get such transport; from Clermont onward he was in the vanguard, a pioneer taking the plague of panic and despair with him, communicating it to all he encountered through his ever dirtier, scruffier clothes, the increasingly gaunt expression as he walked twenty miles a day on little food. But he at least found compensation in it all. He saw his France through fresh eyes, and marveled once more at its extraordinary, overwhelming beauty and variety. He tasted, for the first time, what it must have been like for someone like Olivier de Noyen, traveling so slowly and registering every minute change in landscape and vegetation. Being without a map and having to take directions from passersby. Doing without any assurance that there was a bed or a meal to be found at the end of the day. Sleeping under trees in a forest, wrapped up in an old blanket he had found by a stream, picking fruits and mushrooms and making a fire to roast some potatoes he stole from a field. The parching heat of a shadeless road along a valley that he walked along after Issoire, the sudden torrential downpour that made him sit and shiver in a cave a few kilometers before Allegre.
And in the deepest valleys, farthest away from the towns, the less people were interested in the war, and the less they wanted to know. They or their children had been taken last time, many never came back; every village had its monument with the names on it. All Julien saw was relief that it was already over, that more names were not to be added to the roll call. Quick defeat was better than lengthy victory. The Germans would come, drink champagne, then go home again. That’s what they did. Perhaps the old woman who told him that was even right. Julien did not know, and after nearly two weeks without any news or any reliable information he found that he didn’t even care. The war was to the north, the concern of others. It did not touch those who ploughed their fields and tended their goats. He was more concerned with the way the soles of his shoes were giving way.
He arrived home, at his mother’s home, strangely rested. Montpellier had been in chaos; the university closed, every building, it seemed, crammed with refugees, food running short. Avignon was worse. He stayed there for only a day, then packed a bag, wheeled out his bicycle—now the fastest means of transport available—and pedaled slowly to Roaix, feeling safety wrap itself around him the farther he left the big city behind. He had learned much and was fitter than he had ever been, burned dark by the sun, with the walk—near three hundred kilometers, more or less—having triumphed over the effects of years in libraries. He had a beard, which he kept for a week before shaving it off, burned his clothes and bathed, then waited to see what he should do next.
The little house in the country had scarcely changed in the past thirty years; he had not bothered to put in electricity or any of the other conveniences of modern life. Its whole purpose, after all, was to escape from it; now it served its purpose better than any well-equipped house. He had water in the well outside, a good supply of candles for night, an endless store of wood, which he chopped himself, and had spent so many years playing with the farmers’ children, now the farmers themselves, that there was never any chance that he would be denied food. There was one comfortable chair, a stout oak table, and all the books he might need. In a cupboard there was an old shotgun, which he oiled carefully and regularly, hiding it when possessing such things became illegal, and cartridges so that he could shoot birds or rabbits. How to skin and gut an animal was something he had learned as a child from the local farmers.
He stayed for nearly five months, moving between bursts of anxiety, during which he would pedal into Vaison and try to telephone Paris, or send off letters to find out what, if anything, he should do, and an indolence that permitted him to shut out the world and live the simple country life. He had enough money, and his needs, he discovered, were minimal; he could pass almost a week at a time without spending any at all. In the countryside he lived as he always did, rising at dawn and going to bed at dusk to conserve his dwindling stock of candles, and managed to behave as if nothing had happened. And he wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible.
Of the outside world he had little, and only sporadic, information. The humiliating armistice filled him with despair, as did the exile of the government to Vichy. The treacherous way the English suddenly attacked and sank the best of the French fleet outraged him, and made him think of England’s own imminent, inevitable defeat with greater equanimity. The reestablishment of the government under the firm, reassuring guidance of Marshal Pétain was the only thing that gave him hope, but so far it made little difference to him. He watched from afar, and distinguished little of detail. So he missed most of the vast influx of refugees into the south, was unaware of how slowly they flowed out again like a human tide when a sort of calm returned. He did not hear of the resentments caused by these people, the shortages and the confusion. He saw nothing of the bedraggled, miserable army struggling south then breaking up in hopelessness; heard only a little of the much vaunted new moral order that was to rebuild France, restore its pride in itself, and begin the titanic task of cleaning out the decades of corruption and decay that were responsible for defeat. For France had brought this calamity on itself; that was the feeling, and now France must rise from the pyre of its own making.
Like most people, he was overwhelmed by the magnitude of events, the way the world had fallen to pieces so easily and the obvious difficulties of making sure it did not get even worse. And he consoled himself with reading, and doing little tasks, and by reawakening his long-dormant friendship with Elizabeth, his partner in catechism of near thirty years before. Her presence recalled easier and simpler moments, when all that was to be feared was the wrath of his father, or the disapproval of the priest when they broke out in a fit of giggles in church. She was long since married, but unhappily, to the local blacksmith, a man of almost legendary dullness whose sense of duty just managed to hide a streak of cruelty that, every now and then, would come peeping to the surface. What happened was almost inevitable; Julien certainly should have seen the danger. They began talking in the lane one day as old friends, she came in for a glass of water, and they reached out for each other at the same moment. She stayed for several hours, and returned on many occasions over the next three months. It was a foolishness brought on by the times.
She was not beautiful, not educated, not refined in any way, but had a coarse sensuality that Julien had rarely experienced, and they were drawn to each other because warmth and affection became so priceless in those days. Both of them were starved of it, and both managed briefly to forget everything else in each other’s company. But the world called him back to reality, and her dreams of escape vanished as he explained to her that he had to go, leaving her no alternative but to return to her rough, unsympathetic husband.
“But we can still see each other, when you come back here?” she said.
“I think it’s better not to,” he replied, as gently as he could but with a growing discomfort. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It’s better if you just forget all about me. It was a dream; a lovely dream, but nothing more than that. Besides, sooner or later your husband will find out, and then everyone around will know about it. What will happen then?”
“Maybe he’ll throw me out,” she said with a smile. “Maybe I’ll have to come and live here.”
It was the look of alarm on his face, a slight disgust at the idea that came through the carefully constructed regret and understanding, that did all the damage. Elizabeth’s face turned stony, and she stood up from the little table in his kitchen.
“I see,” she said.
“Please,” he began, but she waved him away.
“Don’t say any more. There is no need to. I don’t intend to embarrass you, or make your life difficult. As you say, it would be best to forget it ever happened. I’m only sorry I misunderstood.”
“So am I,” he said, but could make no contact with her. She left a few moments later, and Julien breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. The next day he packed a little bag and pedaled to Avignon, for all other forms of transport had vanished as if they had never existed.
Someone knew where he was; one of his letters had been received somewhere and had been passed on, in that mysterious way of organizations, into other hands, for in late February 1941 a letter was delivered to the post office at Vaison and was held there until he came in one day to see, again, if there was any soap; one of his neighbors had said there was some, and though he found the country life suited his temperament, he did like to wash properly.
He bought his soap, one precious bar of it, then called in at the post office and was given his letter. Marcel wanted him, needed him. The idyll was over; it was time to return to life. He was being asked to work for the new government. As he told Elizabeth when he announced he was going, he did not know when he would be back, or what he was wanted for.
A QUESTION OF civilized values, he told himself. A question of whether or not one is to take a stand and insist that, despite the times, barbarism must not hold sway. How do we justify calling ourselves civilized, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief and of common values
