When he had announced that he was going to stage the Dumas book, his friends imagined that he would cast himself as d’Artagnan, or at least as one of the three musketeers, but he told them that if they didn’t mind he would rather be Planchet, the servant, a part he wanted to play for laughs. The project was well advanced, the rehearsals in the parish hall were coming to an end, and the date of the first night (which was only ever intended to be followed by a second, or at the very most a third) was fixed. This departure for Germany was most unfortunate, but how could it be avoided when the missive threatened reprisals in case of defection or evasive action — reprisals that the fate of the fusillés de Châteaubriant compelled you to take seriously. There were only two members of his family left now. His cousin Rémi, with his game leg, didn’t have much to fear, and what was more he was a war orphan, but there was also Aunt Marie, his companion in grief who, since she had been wearing mourning for the last twenty-five years, hadn’t had to make any changes in her meager wardrobe when her last brother died. He was the only one of the three who had come back alive from the agony of the 1914 war, and a few months after the death of his wife he had permanently laid down his arms and let himself die of a broken heart.
And now they were taking her nephew from her. And while she is helping with the preparations for his departure, she expresses her surprise that instead of returning his ration coupons as required by the letter, he has tucked them into the lining of his jacket. But his only reply is to give her his last instructions about the house (she is to live in it), the shop (she is to open it in her spare time, if her teaching duties allow her any, until all the stocks have been sold), and the theater. Because right from the start he had enrolled her in the little company and, flattered that he needed her, she had allowed herself to be persuaded. Not to play the duennas. She found her place at stage level, in the prompter’s box. After their day’s work, the apprentice actors — butchers, charcutiers, cobblers, carpenters, roofers, plumbers, grocers — sometimes found it difficult to learn and remember their lines. Naturally, the parts were as far as possible cast in accordance with their individual talents, but Aunt Marie is the indispensable coordinator between the fellow who takes himself for the actor Jules Berry and reinvents his lines and the one who is capable only of mumbling his way through his bits of dialogue. She stops them from going astray, she brings the ones who get lost back on the straight and narrow, and in her best irritated-schoolmistress tone, she scolds the naughty pupils who have forgotten what they had learned. Since they have all been her pupils and remember how angry she can get, the occasional actresses have gotten their parts down pat and know them much better than the young men, which strengthens her in her conviction of the excellence of her method and encourages her to launch her little prefeminist speech, already delivered a thousand times, about the serious-mindedness of girls and their greater maturity, a speech that could also be understood as a defense and illustration of her celibacy.
On the evening of the first night she was at her post down in her sentry box, having arrived at the theater well before everyone else, all the more concerned that the show should run smoothly because Joseph had handed over the reins to her. She had presided over the last rehearsals as if she were the guardian of the temple, cutting short the au-tonomistic vagaries of the village Jules Berry and urging the rest of the company to respect both the letter and the spirit of her nephew’s work. On his recommendation, for lack of an adequate last-minute stand-in she has turned Planchet into a kind of mute moron and given the part to the gardener at the girls’ school. This worthy had no difficulty in adapting to his new function, as stomach rumblings were his natural form of expression — so much so that she had to act as his interpreter to his fellow actors. She had explained that all he had to do was follow d’Artagnan like his shadow when asked to do so and to answer his questions with a grunt. Did he understand? He grunted. He had just passed his audition with honors.
The hall was full. A few German uniforms were to be seen in the audience. They had arrived one sunny Sunday in July 1940 as the congregation was just coming out of eleven o’clock Mass. The faithful had been standing in the square outside the church, discussing the enemy advance — some people had good news: they’d been halted at Saumur — when a couple of spluttering motorbikes came charging up the village street, effected a perfectly controlled skid, and stopped in front of the main entrance to the church. At the sight of their getup, which made it look as if motorbike and motorbiker formed a single unit that had been dipped into a gray-green sauce, even the least intelligent of the onlookers realized that the Saumur plug had been pulled. And while the man in the sidecar, helmeted and begoggled, was aiming his submachine gun at the parishioners, Maryvonne was heard to sigh “That’s all we needed,” which subsequently was unanimously acclaimed as Random’s first act of resistance.
The second was to be credited to the rural policeman who every Sunday at that hour rounded up the population by beating his drum and then reading aloud the various announcements relating to the life of the village. This unexpected arrival just as he was making his appearance seemed likely to ruin his regular Sunday number, all the more so since the bikers had in the meantime been joined by a cohort of cars and covered trucks, crammed full of men at arms, which had surrounded the square. With his drum slung over his shoulder he advanced toward the officer commanding the detachment, clicked his heels — which didn’t make much of a noise in comparison with the German jackboots — and, saluting, stated his grievances. As an officer himself, only a municipal one, true, but nevertheless a sworn official, it was his duty to inform the citizens of the latest communal decrees. What? What had he said that was so funny? A few words pronounced by the German officer in his own language had been enough to spread instantaneous mirth among the entire soldiery. The natives, however, couldn’t see that there was anything to laugh at. Correct, the occupiers? Presumptuous, rather (they even wanted to invite themselves into the homes of the villagers), and obviously lacking in tact. They had never been so humiliated. This was when the rural policeman saw fit to pull his drumsticks out of the diagonal straps across his chest, to take them in his hands in the correct manner (a different hold for the left and the right hand), and while retreating with circumspection, like a trial run, a surreptitious rehearsal, beat out a short, rhythmical message: ta tataratata, which, according to the version he gave later, was supposed to represent the “Tiens voila du boudiri” in the coarse language of the Foreign Legion, but which other people, perhaps to justify themselves for having lost their nerve, more meanly attributed to the fact that his hands were trembling.