The Train (12 page)

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?”

“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?

In our car, I was the only man under fifty, apart from the boy with the blankets. I had nearly forgotten my former schoolmate Leroy, and now I wonder all of a sudden why he wasn’t in the army.

In any case I hadn’t made any advances. It was she who had come to me. I recalled her precise gestures, the first night, next to Julie and her horse dealer.

She hadn’t any luggage, any money; she had ended up by begging a cigarette.

“What are you thinking about?”

“You.”

“I know. But what are you thinking?”

I was thinking that she had foreseen, as far back as Fumay, that sooner or later she would be asked for her papers, and that she had provided herself in advance with a guarantor. Me!

We were standing between two huts. There was still a little trampled grass left on the path; some washing was drying on clotheslines. I saw her pupils narrow, her eyes mist over. I wouldn’t have thought her capable of crying, and yet they were real tears which were trickling down her cheeks.

At the same time her fists clenched and her face grew so dark that I thought that she was going to hurl a torrent of reproaches and abuse at me through her tears.

I tried to take her hand, which she snatched away.

“Forgive me, Anna.”

She shook her head, scattering her hair over her cheeks.

“I didn’t really think that. It was just a vague idea, the sort we all have at certain moments.”

“I know.”

“You understand me?”

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, sniveling unaffectedly.

“It’s finished,” she announced.

“Did I hurt you badly?”

“I’ll get over it.”

“I hurt myself too. Stupidly. I realized right away that it wasn’t true.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“Come along.”

She took me off toward the quayside and we both looked across the masts rocked by the tide at the two bulky towers, like fortress keeps, which flanked the entrance of the port.

“Anna!”

I spoke in an undertone, without turning to look at her, my eyes dazzled by the sunlight and colors.

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

“Hush!”

Her throat swelled as if she were swallowing her saliva. Then she spoke of something else, in a voice which had become natural again.

“You aren’t afraid of somebody pinching your things?”

I started laughing, laughing as if I would never stop, and I kissed her while seagulls, in their flight, passed a few feet above us.

THERE ARE THE OFFICIAL LANDMARKS, THE dates, which must be available in books. I suppose that everybody, depending on the place where he was at that time, his family responsibilities, his personal anxieties, has his own landmarks. Mine are all connected with the reception center, the center as we used to call it, and distinguished by the arrival of a certain train, by the fitting out of a new hut, by an apparently commonplace incident.

Without knowing it, we had been among the first to arrive, a couple of days after the trains had unloaded some Belgian refugees, so that the center hadn’t been broken in yet.

Had the huts, which had been put up a few weeks before and were still new, been intended for this purpose? The question never occurred to me. Probably the answer is yes, seeing that, long before the German attack, the authorities had evacuated part of Alsace.

Nobody, in any case, expected things to happen so quickly, and it was obvious that the people in charge of the camp were improvising from day to day.

On the morning we arrived, the newspapers were already talking of fighting at Monthermé and on the Semois; the next day the Germans were building bridges for their
tanks at Dinant; and on May 15
^th
, unless I am mistaken, at the same time as the withdrawal of the French government was announced, the daily papers quoted in large type the names of places in our part of the world, Montmédy, Raucourt, Rethel, which we had had so much trouble reaching.

All this admittedly existed for me as it did for the others, but it was happening in a far-off, theoretical world from which I was, as it were, detached.

I should like to try to define my state of mind, not only in the early days, but during the whole time I spent at the center.

The war existed, more tangible with every day that passed, and very real, as we had discovered for ourselves when our train had been machine-gunned. Dazed and bewildered, we had crossed a chaotic zone where there had been no fighting as yet but where battles would follow one after another.

Now that had happened. The names of towns and villages, which we had read in passing, in the sunshine, could now be read in big letters on the front page of the newspapers.

That zone, beyond which we had been surprised to find people coming out of church and towns in their Sunday best, was extending every day, and other trains were following the same route as ours, other cars were shuddering along the roads, bumper to bumper, with mattresses and prams on top, old men and dolls inside.