Perhaps the next day, or that evening, the station at Auxerre would be different. My favorite memory, seeing that we had enough time, is of walking about outside with Anna. It seemed so wonderful to be in a real square, walking on real pavingstones, among people who weren’t worried yet about planes.
We saw groups of people slowly making their way home from church, and we went into the little blue-painted bar where I drank a lemonade while Anna, after a furtive glance, ordered an Italian aperitif.
It was the first station since we had left which we had seen from the outside, with its big clock and its frosted-glass porch, the shadowy entrance hall contrasting with the sunny square and the multicolored magazines all around the kiosk.
“Where do you come from, you two?”
“Fumay.”
“I thought that was a Belgian train.”
“There are Belgian carriages and French carriages.”
“Last night we had some Dutch people. It seems they’re being taken to Toulouse. What about you?”
“We don’t know.”
The waiter raised his head and looked at me incredulously. It was only later that I understood his reaction.
“What, you don’t know? You mean you just let them trundle you around wherever they like?”
Some towns had entered the war, while others hadn’t as yet. Because that was so, we had seen from the train quiet villages where everyone was going about their business and little towns invaded by convoys.
It didn’t depend entirely on how close the front was. Indeed, was there such a thing as a front?
At Bourges, for instance, in the middle of the afternoon, we found a reception service as in the north, a platform swarming with families waiting among suitcases and bundles.
They were Belgians again. I wondered how they could have arrived before us. They must have traveled along another line, not as busy as ours, but they had had a similar experience, only more serious, near the frontier.
Several planes had machine-gunned them. Everybody had got out—men, women, and children—to lie down in the ditch. The Germans had returned to the attack twice, putting the engine out of action and killing or wounding a dozen people.
We were forbidden to leave the train so that we shouldn’t get mixed up, but conversations started with the people on the platform while we were being given something to eat and drink.
At Auxerre I had bought a couple of packed meals. We took the sandwiches all the same and put them aside, for we were becoming cautious.
The Belgians on the platform were dazed and gloomy. They had walked for two hours on the pebbles and sleepers along the track before reaching a station, carrying what they could, but leaving most of their things behind.
As usual, the man with the pipe was the best informed of us all, first because of his strategic position near the door, and then because he was not afraid of asking questions.
“You see that blonde over there in a dress with blue dots? She carried her dead child all the way to the station. It seems it was a very small place. Everybody came to see them and she gave the baby to the mayor, who’s a farmer by trade, to be buried.”
She was eating absent-mindedly, with a vacant look in her eyes, sitting on a brown suitcase tied up with ropes.
“A train went to pick them up and left the dead and wounded at a bigger station, they don’t know which. Here, they made them get off their train because they needed the carriages, and they’ve been waiting since eight o’clock this morning.”
They, too, looked at us enviously, without understanding what was happening to them. A pretty, fresh-faced nurse, without a single mark on her starched uniform, was feeding a baby from a bottle while the mother was hunting through her luggage for some clean diapers.
We didn’t see their train come in, so I don’t know when they managed to leave, or where they were taken in the end. It’s true that I didn’t know where my wife and daughter were either.
I tried to find out, and asked the woman who seemed to be in charge of the reception service. She answered calmly:
“Don’t worry. Everything has been provided for. There will be lists printed.”
“Where shall I be able to see these lists?”
“At the reception center you’re going to. You’re Belgian, aren’t you?”
“No. I’m from Fumay.”
“Then what are you doing on a Belgian train?”
I heard that question ten, twenty times. People came close to resenting our presence on the train. Our three wretched cars, as the result of heaven knows what mistake, weren’t where they ought to have been, and we narrowly missed getting the blame.
“Where are they sending the Belgians?”
“As a general rule, to Gironde and the Charente departments.”
“Is this train going there?”
Like the stationmaster at Auxerre, she preferred to answer with a vague gesture.
Contrary to what you might imagine, I thought of Jeanne and my daughter without overmuch anxiety, indeed with a certain serenity.
Once, my heart had missed a beat, when I had heard about the train which had been machine-gunned and the dead child which its mother had been obliged to leave at a little station.
Then I had told myself that that had happened in the north, that Jeanne’s train had been ahead of ours and had therefore crossed the danger zone before us.
I loved my wife. She was just as I had wanted her and had brought me exactly what I expected from my partner in life. I had no complaints to make of her. I wasn’t looking for any either, and that was why I resented Leroy’s ambiguous smile so keenly.
Jeanne had nothing to do with what was happening now, any more than the ten o’clock mass, for instance, my sister-in-law’s confectionery business, or the labeled radios on the shelves in my workshop.
I sometimes say “we” when talking of the people in our train because, on certain points, I know that our reactions were the same. But on this point I speak for myself, although I am convinced that I wasn’t the only one in my position.
A break had occurred. That didn’t mean that the past had ceased to exist, still less that I repudiated my family and had stopped loving them.
It was just that, for an indeterminate period, I was living on another level, where the values had nothing in common with those of my previous existence.
I might say that I was living on two levels at once, but that for the moment the one which counted was the new one, represented by our car with its smell of the stables, by faces I hadn’t known a few days before, by the baskets of sandwiches carried by the young ladies with the arm bands, and by Anna.
I am convinced that she understood me. She no longer tried to cheer me up by telling me, for instance, that my wife and daughter were in no danger and that I would soon find them again.
Something she had said that morning came back to me.
“You’re a cool one.”
She took me for a strong-minded character, and I suspect that that is why she attached herself to me. At that time I knew nothing of her life, apart from the reference she had made to the Namur prison, and I know little more now. It is obvious that she had no ties, nothing solid to lean on.
But, in fact, wasn’t she the stronger of the two of us?
At the Blois station, unless I am mistaken, where another reception service was waiting for us, she was the first to ask:
“There hasn’t been a train here from Fumay, has there?”
“Where’s Fumay?”
“In the Ardennes, near the Belgian frontier.”
“Oh, we’ve had so many Belgians going through!”
On the roads, too, we could now see Belgian cars following one another bumper to bumper, in two lines, so that jams occurred everywhere. There were also some French cars, but far fewer, mainly from the northern departments.
I didn’t know the Loire, which was sparkling in the sunshine, and we caught sight of two or three historic chateaux which were familiar to me from pictu
re postcards.
“Have you been here before?” I asked Anna.
She hesitated before answering “yes” and squeezing the tips of my fingers. Did she guess that she was hurting me a little, that I would have preferred her not to have a past?
It was absurd. But hadn’t everything become absurd and wasn’t this what I had been looking for?
The horse dealer was asleep. Fat Julie had drunk too much and was holding her bosom in both hands, looking at the door with the expression of somebody who expects to be sick any minute.
There were bottles and scraps of food all over the straw, and the fifteen-year-old boy had found a couple of army blankets somewhere.
Everybody had his special place, his corner which he was sure of finding again after getting down onto the platform when we were allowed to leave the train.
It seemed to me that there were fewer of us than at the beginning of our journey, that four or five people were missing, but, not having counted them, I couldn’t be sure, except about the little girl whom the nuns, seeing her with us, had taken off to their carriage as if we were devils.
At Tours, that evening, we were given big bowls of soup, with pieces of boiled beef and some bread. Night was beginning to fall. I was impatient to rediscover our intimacy of the previous night. I must have shown it, for Anna looked at me with a certain tenderness.
The latest news was that we were being taken to Nantes, where our final destination would be decided on.
Wrapping himself up in a blanket, somebody called out:
“Good night, everybody!”
A few cigarettes were still glowing, and I waited, motionless, my eyes fixed on the signals which I kept confusing with the stars.
Jeff was still asleep. All the same there were some furtive movements near Julie until her voice suddenly broke the silence:
“No, boys! Tonight I want a bit of shut-eye. You’d better get that into your heads.”
Anna laughed in my ear and we waited another half hour.
5
ONE OF THE OLD MEN FROM THE INFIRMARY died during the night. I don’t know which, for he was taken off at Nantes in the morning, his face covered with a towel. The Belgian consul was waiting on the platform and the priest went into the stationmaster’s office with him for the formalities.
The reception service here was bigger than before, not only in the number of ladies with arm bands, but because there seemed to be some people concerned with organizing the movements of refugees.
I hoped that I was at last going to see the sea, for the first time in my life. I gathered that it was a long way off, that we were in an estuary, but I caught sight of some ships’ masts and funnels, I heard some hooters, and near to us a whole trainful of bluejackets alighted: they lined up on the platform and marched out of the station.
The weather was as unbelievably glorious as it had been on the previous days, and we were able to wash and have breakfast before leaving.
I had a moment’s anxiety when an assistant stationmaster started talking to somebody who looked like an official, pointing to our three shabby cars, as if there were some question of uncoupling them.
It was becoming increasingly obvious that, incorporated in the Belgian train through no fault of ours, we presented a problem, but finally we were allowed to go.
Our biggest surprise was fat Julie. A few moments before the whistle blew, she appeared on the platform, radiant, fresh-complexioned, wearing a floral cotton dress without a single crease in it.
“What do you think Julie’s been doing, boys, while you’ve been wallowing in the straw? She’s been and had a bath, a real hot bath, in the hotel opposite. And on top of that she’s managed to buy herself a dress on the way!”
We were traveling down toward the Vendée, where, an hour later, I caught a glimpse of the sea in the distance. Deeply stirred, I reached for Anna’s hand. I had seen the sea at the movies and in colored photos, but I hadn’t imagined that it was so bright or so huge and insubstantial.
The water was the same color as the sky, and, since it was reflecting the light, since the sun was both up above and down below, there was no longer any limit to anything and the word “infinite” sprang to my mind.
Anna understood that it was a new experience for me. She smiled. We were both of us lighthearted. The whole car was gay all day.
We now knew more or less what was waiting for us, for the consul had visited the first carriages to cheer up his fellow countrymen, and the man with the pipe, always on the watch, had brought us the news.
“It seems that the Belgians’ destination is La Rochelle. That’s their marshaling yard, so to speak. They’ve set up a sort of camp there with huts, beds, and everything.”
“And what about us? Seeing that we aren’t Belgians?”
“Oh, we’ll manage.”
We were moving slowly and I kept reading place names which reminded me of books I had read: Pornic, Saint-Jean-de-Monts, Croix-de-Vie …
We caught sight of the Île d’Yeu, which, in the dazzling sunlight, you might have taken for a cloud stretched out on a level with the water.
For hours our train seemed to be taking the longest route, as if we were on an excursion, going off on side tracks to stop in the open country and then coming back again.
We were no longer afraid of getting off and jumping on again, for we knew that the engineer would wait for us.
I realized why we were following such a circuitous route, and also perhaps why we had taken such a long time coming from the Ardennes.
The regular trains, with normal passengers who paid for their tickets, were still running, and on the main lines there was also a continual traffic of troop trains and munitions trains which had priority over the rest.
In nearly every station, as well as the ordinary staff, we started seeing an officer giving orders.
As we belonged to none of these categories, we kept being shunted into a siding to make room.
Once I overheard a telephone conversation in a pretty station red with geraniums, where a dog was stretched out across the doorway of the stationmaster’s office. The stationmaster, who was feeling hot, had pushed his cap back and was toying with his flag, which was lying on the desk.
“Is that you, Dambois?”
Another stationmaster explained to me that this wasn’t an ordinary telephone. If I remember rightly, it is called the block telephone and you can only speak to and hear the nearest station on it. That is how notice of a train’s approach is given.
“How are things with you?”
There were some hens behind some chicken wire, just like at home, and a well-kept garden. The stationmaster’s wife was doing the rooms upstairs and came to the window now and then to shake her duster.
“I’ve got the 237 here … I can’t keep them much longer, because I’m expecting the 161 … Is your siding free? … Is Hortense’s café open? … Tell her she’s going to have a crowd of customers … Right! … Thanks … I’ll send it on to you …”
The result was that we spent three hours in a tiny station next to an inn painted pink. The tables were taken by storm. Everybody drank. Everybody ate. Anna and I stayed outside, under a pine tree, and at times we felt embarrassed at having nothing to say to each other.
If I had to describe the place, I could only talk of the patches of sunshine and shadow, of the pink daylight, of the green vines and currant bushes, of my feeling of torpor and animal well-being, and I wonder whether, that particular day, I didn’t get as close as possible to perfect happiness.
Smells existed as they had in my childhood, the quivering of the air, the imperceptible noises of life. I think I have said this before, but as I am not writing all at one go but scribbling a few lines here, a page or two there, in secret, on the sly, I am bound to repeat myself.
When I began my story, I was tempted to start with a foreword, for sentimental rather than practical reasons. You see, at the sanatorium the library consisted mainly of books dating back before 1900, and
it was the fashion for authors in the last century to write a foreword, an introduction, or a preface.
The paper in those books, yellow and speckled with brown spots, was thicker and shinier than in present-day books, and they had a pleasant smell which, for me, has clung to the characters in the novels. The black cloth of the bindings was as shiny as the elbows of an old jacket, and I found the same cloth again in the public library at Fumay.
I dropped the idea of a foreword for fear of seeming conceited. It is true that I may repeat myself, get mixed up, even contradict myself, for I am writing this mainly in the hope of discovering a certain truth.
As for the events which don’t concern me personally, I record them, when I witnessed them, to the best of my recollection. To find certain dates I would have had to look up the back numbers of the newspapers, and I don’t know where to find them.
I am sure about the date of Friday the 10th, which must be in the history books now. I am sure too, more or less, about the itinerary we followed, although, even on the train, some of my companions started mentioning names of stations which we hadn’t seen.
A road which was deserted in the morning, in those days, could be swarming with life an hour later. Everything went terribly fast and terribly slowly. People were still talking about fighting in Holland when the Panzers had already reached Sedan.
Again, my memory may occasionally play tricks on me. As I said about the last morning at Fumay, I could reconstruct certain hours minute by minute, whereas with others I can only remember the general atmosphere.
It was like that on the train, especially with the fatigue, the dull, dazed feeling which resulted from our way of life.
We no longer had any responsibilities, any decisions to make. Nothing depended on us, not even our own fate.
One detail, for instance, has worried me a lot, because I am rather persnickety and tend to think over an idea for hours until I have got it right. When I wrote about the plane machine-gunning our train, about the fireman gesticulating beside his engine, and about the dead driver, I didn’t mention the guard. Yet there ought to have been a guard, whose job it was to make the necessary decisions.
The Train Page 8