Quartet for the End of Time (56 page)

I can't take very much more of this, said Le Boulaire as he massaged his own feet. From the expression on his face I could tell the feeling was starting to return to him, too, and that he was regretting it.

If I had the composer's faith, he said. If I could pray at night and sing when all around me is nothing but misery and pain, then it would be different, but I have no faith and there is nothing to live for.

He began to cry silently. His shoulders, which I could tell had once been broad and strong, shook up and down.

Hush, the composer said.

But Le Boulaire would not be comforted. He turned violently toward the composer.

Your stubborn faith, he said. The way you pray at night! The words you use and the sound of your voice, when I am gripped in fear of what each night will bring—let alone each day. It's horrible! I hear your voice and I begin to doubt myself—my own doubt, even. I hate you for it.

T
HE DEBUT OF THE
composer's
Quartet
was set for St. Nicholas's Day, and as it drew near he worked even more furiously to prepare. He hardly ate anymore, or slept.

Olivier, you must eat, warned Pasquier. Otherwise you will faint away onstage before we finish the first movement.

No, no! said the composer. I feel stronger than ever. But everyone could see that he did not.

I must confess, he told me one night as we stood watch together, I can
no longer bring myself to eat. You see, when I do manage to fall asleep these days, my hunger results in the most incredible dreams. They are more like visions than dreams, and I can't help but look forward to them. I like to pretend I am being visited by angels!

Le Boulaire's nightmares, on the other hand—over the weeks the musicians worked (almost as feverishly as the composer himself) to prepare for the debut—became less frequent. By the middle of December, they had almost ceased entirely. I believe it is the music, he said one morning, after a night he had slept through. It is doing me wonders.

But does it ever trouble you—asked the clarinetist, who had overheard—what they say?

And what do they say? asked Le Boulaire.

You know what! the clarinetist said. But the look on Le Boulaire's face clearly indicated he did not. That we are allowed, the clarinetist said, these …
privileges
… our music, the composer's lectures, entertainment every Saturday night … because it looks good for the Germans in Paris that way. Does it ever occur to you, he asked—his voice deepening—that in this sense we are actually working
for
the Germans?

Music has no part in questions of war, snapped the composer, who had his head buried in his notebook and until that moment had not appeared to be listening. It cannot be used against anyone, he said. In music we praise God, and nothing—he paused—
nobody
, he said, emphasizing the word—else.

We have been over this a thousand times, the clarinetist said. God is an instrument of the state. And now—he shrugged—so are we.

Don't say that! the composer said, snapping his notebook closed and turning to stare at the clarinetist.

Not saying it won't change it if it's true.

If
it's true, put in Le Boulaire. But we cannot be certain that it is. The Germans like the performances just as much as we do. I would say that word does not get to Paris very often, if at all—who would want to report that German officers are enjoying the entertainment of their prisoners because they themselves cannot carry a tune?

A
T LAST IT WAS
the night of the performance. The musicians assembled themselves with their instruments onstage, while the prisoners, fighting for position at the door, waited for the German officers to arrive—after which point they would be free to crowd in behind.

There was almost twice the regular turnout that night, and when at last the men burst into the room there was hardly any room left even to stand.

Pasquier and Le Boulaire tuned their instruments, Henri blew through his clarinet, and the composer, standing at the head of the stage, quietly surveyed the scene. It was indeed, he saw—his eyes scanning the crowd—his most international audience yet!

What you are about to hear, he said—after the musicians had laid down their instruments, indicating they were ready to begin—is an
apocalypse
, in the true sense of the word. A revelation. A music without time, but performed within time, because … for now—his voice trembled with emotion; he had waited for this moment, after all, for so long! For now, he said again—his eyes, for a brief moment, coming to rest on Brüll, seated in the front row—it is all we have.

A
ND THAT
,
CONCLUDED
M
AURICE
Bonheur, was how I witnessed the debut performance of the
Quartet for the End of Time—
it really is an extraordinary piece.

Alden nodded. And does it manage to do what it claims?

Maurice Bonheur shook his head. That is not the right question, he said.

Their glasses had long ago been drained, but no one had disturbed them, and the street was quiet—the light on the boulevard just beginning to dim. Maurice waved for the check, paid, and was just about to go, when Alden stopped him.

Tell me, though, he said. How did you—and the composer—manage finally to arrange your release?

The poet shrugged. The guard Brüll, of course, he said. He arranged passes for Henri, Pasquier, Messiaen, and myself. Henri was stopped at the train depot, though, and detained. They said he was a
Jew. He told them: “I am uncircumcised” (his circumcision was done so poorly it is difficult to tell it has been done at all). He began to unbutton his pants, but the soldiers slammed him in the forehead with the butt of a gun and took him away. That was the last I saw of him, though I have since heard he's escaped. That he is even living in Paris again. And Le Boulaire—I am not sure what has become of him. Brüll could not arrange another pass.

And the composer, he is free to give concerts and teach at the conservatory? On the condition of … ?

Collaboration, of course, said Maurice Bonheur.

He winked at Alden then, but Alden glanced away—embarrassed, for some reason. It was difficult to read his meaning.

And did you write about it? Alden asked, to change the subject.

Sure, Maurice said. In the camp newspaper.
Lumignon.
A glowing review, of course! But I will write about it all again someday—when all of this is over, and I find the right words.

—

A
FTER HIS RETURN TO
P
ARIS
, A
LDEN
'
S DAYS SETTLED ONCE AGAIN
into a regular rhythm of their own. He rescued an old bicycle from a tangled heap in the neglected courtyard of his new building on the Rue Auguste-Comte, and every day he rode to the OKW office at the Hôtel Lutetia on the Boulevard Raspail. At noon, he would leave the office and travel the short distance back to the Luxembourg Gardens, where he would spend his allotted hour walking in circles around the pond. Sometimes he would while the time away writing in his notebook brief sketches of the people or animals he saw come and go—or of the park itself, and the effects of the seasons as they began to roll slowly by. These he would later send to Sutton; she always appreciated that sort of thing, and it satisfied her somewhat in place of any “real” news—which, ever since the capitulation, he had been unable to send. Even if his letters managed to get through the censors, there was nothing he could reasonably tell her about his life these days; no way to explain the sort of work that he did,
or for whom he did it, or why. He was keenly aware that anything he said now, even to Sutton (if it were indeed possible to communicate to her something of the delicate situation he found himself in), would only compromise his chances of, in the first place, hitting upon the key to the code he'd discovered. As well as of sending it, when at last he was able— undetected—abroad.

More than once, however, he took the risk of sending along a small fragment from his growing manuscript of twice-coded poems, which he had, until then, shared with no one—save on a handful of occasions with Maurice Bonheur. To his great relief, his poems cleared the censors easily—each, apparently, as incomprehensible to German intelligence as to Sutton, who responded with polite bewilderment every time. After three or four poems had been successfully transmitted in this way, Alden began to feel more confident that his plan, however unusual and difficult to arrange, could not fail to succeed; whenever, that is, he was finally able to put it into effect.

In the meantime, he continued his afternoon strolls around the Luxembourg Gardens at noon, writing short descriptions of and reflections on what he observed there, which he passed on to Sutton. It was only a short time before he came to recognize nearly every other pedestrian he saw during the hour he spent at the park. Having fixed his own steady pattern—arriving and departing from the garden at (necessarily) exactly the same hour each day—he found that the patterns of others soon became to him equally clear.

There was an old man, for instance, whom he wrote about to Sutton quite often, who set himself up each day next to the pond in order to paint the boats the children floated upon it. He must have started a new painting every day, and because Alden always observed him at midday, when he had barely begun, he never managed to see these paintings in anything but their beginning stages. Never once, that is, did he see the way the sail, billowing up from the empty hulls of the boats, actually took shape, or see the way the grass and the trees in the foreground, once the detail was filled in, might have balanced out the clouds, which (by the time Alden was forced to depart) would have just begun to bloom in
the sky. And then one day, in the fall of 1943—he told Sutton—even that was gone. One day the artist simply did not appear, and then never again after that. Later (but this he did not share with Sutton), Alden learned from another regular—an aging widow, who, despite the dwindling rations, kept the ducks fed—that the artist had been a neighbor of hers: an Austrian Jew. He had a French father, she said, and was rather well connected with some higher-ups—French as well as Austrian army officials. For many years, therefore, he was able not only to avoid any trouble from the German authorities (he had all the “correct” papers, after all), he was able to arrange the “correct” papers for dozens of other foreign Jews. They would come at night; the widow would hear their muffled footsteps on the stairs. Some of them would leave again, but some of them would stay. She could hear them—scuffling like mice inside her walls. It was unsettling. She had not digested her food properly since before the war.

She knew what had happened as soon as she heard the first shout, the widow said. It could have been anything, but I heard a shout one night and I knew they had come. I should not have gone to the window to watch, but I did. I saw them take him. He wore his winter hat, and did not look up. And then behind him—the others. Seven of them. Seven! Imagine. I don't know how long they had been there. All along, living like mice inside the walls. I shouldn't have looked. I wish now I had not. That I didn't know for certain. People say it's difficult when people leave and don't come back. That it's difficult … not knowing. But I think that not knowing must not be as difficult as knowing.
Sans doute
, she said. That is the true burden.

And why … she paused, and threw a handful of crumbs to the ducks. They approached desperately, their wings askew. Why we make up mysteries, she said. We are so afraid to find out there are no mysteries at all.

I
T WAS RIGHT ABOUT
that time—shortly after, in the dwindling months of 1943, the painter disappeared and Alden could no longer pass the time watching him paint empty hulls on the water, or sketch his clouds into a foregroundless sky—that he met Marie-Claude. This, too, he kept to
himself. He and Sutton wrote so rarely by then, anyway—and when they did, it was never easy and familiar, the way it had been before. She had become, he found—ever since their mother's death, perhaps (but nearly two full years had passed since then!), increasingly abstracted; her mind turned more and more toward the past. This was a habit (and he told her so) he quite simply couldn't abide.

Besides: he would have found it as difficult to describe or explain his love for Marie-Claude in those days as he would have anything else.

Although later Marie-Claude would tell him she had in fact been visiting the gardens at the same time each day for several months before making his acquaintance, it was difficult for Alden to imagine how—if that was so—such a long time had passed without their ever once crossing paths. They must have kept such a perfect pace with one another that at any given moment they were, by the central fountain, concealed from view. That whenever he paused, she paused, whenever she paused, he did, and so on. As improbable as it seems, it was the only way (he reasoned) that it could have happened. If he had looked at her even once—fleetingly, across the pond—he was certain he could not have failed to notice her, or had his blood thicken and beat at a quickened pace in his head. Because that was what did happen the first time he saw her, and she was even then at some distance from him, gazing out past the ducks on the water (who appeared for the moment calm and undisturbed, there being—the widow absent that day—nothing to desire). It was perhaps the sharpness of her gaze (though she did not appear to be looking at anything directly, but only very generally off, toward an unfixed point), more even than her startling beauty, that arrested his attention. It would have arrested anyone; that was the kind of beauty she had. The sort that cannot be described with any accuracy by a litany of adjectives or a description of specific features—though it would certainly give anyone pleasure to recall these, too. She was of a medium height, and fair, with a clear complexion rather unusual for fair women—almost olive in tone. Her thick, dark eyebrows lent themselves to the impression that her eyes, in contrast to her fair hair, were also dark—though on closer inspection one could see they were actually
a pale green or gray—not really a color at all, in fact; more like the shade the painter had used for his clouds, in order to indicate that they were not to be mistaken for either water or air.