All at once I knew-Paul Manet was a fake.
The commanding manner was learned. The haughtiness built, assumed. The aristocratic assurance a mask. A fake.
Yet, his past and reputation was open and certain. His heroism was certified, a part of history. His heroic moment. Moment? One moment?
Was that it? A man who had once risen to a moment that was not really in his nature? A moment beyond himself-and he knew that inside? Ever since he had been faking the stance of that one moment, living on it when he knew inside that it was false? Beyond one moment built on special circumstances, he was no hero at all, but needed the rewards his “heroism” had brought, so went on playing the role even long after he himself knew it was fake, nothing was there inside?
“Come on,” I said to Li Marais.
We left him standing there alone, not touching his drink on the table, his eyes as blank as the eyes of a blind man. He wouldn’t tell me whatever the truth was, but if I was right, he would be afraid. He would worry, and maybe make a mistake.
22
We caught a taxi. “Did Claude mention Paul Manet, Li?”
She sat close against me. “Only that he came to Claude with a business offer. Claude was not interested.”
“This was in San Francisco?”
“Yes. Later, Manet came here, but Claude disliked him.”
“Yet Manet used Claude as an intro at the Balzac Union. He met Eugene, and… No, he didn’t meet Eugene at the Union. He met Eugene outside.” I thought as we rode downtown. We were near Li’s hotel. “I want to talk to Claude. We’ll call Lieutenant Marx from your hotel suite.”
She opened her suite door, pointed to where the telephone stood. I didn’t look at the telephone. Claude Marais sat in an easy chair facing us. Li glanced at the bedroom. A giveaway glance. Did it matter? Two used pillows on the unmade bed. Claude knew, had to know.
“They let me go. The lawyer got a paper, something,” he said. “Are you all right, Li?”
“Yes. Mr. Fortune is helping me prove you innocent.”
“How is he doing that?”
I said, “Are you innocent?”
“Who is?” That sleepwalking smile of his. “But prove it for Li, yes? For me, too.”
“I want to know about Paul Manet.”
Claude shook his head. “Not him, no. He leaves a bad taste. I’m not sure why. I suppose I leave a bad taste for many, eh? The used hero, the duped pawn. Like those honest, eager, very brave secret agents they used during World War Two for nothing except to be caught and die. A level of poor fools to give to the Germans, so that underneath them, really hidden, real agents did their work. A filthy world.”
“How did you meet Paul Manet?”
“He came to me in San Francisco, wanted me to work for his companies. Another propagandist for wine and perfume at high prices. I turned him down, but he came here, too. I couldn’t stomach him anymore, we fought.”
“But he looked you up in San Francisco? Did you know him?”
“I’d heard of him. Most Parisians have.”
“Did you introduce him to people there?”
“A few. He wanted introductions.”
“To Eugene here, too?”
“No, he never asked to meet Eugene. Somehow he even missed Eugene at the Balzac Union. They met by chance up here one day. Manet had come to try to gloss over our fight. I didn’t want to gloss it over.”
“How did Eugene act?”
“Act?” Claude seemed to think about it. “Strange, yes. Eugene was odd. He had known the family in the old days, but not Paul, and he became stiff. Silent, for Eugene.”
“Did Eugene mention Vel d’Hiv?”
“Not then, later at the shop. Vel d’Hiv was important to Paul Manet, eh? The large moment.”
“But Manet didn’t want to talk about it to Eugene?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Was Eugene involved in Vel d’Hiv?
“No, at least not actively. He was there that night in Paris, and it had shaken him. Then, it shook many people once it was over. Not enough, though. It didn’t shake enough good Frenchmen. Only Jews.”
“Is Paul Manet a Jew?”
“No, not at all. That made him even more a hero, eh? His people were in no danger, yet he risked his life that night. So they say.”
“He did, we’ve checked. No doubt of it.”
“I’m sure he did. Heroes don’t have to be any better than anyone else. Why not live on a moment of suffering? At least he acted then. One small clean path in a sea of guilt.” Claude turned his dead eyes toward me. “Every country wants to see its people as patriot heroes. I grew up believing in France, my country; in the men and women who fought so bravely against the Germans. I despised those who had not fought, went out to fight for France myself. Only later, after I had seen what we did in Vietnam, in Algeria, did I find out. Only when I had already learned about countries and people did I learn.”
In the silence his hands reached out for something, searching in the air, on the table near him. A drink, a glass in his hand, that was what he wanted. A companion. He found none.
“Claude?” Li said. “Don’t talk about-”
He found a cigarette instead, smoked. “The truth is that only a pitiful few Frenchmen resisted. As many joined the Waffen SS as fought with the Free French, eh? That they did not tell the children of 1946. Paris went on eating at Maxim’s, went on going to the races. Entertainers entertained-in Berlin. The great French Resistance was the work of a few British agents parachuted into France! Most of all, it was only the Communists who fought in large numbers, resisted the Nazis.”
He laughed bitterly, an inner rage. “British agents! To organize Frenchmen to fight. No wonder Dienbienphu; sent to die for a ghost. Algeria-and Vel d’Hiv. If it were only France, I could fight, but it is everywhere, everyone. Vel d’Hiv.”
“A Gestapo operation,” I said. “Why-?”
His head came up, his eyes black. “Gestapo? All the Jews arrested that night were arrested by French gendarmes! Petain agreed, Laval encouraged-they were only Jews, and non-French! The gendarmes were efficient, meticulous, even brutal. A few said no, a handful. The rest? Have you ever seen a policeman shrug, look away, while a child is dragged bewildered to death? Almost thirteen thousand were in Vel d’Hiv that night in 1942. Thirty adults came back after the war. Of four thousand children, none.”
His black eyes were open sockets. “I was a child that night, Paris was not. Laval, Petain were politicians like the corrupt in Hanoi, Saigon, Algiers. There are always monsters, they can be forgotten. The people cannot be forgotten. Paris. France. So few tried to stop it, fewer helped, still fewer cared as long as it wasn’t them. The Dutch hid their Jews. The Danish King wore a yellow star himself and rode the streets of Copenhagen every day. The French rounded up the victims!”
I said, “Paul Manet was one who helped, fought. Yet there’s something wrong about Manet. Something I think Eugene knew.”
“He trades on his heroics,” Claude Marais said, smoked. “Why not? If it was only France, only a few monsters, only that moment. But it isn’t. I learned that in Indo-China, Algeria. All greed, lies, self-interest and power. No honor and no glory. Heroes are only fools sent to kill other fools.”
“Claude,” I said, “what did Eugene know about Paul Manet? Was there something back there in Paris?”
“Eugene did not know Paul Manet then, only some of his family. His mother, brother, grand-”
“Brother?” I said. “Younger or older?”
“Younger. A year or so.”
“Was he in the Resistance too? The younger brother?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What happened to him, the younger brother?”
Claude shrugged. “He died, I think. In the chaos of 1945, the end of the Occupation. Eugene said something about that. To Paul Manet.”
“The younger brother, not in the Resistance, died,” I said, “and the older brother, active against the Germans, survived?”
“It happened in those days. It was all chaos, no one knew what would happen to whom. I think Paul Manet was captured, came back a year or so later. It is hard to know about those days. People vanished, reappeared, died, survived; no one knew how, or why, or what went on minute to minute.”