Promise at Dawn Page 25

  That last foolish cry of the most elementary, the most naïve form of human courage, sank deep into my heart and remains there forever. It is my heart. I know that it will live long after I am dead and that, someday or other, mankind will know a victory far greater than anything we can imagine.

  I stayed there a moment longer in my leather jacket, with my cap pulled down over one eye, feeling as lonely as millions and millions of men have always felt when confronted by their common destiny. Sergeant Dufour looked at me over his dangling cigarette and, in his eyes, there was that sacred spark of gaiety which has always been for me, whenever I see it in human eyes, like a guarantee of survival and the only light Man has ever managed to steal from the gods.

  I then set about finding another plane and another crew. I spent many hours wandering about the airfield, going from one machine to another, from one crew to another.

  I had already been given a very hostile reception by several pilots whom I had tried to talk into taking me to England when I remembered a huge, four-engine Farman which had landed the previous evening. I thought it was about the right size to get me to England. It was certainly the biggest airplane I had ever seen. There appeared to be no sign of life in the monster. Prompted by nothing more than simple curiosity, I climbed the ladder and poked my head inside just to see what it was like. A two-star general was smoking his pipe and writing something at a folding table. A heavy revolver lay on a sheet of paper within reach of his hand. He had a young, nice face and gray, closely-cropped hair. As I clambered into the plane, he looked at me in an absent-minded manner, then returned to his writing. I saluted smartly, but he didn’t even seem to have noticed me.

  I stared with some surprise at the revolver and suddenly its meaning dawned upon me. The defeated general was writing a farewell letter before blowing his brains out. I must confess that I felt deeply moved and immensely grateful. It seemed to me that so long as there were generals capable of such a gesture all hope was not lost. What I had before my eyes was a picture of true human greatness, of tragedy, to which, at my age, I was extremely responsive.

  I saluted again, discreetly withdrew and walked a few paces up and down the runway, waiting for the honor-saving shot. After a quarter of an hour or so, I began to get worried and, returning to the Farman, once more poked my nose inside. The general was still busy writing, covering the paper with his neat and elegant script. I noticed two or three envelopes already piled up under the revolver. Once more he looked at me, once more I saluted smartly and once more I respectfully withdrew. I desperately needed somebody whom I could trust and this general, with his young and noble face, inspired me with just the right confidence, and so I waited patiently for him to give a boost to my morale. However, since nothing happened, I decided to take a walk around the crew’s quarters and find out what I could about the squadron’s plan to seek asylum in Portugal, before going on to England.

  I returned some half an hour later and climbed the ladder. The general was still writing. The sheets covered with his neat script had accumulated under the heavy revolver which lay within easy reach of his hand. Suddenly it came to me that, far from having any sublime intention worthy of a hero of Greek tragedy, the good general was quite simply dealing with his mail and using his revolver as a paperweight. Apparently we were not inhabiting the same universe, he and I. I was horribly disappointed and discouraged, and walked away from the Farman, my head low. I saw the big chief again, some time later, with the revolver back in its holster, his brief case held firmly in his hand and a look as of duty done on his calm, composed face.

  A glorious sunshine lit up the bizarre aerial fauna assembled on the field. Heavily armed Senegalese troops were stationed round the machines as a protection against purely hypothetical sabotage; they were looking with an almost superstitious apprehension at the disquieting birds descending on them from the sky. I remember a pot-bellied Bréguet, the fuselage of which ended in a beam, which looked very much like a wooden leg and was as incongruous and grotesque as certain African fetishes. At the Potez section, the unconquered grandfathers of ’14-’18 were still busily training for the miracle to come, and the drone of their engines was the only purposeful sound in the blue sky. When they landed, they expressed gravely their firm conviction that they would reach the front in time to take things into their experienced hands. I remember one who emerged from his Potez looking the very image of a knight of the air of the Richthofen-Guynemer period, complete with a silk stocking pulled over his head and cavalry breeches, panting a bit from the acrobatic feat involved in a man of his weight getting out of the cockpit. He gave me a slap on the shoulder and shouted: “Cheer up, old cock, we’re here!”

  He pushed away the two pals who had helped him to reach the ground and made a beeline for the bottles of beer waiting on the grass. The two pals, one wearing a khaki tunic with ten dangling decorations, helmeted and booted, the other crowned with a beret, his goggles pushed up on his forehead and arrayed in a Saumur cavalry tunic and puttees, gave me a meaningful wink and assured me: “We’ll get them!”

  They were obviously living the best moments of their lives. They were at once touching and absurd and yet, with their puttees, their silk stockings pulled over their heads, their slightly bloated but resolute faces emerging from the open cockpits, they did somehow manage to evoke the memory of more glorious days. Besides, I had never so much felt the need of a father as I did then. This was a feeling which the whole of France shared and was the real reason why almost to a man the whole country gave itself to the old Marshal. I tried to make myself useful. I helped them into their machines, I swung the propeller, I ran to the canteen for more beer. They spoke to me of the Miracle of the Marne with knowing winks, of Guynemer and Joffre, of Foch and Verdun—in short, they spoke to me of my mother, and that was all I wanted. One of them, stiff with leather—leather leggings, leather helmet, leather jacket, leather shoulder straps and belt, leather gloves—ended up by shouting in a voice which easily dominated the roar of the engines: “F—it all, they’ll see what they’ll see!,” after which, pushed by me and helped by two others, he hoisted himself into the cockpit, caught his breath, lowered the goggles over his eyes, grabbed the stick and leaped into the air. Perhaps I am being a little unjust, but I can’t help thinking that the dear old things were chiefly concerned with savoring revenge against the French High Command for refusing to let them fly, and that their “They’ll see what they’ll see” was directed against their own superiors at least as much as against the Germans.

  I was making another of my fruitless journeys to squadron headquarters to see whether there was any news of the conspiracy to take off for Portugal, when one of the orderlies told me that a young woman was asking for me at the guardroom. I had a superstitious fear of going too far from the airfield lest the squadron take off for England while my back was turned. But a young woman is a young woman and off I trekked to the guardroom, where I was rather disappointed to find a childish looking girl with narrow shoulders and waist, but wide hips and solid thighs, buttocks and calves, whose face and eyes, puffed and red with crying, gave evidence of some deep grief and also of a sort of obstinate, primitive determination which showed itself also in the unnecessary violence with which she gripped the handle of the suitcase she held. She told me that her name was Annick, and that she had been the girl friend of Sergeant Clément, known as Belle-Gueule, who had often talked to her about me as his pal, the “diplomat and writer.” I was seeing her for the first time, though Belle-Gueule had often spoken of her in terms of the highest praise. He had two or three girls working for him but Annick was his favorite and he had fixed her up in a Bordeaux brothel when he was posted to Mérignac. Belle Gueule had never made any mystery of the fact that he was a pimp in civilian life and, just about the time of the German offensive, he had been the object of a disciplinary inquiry and was expecting any day to be struck off the flying list. We were on pretty good terms, he and I, perhaps because we had nothing in common and the very
extent of our difference had established, by contrast, some strange sort of bond between us. I must, however, also confess that, though I was repelled by the deplorable way in which he made his living, it had a certain fascination for me and even made me slightly envious, since it presupposed a total lack of sensitivity and of scruples, as well as a high level of indifference and callousness—indispensable qualities to anyone wanting to get along well with life, in all which I was painfully deficient. He had often boasted to me of Annick’s earnestness and devotion, of her great working capacity, and I knew that he was very much taken with her. I studied her with a good deal of curiosity. She was the commonplace type of young peasant girl who was accustomed to never sparing herself, though behind the little obstinate forehead and in the clear, attentive eyes there seemed to be something more, something that went far beyond what one happened to be, what one happened to be doing, something that made the fact that she was “working” in a brothel irrelevant. I liked her at once, for no better reason than that, in my state of nervous tension, the presence of any woman could bring me comfort and peace. Yes, she said, breaking in on my description of the accident, yes, she knew that Clément had been killed. He had told her more than once that he was going to make his way to England, to carry on the struggle. She was to have joined him later by way of Spain. Clement was no more but she wanted to go to England, all the same. She wasn’t going to work for the Germans. She wanted to be with those who were going to keep on fighting. She knew that she could be useful in England. At least, she would have a clear conscience and would have done her best. Could I help her? She stared at me with silent supplication, gripping her little bag in so determined a way and with that obstinate look in her eyes, so anxious to do her best, so eager to carry on as if Clément were still alive. One could not help seeing in her a basic purity and strength of character, a spark of essential beauty that no ephemeral and irrelevant soiling of the body could destroy. With her, it was less a question, I think, of being faithful to the memory of my friend than of an instinctive devotion to something that is entirely beyond the reach of any dirt, beyond what a man is or does. In the prevailing climate of abandon and discouragement, she conjured up an image of a constancy and a determination to do what was right which struck me as profoundly touching. I have never been able to accept the view that the sexual behavior of human beings is the yardstick of good and evil, and have always looked for human dignity elsewhere, at the level of the heart, the spirit and the soul, where our most infamous prostitutions are always taking place. This little Breton girl seemed to me to have a greater instinctive understanding of what is and what is not important than all the upholders of traditional morality. She must have read in my eyes some sign of sympathy because she redoubled her efforts to convince me—as though I needed convincing. The French soldiers in England were going to be very lonely: something must be done to help them and she wasn’t one to be afraid of work. Perhaps Clément had told me as much. She paused a moment, anxious to know whether Belle-Gueule had, in fact, paid her that tribute or whether he had, perhaps, not thought of it. Sure, I hastened to assure her, he had told me many good things about her. She flushed with pleasure. Yes, she knew all about work, she had a strong back and could put up with almost anything. I could safely take her to England in my plane and, since I had been Clement’s best friend, she would work for me—an airman always needed to feel that he had someone on the ground to care for him: everyone knew that. I thanked her and explained that I already had someone in Nice who was doing precisely that. I also told her that it was almost impossible to find a machine bound for England, as I had recently learned to my cost, that it was quite hopeless to think of such a thing for a civilian, and a woman would not even be admitted on the airfield in the first place. But she was not a girl to be easily put off. When I tried to get out of the difficulty by telling her that she could be just as useful in France as in England, and that the French were going to need fine women like her, she gave me a sweet smile, just to make it clear that she wasn’t angry with me, and then, without another word, she walked away with her suitcase in her hand. I saw her, a little later, among the crews of the Potez-63’s, deep in argument, after which I lost sight of her. I have no idea what became of her. I trust that she is still alive, that she eventually got to England and did well there, that she eventually returned to France and gave us a lot of children. We could do with more women as staunch-hearted as she and I hope that her breed will multiply.

  By the end of the afternoon, a rumor spread that the Mérignac air base was running short of fuel. The crews were guarding their machines in relays as there had already been several instances when pilots found their tanks emptied by fuel thieves, and there were prowlers like me looking for some means of escape and ready to grab a plane as soon as its pilot’s back was turned. The air crews waited. They were waiting for orders, for instructions, for some piece of information which might clarify the situation and help them make up their minds. They were thinking matters over, hesitating, wondering what would be the best step to take, whether to go to England or to North Africa, or not thinking at all but just waiting for something to happen—they didn’t know what. The majority was convinced that the war was going to be carried on from North Africa. Some were so utterly lost, so completely bewildered and out of their depth that the most harmless question about their intentions made them fly into a rage. My suggestion of going to England was always badly received. The English were unpopular. They had dragged us into the war and now they were re-embarking their troops at Dunkirk and leaving us to face the music. The noncoms of three Potez-63’s crowded round me with hatred in their faces and talked about putting me under arrest for attempted desertion. Fortunately, the senior of the three, a flight sergeant, adopted a more indulgent and more human attitude. While the other two held my arms, he contented himself with punching me in the face until my nose and mouth were streaming with blood. After this, they emptied a bottle of beer over my head and let me go. I still had my revolver stuck in my belt and the temptation to use it was almost irresistible. It was, in fact, about the strongest temptation to which I have ever been exposed in the whole course of my life. But it would have been silly to start my war by killing Frenchmen, so I swallowed hard and stumbled away, wiping the beer from my face and feeling as frustrated as any man could be who had not been able to relieve himself of his most natural urges. I find it very difficult to bring myself to kill Frenchmen, and so far as I know, have never killed any. I am afraid that my country could never rely on me in a civil war and I have always refused to command a firing squad, which is probably the result of some obscure complex due to my foreign birth.

  Ever since my crash, I had taken punches on the nose badly, and for several days I was in terrible pain. But I would be ungrateful indeed if I did not recognize that this purely physical suffering did a lot for me, since it helped me, to some extent at least, to feel the fall of France less acutely and to dwell less on the fact that I would probably never see my mother again. My head was bursting, I was constantly wiping blood from my nose and mouth, and I kept being seized by spasms of nausea and vomiting. In fact, I was in such a state that, as far as I was concerned, Hitler was within an inch or two of winning the war. Nevertheless, I continued to drag myself around the airfield in search of a willing crew or an unguarded plane.

  One of the pilots whom I attempted to win over to my way of thinking left an indelible impression on me. He was the owner of an Ayot-372, a factory-fresh machine of the most recent type. I say “owner” because he sat on the grass beside it, looking like a suspicious peasant keeping a watchful eye on his precious cow. An impressive pile of sandwiches was set out on a piece of newspaper in front of him and he was busy devouring these one after the other. In appearance he reminded me a little of Saint-Exupéry: the same roundness of face and features, the same massive, broad-shouldered body—but there the resemblance stopped. He seemed to be suspicious and on his guard, and his revolver holster was unfastened as though
he were convinced that the Mérignac airfield was crowded with cattle thieves ready to snatch his cow from under his nose—and he had a point there. I told him straight out that I was looking for a plane and a patriotic crew willing to go to England to carry on the war from there, and painted a picture of the courage and greatness of that country in my mother’s best epic style.

  He let me talk while he continued to absorb nourishment, at the same time examining, with some placid interest, my bruised and swollen face and the blood-stained handkerchief I kept pressing to my nose. I made a pretty good job of that speech a patriotic, moving and inspired effort if ever there was one. Suffering though I was from violent spasms of nausea—I could scarcely stand on my feet, and my head felt as though it were filled with pieces of chipped rock—I still did my best, and, to judge from the satisfied look on the face of my one-man audience, he must have found the contrast between my sorry appearance and my enthusiastic oratory agreeably diverting. Anyway, he did nothing to interrupt me. He must have felt flattered—he was just the type to enjoy feeling important—and then, too, my high lyrical flights, with my hand on my heart, probably helped his digestion. Now and again I paused, waiting humbly for some reaction to my eloquence; since his face remained expressionless and he merely took another sandwich, I resumed my siren’s song, a true call to glory and a hymn to the fatherland which Déroulède himself would not have disowned. Once, when I produced something equivalent to Hugo’s “mourir pour la patrie est le sort le plus beau, le plus digne d’envie,” he gave a just perceptible nod of approval, then, interrupting his chewing, removed a scrap of ham from between his teeth with a dirty fingernail. When I broke off for a moment to get my breath, he looked at me with what seemed to be an air of reproach, waiting for me to continue to entertain him—he was obviously determined to make me give my best performance. At last, I finished my song—there is no other word for it—and fell silent. He saw that there was nothing more to be got out of me, took his eyes off my face, grabbed another sandwich, and looked up at the sky in search of some fresh object of interest. He had not uttered a single word, and I shall never know whether he was a traditionally prudent son of Normandy, an insensitive brute, a complete imbecile, a quietly determined man who knew exactly what he wanted but did not intend to confide his decision to anybody, a person completely bewildered by events whose nervous reaction was to stuff himself with food, or a crafty peasant with nothing in the world to care about but his cow and determined to stick by her to the end. His little eyes looked at me without the slightest trace of expression while, one foot forward, my head raised proudly, I proclaimed our unshakable decision to continue the struggle and sang a paean to honor, valor, victory and a glorious tomorrow. I must admit that there was a certain bovine grandeur about him. Whenever I read somewhere that a bullock has won first prize at an agricultural show, I always think of him.