Her natural distinction and her husband's money had allowed her not to bother. The world took her as she was: Her life was, as the expression goes, a long peaceful river. Not a ripple in sight. Tonight, however, this arrogant young man had initiated an imperceptible turbulence beneath the calm surface. What to him was an abstraction he felt entitled to deem "proper", to her was "The war". It was the Spring of in Brittany, and she was a girl of nine. Her family had been evacuated from Saint-Malo to the neighbouring village of Miniac-Morvan. They were living in a rented house, and the children were going to school with Mlle Dubois, a motherly middle-aged spinster.
Mathilde was pretty and a bit spoilt; a daughter after three sons. Her dad was a doctor. Of all the children in Miniac, she had befriended a girl called Odette, whose father, a widower, was a cobbler. Odette was different from anyone Mathilde had ever known.
The oldest of five children, she had the crushing responsibility of bringing up her brothers and sisters.
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Blond and pale, quiet and obedient, her humble drab clothes always meticulously clean, she seemed intent, above all, on blending in. But her meagre ambition was not to be granted. Odette was poor and an orphan, a deserving charity case. Everyone knew it and few ever let her forget it. When Mathilde, looking lost, had arrived in the new school, Odette, shy by nature, had acted against her usual reserve. She had come to Mathilde in the playground and had invited her to join the other children in a game.
From that day their friendship had been sealed. Odette was completely devoted to Mathilde, and Mathilde, having soon regained her self-assurance, had taken Odette under her protective wing.
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Their relationship, balanced between the innocence of childhood and the budding awareness of social differences, was a fine mixture of love, admiration and condescension. Friendships, in those days, were very intense, for they brought reassurance and warmth in an otherwise hostile environment.
These were confusing and chaotic times. The war had been going on for five years and Mathilde was too young to remember life being any different. The Germans, whose occupation of France had meant constant fear and deprivation, were starting to fret under the repeated attacks of the American planes. The adults said that the wind was turning. The German army, in a last ditch attempt to reinforce their reign of terror, had become even more cruel to French civilians.
Only hope and faith in the Allies kept life bearable. Thankfully the Germans, too occupied by overseas threats, didn't often show their faces in the village. Life, therefore, could appear almost normal. The pupils were so excited by this exceptional outing that they found walking in line behind the teacher extremely difficult. The open fields were calling appealingly and the fragrances of spring were exhilarating. Mathilde had tied one of her pink ribbons in Odette's pale hair. The beaming smile her friend had given her in return had made her feel wonderful about herself.
At last the teacher stopped on a long road that stretched towards the coast.
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It was bordered on each side by tall willowy trees and a shallow ditch. She instructed the children to find on the grassy verges as many different plants as possible, which they would identify and classify back at school.
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She added very seriously that they should not and she stressed the "not" stray away from the cover of the trees. It was a question of life and death, she said. They all went off in pairs. Little dresses and short trousers, frolicking, laughing and gathering sunny dandelions and delicate daisies. Odette, as usual, was carrying the box for samples, while Mathilde was running around.
Suddenly, the games stopped. From the blue horizon a sound, a roar, disturbed the peace. Always obedient, Odette had remained with the group. Mathilde, on the other hand, had gone off further down the road, behind the line of trees and the ditch, and she was out of reach: Ecstatic and inebriated by the sights and smells of the new season, she didn't hear the distant rumbling nor the teacher's urgent cry.
Odette dropped the sample box, spilling its content on the road, and ran to find her friend. She was calling frantically and her face looked very scared.
Seeing her in the distance, bright red and waving her cardigan frenetically above her head, Mathilde laughed. But when Odette reached her, she heard the groan of the engine and, at last, understood. Huge, dark and lethal. Death from the sky. The plane dived abruptly. Paralysed with fear, the girls stood in the open.
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The gigantic bird was upon them; its cold shadow had eclipsed the sun. Odette pushed Mathilde into the ditch. The explosions of the gunshots sounded like fireworks, magical and terrifying, and the noise from the engine was deafening. The impacts on the dry grass were like hail, only louder, heavier. Then everything went dark: When Mathilde recovered her senses, the teacher was sobbing noisily, holding her to her bosom. There was blood on her new school tunic; what would Maman say? Of Odette, she saw only a pink ribbon caught in a bush on the edge of the ditch.
Her little friend was dead. The funeral was terribly sad. Death then, all dark and resigned, was even more dismal than it is now. The hearse, dragged along the uneven road by two heavy farm horses dressed in black, was followed by a procession of villagers. Mathilde, as Odette's best friend, had been given the privilege of holding one of the two black ribbons at the back of the cart. In the cemetery it started raining. The very small coffin soon disappeared into the ground. Fistfuls of earth were thrown on it: Her father took her hand and led her away from the tomb to join a line of neighbours and friends, each waiting their turn to offer the bereaved family their "sincere condolences".
The sounds were muffled; whispers and smothered weeping. The funeral expenses had been paid by Mathilde's parents, and the poor grief-stricken cobbler thanked them warmly, his unshaved face all shadowed as if stained with shoe polish and tears. It was nobody's fault but the Boches'. Sad, sad, casualty of war. Mathilde was still playing with the ribbons of her dress. The party in the dining room was going on. None of the guests could have imagined her train of thoughts Like a bombshell, the sentence exploded in the civilised and well-fed blandness of the conversation.
Who had spoken it? The voice had sounded so desperate and tense — an absolute social blunder. It seemed to have come from just behind her. For a minute, the room went quiet, and they all stared at her. She felt her tranquil facade was no longer intact. What were they all gazing at so intently? She tried to pull herself together and smile, her habitual social screen, but only managed a grimace. This collection celebrates some of the best, filled with unforgettable characters, heart-stopping action, and the trembling uncertainty of personal relationships.
It captures the essence of what it is to be human or, in one case, what it is to be a dog. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account.
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