by Michel D
‘Right at this moment, Fascist Italy has not seen fit to serve us lunch and I’m ravenous.’
They bought bread, ham and two apples, which they ate sitting on the edge of the fountain of Neptune in Piazza Navona. Rome was gently dozing. The street vendors, sitting in the shade, daydreamed behind their stalls of watermelons, filled rolls and ice cream. Two girls, so alike that they must be sisters, came and sat on the lip of the fountain, laughing and dangling their dusty feet in the cold water. They were not particularly pretty, and had that yellowish complexion that was common among the city’s workers, but they were happy and when they laughed they showed teeth as fine and healthy as their free, young figures under their loose cotton smocks. The friends gave them their apples, which they accepted straight away and bit into, still laughing. After a superficial exchange, the girls jumped down with a cheerful ‘Arrivederci’ that ruled out any idea of following them. In any case Jean was no longer able to walk, for his feet had been burnt by the asphalt of the streets and the pavements’ flagstones. He needed to find a pair of sandals at all costs. When sandals had been bought, the friends counted the money they had left: enough to feed themselves with bread and salami for a week and sleep under the stars.
‘You ought to ask your consulate for help,’ Ernst said. ‘And some papers to get yourself out of Italy.’
At the consulate Jean was only able to speak to a thin-lipped young official who looked him up and down with an expression of profound contempt. How dare he present himself in such a holy place with bare legs and his shirt undone to the waist?
‘Papers? Who says your name is really Jean Arnaud? Do you have any witnesses?’
‘I only have my friend Ernst, a German.’
‘A German! Are you making fun of me?’
‘What can I do then?’
‘I shall write to Paris and ask them to make enquiries at your town hall at …’
‘Grangeville, Seine-Maritime.’
‘As soon as I have an answer, I’ll draw up a provisional paper for you.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Now you really are joking. A week’s time, at the very least. Allow ten days to avoid disappointment.’
‘In ten days I’ll have died of hunger.’
The young man raised his arms to the heavens. Consulates were not charitable institutions. Jean studied him without rancour, with iron in his soul. His last hope had faded. This testy, disdainful consular official symbolised the first of his encounters with the world of administration. He looked more closely at him: flabby around the neck, a shiny nose on which sat horn-rimmed spectacles, a suit of beige tussore set off by a loud tie, a podgy hand wearing a signet ring with two intertwined initials. The initials restored some of Jean’s composure. He remembered a sarcastic remark of Monsieur de Malemort’s once about a bourgeois who, lacking a coat of arms, had sported similar initials on his signet ring.
‘You heard what I said,’ the young man said. ‘Come back in ten days’ time.’
‘Has no one ever told you that it’s bad taste to wear a signet ring engraved with initials?’ Jean asked, in such a faraway tone of voice that he was surprised himself, as though the remark came from someone else.
‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘You heard very well what I said. Goodbye, Monsieur.’
‘Get out of here, you cheeky wretch!’
‘No one can tell me to get out of a place where I have a perfect right to be.’
‘You don’t have the right to insult me.’
He had stood up, scarlet with fury, strangled by his starched collar. Another mistake, Jean thought, noticing that he was barely more than five foot tall. Behind a desk he could maintain the illusion; upright, he was to be pitied.
‘I ask you kindly to get out!’ he yelled.
A secretary opened the door, alerted by the raised voices.
‘What’s happening, Monsieur?’
‘Nothing. In ten days’ time this man will return to see if we have received an answer about his papers. Now leave me, I need to work.’
The secretary kept the door open for Jean, who walked from the room, smiling at the woman. She looked at him with anxiety. Her hair was grey but fine and soft, and she had gentle eyes.
‘You’ve had your money and your papers stolen, haven’t you?’ she said, in a pretty singsong accent.
‘Yes, Madame.’
‘Poor boy! How could someone do that to you? People truly are too bad. In Rome?’
‘No, at Ostia.’
‘It makes me feel ashamed. I’m Italian, married to a Frenchman. Will you let me help you?’
She picked up her bag from the table and took out a fifty-lire note. Tears had welled in her eyes.
‘I can’t say anything, I’m his secretary … but I’d feel I was helping to right a wrong if you would accept. I have a son like you. He travels too, and I would be awfully sad if something like this happened to him …’
‘I’ll send you the money as soon as I get back to France, if you’ll give me your name and address.’
She gave them to him, and he went out into the street to find Ernst, who was waiting with his bicycle.
‘No papers,’ Jean said. ‘Just fifty lire that the secretary lent me because she took pity on me. I was treated like a dog.’
He recounted the consular official’s welcome.
‘You see,’ Ernst said, ‘if something like that happened to me at a German consulate I would immediately denounce the man to the party.’
‘Denounce? No, that’s too disgusting. You don’t do that!’
‘Why not? He’s a saboteur. You would be doing your country and your party a service.’
‘There isn’t one party in France, there are thirty-six … Listen, Ernst, we don’t think the same things, and even so we’re great, and true, friends. Right now I only have one thing I want to do: to get to the border. After that I’ll manage on my own …’
‘Then you need to find a car or a truck to take you to Ventimiglia. Let’s get out of Rome.’
They walked to the edge of the city, and at the Florence road stopped next to a petrol pump. They waited two hours before a truck stopped. The driver poked a superb head, shaved like a Roman gladiator’s, out of the window.
‘Dove vai?’ he asked.
‘Francia.’
‘Anche io. Francese?’
‘Sì, sì, Francese.’
‘Allora, monta!’
Jean only had time to say his goodbyes to Ernst and promise to write to him.
‘I thought of a present for you to remember me by,’ Ernst said. ‘You’ve got nothing left, so take my Italienische Reise. One day perhaps Goethe will be your companion, as he is my father’s. You’re more like my father than you are like me, and Goethe could have been a French writer if he hadn’t chosen, when he was twenty, to write in German.’
‘Thank you, Ernst. I’ll take it, and when I get home I’ll send you a Stendhal.’
‘Goodbye, old Hans.’
‘Goodbye, old Ernst.’
They shook hands vigorously, and Jean climbed up to sit next to the driver, who spoke a little French.
‘Anda de baggages?’
‘No baggage. Everything was stolen.’
‘Porca Madonna! All righta, tomorrow nighta you will be in your country. Ligha me a cigaretta. My name eez Stefano. Yours?’
‘Jean.’
‘Jean, Gino! Bravo. Andiamo.’
Stefano let the clutch in and Jean watched his friend’s sorrowful face. But at seventeen there are no adieus. Life’s road is long, and you believe it will be paved with reunions.
Between Rome and the border he lit a good thirty cigarettes for Stefano, who drove his heavy truck like the devil, stopping every six hours to sleep for a few minutes, his hairy arms folded across the steering wheel. He spoke little, sang a lot, switching often from Italian to Tino Rossi’s French ballads. At the border he hid Jean behind a crate. It was seven in the evening as they drove throug
h Menton. Jean asked to be dropped there.
‘No, my young friend. You are ‘ungry. You ‘ava no money. Come to my girlfriend’s.’
They took the high corniche road, and a while later Stefano pulled up outside a restaurant with a striking sign: Chez Antoine. Mireille Cece had recognised the sound of his engine. She was standing on the doorstep.
8
The author wishes to express a purely personal feeling: that it is sad to have abandoned young Ernst in the previous chapter, to leave him to go on towards his dreadful destiny. Yes, it is undeniable that from the autumn of 1939 onwards this young man will sow death all around him, but he will be repeating a lesson he has been taught, and without that lesson that subjugated so many souls in the young Germany, victorious at the recent Olympiad, victorious in the diplomatic sphere, and soon victorious militarily throughout Europe, without that lesson he would doubtless have been a romantic young man with a heart after his own father’s. He was being readied to perform the role of a robot, and the robot would only break when it faced the revelation of the extent of the disaster it had helped to create. Adieu then, Ernst, of whom we will perhaps speak once or twice more without glimpsing again that face of a young Germanic god, with his straw-coloured hair, blue eyes and prominent cheekbones. To console us, though, here is Mireille Cece, of all unexpected people, standing in the doorway of her restaurant in a red dress with white polka dots. She throws her arms around Stefano’s neck. In the balance she would not weigh heavily beside Ernst. The moral balance, I mean. But much as the young man’s dogmatic idealism still possesses a certain charm – a naïve charm – so her carnivorous realism is impressive. Her unfortunate experience with the customs officer has not cured her. At the same time as keeping up enthusiastic and disinterested relations with Stefano, whose hairy chest and powerful thighs trigger an almost ecstatic frenzy in her, she has found a successor to Antoine, indeed gone one better than a mildly libidinous sugar daddy: an amorous prefect, who ensures that his gendarmes turn a blind eye to her small-scale smuggling. She is thirty-three and her vine-shoot look is at its peak. Sinewy, swarthy, almost flat-chested, restlessly in motion, she is not one of those voluptuous creatures between whose bottom and breasts some men love to lose themselves. On the other hand, there is not one eligible bachelor who, passing within range, fails to guess what flame keeps her warm. I feel that we are edging towards the trivial, that we would do better not to elaborate, and merely limit ourselves to six words: in bed Mireille is a bomb. She has lost her girlish softnesses, to the benefit of her feminine confidence. Her black hair, tied back, severely frames her taut, lively face and large, constantly sparkling black eyes. All the more sparkling now that Stefano has hardly taken her in his arms and she can already feel through her light dress how badly he needs her. And then there is Jean, in an open shirt and a pair of shorts too short for him, standing on the roadside, wondering if he still exists. Fortunately Stefano is a true friend, one who knows how to master his emotions.
‘Mireille,’ he said, ‘Gino eeza French friend. He eez ‘ungry and I wanta you to find ’im a bed for de nighta.’
Mireille opened her eyes and caught sight of Jean, looking gauche and embarrassed. Her immediate thought was that he was handsome, and then that something could be done for him.
‘Come with me,’ she said.
Jean’s tiredness was so great that, having wolfed down some dinner, he collapsed onto a camp bed that had been put up in the pantry and only awoke the next day when Mireille appeared in a dressing gown with a steaming bowl of coffee.
‘Stefano has gone,’ she said. ‘He told me what happened to you. You can write to your parents from here. Where do they live?’
‘Near Dieppe.’
‘Do they have a telephone?’
‘No, it would be difficult, but perhaps they can send me a postal order. While I’m waiting I’m going to look for work.’
‘Work? There’s plenty here. You can help in the kitchen.’
And so there is Jean, washing dishes in a restaurant. It is surprising that Mireille, a simple soul, did not ask the question, ‘Near Dieppe? Do you know an Antoine du Courseau?’ but she had never left the Alpes-Maritimes, and the name Dieppe meant little to her. We should add that Antoine had never revealed his real surname either. She had taken him to be a commercial traveller, a good father and husband, generous, although protective of his anonymity. In any case it was ancient history, and since the unmasking of the customs officer plenty of vigorous lovers had shared her bed, erasing the memory of her first benefactor.
The restaurant was full every evening. They came from Menton, from La Turbie and Monaco, to sample a selection of Provençal and Italian recipes. Mireille no longer cooked herself. She had taken on a chef from Marseille who, after two nights in her bed, had shown himself to be the most obedient of slaves. This man, a former infantry marksman, had the fortunate ability to drown his jealousy in streams of pastis. He stood over the stoves, his eyes bloodshot, glass in hand, utterly indifferent to everything that was happening around him. The waitresses called him Tomate, a witty distortion of his real name, Thomas, because he cooked nothing without tomato sauce. Jean appeared one day through a haze of pastis, and he took no more notice of him than of a new cat in the kitchen. Jean himself was given the very humble task of scouring the pans. The day after his arrival, he wrote to his mother.
Dear Maman, I’m writing to you from Roquebrune, a pretty little village in the Alpes-Maritimes near the Italian border, where I have just arrived after my excellent journey to Italy. I’ve found a job which will allow me to get back home before very long. Actually, at Ostia near Rome I had a bit of bad luck: my bike was stolen, along with my papers and all the money I had left for the return journey. Thanks to a German friend, and then an Italian truck driver, I managed to get as far as the border. So do not worry if I’m away a bit longer than you expected, I’m only making enough money to get home. Reassure Papa too. With warmest love from your
Jean
PS. I received the papal blessing at Saint Peter’s and thought of you very much at that moment.
He posted the letter that evening before dinner and took up his position at the sink, bare-chested, having washed his only shirt. Mireille inspected the kitchen and said a few words to him. He found her curt and bossy, now that Stefano had left for Italy again. But a few days later, writing to Joseph Outen and having told him the Ostia story, he added:
… I’m not unhappy to have a job washing dishes. All the great businessmen started by selling newspapers or shining shoes. I scour pans under the glassy stare of a certain Tomate. It’s not very instructive, but in my situation I don’t have the right to ask for too much. With my first week’s pay I bought a shirt, a pair of trousers, a comb and a toothbrush. It was my return to the human condition. Unfortunately I have nothing to read apart from Goethe’s Italian Journey and, since I don’t understand a word of German, it would be the torture of Tantalus if dear Ernst hadn’t already put me off by reading some extracts to me. Be kind and let me cadge a book or two from you. I promise to pay you back when I get richer.
The patronne is a very strange woman. A real volcano. Not my type at all. I like them slender and distinguished for affairs of the heart, or nice and plump for a fling.
I read in L’Auto that our eight got thrashed at Mâcon: fourth out of five. What ignominy! As soon as I go away it’s a catastrophe. Wait for me to get back, if you want to avoid making yourselves a laughing stock. Every morning when I wake up I treat myself to 200 press-ups. What could be better?
Your friend,
Jean
The second letter to Joseph Outen, ten days later, shows the subsequent course of events.
Dear Joseph, thank you for the books. Such a sarcastic parcel is just what I’d expect from you. The Physiology of Taste and the recipes of Alexandre Dumas! But I’ve had it up to here with kitchens and their smells. My hair and skin are slowly becoming impregnated with garlic and tomatoes. When I get out of
here I’m going to need a lavender bath to get rid of them. The worst of it is that I haven’t even been allowed to pick up a spoon and stir a sauce. I scour pans, and that’s it. About that I know a lot. In any container used for braising, for example, you end up with a crust that’s unbelievably hard to get off. Wire-wool pads won’t touch it. You have to use your nails. When mine are worn out, they’ll just get rid of me. Unless … too bad, you’ll have to hear everything: the patronne sees me. Until now I was only ever on the sharp end of remarks about my work. Yesterday our eyes met. She looked away. But then Stefano came for two days, and she disappeared with him. The bedroom where they frolic is underneath the pantry. At night I don’t miss a moment of what goes on there. It makes me a bit melancholy. I dream about someone else. Look, it’s fairly excusable, I’m only seventeen, after all. Anyway, to summarise in a word: yes, the patronne sees me. It’s making me shiver already …
Jeanne did not answer her son’s letter. As she said, ‘I’m not very good at writing.’ Albert only wrote to newspapers to insult their leader writers. The abbé Le Couec answered for them. He envied Jean his papal blessing and was not at all surprised to hear his bicycle had been stolen. Hadn’t something very similar happened to him with the theft of two pairs of underpants and a missal? Jean’s parents were well, but they were preparing to leave La Sauveté. The Longuets had entrusted the park to another gardener, a supercilious Parisian who was living with them and waiting for the Arnauds to leave so that he could move into the lodge with his wife, a lady of severe aspect who dressed in black and wore costume ruby earrings. There was no call for Jean to hurry back. His parents expected to find shelter temporarily at Madame du Courseau’s. Jean should work and amass the money for his return journey. Then, at the beginning of November, he could enrol at the law faculty in Rouen or at a technical school. They would discuss it. The abbé Le Couec sent Jean his warmest wishes and advised him not to drink, a vice that could be picked up very easily in a kitchen, where you were always hot.