"But we have to bear it," he replied calmly.
He'd used the same tone of voice with her when he'd been wounded in '16 and she'd been called to his bedside at the hospitaclass="underline" "I think my chances of pulling through are about four in ten." He had then stopped a moment to think and added conscientiously, "Three and a half, to be exact."
She placed a tender hand on his forehead and thought despairingly, "Oh, if only Jean-Marie were here, he would look after us, he would save us, I know he would. He's young, he's strong…" Deep inside, she felt a strange intermingling of her need to protect as a mother and her need to be protected as a woman. "Where is he, my darling boy? Is he still alive? Is he in pain? My God, he can't be dead, it just isn't possible!" And her blood ran cold as she realised how very possible it actually was. The tears she had courageously held back for so long welled up in her eyes.
"But why are we always the ones who have to suffer?" she cried out in indignation. "Us and people like us? Ordinary people, the lower middle classes. If war is declared or the franc devalues, if there's unemployment or a revolution, or any sort of crisis, the others manage to get through all right. We're always the ones who are trampled! Why? What did we do? We're paying for everybody else's mistakes. Of course they're not afraid of us. The workers fight back, the rich are powerful. We're just sheep to the slaughter. I want to know why! What's happening? I don't understand. You're a man, you should understand," she said angrily to Maurice, no longer knowing whom to blame for the disaster they were facing. "Who's wrong? Who's right? Why Corbin? Why Jean-Marie? Why us?"
"What do you want to understand? There's nothing to understand," he said, forcing himself to stay calm. "Certain laws govern the world and they're neither for nor against us. When a storm strikes, you don't blame anyone: you know the thunder is the result of two opposite electrical forces, the clouds don't know who you are. You can't reproach them. And it would be ridiculous if you did-they wouldn't understand."
"But it's not the same thing. What we're going through is down to people and people alone."
"It only seems like that, Jeanne. It all seems caused by this man or that, by one circumstance or another, but it's like in nature: after the calm comes the storm; it starts out slowly, reaches its peak, then it's over and other periods of calm, some longer, some shorter, come along. It's just been our bad luck to be born in a century full of storms, that's all. They'll die down."
"Yes," she said, although she didn't really follow this abstract argument, "but what about Corbin? Corbin's hardly a force of nature, is he?"
"He's a harmful specimen, like scorpions, snakes, poison mushrooms. Actually, we're a little bit to blame. We've always known what Corbin was like. Why did we carry on working for him? You wouldn't eat bad mushrooms and you have to be careful with bad people. There have been several times when we could have found other jobs, with a bit of courage and determination. And remember, when we were young I was offered that job as a teacher in Sao Paulo, but you didn't want me to go."
"All right, that's ancient history," she said, shrugging her shoulders.
"No, I just meant…"
"Yes, you just meant we shouldn't hold it against anyone. But you said yourself if you ran into Corbin you'd spit in his face."
They continued arguing, not because they hoped or even wished to win the other over, but because talking helped them forget their painful problems.
"Who could we speak to?" Jeanne finally exclaimed.
"You mean you still don't understand that nobody cares about anybody?"
She looked at him. "You're strange, Maurice. You've seen people at their most cynical, their most disillusioned, and at the same time you're not unhappy, I mean, not really unhappy inside! Am I wrong?"
"No."
"So what makes it all right, then?"
"My certainty that deep down I'm a free man," he said, after thinking for a moment. "It's a constant, precious possession, and whether I keep it or lose it is up to me and no one else. I desperately want the insanity we're living through to end. I desperately want what has begun to finish. In a word, I desperately want this tragedy to be over and for us to try to survive it, that's all. What's important is to live: Primum vivere. One day at a time. To survive, to wait, to hope."
She listened to him without saying a word. Suddenly, she got up and grabbed her hat from the mantelpiece. He looked at her in astonishment. "And what I say," she replied, "is 'Heaven helps those who help themselves.' Which is why I'm going to speak to Furières. He's always been nice to me and he'll help us, even if it's only to annoy Corbin."
Jeanne was right. Furières spoke to her and promised that she and her husband would each receive compensation totalling six months' salary, which brought their capital up to about sixty thousand francs.
"You see, I managed and heaven helped me," Jeanne said to her husband when she got home.
"And I did the hoping," he replied, smiling. "We were both right."
They were very happy with the outcome but sensed that now that their money worries were off their minds, at least for the immediate future, they would be completely overwhelmed by their anguish over their son.
29
It was autumn when Charlie Langelet returned home. The porcelain hadn't been damaged by the journey. He unpacked the large crates himself, trembling with joy when he felt, beneath the straw and tissue paper, the cool smoothness of a pink glass vase or a Sèvres statuette. He still couldn't believe he was really home, reunited with all his wonderful possessions. He would raise his eyes now and again to look through his windows (which still had their strips of coloured paper) at the delightful curve of the Seine.
At noon, the concierge came up to clean; he hadn't yet hired any servants. Important events-whether serious, happy or unfortunate-do not change a man's soul, they merely bring it into relief, just as a strong gust of wind reveals the true shape of a tree when it blows off all its leaves. Such events highlight what is hidden in the shadows; they nudge the spirit towards a place where it can flourish. Charlie had always been careful with money, a penny-pincher. When he got back after the exodus, he felt truly miserly. It gave him real pleasure to save money whenever possible and he was aware of this for, to top it all off, he had become cynical. Before, he would never have considered moving into a disorganised house full of dust; he would have recoiled at the idea of going to a restaurant the very day he returned. Now, however, he had been through so much that nothing frightened him. When the concierge told him that anyway she couldn't finish the cleaning today, that Monsieur didn't realise how much work there was to do, Charlie replied sweetly but firmly, "You'll manage somehow, Madame Logre. You'll just have to work a bit faster, that's all."
"Fast and good don't always go together, Monsieur!"
"This time they will. The good old days are over," Charlie said sternly, then added, "I'll be back at six o'clock. I trust that everything will be ready."
And after an imperious glance at the concierge, who was furious but said nothing, and a final loving look at his porcelains, he left. As he went down the stairs he calculated what he was saving: he wouldn't have to pay for Madame Logre's lunch any more; she could work for him two hours a day for a while; once the heavy work was done, it wouldn't take much to keep the apartment in order, and he could take his time to find some servants, a couple probably. Until now he had always had a couple, a valet and a cook.
He went and had lunch by the river, in a little restaurant he knew. He didn't find the food too bad, all things considered (he never ate much anyway), and the wine he drank was excellent. The owner whispered in his ear that there was still a bit of real coffee left. Charlie lit a cigar and felt that life was good. That is to say, no, not good as such, one mustn't forget the defeat of France and all the suffering, all the humiliation that resulted from it, but for him, Charlie, it was good because he took life as it came, without moaning about the past or fearing the future.