From the Fifteenth District (24 page)

“We know all that,” Gabriel interrupted. “Who’s there at the end?”

The aristo, said Dieter. The aristo and the aged rabbi will survive twelve episodes and make their way together back to
Paris for the Liberation. There they will discover Dieter and his men holed up in the Palais du Luxembourg, standing fast against the local Resistance and a few policemen. The rabbi will die next to the Medici fountain, in the arms of the aristo.

Gabriel thought this did not bode well for the future, but Dieter reassured him: the aristo will now be a changed man. He will storm the Palais and be seen at the end writing “
MY FRIENDS REMEMBERED
” on the wall while Dieter and the others file by with their hands up.

“What about the one anything?” said Gabriel. “How long does he last?”

“Dear friend and old comrade,” said Dieter, “don’t take offense at this. Ten years ago you would have been the first man chosen. But now you are at the wrong age. Who cares what happens to a man of forty-three? You aren’t old enough or young enough to make anyone cry. The fact is – forgive me for saying so – but you are the wrong age to play a Jew. A uniform has no age,” he added, because he was also forty-three. “And no one is expected to cry at the end, but just to be thoughtful and satisfied.”

While Gabriel sat mulling this over, Dieter told him about the helmets the Germans were going to wear. Some were heavy metal, museum pieces; they gave their wearers headaches and left red marks on the brow. A certain number of light plastic helmets would be distributed, but only to officers. The higher one’s rank, the lighter the helmet. What Dieter was getting around to was this: he wondered if Gabriel might not care to bridge this stage of his Occupation career by becoming a surrendering officer, seen in the last episode instead of vanishing after the first. He would be a colonel in the Wehrmacht (humane, idealistic, opposed to extreme measures)
while Dieter would have to be the S.S. one (not so good). He and Dieter would both have weightless helmets and comfortable, well-cut uniforms.

Gabriel supposed that Dieter was right, in a way. Certainly, he was at a bad age for dangerous antics. It was time for younger men to take their turn at jumping off moving vehicles, diving into ice-cold streams, and dodging blank shot; nor had he reached that time of life when he could die blessing and inspiring those the script had chosen to survive him. As an officer, doomed to defeat, he would at least be sure of his rank and his role and of being in one piece at the end.

Two weeks later Dieter announced to the old-timers that the whole first scene had been changed; there would now be a mass escape from a convoy of lorries, with dozens of men gunned down on the spot. The original cast was reduced, with the Protestant, the Communist, and the miner eliminated completely. This new position caused some argument and recrimination, in which Gabriel did not take part. All he had to wait for now was the right helmet and good weather.

The usual working delays occurred, so that it was not until May that the last of the Baums tried on his new uniform. Dieter adjusted the shoulders of the tunic and set the plastic helmet at a jaunty angle. Gabriel looked at himself. He removed the helmet and put it back on straight. Dieter spoke encouragingly; he seemed to think that Gabriel was troubled about seeming too stout, too bald, too old for his rank.

“There is nothing like a uniform for revealing a man’s real age to him,” said Dieter. “But from a distance everyone in uniform looks the same.”

Gabriel in his new uniform seemed not just to be looking at himself in a glass but actually to be walking through it. He
moved through a liquid mirror, back and forth. With each crossing his breath came a little shorter.

Dieter said generously, “A lot of soldiers went bald prematurely because the helmets rubbed their hair.”

The surrender was again delayed, this time on account of bad weather. One sodden afternoon, after hanging about in the Luxembourg Gardens for hours, Dieter and Gabriel borrowed capes from a couple of actors who were playing policemen and, their uniforms concealed, went to a post office so that Dieter could make a phone call. His cousin, Helga, destined by both their families to be his bride, had waited a long time; just when it was beginning to look as if she had waited too long for anything, a widower proposed. She was being married the next day. Dieter had to call and explain why he could not be at the wedding; he was held up waiting for the surrender.

Helga talked to Dieter without drawing breath. He listened for a while then handed the receiver to Gabriel. Helga continued telling Dieter, or Gabriel, that her husband-to-be had a grandchild who could play the accordion. The child was to perform at the wedding party. The accordion was almost as large as the little girl, and twice as heavy.

“You ought to see her fingers on the keyboard,” Helga yelled. “They fly – fast, fast.”

Gabriel gave the telephone to Dieter, who assumed a look of blank concentration. When he had heard enough he beckoned to Gabriel. Gabriel pressed the receiver to his ear and learned that Helga was worried. She had dreamed that she was married and that her husband would not make room for her in his apartment. When she wanted to try the washing machine, he was already washing his own clothes. “What do you think of the dream?” she said to Gabriel. “Can you hear
me? I still love you.” Gabriel placed the receiver softly on a shelf under the telephone and waved Dieter in so that he could say goodbye.

They came out of the post office to a drenching rain. Dieter wondered what shape their uniforms would be in by the time they surrendered. Gabriel argued that after the siege of the Palais du Luxembourg the original uniforms must have shown wear. Dieter answered that it was not up to him or Gabriel to decide such things.

R
ain fell for another fortnight, but, at last, on a cool shining June day, they were able to surrender. During one of the long periods of inextricable confusion, Dieter and Gabriel walked as far as the Delacroix monument and sat on its rim. Dieter was disappointed in his men. There were no real Germans among them, but Yugoslavs, Turks, North Africans, Portuguese, and some unemployed French. The Resistance forces were not much better, he said. There had been complaints. Gabriel had to agree that they were a bedraggled-looking lot. Dieter recalled how in the sixties there used to be real Frenchmen, real Germans, authentic Jews. The Jews had played deportation the way they had seen it in films, and the Germans had surrendered according to film tradition, too, but there had been this difference: They had at least been doing something their parents had done before them. They had not only the folklore of movies to guide them but – in many cases – first-hand accounts. Now, even if one could assemble a true cast of players, they would be trying to imitate their grandfathers. They were at one remove too many. There was no assurance that a real German, a real Frenchman would be any more plausible now than a Turk.

Dieter sighed, and glanced up at the houses on the other side of the street edging the park. “It wouldn’t be bad to live up there,” he said. “At the top, with one of those long terraces. They grow real trees on them – poplars, birches.”

“What would it cost?”

“Around a hundred and fifty million francs,” said Dieter. “Without the furniture.”

“Anyone can have a place like that with money,” said Gabriel. “The interesting thing would be to live up there without it.”

“How?”

Gabriel took off his helmet and looked deeply inside it. He said, “I don’t know.”

Dieter showed him the snapshots of his cousin’s wedding. Helga and the groom wore rimless spectacles. In one picture they cut a cake together; in another they tried to drink out of the same champagne glass. Eyeglasses very like theirs, reduced in size, were worn by a plain little girl. On her head was a wreath of daisies. She was dressed in a long, stiff yellow gown. Gabriel could see just the hem of the dress and the small shoes, and her bashful anxious face and slightly crossed eyes. Her wrists were encircled by daisies, too. Most of her person was behind an accordion. The accordion seemed to be falling apart; she had all she could do to keep it together.

“My cousin’s husband’s granddaughter,” said Dieter. He read Helga’s letter: “ ‘She can play anything – fast, fast. Her fingers simply fly over the keyboard.’ ”

Gabriel examined every detail of the picture. The child was dazzled and alarmed, and the accordion was far too heavy. “What is her name?” he said.

Dieter read more of the letter and said, “Erna.”

“Erna,” Colonel Baum repeated. He looked again at the
button of a face, the flower bracelets, the feet with the heels together – they must have told her to stand that way. He gave the snapshot back without saying anything.

A crowd had collected in the meantime, drawn by the lights and the equipment and the sight of the soldiers in German uniform. Some asked if they might be photographed with them; this often happened when a film of that kind was made in the streets.

An elderly couple edged up to the two officers. The woman said, in German, in a low voice, “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting to surrender,” said Dieter.

“I can see that, but what are you
doing?
”

“I don’t know,” said Dieter. “I’ve been sitting on the edge of this monument for thirty-five years. I’m still waiting for orders.”

The man tried to give them cigarettes, but neither colonel smoked. The couple took pictures of each other standing between Dieter and Gabriel, and went away.

Why is it, said Gabriel to himself, that when I was playing a wretched, desperate victim no one ever asked to have his picture taken with me? The question troubled him, seeming to proceed from the younger Gabriel, who had been absent for some time now. He hoped his unruly tenant was not on his way back, screaming for a child’s version of justice, for an impossible world.

Some of the men put their helmets upside-down on the ground and tried to make the visitors pay for taking their pictures. Dieter was disturbed by this. “Of course, you were a real soldier,” he said to Gabriel unhappily. “All this must seem inferior.” They sat without saying anything for a time and then Dieter began to talk about ecology. Because of ecology, there
was a demand in Bavaria for fresh bread made of authentic flour, salt, water, and yeast. Because of unemployment, there were people willing to return to the old, forgotten trades, at which one earned practically nothing and had to work all night. The fact was that he had finally saved up enough money and had bought a bakery in his native town. He was through with the war, the Occupation, the Liberation, and captivity. He was going home.

This caused the most extraordinary view in Gabriel’s view of the park. All the greens in it became one dull color, as if thunderous clouds had gathered low in the sky.

“You will always be welcome,” said Dieter. “Your room will be ready, a bed made up, flowers in a vase. I intend to marry someone in the village – someone young.”

Gabriel said, “If you have four or five children, how can you keep a spare room?”

Still, it was an attractive thought. The greens emerged again, fresh and bright. He saw the room that could be his. Imagine being wakened in a clean room by birds singing and the smell of freshly baked bread. Flowers in a vase – Gabriel hardly knew one from the other, only the caged flowers of parks. He saw, in a linen press, sheets strewn with lavender. His clothes hung up or folded. His breakfast on a white table-cloth, under a lime tree. A basket of warm bread, another of boiled eggs. Dieter’s wife putting her hand on the white coffee pot to see if it was still hot enough for Gabriel. A jug of milk, another of cream. Dieter’s obedient children drinking from mugs, their chins on the rim of the table. Yes, and the younger Gabriel, revived and outraged and jealous, thrashing around in his heart, saying, “Think about empty rooms, letters left behind, cold railway stations washed down with disinfectant,
dark glaciers of time.” And, then, Gabriel knew nothing about the country. He could not see himself actually
in
it. He had never been to the country except to jump out of trains. It was only in films that he had seen mist lifting or paths lost in ferns.

They surrendered all the rest of the afternoon. The aristo wrote “
MY FRIENDS REMEMBERED
” on the wall while Dieter and Gabriel led some Turks and Yugoslavs and some unemployed Frenchmen into captivity. The aristo did not even bother to turn around and look. Gabriel was breathing at a good rhythm – not too shallow, not too fast. An infinity of surrenders had preceded this one, in color and in black-and-white, with music and without. A long trail of application forms and employment questionnaires had led Gabriel here: “Baum, Gabriel, b. 1935, Germany, nat. French, mil. serv. obl. fulf.” (Actually, for some years now his date of birth had rendered the assurance about military service unnecessary.) Country words ran meanwhile in Gabriel’s head. He thought, Dense thickets, lizards and snakes, a thrush’s egg, a bee, lichen, wild berries, dark thorny leaves, pale mushrooms. Each word carried its own fragrance.

At the end of the day Dieter’s face was white and tired and perfectly blank. He might have been listening to Helga. The aristo came over, smoking a cigarette. About twenty-three years before this, he and Gabriel had performed before a jury in a one-act play of Jules Renard’s. The aristo had received an honorable mention, Gabriel a first. The aristo hadn’t recognized Gabriel until now because of the uniform. He said, “What’s the matter with him?”

Dieter sat slumped in an iron chair belonging to the park administration, staring at his boots. He jerked his head up and looked around, crying, “Why? Where?” and something else Gabriel didn’t catch.

Gabriel hoped Dieter was not going to snap now, with the bakery and the flowers and the children in sight. “Well, well, old friend!” said Dieter, clutching Gabriel and trying to get to his feet. “Save your strength! Don’t take things to heart! You’ll dance at my wedding!”

“Exhaustion,” said the aristo.

Gabriel and Dieter slowly made their way to the street, where Volkswagen buses full of actors were waiting. The actors made signs meaning to tell them to hurry up; they were all tired and impatient and anxious to change into their own clothes and get home. Dieter leaned on his old friend. Every few steps he stopped to talk excitedly, as people put to a great strain will do, all in a rush, like the long babbling of dreams.