The Fires of Autumn (10 page)

‘That man is very clever … He seems to know what he’s talking about.’

‘So what are you doing in Paris?’ asked Bernard.

Détang lowered his voice:

‘I’m on an assignment,’ he said, sounding mysterious. ‘I’m going
on a long trip to the United States soon. I can’t say any more than that, but I hope to contribute, in some small way, in forging a solid link between our two countries. The war is actually about to end. Everyone can sense it. So now, we have to start planning for peacetime and the most important economic and political issues have to be resolved.’

‘Lucky devil,’ grunted the young man. ‘You’re going to get a free trip with flowers, fanfares and parades while the day after tomorrow, I go back to work “somewhere in France”.’

Raymond looked at him sceptically and frowned. At the corners of his lively eyes appeared an intricate network of fine, yellowish lines.

‘You poor boy, come on now …’

They were surrounded by the noise of the crowd; Bernard looked around him with an expression of scorn and curiosity.

‘Paris is strange now,’ said Raymond Détang, and he seemed to be offering the spectacle to Bernard and the women with the same gesture as a director pointing out a group of characters on stage. ‘You have no idea what’s being bought and sold here, what schemes people are cooking up. Sometimes, it makes you want to take your head in your hands and ask yourself “Is this why we’ve gone to war? The Marne, Verdun, our dead young men, all that to end up like this? A jumble of mercenaries, profiteers, schemers, American munitions sellers and Bolshevik spies?” Compared to all that, this is lively, amusing. Vile but lively, you can’t say it isn’t. And there are such opportunities!’ he added, leaning in to whisper in Bernard’s ear.

‘Like women?’

‘Oh, women … there are far too many women. No, business opportunities. Ah, if only I had some investment capital …’

He was lost in a dream for a moment and his hands – he had very beautiful hands, well cared for, expressive, with quivering fingers that curled up slightly at the tips, spiritual, worrying hands
that clashed with the easy-going directness he affected – his hands trembled and stretched out as if reaching for some prey.

‘You’ll find some money, I’m sure of it,’ whispered Bernard.

The two of them spoke very quietly amid the noise while Thérèse remained pensive and the others watched the crowd in open-mouthed astonishment.

‘But I’m not interested in money,’ said Raymond, recovering his mocking manner of good little boy. ‘I am a true son of France, I am, sensitive, generous, a dreamer, always ready to sacrifice my own most legitimate interests to some greater ideal. So in America, where it’s raining gold at present, not a single cent will end up in my pocket. My mind is completely focused on enormously important deals that affect all of humanity … I literally have no time to think about myself, and that’s a shame, a real shame, because, as I’ve already said, there are opportunities and no one should sneer at making money. It’s a powerful lever, a tool that can do a great deal of harm but also a great deal of good,’ he declared in a beautiful, throaty voice that could easily be heard above the noise of the conversations and the clatter of dishes and glasses. ‘When are you going back, Bernard?’ he suddenly asked.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tell me, you speak English, don’t you? Aren’t you a real fount of knowledge? When you were a child, you won all the school prizes. I remember that, just as I remember everything. I have a remarkable memory.’

‘Yes, I do speak English.’

‘Yes, but careful now, is it a good, modern English, good commercial English, no what-do-you-call-its, nothing as old-fashioned as Shakespeare? If so, could you come to the United States with me, as my secretary?’

‘You’re mad! I just told you that I’m leaving tomorrow.’

‘My dear boy, everything can be arranged. You must start from the principle that nothing in this world is impossible. Mind you,
I’m not promising you anything, but I have contacts and a certain amount of influence …’

He gave a self-satisfied little laugh.

‘A certain amount of influence,’ he said again. ‘You could say that you are extraordinarily lucky. I am actually looking for a clever lad who could help me over there, for I am a true son of France, and I have never been able to get a single word of those damned foreign languages to stick in my thick skull. It’s annoying and I’d like to work with someone honest, kind, someone like you, really, and I’d like to help you too. Your mother’s heart is being squeezed dry knowing you’re in danger. To enlist voluntarily at the age of eighteen, wounded twice, fighting throughout the entire campaign, you deserve a bit of a break, and so does she …’

‘It’s quite funny,’ thought Bernard, ‘to think that all I have to do is agree, say yes … I know what he really wants. He must be looking for some little trustworthy fool to help him with his shady munitions deals or to win a contract to manufacture shoes for the army. Ah, those bastards … The United States, the good life, money, women, while we …’

At the same time, he felt as if someone had slapped him across the face. No, worse than that! As if a lump of wet mud had hit him in the face.

‘Thank you, but that isn’t possible,’ he said curtly.

The big man seemed truly surprised:

‘Really, that doesn’t appeal to you? Well, I understand and admire you, to tell the truth! I wasn’t offering to get you out of your responsibilities, you know that very well, but to continue serving your country. The country doesn’t only need our blood, it also needs our intelligence, all our superior qualities. But no matter, I do admire you, my boy, it’s noble, gallant, so very French! It warms my patriotic heart to see a soldier like you. You’re a little hero.’

He turned towards Madame Jacquelain:

‘Madame, you should be very proud of your son.’

‘I should, shouldn’t I?’ said Madame Jacquelain, her eyes welling up with tears, while Bernard, furious, protested:

‘No! That’s enough! You’re making a bloody fool of me!’

‘Me?’ exclaimed Détang, and tears dimmed his booming voice. ‘You’re not being fair to me, my boy. Do you really think it doesn’t lift our hearts to watch the youth of France accomplishing such marvellous things? You are only doing your duty, of course. And we are doing ours. For me, it’s by crossing the dangerous ocean to bring America the respect of her sister Republic. For you, it’s rushing back to the trenches. The beauty of what is happening now in France is even more pronounced against the background of the corruption and dishonesty that I spoke of a little while ago. You are right, my boy, totally and utterly right! Be a soldier, a simple soldier, see only the task ahead. Leave to us what will perhaps be the even more arduous task of preparing the future peace, and allow me to drink to your good health,’ he concluded with a sweet, paternal smile.

He ordered some champagne and they all drank it, after much protest. Madame Jacquelain was sobbing into her glass, out of love, pride and anguish.

‘How this child has changed,’ said Madame Jacquelain, sighing.

They had gone back home through the dark streets. There had not been any air raids for a week, but everything stood ready in case they had to hide in the basement – a shawl for Monsieur Jacquelain, his belladonna drops, a few small pieces of jewellery, some family mementos, all packed into a little case on the mantelpiece where everyone could see it.

In the next room, Bernard spent his last but one night under his family’s roof. These final hours of his leave were so painful to his mother that she sometimes thought: ‘I’d really prefer it if he never came home. It would be better for me if he weren’t brought to me only to be taken away again so soon.’ And this time, in addition to her usual suffering there was something else: another source of gnawing, surprising pain. Her boy had indeed become a stranger. She didn’t know who he was any more. She began to wonder if really and truly the end of the war (even if her son came through it alive), if the end of the war would really put a stop to all her worries.

‘He used to be such an easy child,’ sighed Madame Jacquelain.

She combed her thinning grey hair before going to bed. She settled their old cat Moumoute for the night in the basket they
carefully carried down to the basement when the air raid sirens sounded. She washed and lay down next to her husband. He was still awake. She could hear him sighing in the darkness, the muted, painful groans he made when his stomach cramps gave him trouble. She got up to make him some herbal tea with his drops. He drank it slowly; his long, yellowish moustache hung down into the cup; he sucked one end of it, looking pensive.

‘It’s the hot chocolate that’s made you feel ill,’ said Madame Jacquelain.

He gestured that it wasn’t, thought for a moment, then suddenly cried out:

‘It is really unbelievable that this child is extorting five thousand francs from me for a gambling debt, that he tells me in the most insolent manner that he’s made up his mind and won’t be continuing his studies after the war, that he speaks to me without any affection, with no respect …’

‘Papa!’

‘With no respect, I’m telling you! The moment I open my mouth to express my opinion on the course of events – opinions that, my God, are just as valid as his and that I find, moreover, in a slightly different form in my newspaper, written by the best journalists – this … this little brat contradicts me and only just stops himself from ordering me to keep quiet! It really is unbelievable to have to put up with that from my own son and to have to stop myself from slapping him …’

‘Papa, I’m begging you, you’re getting yourself all upset!’

‘… Slapping him; just because he’s twenty-two and is fighting in the war. In everything he says, in everything he does, he implies: “What? If it weren’t for me …? You’d be in a terrible state if it weren’t for me!” Yes, of course he’s doing a fantastic job, it’s war, I forgive him everything, but if he comes back with that sense of insubordination, of self-pride, what will become of us?’

‘It will pass.’

‘No, no, it won’t pass.’

He gloomily shook his head. He seemed to be contemplating some terrifying vision, as if he were watching monstrous, shadowy shapes from the future rising before him; he could only make out a few sketchy features; he described them in his naïve way; the rest remained hidden from him, or only appeared for a split second. He was feeling his way, trying to understand, shrinking back:

‘He’s holding a grudge against us, that’s what it is, he’s holding a grudge against us. He told me that …’

‘What? What did he tell you?’

‘Oh, silly things, jokes, but things that revealed a terrifying state of mind. He dared to say that the soldiers didn’t give a damn about Alsace-Lorraine or getting our land back!’

Madame Jacquelain let out a wounded cry:

‘Papa! He didn’t really say that!’

‘Yes, he did. And that we, the civilians, had gradually got used to the idea of war, that we pretended to be suffering but that we weren’t really, that only they, they knew what true suffering was, and that now, all they ever thought about was one thing – to end the war and to have themselves a good time to make up for what they had lost.’

He fell silent, picturing Bernard’s hardened face as he said over and over again:

‘They don’t give a damn about anything, nothing at all. Having a good time. That’s all they care about. He told me that because I was talking to him about his studies and he absolutely refuses to continue with them.’

‘But why, why? I don’t understand.’

‘Because he’s become lazy, I dare say! He told me that we were all just dupes, that very soon all you would need is a bit of luck and some influence in order to earn millions, and that a life like ours already disgusted him. It’s the mentality of war transposed into peacetime. It’s terrifying. I told him: “My boy, audacity,
System D and thinking on your feet, being hard-hearted, all that is fine in wartime because patriotism makes it acceptable, but in peacetime, it will create a generation of crooks.” “No! A generation of shrewd people,” he replied. I do believe, Mama, that he’s just showing off, exaggerating, but, in spite of everything, something is going on inside him that terrifies me. And it’s got to the point where … if I talked to him about certain things, like honour, integrity, the inviolable duty to work hard, I think he’d laugh in my face. Our son has been corrupted.’

‘But who has done this to him? Perhaps he has friends who are a bad influence?’ asked Madame Jacquelain who still thought that a soldier’s life, in 1918, was simply the continuation of a student’s life.

‘Perhaps …’

‘But Papa, be fair, he has extraordinary patriotism and decent feelings. Think about what Raymond Détang offered him: to get away from the war, out of harm’s way, to escape from the stress of war to go on a wonderful trip to the United States, and he refused. It broke my heart to see him refuse such an unheard of thing, but at the same time, I was proud of him. No! He’s a good boy, a good Frenchman!’

‘The war still has a hold on them,’ murmured the elderly Monsieur Jacquelain. He fell silent, confusedly picturing in his mind the war as an enormous steel frame that cut straight through and supported these weary men, forcing them into a proud, rigid stance. But when the war was over, they would collapse.

‘No, they’ll forget,’ said Madame Jacquelain. Being a woman, she assumed that the two sexes had the same short memory.

‘War is never forgotten,’ said Monsieur Jacquelain. ‘I’ve never been to war, but still I will never forget it.’

They sat in silence, trying to unravel the enigma of their son together, thinking about it, looking at it from every angle, understanding nothing. A form of revolt? No. Revolt is tinged by
fanaticism, and there wasn’t a hint of fanaticism in Bernard, just a kind of bitter, soul-destroying cynicism.

‘But how does he expect to earn his living if he doesn’t go back to his studies? You can’t have a career without qualifications … Have you asked him about that, Papa?’

‘Yes. He sniggered. “Do you really not see what’s going on around you?” he asked me.’