Léon and Louise

by Alex Capus

  Summer 1944 was fine and warm – an invitation to bathe, but the beaches of Normandy and the Côte d’Azur were inaccessible because of the Allied invasion, so the inhabitants of Paris stayed at home and used the Seine as a lido. The fourth of August was the hottest day of the year so far. Asphalt melted, horses hung their heads, and anyone who couldn’t avoid going out kept to the narrow strips of pavement shaded by buildings.

  One evening, when Léon was passing the entrance of the Musée Cluny on his way home after spending his usual couple of hours after work on the boat, a man was standing in the shadows beneath the archway with his flat cap pulled down low over his face. Scenting danger, Léon walked on faster and deliberately averted his gaze.

  ‘Psst!’ said the man.

  Léon walked on.

  ‘Fine evening, isn’t it?’

  Léon stepped off the pavement and prepared to turn down the Rue de la Sorbonne.

  ‘Hey, stop!’

  Léon walked on.

  ‘Hands up! Don’t move!’

  Léon halted abruptly and raised his hands.

  The man behind him laughed. ‘Relax, Léon, I’m only joking.’

  Hesitantly, Léon lowered his hands and turned round, then stepped back on to the pavement and scrutinized the man. He had clean-cut features and piercing eyes, and he looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘I’m sorry, do we know each other?’

  ‘I’ve brought your four hundred francs back.’

  ‘My four hundred francs?’

  ‘Eight hundred times fifty centimes, don’t you remember? I wanted to get to Jaurès bus station and you helped me.’

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Didn’t recognize me, did you? Yes, I’m your personal tramp, the embodiment of your clear conscience.’

  ‘How long is it, three years?’

  ‘We guessed the war would last three or four years. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘It isn’t over yet.’

  ‘But it soon will be. Let’s walk on, I’ll keep you company for a little way.’

  The man looked ten years younger than he had the last time they met. His eyes were as clear as his complexion, he didn’t smell of red wine, and he seemed to have lost all his body fat. Léon had noticeably aged in comparison, he had to admit, and his hours aboard the boat had probably left him smelling of red wine.

  ‘How long have you been back in Paris?’

  ‘A few days. It won’t be long now, as you know.’

  ‘I don’t know a thing.’

  ‘Of course you do, every child does. The Americans are already in Rouen, things are brewing up in Corsica, and we ourselves have five thousand men in the city.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  Martin pulled a piece of white cloth from his jacket pocket and held it up. It was an armband with the letters FFL stencilled on it in black.

  ‘At last,’ said Léon.

  ‘The balloon could go up any time, possibly next week.’

  ‘Just as long as the Germans don’t do what they did in Warsaw.’

  ‘We’ll take care,’ said Martin. ‘But so should you, Léon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The day of reckoning will soon be here. We plan to tweak a few people’s ears.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘It’ll be summary justice, and we won’t be squeamish. We won’t be holding any coffee parties or discussion groups beforehand.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m not sure you do,’ said Martin. ‘You really ought to look out for yourself. People are talking about you, did you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They’re talking about your handouts of coffee from the SS. They’re talking about your boat and your black market activities.’

  ‘But I – ’

  ‘I know, but coffee’s coffee and a boat’s a boat. People are going to get it in the neck for things like that in days to come, and there won’t be time for any fine distinctions. Our comrades’ blood is up, you’ve got to understand that.’

  ‘So is mine, and you of all people should know – ’

  ‘Yes, but the others don’t. They’ll be deaf to any fine distinctions, as I say. In the days ahead they’ll dispense rough justice and ask questions afterwards. That’s why you must make yourself scarce for a week or two. Right away, until things simmer down. Then you can come back and explain about the coffee.’

  ‘Where should I go?’

  ‘South. It’s summertime. Treat your family to a few weeks beside the sea.’

  ‘The Côte d’Azur, you mean?’

  ‘Well, no, not there. There’ll be plenty going on down there in the next few days. I’d recommend the Atlantic coast, the Germans have already withdrawn from there. Biarritz or Cap Ferret or Lacanau – it’s a question of taste.’

  ‘And money.’

  ‘Here are the four hundred francs you lent me.’ Martin handed Léon a wad of banknotes. ‘And this...’ – he reached into his breast pocket and brought out another, considerably thicker wad – ‘...is what’s left of the money in the drawer at your place of work.’

  ‘How did you – ’

  ‘I got someone to fetch it while you were on your boat, I hope you don’t mind. It’d be better if you didn’t have to go back there again.’

  ‘But – ’

  ‘Take it. The FFL is officially handing it over – as of now, it isn’t Nazi cash any longer. We’ve put the key back in the bakelite tray. A bloody silly hiding place, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘Still, nobody found it.’

  Martin smiled. ‘We’ve been checking on the money for the past two years. It’ll count in your favour that you didn’t spend any on yourself.’

  ‘There’s the boat...’

  ‘I know, Caron told me the whole story. That’ll help too, but first you must disappear. You won’t get your six thousand back, but you can keep the boat. Caron says he doesn’t want it any more. It’s yours now.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘A boat’s like a dog, he says. It can’t keep changing owners.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Here are some railway tickets to Bordeaux – you must fend for yourselves after that. And here are two travel permits. One is for the Germans, the other for our people. You’d be wise not to get them mixed up.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Don’t come back before the twenty-sixth of September. The train to Bordeaux leaves at eight twenty-seven tomorrow morning. Trust me, Léon. Do as I say, and do it tomorrow, not the day after. Now go home and pack your bags.’

  So saying, Martin crossed the street and disappeared beneath the trees in the Parc de Cluny. They had exchanged a farewell hug on the last occasion, Léon recalled. He wondered why they hadn’t this time.

  On the day when the staff of the French capital’s hospitals, the Banque de France and the Police Judiciaire joined the popular uprising and went on strike, Léon Le Gall, wearing an old-fashioned black bathing costume and shaded by a sailcloth awning, was lying in the sand dunes at Lacanau, 600 kilometres south-west of the Quai des Orfèvres. His wife was sitting beside him, straight as a ramrod, watching her four older children playing in the surf while little Philippe built a sandcastle at her feet.

  The beach ran north to south for many kilometres and was deserted for as far as the eye could see. The dunes were surmounted by the bunkers of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Gun barrels pointed ominously out to sea from their loopholes as if the Wehrmacht soldiers had merely gone to fetch some ammunition and would return to their posts at any moment.

  Several times a day, Léon and the children walked along the shoreline to see if the waves had washed up any interesting odds and ends. Their finds included a leather ball, an intact kitchen chair, and a sail complete with mast and rigging. This they had converted into the awning at the foot of the sand dunes.

  Punctually at midday every day, Yvonne gave the signal to leave. Then they all pulled on light summer clothes over their bathing costumes, trudged back
across the dunes to the pine-woods, and rode their rented bicycles along the narrow concrete tracks the Germans had laid for the benefit of their dispatch riders. After lunch and a siesta at the Hôtel de la Cigogne, they returned to the beach. In the evenings an accordionist played for dancing in the village square. Wednesday was market day, and on Saturday night the football ground became an open-air cinema.

  Léon found it happily but also bitterly ironical that he should be fated, for the second time in his life, to spend the closing stages of a world war at the seaside. Although he was thankful to have been able to bring his family to such an idyllic place of safety, he gathered from daily newspaper and radio reports that courageous men were making history elsewhere. With masochistic avidity, he registered the fact that at the moment when General Leclerc’s tanks entered the Champs-Élysées he had been sitting at the breakfast table and dunking a second croissant in his café au lait; that he had eaten a spoonful of vanilla ice cream just as an SS detachment gunned down thirty-five young Frenchmen at the Carrefour des Cascades; that, when the FFL hoisted the tricolour on the Eiffel Tower for the first time, he had been busy whittling a miniature sailing boat for young Philippe; that, when General von Choltitz defied Hitler’s express order to destroy Paris and surrendered the city to Leclerc intact and without a fight, he was having his afternoon rest; and that on the night the Luftwaffe launched its last air raid on the French capital and destroyed 600 buildings, he was sitting with Yvonne on the balcony of their hotel room, looking out over the silvery, shimmering sea beneath a star-spangled sky and drinking a bottle of Bordeaux. And after it a cognac. And another cognac. And, to round the evening off, a beer.

  News of the Wehrmacht’s withdrawal from Paris reached the Le Gall family as they lounged beneath their home-made awning at a quarter past three in the afternoon. A horde of young people irrupted on to the beach from the north. Many were riding bicycles and others running alongside, and two boys on a tandem were towing a trailer containing three girls. All were yelling and waving. Michel went to meet the newcomers. After speaking to them he dived back under the awning and hugged his father and his siblings. Little Philippe and Muriel clamoured for an immediate return to Paris and Madame Rossetos’ advocaat, but Robert wanted to stay in Lacanau until further notice because he had started a rabbit-breeding business in the hotel’s backyard. Léon and Michel, who discussed the possibility of a precipitate return home, came to the conclusion that it would be too risky to go back before the 26th of September without any valid travel permits.

  Meanwhile, Yvonne stood on the sidelines, looking out across the sea and rubbing her thin arms as if she were cold. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘I won’t believe it till de Gaulle speaks on the radio.’

  ‘He was on the radio yesterday.’

  ‘I want to hear him speaking from Paris, and the bells of Notre Dame must be ringing in the background to prove it. He’ll do that if he’s smart.’

  ‘De Gaulle is smart,’ said Léon. ‘If you insist on proof, he’ll supply it.’

  ‘You think he knows me that well? We shall see.’ Yvonne turned round and took her husband by the arm. ‘Know what I want right now, Léon? A steak. A thick, bloody steak au poivre with pommes frites. And some Bordeaux to go with it – the good stuff. And goat’s cheese and Roquefort to follow. And for dessert a crème brûlée.’

  The next day General de Gaulle really was smart enough to ensure that his radio address was accompanied by the bells of Notre Dame. When the bells and the general had fallen silent, Yvonne went to the hotel kitchen and informed the chef that she wanted some wild boar pâté right away, followed by a truite au bleu with mushroom risotto and a main course of boudin noir, pommes dauphinoises and red cabbage, and for dessert a crêpe Suzette – oh yes, and a coupe colonel betweentimes. When the chef objected that it was half-past three in the afternoon for one thing, that the kitchen was closed for another, and that, thirdly, he had nothing she’d requested but the potatoes, Yvonne blithely told him, first, not to be a clock-watcher, secondly to open up the kitchen, and thirdly to get hold of all the necessary ingredients. Money was no object.

  From that moment on, food was Yvonne’s sole interest. As soon as she opened her eyes in the morning she reached for the oatmeal biscuits of which she always kept a ready supply. At breakfast she drank café au lait by the potful and daubed whole baguettes with thick layers of butter and jam. Feeding the children, which had been her exclusive concern for years, she now left entirely to their father. When they departed for the beach she no longer worried about the dangers of the surf and the currents but casually left her brood to their own devices and took a preliminary walk to the pâtisserie to buy herself some Madeleines and apple turnovers. Soon after that it was time for an apéritif and some form of amuse-bouche before lunch.

  Léon looked on in bewilderment as his wife devoted herself to gluttony and turned into a creature he had never, in all their twenty-two years of marriage, dreamt was slumbering inside her. The lizardlike indifference and emotional frigidity Yvonne now displayed was in utter contrast to all she had been hitherto. This gorging, grunting Moloch must have been lying in wait within the stern guardian angel she had been throughout the war years; and the guardian angel, in turn, had previously resided in the sexy diva, and the diva in the tormented housewife, and the housewife in the coquettish bride. Léon wondered what other surprising metamorphoses this woman would undergo.

  Because she did nothing but eat and seldom moved, Yvonne quickly put on weight. Her eternally vigilant expression gave way to a look of smug contentment – sometimes, too, of weary satiety. The children eyed her with covert surprise and shunned her even more than usual. Within a few days her neck had filled out, her shoulders and hips lost their angularity, and her fingers and bosom swelled. Her blue eyes, which had always been alert and slightly prominent, sank ever deeper into the cushions of flesh surrounding their sockets. At the end of the first week in September, because her clothes were beginning to burst at the seams, she took the bus to Bordeaux and bought three comfortable, voluminous summer frocks. And on the night of 25 September, when she was packing her bags for the journey home, she left her tight old wartime clothes in the wardrobe, realizing that she would never again be able to wear them.

  19

  On 26 September 1944, when Léon Le Gall and his family returned to the Rue des Écoles, the rainy season on the Senegal River ended as if someone had turned off a tap. News of the liberation of Paris having spread like wildfire to the furthest corners of French Sudan, the main institutions of the colonial world awoke to new life as if by magic. Trains turned up once more by land and steamers by way of the Senegal River, the telephone worked again and newspapers arrived by post.

  But the special train that was supposed to collect Louise Janvier and the gold did not come.

  Because there are no more letters from Louise among my grandfather’s papers, we cannot tell how she fared at this period. We may assume that she waited impatiently for the train, or at least for a summons from the Banque de France, probably while sitting on her ready-packed suitcase. It is quite possible that she had already given away her umbrella, revolver and spare mosquito net in expectation of leaving soon. It is also quite possible that she refrained for once from cutting her own hair and paid a visit to the hairdresser in Kayes one Sunday. It is further conceivable that, when the mud had dried up and the roads were passable once more, she cycled out to the power station at Félou to say goodbye to the Bonvin brothers. She may perhaps have gone for a last walk with them to the basin below the rapids where the hippos reared their young. It is also quite possible that, on the way back, she gave away her bicycle to a young schoolboy named Abdullay, the only one of the seven- to twelve-year-olds in his village to have achieved a hundred per cent attendance record.

  I further imagine that every night she spent in Giuliano Galiani’s bed must have felt as if it were the last.

  But the special train still didn’t come.

  Now that
the radio and telephone were back in commission, Galiani strutted around the streets at all times of the day and night, proclaiming the latest news. He announced the capture of Aachen by the US VII and IX Corps, the failure of the Germans’ Ardennes offensive, the bombing of Hamburg’s fuel dumps and the surrender of Hungary, and the longer his personal exile lasted, the bluer became the half Italian, half French oaths he levelled at that sonofabitch Maresciallo de Gaulle and those cretini at the Banque de France, who were taking their fucking time about extricating him and that fucking gold from the arsehole of the world. Galiani might have moderated his oaths a little, had he known that General de Gaulle and the Banque de France were leaving him to moulder in the bush only because German U-boats well supplied with fuel and torpedoes were still awaiting an opportunity to send him and the gold to the bottom of the sea.

  In March 1945 the dry season ended and the heat and humidity returned. Galiani got out his umbrella and stomped, cursing, through the mud. He reported the liberation of Auschwitz and the destruction of Dresden, raised his arms to heaven in reproach and asked the vultures in the trees why in God’s name they didn’t let him go home at last. Louise sat on her suitcase and waited. Galiani reported the Yalta Conference and the storming of Hitler’s bunker, the trial of Marshal Pétain and, finally, the bombing of Nagasaki.