SINCE the ballroom had been turned into a hospital ward, they planned to decorate Madame Faurel in the library. Everything was ready for the ceremony. Monsieur Bourcier, the dean, who had the apartment adjoining the library, had given the organizers the use of one of his rooms for the buffet. The room was generally unoccupied, and they had hastily decorated it with flags and brought up chairs and tables. The bursar had supplied the tablecloths, the cups for hot chocolate, the champagne glasses.
At that moment, Noël and a young Alsatian cook named Werner were setting out the pastries that had just arrived from the best shop in town.
Werner was a good-looking boy of twenty-five, a sleepy blond with sentimental blue eyes. Detained in an internment camp at the start of the war, he had just been assigned, on account of his good conduct and talents, to the makeshift hospital at the school, and this made him wild with happiness.
“That’s it, I’m fed up with the adjutant. When he was drunk, he was yelling at everybody. Yes. He broke up all the groups of people who were just strolling in the courtyard, quiet as you please.”
Noël dried the glasses.
Werner was telling him that once, there was a huge party at the camp, for New Year’s. “Oh, that party makes this one for Madame Faurel look tiny. Just think, Monsieur Noël, they put on a little one-act operetta for the party, yes, which people loved. And a concert afterwards. Yes. And I made seven hundred and fifty little doughnuts with jam that sold right away, by arrangement with Monsieur Basquin and the canteen manager. At eleven forty-five, someone made a speech that ended on the stroke of midnight with cries of ‘Vive la liberté!’ And, Monsieur Noël, I myself got to sound the twelve blasts for midnight on the officer’s bugle while at the same time a candlelit procession entered the room, lead by an old woman with a lantern for 1914, so the candle wasn’t lit, and a second woman whose candle was lit, for 1915. A beautiful party, Monsieur Noël. I wrote every detail down in my journal. But then came a miserable time.”
“You’re one of the lucky ones,” said Noël, thinking of his own unhappy invalid. “You’ve been spared. Better to be stuck in the camp and alive. You still have your parents?”
“Yes.”
Noël sighed. He was kind, honest, this young cook. He didn’t have to do anything but stay calm, do what he was told, wait like that until the war ended. His parents would get him back in one piece. Not so with his own poor son . . .
And to be unable to talk about it, do anything about it, to have to always accept it. He was still supposed to be happy, since they’d only cut off both legs. Oh! Those Nabucets had played their cards too well. They did whatever they wanted with him, and he said nothing, happy to have a crumb of bread to share with his poor invalid boy! If only I hadn’t left the farm to become a concierge!
It was Faurel who had gotten him this job. Noël had thought he was right to take it. Working the land was running him down, and his wife had encouraged him to accept, looking at it only in terms of profit. But what a swindle! They could barely make ends meet, not to mention the humiliation. Before Georges had been wounded, Noël had dreamed of returning to farming one day. He wasn’t too old to go back to working in the fields, and with the help of his wife, his daughter, his son, he could have brought up his youngest child properly, made a man of him. Too late now. He’d be a servant till the end of his days.
Nabucet entered unannounced. His galoshes gave him the great advantage of muffling the sound of his footsteps. If he overheard us, thought Noël, we’ll each pay dearly for those comments. It was possible Nabucet had been listening from behind the door. Noël knew that Nabucet had a habit of doing that, and once or twice he’d surprised him at it.
“Good day, sir,” he said. He had to say it first.
“Good day, sir,” said Werner.
“Hello, hello,” Nabucet replied—he started taking off his gloves—“all goes well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see that the pastries have arrived. Good.”
Werner blushed to the tips of his ears. This Monsieur Nabucet, did he know the exact number of cakes . . .was he going to count them? He bent over the plates, sniffing the merchandise, moving slowly from one table to the other, letting the silence and the uneasiness grow like an examiner in the middle of a class.
“Very good,” he said, “everything is in order. We need napkins?” “Fine, sir.” “Ask for napkins from the steward. You may leave us, Werner. I think we won’t need you again until this afternoon, and you’ll be more useful assisting in the hospital kitchens. Go on.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You, Noël, follow me. We’ll go into the other room.” He went out, slapping his gloves against his palm. Noël followed. Two steps in the hall, a double door, and they were in the library.
“Nothing amiss here either?”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“We’ll see about that.” Nabucet gave the room a circular glance, wrinkling his forehead and murmuring “fine . . . fine . . . that’s all right . . . Say, Noël?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For starters, you can open those windows.”
Noël opened the windows.
“Very good. Now go fetch me some flowers and bring them to the sideboard, that’s all. I told you I’d arrange them on the tables myself. Then, once you’ve brought me the flowers, chat with the steward about finding me some firewood. I need a nice basket of logs here. You’ll make a big wood fire in this fireplace. We won’t light it till the afternoon. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And now go. I need to be alone. When you’ve brought the flowers, just knock on that door; I’ll know it’s you.”
“Fine, sir.” Noël went out. Flowers! Where would he find any? And firewood? If there wasn’t any cut, he’d have to busy himself with splitting some. The boys had better things to do than get ready for this party.
He rushed downstairs.
Nabucet strolled around the room, taking little steps and smiling. Once again, he congratulated himself that the usual ballroom hadn’t been available. The library was much better, and the combination presented many advantages that gave him great pleasure. First of all, this library, though it was spacious, wasn’t big enough to make it “logistically possible” to invite the wounded themselves to see their benefactress decorated. And so he had easily eliminated a group that, all things considered, would be happier elsewhere, in the cafeteria, obviously, where they would throw something together (they’ll be in their element and so will we). Another advantage: the ceremony, in such a setting, naturally took on the air of an exclusive reception and, since it was Nabucet who played the host’s role, he could, with little expense, give the impression that he was personally receiving the best of society. What he would have wished for in his dreams was of course something more sumptuous, a cascade of parlors, their parquet floors polished like mirrors, and footmen everywhere, like Swiss guards in white stockings and brass buttons, offering refreshments—luxury cigarettes, cigars fit for princes, etc. There would have been a profusion of flowers, and invisible musicians playing enchantress melodies, and everything would have stretched out until the evening, which would take place in a garden. This would have been his greatest triumph, definitively cementing his reputation as an organizer of charming parties. But that would come, perhaps. There was no need to give up hope. All things come to those who wait. Help yourself, and heaven helps you. And as everyone knows, you don’t need hope to get started, or success to persevere. All the same, Nabucet had succeeded brilliantly. He had known how to make the absolute most of this library. This tall, empty room, so exceptionally pathetic with its white marble fireplace and hundreds of books with identical black bindings—he had known how to make it into what he called a “candy box.” All he’d needed was free rein. It had taken a huge amount of work. Noël had sweat blood and water to get rid of the dust that had coated everything in this solemn and solemnly respected place—no one ever set foot in here—and he had s
coured the fireplace and made sure that it functioned well. Yes, of course Nabucet offered his guests the luxury of a wood fire in the back of the hearth, that crackling wood fire, so poetic and cheerful to look at, so nice to be near, made for dreaming and finding yourself among friends. It seemed like nothing, really, this little idea of a fire, and so it was a delicacy of detail! He was sure the general would appreciate his effort, and the deputy, and the deputy’s wife, everyone would. So he had set up a wood fire, as you would for travelers coming a long way by coach. Nabucet waved his hands gently and kept smiling as he walked around the room. He was delighted with his undertaking. The flowers were the perfect thing to decorate the space. He had the hanging chandelier covered with them, and it now resembled a huge bouquet, held upside-down by an invisible hand; he’d stuck them in the curtains too, the nice way believers did on Corpus-Christi Day, when they spread their conjugal bedding in the street for the procession to bless. He had garlands made and thrown about the library, draped every which way over the Greek busts he’d had brought from the art room. Even the art teacher, that fat, sullen Monsieur Pullier—who for more than twenty years had been telling everyone at the Café Machin about his hundreds of successes when he was in art school, when he thought he was a rising star—this big cockroach had given him a hand and drawn a magnificent life-sized pastel, showing a young blue, white, and red Republic bent over the cradle of a newborn. The caption—a quatrain—was his own invention:
Sleep, great dead, in your long-trenched rows
Bless the stalks that grow anew
A golden crop that’s never mowed
France shall always cradle you.
This decorative panel, a good source of encouragement, took up most of the wall above the fireplace. To the right, a Victory of Samothrace. To the left, a Minerva. Because one mustn’t forget that this gathering was taking place not only in an atmosphere of refined patriotism (that was obvious) but also of culture. Ah! How well things had come together and how the whims of chance—others, less philosophically minded, would have said the will of the Lord—were full of precious teachings and thought-provoking encounters! Wasn’t it just amazing, if you thought about it even a little, that this presentation of the Legion of Honor, which couldn’t be held in the ballroom, was instead taking place in the library—in a place of culture and civilization, as a church was a place of God? You had to be quite sensitive to understand that, but if you did, if the chain of reasoning was even a little bit accessible to you, in short, if you knew how to follow a thought, what could you but conclude? There, where unsophisticated people would only see coincidence, Nabucet found a sign. And in truth, the heroic Madame Faurel had risked her life to care for contagious patients, but why had she done it? What was the point? He would say in his speech this afternoon that the triumph of culture was the point.
If Madame Faurel had agreed to care for typhoid patients, and the poilus themselves had accepted disease and death, it was because there was something to preserve and hand down to future generations living in the era of prosperity which would follow the war—in sum, so that our children and grandchildren could continue in material abundance, which was necessary, as Saint Thomas said, for the practice of virtue—so they could continue to read Boileau as their grandfathers had, and to learn by heart Racine’s epistle on Phèdre’s failure. He would know how to make all that felt in his speech. And all he said on the subject would be even clearer in such a well-chosen place.
He walked around the Venus de Milo and made a scholarly allusion to Paul de Saint-Victor’s famous page that he’d assigned his students to memorize all these years. “Blessed is the Greek peasant . . .” Since the others—with the exception of Cripure—wouldn’t know who Paul de Saint-Victor was, they’d be impressed by Nabucet’s erudition, an advantage not to be overlooked. He would refer to the Prayer on the Acropolis as well, and everyone would be struck by his elegant way of expressing the role Madame Faurel had played in the epic battle between “our luminous culture” and the dark intelligence of the Germans. Everything would be in perfect harmony. Synchronized. It was to demonstrate, in his role as apostle, this luminous genius, that he’d had all the plaster statues brought down from the art room and placed in the four corners of the library. Those perfect torsos—he would discretely allude to them too, he would mention the Greek “sense of proportion”; he would speak on Apollo, the dancers . . . He’d even mention their philosophers. Since it was unavoidable, for Christ’s sake, that Cripure would be at the ceremony, he’d had a blackened, leprous bust of Socrates brought down from the attic so Cripure could see the resemblance. The ripples of a flag brushed Socrates’s shoulders. Who could doubt, standing before this little scene, the happy effect flags produced in a library. Nabucet had worried for a moment about the success of that important part of his décor. In a room that was so closed and gloomy, there was a chance the flags would have made an undesirable impression. But quite the opposite was true. Everything depended, he thought again, on the taste with which you arranged things, and the experience had proved that the allied colors blended in a most harmonious fashion with the books and the Greek plaster casts. The four walls covered with books also had flags, but they had taken care not to tangle the poles with the banners. Instead, the flagstaffs were invisibly anchored behind the books, and the flags themselves were pinned together all around the walls like a vast garland which was also stuck with flowers.
Finally, in huge letters on a calico band over the door, was a phrase taken from a recent speech by Poincaré, affirming yet again that this war was the Just War. For one last examination of the room before letting go, Nabucet sat in the armchair the general would soon occupy, casting his eyes all around, stroking his beard, always smiling.
Someone at the door: “knock, knock, knock . . .”
Without moving from his perch, Nabucet asked, “Is that you, Noël? Did you find some flowers?”
“Yes, sir. Roses, sir. The steward had to cut them from the greenhouse, sir. They were the last ones.”
The steward! Another one who didn’t dare refuse him anything.
“You’ve put them on the sideboard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He didn’t say anything else. He knew that Noël was behind the door, waiting for permission to leave. It wasn’t the first time he’d played this game with the concierge. And Noël knew better than to open the door instead of waiting.
“May I go, sir?”
“One moment.” He smiled to himself, pretending to reflect and consider. “The firewood?”
“Yes, sir. I’d thought of that. I’ll have to chop some logs, sir, then split them.”
“Well then, Noël, hurry up! You’d best be a good logger! But hurry, hurry. We don’t have any time to lose.”
“Very well, sir . . .”
Nabucet heard the heavy, tired steps of the concierge fading as he headed down the stairs.
“. . . go see if the rose
which just this morning disclosed
her purple robe to the sun . . .”
Nabucet murmured these lines to himself as he walked over to the sideboard, where he found a magnificent bouquet of roses. The steward had bled for these. He would make a special visit to thank him.
But wait! He froze, a rose between his fingers. There was an argument underway in the dean’s rooms.
He could hear violent shouts coming through the partition. He put the roses on the table, ran on tiptoe to the door, which he locked, and then he returned to the partition as quietly as he could, pressed his ear to it, and didn’t move.
THE WHOLE disagreement seemed to be about whether Lucien, Monsieur Bourcier’s son, an ex-infantry lieutenant, would consent to don his uniform for that afternoon’s party in honor of Madame Faurel. The uniform question, which no one had thought of, had popped up like a jack-in-the-box, and they were all caught off guard by the sudden importance it had assumed. In a few moments, the quarrel had taken a harsh, almost violent turn, revealing to
all of them just how deeply they were divided. It had been brewing for a long time, and the occasion had finally presented itself. Anger is an accident.
Several of them, the two men especially, would have preferred to avoid that accident. They didn’t necessarily need to say what they thought about each other. But the women—the mother and sister—were less careful.
On the topic of the uniform, the women deployed great passion, full of pacing away and turning back, of wild gestures, of pleading, convincing, and prayers. They hadn’t yet resorted to tears, but those were clearly on the way.
Lucien was unmoved. The question of putting on his uniform—for one last time, they incessantly shouted in his ear—was less important to him since, as they had neglected to learn, he’d never had any intention of going to this party, in civilian clothes or otherwise. He hadn’t thought to say so in the first moments of the argument—he’d let himself be taken over by surprise and rising anger—but now he was calmer, he regained his stoic attitude, seeing the comedy in all of it. But he would have liked to avoid hurting them.
The scene was taking place in Lucien’s own room, which Madame Bourcier had just entered, delicately carrying the infamous uniform in her arms, fresh from the ironing board—a handsome dress uniform destined to make an impression and attract the eyes of everyone, especially the ladies. But he hadn’t seemed to react with joy at the sight. More like disgust. Madame Bourcier found her son ready to go out, wearing rough traveling clothes—a gray suit, warm and comfortable but inelegant, that he’d ordered a few days ago in preparation for his travels. Of course, since he had been demobilized and was going to England, she understood that he’d stopped wearing his uniform, but he very well could today of all days, considering that it was the Legion of Honor ceremony for Madame Faurel and that he was leaving for England in the morning, he certainly could have done something so simple to please his mother. He wasn’t thinking of coming to the party in those clothes, was he? It would be indecent. It would seem like an insult to everyone. Why wouldn’t he put on his uniform? She couldn’t accept or understand it.
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