On Leave (20 page)

Lasteyrie came to fetch her.

“Come on, gorgeous,” he said, and took her hand.

“What about the photos?” she said. “I won't have any souvenirs. There won't be anything. Nobody will have anything.”

“She's right,” Lachaume said. “We can't leave just like that. That would be too easy. On the whistle, train … go! With us inside…”

He squinted at the city.

“What are we going to do? Three guys with a bit of spunk can do a lot of damage to a town…”

“Yeah, we could break some windows,” Lasteyrie said. “And then pay for the broken glass.”

“Just let them try to charge us!” Valette said. He'd been lolling around a little way off. “I ain't paying for nothing, not anymore. Never again!”

“What are we going to do?” Lachaume kept saying, clenching his fists. “Lasteyrie, you're the Parisian, so you should know. What do you think your bloody town looks like?”

In a bar that had just closed a waiter stood behind his counter making little piles of the small change he got in tips.

Assuming the troopers wanted a drink, he shooed them away.

“What are we going to do?” Lachaume said again. “You're the one from Paris. Tell us where to hit it. Where it would hurt the most.”

“Don't waste your energy,” Lasteyrie said. “Paris is armor-plated.”

“There are three of us,” Lachaume said. “I'm telling you, we can smash something.”

“If every man jack who didn't like the idea of going off to war had managed to take something down, there wouldn't be a stone left standing in the whole city,” Lasteyrie said.

“If they had the heart to join forces,” Valette said, “then something could be done. They took down the Bastille once upon a time.”

“Well, we did demolish the fairground at Luna Park,” Lasteyrie said.

They reached the banks of the Seine. Their hair and faces were wet with drizzle. At the Pont d'Arcole there was a set of steep steps leading down to the lapping water that glinted in a small arc from the light of a streetlamp.

“Let's go down there,” Lachaume said, and he started on the stairs, wobbling badly. “Lena…”

“No,” she said. “Come back up. It's raining.”

He sat down on a step and put his head in his hands.

“So what are we going to do?” he mumbled.

The town hall clock struck half-past-eleven.

“Are we really going to go just like that? Just like that?”

“And the photos?” Lena said. “No souvenirs. Nothing.”

Their eyes turned to Lasteyrie, who was cuddling the parapet affectionately, with his cheek lying on top of it.

“Forward march,” he said in a drawl.

He slowly pulled himself upright, stroking the stonework tenderly, and led them along Quai des Célestins toward the railroad station, where the train was due to leave in three-quarters of an hour.

He hesitated at the Pont de Sully, looked toward the Ile Saint-Louis, and then made them all cross the river. The tip of the island is a public garden that is closed at night. He stopped at the low railing, then wiped his rain-soaked face on his sleeve.

“Let's give them a surprise,” he said slowly. He nodded toward the quais on the two sides of the river, shimmering in lights and overrun by cars.

“Like your Duchess Thingummy,” he said, with his hand on Lachaume's shoulder, lowering his head as if he was trying to stifle a giggle. “Just like your duchess!”

Then he clambered over the railing, despite Lena's objections. In the middle of the garden there was a peculiar monument.

What looked like two naked savages sitting on a defeated animal watched over each side of an empty plinth. A naked child stood behind each of the savages.

Using the children's heads as a handhold, Lasteyrie climbed onto the lap of one of the savages, then onto his shoulders. He grasped the bronze laurel wreath at the bottom of the plinth, then climbed onto the head of one of the children, and from there he put his foot on the bronze wreath, and gripping the ledge with his hands, he hauled himself to the top of the plinth. The Germans must have removed the statue that used to be there to melt it down during the last war. That was presumably why it was empty.

He stood on the plinth with his legs apart, took his comb case out of his pocket, then his comb out of its case, and carefully did his hair in the light of a streetlamp, with the rain for hair cream.

“Come up,” he said eventually. “We'll raise our own statue.”

Valette, already perched on the shoulders of a savage, pulled himself up to the plinth and sat on the edge with his legs hanging over the side. He put his head in his hands. You couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying. Nor could he.

Lachaume had got his shoe stuck in the gaping maw of one of the animals, but Lena, who'd stayed on the right side of the railings because she was afraid of the police, refused to come and help him out.

“Get down,” she pleaded. “You shouldn't damage statues.”

“That's true,” Lasteyrie said. “We shouldn't damage our very own comrades and friends … Next time we'll get ourselves transferred to the Louvre.”

“Or over there,” Valette said, pointing to the dark outline of a large building on the Left Bank, in the Jardin des Plantes. “Being a stuffed animal in the Natural History Museum would be a cinch.”

Lachaume had finally got his foot out of the animal's mouth and was now taking a breather on the shoulders of one of the natives.

“Who is this naked gentleman?” he asked.

“A pacified Zulu,” Valette said.

Lachaume was pulled up onto the plinth.

“You,” Lasteyrie said, “you're standing with your hand over your eyes, like you were scanning the horizon…”

Lachaume didn't move.

“Like this,” Lasteyrie said, shading his eyes with his hand.

“What am I scanning?” Lachaume asked eventually, but angrily.

“You're on the lookout for something,” Lasteyrie said. “It's better than doing nothing, it passes the time … And you, old pal,” he said to Valette, “you're on your knees, hands crossed on your chest, like you've been injured. That's the least that can happen to a guy with his heart in his hand…”

Lachaume looked toward the lights of Paris twinkling through the bare branches of the acacia trees and put his hand to his brow; Valette knelt in front of him with hands crossed over his heart, as if he was about to declare his love in a comic opera, and Lasteyrie laughed.

“As for meself…” He cleared his throat. “As for me … if you permit, I shall lay myself down at your feet…”

“At our feet?” Valette queried.

“Yes, old mate, like I was dead.”

So he lay down full length in front of his comrades. The rain got heavier and made their faces wet.

“They'll go berserk when they see our monument,” he said.

“Get down,” Lena begged from the other side of the railing. “Get off there!”

“Never!” Lasteyrie said. “We're here forever … Lena, take a picture of us!”

“Ach! Robert, that's impossible…”

“Lena, I said take a picture!”

Suddenly yielding to weariness and indifference, as if she had always been obliged to put up with despair and the absurd, Lena silently took her camera out of its case, removed the lens cover, pulled back the viewfinder, and pointed it at the monument. She could see a black rectangle; with a bit of goodwill, you could make out a vague smudge in the middle.

“That must be it,” she muttered, and clicked the button.

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Army trains leave late at night, after the last civilian service. Paris keeps them hidden.

Gare de Lyon was bustling with clean-shaven soldiers looking either too pale or too ruddy, talking to each other without eye contact, cracking jokes without smiling, and watched over by military policemen patrolling with fixed bayonets. There was hardly a civilian to be seen. Fathers, mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends hadn't come to see off their sons, brothers, husbands, and boyfriends. Because it was late, because the last metro had gone, because they had to get up for work in the morning. And then those involved just hated waving handkerchiefs. If the trains had to go, then at least they could be spared the sight of resignation. There's not enough difference between a handkerchief waving and the stationmaster's flag …

The first person Valette saw as he went into the station hall was his father, despite his standing at the side, with the khaki kit bags over his shoulder. Valette, in a sodden cape and with a rain-soaked face, went up to him timidly.

“Dad! You shouldn't have come,” he said sullenly. “Look, nobody comes. You're the only one…”

He took his kit bags and put his arm around his father. Then Lachaume came up and shook the old man's hand. Then Valette introduced Lasteyrie and Lena to M. Valette, who looked them up and down with his fuzzy eyes. There was a long pause, though there were only five or six minutes left.

“Dad, about this evening…” Jean Valette finally muttered. “About this evening…” His voice was breaking.

Lachaume, Lasteyrie, and Lena had moved away. M. Valette said nothing and nodded his head, his impenetrable gaze masked by thick spectacles. The only expression on his face was the redness of his cheekbones. At any rate, that's all that the others could see. But Jean Valette was upset.

Whistles were blowing, men were shouting.

They went onto the platform. The military policemen with their bayonets at the ready got on board. Officers hurried up and down the platform alongside the train with railway inspectors.

“Listen, lad,” M. Valette said in a muffled voice. “We'll get something going, just you wait…”

Lasteyrie had taken Lena off to the side.

“Don't scream,” he said. “And take this…”

He had a clutch of assorted banknotes in his hand.

“Take these,” he said. “To bet on the horses.”

“No.”

He raised his eyes to the heavens.

“I'm telling you to bet on the horses for me. And not on any old nag. This is all I've got.”

“Ach! Robert, just like that…” she said with a faint smile. “What will I do with the winnings?”

“Bet again.”

“Sure, sure,” she said gravely (she believed in such things). “How many times over?”

“As far as it goes,” he said. “Until there's none left.” He gave her a peck on the neck.

“All aboard! All aboard!” the conductors shouted.

Valette kissed his father and moved away, then turned back and took him in his arms, gripping his sleeve with his hand.

“What's the matter, lad? What's up?”

“You shouldn't have come,” he said, with tears welling into his eyes.

“All aboard! All aboard!” the conductor yelled, getting closer.

“Lena, Lena,” Lachaume said. “In a way you are all the family I've got…”

“Ach! Laachaume, my brother…” she repeated, with shining eyes.

“What about me?” Lasteyrie said. “Am I not a brother, too?”

“No,” she replied. “Not a brother. Anyway,” she added with a giggle, “what would you do with a sister?”

“I would defend her honor!” he retorted, puffing out his chest with bravado. “Cross my heart! I would defend my sister's honor, if I had one. But I don't!”

“All aboard,” the conductor said one last time, waiting for them to get in before slamming the carriage doors.

The train was about to leave.

At every window there were soldiers leaning out and banging the sides of the carriage with the flats of their hands, shouting: “Send us home! Send us home! Send us home!”

Then: “Down with the war! Down with the war! Down with the war!”

Lachaume and Valette could be seen at one window, banging the outside panels along with the rest. A detachment of military police with fixed bayonets was rushing toward them down the corridor of the next carriage. Lasteyrie appeared last, at the window beside theirs, holding up two fingers in a mocking half-salute.

And they, for their part, watched the dark and empty platforms roll back, glistening with rain beyond the end of the glazed vault of the station, and they went on chanting:

“Send us home! Send us home! Send us home!”

Paris, February–March 1957

 

APPENDIX: DANIEL ANSELME INTERVIEWED BY MAURICE PONS

Like the owl of Minerva that takes its flight, as Hegel tells us, only when the shades of night are gathering, Daniel Anselme, a fat and tousle-haired night owl himself, can only be found when the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés are clearing away their last tables. That is where this unmistakable figure has been ensconced for many years. It's quite surprising, given the hurried generation to which he belongs and given that he's been surrounded by precocious young writers, that he's waited until the age of thirty to bring out his first book,
La Permission
, which has just burst on the literary world like a bombshell.

DA:
To begin with, I was in a hurry to live, and I began living very young. I volunteered for the Resistance when I was sixteen and then went into the army. Because of the war my life began in a way quite similar to that of young men at the start of the nineteenth century.

Maurice Pons:
Like Stendhal, you mean?

DA:
Let's stop joking. My reasons are more serious. Seghers published my first poems in 1944, then G.L.M. brought them out again in 1948, as
A l'heure dite
(“At the appointed hour”).

MP:
Why didn't you write anything for so long after that?

DA:
Why? Because I had written a long poem, “L'Adieu au poème” (“Farewell to the poem”). I can still remember passages.

Daniel Anselme closes his eyes, runs his fingers through his hair to the back of his head, stirs, and so to speak shakes himself into action, while words resurface from the depths of the poem.