The Confidant

by Hélène Grémillon

  I pulled back the sheets and the letter was there, exactly where I knew it would be. Paul was so eager to have her read it that he had become foolhardy, careless.

  Anyone could find it there, without even looking. Paul had taken an incredible risk. Because the risk, for him, was not that someone else might find that letter, but that Annie might fail to find it.

  He thought of her day and night, he wrote. It was a veritable torture not to be able to see her or speak to her or write to her. He had waited so long to obtain his leave all for nothing. But at least he could leave these words for her. He hoped we were reading his letters together, because they were also addressed to her, he hoped she had realised that. It was also for her sake that he described his days. So that she could imagine him there if she wanted to. So that she would have the impression she was with him, in a way, if she wanted to. He worried about her. Was she happy? He was so sorry to hear about her father. He had heard the news when he went to look for us in the village. But everything would work out, it was only a matter of weeks. They couldn’t hold him prisoner forever, not for such a minor thing. Was she still painting? Was she painting things she liked? He had spent a lot of time in her bedroom over the last six days, looking at her canvases. Her colours had become more beautiful, more exact or intense, he couldn’t find the word. He had touched every object; he had sat on the chair, lain on the bed, to feel closer to her. Looking for us, he had gone round all the shops in the neighbourhood in case one of them knew where we were; and the idea that they knew her was a comfort to him, he even felt himself grow hard with pride at the thought that they must have found her beautiful. He lived to desire her; he often did what they had murmured to each other before his departure. And what about her? Did she do it? Did she dare? He loved her. He loved her. He had just heard Reynaud’s inauguration speech on the radio: ‘Win, and you save everything, succumb and you lose everything.’ Not when you succumbed to her. He embraced her with his whole body.

  I held two envelopes in my hands. On one, Paul had written, ‘Elisabeth’. On the other, ‘My love’. Things could scarcely be any clearer.

  I might have chosen to overlook a child, but not an adulterous love affair. I had almost abandoned everything; now it was out of the question. I had finally understood what I had to give up, and what I could still fight. They could go to the devil. The child would be mine. That was all I had left. A betrayed woman is a mother in the making.

  On the ninth of April 1940 when I told her that Hitler was invading Denmark and Norway, Annie felt unwell. ‘Just contractions,’ she said, to reassure me. ‘All of a sudden, my belly moves upwards and turns as hard as a stone’, but it wasn’t serious, she said.

  Perhaps. But when I saw Annie collapse suddenly on the ground, her hands on her belly, her breathing erratic, I thought she was having a miscarriage, and I was so afraid that I decided then and there not to tell her anything more that might upset her or even worry her. I knew she was afraid that the war was gearing up into serious fighting, and that Paul’s life would now be in real danger. If he were to disappear, not only would she be full of sorrow for her lost love—which was of little import to me—Annie would have no one to stop me from taking her baby, and she knew it. Even if she acted as if this were not the case, the prospect was unbearable.

  To give up her child after having carried it was already wrenching enough, and now that it was her love child . . . that nuance changed everything, and I had understood this long ago. I may have lacked certain physical qualities for procreation, but my maternal instinct was intact all the same. Women should always be deprived of both at once; that would prevent untold episodes of sorrow and tragedy.

  I became the censor of all censors and only told her about the musical instruments sent to the soldiers, the cards, books, the hundred thousand footballs they had received, or the credit of three million francs that had been released for the purchase of jerseys, because there were so many football enthusiasts at the front . . . If Annie were to believe me alone, the war was one huge charity ball and nothing else.

  I dreamt of hurting her, but I wanted her to remain a happy womb for my child. I had always heard that the happier the pregnancy was, the happier the child would be, so I tried to keep her calm. I made numerous promises that I did not believe in: nothing would change after the birth, she would stay with us, she would always be able to see her baby and look after it and later, when it was old enough to understand, then we would see; we might try and explain things.

  That is what I told her, very calmly, on the tenth of May when the Germans invaded. A lie equal to the drama that was unfolding. A poultice equal to the wound that was being inflicted upon us. On the pretext of bringing a bouquet of flowers to her room, I clumsily spilled the water from the vase all over the wireless. She must not be exposed to the turmoil of these past weeks; censorship continued to keep a great deal from us but what it did reveal was more than enough to overwhelm her. I wanted the baby to be born, that was all I could think of.

  I saw so many refugees heading off. Magnificent American cars speeding by, liveried chauffeurs bent over their road maps. And older, less stylish cars, filled with families. Then came the bicycles and people on foot, women wearing hats and their Sunday best, sweating under the multiple layers of clothing they had piled on to be able to take as much as possible with them.

  In spite of the panic, I had never once thought of leaving: Annie might give birth at any moment.

  On the night of the fifteenth her first contractions began. After a few hours had gone by the situation degenerated and Sophie asked me to go and fetch a doctor. Annie was screaming, writhing in pain. She was gasping and wheezing, hoarse. She could not bear to be on her back and was on the floor on all fours, like an animal. But I couldn’t do it. At the wheel of my car, I kept thinking, I cannot go for a doctor, no one must know it is her baby. The moon was full and bathed the streets in a white light. I drove with all my lights off, no dipped or side lights. But I had been right to go out. The hope that I was going to come back with a doctor would help her more than if I had stayed there, useless and vicious, hypnotised by her pain. She would have seen that my feelings were not equal to the situation. I felt neither fear nor distress at the sight of her suffering, that’s just how it was, empathy stops where rivalry begins.

  I don’t know how many times I went over that same route, perhaps a hundred times. A madwoman’s circus. From home to home again, by way of Pasquin’s house. When I came alongside his building I slowed down, swearing upon the memory of my parents that if I saw that dear doctor entering or leaving his house I would call out to him, but no one appeared. So back I went to the house where, once again, I did not stop, for fear of what Sophie would have to tell me—deliverance? Or tragedy? So I set off for Pasquin’s yet again, certain this time that I would find him outside his house. There was no reason why I should, but as I no longer possessed my powers of reason, anyway . . . Sophie would hand the child to me, Annie had died in childbirth. I let the words echo through my mind over and over, like a waltz, ‘died in childbirth’, ‘died in childbirth’, it would have made everything so much easier. I was laughing and crying at the same time, because I knew that her death could also take my baby with her. Does Death always use the same scythe to kill, or is there one scythe per person? And Pasquin was still not outside his house . . .

  And all these cars being loaded in haste, lorries cascading with archives and boxes and papers of all sorts that must not fall into the hands of the enemy. Civil servants fleeing, a silent, nocturnal disintegration. The moon terrified me, it was in a phase where you could easily see a face there, and I had the impression it was following my every movement. I explained to the moon that it could not understand me, that it could not possibly know what it is to want a child so badly. And then I thought of how the moon is often viewed as female: perhaps because its body also changes shape depending on the time of the month. Did each ful
l moon give birth to a star? And what if the moon were the mother of all the stars? I kept on driving, long after it had disappeared. And Pasquin was still not outside his house . . .

  Then I saw huge flames rising from the gardens at the Quai d’Orsay. It was this raging fire that finally shocked me out of my torpor. Had I, by dint of going back and forth past the same place, been the match that had finally lit the blaze? There were not enough lorries; all the compromising documents had to be burned on the spot. Black smoke and paper ash rose into the sky. I remember thinking that I did not like used matches. It was time to go home.

  Sophie handed me the baby. Annie had fallen asleep. To appropriate the words of all the new mothers on earth: ‘I will remember this instant all my life.’ I melted into Camille’s eyes; they were open, glassy. It was not really what you would call a gaze, but it would be my life from then on. I stayed like that for a long time, sitting there, Camille against my breast. And my greatest fear had not been realised, she did not look like Annie. Dear God, thank you.

  The days went by, numb, sweet. Naturally the surrender of Holland and Belgium upset me, naturally I was shaken by the German advance, but I withdrew into the scent of my little girl. I could not help it, everything that was happening around me washed over me. The miracle of her birth coloured everything and convinced me that even this war would be resolved by a miracle. And wasn’t the Maréchal’s return already a miracle of a kind?

  The other miracle was that I no longer saw Annie with the same eyes. The German attack had rearranged my circle of adversaries—Annie still belonged there, but not as much as she previously had. The Germans had taken some of my hatred from her. It was mathematical: the more enemies you have—or at least, the more you think you have—the less virulent the hatred you bear them. Whatever people may say, hatred, like love, is not inextinguishable.

  And I saw Annie looking at Camille, I saw the mother taking possession of her child. How could I possibly have thought of taking the child away from her? How could she have thought of giving her up to me? Our moods when we were alone or in each other’s presence were now a thing of the past. Her ambition as a painter and my despair as an infertile women had faded in the light of Camille’s brand new life. Our lives had stopped to make room for Camille’s life; this period immediately after the birth precluded any need to make decisions other than to feed and change the newborn child and lull her to sleep. It was a remarkable time. Annie was nursing Camille, I could not. I changed her, rocked her, Annie could not. And everything seemed to be just the way it should be.

  If Annie had confessed everything to me in the course of those few days, if she had asked for my forgiveness, had asked me for her daughter, I would have let the two of them go away together, however much it might have cost me. It is easy for me to say that now, but I swear that, with the benefit of hindsight, I still believe it. In every conflict there is always a moment when two rivals see eye to eye, and if at that opportune moment they could just be open to each other, instead of continuing to sniff around each other warily, an undreamed-of agreement might ensue.

  Instead, Annie asked me if I had sent the little booties to Paul.

  I had knitted two pairs, one blue and one pink, and we had agreed that ‘I would send Paul the colour that was born’. Annie liked to use that expression, probably because a colour seemed to belong more to her than to her child.

  I had consented, without daring to tell her that they had just announced that the soldiers at the front could no longer receive packages. The situation was getting worse by the day, but I continued to surround Annie with an aura of well-being. It had become a habit and, above all, I did not want her milk to dry up; she had had a difficult birth and now Camille had to thrive.

  But Paul would have been happy to see the colour, he so wanted to have a little girl, ‘so that she will never have to go to war’, as he often said in his letters. I had been dreaming of a boy, because I thought there was less likelihood he would look like Annie . . . And above all because a boy never has to acknowledge, one fine day, that he cannot have a child. One always wants to avoid the worst for one’s child.

  But on the third of June, when the Germans dropped their bombs a few streets from ours, I had to tell Annie that the war had broken out in earnest.

  ‘It was a suicide attack’ which ‘attested to the Germans’ despair,’ and ‘to show how inane their offensive was, the government was still in Paris and had no intentions of leaving.’

  The stoic tone of the opinion columns in the newspapers had been more efficient than the best lies I could have invented. I gave no further details to Annie, and she did not ask for any; she too was completely absorbed by Camille.

  I decided I would not leave Paris, no matter what, and I never strayed from that decision. Even when Reynaud, the government, and all the ministers eventually fled like cowards and left a seething capital city in their wake, and hundreds of thousands of panicked Parisians rushed onto the streets.

  It was the tenth of June. We heard that the Germans were less than fifteen kilometres away, and that the Italians had just come into the war on their side. Almost all my friends and acquaintances had fled, and some of them had suggested I go with them, begging me not to stay on my own with my baby. But it was the opposite that frightened me: I thought it would be lethal to take a newborn child into that stampede.

  The only outings I enforced were our daily walks. I liked nothing better than those moments when, as a couple, we walked the streets and parks, amongst the trees and the pecking of the pigeons. The shopkeepers—those who hadn’t fled—would lean over the pram to inhale a little bit of optimism: we would not be able to lose the war if babies kept being born. Depending on the day, they might inform me ‘that the United States had declared war on Germany’, or that ‘a major French counter-offensive was being mounted with an exceptional reserve army’, or that ‘Hitler was very ill and might be abdicating in favour of Goering’, then they would look up from the pram and say kindly, ‘It is extraordinary how much your baby looks like you.’ One absurd statement after another, to reassure themselves and me. And how we all wanted to believe in them.

  There were people everywhere in the streets. They made me think of animals in flight, determined yet lost. I could not help but despise them; they seemed cowardly.

  And then one day I saw him, too.

  I immediately recognised him, despite his beard and his dishevelled hair; I recognised that arrogant air of his. His face was as inscrutable as on the day I had met him, his attitude still that of a braggart. At first it was the bystanders’ cries that had drawn my attention; they were screaming their heads off, insulting a group of prisoners who were clustered on the other side of the street opposite the Café Piémont. ‘Bastards!’ ‘Hooligans!’ ‘Layabouts!’ Three of their guards, who had obviously had more than a drink or two, were harassing the detainees who were asking for a glass of water.

  ‘If you’re thirsty, take a piss and drink that!’

  ‘Go on, move along, stinking scum!’

  They too were part of the exodus: they had to be transferred to another prison. I waited for the group to draw level with me and then I called to the guard who was bringing up the rear. I asked him if he would like some money. His eyes lit up, but he looked at me in silence, waiting to find out what the matter was. I had two hundred francs on me, they would be his if he let him go. He grabbed the notes out of my hand and murmured that, besides, given the way things were going, if he didn’t let him go then the Boches would, so he might as well . . . He cleared his throat noisily before spitting on the ground.

  ‘Why that one?’

  ‘Because he’s an old man.’

  ‘There’s plenty of old men.’

  ‘Because he looks like my daughter’s grandfather.’

  I pointed to the pram which I was still rocking with one hand, a rhythm that nothing could interr
upt. ‘I get it,’ he said, then shrugged his shoulders and went away, stuffing the money into his pocket. I didn’t wait to see if he released him, I’d done what seemed to be the right thing, the rest had nothing to do with me. It was the sixth of June. I felt as if I had redeemed myself.

  I wanted to tell Annie that her father was free, but I had never been able to bring myself to tell her that he had been arrested. She would have wanted to leave, to go and be with her mother, I could not have held her back and I would have had to say farewell to my baby. Nevertheless, I had asked Jacques to make sure that the old woman had everything she needed. He told me that there was a young lad who stopped by to see her nearly every day. This made me feel less guilty; she was not completely alone.

  I acted badly, I concede. But she in turn must not have loved her daughter very much, for she did not write her a single letter during that entire period. At the same time I was not really surprised, nothing in the world would have made her jeopardise her daughter’s relation with a ‘rich woman’, and she surely hoped to gain from it in one way or another. There is no one more abject than a poor relation when money is at stake.

  Sophie was the one who came to warn me that Paris was an ‘open city’, that there were posters everywhere; no one knew exactly what that meant but everyone knew it was a bad sign. We felt that something terrible was about to happen. It was the twelfth of June 1940. The rumour had spread that the Germans were coming.

  The next evening, while I was in my bath, the power was cut, and I was plunged into complete darkness. I groped my way to Annie’s room to make sure everything was all right. She had fallen asleep and Camille was babbling in her cradle. I searched the chest of drawers, one drawer after another, looking for candles; it was nearly time for the baby’s next feed, and Annie would need some light. I rummaged through her things as best I could and thought I had found what I needed beneath her handkerchiefs. But it was colder than a candle, and made of metal. No bigger than a child’s toy. I remember giving a weary, almost incredulous cry as I took it out from under the pile of cloth.