Cloudless May (72 page)

“I'm no good. I'm not good enough. Anyone else—Bonamy, Louis Mathieu—would have made something out of this crisis. I'm not big enough for it. It has found me out.”

And you too, he thought, looking at her. We have both come
to the end of our cleverness. The war, circumstance, fate—call it what you like—yes, fate is refusing us another chance to show how adroit we are, how subtly we handle people. No more adroit triumphs. Disappointment, failure, anguish of mind . . . and, my poor girl, your looks. . . .

“We could still be happy,” she said timidly.

“Do you think I want to stay?” Bergeot said bitterly. “I've made a failure of everything. All I want is to go away. Never see any of these brutes again.”

Marguerite's face changed. “So it was your vanity made you agree to go away?” she said. “It wasn't”—she was ashamed to say—“love.” Her mouth stretched in an awkward taunting smile. “Your vanity,” she repeated.

He was speechless with anger. “What difference does it make?” he said at last.

“Only that everything is spoiled.”

“And you,” he said, hating her, “you hadn't spoiled it already? With your Thiviers.”

Their bitterness, their hatred of one another, forced them together. Almost weeping, they fell into each other's arms. Bergeot felt that their bones were embracing. Only two such ruined cowardly people could love each other in this way, without pity. Yet he had never been so anxious to look after her. . . . And she—at this moment she knew that no one had defeated her. She had defeated herself; she had told too many lies, the stain of greed and trickery was fixed in her. A life of some sort, somewhere—that was all that was left.

She thought confusedly: Only let us get safely away, I'll change, I'll be honest and kind.

“We ought to go,” she stammered. “I packed some of the clothes you had at home. I couldn't find any of your share certificates, or the money you drew out.”

“They're here.”

He watched her push papers and banknotes into his despatch-case. Suddenly he remembered the pile of letters in the next room; he knew there were a great many more in his files and began desperately looking for them. Marguerite was impatient, then anxious. She said she could hear guns. Bergeot listened, and thought after a moment that there was a distant shudder—not closer, he felt sure, than Orléans. . . . She became frantic
with fear. She snatched the file he was holding, threw it on the table, and hurried him towards the door. He gave way. It was no use—why try to save everybody? He found himself yawning, and yawning.

When they were going down the stairs, Marguerite hesitated. “I've forgotten my fur cape,” she said. She ran back and fetched it.

Lucien watched them from the other end of the corridor. I might as well, he thought, have gone into the tank corps. Is it too late?

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

It was raining heavily. As Rienne crossed the High Street he was almost run down by a car swerving clumsily round a corner. He caught sight of the driver. It was Marguerite, and she was smiling. She was, he thought, alone, but her smile promised nothing good. In any case, what goodness could come of a day on which German guns had fired into Orléans—
Orleans et tout I'aval d'Orléans; la Touraine; la grace et la douceur tourangelle
—and forced the Loire? It was worse than defeat; it was a gross stain, spreading so quickly that you could think the sources everywhere had been poisoned—today Saône, Doubs, Loire, tomorrow it would be Cher, Creuse, Vienne, Rhone. . . . And the Loire would not be defended at Seuilly. When he reported at six o'clock, Piriac had Woerth and Woerth's Personal Assistant with him. Without turning his head, he growled, “What do you want? Get out.” The P.A. looked down and smiled. . . . Rienne went back to his room: a message from Ligny told him that the three tank groups sent to reinforce Colonel Ollivier had been withdrawn, and the order to destroy the Geulin bridge cancelled. He knew what Ollivier was thinking.

His servant had fastened the shutters and lit the reading-lamp on his table. For the first time in his life in barracks, the smallness of his room stifled him. He must hear whatever sounds France was giving out in the darkness—they would be the sounds of her Middle Age, of the chroniclers, the villages burning, the women lying in the streets with their fear and their children. Turning the lamp out, he opened shutters and window, and leaned against any night in the war, in any war.
It was still raining. Under his window the courtyard was full of soldiers, waiting, with a little patience, their turn to file through the guard-room and give names, units, and if they could remember it the date and place where they ceased to be part of battalion and became a few stragglers. A little light, reflected in the rain, spread from the door of the room. Squatting in it, four men were playing belotte. The voices of the others came up to Rienne from some defeat of the past. . . . “He isn't as bad as you'd think, the old Boche.” . . . “I was lying on one grave and firing across the next—Dead for France, October 16, 1917, Jean Durand—Any minute now, my boy, I said, you'll be dead yourself, and for what? For some bloke to come here again in twenty years and plant a machine-gun in your bones; he'll be too sorry for himself to care what happened to Jean Durand and Jean Duchamp, he'll say
merde
and forget us.” . . . “Our lieutenant hopped it the third night, leaving us in the cart.” . . . “We've been properly sold.” . . . “Two of our officers were killed, and the general, no one knew why he was there, he had a car somewhere, said, Get back and blow up the bridge, the bridge must be blown up. And went off. And the captain said he knew the bridge was mined, it only needed one man to set it off, and if he didn't come back in half an hour, to push off; we waited an hour and pushed off.” . . . “You prayed for a Boche?” . . . “Of course, why not, he was dead. . . .”

Rienne did not blame these soldiers for running away; a group of brave men is not an army. . . . As the courtyard emptied slowly, the darkness fell silent. There were now no sounds, neither from defeated nor invaders. In silence, the rest of Europe drew away from France. Everything was spoiled. Towns had been burned, even Thouédun had lost its oldest houses, its youngest children. . . . And the solitude, the desertion, the loneliness were exhilarating. The night, with the rain, was clear and fresh.

June the 18th. In the morning, at eight o'clock, Ligny sent for him.

The general had had himself moved to a room on the ground floor, and a superb bed and other furniture fetched from his house at Bourges. He pointed out that he was dying in the greatest comfort possible.

“I shouldn't like to deprive Piriac of a single word of his legend,” he said, with a fine smile. “Let him die in his camp-bed and bequeath it to the nation. I prefer my own.”

The doctor had assured him that in a hospital on the south coast he could be mended to last ten years. He refused to go. . . . Rienne spoke to him about it.

“My dear boy,” Ligny said, “I'm sixty-two, an age which is usually fatal to the males of my family. The women live to be centenarians or die in infancy. Another of our habits is to leave all the extremes of feeling and character to them; some of them have been saints and the rest diabolically clever or spiteful or good-looking; none were what you could call friendly. Not one of them, man or woman, is alive, I've outlived even the centenarians. I'd like to know how Woerth's mathematics explains it. . . . The long ridge you can just see under the sheet is one of Charlemagne's barons, the last. Look at my nose—one of Louis the Eleventh's Lignys brought it from Tunis with the twelve-year-old girl he married there. She lived to be a hundred and three; it was she who started the habit. Very well, I'm taking it back to her, since no one has any further use for it in France. I ask you what use the country has for a Ligny? I'm what your friend the Prefect would call a Black. I ought to be clamouring for a King. I prefer the Republic. We Lignys have good memories and a longer experience of kings than these journalists and little Counts who make a good thing of their royalism. I daresay they are only fit to serve a tyrant. . . . You can see why I prefer to die here, in comfort. . . . But I sent for you to talk seriously. Open the windows. . . .”

His room looked on to the rough field behind the barracks.
It was a clear day after the rain—with a sky which had got back its colour, and was letting torrents of light fall from gulfs sunk deeply between mountains of white cloud.

“I have two things to say to you. First: Piriac will hand Seuilly over to the Germans without any attempt to make things difficult for them. Your friend—I think he's your friend?—Colonel Ollivier—will get his orders this morning to withdraw all his tanks and anti-tank guns and the rest of it into the town during the day. My impression is that Piriac expects the Germans to come in this afternoon or evening—”

“We should have fought here,” Rienne said.

After a moment Ligny said, “No.”

“Why not, sir?”

“The army has been defeated. The only humane course is to surrender at once. The only possible course.” He looked at Rienne and added, “You are a little like me—except for my remotely great-grandmother's nose—why don't we think alike? You don't agree with me.”

“No,” Rienne said.

“You're stubborn. You forget that this has become a war on civilians—and that civilians are not soldiers.”

“They could have been auxiliaries,” Rienne said.

“You're wrong! They could only suffer, and—since we've been defeated—why should they? My boy, you are as out-of-date as I am, with the difference that you expect everyone to be as obstinate, as single-minded, and—forgive me for referring to it—as brave as yourself. I tell you that this is a mediaeval war with modern weapons. Which makes it quite intolerable.”

“And no doubt your memory and experience of mediaeval wars—” Rienne said, smiling.

“Is closer than yours,” Ligny said, with sudden energy. “You're an insubordinate fellow. I haven't time to argue. . . . I sent for you to warn you that Woerth will certainly get rid of you. He may even have you shot for treason—I have no idea how far he is likely to push his distaste for a Republican staff officer. What are you smiling at?”

“Your distaste for General Woerth.”

“He's a fanatic,” Ligny said. “No, a Jesuit—polite, inflexible, and with a single passion. He's learned nothing since the eighteenth century, when the Jesuits were expelled. A pity.
France hasn't wasted her time during the two centuries he knows nothing about. . . . What was I saying? He'll be the death of you.”

“I've been dead so many times,” Rienne said gaily.

“This isn't war. It's politics. Much more deadly. . . . You must get away—tonight or tomorrow. . . . I'm not joking. . . You can do nothing here, you're a soldier, only good for fighting. The English—they're simpler than we are—will fight.” His face contracted. “Make your plans quickly, my boy. Go there and help them.”

Rienne did not answer. He was surprised to find that during the night his mind had thought of nothing else. And if, when he woke, nothing of the debate remained except a wish to see Agathe and Thouédun, it was because his memory knew already that he would be seeing them for the last time. Turning his head to look at Ligny, he thought: And you too—and this field, and that roof. And the implacable and firm line of the Loire.

“Have I the right to leave France?”

“Have you,” Ligny cried, “the right to stay? When others are still fighting? Does it matter who it is, the English, or some other nation which has forgotten what it is like to be defeated? . . . No, no, you must go on fighting. I want your word.”

Rienne hesitated long enough to become used to the idea that France was leaving him, not he France.

“Very well,” he said. “I'll get away tonight.” With Michel, he said to himself.

Sighing, Ligny folded his hands across his chest in the gesture which no doubt he would be returning in a few days to its Crusading owner. His eyes sparkled with relief and malice.

“And don't let's deceive ourselves,” he murmured, “it's not our faults, it's not even the gross traitors, the Monsieur Labennes, who are responsible for our defeat. It's much more the excellent Monsieur de Thiviers. Have you heard him talking about sacrifice? We're both lucky—we shall soon be out of hearing. . . He has his own definition of sacrifice. Of course. He prides himself on his definitions. He's not thinking of devotion. Or of the modesty that drives a civilised man to prefer Chartres or justice or a small vineyard to his own life. No, no, he means forced labour! He believes that the strength
will come back to our country from the poor and helpless, when they submit to his idea of their duty. What an illusion! The Pyramids were built by slaves, and who, I ask you, can honestly admire them?—they're ridiculous. Only Germans—who see in them the image of their own megalomania. Free men built into Chartres the purest anonymous genius of all ages. What people would give freely to preserve a banker or a politician? Without knowing it, our people prefer to die out; they know very well what is human and what is only a machine of greed, efficiency, power. Even if Thiviers is kind to his slaves, they will die. What they want is the right to work when they're not arguing, to hate foreigners and admit five million of them, to create the finest paintings in the world and the most repellent houses—not simply the right to eat. . . . I've eaten one meal in my life which I remember as perfect. In Tunis. We had been left behind . . . never mind that . . . we were three days without food; on the fourth we reached an outpost, very poorly stocked, but a soldier gave me half a bottle of red wine and a loaf. It was marvellous. . . .”

“Monsieur de Thiviers isn't on the General Staff,” Rienne said, smiling.