by Allan Massie
‘You were surprised that I approached you. I was surprised myself, and then I thought, even if he despises me, we’re on the same side now, on account of our conversation in the Café Régent.’
‘Why should you think I despise you?’
‘Because you’re entitled to.’
‘You think so?’
‘Naturally. Since I despise myself, I can’t look for respect from you. I’m not a bad man, at least I don’t believe I am, only a bad because inadequate priest. I took the cloth because I believed doing so would enable me to resist temptation, even to banish it from my thoughts. But of course it didn’t, quite the reverse indeed. The more I suppressed my desires the more fiercely they burned until it seemed that they were consuming me. I came to know that there is no difference, no essential difference between sinning in your imagination and in the flesh. And so I yielded, and you who may never have felt the urgency of such desires presume to judge me.’
Lannes said, ‘I don’t judge you. It’s not my job and I’m content to leave you to your own conscience. We have all done things since 1940 of which we should be ashamed. That’s undeniable, before too as likely as not. Certainly there will be many who will soon assume the right to judge others, if only to escape judgement themselves. It doesn’t greatly interest me. My concern is with the girl Marie-Adelaide, and with what Labiche has done with her. That’s all that interests me. Her grandmother – your parishioner, Father – commissioned me to find her. If you can help me, fine. If you can’t, I see no point in this conversation. Are you Labiche’s confessor by the way?’
‘If I was there’s nothing I could tell you. You must know that, superintendent. But since I’m not, and not in his confidence, then there’s nothing I know. But ask yourself this: is there any reason to suppose the girl wants to be found? From what I have gathered, she has not been subject to any coercion. But, please answer my question: what did the boy Karim tell you about me?’
Lannes lit a cigarette from the stub of his first one.
‘Why should we have spoken about you? What do you think he might have said? You handed him over to Labiche, didn’t you?’
‘Please.’
‘As you like. It was quite simple. He didn’t care for whatever it was you did or wanted him to do. I didn’t ask him what that was.’
‘I spoke to him of sin and the need for sin to be punished, my sin and his sin. The Devil has to be whipped out. Surely you can see that? I’m not a bad man, you know, only a bad because inadequate priest. And then he has such beautiful eyes. You must have remarked them, superintendent, because, whatever you say … I won’t say more except that he spoke of you as his policeman friend in a manner which suggested it was more than friendship.’
‘And that’s what you told Labiche?’
The priest took another sip of his mineral water.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, superintendent, you have never been subjected to blackmail. I’ve no reason to suppose you have. Well, let me say this. Eventually you tell your blackmailer, who is also your torturer, whatever you think he wants to hear. I’ve thought long about these matters. I’ve been compelled to do so. And this is the conclusion I’ve come to: that a bond is formed between the tortured and the torturer, and in the end, what the tortured man comes to feel is something like love. Because the torturer knows the worst of him. Isn’t this how we approach God, how we come to love Him? Because there is nothing hidden from Him, nothing that can be hidden?’
‘I’m not interested in that,’ Lannes said. ‘Metaphysics are beyond me.’
‘Really? Why do you think I guided you to this bar? Because it was where my brother used to come when he was in Bordeaux, my brother whom you knew as Félix, and for whose death I believe you were responsible.’
The priest’s voice trembled as he spoke and in his agitation he knocked over his glass.
Lannes said, ‘It’s hard to know where responsibility for a death lies. I might say you were responsible for that one yourself, since I take it that you directed your brother to the boy Karim when he was in search of an instrument. I know what he did to Karim and to another boy before him, a young Jew, and the consequence of that was that a man – a German officer certainly, but a good enough fellow with some sense of decency and of honour – shot himself. No doubt your brother believed he was acting in the interests of France. Did he bring his death on himself? Were you responsible, Father? Karim didn’t kill him by the way. Nor did I. Your brother, Félix or whatever his name was, was mired in death. Perhaps you loved him, I don’t know. But I tell you this: even those he worked for, even our friend Fabien who belongs to the same organisation as he did, found his death convenient. He had become an embarrassment, you see. As for Karim, he’ll have troubles enough, I’m afraid, in the months ahead. But leave him alone. You’ve done him enough harm, more than enough. And if you want to make amends, help me bring down Labiche.’
VII
Clothilde sat on the couch with Alain’s cat, No Neck, on her knee. She scratched him behind his ear, making him purr happily. She stroked him and wished it was Michel’s hair she was stroking.
‘Poor No Neck,’ she whispered, ‘will you recognise Alain when he comes back. If he comes. Three years, it’s a long time for a cat.’
She had kissed Michel on this couch and said ‘no’ when he sought to go further – ‘no, please’ – and he had obeyed and now she wished he hadn’t. He was her first true love and perhaps they never would. The news of the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler meant that there would be no early peace, no armistice, and Germany would fight to the last man, even the last Frenchman. She remembered the day he left, kissing her tears away, as he promised he loved her and said that he couldn’t love her, couldn’t be worthy of her love, would be ashamed if he didn’t engage in the struggle against Bolshevism. She couldn’t recall what she had said herself. Perhaps she had said nothing, only wept. And did she believe him? She had to, but really she didn’t know. He chose war, not me; it was a thought she couldn’t rid herself of, no matter how she tried to silence the doubting voice.
The doorbell rang. No Neck jumped off her lap.
‘Maurice.’
‘You don’t mind that I come to see you?’
‘Of course not. You’re Dominique’s best friend.’
‘Only that?’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re my friend too. Of course you are. And I’m glad to see you. I’ve been feeling low. No Neck likewise, we’re both pining.’
***
Léon wasn’t sure he should have come. In fact, he was sure he should have said no. A party – a last party? – at the offices of the German Cultural Mission to France, no, he shouldn’t be there. But Chardy had been insistent. ‘It’s an occasion,’ he said, ‘a historic occasion. The Paris wake of the Third Reich, the Thousand Year Reich that has been here in Paris for only a little more than a Thousand Days. It will be something to write about. And you know, my dear, it’s been a remarkable relationship, the best of Germany and the best of France. As Robert said to me the other day, ‘Whatever anyone denies, the truth is we’ve all slept with Germany for four years and for the most part we’ve enjoyed it. It’s enriched our life.’ And he’s right, of course. I could never have written La Maison d’un Reveur otherwise, and it’s not only my best book, but the only one published in Paris since 1939 which tells the bitter-sweet truth about our times.’
So there they were, and a German private soldier, acting as a waiter, was inviting Léon to take a glass of champagne from the tray he was carrying. Good champagne. That was one thing Chardy had taught him; how to tell good wine from bad.
And Heller, the German cultural chief, was indeed charming. He had said how pleased he was to see him – of course he didn’t know who he was or that he was Jewish. But perhaps he wouldn’t have cared. He was a civilised man after all, as Chardy had insisted. And now he was talking and laughing with Robert Brasillach, the most violent of anti-Semites, who wrote disgusting stuff in Je Sui
s Partout, but whom Léon had met several times with Chardy and found gentle and friendly in conversation, likeable and sympathetic indeed. He had even suggested Léon write something for his rag. ‘We don’t have enough contributors of the younger generation, and Chardy has told me you are very intelligent. I’m sure you could give me something good.’ And the terrible thing was, he had been flattered.
Now he stood with his back to the wall, surveying the scene, listening to the buzz of talk around him. They were all people dancing on the thinnest of ice. Even though such news as he had was slanted, there could be no doubt that the Allies would be in Paris in weeks, if not days, and yet Heller’s guests, most of whom had engaged in whole-hearted collaboration, were still capable of laughter. He recognised many of them, friends, or at least acquaintances, of Chardy’s, and he had eaten at the same restaurant tables with several.
Then he became aware that a man on the other side of the room was staring at him: a stocky figure with his light-brown hair cut en brosse. The steady gaze unnerved him. For a moment he couldn’t think why. But then it came to him: La Chope aux Capucines in the Cours du Marne, eating there with Gaston with whom he had spent the evening and who had an hour to wait before his train back to Bergerac; how Gaston had become agitated, even fearful, disturbed by this man at a table on the other side of the room. He had insisted they change places so that he was no longer facing the man who was wearing a heavy overcoat even though it was hot in the café on account of the stove for which there was still fuel in the days of the phoney war. Gaston had asked him more than once if the man was looking at him, and it was clear that he would rather miss his train than risk showing himself to him as he got up to leave. But in fact the man and his companion had left first, and when Léon described the man to Alain’s father, and said that Gaston had seemed frightened by his appearance there and had fobbed off his questions saying he had had an embarrassing encounter with him some years ago, that was all, which he didn’t believe, the superintendent had told him to be careful, not to approach the man if he saw him again, because – Léon remembered his exact words – ‘I rather think you are one of the few people who can identify your friend’s killer.’
And now the man was here, in Paris, staring as if the sight of him had stirred his memory too.
***
When the explosion threw the train off the rails, crashing down an embankment, and the rotting wood of the wagon splintered and it broke up, Alain had found himself tumbling down the slope until his fall was checked by the undergrowth on the fringes of the forest. A moment later, another body had landed on top of him, and when they shook themselves free of each other, he found that it was the young boy who had been muttering Hail Marys in his fear and who was indeed starting to do so again. Alain told him to be quiet, and, to make sure, placed his hand over the boy’s mouth. Then, after listening hard and hearing only shouts of confusion and a couple of shots, followed by a silence broken only by the whispers of the wind in the trees, he took the boy by the hand, and telling him to make as little noise as possible, led him into the forest.
That had been three weeks ago now. They had lain hidden for a day and a night by which time the boy who said he was called Vincent and was indeed only fifteen had begun to recover his nerve. By sheer chance they had stumbled on the group of the Maquis who had effected the derailment, and so they enlisted with them. They were Communists and when one of them said that after the Liberation the first problem would be how to get rid of de Gaulle, Alain forced himself to smile and made no other reply. Vincent said, proudly, that his father was a Communist and it had been in trying to carry a message from him that he had been arrested. Nevertheless Alain knew that they were both viewed with some suspicion, which is why he kept the boy by his side.
Now he was lying watching the movement of a German contingent retreating North.
‘Shouldn’t we fire on them?’
‘They’re going fast enough,’ the man who called himself Colonel Fermier said. ‘We’ll conserve our ammunition for the real enemy.’
***
Jérôme to his dismay found that he had become superfluous. The broadcasts from the Free French station were now full of instructions, no longer of exhortation. And his voice wasn’t deemed right for them. It lacked authority. Whatever qualities he had – one of his superiors had called his tone ‘lyrical’ – weren’t needed now. He had encouraged the youth of France to hope, in talks which he had often been allowed to write himself, though they were of course subject to editing. But now hope had been overtaken by reality. The Germans were retreating, even if by all reports fighting their losing battles grimly, and soon Paris itself would be liberated. Plans were being made for de Gaulle to be there as soon as it was possible in order to set up the Provisional Government and prevent, as everyone in London knew, the Communists from taking over. The question was how quickly the internal Resistance could either be disbanded or incorporated into the regular army and subjected to military discipline. There was much excited argument about this, but it all left Jérôme feeling like a wallflower at the dance. Freddie had been home on a short leave, with stories about the horrors of the Normandy landings, which in his telling weren’t horrors at all – though the look in his eyes contradicted the words he spoke. His mother gave a party to welcome her boy safely back. Jérôme spent the night there with him in his bed, and when Freddie left the next morning to go back to his ship, his mother said, ‘He didn’t tell me the half of it, Froggie, you’d think it was water off a duck’s back to listen to him, and I don’t suppose he told you either what it was really like.’ ‘No, he didn’t,’ Jérôme said, thinking it better not to say how he had woken to find Freddie sitting upright in the bed moaning and shivering. So, instead he just reminded Mrs Spinks that Freddie and he were still planning a time in Paris when it was all over. ‘Gay Paree,’ she said, ‘the pair of you. The larks you’ll get up to, I shouldn’t wonder, not fit for a mother’s ear.’
But now he was at a loose end, spending hours in the Soho pubs, usually alone even when engaged as he often was in conversation. So when Sir Edwin Pringle invited him to his place in the country for the weekend, he was happy to accept.
***
François said, ‘You know, Dominique, despite everything the Marshal is a great man. That’s something that those of us who were in Vichy shouldn’t forget. Without him – and indeed without Laval – things would have gone much worse for the French. Of course it’s going to be impossible for years to say this publicly. He’s going to be humiliated – they’re both going to be humiliated – and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they were put on trial and even sentenced to death. The French have a passion for revenge and in making the Marshal a scapegoat, they’ll excuse themselves for their collaboration and will be able to pretend that they were always engaged in resistance. It will be a necessary lie – that’s one point on which I agree with de Gaulle. But those of us who experienced the sweetness of Vichy shouldn’t reject the memory, even though it will be wise to say nothing about it. You enjoyed your work with the Chantiers, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Dominique said. ‘We loved it, and so did many of the boys in our charge.’
‘Who will, many of them, now be flocking to the Resistance – except for those misguided enough to sign up for the Milice. What a mess it all is, what a glorious mess! And how much repair work there will soon be to be done.’
***
‘If this thing will stop a tank, I’m a Dutchman,’ Corporal Jean said. ‘Remember when they told us the German tanks were made of cardboard. No you’re too young, but we soon found they weren’t in 1940 when, I don’t mind admitting to you, my son, I ran as fast as anyone. But when we go into action this time, there’ll be nowhere to run to.’
‘You think we’re really going to be in real action again soon?’
‘I know we are, with the Ivans in front of us and the Gestapo behind. What are you smiling about, young Michel?’
‘It’s just that I’m happy.
’
‘Or mad. If your girl that you’re keeping yourself for, most nights anyway, could see you now … ’
‘Yes,’ Michel said. ‘But I was also thinking of Count Pierre, the old White Russian who taught me to box, and how he used to speak about Holy Russia.’
‘Holy Russia be damned. There’s nothing holy about the Ivans, my son. Unholy devils, that’s what they are, and don’t you forget it.’
VIII
The Mother Superior was tall, thin, with a beaky nose and beautiful hands. She had kept him waiting in a barely furnished room that was chill as a cellar even though the sun was shining brightly in the city, and now she sat with her hands folded in her lap, and said, ‘I cannot believe I can be of any assistance to you.’
Lannes apologised again for intruding on her. He hesitated, unsure how to begin. He had never felt easy with nuns, couldn’t forget that his father, the free-thinking Radical, had credited them with what even as a boy Lannes could see were improbable powers. All the same his father had had a point. People who shut themselves up in convents or monasteries saw the world in a different way. That was true of priests also, even that wretched Father Paul. He took out the photograph Lucille had given him and handed it to the Mother Superior.
‘It’s some years ago I know,’ he said, ‘but I’m interested in tracing this girl.’
He put his finger on the one who resembled the little girl in that other dreadful photograph sitting naked alongside Labiche.
The nun looked at it, briefly, without evident interest.
‘You must understand, monsieur, all these girls, they came from unfortunate homes, dreadful backgrounds, many the products of sin. Some of them stayed with us for years, till they were almost grown-up indeed. Others were with us for only a short time, till perhaps their family situation had resolved itself. We cared for them to the best of our poor ability, but, though it is a terrible thing to say, a few were beyond help. They were already corrupt. You find that horrifying perhaps? That I should speak of young girls as corrupt? And yet you shouldn’t, superintendent. As a policeman you must know that there are some for whom nothing can be done. No doubt you would express it differently, but there are those who refuse God’s Grace.’