Cloudless May (59 page)

Labenne had formed his opinion of Vayrac at their first meeting. He believed him to be at least as apt for treachery as Huet, but with less reasoning about it. He would betray from his sense of paradox, from an instinctive pleasure in disorder. Vayrac, Labenne said to himself, is one of those men born expressly to be made use of by a skilful Minister of Police during the interval when one society is going down and the next is not quite safe in its seat. Good—I can use him. Later . . . we'll see. . . .

He felt doubtful about Vayrac's future. Every society needs tools for its unavowable work of keeping itself safe. Unavow-able because it involves injustice and severity. But was Vayrac the type which can settle down, in the police or the counter-police, to an honest routine of spying and informing for the new authorities? Wouldn't that be too tame for him; if you like, too moral—the morality of power? . . . We'll see, Labenne repeated. . . . What at the moment he saw most clearly was that Vayrac's weakness, the fault where you had him, was his taste for violence. It might be as well to let him kill someone, so that he would be marked. It might even—as a politician Labenne did not exclude any possibility—be a public-spirited assassination, which a rising politician would be thankful to see taking place without his having to do anything but deplore it.

“You can go now,” he said amiably. . . .

Vayrac revised a little his judgement of the Mayor of Seuilly. He's more intelligent, he said to himself, than I thought—and means to use more than he helps. He doesn't mean any of his dependents to be able to do without him.

Vayrac's self-esteem was not easily injured, he knew himself too well. At least, I'm beginning a little higher up than a police spy, he thought, smiling—we'll see. . . .

He looked carefully at Mme Huet. He knew about her that she was fashionable, immensely rich, and nearly related to old families which had been given a blood transfusion from heavy industry. He did not know her tastes. Very soon he gathered that it would be no use his pretending to share them, he did not know what Chagall was, Maurras he had heard of but thought he was dead, and for several minutes he believed he had discovered a new political party in surrealism. Besides, he was not anxious to impress her. If they were going to be allies, she must respect his indifference to all forms of art: they did not amuse him, and he had, he felt it, only too little time—even if he were to last out the century—for what did.

Mme Huet did not attract him. He detested women with big bones and flat colourless bodies. She had, he guessed, been robust and lethargic, and now was only tired. It will be abominably hard work, he thought: is she even bearable? Already he was punishing her for making his future difficult.

He listened to her husband with the same frigid intolerance. The deputy had been useful to him, he knew a great many influential people—was it possible that Labenne had been moved by his distaste for an ambitious bore? Possibly the deputy would be more useful to him than Labenne, and he ought to change sides? . . . But Huet's gestures and voice, even when he was saying things that from another man would have been proof of an almost excessive honesty, gave off an odour of bad faith. He would give me away to Labenne out of mere moral frivolity, Vayrac thought. In Paris they must distrust him as much as I do. . . . No doubt Huet had influence in certain quarters—after all, he was a deputy—but, in the new France, what would it be worth? If he was not able to exact his price? A dishonesty which does not know how to make itself valued must be worth even less than a genuine virtue! Not a chance that Huet was one of the men who were going to ride France into the new age—if he were, he would not be sitting here. At this very moment, the new men were certainly all at work somewhere. Besides, the deputy had all the marks of
a politician who has undershot his bolt—he talked of his scruples, his friends, and showed off his learning like the pedant he would have done better to be. . . . I believe he's a coward, Vayrac thought; and you don't survive a revolution only on a talent for treachery, without courage.

“Why don't you make up your mind to write your memoirs?” he asked.

He saw that Mme Huet had noticed the insolence. She gave no sign that she was displeased. Ah, he said to himself, one of these devoted wives who keeps a small store of malice for her husband under her devotion.

“All in good time,” the deputy smiled. “At present I'm too busy living them.”

“You could notice that I remembered to order trout for you,” his wife said.

“Ah, so you did. But why trouble? Eating is not one of my weaknesses. You should have married Georges Labenne. . . . And ought we to be enjoying ourselves when the Germans are in Paris?” he said gaily. “What is more, I'm informed—not from Berlin—that they've broken through the impregnable Maginot.” He smiled and blinked. “It's sad, but let's drink to the end of a long feud and the beginning of a longer peace. My dear young friend, four days ago, at Langey, I heard with my own ears Weygand say that the war was lost. No loyal Frenchman ever rejoiced as I did in that moment. I mean that I am a loyal Frenchman and I rejoiced boldly. Mark, I don't say that the Germans are civilised. By some miracle they escaped the curse from which we've been suffering since the Middle Ages—with the result that if I had brought a bricklayer in to dinner he would think himself called on to have ideas about justice and what not. We French are impossible. What other nation is reckless enough to let its bricklayers and infants stare every day at the three words that stand for three of the most dangerous abstractions in the world? . . . During the last few years, our German neighbours have shown how much a people owes to its primitive instincts—its savagery, if you like. In Germany, the word, the fatal word, has been made flesh. And such sprightly flesh! Liberty—which shuns the meetings of our democrats—flourishes at the other side of the Rhine in its true form, the liberty to obey and prosper. Justice, equality, of which we
have seen nothing since we began pretending to popularise it, has been born again in the will of a leader. Fraternity . . . that reminds me, Hitler's kindness to Madame Huet when he received her, last year about this time, struck me as a good omen. I believe he will respect France. Do you agree, my dear Vayrac?”

“Certainly,”

“Ah, I'm delighted.”

“Hitler,” Vayrac said, “is going to save us the trouble of shooting or beheading five or six million irreconcilables.”

This single phrase silenced the deputy. Vayrac turned to Mme Huet. She had been sparkling with interest in her husband's eloquence, without attending to a word. While Vayrac talked to her, he could see Huet reassuring himself. . . . He is deciding that I meant it figuratively, that I can be employed and kept in order by a finer intelligence—his! . . .

They went into another room to drink coffee. Mme Huet told Vayrac that this room had disgraced itself by pleasing Napoleon's dear Berthier, the Prince de Wagram—“a labourer, wasn't he, by birth?”—so much that he came back to it several times, although one of the benefits he drew from his success with the usurper was the delicious Château de Chambord: “now, as of course you know, in the family of my friend the Princesse de Parme.” . . . The windows, eight of them, were open on to the garden, where a single jet of water was giving the grass and some fat sparrows the benefits of the Loire. The rain had stopped, and the light, now that part at least of the day's heat had dropped as sediment to the lowest levels of the ground, was brilliantly clear.

“That wretched fellow Bergeot,” cried Mme Huet. “He would be the first to start murdering us.”

Vayrac looked at her with admiration. “He might stop short at confiscation.”

The moment he had swallowed his coffee, Huet said in a solemn voice that he must leave them, he was now going to telephone to Bordeaux, to a friend who would tell him what the Cabinet had decided in today's sitting. When Vayrac was pressing his hand he felt it tremble. Still a little afraid of me, he thought, amused.

The deputy hurried off. Just as Vayrac was going to ask
permission to stay, a servant announced Lieutenant de Saint-Jouin. Mme Huet was standing up, she took a step forward, turning her back on Vayrac, who could see her face in a mirror. He read on it surprise, derision, joy. The pretty soldier, he thought, is her lover, and neglects her. This discovery might be useful to him. At the moment it was only a chance to make her grateful to him, and he took it by leaving at once. The smile she gave him, withdrawn for a moment from Saint-Jouin, was almost tender. Payment in advance, he said to himself. . . .

As soon as he had gone, the young officer said carelessly,

“What a common brute, who is he?” Without waiting for any answer he went on, “I've come to say goodbye, I'm leaving tomorrow.”

“Oh. Where?” Mme Huet said.

“My sweet Andrée, you mustn't ask to be told secrets! I'll only tell you that tomorrow evening I shall be drinking claret, the best in the country.”

“Oh, it's Bordeaux. Why? Is the war over?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Mme Huet closed her eyes. “If it's over at last, you'll be safe.”

Saint-Jouin laughed and let go of her hands. “Astonishing creatures women are!” he cried. “The superb way you have of ignoring everything except your feelings. It would make you dangerous as statesmen or diplomats. Let Europe perish if only
he
is kind to me tonight! Marvellous—and frightful. . . . Don't look so tragic, my dear.”

Mme Huet forced herself to say, “And do you never feel that?”

“Oh, men are just as insane in their way. But fortunately for the world we don't take our love-affairs so seriously.”

Her despair and his fatuity were equally shocking to her. That I can still suffer like this, she thought—and for this silly fellow. She felt herself old and heavy.

“My dear Jacques,” she said, with a smile, “what a bore you're becoming with your aphorisms. You're almost dull enough for the Senate. Have you ever thought of politics? Or criticism? I've read just such—what shall I call it?—motto-work written by young men who are trying to make names for themselves. Do think of it!”

Not sure how seriously his vanity had been hurt, Saint-Jouin sulked for a few minutes, then left. She saw in his face that he was promising himself not to come back. He did not need her . . . and now that she didn't even take the trouble to flatter him . . .

She had no wish to be alone with herself. Her sister-in-law, whom she had expected to make the fourth at dinner this evening, had not even telephoned to make excuses. She decided to go to the Hàtel Buran and find out the reason for herself.

She found the Baronne de Chavigny packing, that is, frenziedly hindering her maid. When Mme Huet came in, the woman looked at her with relief and said, “There now, if Madame will only leave me alone for an hour, I can finish. And Madame can get a little sleep.”

“Sleep! But we must leave in an hour,” Mme de Chavigny cried.

“Why, where are you going?” Andrée asked.

Her sister-in-law took her into the next room and shut the door. Her face, not made up, was drawn with fear. Rolling her eyes like a nervous horse, she told Andrée in whispers that a Minister had rung her up from Bordeaux and warned her that it was all up, she had better go South—at once.

“But why? You're quite safe here.”

“No, no, there may be air-raids,” Mme de Chavigny cried; “there might be one tonight.”

“You didn't think of asking me to come with you,” Andrée said mischievously.

Mme de Chavigny was confused. “I was going to wire to you from Bordeaux.”

“My dear Bobo,” Andrée said, smiling, “you Jews are always so cowardly and hysterical. Don't let me delay you a minute. But I must say that if you really want to leave in an hour, you'd better let Marie alone. Why not make yourself presentable? You look like an old-clothes woman.”

Every word of this insult was a comfort to her. She felt almost happy.

When Rienne came in, the officer in charge of the camp was finishing his dinner. He offered Rienne a drink, and was disappointed when he refused. He was bored by his job; he seized every chance to complain, in the belief that his complaints would not bore his listener. Rienne asked to be taken directly to Uhland's hut. There were two hundred and fifty men in the camp, and four huts, named after the points of the compass. But there had been a mistake, and the East hut, where Uhland lived, was on the west side of the camp. The officer was amused. “As they never see the sun rising or setting, they stand and look at the river through the wire, and imagine they're looking towards the sea, no doubt thinking how jolly it would be to be on a ship: in fact, they're gaping towards Germany. . . . Well, if you must see this Boche, you must. Why not see him in here?”

Rienne insisted on going to the hut.

The air was fresh after the rain. The Loire—which knew very well which way it was going—smiled discreetly and innocently. To step from this sober evening into the hut was very like stepping at night into a trench filled with rotting bodies: Rienne thought he recognised the German smell; even in the same sort of trench Germans do not smell like Frenchmen. Except for the stains of light spreading from the candles belonging to wealthy prisoners, those still a few francs above the deepest level of misery, the place was dark; heads without bodies, and bodies mutilated where the darkness began, hung or leaned in these vague circles: a stink, malignant and active, seized Rienne by the throat and forced him to stand still until he could breathe it.

The corporal who had come in with him was pushing his way through a layer of human maggots. Near Rienne, a voice issuing from a peculiarly sour smell shouted in French, “What's up now?”: heaving and falling away in the darkness, the maggots gave an illusion of having white faces. Suddenly a man appeared in front of Rienne and announced himself stiffly. “Joachim von Uhland.”