I shut the door I had opened to leave and go straight to the old man. I want to make peace with him. He pushes me away saying: “Get off !” I am shattered. I say: “It’s not our men who did it, they never…”
“How d’you know?” he cuts me short.
“I know them! I know the colonel…”
“You make me laugh..(he doesn’t). You’d sell yourself for them!
Your loyalties are all twisted! What about your conscience? What happened to it? You tell me! Killing civilians, is that all right by you, then? All for the cause of what you people call Li-ber-té!
The sacred word sounds dirty in his mouth. I shut my ears with my hands. He notices the gesture and stops the assault.
I sit down. I cut myself from the living. Madame Raboullet comes to sit beside me, patting my hand left inert on the table in hers covered with flour. She says, ever so gently: “There, there, don’t take on”
Raboullet comes out of his corner. I can see, through my tears, that it hurts him to have caused me pain. Why do we torture ourselves like this? He answers my unspoken question by saying, in a gentler tone: “Tha’ll never make me change my mind. If they did it, I’ll chase them away and so quickly that they won’t know what hit them. My word I shall!”
“I’ll leave with them! Right now!”
I said it, meant it.
Raboullet says nothing. This cunning Auvergnat who can see ahead, who thinks of all possibilities, hadn’t thought it would be easier for me to leave him on the spot without the slightest hesitation than abandon my comrades. A shadow passes across his face and he says, with a smile typical of him: “Just ye try!”
This challenge, so touching, prevents me from answering I will! No need for wounding each other any further. He takes a large handkerchief from his pocket and orders, as he would his twins: “Blow your nose!”
Then he goes to get a bottle of good wine and three crystal glasses and we drink to one another, all three of us in total silence, still bruised by the battle of words which has taken place in this large sunlit room where the dough, starting to swell under a spotless white cloth tells there’s something good to come, already brewing in the air.
It is midday. Madame Raboullet charges one of her younger sons to set off with a large basket filled with fresh ham and bread for the labourers working in the fields. She follows him to leave Raboullet and me alone. I go the window. The sowing season has begun. I watch the silhouettes of the workers moving very slowly under the blue April sky, a sky washed by the rains and the ferocious storms of the preceding days. From time to time they are buzzed by aircraft which dive quite low over their heads, but they continue to sow, deaf and indifferent to war’s games. Only the crows are alarmed and fly away, but return just as quickly. I turn from this disturbing scene of war and peace, the heart-rending contrast it offers which reminds me of our long wait in Savignole, of Gérard and his men… of Clément, the passion which tied our lives into a knot…and yet…and yet, the future does not exist. It is ashes.
14.
The Syringe.
I return to Raboullet sitting at the table, staring at me… me all mixed up. He takes my hand in his and says simply, “Tell me about it.” About what? Ah, yes, my fatal encounter… It may not be the incident in Murol that he wants to hear about, but about Savignole…my relations with the boys and their chiefs…he is dying to know. Instead I describe St Pré’s aggression, the sudden hostility shown me by the inhabitants, the pharmacist who was supposed to give me an injection but didn’t since I was prevented from honouring my appointment with him…
“I can’t believe it!” he says. “Didn’t you know that Messire-Jean (an ancient Auvergnat surname) is pally with the Boche? Everybody knows that! Except you!”
“I had no choice!”
“Yes, tha had. Tha should’ve mentioned the injections to me. I’ve done ‘em afore…many of them…to beasts, folk, lasses! So?”
“So…I didn’t know.”
“By going to see that Tartuffe you’ve made yourself a suspect, can’t you see that?”
“Yes, I am sorry.”
“What about t’dog? Did they see you with him?”
“Yes.”
“Bon Dieu! Tha’s in a right mess. From now on, no more Messire-Jean, right?”
“Yes, papa!” I can’t help laughing and so does he.
“Right. Yon injections, papa’s going to do them. Got the phials?”
“Yes.”
“Hand ‘em over.”
“I can inject myself, you know.”
“Oh, aye, what with? A screwdriver?”
Very droll. I tell him that one of our comrades, young Francis, is a diabetic and his syringe is always tucked in his rucksack…Oh God! Is he back? With the others? What am I doing here worrying about my own problems?
The only reply I get to my wretchedness is the sight of self possessed Raboullet opening a drawer in the big dresser and taking out a tin box containing a whole arsenal of medicaments, including syringes and needles beautifully laid out on cotton wool. He puts the box on the table and glances at me sideways to see how I’m taking it. This is my first encounter with Raboullet the medic. He is amazing. I am particularly surprised to see how steady his hand is (though I’ve seen it tremble, that hand!) He holds the syringe and the needle and then, as he is drawing up the liquid from the phial into the syringe, he orders:
“Right! Thi bum!”
The old goat! I hesitate (wouldn’t you?). I say: “Why not my arm?” “It’ll hurt thee…In thi bum it’ll go in like butter. Come on. Trust me.”
I don’t tell him that Messire Jean pricked my arm. And it hurt! I trust my friend. Anyway, you don’t argue with your medicine man. There’s just one thing; as I’m wearing trousers, it’s a bit difficult to show only part of my bum. I watch Raboullet out of the corner of my eye. He is waiting patiently, the syringe pointing in the air, while I get ready to half undress. His calmness is disconcerting, I can feel myself going quite red. It’s silly, I know. What if someone comes in? One of the cowmen, for instance, the one with the black beard who looks at me like a rutting bull looks at a cow…or…or Raboullet’s eldest son, Fernand, whom I’ve seen a little too often prowling round Clairefontaine when I washed myself in my stream?
“Bend over!”
I bend over and whoops! In goes the needle, just like butter, as he said. I haven’t felt a thing. Raboullet goes to disinfect the syringe whilst I dress hurriedly. When he has put everything away, very professionally, I give him a kiss. On the cheek. He prefers my mouth.
I walk back to Savignole by way of Clairefontaine to supply the boys with the last of my winter reserve of apples keeping (so far) very well at the bothy which is dry and dark. I took the precaution to protect them from the rodents by means of a piece of gauze stretched on nails, unaware that rats are extremely resourceful; they made little holes in the gauze to get at my apples and made them rot almost immediately.
15.
The Carnage.
My door is ajar. I go to the little window, guessing immediately who is inside. Gérard comes out (He has a key to the bothy). I exclaim: “Thank God” and throw myself into his arms, so great is my joy at seeing him safe and sound. He replies: “There’s nothing to thank God for!”
So the news is bad. I open the door wide to let in some fresh air. Gérard says: “For heaven’s sake, shut that door!”
Silence. It lasts. I can’t wait any longer:
“Would you like an apple?” I ask stupidly.
“No thank you.” He begins to shake his head from side to side, and seems to be focusing on an invisible person across the room. The air is heavy in here, heavy with words not yet spoken. I’ll have to break the silence once more or I’ll go mad. I say: “What about the comrades?”
“Jean-Claude…Gui…Sébastien…dead… all three of them. They disobeyed my orders.” He rises, walks up and down in the small space of the bothy like a trapped animal all alone with its misery. He goes on: “I
t had to happen, sooner or later…They weren’t soldiers…just kids with a heart! But they hadn’t learnt to obey…”
Gérard sits down again, wipes his forehead with his handkerchief, takes off his glasses, does not put them on again, retreating into his own shell, a man deeply wounded. I go and fetch two apples from the shelf Jean had made specially for me. I give one to him and bite into my own to encourage him to do the same. He bites into it absentmindedly and says: “At the beginning all went well, the boys were full of spirit.”
“Perhaps too much so?”
“No,” replies Gérard, “at that moment it was fine”
A shadow passes over his green eyes. He takes off his glasses, his gaze resting on the wall opposite. I take his hands in mine; he does not resist. They are long, strong hands. He withdraws his hands to put on his glasses and resumes: “We succeeded in cutting the telegraph wires in the avenue Blatin. You should have seen us! We climbed up like squirrels, right under the noses of the passers-by who thought we were repair men! Some of us were singing, like workers do. Priceless!”
We laugh, a short laugh.
“When we’re finished, we scatter as planned, to meet up again rue d’Anthème where Pierre is waiting for us in his van.” (Pierre is the Maquis van-driver. He is a grocer in Mont-Dore).
“We set off. Half an hour later we assemble, having gone our separate ways as usual. The timing was perfect. Just then a devil of a row breaks out in the rue Montlosier. It is the convoy you’d signalled us! A whole company, parading like after a victory although they were fleeing to the north… in a hurry, I can tell you!. Our only way out was blocked. We entered the van. I order Pierre to stop the motor. Tanks go past. It never seemed to stop; they must have received reinforcements on the way. Well, as you can imagine, with a few grenades in our pockets and in the middle of town there was no question of having a go at them. We had to let them pass.”
Gérard mops his brow which is beaded with sweat. I’ve never seen him in this state before. The bothy is suddenly plunged into darkness, for the sun which till now was slanting in through the barred window, has gone behind the rhomboidal hill facing the bothy. Gérard turns instinctively to see who has thrown the switch, the natural reaction of a town dweller!
“It’s the sun,” I say. “It will return soon.”
I light the candles. Gérard has stopped talking as if he had received a signal for doing so. Gradually our eyes become accustomed to the new source of light which invites us to look at each other more intensely. Yes, it’s me, Rachel, looking at Gérard, a Gérard beaten, weary, looking at Rachel, fearful of the words which are yet to come. He goes on: “We get out of the van. I give the order: “Down!” There we are, flat on the ground, as one man, all six of us! Pierre stays at the wheel, impassive, smoking a cigarette, looking as though he were waiting for his girl friend. Unbelievable, that lad!”
The ghost of a smile as Gérard says that.
“We wait. The din is terrible. Gui starts to move. First he crawls, as if he just wanted to see, then he gets up and runs like a maniac in the direction of the avenue!”
“Oh no!” I am shattered by this suicidal act committed by a boy of eighteen. Gérard continues:
“The others start to move too. I yell “Get down, it’s an order, damn it!” Sébastien suddenly says “Let’s go!” Jean-Claude gets up with him and they run after Gui as if possessed. I grab the leg of one of them, I don’t even know whose it was, he kicks out so violently (I think it was Jean-Claude) that I fall backwards and bang my head against the van. I must have passed out for a split second. Francis helps me to get up, Paul runs after the three to get them back. I join him hoping that they’d stopped at the corner of the street. Nobody there! They’d disappeared!”
“It was folly!” I cry.
“Yes…they were high…I can’t explain it any other way!”
Oh, how badly I miss my piano right now, how I wish I could play one of Chopin’s Preludes to soothe us both!
The table between Gérard and me is my illusionary piano. I play Chopin’s first Prelude on it, humming. Gérard puts his fingers on mine and says: “To think I’ve never heard you play! Maybe…one day…who knows…in Paris…after this wretched war…”
I burst into sobs. Perhaps Gérard feels like crying too, but his are men’s tears reduced in the throat. When he speaks again his voice is rasping and grave:
“Do you want to hear the rest?”
I nod. At that moment the sun reappears, now a bright red ball of fire. I blow out the candles. We can hardly see each other’s downcast faces. He says:
“We stayed there, Francis, Paul and myself, totally numb. It was then that we heard grenades going off, lobbed from a block of flats quite near.”
“Was it our three?”
“It was.”
The lines of Gérard’s face deepen.
“The convoy stops dead. A swarm of Wehrmacht gets out of the vehicles, enters the houses, breaks down doors of the flats. Meanwhile a tank is hit, then another. Two motorbikes explode with their riders blown to pieces. Women and children, panic-stricken run wild, screaming, mothers calling for their kids. Machine-gun fire drowns their cries and groans. We hear “Raus! Raus!” One or two grenades are thrown for good measure… by the boys…falling on the women, young and old, pushed out of the houses by a demented Wehrmacht…”Gérard stops to draw breath:
“The block of flats the grenades came from is emptied. We see the three lifeless bodies being dragged by the feet…abandoned on the pavement…covered in blood…then more dead bodies from the same building are dragged out…women and children screaming…it was an awful carnage, Rachel! Awful!”
Gérard gets up saying to himself: “It was too much …too much…” He opens the door of the bothy which had remained shut, is astonished to see that it is still daylight and shades his eyes with his hands; half of the disappearing red ball of the sun is dazzling him. Not for long. Dusk sets in when we make our way to Savignole.
Gérard and I are drunk with grief, stumbling on rocky obstacles we cannot see. The ground under our feet is moving, vipers run away from us. I feel the imminence of an earthquake. I can feel its rumble. I ask Gérard whether he can sense it coming. With a cynical laugh he answers “We’d be so lucky”.
At Savignole the comrades are asleep on their mattresses, dead beat. Gérard chooses to repair the shirt he tore when he fell. The boys had eaten my soup, except Francis. Since it is dangerous for a diabetic to go without food, Clément and I are shaking him, trying to get him swallow a spoonful of soup. No Hope! He doesn’t react. Gérard gets out of his corner, raises Francis’ head, slaps his cheeks. I try to get some liquid into his mouth which finally opens. His eyes remain tightly shut. Would it be that he won’t or can’t see any more? The horror film which this adolescent of scarcely seventeen has been forced to watch must have shaken down the walls of innocence which still protected him and has, perhaps, driven him to despair. Gérard touches his pulse and says:
“Let him sleep. He’s exhausted.”
16.
After the Carnage.
The incident at Murol triggered a series of events of which the slaughter in the rue Montlosier was only the prelude. It is the fifth of May. We are waiting for the Allies to invade. Clément tells us “It’s any day now.” We are already talking about how we shall organise ourselves to join up with them.
Gérard is reticent on this point; he reminds us that there is work to be done here, that there are railways to sabotage, that there will be prisoners and we ought to be ready to receive them. We still have no ammunition, the “friend” who was supposed to be coming tonight is otherwise engaged, obviously. So, Gérard has decided to go and see colonel Bollard-Dufresne who is in command of the Maquis at Chambon which seems to be getting more than enough supplies to attack military trains. Our two groups will join up. Gérard is going to discuss it tomorrow, with the Chambon group, loath to join with them for reasons he keeps to himself at the moment. Gérard’
s trust in the neighbouring Maquis is limited to what he knows about their past actions. So far, the Chambon group has shown more military successes than we have been able to show on our side.
Raboullet did not turn us out of Savignole, although he knew who was responsible for the massacre at Clermont-Ferrand. A few days after these events I saw him making his way towards Savignole, his pipe clenched between his teeth. He wanted to see for himself and make his mind up afterwards. His conscience was still bothering him, but his determination not to lose me worried him just as much. The aim of his visit to our Maquis was to reconcile these contradictory feelings.
There was also another aim: he had to meet Clément. I was at the farmhouse when he set off. He said: “I’m going to see what’s going on in your asylum.” This was his way of showing me that he was in a good mood. I could see, too, that he was sober; I mean, it was obvious that he hadn’t touched a glass of wine since the morning, perhaps even the night before. He set such store by my realising the sacrifice he was making to please me! Sometimes he did get drunk, and always for the same reason: I hadn’t been to see him for several days. What would happen to him when I went for good? I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. It must be the same for him too.
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