I drink my last plum brandy at the Café Municipal. Colonel Aravis, the lawyer Forclaz-Manigot, the pharmacist Petit-Savarin and Gruffaz the baker wish me a safe journey.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow night for our game of belote,’ I promise, ‘I’ll bring you some Swiss chocolate.’
I tell Fr. Perrache that my father is staying in a hotel in Geneva and would like to spend the evening with me. He makes a little something for me to eat and tells me not to dawdle on the way back.
I get off the bus at Veyrier-du-Lac and take up my position outside Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs. Soon afterwards, Loïtia comes through the wrought iron gates. After that, everything goes as I had planned. Her eyes shine as I talk to her of love, of empty promises, of abductions, of adventures, of swashbucklers. I lead her to Annecy coach station. From there we take a bus to Geneva. Cruseilles, Annemasse, Saint-Julien, Geneva, Rio de Janeiro. Giraudoux’s girls love to travel. This one, however, seems a little anxious. She reminds me she doesn’t have a suitcase. Don’t worry. We’ll buy everything we need when we get there. I’ll introduce her to my father, Vicomte Lévy-Vendôme, who will shower her with gifts. He’s very sweet, you’ll see. Bald. He has a monocle and a long jade cigarette-holder. Don’t be scared. This gentlemen means well. We cross the border. Quickly. We drink fruit juice at the bar of the Hôtel des Bergues while we wait for the vicomte. He strides up to us, flanked by his henchmen Mouloud and Mustapha. Quickly. He puffs nervously on his jade cigarette-holder. He adjusts his monocle and hands me an envelope stuffed with dollars.
‘Your wages! I’ll take care of the young lady! You have no time to lose! From Savoie you go to Normandy! Call me on my Bordeaux number as soon as you arrive!’
Loïtia gives me a panicked glance. I tell her I will be right back.
That night, I walked along the banks of the Rhône thinking of Jean Giraudoux, of Colette, Marivaux, Verlaine, Charles d’Orléans, Maurice Scève, Rémy Belleau and Corneille. I am coarse and crude compared to such people. I am unworthy. I ask their forgiveness for being born in the Île-de-France rather than Vilnius, Lithuania. I scarcely dare write in French: such a delicate language putrefies beneath my pen. .
I scrawl another fifty pages. After that, I shall give up literature. I swear it.
In Normandy, I will put the finishing touches to my sentimental education. Fougeire-Jusquiames, a little town in Calvados, set off by a seventeenth-century château. As in T., I take a hotel room. This time, I pass myself off as a sales representative for exotic foods. I offer the manageress of Les Trois-Vikings some Turkish delight and question her about the lady of the manor, Véronique de Fougeire-Jusquiames. She tells me everything she knows: madame la marquise lives alone, the villagers see her only at high mass on Sundays. Every year, she organises a hunt. Tourists are allowed to visit the château on Saturday afternoons for three hundred francs a head. Gérard, the Marquise’s chauffeur, acts as guide.
That same evening, I telephone Lévy-Vendôme to tell him I have arrived in Normandy. He implores me to carry out my mission as quickly as possible: our client, the Emir of Samandal, has been daily sending impatient telegrams threatening to cancel the contract if the merchandise is not delivered within the week. Clearly, Lévy-Vendôme does not understand the difficulties I face. How can I, Raphäel Schlemilovitch, make the acquaintance of a marquise overnight? Especially since I am not in Paris, but in Fougeire-Jusquiames, in the heart of rural France. Around here, no Jew, however handsome, would be allowed anywhere near the château except on Saturdays with all the other paying guests.
I spend all night studying a dossier compiled by Lévy-Vendôme on the lineage of the marquise. Her pedigree is excellent. The Directory of French Nobility, founded in 1843 by Baron Samuel Bloch-Morel, offers the following summary: ‘FOUGEIRE-JUSQUIAMES: Seat: Normandie-Poitou. Lineage: Jourdain de Jusquiames, a natural son of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Motto: “Jusquiames, do or damn, Fougère ne’er despair.” The House of Jusquiames supplants the earlier comtes de Fougeire in 1385. Title: duc de Jusquiames (hereditary duchy) under letters patent of 20 September 1603; made hereditary member of the Chambre des pairs by the decree of 30 August 1817. Hereditary Duke-Peer (duc de Jusquiame) Cadet branch: baron romain, papal brief of 19 June 1819, ratified by the decree of 7 September 1822; prince with right of transmission to all descendants by decree of the King of Bavaria of 6 March 1846. Advanced to the dignity of hereditary Count-Peer, by the edict of June 10, 1817. Arms: Gules on a field Azure, Fleurs-De-Lis sautéed with Stars per Saltire.’
In their chronicles of the Fourth Crusade, Robert de Clary, Villehardouin and Henri de Valenciennes offer testaments to the good conduct of the Seigneurs de Fougeire, Froissard, Commynes and Montluc and heap praise upon the valiant Capitaine de Jusquiames. In chapter X of his history of Saint Louis, Joinville recalls a good deed by a knight of the de Fougiere family: ‘Then did this right worthy man raise up his sword and smite the Jew ’twixt the eyes dashing him to the ground. And lo! the Jews did turn and flee taking with them their wounded master.’
On Sunday morning, he posted himself at the entrance to the church. Shortly before eleven o’clock, a black limousine pulled into the square; his heart was pounding. A blonde woman was walking towards him but he dared not look at her. He followed her into the church, struggling to master his emotions. How pure her profile was! Above her, a stained glass window depicted the entrance of Eleanor of Aquitaine into Jerusalem. She looked just like the Marquise de Fougeire-Jusquiames. The same blonde hair, the same tilt of the head, the same slender, delicate neck. His eyes moved from marquise to queen and he thought: ‘How beautiful she is! What nobleness! I see before me a proud Jusquiames, a descendent of Eleanor of Aquitaine.’ Or ‘The glories of the Jusquiames precede the reign of Charlemagne, they held the power of life and death over their vassals. The Marquise de Jusquiames is descended in direct line from Eleanor of Aquitaine. She neither knows nor would she deign to know any of the people gathered here.’ Certainly not Schlemilovitch. He decided to abandon his efforts: Lévy-Vendôme would surely understand that they had been presumptuous. To transform Eleanor of Aquitaine into the denizen of a brothel. The prospect was repugnant. One may be called Schlemilovitch and yet nurture a flicker of sensitivity in one’s heart. The organ and the hymns awakened his nobler disposition. Never would he give up this princess, this fairy, this saint of the Saracens. He would strive to be her hireling, a Jewish pageboy, granted, but mores have changed since the twelfth century and the Marquise de Fougeire-Jusquiames would not take offence at his origins. He would take on the identity of his friend Des Essarts so he might more readily introduce himself. He would talk to her about his own forebears, about Foulques Des Essarts who gutted two hundred Jews before setting off for the Crusades. Foulques was right to do so, these Jews boiled the Host, their slaughter was too kind a punishment, for the bodies of even a thousand Jews are not the equivalent of the sacred Body of Our Lord.
As she left the mass, the Marquise glanced distantly at her congregation. Was it some illusion? Her eyes of periwinkle blue seemed to fix on him. Did she sense the devotion he had vowed to her not an hour since?