Cold Winter in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

  Then, ‘We don’t know each other well,’ he said, ‘but Clothilde’s mother has become very fond of you, and as for Clothilde.’

  ‘She’s wonderful, and Madame Lannes’ – his face brightened in a dazzling smile – ‘Madame Lannes has been so kind and welcoming to me.’

  ‘But,’ Lannes said, ‘Clothilde has told me of your ambition, of what you want to do, and it frightens her. It alarms your grandfather too, and I have a great respect for him. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

  ‘Naturally. But what can I say? I adore Clothilde – my intentions towards her are entirely honourable, I assure you of that – but she’s a girl, a young woman, and women don’t understand these things. As for my grandfather, I have of course a deep affection for him – he has been so kind to my sister Anne-Marie and me, and I respect him – but he’s old and, again with all due respect, he’s out-of-date, he doesn’t understand the world as it is today or the plight that France finds itself in. So for me it’s a matter of duty. You will surely understand that, sir.’

  Lannes stretched out his hand to pick up the boy’s newspaper.

  ‘This thing, it’s all wrong, you know. No matter how well it is written, it’s wrong.’

  ‘You don’t believe that France and Germany should work together and that only an alliance between our two great countries can guard us against the Red menace?’

  ‘I’m a policeman,’ Lannes said, ‘not a politician, and as a policeman, a servant of the Republic, I have no political opinions, but as a private man, a citizen, I can say that, yes, I agree that France and Germany should work together, and indeed, as an officer of the French State, I am required to collaborate with the Occupying forces. But I do this from duty, not from choice. It’s difficult to explain.’

  He laid down the newspaper and took hold of his wine glass but didn’t lift it to his lips.

  ‘A long time ago,’ he said, ‘well before the war, Monsieur Laval remarked that France would always have a border with Germany, that they were a nation of seventy million people to our forty million, and that we must either come to an agreement with them or fight them every generation. He was a pacifist in those days, Monsieur Laval. Perhaps in his heart he still is. No matter: he was right. 1870, 1914, 1939 – it shouldn’t go on. But what did he mean by Germany? Hitler wasn’t then yet in power. There’s another Germany, a different Germany, that we might be friends with. But with Hitler there’s no equality of friendship – the relation is that of master and servant.’

  Michel frowned but said nothing. Lannes thought, at least he’s listening.

  ‘I’m going to say something, Michel, that you won’t agree with, something indeed that would get me in trouble if you reported it. But you won’t do that, not only because you love Clothilde – I’m sure of that – but also because I believe you have a sense of honour. It’s this: Germany is going to lose the war. It’s become inevitable. The Wehrmacht is fighting hard on the Eastern Front, but its advance has evidently been checked, and, now that the Americans have entered the war, Hitler is doomed. It may take some time, years even, but it’s certain. If you do as you intend, and enlist in this Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism, you are joining the losing side. You might be killed – well, that can happen to anyone in wartime – and it would distress Clothilde. It might break her heart. I don’t know, but I’m sure it would leave a wound which would never be wholly healed. I ask you to think of that. But if you are not killed, if you survive, what then? I know the French. We don’t forgive easily; we’ve a lust for revenge. It’s always been like that. Think of the Revolution and of the Commune. There are many who will be ashamed of how they have behaved during the Occupation and they will seek to expunge their shame by turning on those who have collaborated more conspicuously with the enemy. And this is to say nothing of the Resistance.’

  He paused to light a cigarette and found that his hands were shaking. He pushed the packet of Gauloises towards the boy who took one and held out his face for a light. Lannes knew he had to speak of Sigi de Grimaud. He hesitated, unsure of how to do so. He had seen Michel look at him and read hero-worship, even infatuation, in his gaze.

  ‘It’s not true,’ he said, ‘that men are divided into two classes, masters and slaves, as I’ve heard your friend Sigi assert. Most are neither, merely men – and women – who seek to make the best of things, even when they’ve been dealt a poor hand. You’re an idealist, I think. Perhaps your friend Sigi is an idealist too, among other things’ – murderer and crook, he thought, but didn’t say. ‘It’s natural to be an idealist when you’re young, natural and even right. But idealists can do great harm, because idealism clashes with the reality of things. That’s why most of us grow out of it. Ideals rarely accord with reality. And as for the Communists – the Red menace you spoke of – I don’t like them either; they’re idealists themselves also. They believe in absolute truth, as perhaps in his way your friend Sigi does too. But there’s no absolute truth. I’ve learnt that as a policeman.’

  He drew on his cigarette. Smoke swirled between them. He almost said ‘love, friendship and family – these are the things that really matter’ and then he thought of how his relations with Marguerite were strained because he had betrayed her by doing nothing to stop Alain – that other idealist – from joining de Gaulle; and he wondered if he was a hypocrite.

  So instead he said, ‘I’m asking you only to think of what I’ve been saying, also to remember how you will hurt Clothilde and your grandfather and sister too if you persist in your intentions. Meanwhile we look forward to seeing you over Christmas. Dominique is eager to meet you.’

  He gestured to Georges who brought him the bill.

  ‘I have to get back to work,’ he said. ‘One more thing: I was talking recently with a German officer who also believes that Germany has already lost the war and that Hitler is leading his country to ruin. It was rash of him to say so of course. Courageous too. It always takes courage to look reality in the face because it’s much easier to believe that reality will accommodate itself to our wishes.’

  He got up. They shook hands. Then Lannes laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  He turned at the door. Michel’s head was bent over his newspaper again. Was it too much to hope that he might be reading it more sceptically? Probably yes; nobody changes his fixed opinion because of one conversation, and nobody likes to be told that he is walking blindfolded towards disaster. He was afraid, horribly afraid, that he was going to have to speak to Sigi, to urge him to free Michel from his influence. And what could he offer in exchange?

  XXX

  He had spoken of getting back to work, but he had three visits to make that afternoon, and only one of them could, strictly speaking, be characterised as work.

  He went first to the rue des Remparts because it was the nearest to the Place Gambetta. He felt guilty because he hadn’t been there for some time, but then, he thought, what wasn’t an occasion for guilt these days?

  When Miriam joined them and took her place in what was evidently her accustomed chair, it occurred to Lannes that after these months together, since she took refuge there, she and Henri were coming to look like a long-married couple. Perhaps, if they survived, they would indeed marry. It would be like coming into harbour after a stormy voyage. Henri indeed looked better, despite wartime privations, than he had since his young wife Pilar – another damned idealist! – had left him to engage in the Spanish war from which she had never returned. Did Henri, he wondered, suspect that she had betrayed him, as indeed she had by becoming the mistress of Edmond de Grimaud, though, to complicate matters further, she had done so for political reasons, at the command, he believed, of her party chiefs, in order to betray him too? De Grimaud who was, absurdly, Miriam’s stepson, though a man of her own age and one who, by her account, had tried to get her too into his bed.

  Thinking of these things, wheels within wheels, as Henri opened a bottle of white
wine, he said, ‘Dominique is home for Christmas. Since you’re his godfather, he will want to come to see you.’

  ‘But of course, it would be a pleasure. You know how fond I am of the boy.’

  ‘Young Maurice is with him. They’re good friends, as you know. However … ’

  The same thought, he was sure, rippled through the silence. Miriam was in hiding. Maurice was a nice boy. A sweet boy, she had called him, and he had spoken gratefully of how she had behaved to him when the old count was alive, but could he be trusted to say nothing of her presence? Could anyone be trusted, these days, with anything?

  ‘He’s been more than a year in Vichy,’ he said. ‘He’s sure to ask about you.’

  Miriam covered her face with her hands, rubbed them up and down.

  ‘I’m not in real danger,’ she said. ‘They’re not deporting French Jews, are they?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well then … if we can’t trust those we are fond of, everything’s finished.’

  ‘Gaston liked him, didn’t he?’ Henri said. ‘They talked literature together, didn’t they? Wasn’t the boy one of his pupils – his real pupils, I mean? The boy brought him his poems for criticism as I recall. Gaston thought highly of him, said he would be a real poet.’

  Toto, the little French bulldog snuffled, shook himself, got to his feet, and looked up at Henri inviting him to scratch the back of his head.

  ‘Miriam’s right,’ Henri said, responding to Toto’s demand. ‘Everything makes me nervous these days, but she’s right. If we can’t trust people we’re fond of, then nothing is any good.’

  If only it was that simple, Lannes thought. The truth is, we are all too tired to think straight, and no decision is safe.

  ‘You look bruised, Jean, exhausted,’ Henri said. ‘Have you discovered who killed that unfortunate woman? Or can’t you say?’

  Lannes picked up his wine glass and sighed.

  ‘I’m lost in a maze. Do you happen to know of a Dr Duvallier? He was her doctor. I’m told he is a fashionable physician. He came to see me, ostensibly to tell me she had been suffering from anxiety. But it wasn’t anxiety that killed her.’

  Miriam looked up.

  ‘Duvallier? He was – may still be – Jean-Christophe’s doctor. He used to give him injections – for anxiety again, he said. I don’t know what the injections were, but he came to the house once when I was ill and examined me. I didn’t care for him. He had wandering hands. My husband, the old count, threw him out that day, said he was a scoundrel. But then he said that of so many, it probably didn’t mean anything. Still, he’s not someone I would trust.’

  * * *

  ‘Yes, you’ll find her in,’ the concierge said. ‘To tell you the truth, superintendent, I’d rather she was no longer one of my tenants. She’s brought a German officer home more than once, and I’ve told her we can’t have that here. This is a respectable house, I said. To tell you the truth, I would have told her to pack her bags and be gone; only she broke down in tears when I reproached her, and, well, I’ve a soft heart, whatever you may think, and she’s an unhappy girl. The number of empty wine bottles, I needn’t say more. If you can talk some sense into her, I’d be grateful.’

  She was a long time in opening the door and when she did so she looked at Lannes as if she had never seen him before. Then she nodded, vaguely, and stood aside to let him enter. She was wearing a thin blouse which revealed her breasts and her skirt hung squint. There were dark circles under her eyes and when she went to pull the cork from a bottle of wine which was already half empty her hands shook.

  ‘Have you come to tell me who killed the bitch?’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Then you’ve come to wish me a happy Christmas? That’s a joke, superintendent. Happy Christmas – I’ve been thinking of making an end of things. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t? No? Then give me a cigarette and have a glass of wine.’

  ‘Your concierge is worried about you.’

  He lit her cigarette and she drew deeply on it.

  ‘That’s great,’ she said, ‘that’s lovely. My concierge is worried.’

  ‘She’s not pleased that you brought your German boyfriend here.’

  ‘Great,’ she said again. ‘But she needn’t worry. That’s over. He couldn’t take it any more. So there’s nothing left for me, is there, if I can’t even satisfy a Boche, not even one who was a nice boy, a really nice boy who called out to his mother when he was asleep. Do you wonder I hate myself?’

  Again, as on his previous visit, she burst into tears and threw herself down on a couch, burying her face in the cushions. Lannes took the cigarette from her hand and placed it in an ashtray which was already near overflowing. He waited, smoking, till her sobs died away, and said, ‘Dr Duvallier. Tell me about Dr Duvallier.’

  She twisted round, looked up and her face opened in a smile.

  ‘That bastard,’ she said.

  ‘Tell.’

  ‘Give me another cigarette,’ she said, ‘I’m out.’

  ‘Keep the packet,’ he said. ‘I’ve another. Dr Duvallier? He was Giselle’s doctor, yes?’

  She rolled the cigarette between her fingers.

  ‘You called him a bastard.’

  ‘Did I? So I did. And he was one. She relied on him, he’s a handy man with the needle, you see. I told you she had tempers – didn’t I? – terrible sudden tempers? Maybe I didn’t, I don’t remember what I say to anyone now, and that’s perhaps because I talk mostly to myself. But she had. She was what they call volatile. Now up, now down, one moment sweet as a sucking dove and the next screaming in fury. It took me a long time to realise. Indeed, it was only after I had left her and resolved never to see her again, that I realised what it was. He would come running when she was in a state, ready with his needle to calm her down. She was an addict, morphine I’m sure now, having seen others like her when I was in Paris. Do you see?’

  ‘And yet,’ Lannes said, ‘she seems to have been a success as a piano teacher. Several parents of her pupils speak well of her. It doesn’t fit with your picture of her.’

  ‘Maybe she’d taken a cure, I don’t know. Or reached a state of – what is it? – equilibrium – that’s the word. Some addicts manage that, you know. You do know, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I know it’s possible.’

  The room was airless and also cold. Kiki rose, slowly, and crossed to a table by the shuttered window. She wound up the gramophone that sat there, and put a record on: American jazz and a singer sobbing her heart out. He didn’t understand the words but the message was clear: there’s no place to go, no place to go. He saw a chain gang and a woman nursing a dead baby.

  He said, ‘Tell me, Kiki, was Duvallier one of the clients for her entertainments, one of the men she supplied with young girls?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper, ‘I really don’t know.’

  She threw her glass into the empty grate.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’

  He found a hearth brush and dustpan and swept up the broken glass, aware that she was crying again. He wondered if it was safe to leave her alone.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ he said, and heard the feebleness of his words.

  ‘All right?’ she said. ‘Sure, I’ll be all right. What is there not to be all right about?’

  ‘And you won’t do anything foolish?’

  ‘Like keeping going?’ she said.

  ‘That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Yes, I know. No, I won’t.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘You are old-fashioned, superintendent, out-of-date. The way things are, you think promises mean anything? That’s sweet, that’s really sweet.’

  * * *

  He was reluctant to make the third visit, but he had neither seen nor heard anything of Karim since he had fled from the Bar Météo, and he felt a responsibility for the boy who had tu
rned to him for help when Félix had assaulted him, and, then, made to use him as bait. Karim had been afraid, reasonably afraid, and yet he had shown a certain jaunty courage which Lannes responded to. And the boy’s care for his wreck of a mother was also appealing. Thinking of her, Lannes bought a bottle of rum from the Alimentation; on his previous visit the old woman had been incapable of speech till he had fetched her one. The old woman! – she was certainly younger than Lannes himself, younger perhaps than Marguerite. Then he went into the tabac next door and bought two packets of Gauloises. Recognising him as a cop, the man shrugged his shoulders and didn’t require him to obey the regulation which would have had him hand over an empty packet in order to be supplied with a new one. It was intended, Lannes knew, as a means to discourage the black market in cigarettes, and was as futile as most such regulations were.

  The smell on the staircase was appalling, a mixture of boiled cabbage, urine, dust and stale alcohol. It would be no better in the apartment. He knocked and had to do so three times, with long intervals between them, before the door was opened. She was wearing a filthy housecoat, which hung open to the waist, and carpet slippers. A cigarette was stuck to her lower lip and her breath stank of rum. He held out the bottle which was immediately seized, then, without a word, she turned away, and he followed her into the room which, like Kiki’s, was cold and stuffy at the same time. She picked up a dirty glass and poured herself a stiff drink from his bottle. She knocked it back, shuddered, and jerked her thumb indicating that he should go through to the bedroom.

  ‘He’s in,’ she said, and sat down, one hand on her glass and the other on the bottle, in case he should wrest it away from her. Last time she had immediately recognised that he was a policeman; perhaps she was now beyond caring. Or perhaps she saw no reason why a cop shouldn’t also be one of her son’s clients.

  He must have heard the knocking for he had roused himself and was sitting on the edge of the bed. A towel that had once been white was wrapped round his middle. Otherwise he was naked, and it was strange how fresh his skin looked in that filthy apartment.