not care to explain that by the time he had sent two-thirds of his small salary to his mother to help her with the younger children, what was left scarcely mended his shoes and bought him half an hour at a café twice a week. There was no virtue in his generosity; it was habit; before he could speak, when he was cutting his teeth on his father's clumsy silver watch, he had noticed that everything went round in the family circle. He blinked politely at Mme de Freppel, then put his glasses on and saw her clearly again. She was still beautiful. And he had nothing to give her. He looked at the window and offered her the immense bell of the sky tolling sunlight, with the branches of the magnolia across the dusty panes and half-open shutters.

“A magnificent day.”

“You ought to be outside,” Mme de Freppel said kindly.

Did she mean he ought to be in the army? But he knew that. Closing his eyes, he said rapidly,

“If you would only persuade the Prefect to send me away. It's all nonsense about my eyesight. I saw a tank officer in glasses yesterday. After all, you sit in the tank, you drive it over everything, it's not a question of avoiding things. In a tank I couldn't conceivably go wrong. ...”

He heard her laugh. When he looked at her, she patted his cheek with a cool hand.

“Goodness, Lucien, you're burning,” She laid her hand on his forehead. “No, you're all right, it's only your cheeks.”

The young man felt himself turning giddy. He stood still,
enduring his uncomfortable happiness, beating his mind for something to say. She would think him a bore.

“You agree that I ought to be fighting?” he said stiffly.

“Not for a minute.”

“All my friends are in the army. I don't like to sit here in luxury when they . . . why must you laugh?”

“Your idea of luxury, my poor child. Shut up here to wear your suit out. They could at least give you a leather chair. Shall I ask for one for you? I'm very good at asking.”

“You ought not to need to ask,” Lucien said quietly, “you should be given . . . everything . . . you're too good.”

“That's charming.”

Lucien was seized by a rash self-confidence. “I should like to get into the army,” he said, frowning at her, “because of the others. For everything else, I would rather stay where I can see you.”

“Now you're really talking nonsense,” Mme de Freppel said lightly. “I came to ask you for something, a little notepaper—no, not the plain. I want something impressive. Give me some sheets of your official notepaper.”

Lucien handed over a packet. He felt extremely uncomfortable, but dared not refuse. Besides, if he had done wrong, it was for her; that itself was exhilarating. When she had gone he felt the room too small to hold him and rushed to open the shutters. Let the sun try to knock him down. He took his jacket off; then, remembering the neat patches on his shirt, put it on again quickly. ...

Mme de Freppel wrote two letters:

“Léonie, my love, I spoke to Émile last night about Edgar. He's not enthusiastic, he seems to know something, perhaps you'd better have fewer nieces to stay with you for the next month or two, if you can curb your generous soul. I'll talk to him again, I've no doubt I can bring him round in time. Léonie, what strange lives we have had. Sometimes I dream I'm young, I see myself in a glass, my face smooth, and such colour, too. Last night I dreamed we were in a field, I caught my foot and fell, there was water under the grass and I was choking, drowning. I thought you would drag me out. But you didn't move ...”

Why am I writing such nonsense? she thought, frowning. She tore off the last lines and scribbled,
“Now for your friend
Sadinsky. He means to go into politics, I can see that. If I help him to get his spoon into the dish, what is there in it for me? Love. M. de F.”

To Sadinsky she wrote civilly that she had been thinking about his Joan of Arc League. Was the deputy's wife really the best patroness? The way to approach her would be to make a gift to one of her war charities, a handsome gift.
“But do not give away any money until I advise you. If you have money, you can buy anything in France. Believe me, I shall do my best to help you.”

Signing her name, she smiled. I'm cleverer than most people, she thought, excited.

She went out on to the terrace. It was too hot to stand here, and it was happiness. All the roads of the province, she could see two of them sauntering to see what they could pick up in the way of trees, villages, small woods, all the fields in which only women and old men were left to labour, the empty village streets, blanched by the sun, came to an end in her. She felt an impulse to take the train and look at the towns where she had been starved as a child; she would show them that compared with her they were helpless. And, too, there she had been young.

One of these days, she thought, Émile and I will be living in Paris.

Rienne finished the letter he was writing to his sister, and placed it at the side of his desk, for his orderly. The man would look here and nowhere else. He knew Rienne's habits—for the matter of that, they had not changed since the Poly-technique, where he taught himself to keep on two shelves all he possessed. He picked up the book he was reading: a bound copy of
Servitude et grandeur militaires.
Absurd to say that he was reading it; he had read it only once, the first time, when he was a cadet. Since then he listened to Vigny as an older experienced friend, they were together in the last war. He saw to
it that Vigny shared all his tastes, for simple classical music, Anjou wine, black honey. Thanks to Vigny, he had never fallen into the error of hoping to be rewarded for making courage his profession: since it was his duty to kill men, he killed, but he never pretended to be their judge.

After a minute, he put the book away on its shelf, took up his tunic and was fastening it when Bergeot came in. They dined together at least one evening a week.

“I'm late.”

“You're always late,” Rienne said. “You were late every time I bought tickets for a play. The whole time we were in Paris together, when you were at the Law School, I never saw a first act——”

“And you always said it must have been the best,” Bergeot grinned. He sat on the edge of the bed, amused and alert. As always, his friend's monastic room roused in him an impulse the rest of his life cancelled. Why not give up everything, the distractions, the frightful nuisance of other people? With miserly care he could live on the interest from his savings. He could write—he had always wanted to. . . . And Marguerite? . . . His impulse mocked him. You living out of sight! Without excitements, ambition, notice. You a poor scholar! He rushed back head-first into the appalling confusion of his life.

“Where shall we go?” Rienne asked.

“We always go to Buran's. Don't you like it?”

It vexed Rienne to have to explain that he no longer felt comfortable in the Hôtel Buran, where none of the prohibitions were obeyed, and you could order anything you liked. The orders, he knew nothing about it, might be silly, but they were orders. Outside the hotel they were enforced: a workman could not sit drinking brandy every day of the week.

“Very well.” When they were crossing the courtyard he said, as if it had just struck him, “Why not go to Marie's for once? She needs the money.”

Bergeot shrugged his shoulders. “If you like.”

It was still airlessly hot; the evening had stretched itself along the Loire, without finding there any freshness. They sauntered. “I have something to ask you,” Rienne said. “You know the internment camp at Geulin——”

Bergeot made a wry face. “Too well. The medical officer
reported this week that sixteen more of the men have died. Influenza. I ask you—in this weather! I asked him why he didn't inoculate the rest, but it seems there's no serum, or none to spare. Well, they must die. I can't save them.”

“There's one man I want to save, an ex-Imperial officer called Uhland. Joachim von Uhland. Mathieu vouches for him. I want you to get him out.”

An ironical look crossed Bergeot's face. “Louis? Why doesn't he come to me himself?”

“You know as well as I do. He can't bring himself to ask favours.”

“He asked you. . . . No, no, let him ask.”

Rienne smiled. “When are you going to forgive him for taking the history mentions away from you? Good heavens, it's thirty-three years.”

Bergeot frowned with annoyance and resentment, then shook himself and burst out laughing. If he had not laughed, he would have suffered: his self-esteem was nearer the surface than any of his other qualities except a nervous pity, the mildest touch reached it.

“Very well, I'll find out about your Boche,” he said boisterously: “if he's in order I'll slip him out. But tell Louis not to dodge me. As for his history medal—it hasn't got him very far, Has it?”

They had reached the café at the end of the embankment. It was closed. A scrap of paper had been fastened to the shutter
—Open tomorrow.
Marie came out, followed so closely by a soldier that he knocked into her when she stopped to speak to Rienne. Only two evenings ago she had been shabby. Now, when she no longer needed it to heighten her colour, she had tied a scarlet handkerchief at her throat and covered her white blouse by a jacket with scarlet buttons. She was radiant. Hatless, she had smoothed her hair with a piece of silk until it shone. As soon as she saw Rienne she moved her hands in the gesture of a young woman showing off her child.

“You see, he's here. He came this afternoon. Until tomorrow. We have until then, but first we must go and see his mother.” She caught sight of the Prefect behind Rienne's shoulder, and turned the colour of her handkerchief. “Excuse me,” she murmured.

Pierre was standing stiffly, looking straight in front of him—but he had placed himself so that this allowed him to look at his wife. When Bergeot held out his hand, Pierre first saluted, then gripped the Prefect's hand so that the bones came together. Bergeot endured it with his friendly smile.

“Where are you stationed?” he asked.

Pierre did not answer for a minute. Then, looking down, he said, “In the Maginot.”

“Ah, I forgot,” Bergeot said, smiling at Marie, “you mustn't even tell your wife, must you?”

“No,” Pierre said.

The glance he gave his wife was an appeal, he was begging her to rescue him. She understood it. He was never able to talk to other people, her Pierre; he said little even to his wife: everything was said between them without a word when he gave his thin muscular body into her arms. She would not forget the day he left; he lay beside her in their bed all night, wide awake, stretched on his back with his hands under his head, not moving: only when it was time to get up he clung to her and said, “Marie . . . Marie ...” more like a child clutching her than a man. And this had tortured her, because he was strong, he was never afraid of anything, and he could lift her in one hand. She could not comfort him; she thought that if she had many such moments in her life she would know that what old women say is true: A woman is happy before she learns to talk and after her tongue has spoken its last words.

“He would never forget,” she said, looking at Bergeot.

“He's a better soldier than I am,” Bergeot said, laughing. “Never mind, I shan't forget the warning. I'm glad you got leave. Have a good time.”

Rienne, who had said nothing, because he knew that Émile would use all his charm on this unimportant pair, moved away. Bergeot shook hands again.

When they were out of hearing, Pierre said,

“If they were all like those two . . .”

“Come,” his wife said. She put her arm in his. “We
must
go. Your mother——”

“We'll stay there ten minutes,” he interrupted.

He wanted to take off his uniform, to get rid for a few hours of all that kept him away from her, to walk about naked in
the
little space between the bed and the old cupboard, and watch her plaiting her hair in front of the glass, keeping an end of ribbon between her teeth, her face quiet and absorbed. Then she would turn to him, with her slight smile.

He marched beside her in silence. While she talked, he was calculating how many steps they would have to take to his mother's house, then ten minutes, then the same number of steps back. Now and then he looked at her.

“Yes, tell the Mayor I'll see him at once,” Bergeot said to Lucien.

He stood up with unfeigned care, to shake hands with Georges Labenne. No need to pull himself on to an uncomfortable level of elegance. With Labenne he was back in the air he had breathed as a child, flavoured with tobacco smoke, garlic, beeswax, loud with the shrewd genial voices of his father's friends—small wine-growers, the retired tax-collector, and the schoolmaster and the chemist of the village, who represented the tussle between art and science. Also between reason and faith, since the chemist was an ardent Catholic.

Labenne came across the room with controlled jerky strides, his jacket flew open showing a soiled white shirt, he rolled his thick lips in a smile charming in spite of decayed teeth, all his gestures gave away the energy he concealed like an animal under his strong skin. Sitting in front of Bergeot's desk, he rested a hand on it: thick black hairs flourished in the yellow flesh, its nails were pencilled in black.