I didn’t see him. Did he exist or didn’t he? Once again, things didn’t necessarily happen in a logical way.
As for the Vendée, I know that my skin, my eyes, the whole of my body have never drunk in the sunshine as greedily as they did that day, and I can say for sure that I appreciated every nuance of the light, every shade of green of the meadows, the fields, and the trees.
A cow, stretched out in the shade of an oak, all white and brown, its wet muzzle twitching endlessly, ceased to be a familiar animal, a commonplace sight, to become …
To become what? I can’t find the words I want. I am no good at expressing myself. The fact remains that tears came into my eyes looking at a cow. And, that day on the terrace of a pink-painted inn, my eyes remained for a long time fixed in wonderment on a fly circling around a drop of lemonade.
Anna noticed. I became aware that she was smiling. I asked her why.
“I’ve just seen you as you must have been when you were five.”
Even the smells of the human body, particularly that of sweat, were pleasant to rediscover. Finally, I had found a part of the world where the land was on a level with the sea and where you could see as many as five church steeples at once.
The country people went about their work as usual, and when our train stopped they just looked at it from a distance, without feeling the need to come and inspect us or ask us questions.
I noticed that there were far more geese and ducks than there were at home, and that the houses were so low that you could touch the roofs, as if the inhabitants were afraid of the wind carrying them away.
I saw Lucon, which made me think of Cardinal Richelieu, then Fontenay-le-Comte. We could have arrived at La Rochelle in the evening, but the stationmaster at Fontenay came and explained to us that it would be difficult to disembark us in the dark and install us in the reception center.
You have to remember that, on account of the air raids, the gas lamps and all the other street lights were painted blue and people had to hang black curtains in their windows, so that at night, in the towns, the passersby carried flashlights and the cars drove at a walking pace, with just their side lights on.
“They’re going to find you a quiet spot to spend the night in. And somebody’ll bring you food and drink.”
It was true. We approached the sea only to leave it behind again, and our train, which had no timetable to observe and seemed to be looking for a resting place, ended up by stopping in a meadow, near to a way station.
It was six o’clock in the evening. You couldn’t feel the chill of twilight yet. Nearly everybody got out to stretch their legs, except for the old men in the care of the priest and the nuns, and I saw middle-aged women with grim faces bending down to pick daisies and buttercups.
Somebody said the old men in the coarse gray uniforms were mental patients. That may have been the case. At La Rochelle they were met by nurses and more nuns who piled them into a couple of coaches.
I had already had an idea, and I went over to Dede, the fifteen-year-old boy, to buy one of his blankets from him. It was more difficult than I had expected. He haggled more stubbornly than a peasant at a fair, but I got my way in the end.
Anna watched us with a smile, unable, I imagine, to guess the object of our bargaining.
I was enjoying myself. I felt young. Or rather I didn’t feel any age in particular.
“What were you talking about so earnestly?”
“An idea of mine.”
“I know what it is.”
“I doubt it.”
“Bet you I do.”
As if I were a boy and she were a little girl.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, to see if you’ve guessed.”
“You don’t want to sleep on the train.”
It was true, and I was surprised that she had thought of it. To my mind, it was a rather crazy idea, which couldn’t occur to anybody but myself. I had never had an opportunity to sleep in the open air as a child because my mother wouldn’t have allowed it, and besides it would have been difficult in a town, and later on account of my illness.
As soon as the stationmaster had spoken of finding us a quiet spot in the country, the idea had occurred to me, and now I had got hold of a blanket which would protect us from the dew and safeguard our intimacy.
A yellow car arrived with a jovial nurse and four boy scouts of sixteen or seventeen. They brought us sandwiches, bars of chocolate, and a couple of cans of hot coffee. They also had some blankets, which were reserved for the children and the old men.
The doors banged. For a good hour, in the slowly fading light, there was a confused hubbub in which cries in Flemish could be heard the loudest.
If it hadn’t been for that night’s halt, I would never have known that there were some babies in the Belgian carriages. But the nurse knew, thanks to the block telephone, and she had brought along some feeding bottles and a big bundle of diapers.
That was of no interest to our car. Not because they were Belgians but because the children didn’t belong to our group. Besides, the French people in the other two freight cars, although they had got on the train at the same time as us at Fumay, were just as foreign to us.
Cells had been formed, airtight, self-contained. And in each cell smaller cells could be observed, such as the card players or the couple consisting of Anna and myself.
Frogs started croaking, and new sounds could be heard in the meadows and the trees.
We went for a stroll without holding hands, without touching each other, and Anna smoked one of the cigarettes I had bought her at Nantes.
The idea of talking about love never occurred to us, and I wonder today if it was really love that we felt for each other. I mean love in the sense which is usually given to the word, for to my mind it was much more.
She didn’t know what I did for a living and showed no desire to find out. She knew that I had had tuberculosis, for I had happened to remark, on the subject of sleep:
“At the sanatorium they used to turn the lights out at eight o’clock.”
She looked at me immediately and that movement was characteristic of her, as was her glance which I would find difficult to describe. It was as if an idea had struck her all of a sudden, not an idea born of reflection, but something palpable if fleeting which she had caught instinctively in flight.
“Now I understand,” she murmured.
“You understand what?”
“You.”
“What have you found out?”
“That you’ve spent several years shut up.”
I didn’t press the point but I think that I understood in my turn. She had been shut up, too. The name of the place where you are condemned to live between four walls is of small importance.
Didn’t she mean that it leaves a mark, and that she had recognized that mark in me without knowing how to explain it?
We walked slowly back to the darkened train where nothing could be seen but the firefly glimmer of cigarettes and we could hear a few voices whispering.
I collected the blanket. We looked for a place, our place, some soft earth, some tall grass, a gentle slope.
A clump of three trees hid us from sight and there was also a big, smelly patch of cow dung in which somebody had walked. The moon wouldn’t rise before three o’clock in the morning.
We stood for a while rather awkwardly facing one another, and to keep my composure I started arranging the blanket.
I remember Anna throwing away her cigarette, which went on glowing in the grass, taking off her dress with a movement I hadn’t seen before, and then removing her underclothes.
She came up to me then, naked, surprised by the cold which made her shiver once or twice, and gently pulled me down on the ground.
I realized right away that she wanted it to be my night. She had guessed that I was looking forward to it, just as she had guessed so many of my thoughts.
It was she who took the initiative all the time; she too who pushed away the blanket so that
our bodies should be in contact with the ground, with the smell of the earth and the grass.
When the moon rose, I was still awake. Anna had put her dress on again and we were rolled up in the blanket, pressed against each other, on account of the cool of the night.
I could see her dark hair with its glints of red, her exotic profile, and her pale skin whose texture was unlike anything I had ever known before.
We had blended so closely into each other that we had only a single smell.
I don’t know what I thought about while I was looking at her. I was in a serious mood, neither gay nor sad. The future didn’t worry me. I refused to let it intervene in the present.
I suddenly noticed that, for the past twenty-four hours, I hadn’t worried once about my spare pair of glasses, which were probably lying somewhere in the meadow or in the straw in our car.
Every now and then her body was shaken by a shudder and the crease in her forehead deepened, as if at a bad dream or in a spasm of pain.
I finally dropped off to sleep. Instead of waking up of my own accord, as I usually did, I was roused from sleep by the sound of footsteps. Somebody was walking close to us, the man with the pipe, whom I called the concierge. A whiff of his tobacco, unexpected in that country dawn, came to my nostrils.
He was an early riser like me, and doubtless something of a hermit, in spite of his wife and children for whom he kept clamoring with exaggerated ill humor. He was walking with the same steps that I used to walk with in my garden in the morning, and our eyes met.
I thought he had a kindly look about him. With his sloping shoulders and his lopsided nose, he looked like a friendly gnome in a picture book.
Anna woke up with a start.
“Is it time to go?”
“I don’t think so. The sun hasn’t risen yet.”
A slight mist was rising from the ground and some cows were lowing in a distant barn from which a gleam of light was filtering. Somebody was presumably milking them.
The day before, we had noticed a tap behind the brick shelter at the way station. We went there to clean ourselves up. There was nobody around.
“Hold the blanket.”
Anna undressed in a flash and dashed some icy water over her body.
“Go and get my soap, will you? It’s in the straw, behind your trunk.”
Once she had dried herself and got dressed again, she said:
“Your turn!”
I hesitated.
“They’re beginning to get up,” I objected.
“What about it? Even if they see you stark naked?”
I followed her example, my lips blue with cold, and she rubbed my back and chest with the towel.
The yellow car returned, bringing back the same nurse and the same scouts, who looked like overgrown children or unfinished men.
They brought us more coffee, some bread and butter, and feeding bottles for the babies.
I know nothing of what happened on the train that night, nor whether it is true, as rumor had it, that a woman gave birth to a child. I find that hard to believe, for I didn’t hear anything.
They treated us like schoolchildren on holiday, and the nurse, although she was under forty, ordered us about like an infants’ class.
“Heavens above, what a smell of dirty feet! When you get to the camp, you’ll have to have a good wash, all of you. And you, Grandpa, did you empty all those bottles by yourself?”
She spotted Julie.
“Hey, Fatty, what are you waiting for? Are you having a lie-in this morning? Get a move on! An hour from now, you’ll be at La Rochelle.”
There, at last, the sea was close to us, the port adjoining the station, with steamers on one side, and on the other side fishing boats whose sails and nets were drying in the sun.
I took possession of the scene immediately and let it get right under my skin. If there were several trains on the tracks I didn’t pay any attention to them, and I didn’t see anything at all. I didn’t pay any attention either to the more or less important individuals who came and went, giving orders, girls in white, soldiers, boy scouts.
The old men were helped out of the train and the priest counted them as if he were afraid of losing or forgetting some.
“Everybody over to the reception center, opposite the station.”
I picked up my trunk and the suitcase which Anna had tried to take out of my hands, leaving her nothing to carry but the blanket and our empty bottles, which might come in useful again.
Some armed soldiers watched us pass and turned around to look at Anna, who was following close behind me, as if she suddenly felt lost and frightened.
I didn’t understand why until a little later. Outside, the scouts pointed to the deal huts which had been put up in a public park, only a few feet from the dock. There was a smaller hut, hardly any bigger than a newspaper kiosk, which was being used as an office, and we found ourselves queuing with the others outside the open door.
Our group had broken up. We were mixed up with the Belgians, who were the bigger party, and we had no idea what was going to happen to us.
From a distance we witnessed the loading of the old men into the coaches. A couple of ambulances drove away too. The towers of the town could be seen some way off, and some refugees who were already installed in the camp came and looked at us inquisitively. A lot of them were Flemings and were delighted to find some fellow countrymen.
One of them, who spoke French, asked me with a pronounced accent:
“Where do you come from?”
“Fumay.”
“Then you shouldn’t be here, should you? This is a camp for Belgians.”
We exchanged anxious glances, Anna and I, while we waited our turn in the sun.
“Have your identity cards ready.”
I hadn’t got one, because at that time they were not compulsory in France. I hadn’t a passport either, never having been abroad.
I saw some of the people coming out of the office go over to the huts, while others were sent to wait on the pavement, probably for transport to take them somewhere else.
Getting closer to the door, I overheard some snatches of conversation.
“What’s your trade, Peeters?”
“I’m a fitter, but since the war …”
“Do you want a job?”
“I’m not a slacker, you know.”
“Have you got a wife, children?”
“My wife’s over there, the one in the green dress, with the three kids.”
“You can start work tomorrow at the factory at Aytré, and you’ll get the same wage as the French. Go and wait on the pavement. You’ll be taken to Aytré, where they’ll find you lodgings.”
“You mean that?”
“Next.”
Next came old Jules, who, one of the last to arrive, had slipped into the queue.
“Your identity card.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“You’ve lost it?”
“I’ve never had one.”
“You’re Belgian, aren’t you?”
“French.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me.”
The man spoke in a low voice to somebody I couldn’t see.
“Have you any money?”
“Not enough to buy myself a drink.”
“You haven’t any relatives at La Rochelle?”
“I haven’t any relatives anywhere. I’m an orphan from birth.”
“We’ll see about you later. Go and have a rest.”
I could feel Anna getting more and more nervous. I was the second Frenchman to come forward.
“Identity card.”
“I’m French.”
The man looked at me, irritated.
“Are many of you on the train French?”
“Three cars full.”
“Who’s been looking after you?”
“Nobody.”
“What are you thinking of doing?”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know.”
He nodded toward Anna.
“Is she your wife?”
I hesitated only a second before saying “yes.”
“Settle down in the camp for the moment. I don’t know what to do about you. This wasn’t expected.”
Three of the huts were new and roomy, with two rows of mattresses on bails. A few people were still lying down, possibly because they were ill or because they had arrived during the night.
Farther on, an old circus tent made of coarse green canvas had been put up, and they had simply strewn some straw on the ground.
It was there that we put our things down in a corner, Anna and I. People were just beginning to move into the camp. There were a lot of empty spaces. I could see that that wasn’t going to last and thought that we would be more likely to be left in peace in the tent than in the huts.
In a smaller, rather shabby tent, some women were busy peeling potatoes and cleaning whole bucketfuls of vegetables.
“Thank you,” murmured Anna.
“Why?”
“For what you said.”
“I was afraid they might not let you in.”
“What would you have done?”
“I’d have gone with you.”
“Where?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
I hadn’t much money with me, most of our savings being in Jeanne’s handbag. I could have got a job. I wasn’t unwilling to work.
For the moment, though, I wanted to keep my status as a refugee. Above all, I wanted to stay in this camp, near the port, near the boats, and to roam among the huts where women were washing their linen and hanging it out to dry, where children were crawling about on the ground, their bottoms bare.
I hadn’t left Fumay to have to think and take on responsibilities.
“If I had told them I was a Czech …”
“You are a Czech?”
“From Prague, with Jewish blood from my mother. My mother is Jewish.”
She didn’t speak in the past tense, which suggested that her mother was still alive.
“I haven’t got my passport. I left it behind at Namur. With my accent they might have taken me for a German woman.”
I must admit that a disagreeable thought occurred to me and my face clouded over. Wasn’t it she who had as it were chosen me, almost immediately after our departure from Fumay?
The Train Page 9
