Promise at Dawn Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  It is over. The beach at Big Sur is empty and cool and the gentle sand is kind to the fallen. The sea mist blurs all things except memories; between ocean and sky not a mast to be seen; on a rock before me, thousands of birds; on another, a family of seals; the father keeps emerging from the waves with a fish in his mouth, a shiny and devoted parent. Sea gulls land, often so near that I hold my breath and the old longing stirs in me again; in a moment or two, they will settle on my shoulders, in my arms, press their feathers against my neck and against my face, cover me completely. . . . At the age of forty-four, I still catch myself dreaming of some universal and total tenderness. So long have I been lying motionless where I fell that cormorants and pelicans have formed a circle around me, and, just after sunrise, a seal let the surf carry him close to my feet. He stayed there quite a while, raised on his flippers, staring at me, before returning into the sea. I smiled, but he kept staring at me seriously and a little sadly, as though he knew.

  The day war was declared my mother drove five hours in a taxi to say good-by and to wish me, in her own words, “A hundred victories in the sky”—I was at that time gunnery instructor at the Air Force Academy in Salon-de-Provence.

  The taxi was an ancient, flat-nosed Renault, ready to breathe its last. At one time my mother had owned a twenty-five percent share in the vehicle, but for many years now the taxi had been the exclusive property of her former partner, a chauffeur named Rinaldi. She still considered, however, that she had a moral right to free use of the car, and since Rinaldi was a gentle, timid and impressionable soul, whenever he saw my mother walking toward his taxi with a determined air he usually took refuge in flight—both from her and from his own good nature. Long after the war, dear old Rinaldi—he still runs a taxi in Nice and you can hire him at the comer of the rue de France and the Boulevard Gambetta—told me with grudging admiration how my mother had “requisitioned” him.

  “She flung open the door of the cab and, with a commanding sweep of her cane, told me: ‘Take me to Salon-de-Provence. I wish to say good-by to my heroic son.’ I tried to argue—a ten-hour drive it was, there and back, and I knew that she wasn’t going to pay me. She told me I was a bad Frenchman, because there was a war on and I was refusing to do my bit. Then she just climbed into the cab, loaded with all those parcels for you—sausages, ham, pots of jam—and sat there sternly, waiting. I refused to budge, and so we both sat there for I don’t know how long. Then she began to cry, looking suddenly like a dumb, hurt and lost animal—you know the way she looked sometimes—and still blubbering something about her ‘heroic son.’ I held out for a moment; but then, what the hell, I told myself, I was too old for the war, no son of my own, and the whole world had gone crazy anyway, so I might as well do my bit, as she had put it. ‘All right,’ I told her, adding, just to save face, ‘but you’ll pay for the gas’—I damn well knew she wouldn’t. She always thought she had a claim on the car, just because we had been partners years back. Yes, Monsieur Romain, you can say that you’ve been loved in your life—there is nothing she wouldn’t have done for you. . . .”

  I saw her step down from the taxi in front of the canteen, leaning on her cane, a Gauloise in the corner of her mouth, under the interested eyes of the assembled soldiery. It was too late for me to hide; I rose from my table, buckling my belt and smiling bravely, while, with a fine theatrical gesture, she threw her arms wide and stood there, her face radiant, waiting for her little boy to fling himself into her embrace.

  I walked over to her slowly, rolling my shoulders, with my cap tilted cockily over one eye and my hands stuffed into the pockets of one of those almost legendary dashing leather jackets, which did so much to recruit young Frenchmen into the Air Force. I was thoroughly embarrassed by this intolerable intrusion of a mother into the virile world in which I enjoyed a hard won reputation as a tough and even a slightly dangerous, devil-may-care character.

  I remained a moment locked in her arms, sweating profusely, and then with all the amused and protective nonchalance of which I was capable I tried to maneuver her discreetly out of sight behind the taxi. But no: she took a step back to gaze at my face and into my eyes with naïve admiration, sniffing noisily, which was always with her a sign of deep satisfaction. Then, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, and with a strong Russian accent, she announced:

  “Guynemer! You will be a second Guynemer! Your mother has always been right!”

  I could hear the roar of laughter behind my back and for the first time she, too, became aware of the mocking audience. She grabbed her cane and, with a threatening gesture toward the soldiery, she delivered, in an inspired tone, another prophecy: “You will be a great hero, a general, Gabriele d’Annunzio, Ambassador of France! This rabble doesn’t know who you are!” “The rabble” was enjoying itself thoroughly. As for myself, I don’t believe there ever was a son who hated his mother as much as I did at that moment. But when I tried, in a furious whisper, to tell her that she was ruining me in the eyes of our Air Force, and made a renewed effort to push her behind the taxi, her lips began to tremble, a hurt, bewildered look came into her eyes and I heard once more the words that I had heard so often and dreaded so much:

  “You are ashamed of your old mother!”

  That did it: all the trappings of sham virility, of laboriously assumed toughness collapsed to the ground. I put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight, while my free hand defied the soldiery with that rude but expressive gesture known to all armies of the world, with the difference that in Anglo-Saxon society two fingers are necessary, while one suffices in the Latin world. It is all a matter of sunshine and temperament.

  I no longer heard the laughter or saw the mocking faces of my Air Force buddies; we were back once more, the two of us, on our secret and private planet, a wonderland where all the beauty lies, so completely fanciful, and yet so much more real to us than the very earth of Provence on which we stood, a magical world, born out of a mother’s murmur into a child’s ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love. I held her shoulders tightly with my right arm, looking confidently at the sky, so empty and thus so open to my future deeds; I was thinking of the day when I should return to her victorious, having given a meaning to her life of self-denial and sacrifice, in a world I had freed, at last, from the grip of those dark enemies whose names and faces I had come to know so well.

  Even now, when the battle is over and all has been said, as I lie where I have fallen, on the shore of Big Sur, in the vast and soothing emptiness on the ocean’s edge where only the seals utter their cries and a lone whale passes by with its minuscule and derisory jet of white water like a flea’s jump into immensity—even now, I have only to raise my eyes to see the enemy legions leaning over me, eagerly watchful for any sign of submission and defeat.

  I was only a child when my mother first told me of their existence; long before Snow White and Puss in Boots, before the Seven Dwarfs and the Wicked Fairy, they crowded into my nursery and have never left my side since; my mother pointed them out to me one by one, whispering their names; I was too young to understand, and yet I knew already that a day would come when for her sake I would challenge and destroy them; I felt scared, and bewildered, and yet determined; with each year that passed I became more aware of their presence around me, and their ugly features became more apparent to me; with each new blow they struck at us I felt growing in me the heart and soul of a rebel; today, when I have lived, I can still see them grinning in the darkening shadows of Big Sur, and the sound of their mocking and triumphant laughter rises above the ocean’s roar; their names, once more, come one by one to my lips and my aging eyes challenge them with all the earnestness of a child six years old.

  First co
mes Totoche, the god of Stupidity, with his scarlet monkey’s behind, the swollen head of a doctrinaire and a passionate love for abstractions; he has always been the Germans’ pet, but today he prospers almost everywhere, always ready to oblige; he is now devoting himself more and more to pure research and technology, and can be seen frequently grinning over the shoulders of our scientists; with each nuclear explosion his grin grows wider and wider and his shadow looms larger over the earth; his favorite trick is to hide his stupidity under the guise of scientific genius, and to enlist support among our great men to ensure our own destruction.

  Then there is Merzavka, the god of Absolute Truth and Total Righteousness, the lord of all true believers and bigots; whip in hand, a Cossack’s fur cap over one eye, he stands knee deep in a heap of corpses, the eldest of our lords and masters, since time immemorial the most respected and obeyed; since the dawn of history he has had us killed, tortured and oppressed in the name of Absolute Truth, Religious Truth, Political Truth, Moral Truth; always with a capital “T” raised high above our heads, like a scaffold. One half of the human race obsequiously licks his boots, and this causes him immense amusement, for well he knows that there is no such thing as absolute truth, the oldest trick to goad us into slavery or to drive us at each other’s throats; and even as I write these words, I can hear above the barking of the seals and the cries of the cormorants the sound of his triumphant laughter rolling toward me from the other end of the earth, so loud that even my brother the ocean cannot raise his voice above it.

  Then there is Filoche, the god of Mediocrity, full of bilious scorn and rabid prejudice, of hatred and petulance, screaming at the top of his voice, “You dirty Jew! You nigger! Jap! Down with the Yanks! Kill the yellow rats! Wipe out capitalists! Imperialists! Communists!”—lover of holy wars, a Great Inquisitor, who is always there to pull the rope at a lynching, to command a firing squad, to keep the jails full; with his mangy coat, his hyena’s head and his deadly breath, he is one of the most powerful of the gods and the most eagerly listened to; he is to be found in every political camp, from right to left, lurking behind every cause, behind every ideal, always present, rubbing his hands whenever a dream of human dignity is stamped into the mud.

  And Trembloche, the god of Acceptance and Servility, of survival at all costs, shaking with abject fear, covered with goose flesh, running with the hare and hunting with the hounds; a skilled persuader, he knows how to worm his way into a tired heart, and his white reptilian snout always appears before you when it is so easy to give up and to remain alive takes only a little cowardice.

  There are other gods, less easy to unmask, shifty and shrouded in mystery; their cohorts are innumerable and innumerable are the traitors amongst us ready to serve them; my mother knew them all; often, when the going was very hard, she would press my cheek against hers and point them out to me one by one; I listened, holding my breath, to the warning murmur and its promise of final victory, and soon those evil giants who bestride the world became for me more real than the most familiar objects in my nursery, and their towering shadows remain looming over me to this very day; I have only to raise my eyes to see the glitter of their armor in the sky, and their lances aimed at me in every beam of light.

  We are old enemies now, they and I, and it is of my battle with them that I shall tell here; my mother had been one of their favorite toys; they never left her in peace; from the snows of Russia to the shores of France, with her child in her arms, it was in vain that she tried to escape from them; they followed her everywhere; I grew up longing for the day when I could tear down the veil of darkness and absurdity concealing the true face of the universe and discover at last a smile of kindness and wisdom; I grew up in the certitude that one day I should help my fellow men to wrest the world from our enemies and give back the earth to those who ennoble it with their courage and warm it with their love.

  CHAPTER 2

  I was thirteen years old when a clear revelation of my life’s purpose dawned on me for the first time.

  We were living in Nice then. Each morning we left the house together and walked, discussing our radiant future, along the Promenade des Anglais; I was on my way to school, leaving my mother at the Hotel Negresco, where she rented a showcase, displaying on its shelves a few articles de luxe borrowed from the local shops. On each scarf, belt, clip or sweater sold she received a commission of ten per cent. She usually charged more than the agreed price and pocketed the difference. She sat there all day long, except for a two-hour break at noon when I came home for lunch, keeping her eyes open for prospective clients and nervously smoking innumerable Gauloises, since our survival depended entirely upon this humble and precarious business.

  Alone, without husband or lover, without friends, for more than ten years she had been putting up a brave fight to keep us going, to pay for bread and butter and rent, school fees, clothes, shoes and, above all, to achieve that daily miracle, the beefsteak which she set before me for lunch, with a proud and happy smile, as though it were the very symbol of her victorious struggle against adversity. She stood there, her arms crossed, watching me while I ate, with the contented and dreamy look of the female suckling her young.

  She never touched any of the meat herself, maintaining that she was on a diet, and that animal fats were forbidden her.

  One day, leaving the table, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water.

  My mother was seated on a stool, holding the frying pan on her knees. She was carefully sopping up with small chunks of bread the fat in which my steak had been cooked, and then eating the bread with obvious relish. When she saw me, she quickly tried to hide the pan under a napkin, but it was too late: the true reason for her vegetarian diet was now obvious to me.

  For a moment I remained motionless, staring at the frying pan, and at the embarrassed smile and guilty look on my mother’s face. Then I burst into tears and ran away.

  At the far end of the Avenue Shakespeare, where we were then living, there was an almost vertical embankment overlooking the railway line, and it was there that I sought refuge, in the tall weeds under a mimosa tree. The idea of throwing myself under a train and thus escaping my unbearable feeling of shame and helplessness crossed my mind, but almost at once a fierce determination to set the world right started a fire in my blood that burns in me to this day. Pressing my face against the warm earth, with only the weeds for company, I cried; but my friends the tears, which have often been so merciful to me, this time brought no relief. A deep frustration, a strange feeling of manhood drained away, almost of infirmity, took hold of me; as I grew older, this feeling grew with me, until it became a craving, a thirst that neither art nor a woman could quench.

  I don’t know how my mother found out where I was, but I saw her coming down the slope toward me, her gray hair full of light and of sky. She sat down beside me, holding a lighted cigarette between her lips and the package of Gauloises Bleues in her hand.

  “Now,” she said. “Now . . . Please don’t cry.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m sorry. I hurt you. I won’t do it again.”

  “Leave me alone, I said!”

  A train roared past below us. It seemed to me that it was my grief making all that noise.

  “You will soon be big enough to take care of me.”

  I felt a little calmer. We were sitting side by side in the tall grass, looking toward the olive trees on the mountainside across the tracks. The mimosa was in full bloom, the sky was blue, and the sun was doing its best. It occurred to me suddenly that the world was a damn good liar. As far as I can remember, this was my first adult thought.

  My mother held out her package of Gauloises. I took one. She had encouraged me to smoke since I was twelve, just as she had encouraged me to wear long trousers, to kiss the hands of ladies, and had watched approvingly when I tried to shave my nonexistent beard: she was in a hurry. Every few days I checked my height with a tape measure; I used also to devour raw carrots by the pound, having heard
that they helped one to grow faster.

  “Have you done any writing today?”

  For the last year I had been “writing,” and had already blackened the pages of several exercise books with my poems. I copied them painstakingly in block letters, a humble attempt at creating an illusion of print.

  “Yes. I began a new poem this morning. A great metaphysical epic about reincarnation and the migration of souls.”

  She looked pleased.

  “And how are things at school?”

  “I got another zero in math.”

  My mother thought this over for a moment.

  “Your teachers don’t understand you,” she said firmly.

  I was inclined to agree. The persistence with which my teachers kept giving me zeros in science subjects seemed to indicate some truly crass ignorance on their part.

  “They’ll be sorry one day,” my mother assured me. “The time will come when your name will be inscribed in letters of gold on the wall of their wretched school. I’ll go and tell them so tomorrow.”

  I shuddered.

  “Mother, I forbid you to do anything of the kind!”

  “I’ll read your latest poems to them. You will be a d’Annunzio, a Victor Hugo, a Nobel Prize winner. They don’t know who you are! I’ll tell them.”

  “Mother, you’ll only make me look a fool again!”

  She wasn’t listening. A radiant smile, at once triumphant and naïve, was on her lips, and her eyes had that intense fixity which I knew so well. It was as though, piercing the mists of the future, they had caught a sudden vision of her son, with his old mother on his arm, slowly mounting the steps of the Pantheon in full ceremonial dress, covered with glory, feathers, honors and gold braid.

  “The most beautiful women will be dying at your feet!” she proclaimed, shaking a threatening finger at the sky.

  The twelve-fifty from Ventimiglia rushed by in a cloud of steam. The passengers standing at the windows must have wondered what it was that the gray-haired woman and the little boy could be watching in the sky with such absolute fascination.