Article 332: The crime of rape shall be punishable by ten to twenty years. . .This "first" page goes on to include Article 333, which deals with suspects in close and unequal relationships with the victims (people in authority, master/servant relationships, ministers, older relatives). The page concludes with a caveat that "the professor of criminal law" acknowledges difficulty in distinguishing what constitutes a use of force in committing the act.
This was an ominous way to begin the novel. By reading statute without any connection to any act, the reader is left with a sense of foreboding. This must be foreshadowing, obviously. It also suggests an event so large and destructive that it must cloud the whole novel.
On "page 2" Helga sits in her room, which is "full of bric-a-brac" yet " meticulously clean." She is stooped over a letter. We are not told what the letter is about, or even who Helga is, but of course I could not help but connect the scene with the statutes on page one. What is Helga's role? Was she a victim? Does she know of a rape we don't yet know about?
The theme of sexual perversion (not quite the right word) continues on this page, which goes on to describe an odd painting in which a female "saint" waits on a huge bed, apparently for a knight in another part of the painting.
"Page 3" features Marianne laying in her bed where she has spent the last three hours crying. She answers (who or what we do not know) "you know perfectly well what you've done," and later "why did you do it?"
The narrative is unclear as to what she is talking about, or who she is talking to. But here again, I cannot help but to connect this scene with the suggestion of rape given on the first page. For the potential or past rape clouds all. It seems that it will oppressively rule over the narrative. Thus is the importance of the first page!
On "page 4," a German patrol looks for members of the [French?] resistance. Prisoners are led to a truck or, if they fall, shot on sight. Jeanette, who has been silenced previously screams. A roof collapses. A building burns. We know very little of what actually happened in this scene. It is very visceral and fragmented, as if we are seeing only parts of something happening under a swinging light. But we do now know that something bigger is happening. The war is apparently on.
"Page 5" contains a jumbled conversation containing accusations that someone is mistreating his wife. Lucas talks of "confessions"of resistance fighters stored in a nearby drawer. Finally, an anesthetist, a nurse, and a driver speak, suggesting that there has been an accident in which someone has been badly injured.
Synthesis of Day 1:
A scene in which resistance fighters are being defeated and exterminated by German soldiers is intermingled with passages about car accidents and a rape, both personal tragedies to be sure, but no where near the scope of a World War (if that's what's happening here). This intermingling of macro- and micro-histories illuminates how intimate human events are caught up in and often drowned out by larger historical events. We humans live our lives, we grow up, we love, and we suffer under the sweeping blindness of history. And though it is we, as a people, who make history, as individuals our lives and all of their events are small and unnoticeable. We are both a part of history, and an uninvited guest in it.
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