Tonight, raising his glass, Charles Hardelot said, ‘I drink to your victorious return, son. When you come back home, both your family and your fellow citizens will be proud of you. The valorous soldier is the glory of society.’ And he brought his glass to his lips.
They all took a sip. Gently, Pierre touched Agnès’s hair, then he left.
7
It was the very beginning of the war, when the heart bleeds for everyone who dies, when tears are shed for each man sent to fight. Sadly, as time goes on, people get used to it all. They think only of one soldier, theirs. But at the start of a war the heart is still tender; it hasn’t hardened yet. It seems tied by a thousand strings to the inhabitants of another country, or to a certain village or region … a region never seen, but whose very name makes the heart beat faster with anguish and hope. In Saint-Elme, where the people had only ever been malicious or indifferent towards each other, everything suddenly changed: all the families that had been enemies, divided by a thousand long-standing quarrels and the jealousy caused by status or wealth, were united. The announcement of a death, the news of a wounded soldier echoed painfully through every cold, grey house. It wouldn’t last. But for a few days people no longer thought of themselves; they existed for others and that helped them carry on living.
The news about the war was not good. Not the news in the papers: only an experienced diplomat or brilliant strategist would have been able to understand the newspaper articles or ‘war reports’. The news didn’t come in letters either, which were scrupulously designed not to diminish the good spirits of friends and relatives. No, it came from somewhere mysterious, carried on the wind, spread throughout the land.
‘It’s not going too good,’ farmers would say when they ran into each other.
‘Seems we’re getting beat over there,’ the cleaning lady would admit.
Everyone went to bed, got up, ate their meals, but they thought about the war all the time. They even dreamed about the war. And the oddest thing was that everyone could still go to bed, get up, eat and sleep, in spite of the war. People did the washing, picked fruit to make jam, ordered dinner, and Agnès played with her child. Yet one man died every second (a man who could be Pierre) in that strange and terrible place they called ‘the war zone’; it had started by being very far away, but it moved closer every day. Belgium had been invaded. The enemy was pushing into northern France; the enemy was only two days away from Saint-Elme, yet in Saint-Elme nothing changed. They slept in peaceful ignorance; they hid their heads in the sand and thought they were invisible. If someone said, ‘It’s just that, well, they could start fighting here …’, everyone looked at him in astonishment. Fighting in Saint-Elme? Don’t be ridiculous! Was it conceivable that between the church and the market square, on the street where the Hardelots lived, blood might be shed and bombs fall? ‘Certain things are just not possible’, or so they thought.
Saint-Elme went to bed peacefully. Saint-Elme woke up in the middle of the night, in a state of panic. The Germans were coming! The Germans were there! As for who had started the rumour, where the Germans actually were, why it was necessary to leave and where they were supposed to go, no one knew. Just as they had been certain, until now, that out of all the towns in the world, Saint-Elme would be spared, so they now awoke convinced that the battle would be fought in the centre of their town, that every army on earth was heading towards the nearby canal, the church, the market square and the Hardelots’ factory.
Agnès was in her bedroom; she was asleep, with her child at her side, when she was awakened by a loud banging at her door.
‘We’re going!’
‘Where to? How?’
‘I don’t know. We’re going. Everyone’s leaving. Your in-laws are waiting for us,’ replied Madame Florent.
Agnès got dressed quickly, wrapped a blanket round the child and went outside. The main street of Saint-Elme was full of people. It was a clear, mild night. From the north, the refugees were arriving, in cars, on foot, on horseback, in wagons, pushing wheelbarrows full of clothing, pulling along their cows. There were vehicles from Belgium pulled by dogs; the sheep bleated, herds of cattle plodded along. Agnès headed towards the Hardelot residence. No one was there. Women rushed out of their houses, half dressed; you could hear the sound of shutters being locked, doors being closed. The poor had already left. The rich waited; they would have taken their houses and the very earth they were built on, if they could. Agnès walked up to the château (this was how people referred to old Hardelot’s home). She felt frightened and determined. All of this meant nothing. Danger meant nothing. Danger brought her closer to Pierre. She felt she could understand him better now. She would know the meaning of words like ‘cannon fire, panic, the enemy is here’. If Pierre had been in some scorching hot, faraway land, she would have loved the heat of summer and a desperate need for water, as if they were mystical signs sent to her by him that she alone could see.
The gates of the château were open. Agnès hesitated for a moment at the threshold, then went inside. Anything was possible tonight … It all seemed so strange, more like a dream than reality: Julien Hardelot’s house, with its doors wide open, trunks and baskets sitting on the steps, Marthe carrying a pile of sheets that she threw into the car, Charles Hardelot in a bowler hat and yellow gloves, dressed as if he were making the most formal Sunday visit, topping up the oil in the car, tipping the can gently and carefully, as if it were expensive wine being poured on someone’s birthday. In the large ground-floor rooms a lamp sat on a table shedding its light over a small group of tearful women, the four elderly Hardelot-Arques spinsters, who had come to take refuge with the head of the family. Saint-Elme might be surrounded by an angry wave of blood and flames rising towards it, beating against its walls, threatening to engulf it, but in the women’s minds Julien Hardelot’s house would be spared from the wrath pouring down on them from the heavens. The cannons were so close now that the windows and chandeliers shook every time they were fired.
‘I sent Ludivine to find you, Agnès,’ said Charles Hardelot. ‘We have to leave. Will the child be warm enough? Where’s your mother?’
‘She’s just coming.’
‘Charles,’ said Marthe, rushing towards her husband. ‘Oh, my poor Charles …’
She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly.
‘Your father wants to stay!’ she cried.
‘Well, that means there’s nothing to worry about,’ exclaimed the Hardelot-Arques ladies. They forgot all about the battle, the sound of the cannon, the fleeing refugees. Julien Hardelot had spoken. Even the tide obeyed him.
‘But … but that’s impossible,’ said Charles, stammering the way he did when he was very upset. ‘They’re going to fight at the canal. We’ll be right in the middle of a massacre. Is that the place for civilians, for women?’
‘He’s saying that I have to go.’
‘By yourself? Never!’
‘He wants you to go with me as far as the railway station, and then come back, Charles …’
‘I’ll speak to him,’ said Charles, throwing the empty oil can down on the ground and hurrying towards the house.
‘Can I do anything for you, Madame?’ asked Agnès.
‘Oh, my child, I don’t know, I’m losing my mind. Just imagine everything we have to leave behind, our furniture, our linen, our family mementos … I’m just throwing together what I can at random, from my house and from here,’ she said, nodding towards her house in the distance and then back to the château, ‘but there’s so little room. Do you have any luggage?’
‘Two overnight cases and the baby’s things.’
‘Yes. You’re young. You have no memories. As for me, well, I want to take everything,’ she said as she picked up a variety of objects and pressed them close to her heart before putting them down again: a photo of Pierre as a child, a silver sugar bowl, a damask and lace tablecloth.
‘Let me help you,’ said Agnès.
The car was already half full of
the Hardelots’ belongings; they boxed up more silver, the factory’s accounts, a cardboard hatbox full of linen.
‘There’s no more room,’ Agnès said at last.
Charles came back downstairs. ‘Let’s go.’
‘But your father,’ cried Marthe, ‘what about your father?’
‘He’s staying.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I’ll come back as soon as I’ve made sure everyone is in a safe place.’
‘But I won’t leave you,’ she cried. ‘I’d rather die with you.’
Julien Hardelot’s face appeared in the darkened entrance hall. Agnès took a step towards him. He looked at her coldly and turned his back on her.
‘Father,’ cried Marthe. ‘Father!’
He allowed her to cover his cheek in kisses and tears. He put up with her outburst without saying a word.
‘Father, at your age …’
He turned and spoke to his son. ‘The title deeds are in the black metal box.’
‘Papa, please reconsider …’
‘I’ll expect you back tomorrow.’
‘But it’s dangerous …’
‘I am staying here,’ he said, stamping his foot. There was no anger in his gesture; it looked more as if he were taking possession of the land. ‘I’ll expect you back tomorrow,’ he repeated and went back into the house. He closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.
Charles Hardelot helped Madame Florent, who was holding the sleeping baby, into the car, along with Agnès and his wife; they left. It was nearly dawn. The church of Saint-Elme chimed the half-hour and the familiar sound roused the Hardelot-Arques ladies, who looked at each other as if awaking from a nightmare into reality.
‘I think …’ the first one began.
‘Since Julien’s staying …’ said the other.
The third one was already pulling her black shawl more tightly round her chilly shoulders, ready to hurry home. Only the fourth one, the youngest, murmured fearfully, ‘It’s the cannon fire that frightens me …’
‘We’ll all stay in the drawing room,’ said her sister. ‘Everything’s so muffled in there that we won’t hear a thing.’
Heads bowed, pale, proud and frail, suddenly aware of how inappropriate it was to be standing there, alone, out in the street at such an hour, they all went back to their little house that sat in the shadow cast by the château.
8
Simone Renaudin and an elderly relative who was her chaperone passed the Hardelots on the road. From the windows of the two cars the ladies leaned out and nodded awkwardly to each other. The cars, spared from being requisitioned, were old and enormous. Each of them tried slyly to overtake and lose the other, but as soon as they were on the national highway they were forced into line, one behind the other, and had to wait their turn. It was the day after a battle had been lost. They could see the troops passing before them in chaos: ambulances, the wounded, cars, horses, cannons and, among them, the civilians who were fleeing — nuns from a convent in Flanders, farmers pulling along their cows, old people pulling carts on which were two chairs, a pine table and kitchen utensils held in place with planks of wood. All they could do was inch forward. Every now and again they recognised someone from Saint-Elme in this confusing flow of people.
‘I thought I saw the notary and his wife,’ said Charles.
‘There are the little Dubecq children, in an English carriage, with their grandmother,’ replied Madame Florent.
But all these cars disappeared while, in a kind of malicious twist of fate, the Renaudins’ car continually pulled up alongside them. Marthe and Simone turned stiffly away from each other.
‘You might almost think she was doing it on purpose,’ murmured Marthe.
Then, remembering that Charles was going to leave her tomorrow, she returned to her private hell. And Pierre? Where was Pierre? She thought she saw him every time a soldier went by. She would touch her husband’s hand and say shyly, ‘You see that one, over there? The one who’s got his arm in a sling? He looks like Pierre.’
‘You see your son everywhere, my poor darling,’ Charles replied.
Not a cry, not a moan rose from the crowd. They weren’t even looking at the horrific, unforgettable spectacle, the scene that would one day be a page in the history of France: the first weeks of the 1914 war. Only the children stared wide-eyed at the soldiers. As for the others … they had left their hearts behind. They thought about their homes, their fields, the shops they had given up. Marthe could picture all her treasures: the big bed where for twenty-nine years she had slept next to her husband, her linen cupboard, the fine sheets from Flanders, embroidered by nuns in Bruges, her kitchen-ware — copper pans, candlesticks, sparkling bowls — and the photos of Aunt Adèle at her First Communion, and Uncle Jules, ten months old, naked on a pillow. Everything was priceless. And it would all be destroyed, pillaged, looted, reduced to ashes that billowed up towards an indifferent sky.
‘But if the château and the house are bombed, where will you go?’ she asked her husband naïvely, for she still believed that though walls might crumble, people could survive beneath the shells; civilians had to be spared in war. How and why a bomb chose what to strike she did not know, but it seemed inconceivable that the flesh and bones of her husband, of her peace-loving Charles, could be torn apart or pulverised like the soldiers’.
‘Where will you go? What did your father say?’
‘That the cellars are solid, that the house could fall but we’d be safe in the cellars.’
‘But it will be so damp,’ cried Marthe. ‘Do you at least have your flannel jacket?’
Agnès picked up her child; he had woken up crying. She kissed his hair; it was as soft as feathers; she held him tightly, close to her heart, thinking, ‘I’m not going to let you see any more war.’
‘You’re young,’ her mother-in-law had said to her. ‘You have no memories.’ How wrong she was. Her memories weighed down on her insistently. Her memories weren’t just objects that could be replaced by similar ones, they were part of the very place where she had lived, where she and Pierre first began to love each other when they were children. This road, for example, they had been along it so many times, on bicycles or in the car, when the Hardelots had organised picnics; the town with its cathedral in the distance, where Pierre had been at boarding school; the Coudre Woods, still visible on the horizon … all these things were sweet, dear to her, irreplaceable … She closed her eyes and thought passionately, ‘I’m dreaming … This is a horrible nightmare. I’m going to wake up in our apartment in Paris, where we lived three years ago … Oh, my God, give me back those winter days, when I’d come home from the shops, when it was raining and I’d hurry so I could arrange the flowers and light the fire in the dining room, in that old green marble fireplace we thought was so ugly … Then Pierre would come home and we’d have dinner. Is it possible that we’ll never do so again?’
Throughout the crowds, every single woman’s heart bled the same way, remembering those little moments of happiness now gone. And all the individual suffering merged into a single, immense sense of anguish for the fate of France. This anguish was so great that, little by little, it blocked out everything else. Everyone was prepared to accept bereavement, tears, suffering, if only the country could be saved; but everywhere they looked, all they could see were images of chaos and crushing defeat.
In the villages they passed through, people came out on to their doorsteps. ‘Are the Germans coming?’ they asked.
Yes, they were coming. The Hardelots had passed the train station quite a while ago; ordinarily, this was where you got the train to Paris, but already there were no trains running; they had to keep driving.
‘If the Germans take Saint-Elme,’ thought Charles, ‘will they let me go back tomorrow? Won’t they simply cut off the north from the rest of France?’ No, it was inconceivable. He was a civilian, a civilian. He could walk through armies, dodge bullets. Laws, agreements, traditions had alwa
ys defended his person, his freedom and his possessions. He refused to believe that they had been abolished or were obsolete. Yet, nevertheless, they continued to move at a snail’s pace along the crowded roads.
Towards midday Simone Renaudin’s car tried to pass them, swerving in the process and pushing Charles Hardelot and his family into a ditch. Everyone emerged safe and sound from the wrecked bits of wood and shattered glass. Only Agnès had a cut on her forehead. The steering on Simone’s car had broken and it had crashed to a halt against a tree further down the road. No one in her car had been hurt either, but the vehicle was out of commission. They had to pull out all their packages and trunks, and wait at the roadside while the driver went to get some help.
‘Don’t worry, ladies,’ said Charles, ‘someone will give us a hand. Someone will help us.’
But the confusion was becoming ever more strange and frightening. All of Belgium and northern France seemed to be heading for Paris. From every direction a wave of people in cars, with horses or on foot closed in on the broken-down vehicles.
‘Let’s wait a bit longer,’ said Charles, refusing to give up hope. ‘Let’s just wait.’
The Hardelots and the Renaudins, enemies from Saint-Elme, sat at the side of the road like gypsies. Yet the habits of their good upbringing remained so strong within them that the elderly Renaudin woman and the Hardelot and Florent ladies exchanged compliments and ceremonious apologies.
‘I am truly sorry for this mishap, Madame … It’s our driver’s fault.’
‘Not at all. My husband is very careless. I’m always telling him …’
‘The important thing is that no one got badly hurt.’
Only Agnès and Simone said nothing. They looked furtively at each other.
‘She’s too fat,’ thought Agnès. ‘She looks hard and conceited.’
‘That boy looks rather scrawny,’ thought Simone. ‘I would have given Pierre beautiful children. What has she given him? He fought with his family. He’s been kicked out of the factory. And why? What does he see in her? She’s too thin; she’s got almost no hips or bust. I don’t like the kind of mouth she has.’