‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll wait. Stay where you are.’
The wind dropped and she fell asleep. Cyrille woke them up.
‘Jean, I want to go into the forest.’
He had drawn back the curtains, letting in the red glow of the winter sun. The frost-covered fields rose gently towards a birch wood. In the courtyard Jesús was pumping the handle of the water pump in shirtsleeves. Through the floor they could hear kitchen sounds: Laura was prodding the stove into life, putting bowls on the table. Jean went down first and took over at the pump. He quickly ran out of energy and realised how unfit he was. He no longer jogged across Paris; instead he ate too much in black-market restaurants and too little when he was with Claude. The cold air stung his cheeks. He came back in, breathless, with Jesús, who had already sawed a couple of dozen logs. Cyrille was drinking a big bowl of hot milk.
‘You know, Jean, it’s real milk. Jesús fetched it for me from their neighbour. She has cows that give real, real milk.’
He shook his head as he said ‘real’, charmingly, his eyes shining with pleasure. Jesús seemed to notice for the first time the grace of this child to whom, in his pleasure at seeing Jean again, he had hardly paid any attention.
‘After breakfas’ I’ll draw him,’ he said.
‘Can you draw?’ Cyrille asked.
‘A little.’
‘Why do you speak with such a funny accent?’
‘Me? An assen’? No’ at all. Is you who is an assen’.’
Cyrille thought this was tremendously funny. He burst out laughing. Laura turned round and smiled at him and her gloomy face lit up for an instant, revealing more than she usually showed. Jean decided that she was alive but had suppressed her own existence, so as only to live through Jesús. At that moment he was sure she envied Claude’s happiness in having a lover and a child, a happiness she felt to be more complete than her own. Apart from Jesús, who loved himself enough not to need anyone else, they all believed in everyone else’s happiness. Laura wanted a child with Jesús but the circumstances were not right, and Jesús showed little or no interest in children, although it was true that several of his theories had gone up in smoke in the last six months: he had the same woman in his bed, and he had noticed Cyrille, bringing over a sketchbook and starting a series of sketches of the boy, eating, drinking, laughing.
Later all five of them went out. Cyrille, as tubby as a bear cub in his suit and hat knitted by Marie-Dévote and Toinette, skipped along the path that went through the birch wood to the Yvette, exhaling clouds of white vapour. The sun clung to the last golden leaves of autumn and from the fields on the other side of the river there rose the same white vapour, a veil of delicate gauze that shredded in the cold light as they watched.
‘We are ’appy!’ Jesús shouted.
He was, without reservation, and it was visible in his face, which was usually a little tough-looking because of the way his beard, even when he had just shaved, left a blue shadow. A woodcock flew up in front of them and two hares sped away. They met nobody. The countryside was enjoying its Sunday rest and one might have thought it deserted, hibernating in the cold. Cyrille returned to the farmhouse with cheeks like red apples. He wolfed down his lunch and curled up to sleep in one of the armchairs in front of the big fireplace.
At four o’clock, just before nightfall, Laura drove them to the station and they boarded a train crowded with passengers returning to Paris, loaded down with heavy suitcases full of the results of their plundering of the countryside. At Gare de Luxembourg a barrage of police awaited them, filtering the arrivals and ordering them to open parcels and suitcases. Jean went through without difficulty, taking Claude and Cyrille with him. Newsboys were announcing a special edition of Paris-Soir all the way up Boulevard Saint-Michel. The headline filled the whole front page: ‘US PACIFIC FLEET DESTROYED BY JAPANESE AT PEARL HARBOR.’ Passers-by grabbed the paper and read the short bulletin as they walked to the cafés.
‘What’s going on?’ Claude asked.
‘The Japanese have declared war on the United States.’
‘What does it mean for us in Europe?’
‘The USA is at war with the Axis powers.’
‘So there’s a hope it might all be over quickly?’
‘Maybe.’
Claude grasped Jean’s arm and was silent. Cyrille held her hand, dragging his feet, exhausted by his day in the open air that had so disoriented them all that they felt like foreigners in a Paris both dark and hectic. At Rue de la Huchette four German soldiers occupied the width of the pavement. Other pedestrians were stepping into the road to avoid bumping into them. They were young and neither hateful nor arrogant, weighed down by their green uniforms and probably dumbfounded by the city’s peacetime Sunday air. Jean sensed that Claude was about to refuse to step off the pavement. He squeezed her arm.
‘Don’t waste your energy on pointless protests.’
She followed him, her head down, and they skirted round the soldiers.
‘I don’t like them,’ she said.
‘No one likes them.’
‘You have dinner with them.’
‘Not many. What else can I do? They’re everywhere.’
‘Yes, I know. Laura’s kind and yet I felt uncomfortable being with her … I can’t explain it, it’s as if she were hiding the truth from me.’
‘It wasn’t her we went to see, it was Jesús.’
‘That’s true.’
She said nothing more until they reached the door of her building, where she hesitated.
‘Do you want to come up? I haven’t got anything I can offer you for dinner. I think I’ve got one egg left for Cyrille.’
‘Come on,’ Cyrille said. ‘Come, and carry me. My legs feel all wobbly. You can kiss me good night.’
He lifted Cyrille onto his shoulders and climbed the four flights. As she opened her door Claude snatched up a square of white paper with ‘G’ written on it, poking from under the doormat, and slipped it into her bag. Jean realised that he was not to notice anything. Cyrille ate his supper. He looked worn out, his cheeks still pink and his eyes already dreamily unfocused. Claude put him to bed and he instantly fell asleep.
‘You need to go,’ she said to Jean as she came back.
‘I suppose I do. Who are you afraid of?’
‘No one.’
‘It’s not true.’
She begged him.
‘Jean!’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll tell you everything.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Let me be on my own tonight.’
She kissed him on the lips and pushed him towards the door. He felt as though his strength had deserted him, that he was helpless before her anxious and beseeching face. She merely added, ‘Don’t forget that I love you.’
‘No. I won’t forget.’
It was all too rapid, too brutal. He went down the four flights of stairs, oblivious, and out past the door of the concierge who spied on him, noting his comings and goings. For a moment he thought he would stay on the quai and, from the shadows, keep watch on the building. It would have been a betrayal of Claude, of the trust she had placed in him. He set out along the empty quais, seized by the sadness that Paris reserves for lonely souls.
At Rue de Presbourg he found Palfy sitting over a radio set. An intermittent crackling masked a distant voice whose affected English accent could just be made out. The interference rose in volume and the voice disappeared. Palfy fiddled with the knob.
‘This is exciting. What do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘Pearl Harbor. Don’t pretend you haven’t heard.’
‘I read a bulletin.’
‘It’s world war now. Don’t you find that much more interesting?’