Promise at Dawn Read online

  Apart from the time I spent in the air as navigation, gunnery and bombing instructor, my friends often let me take over the controls and I put in, on an average, an hour a day piloting the aircraft. Unfortunately those precious hours had no official existence and could not be entered in my flying log. I therefore kept a second, secret record, each page of which I scrupulously authenticated with the flying-control stamp, thanks to the decency of the clerk in charge. I was convinced that, after the first war losses, the regulations would be relaxed, and that my unofficial hours, already amounting to a good four hundred, would make it possible for me to become a combat pilot.

  On April 4, only a few weeks before the German offensive, while I was peacefully smoking a cigar on the airfield, an orderly brought me a telegram: Mother seriously ill, come at once.

  I stood there in my leather flying jacket, with that ridiculous cigar in my mouth, my cap pulled down jauntily over one eye, my hands in my pockets, and the familiar tough look on my face, while the whole world around me became a strange, foreign place empty of all life. That is what I chiefly remember of that moment today: a feeling of utter strangeness, as though the most familiar things, the houses, the trees, the birds, and the very ground under my feet, all that I had come to regard as certainties, had suddenly become part of an unknown planet which I had never visited before. My whole system of weights and measures, my faith in a secret and hidden logic of life were giving way to nothingness, to a meaningless chaos, to a grinning, grimacing absurdity. I had always known that my love story was bound to end badly because of the difference in age between my mother and myself, and that she would have to be the first to leave. I still could not imagine that the end would come before justice was done. That my mother should die before I had time to fling my weight onto one tray of the scales, to re-establish the balance and demonstrate clearly, irrefutably, the fundamental decency of the world, prove that, deep at the heart of mystery, under the veil of absurdity, was hidden an honorable design, and that a smile of mercy and a light of reason shone at the very essence of things, like some first, sacred, and as yet undiscovered molecule of all matter, seemed to me the negation of the most elementary logic, of all art, of all science, of all possibility of talent or genius, of simple common sense, of the humblest two and two makes four, a final triumph of the monkey gods, reducing life to a pornography, an obscenity that would make not Christ but Hitler the symbol of this world. I do not have to point out to my readers what naïve and juvenile illusions such an attitude implied. Today I am a mature man of much experience. I have lived. I need not say more.

  The special train reserved for soldiers on leave took forty-eight hours to get me to Nice. The morale of that wretched train was at its lowest ebb. It was England who had got us into this business; we were going to get it in the arse; Hitler wasn’t such a bad chap, after all, we just didn’t get him right; we ought to have talked things over with him, instead of listening to the Jews. But there was at least one bright spot in the sky; a new drug had been found which could cure gonorrhea in a matter of days.

  Still, there was no real despair in me: I have never been gifted in that direction. The greatest effort of my life has always been the effort to give up, to attain despair and so know peace, at last. But it’s no good. There is always something in me which keeps smiling.

  I arrived at Nice very early in the morning, and went at once to the Mermonts. I climbed the stairs to the seventh floor, and knocked at the door. My mother occupied the smallest room in the hotel: she had the interests of the proprietor at heart. There was no answer and I walked in. The minute triangular room had a neat and empty look which terrified me. I rushed downstairs again, woke up the concierge and learned that my mother had been taken to the Saint-Antoine clinic. I jumped into a taxi.

  The nurses told me later that when they saw me come in they thought at first that it was a holdup. My mother’s head was deeply sunk in the pillow. Her cheeks were hollow; her face bore a troubled, worried air. I kissed her and sat down on the bed. I was wearing my leather carapace and my cap was tilted cockily over one eye: I kept my leather carapace. I kept the butt end of a cigar gripped between my teeth for hours on end: I had to have something to cling to. On the bedside table, well in evidence in its violet case, was the silver medal which I had won at the ping-pong championship of Nice in 1932. I sat there; we looked at each other; neither of us said a word. Then she asked me to draw the curtains. I drew the curtains, hesitated for a split second, and then raised my eyes to the light: she didn’t have to ask; I spared her that. I remained for quite a while with my eyes raised. That was about all I could do for her. We remained completely silent, all three of us, all three of us. I knew that she could see him clearly, that he was present, and that she was still in love with him. I didn’t have to turn my head to know that she was crying. I also knew that I had nothing to do with her tears. Then I sat down in the armchair beside the bed, and stayed in that chair for forty-eight hours. All of that time I kept my leather jacket on my back, my cap on my head, a dead cigar stub between my teeth: I needed friendship. Once she asked me whether I had any news of Ilona, my Hungarian. I told her I had not.

  “You need a woman by your side,” she told me.

  I said something like: “All men do.”

  “Yes,” she said. “But it’ll be more difficult for you than for others. It’s my fault.”

  We played cards. She was smoking as much as ever. The doctors, she told me, no longer forbade it. There was obviously no point any longer in worrying about her smoking. So she smoked her Gauloises, looking at me from time to time with a concentrated attention, a cunning and calculating air, and I knew that she was scheming once more, that she was cooking up something. But I was very far from suspecting what she had in mind. I am convinced that it was then that her little scheme first entered her head. I caught a few sly, guilty looks in her eyes and knew perfectly well that she was cooking up something, but it never occurred to me, even knowing her as I did, that she would go to such extremes, that she would play such a dirty, loving trick on me. I have never really forgiven her. I had a few words with the doctor. He was reassuring. She might keep going for several years. “Diabetes, you know . . .” he said with a shrug.

  On the evening of the third day, I went to dine at the Masséna, where I made the acquaintance of a Dutch Mynheer who was about to fly to South Africa so as to get clear away “before the German invasion starts.” Without the slightest provocation on my part, and no doubt pinning his faith to my airman’s uniform, he asked me whether I could find him a woman. Come to think of it, the number of men who have made that request to me in my life is pretty shattering: I had always thought that there was something rather distinguished about my appearance, but obviously there ain’t. I told him that I was not in very good form that evening and that, anyway, I was on leave. He confided to me that all his money was already safely tucked away in South Africa and we went off to celebrate the good news at the Chat Noir. The Mynheer proved himself worthy, as far as hard spirits were concerned; personally, I hate drinking, which always, somehow, sobers me up and makes me see life and the world in their true light; but I know how to master some of my weaknesses, at least, and so we emptied a bottle of whisky between us and then switched to cognac. Very soon the word went round the cabaret that I was the first French “ace” of the war, with many victories to my credit, and two or three veterans of the 1914 war asked to be allowed to shake my hand. Much flattered at being recognized, I distributed autographs, did a good deal of handshaking and accepted round after round of drinks. The Mynheer introduced me to the love of his life whom he had just picked up. I had then another opportunity of judging the prestige which the Air Force uniform enjoyed among the hard-working civilian population. The sweet babe offered to make a living for me as long as the war lasted and, if need be, to follow me from one garrison to another. She assured me that she could take on up to twenty men a day. Her talk depressed me because I felt with some sadness that she wa
s offering to do this not really for me personally, but for our heroic Air Force generally. I told her that she was making too much of her patriotism and that I wanted to be loved for myself and not for my uniform. The Mynheer ordered champagne and offered to bless our union by laying, so to speak, the first stone. The manager brought me the menu to sign and I was just about to oblige when I noticed a mocking eye fixed on me. The owner of the eye was not wearing a dashing leather jacket and there were no golden wings on his chest, but he could boast a Croix de Guerre with star, which was pretty good for a foot slogger in those early days of the war. I calmed down a bit. The Mynheer went upstairs with my patriotic babe, who made me swear to wait for her next day at the Cintra. An Air Force cap over one eye, a pair of gold wings on your chest, a leather jacket on your back, a tough look on your mug—and your financial future is assured. I had a devastating headache and my nose weighed a ton. I left the Chat Noir and plunged into the sweet fragrance of the flower market outside and then home.

  I learned later that the girl with the heart of gold waited for several days from 6 P.M. till 2 A.M. at the bar of the Cintra for her sergeant.

  I sometimes wonder whether I didn’t pass by without knowing the greatest love of my life.

  A few days later, I saw the name of my Mynheer on the list of victims of an air crash somewhere near Johannesburg, which only goes to show that there is no such thing as complete security for capital today.

  My leave came to an end. I spent one more night in the armchair at the clinic and next morning, as soon as the curtains had been drawn, I leaned over the bed to kiss her good-by.

  I don’t know how to describe that parting. There are no words. But I put on a good face. I didn’t cry or anything—I remembered what she had told me, all her advice about how to behave with women. For twenty-six years, my mother had been living without a man and now, when we were parting, perhaps forever, I was a great deal more anxious to leave with her the image of a man than that of a son.

  “Well, so long.” I kissed her on the cheek with a smile. What that smile cost me only she could know, because she, too, smiled.

  “You must get married when she comes back,” she said. “That’s exactly the kind of girl you need. She is very lovely.”

  She must have been wondering what would become of me without a woman at my side. She was right: I have never got used to that.

  “Have you a picture of her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think her family has any money?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “When she went to Bruno Walter’s concert at Cannes, she didn’t take the bus, she went in a taxi. So they must be rich.”

  “I don’t care whether they are or not, Mother.”

  “When you’re in the Diplomatic Service, you will have to do a lot of entertaining. You will have to have servants and your wife must be well dressed. Her parents should realize that.”

  I took her hand. “Mother,” I said. “Mother.”

  “I’ll tell them one or two things, tactfully, of course.”

  “Really, Mother . . .”

  “And don’t worry about me. I’m an old warhorse. I’ve kept going till now and I can carry on for a bit longer. Take off your cap.”

  I took it off. She made the sign of the cross on my forehead with her finger. “Blagoslavliayou tiebia—I give you my blessing.”

  My mother was a Jewess. But that didn’t matter. She had to express herself somehow. In what language was of no importance to her.

  I went to the door. We looked at each other once more; we were both smiling. I felt quite calm. Something of her courage had passed into me and it has remained with me ever since. Her courage and her will continue to burn in me even now and make life very difficult, when it would be so easy to give up, to give in. She has condemned me to gaiety, and to hope.

  CHAPTER 31

  I never imagined that France could lose the war. I knew, of course, that she had already lost one in 1870, but at that time I was not yet born nor, for that matter, was my mother. It was all very different.

  On June 13, 1940, when the front was crumbling everywhere, I was returning to base from a bombing mission in a Bloch-210 and landed at Tours to refuel. The Heinkels and Junkers chose that moment to bomb the airfield and I was most ingloriously wounded in the leg. The wound was not serious and I left the splinter in my thigh. I could imagine the pride with which my mother would feel it when I next went on leave.

  The lightning successes of the German offensive failed to impress me. We had seen the same sort of thing in the ’14-’18 war. We French had a knack for restoring the situation at the very last moment: everyone knew that. The thought of Guderian’s tanks plunging ahead through the Sedan gap made me laugh and I pictured our General Staff rubbing its hands as it watched its master plan unfolding stage by stage and those fat-headed Germans once again falling into a well-prepared trap. An invincible belief in the destiny of my fatherland ran in my blood, no doubt bequeathed to me by my Jewish and Tartar ancestors. My commanding officers at Bordeaux-Mérignac must have guessed in me those atavistic qualities of loyalty to our traditions and blind faith, for I was detailed together with two other crews to carry out patriotic air patrols over the working-class districts of Bordeaux. The purpose of these patrols, we were told, was to protect Marshal Pétain, who was determined to continue the struggle against the Germans, and against a Communist fifth column which was preparing to seize power and come to terms with Hitler. Yes: such was the explanation given us during the briefing, and I am happy to say that I am not the only witness, as I was not the only dupe, of this piece of abominable cunning. Brigades of cadets, among them Christian Fouchet, our present ambassador to Denmark, had been told the same fairy tale and stood guard in the streets with their machine guns ready to fire, their hearts overflowing with love and gratitude for the old Marshal who refused to listen to defeatists and was determined to fight to the end. I am still convinced, however, that this adroit piece of trickery had been initiated without orders from the top, by some well-meaning colonels at Mérignac, in the heady political atmosphere of the moment. Completely unaware of this indignity, unable to see Pétain otherwise than as the embodiment of every military virtue, I carried out my low altitude patrols over Bordeaux, with my machine guns loaded, ready to drop my bombs and to open fire on any suspect mob at the first wireless signal from base. I would have done so without the slightest hesitation, and it never entered my mind that the real fifth column had already won the day and that it was not made up of those who march openly in the streets with flags flying, but was something that worms its way insidiously into the soul, paralyzing the will and corrupting the mind. I was temperamentally incapable of imagining that a legendary leader, who had reached the topmost rank of the oldest and most glorious army in the world and whose name my mother mentioned in a hushed tone of almost religious reverence, could suddenly reveal himself as a defeatist, a man with a deep secret flaw in his make-up, a schemer who could put his personal hatreds, grudges and political passions above the good name of his country. The Dreyfus affair had taught me nothing. In the first place, Esterhazy was not a true Frenchman, having become a French citizen only by naturalization and, anyway, the whole business had been designed to bring dishonor on a Jew, and we all know that, with such a purpose at heart, everything is permissible; our beloved military leaden, at the time of the Dreyfus affair, were simply doing their best. In short, I had kept my faith intact to the bitter end, and to this day I doubt that I have much changed in that respect: disastrous idiocy such as underlies our defeat at Dien Bien Phu, or certain dirty and bloody hands acting behind the scenes in the Algerian struggle, still leave me bewildered and unbelieving.

  And so, each time the enemy advanced, each time the front rumbled a bit more, I smiled with a knowing air and waited for that lightning counterstroke of our beloved leaders which was going to come as such a complete surprise to the enemy, for that ironic, dazzling, masterful “Touché!” of ou
r military geniuses who had the Germans exactly where they wanted them. My atavistic inaptitude for despair, a flaw in my genes about which I can do nothing, was now taking the form of some happy, congenital idiocy. As the shadows darkened, all I saw in them was a greater opportunity for a dazzling light. As defeat followed defeat, I waited unperturbed for the moment when the genius of France should suddenly become incarnate in a Man of Destiny, in accordance with the best traditions of our history. Yes, I was a fool, and a fool I shall always be, when it is a matter of believing, of fighting, of carrying on, of smiling in the face of nothingness. There is no despair in me and my idiocy is of the kind that death itself cannot defeat. I have always had a tendency to take literally the fine stories which humanity loves to tell about itself in its noble moments of inspiration, and such inspired narrative talent has never been lacking in us French. My mother’s dazzling genius, where fairy tales were concerned, suddenly revealed itself in me and soared to unexpected heights. I believed in all our beloved leaders and in each I recognized the Man of Destiny, and as soon as one of them crumbled and vanished from the stage, I was already on to the next. Thus I believed successively in General Gamelin, in General Georges, in General Weygand—I remember with what throbs of emotion I read in the press the description of his rawhide boots and his leather breeches when, as the latest Man of Destiny, he ran jauntily down the steps of his headquarters at the age of seventy three; I believed in General Huntziger, in General Blanchard, in General Mittelhauser, in Admiral Darlan—and thus arrived at General de Gaulle, always standing to attention and saluting smartly. One can well imagine my relief when my stubborn belief in our final victory and my congenital inability to despair suddenly lit on the right person, and from the very pit of disaster there emerged, exactly as I anticipated, the extraordinary figure of a leader who not only found in the terrible events the full measure of his stature, but also bore a name which truly smacked of our land and of our ancestors. Each time I find myself in de Gaulle’s presence, I feel that my mother did not deceive me and that she knew what she was talking about