‘Now, now, sir, you’ve had too much to drink. The Christmas spirit, probably. Come on now, I’ll take you home. Where do you live?’
I obstinately refuse to give him my address.
‘Well, in that case I have no choice but to take you to the station.’
The apparent kindness of the policeman is getting on my nerves. I’ve already worked out that he belongs to the Gestapo. Why not just tell me straight out? Maybe he thinks I will put up a fight, scream like a stuck pig? Not at all. Kierling sanatorium is no match for the clinic where this good man plans to take me. First, there will be the customary formalities: I will be asked for my surname, my first name, my date of birth. They will ensure I am genuinely ill, force me to take some sinister test. Next, the operating theatre. Lying on the table, I will wait impatiently for my surgeons Torquemada and Ximénes. They will hand me an x-ray of my lungs which I will see are nothing but a mass of hideous tumours like the tentacles of an octopus.
‘Do you wish us to operate or not?’ Dr Torquemada will ask me calmly.
‘All we need do is transplant two stainless steel lungs,’ Dr Ximénes will gently explain.
‘We have a superior professional conscientiousness,’ Dr Torquemada will say.
‘Together with an acute interest in your health,’ said Dr Ximénes.
‘Unfortunately, most of our patients love their illness with a fierce passion and consequently see us not as surgeons. .’
‘. . but as torturers.’
‘Patients are often unjust towards their doctors,’ Dr Ximénes will add.
‘We are forced to treat them against their will,’ Dr Torquemada will say.
‘A thankless task,’ Dr Ximénes will add.
‘Do you know that some patients in our clinic have formed a union?’ Dr Torquemada will ask me. ‘They have decided to strike, to refuse to allow us to treat them. .’
‘A serious threat to the medical profession,’ Dr Ximénes will add. ‘Especially since the unionist fever is infecting all sectors of the clinic. .’
‘We have tasked a very scrupulous practitioner, Dr Himmler, to crush this rebellion. He is systematically performing euthanasia on all the union members.’
‘So what do you decide. .’ Dr Torquemada will ask me, ‘the operation or euthanasia?’
‘There are no other possible alternatives.’
Events did not unfold as I had expected. The policeman was still holding my arm, telling me he was walking me to the nearest police station for a simple identity check. When I stepped into his office, the Kommisar, a cultured SS officer intimately familiar with the French poets, asked:
‘Say, what have you done, you who come here, with your youth?’
I explained to him how I had wasted it. And then I talked to him about my impatience: at an age when others were planning their future, I could think only of ending things. Take the gare de Lyon, for example, under the German occupation. I was supposed to catch a train that would carry me far away from misfortune and fear. Travellers were queuing at the ticket desks. I had only to wait half an hour to get my ticket. But no, I got into a first class carriage without a ticket like an imposter. At Chalon-sur-Saône, when the German ticket inspectors checked the compartment, they caught me. I held out my hands. I told them that despite the false papers in the name Jean Cassis de Coudray Macouard, I was a jew. The relief!
‘Then they brought me to you, Herr Kommissar. You decide my fate. I promise I will be utterly docile.’
The Komissar smiles gently, pats my cheek and asks whether I really have tuberculosis.
‘It doesn’t surprise me,’ he says. ‘At your age, everyone is consumptive. It needs to be treated, otherwise you end up spitting blood and dragging yourself along all your life. This is what I’ve decided: if you’d been born earlier, I would have sent you to Auschwitz to have your tuberculosis treated, but we live in more civilised times. Here, this is a ticket for Israel. Apparently, over there, the Jews. .’
The sea was inky blue and Tel Aviv was white, so white. As the boat came alongside, the steady beat of his heart made him feel he had returned to his ancestral land after two thousand years away. He had embarked at Marseille, with the Israeli national shipping line. All through the crossing, he tried to calm his rising panic by anaesthetising himself with alcohol and morphine. Now, with Tel Aviv spread out before him, he could die, his heart at peace.
The voice of Admiral Levy roused him from his thoughts.
‘Good crossing, young man? First time in Israel? You’ll love our country. A terrific country, you’ll see. Lads of your age are swept up by the extraordinary energy that, from Haifa to Eilat, from Tel Aviv to the Dead Sea. .’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Admiral.’
‘Are you French? We have a great love of France, the liberal traditions, the warmth of Anjou and Touraine, the scents of Provence. And your national anthem, it’s beautiful! “Allons enfants de la patrie!” Capital, capital!’
‘I’m not entirely French, Admiral, I am a French jew. A French jew.’
Admiral Levy gave him a hostile glare. Admiral Levy looks like the twin brother of Admiral Dönitz. After a moment Admiral Levy says curtly:
‘Follow me, please.’
He ushers the young man into a sealed cabin.
‘I advise you to be sensible. We will deal with you in due course.’
The admiral switches off the electricity and double locks the door.
He sat in total darkness for almost three hours. Only the faint glow of his wristwatch still connected him to the world. The door was flung open and his eyes were dazzled by the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Three men in green oilskins strode towards him. One of them held out a card.
‘Elias Bloch, Secret State Police. You’re a French Jew? Excellent! Put him in handcuffs!’
A fourth stooge, wearing an identical trench coat, stepped into the cabin.
‘A very productive search. In the gentleman’s luggage we found several books by Proust and Kafka, reproductions of Modigliani and Soutine, some photos of Charlie Chaplin, Erich von Stroheim and Groucho Marx.’
‘Your case is looking more and more serious,’ says the man named Elias Bloch. ‘Take him away!’
The men bundle him out of the cabin. The handcuffs chafe his wrists. On the quayside, he tripped and fell down. One of the officers takes the opportunity to give him a few swift kicks in the ribs then, grabbing the chain linking the handcuffs, dragged him to his feet. They crossed the deserted docks. A police van exactly like the ones used by the French police in the roundup on 16 July 1942 was parked on the street corner. Elias Bloch slid into the seat next to the driver. The young man climbed into the back followed by three officers.
The police van sets off up the Champs-Élysées. People are queuing outside the cinemas. On the terrace of Fouquet’s, women are wearing pale dresses. It was clearly a Saturday evening in spring.
They stopped at the Place de l’Étoile. A few GIs were photographing the Arc de Triomphe, but he felt no need to call to them for help. Bloch grabbed his arm and marched him across the place. The four officers followed a few paces behind.
‘So, you’re a French Jew?’ Bloch asked, his face looming close.
He suddenly looked like Henri Chamberlin-Lafont of the French Gestapo Française.
He was bundled into a black Citroën parked on the Avenue Kléber.
‘You’re for it now,’ said the officer on his right.
‘For a beating, right, Saul?’ said the officer on his left.
‘Yes, Isaac, he’s in for a beating,’ said the officer driving.