The Kites

by Romain Gary

  Two American aircraft carriers downed in the Pacific … three hundred English bombers shot down by German aviators in the past two nights …

  Duprat’s eyes were slightly glazed. “It can’t go on like this,” he went on. “Everything’s show nowadays. Take presentation. That has got to end. The future is in the dish. But no one ever listens to me. Even Point refuses to admit that presentation is an unnatural act. The dish always loses its spontaneity, its truth, its moment, in the presentation. It has to come out fully real, in its dish, straight from the fire. And that Vannier, the nerve of him, telling me that only cheap dives send food out from the kitchen in the dish. And where’s taste in all that? What counts is the taste, seared in its moment of truth, the moment when the flesh and the flavor blossom together — you have to seize that moment, you can’t let it get away …”

  Hundreds of thousands of prisoners on the Russian front … vigorous police reprisals against traitors and saboteurs … in England, twelve villages razed in a single night …

  It hit me that Duprat was talking to keep himself together; that he was, in his own way, fighting discouragement and despair.

  “Hello there, Marcellin,” my uncle said.

  Duprat stood up and went to shut off the radio. “What do you want from me at this hour?”

  “The kid needs to talk to you. It’s private.”

  We left the room.

  He listened to us in silence.

  “No way. The Resistance has my full support. I’ve proved that well enough, standing firm in these impossible conditions. But I can’t receive an Allied aviator under the Germans’ noses. They’ll shut me down.”

  My uncle lowered his voice a little. “It’s not just any aviator, Marcellin. It’s General de Gaulle’s aide-de-camp.”

  Duprat was struck with a kind of paralysis. If a monument is ever raised to the man who held the rudder of the Clos Joli with a steady hand through the storm, that’s how I imagine he’ll be immortalized in a square in Cléry, his gaze steely, his jaws clenched. I do believe he felt a certain rivalry with France’s greatest Resistance fighter.

  He thought about it. I sensed he was both tempted and hesitant. My uncle observed him out of the corner of his eye, which betrayed a hint of mischief.

  “That’s all very nice,” he said at last, “but your de Gaulle is in London, and I’m here. I’m the one who has to face the hardships day-to-day. Not he.” He struggled for another moment. I knew it was a question of vanity, but I also knew that the hidden depths of his defiance had more than a bit of grandeur to them. “I’m not putting everything I’ve salvaged on the line so your man can come here. It’s too dangerous. Risking closure just to make a splash — no. But I can do better than that. I’ll give you the Clos Joli menu. Your man can give it to de Gaulle.”

  I stood there, dumbfounded. In the dark, Duprat’s tall, white silhouette resembled some kind of avenging spirit. My uncle Ambrose remained speechless for a moment, too, but when Duprat returned to his kitchen he muttered, “We may be loose cannons, you and I, but that one there is the whole damn artillery.”

  For a while now, the rumble of English bombers had blended with the fire from German antiaircraft guns — the night voice of the Normandy countryside. The searchlights crossed swords above our heads. And then an orange light burst a hole in the sky: an airplane had been hit; it blew up with its bombs.

  Duprat returned. In his hand was the Clos Joli menu. A few bombs fell, over towards Bursières. “Here we are. Listen. This is a personal message to de Gaulle from Marcellin Duprat …” To drown out the voice of the German antiaircraft cannons, he raised his own:

  Soupe crémière d’écrevisses de rivière

  Galette feuilletée aux truffes au vin de Graves …

  Loup à la compotée de tomates …

  He read us the entire menu du jour, from the foie gras in pepper jelly with warm potato salad in white wine all the way to the white peach with Pomerol granita. The Allied bombers rumbled overhead and Marcellin Duprat’s voice trembled a little. From time to time, he stopped and swallowed hard. I think he was a little afraid.

  A fracas of bombs near the Etrilly rail line made the ground shake.

  Duprat went silent and wiped his forehead. He handed me the menu. “Here. Give this to your pilot. So de Gaulle remembers what it’s like. So he knows what he’s fighting for.” The projectors continued their fencing match in the sky, surrounding the toque of the best chef in France with what looked like flashes of lightning. “I don’t kill Germans,” he said. “I crush them.”

  “You talk out of your ass, is mostly what you do,” my uncle observed gently.

  “You think so, do you? We’ll see about that. We’ll see who has the last word, de Gaulle or my Clos Joli.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with French cuisine winning the day. As long as it doesn’t win out over all the rest,” my uncle said. “I just read about a contest a newspaper organized. The subject was, ‘What should we do with the Jews?’ First prize went to a young woman who answered, ‘Roast them.’ Now, with all this rationing, she’s probably just a good little housewife dreaming of a nice roast. Be that as it may, one shouldn’t judge a country by what it does with its Jews; for all time, Jews have been judged by what’s done to them.”

  “Oh what the hell,” Duprat burst out suddenly. “Bring him to me, your aviator. And for heaven’s sake, don’t think I’m doing this to make things right with the future. I have nothing to worry about in that regard. Any German with a shred of sense who sets foot in the Clos Joli can see he’s dealing with supremacy, with historical invincibility. The other day, Grüber himself dined here. And when he finished, do you know what he said to me? ‘Herr Duprat, you should be shot.’”

  We left him in silence. As we made our way through the fields my uncle remarked, “When the defeat came, and the country went down, I thought Marcellin was going to lose his mind. Lucien told me that after the fall of Paris, he walked into the kitchen and found his father standing on a stool with the noose around his neck. He was delirious for days, stuttering and muttering a garble of duck with Normandy herbs and his famous giboulée à la crème, Foch, Verdun, Guynemer. Then, he wanted to shut down, and then he locked himself in his office with his three hundred menus and the glory they’ve brought to the Clos Joli for generations. I think he’s never really completely recovered, and that was when he decided to set an example for the Germans and the whole country — a French chef who wouldn’t capitulate. For sure,” he added, “neither of us can accuse him of being unreasonable.”

  32

  Lieutenant Lucchesi’s lunch at the Clos Joli was memorable. We had procured him a brand new suit and impeccable papers, although since the beginning of the Occupation not one single identity check had ever occurred at Duprat’s restaurant. The lieutenant was served at the best table in the “rotunda,” among the high officers of Wermacht, including General von Tiele in person. At the end of the meal, Marcellin Duprat walked Lucchesi to the door himself, shook his hand, and said: “Come back to see us.”

  Lucchesi looked at him.

  “Unfortunately, you don’t get to choose where you’re downed,” he replied.

  From that day on, Duprat refused us nothing else. I don’t think it was in any way because we now “had him,” or because he had begun to feel the wind was changing and wanted to prove his loyalties to the Resistance, but because if the words sacred union had any meaning for him, it was that such a union ought to coalesce around the Clos Joli. Or, in my uncle’s words — which carried more affection than they did sarcasm — “Marcellin may be older than de Gaulle, but he still has every chance of succeeding him.”

  And so Duprat agreed to take Sénéchal’s fiancée, our comrade Suzanne Dulac, a pretty brunette with sparkling eyes and perfect German, into his service as a “hostess” — “no floozies under my watch” was his only qualification. There was no dou
bt that the table conversation she picked up was of interest in London, where they seemed particularly concerned with what was happening in Normandy: our orders were to disregard nothing. But very soon, we found at our disposal a source of information that turned out to be so important that it profoundly altered the activity of our entire network. As for me, it took me several days to recover from the shock. It was more than surprise: before that day I had never truly understood what lengths a human being — a woman, in this case — could go to in their implacable commitment to struggle and survival.

  In my work at Marcellin Duprat’s, the name I saw most often on the invoices and in the account books was that of the countess Esterhazy — the Gräfin, as the Germans called her — whom my employer held in high esteem: she was an excellent hostess. The buffets at her gatherings were all catered by the Clos Joli, and added appreciable sums to the restaurateur’s income.

  “She is a great lady,” Duprat explained to me, looking over the figures. “A Parisian woman from a very good family, who was married to one of Admiral Horthy’s nephews — you know, the dictator of Hungary. Apparently he left her vast properties in Portugal. I was at her house once, she has autographed photos on her piano of Horthy, Salazar, Marshal Pétain — even Hitler himself, believe it or not: ‘for the Gräfin Esterhazy, from her friend Adolf Hitler.’ I saw it with my own eyes. It’s no surprise the Germans take good care of her. When she came back from Portugal after the victory — well, I mean, after the defeat — she moved into rooms at the Stag at first, but when the hotel was requisitioned by the German General Staff, out of courtesy they left her the pavilion in the hotel gardens. The point is, you see almost as much of the upper crust at her place as you do at mine.”

  Dogs were not permitted to enter the Clos Joli. Duprat was completely intransigent about it. Even the Pomeranian Spitz that followed Grüber everywhere was required to wait in the garden, although it’s true that Duprat sent out generous portions of potted meat for the pooch while it waited. One day when I was in the office, Monsieur Jean came in carrying a Pekinese.

  “Esterhazy’s little doggy. She asked me to bring it in to you, she’ll come pick it up afterward.”

  I glanced at the Pekinese and felt beads of cold sweat form on my brow. It was Chong. Madame Julie Espinoza’s dog. I tried to get ahold of myself, to tell myself that it was just a resemblance, but I’ve never been able to play tricks with my memory. I recognized the black muzzle, every tuft of white-and-brown fur, the little reddish ears. The dog came over to me, placed his front paws on my knees, and began to whimper and wag its tail.

  “Chong!” I murmured.

  He jumped into my lap and licked my hands and face. I sat there stroking him, attempting to order my thoughts. Only one explanation was possible: Madame Julie had been deported, and the dog, in some bizarre series of mishaps or reincarnations, had ended up with the Lady Esterhazy. I knew how respectfully the Germans treated animals, and recalled an announcement published in the Gazette alerting the local population that “the transport of live poultry by tying their feet and hanging them head-down over bicycle handlebars shall be considered torture and strictly forbidden.”

  So Chong had found a new mistress. But the memories tumbled back impetuously and among them those of the “boss lady,” certain of defeat and preparing for the future with meticulous precaution: identity papers “above all suspicion,” millions of counterfeit bills, all the way down to the portraits of Horthy, Salazar, and Hitler that had intrigued me so, yet which “hadn’t been autographed yet.” I continued to sweat with emotion until Monsieur Jean opened the door and Madame Julie Espinoza walked in. To tell the truth, if it hadn’t been for Chong, I wouldn’t have recognized her. All that remained of the old madam in the rue Lepic was the bottomless depth of her gaze, in which whole millennia and all the hardship of the world lay hiding. Beneath her white hair, her face wore a chilly expression of slight haughtiness; an otterskin coat was slung casually over her shoulders, and a gray silk scarf wrapped around her neck; she’d given herself a majestic bosom, gained a good twenty pounds, and seemed almost as many years younger: later, she confided in me that she had taken advantage of her connections to have herself “dewrinkled” at the military burn hospital in Berck. The little golden lizard I knew so well was pinned to her scarf. She waited until Monsieur Jean had respectfully closed the door behind her, took a cigarette from her handbag, lit it with a gold lighter, and drew in the smoke, watching me. A hint of a smile appeared on her lips when she saw me there, frozen in my chair, my mouth hanging open in astonishment. She tucked Chong under her arm and observed me an instant longer, attentively, and almost with malevolence, as if she hardly approved of the trust she felt forced to place in me, and leaned forward: “Ducros, Salin, and Mazurier are under suspicion,” she murmured. “Grüber isn’t touching them for the moment, because he wants to know who the others are. Tell them to lie low for a while. And no more little meetings in the back room of the Normand — or at least not always the same faces. You got that?”

  I was silent. My vision was foggy and I had a sudden desire to pee.

  “Will you remember the names?”

  I nodded my head, yes.

  “And you will not mention me. Not a word. You never saw me. Understood?”

  “Understood, Madame Ju …”

  “Shut it, fool. It’s Lady Esterhazy.”

  “Yes, Lady Esther …”

  “Not Esther. Esterhazy. Esther is not a name to throw around these days. And hurry, because who knows, Grüber may want to pick them up before the meeting. I’ve got one of his guys feeding me information, but the stupid git has been laid up with pneumonia for the past three days.”

  She adjusted her otterskin coat on her shoulders, arranged her scarf, stared at my face for a long moment, crushed out her cigarette in the ashtray on my desk, and left the room.

  I spent the whole afternoon running to warn the threatened comrades. Soubabère absolutely wanted to know who my informant was, but I told him that a passerby had slipped me a note in the street and then taken off running.

  I was so stunned by the metamorphosis of the madam of the rue Lepic into this imposing revenant — a kind of statue de commandeur — that had appeared in my office, and that I tried not to think about it and didn’t breath a word of it to anyone, not even my uncle Ambrose. I ended up believing that my “state” had worsened, and that it had been a hallucination. But, two or three times a month, at lunchtime, Monsieur Jean would bring me the Gräfin’s little doggy, and whenever his mistress came to collect him, it was always so that she could slip me information, some of it so significant that it was becoming more and more difficult for me to pretend that I was picking it up from notes slipped to me by a stranger in the streets of Cléry.

  “Listen, Lady … I mean, My Lady, how am I supposed to explain where I’m getting this information from?”

  “I forbid you to speak of me. I’m not afraid to die, but I’m certain the Nazis are going to lose the war and I want to be around to see it.”

  “But how do you get …”

  “My daughter is a secretary at the General Staff headquarters, at the Stag.”

  She lit a cigarette. “And she’s Colonel Schtekker’s mistress.” She chuckled and stroked Chong. “The Stag. Quite the stag party they’ve got going on there. Tell your guys that you find the information in an envelope on your desk. You don’t know where it comes from. Tell them that if they want it to go on, they had better not ask you any questions.”

  For the first time, I saw a trace of worry on her face, as she observed me.

  “I trust you, Ludo. It’s always a stupid thing to do, but that’s the risk I took. I’ve always kept close to the ground, and for once …” She smiled. “The other day I went to see your uncle’s kites. There was one, a real beauty, that slipped out of his hands and blew away. Your uncle told me it was gone forever, or if you did find it, it woul
d be all banged up.”

  “Pursuing the blue yonder,” I said.

  “I never thought it would happen to me,” said Madame Julie Espinoza, and suddenly I saw tears in her eyes. I think when you’ve seen too much darkness, a little blue goes straight to your head.

  “You can trust me, Lady Esterhazy,” I said softly. “I won’t betray you. You’ve told me enough times that I’ve got the firing squad look.”

  Soubabère didn’t believe a word of the envelope story. When I handed him a map detailing the entire German military presence in Normandy — the number of planes in every airfield; the location of every coastal artillery battery and every AA formation; the number of German divisions that had been pulled out of Russia and were en route to the West — he all but had me court-martialed.

  “You bastard — where are you getting this from?”

  “Can’t tell you that. I gave my word.”

  My comrades were starting to look at me strangely. London demanded imperatively to know the source of the information. I thought so hard about it that there were times I didn’t see Lila for days and days. I had to find a solution at all costs and convince Her Ladyship, who I couldn’t help calling “the Jewess” in my head, to give me permission to inform my network commander. In the end, I resorted to an argument that I wasn’t particularly proud of, but which seemed only fair.

  That day, a Sunday, the Lady Esterhazy came to lunch at the Clos Joli after mass. The Pekinese was duly entrusted to me by Monsieur Jean. At around three o’clock, the lieutenant entered my office and pulled a note out of her handbag. She glanced prudently at the door, then placed the paper in front of me. “Learn it off by heart and burn it immediately.”

  It was a list of “trusted sources” — that is, informants — the Gestapo was using in the region. I read over the names twice and burned the paper.