Monsieur le Commandant (11 page)

My faithful Rochet-Schneider gave up the ghost last May, on my return from Rouen where I had attended a meeting chaired by Jacques Doriot. With Lieutenant Heller’s assistance, I acquired a Belgian Imperia
TA-11
Jupiter saloon, a model which owes its elegant lines (unfortunately blemished by an unsightly gas generator) to the talents of the French designer Chadefeau, and which was originally equipped with one of your powerful four-cylinder Adler engines.

I finished my essay on the Bishop of Avranches, which I intended to dedicate to the Maréchal. I suggested to Ilse, who had joined us in Andigny with Aristide on the night of 12 June, that we take a trip to Mont Saint-Michel. Besides giving me the opportunity to show the German and her children one of the marvels of the Christian world, the outing would let me assess the performance of my new automobile. Moreover, on the night of 29–30 May, another Anglo-American air raid had done cruel damage to a Paris suburb. The toll included some fifty dead, more than a hundred wounded, and two hundred homes destroyed. I preferred that my family spend as much time as possible in Normandy, where everything was calm. We left at dawn on Saturday the 13th, in weather that was every bit as glorious as it had been that day in June, during the exodus.

Things happen at Mont Saint-Michel that one sees nowhere else. Just consider the miracle of Saint Aubert – in the middle of the night, a dazzling light envelops the monastery. Lightning or firebrands, Pentecost or Apocalypse, it is a sign from on high. The Bishop of
Avranches sees the blaze, calls for his horse to be saddled, heads straight for the abbey at full gallop, tears off his purple vestments and becomes a monk. The story captures the very essence of the Mount’s holy spirit.

There are days when I envy the man who has entered the priesthood. Has he not received the Holy Spirit? Is he not
a man of the Holy
Spirit?
The Book of Revelation tells us of a woman (the Church) clothed with the sun; but is not a priest or a monk clothed with joy, clothed with love, clothed with light, clothed with the sun? Every little bird has something to sing about the glory of God. The priest has the great privilege of giving voice every Sunday, every day, to that which the over-brimming heart, all-capacious as it is, is too small to contain. What sweetness merely to speak out loud the name of Our Lord and his Holy Mother! It is what the psalm calls
super mel ori meo
. The honey at the tip of his staff that caused Jonathan to swoon.

Alas, in truth I am of little worth in comparison to that man of the Holy Spirit – I who trifle at weaving sentences and rhyming fragments, and whom the presence at my side of one woman among them all, the presence of her fragile and mortal flesh beside me in the Imperia hurtling towards the sea, causes to swoon!

We took lunch in Avranches, majestically perched on its high, gently sloping hilltop, exposed to the sea winds and invasions, conquered and reconquered by the dukes of Normandy and Brittany, the kings of France and England, yet somehow managing to retain its primal episcopal solemnity. Having eaten, we took a short stroll along the walkway at the botanic garden, lined with age-old elms and overlooking one of the most beautiful landscapes of France. The valley of the Sée and the Sélune is a great ocean of luxuriant green, while in the distance the yellowish strands outline the curve of a crescent gulf, ending in the two headlands at Granville and Pontorson.

In the middle of the gulf, like some fantasy castle, Mont
Saint-Michel
rose on a spindly black outcrop. Seen from a distance, veiled
in fog and as if lost at sea, it looked more like a colossal menhir than a human construction. Its triangular form clearly radiated the three powers united in the All: man, nature and God. This threefold communion – which decadent Surrealists like Breton and Man Ray seek in life’s occult horrors, or in some nonsense about immersion in primary sources – is manifest unequivocally and with unparalleled nobility in the Mount. Standing there, the rock is the unmoving arbiter, the scornful judge of the restless world. On the slopes of the inspired hill, only prayer rises to assault the sky.

We resumed our travels in the direction of Pontorson, then drove along the coast. Low farmhouses still bordered the road, but gradually the trees began to thin out, giving way to the paludal vegetation of samphire marshes. We were coming to the expanse of dunes and sand that extend, gleaming like a sallow mirror, all the way to the open sea. I stopped the car and we walked along the beach as the tide ebbed. Leaning on Ilse’s shoulder as I pointed to the imposing scenery, I quoted Flaubert at the top of my lungs:

As we approached the Mount, the individual buildings and structures took shape, forming a uniquely strange and imposing ensemble, a living relic bequeathed to the people of our century by their very Christian brothers of the Middle Ages – one that elicited awe-struck
exclamations from Hermione. My daughter-in-law, carrying little Aristide in her arms, seemed to be deeply impressed as well. We walked along the causeway, alongside which the fishermen moor their boats, and which ends at the solid wall of the ‘Avancée’, the exterior defensive works of the holy site. My attention was suddenly drawn to a little girl of about twelve years old, a wild child digging for cockles in the sand and singing an ancient and simple melody that I had never heard before. I consigned the words to memory and wrote them down that night at the inn.

If there were other verses, the child didn’t know them, because she
kept returning to the first quatrain and repeating herself. Ilse listened, like me, and when our glances met it seemed to me that my
daughter-in
-law blushed slightly.

Then we reached the granite foundation of the holy Mount itself.

We passed through the King’s Gate. Above our heads, a stone lion rested his paw on the abbatial crest, upon which salmon swam against a wavy background. We began to climb the one street that zigzags along the flank of the Mount, leading to the abbey by ramped stairs. We passed a small group of German officers, no doubt on leave, as they descended, having completed their visit. They smiled at the children and their mother. Two hours after we had begun our ascent, the tide was beating against the Avancée rampart, and soon the encircling waves had turned the isolated Mount into an island.

Over dinner at the inn, I thought Ilse looked preoccupied and sad. I imagined that she was missing Olivier, that his absence became all the more bitter on family outings of which he ought to have been part. Hermione and I were more chatty; I told my granddaughter, whose brown eyes gleamed with excitement, stories of the glorious past of Mont Saint-Michel and the life of Saint Aubert. The child was top of her class at school. Will she one day be as clever as my lost Jeanne?

We were given a large room with two big twin beds and a small side room where Hermione and Aristide would share a more modest bed – my granddaughter loved playing mother, and the birth of her little brother had delivered a real live baby doll. The children, tired out by the drive and the visit to the abbey, immediately fell asleep, curled up together like in Boilly’s painting,
Amour familial
. I washed, then went to lie in the bed next to Ilse’s. I was – almost – as close to her as I had been during our forced stay in Rânes, in the shed behind the café.

I was about to turn off the light when my companion suddenly began to speak in a flat voice.

‘Last Tuesday in Paris, I saw and heard something that I found very
painful. I can’t get it out of my head.’

‘So tell me, my child. I’m listening,’ I answered.

‘It was on the métro. By chance, I happened to get in the last carriage. You know that it’s been ruled that Jews are only allowed in the last carriage?’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’

‘You approve of it, obviously. You don’t consider what it might actually mean. Anyway, that Tuesday afternoon, there was only one passenger in that last carriage wearing a yellow star. I watched her run to catch the train, at the station after École Militaire. A young woman, maybe twenty years old. A student, I think. Clearly someone from a good family, well but plainly dressed. She looked intelligent and honest. Rather pretty. She stood panting, very pale. I watched her from the corner of my eye. There was something appealing about her, this French student. I noticed that she had tears in her eyes. Staring straight ahead of her, the girl was biting her lip to stop herself from crying in public.’

Ilse bit her own lip. Then, with some effort, she went on.

‘A few stations on, just as the young student with the yellow star was about to get off, a lady in the carriage spoke to her. In a friendly voice, and loud enough so that most of the other passengers could hear, she said, “Hello, Mademoiselle.”’

I watched Ilse closely. Her eyes misted over. She fell silent. I asked, ‘Is that all?’

My daughter-in-law glared at me. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘The world is at war, my dear. France is occupied. Some people are responsible for this state of affairs, and now steps are being taken. Everything will be better soon, you’ll see.’

Ilse shook her head, repeating in a rising voice: ‘Better? Better? What you really mean is that things will be better when the police send that student I saw to some camp in the East.’

‘Not necessarily. No one will send her east if she’s French.’

‘Paul-Jean, didn’t you yourself write in
Au Pilori
– don’t deny it, someone showed it to me and I read it – “The yellow star has unmasked a few Jews. We still have to count them all, denounce them and kick them out of Europe. They must be prevented from doing further harm.”
Doing further harm
? That student I saw in the Paris métro on Tuesday, with her textbooks and notebooks, what’s harmful about her?
What harm has she done
?’

I found it difficult to respond, because the violent emotions overwhelming the woman I loved communicated themselves to me and threw me off balance. I mumbled something or other, and Ilse forged ahead.

‘I could feel what she was feeling. I could put myself in her shoes. I knew that for the past two days, the eyes of
every single person
she had met had immediately been drawn to that star, to her chest. Everyone: family, friends, perfect strangers. And no matter how they reacted, the first thing they saw was the star. That star burning into her chest. There were tears of pain and revulsion in her eyes. She struggled to maintain her dignity so that people could see what dignity looks like. She did the most courageous thing of all. It takes more courage to wear the star out in the open than to hide!’

She buried her head in her hands. I looked on, horrified and despairing. ‘My little one,’ I whispered.

‘The way people looked at her,’ she went on, less vehemently but with her face still hidden behind her hands. ‘
Everyone
. Some looked surprised. Curious. Mocking. Severe. Hostile. Evasive. Scornful. Blank. Moved. Shocked. Compassionate. And it’s those compassionate looks, and the friendly smiles, that hurt the most.’

I rose from my bed, crossed over to hers and put my right arm around her shoulder. I could feel her sobs more than I could hear them. I caressed her skin beneath the thin fabric of her nightgown. Ilse
sniffled, shaking her head.

‘I saw this kind of thing in Germany. I never thought I’d see it here. I thought this was the country of liberty. My countrymen did this to you, but the fact is you were ripe for it. You know, this France of yours disgusts me!’

‘You’ve met some charitable Frenchmen, too. That lady …’

I hardly knew what I was saying.

Ilse wept like a child.

I thought I heard her say, ‘I’m afraid … I’m afraid …’

Deeply moved, I stroked her hair and whispered in her ear.

‘You’re not alone. Be strong, little one. I know everything, I understand you. I’m watching over you. I’ll protect you. My dear little Ilse. Don’t be afraid, I’ll protect you, my Ilse, my little Dorte …’

She pulled away from me forcefully. Her blue eyes stared at me, incredulous and suspicious.

‘What did you say? What did you call me?
Nobody
knows that nickname!’

I stuttered that it had been Franz, as he was leaving on the night of the wedding, who had asked me to protect his sister. I recalled his words:

Monsieur Husson, I am entrusting Dorte to you. So that through you – a war hero, a member of the Academy, and a great poet – and through all you represent, the spirit of Eternal France may watch over her!

I knew that her brother was dead; my daughter-in-law didn’t. But completely overcome by his words, she took refuge in my arms, whispering, ‘
Oh, Franz! Franz, mein lieber Franz
…’ I tasted the salt of her tears on my lips. I felt the heat of her trembling body, I felt her hair brush against my skin, I felt our hearts beat in double rhythm. And Ilse, without doubt, felt the hardness of my member against her nightshirt. She did not push me away. I embraced her, Monsieur le Commandant, as I had never embraced a woman before. That night, I know, she came
to understand the full power of my love for her. Soon, she was nothing but sighs and flutters, caress built upon caress, and we climaxed at the same time, two great intermingled cries that half woke the little girl in the room next door.