Suite Française

by Irene Nemirovsky

  “What? Again?”

  “We’re at war,” he said.

  He smiled slightly and, after a brief salute, he left.

  “What are you doing?” Madame Angellier exclaimed sharply. Lucile had pushed aside the curtain and was watching the soldiers go by. “You have absolutely no sense of propriety. When Germans march by, the windows and shutters should be closed . . . like in ’70 . . .”

  “Yes, when they march into a town for the first time . . . But since they walk around our streets nearly every day, we’d be condemned to perpetual darkness if we followed tradition to the letter,” Lucile replied impatiently.

  It was a stormy night; a yellowish light fell on all the soldiers. They held their heads high and moved their lips in song. Their music began softly, as if restrained, suppressed, but it would soon burst forth into a magnificent, solemn chorale.

  “They’ve got some funny songs,” the locals said. “You can’t help listening . . . They’re like prayers.”

  A streak of red lightning flashed across the setting sun and seemed to pour blood over the tight-fitting helmets, the green uniforms, the officer on horseback who commanded the detachment. Even Madame Angellier was impressed.

  “If only it were an omen . . .” she murmured.

  Manoeuvres finished at midnight. Lucile heard the sound of the courtyard doors open and close again. She recognised the officer’s footsteps in the hall. She sighed. She couldn’t sleep. Another bad night. They were all the same now: miserable sleeplessness or confused nightmares. She was up by six o’clock. But that didn’t help: all it did was to make the days longer, emptier.

  The cook told the Angellier ladies that the officer had come home ill and had been visited by the Major who had seen he had a fever and ordered him to stay in his room. At noon, two German soldiers arrived with a meal that the injured man wouldn’t eat. He was staying in his room but he wasn’t staying in bed. They could hear him pacing back and forth, and the monotonous footsteps annoyed Madame Angellier so much that she retired immediately after lunch. This was not like her. Usually she would spend the afternoon in the drawing room doing her accounts or knitting. Only after four o’clock would she go up to her rooms on the second floor, where she was insulated from all noise. Finally Lucile could breathe easily. She sometimes wondered what her mother-in-law did up there, in the darkness. She closed the shutters and windows, and never put on a light, so she couldn’t be reading. Besides, she never read. Maybe she kept on knitting in the dark, making great long scarves for the prisoners of war with the confidence of a blind woman who doesn’t need to look at what she is doing. Or was she praying? Sleeping? She would come downstairs at seven o’clock without a single strand of hair out of place, stiff and silent in her black dress.

  On this day and the ones that followed, Lucile heard her lock her bedroom door, then nothing else; the house seemed dead; only the German’s steady footsteps broke the silence. But Madame Angellier didn’t hear them; she was safely tucked away behind her thick walls, all sound deadened by her draperies. Hers was a large, dark, heavily furnished room. Madame Angellier would begin by closing the shutters and curtains to make it even darker. Then she would sink into a large green armchair with tapestry upholstery, fold her translucent hands in her lap and close her eyes. Sometimes a few bright, rare tears trickled down her cheeks—the reluctant tears of the very old who have finally accepted that sorrow is futile. She would wipe them away almost angrily and, sitting up straight, murmur, “Come along now, aren’t you tired? You’ve been running again, and right after lunch when you should be digesting your food; you’re sweating. Come along, Gaston, bring your little stool. Put it here next to Mama. You can read for me. But rest for a while first. You can lay your little head on Mama’s lap.” Softly, lovingly, she stroked imaginary curls.

  It was neither delirium nor the first signs of madness; never had she been more totally lucid and aware of herself. It was deliberate play-acting, the only thing that brought her some solace, in the same way as morphine or wine. In the darkness and the silence, she could relive the past; she resurrected moments she herself had thought were lost for ever; treasured memories resurfaced; she would remember certain words her son had said, certain intonations in his voice, a gesture he made with his chubby little hands when he was a baby, memories that, truly, for just an instant, could take her back in time. It was no longer her imagination but reality itself, rediscovered through her enduring memories, for nothing could change the fact that these things had actually happened. Absence, even death, could not erase the past; the pink smock her son had worn, the way he cried and held out his hand to her when he’d been stung by nettles, all these things had happened and it was within her power, as long as she was still alive, to bring them back to life. All she needed was solitude, darkness, the furniture around her and these objects that her son had touched. She would vary her hallucinations to suit her mood.

  Not content merely with the past, she anticipated the future; she moulded the present to her will. Though she lied and deceived herself, the lies were her own creation and she cherished them. For very brief moments she was happy. Her happiness was not hampered by the restrictions of reality. Everything was possible, everything within reach. First of all the war was over. That was the starting point of her dream, the springboard from which she could launch herself towards endless joy. The war was over . . . It was a day like any other . . . Tomorrow—why not? She would know nothing until the very last minute; she didn’t read the papers any more, didn’t listen to the radio. It would be like a bolt from the blue. One morning, she would go down to the kitchen and see the cook wide-eyed: “Haven’t you heard, Madame?” The surrender of the King of Belgium, the fall of Paris, the arrival of the Germans, the Armistice . . . She had learned about all these in just this way. Well, why not peace too? Why not: “Madame, it seems it’s all over! It seems no one’s fighting any more, there’s no more war, the prisoners are coming home!” She couldn’t care less if it was the English or the Germans who had won. All she cared about was her son. White as a ghost, eyes closed, she created the scene in her mind with the same abundance of detail found in the paintings of madmen. She could see each and every line on Gaston’s face, his hair, his clothing, the laces on his army boots; she could hear every inflection in his voice. She stretched out her hands and whispered, “Well, come inside. Don’t you recognise your own house?”

  During these first moments, Lucile faded away and Gaston belonged to her and her alone. She would be careful not to cry and kiss him for too long. She would make him a good lunch, run his bath, tell him immediately about his affairs: “You know, I took good care of them. You remember that piece of land you wanted, near the Étang-Neû? I bought it, it’s yours. I also bought that meadow of the Montmorts’ that borders on ours—the one the Viscount was adamant he wouldn’t sell to us. Well, I waited for the right moment. I got what I wanted. Are you pleased? I’ve put your gold, your silverware, the family jewellery all in a safe place. I did everything, courageously, all by myself. If I’d had to count on your wife . . . You can see I’m your only real friend, can’t you? That I’m the only one who really understands you? But go and see your wife, my boy. Go on. Just don’t expect much from her. She’s a cold, rebellious creature. Together, though, we’ll be able to bend her to our will better than I could do alone. She eludes me with her long silences, whereas you have the right to ask her what she’s thinking. You’re the master of the house: you can demand to know. Go, go and see her! Take from her what’s rightfully yours: her beauty, her youth . . . I’ve heard that in Dijon . . . You shouldn’t, my dear Gaston. A mistress is expensive. But I’m sure your long absence will have made you love our old house even more . . . Oh, what wonderful, peaceful days we’re going to spend together,” murmured Madame Angellier. She had stood up and was walking around the room holding an imaginary hand and leaning against a phantom shoulder. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. I’ve had a light meal prepared for you in the sitting room.
You’ve lost weight, Gaston. Come, you’ve got to have something to eat.”

  Without thinking, she opened the door, went down the staircase. Yes, this was how she would come down from her room in the evening, opening the door to surprise the children: Gaston in an armchair next to the window with his wife by his side, reading to him. It was his wife’s duty, her role, to look after him, to amuse him. When he was recovering from typhoid fever, Lucile used to read the newspapers to him. Her voice was soft and pleasant. She couldn’t deny that even she herself had sometimes enjoyed listening to Lucile read. A soft, low voice . . . But was it that voice she could hear now? No, she must be dreaming! She’d allowed her imagination to drift beyond the acceptable limit. She pulled herself up, took a few steps and walked into the sitting room. The armchair had been moved next to the window and sitting in it, his injured arm leaning on the armrest, smoking a pipe, his feet on the little stool where Gaston used to sit as a child, she saw the German in his green uniform—the invader, the enemy—and next to him Lucile, who was reading a book out loud.

  For a moment no one said a word. They both stood up. Lucile dropped the book she was holding. The officer quickly picked it up from the floor and put it on the table.

  “Madame,” he muttered, “your daughter-in-law was kind enough to allow me to come and keep her company for a few moments.”

  The old woman, very pale, nodded. “You’re in charge here.”

  “And since some new books were sent to me from Paris, I took the liberty of . . .”

  “You’re in charge here,” Madame Angellier said again.

  She turned and walked out. Lucile heard her say to the cook, “I’ll be staying in my room from now on. You will bring my meals to me upstairs.”

  “Today, Madame?”

  “Today, tomorrow and for as long as this gentleman is in the house.”

  When she had gone upstairs and they could no longer hear her footsteps in the depths of the house, the German whispered, “That will be heaven.”

  16

  The Viscountess de Montmort suffered from insomnia. She was in tune with the cosmos; all the great contemporary problems touched her soul. When she thought about the future of the white race, or Franco-German relations, or the threat posed by the Freemasons and Communism, sleep was banished. Chills ran through her body. She would get up, put on an old worm-eaten fur wrap and go out into the grounds. She despised dressing up, perhaps because she had lost hope that putting on a pretty dress could counterbalance the overall effect of her plainness (she had a long red nose, an awkward figure and bad skin), perhaps because of a natural sense of pride that made her believe others couldn’t help but see her striking qualities, even beneath a battered felt hat or a knitted wool coat (spinach-green and canary-yellow) that the cook would have rejected in horror, or perhaps out of her contempt for trivial detail. “How important is it, my dear?” she would say sweetly to her husband when he criticised her for coming down to dinner wearing two different shoes. But she quickly returned to earth when it came to overseeing the servants’ work or managing their estate.

  Whenever she couldn’t sleep, she would walk through the grounds reciting poetry or rush to the henhouse and examine the three enormous locks that protected the door; she kept an eye on the cows (since the war had started, no one grew flowers on the lawns any more, the cattle slept there), and in the soft moonlight she would stroll through the vegetable garden and count the maize. She was being robbed. Before the war it was almost unheard of to grow maize in this rich area where poultry was fed on wheat and oats. Now, though, the requisitioning agents searched the lofts for sacks of wheat and the housewives had no grain to feed their hens. People had come to the château to ask for feed, but the Montmorts were hoarding it, mainly for themselves, but also for all their friends and acquaintances in the area. The farmers were angry. “We’d be happy to pay,” they said. She wouldn’t have charged them anything actually, but that wasn’t the issue and they sensed it. They could tell they were up against a kind of brotherhood, like the Freemasons, a closing of ranks that meant that they and their money were insignificant compared to the satisfaction the Montmorts got from doing a favour for the Baron de Montrefaut or the Countess de Pignepoule. Since they weren’t allowed to buy, they simply took. There were no longer any gamekeepers at the château; they’d been taken prisoner and there weren’t enough men in the area to replace them. It was also impossible to find workmen or the materials to rebuild the crumbling walls. The farmers got in through the gaps, poached whatever they wanted, fished in the lake, stole hens, corn or tomato plants—just helped themselves to anything, in fact.

  Monsieur de Montmort’s situation was complicated. On the one hand, he was the Mayor and didn’t want to upset his constituents. On the other, he naturally cared about his estate. Nevertheless, he would have chosen to turn a blind eye to it all if it hadn’t been for his wife, who rejected any compromise or show of weakness on principle. “All you want is a quiet life,” she said sharply to her husband. “Our Lord Himself said: ‘I have not come to bring peace but the sword.’ ”

  “You’re not Jesus Christ,” Amaury replied grumpily, but it had long ago been accepted in the family that the Viscountess had the soul of an apostle and that her opinions were prophetic. What was more, Amaury was even more inclined to adopt the Viscountess’s judgements since she was the one with the family fortune and she kept her purse strings tightly closed. He therefore loyally supported her and waged a bitter war against the poachers, the thieves, the teacher who didn’t go to Mass and the postman, who was suspected of being a member of the “Popular Front” even though he had ostentatiously hung a picture of Maréchal Pétain on the door of the telephone booth in the Post Office.

  And so the Viscountess walked through her grounds on a beautiful June evening and recited the poetry she intended her protégées from the school to recite on Mother’s Day. She would have liked to have composed a poem herself; however, her talent was really for prose (when she wrote, she felt the deluge of ideas so powerfully that she often had to put down her pen and run her hands under cold water to force back into them the blood that had rushed to her head). The obligation to make things rhyme was unbearable. Perhaps, therefore, instead of the poem to the glory of the French Mother she would so like to compose, she would write an incantation in prose: “O Mother!” would exclaim one of the youngest pupils, dressed all in white and holding a bouquet of wild flowers in her hand. “O Mother! Let me see your sweet face above my little bed while the storm rages outside. The sky darkens the earth, but a radiant dawn approaches. Smile, O kind Mother! See how your child is following the Maréchal who holds peace and happiness in his hands. Join me and all the children, all the mothers in France, to form a blissful circle around the venerable Wise One who restores hope in our hearts!”

  Madame de Montmort spoke these words out loud and they echoed in the silent grounds. When inspiration took hold of her, she lost all control. She strode back and forth, then collapsed on to the damp moss and sat in meditation for a long time, her fur wrap pulled tight round her thin shoulders. Whenever she reflected in this way her thoughts quickly led to passionate resentment. Why, when she was so gifted, wasn’t she surrounded by love or even the warmth of admiration? Why had her husband married her for her money? Why wasn’t she popular? When she walked through the village the children would hide or laugh behind her back. She knew they called her “the madwoman.” It was very hard being hated, yet look at how much she’d done for the local people! The library (how lovingly she had chosen the books, good books to elevate the soul but which left them cold; the girls wanted her to get novels by Maurice Dekobra, these young people . . .), educational films (just as unpopular as the books), a village fête every year in the grounds, with a show put on by the schoolchildren. Yet she had not been oblivious to the harsh criticisms bandied about. They held it against her that the chairs had been set up in the garage because the bad weather had made it impossible to enjoy being outside. What
did these people want? Did they expect her to invite them into the château? They’d be the ones who felt embarrassed if she did. Ah, this deplorable new way of thinking that was sweeping through France! She alone could recognise it and give it a name. The people were becoming Bolsheviks. She had thought the defeat would be a lesson to them, that they would see the errors of their ways and be forced to show respect for their leaders. But no: they were worse than ever.

  Sometimes she—a passionate patriot, yes she—was actually glad the enemy was there, she thought, listening to the German guards keeping watch on the road alongside the grounds. They patrolled the village and the surrounding countryside all night long, in groups of four; you could hear the sound of church bells ringing, a sweet, familiar sound that gently lulled people as they slept, and at the same time the hammering of boots, the rattling of weapons, as in a prison courtyard. Yes, the Viscountess de Montmort had reached the point where she wondered if she shouldn’t thank the Good Lord for the German occupation of France. Not that she actually liked them, Lord no! She couldn’t stand them, but without them . . . who knew? It was all very well for Amaury to say “Communists? The people around here? But they’re richer than you are . . .” It wasn’t simply a question of money or land, it was also, especially, a question of zeal. She vaguely sensed this without being able to explain it. Perhaps they didn’t really understand the idea of Communism, but it appealed to their desire for equality, a desire so powerful that even having money and land became frustrating rather than satisfying. It was an insult, as they put it, to own livestock worth a fortune, to be able to send their sons to private school, buy silk stockings for their daughters, and in spite of all that, still feel inferior to the Montmorts.

  The farmers felt they were never given enough respect, especially since the Viscount was made Mayor . . . The old farmer who had been Mayor before him had been warm and friendly to everyone; he might have been greedy, vulgar, harsh and insulting to his constituents . . . he got away with it! Yet they reproached the Viscount de Montmort for being haughty. What did they expect? For him to stand up when they came into the Mayor’s office? To see them to the door or something? They couldn’t bear any hint of superiority, anyone wealthier or anyone who came from a better family. No matter what people said, the Germans had good qualities. They were a disciplined race, docile, thought Madame de Montmort as she listened, almost with pleasure, to the rhythmical footsteps fading away, the harsh voices shouting Achtung in the distance. It must be very nice to own a lot of property in Germany, whereas here . . .