The refugees were walking in small groups. Chance had thrown them together at the edge of Paris and now they stayed together, though they didn't even know one another's names. With the Michauds was a tall, thin woman, wearing a cheap, shabby coat and a great deal of costume jewellery. Jeanne vaguely wondered what would possess someone to flee wearing enormous earrings encrusted with fake pearls and diamonds, large red and green stones on her fingers and a paste brooch with small bits of topaz.

Then there was a concierge and her daughter, the mother small and pale, the child big and heavy. They were both dressed in black and dragged along amid their luggage a portrait of a large man with a long black moustache. "My husband," the woman said. "He's the caretaker at the cemetery." Her sister was with her, pregnant and pushing a sleeping child in a pram. She was very young. As each convoy of soldiers passed by, she too would tremble and search the crowd. "My husband is out there somewhere," she would say; out there somewhere, or perhaps out here… anything was possible.

And Jeanne would say, for the hundredth time no doubt-she really had no idea what she was saying any more-"So is my son, so is my son…

They hadn't yet been shelled. When it happened, they didn't know what was going on at first. They heard the sound of an explosion, then another, then shouting: "Run for it! Get down! Get down on the ground!" They immediately threw themselves face down.

"How grotesque we must look!" Jeanne mused. She wasn't afraid, but she was short of breath and her heart was pounding so violently that she pressed both hands to it and pushed it down against a stone. She could feel a bell-shaped pink flower brushing her lips. Later, she would remember that while they were stretched out on the ground, a small white butterfly was lazily flitting from one flower to another.

Finally she heard a voice whisper, "It's over; they're gone." She stood up and automatically brushed the dust from her skirt. No one, she thought, had been hurt. But after walking for a few minutes, they saw the first fatalities: two men and a woman. Their bodies had been torn to shreds, but by chance their three faces were untouched. Such gloomy, ordinary faces, with a dim, fixed, stunned expression as if they were trying in vain to understand what was happening to them; they weren't made, my God, to die in battle, they weren't made for death. In all her life that woman had probably never said anything but ordinary things, like "The leeks are getting bigger" or "Who's the dirty pig who got my floor all muddy?"

But what do I know? Jeanne asked herself. Perhaps there was a wealth of intelligence and tenderness behind their low brows, beneath their dishevelled, lifeless hair. What are we in people's eyes, Maurice and I, other than two miserable employees? It's true in a way, but in another way, we are precious and unique. I know that too. "What a horrible waste," she thought again. She leaned against Maurice's shoulder, trembling, her cheeks wet with tears.

"Let's go," he said, gently pulling her away.

Both of them were thinking the same thing: "Why?" They would never make it to Tours. Did the bank even exist any more? Was Monsieur Corbin buried beneath the rubble with his files? With his valuables? With his dancer? And his wife's jewellery! But that would be too good to be true, Jeanne thought with sudden ferociousness. Nevertheless, she and Maurice hobbled along, continuing on their way. All they could do was to keep walking and place themselves in the hands of God.

12

The little group made up of the Michauds and their companions was picked up on Friday night. A military truck stopped for them and they travelled through the night, lying among the crates, until they arrived at a town whose name they never discovered. The railway line was intact, they were told. They could go direct to Tours. Jeanne went into the first house she saw on the outskirts of the town and asked permission to wash. The kitchen was already full of refugees rinsing their clothes in the sink, but they took Jeanne to the water pump in the garden. Maurice had brought a little mirror on a small chain; he hung it from the branch of a tree and shaved. Afterwards they felt better, ready to face the long wait by the door of the barracks where soup was being given out, and an even longer wait at the third-class ticket window at the train station. They had eaten and were crossing the square in front of the station when the bombs exploded. Enemy planes had been flying above the town for the past three days and air-raid warnings had been constant. The town had to make do with an old fire siren to sound the alarm; through the din of the cars, the screaming children, the noise of the terrified crowd, you could barely hear its faint, ridiculous sound. The people arriving off trains would ask, "Is it an air raid?" and be told, "No, it's over," only for the faint bell to be heard again five minutes later. There was laughter. Shops were open, little girls played hopscotch on the pavement and dogs ran through the dust near the old cathedral. The Italian and German planes were ignored as they glided calmly overhead. People were used to them.

Suddenly, one broke loose and swooped down at the crowd. He's going to crash, Jeanne thought, then, No, he's going to fire, he's firing, we're finished… Instinctively, she covered her mouth to stifle a scream. The bombs had fallen on the train station and, a bit further along, on the railway tracks. The glass roof shattered and exploded outwards, wounding and killing the people in the square. Panic-stricken, some of the women threw down their babies as if they were cumbersome packages and ran. Others grabbed their children and held them so tightly they seemed to want to force them back into the womb, as if that were the only truly safe place. A wounded woman was writhing around at Jeanne's feet: it was the one with the costume jewellery. Her throat and fingers were sparkling and blood was pouring from her shattered skull. Her warm blood oozed on to Jeanne's dress, on to her shoes and stockings.

But Jeanne was saved from thinking about the dead by the wounded, who were calling for help from beneath the piles of shattered stone and broken glass. She joined Maurice and some other men who were trying to clear away the rubble. But it was too difficult for her. She couldn't do it. Then she remembered the children who were wandering piteously about the square, looking for their mothers. She called them over, took them by the hand and led them to the cathedral, where she assembled them in the front portico. Then she returned to the crowd. When she saw a frantic woman, screaming, running back and forth, she would call out in a calm, loud voice, so calm and loud that she herself was amazed, "The children are by the church door. Go and get them, over there. Could everyone who has lost their children please go and get them at the church."

The women rushed towards the cathedral. Sometimes they wept, sometimes they burst out laughing, sometimes they let out a sort of wild cry, a choking noise, like no other sound. The children were much calmer. Their tears dried quickly. Their mothers carried them away, holding them tightly. Not one of them thought to thank Jeanne. She went back into the square where she learned the town had not suffered much damage. A hospital convoy had been hit just as it was pulling into the station, but the line to Tours was still intact. The train was getting ready right now and would leave in a quarter of an hour. Immediately the dead and injured were forgotten; people rushed towards the station clutching their suitcases and hatboxes like life jackets. The Michauds spotted the first stretchers transporting the wounded soldiers. Because of the crush it was impossible to get close enough to see their faces. They were being piled into trucks and cars, both military and civilian, requisitioned in haste. Jeanne saw an officer going towards a truck full of children, supervised by a priest. She heard him say, "I'm terribly sorry, Father, but I must take this truck. We have to get our wounded to Blois."