The Great and the Good

by Michel Déon

  ‘Will you come and see me in New York?’

  ‘As soon as I’ve made myself a bit of pocket money. Won’t you come to Beresford?’

  The band struck up an old tune, ‘Cheek to Cheek’. He tried to press his cheek to hers.

  ‘Getulio’s looking,’ she said.

  As she left the dance floor she unpinned the rose from her gown and slipped it into Arthur’s pocket.

  He asked Elizabeth to dance, a number so slow that she almost fell asleep in his arms. Suddenly she woke up.

  ‘I expect it’s already too late … But if you find yourself idealising her too much, just remember the Mickey Mouse socks.’

  The classic picture of the young immigrant in a black, too-tight suit, a shirt with crumpled collar, shiny tie, shoes too often mended, cardboard suitcase at his feet, standing alone on the quay by the Hudson, looking crushed by his first glimpse of skyscrapers that, after six days at sea, make him so dizzy he hardly dares look at them, dazed by the boom of the city that rumbles endlessly on above ground and deep in its entrails – that classic picture, capable of softening the hardest heart, is not entirely false. Apart from the fact that the suit is neither black nor too tight, the shirt and collar are immaculate, the shoes new, and a heavy officer’s trunk, on which the capital letters are still legible – CAPT. MORGAN, 1 COMPANY, 1ST BATTALION, 152ND INFANTRY REGIMENT – has replaced the cardboard suitcase. It no longer belongs, of course, to the captain whose body, riddled with pieces of shrapnel, has lain since 1944 in the military cemetery at Colmar, but to his son, Arthur, disembarking from the Queen Mary in a crush of passengers and a tumult of shouts, hugs, porters’ cries and yellow-cab drivers’ exasperated yells to move out of the way. The image is not false, insofar as the young man, finally disembarking on this foreign shore, has lost sight in the crowd of those friendly faces that for the duration of the crossing helped him painlessly to cut the umbilical cord that attached him to Europe. He is alone. He is not about to climb to the top of the Empire State Building, thrust his chest out, and shout, ‘New York, here I come!’ Such is not his ambition, and in any case he has, in the space of a few minutes, realised that this country, so often described to him as a paradise, is also the anteroom of a hell devised by human beings. A grey limousine with blacked-out windows stops a few metres away from him. A uniformed black chauffeur and a young man in a teal-blue suit get out, hurry over to a pile of luggage, and load the cases into the trunk. Allan and Minerva Porter materialise out of the crowd, shake hands with the young man and the chauffeur, and disappear into the car, which everyone makes way for. Professor Concannon has also vanished, as have Augusta, Elizabeth and Getulio. At the fourth attempt Arthur succeeds in persuading a cab to take his trunk and drive him to Grand Central Station. He sees no more than a glimpse of the city. Is this really New York, its streets cratered with ruts, its crumbling buildings blanketed with soot, a station that looks like a cathedral, a grimy Boston-bound train that immediately dives into a tunnel? He has seen nothing. He hears Augusta’s voice saying, ‘Will you come and see me in New York?’ In his pocket he has Elizabeth’s address and the number for Allan Porter’s direct line. Getulio will be getting back to Beresford by road, at the wheel of an old but very elegant car, a 1930 Cord. The previous evening, Arthur had decided not to wait for him. His liking for the Brazilian is as qualified as the latter’s liking for him. They are going to be mixing with each other and Arthur can already foresee that it will not be easy. There is Augusta, plus the floating shadow of Elizabeth: is she, will she be, has she ever been Getulio’s lover? At last, emerging from the endless suburbs, the train rolls on into woods, skirting lovely villages of white-painted clapboard houses with blue roofs. A train that runs as smoothly as this opens the door to unruly reveries. Arthur has Augusta’s rose in an envelope. The petals are falling off, already wilted and curled up.

  ‘You must separate them, then slip them between the pages of a book you won’t be opening for a year or two,’ says a hoarse voice close to him.

  On the seat on the other side of the carriage, an old woman with white doll’s hair lights her cigarette with a soldier’s lighter.

  ‘I’ve kept dozens in my life,’ she says, blowing out a small cloud of blue smoke. ‘Perfect. Never a problem. Do you like roses?’

  ‘I like a rose.’

  ‘When you pick a rose to give it to a woman for her buttonhole, you must be careful to remove the thorns without damaging the stem. If you don’t, the woman – I say “woman” if it’s a red rose, because of course if it’s a white rose I’d say “girl” – the woman will prick herself and panic. You’ll see a look of profound irritation on her face and your plan coming to nothing. You’ll sweep her finger to your lips to stop the bleeding. She’ll see that as a lewd invitation – which it might well be – and cry rape. You’ll be arrested, and you’ll get ten years in prison and a one-hundred-thousand-dollar fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  She rummaged in a huge carpet bag, pulling out empty cigarette packets, a packet of sanitary napkins, two dirty handkerchiefs, and an alarm pistol, before laying her hands on what she was looking for: a small book with a rainbow-coloured cover.

  ‘These are my poems, Roses For Ever. You can give them to your friend.’

  The train slowed. She put everything else back in her bag, placed a fur hat on her head and, turning to Arthur with a wide smile that deformed a mouth seamed with vertical wrinkles, said, ‘That’s five dollars.’

  ‘What’s five dollars?’

  ‘The book you just bought.’

  ‘I haven’t bought anything.’

  He slid the booklet back into her bag as the train braked. She nearly fell, grabbing the back of her seat just in time.

  ‘I never saw anyone so badly raised in all my life,’ she said with towering scorn, proudly jerking her chin upwards to show him how wrong he was, that she was not just anybody but a poet of renown.

  A fat man in whose way she was standing threw a disapproving look at the young man taking refuge in his corner, his forehead against the window, minutely studying the platform and the few travellers alighting on it. The old woman appeared on the other side of the window, straight-backed in her high heels, her fur hat aslant. With her umbrella she struck the window and shouted something Arthur did not understand. The train began to move again.

  ‘Maybe she’ll have more luck with the next guy,’ a male voice said ironically.

  Arthur turned round. On the seat behind him a man in his fifties, with grey hair plastered to his forehead in a fringe and a cheerful face emphasised by a clipped, very white beard, was reading a newspaper he was holding at arm’s length.

  ‘You mean she’s a trickster?’

  The man put his newspaper on his knees and folded it with the flat of his gloved hand.

  ‘A hard word, but that’s about the size of it!’

  ‘I’ve just got here, and I’ve had the shock of my life; I mean, I’ve just got off the Queen Mary … I’m French—’

  ‘I can tell.’

  ‘Does she often pull that trick?’

  ‘Every journey she manages to sell one or two copies of her poems, self-published.’

  ‘Are they any good?’

  ‘I’ve read worse.’

  ‘Did you buy them?’

  ‘Yes … having refused two or three times … Out of curiosity. I had a five-dollar bill in my pocket … I guess you’re going to Beresford.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No, I’m long past that age, but I studied there thirty years ago. My son’s been there since last year. You’re bound to meet him: his name’s John, John Macomber. More a sportsman than an intellectual.’

  With a smile he picked up his paper again. By the time they reached Boston night was falling. A small bus with a sign saying ‘Beresford University’ was waiting at the station exit. Ten or so students got on. The driver said he had backache and was unable to lift the trunk onto the roof. Two strapping-looking boys in blue blaze
rs and grey trousers hoisted it like a feather and tossed it carelessly up among the other luggage.

  An hour later Arthur was unpacking in the small bedroom of the fraternity house where he would spend three years of his life. There was a bed, wardrobe, table, two shelves, a gloomy overhead light, a bedside lamp and, framed and screwed to the door, a list of regulations. He learnt fast – from Getulio first – how to get round them. He identified John Macomber and decided that that excellent football player had not inherited his father’s sense of humour. They met in the mornings on the cinder track at the stadium. Arthur signed up to train for the 3,000 metres. He had no intention of taking part in any events but he felt the distance, without overstretching him, suited his physique and heart rate. John Macomber trained at sprint starts, short sprints, and forward rolls. When they met, they slapped palms together and grinned at each other without speaking. Getulio sometimes joined them. Nature had blessed him with the long legs of an 800-metre runner. A hundred metres from the finish he would drop his arms and walk along the verge to the bag that contained his gear, drape a towel around his neck with perfect elegance and stroll back to the changing room, dragging his feet.

  ‘Those last hundred metres … I’ll never do it. It’s so stupid, they should just set up a 700-metre race instead!’

  ‘You should send a letter of complaint to the Olympic Committee.’

  It was a shame: he had a fine stride, his pulse rate was below sixty, his lungs remained good despite the cigarettes and alcohol. The truth was that being at the track quickly bored him, just as he got bored during classes, where his memory astonished everyone and his indolence drove his teachers to despair. Card-playing was forbidden, but inspections were rare, so he made himself enough pocket money to pay for the garaging and petrol of his superb red and white 1930 Cord.

  ‘I bought it because of Augusta. Red like her rose and white like the blouses she wears in the evening. I have no intention of going unnoticed.’

  Allan Porter gave a lecture at the beginning of November. A handful of students were invited. Faculty and other university staff and several teachers who had come out from Boston filled the lecture theatre well before the start. Arthur recognised the young man in the teal-blue suit who had opened the limousine’s doors for Minerva and Allan on the quayside. A holster bulged obviously under the left side of his jacket.

  ‘I met Mr Porter on the Queen Mary. He particularly asked me to come to the lecture. It looks as though it might be full. My name’s Morgan, Arthur Morgan.’

  ‘I’ll look into it straight away, Mr Morgan. If you wouldn’t mind waiting in the hall.’

  A few minutes later he returned and led Arthur to a reserved seat in the front row among the distinguished guests and university authorities. To his discomfort, he then had to endure their appraising looks and whispers. All of them surely knew far more than he did about Allan Porter, whose arrival on the platform the audience greeted by rising to its feet. Porter had lost his tan and possibly a few kilos. Arthur regretted that he was not gracing this stiff academic occasion in his canary-yellow tracksuit. It would have added piquancy to his lecture, which to begin with was dry but took flight when he began to go into detail, dismantling the mechanisms of several campaigns of disinformation, the first being that of the Wehrmacht’s intelligence service before the outbreak of war. The Germans, feigning clumsiness and incompetence, had succeeded in convincing Stalin that his general staff was betraying him, prompting the Paternal Genius of the Soviet peoples to purge the Red Army vigorously, first executing Marshal Tukhachevsky, followed by twenty generals, then another thirty-five thousand senior and junior officers. Decapitated and robbed of its best technicians, the weakened Red Army had been almost annihilated in 1941 at the launch of Operation Barbarossa. The Allies had shown similar skill in 1944 when they had convinced Rommel and Keitel that a planned invasion force would land in the Pas de Calais area, so the two field marshals had diverted their divisions there, leaving the Cotentin peninsula exposed. Since the hostilities had ended, the KGB had learnt its lesson and was now instigating wave after wave of disinformation, especially in intellectual and academic circles, and successfully discrediting anyone who spoke out against Stalin’s dictatorship, the Soviet gulag, or Communist imperialism.

  Concluding, Porter paused, and asked if anyone in the audience had a question they would like to ask. There was the usual moment’s shuffling and murmuring, then from the back of the hall a deep, aggressive voice said, ‘The speaker would strengthen his argument if he were to offer us some equivalent examples of political disinformation by the United States in the Cold War era.’

  ‘May I at least see whom I’m addressing, sir?’

  ‘No. I’ll identify myself when I’ve heard your answer.’

  A gleam of lively amusement appeared in Porter’s eyes, as though he might have cried, ‘At last!’ had he not been afraid of offending an audience that had been remarkably passive up till then. Of course he had an answer! It went right back to the Founding Fathers of the American nation. The President of the United States swears on the Bible to respect and defend the Constitution. His vow is a religious act that establishes a theocracy. American political life is carried on under God’s protection, a God who will not tolerate untruth.

  It was impossible to discern the irony that Arthur suspected beneath these emollient words, so manifestly intended to confuse the issue. Fortunately the speaker at the back of the room was not satisfied and his baritone made itself heard again.

  ‘Don’t make me laugh!’

  Not in the least put out, Porter looked suddenly inspired, eyes raised towards heaven, as he said, ‘Don’t be surprised, then, if I make myself chuckle too. Think, my invisible interlocutor, of the United States as an empire. Oh, not an empire in the classical sense of having territories in every corner of the earth. No: we were a colony of the British Crown and we don’t like colonial powers, but our empire is not territorial. It is the empire of the dollar. Can you imagine the covetousness that inspires in the rest of the world? We must therefore defend ourselves, using methods that the puritanical ethic of our government would disapprove of, but imposed by factual necessity. It’s never hard for a state to recruit technicians who can organise a coup d’état or train guerrillas, or specialists who know how to foment corruption or disinformation …’

  At these words, Arthur felt Porter’s gaze lingering on him.

  ‘… it is clear that these purely defensive operations must be entrusted to men or women who are prepared to sacrifice their eternal salvation to their love of their country. And are also ready to be disowned in the case of a failure or the discovery of their operation. They are the scapegoats who save the face of the people’s elected representatives. They can be thrown in jail, they can even be shot, but they will not disclose the names or the plans of their principals. They have a conception of praxis that is infinitely superior to that of civil servants and find it right and proper, in certain cases, to perjure themselves in court. In fact, let me tell you that these individuals belong to a new order of chivalry of which the world has need to preserve its balance. Would you like a list of their names, accompanied by their addresses? In strictest confidence, of course, and not to be passed on to the KGB.’

  ‘The USSR would not hesitate to reciprocate such a generous gesture, and the Cold War would come to a rapid end.’

  Porter jubilantly threw his arms wide to clasp to his bosom the enemies of yesterday who had suddenly become the brothers of today, calling on the audience as witnesses with disarming casuistry.

  ‘You see how simple everything is! And no one, not in Washington or Peking or Moscow, has thought of it. Sir, I shall inform President Eisenhower straight away of your generous suggestion. Usually he is none too keen that I bring up politics with him; it’s a subject that lacks gravity for a retired military man, but I don’t rule out, over a round of golf, persuading him to hear the voice of reason.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ the questioner shouted, a
n African American who by now had clambered up on his chair and was being applauded by the other students.

  ‘B–S–in–deed!’ Porter joyfully responded.

  Satisfied to have won his argument by laughter, he was collecting his notes when another student who had climbed onto his chair in turn, applauded by those around him, shouted with a definite edge to his voice: ‘Mr Porter, aren’t you yourself one of those godless and lawless men, ready to cast aside all morals in the name of the supposedly higher interests of the state? You’re an alumnus of Beresford, you had a distinguished war in the Pacific and then in Europe, and now you’re rumoured to be the Père Joseph of the President of the United States—’