Promise at Dawn Page 22

  As I entered the rue Dante, I saw a tricolor flag floating over the freshly painted façade of the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts. Yet this was no national holiday. One glance at the unadorned windows of the neighboring houses assured me of that. Then, suddenly, I realized the full meaning of the flag. My mother had raised the tricolor in honor of the homecoming of her son, recently promoted to the rank of second lieutenant in the French Air Force. I stopped the taxi. I had just time to pay the driver before being sick again. I finished the journey on foot. My legs felt weak and I was breathing deeply.

  My mother was waiting for me in the hotel lobby behind the little reception desk at the far end. She gave one glance at my private’s uniform with the red lance corporal’s stripe on the sleeve. Her mouth fell open and into her eyes there came that dumb look of incomprehension which I have never been able to endure in men, animals or children. . . . I had pushed my cap over one eye and assumed the hard, cynical expression of a true adventurer. I smiled mysteriously, and after the briefest of kisses, said to her: “Come in here. Something funny has happened. But you must promise me to be very discreet about it. The honor of a woman is at stake.”

  I led her to our usual corner of the restaurant. “I’ve not been made an officer, as you can see. I was the only one out of three hundred who didn’t get a commission. A little matter of discipline, and only temporary . . .”

  Her poor face was all expectation and confidence. She was ready to believe and approve anything I chose to tell her.

  “I may have to wait six months or so. You see . . .” I gave a hurried look around me to make sure that nobody was within earshot. “. . . I seduced the wife of my commanding officer. Couldn’t resist. The orderly gave us away. The husband decided to make me pay for it. . . .”

  My mother’s face showed a moment’s hesitation. Then the old romantic instinct of Anna Karenina carried the day. Her lips broke into a smile and a look of profound curiosity came into her eyes. “Was she very beautiful?”

  “You have no idea,” I told her, shaking my head with a sigh. “A fabulous creature! I knew the risk I was taking but didn’t hesitate an instant. It was worth it!”

  “Have you a photo of her?”

  No, I didn’t have a photo. “She’s going to send me one when things quiet down.”

  My mother looked at me with extraordinary pride. “Don Juan!” she exclaimed. “Casanova! I always said so!”

  I smiled modestly.

  “Her husband might have killed you!”

  I shrugged.

  “Does she love you really and truly?”

  “Really and truly.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh well, you know how it is with me,” I said with my toughest air.

  “You mustn’t be like that,” said my mother, though without much conviction. “Promise me you’ll write to her.”

  “Oh, I’ll write to her all right!”

  My mother remained deep in thought for a few moments. Then a new idea came to her: “The only one out of three hundred not to be made a second lieutenant!” she said in a tone of unstinted pride and admiration.

  She hurried away to get tea, jam, sandwiches, cakes and fruit. Then she sat down, put both hands on her thighs, and breathed noisily with intense satisfaction.

  “Now tell me all about it,” she ordered.

  My mother loved beautiful stories. I had told her a great many.

  CHAPTER 29

  Having thus adroitly warded off the more immediate danger, in other words, having saved France from an appalling collapse in my mother’s eyes and heart, and explained to her the reason for my setback with the delicacy of a true man of the world, I now had to face a second test which found me much better prepared.

  Four months earlier, when I was called to the colors, I enjoyed at Salon-de-Provence the privileged standing which befits a future officer. The noncoms had no authority over me and the privates regarded me with a certain amount of awe. I was now coming back to them as a simple lance corporal.

  One can well imagine what sort of life was mine, what I had to put up with, in the way of insults, fatigue, practical jokes, jeers and subtle irony. This was the period when the Army was slowly decomposing among the comforts and delights of that rottenness which finally worked its way into the very souls of some of the defeatists, collaborationists and traitors of 1940. My duties over the weeks that followed my return to Salon-de-Provence took the form of permanent latrine inspection, but I must confess that the sight of latrines was a pleasant change after the faces of certain sergeant majors and sergeants about the camp. Compared with what I had felt when I went back to my mother without her golden officer’s stripe, the vexations to which I was exposed were minor troubles and, on the whole, took my mind off my defeat rather than reminding me of it. And I had only to leave the camp to find myself in the Provencal countryside, with its strangely funereal beauty, where the stones scattered among the cypresses suggested some mysterious ruin of the sky.

  I was not unhappy. I made a number of friends among the civilian population. I went to Les Baux, where, from the top of the gigantic cliff, troubadours sang in medieval times and the courts of love were held, and I spent hours looking at the stretching sea of olive trees at my feet.

  I practiced pistol shooting and put in some fifty hours’ clandestine flying time as a pilot, thanks to the complicity of two of my friends, Sergeant Christ and Sergeant Blaise. Finally, somebody, somewhere, awoke to the fact that I held a navigator’s diploma, with the result that I was appointed air gunnery instructor. The war caught me thus occupied, with my machine guns pointed at the sky.

  The idea that France might lose the war had never occurred to me. My mother’s life could not conceivably end on a note of defeat. This extremely logical line of argument inspired me with more confidence in the victory of French arms than all the Maginot Lines and all the clarion calls of our beloved leaders. My own beloved leader could not possibly lose the war, and I felt sure that destiny was keeping in reserve as a reward for her that final victory which, after so long a struggle, so many sacrifices and so much heroism on her part, was her due.

  The day war was declared, my mother came to Salon-de-Provence to say good-by to me, in the old Renault taxi already mentioned. She arrived laden with food—hams, tins of jam and preserved fruit, cigarettes—everything, in fact, of which a heroic soldier may dream in the hour of his greatest need.

  It transpired, however, that these parcels were not meant for me. There was a cunning look in my mother’s face when she held them out, saying: “For your officers.”

  I was left speechless. I could see the expression on the faces of Captain Longevialle, Captain Moulignat and Captain Turben when a lance corporal entered headquarters and presented them, in his mother’s name, with a tribute of sausages, hams, cognac and cakes designed to influence them in his favor. I do not know whether she thought that this type of Oriental baksheesh was traditional in the French Army, as it may have been in Russian provincial garrisons in Gogol’s time, a hundred years ago, but I took great care to keep my thoughts on the matter to myself. She was perfectly capable of taking these “gifts” in person to my superiors, accompanying their presentation with one of those patriotic tirades of hers which would have brought a blush to the cheeks of Déroulède1 himself.

  I managed, with considerable difficulty, to shepherd my mother, her effusiveness and her parcels out of range of the curious eyes of the grinning soldiery lounging in front of the canteen, and to lead her to the runway, among the grounded aircraft. She walked across the grass, leaning on her stick and solemnly inspecting our aviation strength. Three years later, it was my good fortune to be present when another great lady reviewed our air crews and their machines on a flying ground in Kent. She was Queen Elizabeth of England and I must say that there was less of a proprietary air about Her Majesty than there was about my mother when she walked past our squadrons on the airfield at Salon.

  Having thus taken stock of our military mig
ht, my mother felt rather tired and sat down on the grass at the airfield’s edge. She lit a cigarette and her face assumed a brooding look. She was frowning and obviously preoccupied. I waited. Without any beating around the bush, she said straight out what she was thinking: “We must attack at once,” she declared.

  I must have shown some surprise, for she proceeded to make her words more explicit. “We must march straight on Berlin.” She said it in Russian: Nada iti na Bierlinn, in a tone of profound conviction and absolute certainty.

  I have always since regretted that, failing General de Gaulle, the command of the French armies in 1939 was not entrusted to my mother. I feel pretty sure that our great General Staff, which allowed the breakthrough of German armor at Sedan, would have found its master in her. She had, to a very high degree, the sense of the offensive and the very rare gift of imparting her energy and initiative even to those who most obviously lacked it. I hope I shall be believed when I say that she was not the woman to remain inactive behind the Maginot Line with her left flank completely uncovered.

  I promised her to do my best. This seemed to satisfy her, and she returned to her brooding. “All these machines have open cockpits,” she remarked. “Remember that you’ve always had a delicate throat.”

  I could not resist pointing out that if all the Luftwaffe was going to give me was a sore throat, I would consider myself very lucky. She smiled and gave me a superior, almost ironical look. “Nothing is going to happen to you,” she told me, with perfect tranquillity.

  Her face expressed complete confidence. It was as though she knew, as though she had made a pact with Fate, as though in exchange for her own botched life she had been given certain guarantees, received certain promises. I myself shared her confidence, but this secret knowledge of hers, by removing all risk, removed also for me all possibility of heroic posturing in the midst of perils and thus suppressed not only the danger but, in a sense, my courage as well, making me feel a little hurt

  “Not one pilot in ten will see the end of the war,” I told her proudly. For a moment, a look of blank incomprehension came into her face, a frightened look. Her lips trembled and she began to cry. I took her hand—a thing I very rarely did with her: I could do it only with women.

  “Nothing is going to happen to you,” she said again, but this time her voice sounded almost imploring.

  “No, nothing will happen to me, Mother, I promise you that.” She hesitated. Some struggle was going on inside her and it was reflected in her face. Then she made a little concession. “You may, perhaps, be wounded in the leg,” she said.

  She was trying to make a deal with Fate. And yet, under that sky of cypresses and white stones, it was difficult not to feel the presence of the oldest of man’s destinies, the one that takes no interest and plays no part in his fate. Still, as I measured the anxiety in her eyes, as I listened to that poor woman trying so hard to make a bargain with the gods, I found it more than ever difficult to believe that they were less accessible to pity than Rinaldi, the taxi driver, less understanding than the traders in garlic and pizzas in the Buffa Market, that they could have lived so long with the Mediterranean without learning something from it. Somewhere, above our heads, an honest hand must be holding the scales, and the gods must not be allowed to play with loaded dice against a mother’s heart. The whole land of Provence began to sing in my ears with its cicada voice, and it was without so much as a hint of doubt that I said: “Don’t worry, Mother, of course nothing is going to happen to me.”

  As bad luck would have it, on our way back to the taxi, one of my commanding officers, Captain Moulignat, passed us. I saluted smartly and explained to my mother who he was. Fool that I was! In a flash, my mother had opened the door of the cab, fished out a ham, a bottle and two salami sausages and, before I could do anything to stop her, was already bowing before the captain and offering her presents, with a few appropriate words. I thought I would die of shame—as one can see, I still harbored a number of illusions, for, if it were possible to die of shame, the whole human race would long ago have vanished from the face of the earth. The captain glanced at me with astonishment and I looked back at him with such mute eloquence that, like a true gentleman, he hesitated not a moment, grabbed the sausages, the ham and the bottle, thanked my mother politely and, as she turned to the taxi, after withering me with a triumphant glance, he helped her in and saluted. Gravely, and with a royal inclination of the head, she settled herself in the back seat. I was quite certain that she was sniffing with satisfaction, having given one more proof of her tact and savoir-vivre, which I, her son, had sometimes had the effrontery to doubt. The taxi started and her expression changed suddenly: it was as though her face had suffered shipwreck; pressed to the window, it gazed at me with intense anxiety; she tried to say something to me through the glass but I could not catch her words and, at last, unable to make me understand what it was she wanted to say, she fixed me with her pathetic eyes and made the sign of the cross.

  I must here mention an episode which I have deliberately omitted until now, thus trying to hide from it. Some months before the outbreak of the war, I had fallen in love with a young Hungarian girl who was staying in the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts. We planned to get married. Ilona had black hair and large gray eyes, just to say something about her. She went back to Budapest to see her family, the war separated us and I never saw her again; it was another defeat for me and that is all there is to it. I know that I have broken all the rules by skipping such an episode in an autobiography, but it is still too recent, only twenty years have passed, and to write even these few lines I have had to take advantage of an inflammation of the ear which has confined me to bed in a Mexican hotel: this acute but purely physical pain has acted, in a way, as an anesthetic, and made it possible for me to touch a much more painful wound.

  1 A jingoistic minor French poet of the nineteenth century.

  CHAPTER 30

  The training squadron to which i was attached was transferred to Bordeaux-Mérignac and there I spent five or six hours in the air every day as a bombing and navigation instructor on board a Potez-540. I was soon promoted to sergeant. The pay wasn’t too bad, France stood unshaken, glaring at the enemy, and I shared the view of most of my companions that we had better enjoy life and have a good time since the war would not go on forever. I had a room in town and three pairs of silk pajamas, of which I was very proud. In my eyes, they were the very symbol of luxury living and gave me the feeling that my career as a man of the world was progressing favorably. A girl friend of mine in law school days had stolen them for me when a shop in which her fiancé worked had been burnt to the ground. Since my relations with Marguerite were strictly platonic, I felt that the moral code had been scrupulously observed and I accepted the pajamas gratefully. They had been slightly scorched and never entirely lost the smell of smoked fish: but one can’t have everything. I was also able, from time to time, to treat myself to a box of cigars, which I now had learned to smoke without feeling sick—in short, I was well on my way to becoming a hardened warrior. At about this time, however, I had a tiresome flying accident which very nearly cost me my nose, a loss for which I would never have consoled myself. I need scarcely say that it was all the fault of the Poles.

  The members of the Polish forces were not, just then, very popular with the French. We rather despised them for having lost the war. They had let themselves be soundly thrashed by the Germans in a matter of weeks and we made no bones about putting into words what we thought of them. In addition to this, the spy mania was at its peak, as is always the case when a social organism is sick and on the very verge of collapse. Every time a Polish soldier lit a cigarette he was immediately accused of communicating with the enemy. Since I spoke Polish fluently, I was employed as an interpreter on training flights, the object of which was to familiarize the Poles with our equipment. Standing between the French and Polish pilots, I translated the comments and orders of the French instructor. It was not long before this original versio
n of combined operations bore fruit. Just as we were coming in to land, making the final approach, the French instructor decided that the Polish pilot was coming in too fast, and too long, and he shouted at me, with a hint of anxiety in his voice:

  “Tell the bloody fool to throttle full or he’ll have us all in the ditch!”

  I at once translated the message. Yes, I can truthfully say, with a completely clear conscience, that I didn’t lose a minute in saying: “Prosze dodac gazu, bo za shwile zawalimy sie w drzewa na koncu lotniska!”

  . . .When I came to, the blood was pouring down my face, the ambulance men were bending over me, and the Pole, who was in pretty sorry shape, though not forgetful of his good manners, was trying to prop himself on one elbow in an attempt to apologize to the French pilot: “Za pozno mi pan przytlumaczyl. . .” “He says . . .” I began gallantly.

  The French pilot was not much better off, and had only just time to utter one word before he lost consciousness: “Merde!”

  I gave a faithful translation, after which, my duty done, I passed out. My nose was a nasty mess, but I was told there were no serious internal injuries. They were wrong, and during the next four years my nose gave me a lot of trouble. I was scarcely ever free of appalling headaches, but had to conceal my condition so as not to have my flying career prematurely ended. It was not until 1944 that my nose was completely reconstructed in an R.A.F. hospital. It is no longer the incomparable masterpiece it once was, but it serves its purpose and I have every reason to think that it will keep me company till I breathe my last.