Part 3 (2/2)

Then there was a concierge and her daughter, the mother small and pale, the child big and heavy. They were both dressed in black and dragged along amid their luggage a portrait of a large man with a long black moustache. ”My husband,” the woman said. ”He's the caretaker at the cemetery.” Her sister was with her, pregnant and pus.h.i.+ng a sleeping child in a pram. She was very young. As each convoy of soldiers pa.s.sed by, she too would tremble and search the crowd. ”My husband is out there somewhere,” she would say; out there somewhere, or perhaps out here . . . anything was possible.

And Jeanne would say, for the hundredth time no doubt-she really had no idea what she was saying any more-”So is my son, so is my son . . .”

They hadn't yet been sh.e.l.led. When it happened, they didn't know what was going on at first. They heard the sound of an explosion, then another, then shouting: ”Run for it! Get down! Get down on the ground!” They immediately threw themselves face down.

”How grotesque we must look!” Jeanne mused. She wasn't afraid, but she was short of breath and her heart was pounding so violently that she pressed both hands to it and pushed it down against a stone. She could feel a bell-shaped pink flower brus.h.i.+ng her lips. Later, she would remember that while they were stretched out on the ground, a small white b.u.t.terfly was lazily flitting from one flower to another.

Finally she heard a voice whisper, ”It's over; they're gone.” She stood up and automatically brushed the dust from her skirt. No one, she thought, had been hurt. But after walking for a few minutes, they saw the first fatalities: two men and a woman. Their bodies had been torn to shreds, but by chance their three faces were untouched. Such gloomy, ordinary faces, with a dim, fixed, stunned expression as if they were trying in vain to understand what was happening to them; they weren't made, my G.o.d, to die in battle, they weren't made for death. In all her life that woman had probably never said anything but ordinary things, like ”The leeks are getting bigger” or ”Who's the dirty pig who got my floor all muddy?”

But what do I know? Jeanne asked herself. Perhaps there was a wealth of intelligence and tenderness behind their low brows, beneath their dishevelled, lifeless hair. What are we in people's eyes, Maurice and I, other than two miserable employees? It's true in a way, but in another way, we are precious and unique. I know that too. ”What a horrible waste,” she thought again. She leaned against Marurice's shoulder, trembling, her cheeks wet with tears.

”Let's go,” he said, gently pulling her away.

Both of them were thinking the same thing: ”Why?” They would never make it to Tours. Did the bank even exist any more? Was Monsieur Corbin buried beneath the rubble with his files? With his valuables? With his dancer? And his wife's jewellery! But that would be too good to be true, Jeanne thought with sudden ferociousness. Nevertheless, she and Maurice hobbled along, continuing on their way. All they could do was to keep walking and place themselves in the hands of G.o.d.

12.

The little group made up of the Michauds and their companions was picked up on Friday night. A military truck stopped for them and they travelled through the night, lying among the crates, until they arrived at a town whose name they never discovered. The railway line was intact, they were told. They could go direct to Tours. Jeanne went into the first house she saw on the outskirts of the town and asked permission to wash. The kitchen was already full of refugees rinsing their clothes in the sink, but they took Jeanne to the water pump in the garden. Maurice had brought a little mirror on a small chain; he hung it from the branch of a tree and shaved. Afterwards they felt better, ready to face the long wait by the door of the barracks where soup was being given out, and an even longer wait at the third-cla.s.s ticket window at the train station. They had eaten and were crossing the square in front of the station when the bombs exploded. Enemy planes had been flying above the town for the past three days and air-raid warnings had been constant. The town had to make do with an old fire siren to sound the alarm; through the din of the cars, the screaming children, the noise of the terrified crowd, you could barely hear its faint, ridiculous sound. The people arriving off trains would ask, ”Is it an air raid?” and be told, ”No, it's over,” only for the faint bell to be heard again five minutes later. There was laughter. Shops were open, little girls played hopscotch on the pavement and dogs ran through the dust near the old cathedral. The Italian and German planes were ignored as they glided calmly overhead. People were used to them.

Suddenly, one broke loose and swooped down at the crowd. He's going to crash, Jeanne thought, then, No, he's going to fire, he's firing, we're finished . . . Instinctively, she covered her mouth to stifle a scream. The bombs had fallen on the train station and, a bit further along, on the railway tracks. The gla.s.s roof shattered and exploded outwards, wounding and killing the people in the square. Panic-stricken, some of the women threw down their babies as if they were c.u.mbersome packages and ran. Others grabbed their children and held them so tightly they seemed to want to force them back into the womb, as if that were the only truly safe place. A wounded woman was writhing around at Jeanne's feet: it was the one with the costume jewellery. Her throat and fingers were sparkling and blood was pouring from her shattered skull. Her warm blood oozed on to Jeanne's dress, on to her shoes and stockings.

But Jeanne was saved from thinking about the dead by the wounded, who were calling for help from beneath the piles of shattered stone and broken gla.s.s. She joined Maurice and some other men who were trying to clear away the rubble. But it was too difficult for her. She couldn't do it. Then she remembered the children who were wandering piteously about the square, looking for their mothers. She called them over, took them by the hand and led them to the cathedral, where she a.s.sembled them in the front portico. Then she returned to the crowd. When she saw a frantic woman, screaming, running back and forth, she would call out in a calm, loud voice, so calm and loud that she herself was amazed, ”The children are by the church door. Go and get them, over there. Could everyone who has lost their children please go and get them at the church.”

The women rushed towards the cathedral. Sometimes they wept, sometimes they burst out laughing, sometimes they let out a sort of wild cry, a choking noise, like no other sound. The children were much calmer. Their tears dried quickly. Their mothers carried them away, holding them tightly. Not one of them thought to thank Jeanne. She went back into the square where she learned the town had not suffered much damage. A hospital convoy had been hit just as it was pulling into the station, but the line to Tours was still intact. The train was getting ready right now and would leave in a quarter of an hour. Immediately the dead and injured were forgotten; people rushed towards the station clutching their suitcases and hatboxes like life jackets. The Michauds spotted the first stretchers transporting the wounded soldiers. Because of the crush it was impossible to get close enough to see their faces. They were being piled into trucks and cars, both military and civilian, requisitioned in haste. Jeanne saw an officer going towards a truck full of children, supervised by a priest. She heard him say, ”I'm terribly sorry, Father, but I must take this truck. We have to get our wounded to Blois.”

The priest motioned to the children who started to climb out.

”I'm terribly sorry, Father,” the officer repeated. ”A school, is it?”

”An orphanage.”

”I'll send the truck back to you if I can get any petrol.”

The children-teenagers between fourteen and eighteen-each carrying a little suitcase, got out and formed a small group round the priest.

Maurice turned towards his wife. ”Are you coming?”

”Yes. Wait a minute.”

”What is it?”

She was trying to catch sight of the stretchers moving one after the other through the crowd. But there were too many people: she couldn't see anything.

Next to her another woman was also standing on tiptoe. Her lips were moving but she made no sound: she was praying or repeating someone's name. She looked at Jeanne. ”You always think you see yours, don't you?” she said.

Jeanne sighed faintly. There was no reason at all why it should be her son rather than another woman's who appeared, suddenly, there in front of her eyes, her son, her own, her beloved. Perhaps he was in some peaceful spot? The most terrible battles leave some places untouched, protected, despite being surrounded by fire.

”Do you know where that train was coming from?” she asked the woman next to her.

”No.”

”Are there many dead?”

”They say there are two carriages full of casualties.”

Jeanne gave in and let Maurice pull her away. With great difficulty they made their way to the railway station. In places, they had to step over stone slabs and piles of broken gla.s.s. They finally made it to platform 3, where the train for Tours was getting ready to depart, a small local train from the provinces, peaceful and black, puffing out its smoke.

13.

It was two days since Jean-Marie had been wounded: he was in the train that was bombed. He wasn't hit, but the carriage caught fire. In his attempt to get out of his seat and make it to the door, his wound reopened. When he was picked up and hoisted into the truck, he was only semi-conscious. He lay motionless on his stretcher; his head had fallen sideways so that, at each jolt, it banged hard against an empty crate. Three vehicles full of soldiers were moving slowly down a road that had been machine-gunned and was hardly pa.s.sable. Above the convoy the enemy planes flew back and forth. Jean-Marie came out of his delirium for a moment and thought, ”This is how birds must feel when the hawks circle above them . . .”

In his confusion he could picture his nanny's farm, where he used to spend the Easter holidays as a child. The farmyard was bright with sun: the chickens pecked at grain and hopped friskily about in the ash pile; then his nanny's large bony hand would s.n.a.t.c.h one of them, tie its feet together and five minutes later . . . that stream of blood and that little gurgling sound. Grotesque. Death. ”And me too; I've been s.n.a.t.c.hed and carried away,” he thought, ”. . . s.n.a.t.c.hed and carried away . . . and tomorrow, thin and naked, tossed into a grave, I'll be as ugly as that chicken . . .”

His forehead banged against the crate with such force that he let out a faint protest: he didn't have the strength to cry out any more, but it caught the attention of the soldier on the next stretcher, wounded in the leg, but not too badly. ”Hey, Michaud? What's wrong? Michaud, are you OK?”

”Give me something to drink and get my head in a better position and get this fly away from my eyes,” Jean-Marie wanted to say, but he only sighed. ”No.” And he closed his eyes.

”They're starting again,” groaned his friend.

At that very moment more bombs fell around the convoy. A small bridge was destroyed: the road to Blois was cut off; they would have to retreat, clear a pa.s.sage through the crowd of refugees, or go through Vendome, but they wouldn't make it there until nightfall.

Poor lads, thought the Major, looking at Michaud, the worst off. He gave him an injection. They started moving again. The two trucks carrying the minor casualties crawled towards Vendome; the one carrying Jean-Marie took a path through the fields to shorten the journey by a few kilometres. The truck soon stopped, out of petrol. The Major went to see if he could find a house in which to lodge his men. They were away from the ma.s.s exodus here; the river of cars was moving along the road down below. From the top of the hill, in the periwinkle-blue twilight of this peaceful, tender June night, the Major could see a black swarm from which arose a troubling sound-distinct from the sound of car horns, cries and shouts-a muted, sinister murmur that pierced the soul.

The Major saw a row of farms. They were inhabited, but only by women and children. The men were at the front. It was into one of these farms that Jean-Marie was taken. The neighbouring houses took in the other soldiers. The Major found a woman's bicycle and said he was going to the nearest town to get help, petrol, trucks, whatever he could find . . . ”If he has to die,” he thought, as he said goodbye to Michaud who was still lying on the stretcher in the farm's large kitchen while the women prepared and warmed up a bed, ”if he can't go on, he's better off between two clean sheets than on the road . . .”

He cycled towards Vendome. It took him the whole night and, when he was about to enter the town, he fell into the hands of the Germans who took him prisoner. However, realising that he wasn't coming back, the women had already rushed to the village to warn the doctor and nurses at the hospital. But the hospital was full of the victims of the last bombing, so the soldiers remained in the hamlet. The women complained: with the men gone, they had enough work to do in the fields and looking after the animals without having to take care of these wounded men who'd been dropped on them!

Jean-Marie, burning with fever, painfully opened his eyes and saw an old woman with a long, sallow nose at the foot of his bed, knitting and sighing as she watched him: ”If I could just be sure that my old man, wherever he is, the poor bloke, was being looked after like this one who means nothing to me . . .” Through his confused dream he could hear the clicking of the steel knitting needles. The ball of wool was bouncing on his blanket; in his delirium he thought it had pointed ears and a tail, and he stretched out his hand to stroke it. Now and again the woman's adopted daughter would stand close to him; she was young, with a fresh, rosy face, slightly heavy features and lively brown eyes. One day she brought him a bunch of cherries and put them next to him on the pillow. He was not allowed to eat them, but he pressed them against his burning cheeks and felt content and almost happy.

14.

Corte and Florence had left Orleans and were driving towards Bordeaux. Things were complicated, however, by the fact that they didn't know exactly where they were going. First they had headed towards Brittany, but then decided to go south, to the Midi. And now Gabriel was saying that he wanted to leave France altogether.

”We'll never get out alive,” said Florence.

What she resented, more than the weariness and fear, was her anger-a blind, maddening rage that rose up from inside to suffocate her. She felt that Gabriel had broken the tacit agreement that bound them together. After all, for a man and woman in their position, and at their age, love was a contract. She had given herself to him because she hoped he would take care of her-not just materially but emotionally. Until now she had been dutifully repaid: he had given her wealth and prestige. But suddenly he seemed to her a weak and despicable creature.

”And would you care to tell me just what we would do abroad? What we would live on? All your money is here, since you were foolish enough to have the whole lot sent back from London, not that I've ever understood why!”

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