by Michel Déon
Dear godson, I send you my best warm wishes and a muffler. I hope it isn’t dangerous there, where you are. Don’t catch cold. Uncle Antoine sends you a thousand affectionate thoughts. He says you are his only friend. He kisses you, and I shake your hand …
He had been charmed. It would have been a pleasure to answer her if Antoinette du Courseau had not revealed the secret of his birth to him. And some invisible thread had, without question, connected them in the last summer before the war. Words had turned out to be futile. They echoed mournfully, no match for a secret understanding. When Claude had stayed at the hotel Toinette had remained in the background. Nearly indifferent. Spending almost too much time with Cyrille, as if Claude and Jean did not interest her. Now he could contemplate her only as a beautiful image, not without a hint of jealousy, for one day a man would come and carry off this happy creation of chance and pleasure. Selfishly he wished her a mediocre fate, one that would not fill him with envy.
That evening, after the funeral, a procession of neighbours dropped in at the hotel. Marie-Dévote had prepared for their visits. She set out glasses, wine and pastis on the table on the terrace. They talked in low voices, as though the dead man still lay in his open coffin in the middle of the living room and could hear them. The Midi accent lightened the tone of their condolences, and with the help of the pastis a note of cheerfulness permeated the conversations. Toinette disappeared and Jean led Théo out to the garage. He wanted to see the Bugatti again, still sleeping there, its headlights turned towards the sea. Antoine had left this place only the morning before: his large pipe lay on the workbench, a net was waiting to be repaired, and the car had just been wiped with a chamois leather, its chromework rubbed with oil.
‘He really loved it,’ Théo said. ‘Like a woman! One day I came here barefoot; he didn’t hear me: he was talking to it, he was saying to it, “My beauty. I’ll keep you turning over as long as there’s a drop of petrol left.” Hey … wait a moment. I’ll do it today. He’ll enjoy the music in paradise.’
Jean wanted to stop him. Théo had decided too quickly that he was master of all at last. But the Bugatti, which for three years had started at a tug of its ignition switch, refused his orders. The starter spun unresponsively. The motor shuddered and stopped.
‘It’s flooded!’ Théo said and moved around to open the bonnet.
‘Leave her. Perhaps she’s sad today.’
‘I tell you: you’re a sentimental one.’
Toinette appeared at the doors of the garage. Her face was tense, her eyes sharp and bright.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said to Théo.
‘We were looking at the Bugatti.’
‘You don’t touch it, ever, do you hear me? Ever!’
She turned on her heel, certain that she would be obeyed. Jean went after her. She had taken off her black stockings and was walking barefoot over the sand, still warm from the day. The singsong voices of visitors reached them from the terrace.
‘What do you want?’ she said to Jean.
He felt guilty.
‘I didn’t want to start the Bugatti.’
‘I know. Théo’s such a baby.’
She called him Théo, never Papa, and treated him harshly. They were walking towards the far end of the beach, where Antoine had gone so often to sit and smoke his pipe, watching the sea from the grey rock where he sat. Jean stopped to take his shoes and socks off and walked like her, feeling an inexpressible pleasure in treading over the warm sand.
‘How’s Claude?’ Toinette asked.
He told her what had happened, the arrest, the interrogation, her return in a terrible state, the madness that had taken hold of her. Toinette listened without comment, staring ahead as if she could see at the end of the beach the bulky figure of Antoine on his rock, lapped by the wavelets of the gulf. She was not interested in Claude.
‘Cyrille must be awfully sad. I hope you take him out for walks.’
‘His grandmother has custody of him. She doesn’t let me near him.’
‘What awful stories!’ she said suddenly, as though the little boy’s loneliness was the only aspect of the story that seemed sad to her.
Jean wondered if she knew everything.
‘It’s our second day without Antoine. I feel so unhappy.’
Her musical Midi accent gave the banal phrase a lightness that took away its sense.
‘Did he talk to you about me?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Often. He loved you … Oh, come on. I mean, I know … You’re his grandson and I’m his daughter.’
‘At this precise moment, that seems really stupid to me.’
She turned to him with tears in her eyes.
‘Stupid?’ she said. ‘You think it’s stupid? I think it’s … unfair.’
They had come to Antoine’s rock, and she stopped, putting her hand on the rough stone.
‘I can see him. As if he was here! Yes, it’s unfair. It’s all unfair.’
‘I regret it. And he regretted it too. He would happily have put your hand in mine.’
She smiled. Two tears trickled down her golden cheeks. Jean was silent in the face of her strikingly natural beauty. At her side, he told himself, he would have forgotten everything.
‘I’ll never meet anyone like you,’ he said.
‘No. Never. And don’t try. I’ll never forgive you.’
He put his arms around her and kissed her. He tasted orange blossom on her lips. She pushed him gently away.
‘No more than that. It’s lovely like that. When are you leaving?’
He recounted his flight from Paris, where he would soon be called back. Saint-Tropez was a refuge. Caution dictated that he should not move from there until he received word.
‘Say nothing to Théo,’ she advised him. ‘He’s on the Germans’ side, because they’re winning. When they lose, he’ll be on the British side.’
She smiled, sure of herself, and added more quietly, ‘So it’ll be me who leaves. I’ll go to the mountains and stay with my cousins.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s better. Let’s not tempt fate.’
She thought everything through, with a disconcerting thoroughness. In this family the women were the thinkers, while the men spent their time in pursuit of pleasure.
‘We’ll go back,’ she said. ‘I need to stay with Maman. She’s so sad. You know, Antoine was her real partner. Théo’s her baby. She lets him have everything.’
They walked back to the hotel. Marie-Dévote, a black and watchful silhouette, observed them as they came. Jean wondered if she had seen them kiss, though it was unlikely. But Marie-Dévote did not need proof. She guessed and, like Toinette, thought it was better to separate two beings who were so strongly attracted to each other and could not come together without offending against the natural order of things.
Next morning it was left to Théo to explain.
‘Toinette, she was choking with sorrow. I’ve taken her to the mountains, to her cousins’. The air’s thinner up there. She’ll breathe better. You wouldn’t think so, but she’s delicate, that one, delicate like the orange blossom.’
Jean remembered the taste of her lips. He spent the rest of the day so sadly quiet that Marie-Dévote took him aside.
‘Antoine, he didn’t want to hurt anyone, ever. If we’re too unhappy, he’ll start worrying himself sick up there. Don’t stay here. Go with Théo. He gets around with his truck, sees some countryside. When you’re passing, you can drop by our cousins and kiss Toinette. She’ll be glad you haven’t forgotten her.’
He and Théo crisscrossed the back country, as they had done the previous year. Théo was building up his business. Everywhere he was greeted, bottles were uncorked, goat’s and sheep’s cheese, home-made bread, black olives in vinegar, dried figs in salt water, tomatoes and cucumbers were brought out from cool larders for him. He lingered, argued endlessly, passed on the evening news from the wireless: Rommel was at El Alamein, the Wehrmacht was besieging Sebastopol, the Ja
panese had landed at Guadalcanal. Never before had Théo pored over the atlas so closely. Toinette was exaggerating: he was not ‘on the Germans’ side’, but gleefully, and at a safe distance, followed the victories on both sides. The deployment, on Independence Day, of the first American bombers, B-17s, over Germany gave rise to intense excitement. To hear him, the war was like a world championship: he sought not the victory of good over evil or evil over good, but only wished the match to carry on until all the adversaries were exhausted.
‘You’ll see,’ he said in a sudden flight of prophecy, ‘they’ll finish up on level pegging, a draw. No one will have deserved to win and no one deserves to lose. Remember, it was Théo told you so.’
They called on Toinette. She was not at home. She was picking lavender on the mountainside with her young cousins. While Théo was chatting Jean asked to be shown which way they had gone. He found them in the scrub on the side of a hill of wild lavender, each girl carrying a cotton bag, wide-brimmed straw hats on their heads. From the path he would have found it impossible to say which one was Toinette. They wore the same grey smocks and the same aprons, and were singing in Provençal, their piping girlish voices mingling with the sharp call of the cicadas. A face looked up and called to Toinette.
‘Té, Toinette, he’s here.’
So she had talked about him. He felt intensely proud to have been the subject of a confidence. The girls straightened up, charming figures on the blue-washed hillside dotted with the green of small oaks. He recognised Toinette when she put down her bag and smiled at him under her straw hat. Her lovely tanned face and light eyes were calm. She had pushed up her sleeves, baring her arms, the same golden brown as her legs.
‘I came to say goodbye.’
‘I thought so. You’re leaving then? It’s a shame.’
She smelt naturally of lavender, a fresh smell that would for ever, from that day on, remind Jean of her. Her three cousins kept their distance, consumed with curiosity. Toinette held out her hand.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No shaking hands. We kiss our loved ones.’
He kissed her lightly on both cheeks and added, ‘I’ll write to you.’
‘Yes, that’ll be nice … Send me a postcard, to say which countries you’ve been to.’
He knew as well as she did that he would not, that it had been delightful and now it was over, that their feelings would vanish in the infinity of their parting. Whether it was the heat or emotion, fine pearls of sweat were forming on Toinette’s face. Her soft olive skin glistened. She wiped her brow with the back of her wrist.
‘It’s hot,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how you can wear a jacket. It’s easy to see you’re from the town.’
She picked up her bag. In a moment she would bend over and carry on picking. Jean would have given anything to stop her.
‘Goodbye then,’ she said. ‘And safe journey!’
‘I won’t forget our walk to Antoine’s rock,’ he murmured very quietly.
She shrugged her shoulders modestly, then murmured in turn, ‘You’ll have long forgotten it when I still remember it.’
From the farm came the hoarse bellow of the truck’s horn.
‘Théo’s getting impatient,’ Toinette said. ‘Don’t make him wait. He doesn’t deserve it. He loves driving so much. You know … it makes him different from everyone else.’
She bent down to pick a stalk of lavender and held it out to Jean.
‘Keep it … for a little while.’
She smiled. After he had gone, her cousins would comfort her. He turned to the three girls, three young cooked plums whose eyes shone under the brims of their hats. One of them, at least, looked almost as pretty as Toinette.
Marceline’s message summoned him to Lyon. He spent three weeks there in the company of a short man in glasses, whom he met each day at a different point in town: Place Bellecour, at the Tête-d’Or park, at Perrache station, in obscure bistros – Le Pot, La Baleine – where at the bottom of a few steps you entered a low, dark room. The short man was a wonderful connoisseur of the few places that served the best Beaujolais. It was his only weakness. Actually, to be fair, he had another: he had no sense of humour. When Jean grew tired of his Boy Scout precautions and allowed himself a mildly sarcastic remark, the man looked so hurt that he was filled with remorse. He learnt in dribs and drabs what was expected of him, entering, by small steps, into an unreal, hushed world whose organisational charts reflected an unknown hierachy. He quickly realised that Marceline’s recommendation had been of the highest. He was not considered a run-of-the-mill operative; important things were expected of him. Leaning on a terrace bar at Fourvière with his companion one day, he confessed to him, ‘You must be mistaken. I only joined your organisation because I had nothing better to do.’
It wasn’t the sort of reflection to be made to the man. He did not understand such remarks and was offended by them. He came close to retorting that the devil made work for idle hands, but his pupil interested him; he was a quick learner, almost too quick, as if he might forget the codes and security measures as soon as he had committed them to memory. In mid-August Jean was directed to go to Rouen. He was to spend several hours in Paris between trains. Arriving at Gare de Lyon, he was about to take the Métro for Gare Saint-Lazare when he was suddenly tempted to go to Palais-Royal. He got off there and ran to the Français. The concierge did not want to let him in. There was a rehearsal. Jean asked for Nelly to be given a note. She came running down to see him.
‘I’ve got a break,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to the Régence.’
She was in a sweater and slacks. They ran across the square and found a small table near the window.
‘I didn’t know I loved you,’ she said. ‘I think about you all the time.’
‘What about Jérôme Callot?’
‘Oh darling, you make me so happy! You’re jealous. You stupid idiotic scrumptious darling, your rival didn’t make it past dinner for two. I’m free. Stay.’
It occurred to him that she thought he had left because of the other man.
‘No, Marceline will tell you why I left. Do you see her?’
‘All the time. She has permission from Vaudoyer to watch the rehearsals for Suréna. In the afternoons at home she goes through my lines with me.’
Some German officers sat down at a neighbouring table. They regarded Nelly wolfishly, wondering what she was doing there, in slacks and sweater on an August afternoon. The waiter told them. Nodding, they knowingly pointed out to each other the Théâtre Français, its great grey outline visible through the window.
‘We’ve just got to make love,’ Nelly said. ‘I can’t tell you how much I want it.’
He had an hour till his train. He went back to her dressing room with her and they barricaded the door. The stage manager called her several times, drummed on the door, and went away again, grumbling. Nelly laughed with pleasure.
‘“Love, over my virtue”,’ she said, ‘“hold a little less dominion.”’
He had to admit it: her love was joyful and generous.
‘I don’t know what I’ll do without you,’ he said.
‘Yes, it’s madness … darling Jules-who. You see how good it is to be together. The truth is that there’s nothing better, and I’m going to cry when you leave me. I adore you, you know … You were so obvious, and now you’re becoming mysterious. It’s magic. Women will love it. I’m going to be cheated on left, right and centre.’
She kissed him on the cheek and vanished down a corridor. He had to ask his way several times before he found the exit. He reached Gare Saint-Lazare on foot. Paris was not a city he could walk around with impunity any longer. In Rouen the following day, having delivered his message, he enquired about the times of trains for Dieppe. As the first one left in the morning, he booked into a hotel and spent the evening reading Lost Illusions.32 Later, when he was asked what he had done during the last two years of the occupation, he always answered with the same sincerity, ‘Nothing. I travelled and I read. Ev
ery evening, every night, in trains and cafés during the day. I read and I didn’t think about anything else.’
On 19 August the Dieppe train did not leave Rouen station. The Canadians had landed. We already know how Albert met his end in that bloody adventure and its uncertain lessons. Antoinette told Jean the news by telephone. His last link had been cut. He would have liked to see the abbé Le Couec again, but that saintly man was under house arrest. He could not even go from the rectory to the public telephone at the post office. Jean found that his sadness was leavened by a kind of elation: he was on his own. He weighed no more than his own weight, and he was learning how to be a man by walking on the edge of the chasm, a difficult task that precluded self-questioning. He did not recognise his own reflection: another Jean was being formed in him, a stranger, timid to begin with, then more and more self-confident. The game itself did not bore him, though he brought to it a somewhat limited conviction. He spoke little, kept his doubts to himself, learnt to mistrust everyone and everything. All in all, the short, bespectacled instructor, with his immovable faith and his flow charts, had fashioned a fairly realistic Jules Armand. Jean regretted seeing him only rarely. The rules that governed the network’s security did not allow it, although he stretched them now and then. He likewise met Nelly at the theatre, but their meetings grew more infrequent and Nelly drew away from him, though she was always as tender as before. She explained it to him gently.
‘When I’m not working I need a man beside me. You’re perfect, but you’re never there …’
‘It’s because I’m never there that I’m perfect.’
‘Stop being silly … and understand that I don’t like sleeping on my own. It’s physical.’
‘Get a dog.’
‘I thought of that … and I’d already have done it if it wasn’t for the pee in the morning. Can you see me, eyes swollen, cream all over my face, naked under my coat, bare feet in my pumps, walking my pooch round Place Saint-Sulpice at eight in the morning?’
‘You wouldn’t be the only one. There are plenty of grannies out at that time of morning.’