The next morning – after a strange night spent under the open sky in the middle of town – I felt someone shake me by the shoulder. It was Man Ray, who told me in a whisper how he had devised a plan to obtain a full tank of petrol for our two cars. All he needed was for me to lend a hand, in exchange for which he would share the fuel with me. The previous day, he had approached two Wehrmacht interpreters for help as the national of a neutral country, and they had agreed to show him where to procure petrol before anyone else, since the distribution to refugees in the Occupied Zone would not begin for several days. We would first leave the square on the pretext of finding a hotel outside town for my family, who were extremely tired. I also had to bring a blanket along to cover the petrol cans.
I got into the American’s little car. His girlfriend stayed behind with Ilse, Hermione and Madame C. About ten minutes north of town, at the corner of a little side road, my driving companion found the sign for ‘Le Château Bleu’ that had been described by the Germans. The way led to a clearing guarded by a sentry, his rifle fixed with a bayonet. The American gave him the password. The soldier knocked at the door of a gatehouse, from which emerged one of the interpreters, in shirtsleeves. The young man got into our car and guided us to another, larger clearing, where we found four enormous English tanks that had been captured in Dunkirk and which the Germans wanted to study. Their fuel reservoirs were full; all we had to do was help ourselves! The interpreter left us to work it out for ourselves and walked back to his gatehouse.
The photographer climbed up to the turret and slipped inside the tank. He managed to get the engine started, proving that there was fuel in the reservoir. Then he shut the machine down. I heard a clicking sound from somewhere beneath the thick armour plating, then Man Ray emerged, looking quite absurd in a radio helmet he had found in the cabin. From the turret, he told me to lift up each of the armour plates one after the other. I found the petrol cap. The American came down, opened it and gave it a sniff. ‘First-rate aviation fuel,’ he confirmed. Recalling a length of rubber tubing that had been left in the boot of his car, he handed it to me to siphon off the petrol – first into the tank of his car, and then into the cans we had brought along. Some oil cans had been left beside the tanks, and we filled those too. Man Ray thanked the interpreter when we passed the gatehouse on the way out, and presented him with a bottle of champagne that he had brought from Paris. ‘Ah, Paris!’ your compatriot sighed, and asked for the American’s address in expressing his hope that he might pay him a visit on his next leave. Somewhat ungratefully, my driving companion gave him a false name and address, and we returned to Le Mans in a very jolly mood, laden with a good hundred litres of petrol.
It was noon when we got back, and Ilse threw her arms around my neck. She and the others had thought they would never see us again. Her upset was very real, and I was deeply moved by the tears rolling down her cheeks. I almost began to believe in my lie of the day before – that we were husband and wife. Hadn’t we been sleeping together for the past two weeks? Man Ray, a decidedly skilful liar, explained to the other refugees gathered around us that we had not found a hotel, but that an old couple living in a bungalow had agreed to rent us two rooms. The lie allowed us to leave the square in two cars without arousing suspicion. I followed close behind the car containing the American and his negress, and once we had left Le Mans behind, we pulled over on a country road to share out our petrol and say our goodbyes. Our friends were heading north like us, but the Surrealist photographer drove like a madman and they soon left us far behind.
We reached Paris without hindrance that evening. The streets of the capital were eerily empty, other than some German trucks. I dropped Madame C. at her home in the Alma district, which was altogether deserted, then drove to Rue Richer, where I intended to sleep at my daughter-in-law’s. The concierge gave her an armful of mail, including a letter from Olivier that had arrived that very morning. Ilse opened it, looking more dead than alive. Her face gradually lit up as she read: my son was in the Orléans sector, neither wounded nor captive, and would certainly reach Paris by the next day.
Ilse beamed at me. I should have shared her joy, but a dull bitterness had taken hold of me. I felt as if I had been brutally torn from a dream – a long, marvellous dream – and forced abruptly to see myself as I really was, a lonely old man.
Old man – that was it! In Rânes, confronted by those young men who were beating and rolling me in the dirt, my German daughter-in-law had managed, in French, to hit the nail on the head.
‘You’ll stay the night with us, of course, Paul-Jean?’ she said, pressing the letter to her chest. ‘Olivier will be so happy to see you, too.’
I clicked my heels. Trying to attenuate the curtness in my slightly quavering voice, I said, ‘Thank you, my child, but I’ll be off. I’m a little anxious about the house, you see.’
Refusing the offer of supper, I hugged my family and set off, reaching Andigny shortly before the curfew. The decision to move to German time would not be taken until several days later.
My Villa Némésis was intact, as were the others on the riverside, but all had been requisitioned to house your officers. A helmeted sentry prevented me from entering my own house.
I took a room at the Hôtel Bellevue, where I was well known, and went to bed without supper, feeling deep in my soul, and with unprecedented ferocity, how absurd was this world of ours, and how impenetrable the ways of Our Lord.
15.
The bombs dropped by your Luftwaffe on 8 June, Monsieur le Commandant, spared my home but cruelly ravaged the heart of my city.
All that was left of the beautiful buildings that had surrounded the market square was a pile of smoking ruins. The old Hôtel du Grand Cerf, dating back to Francis I and where Victor Hugo had dined, had gone up in flames from the incendiary bombs. Happily, the town hall, the silk factory and the glassworks had not been touched. Many people, on the morning of the attack, had fled to seek refuge in the neighbouring farms and villages; the rest had cowered in their cellars. There were casualties, whose sorry remains were exhibited in the market square. And some twenty soldiers had died in the fighting at the École Militaire and on their retreat down the former Avenue de la République (now Avenue du Maréchal Pétain), home to the Hôtel de Paris, the headquarters of your Kreiskommandantur. What was left of the French regiment managed to cross the Seine before blowing up the bridge, under fire from your incoming troops.
The first meeting of the Town Council took place on 24 June 1940, a few days after my return to Andigny. In the absence of Mayor Duplessis, who was still in the army, the occupying authorities appointed his secretary, Monsieur Métailié (who would later be so kind as to house me until I was restored to my home), to be his temporary replacement. On 10 July, in the course of a special meeting, eleven new members, including me, were inducted into the new Town Council (the ‘Provisional Commission for Communal Administration’). One of our first decisions, adopted unanimously, was, at Monsieur Métailié’s suggestion, to reduce to two the number of municipal police officers – who are paid exclusively by the commune, which was already under great strain – assigned to ensure law and order and compliance with the curfew, in collaboration with the Feldgendarmes. Moreover, as a member of the Provisional Commission, I wholeheartedly advocated the timely and effective implementation within our canton of measures with respect to Jewish businesses – the former Sub-Prefect Pierval having called us to order in November concerning the Galeries du Vexin furniture shop, whose owner lives in Lyons-la-Forêt and had failed to put up a sign indicating ‘Jewish-owned’ in his shop window.
Through my new duties at the town hall and my contact with my fellow citizens and the nearby farmers whom I have known since childhood, I was able to determine that the local population, while still reeling from a rout whose causes, both deep-rooted and immediate, it but poorly understood, was maintaining its dignity. With the exception of the workers who had lost their jobs, the populace resigned themselves with
a certain patience to the privations and rigours of the coming months, and valiantly returned to work. The people of Andigny, whose patriotism had emerged revitalised by the ordeal, showed themselves to have faith in the Occupier. However, while they accepted the fait accompli, they nevertheless regretted that one provision of the armistice prevented them from hearing the voice of the French government, to which they remained faithfully devoted and whose declarations they endorsed. Political activity, including that of the trade unions, had come to a standstill. Le Journal d’Andigny, which is run by our friend Madame de Feuquerolles, soon resumed publication, continuing to vigorously promote nationalist ideas. Over the course of those months spent restoring order, I noted with satisfaction that the German military authorities generally worked hard to support the French administration, fully recognising the utility of its efforts and the necessity of its involvement, which were in the interests of Germany itself.
In early August, I wrote a letter to Maréchal Pétain in Vichy, having the honour of knowing him personally in our capacities as fellow members of the Academy. I assured him of my deepest respect and unswerving support, and asked that my house be restored to me. I pointed out that I had long been among those who had dearly sought his return to government to save France from the abyss into which we had seen it sinking. And, in offering the services of my pen, I made a number of suggestions, including that of establishing a single party.
I also wrote: ‘The rebirth of France through work cannot be effected without the institution of a new social order based on trust and cooperation between owners and workers. This new social order must overthrow the old way of doing things – the policy of deal-making with Masonic, capitalist and international elements that has brought us to our current pass. The falling birth rate has compelled us to defend our territory with an unacceptably high ratio of North Africans, colonials and foreigners. The French family must be restored to its place of honour. The tide of materialism that overwhelmed France, the spirit of pleasure-seeking and ease are the deep-seated causes of our weakness and our surrender. We must return to the worship and practice of the ideal summarised in these few words: God, Homeland, Family, Work. The education of our young people must be reformed.’
I included with the letter a freshly printed copy of La Grappe mystique, dedicated to our Leader.
A week later, I received, care of Monsieur Métailié, a handwritten response from Maréchal Pétain himself. He thanked me for sending my book (which he looked forward to reading as soon as his labours at the bedside of our defeated and ailing Motherland allowed), and assured me that he had taken the necessary steps for the use of my home to be restored to me: the Secretary of the Academy would send a request on the Maréchal’s behalf to the commander of the occupying forces. And he added:
Many of your ideas, my dear Husson, have hit their mark. As you suggest, we must bring together a group of like-minded thinkers. What we choose to call ourselves is of little import. All true Frenchmen must stand up and be counted. We entirely share your way of thinking. France must revive an ideal that the proliferation of political parties has led her to forget or underestimate. She must revive a conscience that a lack of responsibility has deadened. She must revive a heart that individualism has atrophied or hypertrophied …5
Of course, I was hardly alone among my fellow academicians in proclaiming fervent support for the Maréchal. Not long afterwards, Claudel composed his splendid Ode to Pétain:
France, hear this old man, who thinks of everything and talks to you like a father.
Daughter of Saint Louis, listen and ask: Have you had your fill of politics yet?
Hear that steady voice as it proposes and explains its proposals like oil and its truths like gold …
As soon as I regained possession of Villa Némésis – which Dr Hild, who had been living there, returned graciously and in impeccable condition – I telephoned Rue Richer to invite my family to spend a few days in Andigny. I missed my daughter-in-law. Olivier answered the phone. He sounded awkward, and said that he wanted to talk to me face to face first. Ilse and Hermione could come later in the summer – that could wait. So my son arrived alone, by train. He insisted on talking to me in my office, beyond earshot of the servants. I offered him a chair, and listened to what he had to say, or rather to request.
He began by mentioning the law of 22 July: had I heard of it? I had, and had thought of it myself, but I pretended not to understand why Olivier should want to discuss it with me. As you may be aware, one of the new laws enacted in the summer of 1940, laying the foundations for a complete overhaul of the naturalisation procedures in force since 1927, stipulated that French citizenship could be revoked by decree upon the recommendation of a commission whose membership and functions were to be determined by the Minister of Justice. Olivier was visibly worried about Ilse, whose naturalisation in 1935 would inevitably be reconsidered, one day or another, by the aforesaid review commission.
I raised my eyebrow and asked, ‘Do you know of any reason why your wife’s French citizenship might not be confirmed?’
My son looked flustered. ‘No, but …’
I was playing with Olivier as a cat plays with a mouse: one takes one’s revenge where one can.
‘Well then,’ I said. He said nothing. I went on. ‘The law does not specify particular causes for revocation, other than if citizenship has been acquired “for opportunistic reasons” or to rectify past errors. Is there any chance that the commission will learn something about your wife that could prove to be a problem?’
Olivier reddened and mumbled. I felt sorry for him. I had, in fact, already given the matter some serious thought. I knew what had to be done to protect Ilse from the anti-Jewish regulations that I was convinced would soon enter into force, and with a new severity that in any case I approved of in principle. I rose, approached my son, and placed my hand on his shoulder.
‘You know that I’m on good terms with the Prefect of Police, Langeron. He and I are in the same social circle; he reads my books. I will call him and request an interview, which he will grant me. He is a cultured, courteous and conscientious civil servant, and will certainly know how to avoid having your wife’s file re-opened. Even if my efforts are unnecessary, since as you say, there is no problem.’
Impervious to irony, Olivier raised a radiant face to me and clasped my hand with gratitude.
‘That’s wonderful, Father! It will be such a comfort to me, when I …’ He hesitated.
‘When you?’ I echoed.
He kept my hand in his and, staring me in the eye, said in an exalted tone: ‘When I go away. It’s all decided, you see. I’m leaving with a friend. We have a connection. We’ll go first to Spain, and then by boat to London!’
So the idiot was planning to join de Gaulle! I asked him frostily if he, too, was determined to be condemned to death. To see himself stripped of the citizenship that he hoped to preserve for his wife, a foreigner. And he, a Frenchman! I trembled with indignation and fury. I ended up shouting that, just as the Maréchal had said, England would have its neck wrung like a chicken! Olivier responded by calling me a fascist. Enough was enough. I bellowed that if he betrayed his Homeland, as well as the wife and daughter whom he was abandoning like a coward, then he was no longer my son. I cursed him. Olivier slammed the door to my office on his way out and found his own way back to the station, without even visiting the cemetery to pay his respects at the tomb of she who had given him life.
That was two years ago. I haven’t seen him since. The next day, I merely called to ask Ilse to tell him who was no longer my son that I would keep my promise to arrange a meeting with the official we had spoken about.
*
The Prefect, Roger Langeron, is a dignified man, who has all my respect and good will, and I was sorry to see him arrested (on the basis of a misunderstanding) and replaced. Certainly, the only failing of which one might accuse that humanist is that of having been somewhat half-hearted in his application of the firm measures
required by the situation, and called for in dealing with the Jewish leper.
The elite functionary, who at that time had been running the capital’s police force for six years and had completely overhauled its functions and methods, adapting them to the changing and growing needs of an ever-evolving Paris – it was he who created the post of officer of the peace, the mobile superintendency and the flying squad of the Judicial Police – received me in his office one morning in September 1940. Behind him, the entire wall was covered by a map of the capital, on which each building was drawn in perspective. We could see the Seine from his window. I explained to Monsieur Langeron that my daughter-in-law, born in 1913 to a respectable, middle-class Berlin family, the Wolffsohns, had married my son in 1934 and assumed French citizenship the following year, pursuant to the 1927 law. And although there was certainly no reason to be, I was concerned – most vaguely, to be sure – by the idea that her file might be subject to review.
Monsieur Langeron’s intelligent eyes sparkled behind his delicate glasses, above which sat thick, coal-black eyebrows that almost looked as if they had been drawn with a paintbrush, and a smooth crown, while beneath a straight, equally dark moustache, his thin lips broke into an amiable smile. It suddenly occurred to me that the Prefect rather resembled the actor Groucho Marx, and how amusing it would be if he turned out to be Jewish.
‘My dear Monsieur Husson,’ he exclaimed with open arms. ‘Do you know how many people might be subject to this review?’
I confessed my ignorance.
‘About nine hundred thousand! And have you any idea how long it will take the Commission, with its meagre staff, to look into every case?’
The Prefect smiled at me, then sighed.
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