The Fires of Autumn

  ‘When? My God, when? When will this trial be over?’ Sometimes Bernard thought that if it were possible to cut open the hearts of his companions, you would find those words engraved on their bleeding flesh. But they rarely spoke them out loud. They were ashamed. Life in the camp had reduced them to a strange kind of uniformity: they all looked the same. They only became themselves, only regained their unique personalities when carrying out tasks from their former professions, when the shoemaker put new soles on a pair of boots, when a priest said Mass, when a teacher prepared a talk for the student prisoners who wanted to continue their studies, or when letters and packages arrived from France.

  Then, the jealous men, whose faces were normally grey and gloomy, allowed their torment to show; the ones in love would stare out into space for a long time, their eyes shining, lips slightly parted; the ambitious men who felt that others, in Paris, were usurping their positions, bit their clenched fists in silent rage, and the simple men, nodding their heads, would quietly say:

  ‘Seems like my wife is having a hard time getting by, all alone …’

  Or:

  ‘It’s cold back home too, they say.’

  Or even:

  ‘The cows are all dying … Everything is in chaos … The baby’s nearly ten months old. And to think I’ve never seen him …’

  Someone would then reply:

  ‘Don’t think about it, come on, my boy. That’ll get you nowhere …’

  Each of them would then retreat into his own dream. That did not prevent them from having lively discussions, laughing, playing cards or chess, or, among the intellectuals, passionate arguments over what they had read in the past, plays they had seen (‘Do you remember Dullin in Richard III? One night, in 1930, Ludmilla Pitoëff …’), but the deepest part of each prisoner’s heart, the part of the soul that is immutable, impossible to share with others, that part still slept, taking refuge in the kind of sleep that was their salvation, as well as in dreams, or in those desperate little words, the question that obsessed them, repeated almost mechanically and to which there was no reply (at least, not yet …): ‘When? My God, when?’

  The long evening passed. The snow fell. Every few minutes, a beam would light up the sky and then the barbed wire fences with all their sharp little spikes would sparkle, like a forest of cactuses.

  They could hear the crunching of boots on the frozen ground, the sound of rifle butts striking the hollow earth, brief orders shouted out, a drum roll in the distance. Outside, everything was dark. It was the time of day when the prisoners who had lived in the cities thought about the towns they had left behind, the clusters of lights along the Paris boulevards, the tall white billboards outside the theatres, the gleaming train stations, the reddish haze in the Paris sky … A bad moment, another bad moment to get through. It was the time when they began to confide in one another, shyly, revealing half-secrets. No one spoke about himself, nor of his family, but in the abstract, deliberately coldly, impersonally, starting a conversation that always revolved around the same theme: ‘When will we finally go home? When will the war end?’ Each of them endlessly sought some meaning in such a cruel ordeal. The priests (there were many of them in the camp) were the only ones who felt peace, certainty: suffering was a gift from God. ‘Rejoice, ye who suffer,’ they would say. But the men whom the century held in its snare did not understand; they were indignant, they revolted and continued to seek the meaning of their pain with difficulty, in vain. They beat their fists, so to speak, against a silent wall; their blows returned no sound.

  Sometimes, Bernard would grow pale and cover his eyes with his hand.

  ‘What’s the matter? Have you seen a ghost?’ one of his fellow prisoners would ask, looking at him.

  Yes, a ghost … This was the time when ghosts appeared. The ghosts of the dead and the missing invisibly filled the camp. He felt like crying and begging forgiveness.

  9

  When Thérèse got out of bed, the city was still plunged in darkness. It was the second winter of the war, cold and full of endless snow. No one swept it away any more, and since there were very few cars, the snow did not get crushed beneath their wheels, as it had done in the past; it formed a kind of blackish mire that seeped through worn shoes and froze the feet of the passers-by. There was much poverty in Paris; the city still hid it, though. It was not visible in the streets which, in spite of the war and defeat, retained a look of carefree opulence. Poverty was hidden, out of shame, inside all the houses that had no fires lit; it took a seat around dining tables with little food on them. The manual workers and farmers were less affected than the middle classes, the skilled workers, those with small private means who, like Madame Jacquelain, had first watched their income disappear, then their capital; now, she had only what Thérèse could give her to live on, and that was not much. Thérèse was receiving the allowance she was entitled to as the wife of a prisoner of war and she had a few thousand francs that Monsieur Brun had put away in a savings bank in his daughter’s name.

  Living off this minuscule income would take a miracle, but Thérèse performed that miracle day after day; her daughters had more or less enough to eat; they were warmly dressed – so many sweaters had been unravelled, washed, re-knitted, so many dresses patiently mended and underclothes patched up in the silence of the night! The only thing she could not manage to get was coal, and on the harshest winter days, the children and the aged Madame Jacquelain stayed in bed in their freezing cold little apartment. Madame Jacquelain complained. ‘I would happily change places with you,’ thought Thérèse. Her legs ached after standing for so long on those dark mornings; she waited in front of shops that were half empty, ran her errands, stood in the metro and every day climbed up the five flights of stairs to their apartment. In the evening, after the dishes were done and the children asleep, she would allow herself a moment’s rest, a respite; she would sit down at the empty dining room table; she would hide her head in her hands and imagine the moment he would come home, the moment she would hear Bernard’s footsteps behind the door, his voice, his soft little cough. She loved him so much! Neither separation, nor time, nor age – her greying hair – nor Bernard’s infidelity, nor everything she had guessed about his life, none of it was stronger than her love. She sometimes reproached herself for thinking more about her husband, who was alive, than her son, who was dead. But her poor little Yves no longer needed anything except her tears and her prayers, while Bernard perhaps depended more on her than her son ever had. What was most important was for him to remain alive, to make sure he had parcels, tobacco, sweet treats if ever it was possible, warm clothes for winter. He needed newspapers and books and, most especially, even so far away, he needed to feel her love, the devotion she had sworn to him. She thought back to her rival who had gone away. ‘Has he forgotten her? Does he still think about her?’ She had always been jealous: her heart was filled with jealousy and loyal tenderness. Alone in the small dining room with its dark corners, she imagined the letters she would write to him, letters full of passion, reproaches and cries of love. But then her gaze would wander to the mirror above the mantelpiece, and she would see her face, her dull skin, her hair that was starting to look like silvery foam (the same hair Madame Pain used to have) and her wide, anxious eyes, burning and red from her tears. ‘It’s too late … It’s ridiculous, I’m an old woman. I didn’t manage to keep him when I was twenty.’ It was that feeling of embarrassment and regret that forced her to hold back when she wrote to him. Her letters were brief, in spite of herself. ‘If he’s changed, if this ordeal has made him mature, he’ll understand, but if he’s stayed the same, what’s the point?’ she thought. She would never tell him how difficult everything was, never. She did everything in her power to reassure him: ‘I’m getting by. We want for nothing. Your mother and the girls are as happy as they can be during this sad time. As for me …’

  She stopped. What could she tell him? She was a woman with no hope and no future. She was no longer young or beautiful. ‘
I gave up everything for you, to help you,’ she sometimes thought sadly, but without bitterness. There was not a drop of hostility in her heart. But she had no illusions: she was old. If war had not broken out, if death and mourning, suffering and work had not destroyed her strength and her health, she might have had a few more good years after Bernard came back to her … The memory of that made her come alive again: ‘He came back once. I thought I had lost him but by some miracle, we were together again, I got him back. And just when I feel the most despair, he’ll be given back to me again!’ She stood tall; she carried on with her daily chores, endlessly interrupted, endlessly repeated; she took up her darning (but where would she find any wool tomorrow?), she carried on mending (but this was her last spool of thread), she calculated how many ration tickets were left for meat until the end of the month; she patched up the worn-out slippers. Every now and again, she got up and went to throw a shawl, an overcoat, on to one of the beds, for it was horribly cold. Every so often, when her eyes were too sore and swollen, she would stand up, switch off the light, pull back the dark curtain and watch the sleeping city, the inexpressibly dark, silent city. It was winter, wartime; neither would ever end, or so it seemed. There would never be another spring, or peace. The street lamps along the empty avenues would never be lit again. The deserted buildings would never come to life again. Never. And yet, in the centre of Paris and for the privileged few, life went on, more or less the same as before the war. There were still expensive restaurants, women who wore perfume, brilliant theatrical performances, well-fed men. But in these houses, beneath every roof, sitting beside every lamp, there were so many people in mourning, so many tears shed, so many bitter memories!

  Lost in thought, Thérèse tapped her thimble against the frozen window pane. It was still snowing. The snow fell on to the prisoner of war camps, on to the barbed wire fences, on to the deep forests she imagined in the heart of Germany. What was happening to him, her prisoner of war? Would she ever see him again? And when, my God, when? When would this war ever end?

  The clock ticked in the silence. Thérèse sighed and went back to her sewing.

  They were short of money. The two women pooled their resources; everything that could be sold was carefully examined and weighed up (in Paris, there was a market for silver, gold, precious gems). A few small pieces of jewellery, some silver spoons, the gold necklaces that belonged to the little girls, Bernard’s cuff links and his watch, all these things disappeared one by one. They hid from the children whenever they needed to take something out of the cases where they had been locked away at the beginning of the war. ‘The girls are starting to understand; we mustn’t upset them,’ their grandmother said. But she soon realised that nothing amused Geneviève and Colette more than these secret meetings, the whispering of the grown-ups who rifled through chests of drawers and held lockets, rings, silverware in their trembling hands. Geneviève, who was blonde, cheerful and cheeky, jumped with joy as she said over and over again:

  ‘This is such fun, my God, it’s such fun!’

  All these treasures were sorted through with great care; they saved faded ribbons and Thérèse entrusted her daughters with the task of carefully folding them up: everything was useful, the smallest bit of thread, a needle, a metal button. Everything was in short supply. For certain middle-class French families, life was becoming like surviving a shipwreck. They had to ration coffee, chocolate, cheese; a pin discovered in the hem of a skirt was a lucky find; they saved old rags; they hoarded old newspapers. For the children, it was an amusing, endless new game. Thérèse sold everything that had any value at all. She returned that evening with a bit of money in her handbag: the next day was safe; the children would have enough to eat. She looked for work, but since she couldn’t leave Madame Jacquelain, who was almost always ill, or the little girls, who were still too young, she could not get a job. One day she remembered that in the past, she had been unrivalled at making flowers out of felt and velvet. She spent her very last ration tickets to buy some thread and used some old gloves to make a little bonnet that the hat maker on the corner bought from her. Thank God! Women still liked to dress well. People still found the means to buy accessories. And so Thérèse managed to earn a bit of money.

  10

  Winter ended. At first, no one believed they would ever have enough sun and light to make them forget the harshness of the past season, but summer brought Thérèse other problems: both of the children had caught whooping cough and since they were also anaemic, they were taking a long time to recover. It was stifling hot in the small apartment.

  In August, Thérèse saw that the children were getting worse, so she sold her winter coat. It was twelve years old and made of grey squirrel, one of the rare gifts Bernard had given her. Next winter, she would have to see. Perhaps it would not be so cold? She must not think of the future, just deal with what was most urgent. Furs were selling well; she got enough money for her coat to rent a small country cottage, about two hundred kilometres from Paris. She settled in there with the two children and Madame Jacquelain. It was so peaceful! There was a small garden, a bench on the lawn, a little stream that flowed through a meadow. For the first time since the start of the war, since Bernard had left and her son had died, she felt almost happy. Her happiness was tinged with sadness, but she was calm and confident. She had worked so hard; she had given so much of herself that she had atoned, or so she felt, for all of Bernard’s sins. Her love was not blind: emotions felt with eyes wide open are the most deep-rooted and the most painful. She had not forgotten her suffering, how he had abandoned her, but she forgave him, and with all her heart. He too had suffered. She imagined his nights in the stalag, and his thoughts. He would come home. But what would be in his heart?

  ‘It’s just that we don’t have enough time to start our life together all over again,’ she thought. ‘If I were twenty years younger … But at our age, the furrow has already been marked out; we have to follow it to the end, whatever the cost, and too bad if the earth has been poorly prepared and is full of pebbles. Too bad; it’s too late. The bread we eat will be hard and bitter. Too bad for us. We did not sow our fields well.’

  She knew, though, that she had nothing for which she could reproach herself, but she accepted the mysterious fact that in marriage, the innocent person must often pay as dearly as the guilty one. But she also had faith; her own efforts, her tears, the death of Yves would not be in vain; they would bear fruit. Perhaps in the near future? Perhaps only for their children, when she and Bernard were gone? She did not know. Such thoughts ran endlessly through her mind. She was a woman whose face was tired, whose hair was turning grey, but she was always calm and smiling; no one could have guessed that she still had so much passion within her. One day, she found a photograph from the past among some old letters. It was a group photo of Martial, Bernard as a teenager, Renée and herself; it must have been taken around 1911 or 1912. Her entire past, all her old memories swept through her at once. She called her daughters to show them the picture: ‘Come here, come quickly and see your Papa when he was young!’ Her eyes were shining, her lips trembled, but she smiled.

  ‘You were so pretty, Mama,’ said the little Geneviève, ‘and you’re still pretty.’

  Thérèse glanced at the mirror and thought that, in fact, she was still quite attractive. Then she smiled sadly. Alas, that was not enough … For she could not imagine that Bernard had aged, that Bernard had changed as she had. But whatever he looked like, she loved him.

  It was autumn. The house was rented until the 1st November. Thérèse sometimes wondered if she would not be wiser to stay in the countryside all winter. She would be able to get food and keep warm more easily than in Paris, but what would Bernard say if he came home?

  The children were now well again; they ran through the fields, played on the road and went to fetch eggs from the henhouse. The nights were starting to get cold. In the morning, they picked icy peaches; the juice flowed into their mouths as cold and sweet as sorbet. Li
ttle Colette picked up a dead bee she found in the centre of a dahlia. People were starting to light the first fires: in the little tiled rooms in their houses, the kind of fires that give off the smell of smoke and roasted almonds, a sweet perfume that lingers in the air; and fires, in the fields, that burn the weeds and prepare the ground for the next harvest. All around Thérèse, in the town, on the roads, in every house, a woman was waiting for her prisoner of war to come home. There were so many of them, and Thérèse had listened to their hopes and disappointments (more often than in Paris where she never saw anyone and where everyone talked only about food and how expensive life was), so often that she almost lost the confidence and faith she had felt at first. So many wishes, so much love, so much work … all in vain … Here, a child is born who does not know his father. There, an ill, old woman realises she is going to die without ever seeing her sons again, prisoners of war. And elsewhere, people have worn themselves out trying to keep a little farm going; the women’s health is suffering; their youth is fading because of having to take on work that is too hard for them. It was announced that soldiers who fought in the last war would be shown clemency; some men had already come home, but so many others were still missing, far away. People talked about them, kept their memory alive, but in spite of everything, little by little, their features became blurred in the mind, like the faces of the dead. Every now and again, the ones back at home got used to being alone. From time to time, even Thérèse imagined something she would never have believed possible a few months before: another winter without him, another summer, perhaps … She had to live. She had survived after Yves had died. She would perhaps end her days far away from the only man she had ever loved. She was approaching the hardest moment to be faced when separated from the one you love, the moment when you finally get used to your pain, and then, you are only half alive, because that pain meant you were still fully alive. It was a bleeding, gasping kind of life, but now even that pain had disappeared, leaving nothing but a sense of mournful resignation.