"Stop! Stop! Be quiet!" the lady begged. "Never mind. We"re just happy to have found everything else."
An hour later a gang of kids in dirty clothes came out of the Perrins" garden, followed by two German soldiers pushing a wheelbarrow containing a basket of china cups, a sofa with its four legs in the air (one was broken), a plush photograph alb.u.m, a birdcage that the Germans mistook for the salad dryer and many other items. Bringing up the rear were Lucile and the officer. Curious women stared at them as they walked through the village. They didn"t speak to each other, the women noticed; they didn"t even look at each other and they were deathly pale-the officer"s expression cold and impenetrable.
"She must have given him a piece of her mind," the women whispered. "Said it was shameful to get a house into that state. He"s furious. Goodness gracious, they"re not used to people standing up for themselves. She"s right. We"re not dogs! She"s brave, that young Angellier lady, she"s not afraid." One of them, who was tending a goat (the little old woman with white hair and blue eyes who"d run into the Angellier ladies on their way back from Vespers that Easter Sunday and had said to them, "These Germans, I"ve heard they"re bad and evil"), even came up to Lucile and whispered to her as she pa.s.sed, "Good for you, Madame! Show them we"re not afraid. Your prisoner of war would be proud of you," she added and she began to cry, not that she had a prisoner herself to cry over-she was long past the age of having a husband or a son at war-she cried because prejudice outlives pa.s.sion and because she was sentimentally patriotic.
15.
Whenever the elder Madame Angellier and the German met each other, they both instinctively stepped back. On the officer"s part this could have been interpreted as a sign of exaggerated courtesy, the desire not to impose his presence on the mistress of the house. He had almost the air of a thoroughbred horse leaping away from a snake it sees at its feet. Madame Angellier, on the other hand, didn"t even bother to disguise the shudder that ran through her, leaving her looking stiff and terrified, as if she"d come into contact with some disgusting, dangerous animal. But the moment lasted for only an instant: a good education is precisely designed to correct the instincts of human nature. The officer would draw himself up, put on the rigid, serious expression of an automaton, then bow and click his heels together ("Oh, that Prussian salute!" Madame Angellier would groan, without thinking that this greeting was, in fact, exactly what she should have expected from a man born in western Germany, since it was unlikely to be an Arab kiss of the hand, or an English handshake). As for Madame Angellier, she would clasp her hands in front of her like a nun who has been sitting at someone"s deathbed and gets up to greet a member of his family suspected of anticlericalism. During these encounters, various expressions would cross Madame Angellier"s face: false respect ("You"re in charge here!"), disapproval ("Everyone knows who you are, you heathen!"), submission ("Let us offer up our hatred to the Lord") and finally a flash of fierce joy ("Just you wait, my friend, you"ll be burning in h.e.l.l while I"m finding peace in Jesus"), although this final thought was replaced in Madame Angellier"s mind by the desire she felt every time she saw a member of the occupying forces: "I hope he"ll soon be at the bottom of the English Channel," for everyone was expecting an attempt to invade England, if not imminently, then very soon. Taking her desires for reality, Madame Angellier even came to believe the German looked like a drowned man: pallid, swollen, thrown about by the waves. It was this thought alone that allowed her to look human again, allowed the shadow of a smile to pa.s.s over her lips (like the final rays of a dying star) and allowed her to reply to the German when he asked after her health, "Thank you for asking. I"m as well as can be expected," mournfully stressing these final words to imply, "as well as I can be, given the disastrous situation France is in."
Lucile walked behind Madame Angellier. She had become colder, more distracted, more rebellious than usual. She would nod silently as she walked away from the German. He too was silent. But, thinking no one could see, he would watch her for a long time as she walked away. Madame Angellier seemed to have eyes in the back of her head to catch him. Without even turning round she would mutter angrily to Lucile, "Pay no attention to him. He"s still there." She could only breathe freely after the door had been shut behind them; then she would give her daughter-in-law a withering look and say, "You"ve done something different to your hair today," or "You"re wearing your new dress, aren"t you?" concluding sarcastically, "It"s not very flattering."
And yet, despite the waves of hatred she felt towards Lucile because she was there and her own son was not, in spite of everything she might have imagined or suspected, she never thought her daughter-in-law and the German could possibly care for each other. After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees others enticed by money, the l.u.s.tful who see others obsessed by desire. To Madame Angellier, a German was not a man, he was the personification of cruelty, perversity and hatred. For anyone else to feel differently was preposterous, incredible. She couldn"t imagine Lucile in love with a German any more than she could imagine a woman mating with some mythical creature, a unicorn, a dragon or the monster Sainte Marthe killed to free Tarascon. Nor did it seem possible that the German could be in love with Lucile. Madame Angellier refused to accord him any human feelings. She interpreted his long looks as a further attempt to insult this already defiled French home, as a way of feeling cruel pleasure at having the mother and wife of a prisoner of war at his mercy. What she called Lucile"s "insensitivity" irritated her more than anything else: "She"s trying out new hairstyles, wearing new dresses. Doesn"t she realise the German will think she"s doing it for him? How degrading!" She wanted to cover Lucile"s face with a mask and dress her in a sack. It pained her to see Lucile looking healthy and beautiful. She was suffering: "And all this time, my son, my own son . . ."
It was, for Madame Angellier, a moment of intense pleasure when they ran into the German in the hall one day and saw he was very pale and wore his arm in a sling-quite ostentatiously, in Madame Angellier"s opinion. She was outraged to hear Lucile quickly ask, without thinking, "What happened to you, mein Herr mein Herr?"
"I came off a horse. A difficult animal I was riding for the first time."
"You don"t look well," said Lucile when she saw the German"s haggard face. "You should go and lie down."
"No, no . . . It"s only a graze and in any case . . ." He indicated the sound of the regiment going past their windows. "Manoeuvres . . ."
"What? Again?"
"We"re at war," he said.
He smiled slightly and, after a brief salute, he left.
"What are you doing?" Madame Angellier exclaimed sharply. Lucile had pushed aside the curtain and was watching the soldiers go by. "You have absolutely no sense of propriety. When Germans march by, the windows and shutters should be closed . . . like in "70 . . ."
"Yes, when they march into a town for the first time . . . But since they walk around our streets nearly every day, we"d be condemned to perpetual darkness if we followed tradition to the letter," Lucile replied impatiently.
It was a stormy night; a yellowish light fell on all the soldiers. They held their heads high and moved their lips in song. Their music began softly, as if restrained, suppressed, but it would soon burst forth into a magnificent, solemn chorale.
"They"ve got some funny songs," the locals said. "You can"t help listening . . . They"re like prayers."
A streak of red lightning flashed across the setting sun and seemed to pour blood over the tight-fitting helmets, the green uniforms, the officer on horseback who commanded the detachment. Even Madame Angellier was impressed.
"If only it were an omen . . ." she murmured.
Manoeuvres finished at midnight. Lucile heard the sound of the courtyard doors open and close again. She recognised the officer"s footsteps in the hall. She sighed. She couldn"t sleep. Another bad night. They were all the same now: miserable sleeplessness or confused nightmares. She was up by six o"clock. But that didn"t help: all it did was to make the days longer, emptier.
The cook told the Angellier ladies that the officer had come home ill and had been visited by the Major who had seen he had a fever and ordered him to stay in his room. At noon, two German soldiers arrived with a meal that the injured man wouldn"t eat. He was staying in his room but he wasn"t staying in bed. They could hear him pacing back and forth, and the monotonous footsteps annoyed Madame Angellier so much that she retired immediately after lunch. This was not like her. Usually she would spend the afternoon in the drawing room doing her accounts or knitting. Only after four o"clock would she go up to her rooms on the second floor, where she was insulated from all noise. Finally Lucile could breathe easily. She sometimes wondered what her mother-in-law did up there, in the darkness. She closed the shutters and windows, and never put on a light, so she couldn"t be reading. Besides, she never read. Maybe she kept on knitting in the dark, making great long scarves for the prisoners of war with the confidence of a blind woman who doesn"t need to look at what she is doing. Or was she praying? Sleeping? She would come downstairs at seven o"clock without a single strand of hair out of place, stiff and silent in her black dress.
On this day and the ones that followed, Lucile heard her lock her bedroom door, then nothing else; the house seemed dead; only the German"s steady footsteps broke the silence. But Madame Angellier didn"t hear them; she was safely tucked away behind her thick walls, all sound deadened by her draperies. Hers was a large, dark, heavily furnished room. Madame Angellier would begin by closing the shutters and curtains to make it even darker. Then she would sink into a large green armchair with tapestry upholstery, fold her translucent hands in her lap and close her eyes. Sometimes a few bright, rare tears trickled down her cheeks-the reluctant tears of the very old who have finally accepted that sorrow is futile. She would wipe them away almost angrily and, sitting up straight, murmur, "Come along now, aren"t you tired? You"ve been running again, and right after lunch when you should be digesting your food; you"re sweating. Come along, Gaston, bring your little stool. Put it here next to Mama. You can read for me. But rest for a while first. You can lay your little head on Mama"s lap." Softly, lovingly, she stroked imaginary curls.
It was neither delirium nor the first signs of madness; never had she been more totally lucid and aware of herself. It was deliberate play-acting, the only thing that brought her some solace, in the same way as morphine or wine. In the darkness and the silence, she could relive the past; she resurrected moments she herself had thought were lost for ever; treasured memories resurfaced; she would remember certain words her son had said, certain intonations in his voice, a gesture he made with his chubby little hands when he was a baby, memories that, truly, for just an instant, could take her back in time. It was no longer her imagination but reality itself, rediscovered through her enduring memories, for nothing could change the fact that these things had actually happened. Absence, even death, could not erase the past; the pink smock her son had worn, the way he cried and held out his hand to her when he"d been stung by nettles, all these things had happened and it was within her power, as long as she was still alive, to bring them back to life. All she needed was solitude, darkness, the furniture around her and these objects that her son had touched. She would vary her hallucinations to suit her mood.
Not content merely with the past, she antic.i.p.ated the future; she moulded the present to her will. Though she lied and deceived herself, the lies were her own creation and she cherished them. For very brief moments she was happy. Her happiness was not hampered by the restrictions of reality. Everything was possible, everything within reach. First of all the war was over. That was the starting point of her dream, the springboard from which she could launch herself towards endless joy. The war was over . . . It was a day like any other . . . Tomorrow-why not? She would know nothing until the very last minute; she didn"t read the papers any more, didn"t listen to the radio. It would be like a bolt from the blue. One morning, she would go down to the kitchen and see the cook wide-eyed: "Haven"t you heard, Madame?" The surrender of the King of Belgium, the fall of Paris, the arrival of the Germans, the Armistice . . . She had learned about all these in just this way. Well, why not peace too? Why not: "Madame, it seems it"s all over! It seems no one"s fighting any more, there"s no more war, the prisoners are coming home!" She couldn"t care less if it was the English or the Germans who had won. All she cared about was her son. White as a ghost, eyes closed, she created the scene in her mind with the same abundance of detail found in the paintings of madmen. She could see each and every line on Gaston"s face, his hair, his clothing, the laces on his army boots; she could hear every inflection in his voice. She stretched out her hands and whispered, "Well, come inside. Don"t you recognise your own house?"
During these first moments, Lucile faded away and Gaston belonged to her and her alone. She would be careful not to cry and kiss him for too long. She would make him a good lunch, run his bath, tell him immediately about his affairs: "You know, I took good care of them. You remember that piece of land you wanted, near the etang-Neu? I bought it, it"s yours. I also bought that meadow of the Montmorts" that borders on ours-the one the Viscount was adamant he wouldn"t sell to us. Well, I waited for the right moment. I got what I wanted. Are you pleased? I"ve put your gold, your silverware, the family jewellery all in a safe place. I did everything, courageously, all by myself. If I"d had to count on your wife . . . You can see I"m your only real friend, can"t you? That I"m the only one who really understands you? But go and see your wife, my boy. Go on. Just don"t expect much from her. She"s a cold, rebellious creature. Together, though, we"ll be able to bend her to our will better than I could do alone. She eludes me with her long silences, whereas you have the right to ask her what she"s thinking. You"re the master of the house: you can demand to know. Go, go and see her! Take from her what"s rightfully yours: her beauty, her youth . . . I"ve heard that in Dijon . . . You shouldn"t, my dear Gaston. A mistress is expensive. But I"m sure your long absence will have made you love our old house even more . . . Oh, what wonderful, peaceful days we"re going to spend together," murmured Madame Angellier. She had stood up and was walking around the room holding an imaginary hand and leaning against a phantom shoulder. "Come on, let"s go downstairs. I"ve had a light meal prepared for you in the sitting room. You"ve lost weight, Gaston. Come, you"ve got to have something to eat."
Without thinking, she opened the door, went down the staircase. Yes, this was how she would come down from her room in the evening, opening the door to surprise the children: Gaston in an armchair next to the window with his wife by his side, reading to him. It was his wife"s duty, her role, to look after him, to amuse him. When he was recovering from typhoid fever, Lucile used to read the newspapers to him. Her voice was soft and pleasant. She couldn"t deny that even she herself had sometimes enjoyed listening to Lucile read. A soft, low voice . . . But was it that voice she could hear now? No, she must be dreaming! She"d allowed her imagination to drift beyond the acceptable limit. She pulled herself up, took a few steps and walked into the sitting room. The armchair had been moved next to the window and sitting in it, his injured arm leaning on the armrest, smoking a pipe, his feet on the little stool where Gaston used to sit as a child, she saw the German in his green uniform-the invader, the enemy-and next to him Lucile, who was reading a book out loud.
For a moment no one said a word. They both stood up. Lucile dropped the book she was holding. The officer quickly picked it up from the floor and put it on the table.
"Madame," he muttered, "your daughter-in-law was kind enough to allow me to come and keep her company for a few moments."
The old woman, very pale, nodded. "You"re in charge here."
"And since some new books were sent to me from Paris, I took the liberty of . . ."
"You"re in charge here," Madame Angellier said again.
She turned and walked out. Lucile heard her say to the cook, "I"ll be staying in my room from now on. You will bring my meals to me upstairs."
"Today, Madame?"
"Today, tomorrow and for as long as this gentleman is in the house."
When she had gone upstairs and they could no longer hear her footsteps in the depths of the house, the German whispered, "That will be heaven."
16.
The Viscountess de Montmort suffered from insomnia. She was in tune with the cosmos; all the great contemporary problems touched her soul. When she thought about the future of the white race, or Franco-German relations, or the threat posed by the Freemasons and Communism, sleep was banished. Chills ran through her body. She would get up, put on an old worm-eaten fur wrap and go out into the grounds. She despised dressing up, perhaps because she had lost hope that putting on a pretty dress could counterbalance the overall effect of her plainness (she had a long red nose, an awkward figure and bad skin), perhaps because of a natural sense of pride that made her believe others couldn"t help but see her striking qualities, even beneath a battered felt hat or a knitted wool coat (spinach-green and canary-yellow) that the cook would have rejected in horror, or perhaps out of her contempt for trivial detail. "How important is it, my dear?" she would say sweetly to her husband when he criticised her for coming down to dinner wearing two different shoes. But she quickly returned to earth when it came to overseeing the servants" work or managing their estate.
Whenever she couldn"t sleep, she would walk through the grounds reciting poetry or rush to the henhouse and examine the three enormous locks that protected the door; she kept an eye on the cows (since the war had started, no one grew flowers on the lawns any more, the cattle slept there), and in the soft moonlight she would stroll through the vegetable garden and count the maize. She was being robbed. Before the war it was almost unheard of to grow maize in this rich area where poultry was fed on wheat and oats. Now, though, the requisitioning agents searched the lofts for sacks of wheat and the housewives had no grain to feed their hens. People had come to the chateau to ask for feed, but the Montmorts were h.o.a.rding it, mainly for themselves, but also for all their friends and acquaintances in the area. The farmers were angry. "We"d be happy to pay," they said. She wouldn"t have charged them anything actually, but that wasn"t the issue and they sensed it. They could tell they were up against a kind of brotherhood, like the Freemasons, a closing of ranks that meant that they and their money were insignificant compared to the satisfaction the Montmorts got from doing a favour for the Baron de Montrefaut or the Countess de Pignepoule. Since they weren"t allowed to buy, they simply took. There were no longer any gamekeepers at the chateau; they"d been taken prisoner and there weren"t enough men in the area to replace them. It was also impossible to find workmen or the materials to rebuild the crumbling walls. The farmers got in through the gaps, poached whatever they wanted, fished in the lake, stole hens, corn or tomato plants-just helped themselves to anything, in fact.
Monsieur de Montmort"s situation was complicated. On the one hand, he was the Mayor and didn"t want to upset his const.i.tuents. On the other, he naturally cared about his estate. Nevertheless, he would have chosen to turn a blind eye to it all if it hadn"t been for his wife, who rejected any compromise or show of weakness on principle. "All you want is a quiet life," she said sharply to her husband. "Our Lord Himself said: "I have not come to bring peace but the sword." "
"You"re not Jesus Christ," Amaury replied grumpily, but it had long ago been accepted in the family that the Viscountess had the soul of an apostle and that her opinions were prophetic. What was more, Amaury was even more inclined to adopt the Viscountess"s judgements since she was the one with the family fortune and she kept her purse strings tightly closed. He therefore loyally supported her and waged a bitter war against the poachers, the thieves, the teacher who didn"t go to Ma.s.s and the postman, who was suspected of being a member of the "Popular Front" even though he had ostentatiously hung a picture of Marechal Petain on the door of the telephone booth in the Post Office.
And so the Viscountess walked through her grounds on a beautiful June evening and recited the poetry she intended her protegees from the school to recite on Mother"s Day. She would have liked to have composed a poem herself; however, her talent was really for prose (when she wrote, she felt the deluge of ideas so powerfully that she often had to put down her pen and run her hands under cold water to force back into them the blood that had rushed to her head). The obligation to make things rhyme was unbearable. Perhaps, therefore, instead of the poem to the glory of the French Mother she would so like to compose, she would write an incantation in prose: "O Mother!" would exclaim one of the youngest pupils, dressed all in white and holding a bouquet of wild flowers in her hand. "O Mother! Let me see your sweet face above my little bed while the storm rages outside. The sky darkens the earth, but a radiant dawn approaches. Smile, O kind Mother! See how your child is following the Marechal who holds peace and happiness in his hands. Join me and all the children, all the mothers in France, to form a blissful circle around the venerable Wise One who restores hope in our hearts!"
Madame de Montmort spoke these words out loud and they echoed in the silent grounds. When inspiration took hold of her, she lost all control. She strode back and forth, then collapsed on to the damp moss and sat in meditation for a long time, her fur wrap pulled tight round her thin shoulders. Whenever she reflected in this way her thoughts quickly led to pa.s.sionate resentment. Why, when she was so gifted, wasn"t she surrounded by love or even the warmth of admiration? Why had her husband married her for her money? Why wasn"t she popular? When she walked through the village the children would hide or laugh behind her back. She knew they called her "the madwoman." It was very hard being hated, yet look at how much she"d done for the local people! The library (how lovingly she had chosen the books, good books to elevate the soul but which left them cold; the girls wanted her to get novels by Maurice Dekobra, these young people . . .), educational films (just as unpopular as the books), a village fete every year in the grounds, with a show put on by the schoolchildren. Yet she had not been oblivious to the harsh criticisms bandied about. They held it against her that the chairs had been set up in the garage because the bad weather had made it impossible to enjoy being outside. What did these people want? Did they expect her to invite them into the chateau? They"d be the ones who felt embarra.s.sed if she did. Ah, this deplorable new way of thinking that was sweeping through France! She alone could recognise it and give it a name. The people were becoming Bolsheviks. She had thought the defeat would be a lesson to them, that they would see the errors of their ways and be forced to show respect for their leaders. But no: they were worse than ever.
Sometimes she-a pa.s.sionate patriot, yes she-was actually glad the enemy was there, she thought, listening to the German guards keeping watch on the road alongside the grounds. They patrolled the village and the surrounding countryside all night long, in groups of four; you could hear the sound of church bells ringing, a sweet, familiar sound that gently lulled people as they slept, and at the same time the hammering of boots, the rattling of weapons, as in a prison courtyard. Yes, the Viscountess de Montmort had reached the point where she wondered if she shouldn"t thank the Good Lord for the German occupation of France. Not that she actually liked them, Lord no! She couldn"t stand them, but without them . . . who knew? It was all very well for Amaury to say "Communists? The people around here? But they"re richer than you are . . ." It wasn"t simply a question of money or land, it was also, especially, a question of zeal. She vaguely sensed this without being able to explain it. Perhaps they didn"t really understand the idea of Communism, but it appealed to their desire for equality, a desire so powerful that even having money and land became frustrating rather than satisfying. It was an insult, as they put it, to own livestock worth a fortune, to be able to send their sons to private school, buy silk stockings for their daughters, and in spite of all that, still feel inferior to the Montmorts.
The farmers felt they were never given enough respect, especially since the Viscount was made Mayor . . . The old farmer who had been Mayor before him had been warm and friendly to everyone; he might have been greedy, vulgar, harsh and insulting to his const.i.tuents . . . he got away with it! Yet they reproached the Viscount de Montmort for being haughty. What did they expect? For him to stand up when they came into the Mayor"s office? To see them to the door or something? They couldn"t bear any hint of superiority, anyone wealthier or anyone who came from a better family. No matter what people said, the Germans had good qualities. They were a disciplined race, docile, thought Madame de Montmort as she listened, almost with pleasure, to the rhythmical footsteps fading away, the harsh voices shouting Achtung Achtung in the distance. It must be very nice to own a lot of property in Germany, whereas here . . . in the distance. It must be very nice to own a lot of property in Germany, whereas here . . .
She was consumed by anxiety. It was getting darker and she was about to go back into the house when she saw-or thought she saw-a shadowy figure moving along the wall. Head down, it disappeared into the vegetable garden. Finally, she was going to catch one of these thieves. She quivered with pleasure. It was typical of her not to be afraid. Amaury was always worried about confrontations, but not she. Danger aroused the huntress in her. She hid behind some trees and followed the shadowy figure, holding the pair of shoes she had found hidden in the moss at the foot of the wall (the thief was walking in his socks to make less noise). She worked her way round so that he ran straight into her as he was coming out of the vegetable garden. He jumped back and tried to run away, but she shouted at him contemptuously, "I"ve got your shoes, my friend. The police will soon find out whose they are."
The man stopped and started walking towards her; it was Benoit Sabarie. They stood staring at each other without saying a word.
"Well, that"s a fine thing to do," the Viscountess said finally, her voice trembling with hatred.
She despised him. Of all the farmers, he was the most insolent, the most stubborn; whether it was about the hay, the livestock, the fences, everything and nothing, the chateau and the farm waged silent, interminable guerrilla warfare against each other.
"Well!" she said indignantly. "Now I know who the thief is and I"m going to tell the Mayor immediately. You"ll live to regret this!"
"Tell me, do I talk to you like that, do I? Take your plants," said Benoit, throwing them down on the ground where they lay scattered in the moonlight. "Didn"t we offer to pay for them? Do you think we don"t have enough money to buy them? But every time we ask you for a favour-not that it would cost you anything-no! You"d rather see us starve to death!"
"Thief, thief, thief!" the Viscountess kept shrieking as he talked. "The Mayor . . ."
"I don"t give a d.a.m.n about the Mayor! Go and get him then. I"ll say it to his face."
"How dare you speak to me like that!"
"Because we"ve all had enough around here, if you want to know the truth! You have everything and you keep everything! Your wood, your fruit, your fish, your game, your hens, you wouldn"t sell any of it, you wouldn"t give any of it away for all the money in the world. Your husband the Mayor makes fancy speeches about helping one another and the rest of it. You must be b.l.o.o.d.y joking! Your chateau"s crammed full of stuff, from the cellar to the attic, everyone knows that, they"ve seen. Are we asking for charity? No! But that"s exactly what bothers you, isn"t it? You"d be happy to do it as charity because you like humiliating poor people, but when it comes to doing a favour, as equals-"I"m paying for what I take"-you"re off like a shot. Why wouldn"t you sell me your plants?"
"That"s my business and this is my house, I believe, you insolent . . ."
"That corn wasn"t even for me, I swear! I"d rather die than ask people like you for anything. It was for Louise, "cause her husband"s a prisoner and I wanted to help her out. I I help people!" help people!"
"By stealing?"
"Well, what else are we supposed to do? You"re heartless and stingy with it! What else are we supposed to do?" he repeated furiously. "And I"m not the only one to help myself here. Everything you refuse to give away without a good reason, everything you keep out of pure spite, we"re going to take. And it"s not over yet. Just wait until autumn! Your husband the Mayor will be hunting with the Germans . . ."
"That"s not true! That"s a lie! He"s never gone hunting with the Germans."
She stamped her foot angrily, wild with rage. Again that stupid slander! The Germans did invite them both to one of their hunts last winter, it was true. They had declined, but they couldn"t refuse to attend the dinner in the evening. Whether they liked it or not, they had to follow the government"s orders. And besides, these German officers were cultured men, after all! What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold their knife and fork.
"When it"s autumn," Benoit continued, "he"ll be hunting with the Germans, but I"ll be back, I will, back to your grounds and I won"t care if it"s rabbits or foxes I get. You can have your groundsmen, your gamekeepers and your dogs chase after me as much as you want; they won"t be as clever as Benoit Sabarie! They"ve been running after me plenty all winter without catching me!"
"I won"t go and get the groundsman or the gamekeepers, I"ll get the Germans. They scare you, don"t they? You can show off all you like, but when you see a German uniform, you keep your head down."
"Listen, I"ve seen them Boches up close, I have, in Belgium and at the Somme. I"m not like your husband. Where was he he during the war? In an office, where he could treat everyone like s.h.i.t." during the war? In an office, where he could treat everyone like s.h.i.t."
"You vulgar little man!"
"In Chalon-sur-Saone, that"s where he was, your husband, from September "til the day the Germans arrived. Then he cleared off. That"s his idea of war."
"You are . . . you are repulsive. Get out of here or I"ll scream. Get out of here or I"ll call them!"
"That"s it, call the Boches. You must be really glad they"re here, eh? They"re like the police, they watch your property. You"d better pray to the Good Lord that they stay a long time because the day they leave . . ."
He left his sentence unfinished. Quickly grabbing his shoes, the evidence, from her hands, he put them on, climbed over the wall and disappeared. Almost immediately she heard the sound of German footsteps getting closer.
"Oh, I really hope they caught him. I really hope they"ve killed him," the Viscountess said to herself as she ran towards the chateau. "What a man! What a species! What vile people! That"s what Bolshevism is, exactly that. My G.o.d, what has happened to everyone? When Papa was alive, if you caught a poacher in the woods he"d cry and beg for forgiveness. Naturally he"d be forgiven. Papa, who was goodness personified, would shout, make a scene, then give him a gla.s.s of wine in the kitchen. I saw that happen more than once when I was a child. But then the farmers were poor. Since they"ve got money, it"s as if all their worst instincts have resurfaced. "The chateau"s crammed full of stuff, from the cellar to the attic," " she repeated furiously. "Well! And what about his house? They"re richer than we are. What exactly do they want? It"s envy. They"re being eaten up by base feelings. That Sabarie is dangerous. He bragged about how he came to hunt here. So he"s kept his rifle. He"s capable of anything. If he gets up to mischief, if he kills a German, the entire region will be held responsible and especially the Mayor. It"s people like him that cause all our problems. It"s my duty to denounce him. I"ll make Amaury see reason, and . . . if I have to, I"ll go to German Headquarters myself. He prowls the woods at night, in complete breach of the rules, with a weapon-he"s had it!"
She rushed into the bedroom, woke Amaury up and told him what had happened. "So this is what it"s come to!" she concluded. "They can come and challenge me, steal from me, insult me in my own home. Well, let them. Do you think the insults of a farmer are going to affect me? But he"s a dangerous man. He"ll stop at nothing. I"m sure that if I hadn"t had the presence of mind to keep quiet, if I"d called for the Germans who were pa.s.sing by on the road, he would have been capable of attacking them or even . . ."
She let out a little cry and went deathly pale.
"He had a knife. I saw the light reflected off the blade, I"m sure of it. Can you imagine what might have happened? A German murdered, at night, in our grounds? Go and prove you"re not involved, Amaury. It"s your duty. You must do something. That man bragged about hunting in the grounds all winter so he must have a gun at home. A gun! Even though the Germans have said over and over again that they won"t stand for it. If he"s still got one at home, he must definitely be planning something terrible, an attack of some kind. Do you realise what that means? In the next town a German soldier was killed and all the important people in the town (the Mayor first) were taken as hostages until they found out who had done it. And in a little village eleven kilometres from there a young boy of sixteen got drunk and threw a punch at a guard who was trying to arrest him for being out after curfew. The boy was shot, but there"s worse! Nothing would have happened if he"d obeyed the rules, but they considered the Mayor responsible for his const.i.tuents and he was almost executed as well."
"A pocket knife," Amaury grumbled, but she wasn"t listening. "I"m beginning to think," he said, getting dressed, his hands shaking (it was nearly eight o"clock), "I"m beginning to think I shouldn"t have agreed to be Mayor."
"You"re going to make a formal complaint at the police station, I hope?"
"At the police station? You"re mad! We"ll have the whole place against us. You know that to these people taking what we"ve refused to sell them doesn"t count as stealing. They see it as a joke. They"d make our life miserable. No, I"ll go to German Headquarters right now. I"ll ask them to keep the matter quiet, which they will certainly do, for they"re discreet and they"ll understand the situation. They"ll look around at the Sabaries" place and will, no doubt, find a gun."
"Are you sure they"ll find something? People like that . . ."
"People like that think they"re very clever, but I know where they hide things. They brag about it in the bars, after they"ve had a few drinks. It"s either in the loft, the cellar or the pigsty. They"ll arrest that Benoit, but I"ll make the Germans promise not to punish him too severely. He"ll get away with a few months in prison. We"ll be rid of him for a while and afterwards, I bet you anything, he"ll watch his step. The Germans know how to bring people into line. What"s wrong with them?" exclaimed the Viscount, who was now half dressed, his shirt-tails flapping round his bare thighs. "What kind of people are they? Why can"t they leave well enough alone? What are they being asked to do? To keep quiet, to leave everyone in peace. But no! They have to grumble, quibble, show off. And just how is that going to get them anywhere, I ask you? We were defeated, weren"t we? All we have to do is keep a low profile. You"d think they were doing it on purpose just to annoy me. I had succeeded, after a great deal of effort, in getting along with the Germans. There"s not a single one of them living in the chateau, remember. That was a great favour. And what about the whole region? I"m doing everything I can for it . . . I"m losing sleep over it . . . The Germans are behaving politely to everyone. They salute the women, they stroke the children. They pay cash. But, no! That"s not enough! What else do they want? That they give us back Alsace and Lorraine? That they agree to our becoming a Republic with Leon Blum as President? What do they want? What?"
"Don"t upset yourself, Amaury. Look at me, see how calm I am. Just do your duty without hoping for any reward other than from heaven. Believe me, G.o.d can see into our hearts."
"I know, I know, but it"s hard all the same." The Viscount sighed bitterly.
And without stopping for breakfast (he had such a lump in his throat, he told his wife, that he couldn"t have swallowed a crumb), he left and, in the utmost secrecy, requested an audience at German Headquarters.
17.
The German army had ordered a requisitioning of horses. The going price for a mare was in the region of 60,000 or 70,000 francs; the Germans were paying (promising to pay) half that amount. It was nearly harvest time and the farmers bitterly asked the Mayor how they were supposed to manage.
"With our bare hands, eh? But we"re warning you, if we aren"t allowed to work, it"s the towns that"ll starve to death."
"But my good fellows, I I can"t do anything about it," muttered the Mayor. can"t do anything about it," muttered the Mayor.
In fact, the farmers knew very well that he was powerless; it was simply that they secretly held a grudge against him. "He"ll be all right, he"ll get by, they won"t touch a single one of his cursed horses." Nothing was going right. A storm had been raging since the night before. The gardens were soaked with rain; hail had wreaked havoc in the fields.
That morning, when Bruno left the Angelliers" house to ride to the neighbouring town where the requisitioning was to take place, he looked out over a desolate landscape, lashed by the rainstorm. The great lime trees lining the wide road had been violently battered; they creaked and groaned like masts on a ship. Bruno, however, experienced a feeling of joy as he galloped along; this pure, biting, cold air reminded him of eastern Prussia. Oh, when would he again see those plains, that pale-green gra.s.s, those marshes, the extraordinary beauty of the skies in spring-the late spring of northern countries-those amber skies, pearly clouds, reeds, rushes, spa.r.s.e clumps of silver birch . . . ? When would he again hunt for heron and curlew? Along the way he came across horses and their riders from all the hamlets, villages and estates in the area heading for town. They"re good animals, he thought, but badly cared for. The French-and all civilians actually-understood nothing about horses.
He stopped for a moment to let them pa.s.s. They were zigzagging by in small groups. Bruno studied the animals closely; he was trying to work out which ones would be suitable for war. Most of them would be sent to Germany to work the fields, but some of them would have to carry heavy loads in the African desert or the hop fields of Kent. G.o.d alone knew where the wind of war would carry them. Bruno remembered how the horses had neighed in terror as Rouen burned. It was raining now. The farmers walked with their heads down, only looking up when they saw this motionless cavalryman with his green cape thrown over his shoulders. For a moment their eyes would meet. They"re so slow, Bruno thought, look how clumsy they are. They"ll get there two hours late and when are we supposed to have lunch? We"ll have to see to the horses first.
"Well, go on, then, get a move on," he muttered, impatiently hitting the back of his boots with his riding crop, restraining himself so he didn"t start shouting out orders as he did during manoeuvres. Some old people walked past him, children and even women; everyone from the same village stayed together. Then there would be a gap. Only the swirling wind filled the s.p.a.ce, the silence. Taking advantage of one of these lulls, Bruno broke into a gallop and headed for the town, leaving the patient procession behind.
The farmers were silent: they had taken all the young men; they had taken the bread, the wheat, the flour and the potatoes; they had taken the petrol and the cars, and now the horses. What would they take tomorrow? Some of them had started out at midnight. They walked with their heads down, stooped over, faces impa.s.sive. Even though they"d told the Mayor they"d had enough, that they wouldn"t do another thing, they knew very well the work had to be finished, the harvest taken in. They had to eat. "It"s strange to think we used to be so happy," they thought. "Germans . . . bunch of b.a.s.t.a.r.ds . . . You have to be fair, though. It"s war. Still, for G.o.d"s sake, how long will it go on? How long?" muttered the farmers as they looked at the stormy sky.
Men and horses had pa.s.sed by Lucile"s window all day long. She covered her ears so she wouldn"t hear them any more. She didn"t want to know anything any more. She"d had enough of these warlike scenes, these depressing sights. She was deeply disturbed by them; they broke her heart; they prevented her from being happy. Happy, my G.o.d! So there"s a war, she said to herself, so there are prisoners, widows, misery, hunger, the occupation. So what? I"m not doing anything wrong. He"s a most respectful friend. The books, the music, our long conversations, our walks in the Maie woods . . . What makes them shameful is the idea of the war, this universal evil. But he"s no more at fault than I am. It"s not our fault. Just leave us in peace . . . leave us alone! Sometimes she even frightened and surprised herself at feeling such rebellion in her heart-against her husband, her mother-in-law, public opinion, this "spirit of the hive" Bruno talked about. That evil, grumbling swarm serving some unknown end. She hated it.