challenge of conscription into the war with Germany: “Why am I going
to the war?...And the war in Spain wasn’t my business either. Nor the
Communist Party. But what is my business?” he asks. “War is an illness,
he thought; my business is to bear it like an illness” (Reprieve 258 – 259 ).
Sartre concludes the volume and the fugue with a glimpse of the broken
Deladier, returning from Munich to the cheers of the crowd crying
“Hurrah for France! Hurrah for England! Hurrah for peace!” The
vanquished prime minister remarks to his aide as he descends from
the plane: “The God-damned fools!”
Volume three,Troubled Sleep(Iron in the Soul) brings us into the
phoney war that Sartre knew as a conscript on the Alsatian Front and the
subsequent surrender and imprisonment.^45 The fortunes of war have
thrown Mathieu and Brunet together once more, in the same village as
the Germans advance, but unaware of each other’s presence. In fact, the
decisive act of Mathieu’s life is occurring without Brunet even realizing
that it is happening or that it is Mathieu’s.
The narrative is divided into two parts. In the first part the role of
Mathieu continues to dominate, reaching its climax in that courageous,
self-defining act that he had been entertaining but effectively avoiding
thus far in his life. A ceasefire has been declared and it looks like the war
is coming to an end. Now he joins a band of soldiers (chasseurs) who,
abandoned by their officers but refusing to retreat or surrender, lodge
themselves in the town hall and the church tower of a village in a suicidal
stand-off with advancing German troops. After managing to kill a couple
of the enemy, Mathieu and what remains of the band seem to perish as
the tower is destroyed by enemy fire.
Partiibelongs to Brunet, who emerges from concealment nearby in
time to see the tower collapse under German fire unaware that this event
marked Mathieu’s end. As he approaches the enemy to surrender, he
thinks to himself that the war is over and he has work to do. He must
search for reliable comrades among this motley herd of dispirited men
and begin the process of political formation. Brunet announces that he is
a brevet officer and assumes command of the prisoners, representing
(^45) Jean-Paul Sartre,The Roads of Freedom,vol.iii, Troubled Sleep, trans. Gerard Hopkins (New
York: Vintage, 1973 ). The British edition is entitledIron in the Soulbut, as Craig Vasey
points out, the more faithful translation of the French title,La Mort dans l’aˆme,isDeath in
the Soul.
158 The necessity of contingency:Nausea