Confidant (9781101603628)

by Gremillon, Helene; Anderson, Alison (TRN)

  A few metres ahead of me, on the same pavement, was what looked like an art gallery but was, in fact, a brothel.

  I walked by. If everything had exploded at that moment, I would not have been surprised. I had just realised that Annie was working as a prostitute. Every passing gaze seemed levelled at me. Every finger seemed to point. Every mouth seemed to twist. The sounds around me changed. Stop, it’s not me! She’s the one who chose it. She could have decided to do something completely different. It’s not me. It’s life. I had nothing to do with it. She wanted to become a prostitute, that’s her choice. Perhaps she has it in her blood—no, not in her blood, Camille, my God . . . In her body.

  But my dejection and guilt did not last for long. As abruptly as I had tormented myself, I began to gloat wildly, relieved in a way I had never thought possible. This time it would be all over! Truly over. From where she now stood she could no longer harm me. She would never be able to take Camille from me. By profiting from her pride as a woman, she had forfeited her pride as a mother. Just let her try to come and claim my daughter—I’d know how to deal with her! I would tell her you cannot be a whore and a mother at the same time.

  And while Paul might have gone off with a worker’s daughter, he would never go off with a slut. What’s more, a slut for the Boches. Nur für Offiziere. The Étoile du Berger had been requisitioned.

  How could she have stooped so low? Was it from all the time she spent lurking around my house? Or had she been drawn by the paintings in the window? Did she even know where she was going? That a shopgirl in her negligee would open the curtain? And why not? she must have thought on seeing her. She resigned herself to it. In order to stay near Camille, Louise, close by, and find shelter. It had been such a terrible winter. Eat all she liked. No need to dress up. And make the most of the coal, which must have been in plentiful supply for the clients.

  Every day I made a sweep of the horizon and every day I saw her posted somewhere. Behind a tree, on a faraway bench, always with her eyes riveted on Camille. I had hesitated to go back to the Jardin des Champs-Elysées, but what was the point? No matter where I took Camille to play, in any park, she would find us, that I knew. Wherever I went she would follow. Leaving Paris wouldn’t change anything, either. She would never take her eyes off Camille. And no town or village could protect me as well as Paris could. There are certain things that can exist only in capital cities, where problems can be masked, disabled, and where a nest of vipers can be smothered. I had to continue as I was, and not change a thing. If Annie had locked herself into prostitution, above all, I must not help her to get out of it by leaving.

  I eventually got used to seeing her haunting my life. Just as the German planes on patrol reminded me day and night that even the sky no longer belonged to us, Annie’s lurking presence reminded me that my daughter did not belong outright to me. But Annie no longer made me afraid; in her situation she could risk nothing. We were like two enemies searching and not finding each other’s Achilles’ heel. In fact we shared the same Achilles’ heel, and we could not make use of it, other than to ensure our own misfortune: it was Camille.

  Before I found out that Annie was a prostitute, I didn’t pay the slightest attention to the Germans. I walked by them haughtily; I watched as they opened our coffers and took everything; impassive and proud, I selected my friends and my social engagements carefully in the name of what I called honour and dignity. I was not in the Resistance, far from it, but I was extremely reluctant.

  After I found out that Annie was a prostitute, I relented and went to their soirées: an exhibition by Arno Breker, a concert at the Palais de Chaillot, and I even organised dinners at home. I realise it was unacceptable but I was afraid that Annie might use her charms to win over a German officer and get Camille from me that way. I had to be able to defend myself in the event of such a ploy. I also needed protectors, acquaintances. I had to surrender, the better to fight back, if need be. For Camille’s sake I went over to the enemy. But I would have done anything for Camille. How many nights did I wake up with my love for the child tight around my throat, so alive, so tenacious, that I could not get back to sleep?

  Paul never understood, and I was never able to justify myself to him. At least, if he no longer loved me, I had provided him with a good excuse. His wife, the traitor. The collaborator. How could I have done that to him? While he was a prisoner. Did I not realise? Colluding with the enemy like that. The very people who had arrested Sophie. Did that not bother me either? Did the idea of betrayal never cross my mind?

  How could he ask such a thing!

  I looked him in the eye, coldly, ready to have it out, there and then. He wanted to talk about treason, then we would talk about treason. But he was circling round me, drunk with rage, obsessed with his own train of thought.

  ‘So which one did you sleep with? Or maybe it should be which ones?’

  How dare he? He was standing behind me; I whirled round and with the momentum, as if I were on a spring, unstoppable, I slapped him, so hard, so perfectly, so precisely that my hand reached its goal directly, as if all these years my body had been calculating the angle of the gesture so that it would reach its target with accuracy and a brutal force.

  Paul had come back on the twentieth of August 1942. Camille had just turned two. I wasn’t expecting him. The telephone rang. He was in Compiègne, his train had just arrived. The sound of his voice suddenly made no sense, nor did the desire to resume life with him by my side. La Relève, an initiative launched by Laval, had proved mostly ineffective, but it brought Paul back to me. One chance in a thousand; my bad luck, out of all those thousands. I hadn’t been expecting it; for the most part it was only peasants who came back. I had come to terms with the idea of loving him in absentia. I often talked about him to Camille. A guardian figure who created a balance, the third angle of our triangle, absent, perfect, forgivable. But present: imperfect, unforgivable. After his return everything became complicated. Camille and I both wept a great deal, I because he had come back into my life, she because he had suddenly appeared in hers.

  ‘Why is Papa here?’

  ‘That’s the way it is, sweetheart, a papa lives with his children, the way a maman does.’

  ‘No. Maman’s bed is mine. Papa go back to his war bed.’

  It is so sweet to sleep with one’s child, bodies so relaxed in the knowledge that that is all they have to do, sleep, and that there is no danger that they will have to submit to the onslaughts of a man. The onslaughts of a loyal husband, that is something a woman can abide, and even tell herself sometimes how nice it is, but with an unfaithful husband she closes her eyes and thinks how nice it would be just to sleep, or vomit, she hardly knows which.

  Camille never let him go near her under any pretext. She would rush into my arms the moment she saw him. Paul would get terribly upset. She didn’t want to go out for walks with him and when he left the house her little hand would tug on my skirt, full of hope:

  ‘Has Papa gone back to the war?’

  ‘No, darling, he’ll be back tonight.’

  ‘I liked Sophie better.’

  I was worried. The danger had returned. For the time being Camille’s rejection of her father suited my purposes, but she would eventually allow herself to be won over and everything would cheer up between the two of them. One day she would agree to go to the swings with him. And what would happen when Annie, from her hiding place, saw the two of them together? She would rush over to Paul, fall to her knees, beg him to believe her, Louise was her daughter, and Paul would say, ‘Who is Louise?’ and Annie would point to Camille swinging high, her legs bent back then stretched out, thinking that perhaps her papa was a nice man after all, he could push her closer to the sky than her maman could. And then Paul would think Annie was so beautiful, he wouldn’t listen when she tried to explain to him that she was working at the Étoile du Berger. All he would see was her smile,
the same smile as Camille’s; how had he failed to realise up to now, when it was so obvious? And they would go away together, the three of them, hand in hand.

  And then there had been that dreadful evening. A few weeks after his return, Paul informed me, in his own way, that the past was not dead.

  ‘I went to L’Escalier today. Jacques has kept it well maintained: that was a good idea to ask him to stay there.’

  Then I knew what was about to come. Before I even heard it, I could tell what it would be. Down to the very words.

  ‘Have you had any news from Annie?’

  So he had gone looking for her. With that name on his lips he would continue to go looking for her. He hadn’t forgotten. The fact that this girl’s body had been used by hundreds of German men would change nothing. The images from behind the curtains came back to me, the attraction would be in full force. So, as if I were taking a child’s costume out of an old trunk:

  ‘She’s married.’

  I fed him my story about her being a wartime godmother. It had discouraged one admirer, it would have to discourage this one. I had nothing else to fool him with, and to make him believe that she’d found love elsewhere seemed like the best way of loosening her grip. Only people who have no pride at all will go on clinging to a heart that has been taken; anyone else will give up, and Paul was a proud man. Then I got up and went into the bedroom.

  ‘Speaking of Annie, she asked me to give you this when you came back. I had completely forgotten.’

  I handed him the pistol. For the first time I could tell that he was at a loss; for the first time he would have to come up with an excuse.

  ‘My Deringer . . . I had lost it . . . wonderful! I wondered where it had got to. So it must have been . . . it must have been in the room without walls.’

  ‘Yes, probably.’

  He turned the little gun over and over in his hands, weighing the proof that Annie was gone from him. This hurt him, I could tell he was trying to understand what had happened. It hurt me, too, after all these years; it was not over, I still had to fight. They could run into each other anywhere, I could not control everything, and chance even less than the rest. Wherever I looked I was afraid. I was sorry I had not killed Annie.

  All the more so because of the verdict that had been handed down. During the exodus from Paris there had been nurses who killed the patients they could not take with them. I had followed the story from the beginning. The nurses’ lawyer spoke of the ‘collective madness’ that had gripped the country, a madness that in his view could, if not excuse, then at least explain their insane and criminal acts. And the judges had heeded his findings by granting extenuating circumstances, and giving the nurses—murderesses—nothing more than a suspended sentence. At that rate, I too should have administered a strong dose of morphine to Annie, it wouldn’t have cost me anything, and now I would have some peace of mind. My God, peace of mind, that was all I aspired to, even if it meant forfeiting the pure peace of Christ and a guiltless conscience.

  The noose was tightening with terrifying speed. A few days after that evening, I received a call from a man I was paying to keep an eye on Louis. His colleague. A certain Maurice, a nice enough lad, but he needed money and he saw nothing wrong with telling me that today Annie had suddenly shown up again at the post office and that Louis seemed quite ‘unsettled’.

  ‘Thank you, I will send you your envelope poste restante. Let me know if they see one another again.’

  This was no coincidence. Annie had something up her sleeve, you don’t just suddenly show up like that for no good reason. Louis would find out that I had lied to him, that she wasn’t married. They were going to come and take Camille from me.

  The next morning I received another call.

  ‘Good morning, Madam.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Louis has broken up with his girlfriend, I thought you might be interested.’

  ‘I pay you to find out whether your friend is seeing Annie, not to give me the most trivial details about him. Don’t try to take advantage of me.’

  I hung up on him.

  So that’s how it was? The moment that girl showed up somewhere, all the other girls were swept away. Was that what would happen to me, too, if Paul found her?

  I waited. Despite the semblance of calm, I knew the situation was building to a climax, inexorably. I was no fool, this was the calm before the storm, the tempest. I had to find a way out. Every story needs resolution, that’s just the way it is. I felt as if I were a sentry at a fortress, overwhelmed, running from one watchtower to another, north, south, east, west, trying not be caught out by the enemy. I always had to keep one step ahead.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Louis and your Annie had dinner together last night. They were rounded up after curfew but then were let go again this morning. They just left the house together after breakfast. Hello? Hello?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, but do be quick, I cannot spend hours on the telephone.’

  ‘Annie lives at number 17, rue de Turenne. She’s a shopgirl in a paint shop, and, tell you what, she’s not half bad-looking, that girl.’

  ‘That is not information, merely your personal taste. Tell me instead what they did during the night.’

  ‘I told you, time flies when you’re having fun: they stayed out too late and were arrested after curfew.’

  Untrue. I pictured them making their statement against me, telling the police everything. They would come and take Camille from me. I hung up. Perhaps I left my hand on the receiver for too long, I was staring at the Deringer, which had found its place again among the other weapons in the collection on the wall.

  ‘Who was that?’

  Paul was standing in the door. I turned round, quickly taking my hand from the telephone.

  ‘No one.’

  I could see that he didn’t believe me. Never mind. I had no time. I had to defend myself, they were going to come and take Camille from me. I ran to find my coat.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Shopping.’

  ‘But we were supposed to have lunch with the Pasteaus.’

  ‘I’ll be back by then.’

  I left with Camille. I could not let myself be separated from her, anything but that.

  I didn’t understand. Annie did not live at 17, rue de Turenne. She lived at the Étoile du Berger. I had to make sure. Never mind if I gave myself away. Never mind if she recognised me, if someone described me to her—a woman with a little girl in her arms had been looking for her. Never mind if I met her face to face. The danger wasn’t there, I could tell. I didn’t have much time left to act, I could tell that, too.

  ‘I’m here to see Annie.’

  A bleached blonde wearing furs had opened the curtain.

  ‘Don’t know no Annie.’

  ‘Yes, a young girl who works here.’

  ‘Thing is, there’s only young girls what work here, you need to be more precise. That’s a pretty kid you got there, if my mother’d known when I was that age what I’d turn into, she might’ve—’

  I interrupted harshly.

  ‘I know that Annie works here, she stole money from me, so either you call her at once, or I denounce her to Captain Schiller, who is a friend of mine, and I’m not sure that would be very good for the reputation of this house of yours, if one can even talk about a reputation where a brothel is concerned.’

  ‘All right, all right, no need to go getting het up like that, Ma’am. Can’t do nothing about your money . . . as for Annie, I don’t know where she is. Whether you believe me or not, she left yesterday without a word, left me no time to replace her. Can you imagine the fix she’s put me in? How’m I supposed to deal with the regulars? They’re so touchy, minute something goes wrong they take it personally. Already last night when I told them she wasn’t her
e they looked at me with that suspicious way of theirs, the occupying forces doubting the good will of the occupied people. She’s going to cause me trouble, that one, I can tell . . . Always the same thing, always the ones you least suspect who go and . . .’

  I didn’t wait to hear the rest. The game had begun, Annie was moving the pawns. Where had she found the courage to give it up? Why? For whom? Not for herself, at any rate, you never find that kind of courage for yourself. For Louis? Most likely. For Camille? I was sure of that too. They were going to come and take Camille from me.

  I went to the address my informer had given me. 17, rue de Turenne. There was a little newsboy on the street corner. He had nothing to do, so I sent him to knock on every door in the building. My mission left him breathless: there was an elderly couple, the man opened the door, the old woman was sitting in an armchair, in a corner of the room there was a rabbit in a cage, it looked as old as they were, as if they had never been able to bring themselves to eat it. In the next apartment there was a mother with three children, he could only see two of them, they were drawing, but the third was calling out, he wanted the mum to come and wipe his bum. In another apartment there was no one, in any case, no one came to open the door. Then there was a grumpy fellow who looked like he was waiting for someone. That was on the third floor. Above that there was a pretty girl, all by herself . . .

  ‘How old?’

  ‘A little older than me. At any rate she had bigger tits than most girls my age. Very nice as well, she even bought a paper from me, that way I wouldn’t have got the wrong door for nothing, she said nicely, and it would keep her busy until it was time to go to the gardens . . .’

  ‘That’s fine, thank you, here’s something for you.’

  ‘On the top floor, there was one more—’