Promise at Dawn

  It was already a week since extreme unction had been administered to me and I realized that I ought not to be making so many difficulties. But I have always been a bad loser. I refused to acknowledge defeat. My life did not belong to me. It was but an instrument of justice. I had a promise to keep. I had to return home, my hands full of victories, write War and Peace and become an Ambassador of France, in short, make it possible for my mother’s talent to be made manifest. I was not going to submit to formlessness. A true artist does not let his material get the better of him. He tries to impose his inspiration on the medium in which he is working, even when it is life itself, and he strives to give the magma a shape, a meaning, an expression. I refused to let my mother’s life end so stupidly in the contagious ward of a Damascus hospital. All my craving for art and my love of beauty, which is to say, of justice, forbade me to abandon my lifework before it had taken shape, before I had illumined the world around me, if only for an instant, with some flash of stirring and wholly logical meaning. I was not going to sign my name to the document the monkey gods were handing me, proclaiming man’s insignificance and the total absurdity of life. I could not be so utterly lacking in talent.

  Yet the temptation to give in was terrible. My body was a mass of purulent sores: the needles through which the serum was administered drop by drop were planted in my veins for hours on end and made me feel as though I were wrapped in barbed wire; my tongue was rotting in my mouth; the left-hand side of my jaw, which had been cracked during that unfortunate incident at Mérignac, had become infected, and a scrap of bone had broken loose and pierced my gum, but no one dared to remove it for fear of another hemorrhage. I was still bleeding internally and my fever was so high that when I was rolled in an icy sheet it took my body exactly one minute to reach the same temperature again. To make matters still worse, the doctors discovered I had been harboring a tapeworm, which was now beginning to emerge, inch by inch, from my bloody entrails. Many years afterward, whenever I happened to run across one or another of the army doctors who had seen me through, they would look at me incredulously and say: “You’ll never know where you came back from.”

  That may be true, but the monkey gods had forgotten to cut the umbilical cord. Jealous of any human hand that tries to give a shape and meaning to destiny, they had plunged their knives into me so deep that my whole body was hardly more than a bleeding wound. But they had forgotten to cut the umbilical cord and I survived. The will, the vitality and the courage of my mother continued to flow into me and keep me alive.

  The spark of life which still glowed in me suddenly flared with all the sacred fire of anger when I saw the priest come into my room with the Sacred Elements. When I caught sight of that bearded figure dressed in white and violet advancing on me brandishing a crucifix, and realized what he was proposing to do, I thought I was seeing Satan himself. To the astonishment of the good sister who was supporting my body in her arms, I, who was no more than a death rattle, said in a loud and intelligible voice: “No dice—nothing doing.”

  After which I sank into unconsciousness for a few moments, and when I came to the surface again the good had already been done. But I was not convinced. I saw myself walking through the Buffa Market in my officer’s uniform, my chest collapsing under the weight of my decorations and my mother on my arm. We strolled along the Promenade des Anglais, applauded by the assembled crowds: “Long live the great French lady of the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts! She has returned victorious from the wars. She has been mentioned fifteen times in dispatches; she has covered herself with glory in the Royal Air Force; her son can well be proud of her!” The old gentlemen were raising their hats; there followed a general singing of the “Marseillaise” and somebody whispered: “They are still joined by the umbilical cord”—and indeed I could see a long rubber tube issuing from my veins. I smiled triumphantly. That was art indeed, that was literature for you! I had kept my promise, I had truly achieved a masterpiece; I had defeated the monkey gods of absurdity and nothingness. And they expected me to renounce all this merely because the doctors had condemned me, extreme unction had been administered and my fellow officers in white gloves were already getting ready to mount guard in the mortuary chapel? Never! Rather than accept that—yes, I’d rather live! It must be obvious by this time that I recoil from no extremity.

  I recovered. The process was slow. My fever dropped, then vanished altogether, but my mind still wandered. My fits of insanity could find expression only in a succession of lisps since my tongue was almost cut in two by an ulcer. And then, when all that was over, phlebitis set in and the doctors feared for my legs. Permanent paralysis immobilized the lower left side of my face where the infection in my jaw had cut a nerve, which is why my face today has such a lopsided appearance. My gall bladder was affected, the myocarditis persisted. I recognized no one and I couldn’t speak. But the cord continued to function. And so my mind finally cleared and, as soon as I could articulate, though still with an appalling lisp, I wanted to know when we could both return to battle.

  The doctors laughed. The war was over as far as I was concerned. They were not at all sure that I would be able to walk normally. The damage to my heart would probably be permanent. As to dreaming of flying an operational aircraft—they shrugged with a pitying smile.

  Three months later, I was back with my Blenheim, hunting submarines above the Eastern Mediterranean with de Thuisy, who was killed some months after while flying a Mosquito, in England.

  I wish to express here my gratitude to Ahmed, the obscure Egyptian taxi driver who, for the very moderate sum of six pounds, agreed to put on my uniform and take my place before a medical board in the R.A.F. hospital in Cairo. To the English, all frogs were alike and Ahmed played the part with gusto. “He was not much to look at, he didn’t smell like good hot sand,”1 but he passed the board with flying colors and we exchanged mutual congratulations over ice cream on Gropi’s terrace.

  I still had to face the medical ofiicers at the Damascus base, Major Fitucci and Captain Bercault. There could be no question of pulling the wool over their eyes. They had seen me at work, so to speak, on my hospital bed. They were also aware that I was still subject to occasional blackouts and fainted at the least provocation. I was told to take a month’s leave in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor before even so much as dreaming of taking my place in an air crew again. So I visited the tombs of the Pharaohs and fell deeply in love with the Nile, the whole navigable course of which I covered twice in both directions. I spent long hours on my balcony at the Winter Palace, watching the feluccas sailing past. I resumed work on my book. I wrote several letters to my mother to make up for my long silence. In her letters to me, there seemed to be no trace of anxiety. And yet, her latest letter must have left Nice when she had been without news of me for at least three months. But she appeared not in the least concerned. It seemed a bit odd to me. There was, however, a new note of sadness in her latest letters, something that wasn’t quite said, touching and a little disturbing. “Dear Romouchka, I beg you not to think of me, not to be fearful on my account. Have courage. Remember that you no longer need me, that you are a man now, that you can stand on your own feet. Get married soon, for you will always need a woman at your side. That perhaps is the only wrong I have done you. But, above all, try to write a great book soon; then you will find it easier to be consoled. You have always been an artist. Don’t think too much about me. My health is good. Old Dr. Rosanoff is very pleased with me. He sends you his best wishes. Be strong, I beg you; be brave. Your mother.” I read and reread that letter a hundred times, there on my balcony above the slow-flowing Nile. It held an accent of sadness, a gravity and a reticence that were new to her. And for the first time my mother did not speak of France. My heart was heavy. Something was wrong, something in that letter remained unsaid. There was also that rather strange exhortation to be brave, which now recurred in her letters with greater and greater urgency. It was even slightly irritating. She ought to have known that I was never
afraid of anything. But what really mattered was that she was still alive, and my hope of winning my race against time and returning home triumphant grew stronger with each day that passed.

  1 A quotation from a Foreign Legion song.

  CHAPTER 41

  I was posted back to the squadron and spent a very peaceful time chasing Italian submarines off the coast of Palestine. It was an uneventful occupation, and I always took a picnic with me. Near Cyprus we attacked a submarine on the surface. It was a sitting duck, but somehow we managed to miss it. Our depth charge overshot by a good hundred feet.

  I can say that ever since then I have known the meaning of guilt and remorse.

  A number of films and a very large number of novels have been constructed around the theme of the warrior haunted by the memory of acts he has committed. I am no exception. Even today, I sometimes wake up screaming in the night and drenched in a cold sweat: I dream that I have just missed that submarine again. A horrible nightmare: I have failed to send a crew of twenty men to the bottom. There is no getting away from the simple and brutal conclusion that my feeling of guilt and my nocturnal horrors are due to the fact that I have not killed—an extremely unpleasant admission for a man who claims to have a rather noble opinion of Man. For this, I beg forgiveness of all. I find some slight consolation in telling myself that I am a nasty piece of work but that there are millions, billions of decent sensitive human beings who are not in the least like me. This thought does a lot to bolster my morale since what I need more than anything else is to be able to believe in human nature.

  One half of A European Education was finished and I gave all my available time to writing. When my squadron was transferred to England in August, 1943, I worked even harder. I had a feeling that the Allied landing in Europe was only a matter of days and I could not go home empty-handed. I could already see the joy and pride on my mother’s face at the sight of her name on the cover of a book. She would have to make do with literary fame instead of all the glories of Guynemer. Her artistic ambitions, at least, were going to be realized.

  The conditions at Hartford Bridge were not ideal for literary creation. It was very cold. I wrote at night in a corrugated-iron hut which I shared with three fellow officers. Each night I would put on my flying jacket and my fur-lined boots, prop myself up in bed and write till dawn with numbed fingers, my breath rising in visible vapor in the freezing air. Under the circumstances, I had no difficulty at all in evoking the snow-covered forests of Poland in which the central action of my novel was set. About three or four in the morning, I put down my fountain pen, straddled my bicycle and went to have a cup of tea in the mess. Then I got into my Boston bomber and set off, in the gray dawn, on a mission against powerfully protected targets. When we returned to base, there was almost always somebody missing and once, on our way to Charleroi, we lost seven crews at a single blow, when we had crossed the coast at the wrong point. It was difficult in such conditions to have much heart for literature. But literature and life have always been for me intimately intermingled, and flying and writing were part of the same fight, of the same effort to discover the hidden meaning of life. I went on with my novel when my comrades were asleep. Only once did I find myself alone in the hut and that was when Petit and all his crew were shot down over France.

  The sky around me was becoming very empty. Schlosing, Béguin, Mouchotte, Maridor, Gouby and Max Guedj, perhaps the most legendary hero of all Free France, fell in quick succession. Then the last of the old-timers vanished in their turn, de Thuisy, Martell, Colcanap, de Maismont, Mahé, until a day came when of all those I had known when I first arrived in England, only Barberon, the brothers Langer, Stone and Perrier were left. We often looked at one another in silence.

  I finished A European Education, sent the manuscript to Moura Budberg, the friend of Gorki and of H. G. Wells, and heard nothing more of it. One morning, on getting back from a more than usually lively mission—the Lorraine Squadron specialized in low-level attack, often hedge-hopping for as long as two hours before reaching the target, and three of our crews had been brought down that day—I found a glowing telegram from an English publisher: he was having my book translated and hoped to bring it out within five months. I took off my flying helmet and my gloves and stood for a long time, staring at the telegram. We were born, at last.

  I lost no time in sending the news to her, via Switzerland, and waited impatiently for her reaction. I could imagine her turning the pages of her first novel, sniffing with delight. Her old artistic aspirations were beginning to take shape and, with a little luck, within six months she might become famous. I could see her granting interviews, signing copies of the book, expressing her opinions on the state of contemporary fiction. She had been a late starter: she was now sixty-one. I had become neither a hero nor an Ambassador of France, not even a First Secretary, but all the same I was beginning to keep my promise and to give some meaning to her struggles and her sacrifices. Slim and slight though my little book might be, it seemed to me to weigh heavily on the scales. I waited. But in her letters there was no allusion to our first victory. She had decided to ignore it. It took very little imagination to interpret her silent reproach: what she was expecting of me, so long as France was occupied, were fighting deeds, not literature. Yet I was not to blame if my war had been lacking in brilliance. I was doing my best. Every day I was punctual at my rendezvous with the enemy in the sky and my plane often crawled back riddled with shells. I was not a fighter pilot, only a bomber, and our job was not very spectacular. We dropped our bombs on the target and then went home, or not, as chance dictated. I even caught myself wondering whether my mother had heard about the submarine I had missed off the coast of Palestine and was perhaps furious with me.

  The publication of A European Education in England made me almost famous. Each time I returned from a mission, I found a fresh batch of press cuttings, and several news agencies sent photographers to get a picture of me heroically climbing out of my cockpit I assumed a flattering pose, looking proudly at the sky, with my helmet under my arm, in my flying overalls. I faintly regretted that I was not wearing a Tcherkesse or Guards uniform, sitting on a white horse with a raised saber in my hand, as Mosjoukine did in Michel Strogoff, but I felt sure, all the same, that my mother would be delighted with these photographs and I carefully made a collection of them for her. I was asked to tea by Mrs. Anthony Eden, signed a copy of my book for her and took great pains not to stick out my little finger when I held my cup.

  I spent long hours alone on the airfield, lying in the grass with my head on my parachute, fighting against the feeling of frustration in my hands, a frustration that will remain with me as long as I continue to look at life as if it were a block of marble waiting only for some Phidias to turn it into a masterpiece; against the angry turmoil of my spirit battering against its bounds.

  . . . Sometimes I raise my eyes and look with sympathy at my brother the ocean: he feigns the infinite, but I know that he, too, everywhere comes up against his bounds, and hence all this fury, all this roar.

  We took part in fifteen more missions, but nothing ever happened worthy of us. One day, however, we came in for a more than usually rough time. A few minutes before reaching our target, while we were dancing our crazy dance among the black puffs of exploding shells, I heard in my earphones the anguished cry of my pilot, Arnaud Langer. There was a moment’s silence and then he said quietly and clearly: “I’ve been hit in the eyes.

  I’m completely blind.” In the Boston bomber, the pilot is separated from his navigator and from his machine-gunner by sheets of armor plating, so that, once in the air, neither of us could do anything for the other. And at the very moment Arnaud was telling me that he had lost his sight a violent blow struck me in the stomach. Within seconds, my hands were full of blood and I could see through my tom trousers a gaping, blood-gushing wound. I remember that my first thought was: “Business, at last.” The wound didn’t hurt at all and, by great good luck, we had recently been iss
ued steel helmets to protect our skulls. The English and American crews very naturally wore the helmets on their heads but the French, without exception, used theirs to shield a part of their persons which they regarded as being infinitely more precious. I quickly lifted my steel helmet and assured myself that my essential self was safe and sound. So great was my relief that the gravity of our situation did not particularly impress me. I can say that I have always had, in my life, a sure instinct for what is important and what is not. I heaved a sigh of relief and took stock of the position. The machine gunner, Bauden, had not been touched, but the pilot was blinded. We were still in formation and I, as navigator of the leading aircraft, was responsible for reaching the target, which was only minutes away and clearly visible already, and it seemed to me that the safest thing for us to do would be to continue straight ahead, get rid of our bombs and then concentrate on our situation, assuming that there still would be one. This was what we did, though not without sustaining two more hits. This time it was my back that was honored—and when I say “back” I am being polite. I was, however, able to release our load of bombs on the target with that pleasant feeling of relief and satisfaction which always follows with me the performance of a good deed.

  For a moment or two we stayed on course, then we began directing Arnaud away from the formation and soon found ourselves alone in the sky. I had lost a good deal of blood, and the sight of my open belly and my sticky trousers made me feel sick. One of our two engines had failed. The pilot was trying to pick the splinters from his eyes with his fingers. He could still see the contour of his hand, and we cheered up considerably, as this seemed to indicate that the optic nerve was not damaged. We had decided to bale out as soon as we had crossed the English coast. But Arnaud now discovered that his sliding roof had been damaged by flak and I felt like wringing his neck for this. However, there could be no question of our leaving the blind pilot alone on board. There was nothing we could do now but stay with him and try to direct him in to a landing. Our efforts were not very effective, and we twice overshot the airfield among a confusion of Very lights. I remember at the third attempt the ground was dancing about all around us, and sitting in my plexiglas cage in the nose of the machine, I felt like the yolk just about to drop from an egg into the omelet pan. Suddenly I heard Amaud’s voice in my earphones. It was like a child’s voice, and what it said was—“Jesus—Mary, save me!” I felt slightly aggrieved and annoyed that he should have put in a word for himself, and forgotten all about the rest of us and told him so in a few harsh, heartfelt and, I’m afraid, rather blasphemous words. I also wish to record, for the sake of my literary reputation, that just when the plane was going to hit the ground, I smiled, and let there be no doubt that this smile was one of my most premeditated literary efforts. In fact, I had been working for it all my life. I mention it here in the hope that it will find a place in my complete works.