The Kites Read online

  I was placed under observation at the Caen psychiatric hospital, where I spent two weeks chatting out loud with the invisibly present, which got me officially certified as mentally unbalanced; nothing could have been more helpful to me in my activities with the Resistance. No one found it surprising to see me gesticulating as I wandered from farm to farm, and Soubabère, my network leader, put me in charge of all the liaisons. My wits would return magically for my accounting work at the Clos Joli, and so I continued, which made people remark to Duprat that “a good kick in the pants or two wouldn’t go amiss.” He must have suspected my underground activities, for very little escaped him. He was careful not to allude to them in any way — “So as not to be implicated,” my uncle said — and limited himself to grumbling, “You people will never change!” And I couldn’t tell whether he was speaking only of the Fleurys, or of our whole crazy brotherhood. Our numbers grew across devastated Europe as we began giving in to this aberration, which, in the history of its peoples has so often succeeded in demonstrating the possibility of the impossible.

  She is standing at the other end of the room in a shadowy corner; there, on the wall, is a clumsy kite with a pink and pale-yellow body, speckled with silvery white, painted and assembled in the workshop by a seven-year-old child. I cannot tell if it is a bird, a butterfly, or a lizard, for the childish imagination has been careful not to deprive it of any possibilities.

  “I haven’t always been kind to you, Ludo. So now you’re getting back at me. You forgot me for hours yesterday. You know I’m at your mercy and you like to make me feel it. That’s so typically masculine. As if you were always expecting me to say, what would I become without you? You’re making a game of scaring me.”

  I will admit that I enjoy her fears and worries: here she is, a girl from the oldest of noble families, dependent on a Norman hayseed, on his faithfulness and his memory. But I never abuse my power over her. I allow myself, at the very most, to take the license of infinitely prolonging certain of her motions — like brushing her hand through her hair: I need a few good minutes of that caress each morning. Or I lay hold of her arm to stop her putting on her brassiere.

  “Ludo, come on! Will you cut it out?”

  I like setting off that spark of anger in her eyes. Nothing comforts me more than the sight of her so unchanged, identical to herself.

  “You think you’re allowed to do anything, because I depend on you. Yesterday you made me walk twelve miles through the countryside. And I didn’t like that stupid green sweater you made me wear either, not one bit.”

  “It’s the only one I have, and it was cold.”

  And then, slowly, she ebbs, returns to her clandestinity, and I keep my eyelids closed, the better to protect her.

  28

  I got around the country with ease; the Germans didn’t mistrust me, because they knew I had lost touch with my reason, though that should have been reason enough for them to shoot me on sight. I stored hundreds of constantly changing names and “post box” addresses in my head; never did I have even the smallest scrap of paper on my person.

  One morning, after a night on the road, I stopped for a breather at Le Thélème. At a neighboring table, a man sat reading his newspaper. I couldn’t see his face, just the headline through the first page: Red Army in Full Collapse. Monsieur Roubaud, the owner, came over and set two glasses of white on the table for “poor Ludo” — one for me, the other to humor me. People around here had grown accustomed to my peculiarity, and newcomers were invariably reminded that I was even more “certified” than my uncle, the famous eponymous postman, with his kites. My neighbor lowered his newspaper and I recognized Monsieur Pinder, my old French teacher. I hadn’t seen him since the eighth grade. The passage of time had strongly accentuated his features, which still had the admonitory severity with which he’d once hunted out spelling errors in our notebooks. The same pince-nez and the same goatee he’d worn back then still adorned his face. Monsieur Pinder had always seemed slightly imperial, and he still did, though his illustriousness came largely from the crossword puzzle he’d composed for the Gazette for the past forty years.

  I got up from my seat.

  “Hello, Fleury, hello — please allow me to present my respectful salutations to …”

  He rose slightly and bowed to the empty chair. Bricot, the waiter, who was wiping glasses behind the bar, stopped in astonishment, then resumed wiping. He was a nice enough fellow, who never once used his imagination in his entire life; his death at the hands of SS agents fleeing after D-day was therefore totally useless and unjust.

  “I salute sacred folly,” said Monsieur Pinder. “Yours, your uncle Ambrose’s, and that other young Frenchman in this country whose memory has made him lose his head entirely. I am pleased to note that so many of you have retained what rightly deserves to be included in our good old mandatory public education.” He chuckled. “One might interpret ‘to keep one’s reason’ in two ways. I assigned you a composition on the subject once, I believe. A French composition, if you will.”

  “I remember it very well, Monsieur Pinder. ‘To keep touch with reason: to follow good sense; to act reasonably.’ Or, to the contrary, ‘To keep one’s reason to live.’”

  My former teacher seemed extremely pleased. Although he’d retired long ago, had grown wrinkly, and his imperial air had sagged a bit, there always has been a wholly different kind of youth, the kind that can get even a seventy-year-old schoolteacher deported.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, without specifying the object of his approbation.

  Lorgnette, the owner’s dog, a fox terrier with a black patch around each eye, came and offered Monsieur Pinder her paw. He patted her.

  “One needs a great deal of imagination,” he observed. “A great deal. Look at the Russians: it would appear that they’ve lost the war, according to this newspaper here. But they also seem to have enough imagination not to have noticed it.”

  He stood up. “You’re a very good student, Fleury. Keeping your reason to live is sometimes an antonym for keeping touch with your reason. You shall have excellent marks. Come and see me one of these days, and don’t wait too long. Waiter!”

  He set twenty sous on the table, removed his pince-nez, which was attached to its fob pocket by a velvet ribbon, and put it carefully away. He bowed again to the empty chair, put on his hat, and walked off, his gait somewhat stiff, as his knees were not doing him any favors.

  From May 1941 to July 1942, he wrote a good part of the clandestine “literature” distributed in Normandy. He was arrested in 1944, just before D-day, having grown too confident in his crossword puzzles, which were published twice a week on page four of the Gazette, and which transmitted coded instructions to members of the Resistance fighting in the west, but whose key had been delivered to the Gestapo by a comrade after the rending of a few fingernails.

  All the same, Ambrose Fleury was fingered as a suspect after posters appeared in Cléry one morning on which the words “eternal France” spoke with the fresh and unexpected power of clichés when they suddenly begin molting and emerge transfigured from their old, tattered skins. I was surprised at this unexpected insight from those professionals of heavy-handedness, who, although they knew that what goes up — even a kite — must come down, no matter the force of hope propelling it, somehow identified this old naïf, who could usually be found in a field, surrounded by children, looking up at one of his gnamas, which nowadays we were forbidden from flying higher than fifty feet off the ground.

  The news that suspicions had landed on my uncle was brought to us by our neighbors’ son, the Cailleux boy, who dashed into the workshop one fine morning. Johnny Cailleux was as blond as if he’d been rubbed from head to toe with a sheaf of wheat, and he was all out of breath, more from the emotion than from the running.

  “They’re coming.”

  Whereupon, having paid this first tribute to friendship, he bolted outside and o
ffered up a second one, this time to Norman prudence, disappearing as swiftly as a terrified rabbit.

  “They” turned out to be the mayor of Cléry, Monsieur Plantier, and the town hall secretary, Jabot, whom Monsieur Plantier invited to stay outside; most likely he didn’t want his trusty as a witness — trust then was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He came in, wiping his forehead with a large red-checked handkerchief — officials were already sweating a lot, with the first sabotages — and sat down on a bench, in his piss-colored corduroy jacket and breeches, without so much as a hello, his humor far from pleasant.

  “Fleury, is it you, or isn’t it?”

  “It’s me,” my uncle replied, for he was justifiably proud of our name. “It’s been Fleury for ten generations at least.”

  “Don’t play dumb. They’ve got firing squads now, in case you didn’t know.”

  “But what have I done?”

  “Pamphlets have been found. Real calls for insanity, there’s no other word for it. You’d have to be mad to attack the German forces. Everyone’s saying it: only those crazy Fleurys would do such a thing. First the young one sets fire to the mansion where the German staff headquarters is supposed to be set up — fool, don’t deny it! — and then the old man spends all his time launching his proclamations in the sky.”

  “What proclamations, you old noodle?” my uncle inquired, surprised, with tenderness unwonted for an old pacifist whose vocabulary had fought the Battles of the Marne and Verdun.

  “Your nutty kites and those pamphlets — it’s the same damn thing,” shouted the mayor, suffering from the effects of a comprehension that seemed to come more from the heart than from the head. “Clemenceau, the other day — my kids saw that! And that? What’s that?”

  He pointed an accusing finger at Zola.

  “Is it really the time to be flying Zolas out there? Why not Dreyfus, while you’re at it? Old man, that kind of kidding around will get you marched before a firing squad!”

  “We had nothing to do with the sabotages they’re talking about — much less my kites. You want some cider? You’re imagining things.”

  “Me?” roared Plantier. “Me, imagining things?”

  My uncle poured him some cider. “No one is safe from imagination, Monsieur Mayor. Pretty soon you’ll be seeing de Gaulle floating around up there … No one is safe from acts of folly, not even you.”

  “What is that supposed to mean, not even me? You think I don’t want to see the Germans out of here?”

  “Good Lord, I hope you’re not one of those people who listens to Radio London every night!”

  Plantier looked at him darkly. “Yes — well, look here, it’s none of your business what I do or don’t listen to.”

  He stood up. He was fat. His weight made him sweat even more.

  “Remember, it would be very convenient for us all if it could be proven that two nutcases were printing those pamphlets. If they start going after reasonable people we’ll never get a moment’s peace. I should have let them nab you in the public interest. I don’t know what stopped me.”

  “Maybe it’s because you used to come play with my kites when you were little. Remember?”

  Plantier sighed. “That must be it.” He gazed suspiciously around him. The kites from my uncle’s “historical series” of French kings hung from the rafters, and when they dangle like that, with their heads down, they look sad. Plantier pointed at one of them.

  “Who’s that one?”

  “That’s Good King Dagobert. He’s not subversive.”

  “Yeah, you go figure what’s subversive and what’s not these days.” Plantier took a step toward the door. “Do some housekeeping, Fleury. They’re coming, and if they find one single pamphlet …”

  “They” did not find any pamphlets. It did not occur to them to look inside the kings of France. They didn’t find the printing press, either. It was hidden in a hole beneath a pile of manure. They poked around the manure with a pitchfork, and when the manure responded in the usual way, they didn’t ask anything else of it.

  German soldiers often came to order gnamas to send back home to their children as gifts. Certain kites contained not only calls to resist written in Monsieur Pinder’s fiery prose, but also notes on the principal locations of German troops and the positions of coastal batteries. You had to be very careful not to mix the “sale stock” with the rest.

  Our neighbors, the Cailleux, were perfectly aware of our activities, and Johnny Cailleux often served as a messenger for us. As for the Magnards, I sometimes wondered if they had even noticed France was occupied. They had the same attitude toward the Germans as they did toward everyone else: they ignored them. No one had ever seen them take the slightest interest in what was going on around them.

  “They still make the best butter in the region, though,” Marcellin Duprat remarked approvingly.

  The owner of the Clos Joli recommended us to his new clientele, and once we even received a visit from General Milch, the celebrated German aviator.

  Our most frequent visitor at La Motte was Cléry’s mayor. Plantier would sit down on a bench in the workshop and remain there, grim and suspicious, watching my uncle give body and wings to the naive pictures children sent to him. Then he would get up and leave. He seemed anxious, but kept his fears to himself. And then one day he took my uncle aside.

  “Ambrose, you’re going to slip up one of these days. I can feel it coming. Where are you hiding it?”

  “Hiding what?”

  “Come on, don’t play dumb with me. I’m sure you’ve got it squirreled away somewhere. And then you’ll launch it and they’ll take you away, I’m telling you.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve made a de Gaulle kite, I know it. I’ve been expecting it. And the day you decide to fly it, you know what’s going to happen to you?”

  My uncle didn’t say anything at first, but I saw he was moved — there was a softness in his eyes when something touched him. He went and sat down beside the mayor.

  “Come now, come now — don’t think about it all the time, Albert, or you’ll end up on the town hall balcony shouting ‘Vive de Gaulle!’ without even knowing what’s hit you. And don’t make that face …” He laughed into his big mustache. “I’m not going to denounce you.”

  “Denounce me for what?” shouted Plantier.

  “I won’t go telling the Germans you’re hiding de Gaulle in your home.”

  Monsieur Plantier remained silent, staring at his feet. Then he left and didn’t come back again. He managed to contain himself for a few months, and then, in April 1942, he made it over to England in a fishing boat.

  The country was beginning to change. The presence of the invisible grew steadily. People who seemed “reasonable” and “sane” risked their lives to hide English aviators who had been shot down and Free French agents who had parachuted in from London. “Sensible” men — bourgeoisie, working class, farmers, people it was hard to claim were pursuing the blue yonder — printed and distributed papers in which they spoke of “immortality,” a word they employed frequently, despite the fact that they were always the first to die.

  29

  We’ll build our house as soon as the war is over, but I don’t know where or how I’ll come up with the money. I don’t want to think about it. You have to keep a sharp lookout for excesses of lucidity and good sense — life has lost some of the prettiest feathers in its cap to them. So I haven’t waited; I did all the work myself, and the materials hardly cost me more than a kite. We have a dog but we haven’t named him yet. You always have to set a little something aside for the future. I decided not to sit for the entrance exams for the grandes écoles; out of loyalty to that good old “mandatory public education,” I’ve chosen the profession of schoolteacher, although when I read the names of executed hostages on the walls I’m not
sure it deserves that much sacrifice.

  Sometimes, I’m afraid. Then the house becomes my refuge; it’s hidden from sight; only I know the way there; I built it in the place where we first met; it’s not wild strawberry season but, after all, we don’t live off childhood memories. I often come home dead tired from the long days of trekking through the countryside, filled with nervous tension, and then it takes tremendous effort to find it. You can’t say enough for the power of closed eyes. One German victory follows another in Russia, which often makes it even harder to overcome my weaknesses, and maybe it’s not the time to spend my nights so doggedly building a house for a future that seems to recede further with every passing day. How Lila must hate my moments of solid good sense: she’s entirely dependent on what everyone at the Clos Joli calls my aberration. Even my uncle worries about my underground activities. I wonder if he isn’t feeling his years all of a sudden — they say wisdom overtakes us with age. But no: he simply advises me to be a bit more careful. It’s true that I take too many risks, but there are more and more weapons drops and someone has to collect them, bring them to a safe place, and learn how to use them.

  Often, I find the house is empty. It’s normal for Lila not to be there waiting for me. We don’t know much about the Polish Resistance and the partisan groups hiding out in the forest, but I can only imagine that reality must be even more vigilant there than it is here, more odious, more difficult to vanquish. They’re saying it’s already chalked up millions of deaths.

  It’s almost always in my worst moments of discouragement and weariness that Lila comes to my rescue. It’s enough for me to see her exhausted face and her pale lips to remember that from one end of Europe to the other, it’s the same struggle, the same senseless effort.

  “I waited up for you night after night. You didn’t come.”

  “We sustained heavy losses; we had to go deeper into the forest. There were injuries to take care of and almost no medical supplies. I didn’t have time to think about you.”