Lieutenant Schreiber's Country

by Andrei Makine

  This is roughly how I presented the project about Jean-Claude’s memories to the publishing houses. My certainty was absolute: such a subject could only garner an immediate, enthusiastic, and almost blissful support. The chance to publish a testament like this comes once every fifty years, as I explained to the first editor I contacted, not even attempting to defend my cause because the value of the future book seemed so obvious to me.

  The refusal was at once hesitant and definitive: “No, you know, the publishing crisis, the drop in sales, the competition with the Internet, of course…. People don’t read anymore … well, they read, but their priorities have changed; the French like things in the lighter genre…. Yes, novels, autofiction especially, exactly, tones that are a little exhibitionist, psychological situations that are a little murky and that remind them, though in a more twisted way, of their own life; sentimental books, too, they want to recognize themselves in the characters, whereas here, with your old soldier, there’s no one they can identify with, and also, readers are, most of all, female, and since women don’t have too much of a fondness for books about war, well … no, this is not a viable project.”

  I left, mentally calling him a prize idiot, a paper seller, a redneck disguised as an intellectual. I believed it to be a simple misunderstanding.

  Yet the people I approached in the days that followed would not prove to be very different in their assessments. The decrease in printings, the interest of readers who go for “trendier” subjects, the “mediazation” of minds, young people who prefer the shininess of the screen to the rustling of pages. Okay, your Lieutenant Schreiber landed in Toulon, liberated Alsace, met de Gaulle … but that was a thousand years ago, my good man! There are subjects that are more current. Who’s going to buy his old memories? If, at least, there was the possibility of some kind of scandal in the general staff, something with espionage, a love story, for example, between a French woman and a German officer … but what you’re talking about, those battles and tanks, it’s really not very sexy.

  I am not exaggerating any part of this; I noted these arguments and, looking back, I don’t find them particularly absurd. Two or three editors refused the project even though they recognized its power. One of them seemed genuinely bothered, as though he felt responsible, in front of the foreigner I was, for the literary reputation of his country and its intellectual heritage: “What do you expect? You can see who our new masters of thought are—the soccer players! We hear them on every station with their vocabulary of thirty words, all used the wrong way. Their trainers are the same. All you have to do is compare the time the media devotes to sports with the scraps that remain for books. And even worse, the French often choose their celebrities from among the athletes, who are usually living in Switzerland.”

  To be honest, I experienced these interviews like sequences of bad dreams. Each time I would tell myself that I was going to wake up, and that the same man who was in the process of burying our project would declare with a wink: “Come on, I’m joking! The idea is extraordinary. And that young soldier, what a life! Let’s talk about the contract.” At no moment did I think that Lieutenant Schreiber’s life wouldn’t be allowed to speak.

  I eventually changed my strategy. At the beginning of the conversation, I would agree wholeheartedly with the editors. Yes, light writing, throwaway novels, the literature of entertainment, authors who prostitute their pens and clutter up the bookstores. Yes, the hard laws of the market, the cretinization of the masses by television series and books that imitate those series. Yes, characters that people like because they legitimize the mediocrity and the lamentable comfort of lukewarm thinking.

  Then I would switch to offense. “Imagine,” I would say, “in the midst of all of the neurotic ectoplasms that are swarming around in the production of novels today, a true literary hero suddenly rises up—no, even better, a real man, who instead of rolling out his navel-gazing platitudes humbly recounts what he has lived; he lived it with the extreme intensity imposed on a soldier by every moment’s deadly risk! His life so close to oblivion, the brotherhood of the defeated, bravery without bright lights, the poignant brevity of love, the wisdom one acquires not by juggling freeze-dried concepts but by saving a comrade under machine gun fire and by offering his tenderness to a woman, that nurse who spent long months holding soldiers back from the edge of the last stair step before death.”

  It was probably the sincerest and the clumsiest way to speak about a future book. In any case, it was wholly ineffective. Not one literary agent wanted it.

  I never shared my disappointments with Jean-Claude. Time would go by, and to conceal one failure after another, I would allude to the insufficiently prestigious catalogue of some editor, the sluggish press office of another. “No, no, Jean-Claude, we absolutely must avoid this one, they won’t be capable of defending your book.” I would win another month. At his age, however, we knew very well what each additional delay could mean.

  I also remember a dinner during which we almost believed we had won our case. “We,” because that night Jean-Claude had decided to come meet the people who, probably, were going to take the future of his memoir in their hands. It was a roundtable designed with success in mind: an editor (honest and truly professional), two attentive and competent journalists (a woman and a man), and the two of us. Everything was going in the right direction: Jean-Claude’s words were carrying, his presence (a handsome old man à la Kirk Douglas) commanded attention, and his story—between his service as an officer and his interviews with de Gaulle—could do nothing but awaken the guests’ curiosity. Yet when it came time to make a decision, plan a date, organize an editing process, the remarks became elusive, delaying, drowning the project in a hypothetical future. I insisted, receiving only reassurances that were even more evasive.

  It was then that Jean-Claude did exactly what needed to be done: he stood up, bade everyone goodbye with concise and dignified courtesy, and left. I should have accompanied him, but I was still hoping to hit the jackpot. The conversation began again with a mixture of relief and discomfort.

  I realized that the situation was delicate: no one around the table was really against this project, and they all recognized its potential interest, but by some strange curse it could not become reality. There was nothing mysterious about this curse; I had already observed it at my previous meetings. There was no secret, only reasons that were unremarkably practical: the author’s age (at ninety years old, how was he to be “introduced”?); a legendary subject, certainly, but one that would never find its way amid the pyramids of “thrillers” and “real people.” In short, even with a modest print run, such a publication would inevitably be a loss.

  These people were rather benevolent and understanding, and out of pure economic realism they were resigning themselves to assassinating a book. In my entire life, I had never felt so painfully the weight of matter on the fragile impulses of our spirit. Lost in the far-off mists of my youth, Marx sent me a mocking wink: “I told you so, didn’t I? The products of the spirit are merchandise like anything else.” Lenin, more overbearing, hammered on: “The liberty of the creator in capitalist society is only servitude disguised by a bag of money.”

  Half-serious, I quoted these adages as I explained to Jean-Claude why I had had to (or so I said) reject the advances of one more editor who was too commercial for Lieutenant Schreiber’s future book. I don’t know if he believed me. Ever since the dinner he had walked out of, well before it was over, he seemed more detached, as if, already detecting the indifference of other people, he was not yet bold enough to tell me, “Let’s forget all of this. You can see that my past doesn’t interest anyone. I’m already familiar with that indifference. I have been since May 8, 1945, when I returned from the front.”

  He didn’t say this, though, and I continued my pursuit until I fell (quite low) upon an editor who bluntly said, “Listen, why don’t you get your Schreiber to talk a little bit about all of his mistresses? What was it you said? Camus tried
flirting with his wife? Yes, I know that story. But next to him, Camus was a seminarian. Did you know that Servan-Schreiber was known as the greatest seducer of the Fifth Republic?”

  He used a rather lewd word in the place of “seducer.” My desire to smack him was strong, but he was much older than me and I have also always associated this kind of ribald behavior with the Gallic folklore that the French tend to exaggerate a little bit when speaking to foreigners. More than anything, I was hoping that after this nonsense he would calm down and talk about the project. Alas, writing about the harem of the “seducer” was, for him, the very condition upon which the book could be published.

  Time flew by; another year added to Jean-Claude’s age. I was unable to find, for that birthday, the person who could see a book in the adventure of those ninety-one years.

  Hiding the accumulation of refusals was becoming less and less comfortable for me. I concealed them beneath devil-may-care pleasantries that always cheered the old man up: “Wait a little bit, Jean-Claude, we will hang out the washing on the Siegfried line!” With a small feigned sigh and an air of wit, he would retort: “Yes, I’ve been promised that before, in May 1940.”

  The Era of Suspicion

  The day after his birthday, I went to see the editor at Éditions du Seuil, where a few of my books had been published. I hadn’t done it before because the publishing house was going through a difficult time back then (Olivier Bétourné was not yet there to take the helm). The boat was tipping, taking on water, and many of the authors were paddling toward more solid ocean liners. Putting the old man aboard a Titanic was not a wise choice. I also wanted to distance myself from the writing of his book, limiting my role to that of an intermediary. Later, I told myself, the editor would find an experienced writer who would know—far better than I—how to give Lieutenant Schreiber’s memories a form that was skillfully structured and concise; “journalistic” in the good sense of the word.

  So I met with the person who edited my work at Éditions du Seuil, telling him about the man and his life while keeping silent about my multiple rebuffs. May the writer who has never lied to editors cast the first stone at me!

  The literary director, Bertrand Visage, expressed an enthusiasm verging on rapture, an unreserved support. His conviction was so clear that immediately after the meeting, I called my friend: “Jean-Claude, we’ve got them! The Siegfried line is within reach of our tanks.”

  That evening, the old man appeared transfigured, rejuvenated, and spoke at length, a glass of whiskey in hand, about those years of war when the world of indifferent people had forgotten Lieutenant Schreiber and his companions in arms. He spoke with a new intonation, a little less astute than usual, as if the words he was uttering were already writing themselves on a page.

  No publication of any one of my own books had ever given me as much joy as this project’s finally being accepted.

  One week later, Bertrand Visage, who had notified the directors of Éditions du Seuil, called me back, his voice broken. Those war memories were not wanted in the house’s collections. A meeting, he said, had been organized especially for this, given the undisputed significance of the author (a Servan-Schreiber!). The project was examined, evaluated, and rejected.

  I know who the members of this council are, but I will not speak about them because that seems to me quite insignificant compared to the pain that their decision caused the old man.

  This rejection was much more difficult to hide. I explained to Jean-Claude that this was yet another publishing house that was not at the level of what he was going to recount in his text. For the first time since the beginning of our editorial ordeal, he had to pretend that he believed me by exaggerating his gullibility: “Well, there are plenty more fish in the sea … especially if you’re telling me that they’re going down, the poor things.”

  The decision made by Éditions du Seuil, with its air of “secret meetings,” awakened a suspicion in me: were there things in the old man’s life that were unknown to me? Influential enemies whose pollution would make the publication of his memoirs a thorny matter? Would the abundant book production by other Servan-Schreibers harm our modest project? Or could it be opposition from the family clan, afraid of Jean-Claude’s outspokenness? Or, even worse, were there potential shadowy areas in his biography, those nasty little secrets that the French have a talent for unearthing in the pasts of their great men? Some medal of the Vichy Regime’s Order of the Gallic Francisque lying in an old drawer, the usurped identity of a Resistance fighter, a stripe unfairly sewn onto the sleeve of a uniform that was too smooth?

  In the case of Lieutenant Schreiber, this suspicion didn’t make any sense. He had never claimed to have a superhuman heroism, a glory worthy of being loudly proclaimed. If he spoke about his war, about his wounds, his decorations, it was only to answer my questions, and even this was done with a cautious humility, a self-censoring, even, that forbade him from showcasing his exploits in any way. His participation in the Resistance was limited, he said, to a few simple facts (“I passed weapons to my comrades”). As for his capacities as an officer … here is what the commander of the Fourth Cuirassiers wrote on January 20, 1941 (a date, we should note, that is hardly the right moment for showering praise on a soldier of Jewish background): “A young reserve officer cadet of exceptional vitality and spirit. Has given his utmost from the beginning of the campaign, volunteering for every difficult mission. Has earned two glowing commendations. Was wounded in combat. With his extensive knowledge, very sharp intelligence, and a very pleasant mindset, he has all of the qualities to make an excellent officer.”

  Should I mention that it was not Jean-Claude who spoke to me about this rating? I found it when I was starting my process of verification, trying to understand what could have frightened away the prudish reading committees.

  We already know that this young Officer Cadet Schreiber, who promises to “make an excellent officer,” will be dismissed from the army in April 1941 as a Jew. I also pushed my research in that direction: perhaps this dismissal was convenient for a young soldier who had had enough of exposing himself to shells? Was this anti-Semitic measure not, in actual fact, some secretly desired path to rescue? An evasion? A chance to leave as a victim? A hidey-hole that was morally above reproach?

  I know a good number of novelists who would be enchanted by such a subject: today’s literature adores these murky waters, these muddy psychologies. Stain and ambiguity, the heights of human complexity!

  Sorry to disappoint you, my dear fellow writers. The complexity of Lieutenant Schreiber is elsewhere. It is found in a letter he wrote to his colonel in that same year, 1941: “Though Catholic by religion, I am of Jewish background. But the idea that I cannot serve my country under the same conditions as all of my compatriots is painful and unbearable for me. I wish that a chance could be given to a young cavalry officer cadet, barely twenty-three years old, and that he would be permitted to prove as much in military life as in civilian life that he is right to be proud to be French.”

  Nice words? Rhetoric? The actions will come soon: the Resistance, the journey to Spain, a stay in a concentration camp, North Africa where the army enlists the man it did not want in France, the Landing, the Liberation….

  Too simple for a modern novel, isn’t it?

  The night that I told him, in veiled terms, about Éditions du Seuil’s backing down, he showed me a photo he’d found in one of the boxes from which, at my insistent requests, he would sometimes pull out an old album. The snapshot was yellowed and covered in a fine net of cracks. This one featured the banks of the Rhine, dreary gray trees whose branches had been cut off by shell explosions, and the silhouettes of combat engineers, the sappers who, under endless artillery fire, would raise the bridge to let the tanks across.

  Jean-Claude put on his glasses and examined the photo, shaking his head slightly. “Those guys especially were the ones who suffered as we went through Germany. In our tanks, we were more or less safe. But those guys, the br
idge builders, were defenseless targets on the open riverbank. There were only a few survivors from each unit. And then there was the infantry, of course. A lot of Algerians and Moroccans. They managed to cross the river and hang onto the right bank. The loss of men was enormous! When we had made it across, there were dead men everywhere. I saw a few survivors of a Moroccan Tirailleurs regiment, and then that soldier; he was stretched out, killed, his eyes wide open and … full of tears, as if at the last moment, he had realized what was happening to him. A young boy….”

  Listening to Lieutenant Schreiber, I understood that glorifying his role in the war had never been his obsession. This erasure of the ego had allowed his memory to preserve the living and the dead inside the indistinct mass. A face, a spoken word, a fleeting effigy of the other.

  The night of our defeat, I also told myself that a single fragment—yes, a gray sky reflected in those young dead eyes, filled with tears—was worth more in its unfathomable simplicity than all of that literature about small contemporary neuroses.

  The True Sense of the Word “Gentleman”

  The editor was too old-fashioned: tweed, bow tie, and the indelible imprint of the British spirit in his manners, language, and humor (his father was a subject of the queen despite his French name). Charles F. Dupêchez, fifty-six years old, has been directing Pygmalion for two decades.