Suite Française

by Irene Nemirovsky

  “But what if they ask for the key to the library,” groaned the fat cook.

  “They’ll have to ask me for it,” said Madame Angellier and, standing very tall, she lightly tapped the pocket sewn inside her black wool dress; the bunch of keys she always kept with her jingled. “They won’t be asking twice,” she concluded darkly.

  She instructed her daughter-in-law, Lucile Angellier, to remove the decorative ornaments from the mantelpiece. Lucile wanted to leave an ashtray out. At first the elder Madame Angellier objected.

  “But they’ll drop ash all over the carpets,” Lucile pointed out. Pursing her lips, Madame Angellier gave in.

  This older woman had such a transparent, pale face that she seemed to have not a drop of blood beneath her skin; her hair was pure white, her mouth like the blade of a knife, her lips almost purple. An old-fashioned high collar made of mauve cotton, held rigid by stays, covered but didn’t hide her sharp, bony neck which pulsated with emotion like a lizard. When she heard a German soldier’s footsteps or voice near the window, she would tremble from the tips of her small pointy little boots to the top of her impressively coiffed head. “Hurry up, hurry up, they’re coming,” she’d say.

  They left only the bare essentials in the room: not one flower, not one cushion, not one painting. In the large linen cupboard, beneath a pile of sheets, they buried the family picture album, to prevent the sacrilegious enemy from seeing Great-Aunt Adelaide at her First Communion and Uncle Jules, aged six months, naked on a cushion. They packed away everything—right down to the mantelpiece ornaments: two porcelain Louis-Philippe vases decorated with parrots holding a garland of roses in their beaks (a wedding gift from a relative who came to visit less and less frequently but whom they didn’t dare offend by getting rid of the present) and the two vases about which Gaston had said, “If the maid breaks them while sweeping, I’ll give her a raise.” Yes, even them. They had been given by French hands, looked at by French eyes, touched by the feather dusters of France—they would not be defiled by contact with Germans. And the crucifix! In the corner of the room, above the sofa . . . Madame Angellier took it down herself, slipped it beneath her lace shawl and held it to her breast. “I think that’s everything,” she said at last.

  She took a mental inventory: the furniture from the main reception room had been removed, the curtains taken down, the provisions crammed into the shed where the gardener kept his tools (oh, the large hams smoked in ash, the jars of clarified butter, the salted butter, the fine, pure pork fat, the thick streaky sausages!). All her possessions, all her treasures . . . The wine had been lying buried in the cellar since the day the English army had left Dunkerque. The piano was locked; Gaston’s hunting rifle was in an impregnable hiding place. Everything was in order. There was nothing to do but wait for the conquerors. Pale and silent, with a delicate, trembling hand, she half closed the shutters, as you would in a room where someone had died, and went out, followed by Lucile.

  Lucile was a young woman—beautiful, blonde, with dark eyes, but a quiet, modest demeanour and “a faraway expression,” for which Madame Angellier reproached her. She’d been acceptable because of her family connections and dowry (she was the daughter of an important landowner in the area). However, Lucile’s father had gone on to make some bad investments, lost his fortune and mortgaged his land; the marriage was, therefore, not the most successful; she hadn’t had any children, after all.

  The two women went into the dining room where the table was set. It was just after twelve o’clock, but only according to the clocks on the church and town hall, which they were obliged to set to German time; every French home set their clocks back by sixty minutes as a point of honour; every Frenchwoman would scornfully say, “At our house, we don’t live by German time.” This practice left great voids at various points of the day when there was nothing to do. Now, for example, a deadly gap loomed between the end of Mass and the beginning of Sunday lunch. They didn’t read. If Madame Angellier saw Lucile with a book in her hands, she would look at her, surprised, and say reproachfully, “What’s this? Are you reading?” She had a soft, refined voice, as faint as the echo of a harp: “Don’t you have anything else to do?” No one was working: it was Easter Sunday.

  They didn’t speak. Between these two women, every topic of conversation was a thorn bush they only approached with caution: if they reached out a hand, they risked getting hurt. Every word Madame Angellier heard brought back the memory of some loss, some family story, some former pain Lucile knew nothing about. She would reply with reluctance, then stop to look at her daughter-in-law in sad surprise, as if she were thinking, “How strange that her husband is a German prisoner of war and yet she can still breathe, move, speak, laugh . . .” She could barely admit that the problem between them was Gaston. Lucile’s tone was never what it should be. Sometimes she seemed too sad: was she talking about someone who was dead? Surely her duty as a Frenchwoman, as a wife, was to bear separation courageously, as she, Madame Angellier, had done between 1914 and 1918, just after—or not so long after—her own marriage. But whenever Lucile murmured words of consolation, of hope, her thoughts were similarly bitter: “Ah, you can tell she never really loved him; I’ve always suspected it. Now I can tell, I’m sure of it . . . That tone is unmistakable. She’s cold and indifferent. She wants for nothing, while my son, my poor child . . .” She imagined the prisoner-of-war camp, the barbed wire, the guards, the sentries. Tears would well up in her eyes and she would say in a broken voice, “We mustn’t speak of him . . .” Then she would take a clean handkerchief from her bag, always there in case anyone made her think of Gaston or the misfortunes of France, and delicately dab at her eyes with the same gesture she would use to remove a drop of ink with some blotting paper.

  And so, silent and still, next to the cold fireplace, the two women stood and waited.

  2

  The Germans had moved into their lodgings and were getting to know the village. The officers walked about alone or in pairs, heads held high, boots striking the paving stones. The ordinary soldiers stayed in groups; they had nothing to do, so they paced up and down the only street or gathered in the square near the old crucifix. When one of them stopped, all the others did too, forming a long line of green uniforms that made it impossible for the villagers to get by. Faced with this obstacle, they simply pulled their caps even further down over their eyes, turned away and used the small winding lanes to return to the fields.

  The local policeman, under the surveillance of two non-commissioned officers, was putting up posters on the walls and main buildings. These posters were of various types. Some depicted a smiling German soldier with fair hair and perfect teeth giving out jam sandwiches to a group of French children gathered around him under the caption, “Abandoned citizens, trust in the soldiers of the Third Reich!” Other posters used drawings or caricatures to illustrate world domination by the English and the detestable tyranny of the Jews. But most of them began with the word Verboten—Forbidden. It was forbidden to walk down the street between nine o’clock in the evening and five o’clock in the morning; forbidden to keep any firearms; forbidden to “aid, abet or shelter” escaped prisoners, English soldiers, or citizens of countries which were enemies of Germany; forbidden to listen to foreign radio stations; forbidden to refuse German currency. And beneath each poster was the same warning in black lettering, underlined twice: ON PAIN OF DEATH.

  Meanwhile, Mass was over and the shops were opening for business. In the spring of 1941, there was still no shortage of goods in the provinces: people had secreted away such hoards of fabric, shoes and provisions that they were now rather inclined to sell them. The Germans were not difficult and were prepared to be palmed off with junk: women’s corsets from the last war, ankle boots from 1900, linen decorated with little flags and embroidered Eiffel Towers (originally intended for the English)—they’d buy anything. They inspired in the inhabitants of the occupied countries fear, respect, aversion and the amusing desire to fleece them, to
take advantage of them, to get hold of their money.

  “It’s our money anyway . . . they stole it from us,” thought the grocer as he gave a soldier from the invading army his most charming smile and a pound of wormy prunes at double the price they were worth.

  The soldier examined the goods sceptically. It was obvious he suspected fraud but, intimidated by the grocer’s impenetrable expression, he said nothing. The regiment had previously been stationed in a small town in the north that had been destroyed and pillaged; there had been no supplies for a long time. But in this rich province of central France, the soldier once more found things to covet. His eyes lit up with desire in front of displays full of reminders of comfortable civilian life: pine furniture, ready-to-wear suits, children’s toys, little pink dresses. Their expressions serious and dreamy, the troops marched from one shop to the other, jingling the money in their pockets. Behind the soldiers’ backs, or above their heads, the French sent little signals to one another from their open windows—they raised their eyes to heaven, shook their heads, smiled, made faint grimaces of scorn or defiance, an entire language of gestures to show that they needed God’s help during such terrible times (but that even God . . . !), that they intended to remain free, free in spirit in any case (if not in actions then at least in words), that these Germans weren’t really very clever since they believed favours were done for them willingly, whereas the French knew they were obliged to because, after all, the Germans were the masters. “Our masters,” said the women who looked at the enemy with a mixture of desire and hatred. (The enemy? Of course. But they were also men, and young . . .) The French took special pleasure in cheating them. “They think we like them, but we know we just want to get passes, petrol, permits,” thought those women who had already met the occupying forces in Paris or the larger provincial cities, while the naïve country girls shyly lowered their eyes when the Germans looked at them.

  On entering the cafés, the soldiers took off their belts and threw them on the marble tables before sitting down. At the Hôtel des Voyageurs, the non-commissioned officers reserved the main room for their mess. It was the kind of long, dark room you find in country hotels. Above the mirror at the back, two red flags with swastikas were draped over the cupids and burning torches that adorned the old gilt frame. In spite of the season, the stove was still lit; some of the men had dragged their chairs up to it and basked in its warmth, looking blissfully happy and drowsy. The large purple and black stove sometimes belched out acrid smoke, but the Germans didn’t care. They moved even closer; they dried their clothes and boots; they looked pensively around, a look that was simultaneously bored and vaguely anxious, and seemed to say, “We’ve seen so many things . . . Let’s see what happens here . . .”

  These were the older, wiser ones. The younger ones made eyes at the serving girl who, ten times a minute, lifted open the cellar door, descended into the underground darkness and emerged back into daylight carrying twelve beers in one hand and a box full of sparkling wine in the other (“Sekt!” shouted the Germans. “French champagne, please, Mam’zelle! Sekt!”).

  The serving girl—plump, round and rosy-cheeked—moved quickly between the tables. The soldiers smiled at her. She felt torn between the desire to smile back at them, because they were young, and the fear of getting a bad reputation, because they were the enemy—so she frowned and tightly pursed her lips, without, however, quite managing to erase the two dimples on her cheeks which showed her secret pleasure. My God, there were so many men! So many men for her alone . . . In the other establishments the serving girls were the owners’ daughters and their parents kept an eye on them, while she . . . Whenever they looked at her they made kissing noises. Restrained by a residue of modesty, she pretended not to hear them calling. “All right, all right, I’m coming! You’re in a big hurry!” she muttered to no one in particular. When they talked to her in their language she retorted proudly, “You think I understand your gobbledegook?”

  But as an ever-increasing wave of green uniforms swept in through the open doors, she began to feel exhilarated, overwhelmed, unable to resist. Her defence against their passionate appeals grew weaker: “Oh, do stop it now! You’re like animals!”

  Other soldiers played billiards. The banisters, window ledges, backs of chairs were hung with belts, pistols, helmets and rounds of ammunition.

  Outside, the church bells sounded Vespers.

  3

  The Angellier ladies were leaving their house to go to Vespers when the German officer who was to lodge with them arrived. They met at the door. He clicked his heels, saluted. The elder Madame Angellier grew even paler and with great effort managed a silent nod of the head. Lucile raised her eyes and, for a brief moment, she and the officer looked at each other. In a split second a flurry of thoughts flashed through Lucile’s mind. “Maybe he’s the one,” she thought, “who took Gaston prisoner? My God, how many Frenchmen has he killed? How many tears have been shed because of him? It’s true that if the war had ended the other way, Gaston might today be entering a German house. That’s how war is; it isn’t this boy’s fault.”

  He was young, slim, with beautiful hands and wide eyes. She noticed how beautiful his hands were because he was holding the door of the house open for her. He was wearing an engraved ring with a dark, opaque stone; a ray of sunshine appeared between two clouds, causing a purple flash of light to spring off the ring; it lit up his complexion, rosy from the fresh air and as downy as a lovely piece of fruit growing on a trellis. His cheekbones were high, strong but delicate, his mouth chiselled and proud. Lucile, in spite of herself, walked more slowly; she couldn’t stop looking at his large, delicate hand, his long fingers (she imagined him holding a heavy black revolver, or a machine-gun or a grenade, any weapon that metes out death indifferently), she studied the green uniform (how many Frenchmen, on watch all night, hiding in the darkness of the undergrowth had looked out for that same uniform?) and his sparkling-clean boots.

  She remembered the defeated soldiers of the French army who a year before had fled through the town, dirty, exhausted, dragging their combat boots in the dust. Oh, my God, so this is war . . . An enemy soldier never seemed to be alone—one human being like any other—but followed, crushed from all directions by innumerable ghosts, the missing and the dead. Speaking to him wasn’t like speaking to a solitary man but to an invisible multitude; nothing that was said was either spoken or heard with simplicity: there was always that strange sensation of being no more than lips that spoke for so many others, others who had been silenced.

  “And what about him?” the young woman wondered. “What must he be feeling coming into a French home where the head of the house is gone, taken prisoner by him or his comrades? Does he feel sorry for us? Does he hate us? Or does he just consider our home a hotel, thinking only about the bed, wondering if it’s comfortable, and the maid, if she’s young?” The door had closed on the officer a long time ago; Lucile had followed her mother-in-law; entered the church and knelt at her pew; but she couldn’t stop thinking about the enemy. He was alone in the house now. He had taken over Gaston’s office, which had its own entrance; he would have his meals out; she wouldn’t see him; but she would hear his footsteps, his voice, his laughter. He was able to laugh . . . He had the right. She looked at her mother-in-law who sat motionless, her face in her hands, and for the first time, felt pity and a vague tenderness for this woman she disliked. Leaning towards her, she said softly, “Let’s say our rosary for Gaston, Mother.”

  The old woman nodded in agreement. Lucile started to pray with sincere fervour, but soon her mind began to wander. She thought of the past that was both near and distant at the same time, undoubtedly because of the grim intrusion of the war. She pictured her husband, a heavy, bored man, interested only in money, land and local politics. She had never loved him; she had married him because her father wished it. Born and brought up in the countryside, she had little experience of the outside world, with the exception of a few brief trips to Paris t
o visit an elderly relative. Life in the provinces of central France is affluent and primitive; everyone keeps to himself, rules over his own domain, reaps his own wheat and counts his own money. Leisure time is filled with great feasts and hunting parties. This village, where the forbidding houses were protected by large, prison-like doors and had drawing rooms crammed full of furniture that were always shut up and freezing cold to save lighting the fire, had seemed the very picture of civilisation to Lucile. When she left her father’s house deep in the woods, she had felt joyous excitement at the idea of living in the village, having a car, sometimes going out to lunch in Vichy . . . Her upbringing had been strict and puritanical, but she had not been unhappy: the garden, the housework, a library—an enormous, damp room where the books grew mouldy and where she would secretly rummage around—were all enough to amuse her. She had got married; she had been a cold, docile wife. Gaston Angellier was only twenty-five when they married, but he had had that kind of precocious maturity brought about by a sedentary provincial lifestyle, excellent rich food eaten in abundance, too much wine, and the complete absence of any strong emotions. Only a truly deceptive man can affect the habits and thoughts of an adult while the warm, rich blood of youth still runs in his veins.

  During one of his business trips to Dijon, where he had been a student, Gaston Angellier ran into a former mistress—a hatmaker with whom he’d broken off; he fell in love with her again and more passionately than before; she had his child; he rented a small house for her in the suburbs and arranged his life so he could spend half his time in Dijon. Lucile knew everything but said nothing, out of shyness, scorn or indifference. Then the war . . .

  And now, for a year already, Gaston had been a prisoner. Poor boy . . . He’s suffering, Lucile thought, as the rosary beads slipped mechanically through her fingers. What was he missing most? His comfortable bed, his fine dinners, his mistress? She would like to give him back everything he’d lost, everything that had been taken from him. Yes, everything, even that woman . . . Realising this, realising the spontaneity and sincerity of this feeling, she also realised how very empty was her heart; it had always been empty—empty of love, empty of jealous hatred. Sometimes her husband treated her harshly. She forgave him his infidelities, but he had never forgotten his father-in-law’s bad investments. She could hear the words ringing in her ears, which more than once had made her feel he’d slapped her face: “Imagine if I’d known there wasn’t any money!”