An hour later a gang of kids in dirty clothes came out of the Perrins' garden, followed by two German soldiers pushing a wheelbarrow containing a basket of china cups, a sofa with its four legs in the air (one was broken), a plush photograph album, a birdcage that the Germans mistook for the salad dryer and many other items. Bringing up the rear were Lucile and the officer. Curious women stared at them as they walked through the village. They didn't speak to each other, the women noticed; they didn't even look at each other and they were deathly pale-the officer's expression cold and impenetrable.
"She must have given him a piece of her mind," the women whispered. "Said it was shameful to get a house into that state. He's furious. Goodness gracious, they're not used to people standing up for themselves. She's right. We're not dogs! She's brave, that young Angellier lady, she's not afraid." One of them, who was tending a goat (the little old woman with white hair and blue eyes who'd run into the Angellier ladies on their way back from Vespers that Easter Sunday and had said to them, "These Germans, I've heard they're bad and evil"), even came up to Lucile and whispered to her as she passed, "Good for you, Madame! Show them we're not afraid. Your prisoner of war would be proud of you," she added and she began to cry, not that she had a prisoner herself to cry over-she was long past the age of having a husband or a son at war-she cried because prejudice outlives passion and because she was sentimentally patriotic.
15
Whenever the elder Madame Angellier and the German met each other, they both instinctively stepped back. On the officer's part this could have been interpreted as a sign of exaggerated courtesy, the desire not to impose his presence on the mistress of the house. He had almost the air of a thoroughbred horse leaping away from a snake it sees at its feet. Madame Angellier, on the other hand, didn't even bother to disguise the shudder that ran through her, leaving her looking stiff and terrified, as if she'd come into contact with some disgusting, dangerous animal. But the moment lasted for only an instant: a good education is precisely designed to correct the instincts of human nature. The officer would draw himself up, put on the rigid, serious expression of an automaton, then bow and click his heels together ("Oh, that Prussian salute!" Madame Angellier would groan, without thinking that this greeting was, in fact, exactly what she should have expected from a man born in western Germany, since it was unlikely to be an Arab kiss of the hand, or an English handshake). As for Madame Angellier, she would clasp her hands in front of her like a nun who has been sitting at someone's deathbed and gets up to greet a member of his family suspected of anticlericalism. During these encounters, various expressions would cross Madame Angellier's face: false respect ("You're in charge here!"), disapproval ("Everyone knows who you are, you heathen!"), submission ("Let us offer up our hatred to the Lord") and finally a flash of fierce joy ("Just you wait, my friend, you'll be burning in hell while I'm finding peace in Jesus"), although this final thought was replaced in Madame Angellier's mind by the desire she felt every time she saw a member of the occupying forces: "I hope he'll soon be at the bottom of the English Channel," for everyone was expecting an attempt to invade England, if not imminently, then very soon. Taking her desires for reality, Madame Angellier even came to believe the German looked like a drowned man: pallid, swollen, thrown about by the waves. It was this thought alone that allowed her to look human again, allowed the shadow of a smile to pass over her lips (like the final rays of a dying star) and allowed her to reply to the German when he asked after her health, "Thank you for asking. I'm as well as can be expected," mournfully stressing these final words to imply, "as well as I can be, given the disastrous situation France is in."
Lucile walked behind Madame Angellier. She had become colder, more distracted, more rebellious than usual. She would nod silently as she walked away from the German. He too was silent. But, thinking no one could see, he would watch her for a long time as she walked away. Madame Angellier seemed to have eyes in the back of her head to catch him. Without even turning round she would mutter angrily to Lucile, "Pay no attention to him. He's still there." She could only breathe freely after the door had been shut behind them; then she would give her daughter-in-law a withering look and say, "You've done something different to your hair today," or "You're wearing your new dress, aren't you?" concluding sarcastically, "It's not very flattering."
And yet, despite the waves of hatred she felt towards Lucile because she was there and her own son was not, in spite of everything she might have imagined or suspected, she never thought her daughter-in-law and the German could possibly care for each other. After all, people judge one another according to their own feelings. It is only the miser who sees others enticed by money, the lustful who see others obsessed by desire. To Madame Angellier, a German was not a man, he was the personification of cruelty, perversity and hatred. For anyone else to feel differently was preposterous, incredible. She couldn't imagine Lucile in love with a German any more than she could imagine a woman mating with some mythical creature, a unicorn, a dragon or the monster Sainte Marthe killed to free Tarascon. Nor did it seem possible that the German could be in love with Lucile. Madame Angellier refused to accord him any human feelings. She interpreted his long looks as a further attempt to insult this already defiled French home, as a way of feeling cruel pleasure at having the mother and wife of a prisoner of war at his mercy. What she called Lucile's "insensitivity" irritated her more than anything else: "She's trying out new hairstyles, wearing new dresses. Doesn't she realise the German will think she's doing it for him? How degrading!" She wanted to cover Lucile's face with a mask and dress her in a sack. It pained her to see Lucile looking healthy and beautiful. She was suffering: "And all this time, my son, my own son…"
It was, for Madame Angellier, a moment of intense pleasure when they ran into the German in the hall one day and saw he was very pale and wore his arm in a sling-quite ostentatiously, in Madame Angellier's opinion. She was outraged to hear Lucile quickly ask, without thinking, "What happened to you, mein Herr?"
"I came off a horse. A difficult animal I was riding for the first time."
"You don't look well," said Lucile when she saw the German's haggard face. "You should go and lie down."
"No, no… It's only a graze and in any case…" He indicated the sound of the regiment going past their windows. "Manoeuvres…"
"What? Again?"
"We're at war," he said.
He smiled slightly and, after a brief salute, he left.
"What are you doing?" Madame Angellier exclaimed sharply. Lucile had pushed aside the curtain and was watching the soldiers go by. "You have absolutely no sense of propriety. When Germans march by, the windows and shutters should be closed… like in '70…"
"Yes, when they march into a town for the first time… But since they walk around our streets nearly every day, we'd be condemned to perpetual darkness if we followed tradition to the letter," Lucile replied impatiently.
It was a stormy night; a yellowish light fell on all the soldiers. They held their heads high and moved their lips in song. Their music began softly, as if restrained, suppressed, but it would soon burst forth into a magnificent, solemn chorale.
"They've got some funny songs," the locals said. "You can't help listening… They're like prayers."
A streak of red lightning flashed across the setting sun and seemed to pour blood over the tight-fitting helmets, the green uniforms, the officer on horseback who commanded the detachment. Even Madame Angellier was impressed.
"If only it were an omen…" she murmured.