The Fires of Autumn (9 page)

Young women wearing mourning veils and pink stockings were on the prowl. It was wartime. They had been bombed all week long. They’d be bombed again perhaps. The Germans continued to advance. It was war. This scourge on the immense body of the world had unleashed great waves of blood. Now everyone could tell that such a wound would not heal easily, and the scar would be ugly to behold.

My little boy will be so happy, thought Madame Jacquelain as she came out of the circus where she had just reserved a box for the performance the next day. It was an extravagance … everything was so expensive. Too bad! Bernard was on leave, recovering from being wounded in the Battle of the Aisne; Bernard deserved to be spoiled on his last night in Paris.

He’ll be so happy! He liked the circus and the theatre so much. He used to dream about going to those wonderful matinees of French classics a whole week before he went. His very pale little face would concentrate intently as he looked at the stage: ‘Mama, it’s so beautiful!’ – ‘What could he do when it’s three against one?’ – ‘I hope he dies!’ – ‘Those were real men, Mama!’ He always had such noble feelings. And as for the circus! The horses! He loved everything that pranced, pawed the ground, all the sounds and the bright lights. I think his injury has tired him out, she continued thinking. He’s not … He’s really changed. I can’t put my finger on it but the things he says, his mannerisms … He no longer has that spontaneity that was so sweet … But of course, I’m forgetting that he’s actually a young man now. Even though he was twenty-two, she thought of him with gentle indulgence, just as she had in the past: ‘He’s eight years old. We’ve
cut off his curls but he’s still a baby’ or ‘He’s fifteen and even though he pretends to be a man, he’s still a child at heart.’ Oh, just let this war end, end, end! Just let her little boy, her child come back alive with only a tiny little wound, just enough for her to shed tears of pride, to have an excuse to pamper him. Yes, just let her little boy be given back to her and let them live the life they used to have. Bernard with his books, reading beside the lamp in the dining room, while she knitted him socks. It would be hard work to make up for all that lost time. She was ambitious for him. He’d be the first to be accepted at one of the top universities, and afterwards, oh, afterwards! He’d earn a good living. He’d get married. He’d have children. It would be heaven …

‘And that’s not all,’ she thought, stopping on the pavement. ‘Now let me see, there are two more seats in the box. I’ll invite Thérèse and her grandmother. What should I wear? I have to make my soldier boy proud. My mauve taffeta dress with Aunt Emma’s cameo.’

Happily thinking of everything she had to do, she ran after a bus that had already pulled away.

‘I must stop by at the Bruns to invite the ladies,’ she thought.

Thérèse accepted with pleasure, happy at the thought of seeing the young soldier again. They agreed to meet at the circus, by the entrance, a subtle suggestion by Madame Jacquelain who thought: ‘The men should pay for the programmes and the usher when we arrive. It’s expensive but more gallant.’

Thérèse and her grandmother waited amid the crowd, trying to find the handsome young man in uniform whom she had last seen when he was on leave in 1915, because ever since then, she had been so busy at the hospital that she had not had time to meet up with him when he had been in Paris. She smiled and looked straight in front of her, then suddenly let out a cry of surprise: that tall, skinny young man with a small, dark moustache in a neat, trim line above his thin lips, that young man with the
deep-set eyes and a scar on his cheek who was walking towards them between the Jacquelains, could this be Bernard, the little boy she used to play with?

‘Oh, Grandmother, look at him …’

But Madame Pain was very agitated by all the movement around her and was trying to protect her black silk dress – it was the one she had made for Thérèse’s first Communion (Thérèse had altered it, shortened it, made it look more like the fashion of the day) – and so Madame Pain saw nothing.

They sat down in their box. Thérèse was between her grandmother and Madame Jacquelain, whose face looked pale and preoccupied. Thérèse thought that the fact that Bernard was leaving the next day was already spoiling her happiness. How hard it was to be a mother! How many tears, how many sleepless nights, how much anguish she must have felt these past four years! She squeezed Madame Jacquelain’s hand affectionately.

‘I’m terribly upset, Thérèse,’ she whispered. ‘My husband and Bernard had a fight.’

‘A fight? About what?’

‘Well, when I came home with the tickets for the box, really pleased to surprise my boy, he kissed me and said: “You’re really sweet, Mama, but I already have plans for tonight, I’m supposed to meet my friends.” – “Tonight? Your last night, Bernard? How could you do that? The little time you have here belongs to me, your mother! You owe it to me; I’ve suffered too much,” and I started to cry. He was touched and was about to give in. Unfortunately, his father intervened. He’s not always diplomatic; he upset him, and then …’

She fell silent, her heart heavy, hiding the most important, the most painful part of the argument: Bernard needed money; he had gone out the night before to play poker; he had lost five thousand francs. It was an amount of money they would have considered spending on an operation or for his education, for
something serious, legitimate, reasonable, but for gambling! ‘You, Bernard, a gambler!’ even though she tried to tell her husband that it was just a passing phase, that he’d met up with the wrong kind of people, ‘Papa’ wouldn’t listen to a word. ‘At his age, at twenty-two … still a kid … to lose five thousand francs playing poker!… And what sort of a game is that anyway? Just a kind of baccarat. It wasn’t until I was forty years old and balding that I first bet on anything, five francs on
petits chevaux
in Dieppe. And today, that’s the type of place you intend to go instead of coming to a respectable performance with your family and friends?’ And Bernard … My God, Bernard … what have they done to my good little boy? Bernard sighed with a kind of ironic bitterness: ‘I’m happy to die for you both but don’t give me a hard time!’ She had had the presence of mind to remind her husband that getting all worked up was bad for his stomach. But what an argument, such a scene! ‘You have no respect for your father, my boy. You are undermining the principles of this family.’ Bernard listened to him with a cold, impassive look on his face, as if he pitied us. My God! To fight when he’s leaving the next day, going back to that hell knowing he may never come home again! She watched the horsewoman grabbing at paper hoops and tears formed a kind of prism of the brilliant lights around her so that everything seemed to dance, shimmer and leap inside the ring.

‘Dear Madame Jacquelain, try not to get upset,’ Thérèse said softly. ‘What do you expect? They’ve seen so many horrible things; they need to be entertained to help them forget what they’ve seen.’

‘Exactly,’ said Madame Jacquelain, wiping the tears from her eyes, ‘and what could be more entertaining than the circus to take your mind off things?’

‘Yes, of course, but for a young man of his age, it’s perhaps a little … childish.’

‘But what do you think they do when they get together, then?’
asked Madame Jacquelain, scandalised and extremely curious. ‘Do they get drunk? Invite women around? But why? I mean, why has he changed so much?’

She turned towards Bernard:

‘You’re having a good time, my darling, aren’t you? A really good time?’ she asked anxiously, her voice quivering with hope.

‘Of course I am, Mama.’

‘It’s funny,’ he thought, ‘that they can’t understand. My heart has been bombarded by violent emotions for the past four years and now needs to beat more strongly than in the past, to beat at a pace that is no longer childish. Poker …’ But no, he wasn’t a gambler. He just liked spending money. Spending money! What a sacrilege that was in the eyes of these middle-class people! He’d acquired a taste for it, though, a taste he had not had before his previous leaves. He’d acquired several new tastes and not all of them were low. Books for example … Dostoyevsky, André Gide, the poetry of Rimbaud and Apollinaire. Something within him was becoming sophisticated, demanding, vaguely sensual. Money lost at poker … He hadn’t cost his parents much during the past four years. His father would just have to spend less on his tonics, that’s all.

His father sucked the tip of his moustache, looking irritated and his mother was crying. But what could they be thinking, for heaven’s sake? That he would come back the same as when he left? That after four years of war he would be just as naïve, just as childish as in the past? Four years … His tongue burned, tasted mouldy, as if he’d been drinking 100 proof alcohol. Everything seemed dull, bland. And besides, nothing was of any importance. That was what caused the abyss between him and these people. They were so terribly serious, poor souls … As for him … Oh, he wasn’t going to get upset about it. Everything would work out, nothing was of any importance. You live today, you die tomorrow. When you think about it that way, five thousand francs lost at
poker and the righteous anger of his father were a joke! He half closed his eyes, stifled a yawn. Not a decent woman in sight … Women … The things he’d seen and done … Behind the lines, in the hospitals, you could take your pick. Everyone said they’d become easy since the war started. But he thought they had always been like that. It was in their nature: man was made to kill and woman to … A simple and brutal way of looking at life. Too brutal? Too simple? Rash and lacking in nuance? Perhaps. It wasn’t his fault. And besides, who gave a damn … He glanced over at Thérèse. Now there was one he could get … But he didn’t have time to begin the assault. He was leaving the next day. He looked at the ring where little horses with long tails were trotting about. His mother turned towards him, smiling with delight:

‘Do you remember how much you used to like them, Bernard? When you had Thursdays off, remember?’

He coldly thought back to the memories she conjured up before him. The delights of family life! The humble pleasures of the Parisian middle classes! Free waffles and orangeade in the large department stores on rainy days and, when the weather was good, a wrought iron chair beside the Champs-Élysées watching the fortunate people of this world drive past in their fancy cars. A sudden feeling of envy pierced him to the core: ‘I won’t always be sitting on a wrought iron chair, will I? Ah, how I long to be rich!’ Over there, in the place he’d just come from, it wasn’t the same. Everyone was equal in war. But on the home front … They were revving up to have a good time! And to think that people were talking about regeneration, a revival of morality after the suffering of the war! Could they really not see that everyone had loose morals, that all they wanted to do was eat as much as possible, get drunk, go wild. Whether they were winners or losers made no difference. With pride or in despair, the beast would be released, the beast you had carried within yourself and kept under control for four long years.

After the show, Madame Jacquelain asked her husband to buy everyone some hot chocolate. She was determined that the evening be a total success. Surely her little boy would have nothing to complain about: his parents had gone all out for him. He could even have a drop of Benedictine.

They had lost Armentières and Soissons; the Fifth Division of the British Army had been pushed back. Bombs were falling on Paris. But in this café, set up in a cellar beneath the Champs-Élysées, there was such a crowd that people had to wait to get a table. The Bruns and Jacquelains too smiled and waited with the unshakable patience of Parisians who do not like paying for their pleasures but who will gladly suffer to ensure they enjoy themselves, queuing in the rain at the ticket window of a theatre, trudging the corridors of the metro, travelling in a packed third-class train compartment to spend two hours at the seaside. And besides, it was good sport. They had to keep an eye out for a table where someone had paid the bill, thread their way through the groups who weren’t as on the ball and triumphantly claim their place. At last they were seated; the ladies ordered hot chocolate and Bernard a black coffee, much to the disappointment of Madame Jacquelain.

‘Go ahead, Bernard,’ she whispered, ‘do order a Benedictine …’ then, speaking even more quietly: ‘Papa won’t say anything.’

‘But Mama, I can’t stand Benedictine; it makes me feel sick,’ Bernard protested with a tense smile.

His mother looked sad but said nothing more.

At the next table, a soldier was in the company of some very beautiful young women wearing make-up.

‘But that’s Monsieur Détang!’ exclaimed the elderly Madame Pain.

He heard her and turned around. Heavier, his complexion rosier than ever, he had an unusual upper lip that made him look like a wolf, thought Thérèse. People said he was a good lad, that he
would ‘make his way in politics’. ‘He’s on first-name terms with some Ministers,’ Madame Humbert told them. ‘He’s very well respected, a young man with a future, and kindness itself.’ Madame Humbert had insinuated to Madame Jacquelain that with his connections, his influence, he could get Bernard away from the front line, but Madame Jacquelain’s old French blood had revolted:

‘We’ll have nothing to do with that sort of thing,’ she had replied haughtily. ‘My son isn’t a shirker.’

The use of that word had somewhat spoiled the relationship between the two women, but Raymond Détang smiled most cordially at everyone, greeting them as warmly as possible; he had the eager attentiveness of Southerners who hide their coldness like the ice cream at the centre of that dessert known as ‘Peach Melba’: a layer of smooth, warm chocolate covers a kind of hard stone of ice that hurts your teeth.

‘Thérèse! You’ve finally taken a break from that damn hospital? I hardly ever get to see my wife … wait a minute, is that you, our little Bernard? How’s things?’

‘Not bad, Raymond. How about you?’ Bernard asked casually. He was shocked to be addressed so familiarly and replied in kind.

But Raymond didn’t seem offended that this kid who had addressed him as ‘Monsieur Raymond’ four years ago was now putting himself on an equal footing. He replied with good humour. And besides, he was used to being familiar with all sorts of people, shaking hands all round, and delivering speeches with ease. He immediately launched into a knowledgeable, lively treatise, in a very loud voice, on the most recent developments in the war. Strangers listened to him with respect. Someone whispered: