The Young Lions (72 page)

Christian stood awkwardly against the wall, holding on to the butt of his gun, watching the two people embracing. It was a domestic, husband-and-wife embrace, more relief than passion, plain, unbeautiful, tearful, touching, profoundly private, and Christian felt embarrassed.

Finally, half-sobbing, half-laughing, Simone broke away, pushing back her straight, long hair with one hand, and with the other still clutching Brandt's arm, as though to reassure herself that he was real and to make certain that he would not vanish in the next minute.

"Now," she said, and Christian remembered her light, soft voice very well, "now, we have time to be polite." She turned to Christian.

"You remember Diestl, don't you?" Brandt said.

"Of course, of course." She put out her hand impulsively. Christian shook it. "I am so glad to see you. We have talked about you so often… Come in, come in… You can't stand out in the hall all night."

They stepped into the apartment and Simone locked the door behind them, the sound home-like and secure. Brandt and Christian followed her into the living-room. Standing before the drawn curtains in front of a window was a woman in a quilted robe, her face in shadow, outside the light of the single lamp on the table near the couch.

"Put your things down, oh, you'll want to wash, oh, you must be starving," Simone was saying in a babble of wifely consideration. "We have some wine, we must open a bottle of wine to celebrate… Oh, Francoise, see who's come, isn't it wonderful?"

Francoise, Christian remembered, the German-hater, that's who it is. He watched Francoise warily as she came out from her place near the window and shook hands with Brandt.

"I am so glad to see you," Francoise said.

She was even prettier than Christian remembered, a tall woman, with chestnut hair and a long, fine nose over a controlled mouth. She turned to Christian, smiling and extending her hand.

"Welcome, Sergeant Diestl," Francoise said. She pressed his hand warmly.

"Oh," said Christian carefully, "you remember me."

"Of course," said Francoise, staring directly at him. "I have thought of you again and again."

Greenish, hidden eyes, Christian thought, what is she smiling at, what does she mean by saying she thought of me again and again?

"Francoise came to live with me last month, cheri" Simone said to Brandt. "Her apartment was requisitioned. Your Army." She made a charming little face at Brandt, who laughed and kissed her. Her hands lingered for a moment on his shoulders before she pulled away. Christian noticed that she looked much older. She was still small and trim, and there were anxious wrinkles around her eyes and her skin looked dry and lifeless.

"Do you expect to stay long?" Francoise asked.

There was a moment of hesitation. Then Christian said, stolidly, "Our plans are not definite at the moment, we…"

He heard Brandt laughing and stopped. The laughter was high, near hysteria, a combination of relief and amusement.

"Christian," Brandt said, "stop being so damned correct. We plan to stay until the end of the war."

Then Simone broke down. She sat on the edge of the couch and Brandt had to comfort her. Christian caught Francoise's eye for a flicker and observed what he thought was cool amusement there, before Francoise politely turned away and strolled back to her window.

"Go," Simone was saying. "This is ridiculous. I don't know why I'm crying. Ridiculous. I am getting like my mother, cry because she's happy, cry because she's sad, cry because it's sunny, cry because it's beginning to rain. Go. Go in and tidy up, and when you come back, I shall be as sensible as you can imagine, and I'll have a beautiful supper all ready for you. Go. Don't look at me with my eyes like this. Go ahead."

Brandt was grinning, a foolish, homecoming, childish grin, incongruous on his thin, lined, intelligent face, now grimed with the dust of the long trip from Normandy.

"Come on, Christian," said Brandt, "let's get the dirt off our faces."

Together they went into the bathroom. Francoise, Christian noticed, did not look at them as they left the room.

In the bathroom, with the water running (all cold because of the lack of fuel), Brandt talked, while Christian arranged his dark hair, wet with water, with someone's comb. "There is something about that woman," Brandt was saying, "something I have never found in anyone else. I… I accept everything about her. It's funny, with other women, I was too critical. They were too thin, they were too vain, they were a little silly…

Two, three weeks, and I couldn't stand them any more. But with Simone… I know she is a little sentimental, I know she's getting older, there are wrinkles… I love it. She is not smart. I love it. She has a tendency to weep. I love it." Then he spoke very seriously. "It is the one good thing I have got out of the war." Then, as though ashamed at having talked so frankly, he turned the water on full and vigorously rinsed the soap off his face and neck. He was stripped to the waist, and Christian noticed with amused pity how his friend's bones stuck out, like a small boy's, how frail his arms were. What a lover, Christian thought, what a soldier, how had he ever managed to survive four years of war?

Brandt stood up and towelled his face. "Christian," he said seriously, through the muffling cloth, "you're going to stay with me, aren't you?"

"First," Christian began, keeping his voice low, "what about that other one?"

"Francoise?" Brandt waved his hand. "Don't worry about her. There's plenty of room. You can sleep on the couch. Or…" He grinned. "Come to an understanding with her. Then you wouldn't have to sleep on the couch."

"I'm not worried about the overcrowding," Christian said.

Brandt reached over to turn the water off. "Leave it on," Christian said sharply, holding Brandt's hand.

"What's the matter with you?" Brandt asked, puzzled.

"She doesn't like Germans, that one," Christian said. "She can make a lot of trouble."

"Nonsense." With a quick movement, Brandt snapped the water off. "I know her. She'll grow very fond of you. Now promise you'll stay…"

"All right," Christian said slowly. "I'll stay." He could see Brandt's eyes glistening. Brandt's hand, as it patted Christian's bare shoulder, was trembling a little.

"We're safe, Christian," Brandt whispered. "At last we're safe…"

He turned awkwardly and put on his shirt and went into the other room. Christian put his shirt on slowly, buttoning it carefully, looking at himself in the mirror, studying the haggard eyes, the ridged lines on his cheeks, the topography of fear and grief and exhaustion that was obscurely and invincibly marked there. He leaned close to the mirror and stared at his hair. There was a sanding of grey, heavy at the temples, glistening in little pale tips on top. God, he thought, I never saw that before. I'm getting old, old… He braced himself, hating the wave of self-pity that for a moment he had allowed to flood through him, and walked stiffly out into the living-room.

The living-room was cosy, with the one shaded lamp diffusing a dull rosy glow over the room and over the long, reclining figure of Francoise on the soft couch.

Brandt and Simone had gone to bed, holding hands domestically as they had gone down the hallway. After eating, after telling a jumbled, inaccurate account of the last few days, Brandt had almost fallen asleep in his chair and Simone had fondly pulled him up by his hands and led him away, smiling in an almost motherly way at Christian and Francoise left together in the shadowy room.

"The war is over," Brandt had mumbled in farewell, "the war is over, boys, and now I am going to sleep. Farewell, Lieutenant Brandt, of the Army of the Third Reich," he had said with sleepy oratory, "farewell, soldier. Tomorrow once more the decadent painter of non-objective pictures awakens in his civilian bed, next to his wife." He had pointed in a limp, gentle way at Francoise. "Be good to my friend. Love him well. He is the best of the best. Strong, delicate, tested in the fire, the hope of the new Europe, if there will be a new Europe and if there is any hope for it. Love him well."

Shaking her head fondly, saying, "The drink has gone to the man's tongue," Simone had pushed him gently towards the bedroom.

"Good night," they had heard Brandt's mumbled valedictory in the hallway, "good night, my dear friends…"

Then the door had closed and there had been silence in the small, feminine room, with its pale wood and its dark, nighttime mirrors, its soft-coloured cushions, and its silver-framed photograph of Brandt taken in beret and Basque shirt before the war.

"A tired soldier," Francoise murmured from the depths of the couch, "a very tired soldier, our Lieutenant Brandt."

"Yes," said Christian, watching her carefully.

"He's had a hard time, hasn't he?" Francoise moved her toes.

"It hasn't been pleasant, the last few weeks, has it?"

"No, not very."

"The Americans," said Francoise, in a flat, innocent voice, "they're very strong, very fresh, aren't they?"

"You might say that."

"The papers here," Francoise shifted her weight gently and the long lines rearranged themselves in silvery shadows under the robe, "keep saying it is all going according to plan. The enemy are being cleverly contained, there will be a surprising counter-attack." The tone of lazy amusement in Francoise's voice was very clear. "The papers are very reassuring. Mr Brandt ought to read them more often." She laughed softly. The quiet laugh would have seemed sensual and inviting, Christian realized, if they had been talking on a different subject. "Mr Brandt," Francoise said gently, "is not of the opinion that the enemy will be contained. And a counter-attack would be really surprising to him, wouldn't it?"

"I imagine so," Christian said, sparring, wondering: What is this woman up to?

"How about you?" She spoke abstractedly, not really to Christian, but into the warm, dusky air.

"Perhaps I share Brandt's opinion," Christian said.

"You're very tired, too, aren't you?" Francoise sat up and stared at him, her lips straight and quite sympathetic, but her heavy-lidded green eyes contracted in what seemed to Christian to be a hidden smile. "You probably want to go to sleep, too."

"Not just now," said Christian. Suddenly he couldn't bear the thought of this long-limbed, green-eyed, mocking woman leaving him. "I've been a lot more tired than this in my time."

"Oh," said Francoise, lying back again, "oh, what an excellent soldier. Stoical, inexhaustible. How can an army lose a war when it still has troops like that?"

Christian stared at her, hating her. She turned her head in a sleepy movement of the cushions, to look at him. The long muscles under the pale skin of her throat made a delicate new pattern of flesh and shadows in the lamplight. Finally, Christian knew, staring at her, he would have to kiss that place where the skin swept in an ivory, trembling, living sheet from the base of her throat to the half-exposed shoulder.

"I knew a boy like you long ago," Francoise said, not smiling now, looking directly at him. "A Frenchman. Strong. Uncomplaining. A resolute patriot. I liked him very much, I must say." The deep voice murmured in his ears. "He died in ' 40. In another retreat. Do you expect to die, Sergeant?"

"No," said Christian, slowly. "I do not expect to die."

"Good." Francoise's full lips moved into the semblance of a smile. "The best of the best, according to your friend. The hope of the new Europe. Do you consider yourself the hope of the new Europe, Sergeant?"

"Brandt was drunk."

"Was he? Possibly. Are you sure you don't want to go to sleep?"

"I'm sure."

"You do look very tired, you know."

"I do not wish to go to sleep."

Francoise nodded gently. "The ever-waking Sergeant. Does not wish to go to sleep. Prefers to remain awake, at great personal sacrifice, and entertain a lonely French lady who is at a loose end until the Americans enter Paris…" She put her hand, palm upward, over her eyes, the loose sleeve falling back from the slender wrist and the long, sharp-nailed fingers. "Tomorrow," she said, "we will enter your name for the Legion of Honour, second class, service to the French nation."

"Enough," Christian said, without moving from his chair.

"Stop making fun of me."

"Nothing," said Francoise flatly, "could be further from my mind. Tell me, Sergeant, as a military man, how long do you think it will be before the Americans get here?"

"Two weeks," said Christian. "A month."

"Oh," Francoise said, "we are in for an interesting time, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Shall I tell you something, Sergeant?"

"What?"

"I have remembered our little dinner party again and again.

"'40? '41?"

"'40."

"I wore a white dress. You looked very handsome. Tall, straight, intelligent, conquering, shining in your uniform, the young god of mechanized warfare." She chuckled.

"You are making fun of me again," Christian said. "It is not pleasant."

"I was very much impressed with you." She waved her hand, as though to stop a contradiction that Christian had no idea of voicing. "Honestly, I was. I was very cold to you, wasn't I?" Again the small remembering laugh. "You have no idea how difficult it was for me to manage it. I am far from impervious, Sergeant, to the attractions of young men. And you were so splendid-looking, Sergeant…" The sleepy, hypnotic voice whispering musically in the soft-lighted, civilized room, seemed remote, unreal. "So ripe with conquest, so arrogant, so beautiful. It took all my enormous powers of self-control. You are less arrogant, now, aren't you, Sergeant?"

"Yes," said Christian, feeling himself between sleeping and waking, rhythmically adrift on a soft, perfumed, subtly dangerous tide. "Not arrogant at all any more."

"You're very tired now," the woman murmured. "A little grey. And I noticed that you limp a bit, too. In '40 it did not seem you could ever grow tired. You might die, then, I thought, in one glorious burst of fire, but never weary, never… You are very different now, Sergeant, very different. By ordinary standards, one would never say you were beautiful now, with your limp and your greying hair and your thin face… But I'm going to tell you something, Sergeant. I am a woman of peculiar tastes. Your uniform is no longer shining. Your face is grey. No one would ever believe that there is a resemblance in you to the young god of mechanized warfare…" A final hint of soft laughter echoed in her voice. "But I find you much more attractive tonight, Sergeant, infinitely more…"