Suite Française

A cat held a little piece of bony fish tentatively between its sharp teeth. He was afraid to swallow it, but he couldn’t bring himself to spit it out either.

In hot rooms with blacked-out windows, children were born, and their cries made the women forget the sound of sirens and war.

the river seemed to absorb even the faintest glimmers of light and reflect them back a hundred times brighter

Hot, thought the Parisians. The warm air of spring. It was night, they were at war and there was an air raid. But dawn was near and the war far away.