My four new friends settle down to playing cards. Outside, it is snowing. I engross myself in reading L’Écho-Liberté, the local newspaper. I discover there is a Marx Brothers film playing at the cinema in T. There are six of us, then, six brothers exiled in the Savoie. I feel a little less alone.
On reflection I found the Savoie as charming as I had Guyenne. Was this not the homeland of Henry Bordeaux? When I was about sixteen, I read Les Roquevillard, La Chartreuse du reposoir and Le Calvaire du Cimiez with devotion. A stateless Jew, I hungrily drank in the rustic redolence of these masterpieces. I cannot understand why Henry Bordeaux has fallen from favour in recent years. He had a decisive influence on me and I will be forever loyal to him.
Luckily, I discovered my new-found friends had tastes identical to mine. Aravis read the works of Capitaine Danrit, Petit-Savarin had a weakness for René Bazin and Gruffaz, the baker, set great store by Édouard Estaunié. He had nothing to teach me about the virtues of that particular writer. In What is literature?, Des Essarts described the author as follows: ‘I consider Édouard Estaunié to be the most deviant author I have ever read. At first glance, Estaunié’s characters seem reassuring: paymasters, postmistresses, provincial seminarians, but do not be deceived by appearances: the paymaster has the soul of an anarchist bomber, the postmistress works as a prostitute after her shift at the PTT, the young seminarian is as bloodthirsty as Gilles de Rais. . Estaunié chose to camouflage vice beneath black frockcoats, mantillas, even soutanes: he is de Sade as petty clerk, he is Genet dragged up as Saint Bernadette of Lourdes.’ I read this passage to Forclaz-Manigot, telling him that I had written it. He congratulated me and invited me to dinner. During the meal, I surreptitiously studied his wife. She seemed a little mature, but, if I found nothing better, I decided I would not be choosy. And so, we were living out a novel by Estaunié: the young French aristocrat, so keen on mountaineering, was really a Jew working in the white slave trade; the lawyer’s wife, so reserved, so provincial, would all too soon find herself in a Brazilian brothel if I so decided.
Beloved Savoie! To my dying day I will have fond memories of Colonel Aravis. Every little French boy has a grandfather just like him somewhere in the depths of the provinces. He is ashamed of him. Our friend Sartre would like to forget his great uncle Doctor Schweitzer. When I visit Gide in his ancestral home at Cuverville, he mutters over and over, ‘Families, I despise you! Families, I despise you!’ Only Aragon, my childhood friend, has not spurned his origins. I am grateful to him for that. When Stalin was alive, he would proudly tell me, ‘The Aragons have been cops, father and son, for generations!’ One point in his favour. The other two are nothing more than wayward children.
I, Raphäel Schlemilovitch, listened respectfully to my grandfather, Colonel Aravis, as once I had listened to my great-uncle Adrien Debigorre.
‘Become a mountain infantryman, Des Essarts, goddammit! You’ll be a heartthrob with the ladies. A strapping fellow like you! In uniform, you would turn heads.’
Unfortunately, the uniform of the chasseurs alpins reminded me of the Milice uniform I had died in twenty years earlier.
‘My love of uniforms has never brought me luck,’ I explained to the colonel. ‘Back in 1894, it got me a notorious trial and several years imprisoned on Devil’s Island. The Schlemilovitch Affair, remember?’
The colonel was not listening. He stared me straight in the eye and bellowed:
‘Head up, dear boy, please! A strong handshake. Above all don’t snigger. We have had enough of seeing the French race denigrated. What we want now is purity.’
I felt very moved. This was just the sort of advice Jo Darnand used to give me when we were battling the Résistance.
Every night, I report back to Lévy-Vendôme. I talk to him about Mme Forclaz-Manigot, the lawyer’s wife. He tells me his client in Rio is not interested in mature women. This left me doomed to spending quite some time in the lonely heights of T. I am champing at the bit. Colonel Aravis will be no help, he lives alone. Neither Petit-Savarin nor Gruffaz has daughters. On the other hand, Lévy-Vendôme has specifically forbidden me from meeting young village girls other than through their parents or their husbands: a reputation for being a skirt-chaser would close all doors to me.
IN WHICH THE ABBÉ PERRACHE
GETS ME OUT OF A SCRAPE
I run into this clergyman while in the course of a leisurely stroll around T. Leaning against a tree, he is studying nature, a typical Savoyard parish priest. I am struck by the goodness etched into his face. We strike up a conversation. He talks to me about the Jew Jesus Christ. I talk to him about another Jew named Judas of whom Jesus Christ said ‘Good were it for that man if he had never been born!’ Our theological discussion continues all the way to the village square. Father Perrache is saddened by my preoccupation with Judas. ‘You are a desperate soul,’ he tells me gravely, ‘despair is the worst sin of all.’ I tell this saintly man that my family have sent me to T. to get some fresh air into my lungs and some order into my thoughts. I tell him about my all-too-brief time studying in Bordeaux, explaining that I hated the radical socialist atmosphere of the lycée. He rebukes me for my intransigence. ‘Think of Péguy,’ he says, ‘he divided his time between Chartres cathedral and the Ligue des insituteurs. He did his best to teach Jean Jaurès about the glories of Saint Louis and Joan of Arc. One tries not to be too elitist, my son! I tell him I prefer Monsignor Mayol de Lupé: a Catholic should take Christ’s interests seriously, even if it means enlisting in the LVF. A Catholic should wield a sword, should declare, like Simon de Montfort, ‘God will know His own!’ In fact, the Inquisition, in my opinion, was a public health measure. I think it was compassionate of Torquemada and Ximénes to want to cure these people who complacently wallowed in their sickness, in their Jewry; it was kind-hearted of them to offer them a surgical solution rather than leaving them to die of their consumption.’ After that, I sing the praises of Joseph de Maistre and Édouard Drumont and inform him that God has no time for the mealy-mouthed.
‘Neither for the mealy-mouthed nor for the proud,’ he tells me, ‘and you are committing the sin of Pride, which is just as grave as the sin of Despair. Here, let me set you a little task. You can consider it a penance, an act of contrition. The bishop of this diocese will be visiting the school here in T. a week from now: you will write a welcoming speech which I will pass on to the headmaster. It will be read to His Grace by a young pupil on behalf of the whole community. In it, you will show level-headedness, compassion and humility. Let us pray this exercise brings you back to the path of righteousness! I know you are a lost sheep who wants only to return to the flock. Each man in his darkness goes towards his Light! I have faith in you.’ (Sighs.)
A young blonde girl in the garden of the presbytery. She stares at me curiously: Fr. Perrache introduces me to his niece Loïtia. She is wearing the navy blue uniform of a boarding school girl.
Loïtia lights a paraffin lamp. The Savoyard furniture smells of wax polish. I like the chromolithograph on the left-hand wall. The priest gently lays a hand on my shoulder:
‘Schlemilovitch, you can write and tell your family that you are now in good hands. I shall see to your spiritual health. The mountain air will do the rest. And now, my boy, you are going to write the welcoming speech for the bishop. Loïtia, could you please bring us tea and some brioches? This man needs to build up his strength.’
I look at Loïtia’s pretty face. The nuns at Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs insist that she wear her blonde hair in plaits but, thanks to me, soon she will let it tumble over her shoulders. Having decided to introduce her to the wonders of Brazil, I step into her uncle’s study and pen a welcoming speech for His Grace Nuits-Saint-Georges: