"It's not that they're so bad," said Aline. "They just don't know about life."

16

The Péricands couldn't get lodgings in the town, but they did find a large room in a neighbouring village, in a house inhabited by two elderly spinsters which was opposite the church. The children were put to bed still in their clothes, utterly exhausted. Jacqueline asked in a tearful voice if she could have the cat's basket next to her. She was obsessed by the idea he might escape, that he would be lost, forgotten, and would die of hunger on the road. She put her hand through the basket's wicker bars, which made a kind of window for the cat allowing a glimpse of a blazing green eye and long whiskers bristling with anger. Only then did she calm down. Emmanuel was frightened by this strange, enormous room and the two old ladies running about like headless chickens. "Have you ever seen anything like it?" they groaned. "How could you not feel sorry for them… poor unfortunate dears… dear Jesus…" Bernard lay there watching them without batting an eye, a dazed, serious expression on his face as he sucked on a piece of sugar he'd kept hidden in his pocket for three days; the heat had melted it, so it was lumped together with a bit of lead from a pencil, a faded stamp and a piece of string. The other bed in the room was occupied by the elder Monsieur Péricand. Madame Péricand, Hubert and the servants would spend the night on chairs in the dining room.

Through the open windows you could see a little garden in the moonlight. A brilliant peaceful light glistened on the clusters of sweet-scented white lilacs and on the path's silvery stones where a cat stepped softly. The dining room was crowded with refugees and villagers listening to the radio together. The women were crying. The men, silent, lowered their heads. It wasn't exactly despair they were feeling; it was more like a refusal to understand, the stupor you feel when you're dreaming, when the veil of sleep is about to lift, when you can feel the dawn light, when your whole body reaches out towards it, when you think, "It was just a nightmare, I'm going to wake up now." They stood there, motionless, avoiding each other's eyes. When Hubert switched off the radio, the men left without saying a word. Only the group of women remained in the room. You could hear them sighing, lamenting the misfortunes of their country, which, for them, bore the features of cherished husbands and sons still at the front. Their pain was more physical than the men's, simpler as well and more open. They consoled themselves with recriminations: "Well… I don't know why we bothered!… To end up here… It's shameful, it is… we've been betrayed, Madame, betrayed I say… we've been sold out and now it's the poor men who are suffering…"

Hubert listened to them, clenching his fists, rage in his heart. What was he doing here? Bunch of old chatterboxes, he thought. If only he were two years older! Suddenly his young and innocent mind-younger, until now, than his years-was overtaken by the passions and torment of a grown man: patriotic anguish, a burning feeling of shame, pain, anger and the desire to make a sacrifice. Finally, and for the first time in his life, he thought, he felt linked to a truly serious cause. It wasn't enough to cry or shout traitor, he was a man; he might not be legally old enough to fight but he knew he was stronger, more robust, more able, more cunning than these old men of thirty-five and forty who had been sent to war, and he was free. He wasn't held back by family ties, by love! "Oh, I want to go," he murmured, "I want to go!"

He rushed towards his mother, grabbed her hand, took her aside. "Mummy, let me have some food and my red jumper from your bag and… give me a kiss," he said. "I'm leaving." He couldn't breathe. Tears were streaming down his face.

His mother looked at him and understood. "Come on now, darling, you're mad…"

"Mother, I'm leaving. I can't stay here… I'll die, I'll kill myself if I have to stay here and be useless, twiddling my thumbs while… and don't you realise the Germans will come and force all the boys to fight, make them fight for them. I couldn't! Let me go."

He had gradually raised his voice and was shouting now; he couldn't control himself. He was surrounded by a circle of trembling, terrified old women: another young boy, scarcely older than him, the nephew of the two spinsters, rosy and fair, with curly hair and big innocent blue eyes, had joined him and repeated in a slight southern accent (his parents were civil servants-he'd been born in Tarascon), "Of course we have to go, and tonight! Look, not very far from here, in the Sainte woods, there are troops… all we have to do is get on our bikes and join them…"

"René," moaned his aunts, holding on to him, "René, my darling, think of your mother!"

"Let go of me, Auntie, this is not a matter for women," he replied, pushing them away, and his lovely face flushed with pleasure: he was proud of what he'd said.

He looked at Hubert, who had dried his tears and was standing next to the window, serious and determined. He went up to him and whispered in his ear, "Are we going, then?"

"Yes, we're going," Hubert whispered back. He thought for a minute and added, "Meet on the road leading out of the village, at midnight."

They shook hands in secret. Around them the women were all talking at once, begging them to give up their plan, to take pity on their parents, to hold on to their lives, such precious lives, to think of the future. At that moment they heard Jacqueline's piercing screams from upstairs. "Mummy, Mummy, come quickly! Albert's run away!"

"Albert, is that your other son? Oh, my God!" exclaimed the spinsters.

"No, no, Albert's the cat," said Madame Péricand, who thought she was going mad.

Meanwhile, the sound of deep muffled explosions reverberated through the air: guns were firing in the distance, they were surrounded by danger. Madame Péricand collapsed into a chair. "Hubert, just listen to me! In the absence of your father I am in charge. You are a child, barely seventeen, your duty is to save yourself for the future…"

"For the next war?"

"For the next war," Madame Péricand repeated automatically. "In the meantime, you must simply be quiet and do as I say. You are not going anywhere! If you had any feelings at all such a cruel, stupid idea would not even have crossed your mind! Don't you think I'm miserable enough? Don't you realise we've lost? That the Germans are coming and you'd be killed or taken prisoner before going a hundred metres? No! Not a word! I'm not even going to discuss it; you'll leave here over my dead body!"

"Mummy, Mummy," Jacqueline kept shouting. "I want Albert! Find Albert for me! The Germans will take him! He'll be bombed, stolen, killed! Albert! Albert! Albert!"

"Jacqueline, be quiet, you'll wake up your brothers!"

Everyone was shouting at once. Hubert, lips trembling, broke away from the frenzied group of gesticulating old women. Did they understand nothing at all? Life was like Shakespeare, noble and tragic, and they wanted to debase it. The world was crumbling, was nothing more than rubble and ruins, yet they remained the same. Women were inferior creatures; they didn't know the meaning of heroism, glory, faith, the spirit of sacrifice. All they did was to bring everything they touched down to their level. God! Just to see a man, to shake the hand of a man! Even father, he thought, but most of all his beloved brother, the good, the great Philippe. He longed for his brother so much that, once again, tears came to his eyes. The incessant noise of gunfire filled him with anxiety and excitement; he started trembling all over, shaking his head from side to side like a frightened horse. But he wasn't afraid. Not at all! He wasn't afraid! He welcomed, he embraced, the idea of death. It would be a beautiful death for this lost cause. It would be better than crouching in trenches as they did in '14. Now they fought in the open air, beneath the beautiful June sun or in the brilliant moonlight.