A Prince Without a Kingdom (42 page)

Vango hadn’t signed up for this kind of mission. He had come on personal business.

He didn’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night.

It was here, almost ten years earlier, that he had nearly become a priest. What was he going to do now? Where was his path?

And yet he had never stopped believing. He felt as if he were in a deep valley flooded by a dam, where entire villages, paths, and hedgerows had vanished. Only the towers of churches appeared above the surface of the water. These bell towers were all that Vango had left.

At half past seven, he made his descent via the cathedral chevet. He walked around the square and passed the Portal of the Last Judgment.

London, at the same moment, dawn, December 25, 1942

Ethel walked into the hotel and requested her key at reception. A woman was busily eating biscuits, which she had crumbled into some milk. It looked rather like the porridge that was prepared for Lily the doe back at Everland, but the hotel proprietor could hardly be said to have doe’s eyes. Instead, they were hidden behind lenses as thick as aquarium glass. She half stood up to take a disapproving look at Ethel’s shoes, which were soaking the carpet.

“People have been waiting a long time for you.”

“People?”

“There was one at first, then another. And a third’s just arrived,” the receptionist informed Ethel without blinking her fishy eyes. “They’re upstairs. I gave them the key. They’re officers. I don’t want any trouble. And kindly remove your car from the sidewalk!”

Ethel climbed the two floors slowly. She followed the landing all the way to the end, paused for a second, then turned the door handle.

There were two men smoking in her room. One of them was standing in front of the window. The other was sitting on the bed. They wore Royal Air Force uniforms. As they turned to face her, water could be heard running in the bathroom.

Paul must be washing his hands,
thought Ethel, striding angrily into the room.

“Paul?”

“Good evening, Ethel.”

It was Philip. He closed the bathroom door behind him.

“We’ve been looking for you since yesterday evening. Why did you run away when I called out to you?”

“Where’s Paul?”

Philip turned somberly toward the officer standing by the window. The most senior of the three, and a colonel, he stubbed out his cigarette and took a deep breath.

“Paul’s plane was shot down in France.”

Ethel froze.

The colonel pursed his lips before adding, “You should prepare yourself for . . .”

Philip tried to put his hand on Ethel’s shoulder, but she stepped away.

“The man he parachuted in is alive,” said the other man. “Paul fulfilled his final mission. He was a tremendous pilot.”

“Get out.”

“I’m dreadfully sorry.”

“I’ll accompany you, Ethel,” said Philip.

“Get out.”

The men looked at one another, unsure how to react. Then the colonel gave a signal and all three of them headed for the door.

“If you need anything at all, please come to Cambridge. We’ll be there for you. You will always be most welcome at the base.”

Ethel stood alone in her room, listening to their footsteps as they headed downstairs, before she went over to the window. She wasn’t crying.

The Napier-Railton was waiting for her just below, on the sidewalk.

Paris, Notre Dame, at the same time

Vango sat down next to a shadow that was kneeling in the chapel. The pair of them stayed there, motionless. They were alone. The last of the candles from the previous night were still alight, melting and dripping onto the floor.

The man looked very contemplative. He had put his leather briefcase behind him on the chair. Vango was wary of speaking to him.

When the man tried to sit up again, his briefcase was in the way.

“Is this yours?” he asked.

Vango only wavered for a second.

“Yes,” he said, tucking the briefcase between his knees. The man was Charlot. Footsteps could be heard in the choir behind them. Somebody was drawing near.

“Are you due to meet Saint John at La Blanche?” Vango dared to whisper quickly.

“Who?”

“Saint John. He won’t be there. Ask Mother Elisabeth. She’ll explain.”

“Thank you.”

Charlot stood up and made the sign of the cross.

“Do you think the pilot is still alive?” Vango asked the parachutist as he was about to leave.

Charlot looked around and sat down again before speaking in hushed tones.

“The plane exploded. I saw it in flames. I’ve annotated the map of the zone with the location of the exact spot where the plane fell. That piece of paper is in the parcel you’ve got.”

The footsteps were heading farther away now. Vango recalled the burned bodies from the
Hindenburg:
the chances of survival after a fire in midair were next to none.

“But I know the pilot,” Charlot added. “To my mind, if he’s still alive, he can get out of there.”

Sounds of chairs moving in the cathedral choir. He lowered his voice.

“He had just recovered from his war injuries. I had already fought by his side.”

“When?”

“During the Spanish Civil War, close to Madrid.”

Three women, who sat down right in front of them, began reciting the rosary very quietly. It was impossible to carry on the conversation.

Charlot stood up for the last time. Vango couldn’t let him go. He had one final question to put to him.

“Well, I shall pray for your friend,” he called out in a clear voice.

“Thank you.”

“What was his name?”

“Paul B. H.”

Charlot headed off.

Vango put his head in his hands. He was imagining the burning plane spiraling over the forest in France. He was thinking of Paul. He tried to let himself be transported by the devotional chanting of the women in front. But Ethel’s eyes haunted him. Would she be able to survive this?

Paris, La Belle Étoile restaurant, December 27, 1942

“It’s not what’s supposed to happen,” complained Bartholomew as he folded his duster. “You can’t introduce a new character in the final chapters.”

“Why not?” the restaurant owner called out from the other end of the dining room. “I could even introduce two of them if I liked!”

“I think it shows a lack of respect.”

“I don’t give a stuff about respect, Bartholomew. Clean that window and let me get on with my work.”

Casimir Fermini resumed his furious bashing on his typewriter. He was approaching the end of his first novel. Bartholomew and all the restaurant staff had read each page as it was written. They offered opinions and suggested changes. They were already convinced that their boss would become a luminary writer elected to the French Academy.

Fermini was working at the back of his restaurant, on a table with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. From time to time he looked up and watched Bartholomew cleaning the window across which the words
LA BELLE ÉTOILE
appeared in an arc. Viewed from the inside, the golden looping letters were back to front, a sort of negative image written in an oriental script.

Casimir Fermini had inherited the establishment on the death of his aunt in 1929. She had raised the young Casimir. Until the outbreak of the First World War, she and her husband had run a small but highly reputable café-restaurant on the premises, which didn’t yet bear the name of La Belle Étoile. Uncle Fermini was an impressive cook. Business was good. They even had ten tables outside in summer, a menu with four main courses to choose from, and, for years, a very pretty waitress who was a sign of the restaurant’s prosperity and who produced wonders as a chef’s assistant.

In 1914, at the first sound of cannon fire, Monsieur Fermini died. Panic-stricken, his wife, who had never touched a saucepan, closed the kitchen and nailed up the door. Fifteen years followed in which the word
restaurant
was banned on-site. The establishment turned into a simple café. There were tears when the pretty waitress was sent away; the menus were withdrawn, and the tables removed from the pavement. Young Casimir spent those years serving glasses of fortified wine and liqueurs. On his aunt’s death, the first thing he did was to reinstate the word
restaurant
above the window. But, to begin with, he only served omelets.

Shortly before the war, the food took off without warning. Omelets went by the wayside, with or without bacon, and customers lined up on the sidewalk for a table to become available. It was now called La Belle Étoile. And since this odd-shaped lane in the Temple district had very little passing traffic, Fermini set up tables in the middle of the street. When a car was heard approaching, everyone stood up and pushed their chairs to the side, complaining. The police closed their eyes in exchange for a taste of olives or wild asparagus.

The following year, weary of bringing the tables in with every downpour, Fermini also rented the premises opposite. And so the restaurant was spread over two buildings. A large dining room was opened on the other side of the street, up on the second floor. The kitchen also moved, to the ground floor opposite. There were fifty covers in total, with the historical dining room remaining at number eleven. Six waiters spent their lives crossing back and forth bearing trays.

The war and the Occupation were a new challenge for the establishment. To begin with, Casimir Fermini was faced with the temptation of contraband. For a price, you could get any product you liked, even though the city was hit by famine. Trafficking made a mockery of ration tickets. Foie gras and plump chickens were easy enough to find. But, from the autumn of 1940, La Belle Étoile flaunted itself as one of the rare eateries that rejected the black market outright. The list of dishes was divided by five and the length of the line doubled. On Saturdays, it extended as far as the Carreau du Temple market.

These days, there was only one menu at the restaurant, with starring roles for rutabagas, Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, and dozens of herbs and wild leaves, which the waiters set off with the chef to pick in the countryside by the gates of Paris before daybreak. They returned on bicycles laden with crates of greenery and seeds, like a florist’s wheelbarrow. Back in the kitchen, miracles took place. The Jerusalem artichokes were transformed beyond all recognition, as were the dandelions.

The restaurant afforded itself only one luxury. A luxury that arrived by horse and cart twice a week. A luxury that was stored in a vat and closed with a padlock. Butter.

A farm in Normandy had three dedicated cows whose job it was to provide this butter, and Casimir Fermini himself, on the request of his chef, took the train in order to pay a surprise visit and inspect the eating habits of these three cows. They lived in a peaceful valley with grass above their shoulders. They drank from a pond of clear water that was barely interrupted by frogs. They had no idea there was a war on. In their left ears, a silver ring engraved with
LA BELLE ÉTOILE
served as a reminder of their noble and exclusive calling.

Casimir may have been the restaurant owner, but he knew what he owed his chef for making La Belle Étoile’s success possible. And so he respected the chef’s whims. For some time now, however, the small matter of butter had served as an excuse for the German authorities to poke their noses into the kitchen.

The Nazi officers sniffed out everything that was fine and good in Paris. They always had perfect taste. And they wasted no time in tracking down this extraordinary eatery, far from the areas of Paris they were accustomed to frequenting. But the occupying army received no special treatment at La Belle Étoile.

The restaurant was always full. When a table became free, customers would rush in from all sides to stake their claim before the overdisciplined soldiers had a chance to sit down. In the summer, Fermini paid for two musicians to play in the street, for the enjoyment of those waiting for a table as well as his customers. Each time a green uniform appeared at the end of the street, the musicians would play a song from before the war that proclaimed:
“Everything passes in life, everything passes with time. . . .”

The German military command had paid a visit to the kitchens, on the hunt for rationed products. The
kommandantur
had been surprised to find cheap boxes of root tubers, onions, garlic, two chickens barely big enough to make enough stock for the entire week, and bunches of wasteland plants soaking in bowls.

But at the back of the kitchen they found the butter.

To be strictly accurate, there were sufficient quantities to butter everyone’s toast in the Department of the Seine. Casimir described his cows lovingly. But he realized, when faced with the stiffness of the
feldkommandant,
that he would have to make some kind of concession if he didn’t want his restaurant to be shut down for good.

Casimir agreed to provide the large dining room on the second floor for the New Year’s Eve party. In exchange, he would be left in peace for another year. This gave rise to arguments with his chef, but the smell of butter melting on the stove and the sound of spinach sweating in a frying pan got the better of both the restaurant owner and his chef. There was a war on. People could do without almost anything. Except butter.