The Fires of Autumn

by Irene Nemirovsky

  ‘Imbecile! Not another word!’ his father shouted angrily.

  ‘Papa, Mama, I’m telling you: I’ve made my decision and there’s no turning back.’

  ‘But you’re only seventeen,’ groaned Blanche.

  ‘I’ll be eighteen in three days.’

  ‘But you’re only a child!’

  ‘That’s what the enemy will think,’ replied Bernard, and he thought: ‘That was a good thing to say!’

  Then Adolphe Brun intervened. He banged his fist on the table with one hand while furiously twirling his left moustache with the other.

  ‘You all make me laugh, the lot of you! You know nothing about politics. You’d think you were a bunch of village idiots! I’m an old Parisian; I can’t be fooled. Your war will fizzle out! I’m telling you, I am. Much Ado About Nothing. All that pointless sabre rattling, and in the end, the diplomats will come to an agreement and everyone will go back home. And why? Because that’s the way it’s always been! Yes, I know, there was the Hundred Years War and Napoleon, but all that is history! These days, everything gets worked out in the end. Songs will be written about it, a satirical revue at the end of the year and that will be that! You know that they can’t pull the wool over my eyes,’ he said again, trying to put a crafty expression on his honest face he believed was befitting a true Parisian born and bred. He winked at everyone several times:

  ‘Exactly one year from now, we’ll talk about your war again,’ he concluded, ‘and we’ll have a good laugh.’

  Everyone was silent.

  ‘And we’ll have a good laugh,’ he said again.

  At that very moment, they heard the sound of trains passing by. Sharp, shrill whistles rang out as the carriages seemed to surge out of the station, rumbling, thundering, with the hurried, raucous roar of a herd of furious charging beasts. Everyone listened; they had never heard so many trains going so fast.

  ‘Those are the military convoys, of course, aren’t they?’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely! They must have started moving the troops yesterday.’

  ‘We’ve heard them roaring by for the past three nights,’ said Thérèse.

  Blanche Jacquelain burst into tears while Adolphe Brun turned very pale and simply kept saying:

  ‘I’m telling you we’ll soon be having a good laugh about it, believe you me.’

  4

  Bernard managed to witness one more event with the innocent eyes of a non-combatant: the wedding of Martial and Thérèse.

  The marriage was held at the beginning of 1915. ‘The groom is returning from the front,’ Adolphe Brun had told his friends when he invited them to the wedding reception. ‘He’ll be in Paris for twenty-four hours; he’ll tell us what’s happening.’

  For at the time, soldiers were greeted like ambassadors of a foreign country who carried fearful secrets, secrets that were only kept from their nearest and dearest by the demands of discipline. Every single one of them, from the most humble foot soldier to a battalion’s medical doctor, like Martial, ‘knew things’, or so the civilians thought. They had knowledge of what the great military leaders were plotting, the date of the next offensive and the mysterious plans of the enemy.

  ‘Well, when is it going to happen? When?’ Madame Humbert eagerly asked Doctor Brun as soon as she saw him. What she meant was ‘The Victory. When will we claim Victory?’ And when Martial did not reply, she cheerfully wagged her finger at him. ‘He’s so secretive; he doesn’t want to tell us a thing,’ she said, simpering, then becoming serious again:

  ‘Well, can you explain what they’re doing, why we aren’t advancing?’

  Martial had not remained behind in his fine hospital train for long, a train that could hold up to eight beds per carriage and one hundred and twenty-eight wounded men in total, or so the newspapers proudly reported. Those trains were used for show, to comfort the civilian population and for the edification of the neutral nations. The wounded soldiers were transported in freight trains and cattle wagons, bleeding, in terrible pain, dying all along the small regional branch lines. After the first days, the really awful days, Martial had been allowed to transfer to a first-aid post on the front line. ‘He’s a hero, no one can doubt that,’ thought Bernard as he studied him with jealous admiration, for he was still in the depot: he was just a child; he wore the uniform of the army, of course, but the military medals, the honourable injuries were for the others, he told himself, looking at Raymond Détang’s arm in its sling. Détang, on convalescent leave, had come to the wedding and was now having dinner at the Bruns’ house, in their little dining room crammed full of furniture. It was raining; the wood-burning stove gave off a gentle, somewhat stifling heat. They had toasted the newlyweds, the Allies and Victory. Bernard had still not lost his enthusiasm for drinking as much as he wanted, without risking being told off by his father and mother. He was sitting between the two soldiers. Martial, thin, sunburnt, with sunken cheeks and a pinched nose, pulled at his black beard. Raymond Détang was plump and had a healthy, glowing complexion; he had shaved off his beard and was getting many flattering compliments from the ladies. Because of his appearance, the way he spoke, his gentlemanly demeanour which he used to flatter and reassure civilians (‘Don’t you worry, now; they’re done for, listen to what I’m saying, it’s just a matter of months’), because of his war stories and his healthy chubbiness, Raymond Détang fitted the ideal of a soldier as imagined by civilians in their hearts far better than the silent Martial.

  ‘That’s it, all right,’ said Adolphe Brun as he listened and drank his champagne, deep in thought. ‘That’s it, all right. They always keep a good sense of humour. I heard about one soldier who was hit by a shell and had both his legs blown off. “That’s a bit of luck,” he said. “Now I won’t have to wash my feet any more!” Then he died. Now that’s a real French soldier …’

  ‘Monsieur Détang, is it true they’ve managed to make the trenches more or less comfortable?’ asked Madame Jacquelain.

  Meanwhile, Bernard, who had achieved an extraordinary state of lucidity thanks to the champagne, but the kind of lucidity that emerged in bursts and was then suddenly hidden by a heavy curtain or a wall of dense fog, this young Bernard found a strange resemblance between these two men (Martial and Détang), as if they were related. He took a long time trying to understand the nature of this similarity. ‘They look feverish,’ he thought in the end as he looked into their deep-set eyes. Yes … even Raymond Détang’s eyes shone with a worrying glimmer. Both these men sat stiff and straight, rather too straight, as if they were standing to attention, as if, in spite of their muscles, their nerves were on edge, lying in wait, on the alert. ‘They aren’t really like us,’ thought Bernard as he recalled the soldiers he’d seen when they’d returned from the front. They were different, unusual. The battlefield had dragged men down, crushed them, and war did not willingly return the ones who had not yet been devoured. People talked about the regular leaves they would soon be granted, but for the moment, people turned around in the street whenever one of these fabulous heroes walked by, looking at them with curiosity, respect, love. They had cheated death, these ‘poilus’, the ‘hairy men’ as people called the ordinary soldiers hesitantly, apologising for using such a vulgar expression (the women preferred to call them ‘pioupious’, ‘the young Tommies’). ‘And in a few days,’ thought Bernard, ‘I’ll be just like them. There will be an immeasurable distance between me and my parents, my friends. Martial … Détang … To think that Détang always seemed a downright idiot to me, and Martial a ridiculous smug fool. But they’ve done so many things; they’ve seen so much. They’ve killed other men. Détang says he uses his bayonet, that he skewers them like chickens. As for Martial, naturally, that isn’t his job, he dresses the soldiers’ wounds while they’re under attack, with shells falling all around him … And to think that he could have stayed behind the lines but didn’t so he could serve his country better, that he put off his wedding, even though he really wanted it
…’ Not knowing how he could show what he felt, Bernard shyly touched Thérèse’s arm.

  ‘Will you think of me once in a while, when I’m gone?’ he asked.

  And immediately he berated himself: it was a silly thing to say, whiny, unworthy of a warrior. But he suddenly felt his heart fill with tenderness. Everything around him, these familiar faces, the little dining room that was so warm and peaceful, the table on which he and Thérèse had played card games and backgammon, everything, the little pitcher with the clicking spout he had found so funny when he was little, right down to the pink glass salt cellar sitting in front of him, everything seemed pleasant, friendly and full of precious, deep significance. ‘This might really be the last time that I’m warm, that I feel good, that I want for nothing,’ he thought. ‘I might be killed as soon as I get over there. Brrr … it feels really strange to think about that …’

  A cold little chill ran across his shoulders, so sharply and suddenly that he turned his head, as if someone had breathed on his back:

  ‘If I am killed, at least I will have experienced this, which is better than anything in the world: Papa, Mama, our family and friends. I will never have travelled or been in love …“I am prepared to die, O Goddess, but not before having known love …”.* Martial … One night with the woman you love, your wife … Thérèse … No, I mustn’t let myself think such thoughts. I must respect Thérèse. It isn’t possible that I could be killed as soon as I get over there, is it? But then again, if that does happen, what glory! Everyone will love me, feel sorry for me. I will remain alive in people’s memory, I will remain alive as a hero. Yes, as I fall to my death on that far-off battlefield, facing the enemy, I will feel that great surge of love upon me. It will console me, rock me gently to sleep. What is that thing we call Glory? It is to be loved by as many people as possible … Not just my parents and my friends, but even by strangers. And I, too, I will be happy to have died for them. For there’s no doubt about it, if there were no daring fellows like me to defend you, you’d be shaking in your boots, ladies,’ he concluded, imagining he was speaking to all the women whom he found lovable, sweet and kind.

  ‘They’ll think about me. They’ll worry about me … They’ll send me packages, letters, nice things to eat. And if I come back … with a medal for valour … we’ll celebrate it here. Everyone will drink a toast to me. Then I’ll be able to say, just like Détang: “I held the enemy back with my sharp bayonet. Strike! I pinned him to a wall like a butterfly.” Yes, but what if it’s the enemy who … Humph! I’m not going to think about that. One thing at a time. For now, I’m happy,’ he told himself, and had some more to drink. He settled back in his chair like an old veteran, legs apart and hands in his pockets. It wasn’t very polite, but too bad! It was the audacity of the hero: they just had to put up with it. Détang offered him a cigar; he lit it while looking furtively at his mother. Would she finally understand that he was now a man, that you don’t forbid a man from having a cigar, especially the night before he’s heading for battle? But no! She would not let it go: she clasped her hands together and spoke to him as if he were a child she’d caught playing with matches:

  ‘Oh, Bernard!’

  ‘What do you mean, oh, Bernard!’ he thought. ‘These women are unbelievable, honestly!’

  ‘Won’t that be bad for you, my dear?’

  ‘Of course not, Mama, not at all,’ he replied with affectionate indulgence. He even added: ‘I’m used to it, you know,’ even though it was the first cigar he’d ever had in his life. He took a long puff of it with a serious expression on his face.

  Thérèse had no white dress, no bouquet of lilies, no crown of orange blossom. She was a war bride so wore a modest grey suit and a black hat.

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ thought Martial, ‘twenty-four hours and six have already gone by. One day and one night! That’s all? My God, is that all? And what if I don’t come back? To think that we might have been born fifty years ago … or twenty-five years from now, when there would be no war … Ah, we haven’t been lucky! Détang has assured me that I could have been sent to the rear if I’d used my connections. But that would not have been honest. There are so few men in the first-aid post at the front that students and veterans from the Territorial Army are given the most terrifying responsibilities. It’s true that I could also be useful elsewhere and … No! No! That’s cheating! You don’t compromise, you don’t make a deal when it comes to your duty. You don’t go into things half-heartedly. You sacrifice everything, your life, your work, everything you love.’

  He slowly rubbed his closed eyes, picturing once more the cellar, half under water, where he tended the wounded. That was home to him. For a long time he would know no other. He smiled as he recalled the 14th July, the day when he stood on the staircase at the Rue Monge and planned his future. It was sad and funny to think about that …‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘this filthy war.’

  Adolphe Brun looked at him, outraged. Yes, he had forgotten the rules of the game. Here, among civilians, it was not acceptable to speak ill of the war. It had to be described as wonderful, savage, but inspiring. My God, those things were true, of course. But as a doctor, he mostly saw the other face of war, a face with a deadly grimace. How did young Bernard Jacquelain see it? Eighteen years old with a broad chest, strong muscles, sharp reflexes, piercing eyes … Perfect prey for the war! He felt sorry for him, but his pity was the cold, clear-eyed pity of a doctor. During an operation, the arms and legs are sacrificed to save the rest of the body; men are snatched up and thrown into the fire, him along with many others, so that the country may survive … He accepted this. It made him sad, but he accepted it. ‘You can’t cheat,’ he said to himself once more.

  All the while, he was growing more and more desperately impatient; he looked at the time and wondered when he could politely leave with his wife. A small gold clock sat opposite him on the mantelpiece; it ticked away very quickly, with the sound of a rodent gnawing away at a piece of furniture. Nearly three o’clock … At three o’clock he would leave the Bruns; he would walk down the staircase, Thérèse on his arm; they would head for a little hotel he knew in Versailles where they would spend their wedding night. And the next day, while she was still asleep (his wife … her hair falling over her neck, her shoulders, just as it did when she was a child, her fine, sweet-smelling hair … that cloud of spun gold …) while she was still asleep, he would very quietly leave, without saying goodbye, without even kissing her, because his heart would break if he had to give her one last kiss and see her eyes fill with tears.

  Finally the meal was over. Madame Brun carried the empty cake dish into the kitchen, the one that had held her masterpiece, her triumph, a specialty of Savoie filled with cherry cream. Not a crumb was left. She had been so overcome with emotion by making this dessert that she had hardly noticed anything else, the wedding, or that Thérèse had left … But nothing would change, because tomorrow, with Martial back at the front, Thérèse would return to the room she had before she was married and her life would carry on as if nothing had happened. The elderly Madame Brun was delighted at this thought with the sweet childlike cynicism of the elderly.

  In the dining room, the men had fallen silent, one after the other. Even Adolphe Brun had not been able to take part in the women’s chatter for long; Madame Humbert’s loud, strident voice could be heard above everyone else’s, like the big drum in an orchestra, and during certain patriotic tirades, she sounded like a shrill, heartbreaking fife, while Renée’s voice was a flute alongside hers and Madame Jacquelain sighed like a mandolin. Thérèse was visibly trying to be cheerful, talking and laughing; it was the moment when she began to learn how to behave like a soldier’s wife, no crying, no lamenting in public, rarely talking about herself and never about the one who was ‘over there’, the woman who continues waiting for him when everyone else has stopped waiting, the one who remembers when everyone else has forgotten, the one who hopes against all hope.

  The women were talking about the w
ar.

  They descended from such lofty conversation to discuss the theatre; the Parisian theatres had reopened in December. Madame Jacquelain exclaimed that it was sacrilege: ‘How can people go out in the evening when our dear little soldiers are so miserable? I wouldn’t dare do that, not me …’

  Madame Humbert did not agree:

  ‘But come now, my dear, it all depends on the performance. At the Comédie Française they’ve been showing Horace. Marthe Chenal sang the Marseillaise at the Opera House. Well, what do you want? We need things like that to keep our spirits up. Civilians need that.’

  ‘We’re young,’ said Renée, ‘we need to take our minds off things.’

  She looked at Détang and smiled brightly, provocatively. She and her mother had always dreamed of finding her a rich husband. But the war was wreaking terrible havoc with the men. ‘Soon, it won’t be a question of choice. It will be like it is at the butcher’s: since August, you had to take whatever you could get,’ Madame Humbert had said with a disillusioned sigh, as she sewed her hats beneath the lamplight every evening. ‘Soon a lad like Détang, with no fortune and no prospects, a nobody, will seem like a good bargain, just as long as the war agrees to send him home with at least one arm or leg.’

  ‘He’s not stupid,’ Renée would say to her mother, ‘he’s only as enthusiastic as necessary. It’s very odd: he never gets carried away. He gets everyone else to speak. He does talk a lot but he never actually says anything. He’s got a true Southern personality. He told me that if he makes it through this war he wants to go into politics, and it’s not a bad idea for him. He could be successful.’

  ‘Yes,’ her mother replied, ‘but you must be very careful and not give in to him at all. He’s the kind of man who only gets married as a last resort. I know the type: your father was just the same.’