Suite Française

by Irene Nemirovsky

  “What a terrible sight,” said Lucile, upset.

  In spite of everything there was something comical about the room and especially about the sheepish expression on the faces of the soldiers and the officer.

  Seeing the look of reproach on Lucile’s face, the officer said sharply, “My parents used to have a villa on the Rhine. Your soldiers occupied it during the last war. They smashed rare, priceless musical instruments that had been in the family for two hundred years and tore up books that once belonged to Goethe.”

  Lucile couldn’t help but smile; he was defending himself in the same crude and indignant way a little boy does when accused of some misdeed: “But I wasn’t the one who started it, it was the others . . .”

  She felt a very feminine pleasure, an almost sensual, sweet sensation at seeing this childish look on a face that was, after all, the face of an implacable enemy, a hardened warrior. For we can’t pretend, she thought, that we aren’t all in his hands. We’re defenceless. If we still have our lives and our possessions, it’s only because of his goodwill. She was almost afraid of the feelings growing within her. It was like stroking a wild animal—an exquisitely intense sensation, a mixture of tenderness and terror.

  Wanting to hold on to the feeling a little longer, she frowned. “You should be ashamed! These empty houses were under the protection of the German army, the honour of the German army!”

  As he listened to her, he lightly tapped the back of his boots with his riding crop. He turned towards his soldiers and gave them a good dressing down. Lucile realised he was ordering them to get the house back in order, to fix what had been broken, to polish the floors and the furniture. His voice, when he spoke German, especially with that commanding tone, took on a sharp, resonant quality. Hearing it gave Lucile the same pleasure that a slightly rough kiss might—the kind of kiss that ends with a little bite. She slowly brought her hands to her burning face: Stop it! she said to herself. Stop thinking about him; you’re asking for trouble.

  She took a few steps towards the door. “I’m going home. You have the list; you can ask your soldiers to find everything.”

  In a flash he was by her side. “Please don’t go away angry, I beg of you. Everything will be repaired as well as possible, I give you my word. Listen! Let’s let them look for everything; they can put it all in a wheelbarrow and, under supervision from you, take it straight over to the Perrin ladies. I’ll go with you to apologise. I can’t do more than that. In the meantime, come into the garden. We could go for a little walk and I’ll pick some beautiful flowers for you.”

  “No! I’m going home.”

  “You can’t,” he said, taking her by the arm. “You promised the ladies you’d bring them their things. You have to stay and make sure your orders are carried out.”

  They were outside now, standing on a path bordered with lilacs in full bloom. A multitude of honeybees, bumblebees and wasps were flying all around them, diving into the flowers, drinking their honey and settling on Lucile’s arms and hair; she was frightened and laughed nervously.

  “We can’t stay here. Everywhere I go is dangerous!”

  “Let’s walk on a little further.”

  They came across the village children at the back of the garden. Some of them were playing in the flower beds where everything had been pulled up and trampled; others had climbed the pear trees and were breaking off the branches.

  “Little beasts,” said Lucile. “There’ll be no fruit this year.”

  “Yes, but the flowers are so beautiful.”

  He stretched out his arms and the children threw him some small branches with clusters of delicate petals.

  “Take them, Madame; the petals will be wonderful in a bowl on the table.”

  “I would never dare walk through the village carrying branches from a fruit tree,” Lucile protested, laughing. “Just wait, you little devils! The policemen will catch you.”

  “Not a chance,” said a little girl in a black smock.

  She was eating a jam sandwich while wrapping her dirty little legs round a tree and climbing up.

  “Not a chance. The Bo . . . the Germans won’t let them in.”

  The lawn hadn’t been mowed for two summers and was dotted with buttercups. The officer spread out his large, pale, almost almond-green cape and sat down on the grass. The children had followed them. The little girl in the black smock was picking cowslips; she made big bouquets of the fresh yellow flowers and stuck her nose deep inside them, but her dark eyes, both innocent and crafty, remained fixed on the grown-ups. She looked at Lucile curiously and somewhat critically: the look of one woman to another. She looks scared, she thought. I wonder why she’s scared. He’s not mean, that officer. I know him; he gives me money, and once he got my balloon that was caught in the branches of the big cedar tree. He’s really handsome. More handsome than Daddy and all the boys around here. The lady has a pretty dress.

  Surreptitiously she moved closer and touched one of the folds of the dress with her little dirty finger; it was simple, light, made of grey cotton and decorated only with a small collar and cuffs of pleated linen. She tugged on the dress rather hard and Lucile suddenly turned round. The little girl jumped back, but Lucile looked through her with wide, anxious eyes. The little girl could see that the lady had gone very pale and that her lips were trembling. For sure she was afraid of being alone here with the German. As if he would hurt her! He was talking to her so nicely. But then again, he was holding her hand so tightly that there was no way she could escape. All boys were the same, the little girl thought vaguely, whether they were big or small. They liked teasing girls and scaring them. She stretched out in the tall grass which was so high that it hid her from sight. It felt wonderful to be so tiny and invisible, with the grass tickling her neck, her legs, her eyelids . . .

  The German and the lady were talking quietly. He had turned white as a sheet too. Now and again, she could hear him holding back his loud voice, as if he wanted to shout or cry but didn’t dare. The little girl couldn’t understand anything he said. She vaguely thought he might be talking about his wife and the lady’s husband. She heard him say several times: “If you were happy . . . I see how you live . . . I know that you’re all alone, that your husband has abandoned you . . . I’ve asked people in the village.” Happy? Wasn’t she happy, then, the lady who had such pretty dresses, a beautiful house? Anyway, the lady didn’t want him to feel sorry for her, she wanted to leave. She told him to let go of her and to stop talking. My word, it wasn’t she who was scared now, it was he, in spite of his big boots and proud look. He was the nervous one now. At that moment a ladybird landed on the little girl’s hand. She watched it a while. She wanted to kill it, but she knew it was bad luck to kill one of God’s creatures. So she just blew on it, very gently at first, to see it lift its delicate, transparent wings; then she blew with all her might, so that the little insect must have felt it was on a raft caught in a storm at sea. The ladybird flew off. “It’s on your arm, Madame,” the little girl shouted. Once again, the officer and the lady turned and looked at her but without really seeing her. Meanwhile, the officer made an impatient gesture with his hand, as if he were chasing away a fly. I’m staying right here, the little girl said to herself defiantly. And first of all, what are they doing here? A man and a woman: they should be in the sitting room. Mischievously, she strained to hear them. What were they talking about? “I’ll never forget you,” said the officer, his voice low and trembling. “Never.”

  A large cloud covered half the sky; all the fresh, bright colours in the garden turned grey. The lady was picking some little purple flowers and tearing them up.

  “It’s not possible,” she said, on the verge of tears.

  What’s not possible? the little girl wondered.

  “Of course I’ve also thought about it . . . I admit it, I’m not talking about . . . love . . . but I would have liked to have a friend like you . . . I’ve never had any friends. I have no one. But it’s not possible.”
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  “Because of other people?” said the officer scornfully.

  She just looked at him proudly. “Other people? If I myself felt innocent then . . . No! There can be nothing between us.”

  “There are many things you will never be able to erase: the day we spent together when it rained, the piano, this morning, our walks in the woods . . .”

  “Oh, but I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “But you did! It’s too late . . . there’s nothing you can do about it. All that was . . .”

  The little girl rested her face on her folded arms and heard nothing more than a distant murmur, like the humming of a bumblebee. That big cloud bordered with burning rays of sunlight meant it would rain. What if it suddenly started raining, what would the lady and the officer do? Wouldn’t it be funny to see them running in the rain, her with her straw hat and him with his beautiful green cape? But they could hide in the garden. If they followed her, she could show them a bower where no one would be able to see them. It’s twelve o’clock now, she thought when she heard the church bells ringing the Angelus. Are they going to go home for lunch? What do rich people eat? Fromage blanc like us? Bread? Potatoes? Sweets? What if I asked them for some sweets? She went up to them and was going to tug at their hands to ask for some sweets—she was a bold little girl, this Rose—when she saw them suddenly jump up and stand there, shaking. Yes, the gentleman and the lady were shaking, just like when she was up in the cherry tree at school, her mouth stuffed full of cherries, and she heard the teacher shouting, “Rose, you little thief, come down from there at once!” But they hadn’t seen the teacher: it was a soldier standing to attention, who was talking very quickly in an incomprehensible language; the words coming out of his mouth sounded like water rushing over a bed of rocks.

  The officer moved away from the lady, who looked pale and dishevelled.

  “What is it?” she murmured. “What is he saying?”

  The officer seemed as upset as she was; he was listening without hearing. Finally, his pale face lit up with a smile.

  “He says they’ve found everything . . . but the old gentleman’s false teeth are broken because the children have been playing with them: they tried to cram them in the mouth of the stuffed bulldog.”

  Both of them—the officer and the lady—gradually seemed to come out of their stupor and return to earth. They looked down at the little girl and saw her this time. The officer tugged at her ear. “What have you little devils been up to?”

  But his voice quivered and in the lady’s laugh you could hear the echo of stifled sobs. She laughed like someone who had been very frightened and couldn’t forget, while laughing, that she’d had a narrow escape. Little Rose was bothered and tried in vain to run off. She wanted to say, “The false teeth . . . yes . . . well . . . we wanted to see if the bulldog would look vicious with some brand-new teeth . . .” But she was afraid the officer would get angry (seen close up, he seemed very big and scary) so she just whined, “We didn’t do anything, we didn’t . . . we didn’t even see any false teeth.”

  Meanwhile, children were coming over from all directions. They were all talking at once with their young shrill voices.

  “Stop! Stop! Be quiet!” the lady begged. “Never mind. We’re just happy to have found everything else.”

  An hour later a gang of kids in dirty clothes came out of the Perrins’ garden, followed by two German soldiers pushing a wheelbarrow containing a basket of china cups, a sofa with its four legs in the air (one was broken), a plush photograph album, a birdcage that the Germans mistook for the salad dryer and many other items. Bringing up the rear were Lucile and the officer. Curious women stared at them as they walked through the village. They didn’t speak to each other, the women noticed; they didn’t even look at each other and they were deathly pale—the officer’s expression cold and impenetrable.

  “She must have given him a piece of her mind,” the women whispered. “Said it was shameful to get a house into that state. He’s furious. Goodness gracious, they’re not used to people standing up for themselves. She’s right. We’re not dogs! She’s brave, that young Angellier lady, she’s not afraid.” One of them, who was tending a goat (the little old woman with white hair and blue eyes who’d run into the Angellier ladies on their way back from Vespers that Easter Sunday and had said to them, “These Germans, I’ve heard they’re bad and evil”), even came up to Lucile and whispered to her as she passed, “Good for you, Madame! Show them we’re not afraid. Your prisoner of war would be proud of you,” she added and she began to cry, not that she had a prisoner herself to cry over—she was long past the age of having a husband or a son at war—she cried because prejudice outlives passion and because she was sentimentally patriotic.

  15

  Whenever the elder Madame Angellier and the German met each other, they both instinctively stepped back. On the officer’s part this could have been interpreted as a sign of exaggerated courtesy, the desire not to impose his presence on the mistress of the house. He had almost the air of a thoroughbred horse leaping away from a snake it sees at its feet. Madame Angellier, on the other hand, didn’t even bother to disguise the shudder that ran through her, leaving her looking stiff and terrified, as if she’d come into contact with some disgusting, dangerous animal. But the moment lasted for only an instant: a good education is precisely designed to correct the instincts of human nature. The officer would draw himself up, put on the rigid, serious expression of an automaton, then bow and click his heels together (“Oh, that Prussian salute!” Madame Angellier would groan, without thinking that this greeting was, in fact, exactly what she should have expected from a man born in western Germany, since it was unlikely to be an Arab kiss of the hand, or an English handshake). As for Madame Angellier, she would clasp her hands in front of her like a nun who has been sitting at someone’s deathbed and gets up to greet a member of his family suspected of anticlericalism. During these encounters, various expressions would cross Madame Angellier’s face: false respect (“You’re in charge here!”), disapproval (“Everyone knows who you are, you heathen!”), submission (“Let us offer up our hatred to the Lord”) and finally a flash of fierce joy (“Just you wait, my friend, you’ll be burning in hell while I’m finding peace in Jesus”), although this final thought was replaced in Madame Angellier’s mind by the desire she felt every time she saw a member of the occupying forces: “I hope he’ll soon be at the bottom of the English Channel,” for everyone was expecting an attempt to invade England, if not imminently, then very soon. Taking her desires for reality, Madame Angellier even came to believe the German looked like a drowned man: pallid, swollen, thrown about by the waves. It was this thought alone that allowed her to look human again, allowed the shadow of a smile to pass over her lips (like the final rays of a dying star) and allowed her to reply to the German when he asked after her health, “Thank you for asking. I’m as well as can be expected,” mournfully stressing these final words to imply, “as well as I can be, given the disastrous situation France is in.”

  Lucile walked behind Madame Angellier. She had become colder, more distracted, more rebellious than usual. She would nod silently as she walked away from the German. He too was silent. But, thinking no one could see, he would watch her for a long time as she walked away. Madame Angellier seemed to have eyes in the back of her head to catch him. Without even turning round she would mutter angrily to Lucile, “Pay no attention to him. He’s still there.” She could only breathe freely after the door had been shut behind them; then she would give her daughter-in-law a withering look and say, “You’ve done something different to your hair today,” or “You’re wearing your new dress, aren’t you?” concluding sarcastically, “It’s not very flattering.”

  And yet, despite the waves of hatred she felt towards Lucile because she was there and her own son was not, in spite of everything she might have imagined or suspected, she never thought her daughter-in-law and the German could possibly care for each other. After all, people judge
one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees others enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire. To Madame Angellier, a German was not a man, he was the personification of cruelty, perversity and hatred. For anyone else to feel differently was preposterous, incredible. She couldn’t imagine Lucile in love with a German any more than she could imagine a woman mating with some mythical creature, a unicorn, a dragon or the monster Sainte Marthe killed to free Tarascon. Nor did it seem possible that the German could be in love with Lucile. Madame Angellier refused to accord him any human feelings. She interpreted his long looks as a further attempt to insult this already defiled French home, as a way of feeling cruel pleasure at having the mother and wife of a prisoner of war at his mercy. What she called Lucile’s “insensitivity” irritated her more than anything else: “She’s trying out new hairstyles, wearing new dresses. Doesn’t she realise the German will think she’s doing it for him? How degrading!” She wanted to cover Lucile’s face with a mask and dress her in a sack. It pained her to see Lucile looking healthy and beautiful. She was suffering: “And all this time, my son, my own son . . .”

  It was, for Madame Angellier, a moment of intense pleasure when they ran into the German in the hall one day and saw he was very pale and wore his arm in a sling—quite ostentatiously, in Madame Angellier’s opinion. She was outraged to hear Lucile quickly ask, without thinking, “What happened to you, mein Herr?”

  “I came off a horse. A difficult animal I was riding for the first time.”

  “You don’t look well,” said Lucile when she saw the German’s haggard face. “You should go and lie down.”

  “No, no . . . It’s only a graze and in any case . . .” He indicated the sound of the regiment going past their windows. “Manoeuvres . . .”