A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  And so thirty privileged guests remained in the restaurant with its shutters almost closed, which only heightened the diners’ delight: just as when a lid is put on the cooking pot. Less shouting could be heard coming from opposite now, just a few notes from the piano. The food traveled via the cellars, which ran underneath the street: a tunnel lined with bottles. Plates and aromas arrived in waves. The waiters kept emerging from a trapdoor just behind Ethel and Vango.

  Vango repeatedly checked the clock to stay in touch with reality. He had expected to be thrown out with the curfew, so he wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on the premises right up until the fateful hour. But this hadn’t proved to be the case, and now he was hoping to stay until the end. The suitcase was timed for midnight. He would be in the car, at the end of the street, when he heard the explosion.

  And then it would all be over.

  Ethel was staring at him intensely. For once, she allowed herself to be led by him.

  Vango knew that he was breaking the promise he had made to Zefiro, as well as the one he had made to himself: to renounce warfare and death. This place, which he was warming to, would be affected as well. But it was the dining room opposite that would be destroyed. He had checked each name on Grund’s list several times. Which of these criminals would anyone miss? If necessary, Vango would dig up Mazzetta and his donkey’s treasure, the fortune hidden in a cliff on his island, in order to rebuild these walls so they looked exactly the same.

  A small group next to the couple sipped at their herbal teas. Vango could detect a whiff of aniseed in the air. Tonight, the whole world was conspiring to throw him off balance.

  Slumped over the steering wheel, Simon was worried: the agreed time had long since passed. Paul was asleep behind him. Police officers walked past the car without seeing them. The bell-ringer-turned-driver was wondering whether he should get out.

  At eight minutes before midnight Vango stood up, as if getting to his feet after a dizzy spell.

  “We must leave.”

  Casimir Fermini rushed over to him.

  “Please, a final dish for the young lady.”

  “We can’t stay.”

  “One last dish, in the chef’s honor. And then I’ll grant you your freedom.”

  The patron clicked his fingers, and Bartholomew approached with a tiny plate beneath a copper bell. Vango glanced at the clock and sat down again.

  “This is our great specialty,” said Fermini. “Of course, we haven’t served it on the other side of the street. I still have my honor.”

  Hearing him speak this way, Vango felt ashamed of the damage he was about to inflict. Ethel was watching every flicker on his face.

  Fermini raised the bell. On a bed of melted butter lay eight little potatoes, no bigger than quail’s eggs and peeled so that they had eight facets, like diamonds.

  There was a first tiny explosion in Vango’s heart.

  “Your chef . . .” he said, with tears in his eyes.

  Fermini had placed the bell against his chest so as not to let the steam fall back onto the plate.

  “Is your chef a woman?” asked Vango.

  The patron stared at him.

  “Monsieur, you are the first person to guess that.”

  “She is a woman?”

  It was five to midnight. The patron lowered his voice, as if he were talking about treasure buried in his garden.

  “Not only is she a woman,” Fermini corrected him, welling up with as much emotion as Vango, “but she is a marvel.”

  He seemed to be of two minds about going on.

  “She used to work here before the First War. She was very beautiful, and I was still a child. She learned everything from my uncle.”

  He was shaking his head. Vango turned once again to check the clock.

  “She disappeared, a long time ago. And then she returned, barely five years ago, to set to work again in the kitchen. She named the restaurant La Belle Étoile. It’s a fine name, but she won’t tell me why there has to be a star in her restaurant’s title.”

  Fermini smiled before adding, “To us, she’s only ever been known as Mademoiselle.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In the building opposite, just over there. The poor woman has to cook to the sound of boots above her head.”

  Ethel saw Vango turn abruptly toward the clock, then fix his eyes on the trapdoor that led to the cellars. In a flash, he had disappeared.

  He bumped into a waiter in the gloomy tunnel beneath the street. A few seconds later, he emerged on the other side. The trapdoor opened onto the corridor in front of the kitchen. He pushed open the first door and found himself face-to-face with the soldiers.

  For a second, Vango stopped breathing. Then, slowly, he caught his breath again and managed to say to the soldiers, “My suitcase.”

  He went over to the cloakroom and lifted the suitcase, without appearing to take any strain. He probably had about two minutes left. He walked slowly past the guards and made for the door marked Messieurs under the staircase.

  He reached out for the handle, but the door was locked.

  Twenty seconds went by. The soldiers stared at him suspiciously.

  “There’s someone in there,” Vango explained pointlessly.

  Vango stood there waiting for the tiny click of the detonator at the bottom of the suitcase, but it was the lock in the door that grated first. The door opened and a man appeared.

  Vango took a step backward.

  It was Cafarello.

  He wiped his hands on his jacket.

  “It’s clogged,” the guest of the German high command muttered in Sicilian, staring at the man carrying the suitcase.

  “It doesn’t matter,” replied Vango in the same language.

  They stared at each other, and Cafarello didn’t budge from the door. He checked that his suspenders and fly were in order. He was drunk.

  Upstairs, the countdown to midnight had begun. Emerging from the trapdoor, Fermini appeared next to the guards.

  Finally, Cafarello began to stagger toward the staircase. He turned around for a second to look at Vango, as if he reminded him of something.

  “Sicilian?” he asked, holding on to the handrail.

  “Sorry?” replied Vango in French.

  “You spoke to me in my language,” said Cafarello.

  Vango shook his head to indicate that he didn’t understand.

  Climbing back up the stairs, Cafarello cursed French wine and all the vermin on this earth.

  Vango pushed open the lavatory door and locked himself in.

  He took a key out of his belt and turned it twice in the locks on the suitcase, which gave way. Upstairs, they were stamping their feet to mark each second. Vango had grabbed an iron box with a clock dial. Above all, he mustn’t break the wire. With the same key, he attempted to undo the box’s screws. They wouldn’t turn. And then it happened: he accidentally snapped the rectifier wire. Upstairs, a great cheer went up for the New Year. It was all over. But the alarm clock that activated the bomb was five seconds behind German time. Vango jammed his finger into the mechanism and stopped it.

  The walls were trembling.

  A minute went by.

  Vango didn’t hear Fermini knocking on the door to the gentlemen’s lavatories, or the military hymns wafting down from the great dining room. He was sobbing and staring at something left behind by the previous occupant, over there on the washbasin: a piece of red fabric.

  A Cossack scarf, worn out by the century.

  He went over and picked it up.

  By the time Vango reappeared with his suitcase, Casimir Fermini was beside himself with worry. He’d been convinced that Vango wanted to kidnap his chef. He spoke quietly and urgently, complaining that he’d been given such a fright.

  “You left just like that! It was so fast. And you were talking about my chef.”

  But his words didn’t register with Vango.

  “Is that your suitcase? You know, there are lavatories back on the ot
her side too, as well as a cloakroom. Tell me, are you on your honeymoon?”

  Casimir was whispering so as not to be understood by the two soldiers. He kept talking about how worried he’d been. What he wasn’t admitting, his secret, was that he was madly in love with his chef. Even as a twelve-year-old boy, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her setting the table. Now he lived in fear of losing her, even if she pretended not to pick up on any of his hints.

  “Dinner was on the house! I’m sorry, but we have to ask our guests to leave now. You gave me such a fright. I must warn you not to go into the kitchen. Mademoiselle doesn’t allow visitors.”

  All Vango heard was the final sentence.

  “In that case, I’ll come back,” he blurted.

  “Where is the young bride?”

  Bartholomew opened the door for them, to reveal Ethel waiting out on the sidewalk.

  “Here she is.”

  Upstairs, they were still singing. Vango clenched the red scarf in his hand. He had failed on every count. Ethel ran toward him. Sensing how weak he was, she tried to take the suitcase, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “Wait!” the patron called after them. “If the police pick you up, tell them you were at La Belle Étoile.”

  They headed off down the street, hugging each other tightly.

  “Bon voyage!” Fermini called out.

  And they disappeared.

  Next to the patron stood Costa, the foreigner, who had witnessed the whole scene. He seemed shaken.

  What’s the matter with everybody tonight? wondered Casimir Fermini, as he watched Monsieur Costa running after Vango and Ethel.

  Fermini leaned against the wall, listening to the last German tunes. A moment later, the foreigner was back, out of breath and very pale. Fermini put a hand on his shoulder. Together, they walked into the downstairs dining room, where Monsieur Costa returned to his table. They sat down next to each other. There was no one else left.

  The sounds of the New Year’s Eve party opposite were abating.

  “Did you never think of marrying?” inquired Fermini.

  The man seemed to wake up with a jolt.

  “What?”

  “Are you Spanish?”

  The foreigner smiled.

  “No.”

  “Are you married?” asked Fermini.

  “Not exactly.”

  “I like that kind of answer.”

  “I loved a woman,” said the man, “back home, in Italy, on an island. She left.”

  “For someone else?”

  “Not even that.”

  They both stared at the candle, which had melted right down but was still alight.

  “One day, I received a letter from her, a long letter.”

  “A letter for you?”

  “It was for a boy she had raised, but he never came back either. I opened it, and someone translated it for me. It tells the story of the boy’s life, and of the woman’s too. In five pages. You’d never believe what five pages could contain.”

  For once, Fermini didn’t have the strength to go in search of his own manuscript, which was as heavy as a crate of apples, but he did confide: “I write novels.”

  “Even in a novel, the events wouldn’t be credible. In the letter, in among all the other details, she mentioned that a long time ago, when she was still a young girl, she used to work here as an assistant, in the kitchen.”

  “Here?” asked Fermini, his voice cracking.

  “Yes.”

  “In France?”

  “Here, yes.”

  “In Paris?”

  “I said: here.”

  And twirling his Sicilian fingers, Monsieur Costa pointed to the walls, the ceilings, and the tables of La Belle Étoile.

  Casimir Fermini downed his glass in one and stared at the foreigner, who kept on talking.

  “So, I said to myself, ‘As sure as your name’s Basilio Costa, one day you’ll go to see it with your own eyes.’ That’s what I told myself. ‘You’ll pay a visit to the establishment that knew her as a girl.’ And I told myself all this because I loved her.”

  Fermini put his hand on Costa’s.

  “Next, I learned French like a schoolboy,” Basilio went on. “I wanted to wait for the end of the war before making the journey. But as we grow old, we run out of patience.”

  “Yes.”

  Basilio seemed overcome. He had waited for this day for so long, when he would visit Paris for the first time, and the place where she had spent her youth.

  “And that letter, well, I’ve just given it to the person it was originally intended for.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “It seems unbelievable, but there he was, with you, on the sidewalk opposite. I saw him. The boy, Vango. I went after him to give him the letter.”

  Fermini was listening to Basilio. He didn’t know what to say to this story. He would never have dared to write it in a book.

  “As we grow old, we run out of patience,” Basilio repeated. “And what about her? Who knows what has become of her?” He sighed, putting his hand over his eyes.

  Just then, a head popped up from the trapdoor, a head wearing a white scarf.

  “They’ve all gone, thank goodness,” announced Mademoiselle, without looking at the two men. “The Germans have all left!”

  Out of sheer exhaustion, she began to laugh. She had stopped at the top of the ladder, and her shoulders were still shaking with laughter.

  “Yes, chef. It’s all over,” agreed Fermini.

  “Don’t ever make me go through that again, Casimir,” she said, turning toward them.

  Basilio couldn’t stop staring at the face that had emerged from underneath them.

  Fermini watched each of them in turn, and he knew that it was all over for him.

  “Basilio?” she whispered.

  “Mademoiselle.”

  One street away, Max Grund was talking to his French doctor.

  “Are you sure you . . . you’re happy to accompany these gentlemen?”

  Grund was drunk, and his driver had to help him into the car.

  “Of course,” said the doctor. “My car is parked a little farther off.”

  Just behind them, Cafarello and Voloy Viktor looked more robust than their host. They were able to stand upright with a degree of dignity. Doctor Esquirol stepped gaily between the two men, linking arms with each of them.

  “Messieurs, allow me to lead you to my car. I’ll take care of you.”

  And he started singing Nina’s most famous song: “Welcome to Paris. Glad to know you’re alive. . . .”

  Viktor gently started singing along with him. Cafarello moved like a sleepwalker. They walked for several minutes, unaware that someone was following them along the roof gutters.

  On entering a narrow street, Esquirol let go of both men’s arms and admitted, “I think I must have lost my way.”

  Viktor and Cafarello came to a stop. Esquirol walked a few steps farther before turning around. He held a pistol in his hand. He was calm and collected, and his eyes were almost closed.

  The two arms dealers stared at him blearily.

  “In the old days,” said Esquirol, “I used to stroll the streets of Paris with two friends. Just like tonight. Those were the good old days. One of them was called Joseph Puppet, the other Zefiro. We made promises to one another, and we loved each other.”

  High up on the rooftop, the Cat had come to a stop.

  “Neither of my friends is still with us,” said Esquirol. “Everything has come to an end because of you. My life has changed. The world has changed.”

  His hand didn’t tremble.

  The Cat heard two shots. She leaned over and saw the bodies on the ground and a man standing. Then the man walked away, passing into a beam of light and undoing his polka-dot tie.

  She recognized the great boss. She recognized Caesar.

  At the gates of Paris, a black car had just passed a barrier. The driver had presented an Episcopal authorization, which wa
s all in order.

  “And in the back?”

  “That’s my family,” said Simon.

  The police officer didn’t appear surprised. He moved his flashlight and looked at the three passengers. Only one was awake. He wore a red scarf around his neck. A young woman was asleep on his shoulder. There was a letter open on his knees, and there were tears in his eyes.

  “Thank you, Your Excellency,” said the officer, returning the papers to Simon the bell ringer.

  The car started up again. Three kilometers later, without the car slowing down, a window was opened and a suitcase hurled into the ditch. It rolled in the grass and slid on the remains of the snow, taking three seconds to come to a stop.

  One, two, three.

  The suitcase exploded.

  A gigantic spray of light illuminated the night sky and the trees, and made the chrome on the car sparkle as it headed south between the plane trees.

  Salina, Aeolian Islands

  There were dark years ahead: struggles throughout Europe, families torn apart, places where death became a way of life. There were betrayals, acts of revenge, and beaches stained black with blood.

  And many would later discover that they had only glimpsed the surface of the nightmare.

  There were dark years ahead.

  But there was also Simon, with tiny Colette in his bell ringer’s hands, waving as the car set off again. There was the fire in the hearth at Auguste Boulard’s house, in the middle of the snowy plains of the Aubrac. There were Vango, Ethel, and Paul around his table, and old Mother Boulard standing on a stool, unhooking sausages from the ceiling. There was their crossing of the Pyrenees on foot, the passes, the chamois, the snow, and then the view of Spain and freedom. There was the Cat’s impossible quest for her parents, the hopes, the dead ends, the nights spent in theater attics sleeping next to a violin; and later, when she understood that she really did need to be afraid, there was the arrival of the young Sister Marie-Cat, disguised in the large white headdress known as a nun’s cornet, and welcomed at the Abbey of La Blanche by a beaming Mother Elisabeth. There were Esquirol’s journeys back and forth to England to keep alive the Paradise Network, which he had founded in the first days of the war in memory of his friends from rue de Paradis. There was Eckener’s melancholy as he stared at the reflection of the sky in Lake Constance. There was the good doctor Basilio’s return by boat to the Aeolian Islands, with a lesson learned in his heart. There were the flowers he changed every day, while he waited, on the table of the house in Pollara. There was the revival of a monastery across the waves, with enough honey to make gingerbread again, with bells tolled on stormy evenings; but without Pippo Troisi, who had returned to his capers and his wife.