The Dream of Scipio (49 page)

“What do you suggest we do?”

“We hand them over.”

Hector had never been a practical man. He still lived in a world where you told the police, the police did something. It was his own form of resistance to pretend such a universe still existed. He was at the end of his imagination, all his ideas used up. He had briefly put up a moment’s defiance, but all for naught. He sank back into his habitual impotence and shook his head sadly, as he always had when faced with something so imponderably wrong.

“That is not so easy,” Julien pointed out gently. “And perhaps not wise, either.”

“You have contacts, Julien. You are important. You know the préfet. Go and see him. Talk to him. He’ll be able to do something.”

Julien gazed sadly at him. His faith was touching.

“What do you think?” he asked Julia when he pedaled back to the house. She was still with him; Bernard had not yet made any arrangements to get her out and it looked now as though he never would. Months had passed by; Bernard didn’t even trouble to make excuses anymore. Yet the demands for more identity cards and documents kept coming. Julien hoped that when Bernard had made the agreement he had intended to keep it, but he was no longer sure. Julia had done everything he wanted and more. Anyway, it would be quicker now, so Julien dryly remarked, to wait for the Allies to come to them. Not that he minded so much; there had been no hint of any danger, and the days passed in such perfect happiness—peace, almost—their own tranquillity the greater because of the daily news of the fighting that sooner or later would engulf them all.

She was covered in ink; before he’d lived with her, Julien had never realized quite how messy, quite how physical was the life of a painter. It gave added impetus to his constant search for soap. He looked at her fondly as she tried to scratch her nose with some part of an arm that wasn’t covered in her particularly sticky brew of homemade ink, then took mercy on her and scratched it himself.

“Now I know why the Renaissance painters had assistants,” she said in relief. She looked in the mirror. “Dear God, just look at me!”

An old shirt without a collar, a pair of his old trousers rolled up at the bottom so she wouldn’t trip over them, no shoes, hair tied back with a piece of string, she looked utterly beautiful and more happy than he had ever seen her.

“Go,” she said, after studying herself carefully. “Of course you must go. What is there to lose? You must do something for these poor people, if you can.”

Julien left an hour later. He would, he reckoned, be back the following afternoon, and he promised to see if there was any soap or paper to be had. They were, he acknowledged with a smile as he left, the two most valuable things in the world.

IN 1972, shortly before he died, a journalist-turned-author came across the name of Marcel Laplace and wrote a book about Provence in wartime. His work was part of the reevaluation of the war that at that stage was just beginning to get under way, but was still more concerned with exonerating than accusing. Old accounts were settled, long-hidden deals and accommodations brought to light. In Marcel’s case the cost was not high; he was already ill by then and his mind had trouble concentrating; he was beyond recrimination and had no need to defend himself. His record and reputation spoke for itself.

Marcel, by then, was a man so loaded with honor that he was one of the great men of the state. He had been of major importance in different branches of the French civil service for nearly a quarter of a century after the war and had played a part in the economic miracle that had restored French pride in the 1960s. A technocrat, the epitome of technocracy, who had perfected his art in Avignon during the war, while putting into effect the policies for national renewal dreamed up in Vichy.

The journalist delved into his past and found much that had been forgotten. The book that resulted avoided the bureaucratic detail, the memoranda, the orders, the meetings, the appointments that were the daily bread of collaboration. He could have made much more of the administrative orders Marcel had issued, which showed him time and again going beyond the requirements of both régime and occupiers in his desire to please, gaining himself space to maneuver at the expense of others. A careful examination of the way he applied the
statut des juifs
would have shown that many people lost their jobs who might have survived had a more indolent préfet been in charge. That edicts on reforming schools, closing nightclubs, banning meetings might have been softened in more cautious hands.

All this was mentioned, but it was not what he was after; rather, the author chose to concentrate on the single event that summed up the drama and confusion of war. And he chose as his one telling anecdote the moment on August 14, 1943, when Marcel, according to his own recollection, first tried to make contact with the Resistance, a courageous decision that finally bore fruit in the weeks before the liberation the following year. For when the German army was beaten back, civil war did not break out, chaos did not ensue. Civilian government resumed and reprisals were kept to a minimum. Once more, Marcel served his country and his département well. The author picked up that he and Bernard had been to school together; under his penmanship they became friends, closer than friends, blood brothers reaching out a hand to each other across the divide of ideology and the noise of conflict. Trust, simple and human, triumphed over fear and hatred, and ensured the swift reintegration of military and administration, the reestablishment of civilian government, at the first possible moment after the Allied armies had pushed the Germans back north.

Thus the journalist imagined a conversation in which Marcel was told of Bernard’s presence in France, and has him sitting at his desk, considering how to proceed. Does he inform the Germans? Pass the information on to his own police? Or does he step out of legality and enter the dark world of the clandestine? Someone like Olivier de Noyen would have constructed a semi-theological scenario, with a very literal devil tempting the bureaucrat into evil, an angel arguing for the opposite. Manlius Hippomanes with his classical and pagan background would have mimicked the judgment of Hercules, with a long and highly intellectualized discourse in which the moral issues are debated—with personifications of Vice and Virtue to help out—before Marcel makes his reasoned choice.

Given the way the drama was constructed, all three must make Marcel the hero, as did the author of the book, or at least the centerpiece of the affair. Everything focuses on his decision, and this is where the journalistic distortion creeps in. For Marcel never made a choice. He never considered alternatives. He never doubted for a moment that the actions he in fact took were correct. And, of course, the journalist did not suspect the existence or the importance of Julien Barneuve in the matter.

THE PROBLEM was simple: Manlius regarded the Burgundians as the best hope for the security of Provence. He could make a distinction between one group of barbarians and another, while his friend Felix saw all as a threat to the ideal of Rome. By the time Manlius left the king’s palace and began his trek back home, the starkness of the opposition was clear to him. Events had made them enemies. One or the other must give way. And time was short; the Burgundian king was willing to move his army to a line south of Vaison, but would not invade. He wanted no opposition, and if there was any either he would not come at all or he would feel free to pillage at will. Then everything Manlius had tried to achieve would be lost. Their savior would become their destroyer.

As he voyaged, the journey taking ten days when a generation ago it could have been done in two, Manlius was confident that he could carry the day in the town and the region; his position as bishop gave him an unrivaled, indeed a unique voice to the townspeople, and there was, of course, no doubt that his estates would obey. Nonetheless, he was aware that there would be opposition, and that with Felix at its head, it could be formidable.

He was reassured by the belief that Felix had headed south, to try once again to raise troops to send to Clermont; it was because of this confidence that the news Vaison had rebelled against him under the leadership of Caius Valerius came as such a shock. It was one development he had not foreseen, for like Felix himself, he had never taken seriously the devout but simplistic fool whose bishopric he had taken.

In fact, Caius had been preparing since the moment Manlius was elected some four months previously, and knew that the absence of both the bishop and Felix from the region gave him the one chance he was likely to get. Within hours of the delegation leaving for the court of the Burgundians, he began to move with those he had persuaded, bribed, and frightened into supporting him. The church was captured, and its treasury—newly filled with Manlius’s gold—opened. Work details were set onto the walls, building and strengthening. All of Manlius’s men in the town were disarmed and given the choice: abandon their master or have their hands chopped off so they could not fight for him. Most chose the former option. No move was made to deprive Manlius of his position, however; that would be done later; charges of peculation were prepared to lay against him when he returned. For Caius did not underestimate his bishop or his cousin, and knew that he had little time. Manlius was immensely powerful, and could raise a substantial number of troops from his estates. Moreover, the townspeople were uneasy; Manlius had been elected by acclamation. He had the support of Faustus; he was God’s representative.

Nor could the town be easily prepared for a siege, or defended. The walls were feeble and weak. The inhabitants had almost no idea how to fight. Caius sent urgent messages south, along with all of Manlius’s gold, to hire mercenaries, but nothing had happened. Until they arrived, or his cousin Felix returned with troops to face a fait accompli, a full and open declaration of war against the bishop was unthinkably stupid.

So Caius Valerius worked to prepare the walls, and to stiffen the resolve of the townsmen. Here something dramatic was needed; something to ram home just how unsuitable Manlius was. Who better than Sophia to make this point?

The rumors about her had already started in any case. It took little effort to fan them into a flame of outrage. Sophia was strange, haughty, and aloof. She spoke in a way—the purest Latin, in fact—that the Gallic ear could scarcely even understand anymore. She practiced medicine, so easily confused with necromancy. She was, undoubtedly, the bishop’s consort, he who was supposedly dedicated to celibacy and chastity now his wife had gone to a woman’s house. Above all, she was a pagan, who preferred the company of Jews to good Christians, who openly sneered at the truth and had corrupted the mind of youths throughout the land with her teaching. Sophia, when she heard this last, laughed out loud. She couldn’t corrupt them even if she wanted to.

She was in the habit of coming into the town every few weeks, not so much because she needed to—her slave was more than capable of seeing to her small needs—but because she needed to breathe the air of civilization, however diminished and provincial it might be. She stayed in the great house Manlius had given her, generally only for a day or so, and went walking through the streets, listening to the noise of human activity, constantly surprised by how much it reassured and soothed her. For she had absorbed little of pastoralism in her education; she lived in isolation on her hill to escape the omnipresent signs of decay, rather than to bask in the revitalizing aura of nature. Nature, indeed, she had little time for; she had always been a city dweller, and was more appalled by cruelty of the wild than she was awed by its beauty.

Besides, she had begun to give instruction to Syagrius. The young man had come to her one day and asked to speak. Then, in a rush, he had asked her for lessons, his eyes beseeching her not to turn him away or ridicule him in the way that his adoptive father did as a matter of course. Sophia would never have done that; but she did not, initially, want to instruct him either. She knew perfectly well that he did not ask out of any craving for philosophy; rather he wished through her teaching to come closer to Manlius and demonstrate his worth.

Ordinarily, she would have refused, but now she had no other pupils, and as he stood there, proud but so young and lost, his wish to win Manlius’s respect and affection so clear, she could not turn him away. Instead, with a sigh of misgiving she had smiled, and agreed. “Of course. It would be a pleasure.” His smile of relief and gratitude—a charming smile, with real beauty in it—reassured her.

“And the first thing you can do in my company is to stop standing to attention like that. I will not be your teacher but your guide. I will help you, not instruct you. This means you must speak freely, and I forbid you to believe anything I tell you. Do you understand?”

A look of puzzlement and distress crossed his face. Sophia’s heart sank. “Come in, young man. But if you call me ‘my lady’ once again I will throw you into the street. You will, I hope, think of me with respect. But I have not earned it from you yet. When I have, you may address me thus.”

And so she began with poor, simple discourses. His ignorance was total, the lad was scarcely capable of understanding the basics. Sooner or later, he would say:

“How can you say this? The Bible says . . .”

“What do you mean that life is a quest? What are we looking for? Surely faith should be enough.”

And she would try to explain in a way he could understand, but knew that she lost him, almost every time. “Now, how can we define the difference between understanding and believing?” she would say, continuing because he wanted her to continue, and she was determined not to stop as long as there was any hope that, one day, she might spot some flash of recognition in his eyes.

But she never saw it; his mind was long closed, barricaded by priests and Bibles. She was not strong enough, not a good enough teacher, perhaps, to burst through and let in the light of reason. She should have given up, but she saw also that, although Syagrius’s understanding was feeble, his soul was good. There was no malice or cruelty in him, nor did he ever give up, even though at times he came close to tears in his desperate wish to understand. “Let us take our premise that the individual soul likens himself to God through the refinement of understanding reached through contemplation, and that virtue is a reflection of this understanding . . .”