Never Anyone But You

by Rupert Thomson

  “Yes, you will.”

  She followed me downstairs, mute but powerful. Once in the hall, I found a pair of Wellingtons for her, then I helped her into a coat. She was docile, but the Claude I knew was still concealed. I opened the front door. A shoulder of air pushed past me, the smell of grass and brine. My plan was a simple one. We would keep walking until whatever it was that had possessed her had been worn down or driven out.

  We left the garden and crossed the slipway, Niké running ahead of us. Everything was restless—the plants, the trees, the sea. Our end of the bay was sheltered by the pier, but farther down the beach huge waves hurled themselves against the sand with the deep dull sound of thunder. We entered the churchyard. Lights showed in the windows of the manor house. The rector was still awake. We skirted the Fishermen’s Chapel and passed through the wicket gate. I looked behind me. Niké was sitting upright on a grave, watching us. She had reached the limits of her territory.

  Above Beauport beach I stopped to rest. The sky was full of ragged clouds, a blurred half-moon dropping in the west. Below us was the field of bracken where we used to lie on hot days when we were in our twenties. We had made love in that bracken. But this was a different Claude, a Claude I hardly recognized. I asked her if she was all right. The soaring of the wind and the rush of waves against the rocks were so loud that I had to shout. She nodded. On her face was a look of uncertainty, as if she no longer knew what we were doing, or how it had begun. Perhaps the spell was losing its grip. I couldn’t risk turning back, though, not until she was herself again. But what if that didn’t happen? What if the woman I loved had disappeared forever? What if the madness that had fixed her with its eyes was real? I had to push that prospect to the darkest corner of my mind.

  “Come on,” I said.

  Beyond Beauport beach, the path climbed upwards again, following the coast with all its intricate coves and inlets. There was less cover now, there were fewer trees. Only rugged heathland, coarse grass. A few hundred yards offshore was a rash of small, protruding rocks known as Les Kaines, though I couldn’t see them in the dark. It was in my mind to walk to the lighthouse at Corbières, or even to the long, west-facing beach at St. Ouen, where the waves would roll in unimpeded from the open sea, enormous and deafening, but as the path rounded a splintered crag we were met by the full force of the wind, and it almost knocked me off my feet.

  Claude tugged at my sleeve. “Shouldn’t we go back?”

  The woman who had been intent on killing me had given way to someone else, someone who was younger and more fearful. If I had asked her about what had happened in the bedroom, I doubt she would have understood, or even remembered. But I had to make quite sure.

  “Not yet,” I said. “It’s such a beautiful night.”

  I walked on.

  Later, as we paused for breath above the jagged, hostile shore at Fiquet Bay, Claude wrapped her arms around herself and stared out towards the invisible horizon. “How far are we going?”

  “Not far.”

  “I’m really tired.”

  “Just a little farther,” I said. “Soon it will be dawn.”

  At the beginning of the fifties, Claude became obsessed by the idea of moving. She claimed the island was too crowded, and that she was starved of intellectual stimulation, but I sensed that the quest for privacy and peace, once so important to her, had begun to seem perverse, if not dangerous. Perhaps, after all, she had some memory of the night she held a knife against my throat, that long walk in the wind…

  By early 1953, her plans to visit Paris had taken shape. Jean Schuster wanted to meet her, she told me—Schuster had become the leader of the Surrealist movement, and was seeking her involvement—but I knew she would also be searching for somewhere to live. I had become resigned to the move. If nothing else, it would solve our financial problems.

  Claude left in June and was gone for a fortnight.

  When she returned, she talked too fast, her sentences tumbling over one another, as they used to when she was young. At first she had stayed at the Hôtel Le Royal. After a few days, though, she had moved to the Lutetia, which was quieter. She had looked at several apartments in Vavin, but hadn’t seen anything she liked. Though most of the shops and restaurants we had frequented were still open, the area felt unfamiliar. The war had driven a wedge between the present and the past. Not long after arriving in the city, she managed to track down André Breton.

  I asked her how he was.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  That evening, we walked along the beach to the Café des Amis. When we had ordered our drinks, I asked once again about the meeting with Breton. According to Claude, he had spent most of the time talking about his new wife, Elisa.

  “Is that his third wife or his fourth?” I said. “I’ve completely lost count.”

  “His third.”

  “He has never been short of women, has he? Simone, Colette—Jacqueline—”

  “You don’t have to list them all,” Claude snapped.

  When we were first drawn into Breton’s orbit, I thought I had sensed a longing in Claude. It wasn’t something she ever expressed in words, but it had showed, I felt, in the way her gaze would linger on him when he appeared with somebody new. It was almost as if she was silently pleading. Can’t I be with you too—at least for a short time? Can’t I be one of the many? Am I not even good enough for that? Were I to have put it to her, though, she would have denied it. Had I imagined her interest in him?

  “Whenever we talk about Breton,” I said, “you lose your sense of humor. Why is that?”

  “Why is it that you’re always talking about him? Could it be that you’re jealous?”

  I looked down at my hands. Was I jealous? Could one be jealous of a possibility, something that had never even happened?

  “You’re always so measured,” Claude said. “So faithful. Fidelity is cowardice at some level, don’t you think? A fear of truly risking yourself—of finding out who you are, or who you might become…”

  We were sitting at a table in the corner, and no one was listening. All the same, I lowered my voice. “I have risked myself—by being with you. I’ve risked everything to be with you.”

  Claude shook her head. “You’re limited.”

  “The way I love you isn’t limited. It’s anything but that.”

  “But it’s always me, just me. I carry your love around with me like a weight. Like a handicap. Because it’s never in doubt. It’s so—I don’t know—unquestioning. It’s a habit. It’s as far as you can go.”

  I’d had enough.

  “And you,” I said, no longer bothering to keep my voice down, “you who are so unpredictable—or so you’d have us believe—are unbelievably predictable in this. I knew what mood you’d be in when you came back from seeing him. I knew what effect he would have on you. Perhaps, in the end, you’re the one who’s limited.” I took a breath. “Perhaps you’re the coward.”

  I worried she might lose her temper. Instead, something inside her appeared to unfurl.

  “You’re remarkable, Suzanne,” she said.

  She reached across the table for my hand, but I pulled it away. I wanted to hold on to my anger. Outside, it was dark.

  “Really,” she said. “You are.”

  The following day, at breakfast, Claude admitted she had felt apprehensive about the meeting with Breton—“unhorsed,” as she put it—and that when she sat down at his table he gave off an air of disappointment, as if she didn’t quite live up to his expectations, as if he had remembered her differently. He seemed baffled, even affronted, by her lack of productivity, insisting that she must write, and referring more than once to her silence, which he found “profligate.” In her letters, she had told him about our campaign against the Nazis, and about the months we had spent in prison, but the subject appeared to make him uncomfortable, and he avoid
ed it. Their conversation veered from the bizarre to the inconsequential. He talked about a fire that had broken out in his building, and described how he had run down the stairs and out onto the street in his pajamas, clutching a tribal mask under one arm and The Child’s Brain, a painting by de Chirico, under the other. He told the story with great solemnity, and also with a sense of outrage. That something like that should happen to him. To her consternation, Claude felt she might be about to laugh. She excused herself and left the table. Perhaps she didn’t know him as well as she had thought, or perhaps too many years had passed. In any case, the whole thing had been a disaster.

  By the time she returned from the powder room, Breton had lapsed into a kind of melancholy. He mentioned the recent deaths of several close friends—Paul Éluard, Jindřich Heisler, Pierre Mabille—none of whom, he said, had even reached the age of sixty.

  “And Desnos?” Claude said. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  Breton shook his head. “People think he died in a camp. It seemed he was a member of a Resistance group called Agir.”

  He didn’t know much more than she did. After all, he had been away, in America.

  “You heard that I got married,” he said.

  Claude nodded. “It must be exhausting to have to explain yourself all over again. I admire your energy.”

  “With Elisa,” Breton said, “it wasn’t so exhausting…”

  Claude had to sit and listen as he sang the praises of his new wife, who was a polyglot and a pianist, and who spoke French with an accent that he found “exotic.” She had grown up in Chile, he said. Her father was a diplomat. He had been attracted by the look of sadness on her face. In the summer of 1943, her only child, Ximena, had drowned during a boating trip in Massachusetts. Elisa had subsequently attempted suicide. Four months later, just before Christmas, he had met her at a restaurant in Manhattan. I was attracted by the look of sadness on her face…Once again, Claude felt impossibly torn between boredom and hilarity, but she was rescued by the arrival of the Czech artist, Toyen.

  The next day, Breton wrote to Claude, apologizing for having been distracted and inattentive. He had been preoccupied with a forthcoming trip to the United States, he said. He hoped they would see each other again before too long. Claude was touched by his readiness to accept responsibility for any awkwardness. In retrospect, she felt embarrassed by her own behavior, which had been inappropriate. Still, if his letter was to be believed, he hadn’t noticed, and for that she was grateful.

  “Did I tell you I saw Youki?”

  Towards the end of her two weeks in Paris, Claude told me, she had met Youki in the Café de Flore. When she walked in, Youki was sitting with her back to the window, in a black velvet jacket and a pair of sunglasses. She was still beautiful, though her looks had coarsened and her voice was huskier. She told Claude about a recent affair she’d had—a South American poker player, weekends in Monte Carlo—but Claude kept thinking about Robert and as soon as the story came to an end she asked about him.

  Youki lowered her eyes and crushed out her cigarette. “Robert,” she said. “It’s all anyone wants to talk about.”

  “I’d like to know what happened,” Claude said.

  Youki looked away from her, towards the door. Now her face was in profile, Claude could see behind her sunglasses. Her eyes were puffy, dry.

  Claude leaned across the table and put a hand on Youki’s hand. “You have to tell me. I loved him too.”

  Youki sighed.

  In a voice that was rough-edged and sour, she said she had been the last to know that Robert was working for the Resistance. He hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her. Though Claude tried to look sympathetic, she didn’t blame him. Youki would never have intended to give Robert away, but like Edna, our old housekeeper, she became wildly indiscreet when she was drinking. No secret was ever safe with her.

  The first she knew of his involvement, she said, was when the telephone rang on the morning of February 22, 1944. It was a woman who worked at Aujourd’hui, a newspaper Robert had been writing for. She wanted to warn him that Gestapo agents were looking for him. There had been ample time for Robert to escape, Youki said, but he had been hiding the son of her dressmaker above a false ceiling in the kitchen, and he wanted to make sure that the young man wasn’t caught. He had also been unwilling to leave her on her own. If he fled, she might be arrested in his place, and rumor had it that women were being tortured in an anonymous building on rue Lauriston. He was still hesitating when there was a loud knocking on the door. The three Gestapo agents who entered were in plain clothes, and were led by an officer with bright blond hair. After only a few minutes, they found a piece of paper hidden in the binding of a book. On it were written a number of names and addresses. Robert tried to pretend it was a list of his contacts in the world of publishing. He was a journalist, he said. A poet too. The fair-haired officer smiled sadly, as if Robert’s failure to lie successfully had disappointed him. Youki began to cry. Before Robert was led away, he handed her his favorite Parker pen. Keep it safe for me, my darling, he called out as the Gestapo escorted him down the stairs.

  He was taken to Fresnes prison on the outskirts of Paris, and then to Royallieu, a transit camp near Compiègne. Youki’s first care package contained clothing, shoes, a hat, some cutlery, a pouch of tobacco, and a pipe. She also included fresh fruit, half a chicken in aspic, tins of sardines and tuna, and jars of mustard, jam, and honey. The German soldier who delivered the package joked that Robert’s wife must be divorcing him, since she appeared to have sent him all his worldly possessions. All my worldly possessions? Robert laughed. These are just the basics. Another package followed shortly afterwards, filled with champagne, cigarettes, sausages, eau de cologne, port, chocolate, and three kilos of bread, which she had secured using fake bread tickets that she had forged herself. When she visited Robert a few weeks after his arrest, he was wearing the leather jacket and khaki trousers she had sent. He looked wonderful, she thought.

  She reached under her dark glasses and wiped her eyes.

  On her return to Paris, she tried to plead Robert’s case with the Gestapo, and might have succeeded, had it not been for the intervention of a right-wing journalist called Laubreaux, a man Robert despised and had once insulted. Laubreaux told Gestapo agents that Robert posed a threat, and they believed him. Her request for Robert’s release was rejected.

  Following a tip-off that he was about to be deported to a labor camp, Youki once again traveled down to Compiègne. She arrived in time to see a long line of prisoners being marched towards the railway station. She couldn’t reach Robert to hand over the cigarettes she had brought, but he waved at her and called out that he would be back soon, and that she should not forget to give his love to all their friends. He boarded a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he received a second tattoo. This time it was a number. 185443.

  After a couple of months he was transported to Buchenwald. His courage and his sense of humor lifted the spirits of everyone around him. When it was rumored he might be moving again, east this time, to Flossenbürg, he smiled and said he was happy to be led by his destiny. He wanted to see “as many camps as possible.”

  “That sounds just like him,” Claude said.

  From that point on, Youki went on, the information became more sketchy. From Flossenbürg, Robert was transferred to Flöha on the German-Czech border, where he and his fellow prisoners were housed in a disused textile factory. He threw soup in a guard’s face and was subjected to a vicious beating. His glasses were destroyed. In the spring of 1945, having survived a three-week death march, he arrived at Terezín. On the day the camp was liberated, a soldier photographed a group of prisoners in striped clothing sitting on the ground. One of the men was caught in profile, his head resting against the shoulder of a bald man in a dark coat. He bore a close resemblance to Robert. If indeed it was Robert, it was the last picture ever taken of him. Weaken
ed by dysentery and a high fever, he contracted typhus. He died on June 8, just a month after the Germans surrendered.

  Claude asked Youki if she had seen the photograph.

  Youki nodded.

  “How did he look?” Claude asked.

  “How do you think he looked?”

  Youki was silent for a long time, smoking and staring out of the window.

  “He looked exhausted and frightened,” she said at last. “He looked like someone who was about to be hit.”

  Claude lowered her head.

  “I always wondered who the bald man was,” Youki went on. “Was he a stranger, someone who just happened to be sitting next to Robert when the photograph was taken, or was he a friend? Did he live or die? What was his name?” Tears ran from beneath her dark glasses. “I’m sorry.” She took off the glasses and dabbed her eyes.

  Claude walked round the table and bent over her and held her in her arms. Youki stared straight ahead. A couple sitting nearby looked at them, then looked away.

  “I wrote him a letter,” Youki said. “This was in July 1945.”

  She promised she would devote the rest of her life to him. She would help him to forget the nightmare of the last fifteen months. She sent him a kiss “as big as the Eiffel Tower.” Before she could post the letter, though, a friend called and told her Robert was dead. She still had the letter, she said. She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. She didn’t know why.

  Three months later, at nine in the morning, her doorbell rang. A man in a shabby raincoat was standing in the stairwell. He was from the French embassy in Prague. His name was Lacombe. Once she had invited him in, he presented her with a cocktail shaker containing Robert’s ashes. The cocktail shaker had been his idea, he said. He had bought it himself. The embassy had been unable to afford an urn. He’d had it engraved with Robert’s name and dates. He seemed listless and distracted, as if he had drunk too much the night before. Not knowing what to do with the cocktail shaker, she placed it on the mantelpiece, between a pair of silk stockings and a jar of cold cream. The man from the embassy nodded, as if she had unwittingly obeyed some arcane ritual or law. He left soon afterwards.