A Good Death

by A Good Death (retail) (epub)

  ‘What are we here for?’ Sabine demanded. ‘What’s going on?’

  Her tone was marginally less abrupt than usual, because she really wanted to know the answer. People were gathering in the street as if it were market day, mothers holding children by the hand, women walking together, old men shuffling along on sticks. The doors of the houses were open and the occupants stood on their steps, watching the passers-by, as if uncertain whether to join them or not.

  ‘Do you know what day it is today?’

  ‘Friday,’ said Sabine.

  ‘The fourteenth,’ said Suzie.

  ‘Yes, the Fourteenth of July, our national day.’

  Suzie could remember the Fourteenth of July, long ago, Before, in Paris, with parades and dancing in the street at night.

  ‘We haven’t celebrated the Fourteenth of July for five years,’ Madame Ariane was saying. ‘You probably don’t remember much about it. They’re going to hold a ceremony here.’

  ‘Lunch,’ said Sabine longingly. ‘Will there be lunch with soup and pate and confit and salad and cheese and a tart?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not this year. It’ll have to be quick, in case the Germans or the Milice hear of it and come to break it up and arrest us all.’

  ‘But we’ll be all right, won’t we? Your major will take care of us.’

  Sabine spoke with the naivety which, although the insolence of her intention was clear, normally made it impossible for Madame Ariane to take issue with her. For two years Suzie had watched her submit to Sabine’s rudeness without losing her temper. This time Sabine had struck a nerve.

  ‘I don’t know why you should think I can protect you from the major, Sabine,’ she said furiously, ‘but, believe me, you’re wrong. The major is beyond anyone’s control.’

  Sabine turned away with a little smile on her lips, as if well pleased with the response she had aroused. Madame Ariane walked on, looking dissatisfied with her attempt at self-defence.

  The church clock struck eleven and for a moment the crowd in the square hesitated. They all had an air of wariness and of false innocence, Suzie thought, as though they half-expected to be challenged and would be ready to provide elaborate excuses for why they happened to be there.

  ‘Français, françaises …’

  A small voice floated over the company. People ceased talking, turning to the balcony of the Mairie, where a rotund figure, wrapped in a sash of office, had appeared. The crowd seemed to draw together, moving inwards, concentrating on the figure half-obscured by the tricolour which flew above his head.

  Suzie could not hear the mayor very well. He turned his head to address different sectors of the square and as he did so his voice faded and was lost. She could only catch phrases.

  ‘This is a time of pride … Liberation from the oppressor … France is freeing herself, with the help of the heroic efforts of the Red Army and the Allies … This is a time of hope … The return of the prisoners and the deported from the camps in Germany to their families …’

  Suddenly he was speaking directly to her. She understood that Madame Ariane had not led her here into a trap. She had brought her to hear this news. Maman and Papa would soon return to France and come to Bonnemort to find her. The terrible image of the lieutenant hunting men with his panzers slid away. She saw others moved by the same words. A woman nearby had taken out a handkerchief and was blotting her eyes with it. She was not alone, Suzie told herself. Many people, Micheline and Henri included, had relatives who had been taken away by the Germans and they would all come home soon. She found comfort in the idea of there being lots of them. Two individuals, Papa and Maman, each alone, might disappear, but it was impossible for so many people to be lost. They would all come back together.

  The mayor had finished speaking and there was movement at the end of the square. Suzie squirmed forward through the crowd to see what was happening. When she reached the front, she saw that a company of men had marched in and were now forming up in front of the war memorial beside the Mairie. An accordionist began to play the Marseillaise and at once all noise ceased. Everyone stood to attention.

  When the anthem ended, three men detached themselves from the front rank of the maquisards and marched to the memorial. One of the three came forward and laid a wreath, saluted, turned. Suzie saw that it was Henri. Around her the emotion that had been generated by the reference to the deported reached a new level. To her astonishment she saw men weeping, tears unashamedly falling down their cheeks. The woman who had put her handkerchief to her eyes at the mayor’s speech was now crying openly, her face red and contorted. Another woman, also weeping, put her arms around her. The last post was played. The maquisards presented arms and marched out of the square, leaving an atmosphere of festival. This would have been the moment for the lunch that Sabine had longed for.

  Suzie turned to look for Madame Ariane and spotted her talking to Henri and Monsieur Vernhes, the schoolmaster from Lepech Perdrissou. You could see that she was full of happiness, for she was smiling and put out her arm to Suzie, pulling her towards her in a sideways hug. Suzie allowed herself to respond. After all, Maman and Papa would soon be home and she would be safe for ever, and Sabine was not there to witness her defection.

  Sabine joined them a few minutes later, pushing her bicycle, her face sparkling. Suzie saw the enthusiasm die out of her expression as she approached them. She knew that this was not due to Madame Ariane, who would have normally been entitled to an afternoon’s grace after a morning of such excitement. Monsieur Vernhes, the only person who made Sabine afraid, was responsible for the look of gloom. Suzie did not know what had happened during Sabine’s two years at the village school, but she had observed that Sabine always encountered her former teacher with wariness.

  She and Sabine stood by while the adults talked. Sabine’s eyes were cast down and she tapped the edge of one foot against the other. Suzie was thinking how easy it was to tell someone’s mood from their actions. Henri and Monsieur Vernhes did not like one another; that too was very plain. They faced Madame Ariane and spoke to one another through her.

  ‘Are you satisfied with the demonstration?’ Monsieur Vernhes asked.

  When Henri hesitated, Madame Ariane replied, ‘It was wonderful. Everyone was so moved.’

  ‘I’ll be pleased as long as there are no reprisals,’ Henri said at last.

  ‘That will be the moment to attack them.’

  ‘It would be an act of folly. If we ever faced them in a firefight we would be wiped out. Our duty is to protect the young people and wait until the Germans go, not to waste lives.’

  ‘Very heroic.’ Monsieur Vernhes had a very flat, unemphatic voice, Suzie noticed, yet his tone was sneering. ‘We should drive them out ourselves, not sit here waiting for de Gaulle and the Allies to arrive and do it for us. If we wait for them, it could be winter before the Germans are gone. Can you hold out that long?’

  ‘Well hold out as long as we have to, provided there’s no killing.’

  ‘So there’ll have to be a massacre before you’ll act?’

  ‘Don’t spoil the day,’ Madame Ariane begged. ‘We’ve been round this track before. Let’s see if there is any reaction to today’s demonstration. Let’s see what happened at Longas.’ The schoolmaster was not placated. ‘Look at this place,’ he said. ‘We’ve taken it over; it’s in the hands of the Party and the people now. The mayor, the gendarmes, the local authority, they’re running it now and neither Vichy nor the Germans can do anything about it. That’s what we want at Lepech.’

  ‘No we don’t,’ said Henri. ‘What we want is the Germans out. We don’t want the Party in. And if we’re allowed to choose, we won’t choose them.’

  ‘We’re the party of the martyred, the shot, the deported. We’ve done everything to rid this country of the fascists and we’ll run it when they’ve gone.’

  ‘Others resisted too, from the very first.’

  Madame Ariane was looking from one man to the other anxiously. Suzie tho
ught, she is caught between the two of them, like me between her and Sabine. One is powerful and has to be soothed; the other she agrees with, but can’t show it. So she speaks with a calm voice to try to prevent a quarrel. She doesn’t want to be forced to choose. She would choose Henri, of course, anyone can see that. And would I choose her or Sabine?

  ‘If we were questioned,’ Madame Ariane said to the girls when they were ready to set off for home, ‘it’s most unlikely to happen, but if there was a denunciation …’ She seemed to be talking more to herself than to them, convincing herself that she had taken no risks. ‘But if you were questioned, you would say that we went for a picnic.’

  ‘You’re telling us to lie,’ Sabine said.

  ‘I want you to omit part of the truth. But, yes, if you were obliged to reply directly to the question, did you attend the Fourteenth of July celebrations at Lavallade, I think you should lie.’

  ‘The sisters said we must always tell the truth, whatever it cost us.’

  Madame Ariane gave a small smile, not looking at her stepdaughter. ‘Sabine, let’s have no more of this. If you decide to sacrifice yourself because of your fidelity to absolute truthfulness, I can’t stop you. I just ask you to remember that you have no right to implicate others. I think that even you, with your religious scruples, might hesitate when truthfulness demands a list of names. Some people die under torture rather than do that.’

  Sabine looked sulky at the way her provocation had been turned against her. Suzie had no problem about lying. She would lie and lie and lie again, spin any tale, if it would be believed and save her. Her fear was that her interrogators would step immediately beyond lie and truth, and that violence would descend impartially, on liar and truth-teller, guilty and innocent alike.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Suzie and Sabine were cycling back from mass in Lepech Perdrissou. The aunts, who made the expedition in the donkey cart, their one outing of the week, always remained behind to lunch with the cure, leaving the girls to ride home by themselves.

  Mass had been an occasion of fear for Suzie when she arrived at Bonnemort, heightened by the physical as well as spiritual preparations that Micheline insisted upon. She would wash the girls’ hair on Saturday evening, and lay out their best dresses, newly ironed. Suzie had been terrified of exposure through ignorance, and had no one to ask what she should do, for Madame Ariane did not attend mass. Suzie would therefore cultivate her blankest expression, practised in Clermont Ferrand when she was looking after Maman, which usually made adults think she was a little stupid, or even deaf. In this way she did not have to reply to such questions as, ‘When is your saint’s day, dear?’ or ‘When did you make your first communion, my child?’ The method had worked with the cure who, soon after her first appearance in church with the Cazalle family, ceased to make enquiries about her knowledge and origins. The first time that she attended mass she had been astonished at what they were doing, a Shabbat dinner performed for a Christian audience every Sunday. Now she was used to it, sitting, standing and kneeling automatically, moving her lips in time to Sabine’s responses.

  The sun was almost at its peak and the road shimmered in front of them in the heat. Ahead, in the centre of the road, lay a tangle of rope which, when they reached it, suddenly thrashed itself into a paroxysm, coiling and recoiling, twisting and writhing in their path. Suzie yelped in disgust, swerving widely and riding on. Sabine braked and put her foot to the ground to look back.

  ‘It’s two snakes,’ she shouted. ‘Stop, stop, Suzie. Come and see.’

  Suzie drew up, but would not go back.

  ‘They’re fighting, wrestling, killing one another,’ Sabine reported, walking closer, springing back as the live skein leaped like a single creature. ‘No, they’re fucking.’

  ‘It’s probably shedding its skin,’ Suzie suggested, when Sabine came alongside her.

  ‘No, there were too many, a whole knot of them. They were vipers, too. I saw the V mark on their heads: V for viper, V for victory.’ She began to chant, faster, as she put on a spurt and overtook Suzie. ‘V for viper, V for victory,’ she sang.

  Suzie made no effort to catch her up, pedalling despondently behind. Sabine’s spirits had been manically cheerful since the parade at Lavallade two days earlier. She refused to admit this expedition as evidence of Madame Ariane’s innocence or good faith. They had been sitting in the winepress the previous evening to discuss the question of Madame Ariane and the major. ‘It’s nothing to do with the Resistance,’ she had explained to Suzie. ‘It’s sex, sex, sex.’

  ‘But you keep saying she’s a traitor; she’s not. She must be helping Henri …’

  ‘Of course she’s a traitor. She’s a sexual traitor.’

  When they had first met, Sabine had immediately discovered the extent of Suzie’s ignorance and took it upon herself to inform her about sex and reproduction. Suzie had been secretly offended by her new companion’s teaching about a subject which Maman had already discussed with her, in horticultural terms. Seeds, Maman had explained, were planted by fathers and kept warm by mothers until they germinated and babies were ready to be born. Sabine had poured scorn on this metaphorical knowledge and had ruthlessly demonstrated its defects and limitations.

  Suzie now understood the hydraulics of reproduction. Sabine’s information, startling and implausible as it had first appeared, had been confirmed by her observation of the life of the farm: the cocks’ pursuing and mounting their hens in the orchard, the dogs’ restless howling when one of the bitches was on heat, the litter of kittens, born, naked and bloody, before her eyes on the chair in front of the fire in Micheline’s kitchen. Micheline and Florence dealt with all these alarming aspects of procreation in an entirely matter-of-fact manner which Suzie found reassuring. However, this reassurance was undercut by Sabine’s excited interest, her self-caressing, which Suzie avoided seeing, but could not avoid knowing of. Up till now Sabine had never linked her detestation of Madame Ariane with her interest in the sexual life of the farm. As there were simply no men, apart from Henri who was a father to them all, there was nothing to suggest it. Now the uniting of these two subjects was ominous in Suzie’s eyes.

  She had never understood why Sabine hated Madame Ariane so much. When, early on, she had timidly questioned her on the subject, Sabine’s replies had been incoherent.

  She had taken her away from the convent.

  But Sabine had hated the convent.

  She had taken her away from the village school.

  But Sabine had been bullied at the village school.

  Incomprehensible.

  Once before, in the autumn of the previous year, Sabine’s resentment against Madame Ariane had reached an acute phase. Suzie was not sure what had brought on the murderous fury that had consumed Sabine for a period of about two weeks; she only recalled that it had begun on one of the few occasions when Madame Ariane left Bonnemort, at the time that Dr Maniotte and Henri were arrested.

  They had got up early to go mushrooming. It was early autumn and the weather was ideal, warm and damp after a heavy downpour the previous day. They had left the house soon after six in the morning and had discovered Madame Ariane, dressed in the smart suit that she had worn to collect Suzie, her foot poised on the pedal of her bicycle, her handbag and a large parcel in the basket.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Sabine asked abruptly, without even saying good morning.

  ‘Just to Racines. I’ll be back for dinner, so I hope you find plenty of ceps. Goodbye.’ She pushed off and rode out of the gate.

  Sabine looked after her in fury. ‘She’s not going to Racines. She never wears that suit to go to Racines. Where’s she going?’ She led the way into the forest in a brooding silence.

  Suzie was soon absorbed in her task. Although she had never got over the foreignness of the countryside, and disliked the violence of animal existence, she liked the vegetable side of country life. She was a willing gardener, patiently watering the rows of salads, carrots, leeks and
onions, carrying her watering can from the sink or the water-butt to the kitchen garden. She patrolled the orchard throughout the summer watching the fruit ripen until the moment came to gather it, the cherries in July, the peaches in August, the apples in September, the quinces in October. She looked forward to the grape harvest in September and the walnuts in November.

  She was particularly good at mushrooming, which she had learned with Papa, walking in the woods near Paris when she was a little girl, reciting the Latin name for each variety they found. He had taught her the landscape and season for each variety: open grassland for field mushrooms with their tender pinky-brown gills; pine woods for morels with their reticulated, bulbous heads; mixed woodland for the sinister, black horns of plenty, and open woodland for prized ceps, with their velvety surface and spongy underside. She had a quick eye and could single out the fungi under the leaves, needles and ivy of the forest floor.

  That morning her basket was soon covered with the fat brown caps of ceps. She could hear Sabine moving behind her some distance away, following their customary route. When they turned for home, Sabine’s basket was almost empty. Suzie made no protest as Sabine put her hand into her full basket and transferred some to her own.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Sabine said. ‘We could poison her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She knew quite well what Sabine meant.

  ‘With mushrooms. Listen, it’s a wonderful idea. No one would ever know.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘We go mushrooming and gather all the worst ones especially for her. We make a ragout, two ragouts, one for her, one for the rest of us. We all eat the mushrooms. She’s ill; we’re well.’

  ‘But she might die. Some of them are very powerful.’

  ‘Of course she’ll die. That’s the point. It’s the best way of killing her.’

  Sabine became a person obsessed. She talked about her plan whenever she and Suzie were alone, to the exclusion of all other topics, repeating herself single-mindedly. She spent unaccustomed hours in the library, studying the engravings in an old book on fungi, noting the most lethal types.