A Madame Werner, for example.
An Elisabeth Werner, like my mother. Well, ‘my mother . . .’
I felt sick to my stomach. I went and threw up.
Could that really be my life? My life from before memory?
I didn’t want to believe it, but I could not ignore it. These letters were giving too much away, with too many details. I had to find the author, dammit, I had to have it out with him.
He had told me nothing about himself, but if I went back over all the letters I’d got, right from the start, I was bound to find some sort of clue that would lead me to him.
Deeply uneasy, I waited until the following Tuesday, hoping he would come out with the missing link, but I was afraid of it, all the same.
I could not know how I managed to read to the end—Annie slowed me down, not because she was a burden, but because of who she was. The satisfaction of feeling her weight upon my back, her body against mine, troubled me and overwhelmed me with desire. It was sweet, so sweet to know she could not get off my back and walk away from me. I could have walked like that all night, the two of us now one. If that morning of the fourth of October 1943 someone had told me that after midnight Annie would be on my back, I would never have believed it. With my hands under her buttocks, I walked as silently as possible, while I recalled the day I thought I had lost her forever.
‘Annie was not even at the funeral. Her own mother, can you imagine?’
My sister, who normally loved to dwell on the slightest scrap of gossip and give her opinion at least three times over, went no further in this instance than a simple statement of fact. Death had become too palpable for anyone to delight in talking about it, even her.
The fact remained that no one could accept that a daughter had not gone to her own mother’s funeral. I could understand it—what was the point of this final encounter when the person you went to see wasn’t there anymore? And for Annie it was even worse, her mother’s body was not even there. In that church there was nothing but a dizzying absence.
Annie had left N. the day of the mass in memory of her mother. I knew that she was not just fleeing from the mass, but that she had left town, and I was determined to go and look for her.
I had no difficulty finding their address in Paris. At the post office a man my age passed on the information with an odd smile. At the time I did not understand why. He seemed to know the place very well, or at least the neighbourhood. There was an art gallery in the street perpendicular to hers, go past that and then take the first right. Number 65.
I rang the bell.
It was Madame M. who opened. She was holding the baby in her arms. I could not believe it, Annie’s baby. I could not take my eyes off her. She tightened her hold on the child.
No, Annie was not there, unfortunately, she had had no news of her whatsoever, but she had not entirely given up hope she might hear something someday. She was not angry with her, no, she knew that love can often lead one to abandon a friendship, at least in the beginning, and frankly, who was she to talk, it was exactly the same with a baby. Annie must be with him right now, as we were speaking. He must have had the good fortune to avoid being taken prisoner, and they must have managed to find one another; Annie had been waiting so impatiently for his letters.
Who was she talking about, for God’s sake?
Oh, I’m so sorry! She thought that Annie must have mentioned her young man to me, but it’s true that it’s not always easy for a young woman to talk about one young man to another young man, if I could see what she meant . . . There was nothing particularly unusual about their story. During the time she had spent with Annie, the young woman had fallen in love, his name was Henri. Annie had offered to adopt a soldier, to be a sort of war godmother to him, and as was often the case, she had ended up falling in love with the fellow, a good lad to judge from what Annie had let her read of his letters. In any case a good-looking one, very good-looking, to judge from the photograph that Annie had shown her. She must be married by now, that’s just how Annie was, an all or nothing sort of girl, but I must know that already since I was her friend . . . Her childhood friend, was that it?
‘Yes, that was it.’ I heard my voice slurring. ‘Thank you, Madame, I am sorry to have bothered you.’
And then I looked at the infant one last time. ‘Goodbye, Louise.’
As I said goodbye to that little creature I knew I was saying goodbye to Annie.
This was no longer any of my business, I had to forget now, too: if Annie had decided to abandon her child to this woman, I could not stand in her way. All the more so because I knew Louise would be happy, that Madame M. would love her with all the vehemence of an illegitimate love, of the type that can be lost from one day to the next, for the law of blood does not make such love everlasting.
I had arrived at the M. residence with the confidence of a saviour; I was leaving in a state of agitation, of one who has been spurned. Annie was in love with another man, and I was ashamed that I had not thought of it sooner. A soldier: it was normal, manhood was to be found at the front, love as well. It was all over. I knew Annie well enough to realise that if there were a man who had managed to charm her, he would become her entire life.
I stopped outside the art gallery, the one the postal employee had mentioned to me, and the paintings in the window reminded me of Annie’s. But as I looked up to see the name of the shop, I suddenly understood what it actually concealed. The size of the number left no doubt: as required by law, it was larger than all the other numbers on the street. It was a brothel.
Now I knew why the postal employee had had such a lewd smile on his face, and recalling his deliberately comical expression made me smile in turn. From my reflection in the window I could see my face light up and become more pleasant, more handsome, perhaps not as good-looking as the soldier in the photograph, but not necessarily without charm. If another woman’s painting could make me think of Annie, some day another person, another laugh, another body would make me think fondly of her and then I would be able to love again. I must smile, and go on smiling, and another woman would come. I remembered the little notice on display in the jaunty postal employee’s window.
Help wanted.
Inquire first office on the right.
Why not? I had to begin my life somehow or other.
I kept on promising myself to forget Annie, when suddenly she reappeared in my life, obliterating in one second all the long labour of forgetting that I had imposed on myself for three years. I had buried her in a corner of my brain, as far away as possible. If I happened to think about her—Did she have a family with her handsome soldier? Did she ever think of the little girl she had abandoned? Did she ever think about me?—I did not let myself go. I liked my work. I liked my life. I did not like the times in which we were living, but I did what I could to fight back. No grand deeds of resistance, but what I could. At the post office I was, in some ways, in a good position to manoeuvre. I spent the first half of the day in the sorting room and the afternoon at the counter. Let’s just say I did not make the Germans’ job of censoring any easier.
It must have been around three o’clock, I had just come back from a break with Moustique, his real name was Maurice, but everyone called him Moustique, Mosquito, because he couldn’t sit still. The first thing I saw was her hand, on a letter. At first I paid no attention, for I could not take my eyes off the envelope as I stared at the familiar handwriting. I don’t know how many long seconds went by before I could look up.
I wanted no part of the scene that was about to unfold before my eyes. I was not ready to see her again, I was not strong enough to go on with my life afterwards as if nothing had happened. She was smiling at me. She must have seen the shadow of discontent pass over my face. Had I grimaced? Her smile lost some of its assurance.
‘Hello, Louis.’
‘Hello.’
‘What a coincidence to find you here. By chance.’
‘True enough.’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
More than that I could not manage. I could not suddenly start chatting about this and that as if we had just parted the night before. She sensed this and, to make things worse, the people in the queue behind her were getting impatient. She said a hasty goodbye. I was devastated. It was the end, I could tell, the end of all the peace of mind I’d fought for, bit by bit, day after day, burying my memories. I hated her for coming back into my life like this, without warning. I had to be stronger than her sudden apparition. I mustn’t let her eat away at my existence anymore. She had gone away without saying goodbye and, for three years, not a word. She had made her life, I had to go on with mine. I must stand by my resolve not to think about her, I had managed perfectly well only a few minutes earlier. Nothing needed to change.
That evening I was planning to see Joëlle, who was my girlfriend at the time. Nothing needed to change . . .
I broke up with her. No matter how I claimed it had nothing to do with Annie’s sudden reappearance. No matter that for several weeks already I had been thinking Joëlle was not the right girl for me. That was true enough, but for all that I had not broken up with her.
And what was supposed to happen did happen: I began to wait for her. Not the right girl for me, no. Of course not. Annie was. Once I got into the habit of searching the queues for her face, all I did was look at the letters or packages that people shoved my way, in order to recreate the circumstances of her appearance. But as always, Annie suddenly showed up when I least expected her.
One week later, that famous fourth of October 1943, I found her waiting for me at the entrance, on the pavement, leaning against the wall.
That is how we had ended up walking to her place, where she made me a cup of chicory coffee, where she left me on my own while she returned the keys. That is how I ended up going with her to the municipal baths, and waiting for her in a café, before sharing a wonderful dinner, sad but wonderful. And that is how we now found ourselves walking in that pleasantly awkward position, where my wandering hands, although still, had never been so happy.
I was roused abruptly from my thoughts by the sound of boots headed our way, rhythmic and aggressive. The voices were German, and Annie had heard them, too. She hugged me closer. I froze in the middle of the dark street, careful that no halo from a streetlamp might betray our presence. All we could do was wait. I could feel that Annie was squeezing me tighter and tighter, I thought it was fear, but it was her asthma, suddenly uncontrollable. She began to cough; it was terribly loud in the silence. There was barking and a jangling of metal: the soldiers trained their torch beams on us and then led us away.
After they had checked our papers they took us to the cells. The others who had been arrested that night stayed in the common room with the guards; they could even play cards while they waited until five o’clock. But Annie had been on my back when they found us, and the officers considered this to be a veritable conspiracy against German order, a crime that went beyond a simple failure to obey the curfew. I had not spoken out in our defence; it would be better if they forgot about us—it had not yet occurred to them to look under my shoes.
Our two cells were next to each other. The women on one side, the men on the other. A new school, and still the same rules. We were sitting on either side of the same wall. Annie kept saying we weren’t in any danger, this had already happened to friends of hers and they had been released. Annie was so sweet. I did not want to frighten her. I did not want to tell her that her friends had simply been lucky that there had been no acts of violence against the Germans on the night they were imprisoned. Otherwise her friends who’d got off so lightly would have been summarily lined up before the firing squad at five o’clock in the morning, in reprisal. I did not want to tell her that what had not happened to her friends could well happen to us.
‘Louis?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t go into your post office just by chance.’
Apparently she still had more things to reveal.
‘I knew you worked there. Your mother told me, when I went back to look for you in the village. I also went to see my father. From a distance. It’s strange, all the people I love, right now I have to watch them from a distance as they get on with their lives. I didn’t want it to be like that with you. My father seemed smaller somehow. I hope it was the distance and not old age. I didn’t go up to him because my life was a mess just then. But now things are different, aren’t they? Louis?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can we go back together to see him?’
‘Of course.’
‘And you’ll help me get Louise back.’
‘As soon as we get out of here.’
‘No, not like that. I want to do things properly, for Louise’s sake. And for yours, too.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘We . . . do you remember when we used to play “dot-dash”?’
And then I heard her murmuring, very quietly, not to wake up the guards, reviving the code we used to use as children so that no one would understand us.
Dash dash (M)
Dot dash (A)
Dot dash dot (R)
Dot dash dot (R)
Dash dot dash dash (Y)
There we were. Her handsome soldier, we would get there eventually, I didn’t want to deal with it, but I couldn’t avoid the subject indefinitely. At least I had to acknowledge how tactful she was in telling me about him.
‘And why hasn’t he helped you get your daughter back?’
‘Who?’
‘Your husband.’
‘But I don’t have a husband.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘That’s what I just said.’
I was flabbergasted. I had been so convinced of the contrary. And what about her ring?
‘But it’s Maman’s ring. I told you earlier that Papa threw it in my face when we received the package. Well, I mean, your package . . . I kept it.’
I was both embarrassed and extremely happy.
‘So . . . there is no one in your life?’
I remember well how long her silence was. I thought she wanted to reply using dot-dash but could not remember the code. But that wasn’t it; her voice was choked with emotion.
‘I loved someone, but it’s all over.’
I heard her sobbing then. I didn’t know what to say. I was still in shock. No more handsome soldier.
‘Don’t cry, Annie.’
‘Don’t you think, Louis, that in other people’s lives there is the past which matters and the past which doesn’t matter?’
‘Of course.’
That must not have been the answer she expected. She continued to cry; I thought it was because of the handsome soldier, but it was because of my silence.
She murmured, ‘So you don’t want to?’
Only then did I understand what I had failed to grasp before, because I had hoped for it so much, and I stammered, as intimidated as I would have been had the priest been right there with us.
Dash dot dash dash
Dot
Dot dot dot
Do I need to translate my reply?
YES.
‘That year at the centre of the world there was me, and there was Annie. All around us lots of things were happening that I couldn’t care less about. In Germany, Hitler had become chancellor of the Reich, and the Nazi party exercised single party rule. Brecht and Einstein had fled while Dachau was being built. It is the naïve pretension of childhood to think one can be sheltered from history.’
That year had been 1933, I had checked.
If Louis was twelve then, today he wou
ld be fifty-four, around the same age as Madame Merleau.
Louis was his real name, and Annie was her real name, too, I could tell. The man was not lying, he was just hiding one aspect of reality, the part that could hurt.
So I had to find a certain Louis, fifty-four years old. That was a good start, but I wouldn’t get far with it.
The only solution seemed to be to find the village of ‘N’. There, too, I had the feeling that the initial was the real one, no need to turn it every which way, it hid no secrets other than the letters that should follow.
In the village there was bound to be someone who could give me the names of the doctor or the haberdashery owner from that era, and if there was no one to inform me, there was always the town hall. I would go through the registers and, once I had the name, it would be child’s play to find my way back to Louis. And then I could look him straight in the eye and force him to tell me what he knew, and we would find out soon enough whether his story held together or not.
‘Roughly two weeks later I had further proof that something was not quite right. This time it was her husband’s car that was parked in the drive. As a rule he had already left for his newspaper office by the time I arrived.’
‘N.’ must be less than two hours’ drive from Paris, otherwise Monsieur M.—my father?—would not have been able to come and go on a daily basis between his house and his office. It seemed a long way, but it was feasible, and I had to start as far out as possible.
‘Jacques had stayed behind at L’Escalier . . . He was the one who came up once a week to Paris with news of my parents, but I never saw him, I could only hear his voice.’
If I relied on this expression—coming up to Paris—I could eliminate the north. And concentrate, therefore, on the region to the south, east and west of Paris. I could always return to it later if I didn’t find anything.
And perhaps Jacques, the very zealous Jacques, would still be there looking after L’Escalier, in spite of all the years gone by, never giving up hope that his masters might return some day. Perhaps he would know where to find Louis. He might be able to provide all the missing explanations.
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