Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein

by Gertrude Stein

  The German troops are pretty well out of all this region, the trains are stopped by the French the roads defended by the French as always somewhere in their length they go through gorges and now the only Germans left in the region are the sixty odd here in the town of Culoz in which we are living, the railway was still open between here and Chambery but yesterday it was cut, and to-day the Germans killed their last three pigs and their cow so everybody thinks that they will leave too, they are getting so polite, one woman told me that a German soldier came to her to buy a chicken, she said she could not sell because her husband was not home, but he said you know German soldiers love the French, oh yes said the woman, and said he all French people like German soldiers, oh yes said the woman and then he went away, they know they are caught in a trap and cannot get away, so when they are not demanding something they are very cajoling, the French population are naturally disgusted, the French took their defeat with their heads held well up, and they thought the Germans were strong but now when they behave like that in defeat, they are disgusted. In the last war they were out of the country before they were defeated so the French have never seen them abject in defeat as they are now, and the French the few French who really admired them when they were strong now have nothing to say for them, French people do not like people who are abject in defeat, no they do not.

  As for food we are pretty well off, as alas no food goes to the big cities and the Germans are not here to take it away, and so everything that is here, remains and so we have plenty of everything except fruit, this is not a fruit country, and once or twice trucks have gone to Lyon to get fruit and now the last truck has been captured by the mountain boys and the Germans have taken the others so we have no fruit, but as we have lots of butter cheese meat fish vegetables and potatoes and now bread we cannot be said to be suffering, not much sugar but plenty of honey.

  Day before yesterday we were told that the Germans we had here were all leaving, then we were told at any rate we knew that they had had butchered their three remaining pigs and their cow and their goats. That was true, and then we were told that they were leaving and actually I did see them along the road with all their cars and a mitrailleuse set up and pointing down the road, the little boys in the villages all play at that, they make their guns out of wood and very life-like they are and they set them up on the road, I suppose some of the guns I see are what they called tommy guns in gangster stories, there seem to be quite a variety of them, anyway the hundred odd soldiers that were in the village did leave to-day leaving behind some German railroad workers and station masters. They went to say good-bye to the mayor and his wife, the mayor and his wife told me to-day, the interpreter and the captain, made some polite remarks to them and the interpreter and the captain both saying that they expected to come back to Culoz a few months after the war was over, extraordinary people they think that although they are defeated they can come back as tourists as they like, the interpreter went on to say that he supposed the war would be over by the first of September, the only thing he said necessary to do now is to kill two men. We did not know the two he meant did he mean Hitler and Mussolini, or did he mean Churchill and Roosevelt, naturally we did not ask him, in the meantime, the village was much troubled because the soldiers had told them that they were going away but that they were going to be succeeded by really bad men killers, and indeed those who had been here had been quiet and peaceful enough, and with this village on the border of the maquis land it was terribly upsetting it makes everybody feel kind of queer. Naturally enough. This enemy the new lot has not come yet but there has been a rumor that the last lot were killed before they got far, but that is very likely not so. Anyway, after the other soldiers left when I was walking up the road where they had been, I found paper covers, they had covers of German tobacco and French candles and then there was this. Half pound weight Swifts yellow American farmers cheese, distributed by Bright and Company Chicago Ill. and underneath it it said, buy war bonds and stamps regularly and then it said a natural source of vitamins and riboflavin, now what that is naturally we do not know, it seems to have come on since we knew about what they needed to have in America, but where oh where did the German army get this cheese, and it is a far cry to have them leave it here in our garden, I suppose they stole it from Red Cross supplies, what else well anyway.

  And now it is coming on to the end of July and things are very mixed up, just at present there are no Germans in Culoz except a few at the station but they say there are a thousand of them just across the river, are they, we do not know but everybody says so and it is a little puzzling just a little, and in the meantime the maquis are moving around the country requisitioning cars bicycles and trucks and between the Germans and the maquis everybody is scared, over at Belley they have been carrying on very livelily there are no Germans there but there are real and false maquis and everybody is frightened, quit a bit, and of course what is the worst is that the maquis come into a village have a clash with the Germans then go back to their mountains and the Germans burn and kill the village and so everybody is frightened when they see the maquis and they are frightened when they see the Germans, in the back country just now everybody is frightened, and with cause, they are no longer frightened of bombardments, because as no trains go there is no use in bombarding, there is no doubt about it, there is always plenty to scare one, to scare every one. In the meantime the mayor is trying to find flour for bread, but naturally the trucks that are to bring it never get here, that is natural enough and in the meantime everybody in the country is ready to sell you flour, it is very confusing, very.

  And just now the banker has told us that the department of the Ain that is ours and the two Savoys are going to be almost at once evacuated by the Germans, and he usually knows, in fact now that the communications are cut here to Italy to Lyon to the north and to Grenoble there really does not seem any point in keeping a lot of German troops here when they seem to need them so badly elsewhere, except of course it will give a chance for the French army of the interior to organise itself. Well we must be patient. So we all tell each other.

  Our two chickens are laying two eggs a day, which is a pleasure to all concerned, the two baby chickens particularly the cock is growing apace, he is weighed every day and the cook says he is destined for the first dinner party of the first American general who comes this way. To-day I took a long walk and going through a village a woman asked me to come in as she wanted to ask me a question. When I got in she showed me a package, she said her husband had just found it in a field what was it. It was a package of malted milk tablets and I told her and she said is it good and I said yes for children have you some and she said yes she had two, well I said eat one yourself and if it is good give it to them it will do them good, I suggested that she try if first, because I thought it might be something bad that the Germans had put out to discourage the people with gifts from America, but she said, you know so many strange things happen now, yes I will try it. It was strange I walked for several hours over all the roads where one always used to meet Germans and there were none, none at all, not one, they are across the river and just now ten o’clock in the evening we and the dog Basket II jumped because there were two big explosions probably blowing up more bridges. There is another funny thing. The Germans are not paying any more. They used to hire men in town to watch the railroad cars, the empties and they used to pay the men for this, and now the last few months they have not paid, they do not pay any more, they used to be very regular about paying, for lodgings for breakages for everything and now they do not. Is it that they want to keep what French money they have, the German authorities, is it that the French government is not paying them any more, or is it that they know now that they are not going to continue to possess France and so why pay any one since they are going away.

  It is different, last night, we noticed it the most, we kept our shutters open as long as we liked and then later I went out with Basket and I called him all these days I could not go out
in the garden after ten at night and I could not call Basket because naturally one did not want to attract attention to oneself, and then later about at midnight I heard a man going down the street whistling, what a sense of freedom to hear some one at midnight go down the street whistling. It is a weight off, the weight is not all off because they are still there across the river and they might come back the Germans might come back but with all the allied victories going on it is not very likely, no not very likely, about eleven o’clock last night there was a loud explosion and this afternoon there was cannonading, all across the river, where there still are a couple of hundred Germans.

  To-day the banker from Belley who comes here once a week to do business gave me a copy of a photograph of the monument for the soldiers fallen in 1914–1918 the flags of America and England were made by the young girls of the town and on the 14th of July 1944 they decorated it and the people made a pilgrimage to it all day long and in spite of Germans and police it stayed there till noon.

  Everybody is much excited now what between Germans and maquis, or maquisans as they call what is known as the false maquis. There is naturally a certain amount of lawlessness there are bands who steal, under the name of maquis and now the forces of the interior that is the regular maquis are beginning to police the country in order to keep order but even they requisition what they need, cars, bicycles, motor bicycles, tires, and there are of course exaggerated stories, to be sure anybody connected with the militia fares badly and the girls who mixed up with the Germans fare badly, as badly as is told this we do not know, and then the German soldiers are escaping from the discipline of the army and they come along to get bread and provision to which they are entitled. but as the mayor says as each lot point a tommy gun at you you naturally give them what they want, in the meantime every day the airplanes come not to bombard but to provision the forces of the interior and we are all expecting a considerable battle now in this region, they say to take the airpark at Amberieu. People turn up from Paris who have bicycled down, they say the morale is good but food completely lacking, if they cannot find a bicycle they walk but French people have to move around they just cannot stay put, the roads are always full of every kind of progression.

  As I was walking along this afternoon I talked to an old man and he said there were a lot of airplanes this afternoon and they were all American taking material to the maquis, and they tell us to stay in the houses but not at all we were all out with spy glasses looking for the stars and stripes, yes said he reflectively leaning on his farming implement and I leaning on my cane, yes he said, we depend on America to pick us up out of our troubles, we have always been friends we helped them when they needed us and they helped us when we needed them, the English are all right but it is America that we count on to take care of us to see we keep our colonies, to be sure they will want naval stations and of course we will be pleased to have them have them. The only thing that worries us is that our towns which have been bombarded will they help us to build them up, there is Chambery it was a nice town and the people are such good republicans, yes said I and such ardent patriots, yes he said, we always admire them the Savoyards are like that and Chambery was their capital and now it is destroyed or at least a good part of it, they should have hit the station but not the town, I know I said but there are the unfortunate accidents of war, I know he said but he said the Americans should rebuild Chambery, and say they do and in a year or two it would be rebuilt by them and then when it is all ready and Mr. Roosevelt would be still living he would come over to see it and that would be nice. Perhaps he will I said and then we each went on our way.

  To-day we were over in Belley the third of August, nineteen forty-four, and I looked anxiously to see a maquis. We still have Germans here so up to now we have had no maquis. But Belley which is maquis headquarters was unfortunately empty they had gone away to fight and I only saw one at a distance in a nice khaki suit, that is shirt and trousers, with a red cord over his shoulders so we came home satisfied we had seen a maquis, in Belley they asked us with some astonishment and do you still have Germans, we still have forty odd who are railroad men and guard the station but we were very apologetic about them, we are here in Culoz the only ones in the region who still have Germans, so naturally we are apologetic, and add they are railway workers who have nothing to do they are not soldiers. Things do happen quickly, three months ago Belley was a garrison for thousands of German soldiers and now there are none and the people of Belley talk as if they never had had any as if they only had had maquis, and we in Culoz still have them which is a disgrace.

  They are funny the Germans, now when the Americans are chasing across Brittany and there is no air defence, they are flying airplanes over this back water here and bombing little villages, in an attempt to stop the maquis from receiving supplies from the parachutists but of course they do not hit either supplies or maquis only the poor little village, that has nothing to do with it, but why should they not use those airplanes where they certainly seem to need them more. I suppose it is because when the orders were given it was different and now communications being so interrupted they were not able to get new orders. Our Germans here are leaving a few at a time, now there are less than a hundred in the whole region, but the airplanes go over our heads and there is a sound of distant guns or blowing up of communications any day and every day and soon very soon they will all have gone away. And now this is a spy story, there is no answer to it, but it is a spy story.

  When we had the couple of hundred Germans here, there was with them an interpreter a tall dark man who wore eye-glasses. One day he came here to arrange to have the German soldiers come here when there was an alerte. I was not here and he had a long conversation with Alice Toklas. He talked very good French without any definite accent. He said that as the lower gate was closed he had entered as a brigand over the wall, and could we give him a key to the gate. Alice Toklas said the mairie had one he could get it there, no he said he wanted one to have in his own pocket so she gave him one, and after a little gay conversation he went away. He never came back. We used to see him around the town but the soldiers never came here when there was an alerte and we never had the key back. When I came home Alice Toklas told me about the conversation and said she was puzzled, he was not like a German neither his manners, nor his French nor his looks, later on we were told in the village that he used to keep a hotel in Paris and that his wife was still there keeping it and that is the reason he spoke French so well even though he was only a simple soldier.

  From time to time the mayor’s wife mentioned him as asking for this or asking for that for the Germans and when German troops passed through the town they never had anything to do with those who were here permanently. Mrs. Mayor said that he was always polite and helpful the interpreter and did what he could to make everybody comfortable, and that he had allowed a taxi to help get some friends of theirs to their home, these friends had come down from Normandy just after the beginning of the fighting there. And then the Germans here left and the interpreter and the captain came to say good-bye to the mayor and his wife and the captain who could not talk much French just said a few words politely and the interpreter said, after all the war is going to be over soon it will only mean killing two men and then it is finished, and said he three months after the war I will come back here to call on you.

  Then they went away and a few days after Madame the mayoress told me this story, that was only yesterday.

  She said what was your impression of the interpreter and I told her what Alice Toklas said about him that he was not very German and seemed a gentleman which was strange as he was a common soldier. Yes she said it is strange he was a common soldier, and he took his turn at guard like any of them, I do not know whether he slept and ate with them but otherwise he acted like a common soldier, excepting when he was with the captain and then it was very evident that it was the interpreter who was in command, he did not go when he was sent for by the captain until it suited him and anyway th
ere were thousands of little signs that showed that he was the superior in rank. I told you she said about how he arranged for a taxi for our friends who came from Normandy but I never told you what happened. I was with the husband and wife and children and mother at the mairie waiting for my husband to come in and he came with the interpreter and the interpreter hesitated a moment and then came in, ah said my friend I am not mistaken we have met in Normandy, oh yes said the interpreter and you were Doctor Fisch and were in command, oh yes said the interpreter and said my friend it was I who succeeded in arranging about your having chocolate, from the chocolate factory there, oh yes said the interpreter politely and there the conversation ended, and the interpreter went and got a taxi for them and I have never seen them again.