by Allan Massie
I was shocked by his appearance. He had aged a dozen years since I had left him in Bordeaux, and the formal double-breasted dark grey suit, which he wore even in our mountain retreat, hung loose on him; it might have been made for a bigger man, though Lucien had always been thin. He rose from a sofa as we entered, and rubbed sleep from his eyes.
We embraced of course. He embraced young Hervé too.
‘I’m so glad you have come back,’ he said. ‘Welcome to France.’
Then he was shaken by a coughing fit, which might have been brought on by the depths of his emotion.
We talked for a few minutes about family, about Mother. I told him I had seen Polly, and that you, Etienne, were doing satisfactorily at school in England. He told Hervé Anne sent him love. We were all nervous, anxious to please each other, and fearful of taking a wrong step. I was abashed, as I had been since turbulent childhood, by Lucien’s manifest goodness; it’s a word I find difficult to use, but no other will serve. Someone ought to write an essay on the decline of our belief in goodness, in virtue; somebody probably has, but I read little nowadays.
I had to stop here, Etienne, and take a pill. Thinking of your father brought on agitation and pain.
Hervé relaxed in Lucien’s presence. That impressed me, for the boy’s nerves had been stretched taut as piano-wire.
(I didn’t mean to write that comparison, and am aghast when I contemplate it. Still, stet.)
Only between Simon Halévy and Lucien was there evident tension. I realised that Halévy disliked my brother, and I thought the worse of him for it.
‘So, what’s your proposition, now we are all assembled?’ he said.
Lucien lit a cigarette. His hand shook as he held the match to it. It must have been a strain making that journey, and he would have been too proud to show fear. And I sensed that he felt Halévy’s hostility to be oppressive, and was ashamed, for some reason which escaped me, of his own reciprocal dislike. I say, for some reason which escaped me, because I found no difficulty in accounting for my own dislike of Halévy: he was a shit.
‘You’re Laval’s envoy, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that I have reached some of the same conclusions as Monsieur Laval, but that I have also independent reasons for seeking this meeting. And I have knowledge which he lacks.’
‘Does that mean you are deceiving Laval too?’
‘I hope I’m deceiving nobody.’
That is precisely what he said. It’s important to be clear about that, and to remember that I never knew Lucien tell a lie. For that reason, I have no doubt that the accusations later brought against him are false. And I have frequently said as much to Guy Fouquet. But, again, I confess that this certainty is retrospective. 1944 was not a year when one could put one’s trust in any past knowledge of anyone, not even a brother.
Then Lucien began to speak. His exposition was lucid as ever, but there was a passion in his voice that was new to me. He stabbed the air with his cigarette as he spoke. And he held everyone’s attention.
There would be fighting in France that year, he assured us. But it was not necessary that there should be fighting between Frenchmen. Whatever the attitude of some of his colleagues in Vichy and ‘of the Fascist scum who have been kept out of the centre of power there, with the greatest difficulty, I assure you’, he had never doubted the patriotism of those who had joined de Gaulle. ‘How could I? Doubt your patriotism, Armand, or the patriotism of the many friends who followed the same line as you? I doubted your judgement. That was all.’ Accordingly, he had a right to ask for a similar indulgence of judgement to be directed to those who had taken a different path, who, confronted with the responsibility of action in the circumstances of 1940, had tried to save what they could of France, for France and for the French people.
‘This is fine talk,’ Halévy said.
Lucien looked him in the eyes.
‘It’s by way of introduction,’ he said. ‘I have a proposal, sanctioned by Monsieur Laval, whose envoy, as you say, I am. It is this: let us call a truce between Vichy and the Resistance. Let us postpone recriminations. Meanwhile, if the Resistance will abandon action, which, whenever it takes place, invites German reprisals on unfortunate and innocent people, Monsieur Laval will do all in his power, short of himself inviting similar reprisals, to obstruct the occupying forces. Then, when this year is over, we shall see how things stand. If France is free and independent again, Monsieur Laval will at once demit office, and he is ready to stand trial for any offences which he may be thought to have committed against our country, and he asked me to state that he is confident of being able to justify everything he has done before a properly constituted court of law.’
‘You’re asking us to save Laval. It’s absurd.’
‘I’m asking you to help us spare the French people suffering. Is that absurd? And I’m asking you to consider my proposal before you judge it.’
He paused, and smiled.
‘It’s not a lot to ask you know.’
‘What of the blood that has been spilt already, that cries out for vengeance?’
It was growing dark. Someone closed the shutters and lit an oil-lamp. Shadows flickered against the wall, making me think of early Christians sheltering in the Catacombs or of those mysterious late paintings of Rembrandt in which unexplained menace invades tranquil domestic life. Someone else put a bottle of wine on the table and I was grateful for its harsh red assurance of continuity. Yet it was cold as the room we sat in.
‘Now,’ Lucien said, waving the offer of wine aside, ‘let me go beyond my brief from Monsieur Laval, though what I have to say to my mind reinforces the sense of his offer. I have certain German friends. I’m not ashamed to say that.’ His chin went up, making his shadow dance on the wall. ‘Indeed, I should be ashamed if I had no German friends. These friends are patriots, as we are; like us too, they are not Nazis. Indeed, being German, they have even more reason to hate the Nazis than we have, for Hitler has involved them in the degradation of their people, and they know they are stained by his guilt. They have long nurtured plans against him, and these plans are coming to fruition. Sometime in the next six months – I am sorry I cannot be more exact – they will act. Hitler and his immediate confederates will be removed, a new government established, which will immediately offer peace terms to Britain and America.’
‘What about Russia?’
Lucien did not falter.
‘I can’t answer for the terms which will be offered the Soviet Union, but those proposed in the west will include the immediate evacuation of France by German forces. In six months, if all goes well, the Germans will leave France. I would ask you to consider my earlier proposal for a truce in the light of that … possibility.’
He got up.
‘You’ll want to discuss this among yourselves.’
‘We’ll need to think about it first, take soundings, try to get in touch with others,’ Halévy said. ‘And we’ll require you to stay here.’
‘I can hardly leave without your assistance, since I don’t know where I am.’
I remember thinking: its audacity is matched only by its vagueness. Yet there is a naivety which might just make it work.
‘They don’t like it, do they?’ Lucien came and sat beside me. ‘I’ve failed in this, as in everything.’
‘Have some wine,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you’ve failed. I’ve never thought of you as a failure.’
That was true then. In an odd way it is still true now.
‘I don’t want wine, thank you,’ he said. ‘Curiously, I’d like some rum. I don’t suppose there is any. It’s nice of you to say that, it makes me think of our last meeting in Bordeaux. The tables are turned now, aren’t they? Then you were backing the outsider, and I was on the favourite. Well, that horse hasn’t stayed.’
I drank my wine, waiting. I waited a long time for him to speak.
; ‘I could envy that boy, Hervé,’ he said. ‘He retains a zest for life. I wish you had had the chance to know Anne, his sister. She has saved me, made it possible for me to carry on. I owe her so much. Remember that, will you, Armand, please?’
‘I won’t need to,’ I said. ‘It’ll be over, and we’ll return to …’
‘To what? Normality? Do you know, at home, it’s all the worst types who are in the Resistance. The decent family men have too much to lose. Types like Simon who keeps the garage, I don’t suppose you remember him, you’ve never liked our home, have you?’
‘You’ll do what you can for Etienne, won’t you?’
(I nodded. I’ve failed there, haven’t I? Another broken promise.)
‘And for young Jacques, Marthe’s boy …’
(Was it twenty years in prison?)
‘Do you remember our last conversation, in Bordeaux? I called yours a mad adventure, and invited you to take your share in our National Revolution. Which has divided the nation as never before, and is no revolution. Laval knows we have failed, that’s why he talks for choice only of his village and the land. The land … the land … we have been so … antiquated. I told you it was not based on spite or the desire for revenge. Such self-deception. Do you know, my dear, in the end I have found myself following Laval, not the Marshal, because Laval doesn’t hide from the truth.’
‘Why don’t you say something, Armand?’
I pressed his shoulder, but what could I say? Words of comfort are always impertinent.
‘I dream, you know, every night now, and they are cruel dreams. Always cruel. My poor Rupert is the victim, and I am compelled to watch. I suppose, Armand, I have loved Rupert more than you because I have loved ideas more than life. Even the family has been only an abstract noun for me … teach Etienne to be able to give himself, won’t you? It would be nice if there was some rum. I’m so tired and it helps me …’
But, as if despairing, he picked up my glass of wine and drained it.
‘I’m sorry. That was yours, wasn’t it? Well, at least I have drunk from my brother’s cup.’
I don’t pretend, Etienne, those were all his precise words. How could they be when I am casting back almost forty years in my memory? But that was the sense. I was overwhelmed by my consciousness of his moral exhaustion. Only a stubborn pride held him from despair.
Nothing was decided at that meeting. How could it be? The matter brought us by Lucien was too momentous to be determined at that level. We would all have to consult. It was something, I thought, that it wasn’t rejected out of hand. Even Halévy admitted Lucien’s sincerity, and was impressed by it. This did nothing to mitigate his dislike of my brother. That was rooted in his awareness of his own moral inferiority.
To my dismay Lucien’s spirits were not raised by this degree of success, which he had certainly not expected. He had come to the meeting without hope. He was tempted by the profound attraction of failure. He would have liked to be able to resign from further commitment. But he couldn’t. Pride again held him to his post. I thought of that sentry at Pompeii who held his ground while the lava engulfed him, and of the noble declaration of the Guard at Waterloo: ‘The Guard dies, but it does not surrender.’
Surrender, sometimes rational as in 1940, is the great temptation for the man of low vitality.
We parted at dawn. It was cold. A veil of fog concealed the trees that stood only fifty metres from the little hut. Lucien had shaved. He wore a fur-lined overcoat, but still flinched from the cold. We embraced. His lips were dry on my cheek and his own cheek icy. He got into the car with Halévy, young Hervé and two other men, who were to change cars in the nearby town and then escort Lucien, finally by train, to an agreed point. They drove away. I watched the car swallowed up by the fog.
I never saw him again. I had other assignments to fulfil, which would take me to Normandy and give me the opportunity of a brief and dangerous reunion with Berthe and the children. I was gone by another route within ten minutes of the departure of the others.
Their car was stopped by the Milice twenty miles from our meeting-place. I had known it was folly to travel like that. When I remarked on this, Halévy said, ‘It’s my style.’
They were all arrested. I don’t know what happened to the two men whose names I never knew, but I believe they blabbed. Young Hervé was tortured by the Milice, and then, perhaps because he would not talk, murdered in his cell. Some say he died during torture, others of its effects, but I believe it was as I say. Simon Halévy was also tortured, then surrendered to the Gestapo, who sought him for a bomb attack on a German convoy. They tortured him more. He disappeared in Germany, perhaps in one of the camps, perhaps in a cellar.
There is evidence that Laval tried to protect Lucien, even to have him freed, though, when apprised of the circumstances of his arrest, he straightaway disowned him. I can’t blame him for that. Yet … it’s too difficult.
Your father was taken to Lyons. He was subjected to torture in the prison there, and interrogated by the notorious Barbie himself. Lucien was always afraid that he lacked physical courage – I believe that was why he hunted so audaciously in the year before he married your mother. Fear of fear, and fear of your reaction to pain, is the most desolating fear of all.
He talked. Of course he did. Most of us do. We all do if the torture is gauged correctly. They would have got his friend Rupert months later without his evidence, for they were watching him already; but Lucien talked. There’s no doubt that he betrayed him, in circumstances, I insist, in which the word betrayal loses all meaning.
If he was not compelled, five months later, to watch Rupert’s own experience of torture or to see him twist on that piano-wire on which they hanged him, he had already seen both too often in his imagination.
They didn’t kill Lucien. I think Laval may have saved his life. I don’t know, however. What I am certain of is this: it would have been better if they had killed him, and that is what he would have desired.
He returned home, broken, without fingernails, to the Château de l’Haye on the 14th of May, 1944.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Document 15:
From the last journal of Lucien de Balafré
MAY 16, 1944. It is difficult to hold a pen. Acute pain still in my finger-ends. I believe Laval saved my life. Why?
May 18, 1944. Anne left today. She kissed me on the cheek. Only once, but a lingering kiss. I fancy I can still feel the touch of her lips. She explained to me that, now that she knew for certain that Hervé was dead, she must go to her mother. ‘I’m all she has left,’ she said. Thank God my remnant of pride restrained me from crying, as I wished so much to cry, ‘And what about me? You’re all I have left.’ It would anyway have been a lie, for I have lost her. Whenever she sees me she hears her brother’s screams.
May 19, 1944. Yesterday I wrote of my remnant of pride. How can I have even that? After what I have done, after my act of betrayal. When the curé came today, for Maman, not me, I felt an intense desire to speak to him about Judas. Again I restrained myself. (I write as if my life is a series of acts of self-restraint. It’s not like that at all. It’s not like anything.) The temptation to wallow in self-abasement is extreme.
May 22, 1944. Why not give in? Why not admit that I have always known that I would yield to physical pain?
May 23, 1944. Maman can’t talk to me. She can’t bear to look at my finger-ends either. She understands nothing of the world that has sprung into being like a monster around her. Do I? Of course not. I’m only a man who used to write essays telling people how they should behave.
May 25, 1944. I woke in the night having dreamed of Rupert again. I was screaming and covered in sweat. In the dream I was made, yet again, to watch as Rupert was stretched out, naked, over a wheel, wrists and ankles pinioned. I got up, came downstairs, found a bottle of brandy. This morning I have the taste of rotten flesh in my mouth. More brandy is perhaps best.
May 27, 1944. The Almighty set his canon ‘gain
st self-slaughter’. Oh yes, but the Almighty has surely abdicated. He is as impotent as the Marshal, who has – they say – given up any pretence of still taking an interest in what happens around him. Poor old man. Poor deluded substitute for a hero, or a god.
May 30, 1944. Today, as I was walking, I was accosted by Simon, the garagiste. I thought he had gone into hiding. He adopted that cringing manner which has always irritated me. ‘I’ve a bit of advice for you, monsieur,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t offer it if I didn’t have your good and your family’s to heart. You ought to get out while you can, else things will get rough for you. There,’ he said, wiping his hands on his trouser legs, ‘it’s as much as my own life is worth to have passed on that message.’ I thanked him, and said I was grateful for his advice, but I was staying there. It was my home, and I had done nothing of which I was ashamed. If people wanted to put me on trial after the war, then I was ready to speak in my defence and justify myself. I think I kept my voice steady. ‘You’re a bloody fool then,’ he said. I’m mystified as to why he approached me.
June 4, 1944. Three days with the brandy bottle, two of indifference and one of horrid imaginings. But today I found on my study table a letter from Mathilde Dournier, which had been placed there during my alcoholic absence. I can’t quote it. My emotion is too extreme. I wept from joy as I read it, muttering to myself, ‘At least one person, one single person …’ And now I’m near to tears again thinking of her words.