Wars I Have Seen

  You never can tell who is going to help you, that is a fact. French people are awfully careful of their money, so careful and so hard and yet so many of them most unexpectedly are helpful, not those whom you expect to help you but just anybody. Take our case. After we came into the war it began to get very difficult extremely difficult, and nobody among my old friends nobody asked me if we were in any trouble and it was getting a bit of a trouble, of course if we had wanted it we could have gotten some from the consul but with the price of things going up and up and up that would not have helped us, and so there we are, and so much worse than that there we were, and one day a young man his name is Paul Genin and we had come to know him because they had bought a house in the neighborhood, he was a silk manufacturer from Lyon and he was interested in literature one day he said to me are you having trouble about money, I said not yet I still have a supply but it is beginning to run pretty low and he said can I help you and I said what can you do, well he said write out a check in dollars and I will see what I can do, and then a little while after he said I have been looking into the matter and I think it might possibly get you into trouble and I think I had rather not have you do it, I could have it done but I would rather not so here is your check tear it up and let me be your banker, but, I said, Oh he said, why not, how much do you spend a month, I told him, he said all right I will give you that a month and I said what do you want me to give you in the way of a paper, oh nothing he said, I think it is better not, but said I if I died or anything you have no evidence of anything, oh he said let us risk it, and he did, and every month for six months he gave me what I needed to live on for the month and at the end of six months I sold a picture I had with me quite quietly to some one who came to see me and so I thanked Paul Genin and paid him back and he said if you ever need me just tell me, and that was that.

  Life is funny that way.

  It always is funny that way, the ones that naturally should offer do not, and those who have no reason to offer it, do, you never know you never do know where your good-fortune is to come from. The most experienced person can never tell, never never never.

  At the same time you can tell that Secret Service is an amusement of peace it is not an amusement for war. I have just been reading a secret service novel a quite good one, in which the secret service agents save Hong Kong, to the British. That is all right in peace times like finding out all about new weapons and secret treaties and all that sort of thing and the other secret agents but once war begins well it is not of any use, really it is not, when it is peace time it is drama when it is war time it is melodrama. No information gotten within in a country is of any use to anybody by the time it comes out, anyway information like that is not much use, one does see and hear a good deal of the secret service, bound to, you just cant help hearing more or less actually about it, but it does not seem much good in war time, really not much good, when a country is in revolt as everybody is now who is occupied that is different, but that is not secret service in an enemy’s country that is the organisation of resistance within the country, and of course when the whole country is in sympathy with them messages do go in and out, surely not otherwise, why are they not more often stopped and they never are, the conferences of the important people continue, why are none of the important people killed, nobody really finds out anything and all that secret service agents do in war time is to feel melodramatic and occasionally get shot up, it is indeed a peace time occupation, it really is. We know one of them pretty well, and he is supposed to be a pretty good one and beside upsetting his own nerves and changing his name constantly and his papers and occasionally frightening us rather badly by mysterious messages, which might have to do with him and perhaps might have to do with us, but would he know and being very frequently condemned to death but being still alive, well it is the changing of their name that is the chief occupation, I remember when I was young I was fascinated on the stage that anybody came on disguised by changing their wig, that is the way you knew they were the same but some one else. Well secret service people seem to achieve the same thing by changing their names, once they are Hubert and then they are Henry and then they Charles and the last name changes the same way. Why should it deceive anybody since they remain the same but it seems to, everything is peculiar but that seems to me one of the things that are the most peculiar, what is in a name, for a secret service man everything is in a name if they can find a new one and they undoubtedly always can, and that new name seems to completely throw the authorities out, I used to read about it and I thought it was just in the books, but no they do it they do do it and it seems to work in spite of the horrid suspicion one has that perhaps nobody is really interested in finding them but apparently they are any way it is very funny, a bit frightening from time to time but really very funny. The times are so peculiar now, so mediaeval so unreasonable that for the first time in a hundred years truth is really stranger than fiction. Any truth.

  There are such funny thing, how can a nation that feels itself as strong as the Germans do be afraid of a small handful of people like the Jews, why it does seem funny, most strange and very funny, they must be afraid because as Edgar Wallace loves to say over and over again, hate is fear, and why, what can they do to them, after all what can they do to them. Everything is funny. Yesterday was a funny day.

  Strangers always have to have papers to move about, they are supposed to stay more or less in their commune, nobody that is the French are not very fussy about it but you are more or less supposed to stay in your commune. We are rather favored strangers, and we can move about fairly freely in our department, but when we go to others we are supposed to have a special pass. Yesterday was a funny day.

  To-day was a funny day we expected the son and the mother came. She did say that for the women of France to-day they were a great many who could not remember that there had been peace between ’18 and ’39 it all seemed war and war and no peace in between. To be sure her son had been born in sixteen in Paris, and she had to remain in bed, on the day he was born and risk the bomb but he had been wrapped up in absorbent cotton and taken down into the cellar with all the others who could move about, and now his son was born in 1940, and living in Lyon, when he hears the right kind of a noise he says reflectively that is a bomb, and it is a bomb. As I say to-day was a funny day but yesterday was an even funnier day. As I say we are very careful about having our papers in order. So many people wander about with false papers, one of our friends who has an automobile buys one regularly when he wants to go anywhere, and anyway anybody seems to be able to have one for the asking but we are not like that, we go to the gendarmerie and we get our papers to go where we want to go to be sure they are very nice to us and always give us whatever we ask for which is very nice for us. So yesterday we were to go to Chambery to visit the dentist, and off we started and all as usual. I like trains now, I perfectly understand why the French people never did care for automobiles, why they so much prefer trains, trains are so very much more adventurous, particularly now, when nobody really knows when they will go or where they will go, and when you get off of them whether you can get out of the station to go home, and then the dark stations, and the crowded train, it is all very exciting. So yesterday we started to go to Chambery.

  I had to buy a jar of jam.

  You have to buy what you do not want to buy in order to buy what you do want to buy. That is if you have nothing to trade and a good many of us have nothing to trade. Of course if you are a farmer it is all right you have lots to trade but if you are not a farmer then you have nothing to trade. Once when we were in Bilignin during the winter we wanted to buy some eggs and nobody wanted to sell us any because all the eggs their chickens lay they wanted to eat themselves, which was natural enough, and Madame Roux said can we find nothing to trade that is not to trade but to induce them to sell eggs to us, at last we found something, and it was our dish water. Madame Roux had the habit of carrying off the dish water to give to a neighbor who was fattening a pig,
and as there was very little milk with which to fatten pigs, dish water was considerable of a help, this was in the worst days, ’41–42, in ’43 life began to be easier, well anyway Alice Toklas said to Madame Roux, no we will not give away our dish water, if the neighbor wants it she has in return to be willing to sell us a certain quantity of eggs. So Madame Roux went to the neighbor and told her she could have the family dish water only under the condition of our having the privilege of buying from her a certain quantity of eggs, well she wanted the dish water and we bought the eggs, but alas she killed the pig at Christmas, and everybody killed their pig at Christmas and so there was no need any longer of dish water to fatten the pigs and so our right to buy eggs was over, we had not had the idea of making the bargain for longer. Now in 1943, in December, well I do not know quite why but apparently for a number of reasons victualing yourselves is easier. In the first place so many trains being stopped tends to make all the food produced stay where it is made and there is an awful lot of food produced in France and secondly the transport being so bad and the Germans not having any essence and so not having any trucks, and the trains being stopped all the time the Germans are not able to take food out of France so it stays here and then besides it is a point of honor on the part of every one to steal the reserve that is gathered together by the government to presumably give it to the Germans and all that eventually gets back into the black market, and so now everybody who lives in the country at least complains of having to eat too much meat, too much butter, too much white flour, of course in the big cities it is a different matter, there just because of the difficulties of transport they have difficulty in getting material but even in the big cities curiously enough they seem to have many more provisions than they had before, and also it may be because the war looking as if it might be over, and peace might be upon us any moment, nobody wants to hoard any more, and as there were tremendous stocks of provisions everywhere, and as there are very few Germans in France these days to feed, there is a quantity of food, much more than there has been since 1940. Things work out so differently than one thinks for.

  But to get back to train traveling more and more I like to take a train I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling, it is so much more sociable and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating. As I said we were going to Chambery and we got ready and got to the station well ahead of time as is our custom and with all our papers in order as is our custom.

  When we arrived at the station of course the train was not there it never is and we had a long conversation with our friend the gendarme who helps us get around and helps us get a goat, and helped us every way they help anybody every day often to get away, they do do that. Well anyway we waited for the train and at last it came and it meant to go to Chambery but not the car we were in that did not mean to go to Chambery and so all of a sudden the landscape ceased to be familiar and naturally I was talking to a young woman about Paris and Lyon and about her being a coiffeuse and having a studio in Paris some day, now she was only in Lyon, and she had a girl friend and we were all talking and I said dear me this does not look like Chambery, why no they said it goes to Annecy, oh dear we said what can we do and we all talked and everybody gave advice and a German officer looked as if he wanted to join in but naturally nobody paid any attention to him nobody ever does which makes them quite timid in a train, and they wanted us to go to the biggest town and we said no we would get off at the first town which after all was not more than ten kilometers from Aix-les-Bains and if the worst came to the worst we could walk there. And we got off dog and all because of course Basket is always with us he likes train trips he did not at first but he does now because they admire him and they feed him, French people even in these days of no bread and no sugar cannot see a dog without offering him some bread and some sugar if they are eating and in these days anybody in the train is eating. It is like America was during prohibition you never know when it will happen again so you eat when you can which these days December almost Christmas ’43 seems to be about all the time. Well anyway we stopped at the small station and we asked advice of the station master and he said we were in luck there was a train to Aix in two hours and then at eight o’clock at night there was one from Aix to Culoz and we just had to give up Chambery and just try again later and we did and we were all talking so much that he did not ask us for tickets and we were talking so much that we forgot to give him tickets or pay him, and then we went into the town and they all told us where we could eat in a little café and eat we did and very well for very little and there were a number of us and there were two German soldiers standing at the bar and one of them looked like Hemingway quite a bit when Hemingway was young, he probably was not a German but a Czech or something, they mostly are these days and like Hemingway he was drinking, he had a brandy and then he had an eau de vie and then he had a glass of sparkling white wine and then he had an Amer Picon, and then he had a glass of sparkling wine and he looked more and more like Hemingway when he was young and the other one with him a shorter and fatter and a married man and frankly German only drank a glass of wine and when it came to pay it came to considerable and there was an Alsatian with them interpreting and the one the good-looking one who looked like Hem when he was young when they were leaving put out his hand to shake hands with the proprietress and the proprietress could not refuse of course but she was red in the face and pushed her daughter back and nobody said anything when they left, but everybody understood what everybody felt, to sell and take money is one thing but to shake hands is another thing and the proprietress knew it was not her fault and still she knew it should not have happened she did know that and so did everybody.

  So then we bought some pears and went back to the station and then we heard that the proprietress was Swiss and not French and so we understood that though she felt the same way she did not know as well as any Frenchwoman would know to have a thing like that not happen.

  So then back we were in Aix-les-Bains and there were so many Germans there and there was an alerte but nothing happened and we went to all the shopkeepers we knew and we know a great many in Aix to pass the time and get warm because it was cold and we bought real silk scarfs and a pair of woolen stockings and we went to a tea place where they gave us chocolate and where funnily enough there was a German officer who looked just like Goering though surely he would not be there drinking chocolate too and having bread and jam but there it was and at last everything was closing up and we had to go to the station to wait two hours there for our train.

  We waited and I went in and out and walked up and down and Alice Toklas sat on the bench near where they sell tickets because the waiting room was full of everybody sleeping because you might wait all day for a train or you might wait all night to leave your train because the curfew does not ring but it is there any night and every night and very often you have to wait all night to go home until the morning. It is all like other times, the curfew and in French it is cover fire, and it is cover light and they cannot have midnight mass although it is Christmas because of the curfew. You do not think much about it unless you are traveling because there is nothing to go out for in the winter and so everybody stays at home. So we waited for our train, and I went in and out and there were a good many Germans about and German nurses in and out, and the dog and I went in and out and then suddenly there in the night and in the newsstand outside I saw a copy of Alice Toklas’ Autobiography in French there for sale on a shelf, and I was very excited and went in to tell Alice Toklas and the ticket seller heard me he was a pleasant young fellow and he said yes in ten minutes in English he thought I was asking about the time of the train I had already asked him and so I went up to talk to him, and he said and these gentlemen, that is the way the Germans are always mentioned and these gentlemen do not bother you and I said no we are women and past the age to be bothered and beside I said I am a writer and so the French people take care of me, and what may I ask he s
aid do you write oh I said it just happens that one of my books is for sale outside on the newsstand and that is what I was just telling my friend, and the young woman ticket seller said and might I ask what is the name of the book and I told her and without any hesitation she took up her handbag put a scarf over her and went out to the newsstand and came back with it triumphantly and she said will you sign it? and I said why yes I will and I asked her name and I wrote it in and we were all very pleased and Alice Toklas thought it was all very funny, with all the Germans coming in and out and all about. Anything can happen in France and that makes it what it is, just that makes it what it is.

  And now we are going to Chambery again the train was late again and it was raining, but anyway there were all kinds of them traveling, we and they and every one. French people love to get on a train and now the difficulties are just as they used to be in America in the early days when there were wash outs and snow slides, and train bandits and strikes, and breakdowns and everything, I once crossed the continent during the Pullman strike and traveling now is just like that, anything can happen and nobody expects anything everybody just goes on traveling. The government begs everybody to stay at home unless the reason for traveling is very urgent but of course it is urgent, why not as long as trains go and there is somewhere to go and so we went to Chambery again and it was raining. The dentist’s son after having escaped from jail and having been all through Italy and home again and gone away again to join his comrades and be a commando, little boys in the streets play at that, after all that, he went to Lyon on business for his friends, and was caught by the Germans and now is in prison again and his mother is desperate. But he has written to his grandmother and says she cannot sent him food but she can send him clean linen which she does and he says he is with comrades and they are all well, and the only comfort is that he writes back-handed and people who do that usually manage to take care of themselves so perhaps he will get away although it is now more dangerous for him than it was his father and mother seem to worry less than they did, I suppose there comes the saturation point of worry and then normal life begins again and just goes on being. I met another boy he was an Alsatian and he was visiting in the neighborhood with his mother and all that had happened to him, he had escaped from a train and he had been let out finally and now all he had to do was to avoid big cities not that he really did, they never do and I asked him how he managed to get out of his troubles and he answered by patience and address, and I suppose that is the way to get away.