He entered.
•
A somber entryway. At the end, a door was open, and in the office, Monsieur Marchandeau and his wife.
They hadn’t heard him. Cripure felt like he had suddenly been transported to the hall of a theater. He held his breath, not daring to go further: panic. Now he wished he could run.
What would he say, if they noticed him?
The principal had his back to him. On Madame Marchandeau’s face was a look of sorrow that reminded him of Toinette’s expression during their last attempt at explanations: an air of distress, which he’d had no pity for, that same convulsive movement of the lips and in the throat, that little trembling.
Thank God he’d come upon them as they were finishing up. Madame Marchandeau retreated all the way to the back of the room and went home without a word. Cripure didn’t yet dare reveal himself. A domestic squabble? He’d arrived at the end of one of those little . . . bourgeois ceremonies . . . and while their son . . .
The principal sat down at his desk and started writing, but he quickly ripped the paper and threw it into the wastebasket. He took another, but this time he didn’t even try to write. He put down his pen, got up, took his wastebasket and dumped the contents into the stove. Still holding the wastebasket in his hand, he walked around the room.
Cripure finally steeled himself. He cleared his throat, knocked the floor with his cane, and entered the office with a heavy step like a drunk’s stagger. His feet boomed on the rug and made some piece of glassware tremble in the room—one of the lamps poorly balanced on the piano, maybe, or a paperweight on the loose boards of the desk.
The principal looked at him without surprise. He stopped pacing around the office, forgetting to put his wastebasket back, and murmured, “Yes?”
“You understand,” began Cripure, in a little wheezing voice, “isn’t it so, Monsieur Principal, pardon me, you understand, but the door was open, and, don’t you see, I thought that . . .you didn’t hear me, isn’t that so? It’s that . . . excuse me if I’m inconveniencing you, but I need to make a complaint, you see . . .”
The principal didn’t reply.
Cripure went on: “Monsieur Principal, I must protest against certain actions, you understand, which will be apparent to you . . .”
Still holding the wastebasket in his hand, he watched Cripure with a glazed, almost empty look.
“I’ve come to make a complaint,” Cripure thundered, “a complaint, do you hear me, Monsieur?”
A vague smile appeared on Monsieur Marchandeau’s face. Oh! thought Cripure, he’s making fun of me.
“This is unacceptable!” he cried. “You dare to mock me! I’m going to . . .”
He was going to say that he’d go higher, that he’d find the academy inspector, or the rector, and why not a cabinet minister? The words wouldn’t come. Monsieur Marchandeau put down the wastebasket and handed Cripure a letter.
Cripure made as if to refuse.
“Me?”
“Read it.”
And the principal let out such a heavy sigh that Cripure interrupted his barely begun reading and looked at him. What’s happened to him, then?
He read.
No, it wasn’t an official notice. The mayor hadn’t been here. No red ink. It was a personal letter, a short one.
“Wh . . . what! But that can’t happen! But isn’t it just . . . Wh . . . what!” Cripure yelled, letting his arms fall.
Monsieur Marchandeau didn’t move. He stayed still where he was, a man of wax.
“And here I am . . .”
Complaining, crying as he had just done, in front of this man whose son was going to be shot!
“I beg you to forget . . .”
“You couldn’t have guessed.”
It was no longer a human voice.
“Forgive me.”
The principal shrugged.
Cripure took another step, and, once again, the little glass object tinkled. How to hand the letter back to Marchandeau? The gesture would be so cruel, it would seem to imply such a refusal, a vile abandonment . . . He put it on the desk. Then, his big arms rose and fell, flapping the goatskin. He opened his mouth, but didn’t speak, lifted his pince-nez, put them back in place. Finally he sat, unmoving, head lowered, his hands grasping his pointy knees, his cane slung across his stomach.
“I’m leaving for Paris . . .” The principal rifled through a drawer, looking for money, no doubt, and papers. Cripure remembered what Faurel had told him that morning: not a single pardon. And Monsieur Marchandeau was going to try to sway Poincaré. This is no time for weakness . . .
“Oh! What a life,” Cripure murmured, almost soundlessly. “Ah! The things we still have to see . . .”
The principal was bent over his desk, sorting papers and money into his wallet. He got up, closed the drawer, put the wallet back in his pocket, checked that he had a handkerchief.
“Do you have any money on you?” he asked Cripure.
Cripure scrambled to take out his wallet. “Money? Yes. How much?”
“A thousand or fifteen hundred.”
“Yes, I have it. It’s a pure coincidence, but I have that much.” He handed it to the principal.
“It’s because I may have to stay there for a few days,” Monsieur Marchandeau explained, “maybe go all the way to the front, or, at least, very close to it . . . and I’m not sure if I have enough money on me. I should ask my wife, but . . .”
Did she not know? Cripure didn’t dare ask, but the principal added:
“I’d prefer not to see her again before I leave.”
The maid came in, carrying a suitcase.
“Your suitcase, sir.”
He looked at it.
“You’re the one who chose that suitcase?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ah! Also . . . I was thinking . . . Fine. Put it down there.”
The maid set it down and went out.
Why did she have to choose that one in particular? It was a little yellow leather bag that Pierre had used to carry his gear to the soccer field, to play center forward. The maid must have found his jersey, his cleats, his white shorts . . . all jumbled inside.
“His little soccer bag,” he said. He bit his lips, lowered his head.
“Come, come, my friend. All’s not lost.”
Monsieur Marchandeau shook his head with closed eyes. He picked up the suitcase. “Walk with me to the station?” he asked.
They were about to walk out when someone knocked, opening the door without waiting for a response. Francis Montfort came through the entryway, his hair dangling in his eyes as usual, and books under his arm.
“What’s this?” asked the principal.
He’d forgotten the note he’d left with the concierge for the young monitor.
“You called me in, Monsieur,” said Montfort, coming forward and holding out a paper.
“Oh!” said the principal, remembering all of a sudden, “yes, that’s true, but . . .”
And he looked at Cripure who was waiting, leaning on his cane, the string bag dangling from his arm. When he recognized Montfort, Cripure shivered. That morning’s letter!
“I don’t know,” he said in response to the principal’s look.
More silence.
Montfort waited. They’d asked him to come, it must be for a reason, mustn’t it? And apparently he’d have to explain his role in what happened with the bikes, since Cripure was there? But more important—the poem.
The principal still said nothing. His suitcase in hand, he was looking at Montfort like you contemplate a ghost. To end the awkwardness, Cripure stepped forward: “Monsieur Montfort, it seems you’ve come at a bad time. The principal is . . .”
But he stopped. How could he explain, how could he make him understand?
“He asked to see me, Monsieur,” said Montfort.
He started to explain. He had prepared his response. He resolved to take full responsibility for his actions, to say that he had read a defeati
st poem in study hall, that his classmates had asked him for it, but he didn’t mean that as an excuse. If the principal addressed him in Young Man, he’d respond in Grown Man. But the principal didn’t ask him anything—and Cripure didn’t have another word to say either. They both had a paralyzed air, and the scene dragged on.
Something new must have happened since he’d received that summons. The changed attitude of the two men, that suitcase the principal was holding . . . it flashed through Montfort. “Pierre!”
He said the name in one breath. His eyes met the principal’s. There was his answer.
“Forgive me,” he said, backing away to leave.
They didn’t reply. They let him retreat. But they didn’t immediately move on. They didn’t go out themselves until Montfort’s steps faded away on the staircase. The principal, who was trembling, couldn’t right away get a hold of himself.
•
Once they were in the street, how much they hampered each other—Cripure, who couldn’t keep up with Monsieur Marchandeau, and Marchandeau, who kept having to slow down so as not to abandon Cripure! The cab could have saved the situation, but it was nowhere to be seen. Cripure hauled his horrible feet with a look of supplication on his face, and Monsieur Marchandeau was carried along in spite of himself, turning around constantly, opening his mouth to say something and shutting it again.
As they approached the station a vague rumor came to them, like a muted groaning whose cause they didn’t understand, and Cripure, still on alert, pricked up his ears.
They went into the little square in front of the station. The shouts became distinct. Even if it was possible to recognize, from time to time an attempt at songs, a snatch of “The Internationale,” it wasn’t just singing but also cries, hissing, threats: “Death! Death to Poincaré!”
That call for death eclipsed everything else. Some mouths took it up with violence, stretching it out. Then, like a passing wind, the racket stopped, dispersed into the four corners of the sky. A chant got louder:
“Goodbye life, goodbye love
goodbye to all the pretty girls . . .”
Cripure felt the principal’s shoulder tremble under his hand. “Let’s go on, my friend.”
They walked a little further into the square.
On a bench, a man in his sixties sat with his wife. The man, a peasant, was wearing a big wool bonnet. He had put the collar of his raincoat up and he was smoking. The wife, who was tiny, sat enveloped in her big black shawl.
They sat unmoving, a bundle at their feet. “What’s happening, then?” Cripure asked.
The man raised his head. The song continued, beyond the square, a dragging, savage chant:
“It’s not over, it’s forever
What a Godforsaken war
It’s at Verdun, it’s on the plain
Where we don’t get up again . . .”[15]
They could hear something else now—a metallic sound, like helmets being thrown down, and breaking mirrors.
“They’ve ripped apart the engine,” the old peasant replied. “It’s been going on since the beginning of the afternoon.” He noticed Monsieur Marchandeau’s suitcase. “Were you going to take the train?”
“Yes.”
“We’re in the same fix. We need to be in Orléans tomorrow. But there’s no train.”
“Are you sure? They told you that?” cried Monsieur Marchandeau. “Who was it?”
“They wouldn’t let us through. Seems like everything’s muddled.”
“Are you sure?”
“Otherwise I’d be there,” said the man. Then he added, “and after we walked four miles to get to the station. We started as soon as we got the summons.” He stayed silent for a moment, then asked, “You too, you’re going to see your son?”
Monsieur Marchandeau reached for Cripure’s arm.
“Yes.”
“He’s wounded too?”
“Yes,” Monsieur Marchandeau replied, letting his chin drop into his collar.
“We don’t know what’s wrong with ours. But if they sent the notice . . . Pigs! After you’ve given him everything you had . . . eh?”
The wife didn’t say anything. She seemed not to hear anything. Huddled in her black shawl, she looked like a big, sleeping dog.
“Let’s go on,” said Cripure, pulling Monsieur Marchandeau’s arm. “Let’s keep going anyway! All is perhaps not lost. We’ve got to try!”
They went off.
“Good luck!” said the old peasant.
Couldn’t things rely on more than chance?
Cripure’s heart beat wildly. A little noise in the evening around the trains for furloughed men, Faurel had said. So that wasn’t over then? And Amédée? Was he among them?
“Take my arm, my friend.”
Was it to help the shaking one or to reassure himself?
The crowd swarmed in the square, and in front of the station, from the other side, came whistles, shouts: “Die, die!”
They fought a way through the crowd, up to the barricade in front of the empty courtyard, which a man crossed from time to time. Cripure towered over the angry mass, and his head was so far above them that those who came behind might have thought the crowd carried him on their shoulders in triumph. Monsieur Marchandeau had let go of his arm and was following, hampered by his suitcase, by his hat sliding down his forehead, and Cripure made a desperate effort to turn and urge him onward.
“A little group of officers, it looks like, standing under the overhang and watching, don’t you think? The important thing . . .”
A shove from the crowd interrupted.
“The important thing is to get to them . . .”
He spoke with difficulty, already out of breath. People were pushing him, others, backing away, banged him right in the chest. It was a miracle he hadn’t lost his pince-nez.
“Forward by God! Break through the barrier!” yelled a voice in his ear.
“Kill the pigs!”
Women’s cries mixed in with the others, and the cries of children too. Cripure saw the barrier bend under the force of the crowd then spring back. They were still getting closer.
“Get back, get back!” the station guards endlessly repeated, their rifle butts ringing out against the ground.
“Let us through with our wives!”
“Get back!”
“Let us through!”
“Civilians, get back!”
But the crush continued, and even in the station itself, the chaos increased. “Kill the pigs! Kill them!”
Panic seized Cripure. He was whimpering, still clutching the grocery bag and his cane in his left hand, and searching in vain with his right for something to hold on to, like a man who wavers while walking the plank, sometimes putting a hand on a shoulder, sometimes a head, once right on the face of a poilu, who wasn’t paying attention. The crowd was so dense that Cripure’s little hat, which had slipped off, was trapped between the goatskin and a backpack, and it was a world of trouble to retrieve it. He looked around for a gap to escape through and couldn’t find one. He was terrified that the order would come to clear the square, that he’d be thrown to the ground, trampled, crushed. They’d pull him up, bloody and covered in mud, half dead. What could he do on this nightmarish voyage? The cries deafened him. If he was hurt, who would take care of him? Someone stamped on his foot and he cried out in pain, but no one paid the slightest attention. What was a Cripure’s cry here? Even the principal hadn’t heard, carried away as he was by the currents of the mob.
It was the first time Cripure had gone unnoticed in a crowd. No one here thought to look at him and point a finger, to be shocked, to pity or mock him. And now, when he was so comic and pitiful in his feeble efforts to escape this angry crush a find a refuge somewhere. He didn’t let go of the grocery bag or the cane and thought, in spite of his afflictions, of the bottle of nice wine, which threatened to shatter in his pocket at any moment.
“We can’t take it anymore! End the war!”
“Pe
ace! Peace!”
“Death to Ribot . . .”
The shouts were coming from the other side. Here, they took them up again, but it was mostly about breaking down the barrier, to get or force them to let the women and children accompany their husbands and fathers to the train. To which the station guards unvaryingly replied, “Get back! Civilians can’t come through!”
“Break down the barrier!”
“Get back!”
And the stampede continued.
“That’s a new one,” murmured a soldier.
A hatless woman was pressed up against him: “Wait and see . . .”
He caught sight of a guard. “What’s this all about?”
The man didn’t respond. He was young and pale with strain under his helmet.
“Are you deaf?”
“Go through,” said the train guard. “You . . . not your wife.”
The wife clung tighter to her husband. “We’ll see about that.”
“No civilians allowed.”
“Are you joking?”
The man looked right and left, as if to call in a witness. The young wife lowered her head to hide her eyes. She put her arm around the soldier.
“Lulu . . .”
“Do you realize? No, really, do you?”
“Get back!”
“Shut the hell up.”
“Back!”
“Go ahead,” yelled a deep voice behind him. At the same time, he got a blow to the back. “Walk! Pop that young one in the kisser and go on with your wife . . .”
A head taller than the crowd, waving his arms, he made signs to his comrades, lost in the crush. “We’ve gotta do like the Russians.”
“These men are just asses,” said someone else. “They’re fighting among themselves.”
“What’s it to you . . .”
“Kill the pigs!”
The shout was taken up by dozens of voices. A sergeant intervened: “That’s enough!” he said. “Haven’t you finished yet? Get on the platform.”
“With our wives?”
“No.”
“So, no, we haven’t. We’re staying. We don’t want to go. We resist.” The sergeant shrugged. “You’re just making it harder for yourselves.”
The crowd was still pushing.
“Can we go through or not?”
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