Bernard indeed forever made fun of Marcel’s sense of duty, his belief in the goodness of governance, the dogged, dull way in which he made his way in the world. The aspiring civil servant was sent hither and thither as opportunity, carefully cultivated contacts, and friendships brought promotions that took him, inch by inch, up the ladder to the point where he even began to be allowed to make decisions. He became a sous-préfet in Finistère, enduring purgatories of weather and food to learn the arcane craft of administration; attached himself to a rising politician and went to Paris with him when his patron won his ministry; was all but unemployed for a year when the Popular Front came to power. His patron worked tirelessly to bring the government down, and was reputed to have strong contacts with those bands who took to the streets to demonstrate against bolshevism, radicalism, and Jews. Marcel took little active interest in any of this: his religion had become administration, paralleling and completing his Catholicism; the belief that, whatever the law, the country had to be carefully and firmly governed.
Indeed, so discreetly did he manage himself that in 1939 he won a better position in a department on the Loire. It was a deserved post, for he was able and diligent and experienced. But by then he had seen how politicians worked at too close quarters, and the sight had bred not a safe cynicism but a holy and much more dangerous disgust that reinforced his belief in the bureaucracy, the sole institution that could save the country from the rabble on the one hand and the politicians on the other.
Bernard, in contrast, did not have to see and learn in order to become disenchanted; Julien thought he had been born so. He was an only child, yet absorbed nothing of the father’s seriousness of purpose or the mother’s sweetness. He drifted, becoming first a poet interested more in the life than the words, then a casual journalist. When the first war came, he avoided any fighting, delaying his entry into the military until 1918, then opted for training as a pilot. He arrived on the front line in October, and never saw an enemy plane.
In his subsequent writings he was scathing of the generation that had caused the conflict, and even—no one knew exactly how—began to acquire a reputation as a hero, responsible for all sorts of bravery talked about yet never actually detailed. His career by the 1930s was successful, and lucrative, for he applied himself to the business of earning a living when his father’s impoverishment required it and even enjoyed the liberation that self-reliance provided. He was engaged in—or at least engaged in commenting upon—all the major political issues of the day, his opinions sought after and valued; in Julien’s view the amount that many were prepared to pay him for his views was remarkable. Marcel had a much less polite response and considered that the constant criticism and cynicism that came from people like Bernard was one of the fundamental symptoms of the weakness in the country. Given the slightest opportunity, he would silence them all, so that men of goodwill would be able to build something worthwhile, rather than seeing all their efforts pulled down and destroyed by those who delighted merely in destruction.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that Bernard should support the left-wing Popular Front as much as Marcel detested it; equally inevitable that he should rail against the feebleness of a government that refused to help the republicans of Spain, and that he should go there himself, although as an unofficial observer and informant for politicians rather than as a combatant. He returned once more as a man with a glowing reputation, so that his opinion was still more valued, if not directly sought after, when the war he had predicted finally erupted once more.
PART TWO
CLAUDE BRONSEN was trapped in France when the invasion of May 1940 came because, like most people, he did not believe that disaster could hit so completely. He had taken precautions, as his confidence in the French military was far from total, and had transferred money out of the country in case of necessity, but underestimated how quickly he would need to move. And he could not bring himself to leave; his businesses, swiftly converting to war production, needed him, and he did not trust anyone else to run them properly. He was patriotic, more French than those who had been born in France, though born in Germany himself, and had a strong sense of duty. For years there had been sniping and criticism about people like him—businessmen, financiers, Jews—and to run away at such a time, he felt, would merely have provided more ammunition. Besides, the war came and nothing happened; a sense of calm descended after the initial panic. A perverse faith in the ability of diplomats to fend off catastrophe grew, people began to laugh again and think they had panicked for no reason. Their enemy was more timid than they feared; their own defenses as strong as they had hoped.
When catastrophe did strike, the shock was all the greater, and even a man like Bronsen, normally so canny and prepared, was caught by surprise. He delayed, not able to accept that the defeat was as total as all his intelligence told him. Besides, Julia was not there, and he would not leave without her. She was in the south, somewhere in the Camargue in the little house close to the coast she rented every summer she was in France, as reassured as everyone else. As usual, she had gone off without saying where she was; she guarded her solitude and privacy jealously on such occasions. So, rather than leaving himself, taking one of the last cross-channel ferries before they were cut off, he stayed behind, hoping that she would turn up, and having nightmare visions about what would happen if she arrived and found him already gone.
When it was clear that disaster was looming, his reaction was typically defiant and indeed perverse: He went to the restaurant, the Grand Véfour, with half a dozen friends whom he managed to round up, and had a valedictory meal. One of these friends was Julien Barneuve.
A grand and fine meal it was, although the service was patchy; the waiters’ minds were distracted. Fortunately, the chef’s professionalism held out and supplies of food had not yet run low. Bronsen made a short speech at the end; the mood was immensely, almost hysterically, good-humored.
“All around you, my friends, on this table, you see the best of what two thousand years of civilization has to offer. We have the finest damask cloth, its origins in the Middle East, amongst the Semitic nations but actually, I believe, made in Lyon. This rests on a table cut from a mahogany tree, hewn in the Americas, transported on a ship manned by a crew such as those who have been carrying the goods of the world for millennia. The table rests on an Aubusson carpet, worn and dirty perhaps, but in a design which dates back to the reign of Louis the Fourteenth and which has been produced by craftsmen in the same factory ever since.
“And all this to support, to bring close to us, the food, which we eat with our knives and forks in a fashion we learned from the Ottomans, served, course by course, in a style we used to call the Russian manner.
“Here we approach the foothills of civilization; I chose everything carefully for this reason. We began, did we not, with foie gras from the Dordogne, perfectly produced in some farmer’s basse-cour, fatted on cream and corn, taken to the railway station, and transported on a train line paid for by the British. I pay tribute to them. Whatever one may think of our allies, no one can deny that they make fine railways.