Suite Française

  18

  At last Hubert arrived at the Allier river with the men he’d met on the road. It was noon on Monday, 17 June. Volunteers had joined the soldiers along the way. There were policemen, members of the home guard, a few Senegalese, and soldiers whose defeated companies were trying in vain to regroup and who clung on to any little island of resistance with hopeless courage. There were also young boys like Hubert Péricand who’d become separated from their fleeing families or run away in the night “to join the troops.” These magical words had spread from village to village, from one farm to the next. “We’re going to join the troops, dodge the Germans, regroup by the Loire,” said hordes of sixteen-year-olds. These children carried sacks over their shoulders (the remainder of yesterday’s afternoon tea hastily wrapped up in a shirt and jumper by a tearful mother); their faces were round and rosy, their fingers stained with ink, their voices breaking. Three of them were accompanied by their fathers, veterans of ’14, whose age, former injuries and family situation had prevented them from joining up in September.

  At the bottom of the steps that led down from a stone bridge sat the Commander in Chief of the battalion. Hubert counted nearly 200 men on the road and river bank. In his naïvety he believed that this powerful army would now confront the enemy. He saw explosives stacked up on the stone bridge; what he didn’t know was that there was no fuse to light them. Silently the soldiers went about their business or slept on the ground. They hadn’t eaten anything since the day before. Towards evening, bottles of beer were handed out. Hubert wasn’t hungry but the frothy, bitter beer made him feel happy. It helped him to keep up his courage. No one actually seemed to need him. He went from one person to the other, shyly offering to help; no one answered him, no one even looked at him. He saw two soldiers dragging some straw and bundles of firewood to the bridge; another was pushing a barrel of tar. Hubert grabbed an enormous bundle of wood but so clumsily that splinters ripped his hands and he let out a little cry of pain. Throwing it on to the bridge, he heaved a sigh of relief that no one appeared to have noticed, only to hear one of the men call out, “What the hell are you doing here? Can’t you see you’re just in the way?”

  Wounded to the core, Hubert moved aside. He stood motionless on the road to Saint-Pourçain, facing the river, and watched the incomprehensible actions of the soldiers: the straw and the wood had been doused in tar and placed on the bridge next to a fifty-litre drum of petrol; by using a seventy-five-millimetre gun to detonate the explosives, they were counting on this barricade to hold back the enemy troops.

  And so the rest of the day went by, then the night and the entire next morning. The hours of boredom felt strange and incoherent, like a fever. Still nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Even the young boys from the countryside lost their fresh complexions. Pale with hunger, blackened by dust, hair dishevelled, eyes burning, a sad and stubborn expression on their faces, they seemed suddenly older.

  It was two o’clock when the first Germans came into sight on the other side of the river. Their motor convoy had come through Paray-le-Monial that very morning. Dumbfounded, Hubert watched them head towards the bridge at incredible speed, like a wild, warlike streak of lightning searing through the peaceful countryside. It only lasted a second: a gunshot set off the barrels of explosive forming the barricade. Debris from the bridge, the vehicles and their drivers all fell into the river. Hubert saw soldiers running ahead.

  “This is it! We’re attacking,” he thought. He got goose bumps and his throat went dry, like when he was a child and heard the first strains of military music in the street. He hurled himself towards the straw and wood barricade just as it was being set on fire. The black smoke from the tar filled his nose and mouth. Behind this protective wall, machine-guns were holding back the German tanks. Choking, coughing, sneezing, Hubert crawled a few steps backwards. He was in despair. He had no weapon. All he could do was stand there. They were fighting and he just stood there, arms folded, inert, useless. He felt a little better when he saw that all around him they were taking the enemy’s attack without fighting back. He considered this a complex tactical manoeuvre until he realised that the men had almost no ammunition. “Nevertheless,” he thought, “if we’ve been left here it’s because we’re needed, we’re useful, we’re defending the bulk of the French army, for all we know.” At every moment he expected to see more troops appearing on the road to Saint-Pourçain. “We’re here, lads,” they’d shout, “don’t worry! We’ll beat them!”—or some other warlike cry. But no one came.

  Nearby he saw a man, his head covered in blood, stumble like a drunkard into a thicket; he sat there between the branches in a bizarre and uncomfortable position, his knees folded under him, his chin resting on his chest. He heard an officer shouting angrily, “No doctors, no nurses, no ambulances! What are we supposed to do?”

  “There’s a beat-up ambulance in the garden of the toll-house,” someone replied.

  “What am I supposed to do with that, for God’s sake?” the officer repeated. “Forget it.”

  The shells had set fire to a part of the town. In the splendid June light, the flames took on a transparent pink colour; a plume of smoke drifted up to the sky, flecked with gold by the sunlight, tinged with sulphur and ash.

  “Well, they’re off,” a soldier said to Hubert, pointing to the machine-gunners who were abandoning their post on the bridge.

  “But why?” Hubert shouted, dismayed. “Aren’t they going to keep fighting?”

  “With what?”

  This is a disaster, thought Hubert with a sigh. This is defeat! I am here, watching an enormous defeat, worse than Waterloo. We are all lost. I’ll never see Mother or any of my family again. I’m going to die. He felt doomed, numb to everything around him, in a terrible state of exhaustion and despair. He didn’t hear the order to retreat. He saw men running through the machine-gun fire. Rushing forward, he climbed over a wall into a garden where a baby’s pram still stood in the shade. The battle wasn’t over. Without tanks, without weapons, without ammunition, they were still trying to defend a few square metres of ground, a bridgehead, while from all directions the German conquerors were sweeping through France.

  Hubert was suddenly gripped by a feeling of hopeless courage, almost madness. He realised that he was running away when his duty was to go back towards the fighting, towards the automatic rifles he could still hear obstinately returning the German fire, to die with them. Once again, risking his life at every moment, he crossed the small garden, trampling on children’s toys. Where were the people who lived in this little house? Had they fled? He climbed over the wire fence under a hail of bullets and, still alive, fell back on to the road and began crawling towards the river again, his hands and knees bleeding. He would never make it, never. He was halfway there when everything fell silent. He realised that it was night and that he must have fainted from exhaustion. The extraordinary sudden silence had brought him round. He sat up. His mind was blank and his head throbbed. A magnificent moon lit up the road, but he was sitting in a line of shade cast by a tree trunk. Villars was still burning; all the guns were silent.

  Afraid he might encounter more Germans, Hubert left the road and entered a small wood. Now and again he stopped, wondering where he was. There was no doubt whatsoever that the motor convoys that had taken only five days to invade half of France would reach the borders of Italy, Switzerland, Spain by tomorrow. He wouldn’t be able to escape them. He had forgotten that he wasn’t wearing a uniform, that nothing showed he’d been fighting. He was sure he’d be taken prisoner. He kept running, following the same instincts that had taken him to the battleground and that now led him far from the fires, the destroyed bridges, the dreams in which, for the first time in his life, he had come face to face with death. He spent the night frantically trying to work out which route the Germans might take. He could picture the towns falling, one after the other, the defeated soldiers, the discarded weapons, the trucks abandoned on the road for lack of petrol, the tanks, the big
guns (whose toy models he had so admired) and all the treasure fallen into enemy hands! He was shaking, crying as he crawled on his hands and knees through the moonlit fields, but still he wouldn’t believe they’d been defeated: a healthy young boy always refuses to believe in death. The soldiers would meet up again a bit further away, they’d regroup, do battle once more and he’d be with them. And he’d be . . . with them . . .

  But what have I done? he thought all of a sudden. I haven’t fired a single shot! He felt so ashamed of himself that he started crying again, bitter, painful tears. “It’s not my fault, I didn’t have any weapons, just my own two hands.” Suddenly he pictured himself trying in vain to drag the bundle of wood to the river. No, he hadn’t even been able to do that, he who’d wanted to rush the bridge, lead the soldiers, throw himself on the enemy tanks and die shouting “Vive la France!” He was wild with exhaustion and despair, yet nevertheless some oddly mature ideas passed through his mind: he thought about the disaster, what had caused it, the future, death. Then he wondered about himself, what would become of him and, little by little, he came back to reality. “Mother is going to be furious!” he muttered and his pale, tense face, which seemed to have aged and grown thin in only two days, lit up for a second as he grinned in an innocent childlike way.

  He found a track between two fields, which led deeper into the countryside. Here there were no signs of war. Streams flowed, a nightingale sang, a bell chimed the hours, there were flowers in all the hedges, young green leaves on the trees. He washed his hands and face in a stream, drank some water from his cupped hands and felt better. He desperately tried to find some fruit on the trees. He knew very well it was the wrong time of year, but the young believe in miracles. At the end of the track he was back on the main road. There was a sign: CRESSANGE, 22 KILOMETRES. He stopped in confusion, then saw a farm. After hesitating for a long time, he finally brought himself to knock on the shutter. He heard footsteps inside the house. They asked who he was. When he said he was lost and hungry, they let him in. Three French soldiers were asleep inside. He recognised them. They had defended the bridge at Moulins. Now they were stretched out on benches, snoring, their filthy haggard faces thrown back as if they were dead. A woman watched over them, knitting; a cat chased her ball of wool as it rolled along the floor. The scene was at once so familiar and so strange after everything Hubert had seen during the past week that his legs gave way under him and he had to sit down. On the table he saw the soldiers’ helmets; they had covered them with leaves to stop the moonlight reflecting off them.

  One of the men woke up and pushed himself up on to his elbow. “Did you see any, lad?” he asked in a low hoarse voice.

  Hubert realised he meant the Germans. “No,” he said quickly, “no, not one since Moulins.”

  “Seems like they don’t even want prisoners any more,” the soldier said. “Too many. They just take their guns and tell them to bugger off.”

  “Seems like it,” said the woman.

  They fell silent. Hubert ate what they’d given him: a bowl of soup and some cheese. “What are you going to do now?” he asked the soldier.

  His friend had opened his eyes. They debated. One wanted to go to Cressange.

  “What for?” the other one replied, sounding devastated. “They’re everywhere, everywhere . . .” He looked around him with the sad, frightened eyes of a stunned bird.

  He seemed convinced there were Germans all around, ready to capture him. Now and again he let out a sort of clipped, bitter laugh. “Good God, to have fought in ’14 and then see this . . .”

  The woman kept on knitting calmly. She was very old and had on a white fluted bonnet. “I saw ’70. Now then . . .” she muttered.

  Hubert listened to them in horror. They hardly seemed real to him, more like groaning ghosts conjured up from the pages of his History of France. My God! The present with all its tragedy was more important than the glories of the past and its stench of blood. Hubert drank a cup of hot black coffee, despite the grounds. Then, thanking the woman and saying goodbye to the soldiers, he set off, determined to make it to Cressange by morning. From there he could get in touch with his family to let them know he was all right. At eight in the morning he found himself in front of a hotel in a small village a few kilometres from Cressange; he could smell the delicious aroma of coffee and fresh bread coming from inside. Suddenly Hubert felt he couldn’t go on, that his legs wouldn’t carry him. He walked into the hotel where he found a large room full of refugees. No one could tell him if there were any beds. The owner had gone to see if she could find some food for this horde of hungry people; she’d be back soon. He went back out into the street.

  Up on the first floor a woman sat at a window putting on make-up. Her lipstick clattered to the ground at Hubert’s feet and he quickly picked it up. Leaning out to look for it, the woman saw him and smiled. “How can I get it back?” she asked. And she dangled her bare arm, her white hand, out of the window.

  Hubert was dazzled by the sunlight glinting off her polished nails. Her milky-white skin, her red hair were almost painful to him, like a blinding light. “I . . . I could bring it to you, Madame,” he stammered, lowering his eyes.

  “Oh, yes please, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said and smiled again.

  He went back into the building, through the breakfast room and up a small, dark staircase. Through an open door he saw a pink room. In fact, the pink was the effect of sunlight filtering through cheap red curtains and filling the room with a warm, vibrant light the colour of rose bushes.

  The woman, who was polishing her nails, showed him in and took the lipstick. “Oh, he’s going to faint!” she said, looking at him. Hubert felt her take his hand and help him walk a few steps to a chair; she slipped a pillow under his head. His heart was pounding, but he hadn’t lost consciousness. Everything was whirling around as if he were seasick, and great waves of hot and cold ran through him, one after the other.

  He felt intimidated but rather proud of himself. When she asked him, “Are you tired? Hungry? What’s wrong, my poor darling?” he exaggerated the trembling in his voice: “It’s nothing,” he replied, “it’s just . . . I walked here from Moulins where we were defending the bridge.”

  She looked at him, surprised. “But how old are you?”

  “Eighteen,” he lied.

  “Are you a soldier?”

  “No, I was travelling with my family. I left them. I joined the troops.”

  “That’s wonderful!” she said.

  Even though she’d spoken with the tone of admiration he’d hoped for, he blushed when she looked at him; he didn’t know why. Close up, she didn’t seem young. You could see tiny wrinkles on her lightly powdered face. She was very slim, very elegant, with magnificent legs.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Hubert Péricand.”

  “Isn’t there a Péricand who’s the curator at the Beaux-Arts?”

  “He’s my father, Madame.”

  While they were talking, she had stood up and poured him some coffee. She had just finished breakfast and the tray with the half-full coffee pot, cream jug and toast was still on the table.

  “It’s not very hot,” she said, “but you should have some anyway; it will do you good.”

  He obeyed.

  “It’s such madness downstairs with all those refugees; I could ring for service all day long and still no one would come! You come from Paris, of course?”

  “Yes, and you as well, Madame?”

  “Yes. I got caught in the bombing at Tours. Now I’m thinking about going to Bordeaux. Though I imagine the Opéra in Bordeaux has been evacuated.”

  “Are you an actress, Madame?” Hubert asked respectfully.

  “A dancer. Arlette Corail.”

  Hubert had only ever seen dancers on stage at the Châtelet Theatre. Instinctively he glanced with curiosity and longing at her long ankles and muscular calves, sheathed in silk stockings. He was extremely flustered. A lock of his blond ha
ir fell into his eyes.

  The woman gently pushed it back with her hand. “And where will you be going now?”

  “I don’t know,” Hubert admitted. “My family was staying in a small village about thirty kilometres from here. I’d go back and find them, but the Germans must be there by now.”

  “We expect them here too, any time now.”

  “Here?”

  He started and leapt up as if to run away.

  She held him back, laughing. “Now what do you think they would do with you? A young boy like you . . .”

  “All the same, I did fight,” he protested, his feelings hurt.

  “Yes, of course you did, but no one’s going to tell them that, are they?” She was thinking, frowning slightly. “Listen. This is what you’re going to do. I’ll go downstairs and ask for a room for you. They know me here. It’s a very small hotel but marvellous food and I’ve spent a few weekends here. They can give you their son’s room—he’s away at the front. Rest for a day or two and then contact your parents.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” he murmured.

  She went out. When she came back a few moments later he was asleep. She wanted to lift his head, put her arms round his broad shoulders, feel his chest gently rising and falling. She watched him closely, smoothed back the lock of wild golden hair that had fallen on to his forehead, then looked at him again with a dreamy, hungry look, like a cat staring at a little bird. “He’s not at all bad, this boy . . .” she sighed.

  19

  The entire village was waiting for the Germans. Faced with the idea of seeing their conquerors for the first time, some people felt desperate shame, others anguish, but many felt only apprehensive curiosity, as when some astonishing new theatrical event is announced. The civil servants, police, postmen had all been ordered to leave the day before. The mayor was staying. He was a placid old farmer with gout; nothing flustered him. With or without a leader, things in the village went on much the same. At noon, in the noisy dining room where Arlette Corail was finishing lunch, some travellers brought news of the armistice. The women burst into tears. It seemed that the situation was rather confused. In certain places the army was still resisting and civilians had joined them. However, everyone agreed that the army had failed and there was nothing more to be done; they had no choice but to give up. The room was filled with chatter. It was stiflingly hot.