by Romain Gary
“And now, gentlemen,” he said tersely, “I must ask you to leave me.”
Duprat left the room before me and ran to the toilets to wash his face. If the Gestapo found him in tears before von Tiele was dead, there would be some difficult explaining to do.
The shot rang out just as I was climbing onto my bicycle with Chong tucked under one arm. I just glimpsed Grüber’s men leaping from their cars and dashing toward the restaurant.
Marcellin Duprat remained in bed for the rest of the day, his face turned to the wall. That evening, before the dinner service began, he said something extraordinary, and I never knew whether it was a slip of the tongue or simply his highest praise: “That was one great Frenchman.”
41
I pedaled so hard — holding the Pekinese with one hand and the handlebars with the other — that when I finally arrived at Her Ladyship’s residence, my knees suddenly gave out as I was climbing off my bike, and I fell flat on my face, my head swimming. Most likely fear and emotion had their part to play in it, because despite the “safe place” von Tiele had mentioned to me, and even with the address in my pocket, I had a hard time seeing how Lila could escape the Gestapo and the French police working at the beck and call of the occupying forces. I spent several minutes sobbing while Chong licked my hands and face. I finally managed to pull myself together, picked up the dog, and climbed the three steps to the entrance. I rang, expecting to see Odette Lanier, the “chambermaid” who had arrived from London with the new transceiver nine months prior, but the cook opened the door for me.
“Oh, there you are, dearie. Come along now …” She held out her hand for Chong.
“I would like to speak to Lady Esterhazy myself,” I murmured, still trying to catch my breath. “The dog is sick. It keeps throwing up. I went by the veterinarian’s and …”
“Come in, come in.”
I found Madame Julie in the sitting room, with her daughter. In Cléry once or twice I had seen von Tiele’s general staff “secretary,” who was widely known to be Schtekker’s mistress. She was a pretty brunette, with eyes whose unfathomable depths seemed to descend from her mother’s gaze.
“Hermann always suspected the general,” she was saying now. “He thought von Tiele was decadent, with Francophile tendencies that were becoming intolerable — and his language, when he was speaking of the führer … unacceptable. Hermann sent report after report about him to Berlin. If what people are saying is true, he’ll be promoted.”
“Betraying his country! How completely horrifying,” Madame Julie exclaimed.
The two women were alone in the sitting room. The conversation was clearly intended for me. I concluded that Madame Julie, who believed mistrust was the key to survival, was inviting me to pay very close attention to what I said. You never knew who might be standing by, with an ear pressed to the door. Both mother and daughter, moreover, seemed fairly tense. I even thought I saw Madame Julie’s hands tremble ever so slightly.
“Oh good heavens,” she said, raising her voice. “I see I forgot the poor darling at the Clos Joli again. Here, my dear.”
She took her handbag from the piano. On the piano were all the autographed portraits I knew: in one corner, the picture of Admiral Horthy was wreathed in black crêpe. The crêpe had been there since the death of his son, István Horthy, in 1942, on the Russian front.
She held out a ten-franc note.
“There you are, young man, and thank you.”
“Madame, the dog is very ill, I saw the veterinarian, he prescribed a treatment, I have to tell you about it, it’s quite urgent …”
“Well, it’s time I got back to the office,” the daughter remarked nervously.
Madame Julie walked her to the door. She glanced outside, most likely to make sure I hadn’t come “accompanied,” shut the door again, turned the key in the lock, and returned.
She motioned for me to follow her.
We went to her bedroom. She kept the door wide open, alert to the tiniest noise, and yet again I told myself that if France had been as concerned for its survival as this old madam, things never would have come to this.
“Come on, quickly now, what is it?”
“Von Tiele killed himself, and …”
“Is that all? Obviously he killed himself. When you go at things like a ham-fisted jackass …”
“He gave me Lila’s address and phone number. Apparently it’s a completely secure location.”
“Hand it over.” She snatched the paper from my hands and glanced at the address. “You call that a safe house — it’s his little love nest.” I must have blanched because she softened.
“Not your girl. Von Tiele loved the ladies. He kept bachelor’s quarters in Paris. The last one was a whore from Fabienne’s, that hooking shop in the rue Miromesnil, but she had nice manners — raised by the nuns at Our Lady of the Birds — so he didn’t notice. The Gestapo knows the place, you can be sure of that. They keep files on the private lives of their generals and they’ve always spied on von Tiele — trust me, I know. If the kid is really there …”
“She’s lost,” I murmured.
Madame Julie said nothing.
“Can’t we warn her? There’s a telephone number …”
“Are you kidding? You don’t actually think I’m going to let you make a call from here, do you? The switchboard notes every number you ask for, the time, and the number calling.”
“Help me, Madame Julie!”
She leaned over, picked up Chong, and hugged him, glaring at me with hostility. “Unbelievable. I must have a soft spot for you. At my age!”
She thought.
“The only safe line is the Gestapo’s,” she mused. “Wait. There’s another place. Arnoldt’s house — Grüber’s deputy.”
“But …”
“He lives there with his little friend — the one I told you about. It’s 14, rue des Champs, in Cléry, third floor on the right. They have their own line, and the calls aren’t logged. Go ahead. It’s good timing — I forgot to send his medication over … Well, when I say forgot … My little Francis hasn’t had much time for me lately …”
“Francis?”
“Francis Dupré. It’s as far as you can get from Isidore Lefkowitz. Wait right here …”
She went and rummaged through a dresser drawer, returning with two vials.
“It’s been eight days. He must be climbing the walls, poor thing. But that’ll teach him.”
I took the vials.
“He’s diabetic. It’s insulin.”
“It’s morphine, you mean.”
“What can you do, he’s been scared to death for nearly four years, now. He’s always been a little uneasy in his own skin, actually. Tell him I won’t forget him again, unless he starts forgetting me again, too. And to let you use the phone.”
She sat down in an armchair, legs parted, with Chong in her lap.
“And give me the thing you’ve got in your pocket, Ludo.”
“What thing in my pocket?”
“The cyanide capsule. If they search you and they find that on you, it’s as good as a confession. And what are you going to do, pop a cyanide capsule just because they’re about to search you? There’s always the chance you might get away.”
I placed my cyanide capsule on the night table.
Madame Julie looked dreamy all of a sudden.
“It won’t be long now,” she said. “I can barely sleep at night I’m so impatient. It’d be a damn shame to get nabbed at the last minute.”
Distractedly, she fiddled with her golden lizard.
“If things heat up too much around here, I’m out of here. I’ll stick a yellow star where I need to, head down to Nice or Cannes, and turn myself in to the Germans. They’ll deport me right away, of course, but I’m sure I can hold out for a few months, and then the Americans will land. You know
, like those movies with the redskins, where the cavalry always shows up at the end.”
She laughed.
“Yankee-doodle-doodle-dandy …” she hummed. “Well, something like that. Even the Germans think so. Apparently it’ll be in the Pas-de-Calais. I’d like to be there to see it. So if they bust you …”
“Don’t worry, Madame Julie. I’d let them torture me to death before I’d …”
“Everyone always thinks that. Well, we’ll see. Now you scram.”
In three-quarters of an hour I was at number fourteen, rue des Champs. I left my bicycle a few hundred yards away and mounted the stairs to the third floor. I was so agitated that for the first time in my life my memory actually blanked: I couldn’t remember whether it was the door on the right or the left. I had to think back through my entire conversation with Madame Julie to locate the words third floor on the right. I rang.
A gaunt man came to the door, good-looking enough if you liked the tango dancer type, but ghostly pale and with dark circles smudged under his nervous eyes. He was wearing pajamas and had a little cross on a chain around his neck.
“Monsieur Francis Dupré?”
“That’s me. What do you want?”
“The countess Esterhazy sent me. I brought your medication.”
He perked up.
“Finally … It’s been at least a week … She forgot me, that bitch. Give me that …”
“Madame … I mean, the countess Esterhazy asked that I telephone Paris from your house.”
“Go right ahead, come on in … the telephone is over there, in the bedroom … Give me that.”
“I don’t know German, sir. You’ll need to ask for the number yourself …”
He dashed to the telephone, asked for the number, and passed me the receiver. I gave him the two vials of morphine and he ran and locked himself in the bathroom.
A minute later, I heard Lila’s voice at the other end of the line.
“Hello?”
“It’s me …”
“Ludo! But how …”
“Don’t stay where you are. Get out right now.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Georg told me …”
I could barely speak.
“Get out immediately … They know the place … They’ll be there any minute now …”
“But where am I supposed to go? To my parents?”
“Dear God no, absolutely not … Hang on …”
Dozens of names and addresses of comrades flashed through my head. But I knew that none of them would ever shelter a stranger without a previously arranged password. And maybe Lila was already being tailed. I picked the least dangerous solution.
“Do you have any money?”
“Yes, Georg gave me some.”
“Get out immediately, leave all your things there. Don’t wait a single second. Go and book a room at the Hôtel de l’Europe, 14 rue Rollin. It’s right next to the Place de la Contrescarpe. I’ll send someone to you tonight, he’ll ask for Albertine and you’ll say his name, Roderick. Say it back to me.”
“Albertine. Roderick. But I can’t just leave here, I have all my art books —”
I barked: “You drop everything and you get out! Say it back to me!”
“Roderick. Albertine. Ludo …”
“Go!”
“I almost pulled it off …”
“Go!”
“I love you.”
I hung up.
Physically and emotionally drained, I fell back onto the unmade bed. No sooner had I lain down than Francis Dupré emerged from the bathroom. I would never have believed that a man could change so much in a few minutes. He exuded happiness and serenity. All trace of terror had disappeared from his eyes, with their languorous lashes. He sat down on the bed at my feet, smiling and friendly.
“So young man, everything all right?”
“All right, yes.”
“That Lady Esterhazy, she’s quite a woman.”
“That’s true. Quite a woman.”
“She’s always been a real mother to me. You know, I’m diabetic, and without insulin …”
“I understand.”
“And of course there’s insulin and insulin. The insulin she gets me is always the best quality. Will you have a glass of champagne?”
I stood up.
“I beg your pardon, I’m in a rush.”
“Too bad,” he said. “You seem so charming to me. I hope I’ll have the pleasure of your company again. See you very soon.”
“See you very soon.”
“And please, whatever you do, tell her not to forget about me. I need it regularly, every three days.”
“I’ll tell her. But I was given to understand you had forgotten her a bit, too.”
He chuckled a bit.
“True, true. I won’t do it again. I’ll let her hear from me more often.”
Again, I found myself in the stairwell.
It took me several hours to establish contact with “Roderick” in Paris, to beg him to go to the Hôtel de l’Europe at 14 rue Rollin and ask for Albertine.
We heard back the next evening. There was no Albertine at the Hôtel de l’Europe. All day Saturday and all day Sunday our comrade Lalande called the number von Tiele had given me. He never got an answer.
Lila had disappeared.
42
I couldn’t get to Vieille-Source for several days. The entire region was being turned upside down: thousands of soldiers were combing the countryside for the traitorous officer. My feverish and vain scramble to trace Lila cost me a great deal of time, as well; a few of my comrades even risked a trip to the rue de Chazelle to question the neighbors. All they got were doors shut in their faces. Only a neighborhood café owner recalled seeing a police van across the street, at number 67, but he thought they had departed empty-handed. In Duprat’s papers I managed to turn up the Bronickis’ Paris address, which Lila must have given him: they, too, had disappeared.
I succeeded in convincing myself that the whole family had managed to flee for the countryside, to the home of trusted friends. After all, the Bronickis had any number of connections with the French nobility, and now there was a groundswell of eleventhhour support for the Resistance, even among those who had until then kept prudently out of things, and despite the many assurances from Radio Vichy that “if they dare to make a landing, the Anglo-Saxons will immediately be tossed back into the sea.”
So I managed to calm down a little. If something had happened to Lila, the Cléry Gestapo would be the first to know, and “Francis Dupré” would certainly have alerted the woman who was “like a mother” to him, as he had put it to me. And I had seen the Lady Esterhazy sweep into the Clos Joli, haughty, dressed in gray: she had walked right by me without so much as a look and didn’t even have the Pekinese with her. She had nothing to tell me; there was nothing new to report.
Every day, therefore, I grew more certain that Lila was safe. Whether or not this conviction was entirely sincere I have no idea; what mattered was that it saved me from despair. For now, I had to see to Hans. First I had to find him a safer hiding spot, then arrange for him to be smuggled into Spain with the next convoy. I went to see Soubabère. I found “Hercules” in a particularly sour mood.
“The Boche has never hunted so hard for anything. Our hands are completely tied until they find this guy. If things go on like this, we risk total disaster. They’ve already stumbled on two weapons caches in Verrières and they arrested one of the Solié brothers and their sister. There’s just one thing to do: we have to collar their Kraut for them and turn him in.” It knocked me right down to the ground.
“You can’t do that, Souba.”
“And why not?”
“Because he’s a resister, too. They tried to kill Hitler …”
His eyebrows shot up: “Yeah, after St
alingrad. And you can be sure they’re going to give it another go. The generals have figured out the ship is sinking, and they’re trying to jump while they still can. But let me tell you, Fleury: it’s a good thing they screwed up. Because if they’d pulled it off, or if they pull it off the next time, the Americans will negotiate with them to co-opt the German army against the Russians, believe me …”
“You’re not actually going to do the Gestapo’s job for them?”
“Listen, kid. I have four weapons caches to protect. A printing press. Five radios. And as long as the Boche keeps beating the bushes day and night, we can’t bring in a single airdrop. This guy has thrown off our entire organization. So it’s him or us. I’ve given orders. He has to be found. You should get on that, too. No one knows this country better than you.”
I went away without answering. Later, I tried to work a little. I started to assemble a kite, but I couldn’t even imagine a shape for it. I sat there with the blue paper in my hand. Souba was right. As long as the Gestapo hadn’t found Hans, the entire Resistance was stalled out. And it was just as clear that I could not betray him. At eleven o’clock in the morning, there was a knock at the door and Souba entered with Machaud and Rodier.
“They’re searching everywhere. Our hands are tied. Your childhood friend — where have you stashed him? Apparently you were buddies — he spent his holidays here, this Hans von Schwede. So you’re going to talk now.”
“The bathtub’s down the hall, Souba. I don’t know whether I’ll talk — I always did wonder how I’d hold up under torture.”
“For God’s sake, you’re not going to toss it all in the shitter for a German officer, are you?”
“No. Give me twelve hours.”
“Not one more.”
I didn’t wait for nightfall. I preferred to go to Vieille-Source in broad daylight, to be sure none of my comrades were tailing me. I had prepared civilian clothes for Hans, but there was no point now. I found him sitting on a stone, reading. I didn’t know where he could have gotten the book, and then I remembered, he always had one in his pocket, and it was always the same: Heine.
