detailed report of his observation, including the coordinated operations of air and ground forces. He couldn’t say:
The German articles had, he thought, a companion piece, which he’d read earlier that year, a book by the French general Chauvineau called
If the entire theatre of operations is obstructed, there is no means on earth that can break the insurmountable barrier formed on the ground by automatic arms associated with barbed-wire entanglements.
And, same drawer, same folder, General Chauvineau himself:
By placing two million men with the proper number of machine guns and pillboxes along the 250-mile stretch through which the German armies must pass to enter France, we shall be able to hold them up for three years.
Thus the answer to the question
Two-ten in the morning: he turned the light out and pulled the covers up to his eyes. Outside, the steady wind rattled his window and sighed at the corner of the house.
Christmas Eve. Fernand and Lisette had gone off to Grignan in the truck to spend Christmas Day with their son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren, so Mercier had the house to himself. Then, at seven in the evening, his Uncle Hercule, who lived on a Mercier property some ten miles south of his own, picked him up in the family Citroen, shiny and new, and took him home for the Christmas celebration. His father’s only surviving brother, and easily his least favorite, Hercule was a thin, fretful man who’d become wealthy by speculating in South American railroad stocks, turned violently political, and now absorbed himself in writing right-wing pamphlets and letters to newspapers, often on the subject of Bolshevik designs to corrupt public waterworks. Still, holidays were holidays, and assorted Merciers must be gathered under one roof, attend midnight mass, then sit down together to
A long, long evening for Mercier. Fourteen people in the parlor, various aunts, cousins, nieces, and nephews, his uncle raving about the government, his widowed aunt, Albertine’s mother, undertaking recollections of Mercier and Annemarie’s years together, with mournful looks in his direction, two nephews in a tense conversation-one couldn’t actually argue on Christmas Eve-about some silly American movie; another aunt had been to Greece and found it “filthy.” Mercier was asked about Warsaw and did the best he could, but it was a relief when they left, in an assortment of automobiles, at eleven-fifteen, headed for the church in the village of Boutillon.
At the door of the church, Mercier knelt and crossed himself, then the family dutifully spent a few minutes in front of the Mercier family crypt, a flat marble slab with an inscription carved in the wall above it.
ICI REPOSENT LES DEPOUILLES MORTELLES
De Messires:
Francois Mercier de Boutillon Decede a Montelimar Le 29 Juin 1847
Made La Chevalier Sa Femme nee de Mauronville Decede a Boutillon le 21 Fevrier 1853
Albert Mercier de Boutillon Decede a Boutillon Le 8 Aout 1868
Seigneurs de Boutillon et Autres Places
Transferees en ce Lieu Le 15 Aout 1868
Sous les Auspices de Mr Combert Maire
et de Mf Grenier Cure de Boutillon
Au frais de General Edouard Mercier de Boutillon
Legion D’Honneur Domicilie a Boutillon
The crypt had been installed by Mercier’s nineteenth-century ancestor Edouard, who’d paid for it-duly noted in stone, along with his decoration and the names of the mayor and the priest-moved a few mortal remains there in 1868, and then himself died in battle at the city of Metz, during the 1870 war with Prussia. And that was, Mercier thought, the problem with a family crypt, his family anyhow-the male ancestors fell in foreign fields and there, in vast cemeteries or graves for the unknown, they remained.
For Mercier, it was the ceremony of the mass that eased his soul: the sweetish smoke trailing from the censer, the ringing of the bell, the Latin incantations of the priest. In Warsaw, he attended early mass, at a small church near the apartment, once or twice a month, confessing to his vocational sins-duplicity, for example-in the oblique forms provided by Catholic protocol. He’d grown up an untroubled believer, but the war had put an end to that. What God could permit such misery and slaughter? But, in time, he had found consolation in a God beyond understanding and prayed for those he’d lost, for those he loved, and for an end to evil in the world.
As the service reached its conclusion, Mercier found himself suddenly aware of the congregation, the crowded rows of men and women, their heads raised toward the priest at the altar. And then, once again, he felt, as he had during his lunch at the Brasserie Heininger with General de Beauvilliers, a certain dark apprehension, a sense of vulnerability. This was midnight mass, not the manic gaiety of a Parisian lunch, but it was the same shadow. Was it, he wondered, brought on by the General Staff journals he’d been reading? If you took them seriously, they doomed these people to another war. But, he thought, he mustn’t let his imagination run away with him. Conflict between nations was eternal, inevitable, and this one, between France and Germany, might burn itself out in the endless warfare of politics: in the struggle between radicals and conservatives, in the brutal economics of armament, in the carnival of treaties and alliances.
Mercier looked at his watch; it was Christmas. Soon enough the new year, 1938, and perhaps, he thought, a better year than this.
27 December.
Mercier arrived early at the Montelimar railway station, anxiously watched the windows as the carriages rolled to a halt, then waved as Gabrielle stepped down onto the platform. How lovely she was, not her mother’s looks, more a touch of his, the determined, pale Mercier forehead, dark hair, gray-green eyes. He was relieved to see that she was alone, not that he didn’t like his son-in-law, a correspondent for the Havas news agency in Denmark, he did-but now he would have her all to himself.
As the truck rumbled toward Boutillon, she told him that she’d stayed overnight at the apartment, having taken the express from Copenhagen, through Germany, to the Gare du Nord. A trip ruined by what she called “that hideous Nazi theatre,” SS men and their dogs, swastikas draped everywhere. “One grows weary of it,” she said. “In the newspapers, on the radio, everywhere.”
“A national illness,” he said. “We’ll have to wait it out.”
“I’m afraid of them, the way they are now.”
“You and half the world, my love.”
“Perhaps we should have done something about it. Paul certainly thinks so.”
They came upon a flock of goats in the road, driven along by a young girl with a switch. Mercier stopped the truck as the girl herded the goats to one side. As he drove slowly past, she held the lead goat by the scruff of the neck. “Looking backward, yes,” he said, as the truck gained speed, “but all we can do now is wait. And prepare for war.”
“And you’re in charge of that,” she said.
Mercier laughed. “I’m in charge of a desk.”
“Still,” she said, “the Germans on the train were pleasant enough.”
“No doubt. That’s the worst part-they pretend not to notice. It’s all that ‘
