Suite Française

by Irene Nemirovsky

  The driver turned round and shouted at him, “There’s some about ten kilometres from here, in . . .”

  The name of the hamlet was lost as he drove off but Charlie had already started to walk towards the trees. He thought he could make out one or two houses.

  “But what about the car? I can’t leave the car!” Charlie said to himself in despair. “Let’s try to start it again.” Nothing happened. He was covered with dust as thick as chalk.

  A car was slowly making its way towards him. It was jammed with young people, some even clinging to the running board and the roof, like flies. They seemed drunk. “What a bunch of louts,” Langelet thought, shuddering. Nevertheless, he spoke to them in his most pleasant voice. “You gentlemen wouldn’t happen to have a drop of petrol? I’m stuck.”

  They stopped with a horrible screeching of overworked brakes, looked at Charlie and sniggered. “What’s it worth?” one of them finally said.

  Charlie knew very well he should have replied, “However much you want!” but he was mean and, moreover, he was afraid these tramps would be tempted to rob him if they thought he was too rich. Truth be told, he was terrified of being duped. “I’d pay a reasonable price,” he replied haughtily.

  “There ain’t none,” said the driver of the jerky, creaking car, and drove off along the sandy road through the forest while Langelet, beside himself, waved his arms about and shouted at him.

  “Wait a minute, wait! Stop! At least tell me how much you want!”

  They didn’t even reply. He was alone. But not for long, for night was falling and refugees were gradually coming into the forest. They hadn’t been able to find rooms in a hotel; even the private houses were completely full, so they had decided to spend the night in the woods. Soon it was just like a July campsite in Elisabethville, Langelet thought, feeling sick to his stomach. Children were squealing, the mossy ground was littered with discarded newspaper, dirty clothes and empty tins of food. Some of the women were crying, others were shouting or laughing. Horrible filthy children came up to Charles, who chased them away by rolling his eyes at them angrily but without raising his voice, for he didn’t want any trouble from their parents. “They’re the dregs of the dregs, from Belleville,” he mumbled, horrified. “How did I end up here?” Had chance brought him together with the inhabitants of one of the worst neighbourhoods in Paris, or had Charlie’s vivid, anxious imagination got the better of him? All the men looked like bandits, the women like con artists.

  Soon it was completely dark, and beneath the thick trees, the translucent shadows of a June night were transformed into black shade interspersed with silver glades, drenched in moonlight. Every sound echoed, distinct and sinister: the planes flying across the sky, the night birds, the distant explosions—either gunfire or tyres bursting, you couldn’t be sure. Once or twice a prowler stared at Charles maliciously. He heard things that made him shudder. People weren’t thinking straight . . . They kept talking about rich people who’d run away to save their skins and their money, jamming up the roads, while poor people had only their own two legs and had to walk ’til they dropped down exhausted. “Well, they’re not those poor people; they’ve got cars,” Charlie thought, outraged, “and stolen no doubt!”

  He was extremely relieved when a little car pulled up next to him with a young man and woman who were clearly a better class of people than the other refugees. The young man’s arm was slightly deformed; he held it in front of him ostentatiously, as if it carried a sign, in big letters, which read UNFIT FOR MILITARY SERVICE. The woman was young, pretty, and very fair. They shared some sandwiches and soon fell asleep in the front of the car, leaning against each other, cheek to cheek. Charlie tried to sleep as well, but fatigue, overexcitement, fear kept him awake. An hour later the young man in the car opened his eyes, gently disentangled himself from the young woman and lit a cigarette. He saw that Langelet was also awake.

  “This is so bad!” he said quietly, leaning towards him.

  “Yes, it’s very bad.”

  “Well, the night will go by fast. I hope to make it to Beaugency tomorrow by taking the side roads because the main road down there is impossible.”

  “Really? And it seems there’s been some heavy bombing too. Well, you’re lucky,” Charlie said. “I haven’t got a drop of petrol left.” He paused. “If I could impose on you to watch my car for a while” (he really does seem like an honest person, he thought), “I could go to the next village where I heard I could get some.”

  The young man shook his head. “Unfortunately, Monsieur, there’s none left. I bought the last cans . . . and at an outrageous price.” He pointed to the petrol cans tied to the back of the car. “I have just enough to get to the Loire and cross the bridges before they’re blown up.”

  “What? They’re going to blow up all the bridges?”

  “That’s what everyone’s saying. They’re going to fight along the Loire.”

  “So you think there’s no petrol at all?”

  “Oh, I’m sure of it! I would have been glad to let you have some but I only have just enough for myself. I have to get my fiancée to safety at her parents’ house. They live in Bergerac. Once we’ve crossed the Loire, it will be easy to find petrol, I hope.”

  “Oh, so she’s your fiancée?” Charlie said while thinking of other things.

  “Yes. We were supposed to get married on 14 June. Everything was arranged, the invitations were sent, the rings bought, the dress was supposed to be delivered tomorrow morning.” He drifted off into deep thought.

  “It’s just a delay,” Charles Langelet said politely.

  “Who knows where we’ll be tomorrow, Monsieur? Obviously, I shouldn’t complain. At my age I should have been in the army but with my arm . . . yes, an accident at school . . . but I think that in this war civilians are facing more dangers than the soldiers. They say that certain towns . . .” he lowered his voice “. . . are in ashes and piled high with bodies and there are mass graves. And I’ve heard some horrifying stories. You know that they’ve let everyone out of the prisons and insane asylums? Yes, they have, Monsieur. Our leaders have lost their minds. Prisoners are running loose without wardens. I heard that the director of one of these prisons was murdered by the inmates he was ordered to evacuate; it happened right near here. I’ve seen it with my own eyes: private houses turned upside down, pillaged. And they attack people who are travelling, they steal from people in cars . . .”

  “Oh! They steal from . . .”

  “We’ll never know everything that happened during the exodus. Now they’re saying, ‘You should have stayed at home!’ That’s nice of them. So we could get massacred in our own homes by the artillery and planes. I’d rented a small house in Montfort-l’Amaury to have a lovely month after our wedding, before going back to my in-laws. It was destroyed on 3 June, Monsieur,” he said indignantly.

  He talked a lot and feverishly; he looked exhausted. He touched his fiancée’s cheek tenderly as she slept. “I just want to save Solange!”

  “You’re both very young, aren’t you?”

  “I’m twenty-two and Solange is twenty.”

  “She’s not very comfortable like that,” Charles Langelet said suddenly, sweetly, in a voice even he himself didn’t recognise, as sweet as sugar, while his heart beat harder and faster. “Why don’t you both go and stretch out on the grass, over there?”

  “What about the car?”

  “Oh, I’ll watch the car! Don’t worry,” Charlie said, trying not to laugh.

  The young man still hesitated. “I want to leave as early as possible. And I sleep so soundly . . .”

  “But I’ll wake you up. What time do you want to leave? Look, it’s nearly midnight,” he said, consulting his watch. “I’ll call you at four o’clock.”

  “Oh, Monsieur! You are too kind!”

  “Not at all. When I was twenty-two, I was also in love . . .”

  The young man made a confused gesture. “We were supposed to get married on 14 June,” he re
peated, sighing.

  “Yes, of course, of course . . . we’re living through terrible times . . . but I assure you, it’s ridiculous to stay cramped in your car. Your fiancée is all bent up. Do you have a blanket?”

  “My fiancée has a big travelling coat.”

  “It’s so nice on the grass. If I didn’t have to worry about my rheumatism . . . Oh, you’re so lucky to be a young man of twenty!”

  The fiancé corrected him: “Twenty-two.”

  “You will see better times, you will always find a way out, you will, while a poor old gentleman like me . . .” He lowered his eyes, like a cat when it purrs. Then he stretched out his hand towards a moonlit clearing just visible between the trees. “It must be so nice over there . . . you could forget everything.” He waited, then whispered in a falsely nonchalant tone of voice, “Can you hear that nightingale?”

  The bird had been singing for some time, perched high on a branch, indifferent to the noise, the refugees complaining, the large fires they had lit on the grass to chase away the damp. The bird sang and other nightingales in the countryside answered his song. The young man listened to the bird, tilting his head, and he put his arm round his sleeping fiancée. A few moments later he whispered something in her ear. She opened her eyes. He whispered to her again, closer, urging her. Charlie turned away. Nevertheless, he could hear certain words: “Since this gentleman said he’d watch the car . . .” And: “You don’t love me, Solange, no, you don’t . . . And yet you . . .”

  Charlie yawned loudly, obviously, and, addressing no one in particular with the exaggerated ease of a bad actor, said, “I think I’ll go to sleep now . . .”

  Solange stopped hesitating. She giggled nervously, pushing her fiancé away only to give in and kiss him, saying, “If Mummy could see us now! Oh, Bob, you’re terrible . . . you won’t hold it against me afterwards, will you, Bob?”

  She walked away with her fiancé’s arm around her. Charlie saw them beneath the trees, holding each other and exchanging little kisses. Then they disappeared from sight.

  He waited. The half-hour that followed seemed the longest of his life. But he was determined. He felt both anguish and extraordinary pleasure at the same time. His heart beat so violently, so painfully that he muttered, “This heart of mine . . . can’t take it!”

  But he knew he had never felt such exquisite pleasure. A cat who sleeps on velvet cushions and is fed on chicken breasts and suddenly finds himself in the middle of the countryside, on the dry branch of a tree wet with dew, sinking his teeth into a trembling, bleeding bird, must feel the same terror, the same cruel joy, he thought, for he was too intelligent not to understand what was happening to him. Quietly, ever so quietly, taking great care not to make any noise with the doors, he climbed into the car next to his, untied the petrol cans (he also took some oil), cut his hands getting the cap off his tank, poured in the petrol and, taking advantage of a moment when several other cars started their motors, drove off.

  Once out of the forest, he turned round, smiled up at the trees, silvery green beneath the moon, and thought, “They will indeed have been married on 14 June after all . . .”

  23

  The uproar in the streets woke the elder Monsieur Péricand. He opened one pale eye, just one, in confusion and reproach. “What on earth are they shouting about?” he thought. He had forgotten the journey, the Germans, the war. He thought he was at his son’s home in Boulevard Delessert, even though he was staring at a strange room; he didn’t understand a thing. He was at an age when the past was more real than the present; he pictured the green cover on his bed in Paris. He stretched his shaking fingers towards the bedside table where, every morning, some attentive person would put out a tray with porridge and his special biscuits. There was no tray, no bowl, not even a table. It was then that he heard the fire roaring in the neighbouring houses, smelled the smoke and guessed what was happening. He opened his mouth, gasped silently, like a fish out of water, and fainted.

  Yet the house hadn’t burned to the ground. Only a part of the roof had been destroyed. After a great deal of panic and chaos, the flames died down. Amid the wreckage, the fire smouldered and sizzled quietly, but the house was intact and towards evening they discovered the elder Monsieur Péricand, alone in his bed. He was muttering, confused. He calmly let them take him to the nursing home.

  “He’ll be better off there. I’ve got no time to take care of him. Imagine the idea,” said the owner, “what with the refugees, the Germans about to march in and the fire and all . . .”

  But she said nothing about what was worrying her most: her husband and two sons, gone, all three called up and missing . . . All three away in that vaguely defined, ever-changing, terrifyingly imminent place called “the war” . . .

  The nursing home was very clean, very well looked after by the Sisters of the Sacred Sacrament. They put Monsieur Péricand in a bed next to a window; he would be able to see the tall green June trees outside and the fifteen old people around him, silent and calm in their white sheets. But he saw nothing. He thought he was still at home. Now and again he seemed to talk to his weak purplish hands, folded on top of the grey blanket. He would utter a few harsh, broken words to them, then slowly shake his head and, out of breath, close his eyes. The flames hadn’t touched him, he hadn’t been wounded, but he had a very high fever. The doctor was in the next village, tending to the victims of the bombing. Late that evening he was finally able to examine Monsieur Péricand. He didn’t say much: he was staggering with exhaustion, he had cared for sixty wounded and hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. He gave him an injection and promised to come back the next day. To the Sisters there was no question: they had enough experience with the dying to recognise death by a sigh, a whimper, drops of cold sweat, motionless fingers. They sent someone to get the priest who had been with the doctor in town and hadn’t slept either. He gave Monsieur Péricand the last rites and the old man seemed to come round. As he left, the priest told the Sisters that the poor old gentleman had made his peace with God and would die a very Christian death.

  One of the Sisters was small and thin, with deep blue mischievous eyes that sparkled with courage from beneath her white wimple; the other was sweet and shy, with red cheeks and a terrible toothache, which caused her to bring her hand to her painful gums now and again, in the middle of saying her rosary, smiling humbly as if she were ashamed that the cross she had to bear was so light during these terrible times. It was to her that Monsieur Péricand suddenly said (it was just after midnight and the commotion of the day had died down; now all you could hear were the cats howling in the convent garden), “Daughter, I’m not well . . . Go and get the notary.”

  He thought she was his daughter-in-law. In his delirium, he was very surprised that she had put on a wimple to nurse him, but nevertheless it could only be her. He repeated quietly, patiently, “Monsieur Nogaret . . . notary . . . last Will . . .”

  “What should we do?” said Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament to Sister Marie of the Chérubins.

  The two white wimples tilted towards each other, almost meeting above Monsieur Péricand in his bed.

  “The notary won’t come out at this hour, my poor dear . . . Go to sleep . . . There’ll be time enough tomorrow.”

  “No . . . no time . . .” the quiet voice said. “Monsieur Nogaret will come . . . telephone him, please.”

  Once again the nuns conferred and one of them disappeared, then came back carrying some hot herbal tea. He tried to take a few sips but spat it out immediately; it ran down his white beard. Suddenly he became extremely agitated; he was groaning, shouting orders: “Tell him to hurry . . . he promised . . . as soon as I called . . . please . . . hurry, Jeanne!” (He no longer thought he was talking to his daughter-in-law but to his wife, who had been dead for forty years.)

  A particularly sharp pain from her bad tooth prevented Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament from protesting. She nodded—“Yes, all right”—but remained where she was, dabbing her chee
k with her handkerchief.

  Her friend stood up decisively. “We have to get the notary, Sister.”

  She was passionate, with a natural fighting spirit, and her forced inactivity was frustrating. She had wanted to go to the town with the doctor and priest but couldn’t leave the fifteen old people at the nursing home (she didn’t have much faith in the leadership qualities of Sister Marie of the Sacred Sacrament). When the fire had started she had trembled beneath her wimple. Nevertheless, she had managed to roll the fifteen beds out of the room and prepare ladders, ropes and buckets of water. The fire had not reached the nursing home, which was two kilometres away from the bombed church, but she had waited, flinching at the screams from the frightened crowd, the smell of smoke, the sight of flames—fixed to her post and ready for anything. But nothing happened. The disaster victims were treated at the hospital; there was nothing to do but make soup for the fifteen old people. Until the sudden arrival of Monsieur Péricand galvanised her once more. “We have to go.”

  “Do you think so, Sister?”

  “He might have some important last wishes to set down.”

  “But what if Maître Charboeuf isn’t at home?”

  Sister Marie of the Chérubins shrugged her shoulders. “At half past midnight?”

  “He won’t want to come.”

  “That will be the day!” the young nun said indignantly. “It’s his duty to come. I’ll pull him out of bed myself if I have to.”

  She went out, but hesitated on the doorstep. The religious community—which consisted of four nuns, two of whom had gone into retreat at the convent of Paray-le-Monial at the beginning of June and still hadn’t been able to return—owned a single bicycle. Up until now, none of the Sisters had dared use it, afraid of causing a scandal in the village. Sister Marie of the Chérubins herself had said, “We must wait until the Good Lord Himself provides an emergency. For example, a sick person is dying and we have to get the doctor and the priest. Every second is precious, I jump on my bicycle, no one would dare say a word! And the next time I do it they won’t even notice . . .” They hadn’t yet had an emergency, but Sister Marie of the Chérubins was longing to ride that bicycle! Five years ago, before she became a nun, she’d had so many happy outings with her sisters, so many races, so many picnics. She threw back her black veil, said to herself, “It’s now or never,” and, her heart pounding with joy, grabbed the handlebars.