by Theo Varlet
There were, however, administrative obstacles that even the all-powerful name of Rivier was incapable of removing immediately at that late hour. It was not until eight o’clock in the morning that Frédérique was able to leave the police station where she had spent the latter part of the night as a prisoner in the commissaire’s office—on a reasonably comfortable horsehair divan, she assured me, while completing fixing her make-up in front of the mirror she carried in her handbag.
At any rate when I took her away triumphantly, followed by the sly and mocking gazes of the policemen on duty, she did not seem in the least distraught, and only the cease in her forehead hinted at the tragedy that she had just lived through.
We spent two hours walking around Paris, uplifted by a need to move freely in the midst of the anonymous crowd. Frédérique had taken my arm in a spontaneous gesture of affection, which was worth more than a long speech of thanks.
I was fearful of interrogating her sentiments; the expression in her eyes, as soon as she turned them away from me to think about the events of the previous evening, became hard and pitiless, and I could see that the death of Hans Kohbuler had not produced within her the frequent phenomenon of the “apotheosis” thanks to which a widow, for example, who has spent ten years of marriage cursing her spouse, forgets all her rancor as soon as he has ceased to live, no longer remembering any but the rare bearable moments, deifying the deceased in her memory.
Either I allowed her to see some surprise in spite of my efforts, or she experienced a need to confide in me, for she suddenly said to me: “Kohbuler was not my real father. My mother confessed that to me on her deathbed. It was of no importance to me to obey the man, as long as my skeptical youth, impassioned by science and pure intellectuality, knew no other sentiment than the joy of solving problems. Yes, it was unimportant to me, then, that I had to spend my life deciphering encrypted messages. I didn’t desire anything of the future. My soul was asleep. It had not been born. It only began to live recently, when I met you at Wimereux, my dear Antoine. When I saw you, I felt my heart quiver for the first time, and the tender and generous soul of my mother reborn within me...
“Since then, I’ve only borne my subjection of Kohbuler’s orders with difficulty; my mother’s grief was reborn in me. Every day I detested a little more being the agent of Germany, which forced me to harm France, the country that I felt to be mine as well, since it was my mother’s…since it was yours, my Antoine!
“Now, my past horrifies me. As you can see, I left Claridge’s with my hundred-franc dress in my handbag. I should like to peel off my past, just as I’m now abandoning everything that was mine in the time when my will was put to his odious cause by Kohbuler. Oh, take me with you, my love! Take me far away, to some place where I can forget that I used to be Elsa Kohbuler, the daughter of that wretch. My real name has been soiled by him—but where can I go, alas? There isn’t a capital in Europe to which he did not drag me in his wake, to help him in his machinations...”
Softly, I replied: “There’s a very simple, perfectly legal, means to make you forget that name, my dear Frédérique. I’ll marry you...”
She straightened up, stoically. “I’m yours, my love, entirely yours; make me your mistress. But your wife…no! You’d blush...”
With a tender violence, I put my hand over her mouth, and told her about the offer that Rivier had made to me the previous evening. Then I concluded: “It’s agreed? I’ll propose you as a candidate to my friend Jean-Paul. We’ll be leaving in three or four days, I think. Doctor and Madame Marquin, of the Franco-Britannic Study Mission to Île Féréor...”
XVII. France’s Fortune
The matter was settled. Rivier received Frédérique and me in his office in the Boulevard Haussmann, and everything was arranged in ten minutes. He promoted me on the spot to Commissaire-Delegate of the Banque Rivier et Cie.
“But I don’t have any expertise in that area,” I protested. “I’m only a doctor of medicine.”
“You’re my friend. I can have every confidence in you, and I know that you’ll follow my instructions with precision and fidelity. It’s a matter of agreeing with the English the monthly production of the gold. You’ll have technicians as collaborators. For you, it will be sufficient to have common sense. Oh, the salary! Will sixty thousand a year be sufficient? Yes? Shh! Don’t thank me—it’s a matter of business. You can speak English, of course?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s settled. Let’s pass on to Mademoiselle…no, to your wife, since you have the intention of marrying Mademoiselle Kohbuler, and marrying her right away…you’re in agreement with that, aren’t you, Mademoiselle? It will save you from an awkward situation aboard the Ile-de-France—for it’s that fine liner that will be taking you...
“Let’s see; the departure is fixed for the sixth, in five days. It’s not possible to marry in France in such a short time, so you need to hop over to London by airplane and request the ministry of a clergyman. When are you going? It’s all the same to you? Tomorrow, then. I’ll book you seats with the Compagnie Aérienne. The bank will pay for the little excursion. With the recommendation I’ll give you, you’ll have special passports from the Ministry of Marine...so we’ll say ‘Madame Frédérique Marquin.’ Can you speak English?”
Frédérique smiled. “I can speak English and six other languages fluently.”
“All right—you’ll be your husband’s secretary. Same salary as Antoine—let’s be feminists—sixty thousand…and all presentation expenses. You need to put on a good show for our British friends...”
The business was concluded.
Assured of the future, forgetful of the past, happy with the present, we’ve had a good lunch together, and now we’re setting off along the boulevards, lost in our amorous conversation, to wait for the offices of the Ministry to open.
The new atmosphere of these historic days in Paris is in harmony with our fever; we have the illusion of being, no longer in Paris, but in the capital of some unknown, exotic, unfamiliar France. The physiognomy of objects and people seems to have been scrubbed, endowed with unprecedented radiant powers; their spectacle astonishes us; we seem to be looking for the first time at the façades of the buildings toward which we raise our heads.
We arrive at the Madeleine. As we go down the Rue Royale we’re surprised to see traffic prohibited beyond the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, into which mounted policemen are redirecting the vehicles. On the Place de la Concorde, where a stationary crowd is beginning to assemble, cordons of municipal guards are reserving a large free corridor, which extends from the Champs-Élysées to the Rue de Rivoli, which had also been cleared.
That astonishes Frédérique—and me too, at first; then I understand.
“The gold from Cherbourg! The gold of Île Féréor! This is the route that the trucks will take, in triumph. We read it in the midday papers, which gave the itinerary of the convoy. Let’s go into the Ministry; we’ll be better placed.”
In fact, the name of Jean-Paul Rivier appended to our request for a passport had us introduced into the office of a divisional chief—who was, moreover, a friend of Commander Barcot, and who stationed us at a first floor window overlooking the Place de la Concorde. Directly beneath us, on a stage, cinematographers were beginning to turn their apparatus.
Piercing the rumor of the expectant crowd, the bellowing of a loudspeaker drew nearer, and a metallic voice emerged from the Champs-Élysées, borne by two automobiles bristling with radio apparatus. “Hello, hello! The trucks of gold coming from Cherbourg are coming through the Arc de Triomphe. They’re descending the Avenue…they’ll be here in two minutes...”
And over the excited din of the crowd, mingled with amused laughter, the exceedingly modern sequel to the announcement is heard: “Hello, hello! The Phoebus lamp is the sun in your own home... Hello, hello! Drink nothing but Kichof Apéritif...”
The annunciatory vehicles have passed by and are drawing away along the Rue de Rivoli. In its turn, h
owever, an acclamation swells, increases and arrives like a tidal wave…and the throb of aircraft engines, which revive momentarily the slight tremor of wartime air-raids. Up above, airplanes with military insignia are flying and circling, performing stunts. Lower down, above the trees of the Avenue, a yellow mass shining in the sunlight appears in the triumphant azure: a dirigible at the level of the innumerable riverside roofs glides towards us smoothly, decorated with flags, launching cries from loudspeakers in its turn.
Their apocalyptic voice is, however, drowned by the cyclonic howl of cheers—there might be as many as fifty thousand spectators in the square, dotted with moving heads on either side of the empty space—that goes up as the impressive cortege comes into view.
Three tanks, abreast across the width of the Avenue, are laminating the roadway with their caterpillar-tracks. The muzzles of 75-mm guns project from their flower-garlanded armor. Behind them, a platoon of Gardes Républicains on horseback, trumpeters at the head...
A combat deployment—but no Parisian is deceived by it. It is not a wary provision against any ridiculously improbable strike, some attempt of cinematic banditry to take possession of the billions, but a symbol: the clearly-expressed determination to defend the gold against external enemies.
The trumpets sound, and cause enthusiasm to resonate. Everyone in the crowd senses it: it is the end of dithering, incoherent politics, of the weakness and silly tricks that have brought the country to the brink of the abyss. Confidence has been reestablished from top to bottom with the recovery of the currency. Like some poor fellow who has been walking for a long time with his spine bent by misfortune, and who, suddenly been ballasted with gold by a stroke of good luck, stands up straight again with an unconstrained authority, the same politicians who were previously afflicted with paralysis and imbecility are standing up straight again, finally able to act and to govern.
Everyone in the crowd senses that, and cheers the horizon-blue helmets in battle-dress that are flanking the machine-gun carriers. “Cries of “Long live the army!” and “Long live France!” cleave the musical waves of triumphal marches, rumbling like a hurricane, while the military trucks of the air force file past, two by two. The gold is hidden beneath their tarpaulins, invisible but radiating its glorious effluvia.
“The return of the zaïmph!” Frédérique whispers to me.
Yes! Like her I was thinking of that scene from Salammbô, in which the Carthaginians, standing on the walls of their city, follow Matho with their eyes as he carries, with the veil of Tanit, the fortune of Carthage.21 This is a kind of counterpart, at a distance of twenty centuries. Paris, packed all the way from the Étoile to the Banque, is acclaiming in the arrival of the gold trucks the return of France’s fortune.
In the sky, the aircraft continue to circle like a flock of swallows. A second dirigible, this one a rigid steel-grey ex-zeppelin, the Méditerranée, floats above the trucks. The trucks pass by…and pass by…and the horizon-blues, the Gardes Républicains, the machine-gun carriers and other assault-vehicles...
It takes a good quarter of an hour, while the shouting never stops, directed with full lung-power at the gold, the gold, the gold…acclamations for the tarpaulin-covered trucks, as if for a column of gaudily-decked sovereigns…for the return of a victorious army...
We were going down the stairs of the Ministry when a jovial: “Hey, Antoine!” launched from above stopped me in my racks. I turned round with a start.
“Lefébure! Robert! You’re here in Paris?”
The mariner, wearing civilian dress, with his right arm in a sling, came to join us.
“Yes, old chap, for an hour. Brought back as far as Versailles by the procession, under the protection of the tanks. But you’re with Mademoiselle—I don’t want...”
“Yes, yes, you can come with us, Robert…Frédérique, may I introduce my old friend Robert Lefébure, whom I’ve already mentioned to you. Robert, Frédérique, my wife... But say, your arm’s in a sling. You’re injured?”
“The wrist’s slightly sprained. I’ll tell you all about it—but let’s go sit down somewhere and have a drink.”
The crowd was dispersing slowly. Among its dense waves, we succeeded in reaching the Taverne Royale and finding a section of table and chairs right at the back.
“As you can well imagine, old man,” Lefébure told us, “things got worse on the island after your departure. I was left as the only officer, along with de Silfrage, to keep the men in line—the scientists didn’t count and the engineers had their hands full directing the exploitation. We were preparing the cargo for the next ship—a stockpile of gold on the quay, ready to be taken away—but the fellows didn’t want to take the trouble to wait. They already had enough for themselves, in their estimation. At the instigation of a chap named Le Moullec—you remember him, the big redhead?—my men loaded the motor-launch with gold…full to the brim…in order to run off with it. I was asleep in my dug-out. That fellow Gripert, who had seen what they were doing, came to warn me that they were already going aboard. I ran at top speed and tried to hold them back—I wounded two of them with my pistol—but nothing doing! They were furious. That was when I hurt my wrist—a blow from a gaffe. In brief, they stepped on the gas and shot off southwards.
“There was no one left but the four engineers, the four scientists, de Silfrage and me. It was up to the ten of us to carry on the exploitation as best we could. Not nice—but necessary, no? And we set to work, I can assure you, even Gripert.
“On the twenty-first there was the scare with the Danish boat. We’d spotted it quickly, fortunately, while it was still a long way out to sea of the northern tip of the island, and we had time to put my scheme into action—to set light to two dozen barrels sulfur lined up on the cliff—with the result that the idiots daren’t come close to Port Erebus, the inlet where the mine is, because the wind was blowing that smoke at them like all the devils in hell. Add to that the racket of fifty cheddite cartridges. They thought the volcano was getting ready to blow and turned about in a hurry.
“On the twenty-second, two more ships—but they were flying the French flag and coming straight for us; they were the ships de Silfrage had asked for, the destroyer Espadon and the cargo vessel Cornouaille.
“The lad commanding the Espadon made a lot of fuss about daring to dock. He was afraid of not having enough depth in the creek. But most of all, Antoine, the gobs on all those chaps! Excuse me, Madame, but your husband must have warned you that I’m a bit coarse. The faces of all those fellows, to seeing the stocks of gold heaped up for them! A pile of nuggets, pell-mell, just like a coal-bunker. And when I took them up to the face, at the bottom of the gold chloride cliff! They turned blue. But they were all navy men, the boys on the two boats, and discipline held up. They were put to work...
“There were a good three hundred of them, and in less than three days the cargo ship had taken on its load of nuggets and left. The destroyer stayed to guard the island. As I was no longer good for anything out there with my arm in a sling—and an officer without matelots to boot—I allowed myself to be repatriated by the Cornouaille with de Silfrage and three of the scientists. The engineers all opted to stay, and Gripert too.
“Yesterday morning we disembarked at Cherbourg. A wireless message had just been received from the Espadon announcing that two more cargo ships, the Girondin and the Saint-Thomas, had moored at Port Erebus. We’d also learned that some rat of a Boche claimed to have infiltrated himself into the crew of Erebus II and to have given the game away…but that’s a lie. Commander Barcot immediately made enquiries at the military prison; not a single matelot was missing—of those, that is, that you had knocked out with your drug. A neat invention, I must admit, but they haven’t all come round yet...
“By the way, do you know that the camp—Île Féréor—is sinking? They’ve had the wit to sent new and more rapid means of exploitation: electric dredgers and cables for aerial wagons to double up the decauville. Yes, the camp is rotting away, accordi
ng to Gripert, who’s studying its ‘geological structure,’ and it won’t last much longer. The chloride rock is melting like sugar; at present the peak looks like an old saggy candle and there are incessant landslides at the point of attack. There’s been no mention of it officially, but I was there six days ago and I tell you that the Golden Rock—since that’s its name now—is coming apart at the seams and will end up collapsing on to the heads of the fellows at Port Erebus.
“At any rate, Antoine, you’ll soon see for yourself—and you too, Madame—since I’ve just been told at the Ministry that you’re both going to ‘lay the foundations of a Franco-Britannic condominium.’ That’s how you pronounce it, isn’t it? What’s it all about? Tell me, will you—I’m not up to date...”
It was while paying the bill—Lefébure was leaving us to go to the Gare du Nord in order to meet his wife, who was arriving from Lille at seven p.m.—that I saw a louis d’or for the first time since August 1914. The waiter gave me two, along with notes, in the change for my hundred francs. The mere sight of one of those little yellow disks—one Napoléon III coin and one Republican dated 1897—impressed me more than all the nuggets piled up in the hold of the Erebus II at Cherbourg. Lefébure lingered for a moment and handled them with a fearful and tender respect, but Frédérique only manifested a mediocre curiosity. She had been too young in 1914, and scarcely remembered the Golden Age...
XVIII. In the Radiance of Gold
As sonorous and grandiose as the stroke of a gong emphasizing France’s response to Germany’s challenge, news of that triumphant entrance of the gold to Paris, with its military escort, its dirigibles and its tanks, spreads through the world.
By wire, from Paris, the electric news speeds through the cables alongside the railway lines, singing to towns great and small, provincial and foreign. By submarine cable it leaps from the continent to the islands.