Soldiers at the side of the road got up when they saw our coach approaching and started cheering us as a joke. I waved back and giggled. My mother shook her head with a grin. I seldom saw her playful, but the frivolity of the situation seemed to inspire even her.
“Hélène, child,” she nagged. “If you wave, at least do it with a bit of dignity. Like this…” She waved stiffly with her gloved fingers, in the manner of a princess regent in a victor’s coach — and I burst out laughing.
If this was history, which according to my uncle I must study well, then history was a delight. I could smell the leather of the boots, the shoe polish, the grease and the scent of those bodies, pale, young, tender. And again I see those good-natured faces, the eyelids that narrow, the sparks of pleasure that glow in them while the lads cheer us, and the hair under their arms when they raise an arm to wave. But I also sensed in my mother that same touch of regret that I felt with my uncle when I stared through the telescope at the blood vessels of the war, which day and night pushed those bodies towards the meat-grinder, to an idiotic death in the trenches or the foxhole.
On arrival we had coffee in the establishment where we were staying, in a side street close to the market square on one of the slopes of the hill on which the town was built. At the window the jovial bustle of a seaside resort in high season lapped past, true, flooded by mainly British tourists, all in the same grey uniforms.
We were almost the only civilians in the restaurant, and we must have looked strangely precious among all that khaki, with our dainty hats, our puffed sleeves and cuffs, the brooch my mother had put on the lapel of her cream-coloured overcoat and not least our gloves, mine in satin, hers in crochet, which gave a certain rococo twist even to the simple gesture of bringing a cup of coffee to your lips.
We attracted attention. Around us, at the other tables, officers — I presume, since I’ve never had a clear idea of military ranks and hierarchies — were casting furtive glances at the two of us, sideways, as they drank their glass or cup, or looking up supposedly by chance when they cut their cakes.
My mother shook it off. Straightened her shoulders. Looked around. I could see that she wanted to wallow in the illusion of a more or less normal state of affairs — everyday life with its familiar routines, even though almost all the waiters who were manoeuvring their way between the kitchen and the tables with trays full of crockery and cutlery or portions of tart were older men, older than the majority of the uniformed customers, beneath whose whiskers they arranged silver jugs of cream on the tablecloth, poured tea, juggled with carafes or piled empty plates on their forearms as if performing a circus turn. Their helpful manner, perhaps no more obtrusive or artificial than usual, acquired a mocking edge, though those young men scarcely seemed to notice them.
I saw my mother enjoying herself. I saw how she relished the sight of the maid who, in front of the cupboard for the cutlery and the napkins, was polishing knives and forks with a downy cloth and laying the napkins in piles. The child was probably not much older than me, though a head shorter, slimmer and blonder, with a flannel cap on her hair so big that it resembled a washed-up jellyfish that had accidentally been stranded on her crown. She seemed frightened of the tall matron who, in a corner of the restaurant, close to the door, resided behind a tall lectern and whose task was for some reason to prevent hungry customers from looking for a table on their own initiative, a task which had grown into a true passion. With an imposing choker rising from her voluminous bosom, and in one hand the pen, which regularly made mysterious notes in a register on the lectern, the other pointing a guest to a table, she combined excellently and seamlessly the functions of gatekeeper and cornerstone: half a caryatid, because of that hairdo that towered to just beneath the low ceiling, as though she had to support the whole building, and half a Theban sphinx, only prepared to admit within her ramparts those who gave the right answers to her riddles.
I saw how my mother was enjoying herself, and I was too, but actually not properly until now, long after the whole decorum of the bourgeoisie has wasted away in the props store of time. The most important rituals are those whose symbolism we know has definitely faded. The whole tissue of signs, the map of our soul if you like, in which they were embedded, has worn away around them, but we ascribe to them, literally against our better judgement, a short-lived significance — just as I can only fundamentally believe in God when I feel that the world, down to my own cells and bones, exudes His death: death in the afternoon, when Rachida blesses the floors and cupboards down below, and the caustic soda in her buckets deconsecrates my house until everything lies there white and naked, filled with nothing but its own emptiness.
“Don’t sit there gawping, child. You’ll attract lightning,” whispers my mother, above the cup of coffee which she keeps in front of her mouth for an unnatural length of time so as to be able to have a good look round. And when I stare at her indignantly, I see she is sitting giggling, in a rare fit of self-mockery.
It might be one of the countless incidents that you forget, one of those hundreds of thousands of moments that glide through us without leaving a trace, or one of those scarce moments that on the contrary you remember all your life without really knowing why: memories that have the intensity of revelations, but without a clear message, except for the consolation of their triviality.
However, I remember that afternoon so vividly because my mother had scarcely uttered her playful reprimand when the panes in the window frames around us started to tremble. On all the tables teaspoons vibrated in cups and saucers to the rhythm of a swelling rumble that seemed to spread not only through the air, but also through the ground, through the table legs, the legs of our chairs, through our legs, up to our midriffs. Meanwhile an unearthly din mounted. Somewhere huge shutters seemed to be tumbling off their hinges, steel gates to be slamming shut with a massive clang, followed by clattering, like a hailstorm releasing all its stones at once.
My mother and I looked at each other, half astonished, half bewildered. Around us life came to a complete standstill very briefly, it can’t have been more than eight seconds or so. Forks with pieces of cake on them froze halfway between table and mouth. A coffee jug hung in the air from the motionless hand of a waitress beneath the tinkling candelabra. The matron at her lectern raised her eyes to heaven, to the creaking ceiling, as if she suddenly doubted whether her monolithically constructed coiffure could cope with the weight of the rattling cosmos. By the crockery cupboard the maid stood looking at the shelves, on which plates were trembling, carafes were trembling, milk jugs were trembling, while in the drawers spoons and forks spread a gentle panic. Doggedly she fastened her gaze on the silver and porcelain, perhaps in the hope that by staring intensely she could keep everything in its place, if the crockery were to dance towards the fatal edge of the shelf.
As soon as the shaking ebbed away and the din had moved over us, into the valley, across the immense plain to the coast, and the panes in the window were the last to come to rest, suddenly the hubbub broke loose again as if at a sign. The waiters manoeuvred between the tables and the maid was once more folding napkins, with the same mechanical sleepiness as before, reintegrated into the hypnosis of normality.
Perhaps it was because of the juddering, which was still ringing in my ears and in my midriff, but as I sat looking round me, at the good-natured banter that went on lapping round us, as though there had never been that interval, I had an uncontrollable laughing fit. I tried to keep myself in check, but the tension built up in my midriff and before I realized it I burst into a laugh that took me so totally by surprise that I got cramp in my abdominal muscles. I heard myself, to my horror, not so much guffawing as cackling hysterically.