After the war, sometimes the war continues. Silent, invisible. The past arrives at your door with the evil face of a bad cop; even the dead return. And not always the ones you hoped to see again.
One afternoon, despite Roselyne’s fears, he takes the bus into town to see a film. He did not check the programme, so for a while he goes from one cinema to the next, looking at the posters and the photographs, and he devours those images—men in hats, blonde actresses, faces in chiaroscuro, galloping horses—with the avidity of a kid in a sweet shop. Finally he goes to the Rio to see The Left Handed Gun, knowing nothing about its director, a certain Arthur Penn, nor its lead actor—Paul Newman, a newcomer, whose picture Irène cut out from Ciné Revue, explaining that he was the best American actor of the moment. He prefers Gregory Peck. Moby Dick . . . Ahab . . . He remembers the spectral apparition of the cursed capitaine in the street, glimpsed through the window of the tavern where the sailors’ songs suddenly fell silent, walking through gusts of rain amid flickers of lightning, and the sinister sound of his false leg made from a whale’s jawbone . . . And that’s without even mentioning the meeting with the Indian in the bed, all the stippled tattoos on his face, the peace pipe in his mouth. Gregory Peck and the scar on his cheek. All these characters marked, physically, by their fate: Quick Egg, Ahab, the whale itself, its skin pockmarked with broken harpoons from old battles.
So he chooses this Paul Newman. In the lobby, standing in front of the till, Daniel rediscovers his own path, which he had thought lost. From the till to the heavy doors of the projection room. In the gently sloping rows. The red chairs, the crimson curtain covering the screen. The whispers of people already in their seats, their heads silhouetted over the seat backs.
Algeria remains outside the door. Only the dream life enters here, even if it’s a nightmare. The dreams of others, perfectly framed by the image. Day and night are often not real, and the people are followed by their shadows under the cold false sunlight of a trumped up moon. Even the dead get to their feet again afterwards, rubbing the dust from their hands on their suits. Tears sparkle more brightly and tremble for a long time on the eyelids’ edge. Laughter sounds clearer.
He sinks into his seat, sighing with rapture. He hears the creak of the usherette’s wicker basket and when he turns around, hand lifted, he sees a pretty brunette smiling at him.
Choc ice. Thank you, mademoiselle. The girl has a warm, husky voice, and she hands him his change with the tips of her cool fingers.
When the lights go down, a sob of happiness rises in his chest and sticks in his throat as the Warner Brothers ident appears. This is life. He lets himself be swept away by the whirlwind of challenges and gunshots, embraces and hatreds. He begins to understand why Irène is so taken by this Paul Newman, although he could do with a Gregory Peck figure to prevent him from getting into such trouble, an honest and straightforward guy in a world of ruffians; not one of those old windbags, but a mature, handsome, solid man capable of telling him that his armed left hand will end up bringing him into harm’s way.
He leaves the cinema, dazed in the heat of the street, and looks around him as if he has just got off a transcontinental flight. Then he hangs around for a while with his frame in his hand, isolating three windows on the façade of a building, a street corner where a man is waiting in the shade of an awning, following the trajectory of a passer-by, stopping at a mother on a porch talking to a child in a stroller, and stories come to him, stories that would make wonderful films. But nothing, not even the sun, can lift the gray veil that covers the city, this blackness that oozes from its stones. There is always a little bit of winter here sticking to the buildings, to the roofs. Something oceanic; the cold glare of a stormy sky. He can no longer see this city the way he did before he left for Algeria. And maybe now he’s seeing it the way it is: dark and damp, prone to flooding, at the mercy of the river and its mud, almost dissolved in the endless rains of November.
He decides to walk over to Irène’s office: she works in a wine merchant’s, calculating and checking customs receipts. He waits outside in the street that reeks of cork and cheap wine and sees women come out talking loudly, laughing, some of them pushing down on the pedals of rickety old bicycles and turning around to wave to each other before riding away towards the docks or the end of the street. When she sees him, she shakes her hair to give it more volume then runs towards him, her bag over her shoulder. When they kiss, a group of girls whistle in their direction.
“Don’t worry. They always mess around like that.”
“I’m not worried. They couldn’t possibly know.”
“No, they couldn’t know.”
As they walk to the bus shelter, they talk about the film he watched, the day she has spent in those dark, old-fashioned offices or on the docks sorting out paperwork and administrative procedures with customs employees.
“So . . . Paul Newman?”
Daniel purses his lips.
“All you can see are his eyes. He plays on them too much. It’s like that’s all they filmed. He’s too handsome—it overshadows the film.”
“Too handsome? Is that even possible?”
“Not for you, I’m sure.”
She links arms with him.
“Oh, give over!”
In the bus, sitting face to face, they don’t say anything. They watch the city pass through the windows, even though they’ve seen it a thousand times. The swing bridge is closed to let a ship pass into the wet dock. Daniel takes advantage of this to break the dense, invisible thing that has come between them. He takes Irène to the front of the bus to watch the slow movement of the monster that towers over them.
“So what about Alain? Where is he at the moment?”
There is a man leaning on the railing of the boat, smoking a cigarette and staring into space, or perhaps watching terra firma slide past beneath him. Other men are at work on the bridge, their voices audible. On the dockside, a lock-keeper in overalls walks at the same pace as the cargo ship, eyes fixed on the space separating metal hull from concrete edge.
“I don’t know,” Irène replies. “It’s been a while since I heard from him.”
When they sit down again, she looks him straight in his eyes. “You’ve changed.”
He shrugs, watching the ship’s stern slowly move into the distance.
“No, I haven’t. Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true. There are times when I don’t even recognize you. Your face is the same, but it’s like you’re not really you anymore.”
Don’t tell her anything. Anyway, what could he tell her? He looks away. The bus starts up again.
“Oh, right. Like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Don Siegel . . . We went to see that last year with Alain and Gilbert. It’s just the same. Except I’m not from another planet.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
Irène speaks breathily, almost imploringly. He reaches out to touch her shoulder in apology, but she shies away from him and starts rummaging in her handbag.
When they get off the bus, Daniel catches her arm before she can cross the street.
“I remember a poem you told me once. I can’t remember who it’s by, but at one point it said: And at times I have seen what man thought he saw. Well, that’s how I feel too.”
She turns towards him and looks at him for a few seconds without saying anything, then she strokes his cheek with her hand. And it feels so good to him, because her hand is cool, and so soft. He would like to take this girl in his arms and kiss her, here and now, the way they do in films when nothing except the two characters seems to exist, when the entire world seems to rest on the axis they form, embracing tightly, indestructible. But Irène is already running frantically across the street so he follows her, watching her dress flutter around her legs.
As soon as they open the door, Daniel hears a conversation come to a sudden halt and a h
eavy silence falls in the kitchen. Sitting at the table, having an aperitif, are Roselyne and Maurice and Monsieur Mesplet. For a moment they look at each other without saying anything, as if embarrassed to find themselves in the same room, then Mesplet gets to his feet, saying:
“So, your boss doesn’t even get a hello?”
They hug warmly, then exchange jokes about the disgusting army food. Not surprising you’ve lost weight, it suits you though, and you’ve got a tan too, you look very handsome like that. Maurice takes two glasses from a cupboard and fills them with muscat wine.
“Come on, let’s drink to deserters and to peace!”
All five of them raise their glasses. They drink, and nibble peanuts.
Daniel watches them. He sees the wine in Roselyne’s glass tremble slightly. She won’t meet his eye; she seems to be staring vacantly into space. And the other two are speaking too loud, their laughter sounding false.
“How are things at the garage? How’s Norbert?”
“Things are fine at the garage. No shortage of work anyway. Looking forward to having you back. And Norbert’s making progress. He’s getting pretty good now, so that helps a bit. When we have a lot on, I send for a cousin who comes in to give us a hand. So we get by.”
Claude Mesplet falls silent and downs another mouthful of white.
“So, what about you? What are you going to do?”
“Wait for the war to end, I guess. I don’t know.”
“But you—”
“He’s better off here than back there,” Maurice interrupts. “After all, it might be over in a few months, who knows? Anyway, I think they’ve got better things to do than go after deserters, don’t you?”
Nobody replies. Everyone stares into their glass or away from the table. Another silence. The sound of birds singing wildly through the open windows.
“You have to tell him, Claude,” says Roselyne. “He needs to know.”
Mesplet waves his hand in front of him. It’s unclear whether the gesture is meant to silence Roselyne or to prevent his own mouth letting anything slip.
“What’s going on?”
It’s as if a grenade has just been unpinned in the room. Daniel hears it roll along the floor, waits for it to explode.
“Your father is staying with Claude,” says Maurice. “He’s hiding out in the flat above the garage. He’s wanted by the cops, as you know. He escaped them the other day; he’d been staying with one of his old pals from before the war . . . Anyway, he didn’t know where else to go. We thought you should know.”
Claude clears his throat, has a drink to lubricate his voice.
“I didn’t tell you this, but he came back last November. He brought his motorbike in to get repaired. You remember that man with the English bike? But I didn’t want to see him, I almost threw him out when I realized who he was. The bike stayed in our garage for weeks before he came in to pick it up. He told me that seeing you had been enough for him, that he didn’t dare speak to you, that he was ashamed . . . So I didn’t tell you anything. And then what he’s been doing, that vengeance . . . I didn’t know what to think when articles about it began appearing in the paper. I talked about it with Maurice and Roselyne, but you were in Algeria, you had other things to worry about. But now he’s asking after you. I think he’s on his last legs, to be honest.”
He’s asking after you. Like some fucking ghost in a film. Daniel feels Irène’s hand on his shoulder, the light pressure of her slender fingers. It seems to him that it is only thanks to this almost imperceptible, possibly magical touch that he is prevented from collapsing, because the room is spinning slowly around him now, swaying and rolling like the ship that took him to Algeria. Deep down, he knew this moment was coming, but he had kept pushing it back in his head. Too many other things to think about.
“What do you think of this?” he asks Roselyne.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know . . .”
She examines the tablecloth, staring hard at it, then adds:
“You’ve been wondering about this for so long, thinking about it, asking us questions . . . Back when you were five, you used to ask about him—and about her—all the time. When they would come back, what had happened to them, how they were. And I . . . we . . . didn’t know how to respond. We couldn’t. You understand . . . I think, if you go to see him, at least you’ll know. And then you can choose.”
He watches them all, trying to decipher their gestures, their expressions. He looks at Irène, who bites her lower lip and looks down, head lowered, like a kid feeling guilty or embarrassed. He can no longer stand this silence, this glue paralyzing them. He wants to scream insults at them, ugly things that will hurt them, so he leaves, slamming the door behind him, and out in the street, painted gold by the setting sun, he walks quickly, almost running, until he hears Irène shouting behind him, “Daniel, wait for me!” and those words send shivers of pleasure crawling all over his body, as if she had grabbed him by the elbow before kissing him full on the mouth. He turns around and sees her coming towards him and never, ever has she looked so pretty, never has he felt this sure, and as soon as she is before him he will put his arms around her waist, pull her tight against him, put his lips to hers.
“What’s the matter with you?”
She catches his arm and leads him further away, towards the too-bright sunlight, and she forces him to cross the street so they can find some shade and she pushes him against a wall, the collar of his polo shirt in her fist as though she’s about to beat him up.
“What’s the matter with you?” she repeats. “Shit, you have to talk now!”
“My father,” he says. “My fucking father.”
“Don’t talk about him like that. I wrote to you about this. I told you he was back.”
Tears. Daniel can’t stop them falling. An acid knot in his throat. He coughs to get rid of it, tries to catch his breath. Irène runs her hand through his hair, down his cheek, to calm him, the way you would calm a child. The way she used to when they were little, in their hiding place, and he would cry because he was scared of shadows and memories.
“In Algeria, it all seemed so far away . . . It didn’t make much difference to me that he was back. Even when we talked about it the other day. I didn’t feel like it really concerned me. And then now, suddenly, with old Mesplet coming and saying all that, I don’t know . . .”
“Maybe you have to go. Just to make sure. He must have changed. After everything that’s happened. And so have you.”
“He put me on the roof and he told me they’d come back to fetch me, him and Mum.”
And there he is once again, in the clear, bright cold, among sparrows and robins. Trembling on the tiles, pissing his pants. Nibbling his bit of bread. Shivering. Almost falling asleep, tangled up in hazy dreams.
And then he doesn’t know which of them, him or her, moves so close that their mouths are touching and then they are kissing like lovers, eyes closed. He no longer knows what is happening. Then they are walking home in silence, their two long shadows undulating over the uneven cobbles of the pavement. “I’ll go tomorrow,” he says before they go inside. “Tomorrow.”
A sleepless night. The bedroom full of the living and the dead in the relentless heat. And as the early-morning breeze blows through the half-open window, he feels something a little like courage stir inside him.
35
One evening in December ’44, I found Olga in tears. I thought she was going to cause another scene because I was late getting home. I’d done a bit of drinking and a bit of gambling, but not lost anything. I’d decided to quit while I was ahead. It was barely midnight, but I was content to go to bed early so I would feel fresh the next morning for work: I had to correct an account I’d dipped into the previous month before the boss did his end-of-year inventory and noticed.
Usually she would be in bed, and even if I knew she wasn’t
sleeping—either because I’d woken her or because she hadn’t been able to fall asleep—she usually didn’t move, remaining there with her back to me, and I liked to slide close to her and feel her warmth, and sometimes I would embrace her, wrapping my arm around her waist and falling asleep straight away like that, swearing to myself that I would never come home late again, would quit gambling, would stay with her and the kid. I must have made that promise a hundred times, while hugging my wife as she pretended to sleep. Occasionally I even whispered it to her. A hundred times I betrayed her.
A traitor to myself, my wife and my son.
She didn’t say anything, just stared at me, breathing fast, almost panting. I asked her if Daniel was sick and she shrugged.
“No, Daniel’s fine. Thank you for thinking of him.”
“So what is it? Why aren’t you in bed? It’s cold, it’s raining.”
We could hear the patter of rain on the roof, the water gargling in the gutters. I remember all the details of that evening. They came back to me like a hammer blow to the head, later, in the camp, minute by minute, and for days they obsessed me to the point where I was incapable of thinking about anything else. She was wearing a gray sweater over her midnight-blue dress. And thick socks because it was so cold, because we didn’t have enough coal. Her black hair was down and would sometimes stick to her face because of the tears.
“Your friend Albert, the cop. He came.”
I thought he must have warned her about the next round-up. I took her in my arms but she pushed me away brusquely.
“Are they planning something else? When for?”
She looked at me contemptuously. She nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving me, so I would understand just how much she despised me.
“No. Nothing like that. He just wanted to sleep with me.”
“What? Say that again!”
After the War Page 48
