Suite Francaise (44 page)

Madame Angellier shrugged her shoulders. “Tell me everything,” she said, with an eagerness in her voice that Lucile hadn’t heard for a long time. “Tell me exactly how it all happened. All I know is what the police said. Whom did he kill? Was it just one German? Did he wound any others? Was it at least a high-ranking officer . . . ?”

She’s in her element, thought Lucile. She’s so eager to do her duty in the call to arms . . . Mothers and women in love: both ferocious females. I’m not a mother and I’m not in love (Bruno? No. I mustn’t think of Bruno now, I mustn’t . . .), so I can’t see things in the same way. I’m more detached, colder, calmer, more civilised, I still believe that. And also . . . I can’t imagine that all three of us are really risking our lives. It seems so melodramatic, so extreme. Yet Bonnet is dead, killed by a farmer whom some would treat as a criminal and others as a hero. And what about me? I have to choose. I’ve already chosen . . . in spite of myself. And I thought I was free . . .

“You can question Sabarie yourself, Mother,” she said. “I’ll bring him to you. Make sure you don’t let him smoke; the Lieutenant will smell someone else’s tobacco in the house. I think that’s the only danger; they won’t search the house; they would scarcely believe anyone would dare hide him here in the village. They’ll raid the farms. But we could be denounced.”

“Frenchmen don’t denounce one another,” the old woman said proudly. “You’ve forgotten that, my girl, since you got friendly with the Germans.”

Lucile remembered something Lieutenant von Falk had told her in confidence: “The very first day we arrived,” he’d said, “there was a package of anonymous letters waiting for us at Headquarters. People were accusing one another of spreading English and Gaullist propaganda, of hoarding supplies, of being spies. If we’d taken them all seriously, everyone in the region would be in prison. I had the whole lot thrown on to the fire. People’s lives aren’t worth much and defeat arouses the worst in men. In Germany it was exactly the same.” But Lucile said nothing of this to her mother-in-law and left her to make up the sofa in the dressing room. She looked impassioned, light-hearted and twenty years younger. Using her own mattress, pillow and her best sheets, Madame Angellier lovingly prepared a bed for Benoît Sabarie.

20

For a long time the Germans had been making arrangements for a great celebration at the Château de Montmort. It was to take place on the night of 21 June. This was the anniversary of the regiment’s arrival in Paris, but no Frenchman was to know this was the reason the date had been chosen: the commanding officers had given orders to respect French national pride. All races are aware of their own faults; they know them better than even the most malevolent foreign observer. In a friendly conversation, a young Frenchman had recently told Bruno von Falk: “We Frenchmen have very short memories; this is both our strength and our weakness! We forgot that after 1918 we were the victors and that was our downfall; we’ll forget after 1940 that we were defeated, which will perhaps be our salvation.”

“As a nation, we Germans too have a weakness that is also our greatest quality: our tactlessness, which is really a lack of imagination; we are incapable of putting ourselves in anyone else’s place; we hurt people for no reason; we make others hate us, but that allows us to behave inflexibly and without faltering.”

Since the Germans mistrusted their tendency to be tactless, they were particularly careful of what they said when speaking to the locals; they were therefore accused of being hypocrites. Even when Lucile asked Bruno, “And what’s this celebration in honour of?” he avoided answering honestly. In Germany they always had a party around 24 June, he said, as it was the shortest night of the year. However, since the 24th had been set aside for large-scale manoeuvres, they had brought the date forward.

Everything was ready. They were setting up tables in the castle grounds; they had asked the local people to lend them their best table linen for a few hours. With respect, infinite care and under the supervision of Bruno himself, the soldiers had made their selection from the piles of damask tablecloths that lay deep inside cupboards. The middle-class ladies, eyes raised to heaven—“as if they were expecting to see Sainte Geneviève herself descend from on high,” Bruno thought mischievously, “to strike down the sacrilegious Germans, guilty of daring to touch this family treasure made of fine linen, hemstitched, embroidered with birds and flowers”—these ladies stood guard and counted their towels in front of the soldiers. “I had four dozen of them: forty-eight, Lieutenant, and now there are only forty-seven.”

“Allow me, Madame, to count them again with you. You’re just upset, Madame, I’m sure we haven’t lost any. Here’s the last one; it fell on the floor. Allow me to pick it up and return it to you, Madame.”

“Oh, so it is, I’m sorry, Monsieur,” the lady replied with her most sour smile, “it’s just that when cupboards are turned out like this, things disappear if you’re not careful.”

Nevertheless, he’d found a way to cajole them. “Naturally, we have no right to ask you to lend us these things,” he said, saluting solemnly. “You know we’re not entitled to them . . .”

He even implied that the General shouldn’t find out: “He’s so strict. He’d tell us off for behaving impertinently, but we’re so bored. We want to have a wonderful party. It’s a favour we’re asking of you, Madame. You are perfectly free to refuse.” Magic words! Even the most sullen face lit up with a hint of a smile (like the pale and dismal light of the winter sun, thought Bruno, shining on one of your opulent, decrepit houses).

“But why shouldn’t you enjoy yourselves, Monsieur? You will take good care of these tablecloths, won’t you? They were part of my dowry.”

“Ah, Madame! I give you my word of honour that they will be returned to you intact, washed and ironed . . .”

“No, no! Just give them back as they are, thank you. Wash my linen! But we don’t send them to the laundry, Monsieur. The maid launders them under my supervision. We use fine ashes . . .”

Then all he had to do was smile sweetly and say, “Well, what do you know! So does my mother.”

“Oh, really? Your mother too? What a coincidence. Perhaps you could use some napkins as well?”

“Madame, I didn’t like to ask.”

“I can let you have two, three, four dozen. Would you like any cutlery?”

The soldiers had come out of the houses weighed down with clean, scented linen, their pockets full of dessert knives and holding, as if it were the Holy Sacrament, an antique punchbowl or some Empire coffee pot whose handle was decorated with ornamental leaves. Everything was stored in the château kitchens until the celebration.

The young women laughed and called out to the soldiers, “How are you going to dance with no women?”

“We’ll have no choice, ladies. That’s war for you.”

The musicians would play from the conservatory. At the entrance to the grounds were pillars and poles decorated with garlands of flowers that would be used to hoist the flags: the regimental flag, which had been carried during the campaigns in Poland, Belgium and France and had emerged victorious from three capital cities, and the swastika—stained, Lucile whispered, with the blood of Europe. Yes, sadly, all of Europe, Germany included: the noblest, youngest, most fervent blood, which is always the first to be shed in battle. And with whatever blood remained, the world would have to be rebuilt. That is why the aftermath of war is so difficult . . .

Every day, from Chalon-sur-Saône, Moulins, Nevers, Paris and Epernay, military trucks arrived with cases and cases of champagne. If there couldn’t be women, there would at least be wine, music and fireworks down by the lake.

“We’re going to come and watch,” the young Frenchwomen said. “Forget the curfew for one night, all right? Since you’ll be having fun, you could at least let us have a good time, too. We’ll take the road down to the château and watch you dance.”

Laughing, the girls tried on party hats made of silvery lace, masks and paper flowers for their hair. What party had they been meant for? Everything was slightly crumpled, faded, as if it were second-hand or from some costume wardrobe in Cannes or Deauville belonging to a nightclub manager who, before September 1939, was counting on future seasons.

“How funny you’ll look in all this,” the women said.

The soldiers strutted about making funny faces.

Champagne, music, dancing, a rush of pleasure . . . so they could briefly forget the war and how quickly time was passing. The only thing they worried about was the possibility of a storm that night. But the nights were so clear . . . Then, suddenly, there was this terrible disaster! A comrade murdered, unheroically, killed by some drunken cowardly farmer. They had considered cancelling the celebration. But no! The warrior mentality reigned supreme here: the tacit acceptance that, immediately after you had died, your comrades would dispose of your shirts, your boots, and spend the whole night playing cards while you lay in the corner of some tent—if your remains had been found, that is. Yet it was also a mentality that accepted death as something natural, an ordinary soldier’s destiny, and therefore refused to sacrifice a moment’s pleasure because of it. Besides, the officers’ main responsibility was to think of their men, to distract them from demoralising thoughts about future dangers and how very short life was. No, Bonnet had died without suffering much. He’d been given a beautiful funeral. He would not have wanted his comrades to be disappointed because of him. The celebration would take place as arranged.

Bruno gave in to the childish excitement around him. It was mad and slightly desperate—the kind of excitement that a truce brings out in soldiers, who see the possibility of a moment’s relief from the day-to-day boredom. He didn’t want to think about Bonnet, or about what was whispered behind the closed shutters of these grey, cold enemy houses. Like a child who’s been promised to go to the circus and is then told he must stay home because some old, annoying relative is sick, Bruno wanted to say, “But what has that got to do with it? That’s your problem. What has it got to do with me?” Did it have anything to do with him, Bruno von Falk? He wasn’t just a soldier of the Reich; he wasn’t motivated uniquely by what was best for his regiment or his country. He was a sensitive human being. He, like everyone else, was looking for happiness, the unhampered development of his abilities. Yet (like everyone else, sadly, during these times) his justifiable desires were constantly being thwarted by certain national interests called war, public security, the necessity of maintaining the prestige of the victorious army. A bit like the children of princes whose sole reason for existence is to carry out the wishes of their father, the king. He felt this majesty, the way the greatness and power of Germany reflected on him, as he walked through the streets of Bussy, as he rode through a village on horseback, as his spurs rattled at the doorstep of a French home. But what the French would never understand was that he was neither proud nor arrogant, but sincerely humble: terrified by the magnitude of his task.

But he didn’t want to think about that, not today. He preferred to enjoy the idea of the ball, or to dream about things he could never have: Lucile by his side, for example . . . Lucile who could come with him to the ball . . . “It’s madness,” he said to himself, smiling. “Oh, I don’t care. In my soul I’m free.” He imagined the dress Lucile would wear: not a modern dress, but the kind you might find in some romantic print; a white dress with layer upon layer of chiffon, billowing out like a flower, so that when he danced with her, when he held her in his arms, he could feel the frothy lace brushing against his legs. He went pale and bit his lip. She was so beautiful . . . Lucile close to him, on a night like this, in the Montmorts’ grounds, with the fanfares playing and fireworks in the distance . . . Lucile who, above all, would understand and share the almost religious thrill he felt in his soul when, standing alone in the dark, he felt the distant presence of a vague and terrible multitude—the regiment, the soldiers—and even further away, the army that fought and suffered, and the victorious army that occupied the cities.

“With her,” he said to himself, “I would be inspired.” He had worked very hard. He used to live in a state of perpetual creative exaltation, mad about music, he would say, laughing. Yes, with her and a little freedom, a little peace, he could have done great things. “It’s such a shame”—he sighed—“such a shame . . . one of these days we’ll receive orders to leave and we’ll be at war again. There will be other people, other countries, such extreme physical exhaustion that I’ll never be able to finish my military career. And the music, still waiting to find expression. Musical phrases, delightful chords, subtle dissonances stand poised . . . wild, winged creatures frightened off by the crash of weapons. It’s such a shame. Did Bonnet care about anything besides war? I have no idea. No one can ever truly know another human being. But what if . . . he . . . who died at the age of nineteen, found more fulfilment than me, who’s still alive?”

He stopped in front of the Angelliers’ house. He was home. In three months he had come to think of all this as his own: the iron door, the prison-like lock, the hall with its musty smell, the back garden—the garden bathed in moonlight—and the woods in the distance. It was a June evening, divinely sweet; the roses were in bloom, but even their perfume was overpowered by the smell of hay and strawberries that hovered everywhere since the day before, for it was harvest time. On the road, the Lieutenant had come across some wagons full of freshly cut hay, drawn by cattle as there were no horses left. He had silently admired the slow, regal pace of the cattle pulling their sweet-smelling goods. The farmers looked away as he went past; he had noticed . . . but . . . he felt happy again and light-hearted. He went into the kitchen and asked for something to eat. The cook served him unusually quickly and without replying to his pleasantries.

“Where is Madame?” he said finally.

“I’m here,” said Lucile.

She had come in without making a sound as he was finishing a slice of cured ham on a big piece of fresh bread.