"I'm not afraid," Lucile said slowly.
She thought about it. The danger for Benoît would be the same whether he was in her house or anywhere else. What about the danger for her? What's my life worth anyway? she thought with unintentional despair. Really, it had no importance. She suddenly thought of those days in June 1940 (two years, only two years ago). Then, too, amid the chaos, the danger, she hadn't thought about herself. She had let herself be carried along by a fast-flowing river.
"There's my mother-in-law," she murmured, "but she doesn't leave her room any more. She wouldn't see anything. And there's Marthe."
"Marthe's family, Madame. She's my husband's cousin. There's no danger there. We trust our family. But where could he hide?"
"I was thinking maybe the blue bedroom near the attic, the old playroom that has a kind of alcove… But then, but then, my poor Madeleine, you mustn't have any illusions. If fate is against us they'll find him here as well as anywhere, but if it's God's will, he'll escape. After all, German soldiers have been killed in France before and they've not always found the ones who did it. We must do everything we can to hide him… and… just hope, don't you think?"
"Yes, Madame, hope…" said Madeleine and the tears she could no longer hold back flowed slowly down her cheeks.
Lucile put her arms round Madeleine and hugged her. "Go and get him. Go through the Maie woods. It's still raining. No one will be out. Listen to me, trust no one, German or French. I'll wait for you at the little garden door. I'll go and warn Marthe."
"Thank you, Madame," Madeleine stammered.
"Go quickly. Hurry."
Madeleine opened the door without making a sound and slipped out into the deserted wet garden where tears seemed to drip from the trees. An hour later Lucile let Benoît in through the little green door that opened on to the Maie woods. The storm was over but an angry wind continued to rage.
19
From her room, Madame Angellier could hear the local policeman shouting in front of the town halclass="underline" "Public Announcement by Order of German Headquarters…" Worried faces appeared at all the windows. "What is it now?" everyone thought with fear and hatred. Their fear of the Germans was so great that even when German Headquarters ordered the local police to instruct the villagers to destroy rats or have their children vaccinated, they wouldn't relax until long after the final drum roll had ceased and they had asked the educated people in the village-the pharmacist, the notary or the police chief-to repeat what had just been announced.
"Is that all? Are you sure that's all? They're not taking anything else away from us?"
They gradually calmed down.
"Oh, good," they said, "good, that's fine then! But I wonder why it's their business…"
This would have made everything all right if they hadn't added, "They're our rats and our children. What right have they got to destroy our rats and vaccinate our children? What's it to them?"
The Germans present in the square took it upon themselves to explain the orders.
"We must have everyone in good health now, French and German."
The villagers quickly conceded, with an air of feigned submission ("Oh, they smile like slaves," thought the elder Madame Angellier): "Of course… Good idea… It's in everybody's best interest… We understand."
And each one of them then went home, threw the rat poison in the fire and hurried to the doctor to ask him not to vaccinate their child because he was "just getting over the mumps," or he wasn't strong enough because they didn't have enough food. Others said straight out, "We'd rather there were one or two sick kids: maybe it'll get rid of the Fritz." Alone in the square, the Germans looked around them benevolently and thought that, little by little, the ice was breaking between conquered and conqueror.
On this particular day, however, none of the Germans was smiling or talking to the local people. They stood very straight, a hard stare on their pale faces. The policeman had just played a final drum roll. He was a rather handsome man from the Midi, always happy to be surrounded by women; he was obviously enjoying the importance of what he was about to say. He put his drumsticks under his arm and, with the grace and skill of a magician, he began to read. His attractive, rich, masculine voice echoed in the silence:
A member of the German army has been murdered: an officer of the Wehrmacht was killed in a cowardly way by one Benoît Sabarie, residing at… in the district of Bussy.
The criminal succeeded in escaping. Any person guilty of providing him with shelter, aid or protection, or who knows his whereabouts, is required to report this information to German Headquarters within forty-eight hours, or will otherwise incur the same punishment as the murderer, that is:
IMMEDIATE EXECUTION BY FIRING SQUAD
Madame Angellier had opened the window slightly. When the policeman had gone, she leaned out and looked into the village square. People were whispering, in shock. Only the day before they had been discussing the requisitioning of the horses; this new disaster added to the previous one led to a sort of disbelief in the slow minds of the country folk: "Benoît? Benoît did that? It isn't possible!" The secret had been well kept: the villagers were largely ignorant of what happened in the countryside, on the large, jealously guarded farms.
As for the Germans, well, they were better informed. They now understood what the commotion was about, why there had been whistles in the night, and why, the evening before, they had been forbidden to go out after eight o'clock: "They must have been moving the body and they didn't want us to see." In the cafés, the Germans talked quietly among themselves. They too had the impression it was all horrible, unreal. For three months they had lived alongside these Frenchmen; they had mixed with them; they had done them no harm; they had even managed, thanks to their consideration and good behaviour, to establish a humane relationship with them. Now, the act of one madman made them doubt everything. Yet it wasn't so much the crime that affected them as the solidarity, the complicity they could sense all around them (in the end, for a man to elude an entire regiment hot on his heels meant that everyone must be helping him, hiding him, feeding him; unless, of course, he was hiding in the woods-but the soldiers had spent the entire night searching them). "So, if a Frenchman kills me tomorrow," each soldier was thinking, "me they welcome in their house, me they smile at, who has a place at their dinner table and is allowed to sit their children on my knee… there won't be a single person who'll feel sorry and speak up for me, and everyone will do their best to hide the murderer!" These peaceful country folk with their impassive faces, these women who smiled at them, who had chatted to them yesterday but today walked by embarrassed, avoiding their eye, they were nothing but a group of enemies. They could hardly believe it; they were such nice people… Lacombe, the shoemaker, who had offered a bottle of white wine to the Germans the week before because his daughter had just received her high school diploma and he didn't know how else to express his joy; Georges, the miller, a veteran of the last war, who had said, "Peace as soon as possible and everyone in his own country. That's all we Frenchmen want"; the young women, always eager to laugh, to sing, to share a secret kiss, were they now and for ever to be enemies?