A Prince Without a Kingdom
Page 35
Then came deliverance for Paris: flags, and yet more tanks, with Superintendent Avignon fleeing on the day of Liberation, joyous shots fired into the air, and the crowd braying around Nina Bienvenue. There were Mademoiselle’s farewells on the sidewalk outside La Belle Étoile and the tears of Casimir Fermini. There was a very young Russian soldier, named Andrei Ivanovitch, entering a camp in the south of Poland with his regiment, searching for two people he had never met before among the deportees he had just liberated.
“Monsieur and Madame Atlas?”
And, in front of him, the gazes that wanted to say yes.
There was so much waiting. But some returns were impossible.
At last, there was a fine autumn, the bells of Notre Dame ringing for no reason, fit to burst, and two figures holding tightly to each other at the top of a tower. There was a dinner to celebrate at La Belle Étoile, where everyone ate their fill of omelets. The Boulards were there, having traveled to Paris as guests of honor, as well as Paul in his uniform, covered in medals; there were speeches, there was white wine, and, at the end of the table, the Cat, very pale, because a letter had just arrived from Moscow.
And then there was a journey. Isn’t it customary to set off on journeys after such occasions? There was a walk toward the bottom of a crater that fell away into the sea, a hamlet, and, at the end, a house made of two white cubes. There were Vango and Ethel walking between the Barbary fig trees, overwhelmed and breathless, but nothing could stop them from approaching their destination. There was a falcon in the sky.
There was a woman coming out of the house close to the cliff, a beautiful figure with a red scarf over her white hair, watching attentively, her hand shielding her eyes, looking to see who was heading down between the Barbary figs. Two beings were coming toward her; there was nowhere else in the world they could be going.
There was a cry, a call. And that was all.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Text and cover design copyright © 2011 by Gallimard Jeunesse
English translation copyright © 2014 by Sarah Ardizzone
Picture of the Hindenburg © Corbis
Cover illustration copyright © 2011 by Gallimard Jeunesse
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First U.S. electronic edition 2015
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2014957056
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