Three hours later, Claude Bronsen got into his car—well stocked with petrol, cans on the backseat, for he had prepared as well as possible for emergencies—and struggled south down roads already choked with refugees. He had arranged in advance to meet Julia in Marseille, had told her to go there if something dreadful should happen. It never occurred to him that she could be safe without him, nor did it ever occur to him that he could be content without her nearby. Six weeks later, in Marseille, he was detained by the French police as an alien Jew and sent to the internment camp at Les Milles. Three months after that, in the middle of a cold winter, he died of pneumonia brought on by malnutrition. He was buried the next morning, in an unmarked grave.
JULIEN WAS TOUCHED and rather surprised by the valedictory; he had not expected a man like Bronsen to be capable of such a speech; the times, it seemed, wrought the strangest effects. He was invited to the meal because he had been summoned to Paris to examine a thesis, and had taken the opportunity to see if Julia was at her apartment. When he got no answer there, he visited Claude Bronsen’s house in Neuilly-sur-Seine and found him packing furiously and, for the first time, uncertain about what to do. Julien counseled him to leave for England while he could; he would find Julia and ensure she followed.
“If she is in the south, then she is not in immediate danger. Your position is more perilous, I think. If you stay she will worry about you and not look after herself properly. So go. Head for Normandy and you might get to a port that is still open.”
But he would not. He would not have Julia beholden to anyone but himself. It was his greatest weakness, a trait that came close to erasing all the good he had done as her father. Even in such circumstances he would not let go, would not allow anyone else to protect her; he did not want her depending on Julien, of all people.
“No. It is better that we’re together. I’ll find her, and we’ll go to Marseille. I’ve told her this already. I have a hotel booked, have contacts at a shipping company. All we need is a few visas. She’s probably waiting for me there already.” Julien renewed the offer, then gave way and accepted the invitation to lunch instead.
The very mundaneness of the task that had brought him north, the fact that it could go on at such a time, in itself testified to the confidence that was felt in the French military up until the last moment. He arrived two days before the German assault to listen to a defense of a work on the late antique city—a revision of Fustel’s work, with little originality but showing promise—as the tanks began to enter the Ardennes forest, thought impassable and left virtually undefended. By the time the candidate had been congratulated, the outflanking of the French forces, defending their country from an army that was not there, was all but complete. In an afternoon, between the time Julien donned his robes to the time he shook the candidate’s hand, the war was effectively lost—although full realization of this would take a few more weeks. Even the German commanders were worried, unable to believe that some trap was not waiting for them, certain that the foolhardy valor that had stopped them in their tracks the last time would sooner or later inspire resistance.
When the full enormity of the debacle began to hit home, Julien did not submit to blind panic as so many others were doing, but did earnestly desire to get back to the south as quickly as possible. This was a common reaction that summer; many people fled the oncoming armies but very soon the overwhelming desire was to go home. Julien thought initially he could simply take a train, then realized this was a foolish idea; trains belonged to civilization, and that had, at least temporarily, stopped. He did not have a car, and even if he had, there was no petrol. Ultimately he escaped and managed to flee south because of Bernard. Nothing worked anymore except family and connections; it was an indicator of what was to come. Julien went to see him at the newspaper he was then working for, partly to get the latest news, but mainly because friendship at that time became so much more important. They embraced with a warmth neither had felt for the other since they played in the main square of Vaison as children. Both were relieved to feel something fixed and secure. Old friendship substituted for nationality, place, and position; it was all there was left.
Bernard, as usual, was well informed, a man who seemed as though he could understand the inexplicable. A train was being put together in a marshaling yard in the south of Paris to take junior members of the government and civil servants to Tours, he said. There was talk of a new defensive line on the Loire. And also talk of an armistice.
“Why are they going?”
It was strange; the building seemed nearly deserted. In the middle of the greatest crisis that the country had ever faced, the newspaper had all but closed down; once before, Julien had visited him here, shortly before the war broke out, and the scurry of activity, the noise of work, was intense and exhilarating. Now there was silence as though events were too stupendous for a mere newspaper to report and explain.
“If they stay they’ll be captured in days. It’s all over here. The only choice is to retreat and start again. The Germans are not prepared for a massive advance; it wasn’t part of their plans. Their lines of communication will be too stretched. They’ll have to pause to regroup, and then we can counterattack.”
He stopped, then looked at Julien, a curious half-smile on his face.
“But we won’t,” Bernard said softly. “The generals and the politicians have already given in. They had before it even began. They’re going to a place where they can surrender. They will call it an armistice. More peace with honor. How much honor do these people have? It seems they have an inexhaustible supply.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I thought of going to Brittany. Rumor has it that the English may try to hold it, although I can’t imagine they will do so for long. On the other hand, the government is going south. Perhaps I should go, too.” He laughed. “Extraordinary, isn’t it? Four days ago, we were convinced we could withstand anything the Germans threw at us. All the talk was of attack, the offensive. Now look. We don’t even know who is in charge of the government or what it plans to do. So we must follow our instincts, and we must do something, even if it is only with a gesture,” he continued, thinking aloud and quite oblivious to Julien’s presence. “I will go to Brittany, I think. I must be on the Germans’ list of undesirables, so I can’t stay here.” As ever, vanity had its place in determining his understanding of the world.
He turned to Julien. “Come with me?” he said. “You’ll get no thanks from anyone for it, not from the government or from the English, I suspect. But it will be a lark. You and me together against the world, just like when we broke the window of the church.”
“What good would a forty-year-old classicist be to anyone?” Julien asked.
“What good will a thirty-eight-year-old windbag journalist be?” came the reply. Bernard was, in fact, the same age as Julien, and both knew it.
Julien shook his head. “You like gestures too much,” he said. “Besides, I’ve fought my war. I can’t do it again. It accomplished nothing last time, and won’t this time either.”
“A pity more Germans are not of your opinion. And that fewer French generals are. But I can’t blame you. You are right, after all. Go home then. At least no one will bother you—assuming you get there.”
Bernard turned and took Julien’s hand. “Go to the Ministry of the Interior this afternoon; I’ll talk to contacts and make sure there is some suitable piece of paper to get you onto the convoy. But after that you’ll be on your own.”
Julien nodded, and stood watching as his friend strode off down the corridor to the newsroom, suddenly purposeful where he felt no purpose whatsoever except for the need to get home. There was something in his friend’s step, a bounce almost, that hinted that Bernard was actually enjoying all of this, that he sensed an opportunity. More than anything else that day, that made Julien uneasy.
THE OUTCOME of the chance meeting was laid out in miniature thirty years previously, during the summer of 1911, when a group of children were playing in the square of Vaison. High up, in the medieval hill town to which the townspeople had retreated long before Olivier’s day, and where they stayed until half a century before Julien’s birth, when they began to move back down to the plain that once had held the bustling city of antiquity.
Bernard, the youngest by a few months, is the most exuberant, jumping off walls recklessly, laughing loudly. Every now and then, a head appears in the window of one of the houses, and a voice—old or young, male or female, angry or amused—tells them to keep the noise down. They try, for a few minutes, until Bernard finds something else to laugh about.
Marcel, the eldest by a year, uncertain whether he is too old to be with such young children, stands aside, then is drawn into the play. They throw stones at the splashing water fountain, just below the window of the church. Their faces reflect their characters. Bernard tosses the pebbles with abandon, joyfully seeing if he can lob his missile into the water trough, but not caring whether he succeeds or not. His pleasure is in the movement of his
