The Kites

  This time, I could discern a tiny gleam of amusement in the old fox’s eyes. Perhaps someday I should sit down and have another good think about Duprat, to try and figure out how much of his “folly” was good old Norman cunning. I embraced Lila. I knew myself: I knew that nothing could happen to her. I wanted to cry, but it was only from exhaustion.

  I made my way to my unit without too much trouble. At one in the morning, as I was crossing the marshes, I ran into a group of black American parachutists who had gotten their landing wrong and didn’t know where they were. I brought them to Neuvet, which was our rallying point, where I found Souba and twenty-odd comrades. As I’ve said, our orders were to carry out sabotage missions, but for many of us, the temptation to engage in armed combat was too great. Most were killed. From June 8 to June 16, we had one submachine gun for ten men, with a hundred cartridges, and two light machine guns with a hundred and fifty cartridges. Added to that, for the survivors, were the weapons they managed to capture from the enemy. As for me, I stuck to blowing up railways, bridges, and telephone lines. I didn’t want to kill any men, and unfortunately, by the time you manage to figure out whether it’s a man or an SS officer, it’s always too late — he’s already dead. I also think I was a little paralyzed by the memory of that tank commander who spared Lila and me. But I did good work, in the rear guard, as the Wehrmacht retreated.

  47

  I had no news of Lila for three weeks. Later, she told me that Duprat had been extremely kind to her, although once he had done something that surprised her enormously: he’d pinched her bottom. He’d seemed terribly abashed about it — but one had to lose some battles to win the war, even at his age. She stayed at the Clos Joli for two weeks, helping Duprat to greet the Americans and trying to translate the map of France into English — which, according to Duprat, was entirely unthinkable. Then she returned to La Motte, where I found her on July 10. The next day, we made our way into Cléry together. The fighting continued, but its rumbles in Normandy now resembled little more than a far off thunderstorm. I pasted a notice to the door of the town hall: the workshop in La Motte would be starting up again the next day and any local children interested in what Ambrose Fleury called “the kindly art of the kite” were welcome. Lila had kept her bicycle and its basket, and she went to the Americans to try and get chocolate for the children. She wanted to celebrate the reopening of “classes” at La Motte with a real gala afternoon tea.

  As for me, I hitched a ride on a military truck bound for the Stag, where the Americans had set up their headquarters. It dropped me off at the entrance to the grounds. I wanted to say goodbye to Madame Julie, who was returning to Paris.

  I found her in tears, collapsed in her armchair beside the piano, where the photographs of the Gräfin Esterhazy’s old “friends” had been replaced with portraits of de Gaulle and Eisenhower.

  “What’s wrong, Madame Julie?”

  She could barely speak.

  “They … shot … him!”

  “Who?”

  “Francis … I mean, little Isidore Lefkowitz. And I had taken every precaution … You remember the ‘Great Resistance Fighter’ certificate, the one Soubabère left blank so I could fill in the name myself?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “It was for him. I’d given it to him. He had it in his pocket when they shot him. They stuck him in a truck with two other Gestapo collabos — real ones — and they murdered him. They found the certificate afterward. Izzy never showed it to them! He was probably scared out of his mind and so doped up he forgot!”

  “That might not be it, Madame Julie. Maybe he was just sick of it all.”

  She stared at me, stupefied.

  “Sick of what all? Of life? Have you lost your mind?”

  “Maybe he was sick of himself, the dope — everything.”

  She was inconsolable. “Those bastards. After everything he did for you …”

  “We didn’t shoot him, Madame Julie. It’s the new guys. The ones who joined the Resistance after the Germans left.”

  I tried to hug her but she pushed me away. “Get out of here. I never want to see you again.”

  “Madame Julie …”

  There was nothing for it. For the first time since I’d known her, this indomitable woman gave in to despair. I left her there, an old woman in tears who, like poor Isidore, must’ve been suffering from a momentary lapse in memory: she couldn’t recall where she’d left her “toughness.”

  A Jeep brought me back to Cléry and dropped me off in the rue Vieille-de-l’Église. I was supposed to meet Lila in the Place du Jour, which had recently been renamed La Place de la Victoire. As I entered the square, I found myself at the edge of a crowd pushing toward the fountain. There were shouts and laughter, children running about, and two or three people walking away, most of them older. One of them was Monsieur Lemaine, a friend of my uncle’s and a veteran of the Great War, who’d had a stiff knee since Verdun. He limped past me, stopped, nodded his head, and walked away, grumbling. I couldn’t see what was happening by the fountain. I would hardly have paid it any mind had I not noticed the strange looks I was getting. Leleu, the new owner of the Petit-Gris; Charviaut, the grocer in the rue Baudouin; Colin, the stationer, and others — they all stared at me with a mixture of discomfort and pity.

  “What’s going on?”

  They each turned away without a word.

  I dashed forward.

  Lila was sitting in a chair by the fountain, her head shaved. Chinot, the barber, his clippers in hand, a smile on his lips, had stepped back a little to admire his handiwork. Lila was sitting quietly on the chair, wearing a summer dress, her hands clasped in her lap. For a few seconds, I couldn’t move. Then something tore at my throat, a cry. I threw myself at Chinot, punched him in the face, grabbed Lila’s arm, and dragged her through the throng. The people stepped aside: it was over and done with, the “little lady” had been made to pay for sleeping with the enemy. Later, when I was able to think about it, what remained, beyond the horror, was the memory of all those familiar faces, faces I’d known since childhood. They weren’t monsters — that was what was so monstrous.

  The memories are there, ineffaceable. I ran through the streets, tugging Lila by the arm. It felt as if I would never stop running. I wasn’t running toward the end of the earth: we were already there. I didn’t know where I was going, and indeed there was nowhere to go. I screamed.

  I heard steps behind me. I swung around, fist cocked. I recognized the face of Monsieur Boyer, the baker, panting, with his big belly.

  “Come to my place, Fleury, it’s right here.”

  He pulled us into the bakery. His wife looked at Lila, horrified, and began crying into her apron. Boyer took us upstairs and left us alone. Closing the door, he said to me: “Now the Nazis have really won the war.”

  I helped Lila onto the bed. She didn’t move. I sat down beside her. I don’t know how long we stayed like that. From time to time, I stroked her head. It would grow back, of course. It always grows back.

  Her eyes had a fixedness that seemed to reflect the indelible image inside her. The jeering faces. The clippers in the hands of a brave village barber.

  “It’s nothing, darling. It’s just the Nazis. They’ve been here for four years and they left their mark.”

  That evening Monsieur Boyer served us a meal, but it was impossible to get Lila to eat. She remained prostrate, her eyes wide open, and I thought of her father, who had retreated from reality, “heart and parcel,” as Lila had put it to me. These aristocrats — really, when you think of it, what is one young woman’s shaved head? It’s almost friendly considered alongside everything the others did — the extermination camps, the torture. The others, you know — but what others, actually?

  Sometimes shared humanity is pretty damn ugly.

  In the middle of the night, I got up and set fire to the Clos Joli. I soaked
the old walls in gasoline, and when they began to crumble, I finally fell into peaceful sleep. Luckily, it was just a bad dream.

  Monsieur Boyer went and got Dr. Gardieu, who told us that Lila was in a state of shock. He gave her an injection so that she would sleep. When the door opened, I could hear the radio announcing news of our victories.

  That afternoon, she woke up, smiled at me, and raised her hand to run her fingers through her hair.

  “My God, what …”

  “The Nazis,” I said.

  She hid her face in her hands. Tears bring comfort, it’s often said.

  We stayed with the Boyers for a week. And, every day, I went out with Lila and we walked though the streets of Cléry, holding hands. We’d walk slowly, for hours and hours, so that they could all see us, straight ahead, a young woman with a shaved head and me, Ludovic Fleury, twenty-three years old and known throughout the country for my memory. I told myself that we’d really miss the Nazis, that it would be difficult without them, because we wouldn’t have any excuses anymore. On the fifth day of our demonstration, Monsieur Boyer arrived in our room with the newspaper France-Soir, looking very moved: there was a picture of us, strolling hand in hand through Cléry. I hadn’t known that my face was capable of such hardness. The next day, our demonstration was interrupted by three men wearing FFI armbands. I knew them. They had joined the official “Resistance” eight days after the Allied landing.

  “Are you done with your little show yet?”

  “Well, they did do it for show, didn’t they?”

  “You’re going to end up with a bullet in the ass, Fleury. Enough is enough. What are you trying to prove?”

  “Nothing. The proof’s been there for a long time.” They let it go at that, and walked off calling me a nutter. We continued our “walk” for a few more days. It was Monsieur Boyer who made me decide to quit.

  “They’re used to seeing you. It doesn’t affect them anymore.”

  We went back home to La Motte, and stayed put until October, when we left to get married.

  Johnny Cailleux brought us supplies every morning, and gave us a puppy from a litter they’d had at the farm; Lila named it Darling, which caused a fair amount of confusion at home; every time she called out, we’d both come running. Those days were not without unhappiness, though — it’s needed in life; you can’t live without it. We learned that Bruno had been reported missing in combat in November 1943. He had notched up seventeen victories by then and was one of the most decorated aviators in the Royal Air Force. We sent letter after letter off to Poland to try and obtain news of Tad, but in vain.

  Lila decided to put off going to the Sorbonne for another year, so that she would be better prepared. She studied a lot. Trends in Contemporary Art, Treasures of German Painting, The Complete Works of Vermeer, Masterpieces across the Centuries, The Western World through Its Museums — the books piled up around the little table she had set up near the workshop window.

  Her parents didn’t come to our wedding. The difficult circumstances they’d endured hadn’t caused them to forget their rank, and they disapproved of Lila marrying beneath her station. Social stock had risen rapidly to its prewar value and Stas Bronicki had bounced right back again. Instead, our witnesses were Duprat himself and the “countess” Esterhazy, who, with democracy’s return, had become Julie Espinoza again. She arrived at the town hall in an American army car driven by a GI, in the company of two ravishing young ladies.

  “I’m rebuilding my network,” she explained to us.

  She looked magnificent in her towering Christian Dior hat and with her little golden lizard, which had never left her and was now tucked into the hollow of her shoulder.

  Madame Julie was disappointed that we weren’t having a church wedding.

  Duprat wore a morning coat, with an orchid in his buttonhole. Life magazine had just featured him in an article that is still on display — above the portrait of Brillat-Savarin — with Robert Capa’s famous cover shot of the Clos Joli with its lord and master. He’s standing by the door in his chef’s uniform, beneath the headline, “A Certain Idea of France.” The article provoked great ire in the Parisian press. It’s true that in 1945, the country didn’t hold haute cuisine in quite the same esteem as it does today. I don’t know what idea the Americans had back then of the role they’d leave for France in the new world order, but they admired the Clos Joli and its illustrious proprietor at least as much as the Germans had.

  The morning before the ceremony, Lila stared at herself in the mirror for a long time. Then she made a face: “I need to go to the hairdresser …”

  Her hair had barely grown an inch. At first I didn’t understand. There was only one hairdresser in Cléry, and it was Chinot, the barber. I looked over at her and she grinned back at me. I understood.

  Duprat had lent us one of his vans for the day, and at eleven thirty we pulled up in front of the barbershop. Chinot was alone inside. He backed away a little when he saw us.

  “I’d like you to cut my hair in the latest style again,” Lila announced. “Look. It’s grown back. It doesn’t show anymore.”

  She walked over to a chair and sat down, smiling. “Like last time, please,” she said.

  Chinot still hadn’t moved. He had gone pale.

  “Come on, Monsieur Chinot,” I told him. “Our wedding is later today and we’re in a hurry. My fiancée would like you to shave her head, just like you did six weeks ago. Don’t tell me you’ve lost your inspiration so quickly.”

  He glanced at the door but I shook my head. “Come on, come on,” I said. “I know those heady first days are over and your heart’s not in it anymore, but you’ve got to keep carrying the torch.”

  I picked up the clippers and held them out to him. He stepped back.

  “I told you, we’re in a hurry, Chinot. My fiancée had an unforgettable experience and that’s exactly why she wants to be seen looking her best.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “I have no desire to let you have it, Chinot, but if you insist …”

  “It wasn’t my idea, I swear to you! They came to get me and …”

  “We’re not here to talk about whether it was ‘them,’ ‘me,’ ‘I,’ ‘their guys,’ or ‘our guys,’ old pal. It’s always us. Come on. Go ahead.”

  He walked over to the chair. Lila was laughing. Intact, I thought. It always stays intact.

  Chinot got to work. In a few minutes, Lila’s head was shaved as closely as it had been in those first days. She leaned forward and admired herself in the mirror.

  “It really suits me.”

  She stood. I turned to Chinot.

  “How much do I owe you?”

  He was silent, his mouth hanging open.

  “How much? I don’t like being in anyone’s debt.”

  “Three francs fifty.”

  “Here’s four, for tip.”

  He threw down the clippers and fled to the back of the shop.

  When we arrived at the town hall, everyone was waiting for us. There was a great silence when they saw Lila’s shaven head. Duprat’s mustache quivered nervously a few times. Seeing the faces of my comrades from the Espoir network, you would have thought that the Nazis had returned and we had to start all over again. Only Julie Espinoza rose to the occasion. She walked up to Lila and gave her a kiss.

  “Darling, what an excellent idea! It looks fabulous on you!”

  Lila was very cheerful, and the slight unease that had overtaken the guests lifted immediately. After the ceremony, we went to the Clos Joli, and at the end of the luncheon Marcellin Duprat spoke with feeling about those who had “remained at their posts,” without a single reference to himself. He simply recalled the trials “we all had to face, each at his own battle station,” and then said something I couldn’t quite hear; I couldn’t tell whether he was speaking of his joy at being able to return
the Clos Joli to France or France to the Clos Joli. At the end, he turned to the American officers we had invited and glared at them in silence for a moment, darkly.

  “As for the future, we can’t help feeling a certain degree of worry. Already, my good sirs, from your great and beautiful country, I hear rumors that make me fear the worst. Our France, which has known such suffering, will now be put to a new test. I’m already hearing talk of chickens fattened with hormones, and even, may God forgive me, frozen and ready-made dishes. Never, my American friends, will Marcellin Duprat bow down to ready-to-eat cuisine. Anyone who wants to turn our France into a feeding trough will have me to deal with first. I will stand firm.”

  There was cheering. The Americans were the first to applaud. Duprat raised his hand.

  “There’s no use denying it. After the years we’ve just been through, the road will be a rocky. We haven’t been able to train our youth. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that what I have given everything to defend will grow stronger each day, and that in the end it will take root and triumph in a way we have yet to imagine. As for you, Ludovic Fleury, who fought so hard for this future, and you, Madame, who I’ve known since you were a little girl, you are young enough to be certain of seeing the France that I, old man that I am, can only dream of. And when you do, have a little friendly thought for me and say, ‘Marcellin Duprat got it right.’”