"What does he not know?"
She grasps my shoulders. "Chérie, Chérie. Are you demented? Have you forgotten—have you forgotten?"
Forgotten!... In truth, I have forgotten many things. There are gaps in my memory, wide blank spaces that, no matter how I try to remember, I cannot fill. Now and then something flashes into those blank spaces, a fleeting recollection, a transient vision, then the blankness closes down again and when I try to remember what I have remembered, it is gone.
I ask Louise to tell me what she means, to tell me what I have forgotten; but she only stares at me with those horror-haunted eyes and whispers, "Hush! hush, my poor Chérie!" Then she places her cold hand on my lips as if to close them.
I will try to remember. I will write down in this book all that remains in my memory of those terrible days and nights when we fled from home; when we hid starving and trembling in the woods, and saw through the trees our church-tower burn like a torch, saw it list over and crash down in a cloud of smoke and flame; when, crouching in a ditch, we heard the Uhlans gallop past us and saw them drag two little boys, César and Émile Duroc, out of their hiding-places in the bushes only a few yards from us.
We saw them—we saw them!—crush the children's feet with the butts of their rifles, and then taunt them, telling them to "run away!" I can see them now—two of the men standing behind the children, holding them upright by their small shoulders, while a third beat and crunched and ground their feet into the earth....
But stay ... the wide blank spaces in my brain go back much further than that.
What is it that Louise says I have forgotten? Let me try to remember. Let me try to remember.
I will go back to the evening of my birthday. August the fourth. Our friends come. We dance.