The Mandarins

He looked preoccupied – his usual expression. He always created the impression that everything happening where he chanced to be and even where he chanced not to be – was his personal concern. Henri had no desire to share his worries. Offhandedly, he asked, ‘What’s worrying you so much?’

‘This movement he’s forming. I thought its principal objective was to draw the proletariat away from the Communist Party. But that’s not at all what Dubreuilh seems to have in mind,’ Scriassine said gloomily.

‘No, not at all,’ Henri replied.

Dejectedly, he thought, ‘This is just the kind of conversation I’ll be letting myself in for for days on end, if I get mixed up with Dubreuilh.’ From his head to his toes, he again felt an overpowering desire to be somewhere else.

Scraissine looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Are you going along with him?’

‘Only a little way,’ Henri answered. ‘Politics isn’t exactly my meat.’

‘You probably don’t understand what Dubreuilh is brewing,’ Scriassine said, giving Henri a reproachful look. ‘He’s trying to build up a so-called independent left-wing group, a group that approves of a united front with the Communists.’

‘Yes,’ Henri said. ‘I know that. So?’

‘Don’t you see? He’s playing right into their hands. There are a lot of people who are afraid of Communism; by winning them over to his movement, in effect he’ll be throwing their support to the Communists.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re against a united front,’ Henri said. ‘It would be a fine thing if the left started splitting up!’

‘A left dominated by the Communists would be nothing but a sham,’ Scriassine said. ‘If you’ve decided to go along with Dubreuilh, why not join the Communist Party? That would be a lot more honest.’

‘Completely out of the question. We disagree with them on quite a few points,’ Henri answered.

Scriassine shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you really do disagree with them, then three months from now the Stalinists will denounce you as traitors to the working class.’

‘We’ll see,’ Henri said.

He had no desire to continue the discussion, but Scriassine fixed him insistently with his eyes. ‘I’ve been told that L’Espoir has a lot of readers among the working people. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which means you have in your hands the only non-Communist paper in France that reaches the proletariat. Do you realize the grave responsibility you have?’

‘I realize it.’

‘If you put L’Espoir at Dubreuilh’s service, you’ll be acting as an accomplice in a thoroughly disgusting manoeuvre,’ Scriassine said. ‘Dubreuilh’s friendship doesn’t matter here,’ he added, ‘you’ve got to go the other way.’

‘Listen, as far as the paper is concerned, it will never be at anyone’s service. Neither Dubreuilh’s nor yours,’ Henri said emphatically.

‘One of these days, you know, L’Espoir is going to have to define its political programme,’ Scriassine said.

‘No. I refuse to have any predetermined programme,’ said Henri. ‘I want to go on saying exactly what I think when I think it. And I’ll never let myself become regimented.’

‘That kind of policy won’t stand up,’ Scriassine said.

Luc’s normally placid voice suddenly broke in. ‘We don’t want any political programme; we want to preserve the unity of the Resistance.’

Henri poured himself a glass of bourbon. ‘That’s all a lot of crap!’ he grumbled. Old, worn-out cliches were all that Luc ever mouthed – The Spirit of the Resistance! The Unity of the Resistance! And Scriassine saw red whenever anyone mentioned Russia to him. It would be better if they each had a corner somewhere where they could rave by themselves! Henri emptied his glass. He needed no advice from anyone; he had his own ideas about what a newspaper should be. Obviously, L’Espoir would eventually be forced to take a political stand – but it would do it entirely independently. Henri hadn’t kept the paper going all this time only to see it turn into something like those pre-war rags. Then, the whole press had been dedicated to fooling the public; the knack of presenting one-sided views in a convincing, authoritative manner had become an art. And the result soon became apparent: deprived of their daily oracle, the people were lost. Today, everyone agreed more or less on the essentials; the polemics and the partisan campaigns were out. Now was the time to educate the readers instead of cramming things down their throats. No more dictating opinions to them; rather teach them to judge for themselves. It wasn’t simple. Often they insisted on answers, and he had to be constantly on his guard lest he gave them an impression of ignorance, doubt, or incoherence. But that was precisely the challenge – meriting their confidence rather than robbing them of it. And the fact that L’Espoir sold almost everywhere in France was proof enough that the method worked. ‘No point in damning the Communists for their sectarianism if you’re going to be just as dogmatic as they are,’ Henri said to himself.

‘Don’t you think we could put this discussion off to some other time?’ Henri asked, interrupting Scriassine.

‘All right,’ Scriassine answered. ‘Let’s make a date.’ He pulled a note-book from his pocket. ‘I think it’s important for us to talk over our differences.’

‘Let’s wait until I get back from my trip,’ Henri said.

‘You’re going on a trip? News-hawking?’

‘No, just for pleasure.’

‘Leaving soon?’

‘Very soon,’ Henri answered.

‘Wouldn’t you call that deserting?’ Scriassine asked.

‘Deserting?’ Henri said with a smile. ‘I’m not in the army, you know.’ With his chin, he pointed to Claudie de Belzunce. ‘You ought to ask Claudie for a dance. Over there … the half-naked one dripping with jewellery. She’s a real woman of the world, and, confidentially, she admires you a lot.’

‘Women of the world are one of my weaknesses,’ Scriassine said with a little smile. He shook his head. ‘I have to admit I don’t understand why.’

He moved off towards Claudie. Nadine was dancing with Lachaume, and Dubreuilh and Paula were circling around the Christmas tree. Paula did not like Dubreuilh, but he often succeeded in amusing her.

‘You really shocked Scriassine!’ Vincent said cheerfully.

‘My going on a trip seems to shock damned near everyone,’ Henri said. ‘And Dubreuilh most of all.’

‘That really beats me!’ Lambert said. ‘You did a lot more than any of them ever did. You’re entitled to a little holiday, aren’t you?’

‘There’s no doubt about it,’ Henri said to himself. ‘I have a lot more in common with the youngsters.’ Nadine envied him, Vincent and Lambert understood him. They, too, as soon as they could, had rushed off to see what was happening elsewhere in the world. When assignments as war correspondents were offered them, they had accepted without hestitation. Now he stayed with them as for the hundredth time they spoke of the exciting days when they had first moved into the offices of the newspaper, when they had sold L’Espoir right under the noses of the Germans while Henri was busy writing his editorials, a revolver in his desk drawer. Tonight, because he was hearing them as if from a distance, he found new charm in those old stories. In his imagination he was lying on a beach of soft, white sand, looking out upon the blue sea and calmly thinking of times gone by, of faraway friends. He was delighted at being alone and free. He was completely happy.

At four in the morning, he once again found himself in the red living-room. Many of the guests had already gone and the rest were preparing to leave. In a few moments he would be alone with Paula, would have to speak to her, caress her.

‘Darling, your party was a masterpiece,’ Claudie said, giving Paula a kiss. ‘And you have a magnificent voice. If you wanted to, you could easily be one of the sensations of the post-war era.’

‘Oh,’ Paula said gaily, ‘I’m not asking for that much.’

No, she didn’t have any ambition for that sort of thing. He knew exactly what she wanted: to be once more the most beautiful of women in the arms of the most glorious man in the world. It wasn’t going to be easy to make her change her dream. The last guests left; the studio was suddenly empty. A final shuffling on the stairway, and then steps clicking in the silent street. Paula began gathering up the glasses that had been left on the floor.

‘Claudie’s right,’ Henri said. ‘Your voice is still as beautiful as ever. It’s been so long since I last heard you sing! Why don’t you ever sing any more?’

Paula’s face lit up. ‘Do you still like my voice? Would you like me to sing for you sometimes?’

‘Certainly,’ he answered with a smile. ‘Do you know what Anne told me? She said you ought to begin singing in public again.’

Paula looked shocked. ‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘Don’t speak to me about that. That was all settled a long time ago.’

‘Well, why not?’ Henri asked. ‘You heard how they applauded; they were all deeply moved. A lot of clubs are beginning to open up now, and people want to see new personalities.’

Paula interrupted him. ‘No! Please! Don’t insist. It horrifies me to think of displaying myself in public. Please don’t insist,’ she repeated pleadingly.

‘It horrifies you?’ he said, and his voice sounded perplexed. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. It never used to horrify you. And you don’t look any older, you know; in fact, you’ve grown even more beautiful.’

‘That was a different period of my life,’ Paula said, ‘a period that’s buried forever. I’ll sing for you and for no one else,’ she added with such fervour that Henri felt compelled to remain silent. But he promised himself to take up the subject again at the first opportunity.

There was a moment of silence, and then Paula spoke.

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ she asked.

Henri nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.

Paula sat down on the bed, removed her earrings, and slipped her rings off her fingers. ‘You know,’ she said, and her voice was calm now, ‘I’m sorry if I seemed to disapprove of your trip.’

‘Don’t be silly! You certainly have the right not to like travelling, and to say so,’ Henri replied. The fact that she had scrupulously stifled her remorse all through the evening made him feel ill at ease.

‘I understand perfectly your wanting to leave,’ she said. ‘I even understand your wanting to go without me.’

‘It’s not that I want to.’

She cut him off with a gesture. ‘You don’t have to be polite.’ She put her hands flat on her knees and, with her eyes staring straight ahead and her back very straight, she looked like one of the infinitely calm priestesses of Apollo. ‘I never had any intention of imprisoning you in our love. You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t looking for new horizons, new nourishment.’ She leaned forward and looked Henri squarely in the face. ‘It’s quite enough for me simply to be necessary to you.’

Henri did not answer. He wanted neither to dishearten nor encourage her. ‘If only I had something against her,’ he thought. But no, not a single grievance, not a complaint.

Paula stood up and smiled; her face became human again. She put her hands on Henri’s shoulders, her cheek against his. ‘Could you get along without me?’

‘You know very well I couldn’t.’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said happily. ‘Even if you said you could, I wouldn’t believe you.’

She walked towards the bathroom. It was impossible not to weaken from time to time and speak a few kind words to her, smile gently at her. She stored those treasured relics in her heart and extracted miracles from them whenever she felt her faith wavering. ‘But in spite of everything, she knows I don’t love her any more,’ he said to himself for reassurance. He undressed and put on his pyjamas. She knew it, yes. But as long as she didn’t admit it to herself it meant nothing. He heard a rustle of silk, then the sound of running water and the clinking of glass, those sounds which once used to make his heart pound. ‘No, not tonight, not tonight,’ he said to himself uneasily. Paula appeared in the doorway, grave and nude, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She was nearly as perfect as ever, but for Henri all her splendid beauty no longer meant anything. She slipped in between the sheets and without uttering a word, pressed her body to his. Paula withdrew her lips slightly, and, embarrassed, he heard her murmuring old endearments he never spoke to her now.

‘Am I still your beautiful wisteria vine?’

‘Now and always.’

‘And do you love me? Do you really still love me?’

He did not have the courage at that moment to provoke a scene, he was resigned to avow anything – and Paula knew it. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Do you belong to me?’

‘To you alone.’

‘Tell me you love me, say it.’

‘I love you.’

She uttered a long moan of satisfaction. He embraced her violently, smothered her mouth with his lips, and to get it over with as quickly as possible immediately penetrated her.

When finally he fell limp on Paula, he heard a triumphant moan.

‘Are you happy?’ she murmured.

‘Of course.’

‘I’m so terribly happy!’ Paula exclaimed, looking at him through shining tear-brimmed eyes. He hid her unbearably bright face against his shoulder. ‘The almond trees will be in bloom …’ he said to himself, closing his eyes. ‘And there’ll be oranges hanging from the orange trees.’

II

No, I shan’t meet death today. Not today or any other day. I’ll be dead for others and yet I’ll never have known death.

I closed my eyes again, but I couldn’t sleep. Why had death entered my dreams once more? It is prowling inside me; I can feel it prowling there. Why?

I hadn’t always been aware that one day I would die. As a child, I believed in God. A white robe and two shimmering wings were awaiting me in heaven’s vestry and I wanted so much to break through the clouds and try them on. I would often lie down on my quilt, my hands clasped, and abandon myself to the delights of the hereafter. Sometimes in my sleep I would say to myself, ‘I’m dead,’ and the voice watching over me guaranteed me eternity. I was horrified when I first discovered the silence of death. A mermaid had died on a deserted beach. She had renounced her immortal soul for the love of a young man and all that remained of her was a bit of white foam without memory and without voice. ‘It’s only a fairy tale,’ I would say to myself for reassurance.

But it wasn’t a fairy tale. I was the mermaid. God became an abstract idea in the depths of the sky, and one evening I blotted it out altogether. I’ve never felt sorry about losing God, for He had robbed me of the earth. But one day I came to realize that in renouncing Him I had condemned myself to death. I was fifteen, and I cried out in fear in the empty house. When I regained my senses, I asked myself, ‘What do other people do? What will I do? Will I always live with this fear inside me?’

From the moment I fell in love with Robert, I never again felt fear, of anything. I had only to speak his name and I would feel safe and secure: he’s working in the next room … I can get up and open the door … But I remain in bed; I’m not sure any more that he too doesn’t hear that little, gnawing sound. The earth splits open under our feet, and above our heads there is an infinite abyss. I no longer know who we are, nor what awaits us.

Suddenly, I sat bolt upright, opened my eyes. How could I possibly admit to myself that Robert was in danger? How could I ever bear it? He hadn’t told me anything really disturbing, nothing really new. I’m tired, I drank too much; just a little four-o’clock-in-the-morning frenzy. But who’s to decide at what hour one sees things clearest? Wasn’t it precisely when I believed myself most secure that I used to awaken in frenzies? And did I ever really believe it?

I can’t quite remember. We didn’t pay very much attention to ourselves, Robert and I. Only events counted: the flight from Paris, the return, the sirens, the bombs, the standing in lines, our reunions, the first issues of L’Espoir. A brown candle was sputtering in Paula’s apartment. With a couple of tin cans, we had built a stove in which we used to burn scraps of paper. The smoke would sting our eyes. Outside, puddles of blood, the whistling of bullets, the rumbling of artillery and tanks. In all of us, the same silence, the same hunger, the same hope. Every morning we would awaken asking ourselves the same question: Is the swastika still flying above the Senate? And in August, when we danced around blazing bonfires in the streets of Montparnasse, the same joy was in all our hearts. Then the autumn slipped by, and only a few hours ago, while we were completing the task of forgetting our dead by the lights of a Christmas tree, I realized that we were beginning to exist again each for himself. ‘Do you think it’s possible to bring back the past?’ Paula had asked. And Henri had said, ‘I feel like writing a light novel.’ They could once again speak in their normal voices, have their books published; they could argue again, organize political groups, make plans. That’s why they were all so happy. Well, almost all. Anyhow, this isn’t the time for me to be tormenting myself. Tonight’s a holiday, the first Christmas of peace, the last Christmas at Buchenwald, the last Christmas on earth, the first Christmas Diego hasn’t lived through. We were dancing, we were kissing each other around the tree sparkling with promises, and there were many, oh, so many, who weren’t there. No one had heard their last words; they were buried nowhere, swallowed up in emptiness. Two days after the liberation, Geneviève had placed her hand on a coffin. Was it the right one? Jacques’s body had never been found; a friend claimed he had buried his notebooks under a tree. What notebooks? Which tree? Sonia had asked for a sweater and silk stockings, and then she never again asked for anything. Where were Rachel’s bones and the lovely Rosa’s? In the arms that had so often clasped Rosa’s soft body, Lambert was now holding Nadine and Nadine was laughing the way she used to laugh when Diego held her in his arms. I looked down the row of Christmas trees reflected in the large mirrors and I thought, ‘There are the candles and the holly and the mistletoe they’ll never see. Everything that’s been given me, I stole from them,’ They were killed. Which one first? He or his father? Death didn’t enter into his plans. Did he know he was going to die? Did he rebel at the end or was he resigned to it? How will I ever know? And now that he’s dead, what difference does it make?

No, tombstone, no date of death. That’s why I’ve been groping for him through that life he loved so tumultuously. I hold out my hand towards the light switch and hesitantly withdraw it. In my desk is a picture of Diego, but even though I looked at it for hours I would never find again under that head of bushy hair, his real face of flesh and bones, that face in which everything was too large – his eyes, nose, ears, mouth. He was sitting in the study and Robert had asked, ‘What will you do if the Nazis win?’ And he had answered, ‘A Nazi victory doesn’t enter into my plans.’ His plans consisted of marrying Nadine and becoming a great poet. And he might have made it, too. At sixteen he already knew how to turn words into hot, glowing embers. He might have needed only a very little time – five years, four years; he lived his life so fast. Huddled with the others around the electric heater, I used to enjoy watching him devour Hegel or Kant; he would turn the pages as rapidly as if he were skimming through a murder mystery. And the fact of the matter is that he understood perfectly everything he read. Only his dreams were slow.

He had come one day to show Robert his poems, which was how we first got to know him. His father was a Spanish Jew who was stubbornly determined to continue making money in business even during the Occupation. He claimed the Spanish consul was protecting him. Diego reproached him for his luxurious style of living and his opulent blonde mistress; he preferred our austerity and spent almost all his time with us. Besides, he was at the hero-worshipping age; and he worshipped Robert. The moment he met Nadine, he impetuously gave her his love, his first, his only love. For the first time she had a feeling of being needed; it overwhelmed her. She immediately made room in the house for Diego and invited him to live with us. He had a great deal of affection for me as well, even though he found me much too rational. At night, Nadine insisted upon my tucking her in, the way I used to when she was a child. Lying next to her, he would ask me, ‘And me? Don’t I get a kiss?’ And I would kiss him. That year, we had been friends, my daughter and I. I was grateful to her for being capable of a sincere love and she was thankful to me for not opposing her deepest desire. Why should I have? She was only seventeen, but both Robert and I felt that it’s never too early to be happy.

And they knew how to be happy with so much fire! When we were together, I would rediscover my youth. ‘Come and have dinner with us. Come on, tonight’s a holiday,’ they would say, each one pulling me by an arm. Diego had filched a gold piece from his father. He preferred to take rather than to receive; it was the way of his generation. He had no trouble in changing his treasure into negotiable money and he spent the afternoon with Nadine on the roller coaster at an amusement park. When I met them on the street that evening, they were devouring a huge pie they had bought in the back room of a nearby bakery; it was their way of working up an appetite. They called up Robert and asked him to come along too, but he refused to leave his work. I went with them. Their faces were smeared with jam, their hands black with the grime of the fairground, and in their eyes was the arrogant look of happy criminals. The maître d’hôtel must have surely believed we had come there with the intention of squandering some ill-gotten gains. He showed us to a table far in the rear of the room and asked Diego with chilly politeness, ‘Monsieur has no jacket?’ Nadine threw her jacket over Diego’s threadbare sweater, revealing her own soiled, wrinkled blouse. But in spite of it all, we were served. They ordered ice cream first, and sardines, and then steaks, fried potatoes, oysters, and still more ice cream. ‘It all gets mixed up inside anyhow,’ they explained to me, stuffing the food into their mouths. They were so happy to be able for once to eat their fill! No matter how hard I tried to get enough food to go around, we were always more or less hungry. ‘Eat up,’ they said to me commandingly, as they slipped slices of pâté into their pockets for Robert.

It wasn’t long after this that the Germans one morning knocked at Mr Serra’s door. No one had informed him that the Spanish consul had been transferred. Diego, as luck would have it, had slept at his father’s that night. They didn’t take the blonde. ‘Tell Nadine not to worry about me,’ Diego said. ‘I’ll come back, because I want to come back.’ Those were the last words we ever heard from him; all his other words were drowned out forever, he who loved so much to talk.

It was springtime and the sky was very blue, the peach trees a pastel pink. When we would ride our bicycles, Nadine and I, through the flag-decked parks of Paris, the fragrant joy of peacetime weekends filled our lungs. But the tall buildings of Drancy, where the prisoners were kept, brutally crushed that lie. The blonde had handed over three million francs to a German named Felix who transmitted messages from the prisoners and who had promised to help them escape. Twice, peering through binoculars, we were able to pick out Diego standing at a distant window. They had shaved off his woolly hair and it was no longer entirely he who smiled back at us; his mutilated head seemed even then to belong to another world.

One afternoon in May we found the huge barracks deserted; straw mattresses were being aired at the open windows of empty rooms. At the café where we had parked our bicycles, they told us that three trains had left the station during the night. Standing by the barbed-wire fence, we watched and waited for a long time. And then suddenly, very far off, very high up, we made out two solitary silhouettes leaning out of a window. The younger one waved his beret triumphantly. Felix had spoken the truth: Diego had not been deported. Choked with joy, we rode back to Paris.