“Do you think I’m mean-spirited?”
“What I think is that you don’t take advantage enough of this marvelous gift I gave you.”
“Well, me, what I find irritating about you is your egocentrism and petulance — it’s really too much, you know.”
“That should work in your favor though. I do everything. All you have to do is listen. I’d love to have a comedian around to do all the work!”
“But life doesn’t have to be a series of euphoric one-liners.”
“Well they help, believe me. At least they help me, and since you’re like a wet blanket, never happy, always criticizing…Now hand over my bag, I’d like to smoke a cigarette and I don’t want any back talk, okay?”
Suddenly the telephone rang and Lorenzo’s face appeared on the screen.
“Oh, what a pain in the neck he is!” I spat out in exasperation.
Catherine turned off her phone and passed me my bag. To my surprise she took a cigarette out of my packet and lit it.
“You know that’s really terrible for your health? With each puff the nicotine dilates your arteries and they become progressively less elastic until something horrible ends up happening to you…” I nattered on in my best Catherine imitation until I got a laugh out of her.
“Mom, I am so unhappy.”
“Because of Lorenzo?”
“I am dying of jealousy.”
“That is certainly no fun, I grant you.”
“This is the umpteenth time he’s cheated on me, you know.”
“It’s quite a good sign.”
“Please! Stop trying to be funny and clever.”
“But it’s not funny at all! It hurts like hell! You’re not the first or the last in that situation. The good sign is that he seems to have no intention of leaving you.”
“Yeah, great, but all the while he’s spending his time with these young bimbos!”
“It’s nice to hear you get angry.”
“I cannot continue like this. I have to find the courage to leave him.”
“Are you sure of that? These are just passing fancies, don’t you think?”
“Every time it chips another piece off the idea I had formed of our relationship.”
“You have to admit that marriage is an enormously megalomaniac project when you think about it: loving someone for life, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and all that. But fidelity, my girl, is a Mount Everest–sized ambition.”
“But I’ve always been faithful!”
“Out of love?”
“Of course out of love! Not from pity!”
“Maybe from fear or out of laziness.”
“Oh come on, did you cheat on Papa? Wait, don’t answer that question!”
“Do you want my answer or not?”
“No, no. I don’t want to know.”
“Fine.”
“Oh my God, so you did!”
“Listen, Catherine, if you want me to tell you, I’ll tell you, but get a grip on what you want, would you?”
“Okay, so don’t tell me anything.”
“Cheating is merely the desire to go ashore on an island, even a tiny island, even a not very pretty one. As soon as the ship has dropped anchor, it begins to dream of the ocean. Cheating is just a little curiosity mixed with a dose of narcissism. Most ships go out to sea again after the little pause on shore.”
“And where’s love in all that?”
“Love is the ship. The captain does not abandon the ship at any port of call.”
“Yes, but I have the right to kick him off.”
“What’s certain is that if it makes you that unhappy, he should stop doing it. On the other hand, you should not spend your life rehashing this stuff. It’s banal, it’s human, and it doesn’t mean he’s stopped loving you. He’ll never leave you, but you, you need to ask yourself if you’re going to continue to live like this or if you’re going to take off for good, because there is life beyond Lorenzo and his daily planner and his absences and his incessant phone calls.”
“Sometimes I get the feeling you’re defending cheating.”
“No, I’m defending the right to make mistakes, that’s all. Life is, along with its tortuous beauty, very complicated.”
With her thumb and index finger, she flicked her cigarette butt far into the water like a seasoned professional. Catherine was perhaps not as naive as she seemed.
Chapter Seven
From Wikipedia:
THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME (French: Bataille de la Somme, German: Schlacht an der Somme), also known as the SOMME OFFENSIVE, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British and French empires against the German Empire. It took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 on both sides of the upper reaches of the River Somme in France. The battle was intended to hasten a victory for the Allies and was the largest battle of the First World War on the Western Front. More than 3 million men fought in this battle and one million men were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.
The French and British had committed themselves to an offensive on the Somme during Allied discussions at Chantilly, Oise, in December 1915. The Allies agreed upon a strategy of combined offensives against the Central Powers in 1916, by the French, Russian, British and Italian armies, with the Somme offensive as the Franco-British contribution. Initial plans called for the French army to undertake the main part of the Somme offensive, supported on the northern flank by the Fourth Army of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). When the Imperial German Army began the Battle of Verdun on the Meuse on 21 February 1916, French commanders diverted many of the divisions intended for the Somme and the “supporting” attack by the British became the principal effort.
The first day on the Somme (1 July) saw a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which was forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army, from Foucaucourt-en-Santerre south of the Somme to Maricourt on the north bank and by the Fourth Army from Maricourt to the vicinity of the Albert–Bapaume road. The first day on the Somme was, in terms of casualties, also the worst day in the history of the British army, which suffered 57,470 casualties. These occurred mainly on the front between the Albert–Bapaume road and Gommecourt, where the attack was defeated and few British troops reached the German front line. The British troops on the Somme comprised a mixture of the remains of the pre-war regular army; the Territorial Force; and Kitchener’s Army, a force of volunteer recruits including many Pals’ Battalions, recruited from the same places and occupations.
The battle is notable for the importance of air power and the first use of the tank. At the end of the battle, British and French forces had penetrated 10 km (6 mi) into German-occupied territory, taking more ground than in any of their offensives since the Battle of the Marne in 1914. The Anglo-French armies failed to capture Péronne and halted 5 km (3 mi) from Bapaume, where the German armies maintained their positions over the winter. British attacks in the Ancre valley resumed in January 1917 and forced the Germans into local withdrawals to reserve lines in February, before the scheduled retirement to the Siegfriedstellung (Hindenburg Line) began in March. Debate continues over the necessity, significance and effect of the battle. David Frum opined that a century later, “‘the Somme’ remains the most harrowing place-name” in the history of the British Commonwealth.
Chapter Eight
Papyrus and his cousin Vincent were both twenty-one when they left for the front. Geoffroy was two years older. I know nothing about what happened then, if they returned home often, or how they found the strength to withstand the horror. I imagine it changed them a lot, that war was so bloody and they were so young. All I know is that they were fighting close to our home in the department of the Somme and that Papyrus for some unknown sentimental reason had placed the medal of the Virgin Mary around his neck. My mother regularly told
us the story of the medal, it was her war story, the victory of faith over the battlefields: a German bullet lodged in the center of the medal without Papyrus receiving the least scratch. He may have been a rowdy fellow, but that experience appears to have shaken him into thinking he’d better marry the young, timid girl who had given him the medal. He must have considered her like a guardian angel, and since she was his neighbor and not unattractive, he decided to be patient and ask her to marry him.
According to my mother, at the moment Papyrus caught the bullet with the holy medal, the Germans were launching an offensive in the area near her family’s little château. She used to say, and each time with the same emotion, that her father ran to the village church to join the priest and eat all the sacrament wafers before they fell into enemy hands.
“Wouldn’t it have been better to fight to keep the Krauts from taking them?” Gabriel asked one day.
“But can you imagine what it would have meant for our Savior Jesus Christ to have fallen into the hands of those butchers?”
“Why? Because the Krauts don’t believe in Jesus?”
“You don’t understand, Gabriel, that your grandfather was a hero, and Abbé Delvaux too. They held communion for hours without a thought for the debris that was falling down around them, the pieces of woodwork and the crumbling walls. They carried out this communion slowly, praying with each host for the salvation of their souls and the souls of the French. I would be very proud of you if one day you had to do the same.”
“Okay, but I think that Papyrus was a real hero, he fought and so did Uncle Geoffroy and Cousin Vincent…and all the soldiers in the trenches too.”
“Of course, but your grandfather was an even bigger hero because he was serving God first of all and France came just after.”
Gabriel didn’t want to hurt our mother’s feelings, but her story, which we’d heard since we were very young, lost its prestige little by little as we got older. As children we thought our grandfather was admirable, and if our mother had not constantly gone back over it, we would have kept a heroic impression of him. The problem was she didn’t have many other stories in her repertoire. There were only about one hundred people in our village. There were a few château owners in the area that we were more or less related to, but she wasn’t a gossip or mean. In fact I think she was fairly ignorant. I never saw a book in her hands other than the biography of some saint or other. She spent her days occupied by the morning mass, managing the domestic servants, meals, five o’clock tea, and a few social calls where she was either the hostess or a guest. At six o’clock she went to her room to repeat prayers. Then she prepared dinner and voilà! — another day was done and another step closer to eternity had been taken. What a horrible life! But let’s go back to before her marriage to the end of the First World War.
Papyrus resumed his military life between adventures, balls, and mistresses of every kind. The only woman that he, Geoffroy, and Vincent thoroughly respected without question was Bette. While she was back in Basel at the home of her parents, those three companions spent lots of their leave time in Paris at the home of Vincent’s mother, our rich and worldly aunt Gertrude, who had fled as best she could their sad country home in Picardy. It was there that Bette reappeared in 1920.
Papyrus and his companions would sometimes smoke opium at the home of the Count de Redan, an old partier who organized sumptuous, refined soirées. He liked inviting these three musketeers, whom he found amusing and available. Debauchery united them and they often spent the afternoon in one of those red salons decorated with Asian fabrics and motifs. They would recline on comfortable mattresses while an old Chinaman prepared the opium. Papyrus claimed that they also carried on serious philosophical discussions, but I don’t know how much that is to be believed.
Spiritism was very fashionable at the time and the salons of the nobility were filled with mediums and stories of the dead communicating with the living. Papyrus participated in all that without taking it seriously but simply to go along for the ride with his friends, who found it intriguing. During one alcohol-soaked evening at the home of Charles de Redan, Papyrus was introduced to a stunning young woman from America, Julia Stenton, who claimed she communicated with the spirit of Kate Fox, the youngest of the three sisters who had launched the vogue for Spiritism in the United States and then in Europe. The Fox sisters lived in Hydesville, New York. After regularly hearing knocking coming from inside the walls of their house, the women imagined that it could be the dead trying to communicate. They developed a kind of code in which a given number of knocks corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. It was in this way that a certain Charles Haynes became known to them and claimed to have been assassinated in the house before the Fox family moved there. The three sisters pleaded with their parents for a search to be undertaken, and that search led to the discovery of the remains of a human skeleton. This story created an enormous sensation and the Fox sisters toured the country retelling it. The young women attracted the attention of scientists as well as the curiosity of the general public. When it was revealed that they were using some gimmick during public attempts to communicate with the beyond, the Fox sisters’ prestige rapidly declined, but the passion for Spiritism persisted and made its way around the globe.
After dessert, guests were invited to return to the drawing room, and Julia Stenton asked for complete silence. She and six others sat at a round table. They each placed their hands down on the table with outstretched fingers lightly touching. Papyrus and Charles de Redan looked on from a few steps away.
“Even Doctor Ribaud is indulging in this game. I can’t believe my eyes!” exclaimed the Count.
“Indeed, now we’ve seen everything. You should perhaps change doctors, unless, that is, you don’t mind having your prescriptions written out by ghosts.”
“Yes, and look at your aunt Gertrude and that air of the possessed.”
“True, but with her it’s different. She follows every fashionable turn in the road. If tomorrow’s high society were to begin exercising on balance beams, Aunt Gertrude would become a gold-medal gymnast.”
Julia Stenton was unable to enter into contact with Kate Fox and had to make do with Victor Hugo. The Count’s guests were impressed to hear the table make loud noises to answer yes or no to questions or to indicate letters of the alphabet. Papyrus became bored and said his goodbyes. He returned along the river and was happy to be by himself. He walked with a lively step as usual, though he had no particular amusement in mind, nor did he feel sleepy. He noted the long gray silhouette and shadow of the Eiffel Tower. He thought of Guy de Maupassant, who apparently often liked to dine there because it was the only place in Paris where it could not be seen. At the Pont Royal he stopped to contemplate the Seine and the moonlight reflected in the water. He was tempted to let himself feel sad, but chased the idea from his mind and resumed his walk back to Aunt Gertrude’s residence.
The following week, Papyrus, Geoffroy, and Vincent were again in the Count’s home smoking opium. A heavy-set gentleman with a mustache spoke out in short breaths to describe a newfangled body language, the materialization of music, and an art of movement that was being called eurythmy. He was telling everyone of his keen interest in these new forms of expression that aspired to an ideal and in the spiritual mission of the artists who practiced them.
“Is this another one of those Spiritism exercises that my friends and I love so much?” asked the Count with a dry mock.
“Not at all! Nothing to do with that! You have to see it to believe it. The vogue for Spiritism is ridiculous; anthroposophy on the other hand is a true science of the mind. One mustn’t confuse them! I have a good Swiss friend, an anthroposophist, her name is Elisabeth de Louvenel, and she will be giving a performance of eurythmy to some friends this evening. Come along with me if you like.”
“What’s her name did you say?”
“Elisabeth de Louvenel.”
; “My, what a coincidence! She’s the widow of our old friend Enguerrand de Louvenel! Of course we’ll come along and give her a little surprise while we’re at it.”
Having never taken drugs myself, it’s not easy for me to describe exactly the mind-set of these three men who were forever united by Picardy, their childhood, and the untold horrors of war. What I do know is that on that evening they were in sufficiently good form to knock at the door of the large residence near Trocadéro that belonged to the Count and Countess von Sonnenreich, two charming Austrians who welcomed them warmly. Once inside they were able to set about organizing their surprise for Aunt Bette. Their hosts served them champagne in lovely Baccarat crystal glasses as well as the most exquisite petits fours. A string quartet was playing Schubert in a corner of the drawing room and in the next room one could see a stage had been erected at one end. The elegant yet cozy atmosphere and the joy of seeing Bette again must have been strong enough for Papyrus to overcome the visceral displeasure he felt upon hearing German spoken, or perhaps that came later with the Second World War. In front of the stage three rows of chairs and a sofa had been arranged to accommodate about thirty people. The Countess gracefully came forward and turned to the audience with her back to the stage.
“This evening, our friends Elisabeth de Louvenel, Anette Morgenstjerna, and Olga Berdiaeva will interpret an extract from Goethe’s Faust, the ‘Walpurgis Night.’ You all know the importance that Rudolf Steiner gives to this piece from Faust within his admirable understanding of the spiritual world. Our friends will be performing for you this remarkable example of eurythmy, which we owe to the immensely talented Marie von Sivers. I will now let the movement speak for itself.”
The Countess then gathered her long green satin dress and sat down in the middle of the sofa. The three dancers arrived onstage with light, lively steps. They were dressed in white outfits adorned with colorful veils. Bette wore a pink veil and the other two dancers wore yellow and orange. They ran from one end of the stage to the other before coming to a halt in front of their public. They then each held one arm over their hearts and with the other seemed to be grasping something out of the air. A man’s voice emerged from among the onlookers and recited a text in German that the three friends didn’t understand in the least, but since they were probably still high on opium, they found the whole thing very pleasant. The three women continued their odd but elegant and expressive choreography. Bette, totally absorbed in her art, didn’t even notice them. At the end of the performance, which was enthusiastically applauded, Bette disappeared to change into a proper dress embroidered with little gray beads. She wore a matching diadem in her hair and she was all the more striking now that a period of mourning had removed an excess of healthy pink naïveté. Her eyes were wilder, her voice deeper, and her steps more catlike. She showed every sign of being enchanted to see her old friends.
The Devil's Reward Page 5
