Jean Echenoz: 1914

Then, since three-handed manille was a tricky business, and with Padioleau falling asleep as Bossis grew drowsy as well, Anthime shut down the game to go exploring in the neighboring cars, looking vaguely for Charles without really wanting to see him, assuming he was off by himself, contemptuous as always of his fellow men but surrounded by them of necessity. Well, not at all: Anthime eventually spotted him comfortably installed by a window in a car with seats, taking pictures of the landscape in the company of a clutch of noncommissioned officers whose photos he was also taking, along with their addresses so he could send them their portraits later on. Anthime wandered off.

In the Ardennes, they’d hardly gotten off the train, hardly had the time to get used to this new landscape of dense forests and rolling hills, hadn’t even learned the name of this village where their first camp was or how long they’d be there—when some sergeants lined the men up and the captain made a speech at the foot of the cross on the main square. They were a little tired, didn’t feel much like muttering jokes to one another anymore but they listened to it, this speech, standing at attention looking at trees of a kind they’d never seen before, as the birds in these trees began to tune up, getting ready to play taps in the twilight.

The captain, named Vayssière, was a puny young man with a monocle, a curiously ruddy complexion, and a limp voice: Anthime had never seen him before, and his morphology gave no hint as to why or how he could ever have desired and pursued a combative vocation. You will all return home, Captain Vayssière promised in particular, raising his voice to the limit of its power. Yes, we will all go home to the Vendée. One vital point, however. If a few men do die while at war, it’s for lack of hygiene. Because it isn’t bullets that kill, it is uncleanliness that is fatal and which you must combat first of all. So wash, shave, comb your hair, and you will have nothing to fear.

After that pep talk, as the men were breaking ranks, Anthime happened to find himself next to Charles, near the field kitchen just being set up. Charles did not seem any more inclined than usual or than in the train to chat about the war or the factory, but regarding the latter, well, he clearly couldn’t slip off down one of his hallways claiming urgent correspondence to attend to as he’d always done before, so he was forced to deal with Anthime’s concerns. And they were both dressed alike now, which always helps communication. About the factory, Anthime asked anxiously, what are we going to do? I have Mme. Prochasson to take care of everything, explained Charles, she has the files in hand. It’s the same for you, you have Françoise in the accounts department, you’ll find everything in order when you get back. But when’s that, wondered Anthime. It won’t take long, Charles insisted, we’ll be back for the September orders. Hmm, said Anthime, we’ll see about that.

The men drifted around the camp a bit, long enough to inquire about the resources available in the area. Some fellows were already complaining that they’d found nothing to eat, no beer or even matches, and the price of wine, sold by locals who’d quickly discovered how to profit from the situation, was now exorbitant. Trains could be heard going by in the distance. As for the field kitchen, nothing to be hoped for there until it was completely operational. Since their travel provisions were all gone, after sharing some cold monkey meat and murky water they went to bed.

LEAVING BEHIND THE SERRIED ranks of buildings, the squares with their old houses huddled together, Blanche went farther and farther away from the center of town along thoroughfares that were more open and airy, with somewhat unusual, almost eccentric, and certainly less regimented architecture: these houses in a greater variety or even absence of styles breathed more freely, set back from the street, and all had some form or other of garden around them. Continuing along her way, Blanche passed in front of Charles’s residence and then Anthime’s, now equally deserted.

Charles’s house: beyond an ornate front gate concealing a garden one felt was flourishing, with well-tended flowers and lawns, a path led to a flagstone terrace set off by pillars flanking a double front door of polychrome stained glass, enthroned atop three steps. From the street, one could just make out at some distance the yellow and blue granite facade: tall, narrow, and, like its owner, tightly shut up. Three stories, with a balcony on the second floor.

Anthime’s: this was a single-story house set closer to the street, with a roughcast facade, lower and more compact, as if a residence, like a dog, absolutely had to be homothetic to its master. Less well hidden by a front gate—ajar—made of ill-joined planks covered with flaking white paint, the property was a smaller and poorly defined zone of weeds bordered by some attempts at vegetable gardening. To enter Anthime’s home one had next to cross a cracked slab of concrete ornamented solely by some very distinct and canine paw prints—from an animal therefore probably none too light on its feet—left in the fresh cement on the distant day it was poured. The only memorial to the defunct animal remained these impressions, at the bottom of which had accumulated an earthy grit, an organic residue in which other weeds, of a smaller format, were struggling to grow.

Blanche had given these two domiciles only a passing glance as she walked on toward the factory, a continent-sized heap of dark brick as ponderous as a fortress, isolated from the neighborhood by timid little streets running all around it, as a moat encircles a château. Ordinarily gaping, the enormous main entrance, a maw that periodically engulfed fresh masses of laborers only to regurgitate them utterly exhausted, was on this Sunday closed as tightly as a savings bank. On the circular pediment atop this entrance moved the hands of a gigantic clock, with BORNE-SÈZE spelled out by huge letters in high relief. Below, on the gate, hung a sign bearing two words: NOW HIRING. This factory made footwear.

All kinds of footwear: shoes for men, women, and children, boots, bootees, and ankle boots, Gibsons and Oxfords, sandals and moccasins, boxing shoes, slippers, mules, orthopedic and safety shoes, even the recently invented snow boot, and not forgetting the godillot , that military boot named after its creator, the discoverer of—among other marvels—the difference between the left foot and the right. Everything for the feet at Borne-Sèze: from galoshes to pumps, from buskins to high heels.

Pivoting on hers, Blanche walked around the factory toward an isolated structure of the same dark brick, apparently one of the plant’s outbuildings. DR. MONTEIL, announced a copper plate beneath the door knocker, and hardly had she knocked when this practitioner appeared: rather tall, stooped, with a florid complexion, dressed in gray, looking fiftyish enough—just above the age limit for territorial soldiers—to have narrowly escaped the mobilization. The Bornes had been his patients for a long time when Eugène had asked Monteil to become the factory’s physician—participating in the selection and orientation of new hires, offering consultations and emergency care, giving the odd lecture on industrial hygiene—and although Monteil had immediately cut back on his private practice, he had remained the family doctor for the Bornes and three other local dynasties, while retaining as well his seat on the municipal council. Dr. Monteil knew quite a few people and had connections just about everywhere, even in Paris. He had taken care of Blanche ever since her infancy, so she had come to consult him in his capacity as both doctor and public official.