The Incorrigible Optimists Club

  ‘There must have been a problem.’

  ‘It’s too late, Michel.’

  He grabbed me by the shoulders and clasped me to him. We couldn’t stop patting one another on the back.

  ‘Take care of yourself.’

  He picked up his bag and crossed the drawbridge. Richard followed close behind. The soldier checked their papers and let them pass through the metal gate. He went in without looking back. By my watch, it was exactly five o’clock. I turned round. My eyes were stinging.

  A taxi screeched to a halt in front of the entrance. My father got out, yelling at the driver and threw him a hundred-franc note through the open window.

  ‘If you don’t know how to drive, take lessons! I’ve never seen such a numbskull!’

  He saw me and hurried over.

  ‘Where is he? Hasn’t he arrived yet?’

  ‘Papa, he’s gone in.’

  My father looked up and gazed at the dark and hostile fortress.

  ‘It’s not true!’

  ‘Why are you late?’

  ‘That bitch of a DS broke down! The clutch has gone. On the way out of Versailles. Bloody old banger! Try finding a taxi in the middle of the forest! I tried hitching, but no one gave me a lift. I walked ten kilometres. And I did find a taxi! A real slowcoach, I’m not joking. He was driving along at forty! He stopped at every traffic light! I could have strangled him!’

  Before I could utter another word, he had stepped over the drawbridge. I followed him. He went to see the soldier on duty, who told him that he was there to check the conscripts’ papers. He set off in search of the duty officer. Five minutes later, he came back with a man built like a house who looked like Chéri Bibi.* My father tried to explain to him, but he went about it in the wrong way. He began with the shop he had visited in Versailles, a good deal, a bit pricey; the DS, which was under guarantee and blew up right in the middle of the Marly forest; and the novice taxi driver. Chéri Bibi interrupted him. Three conscripts who were late were waiting to get past.

  ‘You’re interfering with procedures.’

  ‘It’s for my son.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Inside. I should have liked to give him a kiss before he goes away.’

  ‘Kiss him?… That’s over, Monsieur. You must get off the gangway.’

  ‘I’ll be five minutes.’

  ‘You’re in a military zone. You’re forbidden to stay here.’

  ‘Five minutes. That’s not going to alter the course of the war.’

  ‘There is no war. If you don’t leave, I’ll call the military police and they’ll arrest you.’

  ‘And for what reason, may I ask?’

  ‘For obstructing the conscription of recruits. Get out of the way!’

  I pulled at my father’s sleeve. We moved back and found ourselves on the pavement once more.

  ‘What an arsehole!’ he yelled. ‘Good luck to the lad. If they’re all like that, he’s going to have a tough time.’

  The sergeant glared down at us. My father held his gaze. We were in front of the entrance to the fortress. My father was smiling at him arrogantly, hands on hips. The sergeant, arms folded, stood still as a statue. A sort of arm wrestling. It began to rain heavily. The sergeant stepped back inside the sentry box. A mocking smile lit up his square-jawed face. All of a sudden, the crowd dispersed. We were the only two left, getting soaked, like two lonely, forgotten leeks.

  ‘Papa, he’s not going to let us see him.’

  ‘Why did he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Come on, let’s go home.’

  Cars, trucks and buses, making a deafening din, were snarled up as far as the eye could see. There was a stench of petrol and exhaust fumes. Drivers were getting irritated, pushing their way through, blocking each other, sounding their horns and yelling insults. An everyday traffic-jam in the heavy, dismal Paris rain. We searched for a taxi. They were all occupied and there was no point in waiting. We walked up avenue de Paris for two kilometres as far as porte de Vincennes. We were moving faster than the stationary cars. We were soaked. In spite of my insistence, my father refused to take the métro and was searching for a taxi.

  ‘I haven’t taken the métro for over fifteen years and I’m not going to start now.’

  Eventually, we did grab a taxi. Paris was at a standstill.

  ‘I’ll go along tomorrow to see about the DS. They’re going to hear about this at Citroën.’

  ‘Papa, you must write me a note for school.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of Sherlock…. of Monsieur Masson, the supervisor. I told him I was going to the hospital to get treatment. I couldn’t tell him the truth: that my brother’s a communist – that would have gone down very badly. He supports French Algeria.’

  He wasn’t listening to me. He was gazing out through the streaming window. His lips were moving. He was mumbling some inaudible words. He stared at me distractedly.

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘Nothing of interest.’

  ‘He might have waited for me.’

  ‘Whatever you do, not a word to mother.’

  He began nodding his head up and down as if to convince himself.

  ‘You have to believe that that’s the way it is and that’s the way they’re going to be,’ he murmured.

  Delighted by her seminar, my mother was unstoppable over dinner and she tried to make us share her enthusiasm. My father didn’t eat. On two or three occasions, he tried to talk to her. I shuddered and had a fit of sneezing. A filthy cold that dragged on.

  I spent a week at home, reading. My father wrote the note. Everything returned to normal. I didn’t say anything to Cécile. She didn’t ask any questions. When we cleaned the balconies or polished the wooden floors, she became dreamy and would stop rubbing. I didn’t need to ask what she was thinking about. I was waiting for Franck to send her the promised letter. I didn’t want to circumvent him. He had to reflect, weigh up each word, mull over his sentences to explain the why and the wherefore, ask to be forgiven, and persuade her that their relationship wasn’t over and that there was a future for them. The months went by. Love and revolution must be incompatible. He never wrote to her.

  * The hero of Gaston Leroux’s serial adventures.

  JANUARY–DECEMBER 1961

  1

  Martha Balazs was a flighty girl who was bored to death in Debrecen, a godforsaken hole in the depths of Hungary, to where Edgar, her husband, chief engineer of the Magyar railways, had been transferred in 1927 as regional manager. She missed her carefree life as a singer of operetta, when she lost herself in Offenbach and Lehar. The breathtaking stage-fright before the curtain rose, the thrill that ran through the audience when well-known pieces were sung, the jolly dinners with the cast after the show, the endless tours by train or the bus journeys to Bratislava and Bucharest, to Austria and to Germany, the applause of the spectators that caused her to come out in goose pimples, and the curtain calls, as many as seventeen of them, that made her head reel in Zagreb. She kept the newspaper articles in two large Venetian blue exercise books and, even though she didn’t understand the language, she could find her name. These yellowing cuttings mentioned her, her spiralling soprano voice that reached such high notes that it should have opened the doors of the Opera to her, the real one where Verdi and Bizet are sung, if … if… she was no longer really sure, she had had a bit more luck, or courage, or had spoken out a bit. She could have gone on for a few more years if she had not had that panic about the future and about becoming one of those bloated old singers who make up the herd of backstage choruses and who tend to be dismissed unceremoniously. Martha had been able to pull out in time, make a good marriage, and she had maintained her position in society while scorning the uncultured petit-bourgeois women of Debrecen with their hoarse Hajdu accent, that remote province where there was nothing but yokels, bears and forests.

  In her exile, Martha had two passions, her little Tibor, who was admired by everyone
for his beauty, his angelic smile and his sweet nature, and France. Martha had gone to Paris after the war. She had been marked for the rest of her life by the Roaring Twenties, which, in her case, had only lasted for six months. She still spoke about them with emotion as being the great period of her life. Each month she received French fashion magazines as though they were gifts from heaven. It was the light of the banks of the Seine that illuminated her life and those of the three friends she had converted to her religion: being a Parisienne. Living, talking, walking, eating, dressing like a Parisienne. Martha cultivated refinement in all its forms. In this country where the culinary peak was over-boiled stew, she did her best to carry the flag for French gastronomy and, in time, she had become an exceptional cook. She despised the mocking smiles of the local flibbertigibbets who got their clothes from the seamstress on Arpad Square, and who thought that the centre of the world was Vienna. Martha had her clothes sent from Madeleine Vionnet, whom she worshipped for her corolla skirts, her slanting cuts and the friendly little messages she sent along with her New Year wishes. Martha had been the first Hungarian woman to have an Eton crop. She was mad about cloche hats and she maintained the tradition of wearing ribbons as codes, but Hungarians were graceless folk for whom a hat had no other purpose than to cover the head. They did not know that a ribbon with flounces meant that the lady was engaged to be married, or that a rose wrapped in a ribbon signified that she was unattached. Martha read French novels that were sent to her by a bookseller in rue du Bac. Her gods were Radiguet, Cocteau and Léon-Paul Fargue, an ardent and elusive poet she had met at a party in Montparnasse, and with whom she had had an affair. He had shown her Paris. He was funny, inexhaustible, and he knew everybody. Thanks to him, she had met Modigliani, Picasso and Erik Satie. She preserved as though it were a holy relic a small collection of love poems he had written for her, just for her, and which she knew by heart. They had corresponded for two years, after which he no longer replied to her letters. That’s often the way with late-night poets.

  Tibor Balazs knew how to speak French before he knew Hungarian. But Martha never succeeded in ridding him of that accent which exasperated her. She tried relentlessly to correct his pronunciation. Little Tibor never managed to do so. She wrote a begging letter to Cocteau, who had such a beautiful voice, to ask his advice. She never received a reply. She told herself that it would disappear once he grew up and went to live in Paris. She could not imagine that he would live anywhere else. She spoke to him for hours in French. The father could not stand all the whispering, of which he understood nothing, but he was not capable of standing up to Martha and he left her to her Parisian whims, even though he found the monthly bill a little steep. She did her best to develop the artistic qualities of her son, who entered the Budapest drama school and was about to embark on a brilliant career, when Europe was set ablaze.

  It was just a matter of time and, once peace had been restored, despite the advent of the Communist regime, Tibor became the juvenile lead whom Hungarian directors fought over. For ten years his agent, Imré Faludy, staged the French and German classics for him. Tibor triumphed in Dom Juan, Bérénice, Lorenzaccio and The Prince of Homburg. The few producers who managed to make films took him on. Tibor had his actor’s card.

  In 1952, one of his films, The Return of the Travelling Players, directed by István Tamás, was selected for the Cannes film festival. The film was well received by the critics, but less warmly by the public. Festival goers had avid discussions as to whether this was a subtle propaganda film or an ode to lost freedom. For a week Tibor was tipped for the prize for best male performance for his role as a pathetic bastard. What with climbing the steps to the sound of applause and the flashes from the photographers’ bulbs, it was the apotheosis of his career. Everything was possible. The world belonged to him. But they were up against Viva Zapata and the fact that all the actors seemed old-fashioned. Marlon Brando walked off with the prize and Tibor was forgotten. On the night of the awards, Imré tried to use Tibor’s new celebrity to procure political asylum in France. He had had proposals for him from Italian producers for a cloak and dagger film starting in September and for a gangster film early the following year. The screenplay was adapted from a novel by Chester Himes. Tibor agreed enthusiastically. The fee was not huge, with just a share of the takings, but for a small-budget film, one could not be choosy. The main thing was to get work.

  ‘And Mama?’

  ‘You must realize that…’

  Tibor was aware that if he went over to the West, he would never see her again. There is a threshold of vile behaviour beyond which no man can go. He imagined her, alone, in Debrecen, endlessly wondering why her beloved son had deserted her. With heavy hearts, they returned to the land of happy workers, where Tibor was regarded as a national hero, the finest of actors and a victim of imperialist injustice, and he succeeded at last in staging his Galileo.

  In Hungary, the number of those who knew the truth could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Dashing Tibor, the most popular actor in the country, for whom Hungarian women would have sold their souls, was madly in love with his agent Imré. Their love was as secretive as it was passionate. In those years, the party did not treat social outcasts and their anti-proletarian love affairs lightly. Imré went so far as to arrange for the man of his life to marry his female assistant, thus confirming rumours that were circulating about him, much to the despair of millions of Hungarian women.

  There were cracks in the leaden sky. Small, unexpected openings, unknown spaces where a whiff of liberty blew in. You take a step. You wait for the policeman to blow his whistle. There is no policeman. You take a second step, a third and still another. There comes a moment when you have moved so far forward that you can’t go back. You have to continue, come what may. It’s called a revolution. Tibor had put on Galileo Galilei at the Vigszinhaz theatre. It was not the first play of Brecht’s in which he had acted. Imré had obtained the official approvals. There was no reason to be anxious. He was a Marxist writer and a much admired one. On its third performance, the play was suspended without explanation, the authorities foolishly mirroring the intolerance and dogmatism in the play. Previously, this ban would have gone unnoticed. It would not have occurred to anyone to mention it. But it took place on 16 October 1956, during a wave of agitation and popular protest, and the students demonstrated against the censorship. Within three days, Tibor became the symbol of violated freedom. He gave several interviews, expressed his solidarity with the protesters, burned his actor’s card in public and encouraged his fellow countrymen to rise up and resist. Like others, he was convinced that it was the end of the hated regime and they were about to regain their liberty. Elated, the actors in the company unanimously decided to perform the play. Every evening, in the great amphitheatre of the university, they defied the ban in front of an enthusiastic crowd who constantly interrupted, booed the Inquisition court and applauded Galileo. Tibor was not a hero. Nothing in his previous life had prepared him to carry the flag. He allowed himself to be borne along by the wave of rebellion that was overrunning the country. When the Russians laid siege to Budapest on 4 November, he realized there was no point in resisting. You don’t fight an army of seventy-five thousand men with two thousand six hundred T54 tanks, and armed with coaxial machine-guns, with your bare hands.

  For a week, the resistance was heroic, desperate and useless. Tibor set off for Debrecen to search for Martha. What with strikes, people taking flight and panic, it turned out to be a futile quest. During 6 November, men were consumed by folly. British and French parachutists were dropped over the Suez Canal in order to recapture it. As soon as the Russians and Americans glared at them, they gave up the idea and retired, tails between their legs, and while the Russians were threatening them with strikes from their atomic rockets, no one bothered about what was going on in Hungary.

  On the ninth, after three days watching and lying in wait in the snow and the cold, Tibor and Imré succeeded in fleeing to Austria. They l
eft their belongings behind them and found themselves in Vienna without a penny. By selling the car, they managed to subsist for a month. What work could they hope for in this bleak city that resembled a set for an operetta and where thousands of their compatriots were wandering around looking crazed and lost? ‘In Paris, they know me,’ declared Tibor who remembered his reception in Cannes.

  2

  I loathed sport. I loathed those who engaged in sport. They were idiots and they stank. Nevertheless, I ran like lightning behind Cécile, who romped along in spite of her two packs of fags a day. I was about to faint. My heart was thumping, my head was on fire, my legs felt like cotton wool, and I didn’t smoke. From time to time, she glanced back and slowed down and allowed me to catch up. As soon as I drew level with her, without pausing for breath, she asked me: ‘All right?’

  I was crimson and dripping with sweat. Steam was rising from my head. My nose was dripping like a fountain. I had given up answering her because she never waited and would set off again at a trot. I was holding up Pierre’s shorts, which were threatening to fall down, with both hands.

  ‘Are we never going to stop?’

  However much I shouted, she pressed on. And just supposing, behind this silly need to exercise, there was something else? Supposing, behind that angelic aspect, there was a hypocritical smile lurking? Might she want to avenge herself on me for what Franck had done to her? One only had to read Racine’s Iphigénie. It could not be ruled out. I slumped onto a bench. She was disappearing from view. Once she could no longer see me, she would be obliged to come back. I was fed up with running circuits of the Luxembourg in the dust. These were gardens that were meant to be walked in. Not a race track. A park in which to dream and read beside the Médicis fountain. Not in which to clown around in a pair of shorts that was too big for me.