Suite Francaise (16 page)

One of the Sisters was small and thin, with deep blue mischievous eyes that sparkled with courage from beneath her white wimple; the other was sweet and shy, with red cheeks and a terrible toothache, which caused her to bring her hand to her painful gums now and again, in the middle of saying her rosary, smiling humbly as if she were ashamed that the cross she had to bear was so light during these terrible times. It was to her that Monsieur Péricand suddenly said (it was just after midnight and the commotion of the day had died down; now all you could hear were the cats howling in the convent garden), “Daughter, I’m not well . . . Go and get the notary.”

He thought she was his daughter-in-law. In his delirium, he was very surprised that she had put on a wimple to nurse him, but nevertheless it could only be her. He repeated quietly, patiently, “Monsieur Nogaret . . . notary . . . last Will . . .”

“What should we do?” said Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament to Sister Marie of the Chérubins.

The two white wimples tilted towards each other, almost meeting above Monsieur Péricand in his bed.

“The notary won’t come out at this hour, my poor dear . . . Go to sleep . . . There’ll be time enough tomorrow.”

“No . . . no time . . .” the quiet voice said. “Monsieur Nogaret will come . . . telephone him, please.”

Once again the nuns conferred and one of them disappeared, then came back carrying some hot herbal tea. He tried to take a few sips but spat it out immediately; it ran down his white beard. Suddenly he became extremely agitated; he was groaning, shouting orders: “Tell him to hurry . . . he promised . . . as soon as I called . . . please . . . hurry, Jeanne!” (He no longer thought he was talking to his daughter-in-law but to his wife, who had been dead for forty years.)

A particularly sharp pain from her bad tooth prevented Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament from protesting. She nodded—“Yes, all right”—but remained where she was, dabbing her cheek with her handkerchief.

Her friend stood up decisively. “We have to get the notary, Sister.”

She was passionate, with a natural fighting spirit, and her forced inactivity was frustrating. She had wanted to go to the town with the doctor and priest but couldn’t leave the fifteen old people at the nursing home (she didn’t have much faith in the leadership qualities of Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament). When the fire had started she had trembled beneath her wimple. Nevertheless, she had managed to roll the fifteen beds out of the room and prepare ladders, ropes and buckets of water. The fire had not reached the nursing home, which was two kilometres away from the bombed church, but she had waited, flinching at the screams from the frightened crowd, the smell of smoke, the sight of flames—fixed to her post and ready for anything. But nothing happened. The disaster victims were treated at the hospital; there was nothing to do but make soup for the fifteen old people. Until the sudden arrival of Monsieur Péricand galvanised her once more. “We have to go.”

“Do you think so, Sister?”

“He might have some important last wishes to set down.”

“But what if Maître Charboeuf isn’t at home?”

Sister Marie of the Chérubins shrugged her shoulders. “At half past midnight?”

“He won’t want to come.”

“That will be the day!” the young nun said indignantly. “It’s his duty to come. I’ll pull him out of bed myself if I have to.”

She went out, but hesitated on the doorstep. The religious community—which consisted of four nuns, two of whom had gone into retreat at the convent of Paray-le-Monial at the beginning of June and still hadn’t been able to return—owned a single bicycle. Up until now, none of the Sisters had dared use it, afraid of causing a scandal in the village. Sister Marie of the Chérubins herself had said, “We must wait until the Good Lord Himself provides an emergency. For example, a sick person is dying and we have to get the doctor and the priest. Every second is precious, I jump on my bicycle, no one would dare say a word! And the next time I do it they won’t even notice . . .” They hadn’t yet had an emergency, but Sister Marie of the Chérubins was longing to ride that bicycle! Five years ago, before she became a nun, she’d had so many happy outings with her sisters, so many races, so many picnics. She threw back her black veil, said to herself, “It’s now or never,” and, her heart pounding with joy, grabbed the handlebars.

Within a few minutes she was in the village. She had some difficulty waking Maître Charboeuf, who was a sound sleeper, and even more trouble persuading him he had to come to the nursing home right away. Maître Charboeuf, whom the local girls called “Big Baby” because of his chubby pink cheeks and full lips, had an easygoing nature and a wife who terrified him. He got dressed, sighing, and headed for the nursing home. He found Monsieur Péricand wide awake, very red and burning with fever.

“Here’s the notary,” the nun said.

“Sit down, sit down,” said the old man. “There’s no time to lose.”

The notary asked the nursing home’s gardener and three sons to act as witnesses. Seeing that Monsieur Péricand was in a hurry, he took some paper out of his pocket and prepared to start writing.

“I’m ready, Monsieur. If you would, please first tell me your surname, Christian names and title.”

“You’re not Nogaret?”

Péricand came back to his senses. He glanced at the nursing home’s walls, at the plaster statue of St. Joseph opposite his bed, at the two amazing roses Sister Marie of the Chérubins had picked from the window box and put into a slim blue vase. He tried to work out where he was and why he was alone, but gave up. He was dying, there it was, and he wished to have a proper death. This final act, this death, this Will, how many times had he imagined them, the final brilliant performance of a Péricand-Maltête on this earth. For ten years he had been nothing more than a pitiful old man who needed someone else to dress him and wipe his nose, and now suddenly he could reclaim his rightful place! To punish, reward, disappoint, delight, distribute his worldly goods according to his own wishes. To control everyone. To influence everyone. To come first. (Afterwards, there would be a ceremony in which he would indeed come first, in a black coffin, on a raised platform, with flowers, but he would be there only symbolically or as a winged spirit, while here, once more, he was alive . . .)

“What is your name?” he asked quietly.

“Maître Charboeuf,” the notary said unassumingly.

“All right, it doesn’t matter. Let’s get on with it.”

He began dictating slowly, with difficulty, as if he were reading sentences written for himself and visible only to him.

“Before Maître Charboeuf . . . notary at . . . and in the presence of . . .” mumbled the notary, “Monsieur Péricand in person . . .”

Monsieur Péricand made a feeble attempt at saying his name louder, to emphasise its importance, but had to pause for breath, making it impossible for him to enunciate the prestigious syllables individually. His purple hands fluttered for a moment over the sheets, like puppets: he thought he was writing thick black marks on white paper, as he had in the past, when he signed cards, bonds, sales documents, contracts: Péricand . . . Pé—ri—cand, Louis-Auguste.

“Residing at?”

“18 Boulevard Delessert, Paris.”

“In ill health, but sound of mind, he comes before the notary and witnesses,” said Charboeuf, glancing up at the sick man and looking doubtful.

He was overwhelmed by this dying man. He was fairly experienced; his clients were mainly local farmers, but all rich men make their wills the same way. This was a rich man, there was no doubt about it. Even though he was wearing one of the nursing home’s coarse nightshirts, it was clear he was someone important. To be of service like this to him on his deathbed—Maître Charboeuf felt honoured. “Do you wish, Monsieur, to name your son as sole beneficiary?”

“Yes, I bequeath all my worldly goods and possessions to Adrien Péricand, with instructions for him to deposit immediately and without delay five million to the charitable institution I founded, known as the Penitent Children of the 16th Arrondissement. This institution is instructed to commission an excellent artist to paint a life-size portrait of me on my deathbed, or to sculpt a bust that is a good likeness of me, and to place it in the entrance hall of the aforementioned establishment. To my dearly beloved sister Adèle-Emilienne-Louise, to compensate her for the feud caused by the inheritance left me by our venerable mother, Henriette Maltête, I do bequeath as hers and hers alone the property I own in Dunkerque bought in 1912 with all its existing buildings and that portion of the docks which also belongs to me. I entrust my son with the responsibility of carrying out this wish. I desire that my château in Bléoville, in the Vorhange region in Calvados, be turned into a home for former soldiers severely wounded in the war, preferably for those who have been paralysed or have suffered mental breakdowns. I desire that a simple plaque be displayed on the wall inscribed with the words ‘Péricand-Maltête Charitable Institution, in memory of his two sons killed in Champagne.’ When the war is over . . .”

“I think . . . I think it
is
over,” Maître Charboeuf shyly interjected.

But he didn’t realise that Monsieur Péricand was thinking about the last war, the one that had taken two sons from him and tripled his fortune. He was back in September 1918, just after their victory, when he had nearly died of a bout of pneumonia and when, in the presence of his family gathered at his bedside (all the relatives from the north and south had rushed to be there when they heard the news), he had performed what turned out to be a rehearsal of his death: he had dictated his last wishes then and they had remained intact within him until now, when he could give them life.

“When the war is over, I wish a monument to be built to honour the dead for which I bequeath the sum of three thousand francs to be taken from my estate and to be erected on the town square in Bléoville. At the top, in large gold letters, the names of my two oldest sons, then a space, then . . .” he closed his eyes, exhausted, “. . . then all the other names in small letters . . .”

He was silent for such a long time that the notary looked anxiously at the Sisters. Was he . . . ? Was it all over already? But Sister Marie of the Chérubins calmly shook her head. He wasn’t dead yet. He was thinking. In his motionless body, his memory was travelling through immense spans of time and space: “Almost all of my fortune is tied up in American stocks and bonds, which I was advised would be a good investment. I don’t believe it any more.” He shook his beard mournfully. “I don’t believe it any more. I wish my son to convert them immediately into French francs. There is also some gold, but it’s not worth keeping. It should be sold. A copy of my portrait should also be placed in the château in Bléoville in the downstairs ballroom. I bequeath to my faithful valet an annual income of one thousand francs for the rest of his life. As for my future great-grandchildren, I wish their parents to name the boys Louis-Auguste and the girls Louise-Augustine after me.”

“Is that everything?” Maître Charboeuf asked.

He bowed his long beard, indicating yes, that was everything. For a few moments that seemed brief to the notary, the witnesses and the Sisters, but to him were as long as a century, as long as delirium, as long as a dream, Monsieur Péricand-Maltête moved back in time to recall the life he had been given on this earth: the family dinners, the Boulevard Delessert, naps in the drawing room, Albert the cat on his lap; the last time he saw his older brother when they had parted vowing never to have anything more to do with each other (and he had secretly bought back the shares in that deal). Jeanne, his wife in Bléoville, hunched up with rheumatism, lying on a cane chaise longue in the garden, holding a paper fan (she died a week later), and Jeanne, in Bléoville, thirty-five years earlier, just after their wedding, when some bees had come in through the open window and were gathering pollen from the lilies in her bridal bouquet and the garland of orange blossom thrown at the foot of the bed. Jeanne had rushed into his arms, laughing, so he could protect her . . .

Then he was certain he could feel death approaching. He made a startled little gesture (as if he was trying to get through a door that was too narrow for him, saying, “No, please, after you”) and a look of surprise appeared on his face. “Is this what it is?” he seemed to say. “So this is death, then?” The surprise on his face faded and he looked stern, solemn.

Maître Charboeuf wrote very quickly, “. . . When the Testator was handed the pen to affix his signature to this Last Will and Testament, he tried to lift his head, but could not, and immediately breathed his last, in the presence of the notary and the witnesses, who nevertheless, after reading the document, signed their names to render the document legal.”

24

Jean-Marie, meanwhile, was starting to come round. He had drifted in and out of sleep for four days, semi-conscious and feverish. It was only today he felt a bit stronger. A doctor had been able to come the night before to change the dressing; his temperature had dropped. From where he was lying on the bed, he could see a large, dark kitchen, the white hat on an old woman who was sitting in the corner, beautifully shiny pots on the wall and a calendar depicting a chubby-cheeked French soldier hugging two young women from Alsace, a souvenir of the previous war. It was strange to see how the memories of the last war were still so alive in this house. Four pictures of men in uniform had pride of place: a small tricolour ribbon and a crêpe rosetta were pinned up in a corner; and next to him, to keep him from getting bored during the long hours of his convalescence, was a collection of the 1914–18 editions of
L’Illustration
bound in green and black.

He kept overhearing the same phrases in the conversations around him: “Verdun, Charleroi, the Marne . . . ,” “During the other war . . . ,” “When I was part of the occupying forces in Mulhouse . . .” They hardly spoke about the present war, their defeat. It was something they couldn’t quite believe yet. Something that would only become a living, horrible reality a few months later, perhaps a few years later, perhaps not until these little boys with dirty faces that Jean-Marie could see peering over the wooden gate in front of the door grew into men. Wearing torn straw hats, their cheeks rosy or dark-skinned, holding long green sticks, frightened, curious, they stood on tip-toes to make themselves tall enough to see the wounded soldier inside, and when Jean-Marie moved they disappeared, like frogs jumping into the water. Sometimes the open gate let in a chicken, a ferocious old dog, an enormous turkey. Jean-Marie only saw his hosts at mealtimes. During the day, the old woman in the white hat tended to him. In the evening, two young women would sit with him. One was called Cécile, the other Madeleine. For a long time he thought they were sisters. But no. Cécile was the farmer’s daughter and Madeleine was a foster-child. Both of them were attractive, not beautiful but fresh-faced. Cécile had a round red face and lively brown eyes; Madeleine was more delicate, a blonde with bright cheeks, smooth as satin and pink as apple blossom.