The Avignon Quintet (172 page)

How extraordinary to realise that these relics from the war were still in existence, and still in Provence! It seemed hardly possible, so far away did the war seem with all its follies. “The General!” she thought. “Perhaps it would be worth it!”

Yes, she would visit him.

FOUR

The General Visited

F
OR A SHORT WHILE NOTHING WAS TO COME OF THESE
notions, but then with the first few warm days of spring they gradually took shape and turned into promptings fed by her native impatience and the impending changes in their lives – for Blanford had decided that if Sylvie betook herself off to her old quarters in Montfavet he himself might return to Tu Duc at last. Constance seemed to favour the idea at any rate. So she found her thoughts turning in the direction of old Von Esslin who spent his days cooped up in the little Eye Clinic of Nîmes in a state of ambiguous half-imprisonment, waiting upon a War Crimes Tribunal to pronounce on his dossier. He was almost blind and the prognosis for the future was so poor that he had already invested in the traditional white cane, though in fact he could just dimly see things and people, often only as outlines which he filled in from memory. He sat stiffly at a child’s desk trying to learn a little elementary French in order to temper his isolation and loneliness. The authorities treated him with respectful civility proper to his exalted rank and this did not surprise him for, as he was to put it to Constance, “They understand the logic of the uniform – what is a crime after all? A soldier’s duty comes first and they know it.” It was one of those intellectual quibbles which left a bad taste in the mouth, like the scholar’s proposition that “The Templars were the bankers of God but not of Christ”!

Things did not move with great urgency, nor were the French anxious to hasten them, for with every new move the full extent of their shameful collaboration with the Germans became more and more clear. As for Von Esslin he felt rather an orphan for he had lost touch with his family and home which was occupied by Russian troops now. What little news that leaked out was anything but reassuring. Later on he would find out that the Russian Army, responding to reports of Nazi atrocities further East, had burned the chateau. His mother and sister had perished, locked in a barn with the servants. The silence emphasised his isolation. The world had closed in and his movements were limited to a walk of a few hundred yards in the romantic public gardens of that austere fief of Protestantism, the city of Nîmes. He tapped his way across them until he found a sunny spot in which to sit, basking in sunlight whenever there was any, like an old lizard. He suffered very much from the winter cold, for the little clinic was inadequately heated.

It was of course a great surprise when Constance burst into his life as she did, without warning, and she supposed that it was the surprise of her perfect German which made him disposed to welcome her. But in fact it went deeper, very much deeper than she herself would ever guess, for through the screens of his fading vision the blonde and beautiful woman seemed to be reincarnating a screen-memory of his blonde sister Constanza – even to the name! “My name is Constance,” said Constanza, and a piteous pang of joyful recognition was his first reaction. Of course confusion and disappointment followed it-he had wondered for a wild moment whether by some miraculous military dispensation the real Constanza had not been permitted by the Red Cross to cross the lines and visit him … It was cruel, and it took some time to accommodate himself to the truth. It was also in a way exasperating, for this life-inspiring vision had to be continuously edited and re-edited to meet the needs of the present. Moreover the sweet resemblance of voice together with her mannered stylish Prussian turns of speech went far to confirm at first blush that it actually
was
, it might be, it could be,
must
be his sister! Alas! But in their first interview while the girl introduced herself and opened up the subject of it, this thirsty delusion came down over his heart and mind like manna from heaven and it was little wonder that within an hour he was devotedly at her service and fully ready to cooperate with her in her quest for more information about Livia. His age and fragility were touching. They became friends.

What seemed strange at first was the fact that they remembered nothing of each other despite the fact of having spent so long together in the same city during the same critical period. Perhaps twice she had seen him with a column of soldiers crossing the town, face turned away, pale and remote as a cipher – which is what he was. He could not remember having seen her at all, otherwise he must have been struck by the resemblance to his sister. Of Livia he knew only a little and that by accident, for he had spent a weekend in the infirmary of the fortress being nursed for an infected tooth, and this rather taciturn field nurse was on duty that week. But the eminence of his rank had hardly encouraged them to indulge in casual conversation. Nevertheless he had heard some vague gossip about the English girl who had defaulted to join the Nazis and who was working as a staff nurse in the field force. He himself felt that such independence merited admiration and was rather shocked when the security officer who outlined her record spoke of her with pity and contempt. They were suspicious of Livia apparently, and in part it was due to her association with Smirgel who was the senior intelligence officer posted in Avignon and whose acquaintance with her dated from before the war when he had been an art student spending a period of study in the town on a scholarship. He had met Livia one day while working on the restoration of a painting and they had, with some hesitation, become lovers.

“So much I learned, I overheard, so to speak. But I gave the matter no thought as we had so much already on our hands. Nevertheless I often heard doubts about Smirgel’s reliability expressed, specially because he had accepted a working brief with the English, but only in order to mislead or betray them – or at any rate this is what he said. It could have been true – why not? But in a war rumour runs wild, and nobody believes anybody else. At any rate the old field reports must exist somewhere unless the French went ahead and had them destroyed to avoid causing themselves much unnecessary soul-searching because of the past. One can understand it. They were more zealous than us all when it came to hunting down the dissenters. In my own view there would have been no real resistance at all after the first few months had we not gone ahead with our slave-labour policy. That is what set up a wave of reaction and got people evading the draft and taking to the hills. Once that started the British started parachuting in and forming an armed resistance among these runaway slaves; and of course the terrain around LaSalle and in the fastnesses of Langue d’Oc favoured such a development.”

He shook his head with an expression of regret and went on: “And what complicated matters was the three overlapping intelligence agencies, often with conflicting tales to tell about the same incidents. My own role was purely military though I had access to all. I depended on the field command and had an intelligence group of my own, dealing only with that. Then came the military governor who had his own security service which he shared with the French Milice – which he loathed and distrusted, though he managed to foist most of the dirty jobs on to them. Nor did they mind. They seemed to take pleasure in roughing up their own nationals. That is why they are in such a state now, for so many animosities were created, and the Frenchman harbours grudges, he does not forgive and forget!”

He had been drawing in the gravel with his cane – a sketch of the interlapping agencies; now he tapped once or twice as he added, “You see? While nominally working together we were very much divided internally. Nobody could stand the Milice and the dislike was reciprocated for the Milice had a bad conscience. That is why they have pounced on the documents in the case. As far as I am concerned I am convinced that not a scrap of paper will emerge from it all. The dossiers are too incriminating for them. You mark my words, it will all be destroyed and a new race of war heroes will emerge from the ashes. French propaganda is very astute and they must prove they did something in order to give themselves bargaining power when it comes to the negotiations of the peace table. I think so at any rate! But then they would say I was prejudiced against them.”

He sighed and shook his head in a sad, reproachful way. So the conversation ran on in somewhat haphazard fashion: it was so intoxicating to speak his own tongue again that it was almost unmanning for the soldier in him – he felt almost tearful with gratitude. Moreover to speak to this shadow-lambent version of his own beloved Constanza … waves of sympathy passed over his old heart like wind flowing over embers he had long thought cold. He even dared to reach out and touch her hand which did not withdraw from the contact but stayed for a calm moment unstirring in his. It fired his thoughts, this warm contact, though he had little enough to recount about Livia. No, it was obvious that she would have to try to trace Smirgel. She told him how some time late in the war – indeed, just before the general retreat – Smirgel had visited her to ask her opinion about a document which he had procured which purported to be an order of the day signed by Churchill himself. It was an optimistic evaluation of the war situation saying that the Germans had begun to stockpile in back areas and must now be considered as having gone over on to the defensive. Smirgel wanted to know whether she thought it a fake or not. Later when she thought over the episode she thought that it had been a clumsy attempt to worm his way into her confidence. But
why
?

The General provided an excited comment of corroboration to this by saying: “Good Lord! Yes! I well recall that English document with its message. It was very striking because it happened to be true. We had already started anticipating a defensive battle or two in the south of France – to consolidate the Mediterranean axis, for Italy had begun to defect and disintegrate. But even more than that I can tell you that when the Allied radio piously announced that no historical or archaeological treasures would be bombed it gave us at once a clue as to what should be done with all this precious stockpile of weaponry which was pouring into France by rail, road and water! We would mask it if possible by placing it in sites to be spared aerial attack. What better, for example, than to hollow out the quarries and caverns which abut the Pont du Gard? It was a God-given site. The kilometres of subterranean corridors and caves were ideal for the purpose. So we directed our sappers to perform and so they did. And the quantity grew and grew.”

He had grown visibly rather tired and his exposition had begun to flag somewhat. But he did not wish this delicious exchange to end and he quested about in his mind to find an excuse to bring her back again. “It is time for my medicine soon,” he said with regret at last. “But perhaps I will remember other matters of interest later on; would you wish us to meet again for a talk next week?” To his surprised relief she said yes. She found his obvious regret at parting from her touching. “Yes, we should meet again,” she said, “just in case we have overlooked some detail or other which might help me. And next week you can pick your day because I am on leave for a few days.” He was delighted and shook hands warmly as they parted.

So it was that this initial contact flowered into a series of short agreeable visits to the old man which enabled her to relive and re-experience those sad and barren war years spent in echoing Avignon. Nor were the visits valueless from the point of view of information, for many a small detail about life at that obscure epoch awoke under the stimulus of her company. Apart from this, too, she was able to secure for him certain small concessions and attentions on the part of the clinic, such as a cigarette and wine allowance – he was after all a prisoner of war and should enjoy certain entitlements due to his rank. And while the season advanced towards the more clement end of the spring she tried to assemble and collate these tiny fragments of history for her own satisfaction. At first Jourdain proved somewhat cold and hostile towards her acceptance of Sylvie’s leave-taking but later when he sensed the full extent of her regrets he changed back into his former generous self, though when he heard that Blanford had decided to return to Tu Duc he could not repress a jealous pang. He knew nevertheless that Constance had decided that she would herself undertake the extensive physiotherapy which was part of the treatment for the rehabilitation of Blanford’s wounded back which had vastly improved under her care. But one of the more surprising new elements which emerged from the General’s recollections concerned the vast cache of arms which had been stored in the caverns and corridors of the Roman quarries of Vers and elsewhere. The regiment of sappers charged with the task of storing all this weaponry was Austrian and had ended by openly mutinying and refusing to blow up the train full of ammunition which the Nazi command had planted on the bridge over the river which commanded the town. (Had they obeyed the command they would have irremediably disfigured, indeed completely destroyed, Avignon.) The Austrian refusal saved the town, but the sappers themselves, all twenty of them, had been arrested and unceremoniously shot. The grateful townsfolk had covered their graves with roses when the army at last abandoned the town and started to retreat northward … So much was mere history. But the work of the sappers had given rise to strange rumours about discoveries made while they were burrowing their way under the Pont du Gard, clearing out the debris of ancient excavations to make room for their stockpile.