M. Péricourt puts away his spectacles.
“In art, one often comes across the same figures . . .”
He was speaking like a connoisseur. Madeleine, who knew much more about art, decided not to contradict him. After all, it was only a detail, it was not important. What her father needed was to build his monument and begin to take an interest in other things. His daughter’s pregnancy, for example.
“That idiot of yours, Labourdin, is sleeping out in the hall,” she said with a smile.
He had forgotten Labourdin.
“Let him sleep,” he said. “It’s what he does best.”
He kissed her on the forehead. She moved toward the door. From a distance, the submissions looked impressive, she had a sense of the size and scale, she had noticed the dimensions: forty feet, fifty feet, and the height . . .
But that face . . .
Only once did M. Péricourt look at it again. And he tried to find the same face in Édouard’s sketchpad, but the men his son had drawn were not figures, they were real men he had met in the trenches, while the young soldier with the full lips was an idealized model. M. Péricourt had always refrained from any precise image concerning what he referred to as his son’s “affective sympathies.” Even in private, he never thought in terms of “sexual preference” or anything of that sort; he found such terms too precise, too shocking. But, as with those thoughts that surprise you, though you realize that they have long been dormant before they surfaced, he wondered whether the young man with the squint and the cleft chin had been one of Édouard’s “friends.” One of Édouard’s lovers, he mentally corrected himself. And the idea no longer seemed as shocking as before, merely troubling; he did not want to imagine . . . Did not want it to become too real . . . His son was “different,” that was all. All around him he saw men who were not different—his employees, his colleagues, his clients, their sons, brothers—but he no longer envied them as once he had. He could not even remember what virtues he had hitherto seen in them, what qualities had once led him to think them better than Édouard. He despised himself for his past foolishness.
M. Péricourt sat down again and stared at the gallery of pictures. His perspective was slightly altered. Not that he had noticed some new merit in the pictures, no, he still found all of them embarrassingly fulsome. What had changed was his way of seeing, much as our perception of a face changes the longer we observe it: the woman we thought quite pretty a moment earlier comes to seem banal, the ugly man in whom we discover a charm we are surprised to have overlooked. Now that he had grown used to them, the submissions calmed him. It had to do with their substance: some were in stone, others in bronze, weighty materials that seem indestructible. This was precisely what had been missing at the family vault where Édouard’s name was missing, this illusion of eternity. It was important to M. Péricourt that this project, this memorial he was commissioning, transcend him, that it eclipse his life in time, in weight, in mass, in volume, that it be stronger than he was, that it restore his grief to a natural scale.
Each submission was accompanied by a dossier detailing the previous works of the artist, the price, the time it would take to create. M. Péricourt read the letter that had come with the proposal by Jules d’Épremont, but he learned nothing from it, he leafed through the other sketches showing the memorial in profile, in rear elevation, in perspective, in an urban environment . . . From each, the young soldier stared out with that serious face . . . It was enough. He opened the door and called, but to no avail.
“Labourdin, for Christ’s sake!” he bellowed, shaking the mayor awake.
“Huh . . . Wh . . . ? Who?”
Eyes thick with sleep, he looked as though he did not know where he was or why he was there.
“Come with me!”
“Me? Where?”
Labourdin stumbled into the study, rubbing his face to wake himself, stuttering excuses that M. Péricourt did not even hear.
“This one.”
Labourdin, beginning to come around, realized that the chosen submission was not the one he would have recommended but decided that his little speech was perfectly suited to any memorial. He cleared his throat.
“Monsieur le président, if I may be so bold . . .”
“What?” Péricourt snapped without looking up.
He had put on his glasses again and was standing, bent over his desk, writing, satisfied with his decision, confident that he was doing something of which he could be proud, something that would be salutary for him.
Labourdin took a deep breath, puffed out his chest.
“This work, monsieur le président, I feel that this Magisterial Opus . . .”
“Here,” Péricourt interrupted, “here is a check to cover the submission and the initial work. Make all necessary inquiries about the artist, obviously! And the company responsible for building it. And submit the dossier to the préfet. If there is the slightest problem, call me and I will deal with it. Anything else?”
Labourdin grabbed the check. No, there was nothing else.
“Ah, yes,” M. Péricourt said, “I’d like to meet the artist, this . . .” (he cast about for the name) “Jules d’Épremont. Have him come here.”
31
The atmosphere in the house was not, one might say, euphoric. Except for Édouard, but he never behaved as others did; for months now, he had been laughing all the time, it was impossible to make him see sense. It was as though he did not understand the gravity of what was happening. Albert tried not to think about his morphine intake, which was more serious than ever; he could not keep an eye on everything, besides he had his own problems. On his first day at the bank, he had opened a company account for Patriotic Memory to bank monies as they arrived . . .
Sixty-eight thousand, two hundred twenty francs. That was it. The sum total . . .
Thirty-four thousand each.
Albert had never had so much money in his life, but the benefits had to be set against the risks. He had risked thirty years in prison for embezzling less than five times a laborer’s annual salary. It was ridiculous. It was June 15. The War Memorial Sale would be over in less than a month, and they had nothing, Or next to nothing.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Édouard wrote.
Today, in spite of the heat, he was wearing a tall African mask that covered his whole face. A pair of horns rose above his head, curled about themselves like a ram’s horns, while, from the corners of the eyes, two dotted lines of phosphorescent blue trickled like tears of joy down to a multicolored beard that opened out like a fan. The whole thing was painted in tones of ochre, yellow, and vivid red; there was even a twisting velvety band between forehead and the horns, a dark-green snake so lifelike one would have sworn it had coiled around Édouard’s head and was eating its own tail. The brash, vivid, lively colors of the mask clashed with Albert’s mood, which these days came only in black and white—more often black.
“What I said! Nothing!” he yelled waving the account book.
“Be patient,” Édouard said, as he always did.
Louise simply lowered her head a little. She was busy kneading papier-mâché for the new masks. Dreamily, she stared down at the enamel basin, deaf to the raised voices; she had already heard everything they had to say . . .
Albert’s accounts were punctilious: 17 crosses, 24 torches, 14 busts—items that brought in nothing—there were only nine orders for memorials. And even then, two town councils had sent down payments of twenty-five rather than fifty percent, and had asked for some leeway in settling the balance. Of the three thousand acknowledgment slips printed in anticipation of the orders, only sixty had been needed . . .
Édouard was refusing to leave the country until he had made a million; so far, they had not received so much as a tenth of that.
And every day was one day closer to the scheme being discovered. The police might already have begun an investigation. Just going to the post office on the rue du Louvre sent cold shivers down Albert’s spine; a hun
dred times he thought he would piss his pants as he stood in front of the open box and saw someone walking toward him.
“I don’t know why I bother to say anything,” he said to Édouard. “You don’t believe anything unless it suits you.”
He tossed the account book on the floor and put on his coat, Louise went on kneading the papier-mâché, Édouard tilted his head to one side. Albert often flew into a rage, and, unable to express the suffocating feelings, he would storm out and not reappear until the early hours.
These last months had proved a terrible strain for him. At the bank, everyone thought he was sick. No one was surprised, ex-soldiers all had their battle-scars, but Albert seemed more shell shocked than the others—the persistent anxiety, the fearful twitches . . . But since he was kindly and well liked, everyone was quick to offer their advice: have your feet massaged, eat more red meat, have you tried linden blossom tea? Albert, for his part, would look at himself in the mirror as he shaved in the morning and think he looked like death warmed up.
By that time, Édouard would already be tapping away at the typewriter and clucking with delight.
The two men experienced things very differently. The long-awaited moment when they would know whether their madcap scheme had succeeded should have been a moment of joy, of shared triumph; instead it had driven a wedge between them.
Édouard, ever in the clouds, heedless of consequences, gloated as he answered the inquiries they received, never doubting their success. He took great delight in composing his replies in the bureaucratic bohemian style he imagined Jules d’Épremont would use. Albert, meanwhile, consumed with fear, with regret and even resentment, was visibly wasting away.
More than ever he hugged the walls; he barely slept, one hand always on the horse head that he now carried around the apartment with him. If he could, he would have taken it to work, because the very thought of going to the bank every morning made him sick and the horse head was his sole protection, it was his guardian angel. He had embezzled some twenty-five thousand francs and, from the down payments they had received—as he had vowed and despite Édouard’s protestations—he had repaid his employer in full. Even so, he still had to run the gauntlet of inspectors and auditors because the dummy entries were still there, proving there had been a fraud. He was continually compelled to create new entries to hide the old ones. If he were caught, there would be an investigation, they would find out everything . . . They had to get away. With what little was left after the bank had been paid back: twenty thousand francs each. A terrified Albert now realized just how easily he had given in to the wave of panic that had followed his encounter with the Greek. “Typical Albert, that is!” Mme Maillard would have said, had she known, “Always did take the coward’s way out. That’s probably how he came back from the war without a scratch on him. Even in peacetime he’s a coward. If ever he does find himself a woman, I hope the poor thing has nerves of steel . . .”
“If ever he does find himself a woman . . .” When he thought about Pauline, he felt a desperate urge to run off by himself, never to see another living soul. When he imagined his future if they were caught, he felt a strange, unhealthy nostalgia. In hindsight, the years he had spent in the trenches seemed to him an easy, almost happy time and when he looked at his horse head, the shell crater seemed like a haven.
What a waste this whole scheme had been . . .
It had started out well enough. No sooner did the catalog drop onto the desks of town halls through the provinces than requests for information flooded in. Twelve, twenty, some days twenty-five letters. Édouard spent his whole time writing responses, he was indefatigable.
When the mail arrived, he would give a joyous yelp, thread a sheet of Patriotic Memory–headed writing paper into the typewriter, put the “Triumphal March” from Aïda on the gramophone, turn up the sound, stick a finger in the air as though to find out which way the wind was blowing, then swoop down on the keys like a pianist. It was not for the money that he had dreamed up this scheme, but for the feeling of euphoria, the extraordinary thrill of provocation. Here he was, a faceless man thumbing his nose at the whole world, and this made him deliriously happy, it reminded him of who he truly was and what he had almost lost.
Most of the customer inquiries concerned practical considerations: installation methods, warranties, packing, technical specifications for the pedestals . . . As typed by Édouard, Jules d’Épremont had an answer for everything. He wrote fantastically informative letters that were reassuring and personalized. Letters that inspired confidence. The councilors and town clerks would often offer detailed descriptions of their projects, unwittingly drawing attention to the sordidness of the scam, since the government made only a symbolic contribution “in proportion to the efforts and the sacrifices made by the community to glorify, etc . . .” The town councils raised what they could—all too often very little—and so the bulk of the money came from public subscription. From individuals, schools, parishes, whole families scraped together a pittance so that the name of a brother, a son, a father, a cousin, might be engraved on a monument that would stand in the center of the village or by the church for all time, or so they thought. Given the difficulty of raising funds quickly enough to take advantage of the discount offered by “Patriotic Memory,” many of the letters asked if they might come to some arrangement, some agreement about a schedule of payment. Was it possible “to reserve a bronze model with only 660 francs down payment”? After all, they implored, though not quite the fifty percent requested, it amounted to forty-four percent. “The thing is, the money’s been coming in rather slowly. There’s no doubt we’ll meet our financial obligations, we make a firm undertaking.” “We’ve organized the children at the local school to go door to door making a collection,” someone else explained. Or: “Madame de Marsantes has willed a part of her estate to the town. Heaven forbid that she should pass away, but perhaps the bequest might stand as surety so that a fitting memorial might be bought for Chaville-sur-Sâone, where we lost almost fifty of our young men and now find ourselves providing for eighty orphans?”
The closing date of July 14, fast approaching, panicked more than one letter writer. They had scarcely had time to convene a meeting of the council. But the offer was so tempting.
Édouard-Jules d’Épremont, a noble gentleman, granted all requests, offered special discounts, deferred payments, there was never any problem.
He usually began by complimenting his correspondent on the excellent choice. Whether he wished to purchase “Charge!,” a simple torch, or “Le Coq Gaulois Trampling a Boche Helmet,” M. d’Épremont confided that he had a particular soft spot for that very model. Édouard loved this moment of pompous confession and drew his inspiration from the preposterousness he had witnessed from the stuffy, self-satisfied professors at the École de Beaux-Arts.
Whenever a composite project was suggested (when, for example, someone contemplated pairing “Victory” with “Poilu Dying in Defense of the Flag”), Jules d’Épremont was always enthusiastic, lavishing praise on his correspondent’s artistic sensibility, confessing himself surprised at the originality and elegance of the combination. He was understanding about financial matters, compassionate in all things, an expert technician, impeccably well informed, and a master of his craft. No, he assured people, there was no problem with using cement, and, yes the stele could be built in the French style using brick, or granite, too, yes, absolutely, and obviously all Patriotic Memory designs were approved and came with an official certificate from the Ministère de l’Intérieur. There was no problem to which, under Édouard’s light touch, a simple, practical, reassuring solution could not be found. He helpfully reminded his correspondents of the criteria necessary to obtain the meager state subsidy (minutes of the council meeting, sketch of the monument, an artistic appraisal by the steering committee, an estimate of the cost of the memorial, a statement of ways and means), offered some advice on the process, and supplied a superb receipt that alone was worth the down payme
nt.
This final flourish was worthy of being ranked in the annals of classic swindles. At the end of the letter: “Please allow me to congratulate you on the discrimination and the captivating vision of your choice” Then, with circumlocutions to convey his hesitancies and his qualms, Édouard would add a further sentence, adapting it according to the correspondent: “The plans you have submitted marry a delicate artistic sensibility to profound patriotic feeling, in recognition of which I would like to offer you a reduction of15 percent, over and above the existing discount. In view of this exceptional offer (which I would request you to reveal to no one), I would ask that you pay the initial down payment in full.”
Édouard would sometimes admire his work, holding a letter at arm’s length and clucking contentedly. He felt that the sheer volume of inquiries, which took up much of his time, was a clear sign the scheme would be a success. Letters flooded in, Édouard’s in-tray was filled to overflowing.
Albert simply snorted.
“Don’t you think you’re laying it on a little thick?” he said.
He had little trouble imagining that these kindhearted letters would only add to the charges leveled against them when they were arrested.
Édouard, with a regal wave, played the grand gentleman.
“Why not be generous, my friend?” he scrawled on his conversation pad, “It costs nothing, and these people need reassurance. They are contributing to a glorious project. In a sense, they’re heroes, wouldn’t you say?”
Albert was a little shocked: this mocking use of “heroes” to refer to people raising money for a war memorial . . .
Abruptly Édouard ripped off his mask to reveal his face, that monstrous gaping crater and, from above the void, his eyes—the only living, human trace—stared intently.
Albert rarely saw the horror of that ruined face now, since Édouard traded one mask for another. Sometimes, even when he slept, he was an Indian warrior, a mythical bird, a savage joyful beast. Albert, who never slept for longer than an hour, would go over, and with the gentleness of a new father, carefully remove the mask. In the half-light, he would gaze at his sleeping friend, struck by how closely his ruined face—but for the crimson color—resembled the maw of certain cephalopods.
The Great Swindle Page 32
