Standing to attention.
These words left him suddenly devastated.
The sobs returned as, suddenly, he realized why he was crying. He bit down on the covers and let out a long, muffled roar of rage and despair, convulsed by a grief more intense, more terrifying than he could imagine. A feeling all the more terrible because he . . . he . . . He could find no words, his thoughts seemed to dissolve, as though melted by this unendurable pain.
He was grieving for his son.
Édouard was dead. Édouard had just died at this very moment. His little boy, his son, was dead.
This thought had not occurred to him even on Édouard’s birthday, the image had flickered through his mind, everything had swelled within him ready to explode today.
Today, a year exactly since Édouard’s death.
The enormity of his grief was multiplied by the fact that this was the first time that Édouard truly existed for him. Suddenly, he understood how much, dimly, grudgingly, he had loved his son; understood it at precisely the moment he realized he would never see him again.
But no, even that was not the worst, he could tell from the tears, the vise crushing his chest, the blade against his throat.
It was something worse: he had been guilty of greeting the news of his son’s death as a deliverance.
He lay awake all night, remembering Édouard as a child, smiling at memories that had been so deeply buried they seemed new minted. There was no logic to it, he could not say whether the memory of Édouard dressed as cherub (though he had Satan’s horns, even at the age of eight he was incapable of taking anything seriously) had come before the interview with the principal about his drawings. My God, his drawings, the shame. And yet, what talent.
M. Péricourt had kept nothing, not a toy, not a sketch, not a painting or a watercolor, nothing. Maybe Madeleine . . . ? No, he would never be able to bring himself to ask.
He spent the night remembering and regretting, he saw Édouard everywhere, as a baby, as a toddler, as a boy and that laugh, such a laugh, such irrepressible joy, if only he could have behaved differently, if only he had not had that taste for provocation . . . M. Péricourt had never been at ease with his son, he had always had an abhorrence of excess. It was something he got from his wife. In marrying into her fortune (she had been born a de Margis, of the powerful mill-owning family), he had married into her values, which held certain things to be calamities. Artists, for example. Ultimately, though, he might have been able to get used to his son’s artistic dabblings, after all, there were people who made a living daubing canvases for city halls and government departments. No, what M. Péricourt had been unable to forgive his son was not what he did, but what he was: Édouard’s voice was high pitched, he was too thin, too attentive to his clothing, his gestures were too . . . It was not difficult to see, the boy was really effeminate . . . Even in his heart of hearts, M. Péricourt never dared to think the words. He was ashamed of his son in front of his friends, because he could read those words on their lips. He was not a cruel man, but one who had been hurt and humiliated. His son was a living, breathing insult to the modest hopes he had nurtured. Though he never admitted it to anyone, the birth of his daughter had been a bitter disappointment. He considered it normal that a man should want a son. There was a secret, intimate bond between father and son, he thought, since the latter is the successor of the former, the father builds and bequeaths, the son inherits and augments, life has been so since the dawn of time.
Madeleine was a pleasant child; he quickly came to love her, but he remained impatient.
No son came. There were miscarriages, tragic incidents, time passed, M. Péricourt became almost irritable. Then Édouard arrived. At last. Péricourt considered the birth the result of sheer will on his part. Indeed, when his wife died shortly afterward, he saw this as a sign. In those first years, he invested such efforts on his son’s education. He nurtured such hopes, and felt buoyed by the presence of the child. Then came the disappointment. Édouard was about eight or ten when he finally had to face the facts. The boy was a failure. M. Péricourt was not too old to start a new life, but he was too proud to do so. He refused to countenance failure. He retreated into bitterness and resentment.
Now that his son was dead (he did not even know how he had died, he had never asked), the bitter reproaches came flooding back, the harsh, irrevocable words, the doors he had closed, the heart he had closed. M. Péricourt had closed off every avenue for his son, leaving him only the war that was to kill him.
Even when he learned of Édouard’s death, he had said nothing. He could still picture the scene. Madeleine, prostrate with grief. He, laying his hand on her shoulder, showing her the way. Dignity, Madeleine, dignity. He could not tell her, did not even realize himself, that Édouard’s death was the answer to a question that had been troubling him for years: how could a man such as himself endure such a son? Now it was over, death had drawn a line under the question, there had been justice. Balance had been restored. The death of his wife had seemed to him unjust, she had been too young to die; he had felt no such qualms about his son though he had died even younger than she.
The dry sobs returned.
No tears, he thought, I am dried up inside. He wished he might die. For the first time in his life, he felt for someone other than himself.
The following morning, having lain awake all night, he was exhausted. Grief was etched on his face, but since he never showed emotion, Madeleine did not understand and felt afraid. She leaned over him. He kissed her forehead. There were no words to express what he felt.
“I’m going to get up,” he said.
Madeleine was about to protest, but seeing his drained, determined face, she withdrew without a word.
An hour later, M. Péricourt emerged from his apartments dressed and freshly shaven, having eaten nothing. Madeleine could see he had not taken his pills, he looked weak, his shoulders hunched, his face was chalk white. He was wearing a coat. To the astonishment of the servants, he sat in the hallway on the chair on which visitors’ coats were left if they were staying only briefly. He gestured to Madeleine.
“Have the car brought around, we’re going out.”
How much there was in these few words . . . Madeleine gave the orders, ran up to her room, and came back dressed. Beneath her gray coat, she wore a smock of black silk twill that draped about her waist and a cloche hat in the same color. “She loves me,” M. Péricourt thought when he saw his daughter; he meant “she understands me.”
“Let us go . . . ,” he said.
Out on the street, he informed the chauffeur his services would not be needed. He did not often drive himself, it was not something he cared for, except when he wanted to be alone.
He had been to the cemetery only once. For his wife’s funeral.
Even when Madeleine had brought her brother’s body back to be buried in the family vault, M. Péricourt had not been present. She had been the one who wanted to “bring her brother home.” He would not himself have taken the trouble. His son had died for his country, had been buried with his comrades; that was the nature of things. But Madeleine had insisted. He had firmly explained that it was unthinkable that “a man in his position” should allow his daughter to do something so absolutely, categorically forbidden—and when M. Péricourt resorted to more than one adverb, it was not a good sign. Even so, Madeleine had not been daunted, she said never mind, she would take care of things, and if something unforeseen should happen, he had only to say that he knew nothing; she would confirm this, she would accept full responsibility. Two days later, she had come across an envelope containing the money she needed and a discreet letter of introduction to Général Morieux.
In the darkness, she had shared out the money between the men, the guards at the Parisian cemetery, the undertaker, the driver, the laborer who had opened the family crypt; two men had taken down the coffin, and the door had been resealed. Madeleine stood for a moment in prayer until someone roughly took her elbow
—the dead of night was no time for such things; now her brother was here, she could come as often as she liked, but right now, it was best not to attract attention.
M. Péricourt knew nothing of this, he had asked no questions. As he drove with his silent daughter toward the cemetery, he remembered the thoughts that had kept him awake at night. Having previously not wanted to know anything, he was now eager to know every detail . . . Every time he thought about his son, he felt the urge to cry. Mercifully, his self-respect swiftly prevailed.
For Édouard to be buried in the family vault, he had had to be exhumed, M. Péricourt thought. He felt his chest tighten at this thought. He tried to imagine Édouard lying dead, but each time he pictured a civilian death, Édouard in a suit and tie, his shoes spit polished, with candles all around. It was ridiculous. He shook his head, annoyed with himself. What did a corpse look like after so many months? How had they gone about it? Images came to him, commonplace images, and from them arose a question his sleepless night had left unanswered, a question he was surprised had not occurred to him before: why had he felt no shock that his son had died before him? It was not in the nature of things. M. Péricourt was fifty-seven. He was rich. Respected. He had not fought in any wars. Everything had worked out well for him, even his marriage. And he was alive. He felt ashamed of himself.
Curiously, it was this precise moment, here in the car, that Madeleine chose. As she gazed out the window at the houses rolling past, she gently laid her hand on his as though she understood. She understands me, M. Péricourt thought. This cheered him.
Then there was his son-in-law. Madeleine had gone to fetch her brother from that far-flung field where he had died and had come back with this Pradelle, whom she had married that same summer. Though it had not struck him at the time, M. Péricourt now saw a strange equivalence between these two events. He associated the death of his son with the appearance of the man he had been obliged to accept as his son-in-law. He could not explain it; it was as though he blamed this man for his son’s death; the idea was preposterous, but he could not help himself: one had appeared just as the other had disappeared, the idea of cause and effect had occurred automatically, which, to him, meant logically.
Madeleine had tried to explain to him how she had met Capitaine d’Aulnay-Pradelle, how considerate, how tactful he had been, but M. Péricourt did not listen; he was blind and deaf to everything. Why had his daughter married this man rather than another? It was still a mystery to him. He had understood nothing about his son’s life, nothing about his death, and deep down understood nothing about his daughter’s life, nothing about her marriage. On a human level, he understood nothing. The guard at the cemetery gate had lost his right arm. Seeing him, M. Péricourt thought, in my case it’s my heart that is crippled.
The graveyard, given the hour, was thronged with people. Being a businessman, M. Péricourt could not help but notice that the street hawkers were having a field day selling sprays and bouquets of chrysanthemums. Good seasonal trade. Especially since this year, the government had decreed that all commemorations should take place on All Souls’ Day, November 2, at precisely the same time all over France. As one, the whole country went to honor the dead. From his limousine, M. Péricourt watched the preparations, people hanging up ribbons, setting up barriers, brass bands in civilian clothes silently rehearsing, the pavements had been scrubbed, the carriages and automobiles were moved on. M. Péricourt had watched all this dispassionately, his grief was entirely personal.
They parked the car outside the gate. Arm in arm, father and daughter walked quietly toward the family vault. The weather was bright; the chill, pale-yellow sunlight set off the flowers that were already strewn on the graves to either side of the path. M. Péricourt and Madeleine had come empty handed. Neither had thought to buy flowers though there had been an embarrassment of choice at the gates.
The tympanum of the family crypt was surmounted with a cross, and above the studded iron door was the inscription “FAMILLE PÉRICOURT.” On either side were carved the names of those interred there, beginning with M. Péricourt’s parents, since the family’s wealth dated back less than a century.
M. Péricourt kept his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat and did not doff his hat. The thought did not even cross his mind. All his thoughts were with his son. The tears returned, he had thought he had no more to shed, flickering images of Édouard as a child, as a young man, and suddenly he found that the very things he had despised he missed terribly: Édouard’s laugh, his cries. The night before, he had recalled long-forgotten scenes from Édouard’s childhood, a time when he had had only faint suspicions about his son’s true nature and could allow himself a measured, moderate enthusiasm for his drawings, which, he had to admit, showed an uncommon maturity. He could still picture some of them. Édouard had been a child of his time, his imagination filled with exotic images, locomotives, airplanes. M. Péricourt had been struck one day by a sketch of a racing car at top speed, which seemed astonishingly realistic though he had never seen such a car. What was it about this frozen image that it could give an impression of such speed that it seemed as if the car were about to take off? He did not know. Édouard had been nine years old. His drawings had always had a lot of movement. Even his flowers gave a sense of the breeze. He remembered a watercolor—flowers, again, though what kind he did not know—the petals seemed so delicate, that was all he could say. And framed in a very particular way. M. Péricourt, though he knew little about art, realized that there was something original about it. Where were they, he wondered, those sketches? Had Madeleine kept them? But he did not want to look at them again, he preferred to hide them away inside, he did not want these images to ever leave him. Of the images that had surfaced in his memory, he particularly remembered a face, Édouard had sketched faces of every shape and size and had a fondness for certain features that recurred again and again. M. Péricourt wondered whether this was what was called “an individual style.” It had been the innocent face of a young man with fleshy lips, a strong nose, and a dimple that seemed to cleave the chin, but the most striking thing was the subject’s strange gaze, squinting slightly, without a trace of a smile. This was all he could think to say, now that he had found the words . . . But who was there to say it to?
Madeleine pretended to be interested in another tomb and walked off a short distance, leaving him alone. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed his eyes. He read the name of his wife, Léopoldine Péricourt, née de Margis.
Édouard’s name was not there.
Seeing this, he was distraught.
It made sense; his son was not supposed to be buried here, there could be no question of engraving his name, it was obvious, but to M. Péricourt it was as though fate had refused his son an official acknowledgment of death. There had been a document, a letter informing them he had died for France, but what kind of tomb was it where one did not even have the right to read his name? He turned this over in his mind, tried to persuade himself that it was not important, but what he felt was unanswerable. To see the name of his dead son, to read the name “Éduoard Péricourt” suddenly, inexplicably, seemed hugely important. He shook his head.
Madeleine had come back to join him, she squeezed his arm, and they walked back to the car.
He spent his Saturday taking telephone calls from people whose fate depended on his health. “Well, monsieur, are you feeling better today?” they said, or “You gave us quite a fright there, old man!” His answers were curt. To the world at large, this meant that everything was back to normal.
M. Péricourt spent Sunday resting, sipping tisanes, and swallowing the pills prescribed by Docteur Blanche. He filed some documents and, on a silver salver next to his letters, found the package wrapped in flowery paper that Madeleine had left, which contained a notebook and an old, handwritten letter that had already been opened.
He recognized it immediately. He sipped his tea, picked up the letter, read, and reread it. He lingered for a long time on the passag
e where Édouard’s comrade talked about his death:
(. . .) occurred during an assault by our unit on a Boche advance post of crucial military importance to Victory. Your son, who was often in the front line, was struck in the heart by a bullet and died instantly. I can assure you that he did not suffer. Your son, who always spoke of the defense of his country as the greatest duty, knew the satisfaction of dying a hero.
M. Péricourt was a man of affairs who controlled banks, colonial trading companies, and factories and was by nature deeply skeptical. He did not believe a word of this convenient fable crafted for the occasion like a chromolithograph intended to console grieving families. Édouard’s comrade had an elegant hand, but the letter had been written in pencil, the paper was crumbling, all too soon it would fade, like an ineffectual lie no one would believe. He folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope and put it in a desk drawer.
Then he opened the tattered notepad, the rubber band holding the covers in place was slack, as though it had sailed the world three times like an explorer’s logbook. M. Péricourt knew at once it contained his son’s drawings. Sketches of soldiers at the front. He knew that he would not be able to look through all these pages now, that it would take time before he could face the grim truth and his own devastating guilt. He stopped at a portrait of a soldier in full battle dress, helmet on, sitting on the ground, legs splayed in front of him, shoulders hunched, head slightly bowed, exhausted. But for the mustache, it could have been Édouard himself, he thought. Had he aged much during the years spent at war when M. Péricourt had not seen him? Had he grown a mustache as so many soldiers did? How many times did I write to him? he wondered. All these sketches in blue pencil, did he have nothing else to draw with? Surely Madeleine must have sent him packages? He felt suddenly sick as he remembered saying brusquely to one of his secretaries, “Remember to have a package sent to my son . . .” The woman’s own son had fought at the front, had been lost there in the summer of 1914. M. Péricourt saw again the look of frozen horror on her face as she left his office. All through the war, she had sent packages to Édouard as she might have to her own son, she would simply say, “I’ve prepared a package,” M. Péricourt would thank her and, taking a sheet of paper, would write “With all good wishes, my dear Édouard,” then agonize over how to sign it: “Papa” seemed inappropriate, “M. Péricourt” ridiculous. He signed his initials.
The Great Swindle Page 15