One day and one night! That’s all? My God, is that all? And what if I don’t come back? To think that we might have been born fifty years ago … or twenty-five years from now, when there would be no war … Ah, we haven’t been lucky! Détang has assured me that I could have been sent to the rear if I’d used my connections. But that would not have been honest. There are so few men in the first-aid post at the front that students and veterans from the Territorial Army are given the most terrifying responsibilities. It’s true that I could also be useful elsewhere and … No! No! That’s cheating! You don’t compromise, you don’t make a deal when it comes to your duty. You don’t go into things half-heartedly. You sacrifice everything, your life, your work, everything you love.’

He slowly rubbed his closed eyes, picturing once more the cellar, half under water, where he tended the wounded. That was home to him. For a long time he would know no other. He smiled as he recalled the 14th July, the day when he stood on the staircase at the Rue Monge and planned his future. It was sad and funny to think about that …‘Ah,’ he sighed, ‘this filthy war.’

Adolphe Brun looked at him, outraged. Yes, he had forgotten the rules of the game. Here, among civilians, it was not acceptable to speak ill of the war. It had to be described as wonderful, savage, but inspiring. My God, those things were true, of course. But as a doctor, he mostly saw the other face of war, a face with a deadly grimace. How did young Bernard Jacquelain see it? Eighteen years old with a broad chest, strong muscles, sharp reflexes, piercing eyes … Perfect prey for the war! He felt sorry for him, but his pity was the cold, clear-eyed pity of a doctor. During an operation, the arms and legs are sacrificed to save the rest of the body; men are snatched up and thrown into the fire, him along with many others, so that the country may survive … He accepted this. It made him sad, but he accepted it. ‘You can’t cheat,’ he said to himself once more.

All the while, he was growing more and more desperately impatient; he looked at the time and wondered when he could politely leave with his wife. A small gold clock sat opposite him on the mantelpiece; it ticked away very quickly, with the sound of a rodent gnawing away at a piece of furniture. Nearly three o’clock … At three o’clock he would leave the Bruns; he would walk down the staircase, Thérèse on his arm; they would head for a little hotel he knew in Versailles where they would spend their wedding night. And the next day, while she was still asleep (his wife … her hair falling over her neck, her shoulders, just as it did when she was a child, her fine, sweet-smelling hair … that cloud of spun gold …) while she was still asleep, he would very quietly leave, without saying goodbye, without even kissing her, because his heart would break if he had to give her one last kiss and see her eyes fill with tears.

Finally the meal was over. Madame Brun carried the empty cake dish into the kitchen, the one that had held her masterpiece, her triumph, a specialty of Savoie filled with cherry cream. Not a crumb was left. She had been so overcome with emotion by making this dessert that she had hardly noticed anything else, the wedding, or that Thérèse had left … But nothing would change, because tomorrow, with Martial back at the front, Thérèse would return to the room she had before she was married and her life would carry on as if nothing had happened. The elderly Madame Brun was delighted at this thought with the sweet childlike cynicism of the elderly.

In the dining room, the men had fallen silent, one after the other. Even Adolphe Brun had not been able to take part in the women’s chatter for long; Madame Humbert’s loud, strident voice could be heard above everyone else’s, like the big drum in an orchestra, and during certain patriotic tirades, she sounded like a shrill, heartbreaking fife, while Renée’s voice was a flute alongside hers and Madame Jacquelain sighed like a mandolin. Thérèse was visibly trying to be cheerful, talking and laughing; it was the moment when she began to learn how to behave like a soldier’s wife, no crying, no lamenting in public, rarely talking about herself and never about the one who was ‘over there’, the woman who continues waiting for him when everyone else has stopped waiting, the one who remembers when everyone else has forgotten, the one who hopes against all hope.

The women were talking about the war.

They descended from such lofty conversation to discuss the theatre; the Parisian theatres had reopened in December. Madame Jacquelain exclaimed that it was sacrilege: ‘How can people go out in the evening when our dear little soldiers are so miserable? I wouldn’t dare do that, not me …’

Madame Humbert did not agree:

‘But come now, my dear, it all depends on the performance. At the Comédie Française they’ve been showing Horace.