Suite Francaise (35 page)

Every morning she asked the cook, “Is the German still here, Marthe?”

“Well, yes,” the cook would say. “He doesn’t seem so bad: he asked if Madame would like to have some fruit. He’d be happy to give us some. Good grief, they want for nothing, them! They’ve got crates of oranges. So refreshing . . .” she added, torn between a feeling of kindness towards the officer who offered her fruit and who always behaved, as she put it, “very nice, very kind; he doesn’t scare you,” and another feeling, a surge of anger when she thought of all the French people who couldn’t get any fruit at all.

This last thought was undoubtedly the stronger. “Still, they’re a rotten lot, they are!” she finally said in disgust. “I take whatever I can get from that officer, I do: his bread, his sugar, the cakes he gets from home (made with the best flour, I can tell you, Madame), and his tobacco that I send to my prisoner of war.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t, Marthe!”

But the old cook just shrugged her shoulders. “Since they take everything from us, it’s the least . . .”

One evening, just as Lucile was leaving the dining room, Marthe opened the kitchen door and called out, “Could you please come in here, Madame? There’s someone who wants to see you.”

Lucile went in, afraid of being seen by Madame Angellier, who didn’t like anyone to go into the kitchen or the larder. Not that she seriously believed Lucile would steal the jam, despite ostentatiously inspecting the cupboards in front of her, but rather because she felt the same sense of intrusion an artist feels when interrupted in his studio, or a socialite in front of her dressing table: the kitchen was a sacred domain that belonged to her and her alone. Marthe had been with her for twenty-seven years. And for twenty-seven years, Madame Angellier had gone to great lengths to make sure Marthe never forgot she wasn’t in her own home, and that at any moment she could be forced to leave her feather dusters, her pots and pans, her stove; just as the devout must remember that, according to the rituals of the Christian religion, worldly possessions are granted only temporarily and can be taken away overnight on a whim of the Creator.

Marthe closed the door behind Lucile and said reassuringly, “Madame is at church.”

The enormous kitchen was as big as a ballroom, with two large windows that opened out on to the garden. A man was sitting at the table. Lucile saw that a magnificent pike, its silvery body trembling in its final death throes, had been thrown on to the oilcloth, between a large loaf of bread and a half-empty bottle of wine. The man raised his head; Lucile recognised Benoît Sabarie.

“Where did you get that, Benoît?”

“In Monsieur de Montmort’s lake.”

“You’ll get caught one of these days.”

The man didn’t reply. He lifted up the enormous fish by the gills; it flicked its transparent tail, now barely breathing.

“Is it for us?” asked Marthe, who was related to the Sabaries.

“If you want.”

“Give it to me, Benoît. Do you know, Madame, that they’re cutting back the meat rations again? It’ll be death and the end of the world,” she added, shrugging her shoulders while hanging a large ham from the joists. “Benoît, since Madame isn’t home, tell Madame Gaston why you’ve come.”

“Madame,” said Benoît with difficulty, “there’s a German at our place who’s chasing after my wife. The Commandant’s interpreter, a nineteen-year-old kid. I can’t take it any more.”

“But how can I help?”

“One of his friends is living here . . .”

“I never speak to him.”

“Don’t give me that,” said Benoît, looking up.

He went over to the stove and absent-mindedly bent the poker, then straightened it again; he was extraordinarily strong.

“You were talking to him in the garden the other day, laughing with him and eating strawberries. I’m not criticising you, it’s your business, but I’m begging you. Get him to talk to his friend so he sees reason and gets himself somewhere else to live.”

“This village!” Lucile thought. “People can see through walls!”

At that very moment a storm broke. It had been brewing for several hours. There was a single, solemn thunderbolt, followed by the sound of cold rain falling in sheets. The sky darkened; all the lights went out, just as they usually did when the wind was up.

“I guess Madame will be stuck at the church now,” Marthe said smugly.

She took advantage of the fact to bring Benoît a bowl of hot coffee. Lightning flashed through the kitchen; the water streaming down the window-panes looked green in the sulphurous light. The door opened and the German officer, forced out of his room by the storm, came in to ask for a few candles.

“Is that you, Madame?” he added, recognising Lucile. “Excuse me, I couldn’t see you in the dark.”

“There aren’t any candles,” Marthe said sourly. “There are no candles in all of France since your lot got here.”

She didn’t like the officer being in her kitchen. She could put up with his presence in other rooms, but here, between the stove and the pantry, it seemed scandalous and almost sacrilegious: he was violating the very heart of the house.

“At least give me a match,” the officer implored, deliberately trying to look plaintive to soften up the cook, but she just shook her head.

“There aren’t any matches either.”

Lucile began to laugh. “Don’t listen to her. The matches are on the stove, behind you. And actually, there’s someone here who wants to speak to you, Monsieur; he has a complaint about a German soldier.”

“Oh, really? I’m listening,” the officer said eagerly. “We insist that the soldiers of the Reichswehr behave with perfect correctness towards the local people.”

Benoît said nothing.

It was Marthe who spoke. “He’s chasing after his wife,” she said in a tone of voice that made it difficult to tell exactly what she was feeling: virtuous indignation, or regret she was no longer young enough to be prey to such outrages.

“Ah, but you overestimate the power we German officers have, my boy. Of course I can punish him if he bothers your wife, but if she likes him . . .”

“It isn’t no joke!” Benoît growled, taking a step towards the officer.

“Excuse me?”

“It isn’t no joke, I’m telling you. We didn’t need you dirty . . .”

Lucile let out a cry of anguish and warning. Marthe jabbed Benoît with her elbow; she guessed he was going to say the forbidden word “Boche,” punishable by imprisonment. Benoît forced himself to stop.

“We don’t need you running after our women now.”

“Well, you should have thought about defending your women before, my friend,” the officer said quietly. His face had turned bright red; he looked haughty and upset.

Lucile intervened. “Please,” she said softly, “this man is jealous. He’s suffering. Don’t push him over the edge.”

“What’s the name of this man?”

“Bonnet.”

“The Commandant’s interpreter? I have no control over him. He has the same rank as me. It would be impossible for me to intervene.”

“Even as a friend?”

The officer shrugged his shoulders. “Impossible. Let me explain.”

“No point explaining!” Benoît cut in, his voice calm and bitter. “There are always rules for the poor bloke who’s a private.
Verboten,
as you say in your language. But no one bothers the officers if they want to have a good time! It’s the same in all the armies in the world.”

“I certainly won’t speak to him,” replied the German, “because that would be letting him in on the game and I wouldn’t be doing you any favours,” and turning his back on Benoît, he walked over to the table.

“Make me some coffee, my dear Marthe, I’m leaving in an hour.”

“Manoeuvres again? That’s three nights in a row,” exclaimed Marthe, who couldn’t seem to manage to keep her feelings towards the enemy straight. Sometimes, when the regiment came back in the early hours of the morning, she would say with great satisfaction, “Look how hot and tired they are . . . Oh, that makes me feel good!” But sometimes she’d forget they were German and would feel a sort of maternal pity rising up in her: “Still, those poor boys, what a life . . .”

For some reason, this evening saw a surge of feminine tenderness. “All right, I’ll make you some coffee. Sit down over there. You’ll have some as well, won’t you, Madame?”

“No . . .” Lucile started to say.

Meanwhile, Benoît had disappeared; he’d climbed out of the window without making a sound.

“Please say yes,” murmured the German softly. “I won’t be bothering you much longer: I’m leaving the day after tomorrow and there’s talk of sending my regiment to Africa when I get back. We’ll never see each other again and I would like to think you don’t hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, but . . .”

“I know. Let’s leave it at that. Just agree to keep me company . . .”

Marthe laid the table with the tender, complicit, scandalised smile of someone secretly giving bread and jam to naughty children who should be punished. On a clean cloth, she placed two large earthenware bowls decorated with flowers, a piping-hot pot of coffee and an old oil lamp she’d taken out of the cupboard, filled and lit. Its soft yellow flame lit up the copperware on the walls.

The officer looked at it with curiosity. “What do you call that, Madame?”

“That’s a warming pan.”

“And that?”

“A waffle iron. It’s nearly a hundred years old. We don’t use it any more.”

Marthe came in with some jam in an engraved glass dish and an enormous sugar bowl; with its bronze feet and carved lid, it looked like a funeral urn.

“Well, at this time the day after tomorrow,” said Lucile, “you’ll be having a cup of coffee with your wife, won’t you?”

“I hope so. I’ll tell her about you. I’ll describe the house to her.”

“Has she ever been to France?”

“No, Madame.”

Lucile was curious to know whether the enemy liked France, but a kind of modest pride prevented her from asking. They continued drinking their coffee in silence, not looking at each other.

Then the German told her about his country: the wide avenues in Berlin, what it was like in winter, the snow, the biting cold air that blew in from central Europe, the deep lakes, the pine forests and sand quarries.

Marthe was longing to join the conversation. “Is it going to last long, the war?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” the officer said, smiling and with a slight shrug of the shoulders.

“But what do you think?” Lucile then asked.

“Madame, I am a soldier. Soldiers don’t think. I’m told to go somewhere and I go. Told to fight, I fight. Told to get myself killed, I die. Thinking would make fighting more difficult and death more terrible.”

“But what about enthusiasm . . .”

“Madame, forgive me, but that’s a term a woman would use. A man does his duty even without enthusiasm. Perhaps that’s the way you know he’s a man, a real man.”

“Perhaps.”

They could hear the rain rustling in the garden, the last droplets slowly dripping off the lilacs; the fish pond murmuring languidly as it filled with water. The front door opened.

“It’s Madame, hurry!” whispered Marthe, terrified. And she pushed Lucile and the officer outside. “Go through the garden! Good Lord, she’ll give me hell!”

She quickly poured the remaining coffee down the sink, hid the cups and put out the lamp. “Do you hear me? Hurry up! Thank goodness it’s dark out.”

They both went outside. The officer was laughing. Lucile was trembling a little. Hidden in the shadows, they watched Madame Angellier walk through the house behind Marthe, who carried a lamp. Then all the shutters were closed and the doors locked with iron bars.

“It’s like a prison,” the German remarked on hearing the creaking of the hinges, the rusty chains and the mournful sound of the great doors being bolted. “How will you get back in, Madame?”

“Through the side door in the kitchen. Marthe will leave it open. What about you?”

“Oh, I’ll jump over the wall.”

He made it over in one nimble leap and said softly,
“Gute Nacht. Schlafen sie voll wohl.”

“Gute Nacht,”
she replied.

Her accent made the officer laugh. She stood in the shadows for a moment, listening to his laughter fade into the distance. The damp lilacs swayed in the soft wind and brushed against her hair. Feeling light-hearted and happy, she ran back into the house.

11

Every month, Madame Angellier visited her farms. She chose a Sunday so “her people” would be at home, which exasperated the farmers. The moment they saw her, they rushed to hide away the coffee, sugar and eau-de-vie they’d been enjoying after lunch: Madame Angellier was of the old school—she considered the food her tenant farmers ate was somehow stolen from her; she complained bitterly about anyone who bought the best-quality meat from the butcher. She had her police, as she called them, all over town, and wouldn’t keep tenants whose daughters bought silk stockings, perfume, make-up or books too often. Madame de Montmort ruled her estate with similar principles, but as an aristocrat she was more attached to spiritual values than the bitter, materialistic middle classes (to whom Madame Angellier belonged). She therefore concerned herself with religious issues: she tried to find out whether all the children had been baptised, whether they took Communion twice a year, whether the women went to Mass (she let the men get away with it; it was just too difficult). Of the two families who owned all the land in the region—the Montmorts and the Angelliers—the Montmorts were the more hated.

Madame Angellier set off at first light. The weather had changed after the storm the evening before: sheets of cold rain were falling. The car was unusable, for they had no petrol or travel permit, but Madame Angellier had unearthed an old gig from the shed where it had sat for thirty years; with two strong horses in harness, it could travel fairly good distances. The entire household had got up to say goodbye to the elderly lady. At the last minute (and grudgingly) she entrusted Lucile with the keys. She opened her umbrella; it started raining even harder.

“Madame should wait until tomorrow,” said the cook.

“I have no choice but to take care of things myself, given that the head of the house is a prisoner of these gentlemen,” Madame Angellier replied in loud, sarcastic tones, undoubtedly to make the two German soldiers passing by feel guilty.