Cloudless May (44 page)

“So,” Woerth said, “you think that G.H.Q.——”

Piriac interrupted him with a brutality he rarely showed to officers who were almost his equals. “You can trust me to interpret the wishes of the General Staff.”

Another silence. Stooping a little in his chair, head resting on his hands, Ligny was either asleep or too far gone in his thoughts to notice that Woerth had been snubbed. Or perhaps he refused to draw any advantage in his battle with Woerth from Piriac's blow at his chief of staff—unjust at that. . . . The light in the room began to quiver rapidly; clinging to the wall
facing the shutters, it folded and unfolded and refolded wings. A light wind—the first for weeks—had sprung up and was stepping from branch to branch of a tree in the courtyard. Piriac smiled absently. A film cleared from his eyes, the lids flickered.

“The weather is going to break,” he said.

“When, sir?” Rienne asked.

“In about ten days.”

“Too late to do us any good,” Woerth said coldly.

The impulse Piriac had felt momently, to put Woerth in his place, had gone. He was comfortable, as always when one of his Girondin memories was in charge.

“What do you think?” he said in a simple voice, “how long shall we hold the Somme? A week? Two weeks?”

Woerth did not speak at once. He is considering, Rienne thought, whether to say what he believes: Piriac may repeat it. What he says must show him off as a clever general not too clever for his boots.

“I think that the Germans will get through when and where they like,” Woerth said, with an air of ease and lightness.

Pointing at the wall calendar, Piriac lunged forward as though he wanted to stab the day to the heart.

“June the 1st,” he said. “It's been a good spring. Rather hot, we may have too much rain when the vines are flowering—which is bad. As for the war, we have plenty of time. It's clear that the Germans are going to invade England. They may have luck. In the meantime we shall make ourselves safe on the Marne. . . . It's always the same war. . . .”

With a start—the word Marne had caught up with him in some place where the rivers were long shadows—Ligny sat up. He yawned with his mouth shut, it was a trick he had tried to teach Rienne—“against the day when I begin to bore you indecently.”

“If only that were true!” he said. “But in fact war has been spoiled, ruined. No one cares any longer about saddles, only for petrol and trigonometry. It's not combat, it's purely and disgracefully slaughter. I have very unhappy dreams. Why should I dream I'm a young man, when even in the dream itself all the others are dead?”

Piriac laughed. Rienne was so startled that he almost showed
it—an inexcusable sin. During all his years in Seuilly he had never heard such sounds from Piriac: it was the strangest, the harshest, and at the same time the most piteous of laughs. The old general had been dead for so long that to see him move as if he were living—to hear his life give one of its least equivocal cries—was quite shocking. And his eyes sparkled.

“I remember my first sight of war,” he said. “Oh, a mere sight, a touch. No more. It was early morning, cool; the first hour when you know for certain whether the clouds are only left over from the night, or mean rain: you know, there's a moment when you can make a mistake and a moment later when it speaks for itself; or you see an owl going off one way and a hawk starting out in another—but I've forgotten what birds flew in that place, I only remember frogs at night, battalions of frogs, I give you my word—it was coolness turning round all four quarters like a young dog, there was hyssop growing out of a wall, if you licked your fingers you could taste the light. I don't know whether they have such mornings anywhere now. I doubt it. . . . My mare Bella picked her way behind the others, she was trying to see herself in the stream. Like this.” With infinite care he turned his head sideways, balancing himself by grasping a heavy paper-weight. “I was counting the date-palms . . . one . . . two . . . bullets spurted from behind the cliff. Estaunie threw his arms up and slipped over his beast's neck just as I pulled Bella to one side. . . . Clean to the heart. . . .”

He stopped. His words had been coming more and more slowly, until each was a distinct memory, separated from the rest by an abyss of joy. He could not go on. He had no longer the energy for such a road.

“My God. We were young,” Woerth said. He smiled without irony. “My keenest ambition was a third pair of boots—made for me. I was pleased with myself in those days.”

“In those days,” Ligny said, “the country was young.” He hesitated and said, “The Republic was still very young. Now . . .” he smiled, but it was from this end of his life, not, like Piriac, from its beginning: “—no, no, we ought not to have started this war. We are too human, the surface of our old houses is too smooth, too new, we've loaded ourselves with too many perfect things, Chambord, Chartres, Nîmes; our hands
are too full of a past we've brought safely this far, our minds are too orderly, our bread is too sound—for war. Whether we win or lose we shall be defeated. . . . But since we are in fact in a war—we ought to fight it out”—his smile became mocking—“to the last row of numerals. Poor little numbers—they'll die like young men. Exactly like young men.”

“If Seuilly is destroyed—” Piriac stammered.

Rienne saw that any pity the old general was able to feel had taken refuge in this single narrow space. In the tiny image of Seuilly in his mind, its barracks, its double bridge over the Loire, its flowering chestnuts, the spire of its abbey.

Ligny shrugged his shoulders. “It could be rebuilt. What I mind most are the villages no one knows—except their few families. All those roofs, not one like its neighbours. When I think of the Prussians coming into France,” he said quietly, “settling here for years, with their cruelties, I could weep over our little flock of villages.”

“France,” Woerth said, “would still be France—even”—he smiled ironically—“I state the extreme case, even in temporary submission—temporary and in a sense voluntary—to Monsieur Hitler. . . .”

Ligny said bitterly and softly,

“Have you—but of course you have—a respectable new word meaning temporary betrayal? Voluntary treachery, perhaps? Why not simply treachery?”

Without turning his head, Rienne looked at Woerth. The skin, yellow as a drum, was stretched so tightly across his temples that Rienne could watch the veins; he saw Woerth's pulse quicken. His arm lying on the table trembled slightly. When he began speaking, his voice, quick at first, became slow and cold. Ligny had succeeded in rousing an emotion older and deeper than his political craft, old in him as that was.

“You are a sceptic, my friend”—no doubt he had a respectable new word which meant indifferently friendship or contempt—“you have no faith worth calling a faith. You won't understand me even if I tell you that I feel certain God created France for a purpose. Other nations, other purposes. Only the French can carry out theirs. We French are not crass or stupid like the Germans and the English. We deserve something better than the Republic and its coarse pride. If defeat—yes, if Hitler
is His rod for breaking the Republic, let us be broken. For a time, for as long as necessary. It will be worth the cost. . . . Even in defeat we shall be nobler than the rest of the world, because we know why we've been defeated; other peoples don't know. But I tell you, I know France will survive. Why? Because Christianity must survive. . . . And conquer! I look on the revival, even the military revival of France, as certain.” He smiled, startling Rienne, who would have been less startled if the shutters had dropped from the window. “That ought to satisfy you,” he added drily. “It's logical enough.”

“Mathematical,” Ligny said. “Defeat equals Christianity, Christianity equals victory. Therefore defeat equals victory. How you remember your training!”

Woerth was stung. He began an insulting retort, to which Ligny listened, smiling.

Rienne did not listen. Shutting out Woerth's voice he thought about Thouédun. If it were occupied by the Germans, and some men, the least pliant—as Woerth would say, the proudest—were put up against the walls of their houses, would grief send the others into the church they only entered now for a christening or a marriage? Would the blood running across the wall mean forgiveness? Would the despair of obscure men become a word meaning silence? Meaning an end of memory? Meaning peace? . . . He came out of a shadowy trench to hear Piriac talking quietly and heavily. He must have been talking for some moments.

“. . . roads in a state of defence, the bridge mined. Reinforced concrete posts on both banks . . .”

He hesitated. A bewildered look, as though he were puzzled by himself, crossed his face. Woerth was listening with a half-hidden satisfaction. He means to let the old man get himself into trouble, Rienne thought. He looked quickly at Ligny. Has he seen it?

“You can't be sure your sums will always come out right,” Ligny said. He smiled at Woerth.

Woerth ignored him. He said gently to Piriac,

“The concrete posts may not be practicable. I doubt if there is the material.”

“May I speak, sir?” Rienne asked.

Piriac moved his head.

“The material exists. You have only to requisition it. It was brought into the town for civilian purposes.”

“Where?”

“To replace an old house—which needn't be pulled down. I have the information——”

“You would like me to look into it?” Woerth asked Piriac.

“Yes, yes.”

“I'll send for you,” Woerth said to Rienne.

Ligny's face became mischievous. Smiling at Rienne, he said, “Your friend the Prefect wants us to arm the butchers and grocers of Seuilly. He wants to turn his volunteers into a civil guard. What's your opinion?”

“I have the poorest opinion of armed grocers, sir. An armed Frenchman is quite another affair. This is quite another war—not a trench war. It would be worth while to employ civilians in defending their own towns and villages—not simply to fight for their houses—to delay the Germans. They could deal with advance-guards—villages have been taken by a single German motor-cyclist. It's disgraceful. . . .”

Woerth interrupted without looking at him: he looked at Ligny instead, with open dislike.

“Need we waste time on the opinions of your subordinate officer? I have my own opinion about armed mobs. I don't press it on you. Possibly I may have to later. You spoke of fighting to the last soldier. Charming—romantic. The spirit of the Grand Army, and so on. And after that? After our last army collapses? Who will keep order in the country? Colonel Rienne's grocers?”

The movement of Piriac's hand—flesh striking wood with a dead sound—silenced him.

“That's enough,” Piriac said. He looked at Rienne. “I shall be sending you with orders. Go outside. Wait.”

Rienne walked to the end of the, corridor. A window with bars looked on to a courtyard where someone he could not see was walking. A confused noise, almost the sound of foils. He recognised it and smiled. A soldier was raking the gravel and the withered flowers of the chestnuts. In the same moment he recognised his sadness at the thought that he was no longer a fighting soldier, he had become an official, an office soldier, a civilian in uniform. He worked with old men; and intrigues
caught on him like spiders' webs between trees. . . . He remembered suddenly an early morning in September 1914 when—he was walking through a copse to battalion headquarters—he felt in the coolness the threads breaking across his face: he remembered that month and the unlooked-for joy.

He waited. An hour. Two. Three. . . .

When he left the barracks the most savage heat of the day seized him, drying the breath in his mouth. Ollivier opened a bottle of yellow Vouvray for him, and while he was drinking it, read through the orders.

“Your good honest Piriac, and Woerth and the rest, are not exactly thorough,” he said drily. “If they want my opinion you can tell them, with respect, that barricades on the roads and mined bridges are nothing much. Why not mine the roads, too? And why no anti-tank ditch?” He frowned. The weight of his curved forehead, too big for his body, dragged his head forward. “It's four months ago I began digging—and after one day Woerth ordered me to stop. And I wanted to put pill-boxes for my machine-guns at all the cross streets. What a—a general!”

Rienne had closed his eyes to soothe the glare under the lids. Almost without meaning to he talked to his friend about his doubts. After a moment Ollivier's silence reached him. He opened his eyes and met the other's stubborn innocent smile.

“That for the generals!” Ollivier said joyously. “Thank God we have a few rivers. It takes longer, you know, to form a line in depth. And against tanks, it must be deep. By the time the Boches reach it the Marne will be ready for them.” Walking with his infantryman's short stride, he had reached the door. “And—here—we shall be ready.”

Rienne felt ashamed of his doubts. They come of fighting in an office, he thought. With a few regiments of Olliviers France was perfectly safe. Why doubt it?

He went out. In the terrible heat men were dragging blocks of stone, old railway sleepers, wrecked Citroëns, into position across the road coming into Seuilly from the north. Between here and the bridge the road was crossed by six side streets. The crews of the anti-tank guns in these streets had extended the camouflage of branches to make shelters for themselves. Squatting in one, a young soldier poured water on his neck and
chest; two young women in the doorway of the nearest house were laughing at him. Seeing Rienne, they ran inside. The boy grinned timidly.

“It's hot,” he murmured.

Rienne talked to the men guarding the first bridge over the Loire. They were gay. Goodness knows from where or how, a tremor of excitement had reached them. Perhaps, up there, the tide had turned, and the Loire had first news of it. Rienne crossed the bridge. Glancing down at the Loire—What do you know? he asked. The double line of sand, blond fine hair parted delicately round the island, the supple curve, as hard as supple, of the embankment, pleased him—and told him nothing. And “Nothing,” was the answer he got from the closed fronts of old houses, and the trees. The sunlight, blond like the sand, infinitely brighter, made of an infinite number of grains of light, blinded him. Through half-closed eyes he counted the splinters breaking off the surface of the river—a long, two longs, a short. . . . A new word? Meaning—what?