“Hubert,” she sighed, and threw her arms round his neck, hanging on to him, showering him with kisses and tears. An emotional little crowd had gathered around them.
Hubert, who had no idea what to do, patted Madame Péricand’s back, as if something had gone down the wrong way. “Weren’t you expecting me?”
She shook her head.
“Were you going out?”
“My poor boy! We were going to the cathedral to say a Mass for your soul!”
Hubert was taken aback. “You’re joking!”
“But where have you been? What have you been doing these past two months? We were told you’d been killed in Moulins.”
“Well, you can see that wasn’t true since I’m right here.”
“But you did go and fight? Hubert, don’t lie to me! Did you really have to go and do that, you little idiot. And what about your bicycle? Where’s your bicycle?”
“Lost.”
“Of course! This boy will be the death of me! Well, come on, speak, tell us, where were you?”
“I was trying to find you.”
“You would have been better off not leaving us in the first place,” said Madame Péricand harshly. Then, her voice breaking with emotion: “Your father will be so happy when he hears.”
She burst into tears and started kissing him again. It was getting late now. But, even though she wiped her eyes, the tears kept falling. “Go on, then, go inside and get washed! Are you hungry?”
“No, I had a good lunch, thanks.”
“Get a clean handkerchief, change your tie, wash your hands, make yourself decent, for goodness sake! Hurry up, and meet us at the cathedral.”
“What? You’re still going? Since I’m alive, wouldn’t it be better to go and stuff ourselves at a restaurant instead?”
“Hubert!”
“What? Is it because I said ‘stuff ourselves’?”
“No, but . . .”
It would be terrible to tell him, like this, in the middle of the street, she thought. She took his hand and pulled him inside the carriage. “My darling, there have been two great tragedies. First Grandpa, poor Grandpa died, and Philippe . . .”
He took the shock in an odd way. Two months earlier he would have burst into tears, big fat salty tears rolling down his pink cheeks. Now he went very pale and his face took on an expression she had never seen before: manly, almost harsh. “I don’t much mind about Grandpa,” he said after a long silence. “As for Philippe . . .”
“Hubert, are you mad?”
“No, I don’t much mind and neither do you. He was old and ill. What would he have done in all this chaos?”
“Well, really!” Madame Craquant protested.
But he ignored her and continued talking to his mother. “As for Philippe . . . But first, are you really sure? It couldn’t be like what happened with me?”
“We are sure, I’m afraid . . .”
“Philippe . . .” His voice trembled and broke. “He wasn’t of this world. Other people talk about heaven all the time but they only think about this world . . . Philippe, he came from God and he must be very happy now.” He hid his face in his hands and remained motionless for a long time. Then they heard the cathedral bells ringing.
Madame Péricand touched her son’s arm. “Shall we go?”
He nodded. They all got into the carriage, the servants following in another, and made their way to the cathedral. Hubert walked between his mother and grandmother. They remained on either side of him as he knelt on his prayer cushion. He had been recognised; he could hear whispering, muffled cries. Madame Craquant had not been wrong: the whole town was there. Everyone had a good view of the survivor who had come to give thanks to God for his deliverance on the very day his family had gathered to pray for their dead. On the whole, everyone was happy: the fact that a good lad like Hubert had managed to avoid German bullets flattered their sense of justice and their craving for miracles. All the mothers who had had no news since May (and there were so many of them!) felt hope beat within their breast. And it was impossible to feel resentful about it, as they might have been tempted to do—“Some people have all the luck”—when, sadly, poor Philippe (an excellent priest, absolutely everyone said so) had died.
And so, despite the solemnity of the surroundings, many women smiled at Hubert. He didn’t see them. His mother’s words had thrust him into a state of profound shock from which he still hadn’t emerged. Philippe’s death was tearing him apart. He had returned to that terrible state of mind he felt when France was falling, before the desperate and vain battle of Moulins. “If we were all the same,” he thought, looking over the congregation, “if we were all pigs and dogs, then it might be understandable. But saints like Philippe, why are they sent here? If it’s to save us, to make up for our sins, it’s like offering a pearl in exchange for a bag of stones.”
The people around him, his family, his friends, aroused a feeling of shame and rage within him. He had seen them on the road, them and people like them: he recalled the cars full of officers running away with their beautiful yellow trunks and their painted women, civil servants abandoning their posts, panic-stricken politicians dropping files of secret papers along the road, young girls, who had diligently wept the day the armistice was signed, being comforted in the arms of the Germans. “And to think that no one will know, that there will be such a conspiracy of lies that all this will be transformed into yet another glorious page in the history of France. We’ll do everything we can to find acts of devotion and heroism for the official records. Good God! To see what I’ve seen! Closed doors where you knock in vain to get a glass of water and refugees who pillaged houses; everywhere, everywhere you look, chaos, cowardice, vanity and ignorance! What a wonderful race we are!”
Meanwhile, he was absently following the service, his heart so heavy and hard that it caused him physical pain. Several times he sighed gruffly, which worried his mother. She turned towards him, her eyes shining with tears through her black veil. “Are you in pain?” she whispered.
“No, Mother,” he replied, looking at her so coldly that he reproached himself for it, but he couldn’t help it.
He judged his family with bitterness and a painful harshness. His grievances whirled around in his mind in the form of brief, violent images, without him being able to express them clearly: his father calling the Republic “this decaying regime . . .” but that same evening, twenty-four places set for dinner at their apartment, with their most beautiful tablecloths, wonderful foie gras and expensive wines, all in honour of a former minister who might be re-elected and might therefore be useful to Monsieur Péricand (God, his mother’s tight little mouth saying, “Oh, my dear Minister . . .”); their cars full to bursting with fine linen and silver caught up among the refugees, and his mother, pointing to women and children forced to walk with just a few bits of clothing wrapped up in a piece of cloth, saying, “Do you see how good our Lord Jesus is? Just think, we could be those unfortunate wretches!” Hypocrites, frauds!
And what about him? What was he doing here? His heart full of disgust and hatred, he was just pretending to pray for Philippe. But Philippe was . . . My God! Philippe, my beloved brother! He whispered these words and, as if they had some divine power to console, his painful heart relented. Warm tears flooded down his cheeks. Thoughts of kindness, forgiveness, ran through him. They did not come from within him but from beyond, as if some friend had leaned down to whisper in his ear, “A family that produced Philippe can’t be all bad. You’re being too harsh. You’ve only seen things from the outside, you can’t look into their souls. Evil is visible, it burns, it smugly displays itself for all to see. There is only One who can count the sacrifices, who can measure all the blood and tears.”
He looked at the marble plaque engraved with the names of those who had died in the war . . . the last war. Among them were some Craquants and Péricands—uncles, cousins he’d never known, children barely older than he, killed at the Somme, Flanders, Verdun, killed twice s
ince they had died in vain. Little by little, out of this chaos of contradictory feelings, was born a strange, bitter feeling of peace. He had gained valuable experience, knowledge; no longer in an abstract, bookish way, but in his heart, which had beat so wildly, in his hands which had been torn to shreds trying to defend the bridge at Moulins, in his lips which had kissed a woman while the Germans celebrated their victory. Danger, courage, fear, love: now he knew the real meaning of these words . . . Yes, even love . . . He felt better now, stronger, and very confident. He would never see the world through anyone else’s eyes again. But more than that, anything he might love and believe from now on would come from himself, and no one else. Slowly, he put his hands together, lowered his head and, finally, prayed.
The Mass was over. Outside the cathedral he was surrounded by people wanting to kiss him and congratulate his mother.
“And he still has those lovely cheeks,” the women all said, “after all he’s been through . . . He’s hardly lost any weight, he hasn’t changed at all. Dear little Hubert . . .”
27
Gabriel Corte and Florence arrived at the Grand Hotel at seven o’clock in the morning. Collapsing with exhaustion, they looked around fearfully, as if they expected, once through the revolving doors, to plunge back into the nightmare of an incoherent world, with refugees sleeping on the cream carpets of the writing room, a hotel manager who didn’t recognise them and refused to give them a room, no hot water for a bath and bombs falling in the lobby. But, thank God, this Queen of French spas had remained intact and the feverish, noisy activity at the lake was simply the way it always was. All the staff were in place. Despite the manager’s insistence that they were short of everything, the coffee was delicious, the cocktails were mixed with crushed ice and the taps poured out as much water as you liked, cold and boiling hot. At first everyone had been worried: the unfriendly attitude of England made them fear that the blockade would remain in place, thus depriving them of fresh supplies of whisky, but they had a large quantity in stock. They could wait.
As soon as they set foot on the marble floor of the lobby, Gabriel and Florence felt they had been reborn. Everything was calm. You could barely hear the distant whirring of the great lifts. Through the open bay windows, misty, shimmering rainbows created by the hotel’s water sprinklers hovered over the lawns. They were recognised and surrounded. The manager of the Grand Hotel, where they had stayed every year for twenty years, raised his arms to heaven and told them it was all over; they had glimpsed the bottom of the abyss, but now they had to try to restore some sense of duty and nobility in the people. Then he confided in them that they were expecting members of the government to arrive at any moment (their suites had been reserved the previous day), and that the ambassador of Bolivia was having to sleep on a billiard table. However, for him, Gabriel Corte, he would always manage to find something (more or less the same words he had used as a newly promoted deputy manager of the Normandy Hotel in Deauville at the height of the racing season).
Corte wearily passed his hand over his painful forehead. “My good man, you could put a mattress in the lavatory if you had to!”
All around him, everything was taking place in an appropriately discreet manner. There were no more women giving birth in a ditch, no more lost children, no more bridges blown up with such ill-calculated amounts of dynamite that they demolished the houses nearby. Here, windows were politely closed to keep out draughts, doors were opened for him, he felt plush carpets beneath his feet.
“Do you have all your luggage? You didn’t lose anything? What luck! People have been arriving without pyjamas, without even a toothbrush. There was one unfortunate gentleman who arrived with no clothes on. He was wounded in an explosion and made the entire journey from Tours completely naked, with only a blanket round him.”
“Well, I nearly lost my manuscripts,” said Corte.
“Good gracious, how awful! But you found them intact? All the same, what you must have been through! What you must have been through! Excuse me, Monsieur, excuse me, Madame, right this way. Here is the suite I have given you; it’s on the fourth floor, I do apologise; you will excuse me, won’t you?”
“Oh,” muttered Corte, “nothing matters at the moment.”
“I do understand,” said the manager, lowering his head and looking saddened. “Such a tragedy . . . I was born in Switzerland but I am French at heart. I do understand.”
And he stood motionless for a few moments, his head down like a mourner at a funeral who wants to rush to the exit, but feels obliged to pay his respects to the family. He had put on this expression so often in the past few days that his kindly, chubby face had been transformed. He had always walked and spoken softly, as befitted his profession. Now he exaggerated his natural tendencies even further, crossing the room utterly silently, as if he were in a funeral parlour, and when he said to Corte, “Shall I have breakfast sent up?” it was in a discreet and mournful tone of voice, as if he were looking at the body of a cherished relative and asking, “May I kiss him one last time?”
“Breakfast?” Corte sighed, returning with difficulty to reality and the trivial problems of everyday life. “I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours,” he added with a faint smile.
That had been true the day before, but not this morning: at six o’clock he had eaten a hearty meal. Nevertheless, he wasn’t lying: he had eaten absent-mindedly because of his extreme exhaustion and the concern he felt at the tragedy taking place in France. He felt as though he hadn’t eaten.
“Oh, but you must force yourself, Monsieur! I don’t like seeing you like this, Monsieur Corte. You mustn’t give in. You owe it to mankind.”
Corte nodded in resignation; he didn’t dispute his obligation to mankind, but at the moment he couldn’t be expected to have more courage than the most humble citizen. “My good man,” he said, turning away to hide his tears, “it is not just France who is dying, it is Art as well.”
“Not as long as you are here, Monsieur Corte,” the manager replied warmly, as he had a great number of times since the Fall of France. Corte was, in the list of celebrities, the fourteenth to arrive from Paris since the sad events began and the fifth writer to seek refuge at the luxury hotel.
Corte smiled weakly and asked him to make sure the coffee was very hot.
“Boiling hot,” the manager assured him, then gave the necessary orders over the telephone and left.
Florence had gone into her room, locked the door and anxiously looked at herself in the mirror. Her face, normally so soft, so well made-up, so rested, was covered in a shiny coat of sweat; it no longer absorbed the powder and foundation, but turned them into thick lumps, like curdled mayonnaise. Her nose was pinched, her eyes sunken, her mouth pale and limp. She turned away from the mirror in horror.
“I could be fifty,” she said to her maid.
This was quite literally true, but she said it with such disbelief and terror that Julie took it as she should: that is to say figuratively, as a metaphor for expressing extreme old age.
“After everything that’s happened it’s understandable . . . Madame should take a little nap.”
“It’s impossible . . . As soon as I close my eyes I hear the bombs, I see the bridge again, the dead bodies . . .”
“Madame will forget.”
“Never! Could you forget?
“It’s different for me.”
“Why?”
“Madame has so many other things to think about!” said Julie. “Shall I lay out Madame’s green dress?”
“My green dress? With the way I look?”
Florence, who had slumped down into her chair with her eyes closed, suddenly rallied, summoning all her meagre strength like the head of an army who, despite needing rest and acknowledging the inefficiency of his subordinates, pulls himself together and, still weak with exhaustion, leads his troops on to the battlefield. “Listen, this is what you are going to do. First, while you are running the bath, prepare me a face mask, number 3, the American o
ne. Then telephone the hairdresser and ask if Luigi is still there. Tell him to come and give me a manicure in three quarters of an hour. Then get my little grey suit ready, with the pink linen blouse.”
“The one with the collar like this?” Julie asked, drawing a low-cut shape in the air.
Florence hesitated. “Yes . . . no . . . yes . . . that one, and the new little hat with the cornflowers. Oh, Julie, I really never thought I would get to wear that little hat. Well . . . you’re right, I mustn’t think about it any more, I’d go mad . . . I wonder if they have any more of that ochre powder, the last one . . .”
“We’ll have to find out . . . Madame would be wise to buy several boxes. It came from England.”
“You don’t have to tell me! You know, Julie, we don’t really understand what is going on. These events will have an unimaginable impact, believe me, unimaginable . . . People’s lives will be changed for generations. We’ll be hungry this winter. Just get out my grey leather handbag with the gold clasp, that’s all . . . I wonder what Paris is like,” said Florence walking into the bathroom. But the noise of the running water Julie had just turned on drowned out her words.
Meanwhile, less frivolous thoughts were passing through Corte’s mind. He too was lying in the bath. At first he had been filled with such joy, such profound natural peace, that he was reminded of the delights of childhood: his happiness when eating an iced meringue full of cream; dipping his feet in a cool stream; pressing a new toy to his heart. He felt no desire, no regret, no anguish. His head was clear and calm; his body floated in a warm, liquid element that caressed him, gently tickled his skin, washed away the dust, the sweat, insinuated itself between his toes and slid beneath his back like a mother lifting her sleeping child. The bathroom smelled of tar soap, hair lotion, eau de Cologne, lavender water. He smiled, stretched out his arms, cracked the knuckles on his long, pale fingers, savoured the divine, simple pleasure of being safe from the bombs and taking a cool bath on a very hot day. He couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when bitterness cut through him like a sharp knife through a piece of fruit. Perhaps it was when he happened to glance at the suitcase full of manuscripts on the chair, or when the soap fell into the water and he had to fish it out, the strain to his muscles disrupting his state of euphoria. Whenever it was, at a certain point he frowned and his face, which had been clearer, smoother than usual, almost rejuvenated, became sombre and anxious once again.