Cloudless May (57 page)

Marguerite had taken the box of letters and papers to her room. Now that she could think calmly, they made her uneasy. Why had Émile sent them? She turned them out on the floor and looked through them hurriedly. There were bills, letters from Léonie, from other people. She took one out of its envelope. It was a letter from Sadinsky, received only yesterday. He told her that he was leaving Seuilly for Bordeaux, thanked her for the help she had given him, and hoped he would see her again “in a better place.” She had laughed at his choice of words. Now she tore the letter across impatiently, and bundled the rest back into the box. She pushed it out of sight in a cupboard. . . . Has Émile been reading them? . . . She felt alarmed, and refused to think about it.

She heard Lucien's motor-cycle at the other side of the house. That nuisance! she thought wearily. Five minutes later—she had not heard the car—Emile came into the room. She saw that he was profoundly troubled. Her heart sank. . . . How much does he know? . . . Before she knew which of her acts was going to accuse her she felt guilty of all of them; she held herself quiet, ready to repulse the attack from whichever quarter it came.

Bergeot came across to her and kissed her, putting his arms round her as though it were he who had to defend her. Against whom . . .? Her instinct warned her to seem subdued and childlike. She waited, making herself small in his arms, for him to speak and give her her cue. Bergeot released her gently and sat down. After a minute she said in a timid voice,

“Sugny brought my letters.”

He did not turn his head to look at her. “I'd rather you didn't come to the Prefecture just now,” he said gravely.

A month ago—less than that—she would have flown out against this in a rage and scolded him shrewishly until he agreed that she was right, and he was a fool and she must forgive him. Now she hesitated. The humiliation was too severe. . . . It was not that, it was that she no longer had the strength of her savage nature. Even a little discipline had weakened it. Something—what?—when?—had broken in her. When the desire to live quietly with Émile and have his child seized her? No: not even that was the beginning.

“What was the last letter you wrote from the Prefecture?” Émile asked.

She shook her head. “I can't remember. Perhaps to Léonie.”

“That bitch of a woman has done you nothing but harm.”

She did not answer. Since he had no idea what her life was like before she married, he did not know how much of it rested on Léonie's unfailing loyalty. She was thankful to let him think what he liked about her friend.

“Have you seen Bonamy today?” she asked meekly.

“No. Why do you ask?”

Hardening herself, she said, “He always gives you such bad advice, you're more reckless than ever after he has been talking to you.”

“Reckless?”

“Oh, my love'” she said in a coaxing voice, kneeling beside him and putting her head in his hands, “do let us go away. We still have time. We have enough money between us to live carefully. And when I have a child——”

Émile jerked her head back and looked directly at her for the first time. “Are you going to have a child?”

“I think so.”

“And you really want me to resign, and go away with you?”

She gave a cry of joy. “It's the only thing I want.”

She bore his look, forcing herself to seem calm. All the energy of her will was concentrated on one point. She felt his mind wavering, caught on hers. He is going to give in, she said to herself. She hid her triumph and joy. Bergeot turned away suddenly.

“You wouldn't be happy living a dull life without money,” he said. “I know that now.”

Her disappointment and the shock of her failure were too much. She closed her eyes, and felt herself losing control. The abyss that opened in her mind laid it bare to its depths; words sprang from this deep source before she could stop them.

“Very well, if we must stay here, at least be sensible,” she cried, “and take care if we're defeated to be on the strongest side. The same side as Thiviers and other clever well-informed people. Even if it's the side of the Germans. Don't let Bonamy ruin you.”

“Be quiet,” Bergeot said.

He looked at her with contempt. She began to cry quietly. Her crying became convulsive as she ceased quickly to care whether he were moved by it. She was crying for herself now, for her terrible childhood, for all the things she had been driven, it seemed to her, to do, to save herself; and because she had wasted her motherhood; and because her daughter, who no longer loved her, had even insulted her this evening.

Émile began trying to comfort her. She was exhausted and almost indifferent. He was tired out himself: making her sit beside him on the couch, he took hold of her hand; they leaned together without the strength to move. Marguerite's mouth felt dry. What am I? she wondered. She felt that she was lost.
The different life she had been thinking about during the last weeks was a foolish, not a simply difficult dream, and she had been foolish. She felt trapped.

It did not yet enter her mind that she had set the trap herself.

The next day, the 14th, it rained again. Women came to their doors to look at it, with an uneasy sense that their sons and husbands were facing a second enemy. If it's anything like it up there, he'll be getting soaked, they murmured. Added to the other uncertainty, this was too much. It was unjust, the rain coming down now on men who were retreating, as—the only person you wanted to enjoy it with absent—the weeks of fine weather had been unjust. And this war was unjust—it was always France which was invaded, and Frenchmen who died. An unjust universe—with a bias against France. Whose sin are we expiating? the politicians'? the Republic's? the Jews'?

Propped on his couch, its head against the window opening on to the shaft, Mathieu heard all these murmurs in the voices of neighbours talking to his landlady. The clear French sense of this Jew forced him to know that the country's strength was failing—had failed. These bodiless voices filling the shaft might be the stones themselves lamenting. He suffered. He was scarcely conscious of his sick weakness and the aching of torn flesh. Determined that the
Journal
should come out, he dictated to his clerk and sorted reports and communiqués. The cup of milk beside him had a film of dust: he had not touched it.

The door opened. To his surprise—hidden at once—it was his ally the Inspector who came in. His visits had always been made after dark. Mathieu sent his clerk away; no sooner had the man left them than Rienne came.

“Don't go,” Mathieu said to the Inspector, “you can trust Colonel Rienne.”

The Inspector was satisfied. Sitting down again, he began
to speak as though he were making a report. In effect, he was. He was reporting, in precise words, the weakness and desertion that Mathieu had been listening to all the morning. He ended his report with the news that Huet was back—he had been with the Government in Tours—and running about telling people confidentially that defeat was certain within a few days, and the country, unless the Government surrendered at once, lost. The country, he would say smiling, that is, you and me, helpless as we are.

“. . . if it was left to our deputy, we shouldn't wait for Monsieur Hitler to come and fetch his breakfast, we should take it to him in bed!”

“Deputy or not, he must be silenced,” Rienne exclaimed.

The Inspector looked at him with respectful irony. “And while you're about it, you might shut up Monsieur de Thiviers, with his millions of dollars in New York. And Monsieur Émile Bergeot, with his thousands.”

There was a silence, during which Mathieu watched Rienne settle himself like a man determined not to move until he knows how severely he has been wounded. The Inspector broke it to say,

“These are the men, and their friends in Paris and elsewhere, who have betrayed us.”

“Rubbish,” Mathieu said coldly. “What do you mean? Anyone can betray us; but unless we betray ourselves, the future is ours, not theirs.”

He was still watching Rienne. Let him get on with it, he thought; he has only lost a friend.

“The future?”

“For the present there is no France, there are only Frenchmen,” Mathieu said. And I, he thought, what have I lost? I shan't see the future, and I shan't see him again.

“Are you certain that the Prefect has money abroad?” Rienne asked the Inspector.

“Absolutely certain. I have my proofs. Thiviers must have done it for him; it means, of course, that he's in Monsieur de Thiviers's hands.”

Rienne nodded. He glanced at Mathieu, who took care not to show in his face any of the ridiculous pleasure he was feeling; after all these years, and after he had been beaten by
Émile Bergeot in everything but history, it was obvious now which of the two was the better scholar.

“The world is infected,” Mathieu said. “In the past, single nations have succumbed, to greed, or a bad banking system, or a change of climate, or arthritis. This is the first time a germ has attacked humanity. It is eating away the tissues and perverting the patient's appetite, so that he finds cruelty glorious, treachery to his friends a moral imperative, and treason fashionable. Who knows yet whether the disease is going to be fatal? Doctors sometimes tell us that our bodies have begun to tolerate a disease, when what they mean is that the disease has become tolerant and weak. I wonder. When the cancer of arrogance and cruelty has, as they say, run its course, humanity may be dead. Or too weak to recover. That's all. It's very simple.”

The Inspector left. As soon as he had gone, Mathieu said,

“Hand me a sheet of paper. I'm going to draft a letter to the Minister. I can get it put into his hands. If he's not too busy arresting members of the Government—I hope he's arresting them—he may still have time to settle a few local traitors.”

Rienne looked at him calmly.

“Leave Émile alone,” he said. “He's not dangerous. Huet is.”

It's no use your putting up this pretence of being calm, Mathieu thought: I can see through you: it's not the first time I've watched agony of mind being pinched between a thumb and finger like a bitter salt. After a single glance at it, he avoided looking at Rienne's hand on his knee. He had enough respect for Rienne to want to save him a humiliation. At the same time he felt contempt. Contempt with a touch of pity.

“Very well. And I'll ask you to do something for me in return.” It will let you think of your weakness as cancelled, he thought coldly.

“What is it?”

“You can get into the camp at Geulin, can't you? I want you to go there and tell Uhland what is happening. Will you?” . . .

He was alone for some hours, then his landlady herself came upstairs, breathless and a little frightened.

“Monsieur Mathieu, the Mayor is coming up to see you.”

“Let him.”

Labenne came into the room with an air of warmth and good-humour; the same glance took in Mathieu leaning stiffly against the end of the couch, and the room's shabbiness. He liked, when he came into a room for the first time, to reckon what it could cost him if he chose to buy it. Nothing here that would not be knocked down for a few francs in any market. He sat down, smiling.

“My poor Mathieu,” he said in a soft voice, “you're in pain. I was shocked by the attack on you. There is something wrong with society when the police can't prevent such brutalities.”

Mathieu was vexed that he could not sit upright. For this confrontation with Labenne, the confrontation of his faith with the other's scepticism and disloyalty, he would have liked to stand. He suffered from having to turn his head to look at Labenne, as though this were a deflection of his will. And, too, he was really in pain.

“There is always something wrong with society,” he said drily, “and it is always more or less brutal. There is a fashion in these things. Physical cruelty is more fashionable in western Europe now than it was at the beginning of the century.”

Labenne made a pious face. “Manners and morals are going bad together. We need a purge.”

“Sinister phrase,” Mathieu said. “Especially to a Jew. It happens so often that we are the first to be purged.”

“Yet you survive,” Labenne smiled.

“We have survived so far. We've made a habit of it. But if the habit of killing us spreads——”

“Let's hope it won't,” Labenne said mildly. He looked at his watch. “You and I, Monsieur Mathieu, are hard workers. We never waste time, and you don't suppose that I came here this afternoon only to condole with you.”.

“Why should you condole?” Mathieu said.

“Ah, you're a stoic. I respect your courage. But I must go on talking of your—your lamentable experience, because it points what I'm going to say. What I'm going to say—I speak as one anxious man to another, you won't misunderstand me—is that the end of the war will be an opportunity for such ruffians. There may be disorders, and they will be started by men who will call themselves patriots. You, with your superb
knowledge of history, will recall many such patriots. We must see to it that Seuilly remains calm. We——”

Mathieu interrupted him. “The end of the war?”

Opening his arms, Labenne cried, “Who knows better than you do that we can't defend ourselves any longer?”

“I know we can't defend ourselves north of the Loire,” Mathieu said. “But there are more than two million soldiers who have not fought yet. There is still our empire in Africa.” He lowered his voice. “There is still France,” he said coldly.

Labenne smiled. “You are not really a romantic. You know very well that to go on fighting would mean millions of casualties, the death of millions of soldiers and civilians—and defeat in the end. The ruin is too complete, and the disparity between us and Germany is too great. Do you want France to disappear?”