by Allan Massie
They ate in a little Alsatian restaurant behind the Panthéon to which she directed the driver without consulting Lucien, who was both amused and impressed by her certainty.
‘You’ll want a cup of coffee while we order,’ she said. ‘For some reason that I don’t understand, the coffee here is still genuine. That’s why I chose this place.’
Lucien was grateful for the good coffee. He told her that her advice had been so good he would leave her to order the lunch. She nodded her head and told the waiter they would both have onion tart, followed by smoked sausages, and to drink, a bottle of Gewürztraminer.
They were sitting at a little table in the back of the restaurant, which was beginning to fill up. Lucien found himself trembling again; his coffee-cup rattled against the saucer. He was afraid someone he knew would enter. As if she divined the reason for his agitation, the girl told the waiter to bring a little screen and cut them off from the general view. He obeyed in a manner which suggested that she was known there and respected.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Lucien said, and wondered again if he was going to break down completely. He dug his nails into the palms of his hands.
‘I’m not usually like this,’ he managed to say. She lit a cigarette and pushed the packet across the table in his direction. When he looked at it doubtfully, she took the cigarette from her mouth and offered it to him. Their fingers brushed as he took it from her, and then she lit another for herself. They smoked in silence. She inhaled, and held the smoke for a long time in her lungs. She didn’t look more than eighteen.
The tart arrived. It was creamy and sharp-tasting and went well with the smoky wine, but he was not able to eat more than a few forkfuls, till he had finished his first glass and was drinking the second. He never normally drank more than one at lunchtime, and was accustomed to put water in that. Was this girl going to change all his habits? It must be a dozen years since he had eaten in an Alsatian restaurant.
She said, ‘I wangled this job with you. I had a reason.’
He didn’t understand what she meant, and could only look at her. Her mouth was soft and curving. She had eaten her tart, and there was a little crumb adhering to her upper lip. She flicked out her tongue and removed it, and then, with a gesture as if to ask a permission that she knew would be granted her, lit another cigarette. They were ordinary Caporal.
‘My name’s Anne Querouaille,’ she said, ‘and my brother Alain was in your regiment. He wrote to us about the conversations he used to have with you, which I suppose he shouldn’t have done, but my mother and brother and I are all grateful to you. Alain was so sure that he had found a friend, his last friend as it turned out, and so I wanted to know you. I hope you don’t mind.’
And now, at the mention of Alain’s name, he was at last crying indeed. It seemed as if all the tears he had restrained since childhood welled up and broke forth. He felt the awful delight of surrender. The girl, Anne, laid her hand on his, and said nothing. Then, as he dabbed his cheeks with the napkin, she said:
‘When we knew Alain was dead, which wasn’t for some time, not till the letter you wrote to my mother – we hoped of course he had been taken prisoner till then – well, at first, I couldn’t weep for him, not a single tear, and, do you know, I resented you because you had had the chance to talk to him before he died, and that had been denied me, and then even more because you brought us the news we feared to receive.’
‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I have never broken down like that before.’
‘There is nothing to forgive.’
She stayed by his side throughout the meeting, at his urgent request. It strengthened him to know that she was there, and he was able to conduct himself in a satisfactory manner. Various problems relating to the difficulties experienced in the Ministry in exercising their continuing responsibilities for the appointment of teachers in the occupied zone were discussed; suggestions were advanced which, when suitably examined, might form a basis for developing a means of resolving the difficulties which nobody of course had anticipated. Altogether, it was generally agreed, the meeting was ‘useful’. Lucien contrived, by the exercise of his will, to disguise his inability to follow much that was said; nobody appeared to find his behaviour odd or out of the ordinary. That was a considerable achievement on his part. It left him exhausted.
He said to Anne, as the others gathered up their papers, ‘Do you know anywhere else, nearby preferably, where we can get real coffee?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ll take you there.’
‘And can you stay with me this evening?’ he said when they were settled in the corner of a little bar.
He had already dismissed his driver.
‘I can’t,’ he said, ‘promise you anything amusing. Far from it.It’s difficult, in fact. I must go and see my brother’s wife.’
‘Would I be in the way?’
‘No, you would help me.’
‘Then of course I’ll come.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Document 10: Letter from Madame Berthe
de Balafré to Etienne de Balafré
MY DEAR ETIENNE: Of course I was surprised to receive your letter, and yet, even though it is so many years since we have seen one another, it was as if I had always expected it. I have never ceased to think of you with affection, and to pray that you have been able to forgive me for the part I have played in your life. And I suspect that, despite everything you so kindly say now, I have, if not destroyed it, yet twisted it in an appalling manner. As with all the really damaging acts one performs, I did it with the best motives. But I take your letter as evidence, in a sense, of absolution. I am grateful, and to be able to feel gratitude in old age is so rare that your letter indeed brought tears to my eyes.
Yet the discovery that you wish to delve deeper in the past alarms me. I wish for your sake you would let it go. At the same time I realise that I have no right to say ‘for your sake’, considering how mischievous my previous intervention was.
I am therefore assailed by doubt, amounting to anguish, and I only wish my poor dear Armand was here to give me, as he always did, fortitude.
But, in all the circumstances, I am bound to accede to your request, though I do so reluctantly, for a host of reasons.
Yet – a final confession – in some mysterious way I find myself welcoming the opportunity you force on me. It is like opening the last door of a haunted house in a nightmare. It sounds pretentious to call life a nightmare, but it is certainly true that one contains the other.
It was horrifying, you know, how accustomed one became to the Occupation in its first year. That ass de Beauvoir said in one of her interminable books of memoirs, which are, as I have always said, orgies of egotism, that ‘the same violent prejudice and stupidity that had darkened my childhood, now extended over the entire country, an official and repressive blanket’. But it wasn’t like that at all. Even those of us who disapproved of the armistice, whose husbands and lovers had joined de Gaulle in England, as my dear Armand had, felt a certain relief, a deep sense of comfort, when we thought of the Marshal. That was in the first year, when we trusted that somehow or other he could protect us. There was no Resistance then, you know, and there were days, many days, when I thought Armand had been mistaken. One reason I looked forward to seeing Lucien was because of my confidence that he was acting as a moral guardian for me and the children. I gave out of course that I had no idea where Armand was, and said I believed he had been lost in battle. Later I wondered if I had been cowardly, but it seemed sensible then.
So I was eager to see Lucien, and it was unfortunate that Guy called that evening. (Yes, my dear, the same Guy whose name you have so often cursed, the father of your poor Freddie.) I didn’t want him to meet Lucien because they had never liked each other, and also because, though Guy had not joined de Gaulle, whom he regarded as impossibly right-wing, he nevertheless deplored Vichy; and I knew he would pick a fight. He was always argumentative. I knew also that if I told him Lucien was coming
he would certainly stay. Anyway, hard though I tried, I couldn’t get rid of him, and I was even wondering if I should endeavour to do so by pretending that I was expecting a lover (which he would not have believed) when the doorbell rang, and it was Lucien.
I was surprised to see a girl with him, and then I thought, after all, why not, Polly has left him forever. But I thought it in poor taste of him to have brought his mistress to my apartment. It was surprising because Lucien’s manners were usually perfect. The girl couldn’t keep her eyes off him. That was the next thing I saw. And several times, when he hesitated and seemed lost for words, he would turn to her looking for help. I thought, you know, they had been living together for weeks, but they hadn’t.
Lucien was clearly tired, and he wasn’t pleased to see Guy, because – I suppose, or I learned later – he had really wanted to talk to me about Armand and wasn’t willing to trust Guy. That was quite right of course. In those days who could you trust? But Lucien obviously trusted the girl. Anne, that was her name. Do you know, my dear, for a moment I couldn’t remember it. But I forget so much now.
I couldn’t forget the way Guy looked at Lucien. When one person really hates another and the second isn’t aware of anything more than a certain incompatibility, the atmosphere can be very strange. It was like that afternoon which I know you will never forget, in the churchyard when we were waiting for the storm to break.
Guy at once berated Lucien about the anti-Jewish decrees. You will remember that Freddie’s mother was Jewish, but you may not know that she taught philosophy at the university, and she had of course been dismissed from her post as a result of the decrees. Lucien was perturbed; it was as if he had never considered that the decrees which his own Ministry had drafted could have any personal application. He couldn’t imagine they could affect people he knew. This is so often the case with anti-Semitism, people make exceptions of their personal acquaintance, so that Jews only exist in the abstract. But Danielle wasn’t abstract. She was a lively, beautiful, intelligent woman, and a good one, and Lucien knew this. So that when Guy exploded, ‘You are destroying lives for a theory, and a disgusting one at that,’ he had no answer.
‘The whole of Vichy is only a theory,’ Guy said. ‘These idiots have their certain idea of France, but the France which they would wish to impose on us has never existed.’
‘You can’t believe that,’ Lucien said. ‘You know very well that our ideals are admirable, and if perhaps they do represent an ideal society which has never been, why, that is true of Christianity also, and, if I may say so, Guy, for I think you now incline in that direction, of the Marxist Paradise too. A man’s aim should reach further than his grasp. If not, we achieve nothing.’ ‘Ideals!’ Guy said. ‘You talk of ideals, but who really runs your France? Laval! I confess I find it hard to associate Laval with any ideals whatsoever.’
‘Laval,’ Lucien said, ‘is not entirely to my taste, I grant you that. There is a coarseness, an abrasiveness to him which I find displeasing. Nevertheless, Monsieur Laval is a patriot. I have no doubt of that. The trouble with people like you, Guy, is that you are guilty of precisely the same fault as you attribute to us. You are living in an imaginary world. Even if we set aside the vices of the Republic – and it is hard to do so – you cannot pretend that the events of last summer did not take place. We have lost a war. That is the starting-point. What do you do when you have lost a war? Believe me, it is a real problem, and not everyone can retire into private life and pretend it hasn’t happened or doesn’t matter. The truth is, you have to come to some sort of terms with your conquerors. That is the starting-point. Once you admit that, once you have the virtue to confront the facts, then you will find yourself compelled to act as we have acted, often, I confess, in ways that we would not choose …’
You may wonder, Etienne, that I remember so clearly. Of course, I don’t pretend that these were exactly Lucien’s words, but I hope to give you the sense, and the passion. He trembled as he spoke, he felt it so. And one word is, I promise you, exact. The word ‘virtue’. That phrase – ‘the virtue to confront the facts’ – those were his precise words. I admired his use of the word ‘virtue’, which I understood in the full Latin sense.
‘You cannot construct a politics, or a theory of action, on the basis of what you would like to have happened,’ he said.
All the time the girl Anne watched him. She had curious dark eyes which kept changing colour according to the expression on her face. Once she laid her hand on his forearm, with a gesture of the utmost tenderness. It was obvious to me not only that she was in love with him, but that she recognised that this fine and tortured spirit sought comfort.
How, I have often wondered, remembering that evening and the way she looked at him, could she have been brought to betray him?
For she did that, you know.
That was the only time I saw Lucien during the war, therefore my last meeting with him. We went to Normandy the following spring, and remained there. Of course he wrote to me, but that’s not the same thing. I don’t have any of his letters. It was not a time to keep letters.
I tremble to think into what depths your investigation will lead you. But I would impress this on you: there was nothing dishonourable in Lucien’s adherence to Vichy, no matter to what terrible actions he may have been led.
You ask about my health. It is poor, which must be expected. The twins and my other grandchildren are a great comfort. It is not often that I hear from my dear Jeanne-Marie. She is in the Sudan now. She writes of the bones sticking out of the flanks of cattle and of children with the swollen bellies of starvation. But you will have seen all that on the television. If you should find yourself in Paris, please come and see me.
Your loving aunt,
Berthe de Balafré.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LUCIEN WAS UNABLE to arrange immediately for Anne’s transfer from Paris to Vichy, or perhaps they hesitated before an act which must be regarded as one of definite commitment. But she was there early in the spring of 1941, and they were certainly living together soon after her arrival. Despite the insistence of the regime on high standards of personal morality and all the stuff about the sanctity of family life, such irregular liaisons were common enough. Pétain after all, octogenarian though he was, still had his mistress, and was indeed known to claim that women continued to try to force their attentions on him; one of his biographers tells us that he made love for the last time in 1942, at the age of eighty-six.
My grandmother never spoke of Anne, though she certainly stayed at the Château de l’Haye. I can see that she might have wished to pretend that the girl did not exist, but surely the fact of betrayal might have opened her lips. It is very strange; I wonder if young Hugh will be able to guess a reason? American biographers are good at divining what nobody knows. But I keep forgetting that Hugh is Canadian.
I have a problem in dealing with this part of Lucien’s life. He wrote nothing about it, for he did not resume keeping his intermittent journal till the end of that year. I find myself unable to imagine its details without the help of any documentary material. It is a task for an Israelite – making bricks without straw. Exodus doesn’t tell us however whether they were successful in doing this or not; and were such bricks as they made of tolerable quality?
The blank period was obviously passed in the unremitting duties of administration, and in what I would like to think of as domestic bliss with Anne. Because they were together, no letters survive, and, though I have talked to a couple of his old associates in Vichy, their evidence was of no value. ‘They seemed happy enough. She was good for him, you know. Oh yes, there is no doubt she loved him. When we dined together, she would order for him, and she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. As for him, I remember the tender manner in which he held her coat for her when we rose to leave a restaurant.’
That sort of stuff; not very illuminating. But it is useful perhaps if it serves to remind us that life in Vichy was distinguished by its normality. One is
so apt to think of war and defeat as wholly disruptive that it is useful to remember how powerful is the human instinct to create order. You can see it in prisoners who put a glass of flowers on a table in their cell. We aspire to domesticity, for we are domestic animals. Lucien and Anne were clearly not exceptional.
There are however two moments in the summer of 1941 to which it is worth drawing attention.
All spring there had been a debate in the Ministry of Education. The subject was what would be a suitable monument to the Marshal and the National Revolution. It’s normal of course to reserve monuments till the person to be honoured is dead, but that argument was quickly disposed of. The Marshal should be honoured in his life by an act which would bear witness to the nobility of his task and the nature of the glorious revolution (it has become glorious early in the memoranda) which he had inaugurated.
Some suggested that statues of the Marshal be erected before the town hall of every municipality. One supporter of this project wrote: ‘They should bear the simple legend: Blessed Saviour of France.’ This proposal won general applause, and was rejected only when, after consultation with the Ministry of Beaux Arts, it was realised that they could not possibly find a sufficient number of sculptors of requisite quality. A suggestion that the statues should be cast-iron replicas of a masterwork was rejected on the grounds that it smacked of industrialism. Besides, some said, both stone and ironwork lack the note of humanity which the Marshal gives to everything he touches; this was undeniable.
‘Napoleon is commemorated by the Arc de Triomphe,’ one minute ran. ‘The hero of Verdun and the Saviour of 1940 requires a comparable monument.’
General applause again. Unfortunately, however, new objections were advanced. It might have been thought that these would be put forward on the grounds that a triumphal arch was scarcely the most fitting monument for a leader who, whatever his virtues, had assumed power as a consequence of a national disaster, a resounding defeat – and indeed this view was advanced, though anonymously and timidly. That however was an argument easily overturned: the call to Pétain, and his response, after all represented a moral triumph in the hour of adversity. Therefore, a triumphal arch was perfectly appropriate. The trouble was quite different. The proper place for such an arch was Paris. To raise it in Vichy was to subscribe to the treasonable theory that France had been divided; it was to admit that the Marshal was head of a State that was less than France. Impossible and repulsive thought! But, alas, it was inconceivable that the Germans would permit the erection of a new Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The proposal was rejected.
