Nazis in the Metro

by Didier Daeninckx

  Gabriel had passed by the La Caillera bookstore before, halfway up the hill to the Butte aux Cailles on the other side of Avenue d’Italie; he may even have patronized it. He left the Peugeot near the imposing Church of Saint Anne and walked back up Rue Buot. He turned at the corner; the shop, with its shelves of cheap used books, was only twenty meters away. He kept walking, lost in his thoughts, composing lines of dialogue appropriate for a book shopper that would allow him, without giving himself away, to bring up the true object of his curiosity.

  When he looked up, he discovered that Francis, the skinhead printer, was waiting for him just up the block. He was sitting on his Moto Becane next to another motorcycling warrior for the cause, also with shaved head, cargo pants, and Doc Martens. Francis pointed at Gabriel and scowled. The motorcycle engines roared, and it was clear to Gabriel that Francis no longer saw him as a potential contributor to Éditions Gaston Lémoine, or as a soldier for Greater Serbia. He turned on his heels and started back down Rue Buot. The motorcycles bounded onto the sidewalk, slalomed between parked cars … He could see that he had neither the time nor the breath to reach his car. He rifled through his pocket without slowing his pace, flattened himself suddenly against a tall carriage door, and inserted the key to the city into the lock below the electronic keypad.

  Miraculously, the door gave way, and he emerged into a paved courtyard which he sprinted across, diving into the stairwell on the other side. The two skinheads banged on the thick wood, and Gabriel could hear the idling of motors. He slinked up a few steps, opened a window and climbed out into a narrow passageway littered with ancient refrigerators, dismembered pieces of furniture, and a gate that opened into the gardens of the Church of Saint Anne. Gabriel waved at two priests who were playing badminton on the rectory lawn. He allowed himself a few minutes of rest in the church nave, enough to catch his breath between a devotee kneeling in ecstasy in front of the bust of Saint Arvor and a cleaning woman polishing the prayer benches while singing the Serge Lama song “Je suis malade.”

  He crossed the small, somber funeral crowd climbing the steps to the church’s main facade on Rue Bobillot. The Peugeot was fifteen meters away, and he made a run for it. As soon as he was at the wheel, Francis’s motorcycle pulled up next to his door. The skinhead was holding his chain lock like a flail. He started beating it against the car, and the driver-side window exploded into shards. Without thinking, Gabriel shifted into first gear. The Peugeot lurched out of its spot, taking with it a taillight from the car in front, and knocking over the printer’s bike. The accomplice was waiting in ambush at the corner of Rue du Moulinet. Gabriel charged at him, and the skinhead had no choice but to leap from his seat a fraction of a second before the car’s tires crushed his front wheel.

  Francis didn’t relent. He gunned his engine and caught up to Gabriel, flinging the chain at him through the shattered window. Gabriel ran the red light at the intersection of Tolbiac and fled toward Avenue d’Italie. The skinhead printer backed off as soon as they had left the maze of narrow streets in the Butte-aux-Cailles. Now all he could do was monitor the movements of his prey and wait for an opportune moment to swoop down on him.

  Gabriel drove around the Place d’Italie and turned onto Boulevard de l’Hôpital. He slammed on the brakes and pulled up behind the prefecture of the 13th Arrondissement. The tires wailed on the hot asphalt. The two officers on duty outside the precinct rushed over just in time to see a motorcyclist pull up alongside a beaten-up Peugeot and rap on the roof with a chain while the driver escaped through the passenger door. When he saw the cops, the rider reared his bike and disappeared in the direction of Avenue des Gobelins.

  Gabriel lost a good part of the afternoon responding to questions from the cops, who, once they were made aware of the extraordinary nature of his activities, had put a call in to the Bureau. A junior Vergeat must have instructed them not to let him off easy. He stuck to his story: the biker had reacted explosively when Gabriel didn’t let him into his lane. The inspector who was presiding over the hearing didn’t believe a word of it. Sneering, he let Gabriel go at the end of his shift, just before four o’clock.

  —You may return to your wreck … One of my men took down the motorcycle’s license plate, but it didn’t make it into the report. If the insurance company asks for it, for the reimbursement, don’t worry … Come see us … You tell us what really happened, we give you the number.

  He’d driven barely ten meters when one of the cops pulled him over. He circled around the car and issued two tickets: one for failing to signal, and the other for not wearing a seatbelt. Gabriel picked up the stack of citations he’d been collecting for three days and showed it to the officer.

  —Just put it on top, I’m going for the world record.

  The public servant’s cap trembled with righteous pleasure. He wrote out a third ticket, for insulting a representative of the state.

  20

  LA CAILLERA

  Gabriel drove by the hair salon several times, but couldn’t work up the courage to show Cheryl the state of her Peugeot. He left it behind a garden on Rue Désiré-Préaux in Montreuil, in an unofficial garage managed by a former bookstore owner who had sunk his business by refusing to sell Zaraï and Jardin, Sulitzer and Giroud. Now the former bookseller fixed fenders under the table and restored wrecked cars to their factory shades of paint.

  The metro, packed with just-returned vacationers, smelled like the end of beach season, a subtle mixture of suntan oil and sweat. The train stopped for a security alert a hundred meters past the Place d’Italie, and a wino, jarred awake by the absence of the sound of wheels on tracks, got up to relieve himself against the hermetically sealed door. It was nearly eight o’clock when Gabriel emerged from the Corvisart station. The neighborhood’s restaurants, run by anarchists-turned-entrepreneurs, were filling up with customers. Buskers sang Ferré, Brassens, Bruant, occasionally Montéhus—as opposed to any truly subversive music that might interfere with digestion. Gabriel indulged the cravings aroused by the restaurants’ aromas with a crepe bought from a kiosk in front of the Vallès-Burger, and walked back down toward Avenue Colonel Henri. The bookseller had just brought in the used book bins and was lowering the security grate on La Caillera. Gabriel stooped slightly and entered the shop.

  —I’m closing up …

  Gabriel didn’t turn around. He pretended to be studying the titles on a shelf as he scanned the store to make sure nobody else was inside. Classic anarchist texts rubbed shoulders with re-issues of Rebatet, Brasillach, Abel Bonnard.

  —I won’t be long. I’ve got nothing to read tonight …

  The bookseller came back inside. He removed the exterior door handle, closed the door, and stowed away the crank for the grate.

  —You should have said it was an emergency …

  In a nook that was invisible to passersby, Gabriel had glimpsed a post-war edition of the most disturbing book in Paul Morand’s oeuvre, Sweet France. He put down the Série Noir paperbacks he’d been flipping through.

  —I’m going to take one or two of these, but I’ve also been looking for a long time for an out-of-print book by Paul Morand …

  —Which one?

  —Sweet France … I haven’t been able to get my hands on it …

  The bookseller beamed.

  —It’s your lucky day: a copy of that just came in … It’s the third printing, first edition … The only thing is, it’s not cheap …

  —I’d love to see it. Do you accept credit cards?

  He locked the cash register and put the keys in his pocket, then headed toward the back of the store and climbed up two rungs of a ladder to reach for the book. Gabriel followed him. He waited until the bookseller’s balance wavered, then violently jabbed his kidneys with the end of a size-16 socket wrench that he’d borrowed from the mechanic in Montreuil.

  —You will descend calmly, without turning around, and you will put your hands flat against the wall … That’s it … We aren’t turning around, right? />
  The merchant was up against the wall, and Gabriel spread out his legs and gave his ankles a few brisk swipes with the wrench.

  —I had a feeling you were going to pull something … The keys to the register are in my left pocket, but you’ll be disappointed, we empty it out three times a day … There’s almost nothing in there …

  Gabriel let him finish his speech. Continuing to press the wrench against his kidneys, he used his other hand to undo the bookseller’s belt and the two top buttons of his jeans, which fell to his knees. The guy flipped out: What the hell was about to happen to his backside? He tried turning his head but Gabriel drew a palm briskly across his jaw.

  —You’re insane … What is it you want?

  —You know Francis?

  —Who?

  —Francis. You know, from Top Model, the skinhead edition …

  —I don’t know what you’re talking about …

  Gabriel shoved his face against the wall and grabbed him by the hair.

  —You were talking to him and his twin brother just this afternoon … I’m looking for him, I need to make a police report …

  —I don’t have his address … All I know is that he works at Gaston Lémoine, in Gennevilliers … Are you the red Peugeot?

  —Nobody’s ever called me that before, but I’ll accept it … It’s a bit strange to be confused with a heap of metal, but it’s not particularly insulting. I’m going to tell you what I want to know, and you’re going to answer me without trying to get away. You and those henchmen, you beat the hell out of one of my very old friends, and ever since, he’s been trying to reassemble the pieces of his mind, just a few steps away from here, at the Pitié … Sloga, André Sloga, does that ring a bell?

  He shrugged.

  —I’m a bookseller … Of course I know him … We carry his books …

  Gabriel closed his free fist and struck it squarely against the ear of his hostage, who staggered from the blow.

  —I’m not talking to the bookseller. I’m asking the guy who’s pals with Astrapov, Jumel, Somporc, Kevin Keran, Thierry Tegret, Bucar …

  —I don’t understand …

  The end of the wrench dug into the bookseller’s calf. He staggered and almost fell, catching his feet in his lowered pants.

  —I believe I’ve already told you that I don’t have a lot of time … I know that Sloga came here, that he even took part in some events … I want to know who decided to beat him up, and most of all, why!

  The man remained silent. With his giant hand, Gabriel picked up the first volume of the Encyclopedia of French Rights and brought it down on his head, then he probed each vertebra with the mouth of the wrench.

  —Listen, I’m prepared to leave you in the same state in which your friends left André Sloga in the parking lot on Rue Jeanne d’Arc … First, I’ll put a bullet in your spinal column. Not high enough to miss the cord … Right about here … Can you feel the barrel of my gun? That’ll do enough harm to put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your days … You’ll have all the time in the world to remember this evening, and to regret not having talked …

  The bookseller was starting to be convinced.

  —But what do you want me to tell you? I don’t understand what you want …

  —First of all, the simplest thing … Who was it who beat up Sloga?

  —I don’t know exactly … It was guys from Francis’s gang … Skinheads …

  —Well, all right then. Seems to me that a bit of scalp massaging has a good effect on you, it revives your neurons … Did you meet Sloga here in the store?

  —Yes … He bought a bunch of books from us, for about a year … Mostly stuff from the 1930s … Léon Daudet, Abel Bonnard, Robert Brasillach … Since we came from the same movement, anarchism, we gradually integrated him into our group and introduced him to the young writers who share our ideas …

  —And what are your ideas?

  —This isn’t really the moment to talk politics …

  A jab with the wrench changed his mind.

  —There has been a truce between the forces of capitalism and the world’s pseudo-revolutionary organizations. And this partnership depends on the biggest lie of all time: the legend of the gas chambers …

  —Explain this to me … I’m a simple man. I don’t see the connection …

  The bookseller was bold enough to let out a sigh.

  —America and Israel can perpetrate any conceivable abuse on their people, as long as the absolute, unsurpassable crime remains the purported genocide of the Jews … Until this myth is dispelled, no real revolution will be possible …

  Someone on the street stopped at the shop window and thumped on it. The bookseller started to cry for help. The only response he got was a forearm blow to the crook of his neck, stopping the cries in his throat. The onlooker gave up and went on his way.

  —I told you to stay quiet! Your analysis stinks of shit. The problem is that it’s laid out in black and white in your publications, and the fact that André heard it spoken out loud isn’t what got him bludgeoned to within an inch of his life. There has to be something else …

  Gabriel was forced to make use of the Encyclopedia of French Rights again to jog the memory of the bookseller, who abandoned at last any form of resistance.

  —We trusted him completely, and we made the mistake, one night, of inviting him here at the same time as an important person in our movement, who spoke unguardedly of the ideas we all shared … When we learned that Sloga was in fact an infiltrator, we had no choice but to shut him up …

  —And, if you don’t mind my asking, who let the cat out of the bag?

  —A friend who heads up the Asphalt Noir imprint at the publishing house where Sloga was hoping to publish his book …

  —And the important person, who was it?

  The merchant shook his head from right to left, then right to left.

  —I can’t, it’s not possible …

  Another massive blow to the jaw.

  —I’m afraid you don’t have a choice …

  He sputtered out the name.

  —It’s Jean Brienne …

  —Jean Brienne! The Brienne, from the dictionaries?

  —Yes … Sloga’s plan was to reveal everything tomorrow, at the worst possible moment … It couldn’t wait …

  —Tomorrow! Really! Tomorrow … Now I understand everything …

  He grabbed the bookseller by the collar, forced him to turn around, and showed him the socket wrench just as he crushed his liver with a sucker punch. The shopkeeper was down for the count, surrounded by the somber covers of tomes by Bonnard, Rebatet, Suarez, Brasillach, Carrel, Astrapov and Jumel. Before leaving, Gabriel picked up a Charyn and a Vilar that had no business in such company, but left the Malet behind.

  21

  THE DEFINITION OF A KRAUT

  Gabriel had jumped into a taxi that let him out on the Quai Sisley, in Villeneuve-la-Garenne. He’d continued on foot to Pedro’s docked barge, drawing growls from the neighborhood dogs. There, he’d explained the results of his investigations and revealed the name of the man who had ordered the attack on André Sloga in order to protect his career. Pedro had immediately set about creating a complete identity for him as a journalist: passport, professional tricolor press pass, business cards from the Japanese magazine Hori-Shimbun, letter of affiliation from the Institute … Mid-morning, with a Boyard in his mouth, he’d driven Gabriel to Rue Popincourt, where Cheryl shaved him and did his hair under the watchful eyes of the assistant’s Yorkie; then, after a light lunch at the Pied de Porc, they’d gone by car as far as the Louvre, where they parked within sight of its famous glass pyramid.

  They’d walked together to the Seine, where the militant counterfeiter gestured across the river to the roof of the building which, if he remembered correctly, a dying Cocteau had described as the hull of an old ship anchored on the riverbank.

  —They never begin their sacraments before three o’clock, and it’s best if you don’t sh
ow up too early, to avoid being recognized … Once you’re there, you hold tight for a good half hour, and then, when you’re ready, you get to work. Take a deep breath, say your piece, and bust the head of the first person who tries to stop you … Don’t be afraid, they aren’t used to anyone getting physical …

  Then he’d slapped Gabriel on the back and smiled.

  —¡Venceremos!

  Gabriel crossed the Seine on the Pont des Arts and set a determined foot on the Quai Conti. He walked up to the small door to the right of the Coupole’s main entrance, where members of the Republican Guard in ceremonial dress were saluting the Academicians as they came in. Gabriel held out his phony invitation and accreditation papers to the usher, who handed him a white card with a seat number on it. He went up the ornate stairs, each step of which was graced with a guard in his finery, briefly ogled the breasts of a nude statue, and entered the circular hall. The members of the committee were taking their seats on the bench, accompanied by drum rolls.

  At exactly three o’clock, Maurice Druon, the Perpetual Secretary of the Académie Française, stood up.

  —The meeting is now in session. I’ll hand over the floor to Monsieur Jean Brienne for his acceptance speech.

  Jean Brienne, in grandiose attire, sword at his side, rose from his seat in the second-to-last row reserved for members of the fellowship. Several dozen photographers crowded around him to immortalize the Academician-elect. When the chaos had subsided, he put on his glasses and began to read into the microphone the first page of an homage to Edgar Faure, whose death made him inheritor of his seat. He attempted a joke to begin with.

  —The thing I’ll always remember about my illustrious predecessor is his barbed tongue, in such contrast with his perfectly smooth head …

  Gabriel waited for the first quarter of an hour, observing the audience. Everyone who mattered in media and culture was there: acerbic critics, complacent publishers, ancient journalists and young philosophers sitting elbow to elbow, writers on a quest for respectability, members of the black literati gazing at the radiant faces of the Immortals* who represented the hard-won effects of their labors … Gabriel waited until Jean Brienne had finished recounting his predecessor’s life in politics and started in on his calamitous career as a detective novelist under the pseudonym Edgar Sanday. He rose from his seat and barged through a hedge of officials, jostling a dozen people before the photographers noticed the growing disruption. They aimed their zooms and flashes, and continued to click away at the detective while he posed for an instant beside the Academician-to-be, who was still in the midst of his speech. Then, with an imperial gesture, he snatched the man’s extra-credit report from his hands. Michel Droit and Alain Peyrefitte, in defense of their future colleague, lunged at him, but Gabriel Lecouvreur took them on just as Pedro would have wanted him to, issuing a resounding slap to the jaw of the former, for May ’68, and a jab with the wrench between the legs of the latter, for the elephants of Africa. Gabriel grabbed the nominee by the embroidered collar of his green suit, and started to pull him toward the exit. Jean Brienne managed, though with unseemly effort, to draw his sword. He lunged toward his attacker, brandishing the gleaming blade. Gabriel simply shifted his hips and the musketeer lay knocked out at his feet.