The first two blows are the ones that hurt. If they hit you on the head, sometimes only the first hurts. Hide your face. The canons yesterday evening excited a few of the men. “Partir, partir,” the Polish guy said feverishly, “Fini, fini.” His teeth started chattering: “Par. . tir, part. . tir.” They must be nearby. Yesterday they made us line up five times. Took away a lot of men. To start over in this world of oily things, honey-sweetened and peremptory? Start what? No. During the first months here, I kept thinking about the day I’d leave, the day the misunderstanding would end. Not because I wanted to leave, I later realized. It was instinctive for me to have something to anticipate. I had always lived with something on the horizon: exams, the end of my military service, the competition for a job, the end of the war. It was a way of escaping the vertigo of the future, of death. In this camp I have gradually sunk into an infinite, serene marsh. Perhaps death installs itself in people long before it finishes them. As if it wounded them. Be invisible. Invisible like an object. Eyes only slide over you, a brief outline. Be almost an object, like I was the day of the beating when they showed me the photo. I was just an object to that faceless man I hated so deeply.
To return to the womb, doubled up, drowsy, enveloped in warmth. In this corner, the sun is warm. A few days ago two guards found a man hiding here and beat him to death with a shovel. They made me collect him with a cart. It was distressing. He was so heavy I felt like my arms would drop. I didn’t even recognize him. His face was covered with clots of blood. Black blood. Hide your face. Now they come two or three times a day to see if they find anyone there. But what are they waiting for today? What are they waiting for? This breeze that makes the grass sway must still be cold. The wind must blow that wisp of hair. From time to time she must push the strand of hair back. What are they waiting for? Maybe I’ve taken too long to come, to make up my mind. Maybe I should have come the same day, that afternoon, or the following. I didn’t know they were so close by. The first two blows are the most painful. Lower your head, hide your face. After that, it doesn’t matter.
ORLÉANS, THREE KILOMETERS
Whenever she asked, “Is Orléans very far?” he was filled with a dull rage that surged upward till it reached his throat and choked him, causing him to cough. At least he spared himself from responding. They were entering a town. A group of people were gathered in front of a house, and they crossed the street to speak to them.
“What town is this?”
No one paid any attention to the couple. Everyone was anxiously standing around two men in shirtsleeves who were distributing wine. Like the rest of the town, the tiny tavern was abandoned. Smoke billowed from a window, and the air carried the smell of gunpowder.
“Bring bottle, give you wine. Give wine from cellar. Everything abandoned, wine go bad, better to drink it.” The person had no more than imperfect French. He was a tall, thin black man, middle-aged, dressed presentably. A poppy was stuck in the lapel of his jacket; only one petal remained, the others had been winnowed out by the wind.
“Hey, take a look at that suitcase,” the woman exclaimed as she elbowed her husband. The black man was carrying a small pigskin suitcase. It was new, its locks gleaming in the sun.
“Quiet, woman. If he hears us—”
“If you’re afraid he’ll understand us—”
Addressing the Negro, the husband asked, “Would you know the name of this town?” The man raised his hand (dry with long fingers, the color faded from his palm) pointing it upward. A sign was perched on the top of a pole with the name of the town marked in shiny, black letters. Artenay.
“There’s some wine left. Who wants more?” offered one of the two men who were moving back and forth between the cellar and the doorway. Their trousers and shoes were drenched in wine. A woman approached them with a ladle.
“Look what I found. In the house on the corner. The door was blown away and the kitchen’s full of all kinds of utensils. They must have just abandoned it, because the milk on the alcohol burner was boiling over.”
“You got nothing to put wine?” the Negro asked the couple who had arrived last. “No? I look for vase or bottle.” With a smile, wishing to be helpful, he had moved over to the couple. He held out his arm as if he were going to ask them to keep the suitcase for him, but changed his mind. His body stiffened as he tightened his grasp, and the suitcase was fixed to his body, like a continuation of his arm. Calmly he left the group and sauntered along as if he were made of cloth or his arms and legs were broken. One of the men distributing wine came up from the cellar, filled one more bottle and the woman’s ladle, then announced that the wine was all gone.
“Planes, planes!” Everyone looked up. The sky was limpid with the sweet color of blue that the sky takes on in France. Not a cloud. Suddenly there was absolute silence, as if the dozens of people in the street had magically vanished. You could hear the airplanes but couldn’t yet see them.
“Look! There they are, behind the chimney on the white house, directly above.” An old man with a white mustache and eyebrows pointed to the house opposite. Suddenly five gleaming specks of silver flashed across the sky, growing larger and larger.
“Down to the cellar. Everybody down the stairs!”
“I can’t move.”
“Don’t be afraid. They aren’t coming for us. They’ve been bombing Orléans since last night. They’ll pass right over us.”
The drone of the engines drew nearer, and the planes took on the appearance of swallows. The men and women started down into the cellar, serious and silent. Their eyes were steady, as if they already held death. The cellar gave off an unbearable stench of wine, and the floor was muddy. Someone had drawn wine from a full cask and left the valve open. The men who were distributing wine had gone into the cellar and found the cask half empty, the floor flooded. After the brightness of the street, the cellar seemed like a skyless night. The last night of all. A child began to cry. A ray of light filtered down the stairs. Once their eyes became accustomed to the dark, they could make out rows of barrels lined up across the room. All of a sudden the ceiling shook as if it were going to collapse, and a furious clamor resounded through the cellar as it filled with dust. The child abruptly stopped crying, as if he were holding his breath. The women screamed. A man’s trembling voice kept saying, “Keep calm, calm, calm.” Silence returned. Then two or three distant, less violent explosions could be heard.
One of the men risked going outside, then leaned back down the stairs, calling, “It fell in the middle of the street; there’s a crater large enough to hold us all.”
Everyone hurried up to the street. The light blinded them. Everything was brighter than before: the day, the sun. The woman who was carrying her baby was weeping.
“Come on, let’s get going.”
“I’m dying of thirst. I feel like my mouth is full of gunpowder.”
“The problems will be over when we reach Orléans.”
“Is it very far?”
They followed along the streets, first to the right, then to the left, until they reached the village square. In the center stood a fountain. It was dry. The bombings must have cut off the main water line. A few tall, leafy plane trees, very green, cast bluish shadows on the sun-drenched ground and the church façade. A tavern, larger than the one they had just left, stood in front of the church. Au bon coup de rouge. Its wrought iron door, with the sinuous design, was broken off the hinges. They entered. At one end of the counter was a vase with fresh daisies and cornflowers. They stepped over the broken glass. Not a single bottle remained on the shelves. Most of the chairs and tables were broken, their legs pointing upward. Not a glass or mirror was intact. Through the open door at the back you could see a vegetable garden in the bright sunlight, to the right of which lay a lettuce patch and a fat, round daisy surrounded by a swarm of bees. They returned to the room. On a shelf beneath the counter they discovered a half-empty bottle of anise. They downed it as if it were water.