Free Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

out the town. Hubert met her near the café. He hadn’t been able to find a room.
    “There’s nothing to eat, the shops are empty!” she exclaimed.
    “Well,” said Hubert, “
I
found two shops full of goods.”
    “Really? Where?”
    Hubert burst out laughing. “There was one that sold pianos and the other, things for funerals!”
    “You’re such a silly little boy,” said his mother.
    “At the rate we’re going,” Hubert remarked, “I imagine pearl crowns will soon be in great demand. We could stock up on them, what do you think, Mother?”
    Madame Péricand shrugged her shoulders. She could see Jacqueline and Bernard on the doorstep of the café. Their hands were full of chocolate and sweets that they were giving out to everyone around them. Madame Péricand leapt towards them.
    “Get back inside! What are you doing out here? I forbid you to touch the food. Jacqueline, you will be punished. Bernard, your father will hear about this.” Grabbing the two stunned culprits firmly by the hand, she dragged them away. Christian charity, the compassion of centuries of civilisation, fell from her like useless ornaments, revealing her bare, arid soul. She needed to feed and protect her own children. Nothing else mattered any more.

11
    Maurice and Jeanne Michaud walked one behind the other on the wide road lined with poplar trees. Around them, behind them, in front of them, people were fleeing. Occasionally the road rose more steeply and they could see clearly the chaotic multitude trudging through the dust, stretching far into the distance. The luckiest ones had wheelbarrows, a pram, a cart made of four planks of wood set on top of crudely fashioned wheels, bowing down under the weight of bags, tattered clothes, sleeping children. These were the poor, the unlucky, the weak, the sort who don’t know how to manage, who are always pushed to the back; the frightened, too, and the stingy, who had put off buying a ticket until the last minute because of the price, the expenses involved and the dangers of the journey, but who had suddenly been gripped by panic just like everyone else. None of them knew why they were bothering to flee: all of France was burning, there was danger everywhere. Whenever they sank to the ground, they said they would never get up again, they would die right there, that if they had to die it was better to die in peace. But they were the first to stand up when a plane flew near. They were compassionate and kind, offering that active and attentive sympathy that working people normally reserve for their own families or the poor, and even then only at moments of the most exceptional fear and misery. Nearly a dozen times, some of these big, strong women had offered to help Jeanne Michaud to walk. Jeanne herself held children by the hand while her husband carried bags on his shoulders: sometimes a bundle of clothing, sometimes a basket with a live rabbit and potatoes, the worldly possessions of a little old woman who had left Nanterre on foot. In spite of the exhaustion, the hunger, the fear, Maurice Michaud was not really unhappy. He had a unique way of thinking: he didn’t consider himself that important; in his own eyes, he was not that rare and irreplaceable creature most people imagine when they think about themselves. He felt pity towards his fellow sufferers, but his pity was lucid and detached. After all, he thought, these great human migrations seemed to follow natural laws. Surely such occasional mass displacements were necessary to humans, just as the migration of livestock was to animals. He found this idea oddly comforting. The people around him believed that fate was tracking them down, them and their pitiable generation; but not Maurice: he knew there had been exoduses throughout history. How many people had died on this land (on land everywhere in the world), dripping with blood, fleeing the enemy, leaving cities in flames, clutching their children to their hearts: no one gave a thought