The Night Watch (5 page)

Pauvre Swing Troubadour

Pauvre Swing Troubadour . . .

The record stops. ‘Dry martini, young man?’ Lionel de Zieff inquires. The others gather round me. ‘Feeling queasy again?’ Count Baruzzi asks. ‘You look terribly pale.’ ‘Suppose we get him some fresh air?’ suggests Rosenheim. I hadn’t noticed the large photo of Pola Négri behind the bar. Her lips are unmoving, her features smooth and serene. She contemplates what is happening with studied indifference. The yellowed print makes her seem even more distant. Pola Négri cannot help me.

The
Lieutenant. He stepped into Zelly’s café followed by Saint-Georges around midnight, as arranged. Everything happened quickly. I wave to them. I cannot bring myself to meet their eyes. I lead them back outside. The Khedive, Gouari, and Vital-Leca immediately surround them, revolvers drawn. Only then do I look them square in the eye. They stare at me, first in amazement and then with a kind of triumphant scorn. Just as Vital-Leca is about to slip the cuffs on them they make a break for it and run towards the boulevard. The Khedive fires three shots. They crumple at the corner of Avenue Victoria and the square. Arrested during the next hour are:

Each time, I rang the doorbell and, to win their trust, I gave my name.

They’re sleeping now. Coco Lacour has the largest room in the house. I’ve put Esmeralda in the blue room
that
probably once belonged to the owners’ daughter. The owners fled Paris in June ‘owing to circumstances’. They’ll come back when order has been restored – next year maybe, who knows? – and throw us out of their house. In court, I’ll admit that I entered their home illegally. The Khedive, Philibert, and the others will be there in the dock with me. The world will wear its customary colours again. Paris will once more be the City of Light, and the general public in the gallery will pick their noses while they listen to the litany of our crimes: denouncements, beatings, theft, murder, trafficking of every description – things that, as I write these lines, are commonplace. Who will be willing to give evidence for me? The Fort de Montrouge on a bleak December morning. The firing squad. And all the horrors Madeleine Jacob will write about me. (Don’t read them, maman.) But it hardly matters, my partners in crime will kill me long before Morality, Justice, and Humanity return to confound me. I would like to leave a few memories, if nothing else, to leave to posterity the names of Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. Tonight I can watch over them, but for how much longer? What will become of them without me? They were my only companions. Gentle and silent as gazelles. Defenceless. I remember clipping a picture of a cat that had just been
saved
from drowning from a magazine. Its fur was soaked and dripping with mud. Around its neck, a noose weighted at one end with a stone. Never have I seen an expression that radiated such goodness. Coco Lacour and Esmeralda are like that cat. Don’t misunderstand me: I don’t belong to the Animal Protection Society or the League of Human Rights. What do I do? I wander through this desolate city. At night, at about nine o’clock, when the blackout has plunged it into the darkness, the Khedive, Philibert and the others gather around me. The days are white and fevered. I need to find an oasis or I shall die: my love for Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. I suppose even Hitler himself felt the need to relax when he petted his dog.
I PROTECT THEM.
Anyone who tries to harm them will have to answer to me. I fondle the silencer the Khedive gave me. My pockets are stuffed with cash. I have one of the most enviable names in France (I stole it, but in times like these, such things don’t matter). I weigh 90kg on an empty stomach. I have velvety eyes. A ‘promising’ young man. But what exactly was my promise? The Good Fairies gathered around my cradle. They must have been drinking. You’re dealing with a formidable opponent. So
KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THEM!
I first saw them on the platform at Grenelle métro station and realised that it would take only a word, a gesture to break
them.
I wonder how they came to be there, still alive. I remembered the cat saved from drowning. The blind red-headed giant’s name was Coco Lacour, the little girl – or the little old lady – was Esmeralda. Faced with these two people, I felt pity. I felt a bitter, violent wave break over me. As the tide ebbed, I felt my head spin: push them onto the tracks. I had to dig my nails into my palms, hold by whole body taut. The wave broke over me again, a tide so gentle that I closed my eyes and surrendered to it.

Every night I half-open the door to their rooms as quietly as I can, and watch them sleep. I feel my head spinning just as it did that first time: slip the silencer out of my pocket and kill them. I’ll break my last moorings adrift and drift towards the North Pole where there are no tears to temper loneliness. They freeze on the tips of eyelashes. And arid sorrow. Two eyes staring at parched wasteland. If I hesitate at the thought of killing the blind man and the little girl – or the little old lady – how then can I betray the Lieutenant? What counts against him is his courage, his composure, the elegance that imbues his every gesture. His steady blue eyes exasperate me. He belongs to that ungainly breed of heroes. Yet still, I can’t help seeing him as a kindly elderly lady. I don’t take men seriously. One day I’ll
fi
nd myself looking at them – and at myself – the way I do at Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. The toughest, the proudest ones will seem like frail creatures who need to be protected.

They played mah-jongg in the living room before going to bed. The lamp casts a soft glow on the bookshelves and the full-length portrait of Monsieur de Bel-Respiro. They moved the pieces slowly. Esmeralda tilted her head while Coco Lacour gnawed on his forefinger. All around us, silence. I close the shutters. Coco Lacour quickly nods off. Esmeralda is afraid of the dark, so I always leave her door ajar and the light on in the hallway. I usually read to her for half an hour from a book I found in the nightstand of this room when I appropriated this house:
How to Raise Our Daughters
, by Madame Léon Daudet. ‘It is in the linen closet, more than anywhere else, that a young girl begins to sense the seriousness of domestic responsibilities. For is not the linen closet the most enduring symbol of family security and stability? Behind its massive doors lie orderly piles of cool sheets, damask tablecloths, neatly folded napkins; to my mind, there is nothing quite so gratifying to the eye as a well-appointed linen closet . . .’ Esmeralda has fallen asleep. I pick out a few notes on the living room piano.
I
lean up against the window. A peaceful square of the kind you only find in the 16th
arrondissement
. The leaves of the trees brush against the windowpane. I would like to think of this house as mine. I’ve grown attached to the bookshelves, to the lamps with their rosy shades, to the piano. I’d like to cultivate the virtues of domesticity, as outlined by Madame Léon Daudet, but I will not have the time.

Sooner or later the owners will come back. What saddens me most is that they’ll evict Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. I don’t feel sorry for myself. The only feelings I have are Panic (which causes me to commit endless acts of cowardice) and Pity for my fellow men; although their twisted faces frighten me, still I find them moving. Will I spend the winter among these maniacs? I look awful. My constant comings and goings between the Lieutenant and the Khedive, the Khedive and the Lieutenant, are beginning to wear me down. I want to appease them both (so they’ll spare my life), and this double-dealing demands a physical stamina I don’t have. Suddenly I feel the urge to cry. My indifference gives way to what English Jews call
a nervous breakdown
. I wander through a maze of thoughts and come to the conclusion that all these people, in their opposing camps, have secretly banded together to
destroy
me. The Khedive and the Lieutenant are but a single person, and I am simply a panicked moth flitting one lamp to the next, each time singeing its wings a little more.

Esmeralda is crying. I’ll go and comfort her. Her nightmares are short-lived, she ’ll go back to sleep right away. I’ll play mah-jongg while I wait for the Khedive, Philibert, and the others. I’ll assess the situation one last time. On one side, the heroes ‘skulking in the shadows’: the Lieutenant and his plucky little team of graduates from Saint-Cyr Military Academy. On the other, the Khedive and his thugs in the night watch. Tossed about between the two and I and my pitifully modest ambitions:
BARMAN
at some
auberge
outside Paris. A wrought-iron gate, a gravel driveway. Lush gardens and a bounding wall. On a clear day, from the third-floor windows, you might catch a glimpse of the searchlight on the Eiffel Tower sweeping the horizon.

Bartender. You can get used to such things. Though it can be painful sometimes. Especially after twenty years of believing a brilliant future beckoned. Not for me. What does it entail? Making cocktails. On Saturday nights the orders start to pour in. Gin Fizz, Brandy Alexander, Pink Lady, Irish coffee. A twist of lemon.
Two
rum punches. The customers, in swelling numbers, throng the bar where I stand mixing the rainbow-coloured concoctions. Careful not to keep them waiting for fear they’ll lunge at me if there’s a moment’s delay. By quickly filling their glasses I try to keep them at bay. I’m not especially fond of human contact. Porto Flip? Whatever they want. I’m serving up cocktails. It’s as good a way as any to protect yourself from your fellow man and – why not? – to be rid of them. Curaçao? Marie-Brizard? Their faces flush. They reel and lurch, before long they will collapse dead drunk. Leaning on the bar, I will watch them as they sleep. They cannot harm me anymore. Silence, at last. My breath still coming short.

Behind me, photos of Henri Garat, Fred Bretonnel, and a few other pre-war stars whose smiles have faded over the years. Within easy reach, an issue of
L’Illustration
devoted to the Normandie: The grill room, the chairs along the afterdeck. The nursery. The smoking lounge. The ballroom. The sailors’ charity ball on 25 May under the patronage of Madame Flandin. All swallowed up. I know how it feels. I was aboard the Titanic when she sank. Midnight. I’m listening to old songs by Charles Trenet:

.
. .
Bonsoir

Jolie madame . . .

The record is scratched, but I never tire of listening to it. Sometimes I put another record on the gramophone:

Tout est fini, plus de prom’nades

Plus de printemps, Swing Troubadour . . .

The inn, like a bathyscaphe, comes aground in a sunken city. Atlantis? Drowned men glide along the Boulevard Haussmann.

. . .
Ton destin

Swing Troubadour . . .

At Fouquet, they linger at their tables. Most of them have lost all semblance of humanity. One can almost see their entrails beneath their gaudy rags. In the waiting hall at Saint-Lazare, corpses drift in serried groups; I see a few escaping through the windows of commuter trains. On the Rue d’Amsterdam, the patrons streaming out of Le Monseigneur have a sickly green pallor but seem better preserved than the ones before. I continue my night rounds. Élysée-Montmartre. Magic
City.
Luna Park. Rialto-Dancing. Ten thousand, a hundred thousand drowned souls moving slowly, languidly, like the cast of a film projected in slow motion. Silence. Now and then they brush up against the bathyscaphe, their faces – glassy-eyed, open-mouthed – pressed against the porthole.

. . .
Swing Troubadour . . .

I can never go back up to the surface. The air is growing thin, the lights in the bar begin to flicker, and I find myself back at Austerlitz station in summer. Everyone is leaving for the Southern Zone. They jostle each other to get to the ticket windows and board trains bound for Hendaye. They will cross the Spanish border. They will never be seen again. There are still one or two strolling along the station platforms but they too will fade any second now. Hold them back? I head west through Paris. Châtelet. Palais-Royal. Place de la Concorde. The sky is too blue, the leaves are much too delicate. The gardens along the Champs-Élysées look like a thermal spa.

Avenue Kléber. I turn left. Place Cimarosa.
A peaceful square of the kind you only find in the 16th arrondissement
. The bandstand is deserted now, the statue of Toussaint
L’Ouverture
is eaten away by greyish lichen. The house at 3
bis
once belonged to Monsieur and Madame de Bel-Respiro. On 13 May, 1897, they held a masked ball on the theme of the Arabian Nights; Monsieur de Bel-Respiro’s son greeted guests dressed as a rajah. The young man died the next day in a fire at the Bazar de la Charité. Madame de Bel-Respiro loved music, especially Isidore Lara’s ‘Le Rondel de l’adieu’. Monsieur de Bel-Respiro liked to paint in his spare time. I feel the need to mention such details because everyone has forgotten them.

August in Paris brings forth a flood of memories. The sunshine, the deserted avenues, the rustle of chestnut trees . . . I sit on a bench and look up at the façade of brick and stone. The shutters now have long since been boarded up. Coco Lacour’s and Esmeralda’s rooms were on the third floor. I had the attic room at the left. In the living room, a full-length self-portrait of Monsieur de Bel-Respiro in his Spahi officer’s uniform. I would spend long moments staring at his face, at the medals that bedecked his chest.
Légion d’honneur
. The Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the Order of Saint George from Russia, the Order of Prince Danilo from Montenegro, the Order of the Tower and Sword from Portugal. I had exploited this man’s absence to commandeer his house. The
nightmare
would end, I told myself, Monsieur de Bel-Respiro would come back and turn us out, I told myself, while they were torturing that poor devil downstairs and he was staining the Savonnerie carpet with his blood. Strange things went on at 3
bis
while I lived there. Some nights I would be wakened by screams of pain, footsteps scurrying to and fro on the main floor. The Khedive’s voice. Or Philibert’s. I would look out of the window. Two or three shadowy forms were being bundled into the cars parked outside the house. Doors slammed. The roar of the engines would grow fainter and fainter. Silence. Impossible to get back to sleep. I was thinking about Monsieur de Bel-Respiro’s son, about his tragic death. It was not something he had been raised to consider. Even the Princess de Lamballe would have been astonished if she had learned of her own execution a few years beforehand. And me? Who would have guessed that I would be a henchman to a gang of torturers? But all I had to do was light the lamp and go down to the living room, and the familiar order was immediately restored. Monsieur de Bel-Respiro’s self-portrait still hung on the wall. The wallpaper was still impregnated with the Arabian perfume of Madame de Bel-Respiro’s that made my head spin. The mistress of the house was smiling at me. I was her son, Lieutenant
Commander
Maxime de Bel-Respiro, home on leave to attend one of the masked balls that brought artists and politicians flocking to No. 3
bis
: Ida Rubinstein, Gaston Calmette, Federico de Madrazzo, Louis Barthou, Gauthier-Villars, Armande Cassive, Bouffe de Saint-Blaise, Frank Le Harivel, José de Strada, Mery Laurent, Mile Mylo d’Arcille. My mother was playing the ‘Le Rondel de l’adieu’ on the piano. Suddenly I spotted small bloodstains on the Savonnerie carpet. One of the Louis XV armchairs had been overturned: the man who had been screaming a little while earlier had clearly put up a struggle while they were torturing him. Under the console table, a shoe, a tie, a pen. In the circumstances, it is pointless to carry on describing the guests at No. 3
bis
. Madame de Bel-Respiro had left the room. I tried to keep the guests from leaving. José de Strada, who was giving a reading from his
Abeilles d’or
, trailed off, petrified. Madame Mylo d’Arcille had fainted. They were going to murder Barthou. Calmette too. Bouffe de Saint-Blaise and Gauthier-Villars had vanished. Frank Le Harivel and Madrazzo were no more than frantic moths. Ida Rubinstein, Armande Cassive, and Mery Laurent were becoming transparent. I found myself alone in front of the self-portrait of Monsieur de Bel-Respiro. I was twenty years old.