Free Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky Page B

people on foot with their futile honking as they tried in vain to clear a way through. Seeing the impotent rage or the gloomy resignation on the drivers’ faces was a comfort to the refugees. “They’re not going any faster than us!” they would say to each other, enjoying the feeling of shared misfortune.
    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 Marurice’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.
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