The Kites Page 19

  “How did you get that?”

  Madame Julie stood before me dressed all in gray, stroking Chong. “None of your business.”

  “Explain it to me, for God’s sake. It’s not credible, when you think about it. It’s straight from the Gestapo.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. Grüber’s deputy, Arnoldt, is a homosexual. He’s living with a friend of mine, who’s a Jew.”

  She rubbed her cheek against Chong’s muzzle. “I’m the only one who knows he’s Jewish. I had Aryan paperwork forged for him. Third-generation Aryan. He can’t refuse a thing to me.”

  “But now that he has the right papers, he can get rid of you. He can denounce you.”

  “Ah, no, my little Ludo. Because I kept his real papers.”

  There was something implacable and nearly invincible in that dark gaze.

  “So long, kid.”

  “Wait. What do you think will happen to you if I’m arrested and shot?”

  “Not a thing. I’ll be very sad.”

  “You’re wrong, Lady Esterhazy. If I’m no longer around to corroborate all you’ve done for the Resistance, they’ll be after you as soon as the Liberation comes. And then, there will be no one left to defend you. All that will be left is …” I swallowed and screwed my courage to the sticking point: “All that will be left is Julie Espinoza the madam, who was very cozy with the Germans. The firing squads will be just as busy as they are now, you can be sure of that. I’m the only one who knows what you’ve done for us, and if I’m not around anymore …”

  Her hand froze on Chong’s little head, and then continued its caress. I was horrified by my audacity. But the only thing I saw cross the “boss lady’s” face was a smile.

  “My goodness, Ludo, you’ve toughened up,” she said to me. “A real man’s man. But you’re right. I have witnesses in Paris, but I probably won’t have time to go back there. Fine, fine, go ahead. You can tell your friends. And tell them, too, that tomorrow I want a letter of commendation for the services I’ve rendered. I’ll keep it in a safe place … where no one will go looking, at my age. And you tell your network commander … What’s his name again?”

  “Soubabère.”

  “That if there’s the slightest slipup, I’ll be the first to know, and I’ll have the time to get away, but not you. None of you. There won’t be a single one of you left — not even you, Ludo. I’ve been fucked too many times in my life to get fucked over. He’ll keep his mouth shut, that boss of yours, or I’ll have it shut for him, and for good.”

  It took me an hour to explain everything to Souba that evening. The only comment he made after hearing me out was, “She’s quite a lady, that hooker.”

  From time to time, I almost came to regret the argument to which I’d resorted to convince the lieutenant. I’d hit her where she felt it most: her instinct for self-preservation. What might happen to her in the days following the departure of the Germans really came to haunt her: she all but asked for a receipt every time she passed me information. After her “Resistance Hero” certificate, which was dated and signed by “Hercules” — the code name Soubabère had modestly chosen for himself — she demanded another one for her daughter, and another one, typed out, signed, and dated, but with the beneficiary’s name left blank, to fill in later. “Just in case I want to save someone,” she explained to me.

  Soon, Madame Julie had her own code name in London: Garance. After she was awarded her Resistance Medal, her behind-the-scenes role became well known, so I’ve changed some names and a few details here, so as not to disturb her in the notoriety she gained after the war. She continued as our informant until the Allied landing, and was never bothered or suspected. Right up to the end, her ties to the occupying forces were considered “shameful” in the region: she threw a garden party for the German officers at the Stag just days before D-day. She even grew so bold as to install a transceiver in her maid’s quarters, and the maid in question, Odette Lanier, fresh from her training in London, was able to work entirely undisturbed a hundred and fifty yards away from the German staff headquarters.

  We had agreed from the start that I would never take the lead in contacting the Gräfin.

  “If I have something for you, I’ll come and have lunch here, and I’ll leave Chong for you to take care of. I’ll pick him up on my way out and I’ll tell you what I have to say. If I want you to come see me at home, I’ll forget the dog and you’ll bring it back to me …”

  A few months after our first encounter, Monsieur Jean came into the office, where Chong was asleep on a chair. “The Lady Esterhazy forgot the pup. She just rang. She wants you to bring it back to her.”

  “Goddammit,” I said, for form’s sake.

  The villa, which before the war had been occupied by a Jewish family from Paris, was located in the vast gardens of the Stag. Chong was unenthused by his bicycle ride under my arm, and didn’t stop wriggling the whole time. I had to walk part of the way. A chambermaid — a pretty one, at that — opened when I rang.

  “Oh, yes, Madame forgot it …” She tried to take the dog, but I refused, sullenly. “Hang on a minute, now, a whole goddamn hour on this bike and …”

  “I’ll go and see.”

  Just moments later, she returned. “Her Ladyship begs your pardon. Please come in. She would like to thank you.”

  The Gräfin Esterhazy, dressed in a discreet shade of gray that went perfectly with her snow-white chignon, appeared at the door of the sitting room accompanied by a young German officer, who was bidding her goodbye. By sight, I knew him well: he was the staff interpreter, who often accompanied Colonel Schtekker to the Clos Joli.

  “Goodbye, Captain. And believe me, Admiral Horthy became regent quite against his own wishes. His popularity, which was already considerable in 1917, following the battle of Otranto, soared to such heights that, having crushed the Bolshevik Revolution of Béla Kun in 1919, he had no choice but to bow to popular opinion …”

  It was, word for word, the paragraph from the history textbook I had heard Madame Julie reciting in her bordello in 1940, as she prepared for the German victory.

  “But it’s said he has dynastic ambitions,” the captain said. “He named his son István vice-regent …”

  Chong trotted over to his mistress.

  “Ah, there you are.”

  She smiled at me. “Poor little thing. I forgot him. Come, young man, come …”

  The officer kissed the Gräfin’s hand and departed. I followed her into the sitting room. There, on the piano, were the famous “autographed” portraits of Horthy and Salazar I’d noticed at the Hôtel du Passage. Marshal Pétain hung on the wall in a prominent position. The only thing missing was the picture of Hitler I’d also seen “waiting” at the rue Lepic.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Madame Julie, following my gaze, “but it was making me sick.” She glanced at the entryway, then shut the door again. “That handsome captain is schtupping my chambermaid,” she told me. “Which is quite a good thing — it could come in handy. But I change servants every two or three months. It’s safer that way. They always end up knowing too much.” She yanked open the door again with a sudden movement and looked outside. No one was there. “Good. We’re all clear. Come on.”

  I followed her to her bedroom. The change that came over her in the space of a few minutes was extraordinary. At the Clos Joli, and just before, with the German officer, she had been a distinguished lady, holding herself very straight, head high, supported by a cane. Now, she advanced heavily, rolling from one leg to the other, like a docker under a crushing load. She seemed to have gained forty pounds and aged half as many years.

  She walked over to a dresser, opened a drawer, and pulled out a bottle of Coty perfume. “Here, take this.”

  “Perfume, Madame Ju …”

  “Do not ever call me that, you idiot. Cure yourself of that habit — it could come over you
at the wrong moment. This isn’t perfume. It’s deadly, but it only takes effect after forty-eight hours. Now, listen closely …”

  And so it was that in June of 1942, we learned that General von Tiele, the new commander of the German army in Normandy, was giving a luncheon at the Clos Joli, whose guests would include the commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, Marshal Goering himself, as well as a pack of ace pilots, including Garland, the English air force’s number one enemy, as well as numerous generals of the highest rank.

  Our first decision, as soon as we found out the time and date of Goering’s dinner, was to make a big hit. Nothing would have been easier than to poison all the dishes. The affair was too important, however, to be undertaken on our own initiative, and we consulted with London. Everything had to be planned for, including Duprat’s evacuation to England by submarine. The details of Operation Achilles’ Heel have been told several times now, most notably in Donald Simes’s memoir, Nights of Fire.

  The task of talking Duprat into it fell to me, and I approached him with apprehension. The menu General von Tiele had chosen included a seafood saveloy made with truffles and pistachio. I explained our project in what I confess was a feeble voice.

  Duprat refused outright.

  “Poison my saveloy? Impossible.”

  “Why?”

  He glared at me with the steely blue gaze I knew so well: “Because it wouldn’t taste good.”

  He turned on his heel and left the room. When I attempted to follow him into the kitchen, he took me by the shoulders and pushed me out without a word.

  Thankfully, London sent us a message to abort the operation. From time to time I wondered whether de Gaulle himself hadn’t put a stop to it, for the sake of the Clos Joli’s reputation.

  33

  I spoke to Lila less and saw her less, and in this way concealed her more in the eyes of others: it was the rule of the underground. From time to time, a comrade was nabbed because he was taking too many risks and didn’t know how to hide his reason to live. My memory had stored away so many hundreds of constantly changing addresses and collected so much military intelligence that there was less and less room for Lila in there; she’d had to squeeze over a bit and live on less. Her voice barely came through to me now, and when it did, when, instead of thinking of the following day, of meetings, of arrest, of the ever-present possibility of betrayal, my mind was free to listen to her, she spoke with an undertone of reproach.

  “If you keep forgetting me it’ll all be over, Ludo. Over. The more you forget me, the more I’ll be nothing but a memory.”

  “I’m not forgetting you. I’m just hiding you. I’m not forgetting you, or Tad, or Bruno. You should know that by now. It’s not the time to be showing the Germans your reason for living. They’ll shoot you for that.”

  “You’ve become so sure of yourself, so calm. You laugh a lot, as if nothing could happen to me.”

  “As long as I stay sure and calm, nothing can happen to you.”

  “What do you know? And what if I’m dead?” My heart nearly stops, when I hear this insidious murmur. But it’s not Lila’s voice. It’s just the voice of fatigue and doubt. Never before have I needed to go to such lengths to remain unreasonable.

  I stop at nothing; I use every trick. At night, I rise, heat water for the bath, and fill the tub. They’re dreaming of hot baths over there, in their snowy forest, where it’s so cold that every morning you find the bodies of frozen crows curled up beneath the trees.

  “You really do think of everything, Ludo.”

  She is there, beneath my eyelids, soaking in hot water up to her chin.

  “It’s tough, you know. The hunger, the snow … You know me, how I hate the cold! I wonder how much longer we can hold out. The Russians are being routed, there’s no one to help us. We’re all alone.”

  “How is Tad?”

  “He’s taken command of all the partisans in the region. His name is legend, now.”

  “And Bruno?”

  She smiles.

  “Poor thing! If you could’ve seen him, rifle in hand … He held out a few months …”

  “To be near you.”

  “Now he’s in Warsaw, with his music teacher. He’s got a piano.”

  I feel a hand on my shoulder, shaking me roughly. My uncle is there, in the dull rainy gray of daylight.

  “Get up, Ludo. They found an English plane near the ponds over at Goigne. It’s empty. The crew must be searching for a place to hide. Got to try and find them.”

  Another month, and another. Around us, reality is becoming harsher and harsher, more and more implacable: the entire team that printed the Clarté newspaper was arrested; no one got away. I haven’t seen Lila for weeks: I even went to see Dr. Gardieu, to see if something was wrong with my heart. Nope, nothing wrong in that department.

  When the discouragement got to be too much for me, when my strength lagged and my imagination laid down its arms, I would go and see my old French teacher in Cléry. He lived in a house with a little garden that looked as if it had been squeezed in around two trees. Madame Pinder would make us tea and serve it in the library. Her husband would invite me to take a seat, and then regard me at length through his pince-nez. He was probably the last man in the world to wear sleeve protectors. He still wrote with the old Sergent fountain pen of my childhood. He would tell me that in his youth he’d dreamed of becoming a novelist, then he’d add that the only work of imagination he had ever successfully produced was his wife. Madame Pinder would laugh, roll her eyes heavenward, and fill our cups. There are some older women who in a single gesture, a laugh, become young girls again. I’d keep quiet. I didn’t come to talk, but to find comfort; this couple who’d never left each other reassured me in their permanence; I needed their duration, their old age shared, their promise. The house was unheated, and Monsieur Pinder would sit behind his desk with his jacket draped over his shoulders, a flannel scarf around his neck, wearing a wide-brimmed hat; Madame Pinder wore old-fashioned dresses that went down to her ankles and kept her all-white hair pinned back; I observed the two of them avidly, as if they were auguring the future to me. I dreamed of being elderly, of finding myself with Lila on the threshold of extreme old age. All doubt and worry, everything that was nearing despair in me, would calm at the sight of this old, happy couple. Home was in reach.

  “They’re still laughing at Ambrose Fleury and his kites,” Monsieur Pinder said to me. “It’s a good sign. That’s one of the great virtues of comedy: it’s a safe house where serious things can find refuge and survive. What surprises me is that the Gestapo leaves you alone.”

  “They’ve already searched us. They didn’t find a thing.”

  Monsieur Pinder smiled.

  “That’s a problem the Nazis will never be able to solve. No one has ever succeeded in that kind of search. How is your … friend?”

  “We’ve received several airdrops. A new kind of transceiver, with an instructor. And weapons. At the Gambier farm alone we have a hundred pistols hidden, plus hand grenades and incendiary devices … I’m doing all I can.”

  Monsieur Pinder nodded his head to show he understood. “The only thing I worry about with you, Ludovic Fleury, is your … reunion. I might not be around by the time it happens, which will no doubt shield me from many disappointments. France, when it returns, will need not only all of our imagination, but a lot of imaginary things, as well. So this young woman you have been imagining for three years with so much fervor, when you find her again … You’ll need to keep inventing her, with everything you have. She will surely be very different from the girl you knew … I don’t know what wonders our Resistance fighters are expecting of France when she returns, and bleak laughter will often be the measure they show of their disappointment — and even more than that, of themselves …”

  “Lack of love,” I said.

  Monsieur Pinder puffed on his empty cigarette ho
lder. “Nothing is worth the experience if it isn’t a work of imagination above all things — or the sea would be nothing but a lot of salt water … Take me, for example, for fifty years I’ve never once stopped inventing my wife. I haven’t even let her age. She must be riddled with faults I’ve turned into qualities. And in her eyes, I’m an extraordinary man. She’s never stopped inventing me, either. In fifty years of living together, you really learn not to see each other, to invent and reinvent each other with every passing day. You do always have to take things as they are, of course. But only because that’s how you grab onto them to drag them into the light. That’s all civilization is, really — continuously dragging things as they are into the light …”

  Monsieur Pinder was arrested a year later and never returned from the camps; nor did his wife, although she wasn’t deported. I visit them often, in their little house, and they welcome me just as warmly as they always did, even though they’ve been gone a long time now, I’ve been told.

  34

  In the underground struggle I’d joined to hasten Lila’s return, my main responsibilities were as a liaison among my comrades; with André Cailleux and Larinière, I was also in charge of the Normandy section of the network that — when we made it to a landing site before the Germans did — sheltered downed Allied aviators and helped smuggle them through to Spain. In the months of February and March 1942 alone, we recovered five out of the nine pilots who had managed to land their planes or parachute out in time. At the end of March, Cailleux came to alert me that there was a fighter pilot hidden near the Rieux farm; the hideout was secure, but the Rieux were getting impatient, especially the old lady, who was eighty and feared for her family. We set out into the foggy dawn. The damp earth stuck to the soles of our shoes; we had twelve miles to cover, not counting the detours we had to make to stay clear of roads and German checkpoints. We walked in silence; it was only as we neared the farm that Cailleux announced to me: “Hey, I forgot to tell you …” He winked at me in a friendly way, but not without a hint of mischief: “You might be interested to know. The pilot’s Polish.”