Authors: Stephen Hunter
Neither German policeman was injured, except
by means of stolen dignity, but each spilled crazily
from his door, driven by the primal fear of flame
encoded in the human race, one tripping, going to
hands and knees and locomoting desperately from
the conflagration on all fours like some sort of
beast. Civilians panicked as well, and screaming
became general as they scrambled away from the
bonfire that had been an automobile several seconds
earlier.
Basil never looked back, and walked swiftly
down the street until he reached rue de Valor and
headed down it.
Boch was lecturing Abel on the necessity of severity
in dealing with these French cream puffs when
a man roared into the banquet room, screaming,
“They've blown up one of our radio cars. It's an
attack! The Resistance is here!”
Instantly men leaped to action. Three ran to a
gun rack in a closet where the MP 40s were stored
and grabbed those powerful weapons up. Abel
raced to the telephone and called Paris command
with a report and a request for immediate troop
dispatch. Still others pulled Walthers, Lugers, and
P38s from holsters, grabbed overcoats, and readied
themselves to move to the scene and take command.
Hauptsturmführer Boch did nothing. He sat
rooted in terror. He was not a coward, but he also,
for all his worship of severity and aggressive interrogation
methods, was particularly inept at confronting
the unexpected, which generally caused
his mind to dump its contents in a steaming pile
on the floor while he sat in stupefaction, waiting
for it to refill.
In this case, when he found himself alone in the
room, he reached a refill level, stood up, and ran
after his more agile colleagues.
He stepped on the sidewalk, which was full of
fleeing Parisians, and fought against the tide, being
bumped and jostled in the process by those who
had no idea who he was. A particularly hard
thump from a hurtling heavyweight all but
knocked him flat, and the fellow had to grab him
to keep him upright before hurrying along. Thus,
making little progress, the Hauptsturmführer
pulled out his Luger, trying to remember if there
was a shell in the chamber, and started to shout in
his bad French, “Make way! German officer, make
way!” waving the Luger about as if it were some
kind of magic wand that would dissipate the
crowd.
It did not, so taken in panic were the French, so
he diverted to the street itself and found the going
easier. He made it to Boulevard Saint-Germain,
turned right, and there beheld the atrocity. Radio
Car Five still blazed brightly. German plainclothesmen
had set up a cordon around it, menacing the
citizens with their MP 40s, but of course no citizens
were that interested in a German car, and so
the street had largely emptied. Traffic on the busy
thoroughfare had stopped, making the approach
of the fire truck more laggardâthe sound of klaxons
arrived from far away, and it was clear that by
the time the firemen arrived the car would be
largely burned to a charred hulk. Two plainclothesmen,
Esterlitz, from his SS unit, and an Abwehr
agent, sat on the curb looking completely unglued
while Abel tried to talk to them.
Boch ran to them.
“Report,” he snapped as he arrived, but nobody
paid any attention to him.
“Report!” he screamed.
Abel looked over at him.
“I'm trying to get a description from these two
fellows, so we know who we're looking for.”
“We should arrest hostages at once and execute
them if no information is forthcoming.”
“Sir, he has to be in the area still. We have to put
people out in all directions with a solid description.”
“Esterlitz, what did you see?”
Esterlitz looked at him with empty eyes. The
nearness of his escape, the heat of the flames, the
suddenness of it all, had disassembled his brain
completely. Thus it was the Abwehr agent who answered.
“As I've been telling the lieutenant, it happened
so quickly. My last impression in the split second
before the bomb exploded was of a man walking
north on Saint-Germain in a blue pinstripe that
was not well cut at all, a surprise to see in a city so
fashion-conscious, and then
whoosh
, a wall of
flame behind us.”
“The bastards,” said Boch. “Attempting murder
in broad daylight.”
“Sir,” said Abel, “with all due respect, this was
not an assassination operation. Had he wanted
them dead, he would have hurled the Molotov
through the open window, soaking them with
burning gasoline, burning them to death. Instead
he merely ignited the petrol tank, which enabled
them to escape. He didn't care about them. That
wasn't the point, don't you see?”
Boch looked at him, embarrassed to be contradicted
by an underling in front of the troops. It was
not the SS way! But he controlled his temper, as it
made no sense to vent at an ignorant police rube.
“What are you saying?”
“This was some sort of distraction. He wanted
to get us all out here, concentrating on this essentially
meaningless event, because it somehow advanced
his higher purpose.”
“IâIâ” stuttered Boch.
“Let me finish the interview, then get the description
out to all other cars, ordering them to
stay in place. Having our men here, tied up in this
jam, watching the car burn to embers, accomplishes
nothing.”
“Do it! Do it!” screamed Boch, as if he had
thought of it himself.
Basil reached the Bibliothèque Mazarine within
ten minutes and could still hear fire klaxons
sounding in the distance. The disturbance would
clog up the sixth arrondissement for hours before
it was finally untangled, and it would mess up the
German response for those same hours. He knew
he had a window of timeânot much, but perhaps
enough.
He walked through the cobbled yard and approached
the doors, where two French policemen
stood guard.
“Official business only,
monsieur
. German orders,”
said one.
He took out his identification papers and said
frostily, “I do not care to chat with French policemen
in the sunlight. I am here on business.”
“Yes, sir.”
He entered a vast, sacred space. It was composed
of an indefinite number of hexagonal galleries, with
vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low
railings. From any of the hexagons one could see,
interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution
of the galleries was invariable. Twenty
shelves, five long shelves per side, covered all the
sides except two; their height, which was the distance
from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeded that
of a normal bookcase. The books seemed to absorb
and calm all extraneous sounds, so that as his heels
clicked on the marble of the floor on the approach
to a central desk, a woman behind it hardly seemed
to notice him. However, his papers got her attention
and her courtesy right away.
“I am here on important business. I need to
speak to
le directeur
immediately.”
She left. She returned. She bade him follow.
They went to an elevator where a decrepit Great
War veteran, shoulders stooped, medals tarnished,
eyes vacant, opened the gate to a cage-like car.
They were hoisted mechanically up two flights, followed
another path through corridors of books,
and reached a door.
She knocked, then entered. He followed, to discover
an old Frenchie in some kind of frock coat
and goatee, standing nervously.
“I am Claude De Marque, the director,” he said
in French. “How may I help you?”
“Do you speak German?”
“Yes, but I am more fluent in my own tongue.”
“French, then.”
“Please sit down.”
Basil took a chair.
“Nowâ”
“First, understand the courtesy I have paid you.
Had I so chosen, I could have come with a contingent
of armed troops. We could have shaken
down your institution, examined the papers of all
your employees, made impolite inquiries as we
looked for leverage and threw books every which
way. That is the German technique. Perhaps you
shield a Jew, as is the wont of your kind of prissy
French intellectual. Too bad for those Jews, too
bad for those who shield him. Are you getting my
meaning?”
“Yes, sir, Iâ”
“Instead I come on my own. As men of letters,
I think it more appropriate that our relationship
be based on trust and respect. I am a professor of
literature at Leipzig, and I hope to return to that
after the war. I cherish the library, this library, any
library. Libraries are the font of civilization, do you
not agree?”
“I do.”
“Therefore, one of my goals is to protect the integrity
of the library. You must know that first of
all.”
“I am pleased.”
“Then let us proceed. I represent a very high
science office of the Third Reich. This office has an
interest in certain kinds of rare books. I have been
assigned by its commanding officer to assemble a
catalog of such volumes in the great libraries of
Europe. I expect you to help me.”
“What kinds of books?”
“Ah, this is delicate. I expect discretion on your part.”
“Of course.”
“This office has an interest in volumes that deal
with erotic connections between human beings.
Our interest is not limited to those merely between
male and female but extends to other combinations as well. The names de Sade and Ovid have
been mentioned. There are more, I am sure. There
is also artistic representation. The ancients were
more forthright in their descriptions of such activities.
Perhaps you have photos of paintings,
sculptures, friezes?”
“Sir, this is a respectableâ”
“It is not a matter of respect. It is a matter of
science, which must go where it leads. We are undertaking
a study of human sexuality, and it must
be done forthrightly, professionally, and quickly.
We are interested in harnessing the power of eugenics
and seek to find ways to improve the fertility
of our finest minds. Clearly the answer lies in sexual
behaviors. Thus we must fearlessly master such
matters as we chart our way to the future. We must
ensure the future.”
“But we have no salacious materials.”
“And do you believe, knowing of the Germans'
attributes of thoroughness, fairness, calm and deliberate
examination, that a single assurance alone
would suffice?”
“I invite you toâ”
“Exactly. This is what I expect. An hour, certainly
no more, undisturbed in your rare book
vault. I will wear white gloves if you prefer. I must
be free to make a precise search and assure my
commander that either you do not have such materials,
as you claim, or you do, and these are the
ones you have. Do you understand?”
“I confess a first edition of Sade's
Justine
, dated
1791, is among our treasures.”
“Are the books arranged by year?”
“They are.”
“Then that is where I shall begin.”
“Please, you can'tâ”
“Nothing will be disturbed, only examined.
When I am finished, have a document prepared
for me in which I testify to other German officers
that you have cooperated to the maximum degree.
I will sign it, and believe me, it will save you much
trouble in the future.”
“That would be very kind, sir.”
At last he and the Reverend MacBurney were
alone.
I have come a long way to meet you, you Scots
bastard
, he thought.
Let's see what secrets I can tease
out of you.
MacBurney was signified by a manuscript on
foolscap, beribboned in a decaying folder upon
which
The Path to Jesus
had been scrawled in an ornate
hand. It had been easy to find, in a drawer
marked
1789
; he had delicately moved it to the
tabletop, where, opened, it yielded its treasure, page
after page in the round hand of the man of God
himself, laden with swoops and curls of faded
brown ink. In the fashion of the eighteenth century,
he had made each letter a construction of grace and
agility, each line a part of the composition, by turning
the feather quill to get the fat or the thin, these
arranged in an artistic cascade. His punctuation
was precise, deft, studied, just this much twist and
pressure for a comma, that much for a (more plentiful)
semicolon. It was if the penmanship itself
communicated the glory of his love for God. All the
nouns were capitalized, and the
S
's and the
F
's were
so close it would take an expert to tell which was
which; superscript showed up everywhere, as the
man tried to shrink his burden of labor; frequently
the word “the” appeared as “ye,” as the penultimate
letter often stood in for
th
in that era. It seemed the
words on the page wore powdered periwigs and silk
stockings and buckled, heeled shoes as they danced
and pirouetted across the page.
Yet there was a creepy quality to it, too. Splats
or droplets marked the creamy luster of the pageâ
some of wine perhaps, some of tea, some of whatever
else one might have at the board in the
eighteenth century. Some of the lines were
crooked, and the page itself felt off-kilter, as though
a taint of madness had attended, or perhaps
drunkenness, for in his dotage old MacBurney was
no teetotaler, it was said.
More psychotic still were the drawings. As the
librarian had noticed in his published account of
the volume in
Treasures of the Cambridge Library
,
the reverend occasionally yielded to artistic impulse.
No, they weren't vulvas or naked boys or
fornicators in pushed-up petticoats or farmers
too in love with their cows. MacBurney's lusts
weren't so visible or so nakedly expressed. But the
fellow was a doodler after Jesus. He could not
compel himself to be still, and so each page wore
a garland of crosses scattered across its bottom, a
Milky Way of holiness setting off the page number,
or in the margins, and at the top silhouetted
crucifixions, sketches of angels, clumsy reiterations
of God's hand touching Adam's as the great
Italian had captured upon that ceiling in Rome.
Sometimes the devil himself appeared, horned
and ambivalent, just a few angry lines not so
much depicting as suggesting Lucifer's cunning
and malice. It seemed the reverend was in anguish
as he tried desperately to finish this last devotion
to the Lord.