"A romantic little supper?" said Madame Angellier in a voice as low and stinging as a whip.
"I beg you, please be quiet. If you knew…"
"And with a German! Under my own roof! In your husband's house, you miserable…"
"Be quiet, won't you! Can't you see the German isn't back yet? He'll be here any minute. Let me go and tidy up. In the meantime, you go upstairs, open the door to the old playroom and see who's in there… Then, after you've seen, meet me in the dining room. I was wrong, very wrong to act without telling you; I had no right to put your life in danger…"
"You've hidden that farmer here… the one accused of the murder?"
At that very moment they heard the regiment. There was the hoarse shout of orders being given and immediately afterwards the sound of the German officer coming up the steps to the house. His walk was unmistakable. No Frenchman could produce that hammering of boots, that rattling of spurs. It was a walk that could only belong to a proud conqueror, striding over the enemy's cobblestones, joyfully trampling the defeated land.
Madame Angellier opened the door to her own room, pushed Lucile inside, followed her in and turned the key. She took the plate and glass from Lucile, rinsed them in her dressing-room washstand, carefully dried them and put away the bottle after checking the label. Table wine? Yes, well done! She's prepared to be shot for hiding a man who killed a German, thought Lucile, but she wouldn't be happy to give him a good bottle of Burgundy. Thank goodness it was dark in the cellar and I was lucky enough to take a bottle of red wine worth only three francs. She remained silent, waiting with intense curiosity to hear what Madame Angellier would say. She couldn't have kept the presence of a stranger hidden from her much longer: this old woman could see through walls.
Finally, Madame Angellier spoke. "Did you think I would hand that man over to the Germans?" she asked. Her pinched nostrils were trembling; her eyes sparkled. She seemed happy, elated, almost mad, like a former actress who is once again playing the role she starred in long ago and whose nuances and gestures are second nature to her. "Has he been here long?"
"Three days."
"Why didn't you say anything to me?"
Lucile didn't reply.
"You're mad to have hidden him in the blue room. He should stay in here. Since all my meals are brought to me upstairs, there is no risk of anyone challenging you: you have your excuse. He can sleep on the sofa in the dressing room."
"But think about it, Mother! If he's found in our house the risk is terrible. I can take all the blame, say that you didn't know what I was doing, which is actually the truth, but if he's in your room…"
Madame Angellier shrugged her shoulders. "Tell me everything," she said, with an eagerness in her voice that Lucile hadn't heard for a long time. "Tell me exactly how it all happened. All I know is what the police said. Whom did he kill? Was it just one German? Did he wound any others? Was it at least a high-ranking officer…?"
She's in her element, thought Lucile. She's so eager to do her duty in the call to arms… Mothers and women in love: both ferocious females. I'm not a mother and I'm not in love (Bruno? No. I mustn't think of Bruno now, I mustn't…), so I can't see things in the same way. I'm more detached, colder, calmer, more civilised, I still believe that. And also… I can't imagine that all three of us are really risking our lives. It seems so melodramatic, so extreme. Yet Bonnet is dead, killed by a farmer whom some would treat as a criminal and others as a hero. And what about me? I have to choose. I've already chosen… in spite of myself. And I thought I was free…
"You can question Sabarie yourself, Mother," she said. "I'll bring him to you. Make sure you don't let him smoke; the Lieutenant will smell someone else's tobacco in the house. I think that's the only danger; they won't search the house; they would scarcely believe anyone would dare hide him here in the village. They'll raid the farms. But we could be denounced."
"Frenchmen don't denounce one another," the old woman said proudly. "You've forgotten that, my girl, since you got friendly with the Germans."
Lucile remembered something Lieutenant von Falk had told her in confidence: "The very first day we arrived," he'd said, "there was a package of anonymous letters waiting for us at Headquarters. People were accusing one another of spreading English and Gaullist propaganda, of hoarding supplies, of being spies. If we'd taken them all seriously, everyone in the region would be in prison. I had the whole lot thrown on to the fire. People's lives aren't worth much and defeat arouses the worst in men. In Germany it was exactly the same." But Lucile said nothing of this to her mother-in-law and left her to make up the sofa in the dressing room. She looked impassioned, light-hearted and twenty years younger. Using her own mattress, pillow and her best sheets, Madame Angellier lovingly prepared a bed for Benoît Sabarie.
20
For a long time the Germans had been making arrangements for a great celebration at the Château de Montmort. It was to take place on the night of 21 June. This was the anniversary of the regiment's arrival in Paris, but no Frenchman was to know this was the reason the date had been chosen: the commanding officers had given orders to respect French national pride. All races are aware of their own faults; they know them better than even the most malevolent foreign observer. In a friendly conversation, a young Frenchman had recently told Bruno von Falk: "We Frenchmen have very short memories; this is both our strength and our weakness! We forgot that after 1918 we were the victors and that was our downfall; we'll forget after 1940 that we were defeated, which will perhaps be our salvation."
"As a nation, we Germans too have a weakness that is also our greatest quality: our tactlessness, which is really a lack of imagination; we are incapable of putting ourselves in anyone else's place; we hurt people for no reason; we make others hate us, but that allows us to behave inflexibly and without faltering."
Since the Germans mistrusted their tendency to be tactless, they were particularly careful of what they said when speaking to the locals; they were therefore accused of being hypocrites. Even when Lucile asked Bruno, "And what's this celebration in honour of?" he avoided answering honestly. In Germany they always had a party around 24 June, he said, as it was the shortest night of the year. However, since the 24th had been set aside for large-scale manoeuvres, they had brought the date forward.
Everything was ready. They were setting up tables in the castle grounds; they had asked the local people to lend them their best table linen for a few hours. With respect, infinite care and under the supervision of Bruno himself, the soldiers had made their selection from the piles of damask tablecloths that lay deep inside cupboards. The middle-class ladies, eyes raised to heaven-"as if they were expecting to see Sainte Geneviève herself descend from on high," Bruno thought mischievously, "to strike down the sacrilegious Germans, guilty of daring to touch this family treasure made of fine linen, hemstitched, embroidered with birds and flowers"-these ladies stood guard and counted their towels in front of the soldiers. "I had four dozen of them: forty-eight, Lieutenant, and now there are only forty-seven."