All Our Wordly Goods (6 page)

‘It is my profound conviction’, said Charles, ‘that a world war would be over quickly and fought almost without any blood being spilled. Just imagine if every country sent all its forces into battle …’

‘You’ll write to us often,’ Marthe said to her son. She was desperately trying to think of something else she could say to him, some final piece of advice that would not only be an expression of her love, but something useful, practical. In the past, when he left her to go back to school, she would show him the bars of chocolate and box of biscuits tucked away under his nightshirts, and that would make her feel better; she had helped him as much as possible, making the life he faced as a man seem less harsh. But right now when he faced a life that was a thousand times harsher, demanding more courage than she could ever imagine, she was at a loss. Even his bags had been packed by someone else … ‘It’s not fair,’ she thought. Yes, so many mothers were saying goodbye to their sons that night, but they’d had them close by until the very last moment, while she hadn’t seen him for thirty months. Fortunately, she
knew
he would come back. Yes, despite her grief, despite the tears she had shed, a secret voice
within her heart whispered that others might be killed, mutilated, wounded, taken prisoner, but
her
son would come home after the war. And that evening every mother in Saint-Elme was thinking, ‘
My
son will be spared …’ Each one of them believed that a guardian angel would protect her very own Jacques, her Pierre, and no one else.

‘Eat something, my darling, you haven’t touched a thing,’ she kept saying, watching him. To make her happy, he pretended to be very hungry; he filled his plate, but the food stuck in his throat, the meat dish particularly; he found it repugnant.

‘We ate lunch late,’ he said finally.

‘But force yourself. Who knows when you will get your next meal?’

‘Come on now, Mama, we’re not going straight into battle tomorrow, don’t worry.’

He put down his knife and fork, looked at the familiar dining room, the open windows, the peaceful garden, the street lit up by the moon. The sadness he was feeling was a male kind of sadness, a mixture of pride and anguish. He didn’t think he would be saved, he alone among thousands of men. He could see very clearly where he was headed. In spite of everything he was calm. He just thought to himself, ‘What a shame I’m not five years younger. I would have been so happy to go. But …’

He looked at Agnès. The clock chimed eight.

‘We have to leave now,’ he said, looking away from
his mother, pity in his eyes. A woman’s tears were so painful. At the thought of the sobbing he was about to hear, the tears she would shed, his heart sank. He was eager to be among men, to hear foul language, dirty jokes, to get drunk on the cheap wine of manly camaraderie.

‘But you haven’t had your coffee!’ Marthe cried. ‘Agnès, pour him some coffee.’

She looked back and forth between her children, wringing her hands, haggard and trembling. No one replied. She went over to her son and kissed him. She was tricked by that kiss, tricked by his presence. He was there, but he was not, because he was about to leave. She felt as if she were clinging on to a phantom, a pale shadow that she couldn’t hold close, that would vanish in her arms. Yet she shed not a single tear. Her pain was too strange and too intense to allow her to cry.

All four of them spoke the calmest words possible.

‘Don’t be surprised if my letters get delayed …’

‘Agnès, now you look after yourself.’

‘Say goodbye to Grandfather for me. Explain to him that I was only here for a moment.’

‘You’ll be hot tonight on the train, my poor darling.’

He barely kissed Agnès; it was quick and rather cold, thought Marthe. It wasn’t tonight, in front of their parents, that they could say goodbye to each other. The night before, alone, in the silence of their bedroom, in the warmth of their bed, they had exchanged their
parting kiss, a kiss that was deep and silent; there had been no lamenting, no pointless recriminations. But now, their lips were weary and lifeless.

They went into the entrance hall and formed a circle round Pierre. Charles Hardelot, who had gone out for a moment, came back holding an open bottle of champagne. Behind him was Ludivine, the maid, with a tray of glasses.

‘We’re going to drink to your good health, Pierre.’

‘But Papa …’

But he insisted on this ritual. He couldn’t let his son go without making a final speech. ‘I’ve heard so many of them,’ thought Pierre with a smile. For every occasion, his father had a speech at hand: for marriages and engagements, for births, for when he went away to boarding school each year. In a flash, Pierre relived those rainy October nights in the very same entrance hall; the horse champed at the bit as they loaded on the few bags that Pierre took to school, and his father said solemnly, ‘Son, you are about to enter the world of men, where study, camaraderie and competition are there for your benefit. Remember that the child is father of the man and that whatever you sow today in obedience, in esteem for your excellent teachers, in long, serious hard work, you will later reap in the form of happiness, security and respect.’

Tonight, raising his glass, Charles Hardelot said, ‘I drink to your victorious return, son. When you come back home, both your family and your fellow citizens
will be proud of you. The valorous soldier is the glory of society.’ And he brought his glass to his lips.

They all took a sip. Gently, Pierre touched Agnès’s hair, then he left.

It was the very beginning of the war, when the heart bleeds for everyone who dies, when tears are shed for each man sent to fight. Sadly, as time goes on, people get used to it all. They think only of one soldier, theirs. But at the start of a war the heart is still tender; it hasn’t hardened yet. It seems tied by a thousand strings to the inhabitants of another country, or to a certain village or region … a region never seen, but whose very name makes the heart beat faster with anguish and hope. In Saint-Elme, where the people had only ever been malicious or indifferent towards each other, everything suddenly changed: all the families that had been enemies, divided by a thousand long-standing quarrels and the jealousy caused by status or wealth, were united. The announcement of a death, the news of a wounded soldier echoed painfully through every cold, grey house. It wouldn’t last. But for a few days people no longer
thought of themselves; they existed for others and that helped them carry on living.

The news about the war was not good. Not the news in the papers: only an experienced diplomat or brilliant strategist would have been able to understand the newspaper articles or ‘war reports’. The news didn’t come in letters either, which were scrupulously designed not to diminish the good spirits of friends and relatives. No, it came from somewhere mysterious, carried on the wind, spread throughout the land.

‘It’s not going too good,’ farmers would say when they ran into each other.

‘Seems we’re getting beat over there,’ the cleaning lady would admit.

Everyone went to bed, got up, ate their meals, but they thought about the war all the time. They even dreamed about the war. And the oddest thing was that everyone could still go to bed, get up, eat and sleep, in spite of the war. People did the washing, picked fruit to make jam, ordered dinner, and Agnès played with her child. Yet one man died every second (a man who could be Pierre) in that strange and terrible place they called ‘the war zone’; it had started by being very far away, but it moved closer every day. Belgium had been invaded. The enemy was pushing into northern France; the enemy was only two days away from Saint-Elme, yet in Saint-Elme nothing changed. They slept in peaceful ignorance; they hid their heads in the sand and thought they were invisible. If someone said, ‘It’s just that, well,
they could start fighting here …’, everyone looked at him in astonishment. Fighting in Saint-Elme? Don’t be ridiculous! Was it conceivable that between the church and the market square, on the street where the Hardelots lived, blood might be shed and bombs fall? ‘Certain things are just not possible’, or so they thought.

Saint-Elme went to bed peacefully. Saint-Elme woke up in the middle of the night, in a state of panic. The Germans were coming! The Germans were there! As for who had started the rumour, where the Germans actually were, why it was necessary to leave and where they were supposed to go, no one knew. Just as they had been certain, until now, that out of all the towns in the world, Saint-Elme would be spared, so they now awoke convinced that the battle would be fought in the centre of their town, that every army on earth was heading towards the nearby canal, the church, the market square and the Hardelots’ factory.

Agnès was in her bedroom; she was asleep, with her child at her side, when she was awakened by a loud banging at her door.

‘We’re going!’

‘Where to? How?’

‘I don’t know. We’re going. Everyone’s leaving. Your in-laws are waiting for us,’ replied Madame Florent.

Agnès got dressed quickly, wrapped a blanket round the child and went outside. The main street of Saint-Elme was full of people. It was a clear, mild night. From the north, the refugees were arriving, in cars, on foot,
on horseback, in wagons, pushing wheelbarrows full of clothing, pulling along their cows. There were vehicles from Belgium pulled by dogs; the sheep bleated, herds of cattle plodded along. Agnès headed towards the Hardelot residence. No one was there. Women rushed out of their houses, half dressed; you could hear the sound of shutters being locked, doors being closed. The poor had already left. The rich waited; they would have taken their houses and the very earth they were built on, if they could. Agnès walked up to the château (this was how people referred to old Hardelot’s home). She felt frightened and determined. All of this meant nothing. Danger meant nothing. Danger brought her closer to Pierre. She felt she could understand him better now. She would know the meaning of words like ‘cannon fire, panic, the enemy is here’. If Pierre had been in some scorching hot, faraway land, she would have loved the heat of summer and a desperate need for water, as if they were mystical signs sent to her by him that she alone could see.

The gates of the château were open. Agnès hesitated for a moment at the threshold, then went inside. Anything was possible tonight … It all seemed so strange, more like a dream than reality: Julien Hardelot’s house, with its doors wide open, trunks and baskets sitting on the steps, Marthe carrying a pile of sheets that she threw into the car, Charles Hardelot in a bowler hat and yellow gloves, dressed as if he were making the most formal Sunday visit, topping up the oil in the car,
tipping the can gently and carefully, as if it were expensive wine being poured on someone’s birthday. In the large ground-floor rooms a lamp sat on a table shedding its light over a small group of tearful women, the four elderly Hardelot-Arques spinsters, who had come to take refuge with the head of the family. Saint-Elme might be surrounded by an angry wave of blood and flames rising towards it, beating against its walls, threatening to engulf it, but in the women’s minds Julien Hardelot’s house would be spared from the wrath pouring down on them from the heavens. The cannons were so close now that the windows and chandeliers shook every time they were fired.

‘I sent Ludivine to find you, Agnès,’ said Charles Hardelot. ‘We have to leave. Will the child be warm enough? Where’s your mother?’

‘She’s just coming.’

‘Charles,’ said Marthe, rushing towards her husband. ‘Oh, my poor Charles …’

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly.

‘Your father wants to stay!’ she cried.

‘Well, that means there’s nothing to worry about,’ exclaimed the Hardelot-Arques ladies. They forgot all about the battle, the sound of the cannon, the fleeing refugees. Julien Hardelot had spoken. Even the tide obeyed him.

‘But … but that’s impossible,’ said Charles, stammering the way he did when he was very upset. ‘They’re going to fight at the canal. We’ll be right in the middle of a massacre. Is that the place for civilians, for women?’

‘He’s saying that I have to go.’

‘By yourself? Never!’

‘He wants you to go with me as far as the railway station, and then come back, Charles …’

‘I’ll speak to him,’ said Charles, throwing the empty oil can down on the ground and hurrying towards the house.

‘Can I do anything for you, Madame?’ asked Agnès.

‘Oh, my child, I don’t know, I’m losing my mind. Just imagine everything we have to leave behind, our furniture, our linen, our family mementos … I’m just throwing together what I can at random, from my house and from here,’ she said, nodding towards her house in the distance and then back to the château, ‘but there’s so little room. Do you have any luggage?’

‘Two overnight cases and the baby’s things.’

‘Yes. You’re young. You have no memories. As for me, well, I want to take everything,’ she said as she picked up a variety of objects and pressed them close to her heart before putting them down again: a photo of Pierre as a child, a silver sugar bowl, a damask and lace tablecloth.

‘Let me help you,’ said Agnès.

The car was already half full of the Hardelots’ belongings; they boxed up more silver, the factory’s accounts, a cardboard hatbox full of linen.

‘There’s no more room,’ Agnès said at last.

Charles came back downstairs. ‘Let’s go.’

‘But your father,’ cried Marthe, ‘what about your father?’

‘He’s staying.’

‘And what about you?’

‘I’ll come back as soon as I’ve made sure everyone is in a safe place.’

‘But I won’t leave you,’ she cried. ‘I’d rather die with you.’

Julien Hardelot’s face appeared in the darkened entrance hall. Agnès took a step towards him. He looked at her coldly and turned his back on her.

‘Father,’ cried Marthe. ‘Father!’

He allowed her to cover his cheek in kisses and tears. He put up with her outburst without saying a word.

‘Father, at your age …’

He turned and spoke to his son. ‘The title deeds are in the black metal box.’