Cloudless May (76 page)

“No, I can't leave France,” he said.

“Is that all?” Rienne asked.

“And Michèle,” Mourey said. “Do you think I could leave her any more easily?”

Rienne saw him—in a future already too clear—risking himself and his honesty and his indestructible faith in the old civilised France against all the officials of a Government of Woerths and Thiviers. Risking his poor career and his poor pension. Risking even Michèle. . . . If anything good of the past were saved, it would be between the hands of these two of his friends. The future might come from other hands.

“So I can't take any of my friends?” he said lightly.

“Be careful,” Letourneau said, smiling. “You're responsible for us. . . .”

When he told Agathe he was going, she said nothing. This second separation was harder than the first because she knew now what she was losing—a kindness and a good-humour which were truly of her family. The twenty-five years following after the week when she had nursed him were a thin wadding between two happinesses. . . . I am sixty-three, she thought: what is in front of me is eternity. . . . If he comes back in October . . . three months to settle with the Germans, and a month to get back—she had only the vaguest notion where England was. . . .

“The autumn is very beautiful here,” she said.

“I know,” Rienne said.

“If it were a little later—if you come back in the winter—I can make a hare pâté, with a little laurel and a glass of Vouvray.
I shall make it in the square earthenware dish, it's more convenient than the other.”

“You'll be alone, Agathe. Is there anyone you would like to have with you during the war?”

A dark stain spread under the old woman's skin. “No one here.”

“If you could——”

Hesitating, she told him about a day—how long since? forty years?—a young cousin had spoken to her and taken off a ribbon she was wearing to give it to her. She went away next day, and Agathe never saw her again. But if friendship was a warmth, a brightness as dazzling as the first rays of the sun on the horizon of the Loire, then Agathe knew all about it. . . . She asked timidly,

“And you, brother? Would you like to have one of your friends?”

“He was killed this afternoon.”

Agathe did not dare ask his name.

“I hate war,” she murmured. “The last one was bad enough. I felt such despair. I used to wake at night and think: They're killing each other over there. I know you wouldn't murder anyone, but I can't help thinking that men who kill each other are murderers.”

“They are,” Rienne said.

“And now,” she said softly, “the village has been bombed, we have lost the war—we shall have the Germans here. But I don't despair any longer. I feel afraid—but, if you were not going, I should be happy. I am happy. Whatever is coming will not be too much; we can manage hunger and misery, I hope.”

Rienne looked at her with a little surprise. A clumsy big-boned woman in black, a peasant, her skin lined and blackened—with the railing gentleness of Anjou on her dry lips. She was the strength he was leaving, the courage he would return to seek. . . .

He left very early in the morning. The air was clear, with a feeling of rain. The village was still in its last night of independence, the last when an untimely knock on the door could only be a neighbour whose wife or his cow was ill. Everything was quiet. Everything was smooth, fresh—with the freshness of the Roman stones thriftily built into the parish
church. He had only to close his eyes to see, with any of his other senses, the wall separating the Marie-Tillier's field from their cousins the Tillier-Debraye's, and Dellac the poacher stopping to make signs through the window to Dellac the village policeman. A child wakened by the car looked at him from a window; he knew its name because he knew which family belonged to this house. The same with those geese, great-great-grandchildren of the geese he remembered rippling under this gate.

Agathe had watched him from the doorway. He turned. She waved and went in. He heard the door of his house shut. . . . He heard two other sounds—a rake smoothing the gravel on a path, and, faintly and distinctly, the réveillé sounded in the barracks. At the other side of the Loire, the Germans had heard it. . . . His village was giving him, once more, these two French sounds, before it opposed to the invaders its silence and the lighter silence of its dead.

He had his back now to it—as he would always have.

The Germans entered Seuilly in the early afternoon; tanks, guns, trucks—full of scarlet-faced young men crowding the sides like tourists—turned along the Quai d'Angers to reach the old barracks, along the Quai Gambetta to park in the Place de la République, along the rue Rabelais and the Place de Verdun to line with their tanks both sides of the Avenue du Maréchal Foch; here they were astonished to find lime trees but not a single house higher than three stories, not an arch, not even a café . . . strange country, where the names of victorious generals are dismissed to streets of modest private houses. . . . The staff officer who set out, Baedeker in hand, to look for the Roman arch he had marked to visit, was amazed and offended to discover it at the end of an ill-smelling little rue Richelieu, and sprouting St.-John's-wort. He decided to move it. If these people had no natural reverence, they could learn the forms. . . .

In his capacity as Mayor and, the Prefect having fled, chief civilian authority, Labenne received the two German officers appointed to look after the town and region. He watched them arriving. For an instant, when he saw them step out of their car and, standing together, send a brief glance over the superb Renaissance gallery and its robust pillars, over the staircase and towered doorway, he was seized by a primitive agony and fear. For less than an instant—until he felt the spurt of joyous energy in his body. Thank God, he was equal to his appetites. He was, he knew, only at the beginning of months, years, of effort—stretching fully his suppleness, vitality, will. He was not going to make the mistake of doubting his bargain. Nor of justifying it. Even if he had to use his strength first on his own countrymen—why not? No excuses are necessary for using a natural gift. . . . He was at ease in his future—his dear future. His corroding cynicism could not reach the only two human beings he loved. He was guarded on all sides—even against extinction. Even against boredom!

One of the Germans who came into his room was an old acquaintance—Major Landauer. Discreet, Labenne greeted him formally, but Landauer was open and friendly. The other, a Colonel Hellingrath, began at once the ceremony of taking over the command. He was correct, and a little patronising. Since this Frenchman was a man of goodwill, he could let himself feel the complacence of the victor, which before his own officers he repressed. A matter of discipline—they were not to think they could relax among these people, sly, decadent, with their restless hands and shrewd guarded eyes.

It was arranged for Major Landauer to take over the Town Hall; and that Monsieur Labenne—of whose good sense the Colonel was delighted to receive proof—the better to carry out the administrative changes that were needed, would move to the Prefecture. Provided that another and suitable residence were found for Colonel Hellingrath himself. His staff were taking over the Hotel Buran, luckily not damaged in yesterday's foolish incident; he would prefer a private house where he could bring his wife.

Labenne gave way to a delicious spite. “You couldn't do better than Monsieur de Thiviers's house. . . . It will be no hardship to him, he can go to his family house near Luynes.”
He paused. “It's not important, his family house—but it should be lived in.”

He surprised in himself a sudden anxiety for Thiviers's house at Luynes. It was a very small white château, built into the rocky hill above the river and above its own vines and mulberries; there were cellars in the rock. Old, it had far more the air of being immortal than any of the grand châteaux of this region: if they were ageless, it had the freshness and modesty of a good little child. And he was not anxious only about the house. Like the superb trees, the poplars of the Loire doubled by those of the Cher, like the vines and Spanish broom of this double valley, the Loire doubled by the other river, it sprang from a soil nursed by them, and with the same joyous strength. Like them it was a fountain of energy thrust into the clear air and pure suave light. Labenne had felt suddenly responsible for keeping it purely French. It was not his, it was Thiviers's. I'm giving him the chance to look after it, he thought with anger. If instead of going to Paris he lives there, I shan't touch him.

“Yes, he can go to Luynes,” he said again, “and the sooner the better.”

“We know a great deal about Monsieur de Thiviers,” Hellingrath said. “No doubt you will tell us how far he can be relied on.”

“As far as you are willing to acknowledge his importance,” Labenne said, smiling.

The German looked at him with a gleam of respect. Son of a Bavarian mother, he knew a brutally sound peasant when he saw him. And Labenne's lack of elegance pleased him. He became almost genial. After a few minutes, satisfied that the Mayor was his man, he went off.

Landauer stayed, and talked frankly. Unlike Hellingrath, he was not a professional soldier. He was a business-man, he had none of a soldier's prejudices before Europe. He desired ardently the wiping out of all the obstacles, including frontiers, which guide a soldier during invasions, and which Hellingrath would regret. To Landauer, Europe was only the natural setting of banks, mines, factories, the real vigours of the future. He saw no reason to deny Labenne, a Frenchman, his share in it. To turn all Europe into an efficient unit—what a task!

Difficult enough to need any number of clever and ruthless executants.

“You can't stay here,” he said warmly. “As soon as you've cleaned up the region, we shall need you in Paris. Or Berlin. . . . Our good Hellingrath imagines that the army will organise France. He would be hurt if I told him that his beloved army is only the nurse handing the surgeon his knife and rubber gloves. . . . Stukas and 88's are not surgical. What this country needs is experts. And not military ones. The Hellingraths know nothing; their ideas of obedience, respect, discipline, are rigid enough to strangle our new Empire. We need a few diplomats like Bismarck, and an army of supple-minded economists, technicians, bankers, administrators. My dear Labenne, you will be invaluable!”

Labenne pursed his thick lips. Behind his smile, he was listening with a cold ferocity of attention, seeking the weak point in this, his first German colleague. When Landauer began sneering at the professional soldier, he thought he had it. But, no, it was only the common form between politicians, not jealousy.

“Have you met any of our mystics?” he asked. “The ladies and gentlemen who are planning a Catholic peasant France?”

Landauer tapped his arm. “A peasant France is not so far from our idea for this country. Our Empire needs peasants, and yours are admirable. Like your soil. We have no time yet to nurse it, we shall have to cut down forests and force the crops. But for the time being we shall need Thiviers's works, we shall even improve them. Of course with our own money. That will give us control of the shares. Legal control—we're not robbers. Our good Hellingrath would no doubt seize them, he's a soldier of the old school. We don't do that sort of thing, we prefer an alliance—even forced! And how astonished I shall be if French industrialists and bankers don't quickly come to prefer a state of affairs which leaves them—under the discreet, oh, very discreet eye of one of our experts—the management of their property. Without crises or labour troubles. Men don't strike in our factories, let me tell you. . . .” He gave Labenne a shrewd glance. “Don't worry. The industries of the new German Empire have room for all exceptional men.”

Labenne had felt an obscure movement of rage—not unlike
his brief anguish. He ignored it. He needed all his energy to feel his way. And in fact he felt a superb confidence. These Germans thought they had to do with a merely clever or merely crafty man. What idiots! . . .

“I'm sure of it,” he said calmly.

Labenne watched him with an almost affectionate curiosity. “I understand that Monsieur de Thiviers has a fine collection of French paintings—Ingres, Renoirs. . . . We should like to offer for them.”

“Why not?”

“You really don't mind?” Landauer said, smiling.

“If you buy a few paintings? Why should I? When we want them, we can make others.” He was not exaggerating his indifference. So long as the country was not destroyed, so long as he and his children and his Thouédun were secure, much he cared where Monsieur Renoir's pictures went. There are always painters. “You can count on me in every way,” he said, with a slight emphasis. “I'm only anxious to see the end of disorder and weakness. In the language of realism—common to both our countries—France without Germany is nothing. With Germany, it can be a sound healthy province of Europe.”

“And what unique monuments in France!” Landauer cried. He smiled and lowered his voice. “And what women! My dear fellow—not in the least beautiful—only exquisite!”

Labenne felt a pang of disillusion. The most vulgar weakness imaginable. He was disappointed to feel his first steps so easy. It started in him a contempt he should have mistrusted. But he was still avidly licking his new power and far from wondering whether a lust—any lust—is ever clear-sighted enough.

“And what is your general saying to our good honest Piriac?” he asked.

“Oh, he'll know how to put the old fellow in his place,” Landauer answered. “We don't co-operate with French soldiers, only with patriots.”

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

At this moment Dr. Charles-Gouraud walked into his laboratory and found a German officer examining his “godchild.” He had been out of town, settling his family in a village. As he drove into Seuilly, he saw the last German tanks crossing
the bridge. He had to make a long detour to reach the works. He was too late.