by Allan Massie
June 6, 1944. The Allies have landed in Normandy, successfully it seems. I have just listened to Laval’s speech on the wireless. ‘We are not in the war,’ he said. ‘You must not take part in the fighting … You will refuse to aggravate the foreign war on our soil with the horror of civil war …’ And so on. My sentiments exactly. But all around is civil war. Twenty miles away the Maquis murdered a Mayor the day before yesterday: for collaboration. Collaboration in his case meant carrying out the orders of the legitimate government of France. Laval’s lucidity, like mine, belongs to the asylum, now that its inmates have been let loose in the streets. June 8, 1944. All I can do is sit it out.
June 12, 1944. More news of Russian advances on the eastern front. Will some of my enemies now admit that we were right? That the danger from Russian Communism is at least as great as the threat from the Nazis ever was, greater indeed because more fundamental? As for morality, what’s there to choose between them? For Jews, read Kulaks. The difference is that the Communists would not only subvert French society, but would also destroy everything that we recognise as historic France. What is the position of the Church in the Soviet Union? Yet the myopia of Great Britain and the United States is such that they continue to aid the Russians.
June 20, 1944. It was a mistake to enter public life, for which I have no talent. I should have been content to remain at my desk.
June 22, 1944. A letter from Drieu La Rochelle today. He tells me he now believes in nothing, not even action. He would be absolute for suicide, did he not suspect it as a species of action itself. Drieu and I differ in that he was always a romantic who saw himself in a heroic role, whereas I have only tried to be useful and to do my duty. Well, no matter the difference, we have arrived at the same destination: where the only problem is how best to die.
June 30, 1944. The Allies advance. Two policemen were shot in a neighbouring village yesterday. Ceremonially. Though we have still the protection of German troops, it occurs to me that my presence may endanger Maman. That’s impossible. I can’t continue to shelter here. I’m going to Paris. Why Paris? Because it began there.
July 6, 1944. Appalling journey, a crowded train that stopped every few miles, and which was continually searched by German soldiers. Their nerve is shattered. One of them struck an old woman over the face with the butt of his rifle. It looked as though he did so from sheer malevolence. But I think it was an expression of his terror and sense of powerlessness. They know the war is lost. We stood by and did nothing. A little businessman whose fingers smelled of cheese talked all the time, in an undertone directed mostly to himself, but interrupted at intervals by questions which he shot at us: his subject was his imminent bankruptcy: ‘I’ve tried to keep things going for my family, only my family, and now I’ve been blacklisted, boycotted, and I’m in fear of my life.’ That was the tenor of his talk, and I was astonished by the temerity of his frankness. But I don’t think he knew what he was saying most of the time. He waved his cheese-smelling fingers and sniffed at them.
July 10, 1944. I went to my old apartment. The concierge, who was always so polite, has changed her tune. It was to be expected. She will have to go on living here. My apartment was full of memories of Polly, and also of Anne. There was dust everywhere. I traced their names in the dust on the dressing-room table, and, as I did so, fancied I saw them both sitting gazing into the glass and each other’s eyes. I sat down and tried to read. Impossible. We are all waiting, some in barely-suppressed elation, terrified that, even at the last moment, something may go wrong, others, like me, in what would be terror and apprehension, if we were capable of that. I went out, walked the streets for hours. Paris has never looked more beautiful to me: roses and honeysuckle in the Bois de Boulogne. People sitting at café tables as if we were at peace: yet A is only waiting for the arrival of the Allies to denounce B. I sat down at a café and ordered a glass of rum. When I saw Gaston Hunnot limping along the other side of the square, still followed by a troop of girls, I drank it quickly and slipped away. There are other enemies I would happily meet, but I see no reason to subject myself to Gaston’s bitter and mocking triumph. Yet I was pleased to see he had come through. For the first instant I saw him, it was like 1919, and I felt happy. Then I went in search of Mathilde. No one knows where she is, even whether she is still alive. Anything could have happened to her in the month since she wrote to me. Then, on a bookstall, I saw a copy of her poems. I bought it and read them: what a relief to find no mention of war. Of course her melancholy has deeper roots; it’s Platonic. Her world has always been an ugly shadow of the beauty she has glimpsed. So instead I went to the cinema. I had seen that Marcel’s new film was showing at a theatre on the Boulevard Clichy. It’s his version of the David and Jonathan story, and it is cunningly made, in such a way as may, I suppose, put him right with the Resistance. That’s the intention, no doubt: the Philistines are the Germans, and his Goliath bore a startling resemblance to the Reichsmarschall Göring. But, as always with Marcel, it is the personal note that predominates: the sidelong glances of never-to-be satisfied desire which King Saul shoots at the boy David. What is clever, and in its way touching, is the manner in which Marcel indicates that, even if Saul were to achieve precisely what he desires, what he has set his heart on, he would remain unsatisfied: if only because, in doing so, he would have tainted the object of his love. Isn’t this also just what I have experienced with France, and isn’t it also what de Gaulle will come to learn? Marcel has lost all his illusions, and so gained a psychological understanding that makes me tremble.
July 14, 1944. Walking in the early morning on the Avenue de Breteuil, I encountered Drieu.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you haven’t killed yourself yet either.’
I accompanied him back to his flat. Though it was not yet ten
o’clock he insisted that we drank brandy.
‘I split my last bottle of Scotch whisky with Heller three months ago,’ he said. ‘I suppose there will be whisky in Paris again soon, when the Allies arrive. But it won’t be for me. I’ve had it, I realise that.’
He straightened a Matisse on the wall. He was as full of energy as ever, unable to sit still and talk. Instead he walked about the large drawing room, with its magnificent view of the river and the skyline beyond, stabbing his cigarette at me, and drinking three glasses to my one.
‘Really, there’s nothing for it but to stay half-drunk,’ he said, ‘only half, I insist. More than that and one is just a drunken terrified beast like those imbecile Fascists of Je Suis Partout, the ones who surround Robert, you know. On the other hand, sober consciousness has become intolerable. Don’t you find that?’
His mood fluctuated as we talked. One moment he was near despair, analysing the different methods by which he might choose to kill himself. ‘After all, that’s the only serious question that remains, isn’t it, my dear? When and how? To choose one’s own death. It’s a privilege. Besides, we are both classicists, aren’t we?’ But, in the next breath, he was discussing how he might manage to survive. ‘After all, one has friends, hasn’t one, even now?’ He pins his hope on Malraux, who has always been close to him; he proclaims that they have always understood each other, ‘perfectly’. Besides, Malraux is under obligations to him; so is his mistress, Josette Clotis. ‘We’ve always had a lot in common, you know. Do you remember what she said about Clara, André’s first wife, who was Jewish of course? She said, “Their noses aren’t in harmony.” Do you mean you hadn’t heard that one? So amusing. Moreover, it was thanks to me that Josette was able to leave Paris, in some style, I tell you – in a mink coat and a sleeping-car – and join André on the Riviera. Things like that aren’t forgotten.’
But he doesn’t really believe any of this. He talks to amuse himself and because he has never learned how to be silent. It’s his loquacity that has done for him. He’s said and written things that simply can’t be forgotten or forgiven.
When I told him that I intended to await arrest and stand trial, he laughed:
/>
‘My poor Lucien, you haven’t a hope. They’ll shoot you in a cellar.’
He drank off his brandy and filled both glasses. He stood with his back to me, looking out at the river.
‘The quatorze,’ he said. ‘I always thought the Revolution overrated, and besides, I detest manifestations of popular enthusiasm. They might put me on trial, they’d enjoy that, but not you, not with your calm good sense and your air of virtue. Impossible. They’ll shoot you like a dog, my dear.’
And he gestured with the bottle again.
July 21, 1944. The worst has happened, and it leaves me calm because it is only the fulfilment of everything I have feared; and when fulfilment comes, and hope is killed, a dead calm prevails, all agitation of spirit annihilated.
Yesterday Rupert’s friends tried to kill Hitler. Apparently they believed at first that they had succeeded, but this was not true. It’s the end. There’s nothing more to write. These vile dreams in which I have seen Rupert tortured and heard his screams ring down dank and chilly corridors must now be reality.
I remember that half-smile he would give when I bested him in argument.
And I thought of how, if I had not appealed to his sense of honour when he was in love with Polly, he might have escaped all this.
But that’s not true, Rupert was doomed from the start. That’s why I loved him, for his gallant and defeated beauty.
At this moment perhaps, in a cellar, under Berlin.
When I left Drieu the other day, he raised his brandy glass, and, swaying a little, said, ‘Moriturus, te saluto.’
I can’t say even that to Rupert. For two hours I have wandered about my apartment, not even weeping.
But I dare not sleep tonight. I dare not contemplate the shape in which Rupert will present himself to me.
Drieu telephoned to invite me to dinner. I shall go of course.
July 22, 1944. It was a wake. Heller was there. Drieu’s maid Clothilde served dinner, dressed in a black frock and white apron. We ate off silver, and drank a good Burgundy. Lucien Combelle, who used to be Gide’s secretary, was there. He was amusing now – about how, when he first worked for Gide, the great man – ‘and you never met such a conscientiously great man’ – was surrounded by Stalinists whose every word he believed. And now?
‘Now we believe nothing,’ Drieu said.
Heller rose to his feet, a trifle unsteadily, for Drieu had produced the cognac, and made a speech. He praised Drieu for his ‘sincere and whole-hearted collaboration which nevertheless never lost a sense of what was due to France and the self-respect of the French people’. It was clear to him, he said, that the responsibility for the breakdown of relations between France and Germany rested with those who were not content with an honourable collaboration, but wished to go much further, who were in fact Fascists more Fascist than the German occupying authorities, who ‘as you know, so I may safely state as much here, have never been wholehearted Fascists themselves’. He concluded by saying that it had been an honour to work with Drieu, and that, whatever happened after the war, ‘which Germany has lost’, and whatever fate befell Drieu, he would strive to do honour to his friend’s achievements and intentions.
It was clear that he expects Drieu to be dead by then. ‘Well,’ Drieu said, ‘that’s a testimonial to carry to the Shades …’
Someone was singing in the street below. It’s a sound I haven’t heard in Paris since 1939.
Combelle said: ‘If they had killed Hitler the day before yesterday, we might all yet have been saved.’
‘Let’s do something different,’ Drieu said. ‘Let’s go to the Ritz bar.’
It was full of German officers and their whores. There was a curly-haired girl of seventeen or eighteen whose blouse was torn. She carried a bottle in her hand and went from group to group asking if anyone had seen her Klaus. She insisted that he had promised to see her safe: ‘Not safe home, you understand, but just safe.’ She couldn’t however tell anyone which Klaus she meant, or even what his regiment was. A fat Lieutenant pulled her on to his knee and promised that he would do the duty of an absent Klaus. ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘It’s only Klaus I can rely on. He has a friend in the Gestapo who will see me safe.’
‘Come here, my dear,’ Drieu said, ‘and let me give you a word of advice. You’re a lovely girl, but you should go home to your mother. She’s the only person who may be able to protect you.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head and looking at him as if momentarily sobered, ‘when I first went with a German she told me to get out – even though I was bringing her butter and eggs and silk stockings – and called me a disgrace and said she never wanted to see me again … I laughed at her. Oh, why has it all gone wrong? Where’s Klaus, I’m frightened without him.’
‘In that case,’ Drieu said, ‘my second piece of advice is to stay right here, in this bar. In two weeks it will be full of American officers. Find one of them to protect you.
‘What else could one say?’ he asked. ‘Girls like that … do they deserve what will happen to them? You can say we do, but girls like that? I’ve a good mind to take her home with me, but it would only complicate matters for her even more. Her best hope is, as I say, to find an American quickly. It’s like a railway station – have you thought of that, Lucien, that the whole war has been like a railway journey? Now the porter’s crying, “All change for America.”’
I walked home. It was a soft summer night of calm beauty. The streets were quiet and deserted. It might have been any night of real life.
I climbed the stairs, and found Anne sitting on the doorstep of my apartment. She lifted a face smudged with tears.
‘I thought of Rupert,’ she said, ‘and I couldn’t keep away. I couldn’t continue to deny my heart. I’m with you, my dear.’
She waited, I held out my arms. ‘To the end,’ she said, ‘contra mundum …’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Document 16:
Narrative of Armand de Balafré (continued)
I DON’T LIKE to think of those weeks which Lucien spent at the Château de l’Haye, after his mistress left. His loneliness must have been extreme. Certainly he could not have unburdened himself to Maman. Though she never liked me, Etienne, that doesn’t mean that I am blind to her virtues. They were considerable, of course they were, but her lack of sympathy, by which I mean her inability ever to put herself imaginatively in the position of anyone else, made it impossible for her, all her life, to offer comfort even to those she loved. And there’s no doubt that she loved Lucien. Only they couldn’t confide in each other. It’s a tragedy, not to be able to speak to the person you love. There’s nothing more desolating.
That’s what I hoped, and believed, Lucien had found in Anne. I think it’s what he did find. All the more reason therefore for him to be desolated when she left. Yet he couldn’t blame her, for he held himself responsible for Hervé’s death.
I know nothing – I must tell you, Etienne – of how he lived those weeks in Provence and then in Paris. It’s only surmise. One friend, who encountered him by chance in Paris, remarked to me years later that it was ‘disconcerting: like meeting someone who enquired if you, perhaps, were Charon’. But that’s only one personal impression. Impressions, surmises, that’s all I can offer.
At some time, before the Liberation, Anne returned to him. I don’t know why. Perhaps she always intended to betray him, but I don’t believe it.
They remained in hiding during the week of the liberation of Paris. At some point they had furnished themselves with false papers. Her deposition states that they intended to make for Spain. Rather too late. At any time in the previous fortnight they might have managed to get there. So many did, including Abel Bonnard, formerly Lucien’s colleague at the Ministry of Education, then the Minister himself, who made his getaway complete with boyfriend. But there were lots of them. Lucien delayed till it was more difficult, and then left Paris by train. The hard-line collaborators had made for Germany, but Lucien was in t
he unfortunate position of being equally unpopular with both sides. Not even being tortured by the Gestapo could help him with the Resistance.
They reached Orléans on the 1st of September. The train was boarded there by a Resistance unit. I have reason to believe that they had been given advance information. They must have been, for they enquired for Lucien by name. Only Anne could have told them he was on that train, and so she betrayed him. He was disguised, lightly, but at once admitted who he was. It says in the report that he remarked, ‘I don’t want to cause other people unnecessary trouble.’ He was taken to Resistance headquarters. The senior officer there was Guy Fouquet.
I have told this badly. It is partly because the pain makes it so difficult to concentrate.
Pain of the heart at raking over these still burning coals, as well as the sharp nipping of the crab, Etienne.
When I left Lucien after our conference in January, I made my way, as I told you, to Normandy. I saw Berthe and the children. I saw also Danielle, Guy’s wife, your poor Freddie’s mother. She was in hiding there, in terrible danger as a Jewess and the wife of a member of the CNR. My presence was reported to the authorities. I was quickly snatched away by our boys, but in the search for me, Guy’s wife was discovered. You know what happened to her.
From that moment, for the next year, indeed till his second marriage in the summer of ’45, Guy was like a man deranged. He was filled with hatred. He had never liked Lucien, now he saw him as the accomplice of murderers.
