Paris 1935: Destiny's Crossroads

by Paul A. Myers

The Writers

  Late Saturday afternoon, August 31. Dexter sat at a small table on the terrasse of the bistro Les Ministres on the shady side of rue de Bac just across from the Hotel Pont Royal. The hotel’s basement bar was close to the center of the Left Bank publishing district—a good place to end a day or start a night. He watched as Marcelle, smartly dressed, came down the sidewalk, saw him, and walked over. Dexter stood and held her chair as she sat down, smiling, and said, “It is nice to see you again, Dexter. What do you have planned?”

  “The printer is just a couple blocks away. The final galleys of the magazine are being proofed now. It’s the end of summer. Who knows who will be there tonight? Arguments about politics and culture are sure to be in the air.”

  Marcelle looked thoughtful. “What makes you say that?”

  Dexter stood and said, “Let’s go and I’ll let you see for yourself.”

  She stood while saying, “Intriguing, but I am not sure where politics is going myself.”

  Dexter chimed in, “Not that you would say if you did!”

  She laughed and said, “Maybe I might give a little hint.”

  Dexter pointed the way and the couple took off down the sidewalk, Dexter saying, “Both the Right and the Left ask the same basic question: what should France’s response to the rise of Nazi Germany be?”

  “And what should it be?”

  Dexter replied seriously, “The Right strongly believes in an alliance with Italy. It looks to Mussolini as a model for a Rightist authoritarian government.”

  Marcelle asked, almost teasingly, “I thought the Royalists wanted a king?”

  “In real life, some sort of strongman,” he replied.

  “And the Left?” asked Marcelle.

  “The Left is split into two camps: one camp wants a strong alliance with Soviet Russia.”

  Marcelle smoothly interposed, “That is precisely what Premier Laval negotiated last May in his trip to Moscow.”

  Dexter responded, “Yes, but it has not been ratified. Some people think Laval is just using the treaty as bait to cut a deal with Hitler.”

  “A deal with Hitler might just be the solution, correct?” she said.

  “If he could be counted on to keep it,” replied Dexter.

  “And the other camp in the Left?” asked Marcelle.

  Dexter replied, “This group, which I believe includes Alexis Léger, your friend Suzanne’s boss at the foreign ministry, believes that the cornerstone of French policy should be its alliance with Great Britain. France and Great Britain then present a unified front at the League of Nations in Geneva. Collective security is used to contain Germany.”

  “Where does Italy fit into this calculation?” asked Marcelle.

  Dexter sighed and said, “Here is where it gets tricky. France wants to keep Italy in the Stresa Front and present Great Britain, France, and Italy as a unified trio against Hitler. France seems willing, how shall we say it, to accommodate Italy on Ethiopia.”

  Marcelle parried, “Ethiopia is a distant African country. It could have easily wound up as a European colony already if it had not been overlooked in the big land grabs of the last century.”

  Dexter countered, “Actually, the Ethiopians whipped the Italians at Adowa forty years ago and threw them out. It still sticks in the throat with the Italians, I guess, or Mussolini is just using it as pretext for a new imperial adventure.”

  Marcelle good-naturedly said, “I had better not continue or I am liable to say something.”

  Dexter laughed.

  Marcelle now pushed forward a provocative gambit, “If Italy attacks Ethiopia, and Great Britain and France, through the League of Nations, impose sanctions, where would the United States be, Mr. Diplomat?”

  Dexter looked at her bleakly, “Now I am the one who might say something.”

  Marcelle laughed and drove home her point, “I saw that your Congress passed a Neutrality Act last week and that President Roosevelt intends to sign it.”

  Dexter replied, “The American voters are very much against getting involved with what they call ‘Old World quarrels.’”

  Marcelle smiled, almost wickedly Dexter thought, and riposted, “Most observers think that American policy will preclude arms to Ethiopia but not industrial materials to Italy. Even-handed in principle, very one-sided in effect. One can imagine people saying that Yankee principle stands aside for the Yankee dollar.”

  Dexter smiled in warm appreciation at Marcelle’s ability to turn his charming little lecture on European politics on its head. He smoothly replied, “Commercial interests are very powerful in the United States,” and he paused and smiled at her, “as they are in France.”

  She looked at him, quite primly, and graded his answer, “Very good.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Dexter stopped and said, “Here we are.” He held his hand out and guided Marcelle into the somewhat rundown print shop. They were greeted by the raucous noise of boisterous people drinking wine and engaged in loud conversation.

  Dexter guided Marcelle into the thronging crowd, many of the writers and editors turning and giving Dexter a familiar wave and welcoming smile.

  “How do you know these people?” asked Marcelle.

  “I met a lot of them at the basement bar of the Hotel Pont Royal. Then I just sort of mixed in. My flat is right across the street from the hotel.”

  “Near the café where we met today?”

  “A couple of doors down on rue du Bac.”

  She smiled sardonically. “Not very diplomatic.”

  He asked a question, “Should I be over on the Right Bank with the wealthy Americans?” Then he gave the classic Left Bank answer to his question. “I’m told that the life of the mind can’t cross the Seine.”

  She laughed. “Ah yes, another piece of sidewalk wisdom from the habitués of the boulevard cafés on the Left Bank.”

  Dexter and Marcelle approached a couple and Dexter said, “André,” and the man turned, “let me introduce my friend Marcelle. Marcelle, this is André Chamson and his wife, the writer Lucie Mazuric.”

  André Chamson extended his hand, “Enchanté.”

  His wife extended her hand and added her greeting.

  Dexter added, “Marcelle is a redactrice at the ministry of labor.”

  Marcelle glanced at Dexter with a look to say no more.

  Dexter said to Marcelle, “André serves as a political aide to Édouard Daladier when he holds ministerial office. Meanwhile he edits the paper Vendredi,” referring to the party newspaper of the Radical Socialist party.

  Chamson, searching his memory, looked inquiringly at Marcelle. “Do you have business at the Matignon often?”

  Marcelle sighed, looked at Dexter, and smiled. “Yes, I am on temporary assignment there.”

  Chamson brightened. “I see.” He turned to Dexter. “We on the outside guess at policy; she,” and he nodded at Marcelle, “gets to see the decisions being made that drive the events.”

  Lucie Mazuric was charmed by Marcelle’s admission. “Someday you must write a book.”

  Marcelle was momentarily taken aback. “Why no. I could never do that. It would be to betray a trust.”

  Lucie replied, “Oh, but what intriguing things you could say. A manuscript is circulating,” and she circled her head to take in the whole Left Bank publishing world, “from a young diplomat just back from Athens. Bitingly delicious.”

  Dexter laughed and said, “Even I have heard about that one,” and he turned and said in low voice to Marcelle, “he says that the French girls in the houses in Athens told him that their ‘fall,’ such as it was, came from being debouched at home while the finishing touches were added at the convent.”

  Lucie flippantly added, “And that is just the start. In Athens they do nothing else but…”

  Chamson laughed. “It will of course be a best seller.”

  Marcelle laughed and looked with great amusement at Dexter. “Oh, Suzanne has already told me those tales.” And
Marcelle, mimicking Dexter’s low voice, said conspiratorially to Lucie, “She is my friend at the Quai d’Orsay.”

  Marcelle then said, straightening up, “I am the daughter of a good French family and,” looking at Chamson, “the daughter of this French soil. I read the text of your speech at the Palais de la Mutualité last month. I loved it.”

  Chamson smiled at the compliment. Then Marcelle looked teasingly at Dexter. “And as for you, I was a day student at the convent. My education remains incomplete.”

  Dexter gave a playful frown. Chamson laughed and Lucie giggled. “Dexter has met someone fun.”

  Marcelle soothingly asked Lucie, “Is there such a thing as a discreet memoir?”

  “None that sell!” Lucie replied.

  Marcelle smiled, “C’est parfait!”

  The cloud of smoke floated past Dexter’s face and he turned to find himself standing beside André Malraux gesticulating to a small group, a cigarette dangling from his lips, a dark shock of hair across his forehead, and emphatically pronouncing, “The objective is to be anti-Fascist.”

  A man in the group countered, “But to be anti-Fascist you have to be Communist. Moscow leads the attack against the counter-revolutionaries.”

  Malraux was quick on the reply. “No. Both democracy and communism are universal. Fascism is not. Democracy can ally with one, but not the other.”

  Another voice agreed, “André is right. Nazism is nationalistic and particular in its hatreds against individuals.”

  A second voice chimed in, “The Left does not need to be all Communist. Gide said that he could be deeply internationalist while remaining deeply French.” All the heads nodded in profound agreement.