Cloudless May (56 page)

Ligny said slowly, “No. It's simply that I'm too old.”

“Too civilised.”

“You're a worse pessimist than I am,” the general said. He smiled and opened his eyes, sparkling with malice. “If our civilisation is really alive, it will defeat the barbarians. No civilisation is ever murdered. They die, these precious civilisations, only their own deaths. If there is a barbarian at the funeral, he is there to tread down the earth.”

“Why do you call the Germans barbarians?” Rienne asked. “You don't hate them.”

“No. I only hate my fellow Christians. I hate Woerth. . . . The Germans have never been christianised. One summer, when I went to Swinemünde to look at the Baltic, I saw battalions of male and female Germans drawn up almost naked. The sight of that butcher's shop of blond bodies, adoring the sun, revolted me; I realised why the Germans are unlike every other Western people. Their religion is pre-Christian, they
have a purely irrational feeling for nature. All that nonsense of theirs about blood—as if a German body were the Holy Grail—is obviously the religion of a savage. Or else they degrade nature by stifling his own in a child. They even refuse him his own death—a good German must always die for the State. What a degradation! Yet I wonder—can any German, the most fanatical, when he is dying—” He stopped. “But what do I understand about fanaticism?” he said, smiling. “I am a Frenchman. . . . These poor little Boches have no sense of what is possible, they believe they're behaving heroically when they stretch their energy until it snaps. In four centuries—I give them the benefit of the Middle Ages, when all the same we found time to bring our language to a point where it could be used by a Joinville and a Villon; going back only to the beginning of the sixteenth, when we sprang Rabelais on the world—they haven't guessed that a people is not civilised until it learns what can be done by minds and bodies without straining them. Heavens, how they exaggerate! I still shudder at those large nude bodies, modelled on heaven knows what mediaeval savage, and all that indecent enthusiasm. I wanted to wring its neck. And how I wanted a human being, and a little criticism, if it was only of the weather—which was perfect. If the French really are dying, if the universe prefers the Germans to us, it must be losing its taste. Fancy preferring a world of egoism and greed to a world of order, simplicity, happiness. . . . Yes, yes, I know—we are egoists. But only because we are interested—we're not greedy.”

“We don't worship war,” Rienne said.

“We're afraid of it. We know what it costs: Fortunately, the most eager soldiers are not the best.”

Ligny had exhausted himself. Rienne would have left him, but the general sprang on him the question he had hoped to escape.

“Are we preparing to defend the town?”

Rienne hesitated. Should he tell Ligny the truth—that the defences in front of Seuilly were in little better state than in May? Why torment a sick man?

“Piriac has had no orders,” he said.

Ligny closed his eyes. He had no need of malice to help out his intuitive hatred. “Woerth knows what is being prepared,”
he said. “And he means to get rid of the old man. Piriac, whatever else he is, is not a politician.” ...

In the evening, towards nine o'clock, Rienne called on Labenne. He said he had come from General Piriac, who was anxious about the safety of the foreigners interned at Geulin. Labenne interrupted him.

“Is he going to send them away?”

Rienne hesitated. One way, the most certain, of keeping these men shut up was to try to saddle any one person with the responsibility for moving them. Piriac would hand it to the civilians, who would consult the police, and the poor devils would stay where they were. He appealed to Labenne's vanity.

“The General would like to move these men. He is confident that you will agree with him.”

This simplicity almost caught Labenne. For a moment—Rienne saw him—he said to himself: Oh, if the old man wants to make a noble gesture. . . . But in another moment he realised—it was all too clear—that if Piriac had wanted to do anything he would have done it without consulting a civilian. He looked at Rienne with an impressive anxiety.

“I have no authority, even to advise. You must see the head of the police department responsible to the Minister for the camp—Monsieur Drigeard. Shall I ring him up for you?”

“Do,” Rienne said. He was used to summing men up by their gestures, and Labenne's were those of an actor. Had he been acting anything except sincerity, Rienne might have been taken in. He listened coolly while Labenne spoke to the police chief about the camp. The moment I have gone he'll telephone again, he thought. . . .

In fact Labenne waited three minutes. When he spoke to M. Drigeard the second time, it was in a changed voice.

“. . . I've just sent you a man who is ruining his last chances. You can take it from me that no one except this colonel—who is a friend of Mathieu, and of our Prefect—wants to do anything for these scum. Why should he? They're all agents of Moscow or London.”

“I know it. Monsieur Labenne. I know it.”

“We all know it,” Labenne said, “the Germans know it.
They'll know how to deal with their countrymen. I think we can leave it to them. . . . But don't keep me talking, I'm off to bed. I need my seven hours, you know.”

“Good-night, Monsieur Labenne.”

Labenne was telling the truth. He slept like a baby, turning round once and dropping off. Summer and winter, he was in bed at eleven, and rose hungry and refreshed at six. He slept with his head on his chest and knees drawn up, to leave the least possible area open to attack by impulses—to generosity, to good faith—that he fought off so easily in daylight. . . .

Rienne was not kept waiting. The police chief saw him at once, and was sympathetic and eager. But, of course, ultimately it was a question for the Aliens department of the Ministry of Security. He would telephone, he would do everything he could. Colonel Rienne could be confident. . . . Time? There was always time to act humanely. And in fact now that things were going better . . .

“Better?” Rienne said.

M. Drigeard smiled. “Surely! Since the Germans have agreed not to destroy Paris . . . we can hope ...”

The day before, when Marguerite woke up, she had found waiting in her mind, fully grown, the thought that she must send Catherine out of the way. She meant—if things became worse, or as soon as they became worse—to get herself and Émile away, and the idea of taking Catherine displeased her. The girl would embarrass her at a time when she would need to distract Émile by every trick of body and mind. With Catherine watching, listening, she would be helpless. . . . She rang for Sophie to bring her her coffee; before it came she had written out a telegram to send to the well-to-do American woman she knew, living in England, whose daughter had been Catherine's friend at school. To please Catherine she had sometimes sent the other girl presents, and she had been
charming to the mother when they were both in Paris. It was simple to ask her to take Catherine.

Is it strange that she did all this calmly? Not in the least. The anguish that seized her when she allowed the heartrending image of a little weeping girl to come into her mind, kept its claws in. She only felt a little nervous. Catherine at eighteen, detached, friendly, was not that child: they had nothing in common. . . . This was not all. The impulse to get rid of her daughter sprang from some recess of her being, below sense or reason. She had begun to do it so early, and although she loved her child. It might be one of the sins she was born to commit. And it is always easy to go on committing a sin. It becomes a habit. Like any habit.

She had not had an answer to her telegram when, this evening, she decided to tell Catherine.

“. . . and you'll be able to practise your English. It's only for a month or two, until we know what's happening here. And if anything very terrible happened, Madame Putnam would take you to America with her. I shall miss you beyond words, but——”

For one moment, Catherine looked as though she were going to cry. She blushed, her mouth trembled. Her mother did not know that what she felt at the sight of this poor face was the warning of a remorse to come. If Catherine had cried . . . if she had said: No, don't send me away again. . . . But her face became hard and sullen.

“So you want to get rid of me?” If she had even said again. ...

“I want you to be safe.”

“Why? I'm not a child, I'm a woman. Other women are not safe.”

“That's no reason,” her mother said.

“It's the best of reasons,” Catherine said passionately. “You want to make me ashamed of myself. No, that isn't what you want, you simply want not to have to bother with me, you want to give all your time to—to him.”

Her insolence delivered her into her mother's hands. Marguerite gave her a terrible look. “You're behaving like a silly girl,” she said with superb anger. “Yet you expect me to treat you as if you were grown up. Very well, you are grown up. But
you'll go to England and try to behave yourself there. And when you come back, we'll find something for you to do—to use your great gifts.”

She was half afraid the girl would go on defying her. But the contempt in her mother's voice had broken down Catherine's young sense of injustice and outrage. Tears of shame rushed to her eyes. She cried hopelessly, like a child who knows its offence is so disgraceful that it will never be forgiven.

“I'm. sorry,” she stuttered, “I didn't mean that, I don't know what I meant, I'm very sorry.”

Thank God, Marguerite sighed, I can still frighten her: I couldn't have forced her to go. She turned away. She needed comfort herself: Catherine's insult was already one of those thorns we keep with us to sleep on.

“It's eleven o'clock. You'd better go to bed,” she said gently. “Come.”

The door opened at this moment, and Lucien Sugny came in. He was blushing as usual, but he looked stubborn. He had a cardboard box under his arm.

“I knocked twice,” he said, speaking to Mme de Freppel and looking at Catherine.

“What do you want?”

“I've brought you the letters and papers in your desk at the Prefecture. The Prefect asked me to tell you they would be safer here. . . . I had a breakdown. It held me up for an hour, that's why I'm late.” Suddenly he turned to Catherine. “What are you crying for?” he said in a desperate voice.

Mme de Freppel was startled—then angry. She looked from the young man to her daughter. He had moved nearer to her and they formed a single block—of estrangement, of youth—facing her across a table. She suffered horribly from their youth. Before she could say anything, Lucien spoke again. His face was calm now and he looked at her stolidly.

“I love Catherine,” he said.

Her anger gave Mme de Freppel enough self-control to say quietly,

“Really? What do you expect me to say?”

She thought she had hidden her anger, but its electric current had passed between her and Lucien: it would have silenced him if he had not been too absorbed in Catherine to
feel anything more than the shock. He merely stiffened his muscles and glared at her.

Mme de Freppel made another instinctive effort. This time she forced a little warmth into her voice.

“My poor children, I'm very sorry for you. What can I do?”

“You can let us alone,” Catherine muttered.

Ignoring her, Mme de Freppel said gently to the young man, “You can't marry anyone, can you? You have no money and no future. And then the war ...”

Her gentleness defeated Lucien. He blushed again, so deeply that his face seemed to swell. He took a step towards her, away from Catherine, who shivered. Her mother noticed it. It was already a victory.

“I shall do as well as possible in the army,” Lucien stammered. “And afterwards——”

“We can't talk about afterwards,” Mme de Freppel said in a low voice. “It's no use. There's only the war—and your lack of position. And Catherine, who is only eighteen. How old are you, by the way?”

“Twenty-six.”

She smiled at him. “My dear boy. Yet you're quite old enough to know what is possible and what is utterly impossible. Better than Catherine—who is a child. You won't take an unfair advantage of her childishness, will you?”

“Mother——” Catherine began.

Mme de Freppel stood up. “Lucien, I'm going to give you a quarter of an hour to tell Catherine that she must be sensible, you must both be sensible.”

She moved towards the door, looking at Lucien. Miserably confused, he was too late to open it for her. When he turned back to Catherine, she was watching him with a sullen smile.

“Please go away,” she said. She was vexed that he had seen her crying and humiliated. And need he succumb so easily to her mother's charm? Surely he knew it was false?

Lucien felt wretched and ashamed. He knew he had failed Catherine in some way, but he was too bewildered to see where he had gone wrong. “Are you angry with me?” he said humbly.

“No.”

“Then what is it?”

“If you would only go away and leave me.”

He looked at her. They moved together in a blind way and began to comfort each other awkwardly, talking without knowing what they were saying. . . . “I'm hideous, don't look at me.” . . . “Oh, love, love, you're beautiful.” . . . “You shouldn't have let her.” . . . “What? I hated her for making you cry. Oh, Catherine, I'm only a fool.” . . . Catherine's hands moved over his face: they rubbed a tear they came across, and moved on clumsily to his temples.

“You ought to go,” she said steadily, “she might come back.” The thought of her mother hardened her.

She went with him into the courtyard. The night was very quiet. There was a full moon, the handlebars of his motor-cycle glittered, and the windows on one side of the yard. Catherine jumped from the courtyard to the drive, across the black shadow thrown by the arch. She was afraid of drowning in the shadows; between the shallow stretches of light, they seemed so deep. She looked into Lucien's eyes and thought she could see herself in them. Her own smarted. . . . This is the worst moment of my life, she thought. . . . She knew that she was smiling.