by Hedi Kaddour
De Vèze is fifty-five, but it’s only now that he notices that he is a fifty-year-old man, your sixth decade a woman friend pointed out to him, even if you’ve given up wearing braces you are a man of mature years, he’s not thinking straight, he looks down on the Seine, Paris, the water of the river, it has this green colour, it’s weary too, the light scatters sparkles on it when a gust of wind blows against the current, Vassilissa hasn’t written, de Vèze pauses uncertainly as he looks at the Seine, he invariably has a moment of uncertainty when he goes for a walk along the quais.
Shall it be the booksellers on the right? Or the quieter way to the left, towards Passy and the île aux Cygnes?
He has nothing to read at the moment, he has many books in his flat but not one he feels like opening before going to sleep, such as Capitaine Fracasse or The Count of Monte-Cristo, a ripping yarn, nothing depressing, or how about a biography? it would have to be well written, with some thought in it.
He opts for the booksellers and turns right along the quais in the direction of the National Assembly, he’s just received three invitations to dine with old wartime comrades but he’s not taken in, all he has left are memories, he’s like a stopped watch, which can make you do silly things.
He walks along the quais, another marble plaque on a parapet: it commemorates one of his best friends, Varin de La Brunnelière of the 1st Chad Foot, volunteered at eighteen, killed a hundred metres from the Place de la Concorde, gold letters on a white background, de Vèze reminds himself that he still has a few acquaintances hereabouts, on marble plaques, the same thought that occurred to his old friend Hatzfeld the day they walked up towards Belleville, Roland Hatzfeld, a communist, but not a card-carrier, or if he did have a card no one knew, a fellow-traveller as the expression went, a big lawyer with his feet under many tables, had chambers on the île Saint-Louis though he still lives in the same part of Belleville where there’s hardly a street where a Kherlakian or a Leibowitz wasn’t murdered by the Nazis.
During their walk, Hatzfeld had stopped several times at plaques, the old pals circuit he’d said, then they’d sat down together in an Algerian coffee shop, not big, with stools, and ordered baklavas, honey, ground almonds, real puff pastry, the proprietor had made a point of coming over to say hello to Hatzfeld.
‘The most important element is the puff pastry,’ said Hatzfeld, ‘it should retain its bite beneath the honey, crunchy but not hard, baklava keeps for two days maximum, after that you’ve been had, I trust them here, and they don’t use chickpeas or hazelnuts instead of almonds.’
With one hand Hatzfeld motioned to the streets outside along which they’d just walked:
‘You see, the Resistance was like Marxism: lots of Jews and dagos.’
‘Yes,’ said de Vèze, licking his fingers, ‘but there were aristocrats too, Boyer de La Tour, du Chastellar, and there was that man Robin de Margueritte who passed you your orders in 1944, they’ve got plaques too, down on the quais by the Seine.’
‘Much grander, but on German posters our lot were scum, and we were proud of it, we wouldn’t have changed places for a king’s ransom, even if there are high-minded people nowadays who accuse the Party of sending us out to get killed.’
‘I was sent out to be killed too, every day,’ said de Vèze, ‘they do say that’s what war’s all about.’
‘You have to have been through it,’ concluded Hatzfeld.
When they left the coffee shop, de Vèze laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder, he squeezed it as he walked along by his side. Hatzfeld is the sole surviving member of a family of sixteen. After a moment, de Vèze asked:
‘Your Algerian friend, is he in the Party?’
Hatzfeld, why not give Hatzfeld a ring, go back and eat more baklavas? De Vèze walks along the quais towards Notre-Dame, here are the first booksellers after the Place de la Concorde.
A short while ago, at the Quai d’Orsay, in the middle of all that handshaking, he’d been given a specific order, it came from the President, it had been passed on by the Minister: a month before going back to his posting, the President is only too happy about this, he thinks it will hang over the Soviets the threat of a recall of the French Ambassador, the fact is that Monsieur de Vèze is remaining in Paris, for talks, no, he hasn’t been recalled, not officially, but we do not know whether or not he might also take a spell of leave, you know, life in Moscow isn’t all that restful, yes, vital to maintain our great friendship but not, my dear fellow, at any price.
De Vèze walks along the quais and starts thinking about maybe a trip to Singapore, a short pilgrimage, a journey back to the sixties, to that evening in the villa, he wants to see it all again, why does he feel this so strongly? A colonial black-and-white villa bought from the English which was used as an annexe for the French consulate, the gleaming black of dominos on the façade basking in late afternoon sunshine bouncing the white back at the tropical green of the garden, the admirable pitch of the red-tiled roof and the huge living room displaying its collection of mahogany furniture to the plants in the garden, with a veranda where the table has already been set, white tablecloth, Sarreguemines plates, blue pattern; above the table there is a delicate chandelier, when lit it casts an indulgent glow over people’s faces.
What de Vèze remembers particularly is the surprise he’d felt that evening, in 1965, he’d come specially from his posting at Rangoon, he’d travelled to Singapore specifically to say hello to a man he had always admired.
And instead, he’d met another man altogether, unexpected, genial, with big ears, who’d flung those words at him: ‘The Great Adventure is buggered!’
On the quais, de Vèze has passed the Pont Royal, is approaching the Pont des Arts, suddenly he turns and retraces his steps, a moment ago he spotted a book in one of the booksellers’ boxes, the title had caught his eye, he can’t recall it now, a yarning sort of title, an author who wrote of faraway places, the sort of book that makes you want to pack a bag and go, or write something yourself, just the thing you want when you’re on holiday, the volume was displayed face up, on the extreme left-hand side of one of the book boxes, who was it by? Not Pierre Loti, de Vèze passes along the boxes, who on earth is going to buy all those German newspapers published during the Occupation? no not a book by Morand either, Kessel maybe, there’d been only two booksellers with anything by Kessel, de Vèze retraces his steps, slaloming through the tourists, comes to a halt before the cover of a volume wrapped in cellophane, Wagon-lit, that was the title, and the name of the author guarantees that it won’t be another Madonna of the Sleeping-Cars, Kessel, a name to reckon with.
Tonight, in his hotel room, de Vèze will have what he needs to go roaming, a big book, wide-open spaces, no big words, pace, but check first, the bookseller is rather unhelpful, he refuses to remove the cellophane, that’s three times today I’ve been asked, it’s a first edition, keep opening them and books get damaged, and the pages aren’t cut, anything by Kessel you snap up, oh go on then, I’ll open it for you, de Vèze doesn’t care for the man, he leaves him to it and walks on, then he remembers that the book he’d seen hadn’t been wrapped in cellophane.
He looks for the other bookseller, there it is, Wagon-lit, and it’s half the price, and the pages have been cut.
A few metres from him, the bookseller is busy, he’s talking about another author to a customer, a woman, yes, I’ve a copy of the first edition, de Vèze tries to overhear the conversation, blare of car horns, the swish of a bus passing along the quais, I paid five hundred old francs for it, the cover was badly damaged, roar of a passing motorcycle, did you know it was turned down by Gide no less? Which is why it was privately published, it has a dedication, I had it rebound for my own collection, I’ve kept it, sometimes I run my finger over the dedication.
De Vèze opens Wagon-lit, yes, an account of a long journey across Europe, going east, the Gare du Nord, one evening on a whim, Paris, Cologne, Berlin, Olsztyn, Siauliai, Riga, beyond, just took off, a woman, yonder, de Vèze re
ads: ‘I felt the thrill of the fever, the frenzy, the wild call, gradually fill me, grip me, swamp me.’
No way! all those kilometres and what you get is shop girl effusions and words that come in threes, and that ‘wild call’, at this point the author has reached Riga but the phrase hasn’t left Paris, de Vèze thinks he’s not being fair, he looks for something more succulent, turns Kessel’s pages with childish anticipation, he’d really like to go travelling with this book, ‘as if she were regaining consciousness, a fierce fold formed in the space between her eyebrows’, he holds the book in his hand, ‘fierce fold formed’, two thousand kilometres for a fierce fold to form, he puts the book down, his eyes fill with tears, you can’t count on anybody, a Minister, a plumber, months of madness ahead.
He doesn’t feel like reading any more, he’s had a bellyful of booksellers, he turns and walks back, still following the quais, finds himself back opposite the Place de la Concorde, thinks about crossing the bridge, he doesn’t care for the Champs-Élysées, he stays on the left bank, quickens his step as he walks past his Ministry, carries on as far as the Pont de l’Alma, then, drawing level with the Eiffel Tower, the Pont d’Iéna, just at the start of the bridge is a small fair, with a merry-go-round framed by two rearing horses, each on a plinth, loudspeakers blaring the song ‘Ah, le petit vin blanc’, the horses in rows of three rise and fall along their axis as the merry-go-round turns, then ‘Ah, le petit vin blanc’ is followed by ‘La Mer’.
Between the rows of horses are two elephants with seats for tiny tots, the horses are hideous, cream and gilt with manes that are variously brown, green, blue, purple, one of the tots is accompanied by his mother, he is crying, he wants to get off, the merry-go-round revolves; among the horses is a donkey, just the one, the ticket office advertises a free cuddly toy for anyone buying six tickets. There is also Snack-Go-Round which sells everything, popcorn, Belgian waffles, frites, ice-cream, two-scoop cornets, beef tea, candy-floss, crêpes, sausages: two cherubs float above the till. Next to it is a gift-and-souvenir stall which sells Eiffel Towers in various sizes, plus key-rings, scarves, spoons, ash-trays, paper-knives and pens, all with the Eiffel Tower on them. There is also a man selling roast chestnuts.
De Vèze does not linger, he looks over towards the other end of the Pont d’lena where the Palais de Chaillot rises, on the left, he crosses the Pont d’Iéna.
He reaches the other side: an even bigger roundabout, a two-tier merry-go-round, the horses are superior, the colours less gaudy, there’s no donkey but there is a black horse, night is falling, there’s no one on the upper tier, de Vèze strides up to the ticket office, buys a ticket, waits until the previous ride has finished, leaps boldly and decisively up the stairs to the top deck, loudspeakers are playing ‘Ah, le petit vin blanc’, de Vèze is up there all by himself, Paris spins around him, the decorated façade of the Palais de Chaillot, the ornamental pool, the roofs, the trees, the Seine, the pool again and the bas-reliefs, the bridge, the Tower, he feels good.
In Paris, the good times have returned, listening devices disguised as transistors, the whole business has left everyone feeling relieved, France had been caught out by machines, but there weren’t any moles, moles were for the English and the Germans.
In the land of Joan of Arc, the native breed remained untainted.
After a six-week leave, de Vèze flew back to Moscow, a smile on his face, in the end he did not go on his pilgrimage to Singapore as planned, someone had told him that the black-and-white villa had been sold.
In Moscow he began seeing Vassilissa again, quite openly, de Vèze never hid any aspect of his private life, it means he doesn’t have to answer questions put to him by underlings or short-arsed bantams, he notes everything in his desk diary, and makes no bones in doing so, entries that read ‘visit from Mademoiselle Soloviev’, or ‘out with Mademoiselle Soloviev’, often writing ‘ma demoiselle’ as two separate words, in the diary which after all is an official record, quite deliberately, hide nothing, you don’t get bothered that way, Vassilissa is tall, blonde, a mathematician whose field is non-commutative algebras, niece of a marshal, no less, who has a seat on the Central Committee, that’s the main reason why they are left alone, Vassilissa has brisk movements and a tight little bottom.
No one except Berthier has ever dared raise this subject with de Vèze. How would you do it? A man with a record like his is untouchable, the minute you ask him a question which he himself has not prompted, he looks straight at you, and you feel he is about to ask what the hell you did between 1940 and 1944, not in 1945 when there were already too many on the bandwagon, he has time only for survivors who were in it from the very start, like him, and when they send him a survivor who speaks to him candidly, the said survivor limits himself to making some trivial observation, because you don’t treat a man like de Vèze as some minion.
Yes, things are beginning to look up, but you can’t act yet, you’ll have to wait until he does something stupid, he doesn’t do that often, even this girl he has in Moscow, it’s not very prudent, she does maths, knows all about non-commutative algebras, you never know, anyhow that sort of thing’s just not done, and the Russians seem as wrongfooted as we are, but everything’s clear and above board, that’s their strength, they do something that’s quite outrageous and never try to cover it up.
If the girl had picked up a low-level cultural attache, she’d already be an inmate at Magadan, or at least at Yakutsk, alternatively Paris would have settled for recalling the cultural attaché, but as things stand she can look all and sundry right in the eye, it might be worth trying to make life hard for her because she’d slept with a hero of the Second World War, and the Russians know that if they ask for de Vèze to be recalled he won’t be replaced by a Gaullist, Gaullists are an endangered species, so they prefer to hang on to him, de Gaulle might have called him in and said:
‘Ha, de Vèze, go to it: to bed!’
But de Gaulle isn’t around any more, anyway, who knows, he might just have muttered ‘de Vèze? he’s just doing what men do’, and left it at that.
De Vèze and Vassilissa see each other Wednesdays and Saturdays, they prefer Saturdays.
Wednesdays are lively, they use de Vèze’s flat in the Embassy, Vassilissa knows she’s there for only a couple of hours, she wastes no time getting into bed, she has given de Vèze a present, a small painting in the naive style which she personally nailed to his bedroom wall, it shows a couple of closely paired dolphins leaping the waves, she expends her energies directly, once she told de Vèze:
‘If you want to know all about men, first you must wear them out.’
Saturdays are different, they can go off to the little house Vassilissa has in the country, it’s not the same Vassilissa as on Wednesdays, one thing de Vèze really likes about the house is the wall bed, mattress a bit soft, a king-size duvet made of real feathers, but Vassilissa says: no, walkies first.
The wood is full of birch and sweet chestnut and is very old and overrun by bushes, but it blends the light into varied hues of gold and ash.
They walk along the course of a winding stream as far as the small spring where it starts, they pass anglers who start scowling and muttering as they walk by, they startle pigeons which splash through the pools in the middle of the path, and cats out stalking field-mice, they reach the spring, a barely audible gurgle of tiny bubblings which break through the turf close by an outcrop of velvety black roots.
They look around them, their eyes are soon reeling with the water, the sands, the reflections of branches and the sun, they stay there for some time, it all seems so uncomplicated, the grey of the iron-ore which changes to red, the surface of the water which sometimes gleams with rainbow colours.
‘No, it’s not oil, Mister Know-all, it’s the composition of the ore, I’ll explain, I love being able to explain things to you from time to time.’
The water laps low, a rustle of birdwing. A silence deep in the foliage holds everything together. On their way back, they p
ick sour but edible blackberries.
They have their slow times, de Vèze likes watching Vassilissa wash, he fetches water from the pump, he heats it, pours it into the cistern, a more than rudimentary shower, not much more than a trickle of water, Vassilissa laughs a lot and uses de Vèze to hang her towel on. Sometimes it happens that they spend a Saturday night in the house, they have a little time, de Vèze kisses the back of Vassilissa’s heels then as he works upwards sometimes he hums two lines of a song they’d heard in some friends’ house when the children were being put to bed, he only remembers these two lines, they don’t rhyme, ‘there is a jolly butterfly, it’s like a flow’r that blows’, Vassilissa lowers her hand, strokes his hair, it makes her tingle and she smiles because de Vèze sings slightly off key.
On Sunday mornings, de Vèze is woken by the squeak of the handle of a coffee mill being turned, he gets up, Vassilissa holds the coffee mill steady between her legs, he tells her that in another life…
‘I know,’ she says, ‘you’d like to be a coffee mill in this house, but sometimes my aunt has first call on it.’
As soon as the weather turns warm, they hear the sound of birdsong through the blind. No one disturbs them, it’s their gingerbread house, they are left alone, the days of Stalin are over, de Vèze is a big boy now, relations between France and Russia have always been special, de Vèze is a Gaullist, the uncle of the said Vassilissa Soloviev is a marshal, a hero of the Soviet Union, Stalingrad, storm troops; that must be it, that accounts for the affection the Marshal has for de Vèze: how did you throw grenades at a panzer? Toss them into the tracks or push them through a slit in the turret? Which is worse, sand or snow?