“That you, Benoît?”
“Yes, I’m over here.”
“What are you doing? I was scared.”
“Scared? Of what? You’re crazy.”
“I don’t know. Come in.”
“Wait. Wait a little.”
He pulled her towards him. She struggled and pretended to laugh, but he could sense, by a kind of stiffening throughout her body, that she didn’t really want to laugh, that she didn’t find it funny, that she didn’t like being thrown down in the hay and cool straw, she didn’t like it . . . No! She didn’t like him . . . She got no pleasure from him.
He said very quietly, in a low voice, “Is there nothing you like?”
“There is . . . But not here, not like this, Benoît. I’m embarrassed.”
“Why? You think the cows might see you?” he said harshly. “Fine, go on, get out.”
She let out the despondent little moan that made him want to cry and kill her at the same time.
“The way you talk to me! Sometimes, I think you’re cross with me. For what? It’s Cécile who’s . . .”
He put his hand over her mouth; she quickly pulled away and continued, “She’s the one who’s getting you all worked up.”
“No one’s getting me worked up. I don’t need other people’s eyes to see, do I? All I know is whenever I come near you it’s always ‘Wait. Not now. Not tonight, the baby’s worn me out.’ Who are you waiting for?” he roared suddenly. “Who are you saving yourself for? Well? Well?”
“Let go of me!” she cried as he grabbed hold of her. “Let go of me! You’re hurting me.”
He pushed her away so violently that she hit her head on the low door frame. They looked at each other for a moment in silence. He picked up a rake and angrily stabbed at the hay.
“You’re wrong,” Madeleine said finally, then whispered tenderly, “Benoît . . . Poor dear Benoît . . . You’re wrong to think such things. Come on, I’m your wife; if I seem cold, sometimes, it’s because the baby wears me out. That’s all.”
“Let’s get out of here,” he said suddenly. “Let’s go up to bed.”
They went into the dark empty house. There was a little light left in the sky and at the tops of the trees. Everything else—the earth, the house, the meadows—was plunged into cool darkness. They undressed and got into bed. That night he didn’t try to take her. They lay awake, motionless, listening to the German’s breathing above their heads, the creaking of his bed. In the darkness, Madeleine reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Benoît!”
“What?”
“Benoît, I just remembered. You have to hide your shotgun. Did you read the posters in town?”
“Yes,” he said sarcastically. “Verboten. Verboten. Death. That’s all they know how to say, the bastards.”
“Where are you going to hide it?”
“Forget it. It’s fine where it is.”
“Benoît, don’t be stubborn! It’s serious. You know how many people have been shot for not turning in their weapons.”
“You want me to give them my gun? Only chickens do that! I’m not scared of them. You want to know how I got away last summer? I killed two of them. They didn’t know what hit them! And I’ll kill some more,” he said furiously, shaking his fist in the dark at the German upstairs.
“I’m not saying you should hand it in, just hide it, bury it . . . There are plenty of good hiding places.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got to have it to hand. You think I’m going to let the foxes near us—or all the other stinking beasts? The château grounds are crawling with them. The Viscount, he’s a real coward. He’s shaking in his boots. He couldn’t kill a thing. Now there’s one who’s handed in his gun to the Commandant, and with a nice little salute to boot: ‘You’re very welcome, Messieurs, I’m truly honoured . . .’ It’s lucky me and my friends go up to his grounds at night. Otherwise the whole area would be overrun.”
“Don’t they hear the gunshots?”
“Of course not! It’s enormous, almost a forest.”
“Do you go there often?” said Madeleine, curious. “I didn’t know.”
“There’s lots of things you don’t know, my girl. We go looking for his young tomato plants and beetroot, fruit, anything he’s not taking to market. The Viscount . . .” He paused for a moment, plunged in thought, then added, “The Viscount, he’s one of the worst . . .”
For generations the Sabaries had been tenants of the Montmorts. For generations they had hated one another. The Sabaries said the Montmorts were mean to the poor, haughty, shifty; the Montmorts accused their tenants of having a “bad attitude.” They whispered these words as they shrugged their shoulders and raised their eyes to heaven; it was an expression that meant far more than even the Montmorts thought. The Sabaries’ way of perceiving poverty, wealth, peace, war, freedom, property, was not in itself less logical than the Montmorts’, but it was as contrary to theirs as fire is to water. Now there was even more to complain about. The way the Viscount saw it, Benoît had been a soldier in 1940 and, in the end, it was the soldiers’ lack of discipline, their lack of patriotism, their “bad attitude” that had been responsible for the defeat. Benoît, on the other hand, saw in Montmort one of those dashing officers in their tan boots who during those June days had headed towards the Spanish border in their expensive cars, with their wives and suitcases. Then had come “Collaboration” . . .
“He licks the Germans’ boots,” Benoît said darkly.
“Be careful,” said Madeleine. “You say what you think too much. And don’t be rude to that German up there . . .”
“If he starts chasing after you, I’ll . . .”
“You’re crazy!”
“I have eyes.”
“Are you going to be jealous of him too?” Madeleine exclaimed.
She regretted it as soon as she had said it: she shouldn’t have given substance to her jealous husband’s imagination. But after all, what was the use of keeping quiet about something they both knew.
“They’re both the same to me,” Benoît replied.
These well-groomed, clean-cut men with their quick, witty way of talking—the girls are drawn to them, in spite of themselves, because they’re flattered to be sought after by gentlemen . . . that’s what he means, thought Madeleine. If only he knew! Knew she’d loved Jean-Marie from the first moment, the very first moment she saw him lying on that stretcher, exhausted, covered in mud, in his bloody uniform! Loved. Yes. Lying in the dark, deep in that secret part of her heart, she repeated to herself over and over again, “I loved him. There it is. I still love him. I can’t help it.”
At dawn, the husky crow of the cock pierced the silence and put an end to their sleepless night. They both got up. She went to make the coffee, he to tend the animals.
9
Lucile Angellier sat in the shade of the cherry trees with a book and some embroidery. It was the only corner of the garden where trees and plants were left to grow untended, for these cherry trees bore little fruit.
But it was blossom time. Against a sky of pure and relentless blue—that deep but lustrous Sèvres blue seen on certain precious pieces of porcelain—floated branches that appeared to be covered in snow. The breath of wind that moved them was still chilly on this day in May; the flowers gently resisted, curling up with a kind of trembling grace and turning their pale stamens towards the ground. The sun shone through them, revealing a pattern of interlacing, delicate blue veins, visible through the opaque petals; this added something alive to the flower’s fragility, to its ethereal quality, something almost human, in the way that human can mean frailty and endurance both at the same time. The wind could ruffle these ravishing creations but it couldn’t destroy them, or even crush them; they swayed there, dreamily; they seemed ready to fall but held fast to their slim strong branches—branches that had something silvery about them, like the trunk itself, which grew tall and straight, sleek and slende
r, tinged with greys and purples. Between the clusters of white flowers were long thin leaves; in the shade they looked a delicate green, covered in silvery down; in the sunlight they seemed pink.
The garden ran alongside a narrow road, a country lane dotted with little cottages. This was where the Germans had set up their ammunitions store. A guard marched up and down, beneath a red sign that said in large letters:
VERBOTEN
and further down, in small writing, in French:
KEEP OUT UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH
The soldiers whistled as they groomed their horses and the horses ate the green shoots of the young trees. In the gardens bordering the road, men calmly went about their work. In shirtsleeves, corduroy trousers and straw hats, they tilled, pruned, watered, sowed, planted. Sometimes a German soldier would push open the gate of one of these little gardens to ask for a match to light his pipe, or for a fresh egg, or a glass of beer. The gardener would give him what he wanted; then, leaning on his spade and lost in thought, watch him walk away before turning back to his work with a shrug of the shoulders that was no doubt a reaction to a world of thoughts, so numerous, so deep, so serious and strange that it was impossible to express them in words.
Lucile began to embroider, but soon set down her work. The cherry blossom above her head was attracting wasps and bees; they were coming and going, darting about, diving into the centre of the flowers and drinking greedily, heads down and bodies trembling with a sort of spasmodic delight, while a great golden bumblebee, seemingly mocking these agile workers, swayed in the soft breeze as if on a hammock, barely moving and filling the air with its peaceful golden hum.
From her seat, Lucile could see their German officer at the window; for a few days now he’d had the regiment’s Alsatian with him. He was in Gaston Angellier’s room, sitting at the Louis XIV desk; he emptied the ashes from his pipe into the blue cup that the elder Madame Angellier used for her son’s herbal tea; he tapped his heel absent-mindedly against the gilt bronze mounts that supported the table. The dog had put his snout on the German’s leg; he barked and pulled on his chain.
“No, Bubi,” the officer told him, in French, and loud enough for Lucile to hear (in this quiet garden, all sound hung in the air for a long time, as if carried by the gentle breeze), “you can’t go running about. You will eat all these ladies’ lettuces and they will not be happy with you; they will think we are all bad-mannered, crude soldiers. You must stay where you are, Bubi, and look at the beautiful garden.”
“What a child!” Lucile thought. But she couldn’t help smiling.
The officer continued, “It’s a shame, isn’t it, Bubi? You would love to make holes in the garden with your nose, I’m sure. If there were a small child in the house it would be different . . . He’d call us over. We’ve always got along well with small children . . . But here there are only two very serious ladies, very silent and . . . we’re better off staying where we are, Bubi!”
He waited another moment and when Lucile said nothing, he seemed disappointed. He leaned further out of the window, saluted her and asked with excessive politeness, “Would it inconvenience you in any way, Madame, if I were to ask your permission to pick the strawberries in your flower beds?”
“Make yourself at home,” said Lucile with bitter irony.
The officer saluted again. “I wouldn’t take the liberty of asking you for myself, I assure you, but this dog loves strawberries. I would point out, as well, that it is a French dog. He was found in an abandoned village in Normandy, during a battle, and taken in by my comrades. You wouldn’t refuse to give your strawberries to a fellow Frenchman.”
“We must be idiots,” thought Lucile. But all she said was, “Come, both of you, and pick whatever you like.”
“Thank you, Madame,” the officer exclaimed happily and immediately jumped out of the window, the dog following behind.
The two of them came up to Lucile; the German smiled. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, Madame. Please do not think me rude. It’s just that this garden, these cherry trees, it all seems like a little corner of paradise to a simple soldier.”
“Did you spend the winter in France?” Lucile asked.
“Yes. In the north, confined to the barracks and the café by the bad weather. I was billeted with a poor young woman whose husband had been taken prisoner two weeks after they got married. Whenever she saw me in the hallway she started to cry. As for me, well, it made me feel like a criminal. Though it wasn’t my fault . . . and I could have told her I was married too, and separated from my wife by the war.”
“You’re married?”
“Yes. Does that surprise you? Married four years. A soldier four years.”
“But you’re so young!”
“I’m twenty-four, Madame.”
They fell silent. Lucile took up her embroidery. The officer knelt on the ground and began picking strawberries; he held them in the palm of his hand and let Bubi come and find them with his wet black nose.
“Do you live here alone with your mother?”
“She’s my husband’s mother; he’s a prisoner of war. You can ask the cook for a plate for your strawberries.”
“Oh, all right . . . Thank you, Madame.”
After a moment he came back with a big blue plate and continued picking strawberries. He offered some to Lucile who took a few and then told him to have the others. He was standing in front of her, leaning against a cherry tree.
“Your house is beautiful, Madame.”
The sky had become hazy, cloaked in a light mist, and in this softer light the house took on a pinkish ochre colour, like certain eggshells; as a child, Lucile had called them “brown eggs” and thought they tasted more delicious than the snow-white ones most of the hens laid. This memory made her smile. She looked at the house, its bluish slate roof, its sixteen windows with their shutters (carefully left only slightly ajar so the spring sunshine couldn’t fade the tapestries), the great rusty clock over the entrance that no longer sounded the hour and whose glass cover mirrored the sky.
“You think it’s beautiful?” she asked.
“One of Balzac’s characters might live here. It must have been built by a wealthy provincial notary who retired to the countryside. I imagine him, at night, in my room, counting out his gold coins. He was a freethinker, but his wife went to first Mass every morning, the one whose bells I hear ringing on my way back from night manoeuvres. His wife would have been blonde, with a rosy complexion and a large cashmere shawl.”
“I’ll ask my mother-in-law who built this house,” said Lucile. “My husband’s parents were landowners, but in the nineteenth century there must have been notaries, lawyers and doctors, and before that farmers. I know there was a farm here a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“You’ll ask? You don’t know? Doesn’t it interest you, Madame?”
“I don’t know,” said Lucile, “but I can tell you about the house where I was born; I can tell you when it was built and by whom. I wasn’t born here. I just live here.”
“Where were you born?”
“Not far from here, but in another province. In a house in the woods . . . where the trees grow so close to the sitting room that in summer their shadows bathe everything in a green light, just like an aquarium.”
“There are forests where I live,” said the officer. “Very big forests. People hunt all day long.” After thinking for a moment he added, “An aquarium, yes, you’re right. The sitting-room windows are dark green and cloudy, like water. There are also lakes where we hunt wild duck.”
“Will you be getting leave soon so you can go home?” asked Lucile.
Joy flashed across the officer’s face. “I’m leaving in ten days, Madame, a week from Monday. Since the beginning of the war I’ve only had one short leave at Christmas, less than a week. Oh, Madame, we look forward to our leave so much! We count the days. We hope. And then we get there and we realise we don’t speak the same language any more.”
“Sometimes,??
? murmured Lucile.
“Always.”
“Are your parents still alive?”
“Yes. My mother will probably be sitting in the garden right now, like you, with a book and some embroidery.”
“And your wife?”
“My wife,” he said, “is waiting for me, or rather, she’s waiting for someone who went away four years ago and who will never return . . . Absence is a very strange thing!”
“Yes,” sighed Lucile.
And she thought of Gaston Angellier. There are some women who expect to welcome back the same man, and some who expect a different man from before, she said to herself. Both are disappointed. She forced herself to picture the husband she hadn’t seen for a year, and what he must be like now, suffering, consumed with longing (but for his wife or his hatmaker in Dijon?). She wasn’t being fair; he must be devastated by the humiliation of the defeat, the loss of so much wealth . . . Suddenly, the sight of the German was painful to her (no, not the German himself, but his uniform, that peculiar almond-green colour verging on grey, his jacket, his shiny bright boots). She pretended she had some work to do in the house and went inside. From her room she could see him walking up and down the narrow path between the large pear trees, their arms stretched out, heavy with blossom. What a beautiful day . . . Gradually the light began to fade, making the branches of the cherry trees look bluish and airy, like powder puffs. The dog walked quietly beside the officer, now and again rubbing his nose into the young man’s hand. The officer stroked him gently each time. He wasn’t wearing a hat: his silvery blond hair shone in the sunlight. Lucile saw him looking at the house.
“He’s intelligent and well-mannered. But I’m glad he’ll be leaving soon. It pains my poor mother-in-law to see him living in her son’s room. Passionate souls are so simple,” she thought. “She hates him and that’s all there is to it. People who can love and hate openly, consistently, unreservedly, are so lucky. Meanwhile, here I am, on this beautiful day, confined to my bedroom because that gentleman wants to take a little walk. It’s too ridiculous.”