Dimanche and Other Stories (Vintage International)

by Irene Nemirovsky

  “My comrade said it would be best for us to hide in the cellar, as the Germans had done. We left the two dead men where they were and staggered down below; we lowered the trapdoor and stayed there, my comrade cursing and groaning and me bleeding like a pig. We hoped that the artillery fire would stop when daylight came, but it carried on. Durand (that was my friend’s name) had made me a rough bandage. I started to feel better but I was very cold and thirsty. Gradually I began to feel a bit bolder; it was morning and the Germans wouldn’t come back now. I remembered the food in the kitchen, and a hot plate I’d seen the previous evening that still had a jug of warm wine on it. I tried to persuade Durand to come with me but he didn’t want to; he made a blanket out of some old sacking we found in the cellar, and he went to sleep.

  “It was very hard to climb up again. The kitchen was bright; it was broad daylight and I was frozen stiff. I walked around the two rooms where the bodies of Mailloche and the German lay among the wreckage and—you have to believe me, François—I hardly glanced at them. It was the first war scene I had ever seen, but when you’re so hungry and thirsty, you’re more like an animal than a man.

  “Only after I’d knocked back several glasses of the sweet hot wine and felt the warmth in my body and lit my pipe did I give any thought to poor Mailloche. I knelt down beside him. Poor kid, he looked quite calm, happy to be finished with it all, with a strange little smile on his lips as if to say, ‘I know what it’s like now, but you …’

  “I crossed his hands on his chest and opened his wallet to look for his family’s address. He’d told me his mother was widowed—a cleaner who lived in Saint-Mandé. He had her photo in his breast pocket, along with a bit of the rope that one of his uncles had used to hang himself after drinking too much at his own wedding. Can you believe it—my friend Mailloche thought a suicide’s noose would bring him luck! It didn’t protect him, poor lad. He still had his membership card for the Saint-Mandé football club and a few other bits and pieces. I searched for a long time for something to cover his face, but the bedrooms were all locked and anyway it was so cold it could wait until he was buried. I decided to dig a grave in the garden before we left, once Durand had woken up. Then I turned to the other one.”

  “The German?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused for so long that François touched him on the shoulder.

  “Go on, I’m listening!”

  “I know.”

  A train went by at top speed; sparks flew out of the wheels, and the shrill blasts of the engine’s whistle sounded like the shrieking of frantic birds.

  “That’s not ours, is it?” François asked anxiously.

  “Not a chance! We’ll be here till morning.”

  “Go on, then. What about the German?”

  “I hadn’t seen that many Germans before. As I looked at the one I had killed I didn’t feel curiosity, pity, or even hatred—it was more a sort of disbelief. It seemed incredible to see a real dead German lying there next to Mailloche; he might have been one of the men we saw passing like shadows in the dark, whom we fired at and sometimes killed, but whose bodies are never found because their comrades carried them off. We had taken a few prisoners during a raid, but that was before my time.

  “The body was that of the boy whom I had seen leading the way out of the cellar. Something about him struck me; I was astonished and uneasy and I couldn’t think why. I was fumbling for something, just as you are when you try to think of a forgotten name or a tune you can’t quite remember … fumbling and irritable at the same time. Do you see what I’m saying? He was lit up by bright, golden sunshine. Lying there on the cold floor, in his green uniform and big boots, he looked as peaceful as Mailloche, but his sharp, dimpled little chin pointed upward and made him look defiant. He was very fair; his cheeks, which were pale now, were starting to look pinched. His hand had been on his knife as he fell. If I hadn’t been quicker than him, there’s no way he would have missed me. Maybe I shouldn’t have searched his pockets, as I’d done for my comrade, but I didn’t do so with any evil intention. When the war was over wouldn’t his mother, his fiancée, or some other woman want to know how he had been killed, whether he suffered, and where he was buried? He hadn’t suffered; he had died without making a sound. He had a fat wallet stuffed with letters. I looked for a name or an address but there was nothing. There was a photograph of him in tennis clothes with a racket in his hand, wearing white shorts, his shirt unbuttoned at the neck and his hair hanging over his eyes; he seemed extraordinarily young. You can’t imagine how I felt … I had killed a man of my own age, a man who …”

  “One has no choice,” interrupted François with a shrug.

  “No, one has no choice. But you know, when you have kids of your own, and a younger brother you’ve half brought up—because I did half bring you up—well … There were also some photographs of a very pretty girl, and the German had taken pictures of her in at least a dozen different poses, among them some of her sitting on the grass in the middle of a garden with a black dog on her lap. I didn’t feel upset; I’d seen the picture of Mailloche’s old mother and that put my feelings in perspective. I was about to put the wallet back, since I hadn’t found what I was looking for, when I found a photograph that was larger and older than the others; it was slightly yellow and crumpled, as if it had been carried around for a long time in a pocket or bag, rubbing up against other papers …” He stopped. “Do you have the flashlight on you, François?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Switch it on, point it at the ground so we don’t get shouted at. Even though the stars are as bright as headlights. And look …”

  “At what?”

  “This photograph. D’you see? It’s the one I found on the dead German’s body.”

  “Hang on, old man, I don’t …”

  “Doesn’t it remind you of something?”

  François looked at the photograph. It was a picture of a young man taken on the terrace of a country house. There was a fair-haired woman standing next to him, rather stolid-looking with a kind, placid expression.

  After a moment’s hesitation, François made an effort to smile. “I’d say the man looked a bit like you, but …”

  His older brother shook his head.

  “It’s not me he looks like, old man. Look again; look carefully. Look at his left hand—you can see it clearly. Can you see the scar, a deep wound going from his ring finger right down to his wrist? It must,” he went on, shutting his eyes to try and remember something. “It must have created a thick ridge on his flesh, for even though it was a superficial wound, only scratching the skin, it still left a scar that didn’t fade. You know, don’t you, that on September fourteenth, the day Papa was wounded in the thigh and groin, a shell ripped into his hand, and two years later he was wounded a second time, in the head, just above his left eyebrow, there,” he said, pointing at the photograph.

  François looked at it for a long time without saying anything.

  “It’s not possible …” he murmured.

  “I compared this photograph with all the pictures of Papa that Mama had kept. I found the X-rays of both wounds; the one on the forehead made a wavy line and when you look at it through a magnifying glass, which I did, you can see it’s identical to the one in the photograph. You may well have your doubts, you may have forgotten Papa’s face and expression, but for me … it’s so like him, so like the way he would look over the top of his glasses; it’s his smile, and the small dimple on that narrow chin, a chin like mine—and like that of his third son,” he added in a strange voice.

  “Are you sure this German was … his son?”

  “Listen, the photograph is dated 1925 and higher up, can you see, there’s some more writing in German.”

  “I can’t make out the gothic lettering.”

  Claude read it slowly, then translated it: “‘Für meinen lieben Sohn, Franz Hohmann, diese Büd seines vielgeliebten Vatersmöge er ihn aus der Himmelshöhe beschützen. Frieda Hohmann,
Berlin, den 2 Dezember 1939.’ ‘For my dear son François Hohmann, this portrait of his beloved father who is watching over him in heaven. Frieda Hohmann, Berlin, 2 December 1939.’”

  “He was called François?” the young man exclaimed. “François, like me?”

  “Like you, like our grandfather, like one of our uncles: it’s a popular family name. He also gave it to the German.”

  François flinched.

  “I’m telling you it’s him,” Claude said quietly. “I can assure you that if I had the slightest doubt, I’d never have breathed a word of it to you. But it’s such a … such an important and extraordinary thing. I didn’t think I had the right to keep it from you. I thought perhaps we could do some research in Germany, after the war. We could do it together, if we can. If not, whichever one of us survives can do it.”

  Overwhelmed, François buried his head in his hands. “I’m stunned, old man.”

  “Yes, I am, too,” his brother said gently. “I have dreams about it every night.”

  “But I thought we were quite sure Papa had died in the war!”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. He was reported missing on May 27, 1917. Right up until the end of the war, Mama hoped he would come back. It was only after the Armistice that one of Papa’s friends wrote to tell us that he had seen him killed right next to him and that his arms and head had been blown off. His remains were never found. But you can imagine that in the noise and confusion of battle—and this one happened at dawn, in the rain; I found the details in the letter Mama kept and has just given me—his comrade couldn’t have been absolutely sure about what he had seen. There was a huge number of dead and wounded that day. He said so himself, and there were all those burned, crushed, unrecognizable bodies. How on earth could you put names to all those poor lads?”

  He stopped and smoked his pipe silently for a moment, his head turned slightly aside.

  “The Germans wear their identity tag on their chest, attached to a chain around their neck.”

  “Claude?”

  “Yes?”

  “So does that mean … our father was a deserter?”

  “You’d have to be very clever to find out. Maybe he was a deserter. He might have been one of those men with amnesia after the last war, who were claimed by several different families right up to the beginning of this one.”

  “But at least we would have known if he was French.”

  “Not necessarily. A uniform and identity tag can be lost or destroyed, and those wretches with no memory had forgotten their names and had to learn to talk again, like children. Some prisoners escaped from Germany by going through Russia and if they got caught up in the revolution, it would have been easy for a man to change his identity and become French or German, just as he wished.”

  “What about the war?”

  “The war was over.”

  “What about us?”

  “Ah, us … What do you want me to say? I don’t know what to think. He was a good father, but …”

  “Did he behave well to Mama?” François asked, and it was his turn to look away.

  “I don’t think so,” said his older brother.

  “Listen …”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t think so. I was ten, wasn’t I? What would I have known? It’s an impression that’s stayed in my ears more than in my memory or my mind … There were long silences at mealtimes, a tension in their voices when they eventually spoke to each other, slamming doors, the echoes of a distant storm.”

  “Servants’ gossip, perhaps?”

  “Yes, that too. But I’d rather not talk about it.”

  They both fell silent, overcome by a sense of constraint, shame, and anxiety. In the darkness trolleys were pushed past; trunks were still being unloaded. A train had just come into the station and a panic-stricken crowd of people got off. The refugees wandered around on the platform, calling out to one another in anguish and confusion. It was such a clear night that one could distinctly see their haggard faces, their rumpled clothes, and pathetic bundles of ragged household linen, and among them the odd birdcage covered with a scrap of dark material, a basket with a mewing cat inside, and a stretcher.

  “Are they wounded?” François asked.

  Someone heard him and replied, “No, it’s two women about to give birth.”

  “What an awful muddle of people,” François said after the stretcher had gone past. It was being carried by four men, shouting, “Let us through! We need a nurse or a doctor. Quickly! The baby’s coming any minute!”

  “There’s another woman who had her baby two hours ago; she’s had a hemorrhage,” a voice in the crowd said. “She’s dying.”

  Neither of the women on the stretcher made a sound; a porter had switched on his flashlight and one could see long, loose blonde hair trailing on the ground.

  “You don’t usually think about it,” François said quietly, “but after four years of the other war, the invasion, and then our troops being posted on the Rhine, there must be other brothers facing each other as enemies.”

  “They wouldn’t know about it. But since that German died, I’ve had the same dream every night: I see that dark cellar again, the half-open trapdoor, and I know that the German is going to tip it wide open and cut my throat. I fight, I’m the stronger one, I kill the German; then, when he’s dead, I take him in my arms, undress him, and put him on Mama’s bed, the big pink bed where I put you when you had scarlet fever when you were little; then I bend over him and I don’t know if I’m seeing you or him … Oh, what a foul dream,” he muttered, turning aside with a sigh.

  François twisted his hands together nervously. “You can do what you want, my dear old man, but I swear I’m never going to go and look for information in Germany. What good would it do? For a start, I still think you might have made a mistake, that the photograph is not Papa, and if, by some bad luck it is, investigating it would only disturb innocent lives. Anyway, it’s all in the past. I’m not interested and I want to leave well enough alone.”

  “It’s him who won’t leave us alone,” said Claude sighing, again holding up the little identity tag on his wrist so that the metal shone with a dull gleam in the starlight. “But you’re right; it would be best to keep quiet about it.”

  Nearby, a group of refugees was gathered around a fat man brandishing a newspaper. He was in civilian clothes, but his armband showed that he held some position of responsibility in the town, probably in civil defense. Occasionally he blew harsh blasts on a whistle and yelled out some orders; then he called out in a loud, hoarse voice. He had a black mustache and a paunch; his words reached the two soldiers.

  “… And if you’d seen all the equipment going up north, like I have, you’d have no worries, believe you me! This time it’s not going to be like it was in 1914. They’ll find out who they’re dealing with. They’ll cut and run, I promise you! For a start, men who aren’t fed, how can they form an army? Well, I ask you! Won’t we be fighting a bunch of men with rickets and anemia, seeing as they don’t even have enough vitamins to stay healthy? I’m telling you, with our vitamins and our equipment, our energy and our pluck, dammit, we’ll have ’em before they can utter a word!”

  Claude gently shrugged his shoulders. “There are some things it’s best to keep quiet about,” he observed.

  The refugees and soldiers listened to the impromptu orator and laughed and cheered him.

  “Our comrade’s talking sense. He’s quite right!”

  A Vintage International Original, April 2010

  Translation copyright © 2010 by Persephone Books

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Great Britain by Persephone Books, London. Originally published in France, in somewhat different form, as Dimanche et autres nouvelles by Editions Stock, Paris, in 2000. Copyright © 2000 by Editions Stock. License arranged by French Publishers’ Agency in New York.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and
Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Némirovsky, Irène, 1903–1942.

  Dimanche and other stories / Irène Némirovsky ; translated from the

  French by Bridget Patterson.—“A Vintage International original.”

  [Dimanche et autres nouvelles. English]

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-73931-5

  1. Dimanche—Sunday. 2. Les rivages heureux—Those happy shores.

  3. Liens du sang—Flesh and blood. 4. Fraternité—Brotherhood.

  5. La femme de Don Juan—Don Juan’s wife. 6. Le sortilège—The spell.

  7. Le spectateur—The spectator. 8. Monsieur Rose—Mr. Rose.

  9. La confidente—The confidante. 10. L’inconnu—The unknown

  soldier. I. Title. II. Bridget Patterson.

  PQ2627.E4 D5613 2010

  843′.912—dc22

  2009043711

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.0