The Fires of Autumn Read Online Free PDF Page A

She was too old to think about the dead for long. In old age, the dead are so close that you forget about them. You can only imagine things that are far away. She imagined Thérèse’s wedding, the honeymoon, the wonderful meal … the child that would be born.
    She nodded her head and, her voice quivering with emotion, her eyes still full of tears, she automatically began to hum:
    Joyful tambourines, lead the dance!…
    They had arrived at the Pont de la Tournelle. They watched the fireworks above the Seine, saw Notre Dame, the water and the skies all illuminated. Then the water was black, the sky had turned red, threatening, on fire.
    Martial stood beside his fiancée. They were engaged. ‘I’m starting a new chapter,’ he thought, flustered. ‘I’m beginning a new life. What was I before? A man on his own. Unhappy. From now on, whatever happens, we’ll be together. Nothing will come between us.’ He had succeeded; all was well.

3
    A boy of seventeen wearing trousers that were too short and too tight, for he had grown so quickly, no hat, his hair thrown back off his face, gritted his teeth and clenched his fists to hold back the sobs rising in his throat: Bernard Jacquelain walked down the street behind a regiment on the march. It was the 31st July 1914, in Paris.
    Every now and again, Barnard glanced around, curious, attentive and terrified, like a little boy who has been taken to the theatre for the first time. It was an amazing spectacle, on the eve of war, for only men who had gone soft in the head, old fools like Adolphe Brun, or the …(he quickly spat out a swear word that had all the pleasure of novelty, for he had only recently learned it at school), those … like Martial Brun claimed there wouldn’t be a war, that at the last moment the governments would pull back, refusing to be responsible for a European massacre … They really didn’t understand there was something sublime about all this, thought Bernard. To think that a single word, one act could cause war to break out, and war was heroic, similar to all the upheaval wreaked by Napoleon – imagine knowing this and pulling back! You had to have ice in your veins. For a moment, he imagined he was the Tsar, the President of the Republic, a great military leader.
    ‘Forward!’ he murmured, stretching out his arm, his eyes full of tears. ‘For the honour of our flag!’
    ‘Yes, there will be a war,’ he told himself again. ‘And I, I, Bernard Jacquelain, will have lived through heroic times like Austerlitz and Waterloo. I will tell my children: “Ah! If only you could have seen Paris in 1914!” I’ll tell them all about the shouting, the flowers, the cheering, the tears!’
    In reality, it was not like that at all. The streets were quiet, the iron shutters on the shops lowered. You could see carriages loaded up with baggage going by. But Bernard knew there had been patriotic demonstrations that very morning in various parts of the capital and, as for the rest, he embellished, his thoughts wandered into invisible apartments, he explored the depths of the hearts and souls of the Parisian population:
    ‘There’s a woman who is looking at the soldiers and crying. Poor thing … She’s thinking about her husband, her son. And that other woman who watches them march by, such sadness in her eyes. She looks like Mama … What will Mama say when she finds out that I want to join up, “enlist before being conscripted” as they call it? For I’ve made up my mind, I’m not waiting until it’s my turn! Besides, everyone agrees it will all be over in three months. Then what will I do? Stay at school, slog away like a fool, get punished with extra homework like a little kid when there is this, this glory, this bloodshed, this war? No, no, no! No, thank you! I want to go, and right away, go far away, and do everything! God, what beautiful weather it is, how hot the sun is! How striking that soldier’s uniform with its red trousers! And the