Madame Péricand raised her eyes to heaven. “You are so clumsy, darling. You’ll break the seat. Do stay still.”
“Yes, Mother,” he said submissively.
“Did you remember to get your raincoat from the car?”
“No, Mother.”
“You never remember anything!”
“But I won’t need it. It’s nice out.”
“It could rain tomorrow.”
She took her knitting out of her bag. Her needles clicked. When Hubert was little, she would sit near him knitting during his piano lessons. He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. A while later she nodded off. He jumped out of the open window, ran to the shed where his bicycle had been put away and, silently opening the gate, slipped away. Everyone was asleep now. The gunfire had stopped. Cats wailed from the rooftops. A splendid church, with sky-blue windows, rose up in the middle of a dusty old avenue where refugees had parked. The people who hadn’t been able to find accommodation were sleeping inside their cars or on the grass. Anguish oozed from their pale faces, tense and fearful, even in their sleep. They slept so soundly, though, nothing would wake them before daybreak. That was obvious. They could pass from sleep to death without even realising it.
Hubert walked among them feeling shock and pity. He wasn’t tired. His overexcited state of mind gave him strength and kept him going. He thought with sadness and remorse of the family he had abandoned. But this very sadness and remorse increased his elation. He wasn’t going into it with his eyes closed; he was sacrificing not just his own life, but the life of everyone in his family to his country. He marched towards his destiny like a young god bearing offerings. At least, that was how he saw himself. He left the village, got to the cherry tree and threw himself to the ground beneath its branches. A lovely sweet feeling suddenly made his heart beat faster: he thought of the new friend who would share his dangerous exploits and glory. He barely knew him, the boy with the blond hair, but he felt bound to him with extraordinary violence and tenderness. He had heard that, while crossing a bridge in the north, a German regiment had had to walk over the bodies of their dead comrades and that they had started singing: “Once I had a comrade . . .” He understood that feeling of pure, almost savage love. Unconsciously, he was trying to replace Philippe, whom he loved so much and who had separated himself from his younger brother with such implacable gentleness; Philippe was too strict, too saintly, Hubert thought, and with no feelings, no passion for anyone but Christ.
For the past two years Hubert had felt very lonely and, at school, had almost made a point of befriending only bullies or snobs. Also, he was attracted, almost without realising it, to physical beauty—and René had the face of an angel. He waited for him, starting at every sound. It was nearly midnight. A horse went by without a rider. Strange sights like this occasionally reminded him of the war, but otherwise everything was quiet. He pulled a long weed out of the ground and chewed it, then examined the contents of one of his pockets: a bit of bread, an apple, some nuts, gingerbread crumbs, a pocket knife, a ball of string, his little red notebook. On the first page he wrote: “If I am killed, could you please notify my father, Monsieur Péricand, 18 Boulevard Delessert in Paris, or my mother . . .” He added the address in Nîmes. He remembered he hadn’t said his prayers that night. He knelt down in the grass and prayed, adding a special Creed for his family. He felt at peace with man and God. While he was praying, the bells sounded midnight. Now he had to be ready to go.
The moon lit up the road. It was empty. He waited patiently for half an hour, then became overwhelmed with anxiety. Hiding his bicycle in the ditch, he walked towards the village hoping to meet René, but there was no sign of him. Back under the cherry tree, he waited some more, examining the contents of his other pocket: some crumpled-up cigarettes, a bit of money. He smoked a cigarette without pleasure. He still wasn’t used to the taste of tobacco. His hands were shaking nervously. He pulled flowers out of the ground and flicked them away. It was past one o’clock. Was it possible that René . . . ? No, no . . . you don’t break a promise like that . . . He’d been prevented from coming, locked in by his aunts perhaps, but he, Hubert, hadn’t let his mother’s precautions prevent him from getting away. Mother. She would soon wake up and then what would she do? They would look everywhere for him. He couldn’t stay here, so close to the village But what if René came? . . . He would wait for him until daybreak, then leave.
The first rays of sun were beginning to light up the road when Hubert finally set off. Pushing his bicycle, he cautiously climbed the hill to the Sainte woods, preparing what he would say to the soldiers. He heard voices, laughter, a horse neighing. Someone shouted. Hubert stopped, out of breath: they were speaking German. He jumped behind a tree, saw a greenish uniform a few feet away and, abandoning his bicycle, shot off like a hare. At the bottom of the hill he took the wrong path, kept on running and reached the village, but didn’t recognise it. Then he went down to the main road and ended up in the middle of all the refugees’ cars. They were driving insanely fast, insanely. He saw one (a big grey open touring car) that had just knocked a small van into the ditch and driven off without slowing down even for a moment. The further he walked, the faster the flood of cars was moving, like in some mad film, he thought. He saw a truck full of soldiers. He waved at them desperately. Without stopping, someone stretched out his hand and hoisted him up amid the camouflaged guns and boxes of tarpaulins.
“I wanted to warn you,” said Hubert, panting. “I saw Germans in the woods nearby.”
“They’re everywhere, my boy,” the soldier replied.
“Can I go with you?” Hubert asked shyly. “I want . . .” (his voice breaking with emotion), “I want to fight.”
The soldier looked at him and remained silent. Nothing these men heard or saw seemed to be able to surprise or move them any more. Hubert learned that they had picked up a pregnant woman along the way, as well as a child wounded in the bombing who’d been either abandoned or lost and a dog with a broken leg. He also learned they intended to hold the enemy back and prevent them, if possible, from crossing the bridge.
“I’m with them,” Hubert thought. “That’s it, I’m in it now.”
The surging wave of refugees surrounded the truck, preventing them from moving forward. Sometimes it was impossible for the soldiers to move at all. They would fold their arms and wait until someone let them pass. Hubert was sitting at the back of the truck, his legs dangling outside. He was filled with an extraordinary sense of turmoil, a confusion of ideas and emotions, but what he felt most was utter scorn for humanity as a whole. The feeling was almost physical. A few months earlier, his friends had given him some drink for the first time in his life. He thought of the taste now: the horrible taste of bitter ashes that bad wine leaves in your mouth. He had been such a good little boy. He had seen the world as simple and beautiful, men as worthy of respect. Men . . . a herd of cowardly wild animals. That René who had urged him to run off, and then stayed tucked up under his quilt, while France was dying . . . Those people who refused to give the refugees a bed, a glass of water, who charged a fortune for an egg, who stuffed their cars full of luggage, packages, food, even furniture, but who told a woman dying of exhaustion, children who had walked from Paris, “You can’t come with us . . . you can see very well there’s no room . . .” Leather suitcases and painted women in a truck full of officers: such egotism, cowardice, such vicious, useless cruelty made him sick.
And the most horrible thing was that he couldn’t ignore the sacrifices, the heroism, the kindness of some. Philippe, for example, was a saint; these soldiers who’d had nothing to eat or drink (the supply officer had left that morning but hadn’t returned in time) going to do battle for a hopeless cause, they were heroes. There was courage, self-sacrifice, love among these men, but that was frightening too: even goodness was predestined, according to Philippe. Whenever Philippe spoke, he seemed both enlightened and passionate at the same time, as if lit up by a very pure flame. But H
ubert had serious doubts about religion and Philippe was far away. The outside world was incoherent and hideous, painted in the colours of hell, a hell Jesus never could enter, Hubert thought, “because they would tear him to pieces.”
Machine-guns fired on the convoy. Death was gliding across the sky and suddenly plunged down from the heavens, wings outstretched, steel beak firing on this long line of trembling black insects crawling along the road. Everyone threw themselves to the ground; women lay on top of their children to protect them. When the firing stopped, deep furrows were left in the crowd, like wheat after a storm when the fallen stems form close, deep trenches. Only when it had been quiet for a few moments could you hear the cries and moans: people calling to one another, moans that went ignored, cries shouted out in vain . . .
The refugees got back into the cars they’d left beside the road and started off again, but some of the cars remained abandoned, their doors open, baggage still tied to the roof, a wheel in the ditch where the driver had rushed to take shelter. He would never return. In the cars, amid the abandoned packages, there was sometimes a dog howling, pulling on his lead, or a cat miaowing frantically, locked in its basket.
17
The instincts of a former age were still at work in Gabriel Corte: when someone hurt him, rather than defend himself, his first reaction was to complain. Dragging Florence behind him, he strode impatiently through Paray-le-Monial looking for the mayor, the police, a councillor, a deputy, any government official at all who could get him back his dinner. But it was extraordinary . . . the streets were empty, the houses silent. At a crossroads he came across a small group of women who seemed to be wandering about aimlessly.
“We have no idea, we don’t come from here,” they replied to his questions. “We’re refugees, like you,” one of them added.
They could smell smoke, very faintly, carried by the soft June wind.
After a while he began to wonder where their car was. Florence thought they’d left it near the railway station. Gabriel remembered seeing a bridge they could look for; the moon, magnificent and peaceful, lit their way, but all the streets in this small old town looked the same. Everywhere there were gables, ancient stone walls, lopsided balconies, dark cul-de-sacs.
“Like a bad opera set,” Corte groaned.
It even smelled of backstage: sad and dusty, with the faint lingering odour of urine. Sweat was running down his face in the heat. He could hear Florence calling from behind, “Wait for me! Will you stop a minute, you coward, you bastard! Where are you, Gabriel? Where are you? Gabriel, I can’t see you. You pig!” Her cries of rage rebounded off the old walls and their echo struck him like bullets: “Pig, you old bastard, coward!”
She finally caught up with him near the railway station. She leapt at him, hitting, scratching, spitting in his face while he shrieked and tried to fight her off. No one could ever have imagined that the low, weary voice of Gabriel Corte concealed such resonant, shrill sounds, so feminine and wild. They were both being driven mad by hunger, fear and exhaustion.
As soon as they saw that the Avenue de la Gare was deserted, they realised the order had been given to evacuate the town. Everyone else was far away, on the moonlit bridge. Only a few exhausted soldiers remained, sitting on the pavement in small groups. One of them, a very young pale boy with thick glasses, hauled himself up to separate Florence and Corte.
“Come on, Monsieur . . . Now, now, Madame, you should be ashamed of yourselves!”
“But where are the cars?” Corte shouted.
“Gone. They were ordered to leave.”
“But, but . . . by whom? Why? What about our luggage? My manuscripts! I am Gabriel Corte!”
“Good God, you’ll find your manuscripts. And I can tell you that other people have lost a lot more.”
“Philistine!”
“Of course, Monsieur, but . . .”
“Who gave this stupid order?”
“Well, Monsieur . . . there have been a lot of orders which were just as stupid, I’ll admit. Don’t worry, you’ll find your car and your papers. But in the meantime, you can’t stay here. The Germans will be here any minute. We’ve been ordered to blow up the station.”
“Where will we go?” Florence groaned.
“Go back to the town.”
“But where can we stay?”
“There are plenty of rooms. Everyone’s run off,” said one of the soldiers who had come up to them and was standing a few steps away from Corte.
The moon gave off a soft blue light. The man had a harsh, heavy face; two vertical lines cut down his thick cheeks. He put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and effortlessly spun him round. “Off you go. We’ve had enough of you, got it?”
For a second Gabriel thought he might jump at the soldier, but the pressure of that hard hand on his shoulder made him flinch and take two steps backwards. “We’ve been on the road since Monday . . . and we’re hungry . . .”
“We’re hungry,” Florence echoed, sighing.
“Wait until morning. If we’re still here we’ll give you some soup.”
The soldier with the thick glasses said again in his soft, weary voice, “You can’t stay here, Monsieur . . . Go on, off you go.” He took Corte by the hand and gave him a little push, just as you would send the children out of the drawing room when it was time for bed.
They went back across the town square, side by side now and dragging their weary legs; their anger had subsided and with it the nervous energy that had kept them going. They were so demoralised that they didn’t have the strength to start looking for another restaurant. They knocked at doors that never opened and eventually collapsed on a bench near a church. Florence, wincing with pain, took off her shoes.
Night passed. Nothing happened. The railway station was still standing. Now and again, they could hear soldiers walking in the streets nearby. Some men passed by the bench once or twice without even glancing at Florence and Corte, huddled together in the silent shadows, leaning their heavy heads together. They could smell the stench of meat: a bomb had hit the abattoir on the outskirts of the town and it was on fire. They dozed off. When they woke up, they saw soldiers going by with tin dishes. Florence cried out in hunger and the soldiers gave her a bowl of soup and a bit of bread. Daylight returned and with it Gabriel recovered some dignity: he wouldn’t dream of fighting with his mistress over some soup and a crust of bread!
Florence drank slowly. Then she stopped and walked towards Gabriel. “You have the rest,” she said to her lover.
“No, no, there’s barely enough for you,” he protested. She handed him the tin bowl of warm liquid that smelled of cabbage. Trembling, he gripped it with both hands and, placing his mouth at the edge of the bowl, wolfed it down in big gulps, barely stopping to catch his breath. When he had finished, he gave a happy sigh.
“Better?” a soldier asked.
They recognised the man who’d chased them away from the railway station the night before, but the dawn light softened his fierce centurion’s face. Gabriel remembered he had some cigarettes in his pocket and offered them to him. The two men smoked for a while without speaking, while Florence tried in vain to get her shoes back on.
“If I were you,” the soldier finally said, “I’d hurry up and get out of here ’cause the Germans are definitely going to show up. It’s a miracle they aren’t here yet. Still, they don’t have to hurry,” he added bitterly, “they’ve got it sewn up from here to Bayonne . . .”
“Do you think we have any chance?” Florence asked shyly.
The soldier didn’t answer and suddenly left. They left too, hobbling along, heading straight for the outskirts. Gradually, refugees began to emerge from the seemingly deserted town, weighed down with baggage. In the same way that animals separated in a storm find their herd when the storm has passed, they came together in small groups and walked towards the bridge; it was guarded by soldiers who let them pass. Gabriel and Florence followed. Above, the sky shimmered a pure azure blue: no clouds, no planes.
Below, a beautiful glistening river flowed by. In front of them, they could see the road leading south and some very young trees with new green leaves. Suddenly the trees seemed to be moving towards them. German trucks and guns, covered with camouflage, were heading straight at them. Corte saw people ahead raising their arms and running back. At that moment the French soldiers opened fire. When the German machine-guns fired back, the refugees were caught in the crossfire. They ran in all directions. Some simply whirled round on the spot as if they’d gone mad; one woman climbed over the parapet and threw herself into the river.
Florence dug her nails into Corte’s arm and screamed, “Turn back, hurry!”
“But they’ll blow up the bridge,” Corte shouted.
Taking her hand, he propelled her forward and suddenly a thought shot through him, as strange, burning and sharp as lightning: they were running towards death. He pulled her close and, pushing her head down, covered it with his coat as you cover the eyes of a condemned man. Then, stumbling, panting, half carrying her, he ran the short distance to the other side of the river. Even though his heart was pounding in his chest, he wasn’t actually afraid. He had a passionate, urgent desire to save Florence. He had faith in something invisible, in a guiding hand reaching out to him, to him, weak, miserable, insignificant, so insignificant that destiny would spare him, as a wisp of straw sometimes survives a storm. They made it across the bridge, narrowly missing the advancing Germans with their machine-guns and green uniforms. The road was clear, death was behind them and suddenly they saw it—yes, they were right, they recognised it—right there, at the edge of a little country lane, their car and their loyal servants waiting for them. Florence could only groan, “Julie, thank God. Julie!”
To Corte, the voices of the driver and maid sounded like the low, strange noises you hear through a fog just before you faint. Florence was crying. Slowly, incredulously, painfully, Corte realised that he had his car back, his manuscripts back, his life back. He would no longer be an ordinary man, suffering, starving, both courageous and cowardly at the same time, but instead a privileged creature, protected from all evil. He would be—Gabriel Corte!
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