“They’re hiding Jews,” the corporal called down.
The major was more disappointed than angry, although he was irritated that he was wasting his time and putting his men in danger for the sake of a generous impulse that, in his view, had been thrown back in his face. He could hear through the walls, if faintly, the chest-shaking vibration of at least several companies of American tanks, and the sounds, like surging water, of distant and exultant crowds. “How many?”
“Two. One bed, two chairs. There are only two.”
“Get them down.”
With the deepest sadness and boundless fear for themselves and their child, Philippe and Cathérine left the attic they had entered four years before, and awkwardly descended through the hatch. As the corporal and private helped Cathérine down, each of them felt her breasts with their hands. Philippe saw this. His head swam, and the only thing keeping him upright and able to move was the overwhelming imperative of saving his child. He looked at Cathérine, and she at him. In a single glance they said that they loved one another, that they understood they were going to die, and that what they had left to do now in the world was to hope that Jules, overlooked, would live.
Sadism feeds upon itself, and this was the SS. Philippe and Cathérine were not escorted down the stairs, they were kicked and thrown. By the time they reached the rez-de-chaussé, Cathérine’s ribs and wrist were broken, her face cut and bruised. Philippe was hurt even more, but felt nothing except the exquisite pain that he would not be able to save his wife. She looked toward him, he thought, as if he could save her. The Mignons observed all this in shock, certain that they themselves would be shot for harboring Jews.
As if to demonstrate to the soldiers outside that they were doing their job, the private and the corporal hit Cathérine and Philippe with their submachine guns to propel them out the door and ordered them onto the half-track. They were in too much pain to climb up themselves, so the soldiers hoisted them up, threw them onto the steel floor, and forced them to kneel.
As if to explain why they were not simply shot and left on the ground, and why he was not going to shoot the Mignons, the major said, “We’ll have to live with France.” Then he mounted the step and got into the half-track. He looked up and down the street. The unmistakable sound of tanks grew louder. His men looked at him as if to receive orders, but he held up his hand, meaning that they should leave their engines off, and freeze. He hoped that as the tanks passed on the boulevard they might fail to notice his small unit parked quietly and half in shade in the middle of the block.
Jules had never in all his life been anywhere but the attic room or without the presence of both his parents for as much as a second. Their absence was intolerable, and the game was over. At the hatch, he looked down. The shelf was close, but he was scared. He was, however, more scared to be left alone, so he lowered himself. Once on the shelf, he had to jump. He held his breath and did so, closing his eyes as he fell, and rolling when he landed. Shocked but unhurt, he saw the stairs. He’d never seen stairs, much less taken them, and it was difficult for him to do so. He used his hands, backing down, going sideways, terrified of the height. Still, he made his way down the several flights, and though he was confused as to where he was he saw through the bakery window his mother and father kneeling in the half-track, the Mignons outside, their backs to him, and all the soldiers.
He burst through the door, trying to reach Philippe and Cathérine, but Marie Mignon caught him and pressed him to her, hoping in vain that the Germans would take no notice.
“Is that their child?” The major asked.
“No,” Marie answered. “Our grandson, a Christian child, a Catholic child, baptized.”
The major took a step toward Philippe, who was bleeding from his face and could see through only one eye. “Is that your child?” he asked.
Philippe turned his head to look. Suppressing all emotion, he said, “No.” He knew that Jules would hear this and would not understand.
The major asked Cathérine, “Is that your child?”
It took her entire being not to shake and cry, but she said, “No. That is not my child.” Like her husband, she cast no last glance and shed no tears – the most difficult thing in her life.
The major withdrew his pistol from his holster and put it near Cathérine’s head. “Is he?” he asked.
“No.”
Then he fired.
Philippe’s heart burst with powerlessness and regret. Had he not been shot in turn, as he was, he might have died still. It was too much to live through.
Only when Philippe and Cathérine had collapsed, hidden by the sides of the half-track, did Jules speak. It was the first word he had ever said not in a whisper, and it was so loud that it echoed from the façades across the street. “Maman!” he cried.
At this, Marie dropped her head, and shed quiet tears. A soldier came and tried to pull Jules away from her. She resisted. Jacques and Louis joined her. The soldiers had rifles and were too close to fire, so they used them as clubs and beat everyone down. The Mignons fell to the ground and waited to be shot. Jules staggered toward the half-track. As if to prevent the four-year-old from damaging the armored vehicle, one of the soldiers – who had killed many children already – took a quick step after Jules and used the butt of his rifle to smash the back of his head. Jules saw the ground rushing up at him, and then, before losing consciousness, felt the left side of his face hit the pavement.
After the major had shot Philippe, he kept watch up the street, pistol in hand, as if nothing had happened around him. Just as the soldiers remounted their vehicles, pointed their rifles at the Mignons, and waited for the order to fire, the major saw an American tank on the boulevard pass the gap at the end of the street, stop, and slowly backup. “Go!” he ordered. “Drive!”
The engines started, the soldiers dropped behind the armor plate of the half-track, and the SS detachment, still carrying the bodies of Cathérine and Philippe, sped out as the turret of the American tank rotated to aim its gun. The tank fired one round before the targeted vehicles turned onto the boulevard at the other end of the street. The shot hit the second command car, blowing it across the boulevard, but the way was then made clear for the half-track to round the corner, following the lead car. The tank rotated its turret back and continued in the direction in which it had been going.
Marie dragged herself to Jules and pulled him to her again as Louis tried to rise to his knees. “Is he dead?” he asked his wife.
“No,” she answered, the blood from Jules’ left cheek soaking into the front of her dress as she cradled him, “but how can he live?”
The Music Lesson
HE DID LIVE. Although all his life he wanted to follow his mother and father into realms of which he had no fear if only because they were there, and by sharing in their defeat to know, honor, and love them well, he lived intensely and deeply even so. Music kept him steady on course. Its magic clarified existence, stimulated courage as if from thin air, and illuminated that which could not be understood except in the language of music itself, and of which, when the music ceased, the only remnants were the conviction and desire such as one has when longing to re-enter a dream.
Whether or not the rhythm and syncopation of music matched the pulse, the atomic and subatomic timing within the body, or the symphonic motion of countless electrons in every nerve, channel, and cell, its wavelike melody and narrative elevated all things. Without this, Jules, when he was young, would not have been able to go on. So he sought it out, he studied hard and practiced until he bled, and it saved him.
Through the fifties and into the sixties, when a lucrative career and glory were possible in classical music, his fellow students worked for fame and riches. Moved by ambition – some so much so that they worked harder than he did – they went further. In his field, François did the same, rising to the position of someone respected by his peers and sought by every facet of journalism, even Indonesian TV. Jules was left behind. When whatever tal
ents he could proffer had opened opportunities to rise, he froze, unable to perform in public. He associated the joy of success with betrayal of his mother and father, and as if to be true to them in their darkness as, he imagined, they moved through eternal space, he failed time after time.
But just the music was enough. It made a quiet existence better than that which was royal or rich. Every step and misstep brought him closer to them and made him loyal to all who had come before. Though it never succeeded completely, music promised that sin and suffering might be washed away.
OTHER CITIES HAVE been or in time will be liberated, but the nature of Paris is such that when it was liberated in 1944 its beauty swelled as if fed by an artesian stream the Germans had been unable to stem. By coincidence, fashion, or the lack of dyes in wartime, the women of Paris at the Liberation were dressed mainly in white. In their simple white dresses as they marched at the forefront of crowds in celebration, they were like angels. At the Liberation, the impure were made pure, and people who had never experienced happiness suddenly came to know it.
Paris after the war was the creation of Paris before and during the war, and little of the stress and emotion was lost or forgotten. So when Jules was a boy, first in Reims and a few years later in Passy, he was living as much in the war as after it. He always remembered, and often would recall, how at eighteen and brimming over with energy and invincibility – before his induction, before the pine-covered mountains of Algeria, before the experience of exiting an aircraft in flight – he rode on a summer day upon the rear platform of a bus on the Boul-Miche, one of those buses that seem to have been part of Paris forever and to be destined to last just as long, but did not. If you were young and agile, you hopped onto the back as they were moving, and smiled at the angry conductor – if he was there to catch you – who then gave you a cardboard ticket after you had paid up.
Jules had just been conscripted and was saying goodbye to the Quartier latin and a way of life he had closely observed but never embraced, as had for example François, who without inhibition gave himself over to study while surrendering his body to wine, tobacco, and frenzies of the intellect. On the bus, Jules looked down the boulevard as the traffic made clouds of almost-sweet diesel smoke. It was hot, and the overarching limbs of the trees swayed slightly in the wind. Nineteen fifty-eight – everything seemed possible.
MORE THAN FIFTY-SIX years later, the buoyancy of youth long gone, he would make a telephone call to set in motion a series of events that were they to go smoothly or even just adequately would as in the last movement of a symphony unite disparate currents into one stream. Although he himself would never see the braiding of the threads, he hoped that they might save Luc; help Cathérine and David; punish the son-of-a-bitch, lying, dishonorable Jack and the crazy, son-of-a-bitch, lying, dishonorable Rich Panda; allow him to escape jeopardy for what he had done on the Île aux Cygnes; and, finally, achieve at last his greatest ambition.
It would start with a telephone call from which everything else might cascade. Although somewhere south and east of Iceland, eight miles in the air over the darkest ocean, he had laid down the rough outlines of what he had to do, he went over it again and again to rehearse the details and anticipate the unexpected. The dangerous things he had done in his life he had done either in the heat of the moment or as a soldier without choice in the matter. Here, he had a choice, and passion could easily ruin what calculation might achieve.
Before he made the call, to steady himself, clear his mind, and create a kind of alibi, he re-established his routine. It was as if he were two people, one embarking upon something complicated and dangerous, the other quietly going about his business. He would retreat to the routine whenever he felt himself beginning to falter, but, when he regained his footing, go out again.
He began to run once more, gently. He had lost weight in America and now, because of François’ revelation, perhaps only a claim, when he could not eat. Blood pressure and chemistry, pulse, and stamina had to be honed to near ideal levels for his age. He would sleep well, eat sparingly, and work as hard on his endurance as he could without pushing enough to trigger the end.
He placed his faith on the frequency of exercise rather than on its intensity or the length of a single session. This made him very, very busy, in that he would run, swim, and do calisthenics and weights four times a day. He ran so slowly that it was almost like fast walking. The swimming was low key as well, as were the calisthenics. In between sessions, he would nap. This regime was so demanding of his time that he had to take regular days off to attend to other business. He did, however, have a lot of time – on the long terrace, in the pool, before he slept, and as he sat in a café for lunch or tea – to work on his plan, which as it grew in detail he kept exclusively in his memory, with nothing written.
Neither tiring himself nor dropping dead, he passed into the new year, during which he would run ten kilometers and swim two every day, and do hundreds of abdominal, stretching, and weight exercises, with much rest, and civilized meals of small portions. He gave up reading the papers and hardly attended to his mail, which would accumulate as if on the desk of the kind of irresponsible person he had never been.
One did not need to read the papers to know about the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market, or the beatings, boycotts, divestments, and threats. Three years before, after the murder of Jewish children in Toulouse, Jules had come to a conclusion that others were not quite ready to adopt even at present. Now his answer to these events, as most people reacted with surprise, was to maintain a stoic silence and keep up the kind of program common to young musicians embarked upon pre-competition: epic, cloistered practice. What they did was like what Olympic athletes do, like the life of a ballet dancer, the charrette of an architect, or the self-isolation and Herculean work of a great scholar. Though Jules had something else in mind, he pursued it with similar devotion even if the months of discipline would no longer be necessary after one single unthreatening hour.
He didn’t have much to do with anyone except Cathérine, David, and a few waiters and clerks in Saint-Germain-en-Laye whom he had known for decades. The man at the swimming pool wouldn’t even look at him now. He said, once, and only once, after admitting Jules twice a day for a few months, “Congratulations, you now have the body of Arnaud Schwarzenaigre, but if you keep this up you’re going to drop dead.”
“Thank you,” answered Jules, as he tossed his towel into a bin and headed out into air so cold it froze the water left in his hair. But, warm and ruddy, he enjoyed the wind.
He still had not made the phone call, but he had the plan in his mind in as much depth and detail as if he had practiced it a thousand times. He had done the necessary research. All that remained to set it in motion was to press the buttons on the telephone. The new term had begun. He paid no attention, because he thought he had left that life behind. But he hadn’t quite done that, because no plan is perfect.
SAINT-GERMAIN-EN-LAYE that winter was paler, cleaner, and quieter than Paris. The stones had not been as darkened by soot. As the buildings were lower, more blue sky was visible, and, of course, as it was on a height, it was windier. Except during market hours, the streets were fairly empty, sometimes achieving the winter silence of a country village. Just as the great forest and the long views in all seasons brought the contentment of nature, so did the clarity of winter and the cold that swept cleanly through the town, quieting the streets and returning people to the stillness and assurance of home, with red coals in the hearth.
This kind of winter, the Christmas kind, of lights and joys in darkness, is then often subsumed in the raw, wet cold that kills off the season as it grows old. But rain and sleet can turn into beautiful white snow in the aftermath of which the ground is blinding, the air clear, and the sky blue.
One afternoon in February, Jules was between his penultimate and last exercise sets of the day. He would fall into a narcotic-like sleep in these interludes, and wake up flushed and freezing once he t
ossed the covers to the side. Going out into the sleet or rain was painful, but he did it time and again. It strengthened him so much that it was dangerous: he was not supposed to live like a young recruit in basic training.
Still in his running clothes, he was cold and he had the fever-like remnants of a nap in winter. Some stretching and calisthenics warmed him up and he was just about to go out when he heard a brutal knocking on his door. This had to be Claude the gardener, who knocked with an identifiable coarseness, as if the cold and wet outside were resentfully petitioning the comfort of a heated house.
It was indeed Claude, whose face was redder than Jules’ even though in winter he was not outside that much and spent most of his time in the gatehouse, looking at television and drinking the kind of red wine that comes in square cartons. He’d come through the fog and drizzle. “There’s a girl at the gate,” he said. “She says she has an appointment.”
“What?”
“There’s a girl at the gate. She said she has an appointment.”
“I don’t understand,” Jules said, mainly to himself.
But Claude took it literally. “A woman, a female. She’s standing near the gate. She says that she, the woman, the female, has an appointment – a meeting, a rendezvous – with you, Jules Lacour.”
“I got it.”
“You said you didn’t.”
“I mean, I don’t have an appointment with her. I don’t have an appointment with anybody.”
“I’ll tell her that.”
“No, no. I may have forgotten.”
“What should I tell her? She has a big case.”
“Let her in.”