The Book of Pearl

by Timothee de Fombelle

  While another Spahi opened the door wide for him, Joshua Pearl was already on his horse. He left behind a cloud of dust and hay in the cowshed.

  It was eight o’clock in the evening, but Pearl instantly felt the heat hit him like the blast of a furnace. The burnt-out farm was still smoking and the earth was scorched from the sun that had beaten down on this second day of midsummer.

  The first soldiers he encountered an hour later were also troopers. They were led by a young second lieutenant who galloped like a jockey, his knees tucked up by his shoulders.

  “Are you lost?” he asked Pearl, slowing down to draw level with him.

  “I’m looking for a corporal from the 2nd Spahis. He should be carrying a pennant.”

  The Spahis didn’t need a flag to be recognized. They always looked as if they had stepped out of a dance in A Thousand and One Nights.

  “Stay with us,” the officer advised Pearl, “it’ll be dark soon.”

  Pearl thanked him, then swerved to the right and attacked the hill ahead of them. On reaching the summit, he realized that he was surrounded by woods, obscuring the overview he had hoped for. If he was to scan the valley before nightfall, he needed a higher vantage point. He jumped off his horse and made his way over to a tree. It was a beech with bark as smooth as leather, but he climbed the first branches in a matter of seconds. Meanwhile, his disorientated horse went round in circles, trying to find where its rider had disappeared to.

  Pearl reached the top of the tree and poked his head out above the green mist of foliage. Squinting into the distance, he spotted green uniforms of a harsher hue manoeuvring at the foot of the hill. He recognized the German tanks.

  This meant the enemy had breached all the barriers, and the corporal and his flag were likely to have been trampled along the way.

  Pearl turned back towards the clearing. Somebody was running in the direction of his tree. For a split-second, he thought it might be El Fassi, but further inspection revealed yet another fighter who had lost his way in the turmoil of war. The runner was German and weaponless. There was nothing orderly about the battles any more. Unlike those neat collections of toy soldiers lined up on shelves, these were battles that rose up from all sides; battles that dropped from the sky; battles that burst out of the earth or hurtled down slopes with no warning.

  Pearl began his descent in the half-light, feeling for the branches with his feet. Once back in the main part of the tree, he heard a whinnying sound. He glanced down, guessing that the soldier had jumped onto his horse and was digging his heels into its flanks. The rider let out a cry as Pearl was poised to jump down. But it was too late: the horse had already bolted, the sound of its galloping hooves fading into the distance.

  After a safe landing, Pearl leant against the tree trunk and took stock. Without his horse, his best chance lay in darkness falling swiftly. But minutes later, the freshly-mounted soldier reappeared in the clearing, and this time he wasn’t alone: two German motorbikes were bouncing along behind him. The thief had called in reinforcements.

  Pearl began to run across the field without holding out much hope. The throbbing of the motorbikes was getting closer, and the sound of gunfire rang out. Just then, through the hail of bullets that made the earth fly up around him, he glimpsed a horseman emerging from the depths of the forest, like some divine vision. The trooper brandished the flag of the 2nd Moroccan Spahi Regiment, his cape shone white in the evening light, and his turban was immaculate.

  Corporal El Fassi set his horse in the opposite direction, galloping in a great loop around the clearing before he made for Pearl in earnest, whisking him up onto the saddle behind him. The motorbikes were right behind them now and the explosions intensified, but Pearl clung to his companion. The horse jumped over two fallen trees and they entered the forest.

  Their ride felt glorious at first. As they snaked their way between the trees they sensed that their pursuers had given up the fight, and the din was fading behind them. Darkness was descending. With his arms around his fellow trooper, Pearl felt safe in the intoxicating cool that reminded him of the forests of his childhood.

  The horse beneath him was still going strong, but Private Pearl suddenly had concerns about the rider. Although the flag flew high, the man holding it seemed to have slumped.

  “Corporal?”

  His only answer was a faint sigh, as the body began to lurch to the side. Pearl held onto him with all his might, grabbing the reins and making the horse slow down.

  “Are you wounded, Corporal El Fassi?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Just as they were leaving the forest, the moonlight exposed a huge bloodstain on the standard-bearer’s white cape, and the red was spreading. A bullet had struck him in the chest, as he was carrying out the rescue.

  Pearl’s arms grappled to keep his fellow trooper on his mount. The corporal’s body had gone limp, with the exception of his hand, which clung desperately to the shaft of the flagpole.

  “Leave me here,” said El Fassi.

  Pearl knew they couldn’t advance much further, and he steered the horse towards a stream he could hear lower down. For a few minutes they followed the shimmering watercourse beneath the moon, and the sound of hooves rang out over the pebbles.

  They came to a stop under a great stone bridge, which must have had a road or a railway passing over it. Pearl laid the wounded man down by the water’s edge, in the shelter of the arch. He ripped through El Fassi’s clothing with his combat knife, freeing his shoulder and chest. When he lifted up the corporal, he saw that the bullet had gone straight through him, and he could feel the wound on both sides. El Fassi continued to breathe without complaining. The bullet had passed so close to his heart that Pearl thought it was all over.

  “I just have to make it through the night,” said El Fassi, who wasn’t used to speaking at such length. “If I can make it through the night, I’ll rally again.”

  It was the trembling of the horse’s hooves in the water that they heard first. Then came the thunderclap. The corporal smiled when he understood this was not the sound of war.

  The rain started to fall on either side of their shelter, as Pearl fashioned a bandage from the strips of torn shirt. The bullet had made a clean exit: there was nothing left to do but wait.

  Pearl put his cape over the horseman and lay down next to him. They listened to heavy summer rain, cascading like a waterfall, while flashes of lightning illuminated their shelter. With each thunderclap, Joshua Pearl recalled the night when he had passed from one world to another. Was his companion about to make a journey in the opposite direction?

  After an hour, Private Pearl noticed the wounded man’s breathing becoming more rasping. He stood up, wetted the flag in the stream, and placed it on his eyes and forehead.

  “Say something,” whispered the standard-bearer.

  Fate had conspired to bring together the two least talkative soldiers in all of France and her empire. Pearl didn’t know what to say, but when El Fassi let out a groan the young soldier knew it was his duty to break the silence. Pearl owed the corporal his life. Now it was his turn to soften his death.

  “Tell me something.”

  And so Pearl searched deep inside him for what was most precious.

  “I was born far from here,” he began.

  “Me too,” gasped the corporal, who was remembering a small village in the sands, thousands of kilometres from there.

  It was midnight. Joshua Iliån Pearl spoke until dawn, and he confessed everything: even that which he had sworn never to reveal.

  At dawn, the corporal was still alive.

  On the morning of the 23 June 1941, a German armoured division picked up two stray soldiers and a lone horse close to Sion hill in the Lorraine region. One of the men was treated in a makeshift infirmary, under the watchful eye of the second, before they were both sent across the border to a prison camp in Westphalia, Germany.

  In France, the fighting was over. The war was lost, and the country occupied
.

  14

  THE MERMAID’S SCALE

  The letter began with Our Joshua. The prisoner who had opened it, standing against the hut with his feet in the snow, found this very moving. Jacques Pearl must also have felt emotional as he wrote those words, sitting in the small Parisian dining room, his wife by his side. With the pencil between his fingers, he would have felt the heat of the oven, and inhaled the aroma of chestnut flour in the bread.

  Our Joshua,

  We received your letter two weeks ago. We haven’t slept much in all this time. When the envelope arrived, with that name written on the back, I thought it was my turn to die. I waited until evening to open it. Today, we’re replying because it’s Christmas. As you know, the shop is closed. We’re both in our dressing gowns. It feels strange. It’s almost midnight.

  I wrote “our Joshua”, because that’s what you’re asking of me, on account of the guards reading the prisoners’ letters. (Evening, gentlemen!) But now I’m writing it again just for the pleasure of it, because it’s so sweet to see it on paper. Dear Joshua, our little one, don’t think that your letter hurt us. Don’t think that.

  The prisoner’s eyes welled up. He had written to the Pearls just before the winter, prompted by a man he had worked with for ten days when they were assigned to clean the camp water reservoir. They were the only two French-speaking soldiers on shift. The other man had been so delighted to rediscover his language that he had recounted his life story during their time together in the mud. He explained that his parents had asked him to stay in captivity for as long as possible. His family ran a hotel in the north of France. They were Jewish and they’d had problems with the police before, but now they were left in peace on account of their son being a prisoner of war in Germany.

  While he was rotting in this camp, eaten alive by fleas, his parents’ plush establishment, with the piano in the hall and the view over the river from the breakfast room, could remain open. The man said it suited him; that his only fear was dying of typhus before the war was over.

  “If I die, the hotel will be shut down.”

  Hearing that story had made Joshua think of Maison Pearl. He’d never written, not once since the outbreak of war, so as to avoid writing his name in any correspondence and revealing to Jacques and Esther Pearl that he had slipped into the uniform of their dead son. But suddenly he’d understood how he might be able to help them in turn: by letting it be known that one Joshua Pearl, a worthy soldier, had been a prisoner for nearly two years as a result of fighting for France.

  Yes, Jacques Pearl’s letter went on, the authorities aren’t making our life easy at the moment, but I have faith in my old country. They won’t find it so easy to get rid of us!

  So, for now, I don’t wish to take your advice by mentioning your name to the police. It wouldn’t feel right, telling them I had a son in captivity. And anyway, the shop is still open for business. There are people who are much worse off than we are. I’m enclosing a photo of the shop window last week, before Christmas, so that you don’t worry about us. The pharmacist took the photo for you. Doesn’t it look smart?

  And there it was… He hadn’t noticed it before, but at the bottom of the envelope Joshua found a photo of Maison Pearl all lit up in the snow, with another reassuring message in the corner:

  Christmas soon. As you can see!

  Business is good.

  The shop’s doing well, etc.

  In the letter, Jacques Pearl showed his concern for the hardship faced by the prisoner: he said he planned to put together a parcel with warm clothes and marshmallows for Joshua and his army pals. He listed the few flavours of marshmallow they were still able to produce, despite the rationing. He spoke of the sacks of walnuts he had miraculously found one autumn morning, in the back room of the shop, and which had saved the season. And then there were the almonds from the Pilon farm, which had never been so good.

  Finally, he wrote about a female shop assistant who had appeared in September and who had proved invaluable to them following the young man’s departure.

  She works so well, and is so kind that of course Madame Pearl wants to introduce her to you on your return. I had asked her to be in the photo, so that you could see her. She was sitting on the boxes, but she must have slipped out of the frame just as the pharmacist was pressing the shutter, you know what girls are like. She enjoys it when I tell her about you. Oh, and did I mention that she’s very beautiful?

  On closer inspection, Joshua could indeed see small footsteps in the snow around the boxes.

  At the end of the letter, there were a few lines in which Jacques Pearl, deliberately writing in caged terms to put the guards off the scent, expressed his impatience to see him back, to speak with him and to understand why he had left like that, taking the name of a dead child.

  Joshua folded the letter. Despite the cold burning his fingers, he had a warm feeling inside. He slid the envelope into his pocket, no longer burdened with being an imposter.

  It was the beginning of February 1942, and he had just survived a succession of interminable seasons as a German prisoner of war in this stalag. He worked outside, mainly in the forest, where groups of prisoners were marshalled to transport tree trunks. Most of the prisoners in the camp were Polish. They were starving, fed only on soup as clear as rainwater. The French were a little better treated by the German guards, but disease, sickness, fleas and violence made life difficult.

  Joshua Pearl returned to his dormitory, where the bunks were stacked three-high along the walls. He sat down at the back, on the edge of the bottom bunk.

  “I’ve received a letter,” he told a shadow lying on the other side of the narrow aisle between the bunks.

  Brahim El Fassi rolled over to face him. A strong bond had formed between these two men since their night below the bridge in the storm. Joshua had confided everything, in the belief that the horseman would take that precious knowledge to his death. Some stories ease the moment of departure. But this story had worked like a magic potion. If I can make it through the night, I’ll rally again, El Fassi had vowed. It was the voice of Iliån that had helped him to make it through the night. He had rallied.

  For several days, in a school in Nancy that had been transformed by the Germans into a temporary prison and hospital, the two soldiers were barely able to exchange glances. It was as if they were embarrassed at having survived that long night.

  Now, they had become inseparable. But they had never mentioned Iliån’s revelations again.

  “Is it a good letter?” asked El Fassi.

  “Yes. It’s a good letter.”

  A slight twitch of his beard betrayed the corporal’s satisfaction.

  A good letter. That was all he needed to know. He sat up, unrolling the coat that served as his pillow, and put it on. Non-matching items of uniform, ripped from the battlefield, were doled out to the prisoners. El Fassi had, however, been allowed to keep his Spahi turban.

  Standing up, he signalled to Pearl to follow him. They stepped over the prisoners on the floor playing cards in woollen gloves. Brahim El Fassi pushed open the door and went outside into the snow.

  When they were far enough away from the huts, El Fassi began to speak, uttering each sentence as if it were the result of long consideration.

  “I went to the infirmary for my wound, Private Pearl.”

  They were always courteous and respectful, generally addressing one another by their regimental title, after all these months of sharing the same hardships. Perhaps it was a way of preserving the remnants of civilisation beneath the rubble.

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Not much.”

  Pearl knew that he was lying. The corporal suffered every night, and slept with his belt between his teeth so that no one would hear him grinding them in agony.

  “But the doctor speaks French,” said El Fassi. “He’s from Alsace, and he knows my country as well. He tells me things. I appreciate that.”

  By some miracle, Pearl hadn’t y
et needed to visit the camp infirmary. He found it hard to believe that anyone would go there of their own free will. But the corporal was talking as never before.

  “He pointed out a Polish man who comes to see him every morning for his lungs.”

  Silence, and then, “He’s a prisoner, but he works for the camp guards. He polices his whole block. Even the doctor is scared of him.”

  Pearl was straining his ears to catch El Fassi’s hushed tones.

  “His name is Bartosz Kozowski, but everyone calls him Kozo.”

  They walked the length of the barbed wire fence in silence, crossing paths with ten men who were laden with stakes and sacks of cement.

  “If you need me…” Pearl ventured, when they’d overtaken them.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you telling me about this Polish man?”

  “I shouldn’t be. He fills the camp cemetery with anyone who gets in his way.”

  El Fassi glanced around to see whether the groups of prisoners were far enough off now. Next, he checked the watchtower before saying, in an even quieter whisper, “Kozo wears something around his neck. The doctor told me about it. And—”

  “And?”

  “It’s a mermaid’s scale.”

  Pearl froze.

  “It’s attached to a silver cord. He showed it to the doctor, who says he’s never seen anything like it.”

  They had reached the end of the barbed wire fence, and found themselves opposite a brick hangar.

  El Fassi stared straight into his friend’s eyes.

  For the second time in his life as an exile, Pearl felt the breath of air at his back which linked him to his former world. The first time had been on discovering the book of fairy tales that last Christmas Eve at Maison Pearl.

  Further off, a short man in an oversized coat came out of the hangar, coughing in the snow. Brahim El Fassi watched Pearl and saw in his eye a grey glint that flashed like a mermaid’s scale.

  The man who had just emerged kept coughing, bent over double, flanked by two armed guards. As Pearl watched them approaching, he wondered where they were taking the patient.