Dark Palace (49 page)

Avenol kept her about him, talking to her more, at times talking to himself in her presence, but wanting her to be there nonetheless.

To be around him.

There were moments when she told herself to be cautious, thinking with suspicion, ‘He actually wants me to report back all he is saying—he knows I'm a traitor in this office and is now using me against the conspirators.'

She thought him cunning enough to do this.

But she relaxed from this suspicious position, deciding that his tone and manner were too naturally like that of a Secretary-General with his female personal aide.

That tone and manner invited certain things from her—comfort and support—and she felt inclined to respond. For all his difficulties of demeanour, or because of them, she was warming to him.

She moved into subaltern positions too well, too snugly.

And so, as Edith sat there in the dim office, waiting for him to find his words during dictation, she was astounded at times to feel this snugness through her body. As she looked at this French man with all his power and trappings, regardless of the future outcome for her and for them both—for all of them in
the League—regardless of the appropriateness of this to her career, to her age, to her relationship with Ambrose—she felt through her body the glimmering possibility of a surrender of herself to this Secretary-General, to the power of his office.

The daily exchanges between them, the cups of coffee and biscuits, the occasional glass of port at the end of a day of long hours, the special tensions which they were sharing, the unusual hours which they spent together, all of it was entwining her spiritually with him.

When he would lock the office door behind them for security or reasons of privacy and they would be alone inside the locked room, her spirit would begin to melt towards him, giving up all resistance to him. It was a state which she hoped remained unknown to him.

However, however, however—whatever her body told her, in her mind she knew that it was not within the scheme of human alliances and the tempo of the times for her to allow this ever to happen.

What she felt was just a very distant bodily glimmering and to give in to it would be a debasement with untold consequences.

Even if she were now too senior—say it, Edith, yes, too old—to adopt that subaltern relationship there was, she saw, another, older version of that subaltern love.

Where two were equal in the importance of their talents and acumen but where those talents and acumen were not identical and where, in this twosome, one was required professionally to subordinate for reasons of appointment or temperament or sex, there was for her as a woman, a dreadful pull towards surrender.

And so it had been with Bartou—daily she had silently offered herself to him, knowing that it would not happen but still, regardless, making the silent offering. And he had probably used his discipline of self to hold her at proper distance until he had, in the last year or so, grown old and ailing, had
weakened, and she had become his guardian. He had become dependent on her opinions, unable himself to lead or contribute. And the risk of any physical surrender had passed and the silent offering had ceased.

In New York with Gerig and Sweetser, she'd tasted a new experience—the wielding of power, which showed her that she had the inherent will and confidence to take the position of power. Did it follow that if she ever took power, would she then have offered to her this special—limitless?—devotion from a subordinate?

Frances, her stenographer in New York, drifted across her mind as someone who might have developed into a devoted assistant, if time had permitted.

With Avenol she'd partly gone back in time to feeling younger because of the false reduction of her status and the devotion was there as well—sometimes during the day or in bed at night, she almost ached to be able to perform, totally, all that devotion could be asked.

But Avenol, too, would never ask more than he was at present taking.

And, for the good of her soul, she was glad of that.

Those in the conspiracy were having difficulty in finding a way to act.

Aghnides believed that Geneva could be the rallying point for Europe and the whole world against the Nazis.

He saw a role for the League as a global moral spokesman.

She was unconvinced.

She did however want to stand up to the Nazis somehow. Other than running up a silly flag.

She held to the position that for the League to flee was to invite all to run.

‘Surely, though, you only stand where you can fight?' Bartou asked.

‘Can't we fight here? Not militarily but, well, morally, diplomatically?'

‘By being taken prisoner?!'

‘By being here and yes, even by being taken prisoner. The Nazis may be uncertain of how to act towards us. And we would be a very special kind of prisoner and would be diplomatically—a symbol,' she said.

She felt she was now required to buck them up. She had to buck up Avenol during the day and then turn her hand to keeping up the spirits of her co-conspirators, Bartou especially.

‘The Germans have shown precious little uncertainty.'

‘When the idea of leaving Geneva comes up, Avenol has fallen back on the legality of Article VII which says that the seat of the League shall be Geneva until Council decides otherwise,' she said.

‘If there is ever going to be another Council meeting,' Aghnides said.

‘The Supervisory Commission is supposed to take control. But even they can't get together now. It's physically impossible to hold a meeting. In reality, Avenol has all power. There is no controlling instrument any longer. He is virtual dictator of the League,' Edith pointed out.

‘I would think though that we must keep the nucleus of the League functioning—here where we are, in the midst of it—and perhaps initiate a cease-fire. Or negotiate the peace settlement,' Lester said.

Having removed his family, Lester was now prepared to stay and fight.

He had risen to the challenge.

June 1940

Edith had never seen such an agonised identification between the very being of a human and the nation state as she saw in Avenol on the day that Paris fell to the Germans.

He wept openly in his office.

He could not control his demeanour nor find coherence of speech before his staff.

He was a man broken apart.

Edith suggested to him that they both stay by the wireless in his office and suspend meetings and clerical work of any consequence and he agreed.

Some of the French staff were permitted to use the office telephones to seek news of relatives, and anyone who wished was allowed to gather in the Library to listen to the broadcasts.

There in the office alone with Avenol, she poured him a cognac but did not pour one for herself.

The office was dim. He had taken to closing the curtains which she usually opened in the morning. It was as if he were hiding.

She wondered how Jeanne was faring. She wanted to call her but felt she should not do it right then.

He chose to sit on his settee and she sat in his comfortable Leleu armchair, a seating arrangement which normally would be reversed, but he was in that condition where he was unaware of where he sat, alternately needing to stand and walk about and then to sit.

They listened to the news coming in over the French radio broadcast spoken by the announcer in a voice artificially raised to an urgent pitch by patriotism.

It became clear by Avenol's attempts to ring out that although the lines were down here and there and overloaded, they were not totally disrupted, and telephone calls came to him from his friends and relatives in Paris. Avenol spoke in short urgent sentences as if time on the 'phone line was precious.

A friend of Avenol in the French government called in and said that the government had fled to Bordeaux.

He called Vera a number of times, talking in a personal code to her which Edith was able to decipher as being about arrangements to flee and about money matters.

When the telephone bell rang she would answer and announce the caller and he would come to the desk to take the message or not as he chose.

They heard on the wireless that Churchill had offered amalgamation of Britain and France—had offered common citizenship in an effort to bolster morale. The French would be English and the English would be French.

Avenol was on the telephone again to someone in Paris. ‘The army has almost collapsed,' he called to her, relaying the information he was receiving.

He continued to relay to her the news from Paris over his shoulder. ‘The roads are jammed with refugees from Belgium and the north, wounded soldiers are mingled in with them—officers' cars are forcing their way through those fleeing, for the sake of Jesus!—cannons have been left by the roadside, motorcycles smashed and abandoned … Is the army running? Some parts? Mother of God.'

Yet French radio was still talking of a counterattack. The solemn, patriotic voice of the announcer said, ‘The Germans have not yet stood the final test. We are the old opponent of the Marne, the old opponent of Verdun. General Weygand brings back to us the genius of Foch.'

The famous fort at Verdun had fallen days earlier.

The Germans had bypassed the Maginot line which was still fully manned, the troops on the line now cut off.

Only the young cadets at the Cavalry School at Saumur still held out.

‘The cadets of Saumur hold out!' he said, tears in his eyes. Edith also cried as she saw in her mind the boys fighting with their training guns, rallying to the Tricolour.

At other times, Avenol was oblivious of her presence in his office, sometimes speaking to himself, declaiming and gesturing, and then at other times staring at her in bewilderment at the situation, as if, perhaps, he expected her to take some action, to suggest a policy.

She worked to control her weeping and found herself coolly observant, as she sat watching him swing between crying and anger.

The telephone calls then stopped.

The announcer said that German units were on the outskirts of Paris and that resistance had collapsed.

The wireless began to play sombre music. Avenol finally brought his agitation under control and seated himself at his desk, and arranged some papers which were on the desk.

‘The British stink in the nostrils of the world,' he said. ‘They abandoned France at Dunkirk.'

He requested that she bring Aghnides to his office, but not Lester.

She went to Aghnides' office and found him grim-faced, listening to the wireless.

‘Avenol wants you.'

‘How is he?'

‘He was distraught. He's now in a rage.'

They said little else as they walked back to Avenol's office.

She poured Aghnides a cognac.

When the two men were seated, she did not ask for permission to stay, but simply sat herself on the settee.

‘That's it. It is done,' Avenol said to Aghnides.

‘What is done, Joseph?' said Aghnides.

‘That which England has for three hundred years prevented France from achieving—leadership on the continent of Europe—Hitler has now achieved.'

‘All is not over,' Aghnides said feebly and then found his stronger, official Under Secretary's voice. ‘The fall of Paris is not only a French disaster,' he said, ‘the fall of Paris is a disaster for civilisation. I heard today from Athens by long-distance telephone that people there are weeping in the streets for the fall of Paris. But the war is not finished.'

The office sat in silence, Avenol staring at the wireless which was calling for calm and continuing to play sombre music.

To relieve the silence, Aghnides went on to say that people were crying in the corridors of the Palais—all nationalities were weeping. They were weeping in the streets and stores of Geneva. ‘For all people, Paris is the capital of the civilised world.'

‘The crying matters for nothing. The war is finished, Thanassis,' Avenol said, banging the table.

He kept banging the table with his hand but without much force.

Edith's heart went out to him and she felt she should go over and calm him. She had a flash of Sir Eric and his despair at the time of his first great defeat as Secretary-General when, on the first try, the Assembly had failed to admit Germany back in '26.

She had shaved Sir Eric in the office as a way of calming him and giving him back his self-control. She wouldn't be shaving Avenol.

‘England will last fifteen days and then the war will be finished. Italy will simply pick up the spoils. She will destroy us from the south.'

She wondered how he'd arrived at the figure fifteen.

‘Perhaps,' said Aghnides, ‘but then there is the United States.'

‘The United States stays clear of danger. Roosevelt has declared that the United States will never enter the war. Their Congress will never enter the war.'

‘And there is Russia,' Aghnides said, desperation slipping back into his voice.

Avenol looked at him with disgust. ‘The Russo-German Non-aggression Pact took care of Russia. You know that. The war is finished. Accept it.'

She could only watch the force of what Avenol said crash against the feeble counter-arguments put up by Aghnides. And against her own speechless spirit. Her heart was beating and the voice in her head kept saying, ‘Remain calm, be calm.'

She realised that with France gone and with Italy in the war on Germany's side, neutral Switzerland was now isolated and surrounded.

‘The Russians may break the Pact,' Aghnides said.

Even she didn't believe that.

Avenol didn't bother to reply.

‘The Americans will be in for the spoils,' Avenol said. ‘And the Russians. Or perhaps the Americans will join with the Germans against Russia? Who knows? That is what will happen, you'll see—the Americans will now come in with the Germans and attack Russia.'

She and Aghnides stared at him, the ooze of his defeat seeping over them. It seemed there in that dim office that Avenol was perhaps tragically right.

Now and then there would be a government announcement on the wireless. Sometimes a message to mayors,
sometimes to army units, sometimes to the people at large. At the sound of an official announcement, they would cease talking and listen; the music and the announcements were the sounds of a collapsing army and behind that, a collapsing nation.

A cable was brought in to the office by messenger. It was from Arthur Sweetser in Washington.

He looked at the cable. ‘Sweetser …' Avenol made a dismissive noise. ‘The Americans …'

He held it out to Edith and asked her to read it out.

She tried to stop her voice breaking as she read the message from dear old Arthur, which she knew was in part addressed to her, or at least to the true blue League group. ‘I cannot let this day pass without just this briefest word about the tragedy facing Paris. American opinion is more deeply stirred than I have ever known it, for America is also frightened. People are living by the radio, praying for time. Armed we now certainly shall be …'

She tried to hide her emotion by saying, ‘At least the Trans-Atlantic cable line to America is still open.'

Avenol left his desk and paced about the room. ‘Sweetser always sees hope,' Avenol said, although he too was trying to hide his emotions. ‘He is the travelling salesman of hope. Safe and sound in the States. I think I will also go to the United States. I think I have a role there.'

She and Aghnides glanced at each other with puzzlement.

Did Avenol see himself fleeing to America?

Avenol railed on, his mathematical mind now organising the news. ‘The Germans have destroyed two great European armies. Gobbled up four smaller armies, and inflicted an immense loss on the English army. Four empires have dissolved overnight—the Belgian, the French, the Dutch and the British. The French and British together controlled over half the landmass of the world. All lost. We wouldn't let Germany have back one colony after the last war. Not one colony. Now they have every reason to punish us.'

The British Empire is not lost, Edith said silently. They were still there and they would fight.

Or would the collapse of Britain mean that the Empire too was out of the war?

She had never contemplated such a thing.

She felt that she might now be witnessing the character of Avenol which had, in part, been concealed, but which her fellow conspirators had suspected. She thought he would now show his true colours.

Or maybe he would rally?

‘Hitler did it in twelve weeks. Twelve weeks. And it is over. Germany has won,' Avenol said, looking to her as if again remembering her presence, as if anticipating opposition, or looking to her for something else … feminine solace? Her affirmation?

She offered no reaction.

Aghnides said in a desperate, tired and discouraged voice, ‘We have a word in Greek—that word is
hubris
.'

Avenol did not look at him, but shrugged to show he knew the word.

‘It means that those who grow mighty with pride and power the gods will strike down. One day Hitler will be struck down.'

‘How?!' Avenol shouted. ‘How?!' The tone of his question said that he would not believe any reply which challenged this.

‘I do not know how. I know it's in the nature of things that he must eventually fall.'

‘In two hundred years?!' said Avenol. ‘A moment in history has occurred. The democracies have failed. Their role in history is finished. Even if the English hold out they will still have lost the war.'

She found no comfort in Aghnides' hopeless words.

Avenol's pacing seemed to change. He was almost marching about the office. ‘A new order of things is appearing. I
feel it. I sense it. History as we knew it is finished. Something very serious has changed in the nature of things.'

She felt that she was watching a man crossing a line in his mind, finding his way to a massive leap.

He paused, staring out the window as if staring across Europe. ‘It is, perhaps, time that we began to think in a new way. To see how it is that we should now bring ourselves to the service of a new world. A world reorganised on new foundations.'

She listened with cold clarity to Avenol's words.

She was strangely relieved to hear them. They freed her, at last, from any bond she had formed with him. At last, she could be a true enemy. At last, the point of the watchdog group was confirmed. Avenol had in half an hour gone from a state of collapse to an obsessive surrender, and then to seeing himself allied with the victor.

He was finding himself a role in Hitler's New Order.

‘Hitler will fail,' Aghnides said again, and again it lacked conviction.

Avenol paid no heed to this reply but went over to Aghnides and put a hand on his shoulder, saying, ‘My dear Thanassis, it is all over. Our duty now is to work to achieve unity in Europe. The people will want order now. We must help bring order. England is finished on the Continent. The British officials must now leave the Secretariat. I believe in following the direction of history's arrow.'

Again, Edith felt a surge of release from anything to do with Avenol.

She only needed the word and she would join any rebellion against him. She herself would strike him down.

‘Surely you will keep McKinnon-Wood on as legal counsellor?' she said, unable to remain silent, freed from any sense of her proper place. McKinnon-Wood was the legal conscience of the League.

‘No.'

‘You can't just single the British out and send them away,' Aghnides said.

Avenol smiled, a smile without pleasure or humanity. ‘I won't have to send them away. They will go, you watch—they will run like rabbits.'

Aghnides shook his head.

‘Charron would make a good treasurer,' Avenol said, his mind now reshuffling the staff to meet the new situation. ‘You know, Hitler is not really against the League. He admired our work in the Saar.'