“The time of the ostriches”

“The time of the ostriches” is the name given to a period in occupied Saint-Malo when daily life continues amid mounting restrictions and public uncertainty. The phrase does not settle whether the residents are deliberately looking away or struggling to respond; its force lies in the question itself, and in the uneasy mixture of routine, argument, and resistance around it.

The Name and Its Setting

The town’s everyday rhythms persist alongside military presence: boats move outside the walls, flax is processed into rope and other materials, and birds drop shellfish onto rooftops. These details form the setting for a dispute over a new tax announced by the mayor. Some of Madame Manec’s friends accuse him of betraying the population and wish for a stronger leader; others ask what he could realistically do. The division shows that occupation does not produce a single, settled public response. Residents interpret the same decisions differently, between suspicion of local authority and recognition of its limited choices.

The phrase emerges from that unsettled atmosphere rather than from a formal proclamation. Marie-Laure LeBlanc hears a sudden rooftop clatter and sits upright in bed, while the debate over the mayor proceeds around her. Ordinary events and political anxiety occupy the same space: the town’s routines continue, but their meaning is altered by the conditions in which they take place.

Looking Away, or Being Unable to Act

Madame Manec asks whether the residents have their heads in the sand, or whether the occupiers do. Her question leaves open who is refusing to see the situation clearly. Madame Manec’s answer—that perhaps everyone is—turns the image of the ostrich into a shared, uncomfortable possibility rather than a simple accusation against passive neighbors.

That ambiguity matters. The residents are not shown as uniformly indifferent: they argue about the mayor’s choices, and their lives are shaped by orders backed by the threat of arrest. When Marie-Laure LeBlanc asks her father to read an official notice, it requires repeated badgering before he does so. The notice demands that residents surrender every radio receiver to 27 rue de Chartres by noon the next day and threatens arrest for anyone who fails to comply. Under such pressure, silence or apparent inaction cannot automatically be read as consent.

Routine and Small Acts of Resistance

The phrase also sits beside actions that contradict the image of complete passivity. At dusk, Madame Ruelle drives with Madame Guiboux and rearranges road signs using a ratchet set; they return laughing to Number 4 rue Vauborel. Their clandestine act does not erase the danger or the broader restrictions, but it shows that everyday life can contain deliberate interference as well as accommodation. The contrast gives the phrase its tension: the town may be living through an “ostrich” period, yet some residents still find ways to act.

Silence Beyond Saint-Malo

Elsewhere in the novel, communication is also uncertain. Frau Elena writes to a professor because she has not heard his broadcasts for at least two months, wondering whether he has stopped transmitting or whether the problem lies with the listeners. A powerful new transmitter in Brandenburg, she reports, overwhelms much of the radio dial. Her letter makes silence difficult to interpret: a missing voice may indicate a choice, a technical obstacle, or a changed communications landscape.

The occupied town’s radio-surrender order gives that uncertainty a local and coercive form. In Saint-Malo, listening itself is subject to official control, while the threat of arrest gives the order consequence beyond its administrative wording. Against this background, “The time of the ostriches” names not a settled condition of blindness but a disputed way of living through danger—one in which avoidance, constraint, debate, and resistance remain entangled.