A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “When?”

  “During the Spanish Civil War, close to Madrid.”

  Three women, who sat down right in front of them, began reciting the rosary very quietly. It was impossible to carry on the conversation.

  Charlot stood up for the last time. Vango couldn’t let him go. He had one final question to put to him.

  “Well, I shall pray for your friend,” he called out in a clear voice.

  “Thank you.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Paul B. H.”

  Charlot headed off.

  Vango put his head in his hands. He was imagining the burning plane spiraling over the forest in France. He was thinking of Paul. He tried to let himself be transported by the devotional chanting of the women in front. But Ethel’s eyes haunted him. Would she be able to survive this?

  Paris, La Belle Étoile restaurant, December 27, 1942

  “It’s not what’s supposed to happen,” complained Bartholomew as he folded his duster. “You can’t introduce a new character in the final chapters.”

  “Why not?” the restaurant owner called out from the other end of the dining room. “I could even introduce two of them if I liked!”

  “I think it shows a lack of respect.”

  “I don’t give a stuff about respect, Bartholomew. Clean that window and let me get on with my work.”

  Casimir Fermini resumed his furious bashing on his typewriter. He was approaching the end of his first novel. Bartholomew and all the restaurant staff had read each page as it was written. They offered opinions and suggested changes. They were already convinced that their boss would become a luminary writer elected to the French Academy.

  Fermini was working at the back of his restaurant, on a table with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. From time to time he looked up and watched Bartholomew cleaning the window across which the words LA BELLE ÉTOILE appeared in an arc. Viewed from the inside, the golden looping letters were back to front, a sort of negative image written in an oriental script.

  Casimir Fermini had inherited the establishment on the death of his aunt in 1929. She had raised the young Casimir. Until the outbreak of the First World War, she and her husband had run a small but highly reputable café-restaurant on the premises, which didn’t yet bear the name of La Belle Étoile. Uncle Fermini was an impressive cook. Business was good. They even had ten tables outside in summer, a menu with four main courses to choose from, and, for years, a very pretty waitress who was a sign of the restaurant’s prosperity and who produced wonders as a chef’s assistant.

  In 1914, at the first sound of cannon fire, Monsieur Fermini died. Panic-stricken, his wife, who had never touched a saucepan, closed the kitchen and nailed up the door. Fifteen years followed in which the word restaurant was banned on-site. The establishment turned into a simple café. There were tears when the pretty waitress was sent away; the menus were withdrawn, and the tables removed from the pavement. Young Casimir spent those years serving glasses of fortified wine and liqueurs. On his aunt’s death, the first thing he did was to reinstate the word restaurant above the window. But, to begin with, he only served omelets.

  Shortly before the war, the food took off without warning. Omelets went by the wayside, with or without bacon, and customers lined up on the sidewalk for a table to become available. It was now called La Belle Étoile. And since this odd-shaped lane in the Temple district had very little passing traffic, Fermini set up tables in the middle of the street. When a car was heard approaching, everyone stood up and pushed their chairs to the side, complaining. The police closed their eyes in exchange for a taste of olives or wild asparagus.

  The following year, weary of bringing the tables in with every downpour, Fermini also rented the premises opposite. And so the restaurant was spread over two buildings. A large dining room was opened on the other side of the street, up on the second floor. The kitchen also moved, to the ground floor opposite. There were fifty covers in total, with the historical dining room remaining at number eleven. Six waiters spent their lives crossing back and forth bearing trays.

  The war and the Occupation were a new challenge for the establishment. To begin with, Casimir Fermini was faced with the temptation of contraband. For a price, you could get any product you liked, even though the city was hit by famine. Trafficking made a mockery of ration tickets. Foie gras and plump chickens were easy enough to find. But, from the autumn of 1940, La Belle Étoile flaunted itself as one of the rare eateries that rejected the black market outright. The list of dishes was divided by five and the length of the line doubled. On Saturdays, it extended as far as the Carreau du Temple market.

  These days, there was only one menu at the restaurant, with starring roles for rutabagas, Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, and dozens of herbs and wild leaves, which the waiters set off with the chef to pick in the countryside by the gates of Paris before daybreak. They returned on bicycles laden with crates of greenery and seeds, like a florist’s wheelbarrow. Back in the kitchen, miracles took place. The Jerusalem artichokes were transformed beyond all recognition, as were the dandelions.

  The restaurant afforded itself only one luxury. A luxury that arrived by horse and cart twice a week. A luxury that was stored in a vat and closed with a padlock. Butter.

  A farm in Normandy had three dedicated cows whose job it was to provide this butter, and Casimir Fermini himself, on the request of his chef, took the train in order to pay a surprise visit and inspect the eating habits of these three cows. They lived in a peaceful valley with grass above their shoulders. They drank from a pond of clear water that was barely interrupted by frogs. They had no idea there was a war on. In their left ears, a silver ring engraved with LA BELLE ÉTOILE served as a reminder of their noble and exclusive calling.

  Casimir may have been the restaurant owner, but he knew what he owed his chef for making La Belle Étoile’s success possible. And so he respected the chef’s whims. For some time now, however, the small matter of butter had served as an excuse for the German authorities to poke their noses into the kitchen.

  The Nazi officers sniffed out everything that was fine and good in Paris. They always had perfect taste. And they wasted no time in tracking down this extraordinary eatery, far from the areas of Paris they were accustomed to frequenting. But the occupying army received no special treatment at La Belle Étoile.

  The restaurant was always full. When a table became free, customers would rush in from all sides to stake their claim before the overdisciplined soldiers had a chance to sit down. In the summer, Fermini paid for two musicians to play in the street, for the enjoyment of those waiting for a table as well as his customers. Each time a green uniform appeared at the end of the street, the musicians would play a song from before the war that proclaimed: “Everything passes in life, everything passes with time. . . .”

  The German military command had paid a visit to the kitchens, on the hunt for rationed products. The kommandantur had been surprised to find cheap boxes of root tubers, onions, garlic, two chickens barely big enough to make enough stock for the entire week, and bunches of wasteland plants soaking in bowls.

  But at the back of the kitchen they found the butter.

  To be strictly accurate, there were sufficient quantities to butter everyone’s toast in the Department of the Seine. Casimir described his cows lovingly. But he realized, when faced with the stiffness of the feldkommandant, that he would have to make some kind of concession if he didn’t want his restaurant to be shut down for good.

  Casimir agreed to provide the large dining room on the second floor for the New Year’s Eve party. In exchange, he would be left in peace for another year. This gave rise to arguments with his chef, but the smell of butter melting on the stove and the sound of spinach sweating in a frying pan got the better of both the restaurant owner and his chef. There was a war on. People could do without almost anything. Except butter.

  Sitting behind his typewriter, Casimir asked Bartholomew for a café crème. The
waiter put down his duster and disappeared briefly before returning with a cup on a tray. Because of the restrictions, there wasn’t any real coffee, but the barley was roasted in-house and ground with three grains of pepper. The result was, if anything, superior to the coffee of old.

  “Tell me, Bartholomew, how would you describe the ear of a young lady?”

  “The ear?”

  “At the end, you see, Marcel sits Rosalinde on his knees . . .”

  He scrolled the paper in his typewriter back up in order to read the last few sentences. In his book, he had given himself the name of Marcel. He was telling the story of his restaurant as he had dreamed it.

  “Listen: ‘Sitting in the kitchen, Marcel had her chignon in one eye. But with the other eye, he had a good view of the ear of his fiancée, which was like a . . .’ That’s the bit I’m not too sure about. Like a . . .”

  “A flag?”

  Casimir Fermini stared at his employee.

  “Genius. Like a flag.”

  “The idea just came to me,” Bartholomew admitted modestly.

  “Now, in that case, I should introduce some wind a bit earlier; it’ll read more powerfully that way. ‘Sitting in the kitchen, with the window open, Marcel had her chignon in one eye. The wind was blowing forcefully. But with the other eye, he had a good view of the ear of his fiancée, which was like a flag.’ Yes, that’s good. But I can do better.”

  He hunched over his keyboard. A man knocked at the door.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Bartholomew, who was already picturing his own name under the boss’s name on the title page of the book.

  Outside, the man squashed his nose against the glass and peered in.

  Bartholomew waved frantically.

  “Look at that. He’s going to make a mess of my window!”

  The waiter rushed over to the door and stuck his head outside.

  “We’re closed until midday.”

  “It’s about a reservation.”

  “We don’t take reservations here, monsieur.”

  The man spoke with a foreign accent.

  “I’ve come from a long way away; I’m off to explore the countryside. I won’t be back until the evening of the thirty-first of December. I’m worried the restaurant might be full.”

  “The restaurant is always full.”

  Casimir Fermini stood up and went over to join them.

  “Bartholomew, kindly treat this gentleman with due respect.”

  The gentleman in question gave an embarrassed smile.

  “Dear friend, you are very lucky. I’ve never taken a reservation before. Never, I swear on the memory of my aunt Régine. But today, I’m going to do so for the first time, because less than one minute ago I completed my life’s work: my first book.”

  “Congratulations,” said the customer, who was visibly touched.

  Bartholomew also seemed rather emotional. Casimir Fermini slid his right hand inside his suspenders, to the side. He was looking forward to stroking the ceremonial sword he would receive upon his investiture as a member of the French Academy.

  “The Saucepans of Eternity,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s the title.”

  “Bravo,” said Bartholomew.

  The customer was blushing. He had always admired French culture, its fashion, its literature, and its cuisine. And now here he was in Paris at last!

  They shook hands.

  “Follow Bartholomew; he’ll write your name on the slate.”

  “My name is Costa.”

  “You can have the little table at the back, where I work.”

  “That would be an honor for me.”

  “You’ll be very comfortable there, Monsieur Costa. There’s going to be a fancy-dress party in the dining rooms opposite. I hope they won’t make too much noise.”

  The waiter escorted the customer to the door, then retraced his steps.

  “A fancy-dress party?” whispered Bartholomew.

  “It’s better for the restaurant’s reputation. We’ll say they’re wearing fancy dress.”

  Unconvinced, Bartholomew headed off. Casimir Fermini pulled the page out of the typewriter. And, very softly, he read the last lines: “ ‘Sitting in the kitchen, with the window open, Marcel had her chignon in his eye. The wind was blowing forcefully. But with the other eye, he had a good view of the ear of his fiancée, which was billowing like a flag. And the flapping noise joined with that of his own heart.’ ”

  Lower down, the rest of the page would remain blank. He had finished his book.

  Everland, Scotland, at the same time, December 27, 1942

  Mary could finally hear Ethel’s car in the distance, the sound of its engine muffled by the thick mist.

  She had been waiting anxiously since Christmas Eve. The Royal Air Force officers had telephoned the castle when they were looking for Ethel. They had informed Mary of Paul’s disappearance. She had managed to stay calm until they had hung up, at which point she had let out a long howl as she ran down the corridor.

  That night, Mary went outside barefoot. Wearing a shawl that trailed behind her in the grass, she made her way over to a tree, to the grave of Ethel’s and Paul’s parents. Mary railed against them with all her might. She hurled everything she could find: sticks and frozen clods of earth. She said horrible things to them. They had abandoned their children and now they were going to reclaim them one by one. Then, weeping, she picked up her shawl and reinstated the bunch of flowers she had knocked over, before turning her back on them.

  When she heard Ethel’s Railton, more than twenty-four hours later, she was asleep on a chair in the entrance hall. Mary headed out onto the steps. The car pulled up in front of her. Ethel switched off the engine but remained sitting behind the steering wheel. She stared at Mary, who nodded, to indicate that she had heard the news.

  Ethel’s face was unrecognizable. It was ten o’clock in the morning but still fairly dark. She started up the engine again and drove off, not reappearing until the evening. All the staff stood in a line in the entrance hall. No sooner had Ethel kissed Mary than she shut herself in her parents’ room. The housekeeper opened the door in the middle of the night and scooped Ethel up off the sofa in front of the fire, which had gone out. She managed to carry the only surviving member of the B. H. family to her own bed.

  The next day, when Mary brought her a cup of tea, Ethel was gone.

  They searched for her all day. She had left her car behind. Peter the gardener and his son, Nicholas, combed the woods. Mary scoured the attics. That evening, when Nicholas returned to the castle, he had an announcement to make:

  “The plane . . .”

  “What plane?” asked Peter.

  Nobody knew that Ethel’s plane even existed.

  “The plane has disappeared.”

  Later that night Mary noticed, open on the bed where Ethel had slept, a book that Paul had brought back from India for his sister years earlier. She read a few lines. The chapter was entitled “Jatinga.” It was about some species of birds that, in a valley in Jatinga, northern India, hurl themselves against trees and cliffs during some seasons, in order to die. The author concluded with the words: “How great must be their despair.”

  Mary knelt against the bed and wept.

  Outside, the moon was rising. Lily the doe trotted between the box hedges, keeping an eye on the darkened castle. Everland resembled a tree struck by lightning, bereft of what had kept it alive, with only the mournful hooting of an owl behind its hollow bark.

  Paris, December 28, in the evening

  The wind and rain were lashing against the towers of Notre Dame. The Cat found no one below the bell, but the fire was still alight. She tried to dry off her clothes in front of the flames, turning slowly like someone on a spit. Then she heard the wooden staircase creak, and Simon the bell ringer appeared. He was carrying a bundle of sticks covered in feathers, so he must have been foraging for firewood from the old birds’ nests under the cathedra
l roofs.

  He saw the Cat and immediately tossed a few twigs onto the fire. Then he climbed up to retrieve an armful of fabric from the bottom of a suitcase. He had only met the Cat on one occasion, when she had shown up with Vango a little before Christmas.

  “These are my wife’s clothes. Put them on.”

  “No, thank you. I’m already drying out.”

  “I can go downstairs if you’re embarrassed.”

  “I’ll be fine. Where is he?”

  “He said he’d be back.”

  “Can I wait for him?”

  “You can.”

  Simon stoked the fire with some more nest remains.

  In Caesar’s shutter at the Palais-Royal, the Cat had just dropped off the parcel from London brought over by Charlot. She had seen the boss for the first time. He had come out onto the balcony.

  “Hello, Marie.”

  “Are you Caesar?”

  He held out some papers.

  “I believe these belong to you. Mouchet told me that you were interested in the Atlas family.”

  “I got the mail muddled up. Yours is in the shutter now. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry,” the man replied. “I’d have liked to have been able to do something for those people. But it’s too late.”

  Clearly, he had figured out the Atlases’ relationship to the Cat.

  She gave him the map that traced the descent of the English airplane that had been hit. And, from the balcony shutter, he picked up the details about the New Year’s Eve party at La Belle Étoile.

  He opened the packet in front of her and cast his eye over the guest list. When he had finished reading, she thought she saw him stagger for a moment.

  “Do you need me?” asked the Cat.

  “No. Good evening, Marie.”

  The Cat felt as if she’d been living a secret life since she was born. She was used to it. She had nothing to lose. But him? She wondered how such an elegant man experienced his double life. Caesar looked like an important Parisian, the kind she saw when she climbed the fronts of buildings in the chic districts. There were bound to be ten guests waiting for him downstairs, feasting on oysters. None of them knew who he was. He had wandered away from the dining room to read his messages. But in spite of his sandalwood eau de cologne and his double-breasted silk jacket, Caesar would be gunned down within the hour were he to be unmasked.