The Incorrigible Optimists Club (11 page)

I went to my bedroom. I closed the door. They were behind it, listening out for every move and sound that I made. I heard them walk away. I wasn't sleepy. I remained sitting on my bed with Néron pressed against me.

It had been one of those bleak and bitter days when your life topples over into absurdity, when it runs away from you like sand through a fist. A bit like my parents' disastrous wedding day when they heard that Uncle Daniel had died. This day had been just as gloomy, not merely on account of the ruined opening and Cécile's suicide attempt, but because of the quarrel between my mother and Franck. Nobody had really taken
much notice of it to begin with, my disappearance having distracted them from their row. Even though it had been the worst altercation ever, they thought that it would all calm down. It had been a ridiculous argument of the kind that occurs in every family: a bit of tension, irritation, tiredness, raised voices, an unpleasant remark, unpardonable words which one doesn't really mean and then the great reconciliation scene in Act III. But my mother and Franck are very intense characters, neither of them prepared to make concessions. They did not see or speak to one another for twenty-five years. During that lost life, they must have thought about that day and asked themselves how and why things had reached such a point and whether it was worth bearing such a huge grudge on account of trivialities, things you've said that you eventually can't even remember. Our memory is made in such a way that it wipes out unhappy recollections and only preserves the best of them. Twenty years later, while chatting to my father, he asked me what the cause of the argument had been because he had forgotten. I had to make an effort to remember. Had they known, they would have patched things up, but no one is capable of predicting the future. We live from day to day. Our expectations, our best-laid plans turn out to be pathetic and vague. My mother's little schemes proved to be disastrous. This opening, which should have been a day of celebration and hope for our family, turned out to be one when the fine building began to show cracks.

17

I
gor Markish had lived in France for the past seven years. He had left Leningrad in circumstances that he refused to describe. Like the others, it appears to have been for political reasons. When I raised the subject, he put on a distant smile. Along with Werner Toller, he was one of the founders of the Club. The two of them provided an information service on administrative matters. The members of the Club had just one purpose in mind: to have their papers, not to be arrested during a straightforward identification check, not to be deported, to be able to lay down their bags at last, leave the past behind them, begin a new life again, and to work. To be in order, that was their obsession. Only those who have been in an illegal situation can understand the permanent anxiety of the refugee who, after having saved his own skin, has to do battle with this mysterious adversary: the clerk of the Préfecture. The members often discussed their respective authorities in order to find out which was the most fussy, unpredictable and nightmarish. Each of them passionately promoted his own country as deserving the unenviable title of the most foolish administration in the world. They told quite incredible stories about what they had witnessed or suffered: having to prove that you were not dead or that you were not related to someone of the same name who was a traitor to his country, or that you were not guilty of innumerable charges was endless. A Czech would recount an unbelievable case that earned him first prize until a Pole or a Hungarian stole it from him. In the end they decided that the Russian administration was the worst of all.

Leonid Krivoshein, in the most solemn voice imaginable, told of an incident that happened to him: ‘I found myself in a cell with two other Russians who did not understand the reason for their arrest. “I arrived five minutes late,” said a fellow from Kiev, “I was accused of sabotage.” “I was five minutes early,” explained a man who came from Novgorod,
“I was accused of spying.” “I arrived on time,” Leonid asserted, “and I was accused of buying my watch in the West.”'

We burst out laughing. Leonid swore that it was not a joke, but a true story. As proof, he showed us his watch, a Lip Président with a magnifying glass case, which he had been given during a stopover in Paris when he was flying the Moscow–London route. De Gaulle and Eisenhower wore the same one. He looked upset that we didn't believe him. That was part of the game. Leonid never stopped joking. You could never tell with him when he was telling the truth.

‘You're making fun of us,' Tibor asserted. ‘You've never been arrested in your life. I don't know whether you're an utter liar or an utter dimwit.'

Leonid stopped laughing, drained his glass and stared at Tibor, his eyes gleaming.

‘If you ever say that word again, I'll kill you. I promise you. I'll strangle you with these hands. Believe me, I won't be playing games.'

The Palme d'or for exceptional absurdity had been attributed by this jury of connoisseurs to Tomasz Zagielovski, who had been a reporter on a mass circulation national paper and who held the enviable title of victim (first class) of the Polish authorities. He had been summoned to his local town hall, in the Warsaw suburbs. A woman civil servant had asked him suspiciously who he was. When he had refused to identify himself, she had treated him as an impostor. It turned out the real Tomasz Zagielovski had been held for three months in the Bialoleka, the State prison. Tomasz realized the police had mistakenly arrested instead of him an unfortunate fellow who had protested his innocence in vain, and who had claimed his name was Piotr Levinsky. There had, in actual fact, been a terrible misunderstanding: this Levinsky was a good communist. Tomasz thought he was finished and was expecting to be arrested when the civil servant, who was not immune to his charms (he had been told to behave as though he were irresistible to women), had revealed to him that Zagielovski had eventually confessed his errors and had been sentenced to ten years in prison for treason! Tomasz got away with it by telling her that he was the real Piotr Levinsky. Occasionally, he went by the name of Tomasz Zagielovski. He lived at the latter's home, being his wife's lover. The civil
servant had slight doubts, but Tomasz's case was black and white: ‘If I were Tomasz Zagielovski, do you think I would have risked coming here, knowing that I was guilty of treason? Look at me, do I look like the sort of idiot who would throw himself into the lion's jaws?'

She could say nothing in the face of such irrefutable logic. He would even prove it to her by going home to search for his papers. The civil servant had allowed him to leave. He took the opportunity to flee immediately, with just the clothes on his back. As soon as he arrived in France, Tomasz had written to the Polish authorities to point out the mistake. He did not know what repercussions his letter had had, and the members of the Club were certain that his initiative had been pointless.

The authorities hate to admit their errors and to lose face. And as Jan Paczkowski, a former Warsaw lawyer, had observed, when a sentence had been pronounced there was no second chance, it was irreversible, especially in a communist country. This story sent a chill up my spine. I imagined the wretched Piotr Levinsky, who had not merely been convicted for his errors, but had had his name taken away from him. I could not understand why he had confessed to another's offences. Igor had explained to me: ‘For us, a suspicion is a certainty. It's the underlying basis of the system. You're guilty because they suspect you. This Piotr had something to feel guilty about.'

‘He was innocent!'

‘That's not enough. We would have needed a bit of luck as well. It's what we'd been lacking. Piotr didn't have any luck either.'

After his epic flight from Poland, Tomasz had found work as a salesman in a clothes shop on the Champs-Elysées where he made a good living. A fine-looking man, who dressed elegantly, and an inveterate charmer, he spent his Sundays in the dance clubs in rue de Lappe and he never failed to tell us of his conquests, even though we never saw him with anyone.

By common consent, the French authorities were a model of clarity and simplicity compared to the Eastern-bloc countries. But woe betide anyone who encountered a wily enemy lurking in the shadow of the administrative woods: the communist clerk who loathed the traitor denigrating the USSR and its brother countries, the land of happy workers.

The supreme objective, the key, was to obtain political refugee status. Logically, it should have been the simplest document to obtain, given that you came, as they did, from the other side of the iron curtain. But there was an unforeseen obstacle and one that it was impossible to overlook: the appalling Patrick Rousseau, the unctuous head of the bureau that worked on behalf of the political refugee. His warm smile and apparent compassion were deceptive; weapons deployed in order to destroy you more effectively. Vladimir had come across him reading
L'Humanité
at the bar of a local café and, taken aback, Rousseau had told him that the only political refugees worthy of that name came from Spain or Portugal, where fascist dictators were in power. This pervert took it upon himself to block or reject the files from Eastern Europe ‘whose delinquents and outcasts were dumped on us', as he described it. There was always a paper or a rubber stamp or a certificate missing and when, after twenty attempts, you thought the file was completed, a document was lost or no longer valid, and you had to begin over again. Rousseau had even succeeded in causing the calm and phlegmatic Pavel Cibulka, who would have strangled him had Igor not been with him, to lose his temper. Rousseau demanded a certificate of civilian status from him (something which was impossible for an exiled person to obtain), simply because he had been born in Bohemia and the status of political refugee was not granted to gypsies. For a former ambassador to Bulgaria, this was a deadly insult that earned Rousseau a monumental slap and meant that Pavel had to wait three more years to obtain the status. Igor knew every department of the Préfecture, the town hall and certain ministries, the papers that needed to be acquired and how many copies, the names of the clerks to avoid and those who could be bought. To judge by the difficulties encountered in obtaining their papers, they concluded that the clerks in the resident permit department of the Paris Préfecture were virulent trade union members.

Igor spoke French with a slight accent. He was often taken for an Alsatian. He came from a background where people learned French before Russian. His father rented a villa every year in Nice and he remembered
his summer holidays there when he was a child. This was before the war, the first one. Igor didn't like recalling his memories. He had made a great effort to begin a new life and he did not wish to be reminded of his past. His family was wealthy. His father was a well-known surgeon who had a private clinic in St Petersburg. Their life had been swept away by the revolution from one day to the next. But he had had no regrets. A new world was beginning. Everyone joined in to build socialism. After his degree, Igor had worked as a doctor in a hospital, but had not succeeded in becoming a heart specialist. He no longer had time to continue his studies and he had to provide for his family. They were happy. And then, the Earth had stopped turning and had then exploded. Late one Sunday afternoon, he had lifted the veil slightly: ‘During the siege and at the front, I acted as surgeon. I even performed a caesarean during the bombing of Gostiny Dvor. For anaesthetic, all we had was vodka. The mother and the child came through. You've no idea of the operations. If anyone had told me beforehand, I would have sworn it was impossible. And yet I coped. I saw nurses amputating limbs with white-hot instruments. You don't need degrees to operate in wartime. The important thing is to survive, isn't it?'

The war had destroyed his city. He had fought as a doctor in the Red Army, miraculously surviving the siege, after which he had taken part in the German campaign. He had worked for six months as a labourer rebuilding the hospital. That was what stayed with him for ever. The destruction of Leningrad. Rubble everywhere, as far as the eye could see. Hordes of half-starved skeletons in rags fighting with one another to eat a stray dog or the bark from trees. The streets, the avenues and the canals had disappeared. They were going to rebuild them. As before. Even better, larger and more beautiful. A vast building site worthy of Russia. Igor didn't want to talk about this period any more. You had to force him.

‘Why did you go over to the West?'

‘If I hadn't fled, I wouldn't be alive today.'

‘Why did you leave? Tell me.'

‘If I explained, you wouldn't understand. It's complicated. Come on now, it's your turn. You're like an old woman with all your chatter.'

I started to play again. A little later, I asked him another question. He pretended to be engrossed by the game. Occasionally, he would come out with snatches, bracing himself against his memories. It was up to me to put together the pieces of a puzzle in which the main bits were missing. He had left a mother over there, a wife, a son of my age and a daughter who was younger. He had had no news of them for eight years.

‘I've lived several lives that I've forgotten.'

‘You don't just decide to forget with a click of your fingers.'

‘You do. You forget or you die.'

He had decided not to think about it any more. His life, the only one which he was prepared to recall, began with his arrival in France. Igor was warm-hearted, relaxed and bore no ulterior motive. He had a spontaneous manner, which put people at their ease. I never heard anyone speak ill of him. On the contrary, everyone liked and respected him. He was a good-looking man who, with his impressive build, his wavy hair, his blue eyes and friendly smile, did not go unnoticed. He looked a little bit like Burt Lancaster. People never stopped teasing him about that.

‘You should become a film star.'

‘Impossible, I don't know how to lie.'

Igor taught me how to play chess. He was the first person to approach me and suggest a game: ‘Do you know how to play?'

‘A bit.'

‘Sit down there.'

I found myself looking at a chessboard with the white pieces in place. I had never played before in my life. At random, I moved a pawn forward two squares as I had seen others do. He placed his pawn in front of mine. I made two foolish moves, then I moved my knight as if it were a pawn.

‘You don't know how to play!'

‘Not really.'

‘I'm going to teach you.'

He was a good teacher. After a few days, I mastered the rules and began to get the hang of it. I didn't understand when he said to me: ‘There, you know how to play chess. Now, you need to become a player. That will take longer.'

‘How long?'

‘That depends on you. Five years, ten years, more? Look at Imré. He's fifty years old and he's been knocking the pieces around the board for thirty-five of them. With a little practice you could beat him. Remember: lots of concentration and a bit of imagination.'

We would meet in the early evening for one or two quick games. Most of the time we played in silence.

‘If you want to talk, go to the café next door.'

We spent hours barely speaking to one another. He always won. However much I thought until my head ached, made plans, tried to position my pieces, devised a strategy and concealed my moves, he read my game like an open book. He could see my little plan a mile off. My attempts at tactical play amused him.

‘It's right to want to open up your rook, but be careful not to leave the diagonal free for my queen, otherwise you'll be checkmate in three moves.'

‘How did you know that I wanted to move my rook?'

‘There's nothing else you can do. Don't move so quickly. You attack in a disorderly way. Protect your position. It's easier to defend.'

‘If I don't attack, I won't win.'