The Fires of Autumn Read online

  ‘You should get married, Martial,’ said the elderly Madame Pain with a mischievous smile.

  Martial nervously rolled the soft part of the bread into a ball, pulled at it so it took the shape of a man, stabbed at it with his dessert fork and raised his doe eyes to look at Thérèse.

  ‘I’m thinking about it,’ he said, his voice full of emotion. ‘Believe me, I’m thinking about it.’

  For a fleeting moment, Thérèse thought his remarks were directed at her; she wanted to laugh but at the same time felt embarrassed, as if she’d been left standing naked in public. So it was true then, what her father, her grandmother and her friends at school were saying: ever since she had started putting up her hair, she looked like a woman? But to marry this kind Martial … She lowered her eyes and watched him with curiosity. She’d known him since she was a child; she liked him very much; she could live with him as her mother and father had lived until the day the young woman died. ‘The poor boy,’ she suddenly thought. ‘He’s an orphan.’ She already felt a kind of affection and concern that was almost maternal. ‘But he’s not handsome,’ she continued thinking. ‘He looks like the llama at the zoo in the Botanical Gardens: gentle and slightly offended.’

  In an effort to stifle a scornful laugh, two dimples appeared on her rather pale cheeks; all the children of Paris had pale faces. She was a slim, graceful girl with a soft, serious face, grey eyes and hair as fine as mist. ‘What kind of husband would I like?’ she wondered. Her thoughts grew sweet and vague, full of handsome young men who looked like the Hussar from Napoleon’s Army on the print opposite her. A handsome, golden Hussar, a soldier covered in gunpowder and blood, dragging his sword behind him through the dead leaves … She leapt up to help her grandmother clear the table. She felt a jolt that brought her back from her dreams to reality; it was a unique and rather painful feeling: someone seemed to be forcing her to open her eyes while shining a very bright light in front of her.

  ‘Growing up is so tedious,’ she thought. ‘If only I could stay the way I am …’ She sighed rather hypocritically: it was flattering to inspire admiration in a young man, even if it was only the well-mannered Martial. Bernard Jacquelain had gone out on to the balcony and she joined him among the cages of canaries and turtledoves. The steel bridge vibrated: the metro had just passed by. A few moments later, Adolphe Brun came out to the children.

  ‘The Humbert ladies are here,’ he said.

  They were friends of the Brun family, a widow and her daughter Renée, who was fifteen.

  Madame Humbert had lost her brilliant, charming husband early on. It was a sad story, but a good lesson for the youngsters, or so they said. Poor Monsieur Humbert (a talented lawyer), had died at the age of twenty-nine for having too great a fondness for both work and pleasure, which do not go together, as Adolphe Brun remarked. ‘He was a Don Juan,’ he would say, shaking his head, but with an expression of admiration, mixed with condemnation and a tiny bit of envy. Twirling his moustache and looking pensive, he would continue: ‘He had become very conscious of his appearance. He had thirty-six ties’ (thirty-six stood for an exaggerated number). ‘He had started to indulge in luxuries: a bath every week. He caught the chill that killed him coming out of one of the public baths.’

  His widow, left with no money, had been forced to open a milliner’s shop to earn a living. In the Avenue des Gobelins stood a boutique painted in sky blue; high up on the roof was a plaque bearing the inscription: ‘FASHIONS by GERMAINE’ finished with a gold flourish. Madame Humbert launched her creations on her own head and her daughter’s. She was a beautiful brunette; she carried herself with majestic dignity, showing off one of the first new straw hats to come out this spring, trimmed with a burst of artificial poppies. Her daughter wore a modest creation of tulle and ribbons: a stiff bonnet but as light as a lampshade.

  They had been waiting for these ladies before going out to finish their Sunday in the fresh air. And so they all headed for the metro at the Gare de Lyon. The children walked in front, Bernard between the two girls. Bernard was painfully aware of his short trousers and looked with anxiety and shame at the golden hair that shone on his sturdy legs, but he consoled himself by thinking: ‘This is the last year …’ Besides, his mother, who spoiled him, had bought him a cane with a gold knob and he played with this nonchalantly. Unfortunately, Adolphe noticed it and muttered: ‘He looks like a dandy with that cane in his hand …,’ which spoiled all his pleasure. Lively, always on the go, slim with beautiful eyes, to his mother he was the personification of masculine beauty, and with a jealous pang in her heart, she thought: ‘He’ll have so many conquests by the time he’s twenty,’ for she intended to keep him at home until then.

  The young women wore black cotton stockings with nice tailored suits that modestly covered their knees. Madame Humbert had made a hat for Thérèse just like Renée’s, an impressive creation decorated with chiffon and little bows. ‘You look like sisters,’ but what she really thought was: ‘My daughter, my Renée, is prettier. She’s a little doll, a kitten with her blond hair and green eyes. Older men are already starting to notice her,’ she continued thinking, for she was an ambitious mother who could foresee the future.

  Emerging from the depths of the underground, the little group came out of the metro at the Place de la Concorde and walked down the Champs-Élysées. The women carefully lifted the hem of their skirts a bit as they walked; you could see a respectable ruffle of grey poplin under Madame Jacquelain’s dress, a reddish-brown sateen for the elderly Madame Pain, while Madame Humbert, who had an ample bosom and made the most of her ‘Italian eyes’, was accidentally showing off a dapple grey taffeta ruffle that rustled silkily. The ladies were talking about love. Madame Humbert let it be known that she had driven a man wild with her strict morals; in order to forget her, he had to run away to the colonies, and from there he had written to tell her that he had trained one of the little natives to come into his tent at bedtime and say: ‘Germaine loves you and is thinking of you.’

  ‘Men are often more sensitive than we are,’ sighed Madame Humbert.

  ‘Oh, do you think so?’ exclaimed Blanche Jacquelain. She had been listening with the same haughty, sharp expression as a cat eagerly eyeing a saucepan of hot milk (she stretches out her paw then pulls it back with a brief, offended miaow): ‘Do you really think so? It’s only we women who know how to sacrifice ourselves without any ulterior motive.’

  ‘What do you mean by ulterior motive?’ asked Madame Humbert; she lifted her chin and flared her nostrils as if she were about to whinny like a mare.

  ‘My dear, you know very well what she means,’ replied Madame Jacquelain in disgust.

  ‘But that’s human nature, my dear …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the elderly Madame Pain, nodding her head and jiggling her jet-black hat covered in artificial violets, but she wasn’t really listening. She was thinking of the bit of veal (left over from the blanquette) that she would serve that evening. Just as it was or with a tomato sauce?

  Behind them walked the men, holding forth and gesturing grandly.

  The peaceful Sunday crowds walked down the Champs-Élysées. Everyone strolled slowly, no doubt feeling heavier because they were digesting their meals, because of the heat – early for the time of year – or simply because they felt no need to rush. It was an amiable, cheerful, modest group of ordinary middle-class people; the working classes didn’t venture there, and the upper classes only sent the very youngest members of their families to the Champs-Élysées, supervised by nannies wearing beautiful ribbons in their hair. Along the avenue, they could see students from the Military Academy of Saint Cyr walking arm in arm with their lovely grandmothers, or pale students in pince-nez, from the prestigious Polytechnique whose anxious families gazed lovingly at them, high school students in double-breasted jackets and school uniform caps, gentlemen with moustaches, young girls in white dresses walking down to the Arc de Triomphe between a double row of chairs where other students from Saint Cyr
and the Polytechnique sat, with other gentlemen and ladies and children identical to the first group, wearing the same clothes, the same expression, the same smile, a look that was cordial, curious and benevolent, to such an extent that each passer-by seemed to see his own brother by his side. All these faces looked alike: pale-skinned, dull-eyed, and nose in the air.

  They walked even further, right down to the Arc de Triomphe, then to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, to the Boni de Castellane Villa whose lilac silk curtains fluttered out on to the balconies in the light breeze. And then, at last, the horse-drawn carriages arrived in a glorious cloud of dust, returning from the races.

  The families sat on their little metal chairs. They studied the foreign princes, the millionaires, the famous courtesans. Madame Humbert feverishly sketched their hats into a notebook she took out of her handbag. The children watched in admiration. The adults felt contented, satisfied, without envy but full of pride: ‘For the pittance we paid for our chairs and the price of the metro, we can see all of this,’ the Parisians thought, ‘and we can enjoy it. Not only are we spectators at a performance, we are also actors (though with the most minor of roles), with our daughters so beautifully decked out in their brand-new hats, and our chatter and legendary gaiety. We could have been born somewhere else, after all,’ thought the Parisians, ‘in a place where even seeing the Champs-Élysées on a postcard would have made everyone’s heart beat faster!’

  And they settled back comfortably in their chairs.

  ‘Did you see that pink parasol trimmed with lace roses?’ they said, slightly critically, as if they owned the place. ‘It’s too much; I don’t like that sort of thing.’

  They recognised the celebrities that passed by:

  ‘Look, there’s the actress Monna Delza. Who’s she with?’

  The fathers told their children stories from the past:

  ‘Five years ago I saw Lina Cavalieri having lunch with Caruso over there,’ they said, pointing towards the windows of a restaurant. ‘Everyone was gathered round them and looked at them as if they were curious animals, but that didn’t dull their appetite.’

  ‘Who’s Lina Cavalieri, Papa?’

  ‘An actress.’

  Towards evening, the children were starting to drag their feet. The powdery sugar from the waffles fluttered through the air. A fine dust rose slowly towards the sky, a golden dust that crunched between the teeth; it veiled half of the Obélisque in mist at the Place de la Concorde, shrouded the pink flowers on the chestnut trees; the wind carried it towards the Seine and it gradually fell to the ground while the last of the horse-drawn carriages and the Parisians headed for home.

  The Bruns, Jacquelains, Humberts and Raymond Détang sat down on the terrace of a café for a drink:

  ‘Two grenadines and eight glasses of wine.’

  They drank in silence, somewhat tired, rather light-headed, pleased with their day. Raymond Détang fiddled with his little beard and began showing off for the benefit of the woman sitting next to him. It was a hot evening. The first street lamps were being lit and the sky was turning a pale mauve, almost sugary, you could say, like the colour of violet sweets. It looked good enough to eat. ‘Ah, this is so nice …’ the women sighed, and ‘It’s almost too nice to go back home, isn’t it, Eugène?’ But Eugène or Émile (her husband) shook his head, looked at his watch and simply said: ‘Time for supper.’ It was nearly seven o’clock and all the little Parisian families would soon light their lamps and sit down to dinner. The delicious smell of stew and fresh bread would do battle for a few moments with the scent of the perfumed dust that the expensive ladies had left in their wake; it would compete with it and, in the end, win the battle.

  The Bruns and their friends parted at the Étoile metro station. They settled the bill – ‘And I still owe you some money for the waiter’s tip … Yes, I insist; the man who pays his debts is richer for it …’ Then everyone went back home.

  2

  In 1914, Martial Brun ordered a bronze plaque for the door of his future home on the Rue Monge; it was engraved with these words:

  DOCTOR MARTIAL BRUN

  EAR, NOSE AND THROAT

  The apartment would not be available until the end of October; it was now the 14th July. Martial went to see his friend, the doctor, who was still living there. After saying goodbye to him, he stopped on the staircase, took the plaque out of his pocket and polished it until it gleamed. Then he tiptoed back up the stairs, held it against the wooden door for a moment, tilted his long neck even further to the side and thought: ‘That’s really nice’, and began to daydream. There was a polished oak bench on the landing; the windows were made of coloured glass and their reflection covered the stairwell in translucent light, as in a church. Martial imagined a procession of patients arriving to consult Doctor Brun. ‘That excellent Doctor Brun …’ he whispered softly, ‘Martial Brun, that famous doctor … Do you know Doctor Brun? He cured my wife. He removed my daughter’s adenoids.’ He could almost smell that odour of antiseptic and clean linoleum wafting out of his consulting room. No more studying! He had earned his diplomas! That blessed moment when a Frenchman could say: ‘I’ve sown well. Now it is time to reap.’ And in his mind, he mapped out the future. He assigned a date to each event in the years to come: ‘I’ll move in here in October. I’ll get married. I’ll have a son. The second year, I’ll be able to have a holiday at the seaside …’ His life was planned in advance, sketched out right down to every success, right up until he was old, until he died. For naturally, there was death. It had its place in his domestic calculation. But death was no longer a wild animal lurking in the corner, lying in wait, ready to pounce. It was 1914, for heaven’s sake! The century of science, of progress. Even death seemed diminished in the light of such knowledge. It would wait in the wings for an appropriate moment, the moment when Doctor Brun would have fulfilled his destiny, lived a long, contented life, had children and bought a little house in the country, the moment when the white-haired Doctor Brun would fall peacefully asleep. Accompanying him on his path, Doctor Brun imagined Thérèse. He had always … he stopped at the word ‘loved’ as it seemed to him, heaven knows why, bordering on the improper. He had always hoped to make her his wife and the mother of his children. She was eighteen and he was thirty. Their ages were appropriate. She wasn’t rich but she had a small dowry of safe investments: Russian bonds. And so, everything was in place: the house, the money, the wife. His wife … But he hadn’t yet put the question. He had been content to make allusions, to sigh, pay compliments, to squeeze her hand furtively, but that was surely enough. ‘Women are so shrewd …’

  Once again, Martial gave himself a stern talking to:

  ‘I will not let another day go by without asking her if she will marry me. It would be simpler to talk to Uncle Adolphe, but I must take a modern approach. It must be her decision.’

  He was supposed to see her that very evening, for they were going out together. It was the 14th July and they were going to watch the dancing at the Place de la République. Adolphe Brun was very strict about everything Thérèse saw or read: she was not allowed any popular novels; he went through her reading with a fine-tooth comb and only allowed her to see matinees of classical French films; but to him, the streets of Paris held no danger. Its sights, its atmosphere, the gaiety, the hustle and bustle – he allowed Thérèse to enjoy these things as an old Indian brave would allow his children to play on the prairies. To outsiders, this was a wild place full of perils – but to him, it was the most peaceful countryside.

  Standing in front of the carousel with its wooden horses while the orchestra played, or perhaps in the dark street they would take to walk home – the youngsters in front, the parents behind – he would say to her … What would he say to her? ‘Thérèse, I have loved you for a very long time …’ or ‘Thérèse, you alone can make me the happiest, or the most wretched of men.’ Perhaps she would say: ‘I love you too, Martial, I do.’

  Martial could feel his heart pounding at
this idea; he took a little mirror out of his pocket and anxiously looked at himself, hanging his head down even more than ever and almost sweeping his long eyelashes against the mirror, for he was short-sighted. He had taken off his pince-nez so he could see himself: ‘She has to be able to see my eyes,’ he thought, ‘my eyes are really my best feature …’ For a moment he studied his terrified eyes, his pointy red nose and the black beard that hid his cheeks. Then he sighed sadly, put the mirror back in his pocket and walked slowly down the stairs.

  ‘She’s a serious young woman. Respectable women do not care about good looks. We’ll make a family together … We have to have the same likes and dislikes …’

  Then he weakened:

  ‘I’ll love her so much,’ he thought.

  He had dinner with the Bruns. Nothing had changed at their house. Nothing would ever change. Her father sat in his shirtsleeves reading the newspaper in his usual place, at the head of the table, the same table, the same armchair, the same newspaper, the same Uncle Adolphe that Martial was used to seeing, with his bald head, his wide blue eyes, his long red moustache. Grandmother was in the kitchen; Thérèse was setting the table. In the future, he would come to this dining room with his wife and children. He felt very happy. He took Thérèse’s hand; she pulled it away gently but she smiled at him, and that knowing smile, somewhat mocking but friendly, filled his soul with hope. Of course she had guessed everything.

  After dinner, Thérèse went to put on her hat.

  ‘Are you coming with us, Mama?’ asked Adolphe, winking mischievously at his nephew to encourage him to hear what he said next: ‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll get too tired?’

  ‘Me? Get tired?’ the elderly lady protested with indignation. ‘Speak for yourself with your varicose veins! I have strong legs, I do, thank the Lord! And besides, someone has to keep an eye on Thérèse.’