For a long time Lucile sat very still, brush in hand, her hair loose over her shoulders. Then she sighed, thinking vaguely, It's such a shame! (A shame that the silence was so complete? A shame that the boy had stopped playing? A shame that he was here, he, the invader, the enemy, he and not someone else?) She made an annoyed little gesture with her hand, as if she were trying to push away great masses of heavy air, so heavy she couldn't breathe. A shame… She climbed into the large, empty bed.
5
Madeleine Sabarie was alone in the house; she was sitting in the room where Jean-Marie had lived for several weeks. Every day, she made the bed where he had slept. This irritated Cécile. "Why bother! No one ever sleeps here, so you don't need to put clean sheets on every day, as if you were expecting someone. Are you expecting someone?"
Madeleine didn't reply and continued, every morning, to shake out the big feather mattress.
She was happy to be alone with her little boy; he was feeding, his head against her bare breast. When she changed sides, a part of his face was as moist, red and shiny as a cherry, and the shape of her nipple was imprinted on his cheek. She kissed him gently. She thought now as she had before, "I'm glad it's a boy, men don't have it so bad." She dozed while watching the fire: she never got enough sleep. There was so much work to do; they hardly got to bed before ten, eleven o'clock, and sometimes they got up in the middle of the night to listen to English radio. In the morning they had to be up by five o'clock to tend the animals. It was nice, today, to be able to take a little nap. The meal was already cooking, the table was set, everything around her was in order. The faint light of a rainy spring day lit up the shoots in the vegetable plot and the grey sky. In the courtyard the ducks quacked in the rain, while the chickens and turkeys-a little mound of ruffled feathers-sheltered sadly under the shed. Madeleine heard the dog bark.
"Are they home already?" she wondered. Benoît had taken the family to the village.
Someone crossed the courtyard, someone who was not wearing the same kind of shoes as Benoît. And every time she heard footsteps that weren't her husband's or someone else's from the farm, every time she saw a strange shape in the distance, she would immediately panic and think: "It's not Jean-Marie, it can't be him, I'm mad to think it might be. First of all, he's not coming back, and then, even if he did, what would change? I'm married to Benoît. I'm not expecting anyone, quite the opposite, I pray to God that Jean-Marie never comes back because, little by little, I'll get used to my husband and then I'll be happy. But I don't know what I'm going on about, honest to God. What am I thinking? I am happy." At the very moment she had these thoughts, her heart, which was less rational, would start beating so violently that it drowned out every other sound, so violently that she wouldn't hear Benoît's voice, the baby crying, the wind beneath the door; the uproar in her heart was deafening, as if a wave had washed over her. For a few seconds she would be about to faint; she would only come round when she saw the postman bringing the new seed catalogue (he'd been wearing new shoes that day) or the Viscount de Montmort, the landowner.
"Well, Madeleine, aren't you going to say hello?" Mother Sabarie would say, surprised.
"I think I woke you up," the visitor would say, as she feebly apologised and mumbled, "Yes, you frightened me…"
Woke her up? From what dream?
Now she felt that emotion within her once more, that secret panic caused by the stranger who had entered (or was coming back into) her life. She half sat up in the chair, stared at the door. Was it a man? It was a man's footsteps, that light cough, the aroma of fine cigarettes… A man's hand, pale, well-manicured, was on the latch, then a German uniform came into sight. As always, when it wasn't Jean-Marie, her disappointment was so intense that she sat dazed for a moment; she didn't even think of buttoning up her blouse. The German was an officer-a young man who couldn't be more than twenty, with an almost colourless face and equally fair and dazzling eyebrows, hair and small moustache. He looked at her bare bosom, smiled and saluted with an exaggerated, almost insolent politeness. Certain Germans knew how to place in their salute to the French a mere show of politeness (or perhaps it just seemed like that to the defeated French in all their bitterness, humiliation and anger). It was not the courtesy accorded to an equal, but that shown to the dead, like the Presentation of Arms after an execution.
"Can I help you, Monsieur?" Madeleine said, finally buttoning up her blouse.
"Madame, I have been billeted on the farm," replied the young man, who spoke extremely good French. "I apologise for the inconvenience. Would you be so kind as to show me my room?"
"We were told we'd have ordinary soldiers," Madeleine said shyly.
"I am the Lieutenant who serves as interpreter to the Commandant."
"You'll be far away from the village and I'm afraid the room won't be good enough for an officer. It's just a farm, here, and you won't have any running water or electricity, or anything a gentleman needs."
The young man glanced around. He looked closely at the faded red tiles on the floor, worn pink in places, the big stove standing in the middle of the room, the bed in the corner, the spinning wheel (they had brought it down from the attic where it had been since the other war: all the young women in the area were learning to spin; it was impossible to find wool in the shops any more). The German then looked carefully at the framed photographs on the walls, the certificates for agricultural prizes, the empty little niche that used to hold a statue of a saint, surrounded by a delicate frieze now half worn away; finally, his eyes fell once more upon the young farm girl holding the baby in her arms. He smiled. "You needn't worry about me. This will do nicely."
His voice was strangely harsh and resonant, like metal being crushed. His steel-grey eyes, sharply etched face and the unusual shade of his pale-blond hair, which was as smooth and bright as a helmet, made this young man's appearance striking to Madeleine; there was something about his physique that was so perfect, so precise, so dazzling, she thought to herself, that he reminded her more of a machine than a human being. In spite of herself, she was fascinated by his boots and belt buckle: the leather and steel seemed to sparkle.
"I hope you have an orderly," she said. "No one here could make your boots shine like that."
He laughed and said again, "You needn't worry about me."
Madeleine had put her son in his crib. She could see the German's reflection in the mirror above the bed. She saw the way he looked at her and smiled. She was afraid and thought, "What will Benoît say if he starts chasing after me?" She didn't like this young man, he frightened her a bit, yet despite herself she was attracted by a certain resemblance to Jean-Marie-not to Jean-Marie as a man, but as a member of a higher social class, a gentleman. Both were carefully shaven, well brought-up, with pale hands and delicate skin. She realised the presence of this German in the house would be doubly painful for Benoît: because he was the enemy but also because he wasn't a peasant like him-because he hated whatever aroused Madeleine's interest in and curiosity about the upper classes to such an extent that for a while now, he had been snatching fashion magazines from her hands; and if she asked him to shave or change his shirt, he'd say, "Better get used to it. You married a farmer, a country bumpkin, I got no fancy manners" with such resentment, such deep-seated jealousy that she knew who had given him these ideas, that Cécile must have been talking. Cécile wasn't the same with her as before, either… She sighed. So many things had changed since the beginning of this damned war.