Suite Française

by Irene Nemirovsky

  Arlette pushed away her plate and went out into the hotel’s small garden. She had some cigarettes, a deckchair, a book. She’d left Paris a week earlier so panic-stricken she’d felt close to madness; now, despite having met with real danger, she was herself again: perfectly calm and collected. What’s more, she was convinced that, from now on, she could survive any situation, that she was gifted with a real genius for obtaining maximum pleasure and comfort regardless of the circumstances. Her flexibility, lucidity, detachment were qualities that had been of enormous use to her in her career and relationships, but until now she hadn’t realised they would be just as useful in a crisis.

  When she thought of how she had begged Corbin’s help she smiled scornfully. They had arrived in Tours just in time to be bombed; Corbin’s suitcase with his personal effects and the bank’s documents had been buried in the rubble, while she had emerged from the disaster without having lost a single handkerchief, a single box of make-up, a single pair of shoes. She had seen Corbin’s face distorted with terror and thought how much pleasure she would get from reminding him of it, often. Then she remembered his drooping, corpse-like jaw; she’d wanted to give him a chin strap to hold it closed. Pathetic! Leaving him in Tours amid the terrible confusion and chaos, she’d taken the car, managed to find some petrol and left. She’d spent two days in this village, where she’d had good food and lodgings, while a pathetic crowd of people camped in barns and in the village square. She had even allowed herself the luxury of being charitable by leaving her room for that lovely boy, that young Péricand . . . Péricand? They were an upper-middle-class family, dull, respectable, very rich, with excellent connections in the government, among diplomats and wealthy industrialists, thanks to their relatives from Lyon . . . the Maltêtes . . . She sighed with annoyance, realising she would now have to rethink everything. How irritating, too, that she’d recently gone to so much trouble to seduce Gérard Salomon-Worms, the Count de Furières’s brother-in-law. A quite useless conquest that had cost her a great deal of time and effort.

  Frowning slightly, Arlette studied her fingernails. The ten little sparkling mirrors seemed to put her in a pensive mood. Her lovers knew that when she contemplated her hands in this reflective, malicious way, it meant she was about to express her opinion on things like politics, art, literature and fashion, and that, in general, her opinions were insightful and just. For a few seconds, in this little garden in bloom, while bumblebees gathered pollen from a bush with scarlet bell-shaped flowers, the dancer imagined the future. She came to the conclusion that for her nothing would change. Her wealth consisted of jewellery—which could only increase in value—and property (she’d made some good investments in the Midi, before the war). Yet they were mere trimmings. Her principal assets were her legs, her figure, her scheming mind—things vulnerable only to time. But there was the rub . . . She immediately thought of her age and, taking a mirror from her handbag in the way that you touch a good-luck charm to ward off evil spirits, looked carefully at her face. An unpleasant thought occurred to her: she used nothing but American make-up. It had been difficult to get hold of any for a few weeks now. That put her in a bad mood. So what! Things might change on the surface but underneath everything would be the same. There would be new rich men, just as there always were after great disasters—men prepared to pay dearly for their pleasures because their money had come easily and so would love. But please, dear God, let all this chaos end quickly! Please let us get back to a normal way of life, whatever it might be; these wars, revolutions, great historical upheavals might be exciting to men, but to women . . . Women felt nothing but boredom. She was positive that every woman would agree with her: they were tired of crying, bored to death by all these noble words and noble feelings! As for men . . . it was hard to know, difficult to say . . . In some ways those simple souls were incomprehensible, whereas for at least fifty years women had been concerned only with the commonplace, the ordinary . . . She looked up and saw the owner of the little hotel leaning out of the window, looking at something. “What is it, Madame Goulot?” she asked.

  “Mademoiselle,” the woman replied in a solemn, trembling voice, “it’s them . . . they’re coming . . .”

  “The Germans?”

  “Yes.”

  The dancer was about to get up to go to the gate so she could see down the road, but she was afraid to in case someone took her deckchair and her spot in the shade, so she stayed where she was.

  It wasn’t the Germans who were coming but one German: the first. From behind closed doors, through half-closed shutters, from attic windows, the entire village watched him arrive. He stopped his motorcycle in the deserted village square. He had on a green uniform, gloves and a helmet with a visor. When he raised his head, you could see a rosy, thin, almost childlike face. “But he’s so young!” murmured the women. Without actually realising it, they were expecting some vision from the Apocalypse, some terrifying, foreign monster. Since he looked around expectantly, the newsagent, who had fought in ’14 and wore his Croix de Guerre and military medals on the inside of his old grey jacket, came out of his shop and walked towards the enemy. For a moment, the two men just stood there, face-to-face, without saying a word. Then the German took out a cigarette and asked for a light in bad French. The newsagent replied in bad German; he had been among the occupying forces in Mainz in ’18. There was such total silence (the whole village was holding its breath) that you could hear each and every word. The German asked for directions.

  The Frenchman replied, then became bolder: “Has the armistice been signed?”

  The German threw open his arms. “We don’t know yet. We hope so,” he said.

  And the humanity of his words, his gesture, everything proved they were not dealing with some bloodthirsty monster but with a simple soldier like any other, and suddenly the ice was broken between the town and the enemy, between the country folk and the invader.

  “He doesn’t seem so bad,” the women whispered.

  He smiled and then, raising his hand to his helmet, made an unconfident, half-finished gesture: not quite a military salute but not a civilian greeting either. He glanced curiously at the closed windows for a moment, started up his motorcycle and disappeared. One after the other, doors opened and the entire village spilled out into the square until the newsagent was surrounded. Standing motionless, his hands in his pockets, he was frowning and staring into the distance. Contradictory expressions appeared on his face: relief it was all over, sadness and anger that it had all ended this way, memories of the past, fear of the future; and all these feelings were mirrored in the faces around him. The women dried tears from their eyes; the men stood silent, looking obstinate and hostile. The children, distracted from their games for a moment, turned back to their marbles and hopscotch. The sky was shining with the kind of brilliant, silvery light you sometimes find in the middle of a truly beautiful day; an almost imperceptible iridescent mist hovered in the air and all the fresh colours of June were intensified, looked richer and softer, as if reflected through a prism.

  The hours passed by peacefully. There were fewer cars on the road. Bicycles still sped along as if caught up in the angry wind that had been blowing in from the north-east for over a week now, dragging with them their miserable human cargo. A little while later there was a surprising sight: cars appeared—travelling in the opposite direction from a week ago. People were going back to Paris. When they saw that, the villagers finally believed it was all over. They went home. Once again you could hear the women rattling the dishes as they washed them in their kitchens, the faint footsteps of an old woman going to feed her rabbits, even a little girl singing as she drew water from a pump. Dogs rolled around, playing in the dust.

  It was an exquisite evening with clear skies and blue shadows; the last rays of the setting sun caressed the roses, while the church bells called the faithful to prayer. But then a noise rose up from the road, a noise unlike any they’d heard these past few days, a low, steady rumbling that seem
ed to move slowly closer, heavy and relentless. Trucks were heading towards the village. This time it really was the Germans. The trucks stopped in the village square and men got out; others pulled up behind them, then more and still more. In a few seconds the whole of the old, dusty square, from the church to the municipal hall, became a dark, still mass of grey vehicles with a few faded branches clinging to them, the remains of their camouflage.

  There were so many! Silently, cautiously, people came out on to their doorsteps again. They tried in vain to count the flood of soldiers. Germans were coming from all directions. They filled the squares and streets—more and more of them, endlessly. The villagers hadn’t heard the sound of footsteps in the street, young voices, laughter, since September. They were stunned by the noise emerging from this wave of green uniforms, by the scent of these healthy men, their young flesh, and especially by the sound of this foreign language. Germans poured into the houses, the shops, the cafés. Their boots clanked over the red tiles of the kitchens. They asked for food, drink. They stroked the children as they went by. They threw open their arms, they sang, they laughed with the women. Their obvious happiness, their delight at being conquerors, their feverish bliss—a bliss combined with a touch of wonder, as if they themselves could hardly believe what had happened—all this contained such drama, such excitement, that the defeated villagers forgot their sadness and bitterness for a few seconds. They just stood and watched, speechless.

  In the little hotel, below the room where Hubert was still sleeping, the main room echoed with songs and shouting. The Germans had immediately demanded champagne (Sekt! Nahrung!) and corks flew from their hands. Some of them were playing billiards, others went into the kitchen carrying piles of raw pink pork cutlets which they threw on to the fire; the meat sizzled and let off thick smoke as it cooked. The soldiers brought bottles of beer up from the cellar, impatiently pushing aside the waitress who wanted to help them; a young man with a rosy complexion and a mass of golden hair was cracking eggs open on the edge of the stove; in the garden, someone else was picking the first strawberries of summer. Two half-naked young boys were dipping their heads in buckets of cold water drawn from the well. They ate their fill, gorged themselves with all the good things the gardens provided; they had cheated death, they were young, alive, they were conquerors! Their excitement spilled out in urgent, rapid chatter; they spoke bad French to anyone who would listen to them, pointing to their boots, saying over and over again, “We walking, walking, comrades falling and we always walking . . .” The clinking of weapons, belts, helmets filled the room.

  Hubert could hear it in his dream and, confusing it with his memories of the day before, imagined once more the battle on the Moulins bridge. He tossed about, sighing and moaning as if in pain, fighting off some invisible person. When he finally woke up, he was in a strange bedroom. He’d slept all day. He could see the full moon shining through the open window. Hubert started, rubbed his eyes and looked at the dancer who had come in while he was asleep. He muttered his thanks and apologies.

  “You must be hungry,” she said. It was true, he was famished. “You know, perhaps it would be better if you had dinner here with me? It’s unbearable downstairs; there are soldiers everywhere.”

  “Soldiers!” he said, rushing towards the door. “What are they saying? Are things looking any better? Where are the Germans?”

  “The Germans? But they’re here. It’s the German soldiers who are downstairs.”

  He leapt away from her in surprise, as fearful as a hunted animal. “The Germans? No, you’re joking?” He tried in vain to find some other words and then repeated in a low, shaky voice, “You’re joking . . . ?”

  She opened the door; the smell of thick, acrid smoke rose up from the room downstairs, along with the unmistakable sound of a group of victorious soldiers: shouting, laughter, singing, their noisy boots, the clanging of heavy guns thrown on to the marble tables, the crashing of helmets against metal belt buckles, and the joyous roar from a proud, happy crowd, intoxicated by their victory, like the winning team at a rugby match, Hubert thought. He found it almost impossible not to shout out insults or collapse in tears. Rushing to the window, he looked outside. The street was starting to empty, but four men were walking abreast, rapping on the doors of the houses as they passed, shouting, “Lights out!” One after the other, lights were submissively switched off. All that remained was the moonlight, which cast a dull blue glow as it shimmered off the helmets and grey gun barrels. Hubert was shaking; he grabbed the curtain with both hands, pressed it against his mouth and burst into tears.

  “Come on, now,” the woman said, stroking his shoulder and feeling mildly sorry for him. “There’s nothing we can do about it, is there? What can we do? All the tears in the world won’t change anything. There are better times ahead. We have to live to see the better times, first and foremost we have to live . . . to go on . . . But you acted very bravely . . . If everyone had been as brave as you . . . and you’re so young! Almost a child . . .”

  He shook his head.

  “No?” she said, lowering her voice. “Are you a man, then?”

  She fell silent. Her fingers were trembling slightly and she dug her nails into the boy’s arm as if she were grabbing hold of some fresh prey and kneading it before biting into it to satisfy her hunger. “Don’t cry,” she said very quietly, her voice faltering. “Only children cry. You’re a man. When a man is unhappy he knows what he needs . . .”

  She waited for a response but he said nothing and lowered his eyes. His mouth was closed and sad, but his nose wrinkled and his nostrils quivered slightly. So she said in a very quiet voice, “Love . . .”

  20

  In the room where the Péricand children were sleeping, Albert the cat had made his bed. First he’d climbed on to Jacqueline’s small floral quilt and started to paw at it, gnawing at the cotton fabric that smelled of glue and fruit, but Nanny had come in and chased him away. Three times in a row, as soon as she’d turned away, he’d returned with a silent, graceful leap, but finally he’d had to admit defeat and so had curled up at the back of an armchair under Jacqueline’s dressing gown. Sleep filled the room. The children were resting peacefully and Nanny had fallen asleep while saying her rosary. The cat, absolutely still, stared intently with one green eye at the rosary gleaming in the moonlight; the other eye remained closed. His body was hidden by the pink flannel dressing gown. Little by little, extremely quietly, one leg emerged, then the other; he stretched them out and felt them tremble slightly, all the way from his shoulder joint—that steel spring hidden beneath a soft, warm fur coat—right down to his hard, transparent claws. He sprang forward, jumped on to Nanny’s bed and stared at her for a long time without moving; only the ends of his delicate whiskers quivered. He stretched one paw forward and started playing with the rosary beads; they hardly moved at first, but then he began to enjoy the smooth, cool feel of these perfect, tiny balls rolling between his claws; he swiped at them harder and the rosary fell to the floor. The cat took fright and disappeared under an armchair.

  A while later Emmanuel woke up and started crying. The windows and shutters were both open. The moon lit up the rooftops in the village; the tiles glistened like the scales on a fish. The garden was fragrant, peaceful, and the silvery light seemed to shimmer like clear water, gently rising and falling over the fruit trees.

  The cat poked his nose through the fringes of the armchair and studied the scene with a dreamy expression. He was a very young cat who had only ever lived in the city, where the scent of such June nights was far away. Occasionally he had caught a whiff of something warm and intoxicating, but nothing like here where the smell rose up to his whiskers and took hold of him, making his head spin. Eyes half closed, he could feel waves of powerful, sweet perfume running through him: the pungent smell of the last lilacs, the sap running through the trees, the cool, dark earth, the animals, birds, moles, mice, all the prey, the musky scent of fur, of skin, the smell of blood . . . His mouth gaping
with longing, he jumped on to the window sill and walked slowly along the drainpipe. This was where a strong hand had grabbed him the night before and thrown him back to Jacqueline who was crying in bed. But he would not allow himself to be caught tonight.

  He eyed the distance from the drainpipe to the ground. It was an easy jump, but he appeared to want to flatter himself by exaggerating the difficulty of the leap. He balanced his hindquarters, looking fierce and confident, swept his long black tail across the drainpipe and, ears pulled back, leapt forward, landing on the freshly tilled earth. He hesitated for a moment, then buried his muzzle in the ground. Now he was in the very black of night, at the heart of it, at the darkest point. He needed to sniff the earth: here, between the roots and the pebbles, were smells untainted by the scent of humans, smells that had yet to waft into the air and vanish. They were warm, secretive, eloquent. Alive. Each and every scent meant there was some small living creature, hiding, happy, edible . . . June bugs, field mice, crickets and that small toad whose voice seemed full of crystallised tears . . . The cat’s long ears—pink triangles tinged with silver, pointed and delicately curly inside like the flower on bindweed—suddenly shot up. He was listening to faint noises in the shadows, so delicate, so mysterious but, to him alone, so clear: the rustling of wisps of straw in nests where birds watch over their young, the flutter of feathers, the sound of pecking on bark, the beating of insect wings, the patter of mice gently scratching the ground, even the faint bursting of seeds opening. Golden eyes flashed by in the darkness. There were sparrows sleeping under leaves, fat blackbirds, nightingales; the male nightingales were already awake, singing to one another in the forest and along the river banks.