14th of July

I remember one July 14th, a long time ago; I was between 20 and 23 years old, since it was when I was in university. I was spending my summer vacations driving around the region, alone, running away or on the contrary looking for something I would have been able to name. But on that July 14th, I wasn't driving at random; I had an appointment with my parents, who had invited me to a meal with them at the home of people I didn't know at all and who lived in a lost village in the Meuse; the kind of village you have no chance to hear about if you have nothing to do there. It was, as is often the case in Lorraine villages, a single street, lined with old, low, adjoining farmhouses. An impression of dilapidation and poverty emanated from it. There was absolutely no car traffic – it was half past noon – and not a single passer-by could be seen in the street. Towards the end of the commune, for a few hundred meters, the old houses gave way to more recent pavilions, more spaced out, separated by lawns and hedges or fences. There too, no sign of life. No noise, no movement. The whole village, I had noted in passing, was given over to the harsh rays of the sun, since no trees were planted along the road. There was no forest in the distance either, nor any pleasant or picturesque scenery; only the plain, quite flat, and endless. All this gave a depressing impression of nakedness. I had forgotten the address where I was supposed to go, and after parking at random, I had spent a good twenty minutes walking through the village from beginning to end, two or three times – until my mother, probably seeing me through a window, came out of a house. That house was nicely decorated, warm, and had a family that was obviously quite well-to-do, but not a "nouveau riche" family. Many other inhabitants of the village were there; obviously, here, the notion of community was still a reality, it was not at all a dormitory village. I had been quickly slipped a glass of champagne in my hand (but who really celebrates the 14th of July, by the way? who were these people for whom all this still makes sense?) and I had finally spent a pleasant day, telling myself that if nature likes to hide, so does social life, community life; the countryside is perhaps not as dead and anonymous as one thinks when one crosses it as a stranger. They simply protect themselves from us.