Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq

Author:Julien Gracq
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2017-10-30T04:00:00+00:00

TOWARD the middle of January, after snowfalls which rendered the roads entirely impracticable, the weather cleared and a German reconnaissance plane appeared at lunchtime over the Meuse valley. It was only a tiny silver speck, occasionally glistening in the sun as the distance slowed its progress to a crawl across the sky; a languid trail of globular puffs followed behind at some distance, blooming in its wake with a cottony “plop.” The spectacle seemed not in the least warlike to Grange, but rather ornamental, graceful: the bursts were as regularly spaced one behind the other as if the clear morning sky had been neatly planted by some celestial dibble. The airplane returned almost every day for a week. Grange decided the snow showed up the earthworks under construction along the Meuse more clearly: the Germans were profiting by this condition to take photographs. As the coffee was served in the blockhouse, the odd, irregular buzzing made every head turn toward the windows.

“What a trick!” Gourcuff murmured, winking broadly toward the plane. He sheltered his eyes comically with his helmet, as if against the sun, actually protecting himself against the shell splinters that sometimes tinkled off the roof slates. But the anti-aircraft crews never hit the plane: they were using the same .75 caliber that had taken pot shots at the Taubes during the last war.

“Old equipment!” Olivon sighed, impartial and bored, lifting his cup again. Again they heard, for a moment, the heavy oily “plop” exploding gently in the calm blue air with the prudent rhythm of an official salute.

Varin must be going out of his mind, Grange thought. After the reconnaissance, he must be expecting the attack any day now. Grange imagined the captain prowling up and down his office, his hands behind his back, with that insolent way he had of suddenly planting himself in front of his interlocutor, nostrils flaring, his mouth a little twisted: “You still don’t see?” On certain days, the world back of the blockhouse melted into the fog altogether, but never Varin: he remained terribly distinct, perhaps because of the shiny nickel-plated telephone on his desk and the nervous hand, quicker than a cat’s paw, that picked up the receiver, cutting off the first ring; Grange could imagine the big push only vaguely save for one image that was extraordinarily precise: Varin’s thin hand on the telephone and the avid, nervous twitch of his lips which were all that moved in his face as he bent over the phone. He wondered why this picture was so precise and so remarkably disagreeable. Sometimes he dreamed with childish satisfaction about what would happen—during a war, after all, bombs were not out of the question—if one day, far behind the blockhouse lost on the brink of a world a prey to spirits and surprises, Varin’s telephone were cut.

Toward the end of the week, a warm fog covered the Roof; the German reconnaissance planes stopped coming. Then the weather cleared again, dry and very bright now, and

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