She repeated, “Me!,” shrugging her shoulders with simple pride.
“It’s now a little more than two years, monsieur, since I first heard you play. I had a few of your records and I used to listen to you on the radio, but I had never been to one of your concerts. And then one day … I told you earlier that you belong to all those people who admire and love you. Just think, every time you play, there is at least one person in the concert hall whose voice you become, for a few moments. People are dumb, monsieur. We’re like trees or plants. We suffer and die and no one hears our cries. Still, you know all that. What you must have guessed is that, ever since that day, I have …”
She stopped talking and leaned back a little, so that her colorless face stayed in the shadows.
“I wasn’t pretty and of course I couldn’t expect anything from you, but there was Flora. So … I spoke to her about you. I dragged her to your concerts and couldn’t rest until someone introduced her to you. Yes, it was in that empty theater, a few weeks before her debut. It’s strange. You were very cold to begin with, but I knew you would end up falling in love with her.”
“But her, what about her?”
“She didn’t love you. She didn’t know how to love. You think she was ‘an exceptional being’? Not at all, she was the most ordinary of women. Oh, no worse and no more stupid than any other! Just average. The Flora Leblanc of the old days, who wanted to be a dressmaker, she was the one you loved, Roger Dange. She let you love her. You were rich and famous. Then she cheated on you. I would never have believed it. I didn’t see much of her at that time, and she didn’t boast about her love affairs. Six months ago she came to spend a few days here. It’s strange … She was drawn to me but she hated me as well. She would run away from me and then come back.
“I was not alone. I had a young man, a cousin of my mother’s, living with me. He was ten years younger than me, and my parents had brought him up as he was an orphan. Picture a handsome lad, half-peasant, with a snub nose, ruddy cheeks, black hair, and hard, strong arms … The first time I think it was just for one night, because she left again almost immediately. But when you agreed to the tour in Mexico, she came back here. He couldn’t follow her to Paris. He’d bought a garage in the village; he was a crafty lad, not one to lose his head easily over a woman. Anyway, the minute she got here, the two of them … When I think, monsieur, that you accused me of having helped her to cheat on you! Listen, I threw her out! I couldn’t forgive her—what she was doing was so base, so vile. Then she said I was jealous of her. She thought I was in love with the boy, with Robert … Thank God she never guessed the truth! She would have sullied it! And then she told me that her whole life was an artificial creation, that she had been born for men like Robert, not you, that they were the ones who could satisfy her, and she even added something else, something horrible: ‘The body is the only thing you can trust.’ I threw them out, Monsieur Dange, her and her lover. I said to them, ‘When I get home from school tomorrow at lunchtime, I don’t want to find you here.’ They laughed, then went away. They were killed after they left here. And is that what you’re in mourning for?”
She repeated “that” with a harsh, strident laugh. She looked at Dange and added, “I’m prepared to bet you don’t believe me. You think I’m raving, that I’m an old madwoman. Would you like me to recite the contents of the letter you carry next to your heart? The one that starts, ‘Last night I dreamt about you,’ the one that talks about Monteverdi, about that lovely tune, ‘Mort, je crois en toi et dans ta nuit j’espère,’ the one written to you the day before she died … the one you mentioned earlier. She came to find me: ‘Camille, you write to him, I can’t be bothered.’ And so I wrote. How happy I was, writing to you!”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“To save you, to free you from her, to help you get over her death, because she is not worth even one of your tears. What you loved in her did not belong to her.”
“You swear that’s the truth? That you’re not lying? You’re certainly not mad; you seem calm and lucid. You swear that’s the truth?”
“I swear.”
He stood up and walked unsteadily across the room. He took his coat and hat, and opened the door without saying a word. She did not move. She was staring at the fire.
He reached the small, deserted station an hour later. It was strange how he felt. He now understood that he had loved an illusion, a shadow. He knew with absolute certainty that he had at last learned the truth. But he was more tormented than ever because he understood what Camille could not grasp: that his wife’s soul, her wit and intelligence, were of no importance—all that was superfluous. What had mattered was the gentle movement of her shoulders when she turned her head toward him, the shape and warmth of her breast, the expression on her face, her tone of voice, the quick, bored way she pushed him aside when he approached her and she wanted to escape him (now he knew why). This was what he would never get over.
L’inconnu
[ THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER ]
IN COMPLETE TURMOIL, SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS were crowded together in the station at N——. Some had been recalled from leave following the German invasion of Belgium, some were traveling to sort out their affairs, and some were fleeing from areas where the war was closing in. It was a mild May evening in 1940. Nurses in long blue cloaks, fresh-faced boy scouts wearing large military hats, and the local police were all helping refugees from Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland. The soldiers who had first of all taken over the bar and the waiting rooms were now giving them up to the incoming flood of women and children; they were invading the platforms, where they settled down as best they could. There was not a single free bench; people were even sleeping on the ground, among sacks of supplies and suitcases; others were lying on porters’ trolleys. The timetables were in disarray; it was so bad that on some lines they were announcing delays of several hours. While these were being written in chalk on the blackboard under the illuminated clock, people in the crowd milled about noisily. What with the shouting and the sound of soldiers’ footsteps marching over the cobblestones, one could hardly hear the little bell that rang in vain every quarter of an hour. Enemy planes were approaching and the only warning siren the town possessed ineffectually shouted “Danger” to the echoing sky. No bombs had fallen here yet, and all the siren did was wake up a child asleep in his mother’s arms; he opened his eyes and gazed in amazement at all the people who were rushing around shouting to one another; then he buried his face in his mother’s familiar, comforting arms and went back to sleep. The glass of the windows had been painted blue and the lamps dimmed, so that the station itself was a shadowy island among a tangle of railway lines; they gleamed inextinguishably in the starlight, as did the hills and the river nearby. They were surrounded by noise and the smell of smoke.
Two men had walked as far as the end of the platform, to the point at which the last car stopped and tufts of grass grew between piles of coal and stones. It was here that the refugees’ baggage was waiting to be collected. Trunks, bicycles, baby carriages, and hatboxes had been heaped on top of one another, to a height of several meters. The men sat down there. They were brothers, both soldiers, who had been given leave for their sister’s wedding; the war was about to separate them. They talked about their home, the wedding the day before, and those they had just left behind. Their conversation was broken by long silences. Trains went by at great speed, spewing hot, hissing air in their faces; people could be seen at the open windows, looking anxiously up at the sky. It was crystal clear; since the tenth of May there had not been a breath of wind or a cloud in the sky. Many of the trains went through the station without stopping, gathering speed with a piercing, earsplitting noise. After they had disappeared into the distance the metal bridge briefly continued to vibrate, with a groaning sound that was almost musical; then all went quiet again.
Occasionally one of the soldiers went off to find out how late their train would be. The delay kept getting longer and lo
nger.
“Not before three o’clock,” he said, when at last he came back to his brother. “That’s a long time to wait.”
“Are you in such a hurry?” Claude asked, opening his eyes and looking at the shiny identity bracelet on his wrist, the sort that identifies dead bodies after a battle. “We’ll get there eventually.”
“It was good we could be together for Loulou’s wedding.”
“Hmm, yes, it was,” said his brother. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, raising his pointed chin so that the bluish light of the stars was reflected in his tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses, and on the narrow bridge of his nose and his upper lip, which trembled slightly.
“What’s wrong, Claude, old man?” his brother asked.
“Nothing.”
The younger man thought, “It’s worse for him than for me. He’s got a wife and kids …” He was twenty-five and quite happy to go and fight. He’d been stationed in northern France all winter, facing only two enemies: boredom and cold. Any change was welcome. But since September his brother had been serving in the fortifications along the Maginot Line; the ten-year age gap between them made him view this fate with affectionate sympathy. “It’s not fair. They should let him have a bit of peace,” he said to himself, thinking of his sister-in-law’s red eyes and the children’s tears.
“When’s it due, exactly, the new baby?”
“September.”
“Is that why you’re so …” He stopped. “… Is that why you’re looking so fed up?” He put his hand affectionately on Claude’s shoulder in what was meant to be a friendly gesture, but was more like a schoolboy thump on the back than a caress.
“No,” Claude said, “that’s not why.” He half-turned, so that his face was hidden in the shadows; his voice sounded hesitant and strange to the younger man.
“What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously. “It’s not Mama’s health, is it?”
“No, thank goodness, it’s not! It’s something that happened recently, something so odd that I can’t forget it and … I suppose you don’t remember Papa at all?”
“Papa?” the boy repeated, surprised. “Of course not, I was two when he was killed.”
“But sometimes a child’s memory can be amazingly precise. For instance, I can clearly remember the cook we had when we lived in Poitiers, but I wasn’t even three at the time.”
“Oh, but you’ve always had an amazing memory. You must surely remember Papa quite clearly?”
“Yes, especially on his last leave, just after Loulou was born. It was the spring of 1917, and he was reported missing less than two weeks later, in May. It’s the anniversary this month,” he said, after a moment’s silence.
“I don’t remember him at all,” François admitted. “People say you look like him, don’t they? I can only tell by looking at the picture in Mama’s room, where he’s in uniform. He looks nice, a bit of a dreamer. He’s got a little pointed chin like yours.”
Claude made a sharp gesture; his brother looked at him in surprise. “What’s wrong? What did you want to tell me about?”
“What did I want to tell you about? Well, four months ago, when I was on reconnaissance duty, I was one of six men who had to explore an abandoned village. We’d been told there were Germans there and our job was to investigate. I’d just been posted over there …” He waved vaguely, with the gesture used by soldiers to indicate eastern France, where the war was then being fought.
“Over there,” he repeated. “It was the first time I had taken part in an expedition like that. It has an odd effect on you, the first one. The village looked extraordinary. Its inhabitants must have been evacuated in less than five minutes, poor things. There was still the washing that hadn’t been brought in; it had frozen and become stiff old rags hanging from clotheslines in the little gardens. I looked through the open doors and saw kitchens where everything was ready for a meal, a cooking pot on the cold stove, the table laid, and an open newspaper propped up against a jug of wine—full but frozen, a block of purple ice. It was a night as clear as tonight, but very cold; there was frost on the roofs and trees, the streams had turned into skating rinks; it was like a picture postcard.”
“It’s true, it’s been cold. Where we were …”
“Yes,” Claude replied absentmindedly.
His brother went on talking but he interrupted him. “Listen, let me finish, this isn’t easy … So we went through the village without finding anything; it was just one long street. You can imagine how carefully we moved forward. When we set out the sky had clouded over and we counted on there being a mist, even a slight thaw, but as we advanced the stars shone more and more brightly. Like I said, that’s what let me see inside those wretched houses as we went by. You can imagine how we hugged the walls. I’ve noticed that one doesn’t have much of a paunch in situations like that; even the fattest men make themselves thin.
“Eventually we were sure the village was deserted. We were about to go back, but we had a long, hard route ahead of us, part of which was a hellish frozen little stream that we had to slither across on our hands and knees. Obviously we thought about getting some food and drink before we set off. Opposite the church there was a café. The shutters were half-open, just as they were on the other houses. We pulled them wider and looked in: there were bottles from floor to ceiling; every shelf was stacked with full bottles! Unfortunately the bistro must have been restocked the very morning of the evacuation. As one of my lads, Maillard—he was always called Mailloche—said, ‘Some people get a raw deal!’ Then a couple of men climbed in through the window and the rest followed. We helped ourselves. There was a huge ham over the stove: one end of it was a bit off, but the rest seemed edible. So we’re eating and drinking when suddenly one of my men says, ‘There’ve been Germans here.’—‘How can you tell?’—‘Simple, there are empty bottles of beer. It’s quite recent because there’s still froth around the edges, and the wine in the rack next to it hasn’t been touched. Frenchmen would have drunk the wine and left the beer.’
“That sounded right to me. I was hurrying up the lads who were still in there, pretending not to hear me, when all of a sudden one of them caught my eye as he silently pointed at a trapdoor in the middle of the kitchen. It was slightly open; it must have been over the cellar and something was shining in the dark, or rather, one could see something reflected. Mailloche had lit his flashlight to unhook a salami hanging from the joist, and its light was reflected on some polished surface in the gloom. It could have been a bottle or the metal bung on a cask, but it could also have been a belt buckle or a blade. It was a fleeting impression more than anything else, and my eyes had to get accustomed to the dark to see the pale bluish light, but as I looked closely I saw that it was moving backward and forward, then gradually disappearing. I gestured silently to show the men what I had seen. We left as naturally and noisily as we could, but once we were outside we crept up to the window through which we could see right into the kitchen; the trapdoor was in front of us.
“We didn’t have to wait very long. It was opened without a sound … by a German; he was right opposite me, although he couldn’t see me, as I was hidden in the shadow of the blind. But I could see him clearly by the light of the night sky. He had a small chin and rosy cheeks; he seemed very young. He looked all around him, then turned back to beckon to someone down in the cellar. He came out, followed by several men. I thought they would certainly attack us, either then and there or on our return journey. The only reason they hadn’t already done so would have been because they first wanted to make sure that we were the only ones there—that they weren’t in danger of being ambushed. Their precautions showed that we were dealing with a single detachment, just like ours. They thought we had left, so we were able to take them by surprise and had to make the most of it. I say, ‘I thought,’ but you don’t think in a situation like that—you attack or you get out. The instinct to defend yourself is always the same, and on this occasion it went for attack. I leapt through the open window
and the others followed. There must have been about fifteen of us altogether, French and German; the sides were roughly matched. We didn’t exchange fire and no one shouted; our orders were to remain absolutely silent in these sorts of encounters, as no doubt theirs were, too. Poor Mailloche got it first; I heard a body falling near me and recognized his voice calling me, poor man. He held on to my legs and pulled me down with him.
“Each time one of us—French or German—stopped to get his breath back, he called for the enemy to surrender, but no one wanted to give in. For a first skirmish I certainly had my fair share: four men had taken a hammering, and I had killed a German. Then one of the men jumped out of the window and the others, both pursuers and pursued, disappeared. It was incredible: such a silent, savage fight. As for me, I’d hit my head on the corner of a marble table and was knocked unconscious. When I opened my eyes, there was an injured comrade with me, as well as Mailloche, dead, and the German. On top of everything else, someone had fired, forgetting orders, so there was gunfire from every direction. It soon stopped, but was then replaced by artillery fire, crackling on each side of the stream we had to cross. We had to keep our heads down then—we were worried that the Germans could come back at any moment with reinforcements.
“My comrade said it would be best for us to hide in the cellar, as the Germans had done. We left the two dead men where they were and staggered down below; we lowered the trapdoor and stayed there, my comrade cursing and groaning and me bleeding like a pig. We hoped that the artillery fire would stop when daylight came, but it carried on. Durand (that was my friend’s name) had made me a rough bandage. I started to feel better but I was very cold and thirsty. Gradually I began to feel a bit bolder; it was morning and the Germans wouldn’t come back now. I remembered the food in the kitchen, and a hot plate I’d seen the previous evening that still had a jug of warm wine on it. I tried to persuade Durand to come with me but he didn’t want to; he made a blanket out of some old sacking we found in the cellar, and he went to sleep.