CHAPTER VI
VOILÀ LA MISÈRE
Directly opposite Mme. Gabrielle lives Mme. Odille Delorme. One lifts the latch of a heavy wooden gate to enter her courtyard. On left and right are the remains of barn and stable, from the rafters of which depend bundles of haricots hung to dry. A half dozen chickens scurry from under foot, and at the commotion Mme. Delorme steps out. “I have come to make a little visit,” I begin. “Enter then, and see misery,” is her reply. It is a startling reply from this woman, strong, intelligent, and direct. The room of which she throws open the door is tiny; the floor is of earth; there is no window, only a hole covered with oiled linen, which lets in a ray of light but never any sun. A stove, a table, two stools, a shelf or two and a few dishes hung on nails are her furnishings. In her arms she holds her sixteen-months’ baby; a little girl of three comes running in from an adjoining alcove, and is followed presently by her seven-year-old sister, Charmette. The three children look like plants blanched in a cellar. As gently as possible, I proceed with necessary questions: for in social parlance, I am making a preliminary survey of the family needs. “Your husband?” I inquire. She turns to her little girl, “Marie, tell the lady, then, where is Papa.” And Marie, smiling up into her mother’s face, repeats her lesson proudly, “Avec—les—Boches.” “Avec les Boches,” reiterates the mother, and catches the child to her in a passionate embrace. There is a pause before I can continue. “Have you beds and covers?” “See for yourself, Mademoiselle,” and she leads the way through her ménage; three passage-ways opening the one into the other, like the compartments of a train. The first contains a child’s bed of white enamel, and beneath an aperture like that in the outer room, a crib. Both are canopied and ruffled in spotless white. “Yes,” Mme. Delorme says in answer to my unspoken surprise, “I bought these beds. The ruffles are made of sheets, one can but do one’s best. As you see, it is only a chicken-house after all.” Beyond, quite without light, is a space occupied by her own bed, a springless frame of planks. From nails in the walls clothes of all sizes and descriptions hang. In fact, one wonders at the amount of clothing saved by the panic-stricken peasants in their flight. They not only took away with them heavy sacks made out of sheets, but buried what they had time to. Of course, some of their hiding places were rifled; but most of the villagers have a real embarrassment of riches in their old clothes. Their first request is usually for a wardrobe, so that the mice will not nest in them.
But Mme. Delorme asked for nothing. She rested her case in the simple statement, “Voilà la misère.” At a later date, when I returned with a camera, she repeated, “What would you? Take a picture of our misery?” “Yes, Madame, to carry with me to America, that they may see it there and fight the harder for knowing what the Boches have done.” “Eh, bien!” she replied, and the picture was taken. Framed in the deep gateway, from which the clusters of dried beans depend like a stage curtain, her baby in her arms, her two little girls clinging beside her, and neighbourly Adrien, broom in hand, sweeping the light snow from the path,—I see her yet amid the ruins, brave, broken-hearted Odille Delorme.
Before the war, Mme. Delorme had not the social position of her neighbour, Mme. Gabrielle. She lived on her smaller property, and attended to her truck garden and her poultry yard and her children, while her husband served the Government as bargeman on the canal. Yet the two were close friends. Mme. Gabrielle having bought a cow, shared the milk with Mme. Delorme. Mme. Gabrielle told me that Mme. Delorme needed blankets. “She would never admit it,” she explained. “We are not used to accepting gifts, you see.” Or were it necessary for Mme. Delorme to go to Ham perhaps for her allocation, Mme. Gabrielle transferred the baby and Marie to her kitchen until their mother’s return.
From this extreme end of the village, by the Calvary, the street continues across the railroad track. Here, on almost any day, children may be seen digging miniature coal mines. They do it not in play, but in earnest. The ties which the Germans left have long since been used as fuel, but in the roadbed the villager still finds a scant supply of coal. Beyond the track, the first habitable building is a barn. Its interior consists of one room, earthen-floored where two makeshift beds allow it to be seen. In one corner stands a small stove. No light enters except from the open door. Here lodge the old mother, the married daughter, two children, a girl of seventeen and a boy of eleven, and their orphaned cousin, four-year-old Noël. Lydie, capable, red-cheeked, crisp-haired, welcomes us and pulls forward a bench. “Be seated, please.” Her voice has a ring of youth, her mouth a ready smile. One wonders how it can be, yet it is so. The grandmother complains querulously from the untidy bed where she is lying to keep warm. Lydie tells us with perfect equanimity that she herself has no bed. Where does she sleep? On the bench. Beds would be welcome, yes, and sheets and blankets. The grandmother adds a request for warm slippers; her feet are so often cold. A pane of glass for the door I set down also in the list in my notebook, and as assets—the furniture being negligible—300 kilos of cabbages, 100 kilos of potatoes, leeks and chicory in smaller quantities.
—Avant ... quand c’était pas la guerre ... on en avait deux pour un sou, des pralinés! ...
[Once, before the war, the pralines were two for a sou.]