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.
[Illustration: —_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.]]
My next call I have been urged to make by our doctors. Here in a
ramshackle ell, facing a court deep in mire, live the poorest family
in the village, comprising Mme. Laure Tabary, her six children, and a
black and bearded goat. The goat inhabits a rabbit hutch from which
her tether allows her the freedom of the narrow brick path. From the
sidelong gleam in her eyes, one always expects an attack in the flank or
rear. But Madame, her mistress, regards her as a pet; perhaps because she
cannot regard her in any other favourable light,—since _la petite_ gives
no milk. Once past the goat, the door is quickly gained. Two rooms has
Mme. Tabary, and a loft and a shed. She needs them! From forlorn Olga to
forlorn Andréa, the girls of the family descend in graduated wrappings
of rags. “O, Mme. Tabary,” exclaimed the school teacher, with whom I
discussed the all too evident need of soap, and of clothing, “she is a
very worthy woman, but she is always poor.” Always poor, always ailing,
yet always humorous, were the Laure Tabarys. Did the unfortunate woman
try to boil her washing, the stove must needs break, and the cauldron
full of scalding water descend upon Madeleine. No sooner were her wounds
dressed than Andréa developed a fever. It would be interesting to know
how many litres of gasoline were consumed by us in the carrying of Mme.
Tabary’s children to and from hospitals located ten and twenty miles
away. One would have thought the distracted mother might welcome these
deportations. But, naturally enough, she distrusted them, and having
faithfully promised to give up the baby to our care on a certain day,
left instead for Ham. Of how she was won over,—that is a tale which
belongs to the annals of the medical department rather than to me. But I
have heard rumours of hair ribbons and dolls and candy and fairy stories
and I know not what of similar remedies which Hippocrates and Galen never
mentioned. Judge, then, whether our doctors were bugbears or no among the
children of our villages!
But the ell housed another family besides the Tabarys. Across the hall
lodged the Moroys; M. Edouard, an old man of eighty-four, his niece and
nephew and his granddaughter, Mlle. Suzanne. All lived in the one room.
It was a room with only three corners as well, because in the fourth the
floor rose in an arch which indicated the cellar-way. In this room were
three beds, a table, a stove, three chairs and a broken sewing machine.
Yet I never saw the room in disorder, nor heard any requests from the
family beyond that of a little sugar for Grandpère, and, if possible,
another bed, so that Charles might have a place to sleep. Meantime,
Charles slept upon the floor. In this room were two windows. The one to
the south interested me by chance, because the panes looked so clear. I
stepped over and put out my hand. It went straight through the framework;
there was no glass. “But you must be cold!” I exclaimed, knowing well the
common fear of _courants d’air_. Besides, it was late October, and the
nights were already frosty. “Yes, a little,” Mlle. Suzanne admitted in a
matter of fact way. “Yes,” agreed her aunt, in a more positive tone. “And
besides, Mademoiselle, our stove is too small, as you see. In fact, it
is not ours, but belongs to Mme. Tabary. But she has so large a family,
we made an exchange. Perhaps when you distribute stoves——” I promise to
remember, wondering the while if we in like circumstances would share our
last crusts with like generosity. For the window, so scarce was glass,
oiled linen was the best that could be done, a pity considering that it
excluded the sun with the cold.
Mlle. Suzanne, with the exception of Germaine Tabary and Lydie Cerf,
is the only young woman in Canizy. She had been taken captive by the
Germans, but was allowed to return. Her family, however, met an unknown
fate; father and brother, they were _avec les Boches_. A curious
circumstance in this connection was that Suzanne, having been an
independent worker, received no pension for her loss. She, too, seemed a
Good Samaritan to her neighbours—lame Mme. Juliette depends on Suzanne
to bring her her pitcher of milk; Mme. Musqua, sick and irresponsible,
has only to send over her children to Mlle. Suzanne to be cared for,—what
matter two more or less in the crowded room? I added my quota to her
labours by asking her to take charge of washing rags, and started her in
with those of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Tabary. For the purpose, I
have given her a cylindrical boiler, standing three feet high. This, when
not in use, is placed over by the cellar-way. On washing days, it is set
on an open fire in the court, where Grandpère feeds it with laboriously
chopped twigs. Meantime, back of the house, patches of colour and of
flapping white begin to adorn the wire fence. Suzanne also sews, by hand
and, now that its frame is mended by I know not how many screws in the
warped wood, by machine. We give out the sewing, and she earns by it
perhaps three francs a week.
Beyond the Moroys, lives Mme. Thuillard, Charles, as the neighbours call
her to distinguish her from the Thuillards, O. I have seldom found this
energetic lady at home, but I often see her, and sometimes hear her,
as she passes with firm step down the street to work in her garden.
When not playing, her ten-year-old granddaughter Orélie follows in her
wake. This leaves in the unlighted recesses of the barn, her husband,
M. Charles. He seems an apologetic and conciliatory soul, with whom I
discuss domestic needs, such as a window, a lamp, and sheets for the
beds. He will tell his wife what I say and report to-morrow when he
comes for the milk. It is in his entrance-way, so to speak, that I first
noticed a pile of willow-withed market baskets. “O, yes,” he said, “I
had hundreds of such, but the Boches took them.” “Are they then made
hereabouts?” “Before the war; but now no one is left who understands the
trade.” The next day I am likely to get a report, and a sharp one, from
Madame, his wife. “Sheets,” she queries, “what sort of sheets? Are they
linen sheets? Blankets. Are they wool? Are they white? Look you, before
the war, I had five dozen linen sheets and plenty of blankets and down
quilts of the finest quality. Keep your gifts about which you make so
much talk! I will have none of them, none of them at all!”
I have sometimes wondered if Madame were related to the contrary-minded
but equally independent wife of the _garde champêtre_ who distributes—or
not—at her pleasure, the communal supply of bread. “I hear,” she began
one day, as I waited for change for a hundred franc note—change which
came in gold, by the way, as well as in silver—“I hear that you are to
make a distribution of gifts. Do not forget me! I will receive anything,
but you understand, not for payment; only as a present. Behold,” this
with a playful slap on the shoulder, “any one will tell you that I have a
tongue. _O, là, là, là!_”