The Patagonian Hare

by Claude Lanzmann

  This whole period of Évelyne’s life, before and after Sartre, coincides with the Algerian War. Like the rest of us, she was in favour of independence and a passionate campaigner. She attended every demonstration and was beaten by police on several occasions. Sometimes we were arrested together and would spend the night in a cell in Saint-Sulpice police station stichomythically reciting to one another couplets from the great tragedies or alternating stanzas from Hugo’s La Légende des siècles with such brio that, towards four o’clock in the morning, just as in his ‘Booz endormi’ [‘Boaz Asleep’], ‘une immense bonté tombait du firmament’ [‘a great goodness tumbled from the firmament’], causing the weary, human eyes of our guards to mist over. Algerians wanted by the police were given refuge at Evelyne’s apartment on the rue Jacob while she was rehearsing Les Séquestrés d’Altona, Sartre’s magnificent play about man’s hatred of man, which transposes the denunciation of the crimes and tortures we were committing on the far side of the Mediterranean to post-war Germany.

  The première took place in September 1959 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance and Johanna, Évelyne’s role, was written specifically for her. As we know, all of Sartre’s plays were written for women and, as Cau puts it so beautifully in Croquis de mémoire: ‘rather than give them flowers, he offered plays’. But Les Séquestrés d’Altona was the only dramatic piece he wrote for Évelyne, though by then their love affair had been over for several years. It was a wonderful gift: Johanna is a great female role, an actress forced to abandon her profession after she marries, fascinated by the half-feigned madness of her brother-in-law Franz, who has imprisoned himself in his room; though she is in love with him, she is also the embodiment of lucidity and strength, cardinal virtues that lead her not to live out her love for a torturer. There were problems with Les Séquestrés d’Altona from the moment rehearsals began. Sartre was forced to cut the play, which was much too long, then cut it further, and as misunderstandings between him and the director François Darbon multiplied, he had to take over part of the responsibility for the mise en scène. All this contributed to an atmosphere of mounting tension and as a whole the play was not understood. Poirot-Delpech, the papal critic at Le Monde, stupidly referred to it as an ‘illustrated philosophical thesis’. With the exception of Serge Reggiani, who was on stage for three hours, he ‘forgave’ the other actors, including my sister, for not breathing life into such a ‘glacial and disembodied’ work. Sartre had not written for the theatre for four years, and was being made to pay for his political stance in a pre-civil war atmosphere. (The play was performed again six years later, in 1965, with the same cast, directed by François Périer.)

  In 1960, the year that followed the first production, politics seriously impinged on my sister’s career and her life: together with the rest of us, and against my advice, since I foresaw the consequences, she signed the Manifesto of the 121, calling on conscripts to refuse to serve in Algeria. Reprisals were swift. At the time, she had been doing a lot of work for television – state-owned television – and she was immediately penalized, all her contracts cancelled, closing those doors to her for several years. She was thirty years old. Signing the Manifesto was a serious act: Jean Pouillon was a member of the editorial committee of Les Temps modernes, but as he was also a civil servant and secretary of the parliamentary debates at the Assemblée Nationale, he was immediately suspended. Simone Signoret, whom I tried to persuade to sign the Manifesto because she was a figurehead, and a friend of mine, immediately understood the dangers she would be running were she to sign. She told me of a conversation between Jean Gabin, various technicians and some minor actors on the set of a film they were making when war was declared in 1939. Everyone was upset, some of them were crying, but Gabin barked, ‘I don’t know what you’re all snivelling about, you don’t have much to lose. As for me…’ In relating the story, she was trying to tell me that intellectuals, those who earned their living by the pen, depended only on themselves, while she would be blacklisted by television, where she appeared regularly, and by the theatre and the cinema. It took me three days to persuade her: it can truly be said that when she signed the Manifesto she was fully aware of what she was doing, which makes it all the more to her credit. Évelyne, I believed, did so unthinkingly.

  History picked up speed. In July 1961, Sartre’s apartment at 42 rue Bonaparte was blown up for the first time by the OAS (the Organisation armée secrète, a militant group determined that Algeria would remain French and resolved to spread panic in France). Sartre and de Beauvoir exiled themselves to a dismal three-room apartment where, when I went to visit, I practised the various ruses for shaking off a tail that I had learned during my time in the Resistance. The evenings we spent together there were wonderful. They were in fine form and neither of them were inclined to panic. As long as he could write, Sartre was unruffled. Évelyne had to leave the beautiful future apartment of Alain Juppé, which had become too expensive for Sartre as he was on the run; since she was unemployed, she moved to quarters in the same building on the second floor at the rear, which, though very nice, were a third the size and overlooked a melancholy quincunx of trees. She was now the lover of Norbert Bensaïd, an eminent doctor and psychoanalyst, who, despite his numerous promises, ultimately never left his wife. I have read his letters, which were awkward, embarrassed, evasive and ultimately boring, as might be the letters of any man in such a cowardly position. She had other lovers, more than she should have had, perhaps, and every time I was told about one, I would recite two lines from Musset’s ‘Rolla’: ‘It is as though, on each new love, you see, / The sun arise from night’s eternity’. When the Algerians were released from French prisons, both before and after the signing of the Évian Accords, for some of them the rue Jacob was a stopover and a haven. Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi, who went on to become the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the first Algerian government and later the Minister for Education, a supporter of extreme Arabization, of strict Islamic teaching and of polygamy, was Évelyne’s lover for the few days he spent there. I met him, a thin man with a neatly trimmed beard and the fine features of an intellectual consumed from within. He was careful not to say what he truly thought. I helped him, I liked him and I think he liked me, but I never heard from him again: a number of messages from me went unanswered. In the photos of the period my sister is still beautiful but she seems distraught, you can read the terror on her face.

  In September 1965, on the opening night of the revival of Les Séquestrés d’Altona at the Théâtre de l’Athénée, I was backstage in Évelyne’s dressing room with Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir some minutes before she went on stage. The theatre was full, we could clearly hear the audience’s impatient stamping, since the performance was late starting. Évelyne, who was in the first scene, did not want to go on. Dressed in Johanna’s luxurious white dress, her hair in a German braid, she trembled from head to foot before suddenly bursting into convulsive sobs, followed by a heartbreaking wail that drowned out the noise of the audience. The three of us surrounded her, kissing her in turn and talking to her, trying to convince her that everything would be fine, that she was, that she would be, wonderful. To me, it seemed clear that disaster was inevitable: for her, for Sartre, for the play, for the theatre. An announcement was made that there was a technical hitch, then, suddenly, inexplicably, she pulled herself together, dried her eyes, redid her make-up and went on stage. She acted very well: her voice was brittle, almost emotionless; I had never seen her as good in this play. Sartre must have resented her for it; I can understand him.

  I found a letter from her addressed to our mother, from when she was studying at the Centre Dramatique de l’Ouest. In it she announces that they would be performing in Paris and writes: ‘You’ll all be there, you, Monny, Claude and Jacques, I’ll be sick with fear. It’s such a shame, I get completely paralysed by stage-fright. I always give my best performances in little godforsaken villages where I don’t have to be afraid that friends or family will be watching.’ At the Théâtr
e de l’Athénée, all of Paris was watching, the stakes were high and stage-fright, rather than spurring her on as it does most actors – as it did Judith – made her even more afraid of the public and the judgement of others. Her terrifying outburst was evidence of an existential failure, the consequences of which she could not fail to draw. As soon as the play was over, she fell ill. It had been expected that she would go on a long European tour with the play in January 1966; instead she was urgently admitted to the Clinique Claude Bernard where she was diagnosed with purulent pleurisy of the right lung. She was in hospital from 17 January until 5 March 1966, suffering day and night, after which she endured ongoing complications requiring injections in the following months before being readmitted to the clinic in early August. Whenever I went to see her at the hospital, I invariably ran into Claude Roy, either in the corridors or in her room. He visited her daily, sometimes several times a day. He claimed to be hopelessly in love with her, he told her as much, convinced her of it, persuaded her with an avalanche of cards, love letters, poems, telegrams, pneumatiques, etc. Leaving her room, he stopped off at the matron’s office, scribbled out a madrigal on Assistance Publique notepaper and asked for it to be taken to Évelyne immediately. I have all of Claude’s letters, he was a born writer, poetry welled up in him, it was his innate language, he was incredibly gifted, unbelievably talented, inventive, a real box of tricks, an astounding magician. Rereading his letters years later, I am still in awe of his gifts, and I wonder how a woman who was so physically weak and fighting for her life – since Évelyne was allergic to the only antibiotic that might have been effective, forcing her doctors to find alternative ways to treat her – could resist such a bombardment of love, especially if she was as enamoured of the words as of their sender, of the sudden changes of subject, strange associations, the linguistic games of this poet who proclaimed her to be his muse, his inspiration, the fount of this spectacular creativity that so astonished her? They had known each other for a long time, but it was only when he saw her lying in a hospital bed that his curious passion revealed itself. In the months that followed, they talked about living together, but Évelyne could not think so far ahead. She was convinced that, after her recovery, they would spend the summer together by the sea as he had so often promised; this was all that mattered to her. As the holidays approached, the decision became pressing. Claude’s wife, the actress Loleh Bellon, gave him an ultimatum: ‘It’s her or me.’ He was deeply attached to Loleh: she was his bedrock, beside which his amorous poetic effusions to my sister mattered little. Claude, ineffably civilized, broke up with Évelyne with barbaric brutality. I have two of his letters here in front of me, one undated, tender still, but with a tenderness that sounds hollow, where he begins to distance himself, telling her that he will not be able to see her over the next few days, writing: ‘You were very wise not to take the cyanide capsule or throw yourself on the electric fence, because you are destined to do fascinating and beautiful things with your life…’ Clearly, he knew that she had already seriously contemplated suicide, but this did not stop him from sending his last letter to her, dated 27 July 1966, just before he headed off into the sun with his lawfully wedded wife, disappearing entirely. It is clear from reading it that Évelyne had said to him, ‘I curse you’: he defends himself piteously against this curse. She had counted on her holiday with Claude as the beginning of a new life for her, something that would open up new horizons. She had turned thirty-six on 9 July. I had never seen her as desperate, as gaunt, as distraught as she was after this break-up; the broken promise, the withdrawal of love, which she had entirely failed to anticipate.

  She would not even hear talk of returning to the theatre, but thought – we all thought – that she would be able to make films and, in the short term, documentary features for television. She was curious about everything and her nature was such that people found it easy to trust her, she could get them to talk, to open up their deepest selves. Éliane Victor, who at the time presented the celebrated television programme Les Femmes… aussi, and who was very fond of Évelyne, asked her to produce a piece about women in Tunisia. She travelled there in August, and again in September, researching locations. The filming itself took place in October and she started to edit as soon as she got back. She became very close to Bahia, one of the Tunisian women she had chosen as the heroine of her film, and had been adopted by the whole family. She felt as though she had discovered something essential, something that would not prove fleeting.

  On the afternoon of 18 November 1966, Pierre Lazareff, the managing editor of France-Soir, Elle and the various magazines and newspapers of what was, back then, the most important press group in France – at the time I was writing a long feature each month for Elle, which was run by his wife Hélène, and I worked one afternoon and one evening a week as part of the famous team of rewriters at France Dimanche – called me in person from his second-floor office on the rue Réaumur: ‘Claude, you must come and see me, it’s urgent.’ From his tone it was clear that he was upset, because he was a good man. He told me, ‘Go to the rue Jacob straight away, a terrible thing has happened.’ It was Norbert Bensaïd who opened the door to me, clearly distraught: he had found my sister’s body an hour earlier. I rushed to her bed, she was lying on her side, her face was beautiful, gentle, peaceful. I pulled back the sheets, her body was burning up, it was impossible to think that the breath of life had left her forever. Incredulous, I asked Norbert if there was anything we could do, anything that might bring her round. He told me she had been dead for several hours; if her body was still warm it was because the apartment was overheated. She had not only taken barbiturates, she had taken a poison for which there was no antidote. She had made absolutely sure that there was no chance that she might be saved, calling her cleaning lady and instructing her not to come at the usual hour and telling Norbert, who had been very worried and rang her almost every day, that she would not be in Paris. She had arranged things so that by the time she was discovered, she would be dead.

  She had left three letters, laid out carefully, each envelope with a name and address written in pencil, one for Sartre, one for her friend Dolores Ruspoli, one for me. The letters were brief, but it must have been to Dolores that she wrote the last letter, because mid-way through a sentence her handwriting suddenly trails off and plunges from the horizontal to the vertical, a sign that the poison had done its work and she no longer had the strength to continue. She had probably done the fatal deed in the middle of the night, towards four o’clock. She was clear-headed when she did so, there is no pathos in the letters, she briefly put her affairs in order, knowing that she was dying. To me: ‘My dear Claudie, I implore you, the script for the whole programme is here, I want you to ask Éliane to look at the edit of the film carefully, to ensure all the important narration is in there; I would be grateful if you could go, that way at least I will have done one good thing. Claude, my brother, my darling little brother, I love you. É.’ To Dolores: ‘My Dodo, don’t let them knock me about too much. I’m not getting any better in myself, even though on the outside, everything is going really well. At least I managed that. I love you. I want you to have the apartment. Robert will talk to you about it.’ I don’t remember whether I read these letters as soon as I saw her there on the bed or whether I did so later. I don’t have her letter to Sartre, but I remember that it was affectionate. As every day at this time, Castor and Sartre were working together in his new little apartment at 222 boulevard Raspail. Norbert and I held each other and sobbed. It was utterly unbearable.

  Norbert left, I stayed with her, there could be no question of leaving her alone and, as I sat with her, with my dead sister, I felt a sharp pang of remorse, one that has never left me: if she had phoned me before she took the poison, I would have been here in a flash and maybe I could have prevented it. But she did not call, she knew that Judith, who was living with me, didn’t like her; she wouldn’t have dared, she hadn’t dared. I told myself that I had to let everyone know, my bro
ther, Paulette, Monny, my father, Castor, Sartre, but for a long time I simply sat there, saddened at the thought of being the bearer of such tragic news, knowing the suffering it would cause. I called Castor, who burst into tears. I said, ‘You have to come,’ and I heard her speak to Sartre. She said, ‘I’ll come. Sartre doesn’t want to.’ I insisted, ‘It’s unthinkable that he wouldn’t come, he has no right not to.’ He came. My brother’s first words when he arrived – he was a media star at the time and very busy – shocked me. He took me by the shoulders and said, ‘Claudie, swear to me that you’ll never do such a thing!’ All of Paris came, all Saint-Germain-des-Prés, all the actors she had worked with, all those who loved her, all her lovers, past and present, with the exception of Deleuze and Rezvani, came; they came by day and by night in an unending convivial wake. Sartre and Castor spent several hours there every evening, sipping their Chivas, Évelyne’s countless friends were happy to see them, to speak to them simply, everyone recalling memories of Évelyne when she was alive. From time to time, one or other of them would leave the group and go and sit on Évelyne’s bed, stroking her hair, kissing her cold forehead. I had unwillingly become a kind of chef du protocol, the master of ceremonies, because many of those who came would never have met each other in the normal course of events, or their encounters would have been explosive.

  Paulette, shattered as much by the way in which her daughter had died as by the death itself, unleashed her gifts as a detective, her talents as an investigator, doggedly tenacious, publicly demanding explanations. She blamed me, she blamed Sartre, I had to come up with stratagems to keep her away, to prevent her from confronting him. But every suicide requires a guilty party, a scapegoat. The most obvious was Claude Roy: I had found his letters in the apartment. I couldn’t bear the thought that he might come to the funeral, none of us could. Sartre sent him a harsh letter, I’ve forgotten exactly what he said, but he told him he would not be welcome. Claude did not come, but I do remember the first words of his reply to Sartre: ‘Sartre, your grief must have been dreadful, your letter was.’ We agreed that he knew how to write.