The Fires of Autumn by Irène Némirovsky Read Free Book Online Page B

you must be very careful and not give in to him at all. He’s the kind of man who only gets married as a last resort. I know the type: your father was just the same.’
    Now she turned to Madame Jacquelain. ‘Don’t forget about business here in Paris. Businesses have to thrive. Women are starting to think about their clothing again, thank goodness. I’ve designed a gorgeous new style of hat. It’s inspired by the times: it’s a policeman’s hat. Very elegant looking and all the rage. Ithas an embroidered insignia, a piece of braid and a gold tassel, or even feathers and a rosette; no one will wear anything else this winter.’
    Amid the hum of the conversations, the little clock on the mantelpiece, with its silvery tones, very quickly, shyly, struck three times. It was time for everyone to go. Martial stood up, trembling. Since he was leaving the next day, he wouldn’t be seeing his family and friends again. The kisses and handshakes began; Madame Jacquelain quietly begged Martial: ‘If my son is sent to the front lines, you’ll look after him, won’t you?’ (She imagined the front was a kind of lycée where the older boys could defend and protect the younger ones against the unfair attacks of the Germans.) Monsieur Jacquelain spoke in his deep, hoarse voice: ‘You’ll think of me …’, for during dinner, he had made sure to get some medical advice from Martial and made him promise to prepare a diet for his stomach troubles ‘as soon as he had a free moment’.
    Martial nodded and nervously pulled at his beard, where a few grey hairs were already beginning to show. Thérèse had stood up with him.
    ‘I don’t often have any free time over there,’ he pointed out gently.
    But Monsieur Jacquelain refused to believe it:
    ‘There are surely quiet moments; you can’t be operating all the time. It would be impossible for anyone to do that. In the newspapers, they report there are very few sick people and that the wounded heal very quickly, thanks to their good morale. Is that true?’
    ‘Umm … morale … of course …’
    But Adolphe Brun had pulled his nephew towards him and was hugging him; then he let him go and looked at him, his wide, bright eyes full of tears. He wanted to say something, make a joke … tell some funny story that Martial could tell the other soldiers that would make them say:
    ‘Those old blokes from Paris, I mean … they’re really something. They still know how to laugh.’
    But he couldn’t think of anything. He just slapped the doctor on the shoulder, on his thin, yielding shoulder beneath the thick material of his uniform:
    ‘Off you go, my boy …,’ he muttered, ‘you’re a good, brave lad.’
    ----
    * The final lines of ‘Sophocles’ Song at Salamis’ by Victor Hugo, from
La Légende des Siècles
, 1877.

5
    The first-aid post was set up in the cellar; the house, solidly built and very old, had good foundations. It was a comfortable house in French Flanders, three kilometres from the German trenches. It had once looked squat, resilient, reassuring, its solid pillars framing the low door with its large rusty nails. A part of the house remained standing, the part where the silhouette of a tall, slim, mysterious woman wearing a turban had been sculpted above the casement window. The village had passed from one side to the other during the fighting that autumn in 1914. For the moment, the French occupied it. In this never-ending war that had started a few months before, people battled fiercely over a fountain, a forest, a cemetery, a bit of crumbling wall. The sudden advances of the enemy were no longer to be feared, but the bombardments grew more terrifying with every passing day; rubble piled up over the ruins. On sunny days, what had once been a pretty little French village (every gate was decorated with roses in bloom) now resembled a demolition site. Sunny days were rare. In the rain, obscured by the fog, it looked like a cemetery for houses, a