"Oh, all right… Thank you, Madame."
After a moment he came back with a big blue plate and continued picking strawberries. He offered some to Lucile who took a few and then told him to have the others. He was standing in front of her, leaning against a cherry tree.
"Your house is beautiful, Madame."
The sky had become hazy, cloaked in a light mist, and in this softer light the house took on a pinkish ochre colour, like certain eggshells; as a child, Lucile had called them "brown eggs" and thought they tasted more delicious than the snow-white ones most of the hens laid. This memory made her smile. She looked at the house, its bluish slate roof, its sixteen windows with their shutters (carefully left only slightly ajar so the spring sunshine couldn't fade the tapestries), the great rusty clock over the entrance that no longer sounded the hour and whose glass cover mirrored the sky.
"You think it's beautiful?" she asked.
"One of Balzac's characters might live here. It must have been built by a wealthy provincial notary who retired to the countryside. I imagine him, at night, in my room, counting out his gold coins. He was a freethinker, but his wife went to first Mass every morning, the one whose bells I hear ringing on my way back from night manoeuvres. His wife would have been blonde, with a rosy complexion and a large cashmere shawl."
"I'll ask my mother-in-law who built this house," said Lucile. "My husband's parents were landowners, but in the nineteenth century there must have been notaries, lawyers and doctors, and before that farmers. I know there was a farm here a hundred and fifty years ago."
"You'll ask? You don't know? Doesn't it interest you, Madame?"
"I don't know," said Lucile, "but I can tell you about the house where I was born; I can tell you when it was built and by whom. I wasn't born here. I just live here."
"Where were you born?"
"Not far from here, but in another province. In a house in the woods… where the trees grow so close to the sitting room that in summer their shadows bathe everything in a green light, just like an aquarium."
"There are forests where I live," said the officer. "Very big forests. People hunt all day long." After thinking for a moment he added, "An aquarium, yes, you're right. The sitting-room windows are dark green and cloudy, like water. There are also lakes where we hunt wild duck."
"Will you be getting leave soon so you can go home?" asked Lucile.
Joy flashed across the officer's face. "I'm leaving in ten days, Madame, a week from Monday. Since the beginning of the war I've only had one short leave at Christmas, less than a week. Oh, Madame, we look forward to our leave so much! We count the days. We hope. And then we get there and we realise we don't speak the same language any more."
"Sometimes," murmured Lucile.
"Always."
"Are your parents still alive?"
"Yes. My mother will probably be sitting in the garden right now, like you, with a book and some embroidery."
"And your wife?"
"My wife," he said, "is waiting for me, or rather, she's waiting for someone who went away four years ago and who will never return… Absence is a very strange thing!"
"Yes," sighed Lucile.
And she thought of Gaston Angellier. There are some women who expect to welcome back the same man, and some who expect a different man from before, she said to herself. Both are disappointed. She forced herself to picture the husband she hadn't seen for a year, and what he must be like now, suffering, consumed with longing (but for his wife or his hatmaker in Dijon?). She wasn't being fair; he must be devastated by the humiliation of the defeat, the loss of so much wealth… Suddenly, the sight of the German was painful to her (no, not the German himself, but his uniform, that peculiar almond-green colour verging on grey, his jacket, his shiny bright boots). She pretended she had some work to do in the house and went inside. From her room she could see him walking up and down the narrow path between the large pear trees, their arms stretched out, heavy with blossom. What a beautiful day… Gradually the light began to fade, making the branches of the cherry trees look bluish and airy, like powder puffs. The dog walked quietly beside the officer, now and again rubbing his nose into the young man's hand. The officer stroked him gently each time. He wasn't wearing a hat: his silvery blond hair shone in the sunlight. Lucile saw him looking at the house.
"He's intelligent and well-mannered. But I'm glad he'll be leaving soon. It pains my poor mother-in-law to see him living in her son's room. Passionate souls are so simple," she thought. "She hates him and that's all there is to it. People who can love and hate openly, consistently, unreservedly, are so lucky. Meanwhile, here I am, on this beautiful day, confined to my bedroom because that gentleman wants to take a little walk. It's too ridiculous."
She closed the window, threw herself down on the bed and continued reading. She persevered until dinner time, but she was half asleep over her book, tired from the heat and bright light. When she entered the dining room her mother-in-law was already at her usual place opposite the empty chair where Gaston always sat. She was so pale and rigid, her eyes so raw from crying, that Lucile was frightened.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"I wonder…" replied Madame Angellier, clasping her hands together so tightly that Lucile could see her nails turning white, "I wonder why you ever married Gaston?"
There is nothing more consistent in people than their way of expressing anger. Madame Angellier's way was normally as devious and subtle as the hissing of a serpent; Lucile had never endured such an abrupt, harsh attack. She was less indignant than upset; suddenly she realised how much her mother-in-law must be suffering. She remembered their melancholy, affectionate and deceitful black cat who would purr, then slyly lash out with her claws. Once she even went for the cook's eyes, nearly blinding her. That was the day her litter of kittens had been drowned. After that she'd disappeared.
"What have I done?" Lucile asked quietly.
"How could you, here, in his house, outside his windows, with him gone, a prisoner, ill perhaps, abused by these brutes, how could you smile at a German, speak with such familiarity to a German? It's inconceivable!"
"He asked my permission to go into the garden to pick some strawberries. I couldn't exactly refuse. You're forgetting he's in charge here now, unfortunately… He's being polite, but he could take whatever he wants, go wherever he pleases and even throw us out into the street. He wears kid gloves to claim his rights as a conqueror. I can't hold that against him. I think he's right. We're not on a battlefield. We can keep all our feelings deep inside. Superficially at least, why not be polite and considerate? There's something inhuman about our situation. Why make it worse? It isn't… it isn't reasonable, Mother." Lucile spoke so passionately that she surprised even herself.
"Reasonable!" exclaimed Madame Angellier. "But my poor girl, that word alone proves you don't love your husband, that you've never loved him and you don't even miss him. Do you think that I try to be reasonable? I can't bear the sight of that officer. I want to rip his eyes out. I want to see him dead. It may not be fair, or humane, or Christian, but I am a mother. Being without my son is torture. I hate the people who have taken him away from me, and if you were a real wife, you wouldn't have been able to bear that German being near you. You wouldn't have been afraid of appearing uncouth, rude, or ridiculous. You would have simply got up and, with or without an excuse, walked away. My God! That uniform, those boots, that blond hair, that voice, and that look of good health and contentment, while my poor son…"
She stopped and began to cry.
"Come on now, Mother…"
But Madame Angellier became even more enraged. "I wonder why you ever married him!" she exclaimed again. "For his money, for his land no doubt, honestly…"