The Night Watch (10 page)

‘If we ran into this type of wise guy every day it would be pretty rough for us,’ declared Monsieur Philibert. ‘Take it easy, Pierre. He’ll end up talking.’ ‘I don’t think so, Henri.’ ‘Then we’ll make a martyr of him. Martyrs, it would appear, are necessary.’ ‘Martyrs are sheer nonsense,’ declared Lionel de Zieff in a thick voice. ‘You refuse to talk?’ Monsieur Philibert asked him. ‘We won’t trouble you for very long,’ whispered the Khedive. ‘If you don’t answer it means you don’t know anything.’
‘
But if you know something,’ said Monsieur Philibert, ‘you had better tell us now.’

He raised his head. A bloodstain on the Savonnerie carpet, where his head had rested. An ironic twinkle in his periwinkle-blue eyes (the same colour as Saint-Georges’). Or perhaps contempt. People have been known to die for their beliefs. The Khedive hit him three times. He never looked away. Violette Morris threw a glass of champagne in his face. ‘Excuse me, Monsieur,’ murmured Ivanoff the Oracle, ‘could you hold out your left hand?’ People die for their beliefs. The Lieutenant often said: ‘All of us are ready to die for our beliefs. Are you, Lamballe?’ I didn’t dare confess that if I were to die it could only be from disease, fear, or despair. ‘Catch!’ roared Zieff, and the cognac bottle hit him squarely in the face. ‘Your hand, your left hand,’ Ivanoff the Oracle implored. ‘He’ll talk,’ sighed Frau Sultana, ‘I know he will,’ and she bared her shoulders with a wheedling smile. ‘All that blood . . .’ muttered Baroness Lydia Stahl. The man’s head rested on the Savonnerie carpet once more. Danos lifted him up and dragged him from the living room. Moments later, Tony Breton reappeared and in a toneless voice, announced: ‘He’s dead, he died without talking.’ Frau Sultana turned her back with a shrug. Ivanoff stared off into space, his eyes scanning the
ceiling.
‘You have to admit there are still a few fearless guys around,’ commented Pols de Helder.

‘Stubborn, you mean,’ retorted ‘Count’ Baruzzi. ‘I almost admire him,’ declared Monsieur Philibert. ‘He’s the first I’ve seen put up such resistance.’ The Khedive: ‘People like that, Pierre, they
SABOTAGE
our work.’ Midnight. A kind of torpor gripped them. They slumped onto sofas, onto pouffes, into armchairs. Simone Bouquereau stood at the venetian mirror perfecting her make-up. Ivanoff stared intently at Baroness Lydia Stahl’s left hand. The others launched into trivial chatter. About that time the Khedive took me over to the window to talk of his appointment as
préfet de police
, which he felt certain was imminent. He thought about it constantly. At fourteen, the reformatory in Eysses . . . penal military unit in Africa and Fresnes prison. Pointing to the portrait of M. de Bel-Respiro, he named every medal on the man’s chest. ‘Just substitute my face for his. Find me a talented artist. From now on, my name is Henri de Bel-Respiro.’ He repeated, marvelling: ‘Henri de Bel-Respiro, Préfet De Police.’ Such a craving for respectability astonished me, for I had seen it once before in my father, Alexander Stavisky. I still keep the letter he wrote my mother before he took his life: ‘What I ask above all is that you bring up our son to value honour
and
integrity; and, when he has reached the awkward age of fifteen, that you supervise his activities and associations so he may get a healthy start in life and become an honest man.’ I believe he would have liked to end his days in a small provincial town. To find some peace and tranquillity after so many years of turmoil, anxiety, delusions and chaos. My poor father! ‘You’ll see, when I’m
préfet de police
everything will be fine.’ The others were chatting in low voices. One of the Chapochnikoff brothers brought in a tray of orangeade. Were it not for the bloodstain in the middle of the carpet and the gaudy costumes, one might think you were in the company of respectable people. Monsieur Philibert rearranged his files, then sat down at the piano. He dusted the keyboard with his handkerchief and opened a piece of music. He played the Adagio from the Moonlight Sonata. ‘A terpsichorean, a virtuoso,’ whispered the Khedive. ‘An artist to his fingertips. I sometimes wonder why he wastes his time on us. Such a talented boy! Just listen to him!’ I felt my eyes grow wide with a sadness that used up all my tears, a weariness so great it kept me from sleeping. I felt as though I had forever been walking in darkness to the rhythm of this harrowing unending music. Shadowy figures tugged at my lapels, pulling me in opposite directions, now calling me ‘Lamballe’, now ‘Swing
Troubadour’,
forcing me from Passy to Sèvres-Lecourbe, from Sèvres-Lecourbe to Passy, and still I did not know what it was all about. The world truly was fully of sound and fury. No matter. I strode straight through the chaos, stilted as a sleepwalker. Eyes wide open. Things would calm down eventually. The languorous melody Philibert was playing would gradually pervade everyone and everything. Of that I was certain. Everyone had left the living room. On the console tables was a note from the Khedive: ‘Try to deliver Lamballe as quickly as possible. We need him.’ The sound of the car engines grew faint. Then, standing in front of the Venetian mirror, clearly so distinctly, I said:
I AM THE PRIN-CESS DE LAM-BALLE.
I looked myself in the eye, pressed my forehead against the mirror: I am the Princess de Lamballe. Assassins track you in the darkness. They grope about, fumble, bump over the furniture. The seconds seem to last forever. You hold your breath. Will they find the light switch? Let it be over. I can’t hold out much longer against this feverish madness, I’ll walk up to the Khedive, eyes wide open, press my face to his:
I AM THE PRIN-CESS DE LAM-BALLE,
leader of the CKS. Or maybe Lieutenant Dominique will suddenly get to his feet and announce in a grave voice: ‘We have an informant in our midst. Some man by the name of ‘Swing
Troubadour’.
‘I AM Swing Troubadour, Lieutenant.’ I looked up. A moth circled from one chandelier to the other, so to keep his wings from being singed I turned out the lights. No one would ever show me such kindness. I have to fend for myself. Maman was far away: Lausanne. Thankfully. My poor father, Alexander Stavisky, was dead. Lili Marlene had all but forgotten me. Alone. I did not belong anywhere. Not at the Rue Boisrobert nor at Cimarosa Square. On the Left Bank, among those brave boys of the CKS, I hid the fact that I was an informant; on the Right Bank, the title ‘Princesse de Lamballe’ meant I was in serious danger. Who exactly was I? My papers? A fake Nansen passport. Persona non grata everywhere. This parlous situation kept me from sleeping. No matter. In addition to my secondary job of ‘recuperating’ valuable objects, I acted as night watchman at No. 3
bis
. Once Monsieur Philibert, the Khedive and their guests had left, I could have retired to Monsieur de Bel-Respiro’s bedroom, but I stayed in the living room. The lamp under its mauve shade cast deep rings of shadow around me. I opened a book:
The Mysteries of the Chevalier d’Eon
. After a few minutes it slipped from my hands. I was stuck by a sudden realization: I would never get out of this alive. The doleful chords of the Adagio rang in my ears. The flowers in the living room
were
shedding their petals and I was growing old at an accelerated rate. Standing in front of the Venetian mirror one last time, I looked at my reflection and saw the face of Philippe Pétain. His eyes seemed to me too bright, his complexion too pink, and so I metamorphosed into King Lear. What could be more natural. Since childhood, I had stored up a great reservoir of tears. Crying, they say, brings relief but despite my daily efforts, it was a pleasure I had never experienced. So the tears ate away at me like acid, which explains my rapid aging. The doctor had warned me: by twenty, you’ll be the spitting image of King Lear. I should have preferred to offer a more dashing portrait of myself. Is it my fault? I began life with perfect health and steadfast morals, but I’ve suffered great sorrows. Sorrows so intense I cannot sleep and, from years of staying open, my eyes became disproportionately large. They come down to my jaw. One more thing: I have only to touch something for it to crumble into dust. The flowers in the living room are withering. The champagne glasses scattered over the console table, the desk, the mantelpiece evoke some party that took place long ago. Perhaps the masked ball on 20 June, 1896, that Monsieur de Bel-Respiro gave in honour of Camille du Gast, the cakewalk dancer. The abandoned umbrella, the Turkish cigarette butts, the half-finished
orangeade.
Was Philibert playing the piano a moment ago? Or was it Mademoiselle Mylo d’Arcille, who died some sixty years before? The bloodstain brought me back to more pressing problems. I did not know the poor wretch who looked like Saint-Georges. While they were torturing him, he dropped a pen and a handkerchief monogrammed with the initials C.F.: the only traces of his sojourn here on earth . . .

I opened the window. A summer night so blue, so warm, that it could only be short-lived and immediately brought to mind phrases like ‘give up the ghost’ and ‘breathe a last sigh’. The world was dying of consumption. A gentle, lingering agony. The sirens announcing an air raid sobbed. Then all I could hear was a muffled drum. It went on for two or three hours. Phosphorus bombs. By dawn Paris would be a mass of rubble. Too bad. Everything I loved about the city had long since ceased to exist: the railway that once ran along the
petite ceinture
, the Ballon de Ternes, the Pompeian Villa, the Chinese Baths. Over time, it begins to seem natural that things disappear. The fighter squadrons would spare nothing. On the desk I lined up the mah-jongg tiles that had once belonged to the son of the house. The walls began to shudder. Any minute now, they might crumble. But I hadn’t finished what I was saying. Something
would
be born of my old age, my loneliness, like a bubble on the tip of a straw. I waited. In an instant, it took shape: a red-headed giant, clearly blind, since he wore dark glasses. A little girl with a wizened face. I named them Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. Destitute. Sickly. Always silent. A single word, a gesture would be enough to break them. What would have become of them without me? At last I found a reason to go on living. I loved them, my poor monsters. I would watch over them . . . No one would harm them. The money I earned at Cimarosa Square for informing and looting assured them a comfortable life. Coco Lacour. Esmeralda. I chose the two most powerless creatures on earth, but there was nothing maudlin about my love. I would have broken the jaw of any man who dared to make a disparaging remark about them. The mere thought put me in a murderous rage. Red-hot sparks burned my eyes. I felt myself choking. No one would lay a finger on my children. My grief which I had suppressed until now burst forth in torrents, and my love took strength in it. No living thing could resist its erosive power. A love so devastating that kings, warlords, and ‘great men’ were transformed into sick children before my eyes. Attila, Napoleon, Tamburlaine, Genghis Khan, Harun al-Rashid, and others whose virtues I had heard extolled.
How
puny and pitiful they seemed, these so-called titans. Utterly harmless. So much that as I bent over Esmeralda’s face, I wondered whether it was not Hitler I saw. A little girl, abandoned. She was blowing bubbles with a device I had bought for her. Coco Lacour was lighting a cigar. From the very first time I met them, they had never said a word. They must be mutes. Esmeralda stared open-mouthed at the bubbles as they burst against the chandelier. Coco Lacour was utterly absorbed blowing smoke rings. Simple pleasures. I loved them, my little weaklings. I enjoyed their company. Not that I found these two creatures more moving or more helpless than the majority of humankind. The ALL inspired in me a hopeless, maternal compassion. But Coco Lacour and Esmeralda alone remained silent. They never moved. Silence, stillness, after enduring so many useless screams and gestures. I felt no need to speak to them. What would be the purpose? They were deaf. And that was for the best. Were I to confide my grief to a fellow creature, he would immediately desert me. And I would understand. Besides, my physical appearance deters ‘soul mates’. A bearded centenarian with eyes that seem to devour his face. Who could possibly comfort Lear? It hardly matters. What matters: Coco Lacour and Esmeralda. We lived together as a family on Cimarosa Square. I
forgot
the Khedive and the Lieutenant. Gangsters or heroes, those guys had worn me down. I had never managed to be interested in their stories. I was making plans for the future. Esmeralda would take piano lessons. Coco Lacour would play mah-jongg with me and learn to dance the swing. I wanted to spoil them, my two gazelles, my deaf-mutes. To give them the best education. I couldn’t stop looking at them. My love was like my feeling for maman. But she was safe now:
LAUSANNE.
As for Coco Lacour and Esmeralda, I kept them safe. We lived in a comforting house. One that had always been mine. My papers? My name was Maxime de Bel-Respiro. Before me hangs my father’s self-portrait. And there is more:

Memories

At the back of ever every drawer

perfumes

in every wardrobe . . .

We really had nothing to fear. The turmoil and cruelty of the world died on the steps of No. 3
bis
. The hours passed, silently. Coco Lacour and Esmeralda would go up to bed. They would quickly fall asleep. Of all the bubbles Esmeralda blew, one still floated in the air. It
rose
towards the ceiling, hesitantly. I held my breath. It burst against the chandelier. Now everything was over. Coco Lacour and Esmeralda had never existed. I was alone in the living room listening to the rain of phosphorus. I spared a last thought for the quays along the Seine, the Gare d’Orsay, the Petite Ceinture. Then I found myself at the edge of old age in a region of Siberia called Kamchatka. Its soil bears no life. A bleak and arid region. Nights so deep they are sleepless. It is impossible to live at such a latitude, and biologists have observed that here the human body shatters into a thousand shards of laughter: raucous, piercing like the slivers of broken bottles. This is why: in the midst of this polar wasteland you feel free of every tie that bound you to the world. All that remains is for you to die. Laughing. 5 a.m. Or perhaps it is dusk. A layer of ash covered the living-room furniture. I was looking down at the bandstand on the square, at the statue of Toussaint L’Ouverture. It felt as though I were looking at a daguerreotype. Then I wandered through the house, floor by floor. Suitcases lay strewn in every room. There had been no time to close them. One contained a hat from Kronstadt, a slate-gray woollen suit, a yellowed playbill from a show at the Théâtre Ventadour, an autographed photo of the ice-skaters
Goodrich
and Curtis, two keepsakes, a few old toys. I didn’t have the courage to rummage through the others. All around, trunks multiplied: in steel, in wicker, in glass, in Russian leather. Several trunks lined the corridor. 3
bis
was becoming a vast left-luggage department. Forgotten. No one cared about these suitcases. They held the ghosts of many things: two or three walks in Batignolles with Lili Marlene, a kaleidoscope given to me for my seventh birthday, a cup of verbena tea maman gave me one evening I don’t recall how long ago . . . All the little details of a life. I would have liked to make an itemised list. But what good would it do?