Promise at Dawn Read online

  We never learned what became of the other crate, the right one. All sorts of interesting hypotheses sometimes come into my mind.

  1 The authenticity of this episode has been questioned by some, as a similar incident is said to have occurred during the First World War. Although certain details have been changed for obvious reasons, the following persons can bear witness to its veracity and to the ensuing enquiry: Capt. Gayet, Capt. Chevrier, Lt. Cdr. d’Angassac, formerly of the Free French Air Force, Sq. Leader Russel, formerly of the R.A.F.

  CHAPTER 36

  At long last i was transferred to Andover for training and posted to the Free French “Lorraine” Squadron which was getting ready to leave for Africa under the command of Astier de Villatte. Above our heads, historic battles were being fought, and the youth of England was facing a desperate enemy with smiling heroism, and changing the fate of the world. They were few indeed. There were French among them: Bouquillard, Mouchotte, Blaise . . . I was not one. I wandered about the sunny countryside with my eyes fixed on the sky. Sometimes a young Englishman would land in his bullet-ridden Hurricane, refill his tank, reload his guns and set off again into the mêlée. The pilots all wore gaily colored scarves around their necks and so did I: it was my sole contribution to the Battle of Britain. I tried not to think of my mother and of all I had promised her. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of friendship and respect for Britain, a feeling shared by all free men who had the honor to tread her soil in that July of 1940.

  Our training over, we were given four days’ leave in London before sailing for Africa. It was then that an episode took place of an idiocy unparalleled even in my career as a champion of the world. On the second day, while a more than usually violent raid was in progress, I found myself in the company of a young poetess from Chelsea, at the Wellington—that great meeting place for Allied airmen. My lady friend was a great disappointment for she never stopped talking and talking about T. S. Eliot, and about Ezra Pound and Auden, into the bargain, gazing at me with blue eyes literally sparkling with imbecility. I could stand it no longer and was beginning to feel a blind hatred for her. Now and again I kissed her tenderly on the lips in the hope of reducing her to silence but, since my damaged nose was always blocked up, I was obliged, after a while, to abandon her mouth in order to breathe—and off she went again about E. E. Cummings and Walt Whitman. I was already playing with the idea of staging an epileptic fit—it had worked before in similar circumstances—but I was in uniform and the trick might have been embarrassing. I confined myself to stroking her lips tenderly with the tips of my fingers in an attempt to interrupt the flow of words while, with an eloquent look in my eyes, I tried to invite her to a soft and languorous silence, the only true language of the heart. But it was no good. She imprisoned my fingers in her own and embarked upon a dissertation on the symbolism in Finnegans Wake. Boredom through talkativeness and stupidity through intellect are things I have never been able to endure and I began to feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead, while my fascinated gaze never left that devilish oral sphincter which kept opening and shutting, opening and shutting, until I finally flung myself upon it with all the energy of despair, hoping, but in vain, to reduce it to immobility by my kisses. One can imagine my feeling of relief when I saw a handsome Polish officer approach our table and, with a bow to my lady friend, ask her for a dance. Though the code of the place frowned on the idea of a young woman, duly escorted, accepting an invitation to dance with a stranger, I smiled gratefully at the Pole and began to make desperate signs to the waitress, determined to settle the bill and creep away into the dark and sheltering night. I was still gesticulating wildly to attract the waitress’s attention, when my little Ezra Pound came back to the table and at once started on E. E. Cummings, on T. S. Eliot and on the magazine Horizon, for whose editor she expressed an immense admiration. I clenched my teeth and collapsed on the table where, with my head in my hands and my fingers in my ears, I made sure of hearing not one word that she was saying. It was then that a second Polish officer appeared. I smiled ingratiatingly. With a little luck my Ezra Pound might find other points of contact with him besides literature, and I would be rid of her. But, no—the music stopped, and she was returned to me. As I rose to my feet and bowed with true French good manners, a third Polish officer turned up. I noticed suddenly that I was becoming a center of interest, and also that the behavior of the three Polish officers was deliberately offensive. They did not even give my partner time to sit down, but whisked her away, music or no music, one after the other, at the same time pointedly looking at me with expressions of ironical contempt. As I have already mentioned, the Wellington was crammed with Allied officers, English, Canadian, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech, Polish and Australian, all of whom were now beginning to grin at my expense, since my kisses had not passed unobserved. His girl was being snatched from him and the Frenchman was making no attempt to assert his rights. The blood surged in my veins: the prestige of our uniform was at stake. I found myself in the absurd position of having to fight for the possession of a young woman of whom, for the last few hours, I had been desperately trying to rid myself. But I had no choice. Utterly ridiculous though the situation might be, duty demanded that I should not remain indifferent. I got to my feet with a pleasant smile, and, after first uttering, in a very loud voice, and in English, the few heartfelt words expected of me, flung my glass of whisky in the face of the first lieutenant, gave the second a good blow on the mug, and then, honor satisfied, resumed my seat under my mother’s approving gaze. I thought that would be the end of the matter, but the hell it was. The third Pole, to whom I had done nothing, chose to consider himself insulted. While some kind Norwegians were trying to separate us, he embarked on a program of loud abuse directed at the French Air Force, and France generally, and denounced the manner in which we had treated the gallant Polish airmen. For a moment I felt a sharp uprush of sympathy. After all, I, too, was a little Polish, if not by birth at least by reason of the years which I had spent in his country—I had even had a Polish passport for a while. I very nearly shook hands with him, instead of which, my Polish sense of honor sparking within me the sacred flame of French patriotism, and my Tartar and Jewish blood blowing violently on the blaze, I rammed him full in the face with my head, since both my arms were firmly held by a friendly Australian on one side and a debonair Norwegian on the other. After all, who was I to act contrary to the Polish code of honor? He appeared satisfied and vanished somewhere under the table. Again I thought that would be the end of it, but again I was wrong. The other two Poles were now inviting me to go outside with them. I gladly acceded to their request: at last, I thought, I shall get rid of Ezra Pound, but there, again, I was out of luck. Her infallible instinct had told her that at last she was in the thick of a real “experience,” and she clung to my sleeve, positively mewing with excitement. Out we went, the five of us, in the blackout. Bombs were still whining, blowing up London all around us, ambulances were dashing past, with the sweetish and nauseating sound of their muted bells.

  “Well, what next?” I asked them.

  “Duell” barked one of the three lieutenants.

  “Nothing doing,” I told them. “No more audience, blackout everywhere, no more spectators, so no more need for heroics. Get that, you stupid asses?”

  “All Frenchmen are cowards,” stated the second lieutenant, with a polite Polish bow.

  “All right: duel,” I said.

  I was about to suggest Hyde Park as a suitable place in which to settle our differences. The din of the ack-ack guns there was such that our pistol shots would pass unnoticed and we wouldn’t have to worry about leaving a corpse in the dark. I was very anxious not to run the risk of disciplinary action just for the sake of a few drunken Poles. I had had enough of Poles anyway: after our bankruptcy in Vilna, they had confiscated all our possessions, and this was a God-sent opportunity to pay them back. On the other hand, I might well miss my aim in the total obscurity. Though for the last year or two I had
not been keeping up my pistol practice, I had not completely forgotten Lieutenant Sverdlovski and his lessons. Under civilized conditions, I felt reasonably sure I could make a creditable showing on the target, particularly a Polish one.

  “But where?” I asked.

  They argued the point among themselves for a bit.

  “Regent’s Park Hotel,” they finally decided.

  “On the roof?”

  “No, in a bedroom—pistols, at five paces.”

  I reflected that the big London hotels do not, as a rule, let young women go upstairs to a bedroom in the company of four men and that it would be an ideal opportunity of getting rid of Ezra Pound. She was still clinging to my arm: pistols at five paces!—this was literature—there was no holding her back. We got into a taxi after a long and polite argument about who should enter first, and went to the R.A.F. club, where the Poles got out to fetch their service revolvers. I had nothing but the 6.35 which I always carried under my arm. Then we drove to the Regent’s Park. Since Ezra Pound insisted on going upstairs with us, we had to pool our resources and take a suite with a sitting room. At the foot of the staircase, one of the Poles raised a finger.

  “You need a second,” he said.

  I looked around in the hope of finding a French uniform. But there were none to be seen. The lobby was stuffed full of civilians, most of them in pajamas, who had been afraid to stay in their rooms while the air raid was on, and had come down muffled up in warm scarves and dressing gowns. The exploding bombs shook the walls. An English captain, with a monocle in one eye, was busy filling out a form at the reception desk.

  I went over to him.

  “I have a duel on my hands, sir,” I told him, “room 520, fifth floor. I wonder whether you would be so very kind as to act as a witness?”

  He smiled wearily.

  “Oh, these French!” he said, shaking his head. “Thank you for the kind thought, but I’m not the Peeping Tom type.” “It’s not at all what you think, sir. A real duel, pistols at five paces, with three Polish patriots. I’m a bit of a Polish patriot myself, and since the honor of France is at stake, I’ve got to go through with it. You understand?”

  He nodded. He was of those world-weary knowing types. He told me: “Alas, the world is full of Polish patriots. Unfortunately, those Polish patriots are sometimes German, French and English—a circumstance that is apt to lead to wars. And unfortunately too, I am unable to assist you. I have a duel on my hands myself. You see that young woman over there?”

  She was sitting on one of the settees against the wall, a blonde, long-legged type, in every respect an answer to the prayer of every man on leave. I suddenly realized that I was getting hungry: I had skipped dinner that night. The captain adjusted his monocle, and sighed.

  “It has taken me five hours to get her to make up her mind. It took me a lot of dancing, drinking, lying, begging, imploring and whispering to get her there. Finally, she said yes. I can’t very well tell her that I now have to act as a second in a duel and that she will have to wait. Besides, I’m no longer twenty, it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’ve had it. I don’t want it any longer—in fact, it’s the last thing I want right now, but I, too, am something of a Polish patriot, and I can’t get out of it now. I’ll do what I can to defend my honor, but I tremble at the idea of what lies ahead. Why not ask the porter?”

  I took another look around the lobby. Among those seated around a sickly palm in the middle was a gentleman in pajamas and overcoat, with slippers on his feet, a hat on his head, a woolen scarf around his neck, and a melancholy expression, who clasped his hands and raised his eyes each time a bomb fell somewhat too close. The Germans were treating us, that night, to a first-rate show. The walls shook, plaster fell from the ceiling, glass broke in the windows, things were falling all over the place. I studied the gentleman carefully. I can recognize instinctively the type of person in whom the sight of a uniform inspires feelings of nervousness and respect, and who can never say no to authority. I went over to him and explained that urgent reasons necessitated his presence at a duel with pistols which was about to take place on the fifth floor of the hotel. He gave me a frightened and imploring look, but, confronted by the military, he did not offer any resistance, and rose obediently to his feet with a sigh. He even found a few words admirably suited to the occasion:

  “I shall,” he said, “be only too happy to contribute to the Allied war effort.”

  Since the elevators didn’t function during an alert, we walked upstairs. The anemic-looking potted plants on each landing were quivering. Ezra Pound was still hanging on my arm. She was, by now, in the throes of a particularly revolting literary seizure, and, raising her moist eyes to mine, kept murmuring, in erotic undertones:

  “You are going to kill a man! I can feel it! You are going to kill a man!”

  My second leaned against the wall and raised a hand to his head each time he heard the whining of a bomb. The three Poles were anti-Semites and regarded my choice of a second as an additional and deliberate insult to Polish honor. The good fellow, meanwhile, went on climbing the stairs as if he were descending into Hell, eyes shut, and muttering prayers. The upper floors were completely empty, abandoned by their inhabitants. I told the Polish patriots that the carpeted corridor seemed to me to be an ideal spot for our encounter. I also requested that the distance be increased to ten paces. They agreed and started to measure out the ground. I had no intention of suffering even the slightest scratch in this fray, and I also wanted to run no risk of killing my Pole or even wounding him too seriously, not only because Mickiewicz was a great poet but also because I did not want to get into trouble. A corpse in a hotel always gets found in the long run, and a badly wounded man cannot get downstairs under his own steam. On the other hand, knowing all about Polish honor, I asked to be given an assurance that I should not have to take on each of the other patriots in turn, should I disable the first I must add that, throughout the whole episode, my mother did not show the slightest sign of opposition. She must have been delighted to feel that I was doing something, at last, for France. And a duel with pistols at ten paces was just up her street. She knew that both Pushkin and Lermontov had been killed in pistol duels, and it was not for nothing that she had had me trained, from the age of eight by Lieutenant Sverdlovski. I could almost hear her sniff with satisfaction.

  I got ready. I must confess that I was not my usual cool self, partly because Ezra Pound was driving me mad, partly because I was afraid that, should a bomb fall just as I was about to fire, it might make my hand tremble, cause me to miss my target or wound the damn fool too seriously.

  Finally all was ready and we stood facing one another in the corridor. I aimed as best I could but conditions were far from ideal, the explosions and whining were deafening and when the referee—one of the Poles—gave the signal, I wounded my adversary more seriously than was altogether healthy for me. We carried him into our suite, where little Ezra Pound at once assumed the duties of nurse and sister while obviously having hoped for something better, as the lieutenant had, after all, been wounded only in the shoulder. It was then that I truly had my moment of triumph. I saluted my adversaries in the true Prussian, that is, Polish manner, clicking my heels and bowing to them, and then in my best Polish and purest Warsaw accent, told them loudly and clearly what I thought of them. The idiotic look which settled on their faces when the flood of insults, couched in their rich native tongue, began to pour from the lips of their French opponent was one of the most glorious moments in my career as a Polish patriot and largely made up for the intense annoyance they had caused me. But I had not yet finished with the surprises of that evening. My second, who during the exchange of shots had vanished into one of the empty rooms, now followed me onto the stairs. His face was radiant. He seemed to have forgotten his fear and the bombs outside. With a smile which spread so widely across his face that I began to feel concerned for his ears, he took from his wallet four crisp beautiful five-pound notes which he trie
d to press into my hand. When I rejected this offering with dignity, he made a gesture toward the suite in which we had left the three Poles and said in bad French: “Take! Take! Thank you, thank you: they are all anti-Semites! I, too, am a Pole: I know zem!”

  “Sir,” I said in Polish while he was trying to slip the notes into my pocket, “Monsieur, my Polish honor, moj honor polski, forbids me to accept your money. Besides, both as a Cossack, as a Tartar, as a Jew and as a free citizen of the world, I resent your racist attitude! Furthermore, Monsieur, Vive la Pologne, which is an ancient ally of France, my fatherland!”

  I saw his mouth gape, into his eyes came that look of monumental stupefaction which I so love seeing in human eyes, and there I left him, banknotes in hand, and ran whistling downstairs, four steps at a time, and out into the night.

  Next morning, a police car came to pick me up at Odiham and, after a brief but disagreeable session at Scotland Yard, I was handed over to the French authorities at Admiral Muselier’s headquarters, where I was questioned in a resigned fashion by Lieutenant Commander d’Angassac and Commander Auboyneau. It had been agreed that the Polish lieutenant should leave the hotel, supported by his two friends and acting drunk, but Ezra Pound had not been able to resist the dramatic temptation of calling an ambulance and now I was in a pretty pickle. I was helped by the fact that there was a shortage of fully-trained air crews in the meager ranks of the Free French, which made me a precious asset, and also because my squadron was about to leave for other and distant skies. But I have the feeling that my mother had been active behind the scenes, for I escaped with a reprimand—a thing that never broke anybody’s leg—and embarked cheerfully a few days later for Africa.