by Allan Massie
She stopped.
‘I’m not sure that I can go on,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought you here, and I don’t know that I can.’
There was nothing I could say. All my life there has never been anything I could say at moments which demanded speech. I have never known how to encourage others, or strengthen them or comfort them. I have remained locked up in my iron mask, and self-pity has persuaded me that my father turned the key. So now, as Anne shed her Americanised assurance, and as I could see her features reform themselves into those of an old French peasant woman, whose only response to adversity must be endurance, I was held dumb. But Sarah leaned over and kissed her. She held her a moment, and said:
‘It’s terrible for you, reliving this, but you yourself said it’s not the same, the past is past. And don’t think, whatever you have to tell us, that it’s a question of blame. Not now, not ever. And as for the horror, which I’m sure you’ve never spoken of, maybe it will grow less, diminish, if you can only bring yourself to tell us.’
Anne said, ‘It was that image of the girl’s skull, gleaming like dirty tallow. I’ve always carried that with me, and of course, as I’ve said, many worse things were done by others, by the Nazis, and, yes, by the French Fascists too.
‘I don’t remember now if I slept that night. But we didn’t speak. And in the morning the same girl, who was our warder, came again, and she stood outside the cell, and threw her head back, and laughed. Then she told me I was wanted. Her mood changed abruptly, it had been the other girls she was laughing at, with their shaven heads, and now she was angry. “You bitch,” she said, “you’ve cheated us.” I didn’t know what she meant. She pushed me into a room where there was a man sitting behind a desk, and two others lounging by the window, with their backs to me. “Has he spoken of killing himself?” the man at the desk said. “No,” I answered truthfully. “He wants to stand trial,” I said. “Then why were you running away?” “Because I persuaded him.” “He’s escaped us.” One of the men at the window turned round and I knew from the expression on his face what the words meant. “I don’t believe it,” I said, “this is some sort of trick.” Yet I knew it wasn’t that, but a lie. They made me see his body, still dangling. “For identification,” one said. Then the two men went away, and I was taken back to the little room and left there with Guy Fouquet. He gave me some brandy. I wanted to be sick but I forced it down. I wanted to sob, but dared not. He made me sit.
‘“I hated him,” he said, “till we talked the other night. And I don’t believe he killed himself either.” “Then,” I said, “you must order an investigation.” He only smiled. He told me that when I had recovered I would understand the absurdity of what I was asking. What was the death of one collaborator more or less? “Nevertheless, I don’t like it,” he said. “And I will tell you one thing. I have no evidence, and I’m not going to exhaust myself trying to find it, but I have no doubt there were people he could have compromised, people who would rather he had no opportunity to speak, and perhaps whoever let us know he was on that train also contrived, I don’t know how, to hasten his death … we won’t keep you. You were going to your mother’s. I suggest you continue your journey.” “What happens to the body?” I asked. “Can I have it?” “What would you do with it? No, it will have to be buried here.”’
‘He saw me on to the train,’ she said. ‘Guy Fouquet did. And gave me a pass. And the last thing he said was: “I hate myself so much that I can never forgive or forget, but I almost liked him, that last talk we had …”’
She stopped again. She was crying. We sat without speaking. Children shouted and laughed in the street below.
‘I’ve brought you a long way, perhaps to tell you nothing of value. But I had to. I couldn’t let you think or believe that I had betrayed him. Do you believe me?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’ve thought about it so often. I’ve never stopped, it seems to me. And I don’t know who did. There were two old friends he met the day before we left Paris, who had written for his magazine. One was that Torrance, the other Léon-Paul Cebran. He thought they were friends, he might have told them of our plans.’
‘I know of Torrance. What happened to Cebran?’
‘He died, years ago, of cirrhosis, I think. You remember he was a Fascist in 1940. He converted, or recanted, in time. Certainly he denounced others. But how either could have arranged Lucien’s murder – for that’s what it was – I don’t know.’
‘So even in the end, we have a mystery.’
‘Do you know the worst thing? I have never been able to recall his last words to me. He must have said something just before we were separated, but I have never been able to remember what.’
‘Why don’t you come back to South Africa?’ Sarah said. ‘Come home now this is over.’
We were standing at the window of the airport lounge, watching the snow. It was falling in small flakes from an iron sky. Despite the snow their flight would take off in twenty minutes. They would soar over the mountains and deserts to Africa. As from an aeroplane, but an old two-seater one, I looked down on a red road descending like a scar into a wide hollow where a white farmhouse stood surrounded by gum trees. There was a dam with waterfowl and spirals of milk-blue smoke rose from the house and the nearby kraal. A hawk hung above the trees and there was silence but for the chug-chug of the four-stroke engine and the buzz of insects. At ground level the air would be sharp and aromatic. When the aeroplane passed over, the land would relapse into an ancient peace.
But of course they wouldn’t fly over Africa; politics forbade it, commanded them to take the route over the ocean.
‘I know what you’ve been thinking ever since we left Anne.’ Sarah placed her arm on mine. ‘You’ve been thinking about her conversation with Guy Fouquet and wondering whether Berthe and Armand weren’t completely wrong when they warned you off Freddie. Haven’t you?’
‘Daughter,’ I said. ‘You’re Rose’s daughter, and mine.’
The intercom crackled, calling them to Africa.
‘Well, won’t you?’ she said.
‘I’ll see out winter in Europe.’
Niels shook my hand. I kissed Sarah, holding her close to give me strength.
‘Take care of her,’ I said.
I stood at the window and watched the plane slide along the runway, out of sight. Then it returned faster, its nose lifted, and I gazed after it till it was swallowed up in cloud. I lit a cigar and turned away, shrugging myself into my overcoat.
Of course Sarah was right. These thoughts had indeed occupied my mind. If things were not what they have been, they would not be as they are. My uncle and aunt’s intentions had been of the best, brought about the worst. And yet there was Sarah calling me back to Africa, my daughter who was one consequence of their intervention in my life. If only, if only … but then, also, if only, for example, Rupert had laughed at Lucien in that casino where they had discussed his love for Polly, if only he had played the man, instead of the man of honour, and gone off with her, mightn’t Lucien himself have behaved differently in 1940? Things are as they have been made, and not as we might wish to rearrange them in the past. Life takes its shape undeflected by imponder-ables, and my residence in the city of Calvin comes close to persuading me that shape is determined irrespective of our will.
The young taxi-driver was incredulous, sceptical. To look for a tree in a forest? That was madness. And in this weather, in this snow? He would need chains for his car.
‘Very well, then,’ I said, ‘I’ll pay to have them fixed.’
It wasn’t, his look said, a question of money, but of my sanity.
His mood lifted as we set out. This was after all an adventure, in a small way, something to talk about in his favourite bar. This old lunatic who sought a single tree in a forest.
‘Do you know where we should begin to look?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘there may be foresters who would help.’
We stopped at an inn on the outskirt
s of the forest. I explained my business as we ate charcuterie, and an omelette, and drank vin gris followed by marc with our coffee.
The innkeeper expressed ignorance. He was too young, he said, to remember the war. Besides, such things were better forgotten. France was different now; all that had been put behind us. At last, however, he bethought him of an old forester who might remember, ‘But it’s a long time ago, and the young men, you know, were absent then, or so I’ve heard.’ He sent someone to fetch the ancient. Meanwhile we should all have another glass of marc, on the house, this time. He was intrigued by my curiosity. And so on.
At last the old man appeared, grumbling. He cheered up on being offered a drink, and then became voluble.
Of course he remembered it all. Why, he had selected the tree himself. As he said this, his face took on the ingratiating expression of a peasant who sees the chance of a reward. He remembered the Marshal standing there at the ceremony. It had been a fine thing, though everyone thereabouts had now forgotten all about it. He could see his blue gaze to this day. Ah, there was a man. They didn’t make men like old Papa Pétain now, a good man, whatever lies were later told about him.
But there was nothing to see now. Didn’t I know? They had cut it down after the war. That’s what they had done. They’d revenged themselves on a tree. It had been chopped up for firewood. Why, he’d burned some himself.
The gentleman wished to see where it had stood? In a clearing not a kilometre from here. Those had been his instructions. The Marshal was an old man, you know, well over a hundred, they said, and it stood to reason he couldn’t walk far from his car. There had been a cavalcade of cars, a regular cavalcade. And a Bishop. He spat on the floor. Certainly, he would guide the gentleman. But it was a cold day and he felt the cold at his age. Yes, perhaps another drop would be wise.
Of course there was nothing to see. Other great oaks thrust their naked arms to the sky. The clearing was still. There were footprints of animals, rabbits, deer, perhaps a weasel, in the snow. Scrub and saplings had grown over and around the toppled oak. ‘The National Revolution is also a Natural Revolution.’
The old forester tugged the cap off his head and wiped it across his eyes.
‘For years,’ he said, ‘someone used to lay a wreath of lilies on the stump, on his birthday in April. But that was a long time ago. It all stopped a long time ago.’
I write this back in Geneva. I have written a letter to Anne, thanking her, and saying I hope to see her when next in Paris. I have written too to my dear cousin, Jeanne-Marie, to tell her everything, to ask her also to pray for me, to the God of Forgiveness in whom she believes, or used to believe.
The night before Sarah and Niels flew back to Africa we sat for a long time drinking brandy after dinner. The weight of Lucien’s collaboration hung over us, swinging like a pendulum that threatened to descend. The equation seemed so obvious to them.
‘In the end,’ Sarah said, ‘he must have been glad to die.’
‘I have an uncle,’ Niels said, ‘my mother’s brother, who used to be a disciple of Smuts. When he was a young man he worked in his private office. He stayed with the United Party as it disintegrated. Last year he was admitted to a clinic suffering from chronic alcoholism. Do you see what I mean?’
‘What was his name?’ I said.
‘Piet Doorktrievor, he was a lawyer.’
‘It’s a small country, South Africa,’ I said. ‘I used to know him well. I hadn’t heard that about him.’
‘It’s not a small country, Daddy. It’s a big black country.’
‘No, Sarah,’ Niels said, ‘it’s very small for the blacks. It’s a prison.’
‘It’s a lunatic asylum …’
‘A concentration camp …’
‘Poor Piet,’ I said, ‘I hope he recovers.’
‘He doesn’t want to recover, he wants to die.’
I didn’t say: ‘People who seek death, find it.’ Instead I tilted the bottle and poured us each another drink.
‘I understand what you are urging,’ I said, ‘and I appreciate that you are too kind to say it outright.’
‘Believe me,’ Niels said, ‘people like you who don’t belong to the torturable classes can have more influence than you can imagine.’
‘Is there any class that can’t be tortured? Can you believe that after what we have learned?’
There was a news bulletin today. Three young white South Africans have been arrested; they are charged with collaboration with a banned organisation. Two are lawyers, the third a doctor of philosophy. I don’t recognise their names, but I wonder if they are friends of Niels and Sarah.
And in what way they will be tortured.
I tried to telephone the Johannesburg number Sarah left me. The line was dead. I called my lawyer in Cape Town. He was unavailable, in conference, they said. I was reluctant to speak to a partner whom I did not know. I left a message, opaque save to the initiated.
Then, in fulfilment of a promise I had made the Baron, I went to see his ‘poor dear wife’ in her asylum. She wore a rose pinned to her hair, and told me she expected good news, any day now. ‘Old Europe is resurgent,’ she said, ‘resurgent. I expect my estates in the east to be restored to me.’
‘Conquer yourself, not the world’: so Jacques quoted Descartes to me in the prison visiting room.
That advice had done for the garagiste Simon.
*
Did you know that Pétain’s middle name was Benoni? It is Hebrew, meaning ‘son of sorrow’. It was the name Rachel gave her newborn son, whom we know better as Benjamin, as she died (Genesis xxxv: 18).
It would be a pleasant irony to think that the chief of the most anti-Semitic regime France has ever shamefully known had Jewish blood, but this is not so: the name was often given to children born into Royalist families, to remind them, as they grew, of what had been lost and destroyed. Benoni.
Benoni: it is a universal name, one that wings its way through the cold night, across mountains, deserts and seas, reaching even unto Africa.
Benoni.
And this afternoon, restless, I played chess again. My Ukrainian friend beat me twice, first with black, then with white.
He said, ‘You don’t win because you don’t care enough.’
‘Is that true of life as of chess?’
‘Who can tell?’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think I win at chess because I no longer care about life. But then sometimes I think the opposite. Ignorant people call this a mere game, not realising that life unfolds as a game of another sort, in which we are the pieces. Now I am only a pawn. I used to be more ambitious. I used to think I was a knight. I fought, you know, in the Free Ukrainian Army. I was lucky to survive. It was a miracle. We fought for Hitler, and almost all my colleagues were sent back by the British to be murdered by Stalin or to perish in his filthy Gulag. I used to think my survival was a meaningless miracle, in the early years after the war when I was scraping a living and dodging up side-streets at the sight of a policeman. But now I know miracles are no more meaningless than anything else. Man has an instinct to survive. We must live for the moment, that’s all.’
He sipped his lemon tea. I ordered another brandy and gave him a cigar and lit one myself.
‘Do you still believe in a free Ukraine?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It was a Cause, a reason for action, and I’m still a Ukrainian and I’m free. Why shouldn’t I still believe if I choose? After all, I could believe in something still less substantial, like the Trinity. No doubt I did great wrong, but then I suffered great wrong myself. That’s the story of History, isn’t it? That’s what History is, and we are bound to it. It’s a wheel that turns, and sometimes we are at the bottom of the revolution. If the weight on the cart is sufficient then we are crushed. But at other periods we are clear of the ground, and then we have the illusion of being free. Meanwhile I have a daughter and grandchildren. She’s married to a Swiss engineer. When I was in the prison camp, I would have given a lot t
o be a Swiss engineer and to come home every night to a dish of fondue and a bottle of wine. But there it is. She looks after her old father, and I win at chess. I’m too old for other causes. On the other hand, she won’t be pleased when I come home stinking of this very good cigar.’
‘Do you miss the Ukraine?’
‘The mornings, the smell of the river, of horses by the river, and also that horizon you can never hope to reach, that lures you on. All that. But again, there it is. I sometimes think, my friend, that exile is a foretaste of the hereafter, even of Paradise. We won’t value this life till we have lost it and are confronted by God. Then we shall realise it was good. What is exile? The knowledge that we have lost what we did not deserve to have. It is easier for us who know we are exiles to know we are sons of Adam. I can tell you are an exile too. From where are you exiled, my friend?’
I puffed my cigar. I sipped my brandy.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘that I can claim the honour.’