The Kites

by Romain Gary

“Good evening, Monsieur Fleury. Please excuse my visiting you unannounced like this. I wish to speak with you.”

  “Come in.”

  He walked by me, stopped, glanced up at the kites hanging from the rafters.

  “There is someone you know in my car.”

  He ceased speaking and sat down on the bench, his hands clasped. I waited. It was the hour when Allied bombers crossed over the coastline on their way to raze German cities. Von Tiele lifted his head a little and listened to the firing of the coastal artillery.

  “Twelve hundred bombers over Hamburg yesterday,” he said. “You must be pleased.”

  I did not understand what this great war chief wanted from me.

  “You know the man I am bringing to you,” he said. “But I do not know if you consider him a friend or an enemy. Nonetheless, I have come to ask you to help him.”

  Von Tiele rose. He looked at his feet.

  “I want you to help him escape to Spain,” he said with the trace of a smile, “as you are so good at doing with the Allied aviators.”

  I was so floored that I didn’t even protest.

  “Of course you have no reason to save the life of a German officer, Monsieur Fleury. I understand that all too well. It was Lila who advised me to come see you. This may also seem strange to you. But Hans is — like you — very much in love with her. A rival, in sum. Perhaps you would be happy to see him gone. In which case, all you need to do is phone the local Gestapo chief, Herr Grüber …” He didn’t dignify Grüber with his military rank. “But perhaps in the expression ‘to love the same woman’ there is … how shall I say it? What you might call … a kind of fraternity.”

  He observed me attentively, with an unexpected warmth in his haggard, almost ghostly pale face.

  I was silent.

  Von Tiele raised his hand.

  “Listen to the sky. How many children will be killed tonight? We’ll say no more of that. I’m only telling you that I am trying to save a young man who is my nephew, and whom I love like a son. I must leave now. We have about … twenty-four hours. I have arrangements to make. You still haven’t given me your answer, Monsieur Fleury.”

  “Does Lila know?”

  “Yes.”

  Hans was in uniform. Childhood and adolescence really do leave their mark on you: we did not shake hands. But I had to slip my arm under his shoulder to hold him up. He walked a few steps and collapsed. Von Tiele helped me carry him to my room.

  “You must not keep him here, Monsieur Fleury. You are risking your life. Try to hide him somewhere else tonight. However, as I told you, I do think we have twenty-four hours …” He smiled at me.

  “I hope you don’t feel like a traitor, hiding a German officer?”

  “I feel like you owe me one hell of an explanation.”

  “You’ll get it. Hans will explain. And in any case, I’ll explain it to you myself. I’ll be lunching at the Clos Joli, as I do every Friday.”

  Hans was sleeping when I returned to my room. Even in sleep his face remained fraught; from time to time, his chin and lips would tremble convulsively. For a long time, I contemplated his face, whose beauty had once raised such animosity in me. He wore a locket around his neck. I opened it: Lila.

  It was one in the morning; sunrise was at five. The ticktock of the clock was beginning to give me goose flesh. I put some coffee on and woke Hans. He looked at me uncomprehendingly for an instant, then sprang up.

  “Don’t keep me here. They’ll shoot you.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Later, later.”

  The coffee was ready. “We don’t have much time,” I informed him. “It’s a three-hour walk.”

  “To where?”

  “Vieille-Source. Do you remember?”

  “Do I ever! You almost strangled me. What were we … twelve? Thirteen?”

  “Something like that. Hans, what did you do?”

  “We tried to kill Hitler.”

  “Jesus!” That was all I could say.

  “We put a bomb in his plane.”

  “Who is we?”

  “The bomb was defective. It didn’t go off, and they found it. Two of our comrades had time to kill themselves. They’ll get the others to talk. I managed to get out with my plane to warn …” he trailed off.

  “I see.”

  “Yes. I was able to land on the Ouchy field. I wanted to take the general to England …”

  I shook myself, snorted like a startled horse, took a deep breath. And then I began to laugh hysterically. Hans wanted to bring General von Tiele to England to establish Free France there. Free Germany, that is. With the Cross of Lorraine as its emblem, maybe. “Shit,” I said. “It’s May. You’re a month early for June 18. You sure do know how to dream, you Germans. It must be heads or tails with your dreams: sometimes you end up with Goethe and Hölderlin, sometimes with millions dead. If I’m getting this right, your elite officers still believe you can come to some sort of gentleman’s agreement over this? An aristocratic peace? June 18, 1940, but German-style, in London, in 1943, on the back of the Russians, no doubt?”

  He lowered his head.

  “All our traditional officers have opposed Hitler and the war since 1936,” he said.

  “And then of course it was too late, because you were already in Paris, and already halfway to Moscow. Well, come on, let’s go. You’ll be all right at Vieille-Source for a few days, and then we’ll see. Can you make it? It’s four miles.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  I took my precious flashlight — I had only one extra battery left — and we went outside. A lovely night, just right for the stars’ ironic gleam. A French Resistance fighter helping a Gaullist German officer. The moonlight was still strong and I didn’t light my torch until we reached the bottom of the ravine. At the end of our childhood path, overgrown with brush and brambles, the source, too, had aged, and no longer had the strength to gush from its wellhead.

  In single file, we slid along the mossy walls to where the ravine ended in a cul-de-sac. The wigwam was still right where my uncle Ambrose had helped us build it eleven years ago — listing a little, but still upright. And it was only when we were standing before this structure of our childhood that Lila’s phrase rose up in my memory, the one she had murmured to me in my office, so cheerfully and so certainly: “I think I’m finally going to pull off something really extraordinary in my life. I have a lot of influence with Hans, you know.” I looked at Hans. It’s her, I thought. He did it for her. I crouched down and tried to find a little water at the bottom of the spring well. My throat was so dry, I could barely speak.

  “I’ll come once or twice a week with supplies. After that we’ll try and get you over the Pyrenees. I have to talk to my friends about it.”

  The air smelled of earth and damp. Above our heads, an owl dreamed. The sky was growing lighter. Hans took off the jacket of his uniform and tossed it on the ground. In his white shirt, he was not very different from the young man who had stood before me in the weapons room at Gródek during our duel.

  “I owe you my life and I will repay you with my life,” he said.

  “Life will be the one to decide that, old man.”

  It was the only time we ever spoke to each other of Lila by name.

  At eleven o’clock, I was at my desk, at work on the ledgers, unable to think of anything but the events of the previous night. And everything Lila had said, every sentence, every phrase, every intonation, continued to echo through my head. “I’ll pull it off … I’m sure that with a little luck … I have a lot of influence with Hans, you know … I always wanted to do something grand and terribly important …”

  Monsieur Jean opened the door. “General von Tiele put a call in for his monthly bill …”

  “Sure …”

  “Trust me, Ludo … I’ll leave my mark on hi
story …”

  She had talked Hans into it, patiently, and probably without too much difficulty, since even before the hostilities had begun, he was always talking about “saving the honor of the German army.” And von Tiele knew that the war would be lost if Germany had to keep fighting on both fronts. With Hitler gone, a separate peace with the United States and England, and then …

  “Check for table five,” came Monsieur Jean’s voice.

  “Yes … Right away …”

  “What’s wrong, Ludo? Are you ill?”

  “No, nothing, I’m fine …”

  “One day, you’ll be proud of me … I’ll leave my mark on history …” The plot had failed and Lila’s life was in danger. “I have a lot of influence with Hans, you know …” I had to get them into Spain, both of them. I wondered how I would go about it. The two aviators hidden at the Buis’ were supposed to be smuggled through Bagnères in a few days, but I didn’t even know where Lila was; if Hans were to be part of the convoy, Soubabère would have to sign off on it, and there were no “good” Germans in Souba’s eyes. Also, the details of this first plot by officers of the Wehrmacht to overthrow Hitler had to be communicated to London as soon as possible.

  Through my distressed confusion, I heard a whimper — Chong was sitting at my feet, wagging his tail and looking at me reproachfully. I’d completely forgotten him. When the Lady Esterhazy came to lunch at the Clos Joli, it was my job to give him his doggie dinner. I left my office and called out to Lucien Duprat.

  “Is the Lady Esterhazy still here?”

  “Why?”

  “She forgot the pooch.”

  “I’ll go see.”

  He returned to tell me that the Gräfin was having her coffee. I went to the kitchen, grabbed a dish of meat, and returned to feed the dog. As I crossed the entry hall I saw von Tiele’s car pull up in front. The driver opened the door and the general emerged. Von Tiele’s face was drawn, but he seemed to be in a good mood, and he climbed the steps quickly, waving back to someone I could not see. That morning, Duprat had received a note, which he pasted into the guest register after the Liberation: “My friend, Marcellin, I am about to be transferred elsewhere and will come say my goodbyes to the Clos Joli this Friday afternoon at two.”

  All that his presence signified to me was that the Gestapo didn’t know yet. Twenty-four hours at the most, he had told me. I had just a few hours left to locate Lila. But Hans or von Tiele had certainly taken care of her.

  Seconds later, the Gräfin made her entrance in my office. She picked up the dog. “Poor little creature. I nearly forgot him.”

  She placed a ball of wrinkled paper in front of me. I unfolded it. Lila’s handwriting. “I almost succeeded. I love you. Farewell.”

  Madame Julie opened her lighter and set fire to the paper. A little pile of ashes.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. Von Tiele packed her off to Paris yesterday evening. He had her driven to the midnight train in his own car, the fool.”

  “But that paper …”

  She was tense, and tugged at her gloves.

  “What about the paper?”

  “How did you get it?”

  “Well, there was a very nice reception yesterday evening at the Stag, thrown by the subordinate officers for the civilian personnel and the secretaries. All the top brass were there. Even General von Tiele dropped by for a few minutes. Your little lady drank a lot and danced a lot. And then she gave my daughter a letter for you, laughing. It was a love letter, apparently. You know me, love letter, schmove letter, I open everything, nowadays. So there you have it. You’re a lucky guy. If she’d passed that note to anyone else …”

  “They … they already know?”

  “The Gestapo has known since nine o’clock this morning. My little 100 percent Aryan friend — real name Isidore Lefkowitz — let me know at noon. They haven’t locked up von Tiele yet because they don’t want word to get out. The hero of Smolensk, you know — that would make waves. They have orders to send him to Berlin, with all the honors …”

  “But the general is here …”

  “Not for long.”

  Lovingly, she pressed Chong’s muzzle to her cheek. “Come along, my pet. Mommy must still have a heart hidden somewhere in there, because she’s starting to act like a dope.”

  She gave me a hard look.

  “You can’t do a thing for her, so sit very tight and tell everyone else to do the same. There’s a shitstorm brewing.”

  The Gräfin Esterhazy turned on her heel and departed.

  I was on the verge of leaving my office to hightail it over to Soubabère’s when Monsieur Jean came to tell me that General von Tiele wished to speak with me.

  “He is in the Ed …” The old man caught himself. The “Édouard Herriot Room,” where the radical socialist leader had once been a regular, had been dechristened. But Duprat, with great courage, had not given it another name. He had simply taken down the Édouard Herriot plaque and set it aside in a drawer.

  “You never know,” he’d explained to me. “It could come back.”

  There were lots of Parisian and local officials in the restaurant, both in the “rotunda” and in the “galleries.” It was chic to go lean on Fridays: with the country undergoing such hardships, piety and religion had come back into fashion, and to keep business booming on meatless days Marcellin Duprat had gone in for fish specialties with all the subtlety and all the resources of his art. I had to cross through the rotunda and its hoi polloi to get to the dechristened room, which was upstairs — something I never did on ordinary occasions, since my sloppy attire prompted dressings down from the boss whenever I ventured out into the front of the house.

  I found von Tiele at his table. Duprat, very pale, a napkin under his arm, was uncorking what he considered to be his finest bottle: a 1923 Château Laville. Never before had I seen the great chef so emotional. To have given in to that kind of sacrifice he must have been touched in the furthest depths of his soul. Clearly, von Tiele had brought him up to speed as to the exact nature of his “transfer.” From time to time, Duprat would glance toward the window at the two Gestapo cars parked in the drive, one of them Grüber’s black Citroën.

  “Have no fear, my good Marcellin,” the general said to him. “I’ve had them as my escort since nine thirty this morning. I’ve been transferred to Berlin, the plane is waiting for me. The führer wishes to avoid any undue public attention. Being named to General von Keitel’s staff is indeed a promotion. But most likely my plane will crash before we get to Tempelhof, as my feeling is they’re not too concerned for the lives of the crew. My three direct subordinates are supposed to accompany me on the flight; not Colonel Schtekker, though. He is a good Nazi, and he will continue to frequent your establishment, I hope. But not everything will go as they’ve planned. For one thing, I don’t see why I would let a perfectly innocent flight crew perish when the Luftwaffe is already short on pilots. But more than that, I refuse to play along — to collaborate, if you prefer. I want it to be known. Corporal Hitler believes himself to be a brilliant strategist, and he is leading the German army to defeat. So my comrades must learn of my ‘treachery.’ And, if I may allow myself some small immodesty, given my military reputation, all of my fellow commanding officers will understand my reasons, which most of them agree with, moreover. This is a warning, and I want it heard. But — let us speak of more agreeable things.”

  He tasted the 1923 Château-Laville.

  “Wonderful,” he cried. “Ah, the spirit of France!”

  “I prepared a ragoût de coquillages Saint-Jacques and a turbotin grillé à la moutarde,” said Marcellin Duprat, his voice trembling. “It’s a bit routine, obviously. If I’d known …”

  “Well yes. Obviously you couldn’t know, my good Marcellin. Neither could I, when it comes to that. You see, our failure was caused by … how shall
I put it? Not enough trust in the common man. We stayed a cut above them, kept to ourselves, among elite officers. We didn’t dare entrust a simple sergeant or a corporal artificer, and that was a tremendous mistake. If we had gone for help among the … let’s not say inferior, let’s say subordinate ranks, the bomb would have been set correctly and it would have done its job. But we wanted to restrict things to our level: that old caste spirit. Our bomb wasn’t … democratic enough. We didn’t have a squaddie.”

  This little speech by the general Count von Tiele would return to my mind a few months later. On July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count von Stauffenberg, another “elite officer,” left a bomb in a napkin at Hitler’s headquarters in Rastenburg, and the explosion barely turned a hair on Hitler’s head, I told myself that once again, all those lordly officers were missing was a simple munitions officer, someone who would have been able to give the bomb the necessary strength. It was a bomb that lacked popular will.

  Von Tiele finished his turbotin grillé à la moutarde. He turned to me.

  “Well, my young Fleury … Did it go off all right?”

  “So far, so good … He’s well hidden —” I hesitated, and for the first time in my life I said to a German: “my general.”

  He gave me a look of friendship. He understood.

  “Mademoiselle de Bronicka is in Paris,” he said. “In a safe place. Well, as long as she doesn’t try and risk a visit to her parents. You know her!”

  “General, sir, could you …”

  He nodded, drew a notebook from his pocket and scribbled an address and a telephone number. He tore out the page and held it out to me.

  “Try to get them to Spain, both of them …”

  “Yes, sir, General.”

  I put the paper in my pocket.

  Von Tiele took one more bite of the coquilles Saint-Jacques and finished with the famous sour apple soufflé, a coffee, and a glass of cognac.

  “Ah, France!” he murmured again, a shade ironically, it seemed to me.

  Duprat was weeping. With a trembling hand, he offered the general a box of real Havana cigars. Von Tiele declined them with a wave of his hand. Then he looked at the time and rose.