Suite Francaise Part 18

She didn't like the officer being in her kitchen. She could put up with his presence in other rooms, but here, between the stove and the pantry, it seemed scandalous and almost sacrilegious: he was violating the very heart of the house.

"At least give me a match," the officer implored, deliberately trying to look plaintive to soften up the cook, but she just shook her head.

"There aren't any matches either."

Lucile began to laugh. "Don't listen to her. The matches are on the stove, behind you. And actually, there's someone here who wants to speak to you, Monsieur; he has a complaint about a German soldier."

"Oh, really? I'm listening," the officer said eagerly. "We insist that the soldiers of the Reichswehr behave with perfect correctness towards the local people."

Benoit said nothing.

It was Marthe who spoke. "He's chasing after his wife," she said in a tone of voice that made it difficult to tell exactly what she was feeling: virtuous indignation, or regret she was no longer young enough to be prey to such outrages.

"Ah, but you overestimate the power we German officers have, my boy. Of course I can punish him if he bothers your wife, but if she likes him . . ."

"It isn't no joke!" Benoit growled, taking a step towards the officer.

"Excuse me?"

"It isn't no joke, I'm telling you. We didn't need you dirty . . ."

Lucile let out a cry of anguish and warning. Marthe jabbed Benoit with her elbow; she guessed he was going to say the forbidden word "Boche," punishable by imprisonment. Benoit forced himself to stop.

"We don't need you running after our women now."

"Well, you should have thought about defending your women before, my friend," the officer said quietly. His face had turned bright red; he looked haughty and upset.

Lucile intervened. "Please," she said softly, "this man is jealous. He's suffering. Don't push him over the edge."

"What's the name of this man?"

"Bonnet."

"The Commandant's interpreter? I have no control over him. He has the same rank as me. It would be impossible for me to intervene."

"Even as a friend?"

The officer shrugged his shoulders. "Impossible. Let me explain."

"No point explaining!" Benoit cut in, his voice calm and bitter. "There are always rules for the poor bloke who's a private. Verboten, Verboten, as you say in your language. But no one bothers the officers if they want to have a good time! It's the same in all the armies in the world." as you say in your language. But no one bothers the officers if they want to have a good time! It's the same in all the armies in the world."

"I certainly won't speak to him," replied the German, "because that would be letting him in on the game and I wouldn't be doing you any favours," and turning his back on Benoit, he walked over to the table.

"Make me some coffee, my dear Marthe, I'm leaving in an hour."

"Manoeuvres again? That's three nights in a row," exclaimed Marthe, who couldn't seem to manage to keep her feelings towards the enemy straight. Sometimes, when the regiment came back in the early hours of the morning, she would say with great satisfaction, "Look how hot and tired they are . . . Oh, that makes me feel good!" But sometimes she'd forget they were German and would feel a sort of maternal pity rising up in her: "Still, those poor boys, what a life . . ."

For some reason, this evening saw a surge of feminine tenderness. "All right, I'll make you some coffee. Sit down over there. You'll have some as well, won't you, Madame?"

"No . . ." Lucile started to say.

Meanwhile, Benoit had disappeared; he'd climbed out of the window without making a sound.

"Please say yes," murmured the German softly. "I won't be bothering you much longer: I'm leaving the day after tomorrow and there's talk of sending my regiment to Africa when I get back. We'll never see each other again and I would like to think you don't hate me."

"I don't hate you, but . . ."

"I know. Let's leave it at that. Just agree to keep me company . . ."

Marthe laid the table with the tender, complicit, scandalised smile of someone secretly giving bread and jam to naughty children who should be punished. On a clean cloth, she placed two large earthenware bowls decorated with flowers, a piping-hot pot of coffee and an old oil lamp she'd taken out of the cupboard, filled and lit. Its soft yellow flame lit up the copperware on the walls.

The officer looked at it with curiosity. "What do you call that, Madame?"

"That's a warming pan."

"And that?"

"A waffle iron. It's nearly a hundred years old. We don't use it any more."

Marthe came in with some jam in an engraved gla.s.s dish and an enormous sugar bowl; with its bronze feet and carved lid, it looked like a funeral urn.

"Well, at this time the day after tomorrow," said Lucile, "you'll be having a cup of coffee with your wife, won't you?"

"I hope so. I'll tell her about you. I'll describe the house to her."

"Has she ever been to France?"

"No, Madame."

Lucile was curious to know whether the enemy liked France, but a kind of modest pride prevented her from asking. They continued drinking their coffee in silence, not looking at each other.

Then the German told her about his country: the wide avenues in Berlin, what it was like in winter, the snow, the biting cold air that blew in from central Europe, the deep lakes, the pine forests and sand quarries.

Marthe was longing to join the conversation. "Is it going to last long, the war?" she asked.

"I don't know," the officer said, smiling and with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

"But what do you think?" Lucile then asked.

"Madame, I am a soldier. Soldiers don't think. I'm told to go somewhere and I go. Told to fight, I fight. Told to get myself killed, I die. Thinking would make fighting more difficult and death more terrible."

"But what about enthusiasm . . ."

"Madame, forgive me, but that's a term a woman would use. A man does his duty even without enthusiasm. Perhaps that's the way you know he's a man, a real man."

"Perhaps."

They could hear the rain rustling in the garden, the last droplets slowly dripping off the lilacs; the fish pond murmuring languidly as it filled with water. The front door opened.

"It's Madame, hurry!" whispered Marthe, terrified. And she pushed Lucile and the officer outside. "Go through the garden! Good Lord, she'll give me h.e.l.l!"

She quickly poured the remaining coffee down the sink, hid the cups and put out the lamp. "Do you hear me? Hurry up! Thank goodness it's dark out."

They both went outside. The officer was laughing. Lucile was trembling a little. Hidden in the shadows, they watched Madame Angellier walk through the house behind Marthe, who carried a lamp. Then all the shutters were closed and the doors locked with iron bars.

"It's like a prison," the German remarked on hearing the creaking of the hinges, the rusty chains and the mournful sound of the great doors being bolted. "How will you get back in, Madame?"

"Through the side door in the kitchen. Marthe will leave it open. What about you?"

"Oh, I'll jump over the wall."

He made it over in one nimble leap and said softly, "Gute Nacht. Schlafen sie voll wohl." "Gute Nacht. Schlafen sie voll wohl."

"Gute Nacht," she replied. she replied.

Her accent made the officer laugh. She stood in the shadows for a moment, listening to his laughter fade into the distance. The damp lilacs swayed in the soft wind and brushed against her hair. Feeling light-hearted and happy, she ran back into the house.

11.

Every month, Madame Angellier visited her farms. She chose a Sunday so "her people" would be at home, which exasperated the farmers. The moment they saw her, they rushed to hide away the coffee, sugar and eau-de-vie they'd been enjoying after lunch: Madame Angellier was of the old school-she considered the food her tenant farmers ate was somehow stolen from her; she complained bitterly about anyone who bought the best-quality meat from the butcher. She had her police, as she called them, all over town, and wouldn't keep tenants whose daughters bought silk stockings, perfume, make-up or books too often. Madame de Montmort ruled her estate with similar principles, but as an aristocrat she was more attached to spiritual values than the bitter, materialistic middle cla.s.ses (to whom Madame Angellier belonged). She therefore concerned herself with religious issues: she tried to find out whether all the children had been baptised, whether they took Communion twice a year, whether the women went to Ma.s.s (she let the men get away with it; it was just too difficult). Of the two families who owned all the land in the region-the Montmorts and the Angelliers-the Montmorts were the more hated.

Madame Angellier set off at first light. The weather had changed after the storm the evening before: sheets of cold rain were falling. The car was unusable, for they had no petrol or travel permit, but Madame Angellier had unearthed an old gig from the shed where it had sat for thirty years; with two strong horses in harness, it could travel fairly good distances. The entire household had got up to say goodbye to the elderly lady. At the last minute (and grudgingly) she entrusted Lucile with the keys. She opened her umbrella; it started raining even harder.

"Madame should wait until tomorrow," said the cook.

"I have no choice but to take care of things myself, given that the head of the house is a prisoner of these gentlemen," Madame Angellier replied in loud, sarcastic tones, undoubtedly to make the two German soldiers pa.s.sing by feel guilty.

She glared at them the way Chateaubriand described his father's expression: "a burning eye seemed to shoot out and hit home like a bullet."

But the soldiers, who didn't understand a word of French, evidently interpreted her look as a tribute to their strong physiques, their confident bearing, their perfect uniforms, for they smiled with shy good grace. Disgusted, Madame Angellier closed her eyes. The carriage left. A gust of wind rattled the doors.

A little later that morning Lucile went to see the dressmaker, a young woman who, people whispered, socialised with the Germans. She took with her a length of light material that she wished to have made into a dressing gown.

The dressmaker nodded her head: "You're lucky to have some silk like this now. We don't have anything left."

She said this without apparent envy, but thoughtfully, as if she recognised that the middle cla.s.ses had not so much the right to come first, but a kind of natural shrewdness which meant they could get things before anyone else, just as people who live on the plains say of mountain dwellers, "No chance he'll loose his footing, not him! He's been climbing the Alps since he was a child." Evidently she also believed that Lucile, because of her parentage, because of some innate gift, was more skilful than she was at evading the law, bending the rules, for she smiled at her and winked. "I can see you know how to get by," she said. "Well done."

At that moment Lucile noticed a German soldier's belt on the bed. The two women looked at each other. The dressmaker's expression was sly, cautious and implacable; she looked like a cat who's afraid someone is about to take her prey from her claws and so raises her head and miaows arrogantly, as if to say, "No? Well, really! Just whose is it, then?"

"How can you?" murmured Lucile.

The dressmaker wavered between several att.i.tudes. Her expression was a mixture of insolence, confusion and deceit. Then suddenly she lowered her head. "So what? German or French, friend or enemy, he's first and foremost a man and I'm a woman. He's good to me, kind, attentive . . . He's a city boy who takes care of himself, not like the boys around here; he has beautiful skin, white teeth. When he kisses, his breath smells fresh, not of alcohol. And that's good enough for me. I'm not looking for anything else. Our lives are complicated enough with all these wars and bombings. Between a man and a woman, none of that's important. I couldn't care less if the man I fancy is English or black-I'd still offer myself to him if I got the opportunity. Do I disgust you? Sure, it's all right for you, you're rich, you have luxuries I don't have . . ."

"Luxuries!" Lucile cut in, sounding bitter without meaning to, wondering what the dressmaker could imagine might be luxurious about an existence as an Angellier: visiting her estate and investing money, no doubt.

"You're educated. You see people. For us, it's nothing but slaving away at work. If it wasn't for love, we might as well just throw ourselves in the river. And when I say love, don't think it's only about you know what. Listen, the other day this German, he was at Moulins and he bought me a little imitation crocodile handbag; another time he brought me flowers, a bouquet from town, like I was a lady. It's stupid, I know, because there are flowers all over the countryside, but he cared, it made me happy. Up until now, to me men were just good for a tumble. But this one, I don't know why, I'd do anything for him, follow him anywhere. And he loves me, he does . . . Oh, I've known enough men to tell when there's one who's not lying. So, you see, when people say to me 'He's German, a German, a German,' I couldn't care less. They're human, like us."

"Yes, but my poor girl, when people say 'a German,' of course they know he's just a man, but what they mean to say, what is so terrible, is that he's killed Frenchmen, that they're holding our relatives prisoner, that they're starving us . . ."

"You think I never think about that? Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed next to him, I wonder, 'Maybe it was his father who killed mine' (my dad was killed in the last war, you know . . .). I think about it for a while and then, in the end, I don't give a d.a.m.n. On one side there's me and him; on the other side there's everyone else. People don't care about us: they bomb us and make us suffer, and kill us worse than if we were rabbits. And as for us, well, we don't care about them. You see, if we did what other people thought we should do we'd be worse than animals. Around town they call me a dog. Well, I'm not. Dogs travel in packs and bite people when they're told to. Me and w.i.l.l.y . . ."

She stopped and sighed.

"I love him," she said finally.

"But his regiment will be leaving."

"I know that, but w.i.l.l.y said he'd send for me after the war."

"And you believe him?"

"Yes, I believe him," she said defiantly.

"You're mad," said Lucile. "He'll forget you the moment he's gone. You have brothers who are prisoners. When they come home . . . Believe me, be careful. What you're doing is very dangerous. Dangerous and wrong," she added.

"When they come home . . ."

They looked at each other in silence. There was a rich, secret scent in this stuffy room, cluttered with heavy rustic furniture, that troubled Lucile and made her feel strangely uneasy.

As she was leaving, Lucile ran into some children with dirty faces on the staircase; they were running down the steps four at a time.

"Where are you rus.h.i.+ng like that?" Lucile asked.

"We're going to play in the Perrins' garden."

The Perrins were a rich local family who had fled in June 1940. They had been so panic-stricken when they fled that they'd left their house unlocked, all the doors wide open, silver in the drawers, dresses in the wardrobes. The Germans had pillaged it: even the large abandoned garden had been sacked, trampled, and looked like a jungle.

"Do the Germans let you in there?"

They didn't reply and ran off, laughing.

Lucile went home in the rain. She could see the Perrins' garden. Despite the freezing rain, the village children darted back and forth between the trees in their blue and pink smocks. Every so often she glimpsed a s.h.i.+ny, dirty cheek gleaming in the rain like a peach. The children picked lilacs and cherry blossom and chased each other across the lawns. Perched high on top of a cedar tree, one little boy in red trousers whistled like a blackbird.

They were managing to destroy what remained of a garden that had been so well-tended in the past, so loved-a garden where the Perrins no longer came together as a family at dusk to sit in cast-iron chairs (the men in black jackets, the women in long rustling dresses) and watch the melons and strawberries ripen. A small boy in a pink smock was walking along the iron gate, holding on to the spikes to keep his balance.

"You'll fall, you little devil," said Lucile.

He stared at her without replying. Suddenly, she envied these children who could enjoy themselves without worrying about the time, the war, misfortune. It seemed to her that among a race of slaves, they alone were free, "truly free," she thought to herself.

Reluctantly, she walked back to the silent, morose house, whipped by the rain.