Promise at Dawn

  Women might be abominable sluts, but there was no one else to turn to. They had the monopoly. An immense wave of self pity broke over me. Not only had I just suffered the most hideous indignity, but there was no one in the whole world but a wretched pansy to console me and hold my hand. I gave him a nasty look, and, turning my back on the Hôtel des Grands Hommes, made my way home. I collapsed on my bed with my mind firmly made up to enlist in the Foreign Legion the very next day.

  Brigitte returned round about two in the morning, just as I was beginning to get seriously worried about her: perhaps something had happened to her? She scratched timidly at the door, and I told her, loud and clear, in one word, what I thought of her. For half an hour she tried to soothe my feelings through the door. Then there was a long silence. In my terror lest she might, perhaps, go back to the Hôtel des Grands Hommes, I jumped out of bed and let her in. I slapped her once or twice, halfheartedly, but the blows hurt me more than they hurt her. I have always had the greatest difficulty in raising my hand against a woman: I think I must be lacking in virility. Then I asked her a question which I still consider, looking back on it in the light of twenty-five years’ experience, the most idiotic question I have ever asked anyone in my whole career as a champion of the world:

  “Why did you do it?”

  Brigitte’s answer was really superb, I would even say moving. It was a tremendous tribute to the strength of my personality. The blue eyes she turned on me were brimming with tears. Shaking her blond curls, and with a sincere and pathetic effort to explain everything, she said:

  “He was so like you!”

  I have never recovered from it even now. We were living together, she had me within easy reach, but that wasn’t enough for her. Oh no! She had to go out in the rain and walk the best part of a mile to find somebody else, for no better reason than that he reminded her of me. If that’s not proof of my magnetism, then I don’t know what is! I had to make an effort not to show some conceit: say what you like, I obviously made a great impression on women!

  Since then, I have given a great deal of thought to Brigitte’s answer, and the conclusions I have reached, though strictly nonexistent, have, all the same, done much to help me in my relationship with women—and with men who are like me. I have never again been deceived by a woman—that is, I have never, since then, waited in the rain.

  CHAPTER 27

  I was now in my last year at law school and, of far more importance to us, was about to complete my preparatory military training, which would open to me the doors of the Air Force Academy. The sessions took place twice weekly in a place known as La Vache Noire at Montrouge.

  One of my stories was translated and published in America. The fabulous sum of a hundred and fifty dollars which I was paid for it enabled me to make a brief journey to Sweden in pursuit of Brigitte, whom I found married. I tried to come to an arrangement with her husband, but the fellow had no heart and insisted on keeping Brigitte exclusively to himself. Finally, since I was getting slightly out of hand, she exiled me to her aunt’s summer house on a small island of the Stockholm archipelago, in a landscape of Swedish legends, and there I wandered gloomily among the pine trees, while the faithless one and her husband indulged in their guilty loves. Brigitte’s aunt, in order to calm my nerves, insisted on my bathing every day for a whole hour in the icy waters of the Baltic and sat implacable on the shore, watch in hand, while all my organs shrank, my body gradually withdrew from me and I soaked, frozen, vertical, morose and unhappy. Once, as I lay stretched on a rock, waiting for the sun to thaw the blood in my veins, I saw an airplane with swastika markings cross the sky. That was my first encounter with the enemy.

  I had paid but little attention to what was going on in Europe. Perhaps because I had been brought up by a woman and surrounded with a woman’s love, I was incapable of hating anyone for long, and so was lacking in the essential quality which would have made it possible for me to understand Hitler and the Nazis. The silence of France under the impact of his hysterical threats, far from making me uneasy, seemed to me to be a sign of calm strength and self-reliance. I believed in the French Army and in its revered leaders. My mother had built around me, long before the General Staff had constructed it upon our frontiers, a Maginot Line of unshakable certainties and patriotic pictures which no anxieties nor doubts could shake. To give an example, it was only at the Nice lycée that I learned for the first time of our defeat by the Germans in 1870: my mother had forgotten to mention it. I should add that, although I have my good moments, I have always found it difficult to make that prodigious effort of sheer stupidity which one must achieve in order to take war seriously as a solution. I can be stupid enough when I decide to do my best, but I have never managed to reach those glorious asinine heights from which one can gaze on the prospect of slaughter and find it acceptable. I have always considered death to be a regrettable phenomenon, and the idea of inflicting it on anyone is wholly contrary to my nature. True, I have killed men in my time, sometimes with my own hands, in obedience to the unanimous and sacred conventions of the moment, but always without enthusiasm, without anything in the least resembling genuine inspiration. No cause seems to me important enough to warrant such a thing, and my heart is not in it. When it comes to killing my fellow men, I am not enough of a poet. I cannot give myself to it with the necessary zest; I cannot raise my voice in a sacred hymn of hate, and I kill without any satisfaction, stupidly, because I have to.

  The fault also lies, I am inclined to think, in my egocentricity. So egocentric am I, indeed, that I see myself in all suffering humanity, and the wounds of others make me bleed. That feeling is not limited to humans but extends to animals and even to plants. An incredible number of people can happily watch a bullfight, unmoved by the sight of the bull’s agony. Not I. I am the bull. I am always a bit queasy when people cut down trees or hunt the moose, the rabbit or the elephant. On the other hand, the thought of chickens being killed does not much worry me. I cannot see myself in a chicken.

  It was on the eve of Munich. There was a great deal of talk about war, and my mother in her letters which reached me in my sentimental exile at Björkö was already sounding a clarion call. One of those noble outpourings, dashed off in an energetic hand and large-sized characters leaning well forward as though already charging the enemy, declared quite firmly that “France will conquer because she is France.” Looking back, it seems to me that no one could have predicted more convincingly our defeat of ‘40, nor better expressed our lack of preparation.

  I have often scratched my head, trying to understand the why and the how of an old Russian woman’s passionate love for my country, but have never succeeded in finding a really satisfactory answer. No doubt my mother was deeply imbued with the ideas, the scale of values and the opinions current in bourgeois society around about 1900 when France was generally regarded as the pinnacle of creation. Perhaps, too, the origin of her attachment may be found in some secret memory she had kept of her two visits to Paris in her youth, and I, who have retained all my life such a warm place in my heart for Sweden, should be the last person to feel surprised. I have always had a tendency to look, behind the grandiose and noble causes, for some small and intimate impulse, to watch, at the heart of tumultuous symphonies, for the tiny sound of a tender flute suddenly to show the tip of an ear. But the simplest and most probable explanation is that my mother loved France for no specific reason, as is always the case when one truly loves. Be that as it may, it is easy to imagine the part played in the psychological universe in which she lived by the golden stripe soon to adorn my sleeve, as a second lieutenant in the French Air Force. I was actively employed in acquiring it. I had, with great difficulty, achieved my degree in law, but it was in the top listing that I had been accepted into the Air Force Academy.

  My mother’s patriotism, worked up to fever pitch by the anticipation of my military greatness, now took an unexpected turn.

  It was indeed just about this time that my unsuccessful attempt on
Hitler’s life took place. No mention of it has ever appeared in the press. I did not save France and the world, thus missing an opportunity which, in all probability, will never present itself again.

  It happened in 1938 after my return from Sweden. Having abandoned all hope of recovering my beloved and sickened by the behavior of Brigitte’s husband, who had no savoir-vivre, stunned by the discovery that someone else should have been preferred to me, after all that my mother had promised, I went back to Nice to lick my wounds and spend at home my last weeks before entering the Academy.

  I took a taxi from the railway station and, as the cab turned the corner of the Boulevard Gambetta and the rue Dante, I could see the little garden in front of the hotel. It no longer exists, although the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts still stands today, and every time I go back to Nice I look at its entrance and stand there, waiting for the impossible, longing for a miracle.

  My mother welcomed me very strangely. I had been expecting tears and embraces, sniffs of emotion and satisfaction, but not these sobs, these despairing looks which are associated more with partings than with homecomings. Weeping, she flung herself into my arms, now and again stepping back to get a clearer view of my face, then clasping me again in a fresh transport of feeling. I began to be uneasy, to wonder about the state of her health. Yet apparently her diabetes was kept in check, the business was flourishing, all was well—but even while she was telling me all this, there was a fresh outburst of tears and stifled sobs. At last, she managed to calm down and, assuming a mysterious air, took my hand and let me into the empty restaurant. We sat down at our usual table in the corner and there, without further delay, she told me of her plan. It was all very simple. I was to go to Berlin and assassinate Hitler, thus saving France and civilization and truly becoming the champion of the world. She had foreseen every eventuality, including my ultimate safety. Supposing I were caught—though she knew me well enough to feel certain that I was perfectly capable of killing Hitler without letting myself be caught—still, just supposing I were caught, it was crystal clear that the Great Powers, France, England and America, would demand my liberation under threat of war, and Germany would be in such a state of confusion and despondency that the result was a foregone conclusion and I would enter Paris on a white horse through the Arch of Triumph, greeted as a national hero by the populace.

  I confess that I had a moment’s hesitation. I had just done ten different and frequently unpleasant jobs, and had given, both on paper and in the flesh, the best of myself. The idea of starting straight away for Berlin, traveling third class, of course, and assassinating Hitler at the hottest time of the summer, with all that that implied of nervous exhaustion, physical fatigue and preparation, did not appeal to me. I wanted to stay for a while on the shores of the Mediterranean—I have never been able to stay away from it for long without fretting. I would far rather have disposed of the Führer in October, the beginning of the academic year. I contemplated without enthusiasm the prospect of a sleepless night on the hard bench of a third-class carriage in an overcrowded train, to say nothing of the hours I would have to yawn away in the streets of Berlin, waiting for Hitler to put in an appearance. In fact, I showed a lamentable lack of eagerness. But there was no question for me of disappointing her. I was to be a shining hero, the savior of the world, the champion of a just and noble cause, and that was all there was to it.

  I made my plans. I was a very good pistol shot and, though I was a bit out of practice, the training I had received in Lieutenant Sverdlovski’s gymnasium still enabled me to impress my friends on fairgrounds. I went down to the cellar, took my revolver from the famous family box and went to see about my ticket. I felt slightly better on learning from the papers that Hitler was at Berchtesgaden, since it would be pleasanter to breathe the forest air of the Bavarian Alps than that of a city in mid-July. I also put my manuscripts in order, for I was not at all sure, in spite of my mother’s optimism, that I should come out of the business alive. I wrote several farewell letters to the women in my life whom I loved with a unique and undying love, oiled my pistol and borrowed a jacket from a friend who was a good deal fatter than I, so as to be able to conceal my weapon more comfortably. I was irritable and in a bad temper, the more so since the weather was exceptionally hot; the Mediterranean, after our months of separation, seemed more desirable than ever and the Grande Bleue Beach had more intelligent and cultivated Swedish girls on its pebbles than ever before. During all this time my mother never moved from my side. Her look of pride and admiration followed me wherever I went. I got my train ticket and was somewhat flabbergasted to find that the German railways were giving me a thirty per cent reduction—a special arrangement for holiday travelers. Throughout the last forty-eight hours before the time of my departure, I was careful to limit my consumption of dill pickles in order to guard against any intestinal troubles, which might have been interpreted as unheroic by my mother.

  On the eve of the Great Day, I had my last swim at the Grande Bleue and looked with emotion at the last smiles of Sweden. It was on my return from the beach that I found my great dramatic artist crumpled up in an armchair. No sooner did she see me than her eyes widened, she joined her hands as though in prayer and, before I had time to make a move, was on her knees with the tears running down her cheeks:

  “I beg, I implore you not to do it! Renounce this heroic project of yours! For the sake of your poor old mother, don’t, don’t! They have no right to ask this of an only son! I have fought so hard to bring you up, to make a man of you, and now . . . O dear God! . . .”

  Fear had enlarged her eyes, her face wore a ravaged look, her hands were still clasped. I was not at all astonished. I had been “conditioned” for so long! I knew her so well and I understood her so completely! I took her hand.

  “But I’ve paid for my ticket,” I said.

  An expression of fierce resolution swept her face clear of terror and despair. “They’ll have to refund the money,” she announced, grasping her stick. I had no doubt about that.

  Thus it is that I didn’t kill Hitler. But it was a pretty close thing all the same.

  CHAPTER 28

  Only a few months now stood between my mother and my second lieutenant’s stripe, and the reader can well imagine the impatience with which we both waited for the great moment. Time was running short. Her diabetes was getting worse, and, in spite of the different varieties of diet with which the doctors were experimenting, the sugar content of her blood was increasing dangerously. She had another attack of hypoglycemic coma at the market, where she was laid out on the counter of M. Pantaleoni’s vegetable stall, and recovered consciousness only because of the speed with which they poured sugared water down her throat. . . . My race against time was assuming a desperate character, and it showed in my writing. In my determination to write a fabulous masterpiece which should leave the world open-mouthed with admiration, I forced my voice beyond its range, so that it became strident and unpleasant. Aiming at greatness, I achieved only pretentiousness; standing on tiptoe in an attempt to reveal my stature for all to see, I succeeded only in uncovering my lack of it; determined to be a genius, I merely made more clearly visible the limits of my talent. But when one feels the knife at one’s throat, it is difficult to sing in tune. Roger Martin du Gard, when asked by some friends to report on one of my manuscripts, during the war, when I was thought to be dead, spoke of me, very rightly, as a “mouton enrage”—an enraged lamb. My mother doubtless guessed the agonizing nature of the struggle I was waging, and did everything she could to help me. While I was busy polishing my sentences and seeking the right word to express my noble sentiments, she bore the full brunt of battling with the staff, the agencies, the guides, and dealing with the whims and fancies of a capricious clientele. While I was waiting for inspiration to visit me and the light of genius to touch my brow, while I was seeking some staggering subject of tremendous originality and profundity, worthy of my pen, she ran to the market, fought with our Russian chef de cuisine to ke
ep him from drinking, installed a bar in the hall and a café on the roof, checked the accounts, while all the time making it her business to see that nothing should be allowed to disturb my moments of creation. I write these lines without guilt or remorse, still less self-denigration. I was striving to realize her dream, to achieve what, for her, was the sole meaning of her life and of her struggles. . . . She longed to be a great artist, and I was doing my best. In my haste to show her that I was not letting her down, to keep her informed of my strides forward, but, above all, perhaps to reassure myself, to break free from the panic which had hold of me, I would often grab a page or two of my manuscript and go down to the kitchen, where I would turn up just in time to interrupt a violent quarrel with the chef, and read her a passage still hot from the anvil, which seemed to me to be particularly worthy of praise. On such occasions her anger immediately quieted. With a sovereign gesture, she silenced the chef, and listened to me with intense satisfaction.

  Her thighs were a mass of punctures. Twice a day she retired to a corner, sat down with her legs crossed and a cigarette between her lips, heated the water in a special boiler, took up her syringe with its load of insulin, and jabbed the needle into her flesh, all the while continuing to issue orders to the staff. With her habitual energy, she watched over the smooth running of the hotel, countenanced no falling-off in the high standards she had set from the start and even tried, without much success, to learn a few words of English so as to be able to follow better the wishes, the phobias and the little fads and fancies of our visitors from across the Channel. The efforts she made to be always amiable, smiling and conciliatory with tourists went dead against the grain of her naturally frank and impulsive nature and aggravated still more her nervous condition. She was going through three packets of Gauloises a day, though it is true that she never smoked a cigarette to the end but stubbed it out almost as soon as she had started on it, instantly lighting another. She had cut out of an illustrated magazine a picture of some military parade and showed it to the guests, particularly to the young women among them, pointing out the handsome Air Force uniform which would be mine in a few short months. I had the greatest difficulty in getting her to allow me to help in the restaurant, to serve at table and to take the breakfast trays up to the bedrooms, as I always had done in the past: she now found such odd jobs incompatible with my imminent status as an officer. She herself would often carry a new arrival’s suitcase and try to push me away when I wanted to take it from her. It was obvious, however, from a certain air of gaiety about her, from the triumphant and grateful smile which sometimes lit her face when she looked at me, that she felt herself within sight of victory and that she could imagine no day more wonderful than the day when I would return to the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts wearing my glorious Air Force insignia and my officer’s uniform.