I read the book of predictions and went to sleep.
The next morning I said, ‘Well, instead of deciding let us go to see the préfet at Bourg and the American consul at Lyon.’
We went; it was a lovely day, the drive from Bourg to Lyon was heavenly. They all said, ‘Leave,’ and I said to Alice Toklas, ‘Well, I don’t know—it would be awfully uncomfortable and I am fussy about my food. Let’s not leave.’ So we came back, and the village was happy and we were happy and that was all right, and I said I would not hear any more news—Alice Toklas could listen to the wireless, but as for me I was going to cut box hedges and forget the war.
Well, two days after when I woke up, Alice Toklas said sooner or later we would have to go.
I did not have much enthusiasm for leaving and we had not had our passports visaed for Spain, and the American consul had told us we could, so I said, ‘Let’s compromise and go to Lyon again.’
The car’s tire was down and Madame Roux said, ‘You see, even the car does not want to leave.’
Just then Balthus and his wife came along; they had come down from Paris, sleeping two days in their little car, and they were going to their summer home in Savoy and after, if necessary, to Switzerland, Madame Balthus being Swiss. Well, anyway we went to Lyon.
On the way back we were stopped every few minutes by the military; they were preparing to blow up bridges and were placing anti-aircraft guns and it all seemed very near and less than ever did I want to go on the road.
And at the same time when Alice Toklas would say about some place on the road, ‘Look, what a lovely house that is!’ I said, ‘I do not want to look at it—it is all going to be destroyed.’
So just before we got to Belley, at a little village near a little lake, there were Doctor and Madame Chaboux.
‘What,’ said we, stopping, ‘are you doing here?’
‘We are paying for our year’s fishing rights,’ they said, ‘and you?’ said they. ‘Well,’ said we, ‘we are trying to make up our minds what to do, go or stay.’
‘Now,’ said I, ‘tell me, Doctor Chaboux, what shall I do?’
‘Well, we stay,’ said they. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but a doctor is like a soldier—he has to stay.’
‘Yes,’ said they.
‘But now how about us? Should we or should we not?’
‘Well,’ said Doctor Chaboux, reflecting, ‘I can’t guarantee you anything, but my advice is stay. I had friends,’ he said, ‘who in the last war stayed in their homes all through the German occupation, and they saved their homes and those who left lost theirs. No,’ he said, ‘I think unless your house is actually destroyed by a bombardment, I always think the best thing to do is to stay.’ He went on, ‘Everybody knows you here; everybody likes you; we all would help you in every way. Why risk yourself among strangers?’
‘Thank you,’ we said, ‘that is all we need. We stay.’
So back we came and we unpacked our spare gasoline and our bags and we said to Madame Roux, ‘Here we are and here we stay.’
And I went out for a walk and I said to one of the farmers, ‘We are staying.’
‘Vous faites bien,’ he said, ‘mademoiselle. We all said, “Why should these ladies leave? In this quiet corner they are as safe as anywhere,” and we have cows and milk and chickens and flour and we can all live and we know you will help us out in any way you can and we will do the same for you. Here in this little corner we are en famille, and if you left, to go where?—aller, où?’
And they all said to me, ‘Aller, où?’ and I said, ‘You are right—aller, où?’
We stayed, and dear me, I would have hated to have left.
III
The Kiddie has just written me a letter from America and he says in it, ‘We have been wondering what the end of war in France will mean for you, whether you could endure staying there or the exact opposite, whether you could endure not staying there.’
So I said to Alice Toklas, ‘I am cutting the hedges, even the very tall one on a ladder, and I am not reading the prediction book any more, and I am walking and I am not knowing what the news is,’ and Alice Toklas began making raspberry jam—it was a wonderful raspberry year—and the long slow days passed away.
They did not really pass.
One day I said to her, ‘Ten days ago when we were in Lyon,’ and she said, ‘Nonsense, it was three days ago.’ Well, it seemed like ten, but the days all the same did pass one day at a time.
In the afternoons Basket and I always walked.
We walked in the country roads and every now and then a little girl would appear through the bushes; she was sitting with the cows and knitting, but when she heard us she came to the road. They are often blue-eyed, the little girls, as we are in the hills, and hills seem to make people’s eyes blue, and she would say, ‘How do you do, Mademoiselle? Vous êtes en promenade—you are out for a walk,’ and I would say, ‘Yes, it is a nice day,’ and she would say, ‘Yes,’ and I would say, ‘And you are alone,’ and she would say, ‘Yes, my mother was here, but she went home—perhaps she will come again.’ and then she would say, ‘And have you heard the airplanes?’ and I would say, ‘No, have you?’ and she would say, ‘Oh yes,’ and I would say, ‘Were they German or French?’ and she would say, ‘I do not know,’ and I would say ‘Perhaps they are French,’ and she would say, ‘Perhaps,’ and then I would say good-bye and she would say good-bye and disappear back through the bushes into the field, and it was always the same conversation and it was a comfort to us both, to each little girl and to me.
We went to Belley to buy food and the rest of the time I cut box hedges and Alice Toklas went on making raspberry jam; we had lots of raspberries; and as I did not listen to any news any more it was heavy but peaceful.
Then came the next Sunday.
I went out for a walk in the morning and stopped to talk with one of the farmers, Monsieur Tavel. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘the battle of Lyon has commenced.’ ‘What?’ said I. ‘Are they at Lyon?’ From then on they were always spoken of as ‘they’; they did not have any other name. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but it is all right; there are lots of soldiers there and it is all right.’ ‘But why is it all right?’ I said. ‘Well,’ he said, ’because there is an old prophecy which says that the day will come when France will be betrayed by a Catholic king, not her own king but another king—that another king will be crazy, and that all the Paris region will be occupied by the enemy and, in front of Lyon, France will be saved by a very old man on a white horse.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘the king of the Belgians was a Catholic king and he betrayed us, the king of Italy has gone mad, and the Maréchal Pétain is a very old man and he always rides a white horse. So it is all right,’ said Monsieur Tavel.
Well, Lyon was awfully near and if there was going to be a great battle—well, anyway it was a bright sunny day, and I came back and I was tired and so I took out my deck chair and sat in the sun on the terrace and I went sound asleep. Then there was a half-past-twelve communiqué and I woke up just to hear that the Maréchal Pétain had asked for an armistice.
Well, then he had saved France and everything was over. But it wasn’t, not at all—it was just beginning for us.
The village did not know what to say and nobody said anything; they just sighed; it was all very quiet.
We thought we could keep the shutters open and light the light, but they said no, not yet, the armistice was not signed and they, the Germans, might be anywhere.
The boys between sixteen and twenty—we have five of them in the village—were frightened lest they should be taken into the German army; they went to Belley to try to enlist in the French army, but naturally that could not be done. They came back with tears in their eyes and nervous. The peasants could not work—nobody did anything for a day or two. And then news commenced again; the man who bought the milk of Bilignin had met somebody who had seen the Germans and they had been quite kind—had given them gasoline for their car. They had been stuck somewhere wi
thout gasoline because, as the Germans advanced, the order had come that the gasoline should be poured away. Some did it and some did not. Belley is very law-abiding and so all the people who sold gasoline did.
The man who had the milk route which included Bilignin told them he would not come for the milk any more, nor would he pay them, but they could have three of his pigs. They had no way of getting them, so they asked me and I supplied the means of locomotion, and we brought back three pigs and somebody from Belley came out and butchered them and they gave us a beautiful big roast of pork, and with that and a ham we had bought and what there was to eat in the village we were very well fixed.
Everybody was getting more and more nervous and on Tuesday we went in to Belley; there was no armistice yet, but we thought we might get some soap and other things we needed.
We were in the biggest store in Belley, a sort of a bazaar, when all of a sudden the proprietor called out, ‘Go to the back of the shop!’ Well, naturally we didn’t, and we heard a rumbling noise and there two enemy machine-gun tanks came rushing through the street, with the German cross painted on them.
Oh my, it did make us feel most uncommonly queer. ‘Let’s go home,’ we said, and we did not do any more shopping; we went back to Bilignin.
And there we waited.
The boys between seventeen and twenty went up into the hills; they were badly frightened and excited. Their parents did not say anything. They had each taken with them their bicycles and a large loaf of bread. Naturally that did not last long and in two days they were back again. One of them, a boy named Roger, who was working for a farmer, was so frightened he ate nothing for three days and turned green with fright. He had two brothers in the French army—that was all right, but to be a German soldier! We all tried to cheer him up, but he sat in the corner and couldn’t move.
The only news we had about Belley or about anything, because the electricity and the post office were cut off, was by way of the policeman of Belley, who lives in Bilignin. He had to go back to sleep in Belley, but he always managed to get out once during the day to see his mother and give us the news—yes, the Germans were there in Belley; yes, so far they had behaved very correctly; no, nobody knew anything about the armistice.
I remember the last newspaper the postman brought to us. I went out and said, ‘It is nice to see you.’ ‘I wish,’ said he, ‘that I could bring you better news, and I do not think I will come again,’ and he did not, not for more than three weeks.
Basket and I had begun to walk again, the cows and the children began to go out again, and then we began to hear cannon.
Every day we heard the cannon; it seemed to be all around us, which, as it turned out, it was and in some strange way we all cheered up at the sound of the cannonade.
We all began to talk about hearing the cannon, we all began to try to locate the direction of the cannon; some of the anciens combattants thought it came from the Alps, others thought it came from right near by, and then one evening I smelt the brimstone, and the color of the earth in the setting sun was a very strange yellow green and there were clouds, strange clouds, the kind of clouds I had never seen before, thick yellow-green clouds rolling past the hills, and it reminded me of pictures of the Civil War, the battle of Lookout Mountain and that kind of thing—it looked like it and it smelled like it, and in a strange way it was comforting.
The policeman in his daily visit home told us that it was cannon and that it was all around us; the French had blown up the bridges of the Rhone all around us, some only about four kilometres away, and in all the places we knew so well there were machine guns and cannon and fighting and quantities of Germans; armored cars were going through Belley, and in all the villages around there were Germans and some motorcycle Germans came through our village.
And then came another bad Sunday; some of the children went in to Mass and came back with an exciting story that everybody that had any gasoline in their possession was going to be shot. Well, I had some extra gasoline besides what was in my car and I did not want to be shot. So, very nervous, I rushed off to the farmer, our neighbor, who is one of the municipal councilors of Belley, and asked what I should do. ‘Do nothing,’ he said; ‘unless they put up a notice here in Bilignin you do not need to do anything. Besides,’ said he, ‘I am going to Belley to find out all about it,’ And he came back and told us that what had happened was that Belley had gotten rid of all its gasoline and a German company had come along and they had had an accident and lost their gasoline tank, and they had asked at a garage for gasoline. Monsieur Barlet, our very gentle garage keeper, had said that he had none, and the Germans had not believed him and said they would shoot him if he did not produce it, and the mayor, who is also a gentle soul, but efficient, said he would put up a notice and have the town crier announce what was happening, and everybody who had any gasoline would bring it, and everybody in Belley did, and very soon the Germans had more than they needed and everybody went home with their gasoline and Monsieur Barlet was not shot. But he was and is our local hero, and he was quite pale for some days after and we all thanked him for not being shot, and he always carries around in his pocketbook the order that was posted that saved him from being shot.
That was absolutely the only unpleasant incident that happened in Belley, and that was on the Sunday when the Germans were very nervous; they were held up at the Rhone, and as the Rhone makes many bends, and the Chasseurs Alpins were fighting hard there, they thought they were caught in a trap.
IV
Well, then came Tuesday and Wednesday, and the rain poured and poured and the notice of the signing of the armistice was signed by the mayor of Belley and the German Colonel in command there, and posted up in Bilignin. I will never forget that day. It was about noon, and Basket and I went out for a walk and there in the pouring rain sadly were the five young boys of Bilignin leaning on their sticks with which they lead their oxen; they were in the middle of the road and desperate.
Nobody else was around except one farmer’s wife and she said to me, ‘Well, I suppose we will go on working even if we are no longer masters in our own home.’
The next day was a little better. It had stopped raíning and the terms of the armistice were broadcast; we once more had electricity and we knew our little corner was not going to be occupied territory, neither the Bugey nor Lyon, and we gave a sigh of relief. Monsieur Premilieu said to me, ‘Of course we are going to have bad days, many bad days, but it is better to bear them indirectly than directly.’ The boys cheered up and began to eat, and we went in to Belley to shop and, well, in short to begin to move about; and besides —happy moment—we could leave our lights burning at night and the windows and the shutters open.
Even now, a good month after it is finished, every night when I go out walking and see all the lights shining I know the difference, and I cannot help feeling sorry, particularly for the English, but even a little for the Germans who are there in the dark and afraid of bombardment.
Cannonading is not agreeable, but it is bearable, but bombing from above, and not very far above, is mighty unpleasant.
The soldiers and civilians are all agreed about that.
So we went in to Belley and there they were.
All the time they were here they were not spoken of as anything except they, eux.
It was impossible, but there they were, and we were seeing them.
Belley is a town of about five thousand inhabitants, a small town but important, as it is the capital of a rich country, has a hospital, a seminary, many schools, a county court, a souspréfecture, and a garrison.
There are also a good many convents, and so, although the population is not large it has a number of very large buildings and feels like a small capital. It was also just about the centre of all the recent fighting, and so the Germans had made it the headquarters for all the troops in this part of the country.
So when we went in to Belley—we are about a mile out of Belley, on a small country road—we saw them, quantit
ies of soldiers in gray uniforms, trucks, motorcycles, armored cars. We could not believe our eyes, but there they were.
It was not real, but there they were; it looked like photographs in a magazine, but there they were.
I sat in the car and waited while Alice Toklas shopped and then she sat in the car and waited while I went to see Madame Chaboux and shopped. We always stayed, one of us, in the car because of the dogs and the car—even though the Germans were very polite and very correct. That is what everybody was saying. ‘They are correct.’
It was strange sitting there watching the people up and down on the main street of Belley, like all country towns; there are always a good many people going up and down on the main street of a country town, and now added to it were these familiar and unfamiliar German soldiers, familiar because we had seen their photographs in illustrated papers all winter and unfamiliar because we never dreamed we would see them with our own eyes.
They did not look like conquerors; they were very quiet. They bought a great deal, all sugar things, cakes and candies, all silk stockings, women’s shoes, beauty products and fancy soaps, but always everlastingly what the American soldiers in the last war called ‘eats’—that is, anything sweet—and anything that looked like champagne.
They went up and down, but they were gentle, slightly sad, polite; and their voices when they spoke—they did not seem to talk much—were low, not at all resonant.
Everything about them was exactly like the photographs we had seen except themselves; they were not the least bit like we thought they would be. They admired Basket II and said to each other in German, ‘A beautiful dog.’ They were polite and considerate; they were, as the French said, correct. It was all very sad; they were sad, the French were sad, it was all sad, but not at all the way we thought it would be, not at all.
Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein Page 65