Paris keeps them hidden. Gare de Lyon was bustling with clean-shaven soldiers looking either too pale or too ruddy, talking to each other without eye contact, cracking jokes without smiling, and watched over by military policemen patrolling with fixed bayonets. There was hardly a civilian to be seen. Fathers, mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends hadn’t come to see off their sons, brothers, husbands, and boyfriends. Because it was late, because the last metro had gone, because they had to get up for work in the morning. And then those involved just hated waving handkerchiefs. If the trains had to go, then at least they could be spared the sight of resignation. There’s not enough difference between a handkerchief waving and the stationmaster’s flag … The first person Valette saw as he went into the station hall was his father, despite his standing at the side, with the khaki kit bags over his shoulder. Valette, in a sodden cape and with a rain-soaked face, went up to him timidly.
