The Collaborators (13 page)

10

Soon it was time for the French to celebrate their first full year as a subject race. In December Maurice Melchior went to a party given by Serge Yerevan at his villa in Auteil.

It was the kind of party he’d once dreamt of, crowded with social and artistic luminaries. Normally Melchior would have revelled in simply rubbing shoulders with such people but somehow tonight he felt out of sorts with this flashy, lively world so much at odds with the reality of life for most Parisians. When a very distant acquaintance in the theatre said to him coldly, ‘Ah, Melchior, I heard you’d been doing well for yourself. Clearly the new regime likes the cut of your bum,’ he’d flashed back angrily, ‘Perhaps, monsieur. But at least I can conduct my business without having to crawl up German arseholes on the Champs-Élysées every time I move!’

This reference to the need for everything that was printed, produced, played or displayed to be approved by the
Propaganda Abteilung
on the Champs-Élysées caused a little upset. There was no German presence at the party, and a lot of stupid-Boche stories had been flying around, and generally speaking nearly everyone there was busy assuring everyone else that they were all good patriotic Frenchmen.

Yerevan covered the moment by inviting his guests to look at some rushes from his latest film. In the darkness he squeezed Melchior’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Hush, little Maurice. It’s cruel to remind these poor cunts of what they are. Stay behind after they’ve gone. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.’

Business? wondered Melchior. Or could it be that the signals he’d been sending out for some time were at last getting their answer? That Yerevan was bisexual was well known, but for the past few months he’d seemed quite content with Ribot.

When the party reached the point where it was going to turn either sentimental or orgiastic, Yerevan opted for the former, making a little speech about Christmas and absent friends and the gift of freedom, after which he sat at a piano and started to play carols. His guests joined in, raucously at first, but soon with tears in their eyes.

At eleven it was time for the party to break up. The curfew operated even for these people. Probably by inviting a few Germans, Yerevan could have provided everyone with an
Ausweis,
but he’d preferred not to.

‘I can see my friends collaborating any day,’ he explained later to Melchior. ‘It’s much more amusing to see them being patriotic.’

Melchior glanced uneasily at Ribot. He’d been held back from the general exodus by the director’s hand on his arm. Now the big-nippled actress was glowering resentfully at him, making it clear he’d overstayed
her
welcome at least.

‘You look tired, my dear,’ said Yerevan to her. ‘Why don’t you turn in?’

This considerate suggestion was received like a threat. Pale with anger, the woman rose and stalked out of the room without a good night.

‘Women,’ said Yerevan, smiling. ‘They don’t know the difference between true sensitivity and pique, do they? Now, business. With Japan and America in the war, I’m a little concerned that the eastern trade routes may be blocked up. I’d like to be certain you can help.’

He was talking about opium.

‘No problem,’ assured Melchior. ‘Do you want to talk prices now?’

‘Later, later. In the morning will do,’ said Yerevan, waving his hand dismissively. ‘I just wanted reassurance. Don’t you sometimes wish you were ordinary, Maurice? Still, God makes us all the way we are, and we mustn’t quarrel with his disposition, must we? Come now. You’ll stay the night, of course?’

He rose and offered his hand. Melchior took it and rose too. He hoped that Yerevan wasn’t regarding tonight as in any sense a down payment. He might be the king of crime movies but a real life gangster like Miche the Butcher would probably come as something of a shock.

As they went up the stairs hand in hand, Maurice said, ‘All that Christmas stuff from you came as a bit of a surprise.’

‘Why so? We mustn’t be bigots. After all, he was a good Jewish boy. And he’s an example to us all.’

‘How so?’

‘He reminds us not to forget what most Gentiles would like to do to good Jewish boys!’

He opened a door leading into a sumptuously furnished bedroom.

‘In these hard times,’ he said seriously, ‘we good Jewish boys must stick together.’

‘Oh, I do hope not!’ said Melchior.

Laughing, they went into the bedroom.

On the last day of the year, a train from the east pulled into the rain-lashed station at Compiègne. The platform was crowded with hopeful relatives and helpers from various voluntary agencies. There were supposed to be two carriages of repatriated prisoners on the train, but a murmur of disappointment rose above the wind as it was realized there was only one.

Janine had scanned every window as the train decelerated past.

‘I can’t see him,’ she said wretchedly to Christian Valois. ‘He hasn’t come.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ he said confidently. ‘Of course he’ll come. You can’t have seen everyone!’

Uncomforted, she leaned against him and pressed her face into his shoulder. He tried to ignore the pressure of her body and concentrate on scanning the figures who were beginning to emerge from the train. He wanted desperately to spot the dear familiar figure of his friend, yet the thought kept on slipping into his mind that with Jean-Paul’s return would vanish all excuse for the kind of contact, indeed for the close relationship, he and Janine were enjoying now. Jean-Paul had brought them together; now Jean-Paul would separate them. It was a good thing, he assured himself. There’d been a couple of times when he’d come close to overstepping the limits of a fraternal embrace. Thank God he had had the strength to resist. The double meaning of the phrase occurred to him and he smiled. He could think of the German he’d killed now with no qualms at all. Indeed, as he watched the line of bandaged and limping figures being helped from the train, he even felt pride.

Then he saw him.

He held his breath and didn’t speak for a few moments till he was sure. Then he let it out with a sigh.

‘He’s here,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘He’s here.’

She turned her head slowly as if fearing a deceit. And when she saw him, she fixed her eyes on him with a desperate intensity as though fearful that even a single blink would wash him away.

He was much thinner. He was almost literally bareheaded. They must have shaved his head for the operation and the black hair was still as short as the nap on velvet. She could see the scars. One from the bullet at the side of his left temple, and the other edging from beneath the pall of hair where the surgeon’s scalpel had probed. But it was still Jean-Paul, unmistakable, unbelievable, Jean-Paul. She looked at him and her heart swelled with love. She’d hated Günter Mai in the days after he had taken her, but now she forgave him. More, she laughed at him and mocked him for having asked so little of her in return for this dearest of treasures.

Jean-Paul hadn’t seen her yet. He was walking slowly along the platform, not like an invalid but with the slowness of uncertainty. A voluntary worker spoke to him and rested her hand on his arm, but he ignored her and walked on as if she were not there.

And now suddenly he smiled, the smile which turned his dark face from ascetic scholar to Sicilian shepherd boy. His steps speeded up. He came running towards them, heedless of the people between. She stood quite still, frozen by joy. And now for the first time in nearly two years she heard her husband’s voice.

‘Christian!’

Suddenly his arms were round Christian Valois’s neck and his joyous face pressed hard against the shoulder where her dejected face had so recently rested.

‘Jean-Paul, it’s so good to see you. Good? It’s bloody marvellous!’ cried Valois. ‘But hold on a bit. Come on, Jean-Paul, I don’t think you’ve quite got your priorities right.’

Disengaging himself from Jean-Paul, he twisted him round so that he faced Janine.

For long silent seconds the young wife and the returned husband looked at each other and the smiles faded from both faces.

Then Jean-Paul turned to Valois and said in a puzzled tone, ‘Who’s she?’

PART FOUR

February-November 1942

Enfants, beaux fronts naïfs penchés autour de moi, Bouches aux dents d’émail disant toujours: pourquoi?

Victor Hugo,
Ce qui se passait aux feuillantines

1

Janine awoke.

For a moment she did not know where she was. The room was full of frosty radiance as dawn broke through the high sash window. Jean-Paul always slept with the curtains pulled wide. ‘I’m a creature of light,’ he said. ‘I wake with the sun.’

Jean-Paul. She turned. There on the bolster beside her was his dear head. In the month since his return his hair had grown to a fledgling’s fluff obscuring much of the scars, and his face had lost something of the wasted pallor that had turned him into his own ghost.

He turned in his sleep, stretched out his arm, draped it round her shoulders. She held her breath. He opened his eyes, saw her face so close to his and smiled. It was a smile that drew back years, the smile of a young man who knows that by an incredible stroke of fortune, here at the very start of his adult life he has got all that he needs to guarantee his happiness.

The door burst open. Céci rushed in crying, ‘Maman, maman, Pauli’s hid Mimi!’

Janine looked at her daughter with unusual irritation. These first moments of the day when sleep had thrown a fragile membrane over Jean-Paul’s inner wounds were her most precious possession, her greatest hope for his healing. He was sitting up in bed now. The smile had gone and with it the carefree boy, as his face took on its now more normal expression of puzzled watchfulness.

‘All right, all right, Céci. I’ll be out in a minute,’ she said.

Disappointed of her mother’s sympathy, the little girl turned to her father.

‘Papa, Pauli’s very naughty,’ she chimed.

Simonian looked at her then he smiled, not the same smile he had woken with but undoubtedly a smile. Janine felt a flood of relief. Though her old Jean-Paul was rarely with her for more than a few waking moments, there were at least two new Jean-Pauls. This one acknowledged formally who she was, could have animated conversations, particularly with Christian, and was able to smile at his daughter. The other, the one she feared, was a grim intense figure who clearly inhabited a world of darkness and pain the nature of which those around him could only guess at.

‘Let’s go and see Pauli, shall we,’ he said, swinging his legs out of bed and picking up the delighted child.

Janine followed them out of the bedroom. She was always worried at any confrontation between Pauli and his father. Of all the renewed relationships this was the worst. Even at his darkest, Jean-Paul recognized his mother and Christian. Céci he had no recollection of, but as she had no recollection of him either, it didn’t seem to matter. This was her papa, she was told, so that’s how she treated him, leaving him no choice of response. Janine could find hope here even when things looked at their blackest. As for herself, her days swung between the joy of that morning recognition and the pain of subsequent rejections, ranging from the courteous to the totally indifferent.

But the real problem was Pauli.

She saw it now as she watched through the open door of the children’s room.

‘Pauli, papa says you’ve got to give me Mimi back,’ cried Céci from the imperious heights of her father’s arms.

Pauli was sitting on the floor cross-legged, his face set in the expression of almost frowning intensity he had inherited from his father. He didn’t look up but reached under the bed and pulled out a battered toy poodle. This was Mimi, originally Pauli’s toy, which had passed with his blessing to his sister some time ago. His reassertion of ownership was one of the disturbing symptoms of his feelings about his father. Almost since Céci’s birth, he had appointed himself her guide and protector. Now he had taken to treating her with a sulky indifference which sometimes came close to bullying.

‘Come on, Pauli, give Céci the dog. Big boys don’t play with toys like that, do they?’

Jean-Paul was making an effort but he couldn’t hit the right tone. The trouble was that Pauli did remember him, and missed him, had been almost ill with excitement at the prospect of his return, and now found it impossible to understand the changes in him. Janine had tried to explain, but despite his apparent maturity in so many matters, she could see that all he felt here was a small child’s hurt at being rejected. He withdrew into his pain just as his father so often withdrew into his. And neither of them emerged far enough to grasp the other’s reaching hand.

Now Pauli threw the dog at his father’s feet. Jean-Paul’s face set. Then he put the little girl down and, pushing his way past Janine, re-entered his room.

‘Pauli, hurry up and get ready for school,’ she said. ‘It’s late.’

‘Don’t want to go to school,’ said the boy sullenly.

‘I don’t want to stand here arguing,’ she said grimly. ‘Get ready.’

She turned and almost bumped into Christian Valois. He was dressed in his dark business suit.

‘Christian, I’m sorry. I should have been getting breakfast ages ago. We’ve slept in.’

‘So I see,’ he said glancing at her body with a smile.

She looked down, realized she was wearing only a thin cotton nightdress which was hanging open almost to the waist.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting her hands to her breast.

‘Don’t be. How’s Jean-Paul this morning?’

‘All right. You know, not black.’

‘Good. I must rush. See you tonight.’

She watched him leave and thought, soon we must get out of this flat. It had been marvellous of Christian to put them up. Sophie’s flat had been impossible. It was all right for her to share with the children, but not for the four of them to sleep in the same room. The boulangerie offered more space, but the problem there was Louise. She and Jean-Paul had never got on well. Now their proximity might be positively dangerous. There was a violence in Jean-Paul which hadn’t been there before and she did not know where it might come out.

But staying here was not a long-term solution. If Christian’s parents or sister came to Paris, they would expect to stay here. And though he had never said or done anything out of order, she had seen Christian’s eyes rest on her body as they’d done this morning and she knew that in fairness to him they ought to move on. But where? To find a decent place they could afford was not going to be easy. You’d think Paris would be half-empty, but far from it. The Boche set the price of things with their inflated exchange rate and property ran high.

And there was no doubt that the longer she stayed in this spacious and airy apartment the more choosy she was going to get!

She went to get dressed.

Jean-Paul had got back into bed. His face was turned away from her but she could tell by the set of his shoulders that he was drifting into that dark solitary world where no one else could follow.

She dressed swiftly. When she went back to the children’s room she found Pauli already dressed.

‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘Go and get yourself some bread while I see to Céci.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Céci. ‘I want to stay with papa.’

The little girl had not yet started school but usually Janine took her with them and always on mornings when she could tell that Jean-Paul was regressing.

‘No, you come along, Céci,’ she said. ‘We’ll call on grandpa and gramma and have some breakfast there, shall we?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Céci, easily seduced from her plan by the prospect of being spoilt at the bakery.

She looked in once more on Jean-Paul before they left. He was in exactly the same position. He looked to be asleep, but she knew if she walked round the bed she would find those eyes wide and staring, totally devoid of recognition.

She did not make the journey. That blank gaze still had power to overthrow her, and her life was too full of responsibilities for the indulgence of despair.

‘Come on, children,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s time to go.’