Going Ashore (23 page)

My waking dreams produced the bound volume (60 francs, 600 pp., index) as it travelled from publisher to post office, from postman to concierge, from one vacated Paris apartment to another (each move a monument to an altercation with a long-toothed landlord), and finally arrived at my present bosky habitation. (See “From Poultry Yard to Playing Field: An Author Builds a Retreat,” C. Filandreux, 1967.) In reverie, I watched from my window as Émile Pagne, the village mailman, parked his Renault R-5 in a bed of
Rheum rhaponticum
and tooled up the driveway on foot, the publisher’s tawdry book envelope leaking its vitals all over the gravel.

Would I, I pondered, spare twenty words of my review to describe the
cover illustration – a black-and-white photo of the ancient church, named for a saint whose feast day is, or was, or used to be, 12 November, with a swastika stamped over the eleventh-century bell tower and dripping red paint, to indicate to even the most absent-minded reader the book’s period and setting? Ploum-Ploum, the philosopher-clochard, no longer sits in warm sunshine on the church steps. Some say that he bought the whole left-hand side of Rue Bonaparte, all the way down to the Seine, and retired; others aver that he went cheerfully to a pauper’s grave, where his ashes dream of black-market sugar generously shared with Wolf-Wolf, his gentle canine companion. Should I recount, with the quiet humor of detachment, how Wolf-Wolf one day sank his teeth into a certain essayist – who, although totally discredited, continues his hack literary appraisals in a daily newspaper that prudence prevents me from naming? I will say only that the said newspaper appears in the morning, leaving it to the reader to divine which morning.

I shall speak, of course, of that other morning, when Handelskammern first laid eyes on a tousle-haired lad wearing a scarf wound eight or nine times around his young neck, cheeks flushed with triumph because he had, at last, perfected the opening words of “The Front Line of Heaven,” later to be published, with some revisions, under the peacetime title “Growing Up in a War.” Handelskammern came into the Flore surrounded by his usual cloud of toadies and sycophants, one dusting off his chair before he sat down, another polishing his uniform buttons with a sponge dipped in acorn coffee, a third carrying a portable gramophone on which was playing the overture to “Carmen.” (It was typical of Handelskammern’s tact and delicacy of spirit that he would allow only French music to be played in his presence.)

When, later, our acquaintanceship had attained that stage of intimacy which permits personal comment, I ventured to point out that his servile flatterers had never known the
vital
Handelskammern and were concerned only with what the
official
Handelskammern had to offer. “Well, why not?” he said indulgently, meaning that a word from him and one’s books were printed, despite the paper shortage, in places like Bucharest, Sofia – places seen only in daydreams. I finished buttering his bread and cutting it into convenient bite-sized pieces without another word.

I knew about Handelskammern long before our now legendary meeting in the Flore. Every facet of that multitudinous personality had already been flashed before my eyes. I knew, for instance, that the gun he wore in a gleaming holster was in reality a toy for blowing soap bubbles (he was an avowed pacifist), and I see to this day those iridescent symbols of our hopes and dreams drifting, drifting. I knew his influence, and his power. I knew how a certain poet, novelist, and playwright, later, for a brief period of purgatory, a mere parenthesis, and also a salesman of dust mops, had broken down and wept unashamedly because, owing to shortages, his mother could not bake his usual lemon-flavored birthday cake; and I knew how Handelskammern with one quiet phone call had put things right, causing an exquisite lemon-flavored cake, with the requisite number of candles (forty-six, I believe), to be delivered to the poet’s door. “Well,” said Handelskammern, when I reminded him of this generous gesture, “culture somehow has got to be kept in the right place.”

I remember that I felt – raising my dazzled eyes from the now perfect sentence over which I had been torturing my young sensibility all morning – that I knew the man before me. But, of course, Handelskammern did not know
me
.

“Who is that?” I heard him ask.

“I don’t know,” a certain film director answered with some sullenness.

“Then find out,” said Handelskammern, removing the bubble pipe from its holster and placing it symbolically next to the gramophone, now playing a sublime tenor solo from Berlioz’s “The Trojans.”

“Charles Filandreux,” said another untalented hanger-on, with a meaningful smile in my direction.

Handelskammern told me, later, that he had simply been eager to read my manuscript, which was spread over three tables, but had been afraid of compromising me by approaching me while in uniform. With the discrimination and wisdom that no occupying officer, I think, has ever surpassed, he quietly removed his uniform, folded it neatly, sent for a waiter’s apron, and, thus anonymously attired, came over and introduced himself. The gramophone was playing the waltz from Gounod’s “Faust.”

Some of you, my readers, have, I suspect, suddenly fallen into the giddy melancholy of déjà vu. With a disabused
moue
, you are asking one another,
“What is Charles Filandreux talking about? Doesn’t Filandreux know that the Occupation Cultural Sweepstakes have been run for the year?” There were fewer entries than usual, and the field was light. Handelskammern, the favorite, probably overconfident, did a little dance at the starting post and dropped his memoirs. He was still picking the scattered pages out of the mud when Gerhard Heller, an outsider, romped home on “Un Allemand à Paris, 1940-44.” Handelskammern glanced up in time to see Heller wreathed with the garland of forget-me-nots which Handelskammern thought had been woven for
him
. Within the Occupation Cultural Sweepstakes Trophy was a copy of Heller’s own book, inscribed with eager affection by the leading critics of Paris. Upon the cover can be seen a photograph of the author, in an attractive uniform, taken when he was Special Leader of the Propaganda Staff in Paris and the
coqueluche
of the most prestigious literary salons.

Yes, but that was
this
year. Next year, and the year after that, and yet a year after, there are new Occupation races to be run. My review is ready. Actually, it is based on my own “Soap Bubbles of Cultural Exchange: Yesteryear at the Flore,” some copies of which are still available and can be obtained by writing to

and enclosing a postal order (
not
a check) for one hundred and eleven francs, a small booklet of stamps, and a clean book envelope.

SITTING NEXT TO THE DRIVER
, who was certainly his father, he saw the fine rain through the beam of the headlights, and the eyes of small animals at the edge of the road. They were driving from Shekomeko to Pulver’s Corners, taking the route of the school bus. He felt a slight bump, nothing more, and sprawled on his face in an open field. Somebody, running, kicked him in the back. “Run,” he heard a voice say. “Get up and run.” They turned him over. “Be careful of my back,” he said. “I’ve hurt my spine.”

He knew without opening his eyes that he had been brought to a farmhouse. “I’ve been hurt,” he tried to explain. They had placed him on a kitchen table, and now they stood round him and talked about him. They discussed his past, his character, and his destiny – and he powerless to reply! Then they all went out, and left him to die.

I must be careful, he said to himself. I don’t know who these people are, or what they intend to do. He knew they were on the other side of the door, whispering, listening, waiting for him to die. He opened his eyes and saw the reflection of an oil lamp on the ceiling. The lamp had been placed out of his reach, on the kitchen floor.

Without moving his head, he sensed the weight, or the presence, of a large piece of furniture, such as a Welsh dresser, somewhere behind. A window had been left open; he could smell the snow, and he was rigid with cold.

“You poor devil,” said the woman they had left in the room with him.

She got up from her chair and stood by the table. She bent over him; he could not see her face. “It’s a drink you want,” she said, “but I can’t give you anything to drink. I can just give you something to wet your lips. Wait.” She went outside to the yard and filled a cup with water at the pump. She poured the water from the cup onto his dry
lips, but the water splashed to one side. None of it got to his tongue.

“I was in England twenty years,” the woman said, close to his ear. “My husband was a schoolmaster. That is why my English is so fluent. They thought you would want to hear English when you came round.”

They had placed his hands across his breast in preparation for his death, with the fingers of his right hand curled slackly on a worn piece of wood. In the dark – she had turned the lamp down, or else he had closed his eyes – he explored it, barely moving the muscles of his hand. His thumb came to the end of the piece of wood and pressed in.

“You don’t need to ring for me,” said the woman. “I am here. I shall be here until morning.”

She was crouched on the floor, down beside the lamp. He knew she had his examination papers. He heard her rustling them, tearing them perhaps. He moved his jaw; his glued lips parted. His tongue was swollen and dry. He said, “What are you doing?,” but all he heard of his words was “Aaah.”

“You poor devil,” she said. “It’s a bad night for you. A week from now you won’t remember it.” She got to her feet, towered over him, and vanished. The room was rosy, then gray. The Welsh dresser dissolved. “Try to sleep,” said the woman’s voice, lingering after her person.

IN HIS SLEEP
they placed him upon a bed as hard to his back as the table had been. Someone at the foot of the bed asked him questions, tormenting him. He made no attempt to reply. He was troubled now only because he could not imagine his parents’ faces, or think of their name. The people at the foot of his bed knew everything, but they did not know the name of his parents, or how they could be reached. “Do you feel that?” they said to him, grasping both his feet. They had tied electric wires between his feet and his spine. He said, “Yes, I can feel it,” and they all went out once again and left him alone.

It occurred to him that he had been brought here for an important reason, dragged unwillingly, and had been injured when he fought. He spread his hands on his chest, and touched the turnback of the sheet, and then the blanket. He moved his hands slowly, exploring.

The first thing he must remember was the name of the language these people spoke. He understood everything that was said but had forgotten what the language was called. The room was white and too bright, and the brightness was part of his pain. He lay in pain, but presently he found small discomforts just as serious. He was thirsty. The blanket covering him was heavy and coarse. “Yes,” he heard in answer to something he must have said aloud, and a woman slipped her hand beneath his pillow and gradually lifted the pillow and his head. She pushed a glass tube between his lips and he drank orange juice and went to sleep. Waking, he tested his fingers, then his wrists. He tried to change the position of his legs but gave it up. He moved his hands cautiously and discovered the wooden bell. It had been pinned to the garment he wore. There was a safety pin around the wire. He ran his fingers along the pin and the wire, and then rang the bell. He dreamed for a time of swimming. He felt the bedclothes drawn away and his hand gently lifted from the bell. He had lost the sensation of swimming and all that accompanied it – youth and pleasure – yet an indifference to his fate and future made him joyous and pure, as a saint might feel. “I have no past and no memories,” he thought he said. “This is what it means to be free.” A light shone on his face; he addressed the darkness around him.

“Drink some water now,” she said. She laid the flashlight on the bed and brought the glass and tube toward him. He tried to lift his head.

ONE DAY A BLOND NURSE
of great beauty fed him little pieces of toast. The toast was slightly burned, and the texture of the butter disgusted him. He swallowed one bit, was revolted with the next, and spat it out. This girl, whose face floated above him, was of mythical beauty. Her hair was silk and her eyes sea blue. He wanted to see her clearly, but there was a veil. The aura of her own goodness blurred her features. He had never seen the physical evidence of goodness until now, but then he had never in his life been treated so kindly. Meanwhile, the goddess was putting yet a third piece of toast into his mouth. He swallowed it so as to make her pleased with him, and suddenly began to weep; and the goddess, on whom he now depended for everything, was obliged to wipe his tears.

THEY WERE SPEAKING FRENCH
. He understood everything they said, but had not been able to give the language a name. His language was English, which he had not forgotten – neither the name nor how to speak it. The people with secrets to keep, such as the little girls who swept the floor and were scolded by the nurses, talked in a dialect he could not follow, but he knew it was a dialect, and was not troubled as he would have been if it were something he ought to remember. It seemed to him that all anxieties and decisions concerning himself had passed into other hands. This lassitude, this trust, was a development of the vision he had been granted with the veiled goddess who fed him toast. He willed peace, harmony, and happiness to flow around his bed. He succeeded, and he understood how simple everything was going to be now. He smiled.

“That’s a good sign,” said the dark nurse. “Smiling is the best sign. We are bringing your telephone back today. We took it out so the ringing wouldn’t disturb you. And look!” She whipped out her hand and held an envelope to his face. The handwriting said something to him, but his feeling was of apprehension, as if the letter had come too soon, and made too great a claim. He lifted his hand and took the letter. He had a wired arm attached to a wired spine. He was unable to read his own name. “There’s too much light in this room,” he said.