All Our Wordly Goods by Irène Némirovsky Read Free Book Online Page A

Fortunately, she
knew
he would come back. Yes, despite her grief, despite the tears she had shed, a secret voicewithin her heart whispered that others might be killed, mutilated, wounded, taken prisoner, but
her
son would come home after the war. And that evening every mother in Saint-Elme was thinking, ‘
My
son will be spared …’ Each one of them believed that a guardian angel would protect her very own Jacques, her Pierre, and no one else.
    ‘Eat something, my darling, you haven’t touched a thing,’ she kept saying, watching him. To make her happy, he pretended to be very hungry; he filled his plate, but the food stuck in his throat, the meat dish particularly; he found it repugnant.
    ‘We ate lunch late,’ he said finally.
    ‘But force yourself. Who knows when you will get your next meal?’
    ‘Come on now, Mama, we’re not going straight into battle tomorrow, don’t worry.’
    He put down his knife and fork, looked at the familiar dining room, the open windows, the peaceful garden, the street lit up by the moon. The sadness he was feeling was a male kind of sadness, a mixture of pride and anguish. He didn’t think he would be saved, he alone among thousands of men. He could see very clearly where he was headed. In spite of everything he was calm. He just thought to himself, ‘What a shame I’m not five years younger. I would have been so happy to go. But …’
    He looked at Agnès. The clock chimed eight.
    ‘We have to leave now,’ he said, looking away fromhis mother, pity in his eyes. A woman’s tears were so painful. At the thought of the sobbing he was about to hear, the tears she would shed, his heart sank. He was eager to be among men, to hear foul language, dirty jokes, to get drunk on the cheap wine of manly camaraderie.
    ‘But you haven’t had your coffee!’ Marthe cried. ‘Agnès, pour him some coffee.’
    She looked back and forth between her children, wringing her hands, haggard and trembling. No one replied. She went over to her son and kissed him. She was tricked by that kiss, tricked by his presence. He was there, but he was not, because he was about to leave. She felt as if she were clinging on to a phantom, a pale shadow that she couldn’t hold close, that would vanish in her arms. Yet she shed not a single tear. Her pain was too strange and too intense to allow her to cry.
    All four of them spoke the calmest words possible.
    ‘Don’t be surprised if my letters get delayed …’
    ‘Agnès, now you look after yourself.’
    ‘Say goodbye to Grandfather for me. Explain to him that I was only here for a moment.’
    ‘You’ll be hot tonight on the train, my poor darling.’
    He barely kissed Agnès; it was quick and rather cold, thought Marthe. It wasn’t tonight, in front of their parents, that they could say goodbye to each other. The night before, alone, in the silence of their bedroom, in the warmth of their bed, they had exchanged theirparting kiss, a kiss that was deep and silent; there had been no lamenting, no pointless recriminations. But now, their lips were weary and lifeless.
    They went into the entrance hall and formed a circle round Pierre. Charles Hardelot, who had gone out for a moment, came back holding an open bottle of champagne. Behind him was Ludivine, the maid, with a tray of glasses.
    ‘We’re going to drink to your good health, Pierre.’
    ‘But Papa …’
    But he insisted on this ritual. He couldn’t let his son go without making a final speech. ‘I’ve heard so many of them,’ thought Pierre with a smile. For every occasion, his father had a speech at hand: for marriages and engagements, for births, for when he went away to boarding school each year. In a flash, Pierre relived those rainy October nights in the very same entrance hall; the horse champed at the bit as they loaded on the few bags that Pierre took to school, and his father said solemnly, ‘Son, you are about to enter the world of men, where study, camaraderie and competition are