At that moment, in the house at Pollara, Mademoiselle was sitting in a small armchair made by Vango at age twelve from driftwood — the kind of wood that rolls in the sea for a long time and ends up polished and bleached by the pebbles. The chair was a nest made of pieces of wood tied together. It was very comfortable to sit in. Mademoiselle spent her evenings in it, reading or sewing, and sometimes she would wake up in the morning with a book on her knees.
That evening, her book had fallen to the floor, but Mademoiselle wasn’t sleeping. She was simply staring at two men who were destroying the interior of her home.
They had entered without saying a word, just a thin polite smile for Mademoiselle.
There were so few objects inside these walls that the intruders were almost disappointed. Mademoiselle was petrified. She couldn’t move at all. They paced about a bit, then started by ripping out the pages of the books in the small bookcase. They found a pile of papers in a folder made of blotting paper and emptied them into a travel bag. They also threw in a stitched notebook in which Mademoiselle used to copy out her accounts and some poems in no particular order.
Then they broke a few plates. And, as if that wasn’t enough, they started smashing the blue china tiles that covered the walls. These didn’t fall off but splintered into a thousand slivers. The whole room was like the inside of a kaleidoscope that would make anyone’s head spin.
They did all this without saying a word, as if carrying out an intricate job that required complete concentration. To free up their hands, they had put their weapons down on the table: two Tokarev TT33 automatic pistols and a double express pump-action shotgun that must have weighed six or seven kilos.
When they’d entered the home, Mademoiselle hadn’t looked particularly surprised.
She’d told them in Russian that she’d been expecting them for fifteen years.
Vango rushed down the path. All he could feel now was the euphoria of the moment. He was returning to the place he loved, the house that was his homeland, the woman who was his family — a race on a May night after five years of exile. He forgot about everything else.
He took a shortcut to the left. This time, he could clearly see the white roof of the house and then, as he got closer, the lamp alight in the window. She was there.
Vango didn’t want to give Mademoiselle too much of a shock. So he thought he would knock, to indicate his presence on the other side of the door. But first he made a small detour via the olive tree. Its leaves rustled as he approached, and he put his hand on the bark, pressing his forehead against the tree.
Inside the house, through the tiny windows, it was possible to make out some signs of movement. She wasn’t asleep.
Mademoiselle.
He owed her so much. Mademoiselle was a world in her own right. She seemed to know all of life’s secrets, but she let you into them one by one, almost without your noticing. Like this olive tree that shed its leaves throughout the year, without ever seeming to be missing a single one.
Whenever Vango had been feeling sad for too long, she would say things like, “That’s enough of the day wasted on one set of troubles.” She invented her own wisdom.
Before leaving the cover of the tree, he paused for a few seconds.
An enormous shadow was advancing toward him from behind. It was as if Vango was deliberately giving it time to get close. But he hadn’t seen anything and simply wanted to make a sweet moment last a little longer, as he leaned against his tree.
I’m coming, Mademoiselle . . . he thought.
As Vango took a step toward the house, he felt a hand grab hold of his jawbone while he was tackled by the waist and lifted off the ground. It had been the first time in years that Vango had really relaxed, the first moment he had let his guard drop.
But one second was all it took.
Mademoiselle saw the two men rush for their weapons. Like them, she had heard a noise outside. They must have had a third companion keeping watch. One of the men went outside. He returned promptly and nodded reassuringly at the other man. They resumed their infernal task. Mademoiselle had closed her eyes.
Vango was dragged off into the night. The person holding him was prodigiously strong. Vango didn’t put up a fight.
At one point, he could feel himself being put down on the ground. He was in a sort of hole with a hard lava floor. At the back of a small fireplace, flames lit up the room. Vango stood up. There was a gun pointed straight at him.
“Don’t move.”
The man spoke Sicilian.
“You’ve got no chance against them.”
Vango recognized Mazzetta.
“They’ve got more munitions than all the carabinieri from the islands to Milazzo.”
Mazzetta was right. The tilting-block rifle that had been put on Mademoiselle’s table was loaded with 600-caliber nitro, renowned for the past quarter of a century as the ideal weapon for elephant hunting. And one of the men, the taller one, had, in addition to two Tokarev TTs, a handsome English submachine gun hanging beneath his shirt like a christening charm.
Vango got up.
“Sit down,” Mazzetta ordered. “I’ll kneecap you if you try to leave. I don’t want them to get you.”
When he saw the men entering, Mazzetta had intended to take the house by siege. But then he had spotted the arsenal by the window. He knew the power of weapons. He wasn’t frightened for his own life, which he had given up a long time ago. He was frightened for Mademoiselle. He wanted to stay alive so that he could keep an eye on her.
“Let me go over there.”
“No. They’ll leave in the end. They won’t do anything to her. I’m sure you’re the one they’re looking for.”
A stamping sound could be heard just in front of Mazzetta’s hole. Someone was crushing the dry grass. Vango held his breath.
“Who is it?” he whispered.
Mazzetta put a finger to his lips.
Someone was breathing heavily only two meters away, if that.
“Who is it?” Vango wanted to know.
Mazzetta’s bearlike face nodded gently.
“It’s my donkey,” he breathed eventually. “He’s warning us they’re leaving.”
Tesoro the donkey, still wearing his enormous studded leather collar, poked his head around the door. Mazzetta stroked him between the eyes.
They waited several long minutes before Mazzetta went outside. Vango didn’t move.
Eventually, Mazzetta returned and sat down next to Vango.
“They’ve gone.”
“What about Mademoiselle?”
“They’ll stay around these parts for a long time. You must leave.”
“Mademoiselle?”
“She’s in front of the house. She’s not hurt.”
“I want to talk to her.”
“They’re watching. If you talk to her, she’s dead.”
Vango wiped his hand across his face.
“My God,” he uttered.
“Go.”
Mazzetta had put down his hunting gun. For the first time, Vango was actually talking to him.
“What about Mademoiselle? Are you going to look after her?”
“She doesn’t want my help. But I know someone who’ll be there for her.”
“Do whatever she needs. Please.”
Vango made his way out of the hole and crawled through the undergrowth.
Once he was far enough away, he ran toward the sea and climbed down the cliff. He chanced on a boat and pushed it off from the pebble beach, making straight for the open sea.
At two o’clock in the morning, Dr. Basilio heard someone knocking at his door.
He recognized the familiar sound of a man crying outside his house. For him, these male cries were always a few hours ahead of those belonging to the wife who was about to give birth, and the child who was about to see the light of day.
“The men must be able to let it all out too, at some point. It’s their right.”
Half asleep, the doctor chewed h
is words, put on a pair of trousers, grabbed his bag, and opened the door.
It wasn’t what he’d been expecting.
Before him stood Mazzetta, breathless.
“Is it . . . ?”
From the look in Mazzetta’s eyes, the doctor could tell that something serious had happened.
“Mademoiselle?”
He followed the lone character, running through the night.
Arkudah, the next day
Zefiro had never been gifted when it came to reunions. His real talents lay in saying farewell, offering colorful benedictions, and hugging a person hard before a journey. But when he was reunited with someone, he didn’t know whether to open his arms, lower his head, or hold out his hand. So most of the time he did all three at once, resulting in some unfortunate collisions.
Zefiro never knew what to talk about first or how to broach the long absence that had separated them since their last farewells. Their time apart was like a curtain of ice for him.
Finding himself face-to-face with Vango once more, he ventured that the young man’s hair looked a bit shorter than before, stammered something about the weather they were having, and offered him a glass of water.
Next came an unorthodox welcoming phrase: “I’ve got some new rabbits.”
Vango was standing there in front of him, at the door to the invisible monastery, exhausted, his clothes in tatters. His eyes were red, and he was famished.
But he hadn’t forgotten Zefiro. And so he followed him.
As they were walking toward the rabbit hutches, the ice began to melt. When Vango held out a trembling gray rabbit, Zefiro moved the furry animal to one side and took hold of the boy instead, crushing his head against his shoulder. Five years had gone by.
“You were such a long time.”
Vango wanted to look up, but Zefiro refused to stop hugging him because he didn’t want the young one to see his tears.
“You were the one who told me to leave,” Vango said with a sigh.
“One year! I gave you one year to come back. . . .”
Vango looked at him.
“I had a few problems, Padre.”
Moscow, the Kremlin Palace, the same evening, May 2, 1934
Setanka was only eight and a half years old. But when she went to see a film, at night, in the former Winter Garden transformed into a cinema, she was followed by a convoy of armored cars and dozens of guards.
She trotted along in front.
This evening, her father, who was walking just behind her, was listening to a man giving his report.
“We found the house and the woman who brought him up. But no trace of the boy. It seems he hasn’t lived there for a long time.”
“Find him.”
She strained her ears. They were talking about the Bird.
For a long time, Setanka had thought her father was a gardener. In the country houses in Sochi, the Crimea, or just outside Moscow, he liked to touch the flowers and the trees. She could see his handsome mustache quivering at the scent of roses.
A year after the death of her mother, when she was enrolled at a school known as the Twenty-Fifth Model School, standing in the corridor that looked out on to Gorky Street, she had been surprised to see portraits of her father hanging on all the walls. It was then that she realized her father wasn’t a gardener.
He was the absolute master of a vast country that extended as far as Mongolia and the Pacific.
His name was Joseph Stalin.
“Find him,” she heard him saying again. “And leave me in peace.”
When she turned around, she saw him shooing away the man he was talking to with the back of his fingers, the way you swat a fly on a plate of meat.
He took his daughter’s hand.
“Well? Is my little boss happy to be going to the cinema?”
But Setanka didn’t feel like answering. She was gazing at a star above the roof of the Winter Garden. She was thinking of the Bird, who was flying through other skies and who could, at any moment, be struck down in full flight.
Friedrichshafen, Germany, one year later, May 1935
Waiters know all about diners in restaurants who make a reservation for two but arrive alone. They’ve dressed up for a romantic dinner. They check their watch and do their hair again by glancing at their reflection in their glass or their spoon. Nobody comes.
The waiter suggests removing the second plate, but they refuse. “No. My guest won’t be long now. She’ll be here in a minute. She’s often late!” One hour later, the restaurant offers an aperitif on the house as a consolation prize. The other diners look on pityingly.
That evening, at the Kurgarten Hotel, the table by the lakeside was set for two. The restaurant was full. Hugo Eckener had been waiting for three quarters of an hour, but he didn’t look unduly concerned.
The headwaiter, who had recognized him, kept passing by to see if he could be of any assistance.
Three paces away, trees were overhanging the water’s edge. Eckener could see the lights of a village on the other side of the lake. The neighboring tables were filled with couples whose legs were intertwined under the tablecloth.
“A newspaper, Herr Doctor?”
A waiter held out a pile of the day’s newspapers.
Eckener brushed them away.
“Never.”
Whenever Hugo Eckener opened a newspaper, he instantly had to close it again as if it were a basket of snakes. In Germany, the press didn’t talk about anything freely anymore, and if by chance some real news managed to get published, it gave you goose bumps.
Ten months earlier, in July 1934, Eckener had escaped a dreadful night during which Hitler had ordered the killings of dozens of people who irked him: the Night of the Long Knives.
Protection from a minister had narrowly saved Hugo Eckener. Reading the papers the next day, he hadn’t found a single one that denounced the massacre.
Such crimes were becoming increasingly commonplace. Why exhaust yourself trying to convince people when you could just annihilate them? The years of financial crisis had left so many people unemployed that they were ready to believe every promise uttered by Hitler and to pounce on all those he accused as guilty parties.
Eckener spotted a boat crossing the lake in the darkness.
The waiter brought him a glass of wine on a tray.
“I said I don’t want anything for the time being,” huffed Eckener.
“It’s on the house.”
Eckener stared at the glass that had been put in front of him. He was thinking about his wife. He had told her that he was having dinner with an old university friend named Moritz, who had become a psychologist in Munich.
“Apparently, he’s lost all his hair!” the commander had joked to Mrs. Eckener, to make it sound more plausible.
The waiter tiptoed away.
“I’m glad you didn’t wait for me to have a drink.”
Eckener stood up. The young lady was standing in front of him. Eckener thought she looked ravishing. All the customers in the restaurant fell quiet as they watched this strange couple. They shook hands.
“My, how you’ve grown up, Ethel!” said Hugo Eckener.
It wasn’t the most romantic welcome for a guest at this sort of restaurant, but then he had known her when she was only twelve. Now she was almost eighteen. She was hardly the same person.
“I’m sorry, Doctor Eckener. I kept you waiting.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“Two escorts on horseback have been following me since yesterday. I wanted to lead them on a merry dance through the woods. My car goes much faster than their horses. I can relax now.”
“Do you think you’ve shaken them off?”
Ethel nodded.
Agents who weren’t as secret as all that had been trailing her since her arrival in Germany. She’d ended up taking a path through the forest at eighty-five miles per hour. Her little Napier-Railton flew through the pine trees. It was impossible to follow her.
An
accordionist started up a few tables away from them.
“Can you see that boat over there?” asked Eckener, helping the young lady into her seat.
“Yes.”
She could smell the slightly musty scent of Lake Constance as well as that of the peonies on the table, between the candles. She remembered a boat trip she’d made years earlier on this lake with her brother, before going on board the zeppelin. It had been here, in front of this hotel. Right here. At the time, she had been a little girl in whom the light had gone out four years previously: she was in pieces following the deaths of her parents. She had stopped talking. Not a word in four years.
That balloon trip had changed everything.
She kept looking at the rowers, who must be able to see this restaurant, lit up on the shore.
“Why do you ask? Would you like to take me for a spin, Commander Eckener?”
“Your escorts are in that boat.”
Ethel stared at Eckener, aghast.
“You’ll never be able to shake them off,” he added. “Mine have been following me for a year.”
“Where are yours?”
“One is sitting inside, at the bar. The other is busy murdering that accordion tune you’re listening to.”
Ethel turned toward the musician, who had his eyes fixed on them.
“Which is why I asked you to meet me here, my dear Ethel. I always choose the most exposed place so they don’t think I’ve got anything to hide.”
He took a good look at her and added, “Especially when I’m spending the evening with a young lady who is the classic English spy of everyone’s dreams.”
“Scottish.”
“Yes. Scottish. I do beg your pardon. How is your brother? Still a pilot?”
“Yes. He’s got a plane now.”
“And you?”
“He won’t lend it to me,” said Ethel.
She spoke the words as petulantly as if she were seven years old.
“And you let him get away with it?”
They ordered dinner. Their time together passed very enjoyably. They talked about engineering, clouds, the difference between Scottish and German cabbages, and above all about their memories of that voyage they’d made together around the world in the zeppelin.