VERCORS

The Silence of the Sea

and other stories

AFTERWORD BY YVES BEIGBEDER

 AS A PREFACE

Despair is dead

I still don't quite understand how this happened, — within me

and in us. Moreover, I am not looking for it. There are certain miracles very
natural. I mean: very easy to accept. I accept them greatly.
heart and this one was one of those. I often think about it. I get emotional, I smile
and I stretch. I know there would surely be something to find. What for
Good? This half-ignorance, I must say, suits me.
How quickly the deepest torments fade! It has been thirty months
[1]
I wished for death. There were a few of us who wanted it. We did not
we could see nothing but a foul abyss before us. How to live there?
Why wait for a filthy suffocation? Ah! to find a rock
desert, an abandoned island, far from the repugnant melee of men...
How strange it seems, today, — where we have so many reasons
to hope! But hope, despair, are not reasonable things nor
reasonable. Despair had taken hold of us, from head to toe. And, it
we must admit, what we had seen, what we still see does not
didn't help much to shake him off.
For we were not all desperate. Oh! No. In this mess
heterogeneous, where disaster had gathered a dozen officers who came
from all sides, with no common point except for not having fought,
the dominant note was not despair. Each person was above all
self-concerned. And provided that not all paths were cut off
in front of him, took the rest rather lightly. That July, there was a
myth of Laval-Talleyrand: a scoundrel, after Waterloo, had in a few
years redo a feared France; a scoundrel would do the same. He
just had to wait.
There was a man whom I will call Captain Randois. I do not
I didn't love him. Even before the defeat, everything about him was my enemy: his
haughty character, his monarchist convictions, his contempt for the crowd.
I avoided talking to him. I feared that he might, with a word, reveal the
satisfaction with the misfortunes of the Republic, the triumph of the
tyranny, should have awakened in him. I couldn't have endured it without
react. My nerves were not very strong back then. Luckily, neither was he
rarely spoke. He ate in silence, his large nose pointed downwards towards the
tablecloth. The incessant discussions, political and foolish, which formed
the framework of our meals only received from him a disdain that I would have
found it insulting, — if I had not done everything just like him. Our poor old
brigand of the commander, general councilor of Gard, presided over these tournaments,
he watched over with his big dim eyes. He looked, by the face and
the accent, to a softened Raimu, to one of the Fratellini too, — the one who is
dead, the one who hid his trifling malice behind the appearance of a notary
solemnly. He was questioning the future with unease, worried about the place he
could dig for his pudgy frivolity. He says one day:
— "Randois, have you seen? Your Maurras aligns without restriction.
behind the Marshal. " When he spoke, it seemed that his accent was
drowned in a sip of water, one would have expected to see flow between his
soft lips. "I am an old radical, but in the misfortune of the
homeland, one must forget their convictions. Your Maurras, bravo, it’s very
Good. What do you think our victors will think?
Captain Randois lifted his nose. And his eyes, his blue and cold eyes
(I found them cruel) settled on me. Yes, on me and on my neighbor.
Captain Despérados; and he answered:
The Fridolins? They will have us down to the core.
His voice was of an endless sadness. I was surprised, - even more so.
from the gaze that only words. Thus, he joined us, he had managed to us
join, we the loners, we the mute. He had better known how to me
understand, that I, him. Today, I know well that I was lacking in
sagacity. For this message was a reflection of this country, where only the cowards,
the sly and the wicked would continue to prattle on; where the others
would have, to protest, only their silence. Randois had recognized us.
I was silent. But Captain Despérados was more silent than I.
had, for his part, participated in 'our' battle: in the fake battle, in the
dishonorable sham that taught us more in these three days
squeezed between two armistices, on the ridiculous infamy of certain men
honorary awards, that the experience of a lifetime. He had attended
from one end to the other of the shameful and cruel comedy. He had had in the
they had shamelessly put evidence in his hands
filthy and stinking: those of the single concern, on the worst days of
disaster, which had an unworthy leader to prepare the ways of his
ambition. Sordid ambition. One would have said that he had paled, - paled forever.
He was pale and stiff, stiff from an old injury that prevented him from
turning the head without also turning the shoulders; and paler from a scar
who split his beautiful graying matador face in two, opening
through the right eye, as a monocle would have done. And this gave him a
double expression, penetrating and dominating. During all these
For weeks, he never smiles. I have never seen him laugh, except once.
Yes, I have almost an effort to make today to understand,
as I understood it then, that a man could be so mortally
discouraged that it was impossible for him to smile for weeks.
I was myself, however. We dragged our heavy idle shoes.
in the unique street of this sunburnt village, where we had been
confined after the armistice. We could not get out. We had
other choices than the two bistros, the bench of the garden that a kind
someone had offered, or our room. For my part, I had chosen my
room. I hardly moved from there. My overwhelming sadness fed on itself
even, was fattening from this fatal idleness. I think today that
Randois, that Desperados led the same torturous life. Perhaps
Should we see there the reasons for this infernal silence, where we had been
died despite us.
My room was small. I had chosen it because it was small.
It opened onto the rooftops through a narrow window high up. Thus it was
constituted, a bit, like a dungeon, - a dungeon that a young girl would have
solely due to his care. I stayed there for long hours, between these walls
brought closer. A prisoner in these walls like in thoughts, simple
and horrible, that I could not chase away. I loved feeling these walls weigh down on
me, as one likes to press an irritated gum with a nervous finger.
This was certainly not good for the health of the mind. No worse, undoubtedly,
What a waste to wander from one bistro to another, to witness the cowardice of all.
I ended up hardly going out except at mealtimes. I did not have a
long way to go. The house that housed our mess faced the
mine, beyond a narrow stony alley. These meals were lively
and noisy. They seemed gloomy to me. We were fattened there like
geese. The Intendance had not yet been affected by the defeat, and
provided us with several meats per meal, that an arrogant cook,
holder of a military cooking diploma and that one of us had
discovered and "voracious", disguised under skillfully ghastly sauces,
, in front of which the messenger was filled with admiration. One was pleased about it.
mutually. The most sincere cordiality reigned among these men.
gallons, who tore each other apart as soon as they were separated. They were all
rivals, for one reason or another. The debacle had not destroyed within
they liked the taste of precedence, from which they would soon be deprived. Their
rivalry was also more material. Some quickly understood that there
had something to gain from the general disorganization, from the difficulty
of controls. The most hated was the one who was overwhelmed, at meals, by the most
high brands of faithful respect, our commander-Fratellini, to whom his
grade allowed for the most fruitful plundering. We knew that its
the attic was filling up with chocolate, pasta, rice. I should have too,
to hate this man. I don't know why, I couldn't do it. Maybe because
that her trickery was so obviously native that it became ingenuous.
Perhaps also because I knew - before him - that he was going to die. It...
had reached a point of uremia that could soon lead to a crisis.
He was falling asleep, not just after the meal, not just
between each dish: between each bite, — a few seconds, his
fork raised. I saw the others laugh. It was pitiful and tragic.
"My God, I thought, let him stock his attic." Yet I was leaving...
wanted this indulgence.
I was happy to have Desperados by my side. I felt
less alone. Not that we ever exchanged a word of
some importance. But sometimes, when I felt myself swell
my heart of disgust, in front of some new mark of the disastrous
carefreeness of those men in whom the country had hoped to find leaders, I
you turned towards me with a stiff neck, the dilated eye resting on me. We
thus our gazes crossed, and it relieved us. We were not going to
further in our confidences.
That morning, however, he allowed himself to indulge in something more. When
I entered to get my cup of coffee, he was there, alone in front of his.
read the Little Dauphinois. It was one of the first that reached us, after
these fifteen horrible days. And suddenly he handed it to me, silently and
While I was reading at my...
All the while, he fixed his bright eyes on me. Yes, what he made me read
surpassed everything one could expect. What the greatest contempt of
men would not have been enough to make us believe without proof. We were being brought out,
simply (don't forget it was the first time), Joan of Arc,
Saint Helena, and the perfidious Albion. In this same column, under this
same signature, where three weeks earlier the same man was talking to us
again, with sadistic delight, thousands of Teutonic barbarians that
the Lys and the Somme were carrying, bloody and putrid, towards the sea.
What would I have said? I say nothing. But, leaning back on my chair, I
He burst into laughter. Desperados leaned his forearms on the table, and he laughed too.
With a long and loud laugh, swaying a little. It was a sound
displeasing, this joyless gaiety in this gloomy room where lingered
a smell of moldy bread. Then we fell silent, and we got up,
for it was time for us to attend mass in the small church
for the repose of the war dead. It could have been emotional and simple.
It was outrageous and grotesque. A sermon was delivered to us by a young soldier.
priest, studious and ambitious, happy to find an opportunity there
to exercise his eloquence. He delivered to us a hollow and pompous oration,
still clumsy moreover and that not even talent could save.
I came out of there more overwhelmed than ever. I walked with my head down, between
Despérados and Randois who had silently joined us. Like
we were passing through a grassy alley, between two tall garden walls,
I could not quite hold back one of the constrained sighs from my chest.
was full to the point of hurting. Randois turned his head towards me, and I saw that he
smiled affectionately.
We drag our bag, he said, and passing between us, he took us.
each by the arm.
We thus arrived in front of the mess. It was not time yet.
For the first time, we did not part ways. We sat down.
on the edge of the narrow sidewalk, and the silence weighed on us once again.
It was then that we saw the four little ducklings coming.
I knew them. Often I had looked at one or the other, one or
the other one of these very funny yellowish fluff balls, to wallow, without
stop a second of whining with a fragile and endearing voice, in
the gutters or the slightest puddle. More than once, one of them had
thus helped to live, a little faster, a little less heavily, some-
One of the minutes of those endless days. I was grateful to them.
This time, they were all coming four in a row, like ducks.
They were coming from the main street, limping and solemn, lively, vigilant and
military. They kept squeaking. They reminded one of those parades of
gymnasts, proudly carrying their banner and singing
firmly in a very false voice. I said there were four of them. The last one
was younger, — smaller, more yellow, more chick-like. But determined to
not to be treated as such. He squeaked louder than the others, using the
legs and fins to maintain the required distance. But the
stones that his elders crossed with clumsiness but firmness
formed, for him, as many obstacles where his eagerness came
butter. In truth, nothing else can faithfully depict what was happening to him.
so otherwise to say that he was falling flat on his face. Every six steps, he fell.
thus the face and he got up and left, and hurried with a martial air
and anxious, squeaking with a profusion and punctuality without
weakness, and found themselves with their beaks in the dust. Thus they all paraded.
the four, according to the immutable order of a duck parade. Rarely have I-
I witnessed nothing as comical. So much so that I heard myself laugh, and also
Desperados, but no more of our awful morning laughter. The laughter of
Desperados was, this time, deep and healthy and pleasant to hear. And
Even Randois's slightly dry laugh was not unpleasant. And the
ducklings, always squeaking, turned the corner of the alley, and we saw
the little one, one last time, falls flat on his face before disappearing. And
So, here it is, Randois put his hands on our shoulders, and he leaned on
we to get up, and in doing so he will squeeze the fingers, affectionately, and
it hurt a little. And he said:
— To the soup! Come. We will get out of it.
Or, that was exactly what I was thinking: we will get out of it. Oh! I
You would be lying by pretending that I thought those exact words. No more.
that I was not then thinking precisely of centuries, of interminable ones
darker periods still than this one which was yet to seem so
black; nor to the desperate courage, to the superhuman stubbornness that was needed for
some monks, in the midst of these murders, of these pillages, of this
fanatical ignorance, of this triumphant cruelty, to do without
hand in hand a fragile torch for nearly a thousand years. Nor that
if this were to be our destiny, our only
duty now. Certainly, I was not thinking precisely all of that. But this
It was like when you see the binding of a book you know very well.
How these four little ducks, by what secret path of our
did spirits lead us to suddenly discover that our despair was
perverse and sterile? I don’t know. Today, as I strive to write this
lines, I would be tempted to imagine some symbol, both enticing and
easy. Perhaps I would not be wrong. Perhaps, indeed, unconsciously
I will think of the little ducks that were already to parade no less.
comically before the eyes of the first Christians, who had more than
we place to believe everything lost. Perhaps I found that they were parodying
quite well, these four boastful and naive ducklings, what is worst
in the feelings of men in groups, as well as what there is of
better in them. And that it was worth living, since one could hope for a day
to extirpate this worse, to make this better bloom again. Maybe. But it could be that
even more than that, I only discover all of this for the needs of
the reason. Deep down, I prefer the mystery. I know, that alone is certain, that
it is to these mischievous, martial, endearing and ridiculous little ducks,
what I had to feel in the darkest hallway of a dark day,
sudden despair slips from my shoulders like a coat that is too heavy.
That's enough. I won't forget it.
THE SILENCE OF THE SEA
1
In memory of Saint-Pol-Roux
Assassinated poet.

He was preceded by a large deployment of military equipment. First

two troopers, both very blond, one gangly and skinny, the other
square, in the hands of the quarryman. They looked at the house, without entering. More
late came a non-commissioned officer. The lanky soldier accompanied him. They me
they spoke, in what they assumed was French. I did not understand
not a word. Yet I showed them the free rooms. They seemed
contents.
The next morning, a huge gray military torpedo entered
in the garden. The driver and a young skinny soldier, blond and smiling,
extracted two boxes, and a large bundle wrapped in gray cloth. They
They carried everything up to the largest room. The torpedo set off again, and
a few hours later I heard a galloping. Three horsemen
Apparent. One of them got off and went to visit the old building.
of stone. He came back, and all, men and horses, entered the barn
which serves me as a workshop. I lived later that they had pushed the servant of
my workbench between two stones, in a hole in the wall, tied a rope to
valet, and the horses at the rope.
For two days nothing happened anymore. I didn't see anyone.
The horsemen set out early with their horses, they
brought back in the evening, and they themselves slept in the straw which they
had furnished the attic.
Then, on the morning of the third day, the great torpedo returned. The young
A smiling man loaded a spacious trunk on his shoulder and carried it.
in the room. He then took his bag and placed it in the room
neighbor. He went down and, addressing my niece in correct French,
demand for sheets.
2
It was my niece who went to open the door when we knocked. She had just...
Serve my coffee, like every evening (the coffee makes me sleep). I was sitting.
at the back of the room, relatively in the shadows. The door leads to the
garden, on one level. A sidewalk runs along the entire length of the house
red tiles very convenient when it rains. We heard footsteps,
the sound of heels on the tile. My niece looked at me and set down her cup. I
hold mine in my hands.
It was night, not very cold: that November was not very cold.
sight of the immense silhouette, the flat cap, the raincoat thrown over the
shoulders like a cape.
My niece had opened the door and remained silent. She had lowered
the door on the wall, she was standing against the wall, with nothing
look. I was sipping my coffee, slowly.
The officer, at the door, said: "Please." His head gave a small nod.
seems to measure the silence. Then he entered.
The cape slipped over his forearm, he saluted military style and
discovered. He turned to my niece, smiled discreetly while leaning very
slightly the bust. Then he faced me and gave me a deeper bow.
grave. He says: "My name is Werner von Ebrennac." I had the time to
think, very quickly: "The name is not German. Descendant of an emigrant
Protestant?" He added: "I'm sorry."
The last word, pronounced while dragging, fell into silence. My niece
had closed the door and was standing against the wall, looking straight ahead.
I had not gotten up. I slowly set my empty cup down on
the harmonium and crossed my hands and waited.
The officer resumed: 'This was naturally necessary. I would have avoided if'
it was possible. I think my prescription will do everything for your
tranquility." He was standing in the middle of the room. He was huge and very
thin. By raising his arm he would have touched the joists.
His head was slightly tilted forward, as if the neck had not
was planted on the shoulders, but at the birth of the chest. He was not
arched, but it felt as if they were. His hips and shoulders
the features were impressive. The face was beautiful. Virile and marked by
two deep depressions along the cheeks. The eyes were not visible,
what the shadow of the arcade was hiding. They seemed clear to me. The hair
were blonde and flexible, thrown back, shining silkily under the
light of the chandelier.
Silence was prolonged. It became thicker and thicker, like the
morning fog. Thick and still. The stillness of my niece, the
mine too undoubtedly, weighed down this silence, made it leaden.
The officer himself, disoriented, remained still, until finally I
to create a smile on her lips. Her smile was serious and without any.
trace of irony. He made a gesture with his hand, the meaning of which
escaped me. His eyes fell on my niece, still stiff and straight, and
I could leisurely look at the powerful profile, the prominent nose and
I saw, between the half-closed lips, a shining gold tooth.
finally averted his eyes and looked at the fire in the fireplace and said:
I have great respect for people who love their homeland.
And he suddenly raised his head and stared at the sculpted angel above the window.
I could now go up to my room, he said. But I don't know
not the way." My niece opened the door that leads to the small staircase and
he started to climb the steps, without a glance at the officer, as if
she would have been alone. The officer followed her. I then saw that he had a leg.
stiff.
I heard them cross the anteroom, the footsteps of the German.
echoed in the corridor, alternately loud and soft, a door
opened, then closed again. My niece returned. She picked up her cup and continued
to drink his coffee. I lit a pipe. We remained silent for a few
minutes. I say: 'Thank God, he seems suitable.' My niece raised her
shoulders. She drew my velvet jacket onto her knees and finished the piece
invisible that she had begun to sew there.
3
The next morning the officer came down when we were having our
breakfast in the kitchen. Another staircase leads there and I do not know if
the German had heard us or if it was by chance that he took this
path. He stopped at the threshold and said: "I had a very good night. I
would like yours to be just as good." He looked at the vast room in
smiling. Since we had little wood and even less coal, I
I had repainted it, we had brought in some furniture, some copper, and
ancient plates, in order to confine our life there during the winter. It
I examined this and saw the edge of his very white teeth shining. I saw
that his eyes were not blue as I had thought, but golden. Finally, he
crossed the room and opened the door to the garden. He took two steps and
returned to look at our long low house, covered in vines,
on the old brown tiles. His smile opened wide.
Your old mayor told me that I would stay in the castle, he said as
gesturing dismissively at the pretentious building that the trees
the bare areas revealed themselves, a little higher up on the slope. I
I will congratulate my men for being wrong. Here it is a lot.
most beautiful castle.
Then he closed the door, waved goodbye to us through the windows, and left.
He returned in the evening at the same time as the day before. We were having our
café. He knocked, but did not wait for my niece to open the door for him. He opened it himself.
even: "I fear that I am disturbing you, he said. If you prefer it, I...
you will pass through the kitchen: so you will lock this door. He crossed
the room, and kept his hand on the handle for a moment, looking at the various
smoking room coins. Finally, he had a slight inclination of the torso: "I you
wishes a good night," and he left.
We never locked the door. I'm not sure that the
the reasons for this abstention were neither very clear nor very pure. By agreement
we had decided, my niece and I, to change nothing in our lives,
even the slightest detail: as if the officer did not exist; as if he had
been a ghost. But another feeling may have mingled in my
heart to this will: I cannot without suffering offend a man, even if he is
my enemy.
For a long time, — over a month, — the same scene repeated itself.
every day. The officer knocked and entered. He spoke a few words about
the weather, the temperature, or some other subject of equal importance:
their shared property being that they did not assume a response. It
always lingered a bit at the threshold of the small door. He looked around.
from him. A very slight smile conveyed the pleasure he seemed to derive from
this exam, - the same exam every day and the same pleasure. His eyes
lingered on the sloping profile of my niece, inevitably strict
and insensitive, and when he finally turned away his gaze, I was sure of it
could read a kind of smiling approval. Then he said in
bowing: "I wish you a good night," and he was leaving.
Things changed suddenly one evening. It was falling outside a
fine snow mixed with rain, terribly cold and wet. I was making
burn in the hearth thick logs that I had kept for such days.
Despite myself, I imagined the officer outside, the sprinkled look he would have.
upon entering. But he did not come. The time for his arrival had long passed.
and I was annoyed to admit that he occupied my thoughts. My niece was knitting.
slowly, with a very focused expression.
Finally, footsteps were heard. But they were coming from inside the
house. I recognized, by their uneven noise, the walk of the officer. I
understood that he had entered through the other door, that he had come from his room. Without
doubt did he not want to appear before our eyes in a soaked uniform and
without prestige: he had first changed.
The steps,—a strong one, a weak one,—descended the staircase. The door opened.
and the officer appeared. He was in plain clothes. The trousers were made of thick flannel.
gray, the steel blue tweed jacket intertwined with warm brown threads.
It was wide and loose, and fell with a careless elegance.
the jacket, a thick cream wool sweater hugged the slim torso and
muscular.
— Excuse me, he said. I am not hot. I was very wet and my
The room is very cold. I will warm myself by your fire for a few minutes.
He crouched with difficulty in front of the hearth, stretched out his hands. He them
turned and turned them back. He said: "Good!... Good!..." He pivoted and
presents its back to the flame, always crouching and holding a knee in
his arms.
It's nothing here, he said. Winter in France is a mild season. At
me it's really hard. Very. The trees are firs, dense forests, the
The snow is heavy on it. Here the trees are thin. The snow on top is
a lace. At my place, we think of a bull, stocky and powerful, which has
need its strength to live. Here it is the spirit, the subtle thought and
poetic.
 His voice was quite dull, barely modulated. The accent was light.
marked only on the hard consonants. The whole resembled a
singing rather than buzzing.
He stood up. He leaned his forearm on the lintel of the high fireplace, and
his face on the back of his hand. He was so tall that he had to bend down.
Well, I wouldn't even bump the top of my head.
He remained still for quite a while, without moving and without speaking.
My niece was knitting with mechanical liveliness. She did not cast her eyes.
about him, not once. I was smoking, half lying down in my big
cozy armchair. I thought that the weight of our silence could not
not to be shaken. That the man was going to greet us and leave.
But the muffled and singing buzzing rose again, one does not
One could say that he broke the silence, it was more like he was born out of it.
I have always loved France, said the officer without moving. Always.
I was a child during the other war and what I thought then does not matter.
But since then I always loved her. Only it was from afar. Like the
Distant Princess." He paused before saying seriously: "Because
of my father.
He turned around and, with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, leaned against the
long of the leg. His head hit a little on the console. From time to
while he slowly rubbed his occipital, with a natural movement of a deer.
A chair was offered there, nearby. He did not sit down. Until the last.
day, he never sat down. We did not offer it to him and he did nothing,
never, which could pass for familiarity.
He repeated:
— Because of my father. He was a great patriot. The defeat was a
violent pain. Yet he loved France. He loved Briand, he believed
in the Weimar Republic and in Briand. He was very enthusiastic.
He said: "He will unite us, like husband and wife." He thought that the
the sun was finally going to rise over Europe...
While speaking, he was looking at my niece. He wasn't looking at her as a
man looks at a woman, but as if he is looking at a statue. And in fact,
It was indeed a statue. An animated statue, but a statue.
... But Briand was defeated. My father saw that France was still
led by your cruel Great Bourgeois, - the people like yours
Wendel, your Henry Bordeaux and your old Marshal. He said to me: "You don't
"You should never go to France before you can enter wearing boots and a helmet."
I had to promise him, for he was near death. At the time of the war,
I knew all of Europe, except France.
 He smiled and said, as if it had been an explanation:
I am a musician.
A log collapsed, embers rolled out of the fireplace. The German
he poked the embers with tongs. He continued:
I am not an executor: I compose music. That is all.
my life, and, so, it’s a funny sight for me to see myself as a man
of war. Yet I do not regret this war. No. I believe that
this will bring out great things...
He straightened up, took his hands out of his pockets and held them half raised:
— Forgive me: perhaps I may have hurt you. But what I
I say this with a very good heart: I think it out of love for the
France. He will bring out very great things for Germany and for the
France. I think, after my father, that the sun will shine on Europe.
He took two steps and leaned forward. As every evening, he said: 'I you
wishes a good night." Then he left.
I silently finished my pipe. I coughed a little and I said:
"It may be inhuman to deny him the offering of a single word."
niece raised her face. She raised her eyebrows very high, over her eyes
brilliant and indignant. I felt almost a little blush.
4
Since that day, this became the new way of his visits. We did not see him.
more than rarely in attire. He would change first and then knock at
our door. Was it to spare us the sight of the enemy uniform?
Or to make us forget it, - to familiarize us with his person? The
two, undoubtedly. He knocked, and entered without waiting for a response that he
knew that we would not give. He did it with the most candid
natural, and would come to warm himself by the fire, which was the constant pretext for his
venue – a pretext of which neither he nor we were fooled, of which he did not
didn't even try to hide the conveniently conventional character.
He didn't come every evening, but I don't remember.
from a single one where he left us without having spoken. He leaned over the fire, and
while he offered to the warmth of the flame some part of himself,
her buzzing voice rose gently, and it was during these evenings,
on the subjects that inhabited his heart, — his country, music, France,
— an endless monologue; for not once did he attempt to obtain from
we a response, an agreement, or even a look. He did not speak
not long, — never much longer than the first night. He
pronounced a few phrases, sometimes broken by silences, sometimes
flowing with the monotonous continuity of a prayer. Sometimes
motionless against the fireplace, like a caryatid, sometimes
approaching, without interruption, an object, a drawing on the wall. Then he
he would bow his head and wish us a good night.
He said once (it was in the early days of his visits):
Where is the difference between a fire from my place and this one? Of course the
wood, the flame, the fireplace resemble each other. But not the light. This one
depends on the objects it illuminates, - the inhabitants of this smokehouse, of
furniture, walls, books on the shelves...
Why do I love this play so much? he said thoughtfully. It is not
so beautiful,—forgive me!..." He laughed: "I mean: it’s not a
museum piece... Your furniture, we do not say: here are some wonders...
No... But this room has a soul. This whole house has a soul.
He was in front of the library shelves. His fingers were tracing the
binding of a light caress.
— "... Balzac, Barrès, Baudelaire, Beaumarchais, Boileau, Buffon..."
Chateaubriand, Corneille, Descartes, Fénelon, Flaubert... La Fontaine,
France, Gautier, Hugo... What a call!" he said with a light laugh and nodding.
the head. "And I'm only at the letter H!... Neither Molière, nor Rabelais, nor
Racine, neither Pascal, nor Stendhal, nor Voltaire, nor Montaigne, nor all the
others! ..." He continued to slide slowly along the books, and to
from time to time he would let out an imperceptible "Ha!" when I
suppose he was reading a name he was not thinking of. 'The English,' he said again,
one immediately thinks: Shakespeare. The Italians: Dante. Spain:
Cervantes. And us, right away: Goethe. Afterwards, it is necessary to search. But if
They say: and France? So, who appears at this moment? Molière? Racine?
Hugo? Voltaire? Rabelais? Or which other? They are pressing in, they are
like a crowd at the entrance of a theater, one does not know who to let in
first.
He turned around and said seriously:
But for music, then it's with us: Bach, Handel,
Beethoven, Wagner, Mozart... which name comes first?
"And we waged war on each other!" he said slowly, stirring.
the head. He returned to the fireplace and his smiling eyes fell on the
profile of my niece. "But this is the last one! We will not fight anymore:"
we will get married!
the cheekbones were marked by two long dimples, the teeth
white appeared. He said cheerfully: "Yes, yes!" A small nod
He repeated the statement from memory. "When we entered Saintes,
he continued after a silence, I was happy that the population us
was doing well. I was very happy. I thought: It will be easy. And then, I
since it was not that at all, that it was cowardice." He had become
serious. "I despised these people. And I feared for France. I thought:
Has she really become this way?" He shook his head: "No! No. I have
seen then; and now, I am happy with his stern face.
His gaze turned to mine - which I averted, - he lingered a
little in various points of the room, then returned to the face,
mercilessly insensitive, that he had left.
I am happy to have found here a worthy old man. And a
silent young lady. We must overcome this silence. We must overcome the
silence of France. I like it.
He was looking at my niece, her stubborn and closed pure profile, in silence and with a
grave insistence, where the remnants of a smile still floated.
niece felt it. I saw her slightly blush, a crease gradually forming.
between his eyebrows. His fingers pulled a little too sharply, too
drying on the needle, at the risk of breaking the thread.
 — Yes, the slow buzzing voice resumed, it is better this way. Much.
better. It creates strong unions, - unions where everyone benefits.
grandeur... There is a very nice story for children, which I have read, that you
have read, that everyone has read. I don't know if the title is the same in the
two countries. At my place, it is called: The Animal and the Beauty, - the Beauty and the
Beast. Poor Belle! The Beast holds her at his mercy, - helpless and
prisoner, — she imposes on him at all hours of the day her relentless and
heavy presence... The Beauty is proud, dignified, — she has made herself tough... But
The Beast is better than she seems. Oh! She is not very polished!
She is clumsy, brutal, she seems quite rough next to the Beauty if
Fine!... But she has heart, yes, she has a soul that yearns to rise.
Beauty wanted!... Beauty takes a long time to want. Yet, little by little,
she discovers in the depths of the hateful jailer's eyes a glimmer, — a reflection where
can read the prayer and love. It feels less the heavy paw,
less the chains of her prison... She ceases to hate, this constancy
touché, she reaches out... Immediately the Beast transforms, the spell that
the maintenance in this barbaric coat is dissipated: it is now a
very handsome and very pure knight, delicate and cultured, that each kiss of the
Beautiful adornment of increasingly radiant qualities... Their union determines
a sublime happiness. Their children, who add and mix the gifts
of their parents, are the most beautiful that the earth has borne...
Didn’t you like this story? I always loved it. I used to read it again.
ceaselessly. He made me cry. I especially loved the Beast, because I
I understood his pain. Even today, I am moved when I speak about it.
He fell silent, breathed heavily, and bowed:
I wish you a good night.
5
One evening, I had gone up to my room to look for tobacco,
I heard the sound of the harmonium rising. They were playing those 'VIIIe
Prelude and Fugue" that my niece was working on before the debacle. The notebook
had remained open at that page but, until that evening, my niece had not
not resolved to new exercises. That she had taken them up again raised in me
of pleasure and astonishment: what inner necessity could well
suddenly deciding it?
It wasn't her. She hadn't left her armchair or her work.
Her gaze met mine, sending me a message that I did not
I couldn't decipher it. I considered the long torso in front of the instrument, the neck
leaning, long, thin, nervous hands, whose fingers
moved across the keys like autonomous individuals.
He only played the Prelude. He got up and rejoined the fire.
Nothing is greater than this," he said in his muffled voice that did not
did not rise much higher than a whisper. 'Big?... it is not
even the word. Outside of man,—outside of his flesh. This makes us
understand, no: guess... no: sense... sense what it is
nature... divested... of the human soul. Yes: it is the divine nature
and unknowable... nature... inhuman music.
He seemed, in a thoughtful silence, to explore his own thoughts. He became
she slowly bit her lip.
— Bach... He could only be German. Our land has this character:
this inhuman character. I mean: not in keeping with man.
A silence, then:
I love this music, I admire it, it fulfills me, it is in
me like the presence of God but... But it is not mine.
I want to create music that is suited to man: that too
is a path to reach the truth. It is my path. I don't
I would like, I could not follow another one. This, now, I know.
I know perfectly well. Since when? Since I have been living here.
He turned his back on us. He pressed his hands against the lintel, held on to it by the
fingers and offered his face to the flame between his forearms, like to
through the bars of a grid. His voice became deeper and more
buzzing
Now I need France. But I ask for a lot: I
ask her to welcome me. It's nothing, being at her place like a
foreigner, - a traveler or a conqueror. It gives nothing then, -
We can take nothing from him. His wealth, his great wealth, we cannot take.
to conquer her. You must drink from her breast, she must offer you her breast.
in a maternal movement and feeling... I know that this
depends on us... But it also depends on her. She must agree to
understand our thirst, and that it agrees to quench it... that it agrees
to join us.
He straightened up, still turning his back to us, his fingers still
attached to the stone.
— Me, he said a little louder, I will have to live here for a long time.
In a house like this one. Like the son of a village like this.
village... It will be necessary...
He fell silent. He turned towards us. His mouth was smiling, but not his eyes.
who were looking at my niece.
The obstacles will be overcome, he said. Sincerity always
overcome the obstacles.
I wish you a good night.
6
I cannot remember, today, everything that was said during
more than a hundred winter evenings. But the theme hardly varied. It was the
long rhapsody of his discovery of France: the love he had for it
before knowing her, and the growing love every day that he
he had been feeling since he had the happiness of living there. And, I must say, I admired him.
Yes: that he should not be discouraged. And that he should never be tempted to shake off
this relentless silence by some violence of language... On the contrary,
when sometimes he let this silence invade the room and saturate it until
the depths of the corners like a heavy and unbreathable gas, he really seemed to be
the one among us three who felt the most comfortable. So he looked at my
niece, with this expression of approval that is both smiling and serious that
had been hers from the very first day. And I felt the soul of my niece
stirring in this prison that she had built herself, I saw it in
many signs of which the least was a slight trembling of the fingers. And
when finally Werner von Ebrennac broke this silence, softly and without
hit by the filter of his buzzing voice, it seemed that he allowed me to
breathe more freely.
He often talked about himself:
My house in the forest, I was born there, I went to the village school,
the other side; I never left it, until I was in Munich, to
the exams, and in Salzburg, for music. Since then, I have always lived
over there. I didn't like big cities. I experienced London, Vienna,
Rome, Warsaw, the German cities naturally. I don’t like for
to live. I only loved Prague a lot, — no other city has
as much soul. And especially Nuremberg. For a German, it is the city that
dilates his heart, because he finds there the dear ghosts to his heart, the
souvenir in every stone of those who made the nobility of the old
Germany. I believe that the French must feel the same way,
in front of the cathedral of Chartres. They must also feel close to them.
the presence of the ancestors, — the grace of their soul, the greatness of their faith,
and their kindness. Fate has led me to Chartres. Oh! really
when she appears, over the ripe wheat, all blue from afar and
transparent, immaterial, it's a great emotion! I was imagining the
feelings of those who used to come to her, on foot, on horseback or on
chariots... I shared these feelings and I loved these people, and as I
the weather, the temperature, or some other subject of equal importance:
their shared property being that they did not assume a response. It
always lingered a bit at the threshold of the small door. He looked around.
from him. A very slight smile conveyed the pleasure he seemed to derive from
this exam, - the same exam every day and the same pleasure. His eyes
lingered on the sloping profile of my niece, inevitably strict
and insensitive, and when he finally turned away his gaze, I was sure of it
could read a kind of smiling approval. Then he said in
bowing: "I wish you a good night," and he was leaving.
Things changed suddenly one evening. It was falling outside a
fine snow mixed with rain, terribly cold and wet. I was making
burn in the hearth thick logs that I had kept for such days.
Despite myself, I imagined the officer outside, the sprinkled look he would have.
upon entering. But he did not come. The time for his arrival had long passed.
and I was annoyed to admit that he occupied my thoughts. My niece was knitting.
slowly, with a very focused expression.
Finally, footsteps were heard. But they were coming from inside the
house. I recognized, by their uneven noise, the walk of the officer. I
understood that he had entered through the other door, that he had come from his room. Without
doubt did he not want to appear before our eyes in a soaked uniform and
without prestige: he had first changed.
The steps,—a strong one, a weak one,—descended the staircase. The door opened.
and the officer appeared. He was in plain clothes. The trousers were made of thick flann
gray, the steel blue tweed jacket intertwined with warm brown threads.
It was wide and loose, and fell with a careless elegance.
the jacket, a thick cream wool sweater hugged the slim torso and
muscular.
— Excuse me, he said. I am not hot. I was very wet and my
The room is very cold. I will warm myself by your fire for a few minutes.
He crouched with difficulty in front of the hearth, stretched out his hands. He them
turned and turned them back. He said: "Good!... Good!..." He pivoted and
presents its back to the flame, always crouching and holding a knee in
his arms.
It's nothing here, he said. Winter in France is a mild season. At
me it's really hard. Very. The trees are firs, dense forests, the
The snow is heavy on it. Here the trees are thin. The snow on top is
a lace. At my place, we think of a bull, stocky and powerful, which has
need its strength to live. Here it is the spirit, the subtle thought and
poetic.
when they are very alone: it always comes back. And who is more 'alone'
what the men of the same Party, when they are the masters?
Fortunately now they are no longer alone: they are in France.
France will heal them. And I will tell you this: they know it. They know that
France will teach them to be truly great and pure men.
He headed towards the door. He said in a restrained voice, as if to himself-
even
But for that, love is needed.
He held the door open for a moment; his face turned over his shoulder, he
I was looking at my niece's neck bent over her work, the delicate neck and
pale from where the hair rose in twists of dark mahogany. He added,
in a tone of calm resolution:
A shared love.
Then he turned his head, and the door closed behind him as he
pronounced the daily words in a rapid voice:
I wish you a good night.
7
The long spring days were arriving. The officer was getting off
now in the last rays of the sun. He always wore his pants
of gray flannel, but on the bust a lighter jacket in wool jersey
the color of the suit covered a linen shirt with an open collar. He went down a
evening, holding a closed book on his finger. His face lit up with that half-
smile content, which foreshadows the expected pleasure of others. He says:
I brought this down for you. It’s a page from MACBETH. Gods!
What greatness!
He opened the book:
It's the end. The power of Macbeth slips through his fingers, with
the attachment of those who finally measure the darkness of his ambition.
The noble lords who defend the honor of Scotland await its
next ruin. One of them describes the dramatic symptoms of this
collapse...
And he read slowly, with a pathetic weight:
ANGUS
Now he feels his secret crimes sticking to his hands. Every time
A few men of heart have reproached him for his bad faith.
Those he commands obey out of fear and no longer out of love.
From now on, he sees his title hanging around him, floating like the dress.
of a giant on the dwarf who stole it.
He lifted his head and laughed. I wondered in astonishment if he was thinking about the
same tyrant as me. But he says:
Isn't that what must disturb your Admiral's nights? I
pity this man, really, despite the contempt he inspires in me as in
Those whom he commands obey out of fear and no longer out of love.
A chef who does not love his own is a very miserable model.
Only... only... could one wish for something else? Who then,
Otherwise, such a gloomy ambitious person would have accepted this role? But it was necessary. Yes,
someone had to be willing to sell their homeland because,
today, — today and for a long time, France cannot fall
voluntarily in our open arms without losing in his eyes his own
dignity. Often the most sordid intermediary is at the base of the
happier alliance. The matchmaker is no less despicable, nor
the less happy alliance.
He snapped the book shut, shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.
and with a mechanical motion struck this pocket of the palm twice
the hand. Then his long face lit up with a happy expression, he said:
I have to inform my hosts that I will be absent for two weeks.
I am looking forward to going to Paris. It is now my turn for leave and
I will spend it in Paris for the first time. It's a big day for me.
This is the greatest day, waiting for another that I hope for with all
my soul and who will be an even greater day. I will know how to wait for it from the
years, if necessary. My heart has a lot of patience.
In Paris, I suppose I will see my friends, many of whom are
present at the negotiations we are conducting with your politicians,
to prepare the wonderful union of our two peoples. Thus I will be
a little the witness of this marriage... I want to tell you that I am happy for
France, whose wounds will heal very quickly in this way, but I
I am looking forward to Germany and to myself even more! Never.
No one will benefit from his good deed as much as Germany will.
by restoring its greatness to France and its freedom!
I wish you a good night.
 OTHELLO

Let's turn off this light, and then turn off the light of his life.
 We did not see him when he returned.
We knew he was there, because the presence of a guest in a house
reveals itself through many signs, even when it remains invisible. But during
for many days, — much more than a week, — we did not see him
pass.
Shall I confess it? This absence did not leave my mind at rest. I
You think about him, I don't know to what extent I did not feel regret.
of worry. Neither my niece nor I spoke of it. But when
sometimes in the evening we would hear the muffled footsteps echoing up there
unequal, I could clearly see the stubborn application she suddenly put into her
work, with a few light lines that marked his face with a
a simultaneously stubborn and attentive expression, which was also not free from
of thoughts similar to mine.
One day I had to go to the Kommandantur for some reason.
tire declaration. While I was filling out the form that we
had reached out to me, Werner von Ebrennac left his office. He did not see me.
not everything first. He was speaking to the sergeant, sitting at a small table in front of a
high mirror on the wall. I could hear his dull voice with singing inflections
and I stayed there, even though I had nothing left to do there, not knowing
why, curiously moved, waiting for I don't know what outcome. I
I saw his face in the mirror, he looked pale and drawn. His eyes were...
they rose, they fell on mine, for two seconds we
we looked, and suddenly he pivoted on his heels and faced me. His
lips parted and slowly he raised a hand slightly,
almost immediately he let it fall. He shook his head imperceptibly
with a pathetic indecision, as if he were saying to himself: no,
without however taking his eyes off me. Then he made a bow.
bust by letting his gaze slide to the ground, and he returned, limping, to his
office, where he locked himself in.
I said nothing about this to my niece. But women have a divination.
of feline. Throughout the evening, she kept looking up from her
work, every minute, to carry them on me; to try to read
something on a face that I was striving to keep impassive, pulling
on my pipe with application. In the end, she dropped her hands,
as tired, and, folding the fabric, asked me for permission to leave
go to bed early. She slowly ran two fingers over her forehead
like to chase away a migraine. She kissed me and it seemed to me to read
In her beautiful gray eyes, a reproach and quite a heavy sadness. After
At his departure, I felt lifted by an absurd anger: the anger of being
absurd and having an absurd niece. What was all this about?
idiocy? But I couldn't answer myself. If it was an idiocy, she
seemed well rooted.
It was three days later that, barely had we emptied our cups,
we heard being born, and this time without a doubt approaching, the
irregular beating of familiar footsteps. I suddenly recalled this
first winter evening when these steps had been heard, six months earlier.
I thought: "It is raining today too." It had been raining hard since the
morning. A steady and relentless rain that drowned everything around and soaked
the very inside of the house has a cold and damp atmosphere. My
niece had covered her shoulders with a printed silk square where ten hands
worrying, drawn by Jean Cocteau, indicated each other
with sluggishness; I was warming my fingers on the stove of my pipe,
— and it was July!
The footsteps crossed the anteroom and began to make the... groan.
marches. The man was descending slowly, with an ever-increasing slowness.
growing, but not like one who hesitates: like one whose will
underwent an exhausting trial. My niece had raised her head and she looked at me
she fixed on me, during all this time, a look
transparent and inhumane of the great duke. And when the last step had
I shouted and a long silence followed, my niece's gaze flew away, I saw the...
eyelids heavy, the head tilting, and the whole body leaning against the backrest
from the armchair with weariness.
I don't believe this silence lasted more than a few seconds. But this
It lasted for long seconds. I seemed to see the man, behind the
door, the raised index finger ready to strike, and delaying, delaying the moment when,
with the simple gesture of striking, he was about to engage the future... Finally, he struck. And
it was neither with the lightness of hesitation nor the abruptness of shyness
defeated, there were three full and slow blows, the assured and calm blows
from a decision with no way back. I expected to see the door as before
would open immediately. But it remained closed, and then I was overwhelmed by a
uncontrollable agitation of the mind, where uncertainty was intertwined with questioning
opposing desires, and that each of the seconds that passed, me
it seemed, with an increasing urgency of cataract, only did
make it more confusing and hopeless. Should one respond? Why this
change? Why was he waiting for us to break a silence tonight
that he had previously shown by his attitude how much he approved of it
the salutary tenacity? What were this evening, — this evening, — the
commandments of dignity?
I looked at my niece, to fish for encouragement in her eyes or
a sign. But I only found her profile. She was looking at the button of the
door. She looked at him with that inhuman fixity of a great duke who
had already struck me, she was very pale and I saw, sliding on the teeth of which
a thin white line appeared, raising the upper lip in a
painful contraction; and me, in front of this suddenly revealed intimate drama
and who surpassed by such a height the benign torment of my hesitations, I
I lost my last strength. At that moment, two new blows were struck.
struck, — only two, two weak and quick blows, — and my niece
"He's going to leave..." in a low voice and so completely discouraged that
I do not wait any longer and say in a clear voice: "Come in, sir."
Why did I add: sir? To indicate that I was inviting the man.
and not the enemy officer? Or, on the contrary, to show that I was not unaware
had knocked and that it was indeed him that I was addressing? I did not
says. It doesn't matter. What remains is that I say: enter, sir; and he entered.
I imagined seeing him appear in civilian clothes and he was in uniform. I would say
he was more than ever in uniform, if that is understood
that it became clear to me that, this outfit, he had put on in the
hardly intended to impose the view on us. He had slammed the door shut on the
wall and he stood upright in the opening, so upright and so stiff that I was
almost doubting if I had the same man in front of me and that, for the
the first time, I took note of his surprising resemblance to the actor
Louis Jouvet. He remained thus for a few seconds, upright, stiff, and silent,
feet slightly apart and arms hanging expressionless at the sides
of the body, and the face so cold, so perfectly impassive, that it did not seem
so that the slightest feeling could inhabit him.
But I, who was sitting in my deep armchair and had my face in
height of his left hand, I saw that hand, my eyes were seized
by this hand and remained there as if chained, because of the spectacle
pathetic that it gave me and which pathetically denied all
the attitude of man...
I learned that day that a hand can, for those who know how to observe it, reflect
emotions as well as a face, — as well as and better than a face
because it escapes more from the control of will. And the fingers of this
they stretched and bent, pressed and clung to each other,
delivered the most intense mimicry while the face and the whole body
remained motionless and measured.
Then the eyes seemed to come alive, they looked at me for a moment,
I seem to be watched by a hawk, - with gleaming eyes between the
eyes wide apart and stiff, the eyelids both wrinkled and stiff of a
held by insomnia. Then they settled on my niece - and they did not
never left her again.
The hand finally came to a stop, all the fingers curled and tense in the
palm, the mouth opened (the lips separating made: "Pp...")
like the neck of an empty bottle), and the officer said, — his voice
was more deaf than ever:
I must address you with serious words.
My niece was facing him, but she was lowering her head. She was wrapping around
with her fingers the wool from a ball, while the ball was unraveling in
rolling on the carpet; this absurd work was undoubtedly the only one that could
still to agree with his abolished attention, — and spare him the shame.
The officer resumed, - the effort was so visible that it seemed it was to
price of his life:
Everything I have said these six months, everything the walls of this room
heard..." — he breathed, with an asthmatic effort, kept a
His chest swelled... "it is necessary..." He breathed: "it is necessary to forget it."
The young girl slowly let her hands fall into the fold of her skirt,
where they remained bent and inert like stranded boats
on the sand, and slowly she raised her head, and then, for the first time,
— for the first time — she offered the officer the gaze of her pale eyes.
He says (barely could I hear him): Oh what light! not even a
murmur; and as if indeed his eyes could not bear this
light, he hid them behind his wrist. Two seconds; then he let
to drop his hand, but he had lowered his eyelids and it was up to him
from now on to keep his eyes on the ground...
His lips went: "Pp..." and he pronounced,--the voice was dull, dull,
source:
I saw those victorious men.
Then, after a few seconds, in an even lower voice:
I spoke to them." And finally in a whisper, with a slowness
bitter
They laughed at me.
He looked up at me and nodded three times gravely.
Imperceptibly the head. The eyes closed, then:
They said: "You did not understand that we are fooling them?" They
They say that. Exactly. We are scamming them. They said: 'You do not suppose
not that we will foolishly let France recover at our expense
border? No?" They laughed very loudly. They joyfully hit me on the
Two looking at my face: "We are not musicians!"
His voice conveyed a dark disdain as he pronounced those last words.
I don't know if it reflected his own feelings towards others, or
the very tone of the words of these.
— So I spoke for a long time, with a lot of vehemence. They
They said: "Tst! Tst!" They said: "Politics is not a dream of
poet. Why do you suppose we went to war? For them
Old Marshal?" They laughed again: "We are not fools nor
Fools: we have the opportunity to destroy France, it will be done. Not
only its power: its soul too. Its soul above all. Its soul is the
greatest danger. This is our job right now: do not be mistaken
No, my dear! We will spoil it with our smiles and our attentiveness.
We will make her a crawling bitch.
He fell silent. He seemed out of breath. He was clenching his jaws with such
energy that I saw protruding from the cheekbones, and a vein, thick and
twisted like a worm, pounding at the temple. Suddenly the whole skin of
his face stirred, in a kind of subterranean shudder, — like
make a breeze on a lake; like, at the first bubbles, the film
of cream hardened on the surface of milk that we boil. And its eyes
hooked onto the pale and dilated eyes of my niece, and he said, in a tone
bass, uniform, intense and oppressive, with a burdensome slowness:
There is no hope." And in an even duller and more...
lower, and slower, as if to torture himself with this intolerable
Observation: "No hope. No hope." And suddenly, in a voice
unexpectedly high and strong, and to my clear and ringing surprise, like a
blast of the bugle, — like a cry: "No hope!"
Then, the silence.
I thought I heard him laugh. His forehead, furrowed and wrinkled, resembled a
grelin of mooring. His lips trembled, - sick lips at the same time
feverish and pale.
They blamed me, with a bit of anger: 'You see! You
See how much you love it! Here is the great Peril! But we will heal.
Europe of this plague! We will purge it from this poison!" They have taken everything from me.
explained, oh! they haven't left me in the dark. They flatter your writers,
but at the same time, in Belgium, in Holland, in all the countries
Our troops are occupying; they are already making the barrier. No French book...
can no longer be passed, - except for technical publications, manuals of
dioptric or cementation forms... But cultural works
general, none. Nothing!
Her gaze passed over my head, flying and bumping into the corners of
the room like a lost night bird. Finally, he seemed to find refuge
on the darkest shelves, — where Racine and Ronsard align,
Rousseau. His eyes remained fixed there and his voice resumed, with a
moaning violence
— Nothing, nothing, no one!" And as if we had not understood
Still, did not measure the enormity of the threat: "Not just your
modern! Not just your Péguy, your Proust, your Bergson... But everyone
the others! All of them! All! All! All!
His gaze swept once again over the softly shining bindings in
the twilight, like a desperate caress.
They will extinguish the flame completely! he shouted. Europe will no longer exist.
illuminated by this light!
And his hollow and deep voice made my chest vibrate to its very depths,
unexpected and striking, the cry whose final syllable lingered like a
trembling complaint:
Nevermore!
Silence fell once again. Once again, but this time,
how much more obscure and tense! Certainly, beneath the silences of yesteryear,
like, beneath the calm surface of the waters, the melee of beasts in the sea, —
I could feel the underwater life of hidden feelings bustling beneath me,
desires and thoughts that deny and struggle against each other. But beneath this, ah!
just a dreadful oppression...
The voice finally broke this silence. It was soft and unhappy.
I had a friend. He was my brother. We studied together.
We lived in the same room in Stuttgart. We had spent three
months together in Nuremberg. We did nothing without each other: I
I played my music in front of him; he read me his poems. He was sensitive and
romantic. But he left me. He went to read his poems in Munich, in front of
new companions. It was him who was constantly writing to me to come to them.
find. It is him I saw in Paris with his friends. I saw what they have.
make him!
He slowly shook his head, as if he had to refuse.
painful to some supplication.
He was the angriest! He mixed anger and laughter. At times he would...
looked with fervor and shouted: "It’s a venom! We must empty the beast of
It's poison!" At times it would give little jabs in my stomach.
about his index: "They are very afraid now, ah! ah! they
fear for their pockets and for their stomachs, — for their industry and
their business! They think only of that! The few others, we flatter them
and we put them to sleep, ha! ha!... It will be easy!" He laughed and his face became
All is rosy: 'We exchange their soul for a plate of lentils!'
Werner breathes:
I said: "Have you measured what you are doing? Did you
MEASURED?" He said: "Do you expect that this will intimidate us? Our
"Lucidity is of a different caliber!" I said: "Then you will seal this
tomb?— forever?" He said: "It's life or death. To conquer
suffices the Force: not to dominate. We know very well that an army
is nothing to dominate.
— "But at the cost of the Spirit! I shouted. Not at that price!" — "The Spirit does not
never dies, he says. He has seen others. He rises from his ashes. We
we must build for a thousand years: first we must destroy. " I
I was looking. I was looking deep into his clear eyes. He was sincere, yes.
That's the most terrible thing.
His eyes opened wide, — as if at the sight of something
abominable murder
They will do what they say!" he exclaimed as if we had not
You believe it. "With method and perseverance! I know these devils.
fierce!
He shook his head, like a dog suffering from its ear. A
a murmur passed between his clenched teeth, the moaning and violent "oh" of
the betrayed lover.
He had not moved. He was still motionless, stiff and upright in
the door frame, arms extended as if they had to carry
leaden hands; and pale, — not like wax, but like the
plaster of some dilapidated walls: gray, with whiter spots of
saltpeter.
I saw him slowly lean forward. He raised a hand. He threw it, the
palm underneath, fingers slightly bent, towards my niece, towards me. He/She it
contracted, he shook it a little while the expression on his face tightened.
with a kind of fierce energy. Her lips parted, and I believed
that he was going to deliver some kind of exhortation to us: I believed, - yes, I believed.
that he would encourage us to revolt. But not a word crossed his
lips. His mouth closed, and once again his eyes. He straightened up. His
hands climbed along the body, engaging at the level of the face in a
incomprehensible carousel, which resembled certain figures from dances
religious of Java. Then he took his temples and forehead, crushing his
eyelids under the elongated little fingers.
They told me: "It is our right and our duty." Our duty!
Happy is the one who finds with such simple certainty the path to his
duty!
His hands fell.
At the crossroads, they tell you: "Take that road there." He shook his head.
head. "However, this road, we do not see it rising towards the heights.
bright from the peaks, it is seen descending towards a sinister valley,
to sink into the foul darkness of a bleak forest!...Oh God!
Show me where MY homework is!
He says, — he almost shouted:
— It is the Combat, — the Great Battle of the Temporal against the
Spiritual!
He looked, with a lamentable fixity, at the sculpted wooden angel.
above the window, the ecstatic and smiling angel, glowing with tranquility
celestial.
Suddenly her expression seemed to relax. The body lost some of its
stiffness. His face tilted slightly towards the ground. He raised it back up:
I asserted my rights, he said casually. I asked for
join a division in the campaign. This favor has finally been granted to me:
Tomorrow, I am allowed to set off.
I thought I saw a ghost of a smile floating on his lips when he
precise
For hell.
His arm rose towards the East, - towards those vast plains where the wheat
the future will be nourished by corpses.
I thought: 'So he submits. This is all they know how to do.'
They all submit. Even that man.
My niece's face saddened me. It was of a lunar paleness. The
, lips, like the edges of an opaline vase, were parted, they
they sketched the tragic pout of Greek masks. And I saw, at the edge of
front and hair, not to be born, but to spring forth, - yes, to spring forth, - from the
pearls of sweat.
I do not know if Werner von Ebrennac saw it. His pupils, those of the
young girl, tied like, in the current, the boat to the ring of the
Rivers seemed to be held by a thread so tight, so stiff, that one would not have dared
pass a finger between their eyes. Ebrennac with one hand had grabbed the
door handle. On the other side, he held the doorframe. Without moving his
with regard to a line, he slowly pulled the door towards him. He said, — his voice was
strangely devoid of expression:
I wish you a good night.
I thought he was going to close the door and leave. But no. He was looking at me.
niece. He looked at her. He said, — he murmured:
Goodbye.
He did not move. He remained completely still, and in his face
motionless and tense, the eyes were even more motionless and tense,
attached to the eyes, - too open, too pale, - of my niece. This lasted,
hard, — how long? — lasts until finally, the young girl
Werner's eyes sparkled.
I heard:
Goodbye.
One had to have been waiting for this word to hear it, but finally I heard it.
Von Ebrennac also heard it, and he straightened up, and his face and all his
bodies seemed to doze off as after a relaxing bath.
And he smiled, so that the last image I had of him was a
smiling image. And the door closed and his footsteps faded into the background.
the house.
He had left when, the next day, I went down to take my cup of
morning milk. My niece had prepared lunch, as every day.
She served me in silence. We drank in silence. Outside shone through
from the mist a pale sun. It seemed to me that it was very cold.
October 1941.
THAT DAY
 The little boy put his small hand in that of his father without
to be surprised. Yet it had been a long time, he thought. They left the garden.
Mom had placed a pot of geraniums on the kitchen window.
Every time dad would go out. It was a little funny.
It was nice out — there were clouds, but shapeless and all frayed,
we didn't want to look at them. So the little boy looked at the tip
from their little shoes that chased the pebbles of the road.
Dad said nothing. Usually, he got angry when he heard that noise.
He said, "Lift your feet!" and the little boy lifted his feet for a moment,
and then slyly he began again little by little to drag them, a little
on purpose, he didn't know why. But this time dad said nothing, and the
little boy stopped dragging his feet. He continued to look at
Earth: it worried her that dad said nothing.
The road ventured under the trees. Most were still without
leaves. Some were a bit green, small leaves of a green
very clean and very clear. We even wondered if they weren't a
slightly sweet. Further on the road turned, we would see the Great View, on the
Grésivaudan, the great rock that drops steeply, and down there at the bottom
the very small trees, the very small houses, the roads like
scratches, the Isère that winds under a light, light mist. We
he would stop and we would look. Dad would say: "Look at the little train," or
good: "Do you see the little black spot, there, moving on the road? It's a
car. There are people inside. Four people, a lady with a small
dog, and a man with a big beard." The little boy would say:
“How do you see them?” — “I had a little grafted on.”
glasses in the left eye, you know, dad would say. Look, he would say in
"Glaring his eye, don't you see her?" And him, since he is not very...
sure whether it is true or not: "Well... not very well..." Maybe at
at that moment dad would laugh and take him on his shoulders, one leg of
each side.
 But dad distractedly gazed at the Great View and didn't even stop.
He was holding his little boy's small hand tightly in his.
So that when we passed a little further near the place where the edge
the boy climbs and descends the ditch, he could not let go of his father to
climb the small slope saying: "Look, dad, I'm growing... I
I am growing... Look, I am taller than you... and now
I'm shrinking... I'm shrinking... I'm shrinking..." It bothered him a little because he
was very attached to the rites. It was a walk that resembled
not quite to others.
A little further away, there was the square stone rock. We would sit there.
Usually. He wondered if this time they would sit down. The rock of
The square stone was approaching and the little boy wondered if they would sit down.
He was a little afraid that we wouldn't sit down. A little bit afraid, really, of
the true fear. He gently pulled on his father's hand when they were
very close.
Fortunately, dad let himself be pulled and they sat down. They said nothing,
but often, sitting on this stone, dad said nothing. Sometimes
only (when it was very hot): "Phew! that feels good."
Today it wasn't very warm. The only unnatural thing
it was that dad still didn't let go of the little hand. Usually, here,
dad let go of his hand, and the little boy, who didn't like to sit still
A long time ago, climbed under the trees and looked for pine cones.
Sometimes strawberries, but there weren't often strawberries.
They remained seated and the little boy didn't move at all. It was
Same attention not to swing the legs. Why? Didn't know.
it was because dad was holding his hand like that. He couldn't even
no – he didn't even want to think about pine cones, about strawberries.
Moreover, there were surely no strawberries and then, the pine cones,
it's not that funny.
But, not to move, he became a little scared again. Oh! not
a lot, just a little, just a tiny bit, like when we are
lying down and hearing things crack in the dark, but that we
I also understand dad and mom talking in their room. He was
content that Dad held his hand, because that way we are less afraid, but
because he was afraid precisely because dad was holding his hand... so the
little boy, for the first time during one of these walks,
would have really liked to come back home.
As if his father had heard him, he stood up, the little boy stood up, stood up.
asking whether we would go in or if we would go like the other times to the
small bridge, over the Grisonne. He didn't quite know what he preferred. One
head towards the little bridge, then, so much the better.
On the bridge, they watched the torrent (dad called it the stream) flow by.
gurgling between the stones that look like large dragées. A
One day, dad brought him a small bag filled with tiny stones.
like that and they were candies. A long time ago, it was even
before Christmas, he couldn't even remember well. In any case since that
At that time he had never had any candy, and he loved it very much.
looking at the stones of the torrent, it seemed to please him
eyes like candy to the tongue.
Dad says:
Since the time this water has been flowing...
The little boy thought it was funny. Of course it had been sinking since.
a long time. It was already flowing the first time they came.
Moreover, we wouldn't have built a bridge if there hadn't been any water.
And when your little boy, says daddy, has a big beard
white, it will sink again. It will never stop sinking, says dad
looking at the water. It is a comforting thought, says dad again, but, it
he could see, it was not for his little boy, it was for himself.
They stayed for a very, very long time looking at the water, and then finally we left.
return. They took the path of the hedgehog, the little boy called it like
that's since they found a hedgehog there. It was climbing a bit. We
passed in front of the wooden fountain, the one where, in a trough made of a ball
From the hollowed oak, falls the stream of water so clear, to the sound of a crystal
yes pure, that it makes you thirsty just looking at it. But it was not very
hot.
At the very top, the path turned a bit and went down the other side.
from the hill. From the very top, we could see the house. We could see it very well.
What was most visible was the kitchen window, with the pot of
geranium all green and orange in the sun, and mom was behind but
we couldn't see her.
But dad must have been tired, because before reaching the top, he
sat down. Usually, we never sat on this tree trunk. He sat down and
He pulls his little boy between his knees. He says: "Aren't you tired?"
"No," said the little boy. Dad was smiling, but it was only on one side of his face.
mouth. He was caressing her hair, her cheek. He breathed very deeply and said: "It
You have to be very, very good with your mommy," and the little boy nodded.
head, but he found nothing to say. "A good little boy," he said again.
Dad, and he got up. He took his little boy under the armpits and lifted him up.
up to his face and kissed him twice on both cheeks, and he handed him back.
on the ground and said in a firm voice: "Let's go." They set off again.
they arrived at the top and saw the garden wall, the two larches, the house,
the kitchen window.
The geranium pot... it was no longer there.
The little boy immediately saw that the geranium pot was no longer in the
kitchen window. Dad too, surely. Because he stopped as he tightened
the little hand in his, stronger than ever, and he says: "There it is, I
I had my suspicions.
He remained motionless, watching, watching, repeating: "Good gods,
how could I... since I knew it, since I knew it...
The little boy would have liked to ask something, but he could not.
not because dad was shaking his hand so hard.
And he began to feel sick to his stomach, like the day he had eaten.
too much chestnut puree.
Then dad says: "Come here," and instead of going down they went back to
their footsteps, walking very fast. 'Where are we going, dad? Where is it
Where are we going?" said the little boy, and he felt a pain in his heart like on that day.
chestnut puree.
— At Madame Bufferand's, said dad. He had a funny voice, a
voice like that of the postman the day a car had pushed him and he was
fell off the bicycle. "She is very kind, says dad, you know her, you
staying at her place.
The little boy would have liked to ask why, but daddy him
he shook his hand too hard, he couldn't bring himself to ask it. Was it because
From that, he felt more and more sick at heart. So much so that he would have liked to...
lying on the ground, like the day of chestnut puree, but dad him
shook hands so tightly, and yet we were going too fast, and
now he had a pain in his heart, not just in his heart, but pain in the
heart everywhere, in the stomach, in the legs, if it weren't silly to say
that we have pain in our hearts in our legs.
When Mrs. Bufferand, who was very old and all wrinkled, saw them
Both of them, she crossed her hands over her chest and said: "My God!..."
Dad said: "Yes, here it is," and they entered. And then when they were inside
the small room that smelled of cinnamon the little boy could no longer resist and he
lie down on the carpet.
He could no longer hear very well what was being said. It was too dark to
to be able to listen. Mrs. Bufferand was speaking, speaking, in a soft voice
broken, he heard it as if in a dream.
 Dad lifted the little boy and placed him on a bed. He stroked his cheek.
hair, a long time, and he hugged her very tightly and for a long time, tighter and
longer than usual in the evening. And then Mrs. Bufferand to him
he gave a suitcase, kissed Mrs. Bufferand, and he left. And
Madame Bufferand came to take care of the little boy, she put him a
wet handkerchief on her head, she prepared chamomile for him. He saw well
as she cried, she wiped her tears as they came, but it was
still saw.
***
The next day, he was playing with the cubes, he heard
Madame Bufferand who was speaking in the dining room. The cubes had to
to represent the portrait of a gentleman with a ruff and a hat
feather. The eye and the hat were still missing. The little boy got up and
with his ear against the keyhole, which was just at his height in
rising on tiptoes. He couldn't hear very well because
the ladies did not speak loudly, they whispered. Madam
Buffer was talking about the station. Yes, she said, yes, he too: he was trying to
to see his wife in a compartment, they recognized her. Great
Gods, said the other lady, he must have been unable to resist... No, said
Madam Bufferand, he couldn't, who could have? He was saying everything.
time "it's my fault, it's my fault!" And then we talked about him, the little one
boy. Fortunately, the lady said, fortunately that madam
Bufferand was there. Mrs. Bufferand replied with words, but something
she wet her whisper and it could not be understood.
The little boy returned to his block games. He sat on the ground and
search for the one with an eye. He was crying silently, the tears
were flowing and he could not hold them back. He found the cube with the eye and the
put it in its place. The hat was easier. He sniffled while trying not to
don’t make a sound, one of the tears dripped from the corner of the mouth, he picked it up
with a lick, she was salty. The nib, that was the most boring part,
one never knew if she was right side up or upside down. A tear,
fell on the pen, slid, hesitated, remained suspended like a drop
of dew.
THE DREAM
 Has it never troubled you? When, in the days
happy, lying in the sun on the warm sand, or in front of a capon
that watered a solid Burgundy, or again in the animation of one of those
stimulating and free words around a 'black' smelling of good coffee, it
Do you ever think that these simple joys were not such a thing?
natural. And that you make yourself think of populations in India
or elsewhere, dying of cholera. Or to Central Chinese succumbing
to famine by villages; or to others that the Nipponese massacred, or
tortured, to send them to spend their days in the home of a
locomotive.
Did it not torment you, not being able to give them
more than a thought - was it even a thought? Was it more than a
vague imagination? A phantasmagoria much less substantial than this
sweet warmth of the sun, the scent of Burgundy, the excitement of the
controversy. And yet it existed somewhere, you knew it, you...
you even had evidence: undeniable accounts, photographs.
You knew it and you sometimes made efforts to feel something.
more than a brain revolt, efforts to 'share'. They
were vain. You felt trapped in your skin like in a
sealed wagon. Impossible to get out.
It sometimes tormented you and you looked for excuses.
"Too far," you thought. If only those things had happened.
in Europe! They came there: first to Spain, at our borders. And
they occupied your mind more. Your heart too. But as for
"to feel", as for "to share"... The scent of your chocolate,
morning, the taste of fresh croissant, as they had more presence...
You withdrew to France, to Paris, a bit like one says:
we will fight on the Marne, on the Seine, on the Loire... Soon this
they were your own friends from whom each day taught you
imprisonment, deportation or death... You felt
cruelly these blows. But what more? You stayed locked up, double
all, in your windowless carriage. And the sun in the street, the warmth
From an alcove, the thin ham from the black market continued to have for
you a presence otherwise more real than the death cries of those whose
somewhere they were burning the feet and hands.
Yet, I have sometimes managed to break free from this sordid solitude.
Imagination, powerless in the waking state, takes on a...
miraculous power. The imagination? Perhaps. Let's call it that, if
you want. I have other ideas about it. I saw things in a dream
strange, that neither imagination nor unconscious life can
explain. Things that were happening while I was dreaming them, to some
thousands of miles away. No proof, of course, there are never any proofs in
similar matter. But what I experienced, in certain circumstances of
sleep is for me the very sufficient proof of the existence of a vast
diffuse conscience, a sort of universal and floating consciousness, to
which we sometimes participate in during sleep, on certain nights
favored. Those nights, we really step out of the lead wagon, we
we can finally see beyond the embankment...

***
One of those nights, I was walking through a bare countryside. I was walking
with difficulty. The sky was excessively low, and hung in pieces, by
torn tongues that lay on the ground and clung
among the brambles. I was looking for my way among them, avoiding crossing them.
because I was immediately lost in an opaque fog, the thickness
was still being felt through a heavy resistance. I had to push them
before me, to raise them like heavy curtains of pale damask. I
I was exhausting myself and making little progress. The ground was black. It was damp and
spongy. The footsteps were marked there, by a slight depression at first, which
soon filled with a sooty water where debris swam
burnt mousse and rotten wood. A strange smell hung in the air, which was not
not that of humus or corruption, a composite smell that wafted
the pus and the sweat. It made me feel disgusted and anxious. I walked with difficulty
and began to find my own tracks. Was I going in circles then? I
tend to steer myself away, to follow a straight direction. But I always
I found my tracks, more and more hurried. Soon I was trampling on a
black and icy mud where the traces intertwined as if thousands
of men would have made them.
Yet I was alone. It seemed to me that I was dragging a solitude behind me.
secular. All that I had that could perhaps break it was a memory:
Before being here, I must have crossed a river, no doubt. And two
swans, two black swans had, I believe, risen at my approach. I
I remembered poorly, but I remembered their immense shadowy form,
while they passed over my head. I remembered the sound of their
fly, that of the wind in their feathers, and this icy breath on my forehead. This
souvenir also made me anxious.
I do not know when I became aware of no longer being alone. We were walking
in front of me. I wanted to go faster, catch up with this elusive shape. I did not
you never saw it clearly, there was constantly a language between us of
mist or another. At times, everything faded away, leaving in my
heart an atrocious void. Then I saw him again, a little dancing and
lanky, grayish, and silent.
Suddenly she was by my side. She walked close to me, from
not even that I did, weakly and silently. I noticed that it was the
the body of a man, dreadfully thin. His face was pale and square, he
smiled strangely. His arm extended in front of me with a long hand.
bony, as if to designate something to me.
I do not see, I said.
I wasn't talking to a stranger. I mean, it wasn't a
unknown to me, at that moment. We knew each other very well and
All sorts of common memories connected us. So I asked him:
What are you showing me? I see nothing.
He did not respond but shook his bony hand, his index finger extended,
with a bit of impatience.
— But do answer, I exclaimed.
Then he turned toward me his strange smiling face, lunar and ravaged.
He opened his mouth and I saw the horrible twisted, shriveled, black tongue and
torn, curling like a cooked snail. And I recalled that in
the effect it had burned her with a brand. I saw her trembling like that
of a jar that wants to bite. This supreme effort to speak was pathetic
and intolerable. It fills me with a kind of disgust that could not
overcome neither pity nor anger. I turned away and wanted to take to
witness two other human forms that were slowly passing by me
awkward, but the sight of these men took my breath away. They were so
so emaciated that I could not understand where they found the strength to endure
the load they were carrying, a huge T-shaped iron, rough and rusty, which
tore at their shoulder. They walked in silence, with a slowness
hesitant and macabre, and I could only hear their breath like a
intermittent moaning. The first one was leaning forward with a head whose
skull seemed enormous above the face where the skin stuck to the bone. It
had a depression in the nape bordered by two tendons where one could have
clench the fist. The short black hair had taken on a shade
dusty. Sweat stuck them in places, and in others they had
left room for bare skin, a sort of bald patch where had formed some
crusts, some of which were bleeding. His companion was shorter.
The iron weighed heavily on his shoulder and was cruelly bruising him.
his face was covered with a thousand little wrinkles, like a half-inflated child's balloon
deflated. The skin was the color of ash. The eyes stood out to the point
that we expected them to roll, like marbles, and the white was
all branded. I also saw that one of its ears was half detached from the
skull, separated from him by a bloody gutter, running between two
frizzy and oozing lips. They both passed like shadows,
but others were following them. My feet feel like they weigh a hundred kilos and nothing
could not have made me move forward a step. I saw a half-naked torso, under
rags, the sides rose and fell like a bellows,
and under the stomach that seemed to have subsided so much that it was hollow, the effort
distended the abdomen, and one could see rolling under the fabric, with each step,
worrying soft sizes. I saw a man whose body was still
obese and white while the arms and legs were already skeletal
and bluish. His eyes were pale and almost blind in a ring
ink color, and although the cold froze my bones, her hair, her
shirt was glued with sweat. Another would have seemed almost normal, if the
nose, the temples, the ears would not have been covered with hard veins
like those of a leaf. A slightly inflamed nostril had enlarged.
in a strange way, as if a mouse had come to gnaw on it during the
night. Another, whose collarbones formed two deep salt shakers,
was painfully pushing in front of him a huge belly that seemed to have
tumbled between the thighs. Another one had lymph nodes at the armpit so
swelling, as if they had spread under the skin
like entrails. All had a strange, blurry skin like
sour milk, dirty wax from the earth, excoriated by scabs,
truths, of buds, as if the organism had revolted, had wanted
protester, to make oneself heard by these red cries or these moans
bluish-white.
Their age? I couldn't say. All ages probably, but
how to know? At that moment I would have said: "Old, very old," but
as soon as I would have regained my composure. There were surely some very young ones.
you see again, emerging from the mist, that striking face... Those lips
fines, fragile, painfully ajar on small teeth very
whitened, of which several were missing. And all around, this skin color
of zinc, cracked like that of an old peasant... These three wrinkles
deep ones on which soft blonde curls fell... And these
sunken eyes, dilated, in ochre and wrinkled eyelids like a
delicate tissue paper that has been used for a long time... Another one still had
a completely white and smooth forehead, like one only has at sixteen years old. But there-
Below, the face seemed to have undergone an inexplicable catastrophe.
eyes revealed only a feverish pupil, drowned in a
conjunctive red as a wound. The mouth, bloodless, was collapsing
between two flaming parentheses that dug into the cheeks, from the nose to
chin. But the neck was still fragile, smooth and supple like that of a
girl.
The fog had lifted. I could now see the countryside around me.
of me, if we can call this a campaign: a barely circus
hilly, one side of which ran off to get lost in a dirty fog,
where others rose towards shapeless hills. This black earth,
muddy and crumbled, everywhere. Not a tree. Not a scrap of greenery where
the eye rests. The sky black as the earth. In a depression that it
I had to call a valley, I distinguished some constructions.
geometric, black like the sky and the earth, and sadder, more
funeral still being in ranks. In rows of ten, about thirty in
each rank, I thought, should shelter two dozen thousand
of men. In the middle, a taller construction, once white,
with a brick chimney that was once red but has become blackish
like the rest, like the smoke it was spewing. That is where I was going.
I started walking again. It was still far and my heart was so heavy!
ground stuck to my feet, and my gazes, wherever they fell, did not
met only these famished groups, these emaciated shadows,
crushed under various loads that they were carrying in this
gloomy silence... Stacks of beams, bags of cement, girders
of iron... There were other forms as well, dressed in black, those were sturdy.
and alerts. These men wore nothing but a stick. They were going
among the groups, ensuring that there was no halt. Along a
embankment I came across one of those pitiful carriages. The man, behind,
had let himself fall, had dropped the end of the beam he was carrying. He
was lying flat, the figure in the muddy ground. Its
the companion in front of him, standing, hunched, motionless, seemed to bear his cross,
and did not move, he was not looking, he was probably not thinking, he
looked like those poor, dazed horses that wait, their heads drooping,
the whip that will make them start again. Meanwhile, a black man,
rushed, tried to lift the exhausted man with blows of a stick. I was
overcome with nausea, it seemed to me that the man could only let himself be
die from the blows. But no. He lifted his emaciated carcass, he
Souleva even the beam, and the harness started off again, staggering. A little more
a man alone, bent under a sack heavier than him, skeleton
covered with a waxy and flabby skin, the heels raw moistening the
the edge of worn-out shoes stained with blood and mood, vomited in
merchant, or rather tried to vomit a stingy bile that flowed along the
of the neck and throat. His stomach was contracting in horrible spasms, and a
the black man was giving him heartburn with blows of a stick in the
reins.
There were men less exhausted. Those still had a
regard. Was it more bearable? One could only read distress and fear.
We could not yet see their bones beneath the skin, but it was already taking
a wrinkled, grainy, and pale aspect, which announced the decline in
march. One could guess the swelling that would soon become edema,
redness that would soon become ulcers, lividities that would soon
would swell with pus. I don't know if it wasn't even more poignant to see them
to see more or less healthy and to know what would become of them. I was moving forward.
I was terribly cold. I don't know if it was the cold wind or the sorrow, my
eyes were shedding tears that slid hotly down my face.
I moved forward. Near a pile of cement bags lay a miserable body, a
somewhat curled up. It was clear that he was dead. A black man him
he was turning it over with the tip of his stick, like one turns a stranded jellyfish
on the sand, with a half indifferent, half disgusted air. I saw the face,
that death had cleansed of its impurities, and which was beautiful – which had
found her beauty again. I would have liked to run away, but I couldn’t.
could only walk heavily. And I had to walk in circles. Because it
I think it's fine to meet this funeral couple several times, the black man.
taunting with the tip of his stick, with a blase contempt, the lifeless body at his
feet. I moved forward. As I passed through a bog, I stepped on something
of mine. My heart jumped and I jumped. It was a hand. The palm
with one hand. That hand belonged to a man lying on his back,
the arms crossed. The emaciated face moved a little and the eyes rested on
my vague gaze. It was a bit as if I were being looked at by a
marine beast, like by an octopus. Oh! it was intolerable. I
could not have touched that man, no, for anything in the world. And I
I moved away, continued on my way, struggling to push my heavy feet.
Yet I could not avoid hearing, behind me, the noise of the stick on
the bones.
I must see many other things that my memory has let slip away. I
I remember a group, some distance from the huts, about a hundred.
men half-visible in the smoke that the wind was driving away by
fragments. They were in line, at attention, a bad suitcase or
a large bundle at their feet, poorly shod feet that were macerating in the
icy mud. They seemed valid, although they were all curiously.
pale, like those endives that we cultivate in a cellar. Only the ears
were red under the breeze, and all these pairs of ears were of a
gloomy comic. Since when had they been there? There were holes in
In their ranks, some had fallen, they were left where they had fallen.
The immobility of the others was astonishing in the agile smoke, she
was explained by the presence of a few black men who were wandering around,
the stick under the arm, rubbing his hands to warm them up. I them
I exceeded. Does it always come like this, I wondered, always others?
And where do we put them? And suddenly I remembered the dead, and the others, and the
number that I had seen sewn on the shoulder of the mute man, one hundred sixty
a thousand and some, and how much for these shacks? thirty thousand at most, and
then a stream of smoke descended upon me, and took me by the throat, and I breathed
a smell so atrocious that my body was covered in goosebumps, a smell
of sulfur a little, but another as well, an abominable smell of bones
burned and decayed. And I looked in horror at the construction
grayish and its ghostly chimney in its smoke finery, and I
caught in a terrified shiver their sinister meaning.
Here my memory falls into a hole. Like this smoke and my
dread would be a harmful mixture and that my conscience would have succumbed. It
It seems to me that I have long evolved in this smoke. And yet,
yes, I revisit things - islands of deserted memories. I see my
companion with a burned tongue. His square, white, tortured face and that
always offers me that secret and icy smile – and I understand well
now that it was Yorick's smile. And he shows me the palm of
his hands, burned like his tongue, covered with suppurating blisters and
of bloody and darkened rags. And he smiles, he smiles. I remember
another man running, and I wonder how he can run
with these huge, deformed, and injured feet, and these legs like two
Tricks, articulated around the bulky knee like a transmission
on click; and yet he runs, and I hear his panting as I pass
, hoarse, hurried, I do not know if it betrays breathlessness or fear. There is
also this child that I hold, sobbing, in my arms. Who was it? I
I no longer know. I only see myself holding him tight, pressed against me. I
mix my sobs with hers. There is always this smoke, and in the
child's hair I see the vermin running. And I encountered again the
men online, but much later, after many hours. The
the daylight has changed and darkened. It's me who runs, this time, I
run past, and they are still there, feet in the mud, motionless
in the tears of the smoke mixed with the winter wind. Their ranks have
still clarified. And they no longer have red ears. All the skin that we
Look, the hands, the face, the ears, are the same bluish color. And I have
reviewed finally, one last time, my first companion. We take him away on
a stretcher. A sheet completely covers his stiff body. Yet I
you see, under the shroud, his pale face, his face that smiles. But, oh! this
is no longer the same smile. Now that he is dead, he has
lost the smile of Yorick. That smile is happy, and I know that it is to
meant for him, as a fraternal sign, as a message
of hope.
And then...
How did this happen? Like in a dream. In a dream, there is no
of comment. Now, I was one of those men. I am not.
become: I was it. Always. I was no longer that spectator who sometimes
looked at them with petrified pity. I had never been that way. I was
only one of those men. I was dragging my load, like them, and
my body in ruins, like theirs. I had no other memories than my
fatigue and my pain. No other memories than those that had been
registered, day after day, those who were registering hour by hour in
my flesh. Everything I had of consciousness was reduced to these two
the one where my charge tore my skin, crushed the bone, the one where my
my entrails seemed to have become so heavy that they weighed down on the bottom
belly to break. If I had a desire, it was only the desire
unbearable, endless, the only desire to lie down and die.
But I knew of an animal science, of a horse science in his
stretchers, that I could neither lie down, nor die... For man
is not alone in his skin, he hosts a beast that wants to live, and I had
I learned long ago that, if I had happily accepted the stick of
black men would kill me on the spot, the beast, it would rise again under the blows,
like the half-dead mouse, the shattered kidneys, still tries to escape from
his torturer. I knew it and it made my awful fatigue and my
atrocious desire even more atrocious and cruel.
And if at the bottom of this well, at the bottom of this inexhaustible hell, if at
at the bottom of this torn stupor I had a thought – if I had one left
sentiment, it was the bitter heartbreak, it was the tearing, it was the
despairing desert and icy knowledge that people, around the world, of the
men like us, with a head and a heart, know our
existence and our life, and that they lead their own lives, their affairs
of silver, love, and table, that they advance each day among the
things and in time without dedicating to us even a coin of concern. And that
there are others, yes, there are others, others who sometimes
smiling at us - and that thought makes us smile.
November 1943.
IMPOTENCE
 In memory of Benjamin Crémieux

We are more or less sensitive, aren't we, to the misfortunes of others.

My friend Renaud has always been extreme. That is why I
I love him, even if it often happens that I misunderstand him.
I have known him for so long that it is difficult for me to imagine a
a part of my life without him, - without him being more or less involved in it.
Yet I remember when I saw him for the first time. When he is
entered, long and thin, with that look he had, both surprised and attentive,
in Father Clopart's class. He says his name, and I understood:
"Rémoulade." Clopart must have heard it that way himself because he made it so.
repeat. I heard 'Rémoulade' again, and in the early days I...
His name was sincerely given. In fact, he was called Houlade — Renaud.
Houlade. He was swallowing his syllables a bit.
He was seated two or three rows behind me. So he could see very well.
the comrade who, in front of him, playfully grabbed me by the collar of my
he shook me like one shakes a plum tree. And I let go,
instead of plums, a flurry of ink drops that went to stain
the notebooks of my two neighbors. This was followed by a hubbub in which I was held
for responsible, and the minute after I was busy, in the hallway, at
to listen to the footsteps and try to recognize if, among them, there is not
would not get along with those of the director. I had a heart all boiling with
the injustice that was done to me.
Then the classroom door opened again and I saw come out
Rémoulade. He came to me smiling. A somewhat strange smile: at the same time
tense and mocking, - a mix of indignation and triumph. He says:
I got kicked out at the door.
You too? On purpose?
— Yes, he said. I couldn't possibly, could I, spill the beans
friend. But I could tolerate even less what was done to you. So here it is:
I was thrown out at the door.
I forgot how he went about it. (I think he had, all
simply, whistled a little tune.) But I haven't forgotten that our friendship
date of this day, — not because he did this for me (he did not me
did not know), but because of the character that his act suggested.
I was deeply aware of the gravity of such an act committed as soon as
her entrance to school, the risk bravely taken of being forever marked
like a "bad head." In truth, he showed himself that day as he
carried all his life: always ready to bear the weight on his own shoulders
of any injustice, - always ready to pay for it himself
sins of the world.
One imagines what those four years must have been like for him that France has.
passed into the depths of the catacombs. It's not once, but ten times, that he has
to prevent him from committing some irreparable folly. He wanted to
to wear the yellow star, to voluntarily take hostages. He ends up understanding.
the vanity of these revolts. Others have suffered, have starved. Him
was growing thinner, consumed by suppressed rage. No need to tell you that he
throws himself into the resistance with all his might. It is a miracle that he is still
in life. But the activity, the dangers faced did not extinguish this fire within him
of imagination that fed each day with a new pasture.
I had gotten into the habit of seeing him daily in his
Neuilly Pavilion. It did him good. I served as an outlet for him to
everything that overflowed from his troubled heart. I made myself, more than one
Sometimes, dealing with all the names. Then he felt better.
That day, I was the bearer of a lamentable message. Throughout the
path, I had hesitated to teach it to him.
There was a lot of cowardice in my hesitations, since it was necessary
although the thing was told to him one day. When I crossed his door, I
I had taken myself back and decided.
If I had known... but I didn't know. He didn't say anything to me when I arrived: I
learned of the repugnant massacre of the village of Oradour only later. He
had had in his hands, that very morning, this strange report
prefectural, with a sinister simplicity, which circulated for a while then
missing. And which was not followed by any official protest. I suppose —
I am sure he was waiting for me to burst. He was very, very pale. But
I was too tormented myself by what I had to say to take it.
watch. He saw my distress, and then he waited.
I received news from... (I coughed)... bad news.
 It took me some time to gather my courage. Finally, I was able to
to admit
— ... By Bernard Meyer.
He only says: 'Ah', as one would say: 'Here we are'. He had the
profoundly closed face. I did not expect him to show this
glacial calm. I was expecting some frantic activity. Not that Bernard
Meyer was, for him and for me, what one calls a friend. But all the
the world loved her. All those who, closely or distantly, had approached 'the
"box" could only love it, — except for the mediocre and the
envious. He had provided more services to everyone and each person than anyone else.
on earth. Had those who could have done everything possible for it
pulling from Drancy? Renaud and I knew well that it was not. And we
we knew well why, — and that it was not shining.
He is dead, I said, and Renaud's cold, fixed gaze did not help me.
hardly to speak. In Silesia, in his camp, I continued with a
meritorious constancy. And after a long interval, I finally added the two
terrible little words, the two words whose meaning we now know.
summary of suffering, torture, and horrors, the laconic words
what the death notice said: extreme weakness...
Renaud says nothing. He was still looking at me. And I knew that the image of
Bernard Meyer floated between us, that of the Bernard that we
known airplanes, — this long white face; these eyes both lively and
dreamers, this legendary beard that everything that writes and thinks in the
the world had known for a few days this warm accent full of sunshine... — and
that of the miserable, desperate face he had to drag into death...
"Of extreme weakness"... I felt those two words, so horrifically
suggestive for anyone who knows the martyrdom of those camps, to make their
path in the soul of Renaud.
...a tale unfold, whose lightest word
Would torment your soul; chill your youthful blood;
[2]
Make your two eyes, like stars, leap from their orbits
The long minutes of heavy silence that followed, I did not
I won't forget. It was hot, the shutters were three-quarters closed.
to save what could be of a dying freshness... An insect –
Wasp or bumblebee – kept banging against the skylight with stubbornness
absurdity of a fatal misunderstanding... Renaud had said nothing, not a single
mood. Crouched at the back of the couch, he was looking at me. Could he see me? It was a
stone gaze. Everything about him was marble: his tight lips, his nose
thin, her forehead softly shining, illuminated by a vague reflection, — the
a slightly green glow of a ray passing through the trees...
I don't quite know how I ended up outside. The truth is that
I had fled: hardly had I stammered something concerning the
necessity to inform others. I felt like the defeated one of a
strange fight. Like someone who has prepared, who has tensed his strength in
to resist the furious assault of an opponent, and that suddenly he
kiss while crying.
But, while I was slowly walking under the sun, the truth
confusingly began to appear to me: some element was to me
Cache, it is in some already wounded place that I must have struck Renaud.
My distress then turned into worry. I knew too well
Renaud, so as not to imagine what internal blast must have enveloped this.
ferocious silence. I was a little scared. Oh! I was not thinking of anything
really tragic, — but to someone of these thoughtless gestures and,
especially, unpredictable...
My memory drifted from one recollection to another... When he suddenly
left the Sorbonne, abandoning his oral exams for the baccalaureate, because we had
"stuck" You would die... The steps I had taken with my father by
a day as hot as this one, to make Renaud rise (artilleryman)
in Rennes) of a commitment to the Legion, — because a juicy sadist
he martyrs a poor dazed guy... And this abandonment (of the day to
the next day) of a discreet but severe elegance for a laxity of
sweaters and sandals, - because he had acquired proof that a man
Admired, a wealthy bourgeois from a notable family, was nothing but a Tartuffe.
without scruples...
I turned back. Yes, the last memory swept away of him,
immobile, pale and stubbornly silent on his corner of the sofa, seemed to me
suddenly the prodrome of one of those impulsive and baroque strikes. I do not
I hardly deceived myself.
I found him in his garden. He had already piled up branches and
branches, with debris of crates, splinters of boards and
wood paneling, in view of I don't know what bonfire. And on that began to
the treasures hard gathered during his life would pile up,
salt of his life: books, objects, paintings... My heart leapt at the sight of those
that I recognized: the corner of a retable shutter that was probably not
by Memling, but certainly from the school of Bruges. A small marine
turbulent by Jules Noël, romantic symphony of grays and blues
deep. From another canvas, I could only see the back, but I...
I recognized the frame, — that of a "dwarf" (by Picasso) of which he told me
seemed to see the melancholic face, full of sweetness. A small box
of lemon tree, very simple, but which contained, I knew, a quantity of
old and lovely lace. And this strange belt that must have
bind some courtesan to a wasp waist, sixteen slim plates
of ivory where a charming artist had painted sixteen small scenes of
loves of Zeus... All of this swam, with many objects moving less quickly
recognized, among the books. And I saw that he had not chosen. That he had
Poured haphazardly the most humble and rare editions. Some
dog-eared volumes, half-unbound from being read, were nearby
with the original Illuminations, the anonymous tales of Nodier in
a comical romantic cardboard, The Princess of Cleves in binding
of the time. I recognized the Hugo he inherited from his father, the Proust to which
was missing, like an eye, the love of Swann, the Conrads and the Woolfs of
Tauchnitz, all those books that I had so often leafed through and borrowed.
Dominating everything, a small bronze hand, the hand long, flexible,
delicate and fine of a Buddha from Nepal, seemed to silently offer its
desperate protest. When I arrived, Renaud was emptying his arms of everything
a burden of Balzac. I called out to him from the threshold.
He turned around. Those gray and shining eyes, burning and icy, like I
He knew them! He lowered his forehead in a movement of a young bull.
Well? he said. I could see his jaws moving, and I could feel him
stretched on his legs, like ready to pounce. I approached.
— Listen, Renaud... I began, raising a hand. He jumped up.
Indeed, he spread his arms, blocked my way. I wanted to take his wrist,
But he pulled away with a sudden gesture. "Renaud, I pleaded, listen to me.
To what madness again...
-- Folly? he launched. He shoved his hands into his pockets and left.
laugh. It was a forced, mechanical, violent, and pitiful laugh. Madness, you say!
Crazy, really... You're not crazy, YOU. Oh! No, not at all. He me
looked at me as if he hated me.
I understood that if I didn't speak very quickly he would take me by the
shoulders, push me outside.
— Renaud, Renaud, I exclaimed, you are not keeping your cool. Wait.
Listen to me. What are you going to do? What is the point of this holocaust? Who are you going to...
you punish? You, once again, and when...
 He interrupted me and yelled:
No! He shook his head. Me? Punish me? With one hand he seemed
sweep these words and suddenly leaned towards my face. No, no...
he created it and he threw it in my face: The lie! He repeated, he screamed of
stronger than he could: The lie!
I thought he was accusing me.
— Who? I protested. What lie?
Does he keep my question in mind? Probably not right away. He
continued in the same tone of furious anger:
The greatest, the most sinister lie of this sinister world!
Lies! Lies! Lies! Which one are you talking about? You don't know,
Really? Yes, yes, I see what it is. You are too, you are.
as I was. But I am no longer, it’s over. Goodbye, n-i-ni over, I have
Got it! he shouted in a fit of exasperated rage and turned away towards the
burned and took a step.
I caught him by the sleeve. But it was he who pulled me and in three
we jumped near the heap. He gave it a kick
and I saw the Charterhouse of Parma flying in the air. And suddenly he grabbed
my shoulder, forcing me to lean over these accumulated treasures:
-- But look at them, he shouted, and greet them then, and drool on them then your
admiration and your recognition! Because of what they make you think of
yourself. Since here you are, thanks to them, a man so self-satisfied! If
so happy to be a man! So happy to be such a creature
precious and valuable! Oh! yes: filled with poetic feelings and
of moral ideas and mystical aspirations and everything that follows. Name of
God, and types like you and me read this and we delight
and we say: "We are completely sensitive individuals and
intelligent." And we bow to each other and we
we mutually admire each of our pretty hair cut into four
and we pass around the rhubarb and the senna. And all that, what is it
It's? Just a dog thing, a dog thing that makes you want to vomit! What it is,
Man? The most promiscuous of creatures! The most vile and the most sneaky.
and the most cruel! The tiger, the crocodile? But they are angels compared to
us! And they no longer play the little saint, the serious thinker, the
philosopher, to the poet! And you would want me to keep all that in my
rays? What for? To elegantly converse with in the evening.
Mr. Stendhal, as once, with Mr. Baudelaire, with
Gentlemen Gide and Valéry, while we roast living women and
kids in a church? While they massacre and assassinate on
the entire surface of the earth? While women are being decapitated at the
hat? While we deliberately pile people into rooms
built to suffocate them? While everywhere there are hanged men
swaying to the trees, to the sounds of the radio that maybe gives some
Mozart? While we burn the feet and hands of people for their
have the friends delivered? While we make die in agony, while we kill
under the blows, that make my dear die of labor, hunger, and cold,
my good, my delicious Bernard Meyer? And that we are surrounded
of people (very nice people, right, cultured and all) of whom not one
would risk a finger to prevent these horrific acts that they want
cowardly ignore, or that they do not care, that some even
they approve of and are pleased with? And you ask, 'what madness
Again...?" In the name of God, which one of us is crazy? Tell me, tell me, where is the madness?
Will you dare to claim that all this clutter here is better than a
truffles, as long as man is what he is? A filthy sedative, clean
to lull us into a blissful satisfaction? Filth! he exclaimed
in such a high-pitched voice that she lost her voice with anger. I will not read another line!
One more, until the man has changed, but until then, not a line more,
Can you hear me? One more, one more, one more!
He had let me down. He shouted those last words, stamping his foot, as if
an angry child whom grief drives out of himself. He grabs the branch of a
bush and pulled it out. He was striking left and right, on
nonsense, repeating "one more, one more!", but suddenly its
voice broke into a strange gurgle, and finally the tears
escaped, and all his body, suddenly abandoning its violence,
seems to weigh down on itself; and I, taking him by the arm in turn,
I slowly led him to his couch, and he dropped onto it.
buried his head in a pillow and completely surrendered to sobs.
He was really crying like a desperate child. I think I
I also cried silently, looking at him. I had sat down near
him, and I held one of his hands in mine, and he was hanging on to it, - he
held on and hung there, completely, really, like a child. This
despair lasted a long time — it seemed extraordinarily long to me. But,
In the end, like a child, the tears gradually got the better of him.
like a child he fell asleep in the increasingly thick darkness
of that long day ending, while they were still shaking it, moment by moment
instant, small convulsive sighs.
So I went upstairs to find old Berthe, so that she would help me.
The night had fallen. Berthe asked for nothing. She was content with a
a look at Renaud, asleep and pathetic, and shook his head a little. And it is
silently we put everything back in its place.
But since then, I have also lost the joy of reading. Do I think like...
Renaud? No, quite the opposite! Only art prevents me from
despair. Art proves Renaud wrong. We can clearly see that man
is definitely quite a nasty beast. Fortunately, art, thought
uninterested buy it back.
And yet, since that day, I have lost the joy of reading. But it's because
about me: I am the one who feels guilty. In front of my paintings,
in front of my books, I slightly avert my eyes. Like a sly one, not
still hardened, who cannot enjoy with a peaceful heart his treasures
stolen.
July 1944.
THE HORSE AND DEATH
 I hardly listened to their stories. They sometimes amuse me, but the
more often I find them stupid. I was warming the little glass of alcohol
in my hands, and I laughed like the others, at the final word, by
Kindness. It seemed to me that our host was doing everything just like me.
However (when Jean-Marc coughed to clear his voice) he looked up.
smiled at him and clearly showed that he was listening.
Mine is true, of history, says Jean-Marc. I haven't always
I have not always been the portly bourgeois you see. I was not always a manager.
of buildings. I was an aspiring architect that my friends liked
good because it was fanciful. It's extraordinary how fantasy
is a fragile quality.
That day... or rather that night, there were half a dozen of us...
having drunk well and sung well in Balazuc, you know, Beaux street
Arts: his wine. It drinks like water....
It was drinkable, said Maurice sadly.
It will come back, said Jean-Marc. We were strolling along the
Saint-Germain Boulevard. It was midnight... one o'clock. We were looking for
something to do, some prank to do. I never really
understood how the thing was there: an empty dump truck with a
horse, tied to a tree. Without a cart, without anything. It was a good big
horse, that was sleeping standing up, with its head hanging. We unhitched it, and it
followed us very quietly, like horses do, who seem
always find what they are asked for both a little strange and everything
natural fact. We took turns climbing on its back, and those who
remained on foot excited by voice and gesture. I even managed to him
to take the gallop, once, oh! not for long: on ten or twelve
meters. If we left him to himself, he would slow down his pace until
stop, and he would fall asleep on the spot. We had him do I don't know
what detours. To tell the truth, we soon had enough of it, but we did not
We knew what to do with him. No question of taking him back to his cart:
it was too far. We had arrived on rue d'Assas, or rue de Fleuras, around there.
That's when I got the idea. Do you know Huysmans Street?
the most sinister street in all of Paris. It is an entirely bourgeois street:
understand that it was built all at once, with on each side of the
stone houses of dressed stone, in bourgeois style. Not a shop, you
you have no idea how a street without shops (without shops at all)
may be gloomy. No one passes by. A gray, stiff, vanity-filled street,
always deserted. A street of well-mannered pipelets, who do not
never step out onto their doorstep. I suddenly thought that I had
the opportunity to take revenge on this street.
To take revenge, at least, on one of the gossipers. Any of them.
We brought our horse there. We rang a doorbell, a superb one.
wrought iron door, with large windows. We let the good horse in, we
pushed it right in front of the box. One of us said in a very loud voice,
cried like a delayed tenant, with a somewhat neighing voice:
— Chevaâal !
And we left him there. I don't know what happened next.
It doesn't seem very funny, but... All the same, it just takes a little
of imagination. To imagine first the good brute, all alone in the hall,
immobile, looking foolish and a bit annoyed. And the braggart, who hears this name
strange, he does not remember that tenant. Who slightly opens his skylight, —
who sees this (a real horse whose long head turns towards him its gaze
sad) and who, for a minute, in his half-sleep, wonders
if now the horses are really going home saying their
name...
Hi, for twenty years since it happened, I rejoice every time I think about it.
think.
Our host set down his glass and said:
I am going to tell you the most beautiful story about Hitler.
This non sequitur seemed rather strange to me.
In the end, it's the same story, he continued, that's why I think about it.
It's still a true story. It's Z... who tells it, he knows very
Well Brecker. It would not be proof that it was true, but I am
certain that it is. Because it does not end. When a story is
imaginary, we find an end to it.
It's when Hitler came to Paris, in 41. You know. He arrived at
Five o'clock in the morning. He had himself taken here and there. There is a photo.
atrocious, - atrocious for us - where he is on the terrace of the Palace of
Chaillot. In front of one of the most beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful
urban landscape of the world. With all of Paris at its feet. All of Paris
asleep and does not know that Hitler is watching him.
He also had himself taken to the Opera, to the hall. The hall of the Opera.
at six o'clock in the morning... can you imagine that. He was shown the box of
President of the Republic, and he sat down. Sitting alone, in this
log, all alone in this room at six in the morning. I don't know if this
tells you something. I find it pathetic, I find this
pathetic visit to Paris. This man who conquered Paris but knows
although he can only possess this city when asleep, that he cannot
show at the Opera that in the dusty desert of dawn...
But all of this only happened afterwards. What I want to tell you
happens first, upon his arrival. It is Brecker who greets him, the gloomy one
Brecker whom Hitler calls his Michelangelo. And the Führer says to him:
— First of all, take me to where you lived twenty years ago. I want to
First, I want to see where you worked, I want to see your workshop in Montparnasse.
So the car heads towards Campagne-Première street, or towards the
Boissonade Street, I'm not quite sure anymore, well one of those streets. Brecker
hesitate a bit, fumble a bit, many things have changed in twenty
Still, he recognizes the kind of large carriage door. We
descend and we hit.
Here it seems to me that you should make the same effort.
of imagination than for the chatterbox at the brute. This time it's not a
little pipe but an old caretaker; we cannot open the lodge, it is necessary
to descend. These persistent knocks wake her up, she wonders, a little
shivering, what is happening, puts on an old snugly, or a cloak,
descends its half-floor still quite dark, and fiddles somewhat with
his old hands the unruly large lock before managing to open the
door...
Finally she opens, she looks. And she sees...

HITLER

It's the whole story... But it's surprising and it says a lot,
because precisely we understand well that it is superfluous to tell the cry
terrified that the old woman threw and how she hastily pushed it back
she has this incredible vision. It's safe to say she saw the Devil. For
finally it could just as well have been other Germans: she would have had
Fearful indeed, she would have said to herself: 'What are they coming here for?' but she
would have made them enter -- trembling doubtless -- but that's all.
Well imagine Franco, or even Mussolini. She wouldn't have them.
probably not recognized so quickly and yet still: she would not have
pushed the door with this cry of horrified fear. No, no: we
we can see that what she found behind the door was also terrifying,
as horrific and fearsome as if it had been Death, Death with its scythe
and its shroud, and that sinister smile in the lipless jaws.
August 1944.
THE PRINTING HOUSE OF VERDUN
 I

Down with the thieves!

Vendresse had pushed this vindictive cry from the bottom of his heart, at this
captious February. He believed in it. He hated thieves. 'They are the ones that us
"They led us to where we are."
I liked him, Vendresse. He was fervent and sincere. His sincerity, his
Fervor was mistaken about the path, that’s all. He called me: 'Bolshevik!'
half laughing, only half. He knew that I wasn’t "one of them".
Party", that I would never be of a party. But I was even less of the
sight: the only one who was honest in his eyes, the only one where order was loved and the
homeland. He didn’t care much for the "types from the A.F.",
troublemakers again, in their own way. Oh! he was also for the
a commotion, but an orderly commotion, a commotion against thieves.
- But where are those famous thieves? I said.
Well, for example! he exclaimed, looking at me with eyes
all round.
So read, I insisted, what one of my friends wrote the other day:
Why, he said, don't we rather shout 'down with the assassins!' at
the Eastern station, and burn the old wooden carriages that kill the travelers
by two hundred at a time, because the insurance costs less at the
Company with only new cars?
Oh! protested Vendresse, wagons that can still be useful!
That was all my Vendresse, and I looked at it with amusement.
small printing press all cluttered with useless objects, - old clichés,
old keys, old ashtrays-advertisements, old nuts and even an old
manometer of which boiler? — that he could not bring himself to throw away:
That could come in handy.
Printing House of Verdun. This name was surprising on the narrow shop,
They are on the corner of the Passage d'Enfer, in Montparnasse. Why Verdun?
The hell of Verdun? People were asking. In short, there was some of that, well
that the rapprochement was not voluntary. Vendresse was a semi-apprentice
my companion in 14 when the war broke out. His boss left, he kept the
open house until his own departure at the end of 1915. Both
wounded at Verdun, in different regiments. Vendresse is.
remitted very well. But they had to cut off the boss's right foot: gangrene. A
A little later, it was necessary to place that above the knee. Then all the
thigh went by, and finally the left leg got caught. When he went to the billiards
for the sixth time (the other thigh), he lay Vendresse on his
testament and he bequeathed to him the printing house, in memory of Verdun.
This is how Vendresse became his own boss in 1924, and
Baptized the printing press of this glorious name. Oh! It was a modest affair:
"bilboquets" only, invitations, letterheads, brochures... A
automatic minerva, a pedal press, and a funny old press for
bra. This is why I came: proofs for my editions.
Small boss, but, isn't it, boss. He cared a lot about this.
quality. This is undoubtedly why he went to shout 'down with the thieves!'
to protest against taxes. Which are too heavy because the
Jews are fattening themselves, the Freemasons are stealing, the 'Bolsheviks'
sabotaging.
He made a big difference between these various entities and the
individuals who compose them. Thus, his companion was Jewish, frank-
mason and antifascist. This did not prevent Vendresse, despite this
triple tare, to appreciate it greatly. "There are good ones," he said. It was, this
companion, a little guy from Briançon, fiery, lively, hard-working and skillful,
who had made Verdun, he too. After the war, he had bought back from one of his own.
cousin a small printing house in Piedmont, in Pinerolo. Fascism
had chased him away. Vendresse had hired him, always in memory of
Verdun. Dacosta and he would argue fiercely three times a week because of
from Mussolini. After which they were going to have a drink on Campagne street.
First. They adored each other.

***
It almost went wrong in '36. Dacosta felt compelled to go on strike,
out of solidarity. He warned his boss, assuring him that he would make some
overtime in the following weeks, to compensate, at
same price. Vendresse stormed, threatened to chase him away. "If there was the
bosses' strike, says Dacosta, you would do it, wouldn't you? Even if I threatened you.
to leave." Vendresse continued to shout, for appearance's sake. But
The argument touched him. He was very sensitive to justice.
The Munich crisis was very acute at the printing house. "It is a shame,
"a shame," said Dacosta, and his narrow mouth trembled under the little
short mustache, and his black eyes were misted with tears. 'Come on,
let's go, said Vendresse, we must be fair: if the Czechs mistreat them,
Those Sudetes, indeed! Hitler is not wrong. "And the Jews, they don't...
are they not mistreated in Germany? Are we doing something for them?
Dacosta said with suppressed anger. "We should see," said Vendresse.
All that is communist propaganda." "And the Sudetenland is not
propaganda? Boss, boss, I tell you: from abandonment to abandonment, we will go
soon. In three years, we will be vassalized." "Vassalized! it thundered.
Vendresse. Vassalized! Aren't we already vassalized? By the Jews and the
Freemasons?" Followed a painful silence. The clerk, Jewish and free-
mason, looked at his boss with gentle irony... And Vendresse
felt a bit silly, rummaged through his pockets to find a pipe that he
absent-mindedly, she moved her small round glasses on her little piece of
pink nose, was moving its big lips under the mustache reddened by the
butts.
After the war. Vendresse and Dacosta had spent forty years together.
two. They were mobilized into the work companies. I
I knew people at the First Office: Vendresse asked me.
to intervene and, in April 40, they were gathered. Their company was working
in the Compiègne forest. Dacosta was a sergeant, Vendresse was a cabot
only: they found it funny.
When, in June, the Fridolins threatened Compiègne, the company was
in charge of cutting down trees across the road, between Croix-Saint-
Ouen and Verberie. Towards the evening, they began to hear the parade of
armored vehicles on the right bank of the Oise, and similarly in the forest on the
national 332, while the aviation bombarded the intersection of
Vaudrempont. They hurried back to their camp in Saint-
Savior, and found no one there: the captain had slipped away in his
Citroën, with his two lieutenants.
"Bastards," Dacosta said. "Ah! Your elite is beautiful," he said to Vendresse.
The insurance advisor, the liquor merchant, and the little active dandy.
Beautiful patriots!" "You shouldn't generalize, said Vendresse, annoyed. And
then, perhaps they received orders." Whatever it was, Dacosta took the
command of the abandoned company, and began to make him
retreat. They narrowly escaped the tanks, at Senlis, were
caught in Dammartin, freed themselves under the cover of night, crossed the
Marne at the Tribaldou dam, and definitively dropped out at
Pithiviers. Apart from a few laggards, old fellows of forty-eight years
who let themselves be caught, collapsing breathless in a ditch, Dacosta
My company went all the way to Gien. They suffered some losses.
at the crossing of the Loire; a group from the second section, under the
the conduct of an old discouraged dog, abandoned during the night, between
Bourges and Montluçon; however, finally arriving, exhausted, in Clermont,
Dacosta maintained control of more than two-thirds of his unit. He was
cited to the army's order. General G*** congratulated him publicly.
Pétain took power. 'Finally!' said Vendresse.
"Well," said Dacosta, "you’re not afraid." "Of what?" barked Vendresse. "He
Only he can get us out of here. If we had called him earlier... Pétain:
Verdun. What are you afraid of?" "Kaput Republic, says Dacosta. And
as for us, the Jews, it's going to get tough. So, Vendresse laughed.
You know, deep down, I don't care about the Jews, but guys like you...
Verdun and the palms... the Old One, let his soldiers fall? You are a beautiful
bastard!
They were demobilized on the morning of August 3rd. A train was arranged for them.
released Parisians, that very evening. Those who wanted to return had to
decide on the time: the Germans would no longer agree afterwards, he assured
We have the individual returns. For Dacosta, it was an agonizing decision:
Would he get himself into the Fritz's business? "With the name I have, they
They are going to get me involved no later than in Moulins." "You think!
They don't care at all. Don't worry, I'm telling you. You do not
risks nothing with the Old. No stories: you come in with me.
return
***
The printing house was reopened and, little by little, work resumed. Everything
was going well, except that relations were starting to become a bit strained between the boss
and his assistant. Vendresse triumphed: "You see, huh, Old Man? Even
Here, the Fridolins dare not do anything." "Go look in the East and in the
North," said Dacosta. "Nonsense," said Vendresse. On that note, the
the discussion was turning sour.
Towards the end of January, Vendresse received a visit. It was a colleague,
Finally, a galvanometer. His card read: Member of the Association of
Printmakers-Engravers-Binders veterans. — Member of
The Old Friends of Verdun. His name was Paars. He was fat, a bit
dressed too elegantly. His rather soft, closely shaven cheeks,
were broken capillaries under the powder. They first talked about the rain and the
nice weather, as it should be, to get acquainted. And then:
 So, you did Verdun too? said Vendresse (we are on familiar terms)
Old from Verdun.
— And how, said Paars.
- Which sector?
Well... in Verdun, in the city you know. To the passing units.
winks. "The vein."
Ah! yes...
There was a silence. 'And what brings you here?' said Vendresse.
Here you go, said Paars, some of us at the Old Ones of Verdun find
it's time to get rid of the Jews in the profession. We
Will you sign a petition in Vichy? You will walk with us, of course?
Vendresse did not respond immediately. He was rummaging through his pockets,
to look for an absent pipe. He moved a few old nuts,
some old keys, and the old manometer, as if it were to be done
any urgency. He finally says, without turning around:
I walk with the Marshal. I think it is not for me to
to tell him what to do; it is up to him to tell us, up to us to do this
What he says. This is what I think.
He turned around, went behind his desk, and sat down. His thick lips
they stirred under the scorched mustache.
He coughed.
And so, he finally said, does the galvanic work more or less?
Well, says Paars... I no longer have my box, since
thirty-eight. The machinations of a Jew, as expected. But (he winked at
the eye) it will not bring him luck... Come on, he said as he stood up, it's settled,
Huh? I'll put your name.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, Vendresse said. The Jews, it's understood, I
the annoyances. Only...
He took off his glasses, wiped them. His eyes were very small without them.
glasses. He put them back on.
There are Jews at the Amicale; I know some. It's annoying.
If they were in a tough spot, said Paars with a kind of laugh that
sneered between the edges of a contemptuous pout, it is that they do not
they could not do otherwise. No feelings, my old friend.
— Yes, yes, of course, said Vendresse. Nevertheless, I prefer
wait. The Marshal...
What about the Marshal? Ah! yes, what they say he said: "There were some
Jews in Verdun..." You amuse me: do you warn your clients when you
Do you want to have them? Come on, come on, decide: you give your name, you don't.
don’t give?
No, you see, I do not give it, said Vendresse.
Well, says Paars. I can't force you. You will think about it. I don't
You don't think you would smell the Jews.
Vendresse says, briskly and somewhat annoyed:
I don't like them. Then, in a calmer, somewhat hesitant voice:
but it bothers me to... The day when Pétain will tell us...
Don't worry: you won't wait long.
Paars exchanged a few more words with Vendresse, words for
The form is without object, then he left.
Vendresse twirled for a long time in his small office. Before entering
finally in the workshop, he took one last look at the colored portrait
natural of the Marshal, in the middle of the wall. "I hate lies..."
He entered and looked at Dacosta, who was handing out invitations to the press.
pedal.
He was still wandering around the workshop, stuffing his pockets with...
search for a mythical pipe. His big lips were moving. He threw on
Dacosta glances backstage.
Finally, he says nothing.
***
Dacosta had married shortly before the war. He had a son from
three years soon and a twenty-month-old girl.
They lived in a cozy, clean, and sunny little apartment.
faced the Montparnasse cemetery, Rue Froidevaux. On Sundays, they
they liked to invite Vendresse for lunch. In front of the window, there was
like a small terrace covered with zinc and with an iron railing.
Vendresse and Dacosta would have coffee there on nice days. They were
Agreed that a cemetery is not sad.
On a Sunday around eleven o'clock, Vendresse was shaving before leaving, we
it was at his place. It was Paars. Oh! let Vendresse not be disturbed, that he
finish his beard: a visit just passing by, just to chat.
Paars settles her big buttocks in the small leather armchair, of which the bristle
escaped a little to one side. He didn't seem very sure where to put it
his big arms. His flushed jowls overflowed from the small starched collar
adorned with a bow tie. He had slightly
bizarre, poorly planted in the eyelids, like those of a sole.
Well then, he said laughing, still tipsy?
 Vendresse emitted, under the foam of the soap, something that could
to be a grunt or a laugh.
Have you seen, the Marshal, continued Paars, huh, what did I tell you
Did you say? Have you seen the Vichy laws?
Pétain does not do what he wants, Vendresse says. It seems he said
that he did not approve of these laws.
-- Nails, says Paars. Look at this: do you recognize it?
He was adjusting his boutonnière. Vendresse recognized the francisque.
It doesn't happen just like that, says Paars.
Are you into oils? said Vendresse.
I'm a little there. I am at the copper distribution. It's Grandet.
who put me here. Do you know him? No? You could have: it was a hat in
the Old Men of Verdun and also in the league with Deloncle, you know (he laughs), the
synarchy, the hood, as they say... He spoke about me to the Marshal. He
I must say that I am well aware of the situation in the printing industry, from the point of view of
political view, it is understood. And then Grandet carries out operations on copper
of significance and I can lend him a hand. In short, your Marshal, I have seen him.
Grandet had told him that I had ideas regarding decentralization.
big dealings in the profession... I talked to him about the Jews, you see,
So... I said: 'They must be broken.' He said: 'You are the judge of what he...'
You have to do your part." I said: "The rumor is going around, sir
Marshal, that you protect them a little, because of those who are old.
fighters." He smiled, as he does, you know: with one eye winking a
little. And he said: "I must safeguard public sensitivity. Everyone
In France, they do not think in the same way. I cannot say without
restriction what I think. It's a difficult position that I am in.
put his hand on my shoulder, yes, my dear. Like an old friend... And he has
Say: "Always act for the good of the Country. And you will always have me"
behind you. » So you see. Therefore, if you had any scruples...
— But, my old friend, said Vendresse, I find that it means nothing.
not at all! And one could even think... one could claim... Well
he encouraged you without encouraging you while encouraging you. It’s not clear,
that.
Well, what do you need!
I need more than that, yes. It means everything we want, what it
You said there.
Anyway, said Paars abruptly and almost with a certain
violence, he really told me: "You are the judge in your part."
So...
 He accompanies the last word with a small narrow hand gesture.
cutting.
He took out two cigars from his vest and offered one to Vendresse. Meanwhile
When they lit it, a sort of childlike smile widened even more.
face of Paars.
I also wanted to talk to you about something else. I'm interested in a boy...
A small sixteen-year-old. He comes out of school. He is the son of a... oh! I
I'll explain to you another time. A little typist from my place, from the time.
Well... At last, she had this kid, I want to ensure his future. And I have
I thought...
He brushed off a bit of ash that had fallen on his jacket with his finger. He scratched.
the fabric with application.
I thought that being at your place would be exactly what he needs.
All the more...
He offered Vendresse his broad, good-natured smile.
You are an old bachelor, you will take your retirement one of these days.
Look how well that would fall.
Vendresse took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on his little nose.
of pink nose.
— Yes, yes, I understand well, he said. Only...
He got up, went to the back of the room to fetch an advertising ashtray,
he brought it to the table between them, shook his cigar.
You probably know that I am not alone?
Surely, surely, said Paars.
He gently caressed her marbled cheeks of rosacea and
powder. He says:
Isn't this Dacosta a Jew?
No, not at all, said Vendresse.
He spoke calmly. Nestled in the back of his armchair, he remained very
motionless, taking slow puffs from his cigar.
— With that name? It's funny, said Paars, I really thought... and is it
What... Haven't we expelled him from Italy before?
— Yes, it was a long time ago. But it’s his business. Here he stands perfectly
Good. I am very happy about it.
Well, well, too bad, said Paars.
He takes two or three puffs without speaking.
Too bad, too bad, he repeated. It's a shame. And it bothers me.
the boy is a bit difficult to place, he is a bit late for some
things. And the mother is there who... Yes, a little affair like yours,
this is exactly what suits him. Let's not talk about it anymore. Since you
You love your Dacosta.
He crushed the stub of his cigar in the ashtray and added,
smiling
You know what you're doing, right?
Vendresse also smiled and withstood the unsettling gaze of the
eye of flounder.
***
He arrived a little late on Froidevaux Street. He was not very talkative, while
that Madame Dacosta shared her care between the table of the grandes
people and the needs of babies. Vendresse often watched her. From
always the fine face with timidly smiling lips, with black eyes
intense and deep, always a little damp, had stirred within him a
paternal tenderness. Today it appeared, this face, more fragile than
never.
After lunch, Mrs. Dacosta left the two men alone on
the small zinc terrace. They smoked in silence. A light mist
autumn blurred the cemetery with a sunny melancholy. Dacosta
was looking at her boss who was watching the smoke from his cigarette. Madam
Dacosta came in and served the coffee. She left again. They drank in silence. Dacosta
Roula a cigarette. Vendresse carefully filled his pipe.
There are beautiful bastards on earth, he finally said.
— That... said Dacosta, and he added nothing.
Vendresse lit his pipe, took many puffs to make it
take. He says:
I saw one this morning; it is lost.
Ah! said Dacosta.
— All the more bastard... started Vendresse, but he saw that
Dacosta was looking at him with an eye that might seem a little playful, and he
don't finish.
And then Mrs. Dacosta returned. She sat down next to them. The
a conversation resumed between the three of them, somewhat languid.

***

In the days that followed, Vendresse spoke little. He fidgeted a lot,

was tidying up. The work suffered as a result. Dacosta did not notice it.
either you were pretending.
On the Monday of the following week, around ten o'clock, Vendresse suddenly
with his hat and went to see a colleague, on Alésia street. They talked about
things and others, then Vendresse said:
Why did they arrest Whemer?
Oh! said the other, you can well imagine that.
Vendresse blushes.
Yes, yes, undoubtedly... Still, say it.
He didn't like that Whemer. He was a little paper representative.
specialties for invitations. Ageless. A little shabby.
He did not wear the star. He had scratched his card.
Did the Fritz figure it out? said Vendresse.
Think about it.
The French?
Of course. I must say he had a good clientele. She is not
lost for everyone. It is understandable, what do you want. They
buzzed like flies, all these Pollacks. I know you do not
you don't like them much, neither do you.
— No, said Vendresse. But it doesn't matter, it's still ugly.
He returned to the Hell passage. He stopped once more on Boulevard Raspail,
in front of the red poster bordered in black that he knew well, the sinister
poster listing the names of ten communists and as many Jews,
executed as hostages.
Dacosta was at his shop, he was composing an advertisement and sulking.
a little, because it was a demonstration, in support of
prisoners, under the auspices of the Marshal. (They had argued that morning over this
subject.) Vendresse slowly took off his hat, his coat, and came
towards him with hands in pockets, swaying on his little legs.
He coughed.
Wow...
Dacosta looked up, gazed at the nice round face where the trouble...
and the uncertainty was inscribed in an endearing way. He smiled and said:
So is that it? Do I have to put them on?
Vendresse was left breathless. He opened his mouth, raised a hand,
Say nothing. Dacosta calmly resumed his work.
If you think, he said, that I haven't guessed what's brewing... And is it
that I didn't know, from the first day, that we would come to this? It is
you, with your Pétain...
Leave Pétain alone, said Vendresse. He is not responsible for it. This is not...
not your fault if there are bastards...
We are not going to argue once again over that old crab, said
Dacosta. If I understand correctly, the air has become unhealthy for me here?
I'm scared of him. That big pig Paars is an infamous jerk. I was
I discouraged you from registering as a Jew, and now...
Rest assured: I won't be in better sheets. We are there
we will all pass, I'm telling you, sooner or later. Maybe it's better that way.
things are going wrong for me now; it could have been worse later.
— Paars wants your spot for a little one he made for his typist, which he doesn't
he doesn't know how to recognize and doesn't know what to do anymore, because
no one wants a waste. I even understood well that he intends to me
buy back the company, willingly or by force, at a good price, when I have whitened
the hair that I have left to teach the trade to his idiot. All that
revolves around the fact that I kept you with me, in defiance of the laws. He
holds us.
So what do we do? Do we close?
No, said Vendresse. If I close, Paars will take the box. He will not have it.
No, while I am alive. You, you are going to leave. It will work here without you for the time being.
You will have to. You will leave your things, as if you had just stepped out. My old man,
I tell you: the box will come back to you and your son. There is no Fritz nor
of the Jews who hold.
Dacosta took him in his arms and kissed him. He said:
It's unfortunate anyway...
What?
That you are such a brave fellow and that you let yourself go so easily.
counter.
By whom?
— By the hypocrites. And first of all by the chief hypocrite that I do not
I will not name it to avoid ruining this beautiful minute. Because it is a
beautiful moment. Perhaps the last beautiful moment. Come on, he said, I will do everything
I'll finish this box too. After that, I'll go pack my things.
He returned to his junkyard. Vendresse said:
Show me your card.
My card?
Yes; of identity.
Dacosta held out his hand. Vendresse looked at him and said:
You need another one. You'll have trouble with that one, even in
free zone.
Dacosta was waiting. There was a smile ready on his lips, but he
held him back.
I’m disgusted to do this, I hate it, says Vendresse, but it has to be done.
even though I make one for you. Yes, it disgusts me, it disgusts me. Without this
damn Paars...
He rummaged through the drawer to find the letters. He them
compared with the model. Dacosta had let his smile blossom.
Vendresse repeated between his teeth: "It disgusts me. To become a forger, to
my age. And in a finally clean France. It disgusts me. " His fingers
Fat and agile, they maneuvered the composter. Dacosta says:
But the stamp?
In the name of God, it's true, the stamp.
Don't worry, Dacosta said, I know where to put it.
A fake seal?
A fake seal.
— But then, fake cards...
I would know where to find it, yes. But I will be happy, so much more.
content to have one from your hand.
He was still smiling. Vendresse was turning red, her fingers hesitated.
Are you going to take care of the kids? Dacosta suddenly said. He was no longer smiling.
His eyes were dark.
The fingers of Vendresse resumed their work.
— Yes. You know it well. You can leave in peace.
-- Quiet... says Dacosta. They are Jews too, and their mother is too.
I wonder...
Vendresse looked at him and said:
Oh! Still!
You made a mistake once, said Dacosta.
Vendresse finished his line in silence. His thick lips were moving. He
he grumbled:
Fooled, fooled, it's the misfortune of having fallen for a bastard like
that pig of Paars, that's all. You work from the hat. A woman, some
children! You can believe me and leave in peace: as long as the Old Man is there...
As long as he is there, I will not be at peace, not at all.
But you will take care of them? You won't let them arrive.
misfortune?
You will find them fresh and pink, I give you my word.
Now go away. I will take your card to your house. I will stay with your
woman when you will be gone.
Dacosta was looking at his boss. He was looking at him. He was going back and forth.
finger on his little mustache. A slight twitch tightened the corner of his lips, two
or three times, while the right hand drew at hip height
a narrow and flexible circle, where a kind of resignation was inscribed
indecis. Vendresse saw all this and paled a little, Dacosta nonetheless
Parvint to smile. Vendresse also managed to smile.
Well, Dacosta finally said. It will be okay.
He turned his back and left.
Vendresse sat on the marble, his legs dangling, his chin in
the hands.
 II

How had he suspected that he would find help from me? I

I don't know. Maybe because in the past I always took the side of
Dacosta, against him. In any case, it was at my place that he rang that morning.
His eyes!
Vendresse has blue eyes; innocent blue eyes. That morning they
were black. I cannot explain that. Looking at them closely they
were blue as always; but one would have thought they were black. He said,
like that, outright:
I want to print flyers.
He sat down and sighed, and began to knead his knees.
Well, I said, here is something new. He said, in a funny voice:
Yes, here is something new.
I wanted to give myself time to think. I say:
Well, that's neat! A loyal old man like you? A Pétain-
save-the-France, a Marshal-follow-us, a Let's-follow-the-Chief, a the-
France to the French like you? Did I really understand, or what?
Have my ears become horned?
He says nothing. He stayed there all calm, motionless, a little unsettling,
to look at me. His eyes were black. I made my decision.
— Leaflets, I said. Good. That can be done. Do you know what you
risk?
He says: "Yes."
Oh! I clarified, not just being shot. But, for example, of
move on to the question, to give my name, or others.
He hesitated a bit and said:
What are we doing for you?
I leaned back in my chair, casually crossing my
hands and my knees. I say:
Well, for example, you get poked with small pieces of wood.
inflamed, under the nails. Or you are slowly crushed.
main, in a press. Or anything else of that kind. Or even
you are questioned for two, three days, without rest, without pause, under a
blinding projector. Or...
He cut in: "Well," and seemed to ponder.
He says: "I am rather soft, not very brave. Nonetheless, I
believe..." He looked above the door, as if searching for something there.
subject. He says: "Of course the projector... In the eyes for three days
during... » He made a funny noise, with his big lips. « We have to
become almost blind, huh?" I say, "My faith, almost." "And
What a migraine, for the love of God!" I remembered that he was prone to headaches.
in his head, and understood why the idea of the projectors was tormenting him (it was
a pain he was familiar with). I then remembered that he was sensitive to cold and I said:
You are also plunged into icy water several times in a row during
hours." He said slowly: "In the icy water..." He nodded his head a
little, his gaze distant. He looked at me and said seriously: "Well, well,
Well... » I said softly: 'Will it be okay?' His eyes seemed blue to me. He
said: "It will be fine." I stood up. I looked at him:
What happened?
He jumped. As if I had struck him in the face. He turned red, then
pale. He looked at me with that astonished expression that people say they have before
to collapse, a bullet in the heart. Finally, he said deafly, his eyes to

They took them. The little ones and her.

— From Dacosta?
He nodded and looked up at me.
— From Dacosta. The woman and the children of Dacosta. The little ones of a
side, the mother of the other. She wanted to throw herself out the window. They stopped her.
prevented. Me...
He was kneading his knees. His eyes caught mine. They me
black as ink.
— Idiot. Miserable fool. I believed in all these bandits. Got it.
had warned me. He had warned me, he had warned me. I could have...,
I should have... I would have...
He got up and began to pace the room. In the light, I saw that he was not
unshaven - incredible of him. He was slowly massaging one side of his neck.
and heavily, to make him blush. Tears fell one by one along the
nose, would get lost in the big mustache. It was comical and
pathetic.
I would have made them move, or stay at my place, or anything.
what. But I didn't believe it. God damn it, how
to believe...
 He suddenly turned towards me:
Do you know what he replied to me?
— Who?
He raised his eyebrows and said, "Ah! yes..."
He resumed his march, stopped in front of the mirror, looked at himself, looked at his
good face in tears, and started to laugh. It was quite atrocious.
They came to my house first, the day before yesterday, no, three days ago.
What a pastis! My lead everywhere, all trampled. To look for what? The
pleasure in destruction, that's all.
Who? The verdigris?
Can you believe it!... They were saying to me: "Come on, you, an Old Man of
Verdun! They were just kids, I said: 'What do you have to...'
What to do with Verdun?" They got angry: "We serve the Marshal!"
I said, "Me too." They said, "It doesn't look like it! Where is that Jew? He
is not far since his belongings are there." I said: "Look for him." The
younger said, — a little pimple-faced boy, with buzz-cut hair:
We don't care, besides. If we don't find him, we'll take the woman and
the kids. " I laughed. I said: "Try it."
He stopped and looked at me. His little nose, under the glasses, was
red.
I said: 'Try,' he repeated and looked at me. 'And I was laughing,'
he said violently and I heard his teeth grind. "Because I know
Good Tournier, the secretary of the Old Ones of Verdun." He interrupted himself and
he muttered, "I know Tournier well" mockingly and snickered.
two small "ha! ha!" dry, quick, between laughter and anger. He nodded
the head. He says: "I made a jump over there, right away. With the file of
Dac, — Verdun and the rest. I recounted the whole story and I said: "All of
Same, right? A hairy guy like him, that would be quite something. No danger,
I hope?" he said with a smile: "No, no, we will sort this out."
the next day, indeed, nothing. But yesterday...
He stopped. I could see his back. A strong wide back, nice and a bit
arched. I couldn't see his hands but from the movement of the arms, one
He guessed that he would tighten and loosen them. He raised his head with a
horse movement (its plump and pink nape formed a bulge) and I
I heard him sniff. He dropped his head and leaned on the desk. He me
was always turning his back. He was pounding the desk with his little fist that he
had difficulty closing, with a repeated movement of contained rage, — of
stifled sobs.
It's the old baker woman... he began, but his voice broke.
and he had to blow his nose (we are funny animals: he was so
comic to blow from his little red nose that I had a hard time, yes, to
prevent me from smiling. And yet I had a heavy heart.) "She
knocked at my door, he continued. At seven o'clock in the morning, you
Think! She kept repeating: 'Mr. Vendresse! Mr. Vendresse! They
"they're taking them!" I shouted: "Who?" But she didn't need to.
answer: I jumped out of my bed. It was almost dark. It had to be done.
"Yet I am getting dressed!" he said as if he feared that I would do it to him.
rebuke. His eyes moved from right to left, they stopped on
a small canvas by Souverbie, — three women in the antique style, three women
sleeping, — and such calm emanates from the very pure lines that it joins
the eternal, appearing as restful as death. Vendresse was looking at the
toilet - probably without seeing it - her lips trembled under the
red moustache. One could have thought he hesitated whether this serenity beyond
Space and time were for his tormented heart either balm or suffering.
I arrived too late, of course, he said. The little ones were already
embarked, taken God knows where. The mother..." He let out a cough.
bizarre, which hurt me: a small burst of laughter full of sobs and screams
held. "She was screaming, they were hitting her in the face to make her stop. I have
I ran, I shouted, but..." he raised his chin to show me a
bruised with blue and brown: "... I woke up by the edge
from the sidewalk. The cars had left. The little brown pimpled boy me
he was looking and laughing. He said: "You see, we tried"; he said again
something in German, and the two Fritz with him laughed too. They
left me there. People helped me get up, they led me to the
pharmacist. They said nothing. No one said anything.
He suddenly seemed so tired that he had to sit down. He sat right at the edge.
of one of my deep armchairs, as if it could not accept a real
repos.
Naturally, I ran to the Old Ones of Verdun. Naturally
Nobody. Of course, no Tournier. "On a trip. You'll be
will warn." I said: "I want to see the President." They looked at me with
round eyes: "The President?" I said, I shouted: "Yes, the President, the
President!" I had forgotten who the President was, no joke: I had
forgot it was the Old Man. And then I remembered. I kept screaming,
I said that I wanted to see anyone, someone responsible. We
put me in a room. I was made to wait half an hour, an hour,
I don’t know. I would have broken everything. Finally, a guy came, he looked like
bothered, ceremonial and bothered. I pulled out my folder, I think that I
 I

Down with the thieves!

Vendresse had pushed this vindictive cry from the bottom of his heart, at this
captious February. He believed in it. He hated thieves. 'They are the ones that us
"They led us to where we are."
I liked him, Vendresse. He was fervent and sincere. His sincerity, his
Fervor was mistaken about the path, that’s all. He called me: 'Bolshevik!'
half laughing, only half. He knew that I wasn’t "one of them".
Party", that I would never be of a party. But I was even less of the
sight: the only one who was honest in his eyes, the only one where order was loved and the
homeland. He didn’t care much for the "types from the A.F.",
troublemakers again, in their own way. Oh! he was also for the
a commotion, but an orderly commotion, a commotion against thieves.
- But where are those famous thieves? I said.
Well, for example! he exclaimed, looking at me with eyes
all round.
So read, I insisted, what one of my friends wrote the other day:
Why, he said, don't we rather shout 'down with the assassins!' at
the Eastern station, and burn the old wooden carriages that kill the travelers
by two hundred at a time, because the insurance costs less at the
Company with only new cars?
Oh! protested Vendresse, wagons that can still be useful!
That was all my Vendresse, and I looked at it with amusement.
small printing press all cluttered with useless objects, - old clichés,
old keys, old ashtrays-advertisements, old nuts and even an old
manometer of which boiler? — that he could not bring himself to throw away:
That could come in handy.
Printing House of Verdun. This name was surprising on the narrow shop,
They are on the corner of the Passage d'Enfer, in Montparnasse. Why Verdun?
The hell of Verdun? People were asking. In short, there was some of that, well
that the rapprochement was not voluntary. Vendresse was a semi-apprentice
my companion in 14 when the war broke out. His boss left, he kept the
open house until his own departure at the end of 1915. Both
 I stopped smiling, I said quickly: 'No!'
— Why? he said.
He was on the doorstep.
Come back, I said. You cannot go see Coninck, nor any of the
others. Coninck is boxed.
There was a silence. He said slowly:
Is Coninck sealed?
— Yes, I said. A long time ago. Three months, or more.
Three months... but Dacosta...
— Naturally, I said softly, he didn’t tell you. He couldn’t.
not tell you, to you, at that time.
His face elongated. He looked incredibly unhappy. "Ah! "
I thought, too bad. We'll find a way, a trick, something.
Listen, I said aloud, don't worry. I will not let you
Do not fall. Go home and wait. I will send someone to you.
I promise you. But don't do anything silly.
It's true, I tell myself again (as an excuse). It is better that
I keep him under my control.
***
Necessity and circumstances give you ideas. I found
soon "the thing" that could suit Vendresse, without too much
risks: the funeral announcements.
I talked about it to my friends and we had a lot of fun with this idea,
to which we found all sorts of advantages in addition:
certainty that these flyers would be well distributed (how the control
Could the postal service check each of the announcements that are made every day?
posted by tens of thousands?); the possibility for Vendresse to them
printing at home in complete peace during the first months,
during which they would be stored (they would not be put into circulation
later). We prepared thirty different models, there was
always the name in capital letters and below, in small, all the sauce...
We greatly enjoyed this work. During these three
As I feared, we were searched twice at home.
Vendresse. We found nothing. Yet, there were several packages of
invitations, some real and some fake. But no one had the strange idea of them
read.
The three months completed, and the thirty models drawn each multiple times.
tens of thousands, I instructed Vendresse to remain silent during the
weeks when we would distribute them. I promised him another job
right after. I was completely at ease.
Labiche, my little liaison agent, came to see me every day.
count of events, within the framework of the group and also of its stakeholders
and outcomes. One fine day, in the middle of his report, he said: 'Ah!'
Vendresse. » I say: « Well? » He says: « He's in jail. »
My heart tightened. I immediately thought of Paars. "Denunciation?"
do I demand.
— More than likely, said Labiche, but I also believe he acted like a fool.
He made those who came to take the packages speak, they told me
He got in touch with God knows what group. We conducted a search.
The day before yesterday: Gestapo... What an idiot, it was the third time after all, he should have...
you should be careful... The box was full of flyers.
Not one of ours? I exclaimed in astonishment.
No, not one of ours.
We succeeded in tracking him, although he had changed prisons three times.
Naturally, I had to leave my home: I was wary of the spotlight.
and cold baths.
But he says nothing. Yet we knew that he had been tortured. He
managed to pass a word. "Reassure the Wise (it was me). They do not
didn't get me. The projector must be a joke: haven't heard of it.
Fortunately, I faint immediately in the baths.
squashed my toes: right now my nails
fall.
For seven months, he stayed in Fresnes. And then, Germany.
We heard from him again twice, in 44 and in 45. Finally,
in April, his comrades saw him for the last time: in line, we
was evacuating the camp. Scrawny enough to scare. He was walking with difficulty.
Since then, nothing. Her pitiful body must be resting somewhere, in
a ditch by the side of a road in Germany.
The little Madame Dacosta was gassed at Auschwitz. Children, none.
news. They are certainly dead.
I know nothing about the father. He is said to have been caught in front of Cassino. I
I am extremely scared at the thought of seeing him again. Sometimes I find myself
I wish he wouldn't come back. I am very cowardly about certain things.
The Vendresse printing house was taken over, after the arrest, by a
old retired type, rotten from alcohol. He works with an apprentice.
strange, a teenager with a head too big, wild and silent, subject to
sudden anger that impresses the neighborhood.
Paars, after the Liberation, was arrested for three days. But very few people
well they have guaranteed their feelings. Since the end of 43, he was pouring in
are important to certain organizations. Furthermore, it is very up
current of all questions regarding electrolytic copper. It
it is said to be difficult to do without him. He is a big shot in
The Distribution Office. He controls everything.
August 1945.
THE WALK TO THE STAR
 I

FAITH AND LIGHT

There is something that goes further than being crazy, it is being reasonable. And what
more reasonable than to seek first the Kingdom of God
and its justice?

Paul CLAUDEL (Saint-Louis).

IN MEMORY OF THE ONE WHOSE
PAGES TELL ABOUT LIFE
 There is only one way to have found your place, it's to have arrived from where
literally one cannot move.

Paul CLAUDEL (Saint-Louis).

Love most often fades away in a sordid end. Sometimes we

yours: so his death is poignant. Thus, the love of Othello under the blows
the disasters of jealousy. 0 fatal misunderstanding: to accuse Desdemona! The heart
tightens and revolts.
Who was guilty towards Thomas? Stabbed his love and his life?
Did he send him to face death with a ruined soul? Should one blame the
France? Oh! No. Oh! No: this is a lie. Yes, it was again a
atrocious misunderstanding. It brings me to tears, — not from pity: from anger.

I was still a child when I met him. As far back as I remember.

remember, he is intertwined with my memories. What makes this story, I learned it little
little by little, in bits and pieces. I need to bring all of this together, and I realize that nothing
is no more difficult than painting a man you know too well. By where
start?
Shall I follow this easy slope called chronology? Method
helpful but without art. Is it art? God forbid!
The story starts far back. What I know about it is scant. There is first
a conversion – an ancestor who becomes a bishop. Ambitious, no doubt, and
embarrassed by the presence of this family of blockheads. One can well imagine
what pressure, creamy yet relentless, drives the Muritz family away from
Vosges glassworks where she was born, to those of Bohemia where she
settles down. The bishop's nephew marries a young girl from Brünn there and
root done. Around 1860, one of the great-grandsons is found in Pressburg,
wealthy shipowner; his barges traverse the Danube. France is far away and,
it seems, forgotten. Women speak, like their families,
German and Czech (or Hungarian, or Slovak); however, the
boys, from father to son, learn French alongside other languages.
The shipowner has only one son and six daughters. The daughters speak Slovak and
the German. The son, according to tradition, also speaks French. He
is called Thomas.
He is twelve years old in 1878 when his father dies. The Muritz family, with
his seven women are going through tough times. The mother sells everything in Presbourg
and one settles down for a confined life in the old house of Devîn.
The girls are starting to get married. It is an uncle of Thomas who has
bought the navigation business, and when Thomas finishes his studies, he will
will take with him. But the old house of Devîn has other plans.
The old house? Rather the room in the rotunda, at the southwest corner, with
its tall windows and the rays of the setting sun that make shine the
golden leathers of the bindings. This is where the story begins. This is where
born the tenacious passion, the consuming love that inhabited Thomas's heart
Muritz did not leave him, in a horrible tearing apart, except with his life.

***
It is there, amidst these shelves covered with books, that Madame
Muritz found Thomas more often than he should have been. She was getting angry.
but was delighted. She herself read little, but she liked that her son had
this passion. She did not imagine that this vice would separate them, and so soon.
The library was half composed of German books and
Thomas read fluently the ones and the others. 'On the ground and at
lying face down in front of the ceramic stove, that was always his way,
his uncle,— this is the vision he kept of him nearly half a century later
late. The Czech government had just sent him to France to
discuss transit matters, — the first time he had come there since
the war. I was watching him, sipping his glass of fine (the fine of my own
raisin) with a knowing air. "Always like this, on your stomach, all
the days, every time I went to see her mother. If I saw her differently, I
forgotten." His free hand, a small chubby hand, translated this forgetfulness of a
very small expressive gesture. His hands alone had expression. His
big face, much too large for his aged and hunched body, seemed
always asleep. He smiles, — with a Buddha-like smile:
— It makes you laugh, doesn’t it (he spoke, with weight but eloquence,
a Frenchman whom he butchered without shame), that he has these beautiful tastes-
literary? That he still reads, at almost sixty years old,— that he still loves
to read Alexandre Dumas? But I suspect you haven't.
understood.” His big eyes seemed to watch me ironically,
under the thick eyelids. "Dumas? Pfutt!... It’s not Dumas.
It is... it is... FRANCE!" He gulped the end of his glass and kept the
eyes closed, savoring the last drop. 'He is faithful, he is very faithful,'
il ne faut pas rire de la fidélité », dit-il gravement et gravement posa son
heavy gaze upon me. "You see, I didn't see it right away back then..., I
I didn't understand right away that he wasn't reading Alexandre Dumas... that he
read... the history of France. There was no History of France at
Devîn, except for the Thiers Revolution, and besides, he was thirteen years old.
But... » He simply raised three fingers, that was enough for me to understand.
as soon as he abandoned this topic in favor of another. "You do not
do not know in France, of course, Bölöni... Alexandre Farkas
Bölöni... à la recherche de la liberté... Eh bien... », il sembla se raviser et
her lips made a sound like a fish releasing a bubble: "When I think
that it's me who made him read this!... Because he left, this Bölöni,
"to seek freedom where it is found. Gone, do you understand?" He laughed,
and it shook his belly without moving anything on his face. "And Gilbert too
He left, in Joseph Balsamo, do you remember? The magnificent and
adventurous Gilbert... On foot, to Paris." He pointed an index finger at me.
grassouillet, whom he stirred to punctuate his words: "Left, on foot, for
Paris... Naturally, that wouldn't have been enough. But there was this Hugo.
Hugo!... On the ground and flat on his stomach in front of the tiled stove, and devouring
Hugo, day after day, and Alexandre Dumas, and Balzac, and Eugène Sue!
What a mix... "It's funny, you told me, it's funny that he likes
"Still it’s haphazard, all mixed up." First of all, it’s not haphazard.
because these names he has... how do you say?... hierarchical. But...
but it is mainly because you did not know his youth, and his
enthusiasm... the Mysteries of Paris... France, Justice, Freedom...
You know, it meant something to a young man from the Danube!
He never forgot, because he is faithful..." He suddenly left with a real
laugh, his eyes sparkled: "And this too - you do not know in
France neither. This German poem: The Orphan of the Pont des Arts...I have
forgot by whom. I believe Grillparzer. Ask him, he can recite it for you
still whole, - still now..." He repeated: "The Bridge of
Arts!..." by rubbing the knee with a quick and short movement, as a sign of
Jubilation. "Beware, when you have a son who always reads the
Same books. Something is always being prepared. I was young and I did not
didn't understand then. Even when he told me one day, — I think he knew
argued with his sisters: "Isn't it, Uncle Béla, I am a little
French?" I laughed and said: "Yes, a lot. As much as I am Turkish.
I have my grandmother from my grandmother from my grandmother who was
From Uskub, so you see you are French and I am Turkish." He did not laugh nor did he move.
angry but only said: "Still, I am a little bit
French and he went back to his stove...
All boys, are they not, are exhilarated, one day, for something
chose. Me... I am an old rag today but... women... yes,
I have been thrilled more than once for a woman..." - he showed me
suddenly he touched her profile and caressed her skull, near the ear, with a finger
indolent, and I saw a thin white line running through the gray hairs. "I
I messed up... a little on purpose, no doubt, but still... Thomas,
at least at that age, women, no. His exhilaration was (he directed, of a
tight gesture, its fat index towards my chest)... you. You, the
Her belly was once again shaken by silent laughter: "The
do you deserve it? On one side of the Danube, they say yes, on the other side, they say no... to
cause of Trianon... But at that time... In any case, here we are. He was
in love with you, the French. I laughed at it, and so did his mother. Even
when he recited Hugo to us and I assure you, when he started,
They were rather unusual sessions. But we laughed, that's all.
"We were laughing," he repeated, and he lifted his heavy eyelids with the
the slowness of a pachyderm. And I saw running, between the plump folds of flesh,
a gently mocking glimmer as he added: "Is that so bad?"
***
What transformed in Thomas exhilarating daydreams into something
which resembled a seed of decision, it might have been a conference
Outfit, as she approached her sixteen years, in the old house of Devîn. She
heard his mother and his uncle deciding his fate with cruelty
unconscious, while, his forehead resting against the window, he looked down at
the Morava cliff struggles to let its green waters in
in the muddy waters of the Danube, this Danube which would now be the canvas
from the bottom of his life. Terrible Danube! Oh! he loved her. Why don’t you come from
France, he thought. If only one could occasionally hope to see
passer, coming from this prestigious west, of the merchants or
tugboats bearing the tricolor emblem! But no, nothing ever, just the
Austrian and German colors. And the Romanian ones, with this band.
yellow, like a derision, between blue and red...
The death of his cousin Latzi accelerated things. Thomas did not love him.
hardly, yet. The pride of Latzi, a younger brother in Budapest, was only matched by
that of his father, the sententious Counselor Széchenyi, director of
Bridges. Those who were not younger sons were not worth even a glance. One day,
in a door, a comrade bumped into him. Latzi demanded an apology. Some
excuses? To a Slovak? The other spat at his feet. Latzi jumped, threw.
His glove, which was not even picked up. He looked for witnesses, but found none.
can't find. Everyone recused themselves, even the other Slovaks. Latzi panicked.
felt a soft resistance, around him, his feet getting stuck in
something troubled, in a mystery of lowered eyes and smiles
constraints. Finally a comrade decided to reveal to him what everyone knew
at school except for him, which was always hidden from him by the foolish vanity of
his father the King's Counselor, namely that his very pious mother, to him,
Cadet Ladislas Széchenyi was Jewish.
The younger Széchenyi, son of a Jew! He who, like his
companions despised the Jews more than the most bastard of dogs
streets, which made them get up, on the trains, to give him their seat! They
found, at the dawn of a night that must have been full of a terrible struggle, hung
in his room.
The whole story was told to Thomas, with complacency.
whispering, by his uncle's secretary. Thomas was ill from it, —
physically ill. What! These customs of Papuans! Would he need to
spending one's life (all one's life!) in this backward country, among these Kanaks
plumed, when over there - not so far away - there existed a country of free men,
a radiant, generous, intelligent, and just France!
What followed, one might be tempted to bring back to the proportions
on a whim. I think we would be wrong. First of all, because nothing of this
what is caused by love is never a whim. And then, when a
boy saves penny by penny, for months, to achieve a
project; the day he executes this project (even if just the day before he still)
was not deciding), we could not really speak of a spur of the moment decision. Finally
when an entire life, a whole existence directed with wisdom, reason and
fermenté, is the strict consequence of an act, that act, so thoughtless
it may well be the result of a decision
reasonable.
That very night, Thomas Muritz packed his bags. And dawn saw him on the
route, beyond the Danube, which leads to Vienna. Not the most
short, but the one a little further north, which goes through Wagram. He dreamed
of sleeping at Wagram...
Oh! He wasn't leaving at random. Not at all. He had been...
he planned his route, — his stages and his budget. The latter was slim.
Traveling by train was out of the question. He would sleep in the
we were in May, the weather was mild. He would do his grocery shopping
in the villages: a bit of bread, cold cuts, fruits. All of it
was to reach Troyes with a little money in his pocket: there, at last, he was
decided to take the train.
For if he accepted in advance the dust of the roads, the fog of
mountains, the awful fatigue of the end of days; if he accepted the rain,
the wind, the midday sun, the feet bleeding in shoes that are too tight
roids, the tough nights, the sweat and the thirst; at least he did not accept
to reach the very precise point that he set as the destination of his journey
with weary legs: it doesn't matter the hunger but to be fresh and ready! Because
this goal was, certainly, above all, France; but it was, much more
precisely, Paris; and even more this unique place in the world,
prestigious, which haunted his thoughts, nourished his dreams, exalted his
soul: the Bridge of Arts.
I think this will bring a few smiles. And, indeed, to think
that everything for which he sacrificed his happiness and his rest, the warmth of
foyer, a tender and beloved mother (he adored her all his life), an easy future and
sure; that everything for which he faced a risky journey, its dangers
and his dreadful fatigue, the anxieties of an emigration (he did not believe in the
misery but he was not so foolish as to not foresee the struggle), — it was not
no less than the Pont des Arts!... Oh! of course, you who just passed
your day behind a more or less managerial desk, receiving
men you are wary of when you do not despise them, to you
to defend, to feign and to prevaricate, to fight inch by inch for some sordid
thousand-dollar bills, you can smile. Well, my big one, not me. Because
It is to these disproportionate measures that I gauge love. And love does not carry me.
not to smile. And, less than anything else, the love of a child.
Childhood is terribly serious, do not forget it. A child engages
all his being. And we, serious and mature men? What are we for?
ready to engage our whole being? We care too much about our dear carcass.
We clearly saw it when these gilt bourgeois abandoned their
beaten troops, and were traversing France in the 15 CV where they had
stacked their family and their safe. No, the distant love of Thomas
Muritz for the Pont des Arts does not make me smile. It stirs up in me
a burning tenderness. May I never come to smile one day, that is what
what I wish for myself.
 Yes, it is always with poignant tenderness that I imagine you,
dear shadow, on the dusty road, moving with a steadiness
stubborn towards this dazzling country to which you have given your heart. The Tyrolean bag
too heavy weighs on your shoulders, you stretch your neck forward, you swing your
clumsy hands and drag your fragile feet. When I met you you
was still young and yet already a man, a little strong, a little slow and
left, who could not stand the heat or walking. Nothing in the world could
will make me believe that you have never been a walker or an athlete. And on
I can only imagine you tired on this road. As it unfolds day after day.
day the long chain of your stubborn torment. You have said it yourself
same: "It was hard, you would say with this slight difficulty in expressing yourself"
which was resolved in strange shortcuts. It was hard. But... Hugo!
this name made everything clear. For what supported you in this
exhausting trial, it was that which sustained the weary crusaders:
love, faith, — and the saints.
But it was also the anticipated Splendor of Jerusalem. And it was for
Thomas, the fascination with this Paris overflowing with humanity and history,
these stones, these streets, these neighborhoods that lived in the novels of
Dumas, Balzac, Eugène Sue.
***
"Brain love?" Don't bore me with this nonsense. You will say.
that the love which was driving these naive crowds towards the tomb of Christ
was cerebral? And do you believe that we love France differently?
France is not a country like the others. It is not a country that one
love only because we had the chance, deserved or not, to enjoy it
father to son. We do not love him only by an attachment of beast to its
glen. Or from a German to his horde. We love him with the faith of a Christian
for his Redeemer. If you do not understand me, I pity you.
Until her arrival at the French border, I don't know much.
After a slow journey of more than a month, he only had a memory.
monotone. "The March to the Star," he called it himself with a smile,
adding that he could not, like the ancient magi, look at anything except
the star that guided him. "But the Tyrol?" I exclaimed, for it seems to me that
everyone must love the mountains as much as I do. "Well," he said, "I do
crossed. The coasts are as tiring to descend as to climb.
everything he says about it. Still, I was surprised. "It was about arriving"
He said to me and he looked for how to explain himself: "To admire is to stop."
Any delay would have jeopardized my joy - a smile brightened his short
well-groomed beard - I needed... I needed to reach France with
enough money: I wanted, don't laugh, I wanted, for my first night
in France, sleeping in a bed, — in a French bed...
He succeeded – he always succeeded in everything his love demanded of him.
He crossed the border at Delle, on the day of Saint John. He changed what was given to him.
remaining money and counting his fortune: forty francs and a few. Everything
was fine. He counted three francs for a real meal (the first one!) and a
Night at the inn: this, he had promised himself. Then he would continue on his way.
frugal. He thought he could survive on two francs a day. He
he would take the train in Troyes: that too he had promised himself. He would arrive
rich again with more than twelve francs: he would have time to turn around.
God protects lovers and rewards fervent hearts. It happens
that they do not notice it: they find everything natural. For
Others, on the contrary, fervor consists of welcoming everything as a
an intoxicating gift, always up to their expectations. Thomas was
these: he marveled all day. The sweetness of the weather, the road
flat and easy, the freshness of the trees, the meadows, everything seemed to be there
adorable brand of generous hospitality – of the generous hospitality that it
was waiting for France. He marveled that the river on which he leaned
the inn where he stopped, as the sun sank behind the high
poplars, called 'La Savoureuse'. He was amazed by the inn, he
marveled (French cuisine!) at the omelet that was presented to him, which
was twelve eggs and he ate it all with the appetite of an ogre, under
the somewhat surprised eye of the innkeeper, who said nothing although he saw
disappear like this what was supposed to be shared by all his family. When
Thomas understood him, he was amazed by the innkeeper. He marveled at him.
even more later, and his meeting with this man was to
to remain in one's life an indelible memory. "He overwhelmed everything,
he was telling. When I think of the Czechs, it is the figure of my uncle
Karel that I always see, with his blonde mustache that ended in
favorites. It's silly, I know, it was much less Czech
Austrian. And when I think of the French, it's that figure that comes to mind.
look at this slightly tired face of a brave little redhead. This long and pink nose,
and this reddish mustache, which fell into his mouth, and that he
soaked with a sponge-like noise after drinking. And especially those blue eyes,
both dreamers and stubborn, — the placid eyes of a free, reasonable being
and reasoner...
The innkeeper had approached him. He was smiling, twenty folds in a fan.
on the temples.
Is it getting better? he said. Were you hungry?
Thomas was not surprised by the use of 'tu'. He did not think that he ...
was due to his youth. He replied with a warm seriousness:
Yes, citizen.
This time, the reddish mustache widely revealed teeth.
pointed and very white. And the man straddled the bench and sat down in front.
Thomas.
Are you from Austria? he asked.
— From Moravia, Thomas specified.
In France for a long time?
Forever.
The man smiled, his mustache all split, like the teeth of a ...
comb. He says:
No more family over there?
Oh! Yes, said Thomas. I have my mother, my sisters. And my uncle,
the shipowner. That's right.
Exactly?
Yes, well, I would have spent my whole life in Pressburg.
There was, on the innkeeper's face, like a sudden cloud.
Did you bail?
France is a free country, citizen.
The mustache no longer smiled. And the blue eyes fixed on him a
strange look, a little unsettling. No doubt, thought Thomas, the man
hesitated. In a second he saw himself handed over to the police, taken away,
brought back to his family.
But suddenly:
— Sacrebleu, exclaimed his host, you are absolutely right! Yes, France
is a free country. Mariette!
A shape of shadow seemed to emerge from the shadow. A shape all in black.
Not young, not beautiful. But a face with a clear and serene expression.
Do you see that boy? said her husband. He comes from the Danube. He left everything behind.
over there, his mother, his fortune. Do you know why? Because France is a
free country.
And of course you congratulate him, the woman said calmly. Sir,
Believe me, she said to Thomas. Go back home.
Ah! ah! exclaimed the man, here we are. Listen to it, my old friend.
A free country, sir? It's a bit early to say. Ten years!
"freedom is still just a brand new toy, for all those men," she
designated the innkeeper with a nod of the head.
— Mariette! yelled the husband.
A toy, we break it, we wear it out, or we get disgusted with it. Don't get involved.
No, don't get involved! It's dangerous enough for the men.
from here. When I think that he made my granddaughter go see the planting of the tree of the
freedom! My Titine, who is not yet six years old!
She will remember this all her life, said the man.
It is chilling to see them brandish their Freedom like a tide of
ribbons, without realizing that they are being watched from everywhere. That they are there
only take the feet, we will fall on them. Don't find yourself there.
not at that moment, my poor boy!
You heard it, said the man as he stood up. You heard the voice of
caution. Now listen to mine. And first I have to pronounce a
the word she did not say. And it is the word: justice. There is this that she forgets...
I forget nothing, said the woman as she stepped into the shadows. Poor
darling. Justice! ...
... that, he continued, she forgets, before freedom. What would be the use of
to be free, if not to be just? Do not blame the boss.
She is a worthy woman. She is fearful because she has seen tough times.
I have seen as much as she has, and I might be just as fearful as she is, if it
there was none of that: justice. Because of that, a man has no right to be
fearful. And it may well be that it is not a story about women, in
effect. It’s our business. A man’s business. And I’m going to tell you,
I believe you made the right decision to come, because Justice seems to me
to be the matter precisely of this country. It is my opinion that Justice, its
Soldier, it is France. It is we its soldiers. There will never be enough of us.
If you have come here to be one, you are welcome.
I came to be one, said Thomas, and he felt the exhilaration.
to fill his eyes with tears.
— So starting today, you are one of us, said the host gravely, and he
He shrugged his shoulders. And if ever, one day, you are in distress, think of me.

***
You are one of ours! This is what the first Frenchman who spoke to him said.
he had said! Even if Thomas's youth had not hidden from him what he
there was something a bit pompous in this speech, he would have refused to see it, - to
because of these words. And me... well, I admit without shame that a certain
grandiloquence can move me, when it is born from the sincerity of a
simple heart. I love this innkeeper. And as for Thomas, he did not have
need to be in distress, we suspect, to think of him, — throughout
of his life. But when the day came, - when everything forced me to believe, alas!
what this unforgettable face was, this face of "brave little redhead" that
Thomas sees before him at the hour of dying, it is me, it is me who feels
from distress, — and from shame.
The train from Troyes arrived at the station in the evening. The sun was low.
already on the horizon, the houses plunged into shadow until the last
floors that this summer sun illuminated with a glow of rose gold. Thomas Muritz
Don't waste time. He was hungry, his bag was heavy. Look for a
brasserie, a hotel? The sun wouldn’t wait. No: he committed himself.
resolutely on the Boulevard de Strasbourg (he knew the layout of
Paris by heart), went down Boulevard Sébastopol, Rue de Turbigo, the
halls and the street of the Louvre. And he finally reached with the setting sun at
the term of his journey, — to the goal that hope had sustained him since Presburg
in the dust of the roads, the cold of the valleys, the gusts of the peaks,
in the incessant torture of the paralyzed limbs, — to the object that summarized
the various figures of his love: at the Pont des Arts. Now he
was! HE WAS! And he felt fulfilled. He had not been deceived, — and
please acknowledge that his love had not deceived him either: he
had led him straight to the heart of his aspirations, to this point in the world
where one kisses at once, barely turning, the Institute, the Louvre, the
Quoted, — and the book quays, the Tuileries, the Latin hill until the
Pantheon, the Seine up to the Concorde. An extraordinary summary that
swelled his heart with exquisite oppression. He remained there, while the
the last rays of the sun blazed behind Passy, crowned by
vermilion the arrow of Notre-Dame and hung on while passing to
architectural roughness of the Louvre. Beneath his feet flowed a river full
of splendor and restraint, a river that did not need, like the
Danube or the Vltava, to make themselves noticed to be admired. The waters in
were at that hour luminous and heavy as an iridescent mercury.
barges were passing slowly. Painters, on the banks, were folding
luggage. Fishermen persisted without bitterness. Students and
old people lingered to search the boxes of the booksellers. Some gray-haired women
and small hands, as we used to say back then, passed by him and
looked with interested astonishment at this young man with fine features
lost in an impassive contemplation that did not return to them their
regard.
 Here I fear that I must intervene. I must, it seems to me,
I should clarify that I am not telling the story of a hero from my mind,
but that of a man who was made of flesh and blood. The rights and the
The duties of a novelist and a biographer are not the same. It is,
in particular, chances, encounters, coincidences of which one
the novelist cannot use, — since it is he who is in control, and thus he
would be guilty of a breach of the truth of their art. Even a
the biographer is often tempted to exclude them, for the implausibility makes him
fear. I am no bolder than another, and what happened then on
the Pont des Arts, I would undoubtedly have kept silent about it, if, in the
accounts of Thomas's journey as told to me by his wife, by his
son, by his friends, and which form the substance of the present story, if the
the meeting that Thomas had on this bridge would have been less strange by its
extreme unexpectedness due to the singular behavior of Thomas Muritz.
Nothing could perhaps in my eyes illuminate Thomas's love under
colors that are both more natural and more surprising. More
also touching. He was there, standing right in the middle of the Pont des Arts,
"right and immobile like one of the hieratic kings that flank the old
"Prague Bridge," the man who took me there told me many years later.
He was called Gallerand. He was the representative.
general of the Rhône-Danube company. Thomas remembered having seen him
often at his father's and at his uncle's. It was, very exactly, the only
the human he met in Paris. "Gallerand will help me," he had thought.
more than once on the roads. Where to find it? He did not know, but that did not
he hardly knew. And it was that man, it was that improbable Gallerand
who had stopped ten steps away from him and was looking at him. Unlikely coincidence? Without
doubt, but when I consider the immense part that chance has
outfit, on which depended the course of a life as little adventurous as the
mine, I am hardly inclined to marvel at yet another chance. I
I am much more amazed by the behavior of Thomas Muritz in
this occasion. This is what Gallerand was always amazed by when he
told the thing: "Do you think he was surprised? he said. There was,
isn't it? of what being. I was hoping, - I was smiling while hoping for a
startle, an exclamation. Well, not at all. When he turned around and
I noticed him, he smiled and said calmly: "Hello, Sir"
Gallerand » and he took off his hat, - exactly as if we
fusions encountered on the merchant street of Pressburg. And when I told him
He made tell the whole story, and as he was there, at sunset, in
this foreign city, without parents, without friends, without a home, without a job,
without any other money than the two coins he showed me, and when I
I exclaimed: "Unfortunate one! What got into you? What were you going to become?"
Do you realize, if you hadn't met me..." — "But I
"I'm glad to meet you!" he said, and for the first time he
surprise display.
He was indeed surprised. And what surprised him was the surprise of
Gallerand. For after all, what was surprising about meeting each other on the
Bridge of Arts? Where, in fact, to meet, if not on the Bridge of Arts?
Could one live in Paris and not feel compelled, whenever possible, to
crossing the Bridge of Arts? Such was the strength of his love. And such in
was the consistency that he had not quite ceased to be surprised, forty
later: it is still where anyone would want to meet Thomas
Muritz would have done it with the greatest certainty, at any time of the year,
without any other effort than the most modest perseverance.

Gallerand took him home. He asked him what he wanted to do,— if he

had an idea about the future. Indeed, Thomas had an idea!
he only had one idea, a single goal he wanted to achieve and of which the
Pont des Arts was only the first step. He wanted the works of
Balzac, Hugo, and Eugène Sue, those beloved works that had been
for him the bread and the wine, the intoxicating drink whose drunkenness had
revealed to himself, that these odes to Paris, to France and to its people, to
love and justice, that these flaming pages so often read and
rules could penetrate thanks to him into the most humble cottages,
in the simplest workers' housing. And he succeeded! I have already said
that he always achieved everything his love required of him. He asked
that Gallerand helped him to enter a bookstore. This was achieved without too much
barely. He did the shopping, then the packages, then the restocking. He
he left this modest house for a more powerful publisher. He directed it.
soon the messaging services. Later he asked to travel across France
as a broker. And when he felt sufficiently knowledgeable, and a small
capital formed penny by penny allowed him to attempt the thing, he founded the
Editions Muritz. Who still knows them? They are forgotten. They
had only an ephemeral life, at least under this name, — a few
years. Thus the butterfly, after a long life spent in its chrysalis,
comes out of this one solely for the purpose of mating, and dies. Similarly Thomas.
Muritz founded his house to build, on what he had learned, a
popular sales system that allowed him to read, in the form of
Sunday feuilletons, by thousands of families, the works that it
, — Balzac, Hugo, and Eugène Sue. And as soon as this was done, he stopped.
became interested in his house and sold it.
Such is the force of passion, — such is its limit as well and it is
why I don't love him/her. Passion is a terrible destroyer. It
destroyed in the head of whoever does not accommodate everything that is not their fixation. She
makes a terrifying consumption of impulses and concepts of which she
feeds his insatiable cancer. And when, by good or bad fortune,
she comes to disappear (fulfilled or consumed), she leaves in the house
who fed her a devastated vacation, and her host deprived of desires,
except for the thirst to become a slave again.
Fortunately for Thomas Muritz, the void left in him by
the completion of his task was not immediately noticeable to him, - this saved him
undoubtedly these disastrous consequences. It was that his passion was towards
two faces: Paris, and the authors who had revealed it to him. When he had
paid tribute to those to whom he devoted these fifteen years, and that he
found himself still boiling with strength that he no longer knew what to do with.
he at least remained to enjoy his love for the big city, and he there
employs with the fervor he had devoted to honoring the poets: not
a street, not a cobblestone that did not see him pass some day. Was he dreaming, during
this slow and loving possession, to imprint on this beloved flesh the
mark of his passage? He succeeded. He broke through a new street, he bordered
this one of houses.
He never tires, his love never weakens. It was always a
sour love and excessive. O gloomy figure when dragged on vacation
by his family, in the mountains or on the beaches, the sad eye, the back
vaulted, fearing the heat, the cold, the sun, the rain, the wind, and boredom,
boredom, he counted the days until his return, until his reunion
with his beloved Paris! Unable to enjoy anything since separated from
the cherished object, - from where its complaints under the slightest countryside sun and its
Can't wait to go back and brave the heat by crossing over.
daily, at the hottest hour, the scorching Place du Carrousel.
Hence his horror of alpine fogs and his hunger to still be a bystander,
along the antique shops, in a street of the Saints-Pères
luminous of the cold rains of October. Hence his immeasurable boredom in front of
the monotonous agitation of the ocean and its nostalgia for the terraces of
Saint-Michel boulevard from where he would watch, for hours on end, flow
in front of him, the unbroken flow of an international youth.
He had become French. I still see him, the day when my father him
announce the news. It was at the terrace of some café, near the
ministry. I still see the sun that it was, the dusty street, and
the municipal waterer. I can still see that look, that smile that wanted to
hide the anxiety, as we approached. I was a young child.
I remember that they both drank an absinthe, and the pleasure, for
me, of a precious rarity, being on the terrace of a café was spoiled, because
Having watched an anti-alcohol propaganda movie, I feared that
my father and Thomas did not go mad, - let it not happen there, under
my eyes. I watched many alarms empty the glasses. I was on the lookout for
the face of the two drinkers the dreaded signs. But that of Thomas Muritz
reflected nothing but an inexhaustible joy. 'French, I am French',
he kept repeating, and he cast a surprised glance at what surrounded him, as if
everything would have changed since the wonderful news. And I too was
surprised, because at that time I found nothing extraordinary about being French.
Now there is hardly a day when I don’t say to myself, like Thomas
Muritz, how extraordinary it is indeed.
He had married. And his marriage itself was one of the stanzas of this long
hymn to France. I say this time France and no longer Paris. The
The Parisian was alluring him, but if more than one had offered herself to him, he did not
didn't want for a woman. What he expected to find in a wife,
first it was the provincial virtues; it was mainly that she was from
old soil of France, that the children he would have with her would hold to this soil by
a solid root.
To this he succeeded again! The god of passions and the one of chances
they arranged for him to find in the niece of his caterer, who had come to Paris
spending vacation at her uncle's place, the embodiment of her dream. She was
beautiful, modest, cheerful, naive, sentimental, virtuous, - and she
was called Chambord! She was, like Eugénie Grandet, the daughter of a
cooper (but not enriched). She was twenty years old and ran the school.
kindergarten of the small Berry town of Vendœuvres.
Beautiful, virtuous, and that name: Chambord! She too did not take long to
to be seduced by this man with fine features but a manly beard, elegant
more discreet, bold yet reserved, romantic yet thoughtful, — and who
came from a country she could not even pinpoint accurately on the map,
Moravia...
I would have liked to tell about this marriage. This courtship he offered her, good-natured and
engaged. These engagements, during the Christmas holidays, she was confident and
astonished, suddenly pathetic and intimidated. This separation until summer,
that he imposed himself as he did on her, - but which he endured so poorly. And how,
As soon as he was free, he would hop on his motorized tricycle (the latest model of the
novelty), passed through the barrier at the Orléans gate, made ten or twenty
kilometers "in the direction of" Vendœuvres, where he imagined the young
girl in the midst of her children, fingers stained with ink, then happy to
having thus approached her, was coming back... Don't forget that he had then
reached this age and social situation where serious men prefer
generally eyeing the boards of directors.
I would have liked to narrate the ceremony itself; the wedding meal, in
the farm of the bride's nurturing father; and the guests singing first,
one after the other, lewd songs; then gradually
surprising these popular laments that mourn the weakness of
poor, the selfishness of the rich, and the trampled justice... "Good people!"
Thomas thought warmly and, embraced, joked, overwhelmed by
affectionate hugs, his memory flew towards the innkeeper of the banks of
the Savory, towards the brave little redhead who had told him: "You are one
of ours.
 II

THE REIGN OF THE AVARS

It is not enough to possess the Sun if we are not able

to give it!
Paul CLAUDEL (Saint-Louis).
 ÀANDRÉ, DEAD FOR FRANCE,
AND TO HIS BROTHER GEORGES, GREATLY WOUNDED,

MAX, DEAD FOR FRANCE,

ÀLUCIEN, DEAD FOR FRANCE,

TO ROBERT AND TO RAYMOND,

TO HENRI, TO MAURICE, TO HENRY
To BENJAMIN, to JEAN-RICHARD and to PIERRE,
To RAYMOND AND RUDI
COMBATANTS OF THE TWO WARS

Étienne, soldier of Libya,

AND TO ALL THOSE WHO ARE NOT,

LIKE THEM,
MY OLD FRIENDS, MY BROTHERS.
 This wound, with what would you have inflicted it so deep that in you
retiree?

Paul CLAUDEL (Saint-Louis).

I said that in this marriage, he was expecting children who would care for the old man.
sun of France by solid roots. Those that hold its son are so
deep, that they have led him there entirely.
André, oh my dear playmate, lying for twenty-five years
in the cold earth, covered by the deadly shell that pulverized your battery,
You haven't left my memory. Who could forget your radiant figure?
Your childlike kindness, your cheerfulness, your fervor and this intelligence
sparkling? My father enjoyed teasing you, for the pleasure of your responses.
Everything about you pleased him, even that wild chauvinism and that wager.
comical that you held against yourself, never to touch anything that
reminds Germany: even to deprive you of dessert, when the hotel the
Bavaroise. Yet one day you were caught in default: you were slurping
a Saint-Germain soup with appetite... "It's on purpose, you replied in
smiling. It's to show them that we'll eat them up, the Alboches!
Do you remember (ah! I speak as if you were among us) those
last vacation, in 1914, in this hamlet deep in a dark
Swiss valley? That's where the war surprised us. It surprised your father.
more than any other. She terrified him. Not that he was afraid for you or for
he: you were so young, and he was already too old. He was afraid for France, —
for this country and for this people. All night his teeth chattered, the bed
tremble. Without a doubt, he alone perhaps, among all of us, had the vision of
sufferings that threatened these men he loved so much.
We parted laughing. You whispered in my ear: "As soon as
passed my exams, I commit. » Thomas let you do it. How would you have...
He prevented you? It was he himself who instilled that fierce love in you.
As the legend soon shapes the figure of heroes and makes it more
true to nature, the memory I have of you is more firmly linked, can-
to be, in this kind caricature, a work by a friend from Fontainebleau,
that your flesh face. She was so real, and you so loved, that she was drawn out
on a postcard. Impudent, arched, smiling, charming face similar to
that of Louis XV as a child, you went out in an egg shell uniform:
"Poussin, it was said, the youngest officer in France." You did not take long to
become his youngest dead.
I feel nothing but repulsion for those fathers who take pride in 'having
"gave their son to France." Few men more than the old Doumer,
using his four slain sons to elevate himself to honors, deserves
my aversion. And if this was how I had to gain sympathies to
Thomas Muritz, nothing would have convinced me to speak of this sacrifice. But the
the pain of the father far surpassed the pride of the patriot. And of this I do not
Remember one thing, it was the disappearance, forever, of fear.
that one might not hold him to be as French as another.
More than once, at dinners, meetings, bridges,
some boorish patriot had displayed before him contempt for "the
Imported French. Out of respect for his guests, Thomas refrained
the balm of raising the blunder or the rudeness, to put the boor at the foot of
to invite him to assert which actions, more deserving than that
of being born by chance here rather than elsewhere, he had to oppose to his own,
those by which he, Thomas Muritz, had proven his love for the
homeland he had chosen. Could he, like him, sincerely ask
to France, like the saint Louis of Claudel:
Is it just my body that you want, or rather isn't it my
soul?
And do you not say that your right in my heart is beyond things
sensible
Is this the place where time does not serve and where separation is impossible?

What was once naive appetite has now become study, and the
free choice, and honor, and the oath, and the reasonable will,
This kiss while the mind sleeps, in its place here is the long desire
insatiable
From such a difficult paradise that is missing, let all beings be interested in it.

It is not in chance that I love you, but in justice and

necessity...
 I do not love you by chance, but in justice and the
necessity..." He was silent, but he blamed himself for being silent, and for his silence.
as much as the words of the other, he remained bruised. "Fortunately,
he said in his soft voice with that way he had of omitting the
verbs, fortunately, still the same type of people... At four
pins, the air, oh! very pleased with themselves, and a well-groomed stripe, huh?
in well-straightened hair. Thank Heaven, never one of those brave
little redheads..." For he used the plural: as if all the brave
people of this nation that he cherished would have been red-haired. One day I mentioned it to him.
remark. The innkeeper, yes, I knew. But...
There were others, he told me. Redheads have always attracted me.
happiness. Or rather... it's as if France had fun... as if,
these funny little men, she always had fun... with me
delegate... as ambassadors. The ambassadors of what is best
In this people... Here: the redhead from the omnibus, the day of the death of
Ferrer! Do you remember Ferrer? A bit young.
— Which redhead? I asked. Yes, Ferrer, I believe I have read
the story. But I remember poorly.
I liked to make him talk. It was difficult to get him started. He
rarely decided to go beyond a few words. When he did, it was
that it was worth it.
Read the white wine of La Villette, he said. It's well told. It was good.
that. This trial alone is enough to make you revolt. But when they
shot! To shoot a man for his ideas! It may have been in Spain:
When I read that in the newspaper, I jumped up. I was on the platform.
of Auteuil-Saint-Sulpice, I remember.
— The one who was riding on rails? With a horse as backup for
climb the slope?
Yes. Do you remember that?
And the redhead?
It was a little plumber who was reading over my arm,
looking. Red, as I told you. I wouldn't swear that he looked like
my innkeeper. But yet... The face all wrinkled, like him, and the
long reddish-brown mustache... He reads the title, he goes oh! and looks at me.
It's funny that he looked at me, because at that time I was shooting up.
of elegance, I was wearing a gray bowler hat and gaiters, I must not have been at
his eyes the kind of men with whom one sympathizes. Maybe he
saw me jump. Or that he needed to, — that he could not help but
look for someone's gaze. In any case, he is looking at me, I am looking at him,
And there we are nodding our heads, both of us. We nodded it like that.
a good time, because undoubtedly we found nothing to say, and
I imagine today that we would form quite a comedic couple.
But we didn't feel like laughing.
– And you didn't say anything?
Yes, in the end he asked me:
When did they kill him?
Yesterday morning.
— The bastards, he said, whistling through his teeth. And he began again to
nodding, jaws clenched. It was quite enough for me to
understood everything he thought. And indeed, it relieved my own anger,
to not be there all alone to stew in my indignation. Maybe he felt
the same thing. In any case, all of a sudden he took my arm, and he said, in a
both overwhelmed and fierce:
I need to see my friends.
He went down, and naturally I went down with him. It was
on the side of Saint-Charles Square. We started to walk. We were talking, we
talked. We followed the streets. We entered a bistro. It was empty. We
Often speaks badly of bistros, but finding it empty, I understood this
what a bistro could sometimes represent. The owner said: 'Come on
see at Albert's." We left again. We passed under an archway, and at the end
from a courtyard, my redhead took me into a sort of workshop, where
There were large, somewhat dusty tables lined up, with packages
above. There were already half a dozen guys. Mine didn't
presented, I was looked at a bit, but we were all so excited that
Two minutes later, there were already people addressing me informally. Some entered.
others. My little redhead was very listened to. Often he turned towards
me to take as a witness, and each was doing the same, and we
Let us look at each other, deeply. I don't know how much of
time we stayed. Some guys were coming out, others were going in, and almost at
for every newcomer, we heard the same words, and we
we eased the pressure on evil like when we suffer
from a gum. In the end, it was necessary to part ways. But it was understood
that we would meet again. And when we met, our excitement
did not budge an inch. My new friend immediately started to
my side, as if all this anger really stemmed from both of us. And
Here we go again talking, — we couldn't help but emphasize
on the gum. We weren't very sure what we were waiting for, if even we
was waiting for something. In the end, a big devil entered, a chap
with a Gaulish mustache,— red, I swear!... — he shouted: "They
"go to the Embassy!" and he went out without waiting. I did not know who
these were them but I understood without difficulty what the Embassy was. We
We all went out. My little redhead didn't leave me. Neither did I.
would not have wanted to leave him. As she emerged onto the Boulevard de Grenelle
we distinguished other groups, in the shadows, that were climbing towards the
Champ-de-Mars. Groups of three or four. Sometimes of one.
dozens, like us. There were coming out from every street. We passed the
Seine. At Cours-la-Reine it was starting to look like a real crowd.
And it buzzed like a beehive, it was exhilarating: it seemed to me
feel Paris rising beneath my feet. Avenue Montaigne was already a juice
thick, we had a hard time moving forward, there were a few screams... We too we
cried out. We were never able to approach the Embassy, but we
we have cleared our throats to scream, to shout our anger, our revolt, and
our despair... I don't know why I'm telling you all this. I have
pleasure to remind me, I believe... It seems to me... yes, - is it shameful to
it seems to me today that I have never been happier than
that night.
***
And nothing makes me unhappier than thinking about this story. This
noble uprising, this beautiful revolt of French consciences, — for
the unjust death of a single man! Oh! I know well that if it was necessary
today to be so particular... I can measure all the better
what has been lost, the ignoble regression to which we have been forced.
And now that I have to finally tackle the most bitter page, I
feels this downfall in a cruel way.
The armistice found me in what was called the free zone, like many people. I
I got back relatively early. However, I left Paris for a long time.
side: the fear of suffering from his degradation, the absence of transportation, and
the thousand difficulties, insipid but tyrannical, that kept me in
a house delivered for weeks to the troop and to looting. I remained
Long months without news from many friends. I wrote to Thomas Muritz;
but received no answer. Where was he? In truth, I did not worry.
no more for him than for many others. This numbness, this
forced indifference was not one of the least degradations that
we had to endure until the best part of ourselves.
When train traffic resumed, I also resumed my trips to Paris, strongly
rare elsewhere. I hardly spent more than forty-eight in the city
hours. I lacked courage, oh painful necropolis, to proceed
in your deserted streets, which were never more beautiful, never more
poignant, - never more funeral. I especially lacked courage to
in facing the various shames, these flags, these posters, these newspapers,
later these stars...
It was one of those, on a clear June morning, that was approaching toward
Hi. As always, I blush (I have never been able to meet one, not a single one)
times, without blushing). And already I was turning my head away, with this cowardice
miserable that always prevents me from sending a message with a glance
of fraternity that alone could alleviate my humiliation, — already my eyes
despite myself, they pitifully slid towards the ground when they caught onto the
he has a short very white beard, a high and clear forehead, and that look
smiling, full of sweetness...
What, this star... And my amazed memory suddenly brought up all this
that I knew about Thomas Muritz's family, - these ancestors, these
parpaillots...
And suddenly I imagined him as in the past, advancing, advancing
harshly towards this generous France... "The March to the Star..." O
God! Did it really have to be, in the end, that star?
He took my arm and was gently leading me, with affectionate
questions about me and mine, towards the steps that lead to this little
square by the water, right on the quay of the Seine, where one embraces
both the City and the Île Saint-Louis. But I was responding poorly and mumbling,
struggling to recover from a conflicting emotion, that of finding him again
thus, the beautiful old man thinned but so similar to himself, that of seeing him
porter, him, him... I stammered even more and he leaned on.
tenderly on my arm to sit. He was smiling without a trace
of bitterness.
Isn't it you, he said, or André, who had an old professor of
Math, where the lesson one day dealt with the word of Cambronne? When one of
you, he said, believes to thus tarnish his neighbor, he is mistaken: it is his own
clean lips that he covers with filth.
- Well! I exclaimed, that's why I feel myself...
— But what do you have to do with it? Let the winner be.
leaving: it's all profit for France.
— But she lets him do it! But we let him do it, but I...
Do you still want to offer your chest to its tanks? Or what?
Carry a star yourself like these young students did who
Now die slowly in prison?
But you yourself, I exclaimed, why do you wear it? For after all...
One must believe that a layman can be Jewish, after all. Until what
Point? I don't know, because I'm not interested. My mother was Jewish.
My father? The entire male lineage is Protestant. On the women's side, there
there are still Jews, I know it. How many and which ones, Moravia is a
not far to go to dig all that up, and by the way, isn't it, my little one, I
I don't care.
I do not understand you, I do not understand you! I protested.
(and it was true). Some are completely Jewish and who... and who do not
I do not mind and I highly approve of them! And you, who
you would have all the reasons...
Oh! Me, my little one, I am too old.
His words fell into silence, as I did not understand everything.
following what he meant to say. Too old for what? To not carry
the star? What relation did age have...
— You don't see me, yet, he said, at my age, going to blow up
trains, or transporting weapons across fields, or anything else
of the same kind? But not for that reason, right? impassive assistant,
from the bottom of my armchair...
Do you mean...
— But yes, we must give of ourselves one way or another. When
Men are persecuted, how to recognize a French person? And when
France itself suffers, how to recognize its children? Put its little one.
person safe, very well: at least let it be so that one can serve.
Otherwise, if one has a weak arm, one should stay in their place, among their own.
— to carry their cross with them...
— But when the sacrifice is in vain, — like yours? When it is
sterile?
He never is. And you know it. Are you one of those who judge the
France guilty of throwing itself into a fight lost in advance? Of having
offers in holocaust? From those who cannot see, — because everything
What is sordid, always, and murky in a defeat of theirs
cache –, that she will come out strengthened, not diminished?
I don't know, I said honestly. Grown up? I would like to be one.
Sure. The mud, it seems to me that we've plunged it in quite deeply... I
I fear that she will carry traces in her memory for a long time.
of men...
— About what? About the rout? About the exodus? About the pillaging?
 Oh! No. All of this... yes, all of this will be forgotten. It's ugly, it's
pitiful but anecdotal. I mean: related to any misadventure
military. No, I'm thinking of things... degrading... and irreparable.
Like... like what you're wearing there. Or the abandonment of the Lorrainers. Or
the truly dishonorable delivery of the refugees
policies...
What?
It was not an exclamation, not even a cry: a bark. I
turned towards him, surprised. He was red, his eyes slightly bulging. I
recognized one of those sudden fits of anger that scared his son.
— Is that you saying that? How dare you!... (he struck the ground with
his cane...) This odious lie!
I remained silent, and my surprise was so evident that it seemed to him.
calm down a little, — barely.
Are you foolish or light-hearted? You make... you make yourself the peddler of a
of the most sinister ducks...
— But, Mr. Muritz...
Who do you think you are playing into the hands of? Don't you understand,
unfortunate, that the Germans... that the German propaganda... that they
hoping, by attributing this horror to us...
But, Mr. Muritz, it is true! It is, alas, grimly true!...
I was a little furious myself and, I admit, I may have never
as much lacked intuition. Dear Thomas Muritz! Not having understood you,
At this moment... I'm still mad at myself.
He regarded me, all anger gone, with only that kind of
impatient look that reproaches a child for their stubbornness.
— No, my little one, that’s not true. It’s not. It cannot
not the being. Come on!
He tapped my knee.
— Finally, my little one, let’s see! I do not like Pétain. God knows I don’t.
I don't like him. But still... let's see! A Marshal of France!
Let's see, let's see, my little one, a MARSHAL OF FRANCE!...
Sweet Thomas, dear Thomas, ah! how much purer you were than anyone
of us. O all-powerful force of history, and of the words linked to history, on
a fervent brain! A marshal of France... Yes, I thought, it is you
You are right, dear Thomas. We must refuse... And I say:
So, you believe...
I say it wrong. Or rather I say it too well, I seemed to rush too quickly to...
to render... Once again, I lacked intuition. I shouldn't have given in so quickly.
It would have been necessary...

But come on, said Thomas again (he lowered his head a little). Of course,
let's see...
He made a few circles in the sand with his stick. It seemed to me that he
I had to find something to say, right away. But I couldn't find anything.
And the silence lasted, just a little too long.
When Thomas broke it, that troubled voice, that hesitant voice...
-- Because... he finally said (this word, of not being tied to anything, as he
said long...) because, if one day I had to believe... if I had to stop...
He did not speak any further. He had lifted his head, and he was looking at,
beyond the island, over the dock, climbing the houses of the mountain
Saint Genevieve, and that dome up there, under which the men sleep
illustrious, around which the Lycees, the Grandes Ecoles, gather
Faculties.
***
It is this dome and the enormous mass it overlooks that fill everything
the office window of Stani. This mass crushes me – and the character,
Stani's intelligence overwhelms me too. The trade of saints is
Difficult. What a terrible mirror! Too much kindness is cruel to vanity.
of others.
I had climbed the steps of these three floors, my heart as heavy as
the sky of this late autumn. What would be said up there, I knew
the essential. More light would only lead to more pain. But how
refuse the light, even if it is challenging?
Stani opened the door himself. He was only at home for a few days, the
while a safer refuge was found for him; he was not even sleeping there yet.
We had just pulled him out of his prison (I hesitate to say: we, because my
the part in this deliverance was minimal: a few connections, a few
meetings of friends with more social skills). Everything was in order: the papers,
baptism certificates, — without the slightest tampering. It took only
more caution: some enemy had denounced him as a Polish Jew,
we could not know who.
A enemy of Stani! One had to believe it. And besides, yes, the
holiness, greatness must evoke hatred equal to that of wealth and
happiness. Gods, what low souls!
Who was more lowly, the one who denounced him, or the official who
did he deliver it to the enemy? "Fifty hostages tomorrow morning!" and one
who gives? Among which citizens? Naturalized Jews:
what a bargain!
Thus, this admirable man was delivered. Naturalized without delay,
at the request of his amazed teachers, in order to be able to enter the street
from Ulm. Whose polyvalent vaccine preserves thousands every year
French lives. Who wanted, in the two wars, to serve among the
simple soldiers, and served so well, that he came out of one medaled, of the other
with an arm too short.
"Useless!" was the reply when, in Drancy, he requested time to
packing his suitcase. He then knew what fate awaited him.
My life may be owed to their zeal, he said to me: they
they gave one hundred and fifty names, for fear that one would not find the
fifty quite quickly. The calculation was correct, albeit a bit broad: we
We were about a hundred gathered in this sinister shed... Happy for me
even though the Fritz did not have the whole lot wiped out, since it was
So... That they had to choose... Do you know how they went about it?
I shook my head. He had made me sit in one of those deep
chairs that are called, I believe, clubs, and this comfortable indolence,
in this warm atmosphere, amidst these carpets, these books, these
the tableaux made its narrative both horrifically present and
fantastically unreal.
He was standing, slowly pacing back and forth.
air there, and I couldn't stop admiring this face of Saint John the Baptist, whose
drawn traits, the emphasized folds could not erase the extreme
sweetness.
I would prefer, he said, to have been in my place than in theirs.
French gendarmes! They were poor souls, after all.
No, no! I exclaimed. Cowards, nothing else.
She turned her head towards me, over her shoulder, with a smile.
Sad. He closed his eyes, shrugged a little.
— Bah! he said. They had orders. Their whole life, they were trained to
find honor in obedience. Where does crime come from? At what degree of
the scale? Where does it start? Where does it end? As for those poor guys,
I can easily imagine their dismay: 'Only fifty!' and we were
more than a hundred. What a story! And not the time, right, to go
looking for instructions. No, you see, I wonder if it wasn't
not an extra dose of sadism, from the Fritz, than to force
French gendarmes to choose for themselves...
 — Either with contempt, Stani, or with contempt.
— Or contempt... perhaps... Contempt for whom? For these poor
frantic leaders? Or for the leaders who... who have them...
— For everyone, Stani. For the ignominy of these selfishness... of this new
Joseph sold by his brothers... Sold, Stani, by those, among all the
peoples of this unfortunate planet, who should have shown themselves
great... To men who share only a few rocks
dry, some foul marshes, one can forgive a lot...
to be harsh, to be sordid... But to the French! The kindness of God
involves duties... duties from which it is degrading to evade...
Oh! Stani! In what abjection... This stingy and sated country that refuses
to accept the trial! Who with a trembling hand offers his adopted son...
Oh! I know, I know... Is the nation guilty? It is about
some men. Don't ask poor guys for more than they
can offer.
I could not suppress a movement of impatience.
You are too generous, Stani. Your indulgence...
He waved away the words I was about to say with a languid gesture.
He was turning his back to me, near the window, his long slender silhouette in
Chinese shadow on the window. He turned around.
— Because I pity our tormentors? Pitiful tormentors... if you
you had seen them!...
A shadow of a smile lingered on her lips.
— When they opened the door... because it was the solution they
found it, yes: they opened the door and simply told us to
leave. We were expecting feldgrau, so when we saw some
French... these gendarmes, these guys from our place... I believe... I believe... yes,
that I myself hoped for, a second... the sky, isn't it, the trees,
freedom... so that hope, impatience... we've pushed ourselves a little bit (it
had a sad sneer), yes, jostled, to go out, as if... like
yes...
He took a gulp of air and slowly exhaled it through his teeth.
And the first fifty...
Oh! Stani, I whispered. It's horrible.
— Yes, he said... horrible...
His deep, soft gray eyes remained fixed for a long time on the
Lastly, I was able to say, — compel me to say:
-- And... Thomas Muritz...
He silently acquiesced, without moving, with a slow gesture of
eyelids.
“Do you believe,” he suddenly said (he had resumed his weary walk of a
(the wall to the other), will you believe that when I saw him there, I was delighted!
He stopped in front of me, opened his hands slightly, nodded his head to
gray loops.
I was glad! Not to be alone! One must believe... (he resumed his
...we must believe that we are all beautiful selfish brutes, to
less... unless it is really impossible for man to...
"to realize"... that death is really there, waiting for him. And that,
obscurely, I only rejoiced at finding a companion,
no more, no different than in the regiment... Maybe. Yet... he has
scared to see me. "Good God! Stani!" he stammered... "They have you..."
they have you..." Maybe he, "realized" better than I did. Maybe
What age... It's difficult when you still feel full of strength, isn't it?
not, from... to tear oneself away from all illusion.
“Yet...” he started again but hesitated. “Illusions,
he repeated, if he had not had it himself... why would he have... I dare not say
that he faltered, but...
He looked at me, partly turned away still, as if he were waiting for something from me.
something, or wanted to watch for some sign, something on my face
movement. But I remained still.
What an example, however, he had given us during those hours.
"disasters," he said, and he went, once again, to lean against the window. "This
serenity, this detachment!... All those who were there... oh! they did not offer
not everyone a beautiful spectacle. Many were moaning. Others... Muritz them
fit taire: a word against France, and you know what became of it. In the end,
we were all around him. And when the door opened, when,
place of the Fritz, we saw the French...
He remained silent for a long few seconds. He looked at the enormous wall, in
his face, with concentrated insistence, as if trying to decipher it
some ancient inscription erased.
There was this rumor, he continued, this foolish hope, this beginning of
jostling... When Muritz came out, - one of the last, - he looked for me
with his eyes, he gave me a triumphant smile...
Why, murmured Stani in a strange voice, as if he had
asked to respond. 'Anyone... anyone would have seen... there is no
you just had to look at their poor faces, all of them, those unfortunate cops
who opened to us. There was one... (he buried his hands deep in his
pockets and resumed his march)... so pale... turnips and carrots: a funny
little redhead...
Oh! Stani... a redhead...
Well?
— The ambassadors... Ah! You cannot... I will explain it to you.
Continue.
You just had to look at him, that redhead, to understand... I you
I swear I understood quickly! Well... it's from him, it's from that one that
Muritz approached. With a good smile. With that good smile that he
He approached and gave him two friendly pats on the back.
the shoulder... If you had seen it jump!
— Who? The redhead?
Yes. One of those jumps! A second later, Muritz had his revolver.
in the ribs. Poor Pandora! What panic!... "To the wall! To the wall!"
he crated.
After that...
Stop ceasing to walk. He was looking at me, but as one looks
sometimes, without seeing. And he ran a finger over his forehead, slowly.
The rest is less beautiful. It seems that Muritz, all of a sudden... Oh!
I don't know. He has... he has... lost all of his... no more allure, no more allure
not at all. I cannot forget that, as it was... pathetic. He was looking at the
the gendarme, the redhead, with eyes... dilated eyes, and he was mumbling
endlessly 'no... no...' reaching out his hands... What was he waiting for from him, good
God! I've never seen a man looked at like that... And suddenly he
began to hit his temples with his fists, in despair, and to
crying... with sobs... Good God! I wouldn't have wanted to... I would have
wanted to never see...
After that, they closed the door. I still heard Muritz's voice.
who shouted: 'No!' and then...
He shuddered:
The Hotchkiss...
What would I add? With my throat tight from grief and bitterness, I
try to make Stani understand that these tears, that these cries were not
No, alas! Those of an ultimate fright. But those – and I have the heart
torn - from distress, despair, horror, the agony of a
murdered love.
My God, why didn’t you blind Thomas until the end?
Why did you want that in the brief second of this last glance it
caught sight of this horrible face, — this face that we all carry within us—
nations or men, - that of the desperate part that was always at
Mammon? What have you punished me for? Or what have you punished me for? Because
since he is no longer here, the reality of his existence burdens me every day,
— of his existence in this mortal second that I did not know, that we
we did not know that those who remained worthy of his love did not know
he saves.
And if I must, my God, carry within me from now on the memory -
imaginary but tenaciously, but horrifically present - of this ultimate
regard, why are you punishing me in the clarity of my love
for my homeland? Because I know well, I feel well that there is something
altered in this love. Perhaps I will never be able to think again
to France with the pure joy of yesteryear. Oh! not because of France. To
because of this look.
And yet, I know it too, it will hardly disturb our important ones,
all these skilled people who have both feet on the ground and look down on greatness
of a nation measured by its profits. Perhaps, even, they will take
the advantage of what I have just confessed to triumph: "Our love, to
we, do not bend for so little!" They will still give me lessons on
patriotism. What should I answer? They are stronger than me, they...
will close their mouths.
 POSTFACE

It's putting it mildly thatThe Silence of the Sea is the most well-known work.
of Vercors. For most people, Vercors is the man of a book.
However, his bibliography includes around forty titles, without
count the pre-war sketch albums; in their time, the
Deformed animals, to a lesser extent, Sylva, had many
readers. Nevertheless: Vercors, despite a literary production that
spans over fifty years, has been, remains, and undoubtedly
will remain forever, the author of The Silence of the Sea.

SITUATION OF VERCORS THE DAY AFTER

OF THE ARMISTICE

On June 22, 1940, the armistice was signed with Germany, bringing an end to
a poorly prepared war, even more poorly conducted and without it being
possible to discern the slightest national will of significance, to the point
that they called "the funny war". The climate of decay,
of abandonment, of confusion of this time has been described with disgust
by Vercors in The Battle of Silence as well as in The Opportunities
lost. He immerses the short text that opens this collection: "Despair is
[3]
death," which dates back to 1943 .
Vercors had long been a "die-hard pacifist", as he...
define himself – in reaction to the horrors of the 1914-18 war
–, but, in the face of the increasingly violent audacity of fascist regimes
and Nazi (bold actions to which democracies only responded with the
pusillanimity and disunity, after however, in a first
time, contributed to sinking Germany through a foolish policy
revanchist), he understood that pacifism was no longer relevant.
In these pages, we discover a Vercors stunned by the way in which the
operations had been carried out, by incompetence, by cowardice, by
the intrigue spirit of many general officers. In the small village
near Romans where his battalion had been retrenched, he was able to observe closely the
softness, the ambient lowering, but also to feel, among some, the
refusal to indulge in this attitude.
Released, he withdraws with his family to their house in Villiers-sur-
Morin. He had promised himself not to publish anything as long as France was
busy. He already had a nice career as a designer behind him
humorous and an illustrator, which earned him considerable success,
the esteem of amateurs and numerous writers. His best friends
named Jules Romains, Louis Martin-Chauffier, Jean-Richard Bloch.
Environment, we would say today, of "leftist intellectuals", united
for a long time by pacifism (there was also a right-wing pacifism, that
notably from Brasillach, but it was not the same) and always by
antifascism. After having been a fervent supporter for many years of
the agreement with Germany - he had devoted boundless admiration to
Briand, to whom he will later dedicate an "autobiography"
In tribute: I, Aristide Briand - Vercors had become aware, in
particularly on the occasion of a crossing of the country to go to Prague,
in 1938, of the totalitarian character of Nazi Germany. It was
convinced that there was nothing good to expect from such occupants and
the conciliatory attitude, to say the least, of a large part of the
the population concerning them dismayed him. For his part, he was determined, in
better to "be silent".
However, one had to live. Skilled with his hands, he finds a
to be employed by the village carpenter. However, fearing that a task
purely manual, physically exhausting, did not dull him, he decided to
to force oneself to write two pages every evening. For a long time, the demon of
Writing itched him. A large number of his friends were writers.
He had experienced a bit of writing while drafting the captions for his drawings.
Moreover, he was a great reader, and his tastes were quite eclectic, but the most
often oriented towards authors concerned with "form", they carried it
towards Proust, Anatole France, among others, and especially Conrad. Conrad,
for him, was the model of the writer he had dreamed of being. Golden arrow,
Lord Jim was among his favorite books. He was sensitive to the
charm and effectiveness of short stories, short tales, and he will say that
among the models he had in mind, at the moment he decided to set himself
to write, there was Katherine Mansfield. The subject was already found: it was
obsessed with a missed youthful love, a young girl for whom he
had once felt a strong attraction, which he had seen a few times,
but without this love ever being able to express itself. She was now a mother
of family, and it was therefore no longer possible for him to go back on this
missed meeting. He felt guilty for having passed, out of lightness, to
[4]
side of this chance of happiness He had a score to settle with
himself. He also began to recount this unfulfilled love for
Stéphanie – that was supposed to be the title of the story – and, when he had written it
About sixty pages, he went to submit his text to Pierre de Lescure.
He had known Pierre de Lescure since 1926. Lescure, who was then
An art bookstore warmly welcomed its first
album, 21 practical recipes for violent death. Their friendship had not ceased.
to deepen since. Lescure, who was himself a novelist, had
exerted a certain influence on young writers and artists
beginners. Vercors considered him a master, and had confidence
absolute in his judgment. Moreover, it was on his initiative that Vercors
had just engaged in active Resistance. Lescure belonged to a
network that worked for the Intelligence Service and Vercors
had started to transport parachuted people from London
towards the southern area, still unoccupied at that time. The links between the
Two friends were particularly close at that time.
Lescure was rather favorably impressed by this first attempt and
he encouraged him to continue. Some time later, Vercors started
to collaborate with La Pensée libre, a resistant magazine founded by some
communist intellectuals whose main leaders were
Jacques Decour and Georges Politzer. The first issue was released in
February 1941 and it contained, among other things, an article by Politzer,
Obscurantism in the 20thecentury", which was a response to the speech that
had just delivered, in November 1940, at the Chamber of Deputies, at
5
Paris, the ideologue of the Nazi party, Reichsleiter Rosenberg However,
the writers of La Pensée libre were aware that to expand their
audience, they had to draw on contributions that did not come from
only from members or supporters of the Communist Party. He was
thus decided to publish an issue that brought together other currents of
the resistant spirit. Vercors was tasked, alongside Lescure, to ensure
the participation of other authors. But his initial steps towards
of writers certainly hostile to Vichy, but no less anti-communist
(Georges Duhamel was the first he visited), they make
understand that they would never agree to collaborate on a periodical if
clearly marked. The idea came to him, he who had always insisted on
to edit his own albums, to found a clandestine publishing house.
In the meantime, by the way, the Gestapo had searched the printing house of
Free Thought. The printers had been arrested, the intellectuals
[6]
those responsible had fled and were hiding ... something had to be done
thus the Éditions de Minuit was born.
 GENESIS OF SILENCE

The idea of publishing the story of his failed romance with Stéphanie was not
obviously no more words. It was now a matter of doing, if not a
combat literature — that would come a little later — at least one
literature of the affirmation of dignity. It was the most urgent task.
The Battle of Silence accurately describes the beginnings of the Editions of
Midnight; the printing of texts, thanks to courageous printers; the
binding of the works by some friends who worked in
apartment; the distribution by a "secure" network. Lescure, who was in
relationship with Paulhan, was specifically in charge of the collection of
manuscripts; Vercors, who had a personal practice of publishing,
was engaged in manufacturing and distribution. When Lescure leaves for
the maquis of Jura, in 1942, he will appoint Eluard to succeed him at the head
[7]
of the reading committee that had been formed .
But Vercors' work also tells us about the genesis of his own.
texts and, of course, first and foremost, of Silence. The idea, then, was
to affirm the dignity of France at a time when, precisely, it is
[8]
would have needed the most and where honor was cruelly lacking for him .
It was not only the average France, the population that was missing,
in his eyes, to the duty of dignity: he had been shocked by the affability of the
people of his village towards the German soldiers who were there
confined. But the intellectuals themselves, those who should have
set an example by at least refraining from publishing with the
publishers or in periodicals that compromised with the occupier,
accepted the fait accompli, composed, and there were, of course, those
who, like Chardonne or Drieu La Rochelle, openly committed
their pen in the service of the collaborationist policy. Others, without
doubt, like Malraux or René Char, had forbidden themselves from
publish the slightest line as long as the territory is occupied by the army
enemy. But there were few of them. So it is to all those who, without
being collaborators, however, let themselves be lulled by the words
reassuring from the Marshal, through the courtesy of the occupant's order,
what Vercors means: no, do not trust them, those people are lying to you,
[9]
They seek to sweet-talk you in order to crush you later. .
The spark was brought to him by comments made in a
restaurant, two German officers: they were mocking each other about the
naivety of the French who had faith in the displayed willingness to cooperate
10
by the authorities He was holding his subject. He had known, during the years
20, in a ski resort, a German who had been
reserve lieutenant during World War I. This
German spoke only of his disgust for the war, of his desire to see
the two peoples unite. However, a few years later, Vercors was to
finding, by chance, seated at a café terrace on the boulevard Saint-
Michel:
"He had just left Nazi Germany, he was emigrating to America."
What was happening in his country filled him with shame, and dread.
was going to happen in Europe (...). I have never forgotten that man and his
[11]
shattered hope ... »
He would play a character of a young German officer.
Francophile, nurtured entirely by French culture and a pacifist ideal. This
officer, when he discovered the true intentions of his country, of its
old friends would sink into despair. Contrary to what may have
to be said by some critics (particularly the remarks written since
London by Kœstler in 1943, and taken up in The Yogi and the
Commissioner), the character was not completely unrealistic.
Anti-Nazi, certainly, but like many officers of the
Wehrmacht. Possibly for moral reasons, but mainly due to
aristocratic contempt for the demagogic outbursts of the corporal
[12]
Hitler. On the other hand, Vercors intended to show a cultured German,
cultivated, as Ernst Jünger is in his journal Gardens and
[13]
Routes He considered it infinitely more effective to show a
refined character rather than a barbarian. First of all, because in the
In the early days of the Occupation, the Germans did not behave
like brutes. Sartre explained it well in an article published in 1945,
then resumed in Situations III:
 We need to get rid of the clichéd images: no, the Germans do not
they were not roaming Paris with guns drawn; no, they were not forcing civilians
to yield to them, to step down from the sidewalks in front of them (...). They had been
they said to be correct and they were being correct, with shyness and
14
application . »
Of course, Ebrennac is not reduced to his 'correction'. But his
courtesy, its tact aims, in the spirit of Vercors, to put us
double caution. It is precisely because the Germans are
corrects and because there are even those who sincerely love it
15
France, like Ernst Jünger or Gerhard Heller that one must repeat
of vigilance.
Facing Ebrennac, the narrator's niece. Undoubtedly, in her
purity, its thirst for honesty and absolute transparency (its gaze is
"pale", of an almost unbearable brightness), it owes much to the
Stéphanie that Vercors could not "put into literature". In a
world of lies, voluntary lies of the occupiers and Vichy,
involuntary lie, deceived, of Ebrennac, this young girl represents the
pole of purity. She is so "pure" that one can feel that she is reaching
to annoy his uncle himself. The character of the niece could not have been
inspired by Vercors only by his regrets, but one can feel that he
a burden of regret towards the young girl he had
"deceived". To Ebrennac's words, she opposes silence. She is
obviously, for the author, the embodiment of what it should have been
France, dignified and silent. What it should have been, and what it was not.
not. To those who later reproached Vercors for not having done
a realistic painting, it must be said that his book aimed to be exemplary:
here's how you other French people of 1941 should be
to behave. In this sense, it is reminiscent of some of the
characters from the works of Maupassant who, during the occupation of
territory in 1870, opposing the Prussians with both passive resistance,
sometimes frankly active.
Let's add that Vercors also aimed – if not primarily
– foreign readers. To them, it was a matter of saying: do not despair of
[16]
France, here is what it can be.
The character of the niece, as well as the "couple" formed by a
young woman from an occupied country and a young man belonging to the
occupational power has precedents in literature.
Vercors was familiar with Barrès' novel, Colette Baudoche, published in 1909.
A young German teacher is staying with a family from Metz, during the time
of the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine, after the defeat of 1870. It
falls under the spell of the young girl from the house and, little by little, he is
conquered by the atmosphere of discreet refinement that prevails in this
family and in France in general. However, when it comes to asking
the young girl in marriage, this one, although sensitive to his qualities and attracted
By him, he refuses her hand. Colette, Barrès tells us: "is a little
French of the Cornelian lineage, who decides to love based on the
[17]
judgment of the mind . » The kinship with the niece of Silence imposes itself to
obvious. And this, even in details, and in suggestions
atmosphere: while Asmus (the professor) was making conversation with him,
Colette was leaning over a sewing work, and the light was illuminating her.
18
gently ».
The uncle, for his part, occupies a well-defined place in prose.
narrative; that of the witness-narrator. Almost all the stories in this collection,
Moreover, they are made in the first person: thejeest is like the guarantor of
the authenticity of the testimony. Vercors had been convinced by the
Conrad's technique:
She seemed to be the one who adapted best to the living reality.
like in the mystery of souls and individuals. A character was not
never described from the inside as if the author were a capable demiurge
[19]
to visit the cranial caps »
Ebrennac and the niece are seen through the eyes of the uncle. From there,
the importance of observations on attitudes, on behaviors,
on the physical manifestations of emotions. One is struck,
notably, by the number of remarks about the hands, about the looks:
it is that gestures speak louder than words; this "silence" is a
full silence.
WELCOME OF THE BOOK: A SILENCE THAT MATTERS
NOISE

Written during the summer of 1941, the book, due to the difficulties
[20]
of printing , was only finished printing on February 22, 1942. And, from
Indeed, many readers noticed a certain discrepancy between the spirit
of this story and the realities of the situation: for those who could not bear
not under the German yoke, the time of silence was over, we had entered
in the active fighting phase.
The book is published under the name Vercors: 'A name full of harshness'
[21]
height he will say, and the idea came to him during the 'funny
war: the train that was taking him from Embrun to Romans had followed the massif
from Vercors:
The indomitable grandeur evoked by the immense ship emerging
[22]
the plain exerted an increasing fascination on me .»
He had promised himself to take to the bush in these mountains rather than
to let themselves be captured by the Germans. Let's add that in almost all the
authors published by Éditions de Minuit during the Occupation will be given
as a pseudonym the name of a place in France, in order to clearly affirm the
national loyalty: thus, Mauriac, who will entrust them in 1943 with The Notebook
black, will be 'Forez'.
The dedication to Saint-Pol Roux, far from being gratuitous, confirms and underscores
the meaning of the story. The poet, a friend of Jean Moulin and Max Jacob, had died.
in December 1940 at the Brest hospital, six months after a soldier
drunk German forced the door of his manor, killed his maid and injured
seriously one of his daughters. At the request of Pierre Seghers, Aragon
had written a dozen vengeful pages, 'Saint-Pol Roux or
[23]
l’espoir », qui avaient été publiées dans le n° 2 dePoésie 41 .
The tribute to the old murdered poet is therefore perfectly explicit: the
Authorities who were able to cover up such a crime cannot be believed.
when they offer us to collaborate with them. The writers who
those who agree to enter their game become their accomplices.
The small volume of one hundred pages, initially printed in three hundred fifty
copies (a second print run of fifteen hundred copies will follow
quickly), spreads thanks to a chain of active friendships, of which
Jean Paulhan will be one of the main links. Some - that was the case of the
Professor Robert Debré, who had largely contributed to funding
the printing - the typeface to increase its distribution. It
crosses borders; a publishing house is specially founded
[24]
in Switzerland to reprint it and distribute it in the southern area ; he succeeds
in London where General de Gaulle himself orders it immediately
reissue. Its release in 1943 marks the beginning of the publications of the Cahiers du
Silence, which will take it upon themselves to reprint all the volumes
from Éditions de Minuit. The text is accompanied by a preface from
Maurice Druon who praises the courage of the author:

The author who hides under the pseudonym of Vercors - can-

to be a famous novelist, surely known or unknown, a very great one
writer – has put a bounty on his head.

At the same time, The Silence is published in installments by La Marseillaise.

journal of the French in London, starting from February 1943: Maurice
Schumann greets Vercors on the waves of 'The French Speak to the'
French." But the narrative does not receive only approvals. Arthur
Kœstler, who was living in London at the time, expresses his disagreement in an article from
Tribune, in November of the same year. The story, according to him, is not
psychologically credible, she is also stupid and harmful
on a political level. Why, indeed, punish with this obstinate silence a
German also frankly anti-Nazi? If one assumes that an enlightened German
could still be, in 1940, as ignorant of the plans of the IIIe
[25]
Empire ... In Algeria, the communists are convinced that this story which
makes room for a friendly German can only be the work
[26]
that of a collaborator ...
In France, however, the welcome is, overall, extremely
favorable. Aragon, excited, wondering who the author was,
will remark with the sharpness we know him for: "It's not Malraux, he
[27]
(that is to say Malraux) does not know how to write French Letters
will dedicate a rather late report in October 1943. While
suggesting that the type of resistance described in this news belongs to
now in the past, the author of the report sees it as 'the simple picture and
admirable (...) of the silent and obstinate refusal of the French people to the advances of
[28]
the enemy .»
Sartre will dedicate several pages to the Silence of the after the war.
mer. Wondering, in Situations II: Who are we writing for? he will reposition the
story related to the audience it was intended for, that of the French of
1941, who, interacting daily with 'proper' Germans, would not have
did not understand that they were depicted as bloodthirsty brutes. However, in
considering this book as a work of circumstance – which it was –
He doubts that he can still excite a future audience. .
Vercors will take into account some of the observations later.
that had been made. Thus, for example, in order to eliminate any risk
of ambiguity in the interpretation of his story (some friends told him
had pointed out that readers could interpret it as an incitement to
the Franco-German reconciliation, certainly unwelcome in 1941), he will add,
at the end of the story, in the 1951 reissue, this reflection from the uncle:
I thought: Thus, he submits. That's all they know how to do. They
submits everyone. Even that man.
When he adapts his short story for the theater in 1949, he is content to
take back, overall, almost literally the original text, but it
enriches it with a few lines that have a dramatic function
(animating these two characters), but also of clarification. At the beginning,
while the officer has already arrived, the niece questions her uncle:
What are we doing?
— Nothing. What do you want to do?
I don't know. But how to endure this, my uncle?
30
How to cope with it ?»
Later, as the officer wonders aloud where his
In his duty, the uncle refers to a book by Anatole France:

It is beautiful, for a soldier, to disobey criminal orders [...].

What... what are you saying there? Disobey? [...]. Disobey the homeland
German? [...] I am a soldier. Sir. I am German. My homeland is
[31]
Germany. Disobeying is impossible. .
Finally, in the last scene, as the officer has just left, the niece
shivers. The uncle then pulls out a weapon that he had been hiding until now and
the ostentatious placement on the table. He smiled at her. She 'responded to him with a
smiling too, which brightens, intensifies, radiates." Clearly,
even if the allusion is a bit too clear, we see her ready to
"to engage", to enter into the active phase of the Resistance.
 OTHER TALES: THE SPECTER OF THE
Holocaust

During the Resistance, the entire policy of Éditions de Minuit will be to

maintain, even if they leaned "naturally" to the left, a
balance between the two major trends, Gaullist and Communist.
lucky that, if most of the published texts belonged to the movement
Marxist or related, one could identify signatures of foreign authors.
to Leninism, such as Mauriac or Maritain. Vercors will later express, at
multiple times, his nostalgia for this first phase of the Resistance.
The communion, the unity, overshadowed ideological divisions, but
from 1943-1944, each faction began preparing to seize power for
the post-war.
We must, once again, remind ourselves what certain literature was.
officially authorized during those years. While Vercors
The Silence of the Sea, Céline published The Beautiful Drapes.
pamphlet of an anti-Semitic virulence such that it even embarrassed its supporters
for this reason: he criticized, among others, the "Jew Racine" and "Ben
Montaigne. Jacques Chardonne, in See the figure (Grasset, 1942),
complained about "the French who have made it their point of honor to ignore the
Germans" and mentioned "these moving and modest conversations,
similar to this late agreement that a couple reaches after a long time
[32]
torn by the learnings of mutual knowledge . As
September 1940, the French publishers unanimously, with the sole exception
Emile-Paul Frères had committed to removing all from their catalogs.
writers who did not find favor with the Germans: during the
During the Occupation period from 1941 to 1944, 2,242 tons of books will be

thus put to the mortar .

The role of the Éditions de Minuit was therefore clearly established. At
At first, he only received a few manuscripts from them. Vercors was becoming impatient:
He is told that writers need time to write. After
1943, the opposite occurred: matter abounded; did the writers have
suddenly found inspiration? Or was it because, during this time,
being published by Éditions de Minuit had become a label of quality
[34]
driving ?...
Texts by Vercors published during the war or immediately after
war, "The March to the Star" is the one that drew the most attention.
The story of Muritz is, barely transposed, that of Vercors' father. The
The story is dedicated "to the memory of the one whose life these pages recount."
Vercors, whose father had died in 1930, wondered: how this
man, who felt such love for France and for the French,
would he have reacted if, as a Jew, he had been arrested by police officers
French?
All the stories that make up this collection have been, in one way or another
on the other hand, inspired in the author by personal memories. We have
already noticed that these are first-person narratives, where the
the narrator merges little or much with the author. Surely every writer
May he draw, for the needs of his work, from an important material.
personal. With Vercors, however, one is struck by the place
that occupy his memories. It is not just, by the way, about what
is the most apparent: the subjects or the settings of his stories, the history of his
father, the portrait of the resistant printer, the house of Villiers-sur-
Morin; but from a whole series of true little facts, of details drawn from
In his experience, this suggests that he can only write submissively.
to the stimuli of observation, of reality. While later, in
the shadow of his works that resemble the philosophical tale, to the
fable on a fantastical subject (The Deformed Animals, Sylva), one would say
unfit for traditional romanticism, and for illusion. It evokes only this
that he knows, only what concerns his life. One will not find, in him, a
specific mention of class conflicts, economic burdens and
social: this 'companion on the road' of the Marxists was above all, this
qualification must have annoyed her, a moralist. And it is as a moralist that he
evokes, in "The Printing House of Verdun", this very concrete reality that has
the appropriation of Jewish property by unscrupulous competitors.
[35]
The persecution of the Jews had taken on such proportions as early as 1942. that
Vercors, partially Jewish himself through his father (his paternal grandmother.
was Jewish), could only denounce her through a series of stories. Having
learned what was happening in the concentration camps, from a friend who
had been miraculously freed, he nevertheless did not resolve to do so
publish the horror: it was only after the war that he published 'The
Dream." He had not believed he should add to the torment of the families whose
[36]
a member had been deported The story of Muritz, like that of
Vendresse, walled in his blind trust for the "Marshal", that of
Renaud, the hero of 'Impotence', who believes he discovers that culture
is nothing but a vast lie, and that, frozen, of Ebrennac, have as theme
[37]
a disappointed love, a betrayed trust The Jews have been the dupes
of a broken pact. There is, in Vercors, an obsession with betrayal,
towards his thirst for purity, for transparency.
 THE UNIVERSE OF VERCORS

Several characters in the collection embody the rejection of everything.

compromise: the young girl of Silence, of course, but also Renaud
of 'The Powerlessness', to which Lescure's unwavering integrity had
38
serve as a model Others may appear to be incurable
naïve, refusing to acknowledge the evil until the end, even if it is obvious: such
are Vendresse ("The Printing House of Verdun") and Muritz ("The March to
the star"), victims of their trust in the word of the Marshal.
Ebrennac himself – that is why several readers,
the example of Arthur Kœstler, deemed totally unrealistic – demonstrates
of extreme blindness: one can hardly imagine that it took him
waiting so long to be disillusioned.
The characters are most often thin. To the sobriety of their
The literary portrait corresponds to an ascetic silhouette. The niece,
Ebrennac has an emaciated physique. The "cutting big nose" of
Desperados ("Despair is dead"), the thinness of Dacosta
("The Printing House of Verdun") contrasts with the spread of the
dishonest commander, with the softness of Paars (‘The Printing House’).
The degradation, the abasement relates man to an animal: Paars
is compared to "a big pig," he has "flounder eyes," and at the mess
in the first narrative, the officers are fattened "like geese".
Physical characteristics reflect moral character. Vercors, like
the Sartre of Nausea or the Malraux of The Royal Way, opposes the hard, the
sec, the firm, the soft, the greasy, the swollen. The rot,
The slouching inspires a physical disgust.
The fallen man regresses towards the beast. The inhuman plunges into the
subhuman, and Evil lurks, with its entourage of tortures and abominations
"The Dream". Nazism has awakened old demons.
Undoubtedly, hope will prevail. But if Beauty triumphs over the
Beast, it is not, as in the tale, by uniting with her, it is by
refusing to her. Vercors' later work will be haunted by the question
of identity. Man asserts himself by separating from nature, by
rebellious. Culture against nature. The library of Uncle Silence
manifests our dignity. Vercors, in the manner of the philosopher Politzer who,
at the same time, is executed by the Germans, wants to be a man of
Lights. The clarity of the niece's gaze responds to the dark forests of
German fir trees. One of the words that comes up most often is the word
regard
 BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS

February 26, 1902: Birth in Paris of Jean Bruller, to a father

of Hungarian origin, came to France at the age of fifteen (see "The
"Star Walk") and a mother from Berry who had been a schoolteacher.
in his youth. Happy childhood. Lively admiration for his father, who
had founded a popular publishing house. Secondary studies at
The Alsatian School.
1914 - World War I: 'hatred of the German.'
1918. – Revelation of the horrors of war, making him a 'pacifist at
all hair
After studying at the Bréguet School, I obtained a degree in electrical engineering.
1923. - Poincaré. The occupation of the Ruhr strengthens his convictions
pacifists. Placing all his hopes in Briand's policy of agreement.
1926.– After a stint at the Grande-Chaumière workshop, begins
a career as a cartoonist and illustrator that does not
will only be interrupted with the war of 1939.
First album: 21 practical recipes for violent death. At this
On this occasion, he forms a bond with Pierre de Lescure, a writer and bookseller.
1930. - Death of his father. Jules Romains, an old friend of the latter,
report his affection for him. They are united by an equal hatred of the
war.
1934. – New Key to Dreams, album.
1935. - Collaborates with Vendredi, an antifascist weekly, where he
they find André Chamson, Jean Guehenno, Martin-Chauffier.
1936. – Intimate and reassuring images of war, new album.
1937. - Decorates the Leisure Pavilion at the World Exposition. Despite
his sympathy for the Popular Front government, the rise of
dangers on the international level and internally, makes it increasingly
skeptical about his chances of success.
1938. – Pen Club Congress in Prague. Crossing through Germany:
sinister impression.
He is horrified by the Munich agreements, to which his pacifism does not...
do not resist.
1939. - Mobilized, he was injured in the leg.
 1940. - He is withdrawn with his battalion to Besayes, near Romans:
"We had nothing to do but wait." Full impressions
taken from "Despair is dead." Released, Vercors retreats into his
house of Villiers-sur-Morin, which will serve as the setting for The Silence of the Sea.
to a job at the village carpenter's. Pierre de Lescure introduces him.
in a Resistance network that works in relation with Intelligence
The arrest of one of the members forces them to dissolve the network.
1941. – Pierre de Lescure, to whom he communicated a first
literary tentative, she strongly encourages him to write a short story. It will be,
under the name of Vercors, The Silence of the Sea, initially intended to be
published in La Pensée libre, a magazine founded by intellectual resistors
communists. The attempt is thwarted, the Gestapo having conducted a raid.
at the printer. The two main leaders, Georges Politzer and
Jacques Decour will be arrested a few months later and shot in May.
In 1942, Vercors and Lescure decided to set up their own publishing house.
clandestine editions, the Éditions de Minuit. From 1941 to 1944, the
Éditions de Minuit will publish twenty-five volumes of writers
belonging to all currents of the Resistance.
1943. – The March to the Star, published by Éditions de Minuit.
1944. - Member of the National Writers Committee. Withdraws from
Editions de Minuit, which no longer have any reason to exist in his eyes.
1946. - The Arms of the Night, the story of a resistor who, in a camp
of concentration, was forced to throw a comrade alive into the furnace
crematorium. Followed in 1951 by The Power of the Day, a story of its.
renaissance to hope.
1948. – Despite Vercors' reluctance, Jean-Pierre Melville carries
Silence of the sea on screen. The adaptation is very faithful to the text. The reception
the criticism is shared.
1949. – Creation of The Silence of the Sea, a play in nine tableaux adapted
the story by the author, in a staging by Jean Mercure, at the theater
Édouard-Vil, in Paris. Protests against the arrest and trial of Rajk.
accused of titism, in Hungary. Without renouncing their loyalty to the Party.
communist, he and Jean Cassou publish, in Esprit, the manifesto "It does not
one must not deceive the people.
1952. - The Denatured Animals: what does it mean to be human?
1953. – Trip to China. He is dazzled by the regime's achievements.
1954 - Trip to Algeria, six months before the outbreak of the
hostilities. Struck by the injustice that reigns there.
 1956. - Suppression of the Hungarian uprising by the troops
Soviets. After twelve years of companionship with the Party
communist, Vercors decides to break. He draws lessons from his twelve
years in the pamphlet: "P.P.C. (To take leave)".
1957. – Returns the Legion of Honor to the President of the Republic which
it had been awarded at the Liberation, because the use of torture in
Algeria calls into question the honor of France.
1960. - Co-signatory of the Manifesto of the 121, which approves the principle of
the insubordination of conscripts in Algeria.
Sylva, philosophical tale: How one becomes a person
humane.
1963. – Stage adaptation of Les Animaux dénaturés, under the title
Zoo or the Philanthropic Assassin. Created that year at the festival
from Avignon, the play will be revived the following year at the T.N.P. by Georges
Wilson.
1965. – Translation of Hamlet.
1981. - First volume of One Hundred Years of the History of France: Me,
Aristide Briand. Will be followed in 1982 by Lost Opportunities and, in 1984,
New Days.
1989. – Filming of an interview with Gilles Plazy, which will be broadcast by
FR 3 on September 23, 1991.
June 10, 1991: death of Vercors in Paris. A few hours before his
disappearance, he was giving an interview to the magazine Globe: "What struck me was
immediately interested after the war, with Nazism, it is the definition
about what man really is, about what is human in man.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Works of Vercors
We have reported some of the main works of Vercors
in his biography, aware of the very subjective nature of this type of
selection. A chronological bibliography of his works can be found,
as well as drawing albums and illustrator work, with
indication of the editors, in To tell the truth, collection of interviews with Gilles
Plazy (pp. 209-212).
The play by Vercors adapted from The Silence of the Sea and created in Paris in
1949, was published in Theatre I, Galilée Editions, 1978.

II. On Vercors in general, the Editions of

Clandestine Midnights and The Silence of the Sea
in particular
In the absence of a comprehensive study on Vercors and his work, it is up to his
autobiographical writings and to his work as a memoirist that one
reporter. For an initial introduction, one will read with interest the work
above-mentioned
To be honest, interviews with Gilles PLAZY, François Bourin Editions,
1991.
The Battle of Silence
Editions de Minuit in 1992). The birth of Editions de Minuit and the
work that was accomplished there during the Occupation. One will find there
numerous indications from Vercors on the genesis of his own stories.
His work as a true memoirist, which includes three
volumes, restores the climate and the events of his time as he experienced them.
experienced himself and, as a result, constitutes a valuable testimony on his
proper journey and on the content of his writings:
Hello, Aristide Briand (1862-1932), Plon, 1981.
The Lost Occasions (1932-1942)
The New Days (1942-1962), Pion, 1984.
One will consult in the library the small work by Jacques DEBU-
BRIDEL, which unfortunately has never been reissued since its publication.
(but whose main indications, it is true, are found in The
Battle of Silence of Vercors: The Minuit Editions, Editions de
Midnight, 1945.
Two critical texts about The Silence of the Sea are available in
library:
SARTRE, Jean-Paul, "Who are we writing for?", in What is the
literature?, Gallimard Editions 1948 (reissue Folio/essays, no. 19, 1985,
pp. 92-96 and 191.
KŒSTLER, Arthur, "The French Catarrh," in The Yogi and the
Commissioner, Calmann-Lévy, 1947.

III. To situate 'The Silence' and the others

stories from the collection in their context.
Before the war, the rise of dangers, existence and in particular the
intellectual life in occupied France, the organization of the Resistance,
the persecution of the Jews, it is obviously impossible to offer, in the
limits of this edition, as the subject is vast, of orientation
bibliographic worthy of the name. We will therefore limit ourselves to noting,
in an extremely arbitrary manner, some works that have us
seemed suitable to enlighten the climate in which the stories were composed.
of this collection.

For a first approach, one will refer with interest to the chapter
on "French intellectuals in the face of war 1938-1944" in: Pascal
ORY and Jean-François SIRINELLI, The Intellectuals in France, from
The Dreyfus Affair to Our Days
142. This book contains useful bibliographical references, p. 251.
On the intelligentsia of the Collaboration, one can consult the collection
Period texts presented by Pascal ORY, The German France,
Words of French collaborationism (1933-1945), Gallimard,
collection Archives/Julliard, 1977. To be completed by:
FOUCHE, Pascal, The French Edition Under the Occupation, 1940-1944
Library of Contemporary Literature of the University Paris-VII,
1987, 2 vol. This work particularly reproduces the successive states of the
Otto list.
A German in Paris
on the literary Paris of the Occupation.
DRIEU LA ROCHELLE, Pierre, Journal 1939-1945, presented and
annotated by Julien HERVIER, Gallimard, Witnesses collection, 1992. The
intimate reflections of one of the main figures of collaboration
intellectual. It contains the expression of an obsessive antisemitism,
but which does not manifest itself through public statements,
unlike Brasillach, Céline and Rebatet.
On anti-Semitism:
A general introduction: François de FONTETTE, History of
antisemitism, P.U.F., collection Que sais-je? no. 2039, 1982. Read in
particular "Vichy France >", pp. 102-113.
The essay by Jean-Paul SARTRE, Reflections on the Jewish Question, 1946
reissued by Gallimard, Folio/essais collection, no. 10.
Finally, the very recent book and undoubtedly the most comprehensive on the
Persecution of Jews from 1940 to 1944: Serge KLARSFELD, The Calendar
on the persecution of Jews in France, 1940-1944, edited by the Association
The sons and daughters of the Jewish deportees from France, 1993.

Regarding intellectual resistance, in addition to the works of

Vercors already mentioned, refer to the lecture he gave at the Institute.
National Education on February 21, 1968: "Literature and the
Resistance" (publications of I.P.N., 1968). It should be noted that the
The literary production of the Resistance was mainly the work of
poets. See on this subject:
SEGHERS, Pierre, The Resistance and its Poets: France 1940-1945
Seghers, 1974.
An excellent study on the stories and novellas of the Resistance is
however recently published:
STEEL, James, Literatures of the Shadow, Presses de la Fondation
National School of Political Sciences, 1991. It contains very many
references to The Silence of the Sea, which she places within the entire production
resistant. Steel highlights the opposition between the literature of dignity of
beginning(The Silence) and the combat literature that quickly took over
(Elsa Triolet, Kessel).

FIN
[1]
Written in 1942.

[2]
...A chain of visions whose sweetest would tear at your soul, freeze your young blood,
would make your eyes rise like stars out of their sphere. (Hamlet.)

[3]
We derive most of our information about Vercors from its various memoirs.
as well as his interviews with Gilles Plazy (see the bibliographical indications, p. 185).
[4]
Refer to this subject in The Battle of Silence, pp. 82-89 and 102-105.
[5]
Politzer's article, very biting in its demystification, has been reproduced in Writings I.
philosophy and myths, Social Editions, 1973. Rosenberg, while denouncing the 'thinkers
"exalted ones who had prepared the French Revolution," asserted to honor France in its tradition.
cultural: this was part of the outreach policy adopted in the early days of
the Occupation.
[6]
Jacques Decour and Georges Politzer were arrested in February 1942 and executed in May.
[7]
In addition to the work by Vercors mentioned, one can also refer to the history of the Editions of
Midnight given by Debu-Bridel in 1945, as well as to the recent article by Anne Simonin published in the
Review of History: 'The War of the Editions de Minuit', No. 160, November 1992, pp. 78-80.
8
Paulhan, commenting on the attitude of the French during the summer of 1940, noted in 1942: "The French
in general have not been so worthy." (Quoted by James Steel. Literatures of the shadow, p. 39.)
[9]
In A German in Paris, Heller confirms that "from the beginning of the Occupation,
the official instruction was to curb the expansion of French culture" (p. 68).
[10]
See The Battle of Silence, pp. 181-182.
[11]
The Battle of Silence, pp. 23-24.
[12]
Hitler fought in the 1914 war as a corporal.
[13]
Published in 1942. Reissue Le Livre de Poche, no. 3006, 1982.
[14]
Situations III, Gallimard, 1949, p. 18.
[15]
Undeniable Francophile but tasked with censoring books, Gerhard Heller has
explained his inner turmoil in a memoir: A German in Paris. 1940-1944.
[16]
A good analysis of the question can be found in the work of James Steel, Literatures of
the shadow (see the bibliography, p. 188).
[17]
Colette Baudoche, The Pocket Book, no. 2324, p. 125 (work not reissued).
[18]
Ibid., p. 43.
[19]
The Battle of Silence p. 140.
20
See regarding this the cited article: "The War of the Éditions de Minuit."
[21]
The Battle of Silence, p. 201.
[22]
Ibid., p. 57.
[23]
Quoted by Pierre Seghers, The Resistance and its Poets, p. 84.
[24]
See Pierre Seghers, cited work, p. 266.
[25]
Article reproduced in The Yogi and the Commissioner, Le Livre de Poche No. 2569, pp. 36-38.
[26]
Such will also be the reaction of Ilya Ehrenburg. In 1944, he had pursued the retreat.
German, noting the thousands of Oradours burned by the Nazis (...). This charming officer, this
calm silence in a cozy house could only have appeared to him as 'propaganda'
well disguised." (Vercors, To tell the truth, p 69.)
[27]
Report brought by Georges Lorris in the program "The Messengers of the Shadow", series
Oceanic, FR 3, March 1992.
[28]
Cited by James Steel, Literatures of the Shadow, p. 67.
[29]
Situations II. What is literature? Folio/essays, no. 19, pp. 92-96.
[30]
Theater, I, p. 176.
[31]
Ibid., p. 196.
[32]
Cited by Pascal Ory, The German France, pp. 81 and 85.
[33]
Figure given by Gerhard Heller, A German in Paris, p. 30.
[34]
The Editions de Minuit, initiated by Vercors and Paul Eluard, who succeeded Lescure,
published, from 1942 to 1944, 25 volumes, making it the first clandestine publishing house
French throughout the war.
[35]
The wearing of the yellow star became mandatory in July 1942. On July 16, the great roundup takes place.
of the Vel'd'Hiv, where 12,000 Jews were arrested and deported.
36
He also feared not to be believed: when Koestler published in London, in 1943, Crusade
without cross, where he describes the Nazi atrocities, it seems so unbearable that some
They accuse him of having exaggerated to satisfy a morbid imagination.
[37]
I believed in all these bandits,
[38]
See the story of Lescure in To Speak Truly.