The Apocalypse Watch (3 page)

“Who the hell
was
he?” cried a shaken Jean-Pierre Villier at his dressing-room table, his parents at his side. “He said such crazy things, then killed himself.
Why?
”

The elder Villiers, now in their late seventies, looked at each other; both nodded.

“We must talk,” said Catherine Villier as she massaged the aching neck of the man she had raised as her son. “Perhaps with your wife too.”

“That’s not necessary,” interrupted the father. “He can handle that if he thinks he should.”

“You’re right, my husband. It is his decision.”

“What are you both talking about?”

“We have kept many things from you, my son, things that in the early years might have harmed you—”

“Harmed me?”

“Through no fault of yours, Jean-Pierre. We were an occupied country, the enemy among us constantly searching for those who secretly, violently, opposed the victors, in many cases torturing and imprisoning whole families who were suspect.”

“The Résistance, naturally,” interrupted Villier.

“Naturally,” agreed the father.

“You both were a part of it, you’ve told me that, although you’ve never expounded on your contributions.”

“They’re best forgotten,” said the mother. “It was a horrible time—so many who were stigmatized and beaten as collaborators were only protecting loved ones, including their children.”

“But this man tonight, this crazy tramp! He so identified with me that he called me his
son
!… I accept a degree of excessive devotion—it goes with the profession, however foolish that may be—but to the point of killing himself in front of my eyes?
Madness!
”

“He
was
mad, driven insane by what he had endured,” said Catherine.

“You knew him?”

“Very well,” replied the old actor, Julian Villier. “His name was Jean-Pierre Jodelle, once a promising young baritone at the opera, and we, your mother and I, tried desperately to find him after the war. There was no trace, and since we knew he had been found out by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp, we assumed he was dead, a non-entry, like thousands of others.”

“Why did you try to find him? Who was he to you?”

The only mother Jean-Pierre had ever known knelt beside his dressing-room chair, her exquisite features bespeaking the great star she had been; her blue-green eyes below her full, soft white hair were locked with his. She spoke softly. “Not only to us, my son, but to you. He was your natural father.”

“Oh, my God!… Then you,
both
of you—”

“Your natural mother,” added Villier
père
, quietly interrupting, “was a member of the Comédie—”

“A splendid talent,” broke in Catherine, “caught in those trying years between being an ingenue and being a woman, all of it made horrid by the occupation. She was a dear girl, like a younger sister to me.”

“Please!” cried Jean-Pierre, leaping to his feet as the mother he knew rose and stood by her husband. “This is all coming so quickly, it is so astonishing, I … I can’t
think
!”

“Sometimes it’s best not to think for a while, my son,” said the elder Villier. “Stay numb until the mind tells you it is ready to accept.”

“You used to tell me that years ago,” said the actor, smiling sadly, warmly, at Julian, “when I had trouble with a scene or a monologue, and the meaning was escaping me. You’d say, ‘Just keep reading and rereading the words without trying so hard. Something will happen.’ ”

“It was good advice, my husband.”

“I was always a better teacher than I ever was a performer.”

“Agreed,” said Jean-Pierre softly.

“I beg your pardon? You agree?”

“I meant only, my father, that when you were onstage, you … you—”

“A part of you was always concentrating on the others,” jumped in Catherine Villier, exchanging a knowing glance with her son—and not her son.

“Ah, you both conspire again, has it not been so for years? The two great stars being gentle with the lesser player.… Good! That’s over with.… For a few moments we all stopped thinking about tonight. Now, perhaps, we can talk.”

Silence.

“For God’s sake, tell me what
happened
!” exclaimed Jean-Pierre finally.

As he asked the question, there was a rapid knocking at the dressing-room door; it was opened by the theater’s old night watchman. “Sorry to intrude, but I thought you ought to know. There are still reporters at the stage door.
They won’t believe the police or me. We said you left earlier by the front entrance, but they’re not convinced. However, they cannot get inside.”

“Then we’ll stay here for a while, if need be all night—at least I will. There’s a couch in the other room, and I’ve already called my wife. She heard everything on the news.”

“Very well, sir.… Madame Villier, and you also, monsieur, despite the terrible circumstances it is glorious to see you both again. You are always remembered with great affection.”

“Thank you, Charles,” said Catherine. “You look well, my friend.”

“I’d look better still if you were back onstage, madame.” The watchman nodded and closed the door.

“Go on, Father, what
did
happen?”

“We were all part of the Résistance,” began Julian Villier, sitting down on a small love seat across the room, “artists drawn together against an enemy that would destroy all art. And we had certain capabilities that served our cause. Musicians passed codes by inserting melodic phrases not in an original score; illustrators produced the daily and weekly posters demanded by the Germans, subtly employing colors and images that sent other messages. And we in the theater continuously corrupted texts, especially those of revivals and well-known plays, often giving direct instructions to the saboteurs—”

“At times it was quite amusing,” interrupted the regal Catherine, joining her husband and taking his hand. “Say there was a line like ‘I shall meet her at the Métro in Montparnasse.’ We’d change it to ‘I shall meet her at the east railway station—she should be there by eleven o’clock.’ The play would finish, the curtain fall, and all those Germans in their splendid uniforms would be applauding while a Résistance team left quickly to be in place for the sabotage units at the Gare de l’Est an hour before midnight.”

“Yes, yes,” said Jean-Pierre impatiently. “I’ve heard the stories, but that’s not what I’m asking. I realize it’s as
difficult for you as it is for me, but please, tell me what I must know.”

The white-haired couple looked intensely at each other; the wife nodded as their hands gripped, the veins showing. Her husband spoke. “Jodelle was found out, revealed by a young runner who could not take the torture. The Gestapo surrounded his house, waiting for him to return one night, but he couldn’t, for he was in Le Havre, making contact with British and American agents in the early planning stages of the invasion. By dawn, it was said that the leader of the Gestapo unit became furious with frustration. He stormed the house and executed your mother and your older brother, a child of five years. They picked up Jodelle several hours later; we managed to get word to him that you had survived.”

“Oh … my God!” The celebrated actor grew pale, his eyes closed as he sank down into his chair. “Monsters!… No, wait, what did you just say? ‘It was said that the leader of the Gestapo—’ It was
said?
Not
confirmed
?”

“You’re very quick, Jean-Pierre,” observed Catherine. “You listen, that’s why you’re a great actor.”

“To hell with that, Mother! What did you mean, Father?”

“It was not the policy of the Germans to kill the families of Résistance fighters, real or suspected. They had more practical uses for them—torture them for information, or use them as bait for others, and there was always forced labor, women for the Officers Corps, a category in which your natural mother would certainly have fallen.”

“Then why were they killed?… No, first me. How did I survive?”

“I went out to an early dawn meeting in the woods of Barbizon. I passed your house, saw windows broken, the front door smashed, and heard an infant crying. You. Everything was obvious and, of course, there would be no meeting. I brought you home, bicycling through the back roads to Paris.”

“It’s a little late to thank you, but, again, why were my—my natural mother and my brother
shot
?”

“Now you lost a word, my son,” said the elder Villier.

“What?”

“In your shock, your listening wasn’t as acute as it was a moment before, when I described the events of that night.”

“Stop it, Papa! Say what you mean!”

“
I
said ‘executed,’
you
said ‘shot.’ ”

“I don’t understand.…”

“Before Jodelle was found out by the Germans, one of his covers was as a city messenger for the Ministry of Information—the Nazis could never get our arrondissements straight, much less our short, curving streets. We never learned the details, for as impressive as his voice was, Jodelle was extremely quiet where rumors were concerned—they were everywhere. Falsehoods, half-truths, and truths raced through Paris like gunfire at the slightest provocation. We were a city gripped by fear and suspicion—”

“I understand that, my father,” broke in the ever more impatient Jean-Pierre. “Please explain what I
don’t
understand. The details that you were never given, what did they concern and how did they result in the killings, the
executions
?”

“Jodelle said to a few of us that there was a man so high in the Résistance that he was a legend only whispered about, his identity the most closely guarded secret of the movement. Jodelle, however, claimed he had learned who the man was, and if what he had pieced together was accurate, that same man, that ‘legend,’ was no great hero but instead a traitor.”

“Who was he?” pressed Jean-Pierre.

“He never told us. However, he did say that the man was a general in our French army, of which there were dozens. He said if he was right and any of us revealed the man’s name, we’d be shot by the Germans. If he was wrong and someone spoke of him in a defamatory way, our wing would be called unstable and we would no longer be trusted.”

“What was he going to do then?”

“If he was able to establish his proof, he would take the man out himself. He swore he was in a position to do so.
We assumed—correctly, we believe, to this day—that whoever the traitor was, he somehow learned of Jodelle’s suspicions and gave the order to execute him and his family.”

“That was it? Nothing
else?
”

“Try to understand what the times were like, my son,” said Catherine Villier. “A wrong word, even a hostile stare or a gesture, could result in immediate detention, imprisonment, and even, not unheard of, deportation. The occupation forces, especially the ambitious middle-level officers, were fanatically suspicious of everyone and everything. Each new Résistance accomplishment fueled the fires of their anger. Quite simply, no one was safe. Kafka could not have invented such a hell.”

“And you never saw him again until
tonight?
”

“If we had, we would not have recognized him,” replied Villier
père
. “I barely did when I identified his body. The years notwithstanding, he was, as the English say, a ‘rackabones’ of the man I remembered, less than half the weight and height of his former self, his face mummified, a stretched, wrinkled version of what it once was.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t
he
, is that possible, my father?”

“No, it was Jodelle. His eyes were wide in death, and still so blue, so resoundingly blue, like a cloudless sky in the Mediterranean.… Like yours, Jean-Pierre.”

“Jean-Pierre …?” said the actor softly. “You gave me his name?”

“In truth, it was your brother’s also,” corrected the actress gently. “That poor child had no use for it, and we felt you should have it for Jodelle’s sake.”

“That was caring of you—”

“We knew we could never replace your true parents,” continued the actress quickly, half pleadingly, “but we tried our best, my darling. In our wills we make clear everything that happened, but until tonight we hadn’t the courage within ourselves to tell you. We love you so.”

“For God’s sake, stop, Mother, or I’ll burst out crying. Who in this world could ask for better parents than you two? I will never know what I cannot know, but forever you
are
my father and mother, and you know that.”

The telephone rang, startling them all. “The press doesn’t have this number, does it?” asked Julian.

“Not that I’m aware of,” replied Jean-Pierre, turning to the phone on the dressing table. “Only you, Giselle, and my agent have it; not even my attorney or, God forbid, the owners of the theater.… Yes?” he said gutturally.

“Jean-Pierre?” asked his wife, Giselle, over the telephone.

“Of course, my dear.”

“I wasn’t sure—”

“I wasn’t either, that’s why I altered my voice. Mother and Father are here, and I’ll be home as soon as the newspapers give up for the night.”

“I think you should find a way to come home now.”

“What?”

“A man has come to see you—”

“At
this
hour? Who is he?”

“An American, and he says he has to talk to you. It’s about tonight.”

“Tonight … here at the theater?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have let him in, Giselle.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t have a choice. Henri Bressard is with him.”

“
Henri?
What does tonight have to do with the Quai d’Orsay?”

“As we speak, our dear friend Henri is all smiles and diplomatic charm and will tell me nothing until you arrive.… Am I right, Henri?”

“Too true, my dearest Giselle” was the faint reply heard by Villier. “I know little or nothing myself.”

“Did you hear him, my darling?”

“Clearly enough. What about the American? Is he a boor? Just answer yes or no.”

“Quite the contrary. Although, as you actors might say, his eyes have a hot flame in them.”

“What about Mother and Father? Should they come with me?”

Giselle Villier addressed the two men in the room, repeating the question. “
Later
,” said the man from the Quai
d’Orsay, loud enough to be heard over the telephone. “We’ll speak to them
later
, Jean-Pierre,” he added even louder. “Not tonight.”