The Incorrigible Optimists Club (25 page)

He spoke to the owner: ‘Jeannot, bring us two Cokes, please.'

‘I'd prefer a really weak lemonade shandy.'

The others suggested he play tarot with them. He declined the invitation.

‘Thanks, fellows. We prefer to watch.'

He drained his glass, then leaned over and asked: ‘Have they left?'

I nodded. He got up and paid the bill.

‘Come on, let's go home.'

We found ourselves out in the cold once more. He shielded me in his overcoat.

‘Papa, maybe now's the time, if ever there was one, to go to mass and light a candle for Franck.'

‘You know, Michel, if God's as great as that and sees everything, he doesn't need us to ask him something in order to make up his mind, but if you want to, we'll go.'

For a long time, I felt annoyed with myself for not having gone to church. When you think about what happened afterwards, one candle isn't much to ask. If there are that many people in the world who light candles or night-lights, you have to believe they serve a purpose and that, from time to time, in the midst of the masses of flickering flames, there must be one that catches his notice, otherwise we are only lighting them to reassure ourselves in our human darkness. But when you think of the millions and millions of candles that have been lit since mankind began, and of all the prayers and bowing and scraping, you could also say that God, if he exists, doesn't expect anything of us.

 

 

*
The ZNA (Zone Nord-Algérois) was one of the many sectors of the country in which French troops were billeted during the Algerian War (1954–62). Tr.

JANUARY–DECEMBER 1962

1

T
here are some tasks, such as confronting reality, telling the truth, or acknowledging our mistakes, that are insuperable. We delay, we avoid them, we move on to something else and we adopt the Jesuits' maxim that a lie of omission is not a lie. When Cécile returned from holiday, I said nothing to her.

‘How did it go?'

‘Like any family party.'

We wished each other a happy New Year and much happiness.

‘What's your dearest wish, Michel?' she asked me as she cut some
kugelhopf
she had brought back from Strasbourg.

‘Apart from a Circuit 24, it would be taking a photograph of you.'

‘You've taken masses and they're not great.'

‘I could take some photos of you in your bath.'

‘Are you joking?'

‘They would be artistic.'

‘Can't you think of anything more original?'

‘If we can't even joke any more… What would your wish be?'

‘I don't want anything. A wish is something sad and impossible. I don't feel like dreaming.'

‘You could think of Pierre, wish for the war to end and for him to come home.'

‘I do think of Pierre, the war will end and he will come home.'

‘What about your thesis?'

‘It'll be finished on time and I'll pass. You haven't answered me.'

I hesitated to tell her about the visit from the police. We would have concocted hypotheses and come up with explanations that did not stand up. We would have wished for the same thing. I knew what she was like. She would have put on her most casual air and replied that she couldn't care less, that it was no longer her problem.

‘What I really want is a little more
kugelhopf
.'

She had invited me for a hot chocolate and had forgotten to buy any. She made a café au lait. We finished the
kugelhopf
.

‘My uncle runs a restaurant. I can't tell you what I've eaten in the past two weeks. Do you reckon I've put on weight?'

‘Since we're leaving things unsaid, I'd prefer not to answer that. We'll start going on runs again.'

What would have been the point of talking about Franck? For over a year she had avoided raising the question. And besides, what would I say? We knew nothing. Maurice had some connections, but they were useless. An invisible and insurmountable wall descended the moment he mentioned the words ‘deserter' and ‘examining magistrate'. His contacts promised to call him back. He spent hours by the telephone waiting for a call that never came. Those we did receive were not the ones he was expecting. He spent his time hanging up on people. He had arranged for someone to be constantly by the phone. We were told not to use it, in case someone might be contacting him. When he returned the calls that had come in, there was nobody there and he left pointless messages. Grandfather Delaunay had decided to take over the reins before we ended up in the ditch, but the people in high places whom he once knew had all retired. No one remembered him. De Gaulle had had a clear-out in the ministries and placed his own men everywhere.

The holidays came to an end without our having any news. Maurice, Louise and the cousins had left to go back to Algiers. Maurice appeared optimistic. He had his networks down there and he would soon obtain information. But his friends in Algeria were like his friends here, they shrugged their shoulders fatalistically and advised him not to dwell on the matter. At the court in Algiers, he was sent from one office to another. Even his friend Fernand, whom he regarded as a brother, and who was a head of department at the Préfecture, seemed to be evasive and elusive. ‘Drop it, Maurice,' he said finally, unable to help, ‘Don't get involved.'

Two words summed up the tragedy: military justice. It was secret. Like a hidden danger or a shameful illness, it was spoken of in hushed voices. We couldn't let anyone else know, otherwise we would be courting
endless trouble. Whenever Maurice rang, my father rushed over to the phone, my mother listened in, and they conducted a three-way discussion. The examining magistrate at the permanent military tribunal of the armed forces had refused to see him. He had not been allowed to enter the El-Biar barracks and he had been obliged to wait in the blazing sun. A parachutist had told him that he was wasting his time and that he should not come back. For a month, our lives revolved around these nightly calls. Whatever my father might say about Maurice, my uncle spared no effort to obtain information. Then he came up with a solution. My mother was firmly opposed to it. Maurice knew ‘a very nice person' who ran a hotel at Bab-el-Oued that was frequented by Massu, Bigeard and half the general staff. In spite of my father's exhortations, she refused to allow her brother to ask this woman for help. It required Philippe to become involved for her to give way: ‘You're boring us stiff, Hélène, with your qualms! Let Maurice deal with it. This is for men to sort out!'

‘It's our last chance,' Maurice explained, trying to persuade her. ‘She knows everyone in Algiers.'

Igor, Werner, Pavel or Gregorios had faced up to impossible situations and endured the cruellest ordeals without panicking. When I walked into the Club, Big Ears was chatting to Tomasz. I was convinced they were going to guess what my problems were from my expression or my demeanour, but apparently one can endure the worst torments without anyone suspecting. I sat down and made comments about the game being played. I waited for one of them to ask me: ‘What's the matter, Michel?'

Nobody noticed a thing. I kept my secret to myself. Yet what was the point of having so many friends if you couldn't talk to them? I made up my mind to ask Igor. He was someone who would understand and he would know what to do. I was sure that Big Ears would not be there on a Sunday. When I arrived at the Balto, there was a group of people congregated around Madeleine and Imré, listening to the radio. Albert was switching impatiently from one station to another.

‘What's going on?'

‘Haven't you heard?' Imré replied.

‘About what?'

‘There's been an attempt on Sartre's life. He may have been killed!' Jacky exclaimed.

On that 7 January 1962 a bomb attack by the OAS had destroyed the small flat on the fourth floor of 42 Rue Bonaparte where Jean-Paul Sartre had lived with his mother since 1946. Another bomb, the previous year, had caused some damage. This time, the flat had been wrecked, his piano demolished, and his manuscripts scattered.

Thanks to old Marcusot's Auvergne grapevine, the following day Sartre found a studio flat to rent that was very close to the Balto, on the tenth floor of a modern building at 222 Boulevard Raspail. He moved in as unobtrusively as possible for fear of another attack. The tenants were scared stiff about having him as a neighbour and ten of them signed a petition, which the estate agent threw in the bin. Sartre started coming to the Balto and the local bistros more frequently. He had his table in the dining room, close to the door to the Club. He spent his mornings writing and no one dared to disturb him apart from Jacky, who served him a
café crème
as soon as he arrived, and brought him another whenever he waved his hand. Occasionally, he would sit down next to Sartre and they would chat. We wondered what they could possibly be saying to one another. Jacky had only one topic of conversation: the Stade de Reims football team. We deduced that Jean-Paul Sartre liked football too. One day, we asked Jacky: ‘What can you have to say to one another?'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘You and Sartre have been chatting for an hour. What did he say to you? Is he interested in soccer?'

‘Oh, he's a complicated guy. He never stops asking me questions about my job.'

‘About your job?'

‘Yeah. He thinks that compared to other café waiters, I'm not playing at being a waiter. I interest him a great deal. He says that I'm genuine, that I'm not pretending, that I'm not acting a part in relation to what I do, but that I am living in reality as far as who I am. Apparently I'm the only waiter he knows who doesn't use his social background to achieve his
position, yet I am, essentially, a café waiter, and that astonishes him. The guy's really got a lot of time on his hands, hasn't he? What'll you have?'

Sartre would sometimes spend the afternoon working in the dining room without coming into the Club. Although Igor, Leonid and Gregorios had huge admiration for him, Imré, Vladimir, Tomasz, Piotr or Pavel detested him on account of his defence of Stalin's communism, his double standards over events in Budapest, and because he had asserted at the time of the Kravchenko trial that all anti-communists were dogs. They walked past him without looking at him or saying hello. Sartre did not glance at them. As for me, every time I saw him, I gave a nod. He replied with a little bob of his head. On one occasion, he ran out of matches. I offered to go and get him some.

‘Yes, please.'

I brought him a book of matches.

‘Thank you very much.'

He smiled at me. I didn't dare address myself to the former pupil of the Lycée Henri-IV and tell him that we had that in common. I wanted to say something more original, I was not sure what. How could you be intelligent in front of Jean-Paul Sartre?

‘Did you hear what happened yesterday? Racing thrashed Stade de Reims yet again. Things aren't what they used to be.'

He stared at me in astonishment. He said nothing, lit his cigarette, went back to his work and started writing. I concluded from this that I had blundered and that he was a Stade de Reims supporter. On another occasion, I picked up one of his sheets of paper that had fallen on the floor. In his metallic voice, he said to me: ‘Thank you, young man.'

‘I'm at the Lycée Henri-IV, you know.'

‘We had a lot of fun there. I have good memories of it.'

I was very proud of this exchange. I repeated it to Cécile. I told her she would be welcome to come and see him, but her contact with the Club had been so unfortunate that she did not want to set foot there again.

The great writers have pointed out that women are superior to men and have attributed to them instinctive psychological skills. At the Club, nobody had detected anything different in my attitude, but eventually,
Cécile noticed something unusual about my behaviour. We had completed our run round the Luxembourg and were resting by the Médicis fountain.

‘What's the matter with you, Michel?'

‘I'm a bit out of breath.'

‘You look as if something's wrong.'

‘Oh, really?'

‘Have you got problems?'

‘No.'

‘Something at school?'

She was insistent. The great writers have subtly observed that women are insistent. Until they obtain satisfaction and the hero confesses. Which can give rise to an outburst. Having read a great deal, I decided not to admit to anything. After closely analysing Isabel Archer, Jane Eyre and Marguerite Gautier, I was forewarned that they could have recourse to weapons that men were unable to resist.

‘You're not allowed to fib to me, little bro'.'

‘I'm not fibbing.'

‘If it was important, would you tell me?'

‘Stop it, Cécile. Come on, let's do another circuit.'

We set off at a trot. I could see from her expression that she did not believe me. The great writers have often solved their hero's problems with a convenient escape, but I'd never read anything in which the two protagonists set off running together.

‘Whatever you say. You've got a strange look on your face.'

I said nothing to Cécile. I said nothing to Igor. Every evening, I hoped for an answer. When the telephone rang, we rushed over. But Maurice's efforts were proving to be unsuccessful. The acquaintances of his woman friend at the hotel were taking a lot of persuading. She would continue to make enquiries. Still nobody was able to tell us why Franck had deserted and what had become of him.

2

‘
T
hose who have never flown in a Sturmovik 2 will never experience the delightful sensation of piloting a steam iron,' Leonid explained to me. ‘Especially when there's a Messerschmitt 109, which is almost two tons lighter, flying at 200 km per hour faster and clinging to your tail like a magnet. Then, you really do start to sweat and your balls shrink to nothing. You can hear the bullets whistling around you, making holes in the cockpit; your machine-gunner lies bleeding, your joy-stick no longer works. You don't know what to do. No one can teach you how to extricate yourself from this hornet's nest because no one has come out of it alive. Your only god is called Parachute. Believe it or not, I never ever thought to myself that I was finished. Twice, I was able to land, one of them a crash landing. I was wounded seven times. I always trusted in my lucky star. Two or three times, I had close shaves. To begin with, we had no rear-gunner. Afterwards, when Ilyushin put one in for us, beneath an extended canopy, it was worse. The plane was as unsteady as a legless man on a scooter. The recoil from our 37mm guns gave us no accuracy. Little Father Stalin had a tantrum. He knew what this meant. They slaved away day and night. We switched to a two-seater, with new engines and armour-plated structures. By the end of forty-two, we began getting decent Ilyushas, with 20mm guns, and then we were able to do them some damage. Our bombs mopped up everything over an area of a thousand square metres. We knocked out their tanks and their Stukas as though we were showing off. It was in the Urals that the war tipped the other way.'

‘Did you really know Stalin?'

‘I was introduced to him during the battle of Prokhorovka. I'd been wounded in the shoulder when my plane was shot down. He congratulated me on my bravery, decorated me with the order of Koutouzov, which he had just instigated, and decreed that I was a hero. Others were
frightened of him. I didn't fear him myself. He could sense this and it pleased him. I spoke to him as if to a friend, as I would to anyone else. He said to me: “Leonid Mikhaïlovitch, apparently nobody knows as many jokes as you do.” I'm not sure how he knew this. He asked me to tell him a few. I started off as I did every evening with my pals. He roared with laughter – not something that happened very often. His staff officers laughed too. We drank quite a lot, celebrating our victory. We were happy. We knew that we were going to win the war. He asked me whether I knew any jokes about him. They stopped laughing. What could I reply? My general was quaking. If I told him I did, I risked being shot on the spot or sent goodness knows where. If I said I didn't, he wouldn't have believed me. I didn't get flustered. I told him that I only knew one. He asked me to tell it to him. That's how we became friends.'

‘What story was it?… No, Leonid, don't tell me it was the joke about the sun that rises in the daytime and goes over to the West.'

‘Yes, he loved it and asked me to tell it on several occasions. Each time, it produced the same effect. The staff officers were terrified. As for him, he had tears in his eyes. He said it along with me, he repeated it back to me, and he added details. He choked himself laughing. One day, a general informed him that he was shocked by this insolence and that it didn't make him laugh. Stalin replied that heroes were entitled to small privileges and that one could make exceptions for them. It was said that he had infinite patience and that he was as wily as a fox. One day, he asked me who had told me the joke. I told him that it was a friend, a lieutenant who had died in battle. I could see he didn't believe me, but he wasn't angry with me. Thanks to him, I was made a colonel and I received the gold star of Hero of the Soviet Union. The decoration wasn't given as a favour, but for an air battle in which I brought down three Messerschmitt 109s and a Junkers 87, one of their fucking Stukas, by causing a deliberate mid-air collision. That was fairly common in the Soviet air force. There were hundreds of them. We were fighting for our homeland and we weren't afraid of dying. The Japanese kamikaze invented nothing new. My parachute opened. It was the highest distinction that a Russian serviceman can be given. I had the huge honour of being awarded it
twice. The second time was after the battle for Berlin. That's one I'm not so proud of.'

My father never talked about the war. He spent forty months in a prisoner of war camp, bored to death. When Leonid Krivoshein told me about his war, it was like an all-action film. We jumped back twenty years into the past. Pilot's licence at the Perm Air Academy, posted as a sub-lieutenant to the Garde air squadron, he achieved 278 missions, 91 accredited victories, of which 65 were individual and 26 in combination, as well as knocking out 96 tanks, 151 anti-aircraft guns and 17 locomotives on the ground, and 25 decorations and military awards. His rapid advancement was due to his courage and to the slaughter of the Soviet troops that had left him, at the end of the conflict, as the sole survivor of his year.

To begin with, I found it hard to believe him. In spite of his dark, tired eyes, he seemed scarcely older than Franck. With his white skin, his tousled blond hair and his smooth cheeks, he looked more like a youthful English aristocrat than a Russian airman. I would have reckoned him to be about thirty when he was actually nearly fifty. Igor held him in high regard and confirmed that he was speaking the truth. As soon as he started describing the battle of Koursk, when he had destroyed two enemy planes before being shot down by a Henschel 129, or the terrible Polish campaign, though, the others jumped on him. Vladimir Gorenko was the harshest: ‘You can't go on being such a pain in the arse, Leonid. You've won. You got a pack of medals. Stalin embraced you and decorated you. Ilyushin said you were the best pilot in the world and Tupolev thought of you as his son. Streets and school have been named after you. You were a hero of the Soviet Union. Bravo, comrade, but today you're just an arsehole of a Parisian taxi driver. Stop boring us stiff with this fucking war. We don't want to hear about it any more!'

Leonid stood up to the rebuffs without getting annoyed and countered immediately: ‘If I don't speak about it, Vladimir, if I don't talk about what we went through, who will know?'

From time to time, he suffered from bouts of sniffing, as if an unpleasant smell were bothering him, and he peered at his colleagues to see whether they were aware of it. He took a small opaque glass phial from
his pocket and poured five drops onto a handkerchief then used it to dab at his nostrils. I didn't dare ask him questions and so I asked Igor.

‘It's nothing. He's got a slight medical problem with his nose. He's sniffing some medicine.'

Summer and winter, he wore the same black cashmere pullover with a loose-fitting polo neck, and a worn Burberry bought in London when he was at his peak. On his right wrist he wore his Lip Président watch, which, in over ten years, had kept perfect time with the talking clock. It was his most precious possession. Every day, Leonid took away two sandwiches, one made with ham and one with Gruyere cheese, lovingly prepared for him by Madeleine, who gave him double portions. She wrapped them in a cloth bag which he slipped into the inside pocket of his raincoat. More than once, Madeleine discovered an entire sandwich and told him off for not eating it. Leonid smiled as if to apologize. He wasn't hungry. The alcohol was enough for him. He was renowned for his exceptional ability to hold his drink, and more than one idiot who had wanted to test his stamina had slumped beneath the counter while Leonid had walked nonchalantly away, shrugging his shoulders, then climbed into his taxi and driven off without swerving an inch. Even when he was in an awkward position or had drunk a lot, he managed to extricate himself by playing for a stalemate. His fame had spread, and more than one player would push open the door of the Club to take him on. Students from the neighbouring
grandes écoles
, Centrale or Polytechnique would turn up hoping to beat him. Leonid wouldn't agree to any game without a bet on either a bottle of Côtes-du-Rhône, drinks all round, or an apéritif. Those who took him on would frequently stagger away again, having made fools of themselves. Apart from his best friends, Igor and Werner, and Virgil, who longed to defeat him, the others in the Club had given up challenging him. The losers had to endure his sarcastic comments: ‘You've made progress, Tibor, but backwards', or ‘You're just a small-time player from the suburbs, Imré', or, to Gregorios, who had no sense of humour: ‘On the scale of 1 to 10, you're minus zero.'

The worst chess insults were reserved for those who dared contest his supremacy, whom he treated as pathetic idiots. I had tried on several
occasions to get him to take me on. He evaded the matter with a smile:

‘In ten years' time, when you know how to play, we'll discuss it again. Practise with Imré or Vladimir. When you beat them every time, come and see me.'

I spent hours observing him, noting down his moves and asking him questions. Leonid was a fanatic and had no need of a board or of pieces. He played in his head. He claimed to know two hundred and eighty-seven games by heart, the most useful ones, as well as several hundred of the best openings and endings. He had not counted them, which was amazing for he was always absolutely precise. He would memorize each move and describe a series of identical exchanges, comparing them with a particular sequence in a well-known tournament, and then wonder what Alekhine, the complete master, who knew more than a thousand games, and against whom he had had the honour of playing on three occasions without beating him, or Botvinnik, the champion of champions, who had always thrashed him, would have done in this situation. I followed him as best I could. I only understood about half of what he said. One day, seeing me looking downcast, he set out some pieces: ‘This one's easy. You've got to checkmate in four moves.'

He left me feeling useless. The pieces shifted around in a pointless ballet. Pavel and Virgil joined me. We thought long and hard before coming to the obvious conclusion that this time he had got it wrong.

‘Did he say in four moves?' asked Virgil.

‘There aren't thirty-six solutions. We're not idiots,' Pavel declared. ‘He's taking the piss out of you.'

‘Go and ask the champion how he does it in four moves,' Virgil suggested. ‘I maintain it's not possible. In five perhaps, but not four.'

‘He's playing at the moment.'

‘We don't care a damn,' Pavel replied. ‘Who does he think he is, after all?'

I dared go and disturb him while he was playing a game with a student. Leonid had just made his move and pressed the button on the time clock.

‘Hey, Leonid, are you sure you didn't get it wrong? Mate in four moves is impossible. We all agree.'

‘Can't you wait? I've told you that you should never disturb a player except if there's a fire in the Club. In the past, we would add: or if the Germans are attacking. There's no danger? Then get the hell out of here!'

I followed the game. To judge by his tense expression, his young opponent could not see a way of extricating himself from the position he was in. From time to time, he glanced at the minute hand of the clock which was approaching the fateful XII. Then he let out a long sigh, shook his head as though it were weighing him down, and toppled over his king.

‘Bravo,' he murmured sharply.

He reached out his hand to Leonid, who shook it with his fingertips.

‘Jacky,' Leonid called, ‘bring a bottle of Côtes. The gentleman is inviting us. Won't you have a drink, young man?' he added.

‘No thanks.'

‘Whenever you want,' said Leonid as he poured himself a large glass of Côtes-du-Rhône.

He knocked it back in one gulp and filled the glass again.

Then, rubbing his back, he dragged himself to his feet and deigned to move over to our table.

‘They're weird, these kids from Polytechnique. Good at maths and not great at chess. That guy could make it, but he plays with a tight ass. He's too frightened of losing.'

‘Are you offering us a drink?' asked Pavel.

‘I'll buy you one when you've improved. And it's not going to happen in a hurry.'

‘This time, you've got it wrong!' announced Virgil, coming over to the table.

‘You're just a load of wet blankets,' said Leonid as he made four moves with the black and white pieces. ‘Mate. Not even my cat would want to play with you lot.'

Virgil and Pavel slipped away without saying anything.

‘As for you,' Leonid told me, ‘you're going to finish the game and try to understand why this dumb ass gave in. He at least saw what was coming.'

I leant over his chessboard and stood the king up.

‘He was in a reasonable position, wasn't he?'

‘It's not complicated. Not obvious, but fairly straightforward. I'll give you a clue. We had an identical set of moves last week, but there was one knight fewer.'

I stood staring at the chessboard for twenty minutes as though I was trying to discover the secret of some hieroglyphics.

‘You're a great guy, Leonid. But I'll never understand it. Chess is like maths, I just don't get it.'

‘The day you start using the brain you've got in your head, you'll get better.'

‘That's all I ask for. How do I do it?'

‘If I knew the answer, I'd give up the taxi. And my pockets would be full of dough.'

‘Have you ever been really drunk?'

He thought about it, recalling distant memories.

‘Dead drunk, you mean? Two or three times, when I was young, I felt a bit dizzy. During the war, I had quite a few. I stayed on my feet.'

Madeleine and Igor were scheming to make him eat the dish of the day, but he hardly ate any of it. He was polishing off the bottle of Côtes, and woe betide anyone who refused to serve him when he asked for another one.

‘I'm paying. I'm not drunk. I'm not making a scene. Do your job and give us something to drink.'