Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (84 page)

And then miles and miles of them went away and they were gone.

Everybody breathed again.

Everybody began to talk again, not about anything in particular, but they all just began to talk again.

The post office was open again and everybody began to worry about everybody’s husband and brother and father and nephew and son, everybody, and nobody had heard anything for so long.

Slowly they began to hear; some did not hear for a very long time, but more or less they all began to hear and they all began to write all the soldiers about coming home, and they said they were coming home and they did come home.

Gradually everybody began to realize that very few French-men were dead; a great many were prisoners, but very few were dead; and a great load was lifted off France. It was not like the last war, when all the men were dead or badly wounded; practically nobody was wounded and very few were dead. Everybody forgot about being defeated, it was such a relief that their men were not dead.

The Germans had said that when they were here; they said lots and lots of Germans had been killed and very, very few French.

Later on I asked the returned French soldiers how they had succeeded in killing so many Germans and not any of them being killed themselves. They explained that there was terrific aerial bombardment, but that all the soldiers had to do was to lie down and the bombs exploded before they were hit. They said that the bombs were made to explode on buildings, not in the ground, and so civilians in a city like Auxerre were killed, but as the soldiers were in the open country they were not killed. Then, while the air bombardment was going on, the tanks broke through the French line, and opened out in a fan behind the French line; the German infantry, being in serried formation behind the tanks, were shot down and so a lot of them were killed, but as there were
so many of them they finally exhausted the capacity of the French to kill them and they came through too, and so the French were made prisoners except a great many who made off into the fields and, walking twenty-five kilometers a day or finding a stray bicycle, got home.

Georges Rosset made it all very clear, his only regret was that he had lost all his accoutrement and particularly a very nice pair of socks that Alice Toklas had knitted for him out of very lovely wool. He wrote all about that before he managed to get home, but Alice Toklas said to his mother to write that she would immediately start another pair and anyway he would have a chocolate cake when he came home, and she did make a chocolate cake for him when he did come home, and he is home. They all are. The curé d’Ars had said that the women would plant the grain and the men would harvest it and here they were—they are harvesting it, and it is all harvested.

He also said that when everything was at its worst, then it would turn out to be at its best.

V

It is very true that all the old predictions are that there will be a complete disaster; one said that the cock would completely lose its feathers and that afterwards its feathers would be more beautiful than ever. The French do naturally not like that life is too easy, they like, like the phœnix, to rise from the ashes. They really do believe that those that win lose.

In the meantime the government of France had changed, but that did not worry anyone.

It was natural that, since the Third Republic had not defended them from their enemies, it would end.

As I said in
Paris France
, to the French a government is something outside which does not concern them; its business is policing, defending them from their enemies; it is to be hoped that it will not cost too much, and naturally it leaves every one to lead their own French life.

And so naturally the government had changed, but their life was to go on all the same.

Everybody was happy, because their men were alive and a good many of them had come home. There were a great many difficulties, mostly concerning themselves with the question of gasoline and the question of butter.

These were the two things that bothered everybody the most.

French farmers need bread, wine, vegetables, and butter. Meat is a luxury, not a necessity, to be eaten when had, but never thought about in between; sugar and coffee a half luxury—you can do without but you miss it; but bread and wine and vegetables and butter you must have.

There was no lack of bread, wine, and vegetable; there was a moment of hesitation about bread, but the harvest was excellent, and there was no real lack; vegetables and wine are always there, and suddenly there was a question of butter. Whether it was because the Germans made such a fuss about butter that made the French think that butter could be a luxury or what I do not know, but suddenly butter became, as everybody said,
une chose rare.

It was a puzzle—there were the same number of cows and so there was as much milk, but where was the butter?

Of course there was the trouble about gasoline. There being no gasoline, the milkmen could not make their rounds, but even so, what with bicycles and horses, milk was gathered in. But the butter?

There was a wild flurry about butter. The most sober of the farmers’ wives were fussed. Their milk was under contract to go to the dairies, and the dairy would not give them butter. Nobody in France talked about anything but butter. Well, one way or another, one did get enough butter to cook with and to eat; but everybody went somewhere else to get it and it was purchased silently; it was a whole history of intrigue and it did a great deal to make everybody forget about war and about government, and then all of a sudden everybody had butter and that was over.

Everybody breathed again; everybody could have bread, butter, wine, and vegetables, and so they forgot their troubles.

They settled down to get in their harvest. Just tonight one of the wagons, with its oxen, was coming in very late at night,
about ten o’clock, loaded with wheat, and I said, ‘It is late. Is the harvest all in?’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘yes. There is our bread.’ It did not look like bread yet; it looked more like straw—but it was bread.

The only trouble left was the question of gasoline and that is still a trouble, and very complicated.

Of course there is none in France and they are trying to substitute for it charcoal, and that does very well for trucks, but it does not do for small cars, and how will there be any gasoline if the English keep blowing it up and besides not letting it pass?

The only way at present is not to use any, and to gather in what there is. Well, that seems to work all right, only it stopped all business, and so from time to time a day was given in which everybody who had any gasoline could go out. You could not buy any, but you could go out. And just now, the eighth of August, everybody says that everybody who has any gasoline can go about. ‘But,’ said I to Madeleine Rops, ‘it did not say so in the paper.’ ‘Ah, my dear,’ said Madeleine, ‘after all you do not yet understand French logic. Nobody was allowed to
rouler
, and then all of a sudden they announced that after the twenty-fifth of August nobody is allowed to
rouler.
So,
ma chère
, that means that now everybody can
rouler
, otherwise why should they say that after the twenty-fifth it will all be
contrôlé? C’est simple,
’ said Madeleine Rops. So we got out the car and went shopping into Belley, most exciting; it used to be a bit of a bore to have to go shopping into Belley, but now, as it can only be done unexpectedly, it is most exciting.

And so everybody is very busy accommodating themselves to everything, and I must say the French are really happy in combining and contriving and intriguing and succeeding, and above all in saving. This evening, in going out walking, I met the town’s people bringing in as much wood as they could carry; of course there are lots of woods around here and fallen branches and everybody is carrying in some for autumn burning.

I have been talking to the young people and asking them how they like it all and they said they are very pleased. They
say now they can begin to feel that they have their future to create, that they were tired of the weak vices that they were all indulging in, that if they had had an easy victory the vices would have been weaker and more of them, and now—well, now there is really something to do—they have to make France itself again and there is a future; and then there is to be lots of electricity and they want France to be self-sufficing, and they think it will be and they all think that French people were getting soft, and French people should not be soft. Well, anyway they are looking forward, and then besides they won’t all just go into the bureaucracy the way they were doing; they will have to find other things to do. In short, they feel alive and like it.

The older people, once they have gotten over the shock, do not seem to mind either; nobody seems to mind, as Madeleine Rops said after having come all the way from Bordeaux to Belley. Really, you know, you would not think that it was a defeated country—not at all; they seem much more wide-awake than they were.

Well, yes, they do a little regret the predictions, but still all the predictions said that the cock would lose its feathers but would come out more crowing than ever, and they all said that when the worst was there the best would follow; and then there was Sainte Odile, who said that after her blood flowed in June, four months after, France would be more glorious than ever. Well, why not?

I had my own private prediction, and that was that when I had cut all the box hedges in the garden the war would be all over. Well, the box hedge is all cut now today, the eighth of August, but the war is not all over yet. But anyway our light is lit and the shutters are open, and perhaps everybody will find out, as the French know so well, that the winner loses, and everybody will be, too, like the French, that is, tremendously occupied with the business of daily living, and that that will be enough.

Well that was yesterday and to-day is the landing and we heard Eisenhower tell us he was here they were here and just yesterday a man sold us ten packages of Camel cigarettes, glory be, and we are singing glory hallelujah, and feeling very nicely, and everybody has been telephoning to us congratulatory messages upon my birthday which it isn’t but we know what they mean. And I said in return I hoped their hair was curling nicely, and we all hope it is, and to-day is the day.

While I was out walking to-day I talked to a little girl who looked nine but was really fourteen, her people came from the neighborhood of Rome but they had been French for some time and the children all born in France, she said they were all small, she certainly was and we talked about eating, and she said she would like an orange, and I said how about a banana do you know what a banana is oh yes she said I used to eat them, but my younger brothers and sisters they never saw a banana, and some of them cannot remember an orange, well she said sighing the time will come yes it will of course one does need bread but one does need oranges and lemons and bananas too.

To-day is only the third day of the landing and what a change, everybody openly making fun of the Germans, the girls leaning out of the window and singing the Marseillaise, and all the people in the village, so pleased because it has been said that this department the department of the Ain will be the first to be free and then the Savoy and the Haute
Savoy, and indeed the mountain boys are at it, Bourg the biggest city in the department has been completely cut off by them from contact with any one, they have cut the railroads, they guard the railroads and they have interrupted the telephone, and they have occupied quite a few important towns round about, and the few Germans that are left are getting mighty uncomfortable, the fifty who are here were called to go and fight the mountain boys and they said they did not want to and their officer harangued them and then they had to go, but there were no trains and so they requisitioned the French trucks and some autocars and away they went, I was sitting with the wife of the mayor and we saw them going off to fight and it was a very great contrast to the German army of 1940, my gracious yes. They have just told us that when the Germans started to attack the mountain boys the mountain boys just climbed a little higher, and sometimes they do not trouble to fight, they just throw stones down and call out cuckoo, cuckoo, of course to the French a cuckoo is some one who has stolen somebody else’s nest. The Germans did not like being called cuckoo but what else can they do. The young people are all feeling very gay, the older ones naturally are worried but the young ones are feeling very gay.

The mayors now have to have the whole responsibility of their towns, there are no communications, so they cannot get into touch with a higher authority, and so they are the ultimate authority, and they are very capable the French mayors, even in the smallest places. Our is taking care of us very well, he has managed to get flour for bread and that is important because French people do not like to live by bread alone but without bread they cannot live at all, potatoes they say are filling but an hour after you are as hungry as before while bread is really sustaining so they must have bread and so far our mayor has managed it for us. It would be nice if ours would be the first department to be completely freed of Germans, perhaps, the mountain boys around here are very active, and it would be nice.

A buzzard has carried off one after the other three of our baby chickens, that is natural the hunters usually shoot enough buzzards every year so that they do not steal baby
chickens, but after three years of not hunting, the air is full of buzzards full of buzzards.

And full of everything just now but mostly rumors. There are however some funny true stories, the mountain boys the other day came into Amberieu and one of them got into the post office and sounded the alerte, the whole population and the Germans ran away supposing it was a bombardment and the mountain boys went into the round house and blew up a quantity of locomotives and left before the Germans got back. The latest rumor is that Belley is held by the mountain boys but one thing is certain at the station here no trains pass, I was around the station this afternoon and I never saw a railroad station so dead not since in my youth I crossed the continent during the Pullman strike and what else can we do, it is the third time that we have been deprived of the telephones and this time fortunately they have left us electricity and the radio, which is a pleasure. But for how long this we do not know, anyway the landing goes on and when we hear the official French announcement that the Germans are perfectly calm, we know better, they are not, what we are afraid of now is that German deserters will try to get into the house, one did to-day, he said he was looking for a German lady, but as we are well up the mountain and not in the town it sounded fishy. Basket barks and barks as if he were a savage dog instead of a lamb which is just as well. Everything is going on that is to say nothing is going on no trains no mail no telephone, nothing coming and going except a few unfortunates, I saw one to-day who seemed a little queer, and there is a noonday hush all over the place all day long, the Germans are requisitioning more and more enormous logs to get themselves barricaded, away from the mountain boys and everybody chuckles they say much good that will do them, there are according to all calculations about three thousand of them in the whole department and as the mountain boys are killing them a few at a time it may take some time but on the other hand, they are stuck they can go up and down the road a distance of about fifty kilometers and then they have to come back again, all the youth are joining up with their friends, the police too, our friend came to see
us from Belley yesterday Sunday and everything is peaceful except that everywhere the mountain boys guard the roads but they are very polite and help shove the cars when they get stuck, everybody for the moment is very polite, the mayor on his bicycle goes around gathering in food from the surrounding country to feed his population and so far has succeeded very well, the only thing that is a great trouble, is when there is a need for surgical operations and it is very difficult to get a conveyance, the men with the taxis are always getting their cars out of order to avoid going around with the Germans and they are frightened of putting them in order to take the French, but by the end of the week it is now the first Sunday since the landing everybody expects that the Germans will be gone. And they will, yes they will. My gracious they are all happy not the Germans but the population, even those who were collabo as they call them are happy why not they were collabo because they were afraid afraid of communism and afraid of Germans and then too the Germans to some French people did seem to be so strong but now well they are weak nobody uses the phrase that used to annoy us so they are still strong, and so there are no collabos because now that the Anglo-Americans have proved themselves so strong they are less afraid of communism and they are not at all afraid of Germans not at all so the rejoicing is practically universal, a little frightened still but complete. Some one has just told me about how the mountain boys in Bellegarde have taken German prisoners and have put them to work picking potato bugs off the potato plants, the only agricultural activity that every French man woman and child hates, they are looking forward to the clearance of the pests completely by the German prisoners. Everybody is delighted they say potatoes came from America and the potato pest seems to have come over these recent years from America and now because of America they have been able to take German prisoners here very far away from the Americans to be sure and these prisoners can spend their days destroying the potato bugs off the potato plants.