Читать книгу The Foundling's War - Yasmina Khadra - Страница 6

The French are very patriotic deep down. A few bars of a military march and their dormant fighting instinct is aroused. Clermont-Ferrand was throwing itself into the parade. Men unfit for military service wandered in the neighbouring streets, brooding on their shame, and were joined by a few stone-deaf pensioners. Palfy was walking briskly, Jean struggling to keep up behind him, his thoughts still on Place de Jaude where the woman in the lawn dress had vanished into the crowd. He was cross with his delicious apparition for letting herself be taken in by such a dubious spectacle. Did she have a taste for heroes? If she did, Palfy’s noisy interruption must have surprised her. Her amused smile when she had glimpsed Jean with the gardes mobiles in hot pursuit planted a hope that she had a critical turn of mind. If I’d had to, Jean mused, I’d have accepted a Croix de Guerre from her; her cool kiss on his cheeks was infinitely more tempting than the rough embrace of some colonel or general. But what chance did he stand of chatting her up on a big day like this, dressed in a ghastly pair of old corduroys two sizes too big and a rough wool shirt? Something about her reminded him of Chantal de Malemort: the outline of her figure, a neatness about her, her smile when she answered an unexpected question. But Chantal, gone to earth in Grangeville, was bringing in the harvest and Jean would never forgive her for having betrayed him.

Palfy stopped. They had taken the wrong street. They retraced their steps, looking for a crossroads in the old town that led to where they had decided to go. A short, elderly man in an alpaca suit and a boater with a black ribbon, walking with the aid of two sticks, offered to show them the way.

‘Follow me – it’s a long time since I’ve been there, but I know the way. When I had my legs, I used to go there on Saturday nights. Around 1925 there was a Negress there, Victoire Sanpeur was her name; everyone in Clermont remembers her—’

‘Victoire Sanpeur?’ Jean asked.

‘Now, now!’ the old man chuckled. ‘Just listen to the youngster! My dear young fellow, in 1925 you were still suckling at your mama’s breast. Yes, Victoire Sanpeur, that’s who I said; everyone in Clermont remembers her. An unforgettable head of hair! She was here a year, before she was kidnapped by a député … I can’t walk very fast. It’s because of my arthritis …’

Palfy winked at Jean and asked in a deliberately innocent voice, ‘Not because of an old dose of the clap, perhaps?’

The old dodderer raised his stick.

‘You blooming rascal, you deserve a good hiding!’

His anger was short-lived. The allusion to his past exploits helped him forget what a wreck he had become.

‘No, Monsieur, throughout my life I have only ever frequented establishments that maintained the highest standards of cleanliness.’

‘Never an honest woman?’ Palfy enquired politely.

‘Never! Honest women, as you call them, that’s where the trouble lies. No sense of cleanliness.’

He stopped, gathered his sticks in one hand, mopped his brow, and blew his nose noisily before breathing again. Jean gave up being astonished. How did Palfy know Clermont-Ferrand? He was a vagrant who was at home everywhere: in London, Cannes, Deauville, Paris, and now in the Auvergne. In fashionable society or the demimonde he fell on his feet with staggering ease: penniless one day and dressed up as a priest to rob the poor boxes in church; elegance itself the next, driving his Rolls-Royce around London, served by a butler who was straight out of an English novel; one day a swindler, the next a successful wheeler-dealer. Beside him Jean measured his own clumsiness and naivety, discovering that life is made up of such differences: one child is born into a glittering, false milieu that gives him a passport for the rest of his existence; another, born in a caretaker’s lodge at Grangeville in Normandy, will always feel the weight on his shoulders of his humble origins as the child of a washerwoman and a gardener, and have to discover everything by himself. The fact that Jean had known his real mother’s name since Antoinette’s revelation at Yssingeaux – Geneviève du Courseau – changed nothing. Only Albert and Jeanne counted. The couple had brought him up with strict principles, boring virtues and flat homilies that had proved useless in the present circumstances. As for Geneviève, she had offered him only the most ambiguous feelings. He was once again hanging on to Palfy’s coat-tails, as he kept the man with two sticks company.

‘My sister keeps house for me,’ the arthritic old man said, each step producing a grimace of pain. ‘She leaves me a few francs for my tobacco. I’ve been rolling my own since 1914, shag, nothing but shag. And enough to order an Amer Picon before lunch. What do you drink?’

‘Champagne or vodka,’ Palfy answered.

‘I’ve drunk vodka … in the past. No taste. Champagne is for marriages, christenings and the sick … Here we are … This is it.’

He jabbed his stick at a massive, freshly painted door. A mermaid’s tail in gilded bronze served as a knocker beneath the iron grille. The shutters were closed.

‘There won’t be anybody home,’ the old man said. ‘They’ll all be at the parade. You’d be better off coming back – and making yourselves more presentable. They won’t let you in like that. It’s a place with a good reputation. It belongs to the diocese.’

In the distance the band struck up the first bars of ‘Le Téméraire’. The companies were marching past the general.

‘It’s over,’ Jean said. ‘They’re returning to barracks.’

Palfy lifted the knocker. The little old man stamped his foot and banged the pavement with his stick.

‘They’re not there! And they won’t let you in anyway.’

Having led them there, he was regretting his kindness. Good heavens! Two workers did not seriously think they were going to slake their appetites in a house that had seen Clermont’s political and municipal elite pass through its doors, not to mention distinguished men of the cloth and numerous respectable husbands and fathers.

‘They won’t let you in, I tell you!’

A creaking warned them that someone was sliding the grille aside to observe them. The door opened a fraction. A birdlike head, thin and with a long curved nose and jutting chin, crowned by a meagre but severe bun, appeared.

‘Now look, Monsieur Petitlouis, you know perfectly well that your sister does not want to see you coming here any more. Be reasonable. You’re past it now!’

Monsieur Petitlouis, choked with fury, banged his walking stick again.

‘My sister? Bugger my sister. And you too, you blooming madam.’

Palfy inserted a foot between the door and frame. The woman saw it and tried to force it back.

‘The establishment is closed.’

‘Not to me,’ he said.

‘The staff are watching the parade.’

‘We’ll both wait for them together then.’

‘You’ll wait outside …’

And more energetically than expected, she let fly a kick that connected with Palfy’s shin and dislodged him. The door shut again.

‘Didn’t I tell you you wouldn’t get in?’ chuckled the ghastly old man.

Through the grille the woman called out that she would call the police if they continued to make a scene in a street of respectable citizens. But Palfy was not to be deterred. He knocked again with the mermaid’s tail. The grille slid half-open.

‘What are you wanting now?’ the haughty, shrill voice demanded.

‘The correct form is, “What do you want?” but it’s a small detail and we shan’t let ourselves get hung up on grammar. I want to see Monsieur Michette. I have a message for him.’

‘Monsieur Michette is doing his duty. He’s gone to war.’

‘Allow me to point out to you that the war is over.’

‘Madame Michette will be here shortly.’

The grille slammed shut. It was clear this time that the door would stay closed. The assistant madam had her orders. Monsieur Petitlouis almost burst with pleasure. He spat into a checked handkerchief. Have I mentioned that on this particular day in July 1940 the temperature had risen to 31 degrees in the shade, overwhelming a town far more used to a temperate climate? Jean and Palfy had been running. Their throats were parched. Monsieur Petitlouis offered to take them to a bistro where they served home-distilled pastis, on condition naturally that they bought him a glass.

‘My sister will never know!’

He laughed so hard he almost choked again. Jean looked anxiously at Palfy. The night before had left them with no more than a few francs in their pockets, hardly enough to buy half a baguette and some mortadella. As the reader will have realised, Palfy was not a man to let such a detail bother him. One on each side of the arthritic old devil, they reached a café at the bottom of the street. Back from the parade, the patron, in a black jacket and homburg hat, was raising the shutter. He served them at the counter, philosophising about the morning’s spectacle.

‘Well, Monsieur Petitlouis, you really missed something at that parade! You have to hand it to our army and how it’s put itself back together, two weeks after the armistice. The Germans won’t want to brush with them a second time, I tell you. You can see it in our chaps’ faces: they’re raring to go. It’s the government that’s not. A fine bunch of traitors in the pay of Adolf, I tell you … That armistice business was all for show, with a fat lot of cash changing hands to stop us pulling off another Marne like we did in ’14, on the Loire …’

Monsieur Petitlouis agreed. Traitors were everywhere. Customers were arriving, red in the face and breathless. They listened to the patron, nodding or choosing their words carefully to express mild doubts. The pastis was served in cups, in case a policeman came past and decided to apply the new law on the consumption of spirits. Jean kept an eye on the street. In the distance he caught sight of about a dozen women, led by a matron in a blue skirt, white blouse and red hat, walking up the middle of the street. They fanned themselves with little paper tricolours, and as they passed the café he saw, sashaying in the middle of the group, a black woman with straightened hair, her back hollow and her buttocks stretching the pink satin of her skirt. She reminded Jean of the girls from the Antilles who had brought up Antoinette and Michel du Courseau and simultaneously been their father’s bit on the side. And what an odd coincidence: one of them, Victoire Sanpeur, had come to live at Clermont after her departure from La Sauveté. He decided to tell that part of the story to Monsieur Petitlouis, who was sipping his pastis like a greedy child.

‘You really knew Victoire!’ the old hog exclaimed. ‘You were lucky. They say she’s still living with her député. She comes back sometimes to see her old girlfriends. She’s been known not to turn down the odd customer, even now. For fun – know what I mean? Ah yes, that’s a real establishment, a proper family if you’re with the Michettes. Not one of those nasty whorehouses where they chuck the girls in the street when they’re a bit past it. No. They teach them a trade, how to spell and use a knife and fork; then they find them a job somewhere …’

The women walked past, looking straight ahead and ignoring the customers’ ribald comments. Madame Michette glared at those responsible for the coarsest comments. Two girls giggled. Palfy ordered another round of pastis and made a sign to Jean.

‘We’ll be back in a couple of minutes,’ he said to the patron. ‘Look after Monsieur Petitlouis, he’s a friend of ours.’

*

This time Madame Michette herself opened the door and asked them, disdainfully, what they wanted. The house was closed. The ladies were having lunch.

‘We won’t disturb them. We merely wanted to have a word with Monsieur Michette and deliver a letter to him from a mutual friend.’

‘And who might that be?’ she asked, with the suspicion of someone accustomed to the kind of subterfuge her business inspired.

‘It’s a matter between Monsieur Michette and ourselves.’

‘Monsieur Michette is still serving in the army.’

‘In that case we shall come back later.’

It was a risky move. It depended entirely on the curiosity and high regard in which Madame Michette held herself, after having taken over the reins of the establishment. The two workmen rightly inspired very little confidence, although the older one talked very correctly and the younger one had a handsome, open face. These were tumultuous times. Clothes no longer made the man.

‘Come in!’ she said, in a more accommodating tone.

We shall not linger over a description of a brothel interior at Clermont-Ferrand in 1940. It would be tedious. There is a whole literature full of such images of the good old days, when lonely men could take themselves to a so-called ‘house of ill repute’ and find a family to welcome them, to provide tenderness and a sympathetic ear to their preoccupations large and small. Let us merely say that at the Michettes’ (another fateful name, but the author cannot help that)2 a very strict code of discipline and morals was applied. Monsieur Petitlouis was not exaggerating. Madame Michette was convent-educated and Monsieur Michette had had an exceptionally distinguished war in 1914–18, coming out of it as an infantry sergeant-major. The sum of physical and spiritual human misery that found respite and forgiveness in their establishment was incalculable. One might, without irony, describe the Michettes as belonging to that category of society’s benefactors that provincial life shunned, stifling it in the straitjacket of moralistic disapproval. Lastly – a supreme luxury in a town whose relative enlightenment as the capital of the Auvergne did not stop gossip being rife – the Michettes had made discretion the watchword of their profession. No large number over the door, and obviously no red light. A stranger could walk past the house a dozen times without suspecting anything, unless his gaze should rest for a second upon the little mermaid whose fish’s tail curled to form the knocker and gave its name to the establishment.

The diocese valued this self-effacement and the punctuality with which its rent was paid. Seminarians were offered concessionary prices and popular opinion had it that senior clerics paid by handing out absolutions. Numerous were the Clermontois who remembered with feeling having lost their virginity there before their marriage. In the arms of Nénette, Verushka or Victoire they had learnt many imaginative alternatives to the missionary position, alternatives that they would later teach their wives. Those violated, humiliated, ashamed and overwhelmed brides, at first taken horribly by surprise at what marriage involved, would later be secretly grateful to the girls of Michette’s. Not for them the harrowing labours of Mesdames de Rênal and Bovary, pursuing experience with clumsy youths. I am being perfectly serious. France’s brothels – the serious ones, in any case – contributed to both the moral welfare and mental stability of her people. They were her universities of sex. Anatomy was taught there and love acted out with far greater talent than was to be found in a marriage arranged by a notary. They were, in fact, where men passed their exams in licentiousness before setting out on the business of life. Suppressed after the war by a prudish republic, they were so sorely missed by the French that a generation later the state was forced to take measures to introduce the theory and practice of sexual matters into schools. We then witnessed the spectacle of a generation of benighted adolescents receiving the cobbled-together guidance of schoolteachers and demonstrating just how far the civilisation of love had regressed.

There is no need to remind ourselves that our two heroes had different conceptions of love. Palfy, as a gentleman, kept his preferences to himself, and Jean, thanks to his physique, had not had to go to the same school as everyone else. As a result, coming across such a place for the first time, he found Madame Michette’s establishment gloomy, especially its large sitting room with its walls decorated in a design of pale-skinned mermaids with crimson lips and golden tresses, where Madame received them standing up, not inviting them to sit as she would have done for the humblest customer before the girls processed past him. A scent of cheap face powder hung in the air, along, perhaps, with other odours less pleasing to fastidious nostrils. Tall, solidly large, with the physique of a grenadier, with workman’s hands, and hairs sprouting from her animated chin, Madame Michette banished from their minds any further thought of playing practical jokes.

‘Do you have the letter you mentioned?’ she asked Palfy.

‘I have it with me, but its sender, Monsieur Salah, was very insistent that we deliver it personally. It’s a shame Monsieur Michette isn’t yet back from the war.’

Jean patted his back pocket. The famous letter he had been given by the prince, in case he ever found himself in difficulty, was not there. His friend’s latest deceit infuriated him. He would happily have strangled Palfy, who intercepted his glare and gave a forced half-smile, half-grimace. Madame Michette, whose eyes had opened wide at Salah’s name, took the smile as a shared understanding. She was dying to know the letter’s contents.

‘I have the same authority as my husband to receive Monsieur Salah’s orders. His friends are our friends.’

‘It’s a delicate matter,’ Palfy murmured in a reticent undertone.

Jean decided that if Palfy showed the letter to Madame Michette, he would grab it and make a run for the nearest exit, but a diversion saved him from such an extreme step. A face framed by red curls appeared in the half-open doorway.

‘Madame, the lamb’s done. Shall I pour the sauce over the flageolets?’

‘Wait for me, Zizi, I’m coming. Serve the asparagus first and leave the lamb in the oven.’

Zizi’s head disappeared.

‘We shall leave you,’ Palfy said.

Madame hesitated. Despite her position and her responsibilities, she was still a woman. Suspicious but curious. She would have that letter.

‘Come and join us for lunch. We had a gift of a shoulder of lamb, and it’s sitting waiting for us.’

Jean felt his resistance weaken. Palfy was already accepting, begging Madame Michette to forgive his and his friend’s state of dress.

‘We trust you, Madame, but I must ask you not to enquire as to the reasons for what we’re wearing. We are on our way back from an ultra-secret mission and haven’t yet been able to change …’

The reader will find his excuse less than subtle, but I ask him or her to remember the period. Over the next four years numerous people would live in disguise and under borrowed identities. The world would lose count of the colonels and generals who popped up like jack-in-the-boxes, only to disappear again immediately; of the bogus priests and phoney nuns concealing sub-machine guns or explosives underneath their skirts, and the inflated numbers of commercial travellers, an easy profession to assume for those who carried false papers. A great intrigue was on the wing, undertaken by amateurs who would dazzle the readers of adventure and espionage fiction. Madame Michette, ordinarily exceptionally sceptical and trained by years of experience at sniffing out men’s lies, felt so flattered by Palfy’s half-confidence that she instantly adopted an expression of complicity.

‘I promise you we shall say nothing.’

So they went through to the dining room, where the residents had already sat down. They stood up again as Madame entered, and for a moment Jean wondered if she was going to say grace. He and Palfy were introduced as ‘friends’ to Nénette, Claudette and one or two others. Indicating the young black woman, Madame added, ‘– and our black pearl, Victoire from Guadeloupe. Her real name is Jeannine, but the customers have such fond memories of the first black resident we had here that they demanded we call her successors Victoire as well. Since our motto has always been “put the customer first” …’

At the Sirène, behind closed shutters, life carried on in the glare of electric light. Jean noticed the poor girls’ anaemia, their skin coarsened by make-up, the rings round their eyes and their bodies’ lack of firmness beneath their thin dressing gowns. Their eyes were the only part of their faces that still showed signs of a life of joy and pleasure. They nudged each other and giggled, and there was general hilarity when Madame scolded Zizi for eating her asparagus in a manner that might have given pause to those with dirty minds.

Palfy liked to put his friends on the spot. Jean’s silence made him feel disapproved of, so he swung the spotlight back on him.

‘To be perfectly honest’ – he leant towards Madame’s ear – ‘I know Monsieur Salah very slightly. It’s more my young colleague who knows him well. Before this absurd war they saw each other often, in Rome, in London and even, I believe, at Grangeville in Normandy.’

‘And how old are you, young man?’ she asked Jean.

‘I’m just twenty.’

‘Twenty years old, and you’ve already seen the world!’

‘Not the world: only Italy and England.’

‘Well, I had to wait forty years before I went on a pilgrimage to Rome. That was the year I brought Maria back.’

Across the table from Jean a girl with brown hair and bright eyes smiled. Less pale than the others, she revealed behind her plumply rolled lips the compact teeth of a Roman she-wolf.

‘And do you speak Italian?’ Madame enquired, making at the same time a gesture to Nénette that she should extend her little finger when drinking her glass of wine.

‘Only a few words, but I speak English.’

‘Education always comes in handy. I say it again and again to my young ladies.’

The young ladies, who usually chattered non-stop at the arrival of a customer, whoever he might be, had understood that a certain decorum was called for at this lunch in the company of two strangers. Madame fortunately was well versed in the art of what she called ‘lathering’ her customers, and secretly hoped that the two messengers would take flattering reports back to Salah about the way her establishment was run.

‘Who knows where that man is now?’ she said with an anxiety that was only half feigned.

‘In Lebanon,’ Jean said.

Questioning looks were exchanged around the table, but no one dared ask where Lebanon was. Madame Michette’s anxiety was not allayed.

‘There’s no war there, I hope?’

‘Not yet!’ Palfy said with a knowing air.

Zizi, the establishment’s cook, had prepared a surprise: a chocolate gateau topped with whipped cream. Everyone clapped. Madame Michette injected a melancholy note.

‘Cream is getting hard to come by. Apparently the Germans are commandeering whole trainloads of it. If we let them, they’ll take it all. However, Monsieur Cassagnate, who is a little in love with our Zizi, has promised to keep some by for us. From his farm! Real cream.’

‘He’s such a sweetie!’ Zizi said.

‘A sweetie filled with cream,’ Nénette added.

Madame tapped on the table with her spoon.

‘Nénette always talks too much,’ she said. ‘When she was little her parents took her to pray to St Lupus, who cures the timid. He cured her too well.’

Palfy played up to her, listening attentively, and when the Bénédictine was served (what else, in such a right-minded establishment?) Madame Michette and her young ladies launched into stories of their favourite saints with healing properties: Saints Cosmas and Damian who would cure you of anything at Brageac in Cantal, St Priest at Volvic who restored the infirm (although, as Victoire observed, he had had a failure with Monsieur Petitlouis), Notre-Dame de la Râche at Domerat who was good for getting rid of impetigo, and at Clermont itself a pair of saints who were not short of work: St Zachary who restored the power of speech and St George who eliminated the harmful effects of embarrassing diseases …

Madame protested. They had no need of him at the Sirène. It was a decent establishment, very hygienic. The girls cleared the table and carried the dishes to the kitchen. In half an hour the first customers would be arriving. They had just enough time to make themselves up and slip on the négligées they wore for work. The assistant madam, who had received Jean and Palfy so disagreeably, appeared looking pinched and officious and summoned the young ladies. The bedrooms needed to be clean and tidy.

‘It’s Sunday,’ Madame explained to her guests. ‘And after that parade we’ll be seeing a fair few soldiers. Oh, if only Monsieur Michette were here …’

‘He won’t be long now.’

‘One often needs a man on such occasions. Military men are such children.’

‘My colleague,’ Palfy said, ‘has exactly the physique you require to preserve respect for the conventions. If he can be of any use to you … I can’t personally: I’ve a very hollow chest, and at thirty my reflexes aren’t as quick as they were.’

Before accepting his offer, Madame Michette again expressed her keenness to know more about the letter. Might she not just see the envelope? Palfy put his hand in his pocket and turned pale.

‘I had it a moment ago.’

Jean let him search for it. Madame Michette, her face flushed a little from red wine and Bénédictine, started to look suspicious. Palfy ran to the sitting room and Jean took advantage of his absence to get out the letter he had surreptitiously removed from his friend’s pocket. The outer envelope had already been slit. It contained a typed list of town names, and next to each town someone’s name. Against Clermont-Ferrand was the name ‘Michette, René’, underlined by Palfy. This addressee was to be given a second sealed envelope, which he would open and reveal the important person whose intervention would save Jean, if it ever became necessary.

‘I can’t show you any more,’ Jean said regretfully to Madame, reclaiming his property as Palfy returned, looking yellow and sheepish.

‘You had it?’

‘You gave it to me this morning, remember. For safekeeping,’ Jean lied, to save face for his friend.

Madame Michette had seen the list for long enough to scan the names.

‘I know some of these people,’ she said meaningfully. ‘They’re acquaintances.’

‘Yes,’ Palfy said, ‘but we must ask you to be very discreet. Since you’re clearly a trustworthy person, we can tell you that great plans are being made. The Germans have not won the war, as some benighted souls imagine. They have lost it. It is for that defeat that my friend and I are working. We are, I’ll be completely frank and open with you, secret agents.’

‘My lips are sealed!’ Madame Michette breathed, closing her eyes and pressing her hand to her stomach, which was making a joyful gurgling sound.

Jean tried very hard not to laugh. Madame Michette led them to a small ground-floor office from where, through a spyhole, they could monitor her customers arriving and leaving. As soon as they were settled, they fell fast asleep in their armchairs, full of lunch and exhausted from their recent forced march, and were undisturbed by the noise of the knocker and the comings and goings in the hall. Her uniformed customers, that day at least, refrained from behaving like conquering heroes. They came, mostly in groups of three or four and pushing a blushing virgin ahead of them, and the authority of Madame and her assistant madam impressed them deeply. There were no brawls, nor Bacchic outbursts.

Let us make the most of the moment while our two heroes slumber to satisfy the reader’s curiosity about a point of history that the author has, in his Machiavellian way, so far left blank. What happened when the twelve rifles of the SS Grenadiers took aim in the little village square where Constantin Palfy, Jean Arnaud, Francis Picallon and the surveyor Jacques Graindorge had been lined up to be shot? Of course, apart from themselves and Obersturmführer Karl Schmidt, no one really thought they would be shot. We would not have undertaken the narrative of Jean Arnaud’s long sentimental education if we had had to call a halt at the age of twenty because a uniformed idiot who played the violin had ordered a platoon of his men to execute four Frenchmen after a good lunch. No. Jean Arnaud and the strange Constantin Palfy will have a hard life, but it is Karl Schmidt who will be the first to die, which no one, except for his wife and children, will greatly mind. But let us abandon Karl Schmidt, whose only virtue was to add a grotesque element to a macabre spectacle. The thing we need to know is that the SS Grenadiers did take aim at our friends. It was a ghastly, melancholy minute and few who have survived such a thing can bring themselves to talk about it. Twelve black holes and an NCO, his boots squarely planted where he stands, revolver in hand for the coup de grâce, are an image you don’t forget. If you escape, by a miracle, that image awakens a deeper respect for life, and the three-line notices announcing the death of a hostage jump out of the news with a significance so harrowing that it can become unbearable. What does one think about at such a moment? It is as difficult for the survivor to remember as it is for anyone else to imagine. If we were to ask Jean Arnaud, he would answer, ‘I don’t know. Nothing, maybe. Two or three fleeting memories: Maman in the kitchen of her house, holding the iron up to her cheek, Papa limping across the garden, Antoinette showing me her bottom at the foot of the cliffs, Chantal in our bedroom in Rue Lepic, or Geneviève, my real mother, embarking at Cannes to escape from the war. But all of it very fast, very superficial. Nothing, in fact. And not even a thought for my soul’s salvation. No, really, nothing dignified or interesting, not the sort of thing you read in classical tragedies, romantic plays, or heroic novels.’ Come to the point, I hear you say. But the author cannot help but go on hesitating to say what saved Jean and Palfy that day, so utterly improbable does it seem here. It would be so much easier to explain that it was all a poor and violent joke on the Obersturmführer’s part to test the four Frenchmen’s equanimity, or, more prosaically, to divert himself after a campaign so rapid that the SS units intended for the fiercest fighting had not had to fire a shot in anger. Valiant warriors who had advanced with the thought of heroic battles to come had experienced considerable frustration. They had been drilled for war, not sightseeing. The firing squad was thus not merely a macabre joke. A few seconds longer, and Jean and Palfy would have been shot. So we are left with no alternative but to invoke Providence, that benevolent entity that sometimes stoops to take a hand in human destinies and delay deaths without giving reasons, just to amuse itself, or so it seems, to toy with existences that are no more or less dear to it than others and that it only identifies by caprice or a taste for sarcasm.

On this occasion, then, Providence appeared in the guise of an open-topped car belonging to the German army, an elegant high-bodied vehicle driven by a helmeted chauffeur whose chinstrap was immaculately placed. On the rear seat sat three individuals: two French soldiers in forage caps, flanking a Wehrmacht colonel. They had come from the south and been on their way for more than an hour, which showed how far behind the lines the tankettes were. But was there still a line on 20 June 1940? One wonders. The car was crossing the square when the colonel caught sight of the drama in which the Obersturmführer was already losing interest. He tapped the driver’s shoulder. The car braked in a cloud of dust. The Unterscharführer ordered his platoon to about-turn and present arms. Karl Schmidt attempted to inject an offhand note into his salute, but the colonel ordered him to approach.

‘What do you think you’re doing? Are you shooting civilians?’

‘They’re irregulars, Herr Oberst.’

‘They are not, because there aren’t any. And if there were, they would first of all be answerable to a court martial, not to an SS lieutenant.’

‘Herr Oberst, I assure you that they are dangerous bandits.’

The colonel sighed and stepped from his car to approach the men lined up in front of the Café des Amis.

‘Will you excuse me,’ he said in French to the two prisoners who flanked him, pale and with clenched teeth, on the rear seat.

The colonel approached Jacques Graindorge, who was seized again by a mad hope.

‘Were you sheltering these soldiers?’ he asked scornfully. ‘If one may call them soldiers …’

‘I thought they were Germans, General! I’m a friend of Germany, General, of Greater Germany, General.’

‘A friend of Germany ought to be able to tell the difference between a colonel and a general and a pair of khaki trousers and a pair of field-grey trousers. Or alternatively he’s an idiot, but even if he is we aren’t going to shoot every idiot on earth – we’d be here for years.’

One of the prisoners got out of the car and walked up to the colonel. Had it not been for his uniform, he could have been taken for a German: a tall Celt with curly blond hair, eyes of a clear blue, hollow cheeks.

‘Colonel, will you allow me to ask these men a question?’

‘Of course, my dear fellow.’

The man stared at the prisoners in turn, with great concentration.

‘Are there any Bretons among you?’

‘I am Anglo-Serb,’ Palfy said.

‘I’m Norman,’ Jean said.

‘From the Jura!’ Picallon sang out.

‘And you, Monsieur?’ The prisoner turned to Graindorge.

‘From the Auvergne!’

The man turned back to the colonel and shrugged.

‘They are of no interest to me at all. Having said that, Colonel, spare them if you’re able and if you believe, as I do, that we should begin our project in a spirit of reconciliation rather than hatred.’

‘Consider it done!’ the colonel said.

He called Karl Schmidt and ordered him to release the prisoners. The Obersturmführer protested. The officer reminded him of his rank. There was much heel clicking and more presenting of arms and the SS section drove away in its armoured cars.

‘Do we have you to thank?’ Palfy asked the Frenchman.

‘No. Thank the colonel.’

‘There are always blunders when two great peoples such as Germany and France are reconciled,’ the German said, ‘but it is well known in Berlin that your country has been plunged into a fratricidal war by unscrupulous politicians … Now, leave your two tankettes and try to rejoin your army …’

Laughing, he added, ‘… if you have strong legs.’

Jean studied the French prisoner who had spoken to the colonel with such assurance, and to whom the colonel spoke in a tone close to deference. In the colonel’s car, the other prisoner was looking both furious and bored. It was the combination of the two faces that reminded Jean where he had seen them before, one open and friendly, the other sarcastic and closed.

‘I’m wondering whether I might possibly know you,’ Jean said to the prisoner whose incomprehensible contribution to the situation had saved their lives. ‘You wouldn’t be a friend of the abbé Le Couec?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know me too, and your friend sitting in the car owes his freedom to me. My name is Jean Arnaud and I led him by bicycle from Tôtes to Grangeville eight years ago. I was a little boy then.’

‘Jean! Jean from Grangeville!’

He kissed him. The colonel smiled. Things had been going very well ever since the morning. When he had asked a group of prisoners of war for any Bretons among them to make themselves known to him, he had had the surprise of coming across two senior members of the Breton National Party. The reader who still has a vague memory of Jean’s childhood will already have guessed that these two are Yann and Monsieur Carnac, names that in the underground denote the two separatists who, having taken part in the attack at Rennes on 6 August 1932, on the eve of a visit by Édouard Herriot, had fled and met up again at the abbé Le Couec’s rectory at Grangeville. A terrific coincidence, I will agree, having promised that these kinds of magic meetings would be putting in no further appearances, yet it must be admitted that in the general chaos of that time anything was possible. Monsieur Carnac stepped from the car and shook Jean’s hand.

‘I wouldn’t have recognised you. You’re a man now.’

The colonel (I have not given his name as we shall not be seeing him again in Jean Arnaud’s life; he is no petty Prussian squire with a monocle screwed into his eye – there really would have needed to be a fantastic reservoir of petty squires to supply the entire German army with officers – but a professor of Celtic studies at the University of Mainz whose detailed report on Breton separatism, published at the outbreak of war, had attracted the attention of the German high command), the colonel seemed over the moon. His grand political design was taking shape: the two prisoners he was taking to Dortmund, where separatists of every stripe, Breton, Basque, Corsican and Alsatian, were being assembled, had sympathisers in the rest of the country. They were not disliked, far from it. France was behind them!

We shall cut short the scene that followed. The colonel was in a hurry to return to Germany. He signed three safe-conduct passes for Palfy, Jean and Picallon and assured Graindorge of his protection.

‘If I may give you a word of advice,’ he said to the three soldiers, ‘it would be to throw away those uniforms and lose yourselves on one of the farms around here. Marshal Pétain requested an armistice last night. The war is over …’

The village square returned to a state of calm, and if the two tankettes had not still been parked in the shade it would have been easy to imagine that it was any summer’s day at siesta time. Graindorge, his fear evaporated, and overcome by shame and rage, hastened to his house and locked himself in. The three friends walked across to a clothes shop which they opened with a boot through the window. Inside, they found that all that was left were trousers and jackets that were either too large or too small. They spent the next two weeks on a farm bringing in the hay, heard that the armistice had been signed and the ceasefire had come into effect. Picallon, ever dutiful, left on his own to rejoin the regiment, said to be stationed at Clermont-Ferrand. Palfy and Jean took longer to get themselves organised. They had become fond of the farm, where they were looked after lavishly in the evenings when they came in from the fields. But once the hay was in, there was no longer any need for their services, and they set out. It was on the morning of their arrival at Clermont that we first caught sight of them on a café terrace, enjoying their regiment marching past and moved by a glimpse of a pretty young woman with ash-blond hair, wearing a dress of translucent lawn.

Their siesta, deepened by Madame Michette’s red wine and Bénédictine, was succeeded by a conversation which we can summarise briefly. Palfy felt quite at home at the Sirène – he would happily have spent several days there – and urged Jean to hand over the secret letter to the patronne, a woman of intelligence, well organised and enterprising. She was capable of getting them out of trouble at a time when contacts, ideas and courage would not bear fruit so easily. What could Clermont-Ferrand offer them by way of resources in these difficult days? With the frontiers closed, there was no leaving France now, and even more inconveniently, to get across the demarcation line from the northern zone to the southern was impossible without a special pass. Despair would obviously have been absurd. The cage in which they found themselves was still a large one, and the freedom of movement it offered was not so very different from before the war. The newsstands were still covered with names of newspapers that reminded them of Paris: Le Figaro, Le Journal, Paris-Soir, Le Temps, Action Française, now proudly launching into the subject of the ‘national revolution’. In short, one had to be there in order to see what would happen. Jean, however, wanted to keep the prince and Salah’s letter, which was intended to be used only in extreme necessity. What, in any case, could it contain? Probably a recommendation to some powerful person who controlled the destinies of thirty such welcoming establishments scattered here and there around France. As such, that person was likely to have close relations with police and politicians, and Jean, more by instinct than serious consideration, recoiled from using such a recommendation, to the point where he was willing to leave Clermont if he could not find work there …

‘We’ve got nothing to eat this evening!’ Palfy objected.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Very well … let’s wait till tomorrow.’

This was stating the obvious. The truth was that Palfy was becoming bourgeois. He was less fond of the risks that for so long had been a prime feature of his character. Jean, on the other hand, felt that the situation was tailor-made for them: a few francs in their pockets and nowhere to stay.

‘I know,’ Jean said, ‘let’s play a little game while we’re at it. To unearth, in this town where we know neither streets nor habits, a pearl beyond price lost in the crowd …’

‘Yes, she’s very pretty. But you’re not going to make me wear out my shoe leather. In all sincerity I prefer Zizi. Firstly because she’s a good cook—’

‘Palfy, you think of nothing but eating these days.’

‘Yes, and it’s my impression that that is going to become more and more difficult. We’re not even allowed to go to Switzerland, where they’ve hollowed out mountains to fill them with chocolate and butter. So we might as well get a head start here. The establishment is very welcoming—’

‘Nothing says that old woman Michette is going to be happy keeping you for a single night.’

‘You’re out of your mind! She’s quivering with anticipation at the idea of harbouring secret agents.’

Palfy was right. Madame Michette offered them a room without any prompting.

‘After midnight we’re closed. Nénette and Zizi will sleep together. You can use Zizi’s room. We’ll give you clean sheets. Tomorrow perhaps we’ll have some news of Monsieur Michette. An officer told me that his regiment has reached Perpignan at last, after defending heroically. He’ll be here soon; he knows his duty now that the war is over.’

Palfy explained that they had another problem: to find their contact, a pretty young woman who answered to the name of Claude, green eyes, ash-blond hair, a blue lawn dress (but well dressed enough not to wear it two days running), whom they had just missed this morning because of the crowds gathering for the parade.

‘Naturally,’ he pointed out, lowering his voice, ‘we are still talking about a secret mission, and as I’m sure you’re aware, when a meeting between agents fails, they stand a strong chance of not making contact a second time. Safeguarding security is of the utmost importance in our work.’

Madame Michette threw herself into her two guests’ predicament with an eagerness that astonished them. The truth was that she had recently become a devoted fan of a serial in L’Avenir, the Clermont-Ferrand newspaper, about the adventures of a secret agent whose name, Soleil, had particularly captivated her. Ever since her breathless daily dose of Soleil’s adventures, which had had her hurrying to the newsstand before she drank her morning coffee, she had dreamt of offering her services to her country. She had begun raiding the bookshops for spy novels. Accepting that her appearance was unlikely to allow her to seduce an enemy agent and extract his secret from him, she had been waiting for an opportunity that would reveal her deeper qualities of courage, intuition and decisiveness. In this bourgeois woman brought up to respect the virtues on which an honest and hard-working society was based, there seethed ambitions that her position as madam of a brothel did not allow her to satisfy. She suffered from not being ‘accepted’ in society. The great and the good of Clermont were as friendly to her as good taste allowed, but in public either barely greeted her or failed to acknowledge her entirely if they were with their wives. Their disregard made her miserable and she had complained bitterly about it to Monsieur Michette, who himself had no such sensibilities and contented himself with scrupulously keeping the establishment’s accounts for the benefit of its powerful patrons. Palfy and Jean could not have guessed upon what marvellously fertile soil they had fallen, or what an ally they were making for themselves by asking this honest woman for her help. In a flash Madame Michette had glimpsed an incredible opportunity in the challenge they had set her. If she came out of it well she would be eligible for other missions, and one day, like her husband, be entitled to wear the Croix de Guerre, and earn the respect of all.

She nevertheless made it clear to Jean and Palfy that what they were asking was tantamount to finding a needle in a haystack. Thousands of refugees were flooding into Clermont-Ferrand. The hotels were full. There was not a bed to be had in any private house. And the inhabitants of Clermont, secretive at the best of times, recoiled from showy behaviour. Families lived discreetly, rarely showing themselves. Perhaps there were, all the same, two or three streets and Place de Jaude where one might position oneself in the hope of meeting the desired person. But their description of Claude was vague. Madame Michette promised to give the matter some thought.

The next morning the street’s residents were highly surprised to see the young women from the Sirène emerge as a group from their lodgings. This was not part of their routine. Speculation ran riot: the girls were on their way to the railway station to greet Monsieur Michette, who was returning with another palm to add to his Croix de Guerre; they were going to present a petition at the prefecture calling for their status as workers in a reserved occupation to be recognised, which would entitle them to extra food rations: 350 grams of bread instead of 250, a bar of chocolate a month and an extra 100 grams of butter; they wanted to complain en masse to the regional military commander about his rumoured decision to send the glorious 152nd infantry regiment to Montluçon – the 15–2 – first regiment of France, recently re-formed at the Desaix barracks. The spectators watched them go, their bottoms swaying briskly down the street, led by Madame Michette dressed soberly in grey, the appropriate colour for a secret agent. The girls were not laughing and walked with their eyes lowered, their faces unmade-up, swinging their patent handbags. In short, only Monsieur Michette was missing for them to start walking in step with each other.

As soon as they arrived in the town centre they dispersed according to a prearranged plan. Madame Michette installed herself at the Café Riche, next to the telephone booth. Palfy and Jean sat at a table some distance away, pretending to ignore their new friend, who ordered a beer and immersed herself in a spy novel. With a passion unexpected in a person as down to earth as she was, she had, in the space of a night, taken the bait put down by Palfy and decided, by every possible means including the consumption of pulp novels on the subject, to begin her training as a secret agent.

The wait lasted all morning. Palfy rejoiced in his machinations. Jean was the only one not to believe it would work, even though the preparations had crystallised in his mind’s eye an idealised image of the young woman he had glimpsed during the parade. In the shabby, heavily perfumed surroundings of the Sirène, that image was like a window open onto a scrap of sky, a hope that a world more sympathetic to his tastes and his aspirations still existed despite the debacle of the past month.

‘I feel we’re on our way to great things,’ Palfy murmured. ‘The era is eminently favourable to those who venture all. We shall have fun.’

‘I’ll admit it hasn’t got off to a bad start. I adore Madame Michette.’

‘France is full of Madame Michettes. We shall fill their heads with dreams.’

‘You’ll fill their heads. Not me.’

Palfy waved his hand irritably.

‘Are you starting again? Listen, dear boy, I don’t know how many times you’ve tried to back out, but it’s time to stop. I know your excellent soul, your rectitude, your honesty, your courage and loyalty. All well and good, I’m in the picture. You can’t shock me any more. But from now on, life is about living, so put all that on one side for the next few years. We own nothing, hardly even the shirts on our backs. We’re starting again from nothing. I have a few ideas and you’ve got a sweet mug – women like you. On my own I can’t do anything, and if you go it alone you’ll end up doing ghastly little jobs: delivering parcels, or bouncer at a nightclub. Think about it …’

‘Then explain to me,’ Jean said, ‘why your cheating makes me feel so uncomfortable. I should be getting used to it and recognising that it’s justified most of the time, because all you’re really doing is taking advantage of human stupidity. But I can’t help it: every time something inside me says no.’

‘My dear chap, I’m afraid these scruples of yours are metaphysical in origin. They’re an artificial distinction, produced by centuries of tradition, between good and evil. Trust me on this: get out of the habit, or you’ll be doomed to play the game of a society that doesn’t give a shit about your soul and will happily exploit you like a slave …’

A slave? Wasn’t one a slave to everything? To one’s social status, one’s passions, one’s stupidity or clear-sightedness for that matter? Jean would have liked to muse on the question at greater length, without immediately answering yes or no to Palfy, for whom, ever since they had enlisted, he had felt real friendship, even something close to admiration. Palfy shone a light on life, painted it in bold colours, set traps for him. Unfortunately, every time events seemed to point to perfect happiness, they had a tendency to come to grief and everything went back to square one. Staring out of the café window, Jean felt sceptical about the possibilities Palfy saw in the situation: he saw only a quiet street, women carrying shopping bags, a queue outside a butcher’s twenty people long, several closed steel shutters. After the emotions sparked by the parade, life was returning to normal, as dull as before, with the same hardships making themselves felt and starting to monopolise people’s thoughts, as night followed day. How could one hope to succeed in a defeated country that, since the unprovoked massacre of its sailors at Mers el-Kébir, no longer knew whether yesterday’s allies were not today’s enemies and whether the enemy currently occupying half the country in such a disciplined way would not become tomorrow’s friend? To be able to see clearly these days demanded a particular lucidity, one that no single person possessed. Reason dictated simply surviving until one could see things more distinctly. No one knew what was happening in Paris or the rest of France. Jean thought about his father. How was he feeling now, the old leftist pacifist who had remained so loyal to his ideas that he was willing to insult French officers in the street while a war was going on? Jean had disappointed him deeply by enlisting on the eve of the conflict.

‘I need to see my father,’ Jean said.

Palfy shrugged.

‘Forget it. You’ve got to leave all that alone now too.’

One of the girls from the Sirène came into the café. She brought an address. Madame Michette made a note. By the end of the morning she had half a dozen other addresses. Posted at different crossroads, the girls had observed six possible Claudes and trailed them to where they lived. Six was too many. Jean did not hide his scorn. He found Palfy’s new ploy risible, an ugly caricature of the carefree pleasure to be had from a sudden encounter with a desirable face and a tantalising outline in the morning sunshine. After lunch he refused to accompany Palfy when he set off, list in hand, to find the real Claude. He was thrown into an even greater panic when his friend returned triumphant. Claude existed! And she was waiting for him, in a café on Place de Jaude. First they had to put on an elaborate act for Madame Michette, whose chest had swelled to bursting and who expected a medal at the very least.

‘Get going!’ Palfy ordered. ‘I have a hunch that you’ve got an incredible opportunity waiting for you this time, one you can’t pass up. She’s much more beautiful than we thought when we first caught sight of her. A refugee from the north. Lives in Paris. Get a move on, I tell you! The future is yours.’

‘I won’t know what to say to her, I don’t know her.’

‘You’ll think of something.’

He went, pursued by Palfy, who, suspecting he might try to run away, did not want to give him the opportunity.

‘What did you say to her?’ Jean asked as they reached the café.

‘Nothing. I didn’t need to. She guessed.’

‘I haven’t even got enough to buy her a drink.’

‘I thought of that. Here.’

He held out a 500-franc note.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘What do you care?’

‘Was it Zizi?’

‘Yes, clever dick. She’s mad about us.’

‘It makes me feel sick.’

‘We’ll pay her back a hundred times over.’

The time for hesitating was over. Palfy turned and walked away. Inside the café the young woman was sitting at a table on her own. She smiled when she saw him walk in.

‘So it is you,’ she said.