The Train (14 page)

In the villages close to the main roads, the bakers’ shops were being taken by storm, and there wasn’t a single bed available in the hospitals.

“Fill out this form. Leave me your name and address.”

Out of prudence, I didn’t mention the reception center and I put down
paste restante
. Already, however, old Jules and I were no longer the only French people in the camp.

I can still picture to myself the ugliest train, in the heat of a fine afternoon, when the girls of a local school had just gone by, in a line, along the pavement, on their way to a fete.

What we, like Madame Bauche, called ugly trains were those which had suffered the most en route, trains in which people had died, in which women had given birth without proper attention.

There had been a lunatics’ train, for instance, ten carriages full of lunatics evacuated from an asylum. In spite of all the precautions taken, two of them escaped and got as far as the big clock before they were caught.

I can’t remember whether the train I am talking about had come from Douai or from Laon, for I tend to get the two towns mixed up. It was carrying only a few wounded people, who had had medical attention on the way, but the eyes of all the passengers, men, women, and children, were still glazed with terror.

One woman was trembling violently and she went on trembling all night, her teeth chattering and her hands pushing away her blanket.

Others talked incoherently or kept on repeating the same story in a monotonous voice.

They were being entrained, at Douai or at Laon, two hundred yards from the station which was packed with people. Some of them were waiting for late-comers or for relatives who had gone to the refreshment room to buy something when, without any warning having been sounded, some planes had suddenly appeared in the sky.

“The bombs fell like that, Monsieur … Sideways … You could see them falling on the station and the houses opposite, and everything started trembling and blowing up, roofs, stones, people, the carriages standing a little way
off … I saw a leg hurled into the air, and I myself, although we were a fair distance away, I was thrown to the ground on top of my son …”

The sirens had finally started wailing, those of the fire engines too, and from the heaps of stones, bricks, and twisted metal corpses could be seen poking out pieces of broken furniture, occasionally a familiar object which had miraculously remained intact.

The newspapers announced the formation of a new government, the retreat toward Dunkirk, the blocking of railway lines all over the place, while Anna and I continued our quiet existence as if it were going to last forever.

Anna knew as well as I did that this wasn’t so, but she never made any mention of it. Before me, she had shared other existences, other more or less prolonged moments of different lives, and I preferred not to think about what was going to happen after me.

It had wrung my heart seeing her from the window in the Prefecture, alone on the pavement, as if we were already parted. I had been filled with panic. When I had rejoined her, I had seized hold of her arm as if I had been separated from her for several days.

I would be ready to swear that it didn’t rain once during the whole of that period apart from a solitary storm, I remember that now, which left pockets of water in the roof of our tent. The weather seemed unreal, it was so wonderful, and I can’t imagine La Rochelle otherwise than in the heat of the sun.

The fishermen used to bring us fish. The scouts, every morning, went around the market, where their baskets were filled with vegetables and fruit. They had a handcart like the one which I had abandoned at Fumay in the station yard. I
accompanied them several times, putting myself between the shafts for the fun of it, while Anna followed on the pavement.

We nearly had some ugly incidents, in the camp and at the station, when the radio announced the capitulation of Belgium. At that time there were almost as many French refugees as Belgians, and whole factories were being evacuated. I saw some Flemings and Walloons who were crying like children, and others who came to blows and had to be separated.

Every day that passed nibbled away some of my meager capital of happiness. That isn’t the right word, but as I can’t find another, and as people are always talking about happiness, I am obliged to make do with the word myself.

Sooner or later, at the town hall, at the Prefecture, at the post office, I would find news of Jeanne and my daughter. The baby was nearly due, and I hoped that the journey and all the excitement hadn’t brought on a premature delivery.

The Paris newspapers were publishing lists of readers who gave news to their families in that way, and for a moment I thought of using the same method. But at Fumay we never read any of the Paris papers. Which was I to choose? We would have had to agree on one beforehand, something which we hadn’t done. There was no likelihood of Jeanne buying all the daily papers every day.

The Germans were advancing so fast that there was a lot of talk of treason and fifth-column activities. It appeared that in one of our huts they had arrested a man who said he was Dutch, and who had a portable radio transmitter in his luggage.

I don’t know whether that was true. Madame Bauche, whom I asked about it, couldn’t confirm the story, but she
had seen some plain-clothes detectives prowling around the camp.

This frightened Anna, whose surname, Kupfer, sounded very Teutonic. We thought about that every time we crossed the square between the camp and the station and looked at the geraniums in all their splendor.

The municipal gardener had set them out, already in flower, shortly after our arrival. I remember seeing him, early in the morning, in the as yet pale sunshine, doing his reassuring work, when the refugee trains were arriving all the time at the station and the newspapers on the stall were full of disasters.

It seems that two hours later, while the gardener was still there, a German radio station, which broadcast propaganda in French, said something to this effect:

“It is kind of you, Monsieur Vieiljeux, to plant flowers outside your station in our honor. We shall be there a few days from now.”

Monsieur Vieiljeux, whom I never saw, was the Mayor of La Rochelle, and the German radio went on sending him ironic messages, thus showing that they knew everything that was happening in the town.

The word “spy” could be heard more and more often, and people’s eyes became suspicious.

“You’d better speak as little as possible when other people are around.”

“I’ve thought of that.”

She wasn’t talkative. Nor was I. Even if both of us had been, there were so many forbidden subjects between us that we wouldn’t have found much to say to each other.

No past or future. Nothing but a fragile present, which we sipped and savored together.

We feasted ourselves on little pleasures, on patterns of light and shade which we knew we should remember all our lives. As for our flesh, we tortured it with our desperate efforts to blend it into a single whole.

I am not ashamed to say that I was happy, with a happiness which bore the same relation to everyday happiness as the sound produced by passing a violin bow across the wrong side of the bridge bears to the normal sound of a violin. It was sharp and exquisite, and deliciously painful.

As for our sexual hunger, I am almost certain that we weren’t alone in feeling it. Although we were not as crowded in the circus tent as in our cattle car, there were still about a hundred of us, men and women, sleeping under the same shelter. Not a night went by without my hearing bodies moving cautiously, panting breath and amorous complaints.

I wasn’t alone in feeling outside ordinary life and its conventions. At any moment planes might appear in the sky and drop their rosary of bombs. In a fortnight or three weeks the German troops would be at La Rochelle, and nobody had any idea what would happen then.

The first time the air-raid warning sounded, we were told to lie down beside the dock, for the underground shelter which had been built near the freight station was too far away.

The anti-aircraft guns opened up. Bursts of fire came from the station. Later we were told that it was a mistake, that the planes had been French machines which hadn’t given the regulation signals.

Some other planes dived over the town to lay mines around a ship, the
Champlain
, in the La Pallice roadstead. In the morning the boat blew up. We heard the explosions without knowing what was happening.

Later on, some petrol tanks started blazing two or three miles from the town, and black smoke hung in the sky for several days.

I have said this before, but I say it again: the days went by both fast and slowly. The notion of time had altered. The Germans were entering Paris, whereas Anna and I had changed nothing in our little habits. Only the atmosphere in the station was altering from day to day, becoming more confused and chaotic.

As at Fumay, I got up first and went outside to make the coffee, at the same time shaving in front of a mirror hooked onto the canvas of the tent. Part of one hut had finally been set aside as a washroom for the women, and Anna went there early, before the rush.

Then we used to stroll over to the station, where they were used to us and gave us a cheery greeting.

“Many trains today?”

“We’re expecting some personnel from Renault’s.”

We knew the subway, the tracks, the benches. It was with a certain tenderness that we looked at the cattle cars in which there was still some straw lying about. Where was ours now, in which a little of our own smell must be lingering?

After that, Madame Bauche nearly always needed me for some job, mending a door or a window, or fitting up new shelves for food or medical supplies.

We went for our ration of soup. Now and then we gave ourselves an extra treat. Crossing the avenue, we would go into a cozy bar where I knew Anna liked to drink an aperitif while I, to keep her company, ordered a lemonade.

In the afternoon we went into town, and I would go and read the lists before dropping in at the post office.

Unless it was a little premature, our child might be born any day now, and I kept wondering who would look after Sophie while my wife was in the maternity home.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t manage to picture either of them in my mind. Their features remained vague and blurred.

I wasn’t too worried about Sophie, for we had had a couple of children in the camp for a week who had lost their mother on the way and didn’t suffer as a result. They played with the others, as carefree as they were, and when their mother finally came to fetch them they stood motionless in front of her for quite a while, embarrassed, as if they had been playing truant.

The 16
^th
of June is one of the dates I remember. Pétain, at Orléans, was asking for an armistice and some soldiers left the station suddenly, without their weapons, in spite of attempts by the officers to stop them.

Three days later the Germans were at Nantes. We calculated that, being motorized, they were moving fast, and we expected to see them the following day.

But it wasn’t until the 22
^nd
, a Saturday, that some motorists called out to us in passing:

“They’re at La Roche-sur-Yon!”

“Have you seen them?”

They nodded as they drove on.

The following night was hot. Anna lay down first, and, standing there, I felt tears coming to my eyes at the sight of her making her hole in the straw. I said:

“No. Come along.”

She never asked me where or why. You would have sworn that she had spent her life following a man, that she had been born to do just that.

We walked along listening to the sound of the sea and the creaking of the rigging. Perhaps she thought that I was looking for the shelter of a boat?

I led her like that as far as the end of the port, where the building yards begin, and then I turned into the path which ends up at the beach.

There wasn’t a sound to be heard. You couldn’t see any lights in the town, nothing but a dark green lantern at the end of the jetty.

We lay down on the sand, near the little waves, and we stayed for a long time without saying anything, without doing anything, listening to our heartbeats.

“Anna! I’d like you to remember always …”

“Hush!”

She didn’t need words. She didn’t like them. I think they frightened her.

I started to take her, awkwardly, gradually bringing to my lovemaking an impatience which resembled malice. This time she didn’t help me, but lay motionless, her eyes fixed on my face, and I could read no expression in them.

For a moment it seemed to me that she had already gone and I imagined her alone again, like a lost animal.

“Anna!” I cried, in the same voice in which I would have called for help. “Try to understand!”

She took my head between her hands to murmur, choking back her sobs:

“It was good!”

She wasn’t speaking of our embrace but of us, of all that had been us for such a short time. We wept, one on top of the other, while we made love. Meanwhile the sea had come up to our feet.

I needed to do something, I didn’t know what. I tore her dress off her, stripped off my clothes. I said once again:

“Come along!”

The sky was bright enough for her body to stand out in the dark, but I couldn’t see her face. Was she really frightened? Did she think that I meant to drown her, perhaps drown myself with her? Her body drew back, seized by an animal panic.

“Come along, silly!”

I ran into the water, where she soon joined me. She could swim. I couldn’t. She went farther into the sea, then came and made rings around me.

I wonder today whether she was so very far wrong to feel frightened. Everything was possible just then. We tried to make a game of that bath, to amuse ourselves like schoolchildren on holiday, but we didn’t succeed.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Let’s run to get warm.”

We ran along the sand, which stuck to our feet and the calves of our legs.

It hadn’t been a good idea. On our way back to the camp, a patrol obliged us to stay hidden in a corner for nearly a quarter of an hour.