Invisible Love (12 page)

When I was six feet from him, he rose to his full height and set off at a run. I realized that he had interpreted my sudden appearance as an attack and thought my stick was a weapon.

I found this reaction repulsive. What a wretch! Always thinking the worst! “Wait!” I cried. “Just wait!”

He was still running, letting out little piglike moans.

That was too much.

I set off after him.

Arms raised, clumsy and uncoordinated, his knees giving way, he was shrieking, “No, no.”

In spite of my slowness, in spite of the year I'd spent in a concentration camp, I was running faster than him, especially as I was lighter. The idiot stumbled over a root and fell. Instead of getting up, he squealed like a stuck pig.

“Shut up, you imbecile,” I hissed.

In response, he choked, he foamed at the mouth, he sweated, his eyes rolled upwards, he was soft, cowardly, despicable, already as prostrate as a sacrificial victim.

I decided to hit him. Since he was convinced that was my intention anyway, why deny myself? Breathing in, I released the violence that had been lurking deep in my brain, ready to pounce: yes, I was going to beat him to a pulp, I was going to take the law into my hands, into our hands, all of us, I'd leave him dead in a pool of blood. Revenge! He would pay for his crime. I'd avenge my parents, my grandparents, my sister, I'd avenge six million Jews by killing this babbling moron.

I raised my stick in the air . . .

It was then that Argos intervened: he charged at Maxime de Sire, placed his paws on his chest, and barked.

Maxime de Sire screamed, convinced that my dog was going to tear him to pieces. But Argos licked him once, then broke free, yelped, and started running in circles around him, enthusiastically, to let him know that he was ready to play.

I looked at Argos, disconcerted. What, hadn't my Argos, who could sense my every mood, sensed my anger? Hadn't he realized that I had to take the law into my own hands and get rid of this scum?

No, the dog insisted, his head on the ground, his rump high. He wanted to draw Maxime into an unforgettable game. He barked impatiently. And that meant: “Come on, we've wasted enough time, let's have some fun!”

Maxime stared at the animal, realized that he had nothing more to fear from that direction, and looked at me again, expectantly.

Argos threw me a wicked glance as if to say, “How slow your friend is!”

Suddenly, I understood. Anger left my veins.

I smiled at Argos and threw the stick a long way. Immediately focused, Argos ran to catch it before it touched the ground. Maxime stared at me anxiously, pale-faced, lips trembling.

I folded my arms across my chest. “Get up. The dog is right.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The dog is right. He doesn't know you're a bastard, he doesn't know you gave away my friends and me during the war. As far as he's concerned, you're a man.”

Argos put the stick down at my feet. I didn't react, too occupied in looking Maxime up and down, so he scratched impatiently at my shin.

“Of course. Go fetch, Argos!”

And to give him more credit, I sent the stick into the heart of the undergrowth. This purebred dog who didn't know the concept of race had just saved Maxime de Sire, just as he had saved me a year earlier. It was impossible to explain that to Maxime de Sire, because it would have meant telling an informer all about my private life.

Bursting with pride, Argos gave me back the stick with pieces of bramble still clinging to it. I signaled to him that we were turning back. Immediately in agreement, he fell into step with me, keeping the stick in his mouth, like a butler carrying his master's umbrella just in case it rains.

Muddy and disheveled, Maxime de Sire followed us at a cautious distance, calling after me to thank me, expressing himself with an unctuous humility as exaggerated as his arrogance had been:

“I don't have any excuse, Samuel. I behaved like a fool. I know that. We were confused. We were so dominated by the Nazis, we started thinking like them. I'm ashamed of my sin, I swear to you.”

I listened without believing him. His contrition was too good to be true. All the same, deep down I was happy: I had tracked down the guilty party, I had confronted him with his actions, and Argos had rescued me for the second time. Without him, I would have behaved like a barbarian. After five years of war, he had helped me to rise above myself, by showing me what greatness is: a hero is a man who tries to be a man all his life, sometimes in opposition to others, sometimes in opposition to himself.
 

 

Well, Miranda, now you know my story. Our story, Argos's and mine. Your story too, since you knew the successive Argoses who have kept me going.

Without that dog, I would have been incapable of remaining in this world. Like so many survivors, I would have let discouragement overwhelm me, I would have kept repeating, “What's the point?”, I would have sunk into depression and seized upon the first illness that allowed me to disappear.

Argos was my savior. Argos was my guardian. Argos was my guide. He taught me everything: how to respect mankind, how to venerate happiness, how to live in the moment.

You can't admit these things in public: anyone claiming that a dog taught him wisdom would be thought of as insane. But that was what happened to me. Since that Argos died, the Argoses have taken over from one another, all similar and all different. I've always needed them much more than they needed me.

My last Argos was murdered five days ago. Five days is how long it's taken for me to write this confession. I say “my last Argos” because I don't have the time or the desire to travel to the Ardennes and find yet another puppy. First of all, I'm getting so old, I'll die before he will. Secondly, my last Argos reminded me so much of the original Argos that I loved him passionately, and I can't bear the thought that a dumb hit-and-run driver killed him. If I stay here, I'm going to start hating people again. And that's something I don't want: all the dogs I've had in my life have taught me the opposite.

To end, let me tell you an anecdote. Ten years ago, I met by chance, at an antiques fair, Peter, the boy with beautiful teeth I had known in the camp; he was now a patriarch with beautiful teeth. We retreated to a café to talk. He was a chemistry teacher, with an extensive family, and that day he was very angry because one of his grandsons had just announced to him that he was planning to become a rabbi.

“A rabbi! Can you imagine? A rabbi! Can we still trust God after what we've suffered? Do you believe in God?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't believe in Him anymore and I'll never believe in Him again.”

“I have to admit that when I was first in captivity, I prayed. For example, when we got off the train and the SS made their selection.”

“Oh, yes? And do you think the others, the men, women and children who died in the gas chambers, didn't pray?”

“You're right,” I said.

“Well, then, if God exists, where was He when we were dying in Auschwitz?”

Stroking Argos's head under our table, I didn't dare reply that God had come back to me in the eyes of a dog.

 

I lay there for a long time with Samuel's confession on my chest, reflecting on what I had just learned.

Outside, the clouds were racing, squat, light, rapid, like bowling balls on the blue lanes of the sky. The last leaves were falling from the trees and whirling between the smooth branches. As always in this very special region, the sun was shining with a warm golden light just before it set. The day had been gloomy, grey, and leaden, but now it was finding a way to make us miss it.

I realized that I had spent the whole day thinking about Samuel. It was time for me to take these pages to his daughter.

I wolfed down a sandwich and went to visit my dogs. Even though I had been away for several weeks and had only devoted a few minutes to them since my return, they gave themselves up to my caresses with abandon, and to my games with fervor, good-natured and idolatrous, never letting me forget that I was their master, even though Edwin, the caretaker, spent more time with them than I did. I usually called them “the most spoiled dogs in the world,” but now, astonished by their lack of ingratitude, I suddenly doubted whether I deserved even a tenth of their devotion, and I made a fuss of them to console them for loving me.

I crossed the village to join Miranda.

She was idling in her father's garden, admiring the care with which he had reconstructed the quaint old gazebo and cut then arranged his firewood under the lean-to.

When she saw me outside the gate, she came running, sensing that something important had happened.

Anxiously, she unlocked the gate. I caught her by both hands and slowly, almost solemnly, placed the pages in them. She gave a start when she recognized her father's handwriting.

“What—”

“He wanted to tell you his secret before taking his leave. But because he didn't trust himself, he addressed it to me. He thought I ought to rewrite what he had written. He was wrong.”

“But—”

“I'm going it read it out loud to you. That way, I'll have obeyed his wishes.”

We sat down by the fire. I started a blaze, poured us two glasses of whiskey, and began the story. The text moved me even more the second time. Maybe because I was paying less attention to the events, and more to the way Samuel had written about them. Or was it because I could see how shaken Miranda was? Tears ran discreetly down her long, thin, pale face, but there was no sound of crying.

When I had finished, I poured us another glass. The silence was noisy with Samuel's reflections. Then we looked at each other, and went up to Miranda's room. There was only one thing to do: after that story of death and rebirth, which mixed the deepest despair with the wisdom of joy, we had to make love. We spent the night together, mischievous, respectful, alternating sensuality and sorrow, moving from laughter to astonishment, sometimes bestial, sometimes refined, always complicit. It was one of the strangest but most wonderful nights I've ever known.

 

*

 

The next morning, we went to the Café Pétrelle. We were starving. The weather was so good that the owner had stuck a slate on the door: “Shady tables in the courtyard.” We ate quickly because we had only an hour left to get dressed and go to Samuel's funeral.

The Count De Sire had not skimped on the pomp. An old hearse covered with wreaths of white roses appeared in the square, drawn by four quivering horses with gold harnesses, surmounted with ostrich plumes.

In the church, the profusion of flowers continued. A children's choir stood in the nave, with an orchestra lining the sides.

During the ceremony, three actors from the National Theater recited poems.

Maxime de Sire constantly threw nervous glances at Miranda to make sure she liked the proceedings.

“Look at him,” she whispered in my ear. “He's still ashamed.”

“All the better. That proves that he isn't just a villain. That he's trying to ‘be a man,' as Samuel said.”

“My father may have forgiven him, but he hasn't yet forgiven himself.”

“That's something he can never do. Only the dead have the power to forgive.”

S
he hadn't noticed him.

First of all, because he wasn't noticeable . . . He belonged to the mass of grey men who exhibit a front rather than a face, spineless characters who don't have bodies but merely a volume swelling their clothes, individuals we forget even if they pass us ten times, who come in and out without anyone paying attention to them, with less presence than a door.

So she hadn't noticed him.

To be honest, she'd stopped looking at men . . . She really wasn't in the mood. The only reason she still went out into society was to look for money. She needed it urgently! How was she to support her two children, to give them food and a roof over their heads? Her family had made it quite clear they wouldn't help her out beyond the summer. As for her sister-in-law, that tight-fisted bitch, there was no chance of help from that direction.

Yes, she had taken her time noticing him. Would she have picked him out at all from the others if he hadn't imposed his presence on her? If he hadn't shouldered his way toward her through the overpopulated drawing room?

Standing flat against the wall next to her, between the fireplace and a monumental bouquet, he had obliged her to look at him and then started up a conversation. It would be more accurate to describe it as a monologue, because she hadn't replied and had spent her time searching with her eyes for a man who might be useful to her among all the guests at this wretched party. Useful, in the sense of being a possible employer. She had to work hard, that was all she could do . . . As for men, it was all over for her! She had given enough. Or rather—and let there be no misunderstanding about this—she had given enough of herself to one man. Well, almost . . . Her husband. And he had just died. What had he been thinking of? He hadn't been much older than thirty . . . That was no age to die. Especially as he'd always been healthier than her. Whereas she had been forced to take frequent cures in Baden, he had never stopped moving, working, running around. Would she have married him nine years earlier if she had known that he would leave her alone without a penny, saddled with a thousand debts and two orphans? Of course not. Her mother had been against it! Good old Mother. But there you are, when you're twenty you don't know. Or thirty or sixty for that matter . . . We don't know the future because we make it.