Nazis in the Metro

by Didier Daeninckx

  —Have you read this?

  Gérard leaned over the minuscule box of text to which the Octopus was pointing, at the foot of the page:

  ATTACKED IN THE BASEMENT

  A man was found gravely wounded in the underground parking lot at 2 Rue Jeanne d’Arc (in the 13th Arrondissement). Robbery was the apparent motive of the attack. The victim, a resident of the building, 78-year-old André Sloga, was taken to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, where he remains in a deep coma.

  The proprietor shrugged.

  —That’s what put you in such a state? There’s no respect anymore, especially for old people. Those stories are a dime a dozen around here! …

  Gabriel placed his finger on the victim’s name.

  —Sloga … André Sloga, the name means nothing to you?

  —Why, should it?

  —Actually, yes … You haven’t read The Innocents, Hell’s Harvest, even Weekend in Nagasaki?

  Maria, whose breasts were exactly level with the counter, had begun to take orders. Gérard admitted his ignorance.

  —I’ve never heard of him … Who is he, a writer?

  —Yes, and not just any writer … He was a working-class kid from the south of Paris … His father worked like a slave in an alloy plant in Vitry and on Sundays played accordion at the dance clubs on the banks of the Marne. Anarcho-pacifist, bit of a basher, borderline alcoholic … He writes about it in his first book …

  —Now that you mention it, I’m beginning to place him … Weren’t they also athletes?

  —Not exactly, but almost. In ’37, around the time of Guernica, the father and son got involved in the International Brigades. They were assigned to the defense of the People’s Olympiad in Barcelona, a competition that was to have taken place at the same time as the Nazi Games in Berlin, at the opening of which, we all too often forget, our beloved sportsmen, with images of Baron de Coubertin* in their minds, coughed up a raised-arm salute to the Führer! Sloga recounts all of this in detail in The Innocents, which Gallimard published in June of 1940, causing a full-scale debacle … Almost the entire edition was pulped after the superior race cleansed the reading committee—

  Maria interrupted him.

  —I’ve only been acquainted with your Sloga for five minutes, but I have a feeling he hasn’t had a lot of luck in his life …

  Gabriel tore a crusty point from his croissant and dunked it into his steaming coffee.

  —Well, the book ends with the death of his father, who was executed by supporters of Franco … It’s there in everything he writes, every word, story, every tangent, and at the heart of it all: pulsating, bleeding life … Basically, everything that’s missing from almost all the others.

  Gérard leapt over to the coffee machine to loosen the handle of a portafilter Maria was wrestling with.

  —It’s strange that you’ve never spoken of him before … We’ve fought over Calet, Hardellet, André Laude, de Bove, but this guy: nothing. He’s fallen through the cracks … How do you explain that?

  Gabriel leaned over his bowl, his hands gripping its porcelain sides, and, lips protruding like a giraffe’s, inhaled in one go more than half of the liquid inside.

  —The hard times never left him. After the War, Gallimard published a half-dozen titles by Sloga, until one day they turned one down … He’d written too pointedly about the free use of the guillotine in Algerian prisons, and the Gestapo-style torture the French army was endorsing in the Aurès mountains … This was in 1955. He left Gallimard and slammed the door on his way out … Twenty years later his fury would have made him famous; his fatal flaw was that he was ahead of his time … After that, he floated from publisher to publisher … The last thing of his I read was Countercurrent from Plasma in the middle of the 1980s. To my knowledge, he hasn’t published anything for more than ten years … Total oblivion. The guy who cranked out that article today didn’t even know who he was writing about …

  —Give him a call so he can print a correct …

  —I have better things to do in life than to call out journalists!

  * The term ratonnade, deriving from “raton” (rat), a racial slur, referred originally to acts of violence in France against people of North African descent during the years of the French-Algerian war (1954–1962). By extension, the term has been used since then to refer to other racially motivated acts of violence.

  * Pierre de Coubertin was the French founder of the International Olympic Committee.

  3

  THE BLACK LION’S MUSTACHE

  Gabriel Lecouvreur got to his car at the precise moment when the traffic warden for Place Léon Blum was tearing the ticket from its stub. She ignored the hand he held out to her, and, without a glance at her victim, tucked the slip of paper under the left wiper blade as procedure required. During the vacation month of August, the streets were beset by repairs that necessitated endless detours, allowing statisticians to observe that summer car travel by Parisians was trending toward the annual norm. He crossed the Seine on the Austerlitz bridge and parked in the shade of the tracks of the elevated metro. One of two white-shirted men in the sentry booth cast him an indifferent glance as he crossed the median.

  Six months earlier, when Gabriel had been investigating abusive psychiatric internments, the president of a human-rights organization—who had himself suffered the rigors of a prolonged sojourn between padded walls—dragged him to every hospital in Paris and its vicinity to show him the secret equipment used by state-employed psychiatrists. This self-proclaimed President of the Falsely Diagnosed harbored a pronounced taste for the clandestine. When they’d visited the Pitié-Salpêtrière, he’d asked to meet Gabriel in an infamous parking lot at Port Austerlitz. Gabriel had to knock four times—long, long, short, short—on the side of the electrician’s van that served as the man’s cover, and await verification before the door slid open. He folded himself in two to enter the vehicle. The president traded his mechanic’s overalls for jeans and a sweater. He asked the Octopus to wait, then crouched before a mirror hanging from a strap to fit a jet-black wig on his bald head. After the approximate application of a mustache to match the hair, using his right index finger and a tin of Black Lion shoe polish, the character transformation was complete. From his booth, the sentry of the Salpêtrière had been watching them approach from far away. The mocking smile on his lips blossomed into outright mirth when, as the men passed through the gate, one of the gusts of wind typical to the area caused the president’s rug to rotate a quarter-turn. His attempt to reposition his synthetic mane led only to disaster: the sleeve of his pullover, which was too big for him, brushed against his nose and jaw, marring the face of the Defender of Lunatics with black streaks. Gabriel was about to turn back, but his guide, not realizing that his wig was on backwards and his mustache had procreated, shot him an encouraging wink to signify that he had the situation under control.

  Vaguely ashamed, Gabriel Lecouvreur now lowered his head while passing the sentry booth for the second time in his existence. He made a beeline for the main entrance while one of the guards was busy answering the phone. He admired the shapeliness of a West Indian woman who was updating a schedule that hung on the wall, lingering for a while on the curve of her waist, then decided to cough to attract her attention.

  —Can you tell me which unit André Sloga is in? He’s a relative … He was admitted during the night, after an attack …

  Her lacquered nails squeaked against the glossy paper of the patient log, and the sharp point of her index finger stopped next to a name.

  —He’s still in Emergency, in ICU … I’m sorry, but visitors are strictly forbidden.

  Gabriel made as if to leave, then turned back around.

  —I came up from the south just to see him. Maybe I can find out something from the doc … Do you know who’s on his case?

  The young woman shrugged, then glanced back at the register.

  —Professor Lehmann is taking care of him. You’re welcome to try, but I’d be shocked
if he agreed to tell you anything whatsoever!

  Gabriel was again turned away when he approached the ICU staff to ask for news about Sloga’s condition. He waited for a while, pacing the hundred feet of the central corridor, peering at anyone who came or went, his eyes peeled for a crack in the system. Finally he’d had enough, and then, as he was traversing the wings of the Pitié on his way to the exit, he came across a nurse busily picking up books that had fallen from a cart whose shelves, intended for trays of food, had been stocked with reading material instead. He stooped to glean a few copies of Que sais-je?—a booklet for the Assimil method of learning English—and two mismatched volumes of Jalna, and offered them to the young woman.

  —I wasn’t aware that hospitals had added reading to their list of treatments …

  She rose and tugged at the bottom of her smock to cover her knees.

  —There are lots of sick people who can’t stand television anymore, who find it mind-numbing, and ask for things to read instead. I’m in charge of the library …

  Gabriel collected the last paperbacks scattered in the corridor. Then he, too, stood up.

  —It’s curious …

  After a weighty silence, she took the bait.

  —What’s curious?

  —Oh! Nothing … I just learned that there’s a writer on the verge of death, two steps from here … And to see all these books on the ground … It’s just strange, the coincidence …

  The librarian’s face lit up.

  —You mean André Sloga? Do you know André Sloga?

  —Not personally; I know him through his writing … Just yesterday I was rereading The Innocents … A masterpiece. I would very much like to have met him, but your colleagues aren’t letting anyone near him.

  She pushed her cart over to a small circular room set up as a cafeteria and sat down on a chair.

  —There’s no point, you would only see a swollen face with tubes in its nose and mouth … I’ve read all of his books, passionately; it’s unbearable to see someone who has moved you so much in a condition like that … I was a nurse before I was a librarian, and believe me, I’m used to worse sights … But with this, it was like the first time …

  —He’s badly banged up?

  She swayed her head back and forth, lost in her thoughts.

  —Yes … he’s a mess. You wonder how he managed to survive …

  This was the trademark of professional thugs, Gabriel thought, the final stroke of intimidation: to leave the target on the verge of death, one foot in, one foot out.

  —Do they know what happened?

  —Not really … From what I’ve been told, one of his neighbors discovered him slumped in the stairway to the parking lot in his building, around one in the morning. Some cops from Boulevard de l’Hôpital brought him to us. They determined that André Sloga had just returned from vacation, and that he was attacked by a group of thieves who stole his luggage … It’s true that he lives in a pretty sketchy neighborhood …

  —In the paper, they said Rue Jeanne d’Arc … That street’s been cleaned up for several years now, it’s almost become residential, and with the new library …

  He gathered from her pout and the way she wrinkled her nose that she did not share his point of view on the improved standing of this pocket of the 13th Arrondissement.

  —Do you know if he can speak?

  —I watched him for two hours, early this morning … He experienced sudden bouts of terror, like anyone who comes in like that … He yelled …

  —Were you able to understand any of it?

  —No. Actually, he didn’t yell, he didn’t have the strength … He murmured, but you could see that he was trying to yell. Then he calmed down and started to speak.

  —What exactly did he say?

  —Nothing. Disconnected words with no meaning …

  Gabriel leaned toward her.

  —What words? It’s important … Try to remember, please.

  She closed her eyes for a few moments.

  —He said “loudspeaker” several times, yes, that’s it … “the loudspeaker on the square …” That came back every ten minutes or so … He also repeated “the bank, the bank,” and once, just once, he said a name …

  Gabriel placed his hand over the young woman’s.

  —What name?

  She looked at him square in the face.

  —“Max.”

  4

  THE REFRIGERATOR ARTISTS

  “Max, the bank, the loudspeaker on the square …” Gabriel left the Pitié-Salpêtrière, his head spinning like an old scratched record with the words the writer had spoken on his sickbed. “Max, the bank, the loudspeaker on the square.” He got into his car and sat there for a moment, motionless, his elbows resting on the steering wheel, as he tried to figure out the magic combination that would be the key to the puzzle. The bank of Max beneath the loudspeaker on the square. A max of banks for the crowd-speakers on the square. The proud speaker of Max’s square. Speak loudly, Max, on the banks of the square … The roar of a train on the elevated tracks snapped him out of his reverie. He started the car and took off toward Rue Jeanne d’Arc, which he followed almost as far as Tolbiac. Before getting out, he took the precaution of shoving two pieces of licorice chewing gum that had been softening on his dashboard into his mouth and removing about twenty centimeters from a spool of orange mending thread.

  The artists who’d been squatting in the neighborhood had pasted colorful hand-painted posters to walls and posts, and taped them to the windows of sympathetic shopkeepers. If you came close enough and spent a little time, it was possible to decipher the tormented calligraphy of the words, and to understand that they were protesting the imminent expulsion of a hundred painters, sculptors, and actors from the abandoned refrigeration warehouses that overlooked the train tracks, just steps from the Seine.

  Gabriel walked up the street and found the name “André Sloga” among the labels on the intercom of the corner building. He knew the writer lived like a lone wolf, that he made no secret of a misogyny fueled by the failure of three marriages, but he pressed the button anyway to make sure the apartment was empty. He noted that by day, it was possible to enter the building’s foyer by buzzing yourself in. On the other hand, a reinforced door prevented access to the rest of the building.

  From the depths of his pocket, Gabriel dug out his “key to the city,” a gift from the chief of the fire station on Rue de la Pompe. The master key could be used with any locking system, from the poorly jury-rigged to the most sophisticated, in all of Paris and the nearby suburbs. The twelve steel pins clicked in beautiful unison, like a regiment of ass-kissers who’ve stumbled upon a field marshal, and he found himself in a long, grey corridor with three rows of mailboxes along its right-hand wall.

  André Sloga used two boxes: the first, fairly small, for letters, and another for bulkier pieces. Gabriel removed the advertisements that had also managed to cross the electronic barrier, and noticed that a dozen letters lay on the bottom of the first metal box. He checked to see that no one was coming from either direction, then unfurled the orange thread to its end, to which he attached the sticky brown mass he’d been kneading in his mouth for the last five minutes. He slid the gum into the box, jerking it this way and that in a fishing motion, then setting it down on top of the paper. He was careful to remoisten the sugary wad after each capture, and it took him less than a minute to remove all of the mail addressed to the writer. Seven notices concerning the finer points of domestic survival that end up draining the lifeblood from us all: Public Treasury, telephone, electricity, insurance. He sent them back into their void and kept only the four envelopes with no business name or return address. Then he attacked the box for parcels. The orange thread and licorice chewing gum had reached the limits of their combined powers. But the thin sheet-metal door bent beneath the pressure of his hands, and with the tip of his middle finger he was able to retrieve the single package, as thick as a pack of cigarettes, that lay at the bottom. T
he metal snapped back in place as soon as he let go. He tucked the letters and package under his belt and was about to leave the building when the clicking of the entrance door’s steel pins resounded in the corridor. He grabbed a doorknob and found himself facing the trash chute. He didn’t have the luxury of trying to find the stairwell a second time; the ceiling light had already caught his yellowing reflection on the polished skull of Inspector Vergeat. The pig let out a prolonged squeal. That was how he laughed.

  —Lecouvreur! Unbelievable. Seriously, you’re the last person I expected to run into here, but in fact, you’re right at home.

  —Am I? How do you mean?

  —Yes, you’re at home wherever it stinks of shit!

  Vergeat had approached the battery of mailboxes and seemed reassured to find André Sloga’s full.

  He moved in a curious manner, repeatedly tugging at the creases in his pants, stroking his coat pockets, verifying at least thirty times the efficacious presence of the buttons on his shirt, the solidity of his belt buckle, the contents of his pocket. After each of their encounters, Gabriel vowed to describe Vergeat’s behavior to an alcoholic psychiatrist who hung out at the Pied de Porc à la Sainte-Scolasse, but had never been able to follow up, as the shrink always seemed to have reached the limits of his ability to comprehend anything by the time the Octopus thought to bring it up. In reality, he didn’t want to know too much about the calcified inner workings of the policeman; he wanted to keep the fight fair, without leaning on science. It wasn’t Vergeat himself who was the enemy, but the cop inside the man.

  —So, explain … What the fuck are you doing here?

  Gabriel lifted a finger toward the floors above.

  —Nothing. I came to visit my aging aunt …

  The inspector shoved his hands into his pants pockets and massaged his thighs through the fabric.

  —I didn’t know this André Sloga was a faggot!

  —I have no idea who you’re talking about … Friend of yours? Someone who lives here?