PRAISE FOR MURDER IN MEMORIAM
“How many detective stories have helped a country confront its past? Murder in Memoriam has certainly done that.”
—THE GUARDIAN
“Serves as a tap on the shoulder—a necessary reminder that what is dead is not buried, and what is buried is, unfortunately, not dead.”
—DEREK RAYMOND
“Murder in Memoriam is the kind of book that begins to restore one’s confidence in the detective story. Not only has Daeninckx produced a particularly intriguing narrative, but he has found a way to give this narrative a satisfying significance … A touch of moral vision and a pinch of righteous anger work wonders.”
—NICK HORNBY
“Didier Daeninckx is a novelist, magician and archaeologist prince … A frightening book.”
—JEROME CHARYN
“A crime fiction landmark.”
—REVIEWING THE EVIDENCE
“A masterful weave of political history.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
PRAISE FOR A VERY PROFITABLE WAR
“One hell of an unflinching look at war and its aftermath.”
—THE THRILLING DETECTIVE
“An entertaining thriller … A Very Profitable War is also noteworthy because Daeninckx doesn’t just think outside the box as far as this fairly well-worn genre goes, he shatters it.”
—THE COMPLETE REVIEW
“Melville House continues to uncover hidden gems and this 1984 novel by one of France’s most popular writers is a perfectly polished jewel … Let’s hope Melville House brings out more of Daeninckx’s novels.”
—THE GLOBE AND MAIL (TORONTO)
DIDIER DAENINCKX, France’s leading crime novelist, has written more than forty books. His novel Murder in Memoriam forced the French government to try Nazi collaborators, convicted the collaborator Paul Touvier to life imprisonment, and led President François Mitterrand to declare July 16 a day of national reflection on fascism and racism in France. He is also the author of A Very Profitable War. Also a journalist and an author of literary fiction, he won the 2012 Prix Goncourt for his book L’espoir en contrabande.
ANNA MOSCHOVAKIS is the translator of Albert Cossery’s The Jokers and Georges Simenon’s The Engagement, among other books. She is also a poet and an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse.
Also by Didier Daeninckx
A Very Profitable War
Murder in Memoriam
MELVILLE INTERNATIONAL CRIME
NAZIS IN THE METRO
First published in France as Nazis dans le métro in 1997
Copyright © 1997 by Éditions Baleine, Paris, France
Published by arrangement with Mon Agent et Compagnie
6 rue de Victor Hugo—73000, Chambéry, France
Translation copyright © 2014 by Anna Moschovakis
First Melville House Printing: March 2014
Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
and
8 Blackstock Mews
Islington
London N4 2BT
mhpbooks.com facebook.com/mhpbooks @melvillehouse
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014933228
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61219-297-0
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
v3.1
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
1: Jaurès and Funès
2: Brétonnades
3: The Black Lion’s Mustache
4: The Refrigerator Artists
5: Tied for First Prize at the Young Theater of the Real
6: Lost & Found Ink
7: Serbo-Bosnio-Croato-Slovenes
8: Yolanda of the Marshes
9: River Rats
10: To Doc Or Not to Doc
11: Luminaries and Louts
12: With his Tail Between his Legs
13: Disks, Chicks, and Tricks
14: Pedro and the Nazis of the Left
15: The Russian Poet Who Loves Serbian Shrinks
16: In the Field
17: The End of the World
18: Final Proofs
19: Chains on the Chassis
20: La Caillera
21: The Definition of a Kraut
22: Max, on the Square
Melville International Crime
1
JAURÈS AND FUNÈS
Sloga had read the Indépendant de Perpignan while downing an uninspiring coffee on the terrace of the Trois Grâces café, just before hitting the road. Murdered children, ethnic cleansing, a prince’s divorce, the usual filth. The only touch of humanity was in the almanac, next to the weather report: an item recalling the assassination of Jean Jaurès, eighty-one years earlier to the day, the 31st of July, 1914. He had not known that this disappearance was compensated for, a few hours later, by the birth of the comedian Louis de Funès. A conscience, pawned for its weight in funny faces: the century was off on the right track.
The Autoroute des Deux Mers snaked and dipped. Undulations in the land concealed the Catharist past the villages were now selling off, stone by stone: their erstwhile resistance embellished labels on bottles of Corbières; their sacrificed villages attracted euro-wielding tourists; their marginalized faith inspired spectacles of Sound and Light. He didn’t blame them; the entire country, a republic of autophagics, was living on its own remains. In the last few days, the waves of suntanned Spaniards and Italians had slowly begun to drift northward, and he was surprised not to be making any progress toward Roquemaure. When he recognized the sound of ambulances chirping in the distance, he understood that the traffic jam was actually a spontaneous funeral procession. The people who now lay dead in crumpled metal heaps where the Languedoc Route met the Autoroute du Soleil couldn’t have dreamed of drawing such a crowd to their services. Sloga slowly advanced alongside the red-and-white clown hats that surrounded the accident scene and first-aid zone, trying not to look at the disemboweled suitcases, the metallic shimmer of emergency blankets, the bottles turned upside down over IV tubes.
For some ten kilometers, his foot was lighter on the gas, and then, gradually, it began to recover its sense of weight. He enjoyed long, solitary trips. Driving calmed him down, and, as he no longer dreamed, it gave his mind the opportunity to wander in total freedom. He would talk to himself, sing, arrange sounds according to nothing but the obscure meaning of their rhythm. The place names marked with arrows on the brown signs that lined the road were so many memory traps. Every now and then, a memory gave rise to a burst of nostalgia, and he let the ghosts rush in until their features were reflected clearly in the windshield, floating above the shifting landscape. Then he would concentrate on the three-pointed star stuck to the tip of the hood and breathe deeply, to disengage with anything beyond the tangible world. Protesting grape growers had taken over the tollbooths at Ury. They would let you through for the price of a smile.
He tossed the yellow tract onto the passenger seat and read it at an angle as he descended into Paris. He entered the capital via a tentacle of the ring road and drove along its cultivated banks. There was almost nothing left of the neighborhood where he’d roamed as a child. Not even the name. The glory of Bercy’s wine-trading past was no longer the first thing that came to most people’s minds. At best, they might think of the Palais Omnisports, but more likely it would be the omnipresent Minister of Finance. Dust from construction sites dulled the sparkle on the tiles of the old pneumatic factory, a bulldozer’s claws attacked the cement rotunda near the refrigeration warehouses, and a perforated metal barrier blocked off Rue
Watt. What was left of a world that had been built by labor was being erased so that the book stacks for the grand library could be erected in its place: four massive, glassed-in legs of a gigantic table turned on its head. Wherever you looked, placards announced ambitious building projects along the Seine, and he wondered once again if the Opéra Bastille, the Abattoir des Sciences et Techniques, and the Arche de la Défense were built in response to real needs, or if their construction was not, rather, a pretext for reclaiming whole segments of working-class Paris.
He crossed over the Austerlitz tracks on the Tolbiac bridge, which a municipal architect had repainted red, white, and green like a pizzeria, and activated the remote-controlled door to the parking garage as soon as the building on the corner of Rue Jeanne d’Arc came into view. The nose of the Mercedes tilted toward the basement, where the fluorescent lights flickered on and off until their autopsy glow settled on the cars squeezed tightly between rough pillars. He parked between two Clios near the elevator door on Level 2, and gathered up the objects that had scattered around the car’s interior over the course of his trip. It wasn’t until he was making his way around to the trunk to retrieve his luggage that he became aware of a presence. Nothing concrete, not the movement of a shadow, nor the sound of breathing, nor the squeaking of soles, only the weight of someone’s eyes, someone’s attention.
He froze, his hand on the car, and turned around to take a long look at the garage. He blinked. The tens of thousands of painted white dashes on the roadway between Narbonne and Paris had left their imprint on his retinas. He shook his head to dispel their traces as much as his own uneasiness. He had to use both hands to pick up the suitcase, which was weighed down by books. The lights went out just as he stopped in front of the elevator. The call button was not illuminated as usual. He felt around for it, then pressed it several times, tugging the door toward himself out of instinct. It opened. A man was huddled on the floor of the elevator car, his silhouette reflected in its mirrored back wall. Sloga backed up and into another man, who had snuck up silently behind him under the cover of darkness. He blurted out a ridiculous “Pardon me” before the first punches fell.
2
BRÉTONNADES
Gabriel Lecouvreur, also known as the Octopus, extracted himself from the compact Peugeot like a crab from a shoe-box. The periwinkle-clad meter maids hadn’t yet started scouring for miscreants on this side of the Place Léon Blum, and he figured he had time to go have his coffee before the windshield of Cheryl’s car was graced with a city-issued ticket. The news seller, inside the illuminated, ad-covered walls of his tiny kiosk, was tying up yesterday’s unsold papers. He had arrayed the day’s wares in misshapen, unstable waves on the counter. Gabriel managed to withdraw a Parisien and a Libération more or less intact, without endangering the precarious equilibrium. Not long ago, just the sight of someone flipping through the first of these lying rags would have constituted an act of war. But now, surprisingly, he found himself more interested and engaged by its provincial reportage than by the sententious editorials in his other standby for daily news. And yet, he was sure he hadn’t changed …
A commercial moving truck pulled up in front of the wooden table-leg manufacturer’s place on Rue Godefroy-Cavaignac. A team of burly, taciturn men began loading machine parts, strapping them in place somewhere in the dark belly of the semi. Gabriel approached Monsieur Alaric the elder, proprietor of the table-leg operation, a portly Breton with olive skin who was watching the movers’ comings and goings through a double door. He extended his hand. The pressure of his fingers was more than just weak: it was disillusioned.
—No rest for the weary, eh! What are you doing, modernizing? Getting rid of the old rigs?
The carpenter shrugged.
—Modernize? What for? With table legs, it’s not like you’re cutting them with lasers and scouring the Internet every morning to find out if some cabinetmaker in Fatchakulla has invented a revolutionary new technique in the middle of the night!
—So what are they doing then?
Alaric unzipped the front pocket of his overalls and dug out a Gauloise Light from a dented packet.
—Isn’t it obvious? I’m out of here.
He offered Gabriel a cigarette.
—Thanks, but I haven’t quit quitting … You’re really leaving? Closing up shop? Is business that bad?
Smoke streamed from his nostrils in two jets that merged into one.
—You kidding? I’ve got a list of orders as long as a day without bread … No, the new owner’s kicking me out. There’s no romance in table legs anymore. He wants to gut the place and turn it into a gallery-café …
—Another café! Well, we don’t have to worry about dying of hunger in this neighborhood anymore … And where will you go? Back to Brittany?
Alaric nearly choked.
—Brittany, me? Never! I don’t even go there for vacation! I need streets, bars, cars, subways! The older generations might’ve had a hard time adapting, but I’m completely at home …
Gabriel leaned his long frame against the wall.
—Of course, it’s been a long time … The Alaric name has been on this shack forever …
—You can say that again! Now we’re out on the street … It was my great-grandfather who came here first, from Finistère-Nord, at the end of the last century … The recruiters arrived and sent whole villages into exile, giving advances to parents and wives … Reimbursable from the first year’s pay. It was a little like Citroën and Bouygues with the Moroccans and the Turks … But with us it was for the first Delaunay-Belleville cars. The plant was in Saint-Denis, not far from Briche. Steel frames, spoked wheels, wood interiors, all-leather upholstery … They needed the best craftsmen in the country, and they went looking for them in Brittany and Auvergne … I never had the chance to know my great-grandfather, but my grandfather lived basically the same shitty life as he did … At first he didn’t speak a word of French, and on Saturday nights, after their shifts, Parisian workers would unwind by chasing down “foreigners” … Because they spoke Méteque, because they were unmarried, because they didn’t eat the food everyone else ate. He was systematically beat up … And you know what the bastards called those raids?
—No.
With an expert flick, Alaric propelled his cigarette butt into the clear waters of the gutter.
—Brétonnades! Can you imagine? Forty years before the ratonnades* against the Arabs … It’s only proof that nothing ever changes: we just get used to it …
—And where will you go?
—When they ruin the provinces for you and then kick you out of the city, what’s left?
Gabriel Lecouvreur’s eyebrows rearranged themselves into a circumflex.
—I don’t know …
—It’s obvious: the outskirts … They’re sticking me with three thousand square meters in Montreuil, along the highway. It’s called Mosinor … Twelve stories surrounded by a truck route. Three-quarters of the building is occupied by sweatshops, and the courtyard is used as a parking lot for those green dumpsters from the Department of Household Waste! It’s a dream come true!
—You do make it sound appealing … You should reinvent yourself as a real-estate agent. Is there anywhere to get a drink, at least?
—Oh sure, these are civilized people, after all: they just opened a Burger King on the ground floor … I’m going to have to get used to soft drinks …
Gabriel Lecouvreur walked back up toward Ledru-Rollin, his Parisian open against the crowd, his nose deep in the news of the rotating orb beneath his feet. The other pedestrians made way for this beanpole of a man absorbed in the world’s progress. Some lifted their heads in his direction, and the oldest among them saw in him a strong resemblance to a young Philippe Clay.
Perched on a wobbly stool, on tiptoes, Maria was writing the list of appetizers and desserts of the day on the front window of the Pied de Porc à la Sainte-Scolasse. Lecouvreur stopped next to her. Thanks to the stool, their heads were at the same
height. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and pointed at the menu.
—Vinaigrette is written with a V, not a W …
She spun around reflexively to check her writing, realizing as she turned that he was teasing her. She responded in an exaggerated Teruel accent:
—I don’t understand … it weally is leeks wit’ win-aigwette …
The proprietor, who was busy fiddling with the coffee machine, didn’t see him enter. Gabriel greeted the fifteen or so regulars gathered around the counter and sat down behind the row of potted Wandering Jews whose leaves, which Maria doped up with aspirin and a concoction of ground eggshells, were as green as the hills of Normandy. Léon, the epileptic German Shepherd, headed toward him in slow motion, his hindquarters skidding. He plowed his muzzle twice into the plastic lattice-backed chairs before collapsing with a sigh at Gabriel’s feet. Gérard, who had just finished serving a dozen coffees and almost as many glasses of Calvados, walked across the room. He set down Gabriel’s daily bowl of Arabica and a croissant.
—No more sweets for Léon, he’s becoming blind as a bat! It’s bad enough that he can’t bark anymore …
Ordinarily, Gabriel would have bestowed a thousand virtues on the dog’s gluttony; he would have patiently explained that, in The Symposium, Plato had the Philosopher assert the palate’s superiority over sight, arguing that our eyes detect only the surface of things whereas our taste buds are able to decipher the secret depths of all the flavors of the earth. In other words, he would have put on his usual show. The customers waited attentively for the joust to begin, but it did not; Gabriel remained immobile, waylaid by the News in Brief. Gérard tried again to spark an exchange with a noisy sniff.
—You don’t think he stinks?
This attempt met with no greater success. He was preparing to resume his position behind the bar when Gabriel raised his head with a devastated look in his eyes.
Nazis in the Metro Page 1