Mettez-vous
dans l’ambiance
oubliez
vos soucis. .
She unbuttoned her blouse, broke into a jazz step. The others followed suit. Codébo, Danos, and Robert le Pâle entered the living room. They elbowed a path through the dancers, reached Monsieur Philibert, and whispered a few words in his ear. I was staring out of the window. A car with its headlights off was parked in front of No. 3 bis. Vital-Léca was holding a flashlight, Reocreux opened the car door. A man, in handcuff s. Gouari brutally pushed him toward the steps up to the house. I thought of the Lieutenant, the boys in Vaugirard. One night I would see them all in chains like this man. Breton would give them the shock treatment. What then. . Will I be able to live with the guilt? Pernety and his black leather shoes. Picpus and his fiancée’s letters. The periwinkle-blue eyes of Saint-Georges. Their dreams, all their wonderful fantasies would come to an end on the blood-spattered walls of the cellar at No. 3 bis. And it will be all my fault. That said, don’t think I casually use the terms ‘shock treatment’, ‘blackout’, ‘informant’, ‘hired killer’. I am reporting what I’ve seen, what I’ve lived. With no embellishments. I have invented nothing. All the people I have mentioned really existed. I have gone so far as to use their real names. As for my own tastes, they tend towards hollyhocks, a garden in the moonlight and the tango of happier days. The heart of a star-struck girl. . I’ve been unlucky. You could hear their groans rising from the basement, stifled at last by the music. Johnny Hess:
Puisque je suis là
le rythme
est là
Sur son aile il vous
emportera. .
Frau Sultana was goading them on with high-pitched squeals. Ivanoff was waving his ‘lighter-than-iron rod’. They jostled, gasped for breath, their dancing grew spasmodic, upended a vase of dahlias and went back to their wild gesticulating.
La musique
c’est
le philtre magique. .
The double-doors were flung open. Codébo and Danos propped the man up. He was still in handcuff s. His face was dripping blood. He stumbled and collapsed in the middle of the living room. Everyone froze, waiting. Only the Chapochnikoff brothers moved about, as if nothing was happening, picking up the shards of the broken vase, straightening the flowers. One of them crept towards Baroness Lydia proffering an orchid.
‘If we ran into this type of wise guy every day it would be pretty rough for us,’ declared Monsieur Philibert. ‘Take it easy, Pierre. He’ll end up talking.’ ‘I don’t think so, Henri.’ ‘Then we’ll make a martyr of him. Martyrs, it would appear, are necessary.’ ‘Martyrs are sheer nonsense,’ declared Lionel de Zieff in a thick voice. ‘You refuse to talk?’ Monsieur Philibert asked him. ‘We won’t trouble you for very long,’ whispered the Khedive. ‘If you don’t answer it means you don’t know anything.’ ‘But if you know something,’ said Monsieur Philibert, ‘you had better tell us now.’
He raised his head. A bloodstain on the Savonnerie carpet, where his head had rested. An ironic twinkle in his periwinkle-blue eyes (the same colour as Saint-Georges’). Or perhaps contempt. People have been known to die for their beliefs. The Khedive hit him three times. He never looked away. Violette Morris threw a glass of champagne in his face. ‘Excuse me, Monsieur,’ murmured Ivanoff the Oracle, ‘could you hold out your left hand?’ People die for their beliefs. The Lieutenant often said: ‘All of us are ready to die for our beliefs. Are you, Lamballe?’ I didn’t dare confess that if I were to die it could only be from disease, fear, or despair. ‘Catch!’ roared Zieff, and the cognac bottle hit him squarely in the face. ‘Your hand, your left hand,’ Ivanoff the Oracle implored. ‘He’ll talk,’ sighed Frau Sultana, ‘I know he will,’ and she bared her shoulders with a wheedling smile. ‘All that blood. .’ muttered Baroness Lydia Stahl. The man’s head rested on the Savonnerie carpet once more. Danos lifted him up and dragged him from the living room. Moments later, Tony Breton reappeared and in a toneless voice, announced: ‘He’s dead, he died without talking.’ Frau Sultana turned her back with a shrug. Ivanoff stared off into space, his eyes scanning the ceiling. ‘You have to admit there are still a few fearless guys around,’ commented Pols de Helder.
‘Stubborn, you mean,’ retorted ‘Count’ Baruzzi. ‘I almost admire him,’ declared Monsieur Philibert. ‘He’s the first I’ve seen put up such resistance.’ The Khedive: ‘People like that, Pierre, they SABOTAGE our work.’ Midnight. A kind of torpor gripped them. They slumped onto sofas, onto pouffes, into armchairs. Simone Bouquereau stood at the venetian mirror perfecting her make-up. Ivanoff stared intently at Baroness Lydia Stahl’s left hand. The others launched into trivial chatter. About that time the Khedive took me over to the window to talk of his appointment as préfet de police, which he felt certain was imminent. He thought about it constantly. At fourteen, the reformatory in Eysses. . penal military unit in Africa and Fresnes prison. Pointing to the portrait of M. de Bel-Respiro, he named every medal on the man’s chest. ‘Just substitute my face for his. Find me a talented artist. From now on, my name is Henri de Bel-Respiro.’ He repeated, marvelling: ‘Henri de Bel-Respiro, Préfet De Police.’ Such a craving for respectability astonished me, for I had seen it once before in my father, Alexander Stavisky. I still keep the letter he wrote my mother before he took his life: ‘What I ask above all is that you bring up our son to value honour and integrity; and, when he has reached the awkward age of fifteen, that you supervise his activities and associations so he may get a healthy start in life and become an honest man.’ I believe he would have liked to end his days in a small provincial town. To find some peace and tranquillity after so many years of turmoil, anxiety, delusions and chaos. My poor father! ‘You’ll see, when I’m préfet de police everything will be fine.’ The others were chatting in low voices. One of the Chapochnikoff brothers brought in a tray of orangeade. Were it not for the bloodstain in the middle of the carpet and the gaudy costumes, one might think you were in the company of respectable people. Monsieur Philibert rearranged his files, then sat down at the piano. He dusted the keyboard with his handkerchief and opened a piece of music. He played the Adagio from the Moonlight Sonata. ‘A terpsichorean, a virtuoso,’ whispered the Khedive. ‘An artist to his fingertips. I sometimes wonder why he wastes his time on us. Such a talented boy! Just listen to him!’ I felt my eyes grow wide with a sadness that used up all my tears, a weariness so great it kept me from sleeping. I felt as though I had forever been walking in darkness to the rhythm of this harrowing unending music. Shadowy figures tugged at my lapels, pulling me in opposite directions, now calling me ‘Lamballe’, now ‘Swing Troubadour’, forcing me from Passy to Sèvres-Lecourbe, from Sèvres-Lecourbe to Passy, and still I did not know what it was all about. The world truly was fully of sound and fury. No matter. I strode straight through the chaos, stilted as a sleepwalker. Eyes wide open. Things would calm down eventually. The languorous melody Philibert was playing would gradually pervade everyone and everything. Of that I was certain. Everyone had left the living room. On the console tables was a note from the Khedive: ‘Try to deliver Lamballe as quickly as possible. We need him.’ The sound of the car engines grew faint. Then, standing in front of the Venetian mirror, clearly so distinctly, I said: I AM THE PRIN-CESS DE LAM-BALLE. I looked myself in the eye, pressed my forehead against the mirror: I am the Princess de Lamballe. Assassins track you in the darkness. They grope about, fumble, bump over the furniture. The seconds seem to last forever. You hold your breath. Will they find the light switch? Let it be over. I can’t hold out much longer against this feverish madness, I’ll walk up to the Khedive, eyes wide open, press my face to his: I AM THE PRIN-CESS DE LAM-BALLE, leader of the CKS. Or maybe Lieutenant Dominique will suddenly get to his feet and announce in a grave voice: ‘We have an informant in our midst. Some man by the name of ‘Swing Troubadour’. ‘I AM Swing Troubadour, Lieutenant.’ I looked up. A moth circled from one chandelier to the other, so to keep his wings from being singed I turned out the lights. No one would ever show me such kindness. I have to fend for myself. Maman was far away: Lausanne. Thankfully. My poor father, Alexander Stavisky, was dead. Lili Marlene had all but forgotten me. Alone. I did not belong anywhere. Not at the Rue Boisrobert nor at Cimarosa Square. On the Left Bank, among those brave boys of the CKS, I hid the fact that I was an informant; on the Right Bank, the title ‘Princesse de Lamballe’ meant I was in serious danger. Who exactly was I? My papers? A fake Nansen passport. Persona non grata everywhere. This parlous situation kept me from sleeping. No matter. In addition to my secondary job of ‘recuperating’ valuable objects, I acted as night watchman at No. 3 bis. Once Monsieur Philibert, the Khedive and their guests had left, I could have retired to Monsieur de Bel-Respiro’s bedroom, but I stayed in the living room. The lamp under its mauve shade cast deep rings of shadow around me. I opened a book: The Mysteries of the Chevalier d’Eon. After a few minutes it slipped from my hands. I was stuck by a sudden realization: I would never get out of this alive. The doleful chords of the Adagio rang in my ears. The flowers in the living room were shedding their petals and I was growing old at an accelerated rate. Standing in front of the Venetian mirror one last time, I looked at my reflection and saw the face of Philippe Pétain. His eyes seemed to me too bright, his complexion too pink, and so I metamorphosed into King Lear. What could be more natural. Since childhood, I had stored up a great reservoir of tears. Crying, they say, brings relief but despite my daily efforts, it was a pleasure I had never experienced. So the tears ate away at me like acid, which explains my rapid aging. The doctor had warned me: by twenty, you’ll be the spitting image of King Lear. I should have preferred to offer a more dashing portrait of myself. Is it my fault? I began life with perfect health and steadfast morals, but I’ve suffered great sorrows. Sorrows so intense I cannot sleep and, from years of staying open, my eyes became disproportionately large. They come down to my jaw. One more thing: I have only to touch something for it to crumble into dust. The flowers in the living room are withering. The champagne glasses scattered over the console table, the desk, the mantelpiece evoke some party that took place long ago. Perhaps the masked ball on 20 June, 1896, that Monsieur de Bel-Respiro gave in honour of Camille du Gast, the cakewalk dancer. The abandoned umbrella, the Turkish cigarette butts, the half-finished orangeade. Was Philibert playing the piano a moment ago? Or was it Mademoiselle Mylo d’Arcille, who died some sixty years before? The bloodstain brought me back to more pressing problems. I did not know the poor wretch who looked like Saint-Georges. While they were torturing him, he dropped a pen and a handkerchief monogrammed with the initials C.F.: the only traces of his sojourn here on earth. .