Free The Fires of Autumn by Irène Némirovsky

ice cream … The sun on an open wound is torture! And the sun on a helmet … My brain is being boiled. What did Papa say during my last leave? “They won’t be very demanding, the ones who make it back. It will take very little to make them happy!” He was so wrong! But everything they say is stupid,’ he thought bitterly. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid …’
    He stumbled, felt as if he were losing his footing: blood was seeping through the dressing that a nurse had hastily applied during the battle; warm blood ran down his arm, and he no longer knew whether the sickly stench of butchery came from the dead horses or from his own body. He fell down. ‘No one will carry me, will they?’ he said to himself. ‘Well, then keep on walking or die, boy.’ With superhuman effort, he stood up, kept going. A small group of wounded men were behind him, each man grittinghis teeth, each one dragging his weary legs. Then came a stretcher with a wounded man on it, followed by another carrying a corpse. Then some African soldiers rolling their wide, terrified eyes to the heavens. Then grey soldiers in long greatcoats. Then a Hindu riding a small black horse. Then more trucks, tanks, cannon. And Bernard, who kept on walking …

7
    The war dragged on; a long-range cannon fired on Paris; the Allies were preparing themselves for ‘three, ten, twenty years of war, if necessary’, but everyone, even the Germans, knew that peace would come eventually. No one could imagine how it would come, whether it would arrive with the sly, soft footsteps of the diplomats or the arrogant strides of the conquering warriors. What would it be called? A truce with no winner, a victory, a defeat? But there were subtle signs of its approach. ‘There’s no reason why it should end,’ people said out of habit. ‘It will only be over when we’re all dead.’ But every now and then, a timid little voice would suggest: ‘Still, it can’t go on forever. Force of circumstances will put a stop to it. It will end because everything ends.’ The young retorted harshly: ‘It will end because everyone’s had enough.’ There was an outcry: ‘Coward! Defeatist! You’re not a true patriot.’ But these were merely empty words: the truth was they had had enough. They were dazed by the thundering weapons, they’d had their fill of blood and glory.
    Madame Pain came back from the greengrocer’s, emptied her bag full of vegetables on to the kitchen table and announced:
    ‘It won’t go on for much longer now. All we have to do is wait!’
    ‘Well she can tell herself to be patient,’ thought MadameJacquelain, her heart breaking with anguish. ‘She doesn’t have anyone over there.’
    It was over: the holy alliance of the early days, the time when each person suffered on behalf of everyone, when glory and mourning were shared equally among all the French. Four years later, everyone had his own personal destiny, and it had nothing to do with the fate of France. Martial was dead. They all talked about him; his picture had place of honour in the dining room: a framed photograph decorated with a red, white and blue rosette and black mourning crepe. He was in his uniform; he looked taller, more imposing than he had in reality; he had straightened his neck for the camera lens rather than shrinking it as he normally did when he tugged at his beard or rubbed his tired eyes … He looked straight ahead of him with an expression that was strange, wise, attentive, kind, yet with a barely perceptible hint of coldness, a kind of detachment, as if, from that moment on, in the village behind the lines where he had been photographed a week before he died, he was saying goodbye to everyone, forever. Thérèse placed fresh flowers in front of his picture every day.
    Madame Jacquelain was pale, emaciated, her face distorted by nervous tics. She couldn’t sleep any more, barely ate. Lying in her bedroom, she thought about Bernard sleeping in the mud of the Somme or in the