—What mischief are you up to now?
Pedro waved the flame of his lighter in front of the uneven stub of his Boyard Maïs and took a long puff. He could pride himself on being the last person in the world to smoke this brand of cigarette. When, several years earlier, the Surgeon General had decided to halt the fabrication of the most deadly of the human-lung-seeking missiles, Pedro had hastened to order a pallet full, which he stored in a damp and airless room near the propeller head. By his calculations, at a rate of twelve a day, he had enough to last him until his seventieth birthday, in the year 2000. He placed a blank sheet atop the disorderly stack of papers on the table.
—Just some BS so I don’t lose my touch …
—If it’s BS, why are you hiding it? Don’t you trust me anymore?
Pedro slapped him lightly on the back.
—This isn’t true for everything, but in this particular case, the less you know the better … What brings you here?
Gabriel explained what had happened to Sloga and why, after his time with the coypus of Poitiers, he was losing faith in his original hypothesis, seductive as it was, about vengeance over a literary indiscretion. Now he believed the attack on the writer might be related to his research into the revival of an openly fascist movement among Parisian intellectuals.
—I took the time to read and reread the veritable dictionary of putrid ideas that André Sloga had assembled from more than a hundred citations. It’s revolting. He drew up charts in order to classify them according to their principal themes. Anti-Semitism and revisionism came first, followed close behind by a visceral hatred of social democracy, then by the denunciation of Satanic America, and finally, the celebration of nationalism in all its forms. The texts were taken from about thirty different publications. Continental Furor and the Shock of the Month, monthlies catering to intellectuals in the National Front, provided the majority of the references, but others were drawn from the National Weekly, the Minute, Elements, Krisis, Humanity, the Social War, the People’s Struggle, Revolution, and a privately circulated bulletin of the Federation of Anarchists.
Pedro registered what he was being told. He sat down in an armchair that resembled Sylvia Krystel’s in Emmanuelle, with the slight difference that this one was positioned beneath a portrait of Puig Antich, one of the last of Franco’s victims. He read calmly for an hour, through his half-moon glasses, then put down the dozen or so sheets of paper with a disgusted frown. Gabriel sat down across from him.
—What do you think?
—Not much … I get the sense that history is repeating itself, and that these cretins are serving stale dishes from the 1930s! That thing about Fabius, for example, that your friend found in the Minute, the Jewish baby who thinks only of dollars, that’s vintage Léon Daudet … The guy who wrote that isn’t treading any new ground, I’m sure he stole “deadened maw, gelatinous jay” directly from old pamphlets by that Nazi piece of crap!
—What I like about you is that you don’t bother with niceties, or subtle turns of phrase …
Pedro’s fist slammed down on the table, making his forger’s tools jump.
—Because you think the way to hunt a hyena is with a flute! I give as much of a shit about political correctness as I do about being arrested! No mercy for the Krauts … They must be crushed to the last. And not in the name of truth or reason! It’s the fundamental, ancient instinct to survive. They proved what they’re capable of, and if we let them sit at the table, they won’t settle for just one seat.
Gabriel smiled as he listened to the diatribe.
—Seems like that did you good! You look revived. I’ve known for a long time what your convictions are, Pedro, but right now what I need is an objective, clear opinion about this steaming pile of manure.
Pedro relit his Boyard.
—If you hadn’t forgotten how to be a student, you’d notice that I’ve already responded in part … Did I or did I not tell you that they’re just serving cold dishes from the ’30s?
Gabriel knitted his brow.
—Yes. And?
—And how the hell does this happen? We teach kids the color of the uniforms Francois I’s soldiers wore when they raided Marignan in 1515, but they are incapable of learning what happened just thirty years before they were born! What really alarms me in this collage of quotations is the conflation of ideas from right-wing and communist presses. You know me well enough to know that I puke on all manner of commies, whether they’re Stalinists, Trotskyites, Marxists, Leninists, Carilloists, Maoists, Guevaroists, or Jivaroists! And yet, Kronstadt, Makhno, and the Catalogne won’t let me forget that we’re all fuel for the fascists’ fire … Because we’re Jewish, Arab, black, anarchist, handicapped, queer, or all of the above, like you!
—I was waiting for that, you couldn’t resist …
—It might be a cheap shot, but it gives me joy … Seriously, there’s nothing more dangerous than an alliance between the fascists and the commies … It’s like nitrite and glycerine. In two separate bottles you’ve got nothing to fear, but if you mix them, you’ll blow your head off! The Number Two in the French Communist Party, Jacques Doriot, deputy mayor of Saint-Denis, crossed over at the end of the 1930s, but luckily his party threw him out. He died wearing an S.S. uniform. Imagine the scene if he’d gotten away with it, if he’d taken down Thorez … It was a close call …
Gabriel picked up an awl and started cleaning his fingernails.
—We aren’t at that point yet …
Pedro took the tool from him.
—Go tell that to the flock in Toulon, Orange, Marignane, Dreux, Clichy-sous-Bois … Le Pen’s horde has become the number one labor party in France! It’s all but taken the lead even in Drancy, the city where an old Socialist, Laval, deported seventy thousand Jews in a raid carried out by our beloved forces from the Order! I shit upon every mute Drancean with his memory up his ass!
Pedro rose suddenly, causing the wicker to creak, and went over to the library that had been built into what was formerly the bargeman’s sleeping alcove.
—Here, I know exactly what all this shit you’ve shown me has made me think of! It must be in the section for … Hold on … You can judge for yourself …
His hand caressed the edges of a row of books and pamphlets. He delicately extracted a booklet with a brown cover, whose yellowed pages were separating from the spine, and blew on it to disperse the dust. Gabriel was only able to read the title, Black Front, before Pedro set it on the table and opened to the flyleaf, which bore an epigraph from Adolf Hitler:
“There are more things that link us to communism than things that separate us. There is, above all, the revolutionary spirit. The social democrat and the bourgeois unionist will never become National Socialists, but the communist will.”
Gabriel read the text several times.
—For fuck’s sake. He’s never been one of my favorite authors, far from it, but I didn’t suspect he was capable of such reflection … People talk about him like he was a born imbecile.
Pedro flipped through the little book, and entire passages returned to him from memory. It was enough to replace the 1930s with the 1990s to see how much the strategy of an alliance between red and brown persisted. He looked at Gabriel.
—So many things have been swept under the carpet … Have you heard about the Strasser brothers, the left-wing Nazis?
—No, and even the concept of a left-wing Nazi is new to me, I must admit!
—Well, there are two brothers, Otto and Gregor, who, in around 1925, start to establish the Nazi party in northern Germany, in the provinces of Prussia, Saxony, Rhineland, and Hanover … These aren’t little guys … Their right-hand man is a guy called Goebbels. Gregor Strasser quickly becomes Number Two in the Nazi party, and the leader of Hitler’s deputies in the Reichstag. He tries to set up an anti-capitalist program: confiscation of property from the old reigning families, nationalization of heavy industry and of the banks, expropriation of holdings. He allies himself with the red unions,
the tramways and metalworkers, and even threatens Hitler with exclusion … In 1934, after his party comes into power, he attempts a rapprochement with the three million men of Ernst Röhm’s assault division … His former right-hand man, who has gone back to Hitler’s side, has them all executed in June of that year, during the Night of the Long Knives. Otto Strasser escapes, with the killers in pursuit. He hides away in Austria, in Chechnya, in Canada. He made a comeback in Berlin in the early 1970s, creating a new national Bolshevik party, the German Social Union. But he arrived too early: it was a flop. Today, he’d have a good chance of succeeding.
Pedro held out the pamphlet to Gabriel.
—Shall I leave it with you?
—Thanks, I’ll read it tonight while watching Where Are They Now?
—I don’t see the connection …
—Neither do I!
15
THE RUSSIAN POET WHO LOVES SERBIAN SHRINKS
The storm broke just as Gabriel passed the prow of the barge, on which you could still read the name Carmela. He pushed open the makeshift door to Pedro’s vegetable garden. The Seine instantly turned the same shade of grey as the department-store warehouses that lined the horizon. The raindrops, like those he’d wiped away on his return from Bonvix, burst on the hard earth, and flashes of lightning split the dark sky into pieces above the Île-Saint-Denis. Gabriel pulled his jacket up over his head and ran all the way to the Peugeot, which was parked in front of the closed shutters of the Guinguette des Chantiers. In the notebook that sat on top of the glove box, he’d written down the addresses, telephone and fax numbers of all the publishers in André Sloga’s inventory. He noticed that one of the most cited papers, Continental Furor, had long shared a Gennevilliers address with the offices of Éditions Gaston Lémoine. He crossed both branches of the river and followed its meanderings to the square surrounding the city hall, which had been afflicted with a polychromatic fountain by one of the numerous lumpish students of Fernand Léger.
Éditions Lémoine’s headquarters were tucked away in an industrial zone occupying the wastelands that bordered the A86. Pallets of printed matter cinched with plastic bands waited in the parking lot to be loaded into a semi. Gabriel leaned over the freshly inked sheets. A four-color cover of The History of the Militia, printed eight to the sheet, awaited transportation to the bindery. The illustration referenced the poster from the young fascist movement’s first congress: a fist holding a sword, raised up against a background of fields and factories and a red and black sky. He was astonished to notice that the group’s logo was virtually identical to the red ribbon of the anti-AIDS campaigns. He had begun to read the text on the back cover when a voice made him jump.
—Are you looking for something?
He turned to face a paunchy skinhead of about thirty, decked out in cargo pants, camo shirt, and khaki Doc Martens. His hands were stained with ink. Gabriel pointed to the warehouse.
—Is the office in there?
—No, these are the studios … You have to go around …
Before moving away, the detective put his hand on the pile of book covers.
—Can’t wait for this to be out in the stores! They fill our heads with so much junk, we’re in danger of forgetting to learn from their example …
A toothy smile spread across the skinhead’s pudgy face.
At first sight, the lobby of the Éditions Gaston Lémoine resembled the lobby of any business: impersonal decoration, all-purpose furnishings, insufficient lighting, the scent of photocopies. If, while reclining in one of the faux-leather armchairs, you felt the urge to read one of the magazines piled up on a Chinoiserie side table, you’d look in vain for the usual fare: Paris-Match, Marie-Claire, or the day’s Le Figaro. On the other hand, if you were a lover of the exploits of various army corps—German, Japanese, Croatian, or Romanian, between 1939 and 1944—you’d be in heaven. It was clear to Gabriel that the clients of this establishment all belonged to the latter category. He flipped through a copy of New Solidarity, the main media outlet of the European Workers’ Party, in which one of the directors of Éditions Gaston Lémoine—a certain Victor Brignard—made clear in a long interview that he was a member of that small, anti-Semitic group. He looked up. The receptionist had been trying for some time to replace the paper roll in the fax machine by putting it in backwards. Gabriel went behind the desk to assist her. The machine blinked in satisfaction.
—Thank you, I thought I’d never manage. Do you have an appointment?
—No, but I would like to see Monsieur Gaston Lémoine …
—I’m afraid that will be difficult to arrange: he’s been dead for half a century … If you tell me what brings you here, I may be able to direct you …
Gabriel lowered his voice.
—It’s rather confidential …
Her expression was as hypocritical as that of a mother leading her child to the dentist’s chair.
—I assure you, it’s no accident that I’m sitting at this desk … I work closely with the director, Monsieur Brignard. Every file passes through my hands … I know everything that goes on here.
Gabriel pretended to gather his courage.
—All right … After the recent death of my father, I inherited a lot of family papers. Photo albums, collections of postcards, packets of letters …
He noticed that she was showing signs of impatience.
—There were also a lot of documents from the period of the Occupation … Files that had been examined by my grandfather, notebooks filled with intelligence never before seen … All I’ve done so far is try to put them in some kind of order, but I think there is enough material to make an explosive book …
He now had the full attention of Brignard’s deputy.
—What kinds of files, what kinds of intelligence? Relating to what region?
—My grandfather was the archivist of the Rhône prefecture, in Lyon, and from what I’ve been able to understand, he kept copies of all the internal documents concerning the Militia and the Franc-Garde …
She asked him to follow her to the second floor and handed him off to a short man with beady eyes who introduced himself as the literary director of Éditions Gaston Lémoine. Gabriel continued to play the role of the dutiful grandson carrying out a family obligation. He promised to return the next day with some samples from the Lyon documents. Before letting him leave, the beady-eyed man asked how he’d become aware of his enterprise and the ideological war it was waging.
—I subscribed to Continental Furor for many years, and I was always aware that it was printed here …
Reassured, and eager to cement his hold on the heir, the beady-eyed man turned confessional.
—Our role wasn’t limited to that …
—It’s too bad it’s disappeared …
—Yes. We owned nearly fifty percent of the paper. Forty-eight percent, to be precise. Our director, Victor Brignard, had even taken over its editorship for several years … We could have done great things if the founder of the Continental Furor, Kevin Kervan, hadn’t suddenly gone mad, blinded himself … It never pays to cut corners …
The beady-eyed man left him in the second-floor hallway, near the stairway. Gabriel descended it slowly, with one eye on the publications exhibited in small, glassed-in nooks. It wasn’t pornography, but it was thoroughly obscene: Hitlerian, Mussolinian, Pétainian. Nothing here belonged in the hands of citizens between the ages of seven and seventy-seven. He froze at the top of the last flight of stairs when he heard the receptionist whispering into the telephone.
—You ask Roger to fill in for you. No … Listen, Francis, you’ll do what I say, ok? We need to find out more about this guy. If there’s no other way, bring him to your meeting … The boss wants to know what to expect from these archives … We can’t let this pass us by … Understood? Don’t slip up. Find a way.
Gabriel waited for a long moment on the landing before descending briskly, with a casual air. The receptionist flashed him a broad smile that lasted through hi
s “See you tomorrow.” The skinhead was in the parking lot, laboring over an all-terrain motorcycle that was apparently refusing to start. He lowered the kickstand and walked over to Gabriel, who was opening the door to the Peugeot.
Excuse me, but my bike won’t start … Are you driving to Paris?
—Yes …
—Do you think you might be able to drop me off at the Porte d’Asnières? It’s on the way …
In order to sit down, he had to move André Sloga’s papers to the backseat. Two sheets slipped out. While gathering them from the floor, the skinhead caught a few choice phrases from the Continental Furor concerning Bernard-Henri Lévy, which bolstered his trust in his accidental chauffeur:
Bernard-Henri Lévy, the almost-philosopher who is not a writer, in a fat book published by Grasset …
Too much rigor annoys B.H.L., who has seen nothing, written nothing, made nothing, except cash, and always with the help of others …
B.H.L., a sad character whom I will finish off one day with a Moulinex kitchen knife …
To see Lévy’s name paired with the words “fat” and “cash” and the avowal of a murderous impulse: he was in familiar territory. The car crossed over the ring road and wove through the housing projects. Beyond small talk, the skinhead printer had a hard time formulating questions, keeping up a conversation. Rhetoric was not his strong point. Gabriel did not push him, and they continued on in silence. He turned toward him after stopping at a red light, a hundred meters from the corner of Boulevard Berthier.
Nazis in the Metro Page 8
