The Kites

by Romain Gary

  “I could feel that, all right.”

  She’s got a heavy military greatcoat, a stretcher with a nurse’s red cross; I’ve kept the long hair and the beret from our happy times.

  “How are things going here?”

  “The keep-your-head-downs and the play-your-cards-rights. But it’ll change.”

  “Watch out, Ludo. If you ever get arrested …”

  “Nothing will happen to you.”

  “And if you’re killed?”

  “Well, then, someone else will love you, and that’s that.”

  “Then who? Hans?”

  I am silent. She still enjoys teasing me as much as she always did.

  “How much more time, Ludo?”

  “I don’t know. There’s always that old saying, ‘We’re living off hope,’ but I’m starting to think hope is the one living off us.”

  Waking up is our best time: a warm bed is always a little bit of a wife. I draw these moments out as much as I can, but day always comes, bearing its weight of reality, messages to carry, new contacts to establish. I hear the floorboards creak, I watch Lila dress, moving to and fro under my eyelids; she goes down to the kitchen, lights the fire, puts the water on to boil — and I laugh at the thought that this girl, who never did such menial chores in her life, has learned to keep house so quickly.

  My uncle grumbles: “There are only two other people living entirely off memory like you — de Gaulle in London and Duprat at the Clos Joli.”

  And then he laughs. “I wonder which of them will end up winning.”

  30

  The Clos Joli continued to prosper, but Marcellin Duprat’s reputation in the area began to suffer; he was accused of serving the occupier too well; as for our comrades, they hated him cordially. I knew him better than that and defended him when my friends called him a bootlicker or a collaborator. Truth be told, as soon as the Occupation began, with the German superior officers and the entire Parisian elite already flocking to his “galleries” and his “rotunda,” Duprat made his choice. His restaurant had to remain what it always had been: one of France’s proudest landmarks, and every day, he, Marcellin Duprat, intended to show the enemy a thing that could not be defeated. But since the Germans felt so comfortable there, and were unstinting in their protection of him, his attitude was misunderstood and harshly judged. I myself observed an altercation at the Petit-Gris, where Duprat had stopped to buy a tinder lighter and was called out by Monsieur Mazier, the solicitor, who did not mince his words: “You should be ashamed, Duprat. The whole nation’s eating rutabaga and you’re treating the Germans to truffles and foie gras. You know what we call the menu of your Clos Joli around here? The menu of shame.”

  Duprat stiffened. There had always been something military in his physique, with a face that would harden all at once, lips clenched beneath his little gray mustache and his steel-blue gaze.

  “The hell with you, Mazier. If you’re too stupid to understand what I’m trying to do, then France really is in the toilet.”

  “And what exactly are you doing, you old jackass?” No one had ever heard that kind of legal jargon before.

  “I’m holding down the fort,” growled Duprat.

  “What fort? Fort Scallops Chervil? Fort Lobster Soup? Fort Turbot with Cream of Leek and Mullet Sautéed with Thyme Blossoms? France’s young men are rotting away in prison camps, when they’re not being shot to death, and you … Mousse de sol au beurre de fines herbes! Salade de queues d’écrevisses! Last Thursday, you served the occupying forces lobster rolls with sweetbreads, shellfish saveloy with truffle and pistachio, and Bresse chicken liver mousse with cranberries …” He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his lips. I do believe his mouth was watering.

  Duprat waited a good long moment. There was a crowd at the bar: Gente, the civil engineer; Dumas, the owner; and one of the Loubereau brothers, who would be arrested a few weeks later.

  “Listen carefully, you asshole,” Duprat said finally, in a low voice. “Our politicians have betrayed us, our generals turned out to be fools, but the men responsible for France’s great cuisine will defend it to the death. And as for the future …”

  He shot them all a glare.

  “Who’s going to win the war? Not Germany, not America, not England! Not Churchill, not Roosevelt, not that other guy, what’s his name, the one who’s always talking to us from London! The war will be won by Duprat and his Clos Joli, by Pic in Valence, by Point in Vienne, by Dumaine in Saulieu! That’s all I have to say to you, assholes!”

  Never before had I seen such stupor on the faces of four Frenchmen. Duprat flung a few coins onto the tobacconist’s counter, put the lighter in his pocket. He looked them all over one last time, and departed.

  When I told him about the incident, Ambrose Fleury nodded his head to show he understood. “He’s crazy with sorrow, too.”

  That very night, the Clos Joli’s van stopped in front of our house. Duprat had come to seek comfort with his best friend. At first, the two men did not exchange so much as a word, and went to work on a bottle of calvados. It was an entirely different man I saw sitting before me now from the one I’d watched a few hours before at the Petit-Gris. Marcellin’s face was ghastly pale and defeated; no trace remained of his determined air.

  “You know what one of those gentlemen said to me the other day? He got up from the table and declared to me with a smile, ‘Herr Duprat, the German army and French cuisine — we’ll build Europe together! With Germany for force and France for flavor! You’ll be the one to give this Europe of the future what it needs from France, and we will ensure that all of France becomes a big Clos Joli!’ And then he added, ‘You know what the German army did when it got to the Maginot Line? It drove right past! And do you know what it did when it got to the Clos Joli? It stopped! Ha, ha, ha!’ And he laughed.” For the first time, I saw tears in Duprat’s eyes.

  “Come on, Marcellin,” my uncle said gently. “Look, I know these words have often smacked of defeat, but … we’ll get them!”

  Duprat pulled himself together. His eye recovered its famous steely gleam and you could even see a glint of some cruel irony. “Apparently in America, in England, they’re saying France is unrecognizable. Well, tell them to come to the Clos Joli: they’ll recognize it, all right!”

  “There. That’s better,” said my uncle, filling his glass.

  They were smiling now, the two of them.

  “Because,” Duprat went on, “I’m not one of those people whimpering, ‘Who knows what the future has in store for us!’ You ask me. I know: there will always be a France in the Michelin Guide!”

  My uncle had to drive him back home. I think it was on that day that I understood Marcellin Duprat’s desperation and furor, but also his faith: that very Norman mix of flair and hidden fire, the fire he had once told me was “everyone’s common ancestor.” In any case, in March 1942, when the idea of fire came up with regard to the Clos Joli — that is to say, of setting fire to it and along with it to all the upper crust of the collaboration rushing for a seat at the occupier’s table there, I protested vehemently.

  There were six of us at the meeting, including Monsieur Pinder, to whom I had spoken at length. He had promised me he would do what he could to calm the hotheads among us. Guédard was there — he was beginning to scout out clandestine landing spots in the west; Jombey, aggressive and nervous, as if he already sensed his tragic end; Sénéchal, a teacher from Caen; and Vigier, who had come from Paris to study “the Duprat case” with local network heads and make the necessary decisions to proceed. We had met at Guédard’s house, on the third floor, which faced the Clos Joli from the other side of the road. The general’s Mercedes and the black Citroëns of the Gestapo and their French colleagues were already lined up in front of the restaurant. Jombey stood at the window, the curtain open a crack.

  “It can’t be tolerated,” he repeated. “Look at the
image Duprat is broadcasting! For two years, he’s been a toady and a whore — it’s insufferable. The old cook pulls out all the stops to pleasure the Boche and those traitors …” He came over to the table and opened Duprat’s “file.” Proof of collaboration with the enemy, as it was called back then. “Listen to this …”

  We hardly needed to listen. We knew the “proof” by heart. Terrine d’anguille sauce émeraude, served to Otto Abetz, Hitler’s ambassador in Paris, and his friends. Fantaisie gourmande Marcellin Duprat, served to Fernand de Brinon, Vichy’s ambassador in Paris, who was executed by firing squad in 1947. Feuilleté aux écrevisses et aux pointes d’asperges, mouisse de foies blonds aux airelles, served to Laval himself — the head of the Milice, in the company of his Vichy crew. Pot-au-feu vieille France, served to Grüber and his French aides in the Gestapo. And twenty or thirty of the best dishes of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France, in which General von Tiele, the new commander of the German army in Normandy, had already taken his victor’s pleasure in the course of a single week the month before. The wine list alone was sufficient evidence of Duprat’s eagerness to provide the occupier with the very best of what French soil had to offer.

  “Listen to me, I mean listen!” Jombey roared. “At the very least he could have hidden his best bottles — kept them for the Allies when they get here! But no, he gave it all up, he handed it all over … he sold it all! From the 1928 Château Margaux to the 1934 Château Latour — even a 1921 Château d’Yquem!”

  Sénéchal was seated on the bed, caressing his spaniel. He was a big blond guy. I always try to remember, to bring it back to life — the hair color, if nothing else, of this man of whom, a few months later, nothing would remain. “I ran into Duprat eight days ago,” he said, “he was coming back from his rounds of the local farms and the back of his car was chockablock with parcels. He had a black eye. ‘Hoodlums,’ he said to me. ‘Listen, Monsieur Duprat, they’re not hoodlums and you know it. Aren’t you even a little ashamed?’ He gritted his teeth. ‘Well, well, you, too, little one? And here I thought you were a good Frenchman.’ ‘What does that mean right now, a good Frenchman, according to you?’ ‘We’ll, I’ll go ahead and tell you, since you don’t seem to know. That doesn’t surprise me, as a matter of fact. You’ve even forgotten your history! A good Frenchman, nowadays, is one who stands firm.’ I was stunned. There he was, at the wheel of his little van, with petrol supplied by the occupier, bringing the best products in France to the Germans, talking about people who ‘stand firm.’ ‘And standing firm — what does that mean to you?’ ‘It’s someone who doesn’t back down, who holds his head high and stays loyal to what makes France France … It’s this!’ He showed me his hands. ‘My grandfather and my father worked for France’s great cuisine, and France’s great cuisine has never taken a fall. It’s never known defeat, and it never will be defeated, so long as there’s a Duprat to defend it — against the Germans, against the Americans, against anybody and everybody! I know what they think of me. I’ve heard it enough times. That I go all out to please the Germans. Shit. Is the priest at Notre Dame Cathedral going to stand in the way if the Germans want to kneel? In two or three decades France will realize who we are — the Pics and the Dumaines and the Duprats, and the few others who salvaged the essentials. One day, all of France will be making pilgrimages here, and the standard of our country’s greatness will be borne by its great chefs to the four corners of the earth! One day, my good man, whether it’s Germany, America, or Russia who wins the war, this country will be so sunk in the mud that the only hope we’ll have of finding our way out will be the Michelin Guide! And even that won’t be enough! And then we’ll see guides, let me tell you!’” Sénéchal trailed off.

  “He’s a desperate man,” I said. “You’ve got to remember, his generation fought at Verdun.”

  He smiled at me. “He’s a little like your uncle, with his kites.”

  “I think he’s telling everyone to go fly a kite,” Vigier put in. “He’s just giving everything he has to pursue his passions — for his work, and for rattling people’s chains.”

  Monsieur Pinder looked uncomfortable. “Duprat has a certain idea of France,” he murmured.

  “What?!” Jombey hollered. “Monsieur Pinder, I can’t believe you’re saying that!”

  “Calm down, my friend. Because all the same, there is, after all, a hypothesis to be evaluated here …”

  We waited.

  “What if Duprat is a visionary?” said Monsieur Pinder softly. “What if he’s taking the long view? If he’s really seeing the future?”

  “I don’t get it,” Jombey muttered.

  “Maybe Duprat, out of all of us, is the one who sees the country’s future most clearly. And when we’ve all been killed, and the Germans have been beaten, it will all end in a blaze of glory — culinary glory. We may pose the question as follows: who, here, is prepared to die for France to become Europe’s Clos Joli?”

  “Duprat,” I said.

  “Out of love or hate?” demanded Guédard.

  “Apparently the two go pretty well together,” I pointed out. “Both blind, all’s fair in love and war and so on. I think if we got him into a trench with a rifle in his hand like back in ’18, he’d be able to show us his true feelings.”

  “Come see,” said Jombey.

  We went over to the window. Four faces, three young, one old. The curtains were thin cotton, with pink and yellow flowers on them.

  The gentlemen were leaving the restaurant.

  There was Grüber, the local head of the Gestapo; Marle and Dennier, two of his French colleagues; and a group of aviators, among whom I recognized Hans.

  “A bomb in there,” Jombey said. “And burn the Clos Joli right down to the ground.”

  “The costs of an attack like that would be too high for the local population,” I said. I felt uneasy. I really understood Marcellin Duprat and his mix of despair, sincerity, and showmanship, the cunning and authenticity in his loyalty to his vocation, which vastly transcended whatever futility it also contained. I had no doubt that, in all his rage and frustration as a veteran of the Great War, French haute cuisine had become his last line of defense. Actually, his brand of willful blindness was just another way of seeing: the kind that lets a man hold on to something so he doesn’t go under. Obviously, I wasn’t mistaking cathedrals for custard, but, having been raised among the kites of “that crazy old Fleury,” I had a soft spot for anything that allows a man to give the best of himself.

  “I know it sounds ridiculous to you but don’t forget that three generations of chefs before Marcellin bore the Duprat name. He was completely traumatized by the defeat — it was the collapse of everything he believed in — and so he’s given himself completely to what’s left, body and soul.”

  “Yeah, asshat of veal in bugger sauce,” Jombey shouted. “What do you take us for, Fleury?”

  I had a plan all ready and I had already talked it over with Sénéchal.

  “We have to use the Clos Joli, not destroy it. Once the wine starts flowing, the Germans talk a lot around the table, and very freely. We have to plant someone in the restaurant who knows German and who can pass us information. Information, that’s what London’s asking us for. A whole lot more than flashy attacks.”

  I underlined the risk of reprisals against the local population, as well, and it was decided that we would hold off on the action. But I knew that sooner or later, if I couldn’t prove to our comrades that Duprat could be useful to us, the Clos Joli would go up in flames.

  31

  I spent a few days racking my brain. Sénéchal’s fiancée, Suzanne Dulac, had a degree in German, but I still couldn’t figure out how to get Duprat to take her on.

  For the past few months, I had been in charge of coordinating the safe houses for the escape route that funneled downed Allied pilots out through Spain. One evening, one of the Buis brothers alerted me that a Free Frenc
h pilot had been found and hidden at their farm. The Buis family had kept him for a week while things “cooled off,” and when the Germans became less frequent in their patrols around the downed plane, they called for me.

  I found the pilot sitting at the kitchen table in front of a plate of tripe. His name was Lucchesi. It seemed like he’d spent a lifetime tumbling out of the sky, so at ease was he with his red polka-dotted scarf around his neck and the Cross of Lorraine insignia on his air force blue battle dress.

  “Tell me, sir, is there a good inn around here I could recommend to my squadron mates? We’re losing four or five pilots a month, so if any end up around here …”

  That’s when it came to me. I had to stow the pilot for at least eight days before I could arrange for his passage to Spain.

  My uncle accompanied me to the Clos Joli late the next evening. I found Duprat plunged in somber thought, in the company of his son, Lucien. Radio Vichy was on full blast, and there was plenty to be upset about. The British merchant fleet was no more, the Afrika Korps was closing in on Cairo, the Italian army had occupied Greece … never before had I seen Marcellin Duprat so preoccupied by bad news. Only when he started talking did I realize my error. The master of the Clos Joli had simply forgotten to turn the radio off. He was meditating on something quite different from such ephemera.

  “You know, Tournedos Rossini — I never did want it on my menu. Another Escoffier legacy. What a flimflammer. You know what the Tournedos Rossini is? Trick of the eye, that’s what. Escoffier invented it because there were so many questionable steaks. So he just slapped something on top to make them go down easier. Foie gras, truffles à la brune — it distracts the tongue. That’s pretty much where we’re at with politics right now: Tournedos Rossini. Tricks of the tongue. The product is rotten, so they slather it in lies and pretty talk. The more eloquence they pile on, the cleverer they get, the surer you can be that it’s rotten on the inside. Personally, I never could stomach Escoffier. You know what he called frogs’ legs? ‘Nymph wings à l’aurore’ …”