O

by Steven Carroll

  And kissing, kissing everywhere. Lipstick smeared across the faces of soldiers and resistants and all those ordinary people who crouched and waited and kept their heads down, just wanting to live, or stood by silently watching while others died. Red smeared on the faces of the chanting living – and on the face of a young dead soldier, lying by a wall, blood trickling from his temple. The crowd pauses as it passes, the soldier still fresh faced, too impossibly young to be dead, then moves on. Nobody knows where, but everybody flows with the crowd, trust and apprehension mingling in this glittering and dark carnival of release.

  The moon catches the rooftops and spires and spills onto the streets where the lights are still off as if in observance of a curfew that doesn’t exist any more. A bullet fizzes through the air and cracks into a wall. The crowd ducks, falls flat to the footpath, waits and looks up to the rooftops, then, judging the moment, rises and runs to the ever-moving mass ahead and the safety of numbers. One moment cheering; the next looking anxiously to the rooftops for signs of shadows, but unable to tear themselves away. A cheer goes up as a man leans out of a window of a public building and wrenches a Nazi flag from the wall, then watches it flutter to the ground where men and women dance upon it, squashing and trampling it.

  Dominique stops, resists the irresistible surge of the crowd that simply trusts it is moving somewhere, and stands back on a footpath to look upon the arrival of this long-awaited, long-craved moment, this orgy of joy and dread – for not only has the liberation commenced, she knows that soon, too soon, the recriminations will too, like long-gone revolutionary scenes re-enacting themselves. But uppermost in her mind is a strange sense of loss: of saying goodbye to the days of dangerous freedom, and of freedom like no other; saying goodbye to the intensity that animated every day and made you alive like you had never been before.

  * * *

  She and Jean were lying in their room, in their bed, when they heard the long, rolling sound. One bell, Notre-Dame’s biggest and best, Emmanuel, boomed across the city. Heard for miles around for the first time in years. And everybody who heard it knew exactly what it meant. Soon another joined in, and another and another until Paris was a city of bells.

  They rushed to the hotel window and stood naked, staring out onto the intersection of streets below. And it was then, mingling with the sound of the bells, that they heard the roar of an engine, and looked up to see the lights of an American night-fighter pass just above them. Low and deafening. A single fighter, unafraid, saying the sky is mine. An assertion made all the more powerful and thrilling by virtue of the plane being alone.

  The streets below, empty until the bells rang out, quickly filled, and she and Jean turned from the window, rushed into their clothes and ran downstairs onto the street.

  They made their way, pushing through the crowds, towards the boulevard Saint-Michel, where, above the noise and singing, they gradually became aware of the sound of engines rumbling towards them. Soon the footpath beneath their feet and the buildings themselves were trembling. The sound became deafening, and everybody stood still, looking towards where it was coming from.

  A Sherman tank burst upon the scene, followed by another and another until a procession of tanks filled the boulevard, French soldiers perched on top, singing, waving, accepting bottles of wine, shaking the hands of the crowd, a man in a suit crying while young women and men climbed onto the tanks and embraced their liberators.

  At some point Dominique noticed that every tank had a name, and she watched as the various quarters of the city passed by her: Montparnasse, Marais, Bastille, Austerlitz, on and on. Another had a portrait of Hitler on it, the single word merde scrawled across it, while the following tank bore the name Guernica to remind everyone that Spanish Republicans were on those tanks too. The whole city passed by, tank after tank, while the footpaths, streets and buildings trembled.

  Dominique and Jean embraced, then Jean left her to go home and share the moment with his wife. She must see this, he said. He must take her to the window to view the streets. If, that is, the crowds are on the street in their part of town. And if they’re not, he will tell her. Describe it all to her. Then return. They will meet again at Gallimard. There will be a party, he says, of course there will. A party the likes of which they have never had before. It will go till dawn. Until then, he says, telling her to be careful. There will be parties all over Paris, but there will also be snipers.

  * * *

  To fill the time she wanders around the city, breathing in the smell of exhaust from the tanks and trucks and jeeps that fill the boulevards. And it is strange to be breathing in exhaust again after years of living in a city of bicycles; strange to be hearing the rumble and revving of engines where, yesterday, these streets were virtually silent.

  She looks about to see she is standing at the entrance of the pont de Sully. How did she get here? She has barely any memory of where she has been. And it is while she is contemplating this that she looks back to the bridge and sees a small group of people gathered there. And hears shouting and screams. The spectacle draws her in. People are gathered in a circle, drunk and loud, and in the centre is a young woman, kneeling on the ground. She is naked and her head is shaven. A swastika has been painted on her scalp. This small circle of drunks, men and women, is spitting on her, yelling abuse, calling her a whore and a slut and a prostitute, every insult they can think of, while a man whips her with his belt, and every time he whips her, and every time the young woman screams, the circle cheers. As Dominique nears the group she can see that the man has drawn blood and there are strap marks across the woman’s back. Her torturer swigs from his bottle, then lifts his belt and strikes again, the buckle of the belt biting into the woman’s flesh as she screams and the circle cheers again.

  At first Dominique is dumbstruck as she gazes upon the spectacle. Then she is running to the circle, where she snatches the belt from the drunk, who almost falls over in amazement. Now Dominique is the one in the centre of the circle, the belt in her hands, the weeping, naked woman kneeling beside her, and she looks back at over a dozen pairs of drunken eyes, all glaring at her with hatred, and all, it seems, on the point of stepping towards her, snatching back the belt, and giving the slut on her knees exactly what she deserves.

  Fury gives Dominique strength and she glares back at them. ‘Stop!’

  Her voice is loud, surprising her as well as the circle of drunks. And it is as though, for the moment, they are sobered.

  They stand still, waiting. For it is not just the volume of Dominique’s command that stops them. They seem, somewhere inside themselves, to recognise that this woman whom they have never seen before, this stranger who has burst upon their circle and halted their dark, bloody ritual, speaks with surprising authority. And like children confronted by an adult, they turn sullen and silent.

  And Dominique, sensing that she has them, continues. ‘Where are her clothes?’

  The drunk who was whipping the woman glares at Dominique with a surly look in his eyes and says, ‘In the river, where she should be!’

  He sways on his feet and Dominique pours her contempt on him. ‘Oh, you’re brave now! Against a naked woman,’ she yells, pointing to the woman beside her, who is still kneeling. ‘But where was your bravery when it mattered? Where?!’ She then turns her attention to the entire circle. ‘You,’ she says, ‘and you, and you and you . . . where was your bravery when it was needed?’

  No one in the drunken circle moves or says a word as she prods them with questions and accusations. You and you and you . . . still they remain silent, and she takes their silence as confirmation that, when it mattered, these are the ones who did nothing. They know it and it now eats away at them. She can see that, plain as the light on the river. For this is how it will be: those who did nothing will be the most outraged and violent. And righteous. Driven by their guilt. That is why they are so easily subdued. They are weak, and they know they are.

  Dominique throws the belt into the river – the drunk
watching its flight in stupefied amazement – and draws the young woman up, naked and shivering in the cool summer night. She stands, legs shaking. Dumb, the circle watches as Dominique gives the woman her own coat, wraps her in it and buttons it up, then gives the woman her hat, so that no one will see that her head is shaven with a crude swastika painted on it.

  As she leads her away from the drunks, the woman, who can be no more than twenty, possibly younger, looks directly at Dominique, her face smeared with tears, and says, ‘But I deserve it.’

  Dominique shakes her head, as if to say no, no you don’t. But the woman insists.

  ‘I do. I am everything they say I am. And more. I deserve it.’

  Dominique ignores her and asks where her home is, and the woman points back towards the Left Bank.

  ‘Over there.’

  ‘Can you walk that far?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But what about your coat and hat?’

  ‘Keep them,’ says Dominique, ‘I have others. Now go home. Go now,’ she urges her, looking behind her at the circle of drunks, grumbling back into voice. ‘Go, before they come for you again.’

  The woman, looking from Dominique to the drunks and back again, turns and walks away from the bridge, slowly mingling with a group of revellers, wearing only Dominique’s hat and coat, an odd spectacle, like an actor, a clown even, from some dark farce.

  Dominique’s then remembers the party at Gallimard, a good walk from here. Jean may well be there by now. And it is while she is standing and pondering this that the lights of Paris are suddenly switched back on: the bridge glows, the river sparkles, the streets are alight as they haven’t been for years. There is a cacophony of cheers, shouts and song, and the drums of metal rubbish bins. Dazzled and dreamy, she drifts off towards Gallimard, the whole city one vast sound and light show.

  * * *

  She arrives to smoke, laughter and music from someone’s gramophone floating in and out of the doorways of tiny offices. It is not so much one party as a large collection of them. She waves at people she knows, stops to greet others, then moves on, looking into office after office until she finds Jean, deep in conversation with a small group of authors: the famous, like Albert Camus, his moody, cinema face grinning; and others not so well known. On seeing her, Jean calls her over, passes her a drink and everybody toasts Leclerc’s tanks. Officially their affair is a secret, but everybody here in the small office, she guesses, realises the truth. All the same, there is a touch of the formal in the way he kisses her. Then he looks her up and down quizzically.

  ‘But where is your hat, and your coat?’

  She tells them what happened.

  Camus shakes his head, the grin disappearing. ‘It begins.’

  The image of the woman is still vivid: kneeling, naked, the belt cutting into her flesh. Dominique winces, the image so strong, so fresh, that she feels the young woman’s pain. But at the same time something else, just as disturbing, is swimming its way to the surface. I deserve it . . . But the memory of the young woman’s voice is different, now carrying with it a strength, an assertiveness, a sense of contempt for all those around her and a suggestion of power, power over them all, that Dominique didn’t hear at the time but now does. And for the first time she’s wondering if she rescued the woman at all, and is considering the possibility that she didn’t want to be rescued: that her tormentors were actually in her service, dispensing the very thing she craved.

  Dominique suddenly looks around the crowded office and snaps out of her reflections, while also noting that a certain sombre mood has settled on the room, and because she feels responsible for the shift in mood and because they ought to be laughing on a night like this, she smiles, saying, ‘I never liked the hat anyway. Or the coat. They looked better on her.’

  Almost immediately the conversation moves on, or rather back to Leclerc’s tanks, everybody reeling off their favourite.

  ‘Voltaire,’ says Jean, ‘an enlightened tank.’

  ‘Pompadour,’ cries another.

  ‘Pompadour?’ asks Jean.

  ‘Carmen,’ calls another, ‘a gypsy tank.’

  ‘Or someone’s girlfriend,’ says Camus.

  And on it goes, a little party game that will amuse them for a short time before another comes along. She tells herself that they have earned this laughter. How long has it been since she last heard careless, trivial laughter like this?

  There is lightness in the air. Even old enemies are drinking together. It’s true, the nightmare is over. The cockroach soldiers have nearly all left and the city is itself again, or soon will be. There are parties all over Paris. Children are being born tonight. Women stripped and beaten. Joy and vengeance going hand in hand through the streets. History is shrugging, releasing marvels and monsters. She has only lost her hat; others will lose their heads.

  12.

  In the café called Hope the owner is telling American soldiers that he has oysters, paté and brie. Dominique watches as she sits opposite Jean. Nothing changes, only the uniforms.

  But perhaps she shouldn’t be so quick to judge, for who knows what this jolly host did over the last few years. Was the jolly face a mask he wore, one that enabled him to get on with whatever it was he may have done? It’s a possibility, not one she believes. But possible. After all, who knows what she got up to? A handful of men and women, and even then nobody knew each other’s real names. And the young woman she escorted to Avranches – who will ever know what she did? What she really did. And while she thinks of her, as she does often, she is glad that the young woman she knew only as Pauline Réage is not here. At least she hopes she is still in England. For these are dangerous times for a woman like her. Arletty is in the papers: soon to be tried – and who knows what the mood of the times will decide on. The country is being purged of its impurity, judgement is swift, anybody with the taint of collaboration is executed or paraded, head shaven and bowed, through the streets, like an aristocrat to the guillotine.

  She greets Jean, who has been reading a book while waiting for her. She is late, she apologises. He puts his book down with a satisfied sigh. De Sade, she notices. For a moment a vision of her father’s library comes to her, and that corner of the library where he keeps his secret store. She takes a manuscript from her satchel, the same satchel she carried throughout the occupation. She has translated a selection of the stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and while she could have handed it over at Jean’s office, his office would have been too poky for such a day.

  There is one story in particular that she likes, and not a very well-known one, about a young woman from the warm south of America who moves to the cold north and loses herself in the maze of an ice palace. She doesn’t know, she says, why she likes it most. But, she adds, there is something almost religious in the woman’s fate.

  She talks about the other stories, how this word and that phrase were difficult to pin down. She is chatty, relaxed, happy. The world around them may be positioning itself for power, but they have something else: this deep, abiding love of literature they have always had and always will.

  ‘I’m sure,’ he says, looking down at her manuscript on the café table, ‘it’s wonderful.’ He adds, with a boyish, cheeky laugh, ‘It’s a good time to be publishing the Americans.’

  He looks at her gravely, then says, ‘You know, there is talk of you joining the reading committee at Gallimard.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There has never been a woman on the committee.’

  ‘Times are changing. Everybody, everybody that matters, has read your translations. And your essays. They are very impressed. What would you say, if asked?’ He is pleased with himself. ‘Well?’

  ‘I would jump at it. Of course. But they won’t ask me.’

  ‘Won’t they?’ he says, with the air of someone who knows more than he lets on, before dropping the matter. He looks at the volume of de Sade on the table.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ she asks, in a
way that implies she is familiar with it.

  ‘Immense, brutal,’ he says, but seems puzzled. ‘Have you read him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, amused by his incredulity.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘My father’s library. He has a special section for his naughty books,’ she says with a grin.

  ‘And you found them?’

  She shrugs. ‘They found me.’

  ‘And?’ he asks.

  ‘What did I think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She is still grinning. Impish. ‘Immense, brutal . . . She corrects herself. ‘Not really.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. The first fifty pages, yes. After that it’s unreadable.’

  He is silenced by her pronouncement. Then, as though a revelation has only just appeared to him, he slaps the book and says in the manner of an incontrovertible truth, ‘No woman could ever write such a book!’

  She is not so much shocked or annoyed as disappointed. Jean, a man of the world, a man of literature, suddenly saying something that he ought to be above. At the same time, he’s hit a nerve. She feels her back stiffen.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, a playfully calculating tone to her voice. ‘Perhaps I too could write those books you like to read.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  She doesn’t say what she’s thinking – ‘Yes, I do think so’ – just eyes him with one of her father’s hard to read smiles.

  He looks back at her as though never having contemplated such a thing before, then waves to the jolly host, saying to Dominique, ‘I’m suddenly hungry. Shall we have some of this famous brie?’

  Her face lights up as she watches him talking to the host and becoming excited at the prospect of bread, cheese and wine. Her Jean. A man of appetites: for life, love, art and food. Immense. And when the bread and cheese arrive they feast upon it like people who have never tasted fresh crusty bread and cheese before.

  But at some point she notices his gaze straying from her to another part of the café. The café is crowded and noisy, distracting. She turns her head, curiously seeking out the source of his distraction, going from table to table, until she comes to a stop with a sharp intake of breath. It is a young woman he is drawn to, a very attractive one, sitting alone at a table.