All Our Wordly Goods by Irène Némirovsky Read Free Book Online

already hear Pierre’s voice, tender and slightly mocking: ‘What’s this, Mama? Are you crying? Tears of joy, I hope? Are you happy to see us?’
    She threw her arms round him and hugged him tightly. ‘When are you leaving? Do you have to go right away?’
    ‘No, not at all,’ he said, as if he were talking to a child.
    But she knew very well he was lying; she could tell just by looking at Agnès’s sad, pale face. She could keep her son for only a few hours, perhaps overnight. Devastated, she frostily kissed her daughter-in-law and the baby.
    ‘Look, Marthe,’ said Charles, ‘what a handsome boy.’
    But she didn’t want to look at him; she didn’t want to be consoled. At that very moment only Pierre filled her heart. Every smile she gave to anyone else was stolen from Pierre.
    ‘Come inside,’ she murmured automatically. ‘Dinner’s getting cold. You’re very late. I had some strained soup made for the baby.’
    ‘Madame,’ said Agnès, ‘he’s already eaten. We wanted to show him to you, but you can spend more time withhim tomorrow. Mama has his bed ready at her house. The maid will come and fetch him and put him straight to sleep. He’s tired.’
    ‘Oh, very well,’ said Madame Hardelot with a gesture that seemed to indicate she had swallowed as much bitterness as she could take.
    ‘We’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll come back as often as you like,’ Agnès said softly.
    ‘And you’ll come too, Pierre? You don’t hold anything against us because of your grandfather, my darling? You know very well that …’
    ‘Of course, Mama, of course I know.’
    ‘You’ll come for lunch tomorrow, won’t you? I don’t want to drag Agnès away from her mother the very first day, but
you’ll
come,’ said Madame Hardelot, clinging on to a glimmer of hope, ‘you’ll come, my darling, won’t you? Tomorrow?’
    She saw how Agnès and Pierre looked at each other.
    ‘I can’t, my poor Mama. I’m leaving.’
    ‘But when? Tomorrow? Tomorrow morning? Well, too bad, then, you’ll stay here with me tonight.’
    ‘I’m leaving in an hour,’ said Pierre, ‘on the last train.’
    They went into the dining room in silence.
    How strange everything seemed to them this evening. They ate, they talked, yet each one of them was thinking, ‘I’m dreaming … I’m having a terrible dream.’
    ‘Agnès will stay here with her mother,’ said Pierre. ‘That way, little Guy will be near you. My position? I’ll have it back after the war. I did a good job, it was goingwell, yes … Not that we were rich. I wasn’t destined to be rich. I don’t have Grandfather’s temperament, but we’ve been very comfortable and we’ve been happy. I was supposed to come back to France at the beginning of October. I intended to … But now all that’s over, unless between now and then …’
    ‘It is my profound conviction’, said Charles, ‘that a world war would be over quickly and fought almost without any blood being spilled. Just imagine if every country sent all its forces into battle …’
    ‘You’ll write to us often,’ Marthe said to her son. She was desperately trying to think of something else she could say to him, some final piece of advice that would not only be an expression of her love, but something useful, practical. In the past, when he left her to go back to school, she would show him the bars of chocolate and box of biscuits tucked away under his nightshirts, and that would make her feel better; she had helped him as much as possible, making the life he faced as a man seem less harsh. But right now when he faced a life that was a thousand times harsher, demanding more courage than she could ever imagine, she was at a loss. Even his bags had been packed by someone else … ‘It’s not fair,’ she thought. Yes, so many mothers were saying goodbye to their sons that night, but they’d had them close by until the very last moment, while she hadn’t seen him for thirty months.