The Centurions (32 page)

He noticed that a complete silence had fallen and that most of the audience had got up and were waiting for something to happen. He composed his voice.

“I'm glad to see you again, Philippe.”

“I'm not. I'll repeat my question: what has my country done to you for you to think of nothing but destroying it?”

“It's my country as well.”

“No, it isn't.”

“Because I'm a Jew?”

“No. Goldschmidt's also Jewish, but it's still his country.”

“Because I'm a Progressivist?”

“Goldschmidt also claims to be a Progressivist, and it's still his country.”

“Then why?”

“Because you're a dirty little shit. You've got an unhealthy liking for misfortune, putrefaction and defeat. You're a born lackey, servile and fawning . . .”

“I saved your life at Mathausen.”

“Not you, your masters . . . the Communists. It was Fournier who had my name taken off the list. Fournier and I don't see eye to eye, but at least we respect each other.”

“Why are you trying to make a row?”

“I was lucky enough to find you surrounded by a particularly choice bunch of asses, bitches and snobs. I couldn't resist such a pleasure. Tomorrow we'll disinfect the place . . . with D.D.T.”

“This is outrageous,” the philosophy mistress cried out in a shrill voice.

“This happens to be my house, madame. It's a funny thing, but among all these friends of the people I can't see a single working-class person, and among these Fighters for Peace not a single person capable of handling a rifle. Not a single Commie either. The Communists aren't like us. They're much more intolerant. They guard against contagion, they keep themselves clean and tip their refuse out on to the heads of others. They've filled my drawing-room with it.”

“It's not as bad as all that,” Weihl said to himself, “as long as he sticks to generalizations. Perhaps he won't talk about Mathausen and the reason why I was deported . . . perhaps . . . because Fournier must certainly have told him all about it. He's a sensitive man, old Philippe. Even though he's a bit of a brute he's frightened of hurting his sister or dishonouring the family name. Deported for black market activities. After all, one had to live, or rather survive. Philippe can't understand that. The Esclaviers have been steeped in honour and fine sentiments for centuries. Now that I have established myself I'm ready to have as many fine sentiments, and even finer, as anyone else!”

“Are you drunk, Philippe?”

He could not resist provoking his brother-in-law. Perhaps Philippe would now strike him, lay him out as he had done in the camp when he caught him stealing someone else's rations. At the time he had experienced a disturbing sensation of well-being; very odd, that sensation.

Philippe's voice sounded distant and remote.

“I'm not yet drunk enough. Weihl, go and fetch some alcohol, for we drink alcohol in my house and not milksop concoctions. We'll both get blind drunk together. No, everyone will get blind drunk with us, even the vicar. Jump to it, Michel my lad, I'm thirsty. Go on, you know what drinks to choose, don't try and pretend . . .”

This time the illusion was pointed. Weihl had sold the Germans a store of contraband alcohol, that was why he had been sent to Mathausen . . . Philippe was drunk. Villèle was sweating with curiosity. He felt some really juicy secret was about to be revealed.

“Get a move on, Michel.”

Weihl slowly unhooked himself from the mantelpiece.

The captain opened the door for him and shoved him outside. Guitte, too, had sprung to her feet, as though the spell which held them all rooted to the spot had been broken. She rubbed her head against Philippe's chest, nibbled him, kissed him, scratched him, laughed, sobbed and stroked his face.

“You've come back at last, Philippe. I'm touching you, kissing you. You're as unshaven as ever this evening.”

Panting and puffing, old Goldschmidt had grasped the captain's hand and was holding it against his fat paunch; he was snivelling, which made him look even uglier than usual.

“Why didn't you let us know? We should have come and met you at the station, or at Marseilles . . .”

Villèle lit a cigarette and thought:

“This isn't at all funny, everyone's in tears. It's too trite and yet just now we were very near the moment of truth. Interesting, this captain, very interesting. He's the great love of little Guitte, you can see.”

Weihl's guests trooped past, one after another, without daring to look at Philippe who was still standing by the door. On his way the Dominican delivered himself in an unctuous tone:

“May God forgive you, my son.”

“I'd like to see you again, Captain,” said Villèle. “You remember, I was at Vietri at the time of your release . . . That magnificent gesture, yes, throwing your fibre helmets into the river . . . I'll ring you up . . . in the very near future.”

In his surprise Esclavier allowed him to shake the hand which Goldschmidt was not holding.

He suddenly felt tired out, bereft, devoid of anger. Ashamed of himself and of his outburst.

Weihl came back with a bottle of brandy, put it down on the table and disappeared. He had suddenly assumed the smooth manner of a head waiter.

 • • • 

“You went too far, Philippe,” Goldschmidt gently observed, forcing the captain to sit down beside him. “It was you alone who allowed Weihl to become the heir to your father and to his thought. Do you know he's got the makings of a great writer? He's an exhibitionist who hates to reveal himself in public though at the same time he can't resist the temptation to do so . . .”

“A mental strip-tease, but he takes good care not to give the reason for his deportation!”

“He will one day . . . because he won't be able to stop himself. Exhibitionists are queer people, and we Jews are all exhibitionists.”

“Even the Jews of Israel?” Guitte inquired.

“No, they seem to have escaped the curse. But at the same time they're going to lose their genius, which is a compound of subtlety, restlessness and also fear. In every Jew's subconscious there's a deeply rooted terror of the pogrom. The Israeli doesn't have this. He tills a land which belongs to him and has a rifle slung on his shoulder. For centuries the uprooted Jew has inevitably hated all forms of nationalism. Nations are shadowy families from which he feels himself excluded. So he invented Communism, where the notion of class replaced that of nation. But this latest invention to have sprouted from his genius has not solved the problem, at least not for him, for the Jew is essentially outside all social classes just as he happens to be outside every nation. So he lingers on the fringe of Communism and becomes what is known as a Progressivist. The Israelis took the opposite course, but they immediately suffered from nationalist delirium.

“You see, I'm as garrulous as ever, Philippe. All this is just to tell you that I'm a Jew and not an Israeli and that Weihl is like me. That's one of the reasons I'm so attached to him.”

“I'm an Israeli,” said Guitte. “I'm a nationalist and I'm not under the curse. Won't you marry me, Philippe! We'll organize pogroms together and chase Weihl and old Goldschmidt with long knives down every passage in the house!”

“All right,” said Philippe, “I've learnt my lesson. I'm extremely fond of you both, but just leave me in peace with my bottle of brandy.”

“When are you coming to dine with us?” Guitte asked. “I'll cook you a nationalist dish, steak and French fried potatoes. I've learnt how to cook in order to seduce you all the more easily.”

“You know what your father used to say,” Goldschmidt went on. “‘History will drive us ineluctably towards Communism. Instead of fighting it, we ought to humanize it so as to make it tolerable for the West.'”

“I know what Communism is like and I can tell you now that it isn't tolerable and can never be humanized.”

Goldschmidt had some difficulty in getting up from his chair. He had asthma and panted at every step he took. One day his heart would give out and that would be the last of the garrulous, inquisitive, indulgent old man. He had always lived in the shadow of others, he had forgotten himself, and here was death suddenly reminding him that he existed.

Leaning on his daughter's arm, he shuffled slowly along the railings of the Luxembourg Gardens. He stopped to recover his breath.

“What an extraordinary fate for that Esclavier family!” he suddenly said to Guitte. “Étienne dies on his return from the U.S.S.R. where he has been received in triumph. Paul follows him into the grave a few days later after having had his brother voted out of the Socialist Party, with the result that the Communists and Socialists each bury their great man under their own Red Flag and insult each other at both funerals! Meanwhile Philippe was at death's door in a hospital at Hanoi with a wound in the stomach he had received while attacking a Vietminh village over which the same Red Flag was unfurled.

“The two dying men asked for Philippe. One of them only had Weihl on whom to bestow his ‘political testament.' Paul's bedside companion was a former president who had been involved in some shady business. But there was no one with Philippe's mother when she died a month after her great man, no one but old Goldschmidt. She wanted a rosary. The woman in the religious articles shop asked me: “Is it for someone taking their first communion?' Yes, a really astonishing family! Philippe has inherited his father's good looks, eyes as grey as the sea off Brittany. But war and suffering have left their stamp on his face. The raw clay has been fired in the oven. I must ask Philippe one day why he stayed on in the army.”

“I know why, because I'm an Israeli.”

“You're a bit in love with Philippe, aren't you?”

“You can't walk any farther; I'm going to call a taxi.”

“I warn you, the Esclaviers only admit submissive and retiring women into their lives.”

 • • • 

Alone in the drawing-room, with a glass in his hand, Philippe Esclavier paced up and down the shelves of books: old books bound in leather or parchment, paper-covered books whose spines had been bleached and whose titles had faded in the light.

When his father was still alive, the room was cluttered with books that had just been published.

Almost all of them bore the inevitable dedication:

“To the master, Étienne Esclavier, with all my admiration . . .” “The respectful homage of a disciple . . .” “To the guiding-light of our generation . . .”

Base flattery was mixed with sincerity.

Étienne Esclavier used to savour the new books like flowers or fruit. He loved the smell of the paper and the fresh ink. He would pick at the stacks at random, glance through a book and put it down again a few minutes later, but sometimes when his interest was roused, he carried it away clasped to his breast like a precious discovery.

It was in this room that father and son gave full rein to their exclusive passion. Between them they spoke a language to which they alone held the key. The great men of the Third Republic, the writers and artists who came to the Esclaviers, found themselves dubbed with ridiculous nicknames. Sometimes the professor would pull one of them to pieces for his son's amusement, and soon his absurdities, his vanities and falsehoods would be layed bare on the carpet. Philippe took down a book.
Marriage
by Léon Blum. The fuss it had caused on publication now seemed laughable. He remembered Léon Blum.

It was in
1936
; he was thirteen years old. Étienne Esclavier, with his long silver locks nodding at every step, had marched from the Nation to the Bastille holding him by the hand to introduce him to this Popular Front which was partly of his own making.

Léon Blum, who could be gentle when he liked, had stroked little Philippe's hair, and old Jouhaux had clasped him so tightly to his “breadbasket” that he had burst into tears.

It was in this room, through this very door, that Eugen Jochim Raths had appeared.

Philippe remembered it clearly. As he himself was doing now, he had put his hand on the back of this arm-chair and, like him, he wore the badges of rank of a captain, but it was very cold in the big drawing-room.

Defeat had fallen like a black veil over Paris. Came the occupation and times were hard in the Rue de l'Université, where one was too well-bred after all to indulge in black market activities.

Paris was ruled by the Germans, and the people of Paris by the black marketeers, the B.O.F., the dairymen, the grocers and the butchers.

Étienne Esclavier had taken refuge in a magnificent isolation into which he had taken his son with him. It was easy to convince him, by pointing out the morals then in force, that this was not the moment to commit oneself. Every day he had doled him out the sleeping draught which he had baptized “detachment.”

Although suspect in the eyes of the occupying forces, such was his renown that Professor Esclavier retained his chair at the Sorbonne. The students flocked to his history lectures as though they hoped these might reveal a secret message which would tell them they must fight and die.

But the professor told them nothing and the students tried to find some secret meaning in every word he uttered . . .

The German officer had arrived late in the afternoon. He was tall, slim, wore the Iron Cross and spoke perfect French.

Étienne Esclavier, looking very pale, received him standing up, and when Philippe slipped his hand into his father's he felt it trembling like that of an old man. He had no idea his father could age so rapidly and lose his self-control to such an extent.

“Don't worry,” said the German, “I haven't come to arrest you. I'm Eugen Jochim Raths; I was a pupil of yours at the Sorbonne.”

“I remember now,” the professor replied with an effort. “Please sit down, won't you.”