Suite Francaise Read Online Free PDF Page A

to need the kind of air he’d breathed in the high altitudes of Switzerland for two years. Back on the streets of Paris, he strode along in a manner that made passers-by smile, for it seemed out of keeping with his cassock.
    And so that morning he stopped in front of a grey building and entered a courtyard that smelled of cabbage. The Penitent Children of the 16th Arrondissement were lodged in a small private residence set behind a tall administrative building. As Madame Péricand explained in her annual letter to the Friends of the charitable institution (Founding Member, 500 francs per year; Benefactor, 100 francs; Member, 20 francs), the children lived in the best possible material and moral conditions, were apprenticed to a variety of trades and participated in healthy physical activities: a small glass lean-to had been built on to the house, providing a carpenter’s workshop and a cobbler’s bench. Through the window-panes, Father Péricand saw the round heads of the little inmates look up for a second when they heard his footsteps. In one part of the garden, between the steps and the lean-to, two boys aged fifteen and sixteen were working with a supervisor. There were no uniforms. The Institution hadn’t wanted to recall the prisons already known to some of them. They wore clothing made by charitable people using leftover wool. One of the boys had on an apple-green cardigan that revealed his long, thin, hairy wrists. In perfect discipline and silence, he and his companion were digging the earth, pulling out grass, repotting flowers. They nodded to Father Péricand, who smiled at them. The priest’s face was calm, his expression stern and a bit sad. But his smile was very sweet, slightly shy, with a kind of gentle reproach: “I love you,” it seemed to say. “Why don’t you love me?” The children were watching him, saying nothing.
    “What beautiful weather,” he murmured.
    “Yes, Father,” they replied, their voices cold and forced.
    Philippe said a few more words to them, then went into the house. Inside it was grey and clean, and the room where he found himself was almost bare, containing only two cane chairs. It was the reception room, where the charges could have visitors, a practice tolerated but not encouraged. In any case, almost all of them were orphans. From time to time some neighbour who had known their dead parents, some older sister living in the country, would remember them and come to visit. But Father Péricand had never met a living soul in this room. The director’s office was on the same floor.
    The director was a short, fair man with pink eyelids and a pointed nose that trembled like an animal’s snout when he smelled food. His charges called him “the rat” or “the tapir.” He stretched both arms out to Philippe; his hands were cold and clammy. “I simply do not know how to thank you for your kindness, Father! You are really going to take charge of our boys?”
    The children had to be evacuated the following day. He’d just been called urgently to the Midi, to his sick wife’s side . . .
    “The supervisor is afraid he’ll be snowed under, that he won’t be able to manage our thirty boys all alone.”
    “They seem very obedient,” Philippe remarked.
    “Oh, they’re good boys. We get them into shape, teach the rebellious ones how to behave. But without wishing to seem proud, I’m the one who keeps everything going here. The supervisors are afraid. In any case, the war has claimed one of them and as for the other . . .” He pouted. “Excellent if he follows a rigid routine, but incapable of taking any initiative whatsoever, one of those people who could drown in a glass of water. Anyway, I was wondering which Saint to pray to in order to evacuate these boys when your good father told me you were passing through, leaving tomorrow for the mountains and that you wouldn’t refuse to help us.”
    “I’ll gladly do it. How are you planning to get the children