The French Promise

by Fiona McIntosh

  But then the cancer had announced itself. Nevertheless, his grandparents had insisted he continue his studies. ‘Go, son,’ Emile had urged on that first trip back after the news of her illness. ‘This is your life. We will stay close and help get your mother back to good health.’

  And in the initial year of her convalescence – his third year at university – and then through one period of remission, his regular trips home had worked well. However, since the closure of his fourth year, she’d had to admit to no longer being able to live independently, and this made it far harder for him to leave her.

  Max now accepted, though, as he was preparing to enter his last year of university, that on this occasion his mother would leave him. It’s certainly what Dr Klein was expressing, although the harshness was well disguised, layered beneath his tender counsel. Max couldn’t imagine a life in which Ilse Vogel wasn’t there and the pain that had twisted itself into a convenient tight ball over his university years was suddenly threatening to unravel.

  He could feel it: fluttering tendrils of pain, panic, anger, just beginning to creep up into his throat. He wanted to yell at the unfairness of it. Why her? Why me? Why us?

  His generous and loving grandparents aside, all he and Ilse had ever had was each other; no extended family. Not even that many friends … not close ones, anyway. And his grandparents were fighting their own demons while they stoically watched their daughter wither.

  Max had never complained about the lack of family, so where was the fairness in ripping away all he had? And who is my father? he wondered. The question had always hung between them but now, more than ever, it felt less like a deep bruise and more like a freshly hacked wound. Max watched Ilse Vogel surface weakly from the enforced sleep of morphine for perhaps the last time and the wound bled.

  ‘Who am I?’ he murmured beneath his breath, refusing the tears that burnt in his misting eyes as he looked down at his mother’s pale, groggy form. He blinked them away.

  ‘Tears are useless,’ his grandmother had said to him all through his life. ‘They’re a sign of regret. Give yourself no cause for regret and then you’ve no cause for tears.’

  ‘What about sad tears, though?’ he’d asked her as a boy.

  ‘Cry them inside. If others see them, you are weakened.’

  He’d always thought Geli was tougher than Emile.

  ‘It’s the German stock,’ his mother had quipped, amused by his observation. ‘Strong, proud, chin-up, no matter what.’ He remembered not so many years ago how Ilse had touched his cheek. ‘The German blood runs thick in you, Max,’ she’d said, sounding uncharacteristically sentimental. He’d never believed she’d been referring to his maternal blood either.

  Am I tough? he wondered. Am I German enough? Can I keep my chin up, my eyes dry when you die? he heard himself ask silently as he looked down on his mother’s frail form.

  ‘Max is back,’ Klein was saying, as he began to help sit his mother up. ‘He’s right here, Ilse. Now, if the pain is too great, you tell Max to tell me. All right?’

  ‘Thank you, Arne,’ she croaked.

  He left with a nod to Max that spoke volumes. Max finally approached, dry-eyed, a smile pasted on his face. ‘Hello, Mutti. He sat on the side of her wide bed and leant in to kiss both her cheeks, lingering on each, hugging her gently. She felt like a trembling bird of so little substance.

  ‘Hello, my darling,’ she said. Her clearing gaze was still fierce and she looked at him with pride, squeezing both his hands. The pressure she could exert, he noticed, was minimal. ‘Did you get in this morning?’

  ‘Early. Dr Klein offered to pick me up.’

  ‘He’s so sweet.’

  ‘He loves you, you do know that, don’t you?’

  She grinned. ‘Even bald, apparently,’ she said, touching the beautiful Hermès scarf wrapped expertly around her head. Max had given it to her last Christmas. It had cost a fortune.

  Even dying, Ilse Vogel managed to look elegant. They shared an affectionate smile.

  ‘Every time I see you, Max, you’re thinner.’

  ‘So are you.’

  She slapped him. It felt like a butterfly landing on his hand. ‘No, seriously, darling,’ she reproached.

  ‘I eat, I promise. I think you keep imagining me as a chubby ten-year-old.’

  ‘I probably do. So … another year of university? You’re not going to be one of those tiresome, dandruff-laden academics who never actually leave an institution, are you?’

  He shook his head, grinning. ‘No. I’m just not sure what to do with myself yet.’

  ‘And you think more letters after your name will help clarify this?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mutti. I’m a bit lost.’

  Her gaze hardened. ‘Don’t be pathetic, Maxi. Lost? You have everything to live for!’

  ‘So do you,’ he said. It slipped out; sounded like an accusation.

  She didn’t flinch. ‘Yes, I do. But I don’t have a choice. The choice has been made for me and it’s no good us getting deflated; won’t help any of us to be weak.’

  ‘You sound like my grandmother now.’

  ‘I am her daughter.’ She smiled. ‘My point, Maximilian, is that you do have a choice in life. Get out and live it. Do you have enough money?’

  He sighed, gently exasperated. ‘You’re too generous. I live well … far better than a student traditionally does.’

  She gave a small, birdlike shrug. ‘Who else can we spoil, except you, my darling? Keep living well, son.’ She gave a crooked smile. ‘As I’ve discovered, life’s too short.’

  He hated that expression. ‘I’m not complaining.’

  ‘I want you to do something for me,’ she said, switching subjects suddenly as she reached for the glass of water at her bedside. He noticed how skeletally thin her arm was and how she shook as she sipped weakly on the straw. She waved a hand, suddenly a claw of sunken flesh, in the direction of her wardrobe as he took the wobbling glass from her. Ilse fell back against the pillow, seemingly exhausted. ‘In the back is a Charles Jourdan shoebox. Can you fetch it for me, darling, please?’ Despite her fatigue he saw something had galvanised within her. Her pale eyes gleamed hungrily.

  Max frowned and did as she asked. After rummaging around amongst many shoeboxes, he held one up. ‘This one?’

  ‘That’s it,’ she smiled.

  He brought it to her bed and handed the box to his mother, placing it on the sheet and quilt that covered her wretchedly thin frame. ‘I hope you’re not going to pull out thousands of francs you’ve been hoarding for me.’

  She giggled and he liked the sound of that laugh; he hadn’t heard her so amused for too long. ‘I’ve got plenty of those already hoarded in the bank for you, my boy. You will never have to worry. Just be careful whom you marry. Mutti won’t be around to advise.’

  He felt a childlike sob hack its way up and into his throat but caught it in time, turning it into a clearing of his throat. It’s not as though he didn’t know this moment would have to be faced. He’d been preparing for it for more than a year now. The knowledge that one of these days he would have to say farewell, look into those genial eyes and wish his mother a fearless onward journey had loomed over him for long enough that he shouldn’t now be inwardly collapsing.

  He secretly envied those the shock of learning their parents had died in an accident, or had received a telegram that their father had passed away suddenly from a heart attack. He even momentarily wished his mother were already dead, stolen from him while he’d travelled here to be with her so all that was left was to kiss the corpse. But shame glowed through him at the thought. If she had the courage to stare the beast in the face and still smile at it, he should have the nerve to look upon her with the unwavering resilience his grandmother had earnestly drummed into him.

  ‘Let her last look upon you be one of your handsome face, child,’ she’d said only minutes earlier, stroking his unshaven cheek. ‘Go to her and hug her goodbye with love and laughter.’ A
nd as he’d climbed the stairs, she’d called to him. ‘No tears, Maxi. She won’t like it.’

  And so from somewhere – the German part of him, he liked to think – he dredged up a rascally grin.

  ‘I’ve been seeing an African girl,’ he said and laughed at his mother’s shocked expression. ‘I’m joking.’

  ‘But you are seeing someone?’

  He nodded, lying. ‘Nothing serious,’ he said, doubling up on the lie. He had been deadly serious about Claire until he’d discovered she’d slept with someone else. He recalled her stricken look when he’d confronted her. ‘It was a stupid mistake, Max. I don’t know why I agreed to that weekend with him. My friends were going. I just wanted some fun. You rush off to Lausanne and you never want me with you. I’m so often alone.’

  The words echoed in his mind now. They say there’s a thin line between love and hate and it was true that Max had believed himself wholly in love with Claire, had imagined himself placing a ring on her finger, and setting up home in Switzerland together; a holiday house in Provence would follow, and an apartment in Paris. But her betrayal had ground salt into an already wounded animal; she knew he was living through the slow, painful death of his parent and her treachery was enough to plunge him into a melancholy.

  It wasn’t the split. He could see now that they were probably unsuited; she was a party girl. He liked quiet times and conversation but he’d pretended that her spirited ways kept a bright light on him, didn’t allow him to become too moody. She knew he didn’t know who his father was and it was Claire who’d warned him not to become obsessive over it.

  ‘Who cares who he is … or was? You are who you are. Knowing him changes nothing about you.’

  But she was wrong then and she was still wrong. Knowing who fathered him had the capacity to change everything. It would give him the second chain he craved to anchor his life … especially now that the main chain was about to be severed. He looked back to his mother’s sunken but affection-filled face. Don’t leave me, he heard himself plead inwardly. I’m not ready …

  ‘So, not marriage material?’ his mother wondered, breaking into his gloom.

  ‘No!’ he scoffed. ‘I’m not ready to marry.’

  ‘Max, you’re turning twenty-four. Eligibility is your middle name now … and especially with your surname.’

  It was true. In Switzerland his family’s name was all too well known and each summer a parade of young and exquisitely pretty women would flash their smiles his way. And, given that Lausanne was something of a summer playground for the wealthy, well-heeled mothers would find excuses to introduce him to their daughters on the pretext of visiting his ailing mother.

  ‘I think I’ll deliberately marry an Australian – one of those fresh-faced farm girls, with few airs and graces.’

  ‘I hope you do marry a stranger from a faraway place, actually, darling. Snub all those social climbers from Vienna and Geneva. Dare to be different. You’ll make me proud.’

  ‘Why did you never marry anyone? I don’t mean my father, whoever he was, but why not someone? I know there were many who interested you.’

  She gazed at him with soft exasperation. ‘None of them interested me as much as you.’

  He gave her a withering look.

  ‘I’m glad you mentioned your father,’ she said, lifting the lid on the shoebox.

  He pounced on the opening. They never discussed his father. ‘Why? You’ve told me all my life you don’t even remember his name! Know absolutely nothing about him.’

  She looked up, her gaze tender … heartbreaking, in a way.

  ‘That you were a mistake?’ she said. He nodded but she continued as if he hadn’t. ‘Conceived in a reckless moment?’ She looked away, her memories stealing her attention elsewhere momentarily. ‘I know. But what a beautiful, wonderful mistake you are, child. You were a gift. You kept me sane.’

  ‘You’ve always maintained the insanity of war,’ he argued.

  ‘I meant you kept me sane from heartbreak,’ she said softly.

  He caught his breath. ‘What does that mean?’ he whispered, confused.

  ‘In here,’ she said, suddenly returning her attention to the shoebox and trying to sound conversational but not succeeding, ‘are letters from a man who—’

  ‘My father?’ he said, in a stunned tone, before she could say it.

  She nodded, not meeting his gaze, her fingers fluttering haphazardly on the box like moths around a flame.

  ‘But—’

  ‘I know, darling. I know. I lied and I’m asking your forgiveness. I had my reasons for—’

  ‘Reasons?’ He looked at her with such raw pain blooming in his expression that it prompted her tears to well. He’d not seen her cry once through her illness; she’d never complained or pitied herself but she grieved now for hurting him. And it did hurt. The countless times he’d asked about his father and been fobbed off with excuses. He’d certainly developed the impression that his conception had been a torrid moment of ill-advised ardour in the back room of someone’s house at a party when the talk of war had depressed her enough that she’d got drunk. In truth he had never been able to imagine his mother ever being that out of control.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he entreated, relieved his voice was steady. ‘But why the lie?’

  She dabbed her cheeks with the sheet. ‘Because you were such a proud little fellow. Knowing your father seemed important even from your young years; I wanted to be enough but I knew that I never was.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ he began, although he felt the honesty of what she said slip like a stiletto beneath his skin, cutting away to the truth in his heart.

  She didn’t let him finish. ‘Max, I didn’t want you to hate him.’

  ‘Hate him?’

  ‘You’ll understand soon.’ She looked away. He was baffled. Understand what? His mother turned back. ‘Besides, I didn’t want to break your heart with the knowledge of him. I never wanted you to think he didn’t care enough but that’s exactly what your young, intensive, ever-curious mind would have driven you to believe. I know you too well. You can’t leave something alone once it fascinates you. And you would always have arrived at the wrong answer where your father was concerned. It was easier to keep you – and your grandparents, I might add – in the dark about him because I refused to allow you to grow up wondering about the man who deserted me.’

  ‘And did he desert us?’

  She shook her silk-clad head wearily. ‘Not us, darling. He never knew of your arrival. He would have so loved you.’

  ‘You never told him?’

  She looked wanly towards the window, seeking the sunlight. ‘I had no access to him. He was a soldier at the Front.’ Max swallowed. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes.’ She finally broke down and wept, allowing the tears to fall silently down her sunken cheeks. They didn’t last. She rallied herself briskly, again wiping away the damp with her sheet. ‘But I only learnt of it long after the war.’ She sniffed, back in control.

  He looked into the box and the tightness in his throat increased. ‘So these are letters from my father,’ he remarked, softly awed, a thrill of excitement unexpectedly passing through him like an electric current. He wanted to be angry but all he felt was elation: a father, a name, a brave man, the second chain to the anchor.

  She nodded, dabbed once more at her eyes and her voice steadied. ‘He wrote only a couple of times. The one from Paris,’ she gave a soft sigh, ‘it was his last; a rolling letter, written over a couple of months. He dated each entry and died within a day of the last.’

  He frowned. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it was sent by someone else. By a Frenchman who was with him when he died.’

  Max felt sick. ‘How did my father die?’

  ‘He was killed by a French rebel during the Fall of Paris in 1944.’

  ‘His killer wrote to you?’ he asked, astonished.

  ‘No.’ She’d fully regained her composure and could now speak withou
t a tremble in her voice. ‘The man who wrote to me was the one who stayed with your father until he died of his wound – a single bullet, I believe. It seems your father and this French Resister were enemies and yet friends.’ At his perplexed glance, she shrugged a shoulder. ‘You need to read it to understand. It gets even more complex; your father’s companion was fighting for the French but he is German. His name is Lukas Ravensburg.’ Her mouth twisted as though in apology. ‘That’s how he signed off.’

  ‘He wrote separately to you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s all there. His letter accompanied your father’s. I want you to have these. It’s right that you should know about Markus.’

  ‘Markus,’ he repeated, his voice filled with quiet wonder.

  She smiled, lost in the memories that the name prompted. He waited until she returned her attention.

  Ilse’s gaze cleared and she looked at her son as intently as he could recall in a long time. Her voice was insistent, firm when she spoke. And she found the strength to raise herself from the pillow to reinforce her words. ‘Colonel Markus Kilian is the only man I loved; ever could love,’ she said through a watery smile. ‘It’s why I could never say yes to all those earnest proposals. Markus came into my life like a blazing meteorite and everyone else afterwards glowed dully. But he gave me you, Max.’ She gripped his hand surprisingly firmly. ‘I met him in 1938. We became lovers almost immediately. I didn’t know I was pregnant; the situation was turning dangerous in Europe so I returned to Switzerland. Markus was recalled to Berlin and then posted. We both knew it was pointless to discuss a future that could be snuffed out at any minute. He was determined to go to the Front as a bachelor with no ties. His last spoken words to me explained that it was too hard for him to stay focused on leading men into battle and to make the tough decisions if he was worried about a wife, family … I understood, of course, because you know what a practical person I am.’ She smiled. ‘However, at the time we said goodbye, I didn’t know we’d made a child. I didn’t think it was goodbye so much as adieu.’’ She shook her head. ‘It was a mad time, a frightening time, and everyone was heading back to their homes. I came here but figured we’d see each other again soon enough and work things out.’