33 Days (8 page)

Head, mouth and lips forward, Madame Lerouchon shouted at the volume of a domestic argument.

“You believe everything you’re told about Hitler. But you’re told nothing about Chamberlain.” Then, in a higher register, her final words screamed like a tenor heaving himself toward the high C, she repeated, “You were told … you were told … you were told … you were told … you were told that Hitler was malicious … But what do you know about it?… What harm do you expect him to do you?…”

Madame Lerouchon was seemingly in a frenzy. But it wasn’t a towering frenzy. It was a sort of good-girl’s frenzy, a fit, a frenzy without malice.

With a certain plebeian power, but with repulsive banality, she presented a savage Chamberlain and a decent Hitler, translating themes from Radio Stuttgart into cartoon images.

Madame Soutreux cannot possibly have grasped our surprise and distaste. It seemed as if she wanted to explain and comment on Madame Lerouchon’s words. Hers was a different tone of voice, a sugary little tone. She was speaking with pursed lips. And her words were much less operatic, without apparent passion. She also defended Hitler and Germany, but with the appearance of impartiality and by means of those historical abstractions that are at the disposal of everyone who reads the newspapers.

“Germany was deprived of all its colonies,” she said, “it was forced to prepare its revenge. Germany needs to expand in proportion to its population. You must not listen to only one version, you must see both sides … You must understand that the Germans are organizers …”

After a week of worry and insomnia, we found respite, a refuge, in a French household. The words we were hearing there seemed hallucinatory. But for the moment, I’m not looking for any explanations, I’m scrupulously recounting, in its natural order, reality.
While these two women were speaking, I was remembering that military tribunals in Paris had sentenced “defeatists” to months or years in prison, some of whom had expressed nothing but innocent doubt. I attended one of those hearings. Poor buggers were judged severely, along vague lines, for having asserted in a bar that trainloads of wounded were heading toward Paris. I also heard Pastor Roser condemned to five years in prison for asserting that war was irreconcilable with the Gospel. But these two women were testifying to their devotion to Germany in a tone that had nothing confidential about it, concealing nothing, as if it were the expression of some orthodox truth.

That is when two German soldiers appeared in the courtyard. Armed, for sure, but alone, neither fearing nor threatening anyone, in some way like hikers. They seemed to me more frightening than those who had machine-gunned us the day before at Ouzouer. At Ouzouer we were caught up in the risks, the hazards of war. We were in the violence and noise of war, in the uncertainty that someone who does not fear death too much can overcome. But these two isolated soldiers were an entire army, covering the entire battleground; we were all prisoners of these two soldiers. Yesterday’s could have killed us, these could humiliate us.

They only wanted to refill their canteens with water from the well. But Madame Soutreux wouldn’t hear of it. She went down to the cellar and brought them a bottle of wine. She engaged them in cordial conversation. She spoke German so fluently that I couldn’t make out a single word of what she said.

The two Germans leaned over the Aufresnes’ baby, and one of them took her in his arms. Since then I have always seen German soldiers act like born nursemaids in front of children, showing the liveliest tenderness. I’m certainly not claiming that this tenderness is faked. Even less do I believe that it runs all that deep. And I’m sure they’re mixing in a portion of either unconscious histrionics or concerted decision. This is how the Germans give proof of their advanced civilization. The kindness of these two toward the baby wasn’t fully exempt from some intent toward propaganda and display. The soldier who had taken the infant in his arms set it down, saying to
her, “You see … your
Boches
,
^*
your barbarians.” This, it goes without saying, was directed toward us and not Madame Soutreux, who stood with them and seemed to gloat over the benevolence of her helmeted guests.

I’ll add that I never saw a German, before taking an infant in his arms, trouble himself to find out whether this was agreeable or not to the parents. You’d think the infant belonged to them by right of conquest.

A half hour later two more soldiers entered the courtyard. Madame Soutreux had not welcomed us with such unreserved, expansive kindness. She became animated; she was in a state of jubilation. And I wondered whether her jubilation came from speaking with Germans or speaking German. I came to wonder whether Madame Soutreux wasn’t simply obsessed with foreign languages. That was when I witnessed one of those spectacles that make you say I can’t believe my eyes. Madame Soutreux came back from the cellar and she was carrying two glasses and a bottle of champagne. She poured it into the glasses herself and handed them to the two soldiers. And she watched them drink with a smiling tenderness.

“
Goot kvality
 …,” said one of the soldiers to thank her.

That’s exactly what happened.

An hour later, another soldier entered the yard. He wasn’t as lucky: The Soutreux woman wasn’t there; he got only water.

He was sweating and reeling, not from drunkenness but from fatigue. Arms outstretched, he held two canteens toward us. I still don’t know what he meant by this gesture. Was he asking where the well was? Or, as warlord, was he ordering us to bring him water, to fill them ourselves? Aufresne took the canteens, went to the well, refilled them and brought them back to the soldier. His face was tense, flushed, but not one of those that is easily read. Aufresne and I never exchanged a word about it, then or later. I think he was saying to himself, “I’m obeying the law of the conqueror … I’m giving in to coercion.”

I’m saying to myself, “I would sooner get myself killed than go
find water for this soldier.” I’m sincere and I’m lying. Had the soldier pointed his gun at me, I’d have gone to the well and brought back the canteens. The truth is, at that moment and no other, this soldier and no other would have gone to the well to refill his own canteens without a word had I pointed the way. But everything would have been different had the soldier been a drunk thug or had headquarters decided to instill terror.

A childish discussion … you might say. A trivial event, but the discussion is essential. Dignity isn’t measured arithmetically. The smaller the event, the better one grasps the nuances of freedom and dignity. I sensed at that moment that I belonged to a people who were recognizing nuances. I remembered that while I was doing my military service an adjutant called to me in the courtyard and ordered me to go to his room and polish his shoes. I refused. Having exhausted threats of the rigors of the Military Code, he gave in to astonishment and a sort of curiosity that I must call psychological. I explained to him that the act of shining shoes seemed in no way beneath me, that I willingly polished my barracks mate’s shoes if he was late for inspection or too drunk to do this task himself, but I would not be ordered to shine shoes. I was not shot or punished.

At nightfall, the bombardment begins again. I forgot to say that the house wasn’t built on a cellar; what I called a cellar earlier was only a kind of storage space at ground level. We took shelter there, the Aufresnes and us, Madame Soutreux and the Lerouchon woman. That’s when we saw two soldiers appear suddenly out of the darkness. I don’t know whether they were two from that afternoon—the ones who got wine or the ones who got champagne—or two new ones, whether their coming is their own idea or if some authority sent them. I don’t know and I’ll never know. The soldiers explain in German to Soutreux and Lerouchon that the house is endangered by the shellfire, that it is reckless to stay here, and they signal all of us to follow them.

So here we are under the Germans’ protection. I very much want to stay behind. But I think I ought to choose the least risk for my wife. And anyway, Lerouchon, the good girl, is shouting at me, “So come … it has nothing to do with politics …” I don’t know whether
my feelings are political or not. But I give in to the absurdity of a memorable statement and reply to the Lerouchon woman that at this moment she cannot imagine how much I prefer French soldiers to German soldiers. I believe I even had the weakness to add that it wasn’t a matter of politics or patriotism, but of dignity … My wife, with a great deal of common sense, shuts me up.

We follow the Germans. We cross some fields. It’s dark. We haven’t eaten anything since morning. One of the fields is cut by a ditch at least two meters deep. The soldiers climb in, sinking knee-high into water. One of them takes the baby in his arms. They help the women get across.

We arrive at a farmhouse where the Germans are billeting. We sit down on the steps of a kind of porch. Heavy shadows are passing through the courtyard. A few of these shadows approach us, join our group. There’s some rapid conversation between the shadows, Soutreux and Lerouchon.

Lerouchon makes sure to translate the essence of the conversation for us. The Germans are giving her information about the war. She shouts to us, in a tone of triumph, “They’ve bombed Dreux; they’ve bombed Juvisy …” She shouts this to us as if she were announcing both a victory for her own country and a personal triumph. Then we can only hear a few sounds, at once raucous and muffled, a torrent of accented syllables. Lerouchon isn’t translating whatever the source of the jubilation is. Suddenly, she yells in French, “You know … a French general surrendered … He came alone to surrender …”

I see Madame Aufresne crying. She told me later that she was crying from shame.

The Germans leave us. They are bringing hay into a kind of cellar. They spread it on the floor and over some barrels. This is our designated refuge for the night.

Soutreux and Lerouchon are speaking German to each other in loud voices. To tell the truth, where there are Germans, they feel too much at home. They are forgetting that they’re only guests. A noncommissioned officer brusquely orders them to shut up. He’s right, after all.

We lie down on the straw, some of us on the ground, others on
the barrels. Toward three in the morning someone declares that the shell impacts are getting closer and that our shelter is far from strong. We dash across fields. Mortar shells are whistling … I don’t like the sound. But after the jolt caused by the initial explosions, I can’t help but ignore the mortars. I manage with great difficulty to overcome the idea that the mortars are not part of my personal universe … We don’t speak the same language. This game of artillery is as alien to me as the game of belote.

Before reaching Lorris, lying on the grass with a pain in my shoulders while the trucks filed by endlessly, I’d already rediscovered the soldier in me, the soldier of 1915, lost in events. This was only a kind of camping trip that I imagined as temporary. Now, I feel only desolate and numb. Yes, it’s as if everything inside me were frozen … I rediscover the soul, the torpor and the passions of a soldier. I’m sleepy, I’m hungry and I’m full of certainties. The 1914 war was limited in its goals, modestly territorial, modestly economic. At stake this time is the totality of man, the totality of all men. So vast that to express it, the masses and their masters can no longer come up with token lies. Those conducting this war haven’t invented stories of severed hands; neither have the masses.

We reach a farm around which German soldiers are camping. Some refugees are leaving; they have gathered their bundles in a wheelbarrow. Others have settled in. Once they have understood that we’re only temporary guests, they welcome us and offer us coffee.

We sleep in the barn until daybreak. I wander through the courtyard. A German soldier comes over to me, speaking to me gently, but I can’t manage to understand him. Nevertheless, we seem to agree on the uncomplicated idea that the war is a sad thing,
traurig
 … 
traurig
^†
 … Another soldier comes to talk with him. They look furious. It seems the Lerouchon woman has insulted the soldiers. It’s hard to believe there have been a disagreement. Or Lerouchon, who earlier was joking coarsely with the Germans, must have ventured some joke that was misunderstood. The two women come back. The
two Germans are “giving them hell.” Lerouchon wants to respond, but Soutreux restrains her. All this in the glimmer of dawn. It’s as if two girls were being chased out of a guard post.

We leave the farm. The barrage continues, but very listlessly. Soutreux and Lerouchon take fright, turn back and vanish behind a hedge. They know the side paths and the location of their house. We’re trying to rejoin them via the main road. That house is not home for us, but for the moment it’s our only refuge. The road is lined with woods, and these woods are full of cannons, horses and German soldiers. The soldiers force us to turn back.

We pass a dead horse (it looks as if it were rearing upside down); we pass near the grave of a German soldier. We cross the village of Dampierre. The ground is strewn with the broken stocks of French rifles. We’re no longer hearing cannons. We won’t hear them again.

We are resting quite a distance from the road on the edge of some woods. The solitude, the silence are such that the war seems far away. But a telephone wire, laid by the Germans, runs along the ground, hidden in the grass. A soldier comes from the roadway. He approaches and hands us a can of monkey meat.
^‡

I felt humiliated. I was the conquered, who receives his food by the conqueror’s generosity. Such is war: it imposes gross simplifications, it thinks poorly, it forces poor thinking, in gross categories; it pits nations against each other in an excess of unity that’s nothing but insanity; it contrasts victor and vanquished; it eliminates subtle conflicts and replaces them with a fistfight. As big as the fistfight may be, it’s only a fistfight. But at the moment nothing can change the fact that this soldier is victory and I am defeat.