Bella—I’ll call her by her first name—was about fifteen years older than I and already had a long career behind her. At seventeen, she had been the very model of those starlets who vamped for paparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival. After that, she had a few successes. As she was a good dancer and could speak fluent English, they hired her to play supporting roles in American musical comedies. Back in France, in the early fifties, bathing in the glamour of her Hollywood sojourn, she starred in several films directed by competent journeymen. The public liked her well enough. But that was a decade ago.
She was a tiny brunette with green eyes, prominent cheekbones, a turned-up nose, and an obdurate forehead.
Tellegen was back on his feet after a week, but he had lost twenty pounds and walked unsteadily, often using a cane. Rollner shot the outdoor scenes with him first.
I saw very little of the actual filming, as I got up too late. Rollner was famous for his slow pace and his meticulousness. He had a hard time choosing which angle he wanted, and it caused him acute anxiety. The sound engineer, who had worked with him before, told me the editing caused him even more torment: on those occasions, he had seen Rollner on the verge of suicide, and he didn’t use the word lightly. Still, after a few days, Captain Van Mers had an unusual effect on Rollner. He appeared to doze off between takes. One time, he fell fast asleep.
It’s true that the story line was not terribly original. Bella, on the prow, is transfixed by the island where she and her five friends, rich idle youth on a cruise, are about to land. They have no moral compass, and “an atmosphere of depravity” reigns aboard the yacht. On the island, they meet the “Captain of the South Seas,” a retired merchant seaman who has lived there for the past twenty years. A pure soul, to whom Tellegen lent the face of a former young lead. Bella falls in love with him, despite the age difference, and abandons her friends to go live with the “Captain” in the solitude of this lush island.
Tellegen and Bella made an odd couple, he so tall, she so slight that you would have taken them for father and small daughter. I remember one afternoon when I watched a scene being filmed. Bella and Tellegen take their first walk in the heart of the island. The Captain of the South Seas declares to her:
“With you, I feel like I’ve become young again . . .”
To which she replies:
“Why did you say that? You are young . . .”
It was very hot and Tellegen’s shirt was drenched with sweat. He changed it every ten minutes. He collapsed onto his folding chair and they retouched his makeup. Bella couldn’t stand the sun either. She was in a bad mood. Rollner, in his eternal navy-blue anorak, tried to joke with them and gave them stage directions. During pauses, Tellegen loosened his leather corset. He put it on when the scene required him to remain on his feet for long periods. It was hard for him to stand straight.
We returned to the hotel at dusk. We had to walk for about a quarter of an hour and the crew went on ahead. Bella, Rollner, Tellegen, and I remained alone. Before starting out, Tellegen offered each of us the bottle of vodka that he was never without and urged us to take a good swig. It would buck us up.
Rollner led the way, supporting Tellegen. The latter rested the palm of his hand on Georges’s right shoulder and leaned on his cane. Bella and I followed a few yards behind. She had taken my arm. The moonlight was lovely and the path sometimes disappeared beneath the heather, making it hard to follow. The air was thick with the scent of pine and eucalyptus, and still today that smell brings back our nocturnal trek. The sound of our footsteps disturbed a silence that grew deeper and deeper, and Bella rested her head on my shoulder. After a while, Tellegen showed signs of fatigue.
He limped, stumbled, and caught himself in extremis on Georges Rollner’s arm. He stopped short. He stood there, face bathed in sweat, eyes vacant, and signaled for us to keep going. In the moonlight, he seemed to have aged another ten years.
Rollner and I finally managed to drag him to the hotel. His teeth were chattering. This was the same man I had seen, when I was a child, agile and slim in The Scarlet Pimpernel.
The four of us met up at the same table in the hotel dining room. Bella had already made a film with Rollner and they reminisced together.
After dinner, Bella, Rollner, the sound engineer, and the cameraman engaged in a few hands of poker. I remained behind with Tellegen, who spoke very good French. He confided in me. He, too, had wanted to be a writer. He had begun drafting a memoir of his youth, the years when he’d lived an adventurous life in Africa and New Guinea and had sailed on a small boat, the Tasmanian. But he “wasn’t cut out to wield a pen.” He liked to philosophize. He told me that, in life, you must never listen to other people’s advice. And that it’s very hard to live with a woman. And that youth, fame, and health don’t last—he should know. And other reflections that I don’t recall.
I think he was fond of me. We were both tall, he six-foot-four, I six-foot-six. Every evening I brought him back to his room, guiding him by the arm, because of all the vodka he had drunk. He always said to me, in English, “Thank you, my son,” before dropping to sleep like a stone.
Bella asked me to lend her some money because she’d just lost a bundle at poker. I still had four hundred thousand old francs of the six hundred I’d received for the screenplay. I gave her three-quarters of it. I was in love with her, having always had a soft spot for tiny brunettes with green eyes. But I was too shy to tell her.
Shooting was completed in three weeks. Rollner hadn’t even bothered to go watch the “rushes” at a cinema in Hyères. He sent the sound engineer. He had asked me to “condense” the last forty pages of script so that he could “wrap up” the ending in three days. He couldn’t stand any more. He dozed off from boredom between scenes.
He regained interest in his work only when they filmed the sequence in which this retort snapped like a banner: “One can be Jewish and still be a flying ace, mister.” He had Tellegen do fifteen takes of that scene, but never managed to get it just right.
There was a small party to celebrate the end of filming. For the occasion, Stocklin flew in from Paris in a private plane that he piloted himself. He managed an aerobatic landing in front of the hotel, pipe between his teeth.
The mood that evening was lively. An August evening, redolent of pine and eucalyptus. Rollner seemed relieved to have brought the film to a successful conclusion.
They took a photo of the entire cast and crew, which I’d like to find again. I was between Bella and Tellegen. Tellegen drank like a fish. It was painful to watch. Bella whispered to me that she’d lost the money I lent her, but she swore to pay me back in Paris. She gave me her phone number: Auteuil 00-08.
That evening, I took Rollner aside and asked when Captain Van Mers would be released.
His eyes were cloudy. He had drunk a fair amount himself.
“But it’s never going to be released, old man,” he said with a shrug.
Then he pulled me out of the lounge where we were all gathered. I helped him upstairs. He halted on the first landing. He fixed me with his cloudy gaze.
“Tell me, old man . . . I’ve never understood why they hired you for this screenplay. Are you related to Stocklin?”
“I . . . I don’t think so,” I said.
He smiled and patted my head with a paternal hand.
“Anyway . . . we’re all related . . . The movies are just one big family . . .”
We started back up the stairs. He stumbled on every step.
“This film is a piece of crap . . .”
“You think so?” I said.
“Personally, I couldn’t care less. I said all I had to say in this film. All of it.”
He brought his face close to mine.
“You know . . . my little sentence . . .”
I steered him down the hallway. I opened the door to his room.
“It’s too bad for you, Patrick,” he said. “But as for me, I said all I had to say in this film. One single sentence . . .”
> Suddenly, he spun toward the sink, bent over, and vomited. I waited in the doorway. He turned back toward me, ashen. He smiled.
“Forgive me. I’m sick as a dog. You should go back with the others.”
I sat down in the middle of the hallway, near his door, thinking he might need me. I heard the crash of furniture falling over and the plaintive creak bedsprings make when someone collapses onto them. Silence. And then, this sentence, barely audible, that he murmured between clenched teeth:
“One can be Jewish and still be a flying ace, mister . . .”
VIII
My wife and I had arrived at Place Clemenceau in Biarritz. We left behind the manorlike Café Basque and headed down Avenue Victor-Hugo.
It was the start of a bright afternoon in early summer and a mild breeze was blowing. No pedestrians. The occasional car passed by, barely ruffling the silence. The market square and the churchyard of Saint-Joseph looked familiar. We passed through the doorway of the church. It was empty. A single candle was burning near the confessional. In whose name? I would have liked to consult the baptismal register, but seeing no one to ask, I thought we might come back later that afternoon.
We followed Avenue de la République. It hadn’t changed much at all in twenty years and I stared at the building façades, hoping one of them would trigger a memory. It was as if we were strolling in the suburbs of Paris, in Jouy-en-Josas, for instance, in peaceful and mysterious Rue du Docteur-Kurzenne, where my brother and I had lived. But a house with more of a seaside-resort look to it than the others, bearing over its entrance the inscription “Villa Miramar” or “Villa Queen Nathalie,” reminded me that we were in Biarritz. And the soft, clear light was that of the Côte d’Argent.
On Avenue de la République, children were heading into the Institut Sainte-Marie, a very old building whose façade had been repainted. The mesh fence was open and, after filing through it, they chased each other around the playground. A muffled ringing announced the start of class. And I remembered the morning in October 1950 when my mother and I walked across that yard and knocked at one of the French doors with gray wooden shutters. It was my first time at school and I was crying.
To our left, the narrow Friars Wynd stretched between two walls as far as the eye could see. I spotted a door that said: Institution de l’Immaculée Conception. To the right was a line of small villas. We reached the end of the avenue. There was a crossroads. A few more steps and, at the intersection of two streets, dominating the crossroads like a figurehead, stood Casa Montalvo.
How can I describe it? A massive edifice of pale stone, or rather a castle topped by a beveled slate roof. A very wide path led to the entrance door, which was sheltered by a slate awning. The lawn of Casa Montalvo was encircled by a high wall. I went through the white wooden gate but couldn’t bring myself to walk to the entrance. At the end of the path, to the left, amid clumps of flowers, rose a palm tree that certainly impressed us when we were children, but that hadn’t left the slightest trace in my memory. I tried to identify the windows of the small apartment where my brother Rudy and I lived, as Casa Montalvo was divided into several furnished units. From our windows, we could see the Chateau Grammont across the intersection, with its red brick façade in the style of Louis XIII, its turrets and neglected park.
I shut the gate behind me. On either side of it, a plaque. On the left-hand one, I read “Casa,” and on the right, “Montalvo.”
My wife stood waiting for me, smoking a cigarette. We walked straight ahead to Rue Saint-Martin, and soon we stopped at the church of the same name. I believe this church dates from the fifteenth century. We met a priest in a cassock, and I asked whether one could obtain a copy of a baptism certificate. He pointed me toward a small building opposite the church. We went inside. A rather elderly woman was sitting behind the window. My wife went to sit on a bench in the back of the room, and I, leaning toward the window, said:
“I’ve come to get a copy of a baptism certificate.”
I was more and more convinced that the baptism had taken place in this church.
“On what date?” the old woman asked in a very soft voice.
“Oh . . . summer 1950.”
And, saying “summer 1950,” I felt a wave of sadness.
I spelled out my name, and she patiently combed through the register for the months of June, July, August, and September. She finally found it on September 24th.
“It was autumn 1950, not summer,” she said with a wan smile.
She made a copy of the baptismal record and handed me the sheet, which read:
CERTIFICATE OF BAPTISM
PARISH OF ST. MARTIN—BIARRITZ DIOCESE OF BAYONNE
Baptismal Register, Year 1950—Certificate no. 145
On this date, September 24, 1950, was baptized: P
Born July 30, 1945, in Paris
Son of: A,
and of: L,
Permanent residence: 15 Quai de Conti, Paris.
Godfather: André Camoin, represented by J. Minthe and V. Rachevsky.
Godmother: Madeleine Ferragus.
Additional notes: None.
I carefully folded the duplicate baptism certificate and slid it into my inner jacket pocket. My wife and I left.
And so I had been baptized in this little church of Saint-Martin . . . I had a vague memory of the ceremony, of my apprehension when the priest led me toward the baptismal font, and of the group formed by my brother, baptized the day before, my mother, my godmother, Madeleine Ferragus, and the two individuals “representing” my godfather. Only one clear image remained: of Rachevsky’s large white convertible, parked in front of the church. A random baptism. Whose idea was it? And why did we stay in Biarritz for almost a year, my brother and I? I think the Korean War might have had something to do with it: that because of it, with the previous war in mind, they had decided to keep us away from Paris and baptize us as a precaution. I remember something my father said, when he came to see us at Casa Montalvo before heading off to Africa: “If the war lasts much longer, I’ll take you with me to Brazzaville.” And on the world globe he had given us, he pointed out that city in French Equatorial Africa.
Other images . . . One night in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, at a toro de fuego, I hurled myself at someone who was tossing confetti at my mother. A van had knocked me down as I was leaving Sainte-Marie. The convent of Dominican nuns on Avenue de la République, which we had passed by earlier, where they had put me out with ether to tend to my injuries. The military fanfare that we listened to, my brother and I, beneath the trees in Place Pierre-Forsans.
At the end of Rue Saint-Martin, my wife and I followed Avenue J.-F.-Kennedy. Back then, it had had a different name. We sat at a sidewalk table of a small café, in the sun. Behind us, the owner and two others were discussing next Sunday’s pelota match. Through the fabric of my jacket, I fingered the copy of my baptism certificate. Many things had changed since then, there had been quite a few sorrows, but it was nonetheless comforting to have found my old parish.
IX
Have I really changed so much since the time I lived in Lausanne, in the Canton of Vaud?
In the evening, when I left the Florimont School, I caught the subway that looks like a funicular and that, from the center of town, descends toward Ouchy. I didn’t have to do much work at the Florimont School. Three French lessons a week, which I gave to foreign students, outside of their normal curriculum. Sort of like summer school. I dictated interminable texts to them, which they couldn’t understand because of my muffled voice.
I was only twenty years old, but my memory stretched back before my birth. I was certain, for instance, that I’d lived in Paris under the Occupation because I recalled certain individuals from that time, as well as small, disturbing details that weren’t in any history book. Still, I tried to fight the heaviness that pulled me backward, and dreamed of liberating myself from my poisoned memory. I would have given anything to be an amnesiac.
I thought about escaping to some lost island i
n the Indian Ocean, where my recollections of old Europe would pale into insignificance. Forgetfulness would soon follow. I would be cured. Instead, I settled on somewhere less distant that hadn’t experienced the pains and torments of this century: Switzerland. I decided to stay there, for as long as my military deferment would allow.
My lessons at the Florimont School lasted until 7:15, and a kind of stupor that I still recall fondly would come over me on Avenue de Rumine. The apartment buildings and Municipal Theater were as lacking in relief as a trompe-l’oeil backdrop. On Place Saint-François stood a thirteenth-century church, which for me had no more reality than the unblemished façades of the bank buildings a bit farther on. Everything floated in Lausanne; one’s gaze and one’s heart slid by, unable to latch onto any kind of asperity. Everything was neutral. Neither time nor suffering had planted its leprosy here. Moreover, on this side of Lake Geneva, time had stopped centuries ago.
I often stopped at a café near Bel-Air Tower and listened in on the customers’ conversations. Even their way of speaking French aggravated my overall sense of unreality. They had strange inflections, and French in their mouths became the language that filters through loudspeakers in international airports. The Vaudois accent seemed too heavy and rustic to be true.
Family Record Page 7