O

by Steven Carroll

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Good,’ he says, then slaps the manuscript down on the table. Crack. Almost like a rifle shot. Heads turn. She jumps, suppressing nervous laughter.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he says, reaching out as if to take her hand but falling back.

  ‘Nothing to forgive.’

  He folds his hands. ‘I didn’t mean to give you a fright.’

  ‘I’m not frightened.’

  Heads around them turn back to their conversations. He lightly taps the manuscript. ‘You are bold.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No nonsense. You say what you think.’

  She shrugs. ‘Should I say what I don’t think?’

  He pauses, looking around the café. ‘You wouldn’t be the only one if you did.’

  ‘The fact is . . . Why have a mind, if you don’t speak it?’

  ‘Just be careful,’ he says gently, slowing the pace down, ‘whom you speak it to.’

  ‘I think I am.’

  They stop talking, smiling quizzically at each other, as if each were asking of the other, have we got this right? Both looking for signs of confirmation: the shadow of desire, a softening in the tone of voice.

  ‘When I say something, when I do something,’ she continues, ‘it’s all or nothing. For better or worse, I don’t know any other way.’

  He nods, taking her in. They seek one another in silence, almost circling each other, reaching for each other’s thoughts. And for those few spellbound seconds she feels as though she is emitting both her thoughts and feelings, those things she hasn’t yet said, in silent transmission: a humming in the air that he is receptive to and picks up, a subtle vibration that says we’ve been talking about more than books here, haven’t we? And for a moment she closes her eyes, concentrating her telegraphic powers, then opens them. Candid. Direct. You have been on my mind these last few weeks: in the mornings, the solitary evenings, in the metro rattling through the dark. You have been in my thoughts, Jean Paulhan, and I in yours. Is this not so?

  The exchange has long crossed the line that separates a glance from a look. They understand each other, she is sure. An understanding, what is more, reached without saying as much. She is transparent. So is he. Lying is futile.

  Then the owner is suddenly beside them, his very presence breaking the spell, and the world around her which had been silenced until then reasserts itself. Mere reality returns: chatter, laughter and the jolly owner, face grim today, placing coffee in front of them.

  ‘Anything else?’ he asks, voice flat. ‘Cognac?’

  Jean raises his eyebrows. ‘Big decision.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, with the hint of a grin, ‘not so big really.’

  Jean’s face lights up and he turns to the owner. ‘Cognac.’

  They watch him go. Jean leans towards her, speaking softly. ‘No oysters today?’

  ‘No smiles?’

  ‘No cheese, fresh from the cows?’

  She shrugs. ‘It’s the war.’

  They both glance at the owner by the counter.

  ‘No jolly friends today.’ Jean pauses, looks down at the manuscript and back to her. ‘You have done a fine job. I like it very much. And such an interesting selection. Saint Teresa?’

  ‘Ah,’ she says, ‘if I have a patron saint at all, she is mine. Is there any other way to believe – or love, for that matter – than to give yourself up to it completely? She was willing to die.’

  ‘For love?’

  ‘Why not?’

  She can tell he’s thinking is she serious? Does she really mean it? Be that as it may, she can also tell she’s answered the challenge of that first meeting, and he has concluded that she most certainly is interesting. Indeed, he gives every impression that he may just be wondering – a thought that prolongs the smile on her face – what have we got here? He nods slowly, deeply curious, intrigued, then, as if to say this can wait for another time, he indicates the manuscript. Back to business. Downing the shot of coffee in one hit, he says he would like certain points in her introduction expanded upon, other points clarified. ‘Mere details,’ he says reassuringly. ‘Believe me, I like it very much. And so do my colleagues. Everybody is very impressed.’

  She inclines her head in thanks. She is pleased. A compliment, when sincerely offered, is always welcome. More so a compliment from the powerful. It means more work, and for this she is also pleased.

  He adds, as if having read her thoughts, ‘We will work together more. You and I.’

  While she is pleased to have this confirmed, she is also telling herself that compliments are for the conventional. And they’re not. But she is also acknowledging that there is something tantalisingly restrained in his use of vous, the formal ‘you’: You and I. Like the light touch of an admirer, out of shyness or respect or both, guiding her across a crowded crossing, it speaks patient volumes and amplifies the urgency of that which is restrained. Very civilised. A fellow creature practised in the grammar of flirtation.

  It is then that the cognac arrives, and they both swirl the spirit round in their glasses, then raise them in an unspecified toast. To the book, yes. But also this other thing that is happening or has happened.

  Routine talk follows, a publisher talking to a writer. Almost. For she is aware of them slipping in and out of personas: the formal and the frank – one moment giving nothing away; the next furtively declaring that something indeed is going on. Birds, as the English say, of a feather.

  She is alive, senses alert, her mind sharpened by the balancing act, the daring of the moment, and the knowledge that she can match it with the Jean Paulhans of this world. Yes, she feels alive. She has no doubt she is on the crest of something tremendous. One of those moments you look back on years later and say that was when my life changed. He will change her and she will change him. And together they will create a kind of third: her, him, them. A leap into faith: love like faith, that demands nothing less than everything. Both perched on the crest of something sublimely terrifying just before it sweeps them up.

  He tears a page from his notebook, the sound of the page being ripped from its binding bringing her back to earth, to the here and now, as he writes his name, telephone number and the days and hours he is at the office.

  ‘This is my number,’ he says (for their communications so far have been by letter), ‘and these are the best times to catch me.’ He hands the page to her. But it is not the details she notices – the mornings and afternoons he is available – but the handwriting itself. Not so much writing as printing. Highly ordered. No flow. Odd for a man with this anarchic side to him. And unFrench. In France everybody’s writing is more or less the same. This is what her English friends have always said. And they’re right. But his writing gives no hint of the man, which she likes.

  He names a submission date, breaking into her thoughts, as he drains his cognac. ‘Can you be finished by then? You’ve done the main work, you’ve broken the back of the beast, these are merely the finishing touches.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says decisively, emptying her glass and placing it back on the table. ‘I like deadlines.’

  He raises his eyebrows. ‘Do you now?’

  Like two characters from a novel of intrigues or a comedy of manners, they talk days and dates and numbers, while knowing full well what’s really going on. For somewhere in their circling of each other he handed over his telephone number, like the key to his door, an invitation to enter, one that she may accept or not as the case may be. She is pondering this fine balancing act between social chit-chat and those stirred impulses rumbling underneath it all, what is said and the way it is said, when the two German officers who gorged on oysters and Normandy cheese on their previous visit walk in as if they own the place. Which, she notes, in a real sense they do.

  They both turn and watch the entry of the officers, as the whole café does. The Germans make no move to sit at a table. Their hats remain on, their pistols ready to hand. They are here on business. They walk towards the o
wner at the counter, where a hushed conversation takes place between the three of them, and Dominique and Jean watch as the owner’s face turns grave, transforming from pinkness to pallor. The officers then leave as suddenly as they entered. Talk in the café resumes, but it is not the same talk as before. The owner, soon after, puts his hat and coat on and leaves the café to the head waiter.

  Whether some harmless little game of black-market bribery, which is going on everywhere – you look after us and we’ll look after you – has been discovered, or bungled, or worse, is impossible to tell.

  Jean leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling with the air of a man who has just been served some disgusting meal that he refuses to touch, let alone eat. He leans over the table to Dominique. ‘The air is unpleasant in here. The cheese is off. Shall we go?’

  She agrees, and in unison they rise and leave.

  Outside, that look of disgust remains on his face. She wants to let him know that his disgust is shared; that this city of jolly, accommodating hosts, and spiders swarming over them all, is insufferable.

  ‘Do you mind if we walk?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He breathes in the fresh air deeply.

  ‘I had to get out. In case I did or said something silly.’

  ‘I could see that.’

  His eyes rest on her. ‘I thought so.’

  She corrects him. ‘You knew so.’

  He pauses, eyebrows lifting, a gesture that she feels sure acknowledges what she has already concluded: that they couldn’t, even if they tried, lie to each other. Not now. A line has been crossed. ‘Yes,’ he says, inclining his beak. ‘I knew so.’

  And it is then, as they set off, that she brushes his hand with the back of hers – impulsively, but with the conviction that there is something now inevitable about the night. First touch: an order of sensation all its own. But done in such a way that it could be an accident. Her way of testing the truth of the matter. As casually accidental as it may seem, there is high risk in the gesture. She may have everything completely wrong. And so she waits, trembling, for that awful moment when he will withdraw his hand and the shadow of shame will pass over her. She holds her breath. The answer comes swiftly and briefly as he takes her hand, without looking at her, lightly squeezes it, then lets it go. An acknowledgement, almost a kind of consummation. Done without a word.

  The narcotic thrill of it, with the cognac, spreads through her body, heart to fingertips. She is light, floating. They stroll back towards the publishers, a short walk, too short to absorb all that is happening, so they slow down.

  She looks around the street: the couple over there, the grocer leaning in his doorway, the woman passing by, carrying whatever shopping she was able to forage for the day. A quiet, beaten people with that beaten look about them. She eyes them, almost as though she’s forgotten about the war. Feet barely touching the ground, she hovers above them, then lands with a thud. She is them; they are her. The thrill of this moment, the release and the shame mingle. ‘We are weak,’ she murmurs, as she stops walking, he stopping with her. ‘I can’t bear this. It will kill all the good things that come to us,’ and here she glances at him, ‘if we let it. I’ve got to do something or I’ll go mad. I can’t just watch any more.’

  He stares back at her, steady, unwavering. Scrutinising her, evaluating not only her words but taking in the intensity that comes with them. On the brink, she is sure, of a decision. ‘And what is that something you would do?’

  She looks at him, almost pleading. ‘You know people.’

  He remains silent; she waits. But at the same time she knows they have crossed a shadow line. For although he has stuck to the formal vous – what would you do – he has used it with affection. Whether conscious or not. The wall of restraint tantalisingly close to collapsing. Such is the precision and poetry of grammar when in the hands of those who know how to use it.

  They stroll on: she looking ahead, the publishing house coming into view all too soon; he looking down, still, she is sure, on the brink of a decision. An important one. Then he looks up and they stop in front of the offices of Nouvelle Revue française, the street eerie in its quietness: no cars, no trucks or motorcycles or scooters, nothing. The whole scene slipping into violet evening.

  With a considered, slow air, he names a writer, famous before the war, and asks if she remembers her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She still writes,’ he says, gazing on the dull lights of the café. ‘But she is a Jew. She is banned.’ He pauses. ‘Such a writer. What an eye. Such wonderful words! Her tales and characters!’ He breathes in deeply, the air freshened. ‘Truly, large as life!’

  He seems to have forgotten all about Dominique. But she is happy for him to. For just as they are fellow creatures of the forest whose paths have miraculously crossed, they are fellow creatures of literature as well. Here is a man who memorises and savours words, who lives for literature as much as he lives for life. As indeed does she. For whom literature and life are experienced simultaneously. No distinction between a word and the thing the word refers to. The crunch of an apple (and when was the last time she saw one?) is not simply read, but heard and tasted; Chaucer’s garlic and leeks smelt on the page as if on the very foul lips of the Summoner himself. They don’t just read books, they live them.

  He turns his owl eyes, wide and alert, back to Dominique, dwelling on her, at once playful and deadly serious, as if looking out from the hollow of a tree trunk.

  ‘Only barbarians ban such writing. You want to do something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s living in the south, near Vichy. I have her latest novel. Well, one of a suite of novels. We’re going to publish her.’

  ‘Gallimard?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who?’

  He smiles. ‘All in good time. It needs tidying up. It needs your touch. I want you to edit it.’ He gathers hmself, dwelling on her. ‘We might be conquered, but we must never be isolated. Or alone. Or allow ourselves to be. We must show the world that we reach out, even now. Especially now,’ he corrects himself.

  He shrugs, as if to say all right, I am getting sentimental. But his request was made almost in the manner of a challenge: Here, you say you want to do something? Take this job, I am entrusting you with it. ‘Shall we walk on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And this time it is he who brushes her hand with the back of his, before placing it back in his coat pocket and setting off. ‘You and I,’ he says, as they stroll down towards the river, the curtain of the curfew having not yet fallen, ‘we were not born to carry guns or rifles. To shoot people. That is not our lot. We carry words.’ He stops, eyes alight in the hazy silence of the street. ‘No, what do the Americans say? We pack words. Yes, that’s it.’ He takes in the phrasing with the same satisfied look he might wear when puffing on a good cigarette or sipping a good cognac. ‘We must show the world that we have not all bowed down before the new masters. That we are still us. Still standing. Still part of the world: this free world we helped invent. And we must show them we are ready to fight for it. Show the world that we publish who and what we choose to publish. Not what they tell us we can and cannot publish.’ He pauses, face flushed. ‘Have you heard of Les Éditions de Minuit?’

  She is puzzled. She thought she knew them all. ‘No.’

  ‘Good. It’s secret. That’s what we call it. I say “we” because . . . well, there are a number of us.’

  They walk on, for the time being saying nothing, Jean seeming to weigh up just what he can say. Eventually, having strolled in companionable silence, they reach the river and stand looking out at the Tuileries in the near distance: the familiar statues, the colour of milky coffee in the fading light, look almost thoughtful.

  ‘We have a printing press,’ he continues, as if there has been no silence at all. ‘Not a big one, but like Mercutio’s wound it does the job.’ He turns as if to ask did you like that? She smiles, relieved to learn that even the lofty can
be eternal schoolboys. He continues, his tone again serious. ‘Besides, we have to be ready to move it at short notice. We have paper, ink. Everything we need. It’s a midnight job. We print them here, forbidden books, and we send them out to the world. I would very much like you to do this job. The poor woman, she writes without the hope of anyone ever reading her – but she still writes! We owe this to her, and ourselves. We can’t cross the Channel, but our books can. Our words will. Smuggled out. Our soldiers in England and America and Canada will read them. Forbidden books! It is our way of saying to all of them that we are in this together. Till the end. And they will know we are not beaten.’ He pauses, eyeing her. ‘Well?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ It is impossible not to be swept up in the moment, and she is worried she has been too loud and attracted attention. But a quick sweep of the street tells her there is no one about.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘Not long. You’re not frightened?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Good. You should be.’

  ‘But alive too.’ She breathes in the air deeply as if it has become sweeter and cleaner. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Resistance. Have I joined?’

  He shrugs, as if to say he doesn’t think of it like that: that there is not just one Resistance, there are many, and we don’t go around calling it that. ‘Perhaps. If you will,’ he eventually says. ‘They could shoot you for this.’

  ‘I know,’ she says, her eyes shining.

  ‘They shot my fellow editor. Arrested at night, shot at dawn. This is dangerous, you understand?’

  Her face becomes serious. ‘I understand perfectly.’

  ‘You’ll need a new name,’ he says, satisfied she does.

  ‘Dominique Aury is not my name.’

  ‘Then you were born for the job.’