by Adam Thorpe
And then something weird happened: last night started to percolate properly through my brain. It began with Coppélia, and the way the dancers seemed lighter than air as they leapt and spun or just ran across the stage. My legs wanted to do the same, there in the shower, and I had to clamp the muscles tight to stop them. It almost hurt. Then this turned into me missing Jocelyne’s mouth and somehow the policemen’s faces replaced Jocelyne but all I could see were helmets with the goggles-strap dangling off the back and the white crest flashing and revolving round and round as I felt the cell’s concrete floor hard on my bottom and Van’s bloodshot eyes goggling at me with the noise of the shower shutting out everything in a deafening hiss. It was a sort of waking nightmare. I scrabbled for the taps and stopped the shower and just stood there, trembling under the drips, my eyes and bad ear stinging from the shampoo. I pulled the plastic curtains back and one of them clung to my legs in a horrible way. I kicked it off and stepped out carefully and rubbed my face with the towel. I kept hearing Raoul’s voice, now, going on about permanent insurrection. I prayed again, to the Holy Virgin. I prayed that she might wash my mind clean. I pictured Ste Thérèse and the Holy Virgin Mother sitting together in Heaven, smiling at me in their white robes, and allowed my mind to be washed as if doves of peace were flying through it.
I dressed in clean clothes. Tante Clothilde bathed and dressed my ear. She was nice to me, now. She never mentioned the bathroom business or the fact that I’d called her an old hen. My ear didn’t resemble an ear any more, but she said that it would find its old self again in a few days. It wasn’t torn, at least. She’d phoned the hospital and left a message for Oncle Alain, saying I had come back safe and sound. I lay on my bed and plunged into a deep sleep, without a single dream.
When I woke up I felt achey all over, but less dizzy and echoey. It was two o’clock: I’d slept right through lunch. I went quietly downstairs and could hear Tante Clothilde fussing about in the kitchen. I couldn’t face her, suddenly. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone right now. I went past the office into the showroom.
Gigi was in there, standing among the demo models with his arms folded, staring out of the main window.
He hardly looked at me when I came in. I pretended I needed something from the desk, and searched through the drawers for it. I’d really wanted to be in there alone, to try to get back to feeling normal. He took out the stub of a thin cigar from the top pocket of his worn overalls and put it between his lips. I could hear the breath whistling in his chest. That was Verdun. He was standing just where my father had fallen over and hit his head.
‘This used to be an orchard,’ he said, without turning to me.
‘I know. Any more news of Maman?’
‘Bullets. We found bullets, here. And bones.’
‘I know. There was that battle, in 1870.’
I’d already told him about the Bagneux battle in 1870, but his memory was faulty.
‘Not my war,’ he muttered. ‘Trampled over my orchard and garden three times, the Boche have. Taken my home. There’ll be a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth.’
I started wandering around between the models. There was a lot of dust on them. Weird, to have dust on vacuum cleaners. He turned and looked at me.
‘Cabbage ear, boy.’
‘Where I was hit, Gigi. By the police.’
He grunted.
‘Bad as the bloody Boche,’ he murmured. ‘What do I care? I’m seventy-two. They can have my bloody orchard. They can have it.’
He looked down at the floor. It was as if he was seeing earth and plants, instead of lino. I didn’t say anything. He started singing to himself, with a flat voice – an old-fashioned song he’d sing quite often, in fact, but which Tante Clothilde didn’t like because it made her miss my grandmother:
Je rêve au fil de l’eau
Ecoutant les sanglots
De mon accordéon nostalgique!
Le bateau va toujours
Emportant mes amours …
Then he grunted halfway through and just limped out slowly, closing the door behind him.
I’d obviously disturbed him in his thoughts. It was impossible for me to imagine open air instead of the showroom, but he must have been seeing it, actually seeing the orchard that he’d got rid of himself. Like seeing a ghost, I thought. Or maybe he’d imagined himself on a river, playing an accordion, with my grandmother next to him. Or maybe both at the same time.
I stayed about half an hour in the showroom, trying to get back to feeling normal. Everything looked the same but as if it was pretending. Even the people waiting for the bus on the other side of the road looked as if they were pretending.
Oncle Alain came back in the afternoon. I was downstairs, watching an old film on television, my whole body like glass. Gigi and Tante Clothilde were in the kitchen. I heard him speak to them and I felt very nervous. He came into the sitting-room and closed the door behind him. He looked at me up and down, like Gigi had.
‘So,’ he said, ‘the bloody idiot.’
I stood up. He held my face and kissed me hard on each cheek. His fingers brushed my bad ear and I winced. He stank of Byrrh.
‘Maman is going to be fine,’ he said.
‘One hundred per cent?’
He looked at me and chuckled and said, ‘One hundred and five. She’s already giving me orders.’
He lit a cigarette and turned the sound down on the television. He sat in his usual chair.
‘Right. So. Explain yourself.’
Before I could reply he pointed his cigarette at me and said, ‘I was damn worried about you, we all were. I wasn’t just a little bit cross. I was damn worried.’
I told him what had happened, just as I’d told Gigi and Tante Clothilde. He listened without interrupting, staring up at the ceiling and blowing smoke rings.
‘So,’ he said, when I’d finished. ‘They still don’t discriminate.’
‘Discriminate?’
‘Between the good apples and the rotten apples.’
He scratched his sideburn, thinking. He stumped out his cigarette. Then he took a deep breath in through his mouth, making a sucking sound between his teeth. He held the air in and then let it out with a little grunt.
‘Raymond – Raymond says you’ve been putting up posters. Political posters. With your sister, all over Paris.’
‘That was ages ago.’
He lit another cigarette.
‘I’ve been thinking about that, chum,’ he said, pocketing his lighter.
I nodded, wondering what my punishment would be. I waited. His cigarette hand was trembling. I hoped he wouldn’t shout at me, because I felt like thin glass.
Then he bent forward almost into a ball, his elbows on his knees and his head right down, staring at the carpet between his feet. It reminded me of Carole, rolling up into a ball in the sanatorium’s garden by the crocuses. Maybe he’s been drinking, I thought.
‘I put posters up,’ he murmured, down into the carpet.
‘Really?’
‘Put them up. Yeah. Put some posters up.’
He was biting his lip, staring down at the carpet with his hands dangling from his knees.
‘Defaced posters, as well.’
‘Really?’
‘One in the métro, it said Rauchen Verboten. Guess what Rauchen Verboten means. Eh?’
‘No Spitting.’
‘Close. No Smoking. Changed it to Race Vert, with the help of a pen. School fountain pen. Still at school in 1944, chum. Aged fifteen. Your father, he was eighteen. Last year at lycée. Same lycée, you see. We were at the same lycée. Not here, the Boche had booted us out, we had to cram into old Tante Alice’s at St Ouen. She ran this little hat-shop. Up in the attic, we were. We were quite good at school. We were going to go places. Gigi, he left school at twelve. So we’d gone up a notch, hadn’t we? So.’
He bit his lip, catching it between his teeth like the policeman in the van, and stared down at his shoes. The television film chattere
d on quietly. I didn’t want to switch it off in case it disturbed him.
‘Rauchen Verboten,’ he said, ‘because the Boche are in town. You know all about that, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘Twenty-three, twenty-four years ago. Feels like yesterday. We have to learn Boche history and the glorious Boche language. Your father, Henri, he does his bit against the Boche. He does his bit. Runs messages, puts up posters. The Nazis are murderous pigs, that type of stuff. Or something for the morale, some message from de Gaulle in crooked letters, spelling mistakes’n all. One day, you see, he says to me, “Plouf”– that’s his nickname for me, dating from when we were tots – “Plouf, I’ve got a hundred posters to put up by tomorrow. Give us a hand?” He doesn’t usually ask me. Not his kid brother. Dangerous work. Maybe he thinks I’m old enough, now. Gigi and Mamie, they sort of know but can’t stop us, can they? They hate the Boche. Gigi especially hates ’em.’
He studied the filter on his cigarette, with the tiny Winston written in red.
‘It’s a Friday. Friday evening. We have the usual famine supper and then we take the train to this pick-up point. Near the Gare St Lazare, it was. Carrying our school satchels. It’s January, freezing bloody cold, black as ink, no street lights or shops lit up or anything. Well, it’s wartime, 1944. Sirens, because the English planes are busy. A few fireworks up in the sky. Machine guns. Otherwise it’s deadly quiet.’
He drew on his cigarette, hiding it under his fingers like a workman, head still right down, jacket stretched over his back.
‘So we collect the posters – and the bucket of paste, of course. They’re handed to us – out of this hatch down an alleyway, this cellar hatch. Bloke with a beret keeping watch. We stuff ’em in our satchels. The posters, not the bucket of paste. Henri tells me to drop that and run, if we’re spotted. The bucket, I mean. And we sort of flit from street to street, like moths. Putting the posters up. Deserted streets. Nobody about. Pitch-black. Bloody cold, especially where the paste dribbles down the sleeve. Wet gloves. A few fireworks up in the sky from the Nazi guns, but no searchlights. Must’ve been wheeled off to more important places, the searchlights. Docks, arms factories, that sort of lark.’
He scratched his nose and almost lifted his head enough to look at me. He sucked on his cigarette again and then coughed.
‘Well, we’re just a lot of pretty buildings, y’see. Paris. Old history. The poster, it looks like a muster-roll. It’s got names on. Names of collaborators, with their ages and professions. Still see it. Known collabos. There are Nazi posters plastered all over the shop, of course, so maybe it’ll take some time to be noticed, our one. Not a big poster, about magazine size. Anyway, we’re somewhere near the Maubert down some stinky little alley and we’re nearly finished and your father, Henri, he’s gone round the corner to recce. I’m smoothing one out on the wall.’
His back twitched – it almost made me jump.
‘I should have had my satchel round my neck, but I didn’t. Kept getting in the way, kept slipping forward every time I’d bend down and so forth. You see? That was my big mistake, Gilles. A little detail, but a big mistake. Everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be foolproof. Flawless. Without flaw.’
There was a long pause. I could hear him swallowing.
‘So, anyway, I’ve put it down next to me while I’m pasting. There’s a shout. A torch shines down the alley and blinds me. I panic. Instead of taking the satchel, I grab the bucket. It should have been round my neck, the satchel, but it wasn’t. I scarper, holding the bucket. Henri’s round the corner and I run past him and the paste’s slopping all over my legs and Henri grabs the bucket from me and chucks it away with a big clang and splash. We keep on running and it’s pitch-black, it’s not easy, and all we’re hearing is our own footsteps clattering and scraping, and then we’re over this bridge with the Seine sort of glimmering along calmly either side, and there’s nobody coming after us. We get home to Tante Alice’s about a minute before the midnight curfew. You can be shot for being out after curfew, you see, chum. Tuck ourselves up in bed. Bloody petrified.’
He nodded to himself, lighting another cigarette off the end of the first one. I didn’t move a muscle. I somehow knew it wasn’t the end, that the main part of the story was still to come. His deep voice started up again, but hoarser.
‘I’m ill, Gilles. Bad cold that turns into pleurisy. Getting my legs and feet and hands all wet with the paste, I suppose. And being hungry all the time. I’m not in school on Monday, anyway. I’m not in school.’
He was staying even stiller, now, while staring down at the carpet between his shoes. Now and again he’d twitch, while talking, as if a fly had landed on his back.
‘Ten or so French flicks, not the Boche, come into the school during the second lesson, Monday morning. Into my class. They get my class out and stand them in the courtyard. All my classmates. Twenty-eight of them. Middle of a maths lesson. “One of you has been sticking up seditious posters,” says the chief. “We have proof that this person attends this class. We don’t know his name, but he’s certainly one of you. If that one person doesn’t step forward in the next two minutes, all of you will be arrested.” And he times it on his watch.’
My uncle looked at his watch, almost acting it.
‘My classmates, my chums, they just look at each other, you see, a bit bewildered. The other classes are watching through the windows, but the windows are shut and they can’t hear anything. Our maths teacher, old Leupin with the limp, he’s scared. “These lads wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” he says to the flicks. He’s told to shut his gob. My classmates, they look at each other, keep looking at each other. Sort of bewildered. Worried, obviously. They must have been worried.’
He went silent again. I could hear him swallowing. I was staring at his curved back, the way the jacket was stretched on it, the folds spreading out straight from the stitching down the middle. It was like a hill. In front of it I could see everything happening: the school yard, the policemen, the classmates in a group in the middle. A very long time ago, it was happening. But also now, as he was talking about it. It was actually happening now, in fact.
‘They must have realised that, you know – that I was missing,’ he said. ‘My chums must have. I was popular, you know. And not a single one of them, not one, not one single one of them bastards put their hand up and said, “Alain Gobain’s not here, sir.” Not one of them. Not even the teacher. Not even old Leupin. Not one.’
My uncle put a hand over his eyes and then something happened I had never seen before in my life. He started to cry. His voice went high and pathetic. Tears plopped onto the carpet – plouf! plouf! plouf! – and his nose dribbled. He was saying things but they were so distorted by his crying that I couldn’t make out much. His whole body was shivering and shaking, still in this bent-over position, this kind of ball. I realised he was apologising, now. He was saying sorry for losing control. I sat very still on the sofa, my eyes automatically drawn to the television’s grey and flickering screen; someone was trying to ride a donkey while a girl in a straw hat laughed at him in the sunshine.
‘Don’t worry,’ I murmured. ‘I don’t mind.’
I should have put an arm around him, or at least a hand on his back. But I didn’t. He coped with it all on his own.
My uncle blew his nose.
‘I’m sorry, Gilles,’ he said. ‘Bloody stupid.’
‘Don’t worry. They were all … they were all taken away, then.’
He nodded.
‘The whole lot. Taken off in the salad basket, just like you were. Hostages, you see. No one tells me, not even your father. I’m too ill with bloody pleurisy. Some idiot bigwig in the Wehrmacht gets himself assassinated, you see, by the Resistance, a couple of days later. And then Gigi, he reads in Le Matin that twenty-eight “terrorists”, so-called, have been shot on the orders of the “Höherer S.S. und Polizeifuhrer”.’ He said this in a funny voice, wobbling his head from side to side. ‘
“Höherer S.S. und Polizeiführer.” They’re from our school, aged between fifteen and sixteen. Hostages. Gigi shows this to Henri and Henri shows me when I’m better and tells me the whole – the whole story.’
He coughed, suddenly, his back heaving up. I started to feel sorry for him. The fact that he’d cheated Maman and probably staged a robbery seemed to fade away.
‘He should have told them, you see, Gilles. Your father should have told them that I was the one they were looking for. He watched it all through the window, your dad, sitting there in his classroom, he watched it all going on in the courtyard. He knew what it was about. Couldn’t hear anything, but he knew what it was about.’
‘He could’ve owned up to it himself,’ I said.
He gave a little snort.
‘Never. Not if you’re a true Resistance man, chum. You don’t know what they might get out of you. He knew a lot, you see. I didn’t. I didn’t know anything. Not a bloody thing. They wouldn’t have got a bloody thing out of me because I didn’t know a thing, you see.’
‘You knew about him.’
He smiled at me.
‘You can’t go betraying your brother,’ he said. ‘Can you?’
‘I dunno.’
He chuckled. There was a little silence. I thought of my own brother Nicolas, hitting himself without knowing it. Then I imagined the group in the school yard and my father watching it all through the closed window, not hearing anything, like the telly with the sound off. Not saying anything, either. I could see it from the outside and my father’s face just a white foggy shape through the window and then from the inside, seeing the back of my father’s head like in the advertisement for that bank. It was weird.
‘Then he couldn’t betray you, either,’ I said. ‘Because you were his brother. That’s why he didn’t say anything.’
My uncle didn’t answer. His trembling hand lifted the cigarette to his lips as if it was fragile. A long column of ash fell onto the carpet.