‘This will be your shroud. Adieu, my angel.’
This leaves Bloch, Isaac, Saul, Isaiah and Lévy-Vendôme.
Isaac tries to haul me to my feet, tugging on the chain connecting the handcuffs.
‘Leave him,’ says Commandant Bloch, ‘he’s better lying down.’
Saul, Isaac, Isaiah and Lévy-Vendôme go and sit on the steps outside number 93. They stare at me and weep.
‘I’ll join the others a little later,’ Commandant Bloch says to me in a sad voice. ‘The whisky and champagne will flow as usual on Rue Lauriston.’
He brings his face close to mine. He really is the spitting image of my old friend Henri Chamberlin-Lafont.
‘You are going to die in an SS uniform,’ he says. ‘You are touching, Schlemilovitch, very touching.’
From the windows of number 93, I hear a burst of laughter and the chorus of a song:
Moi, j’aime le music-hall
Ses jongleurs
Ses danseuses légères. .
‘Hear that?’ asks Bloch, his eyes misted with tears. ‘In France, everything ends with a song, Schlemilovitch! So keep your spirits up!’
From the right-hand pocket of his trench coat, he takes a revolver. I struggle to my feet and stagger back. Commandant Bloch does not take his eyes off me. Sitting on the steps opposite, Isaiah, Saul, Isaac and Lévy-Vendôme are still sobbing. I consider the façade of number 93 for a moment. From the windows Jean-Farouk de Mérode, Paulo Hayakawa, M. Igor, Otto da Silva, Sophie Knout, the elderly Baroness Lydia Stahl, the Marquise de Fougeire-Jusquiames, Princess Chericheff-Devorazoff, Inspector Bonny pull faces and thumb their noses at me. A sort of cheerful sadness washes over me, one I know only too well. Rebecca was right to laugh a while ago. I summon my last ounce of strength. A nervous, feeble laugh. Gradually it swells until it shakes my whole body, doubling me over. It hardly matters that Commandant Bloch is slowly coming towards me, I feel utterly at ease. He waves his revolver and roars:
‘You’re laughing? YOU’RE LAUGHING? Well, take that you little Jew, take that!’
My head explodes, but I do not know whether from the bullets or from my delirious joy.
The blue walls of the room and the window. By my bed sits Sigmund Freud. To make sure I’m not dreaming, I reach out my right hand and stroke his bald pate.
‘. . my nurses picked you up on the Franz-Josefs-Kai tonight and brought you to my clinic here in Pötzleinsdorf. A course of psychoanalysis will clarify things in my mind. You’ll soon be a healthy, optimistic, sporty young man, I promise. Here, I want you to read this insightful essay by your compatriot Jean-Paul Schweitzer de la Sarthe: Anti-Semite and Jew. There is one thing you must understand at all costs. THE JEW DOES NOT EXIST, as Schweitzer de la Sarthe so aptly puts it. YOU ARE NOT A JEW, you are a man among other men, that is all. You are not a Jew, as I have just said, you are suffering from delusions, hallucinations, fantasies, nothing more, a slight touch of paranoia. . No one wishes you harm, my boy, all people want is to be kind to you. We are living in a world at peace. Himmler is dead, how can you remember all these things? You were not even born, come now, be reasonable, I beg you, I implore you, I. .’
I am no longer listening to Dr Freud. And yet he goes down on his knees, arms outstretched, he pleads with me, takes his head in his hands, rolls on the floor in despair, crawls on all fours, barks, begs me again to let go of my ‘hallucinatory delusions’, my ‘Jewish neuroses’, my ‘Yiddish paranoia’. I am astonished to see him in such a state: does he find my presence so disturbing?
‘Stop the gesticulating.’ I say, ‘The only doctor I will allow to treat me is Dr Bardamu, Louis-Ferdinand Bardamu. . A Jew like me. . Bardamu. Louis-Ferdinand Bardamu. .’
I got up and walked with some difficulty to the window. The psychoanalyst lay sobbing in a corner. Outside, the Pötzleinsdorfer Park was glittering with snow and sunlight. A red tram was coming down the avenue. I thought about the future being offered me: a swift cure thanks to the tender mercies of Dr Freud, men and women waiting for me at the entrance to the clinic, their expressions warm and friendly. The world, full of amazing ventures, a hive of activity.
The beautiful Pötzleinsdorfer Park, there, close by, the greenness and the sunlit pathways.
Furtively, I slip behind the psychoanalyst and pat his head.
‘I’m so tired,’ I tell him, ‘so tired. .’
1 ‘I, Senora, your beloved, am the son of the learned and glorious Don Isaac Ben Israëç, Rabbi of the synagogue of Saragossa.’
2 Latin grammar
3 Himmler
4 ‘Go on, eat up!’
THE NIGHT WATCH
for Rudy Modiano
for Mother
‘Why was I identified with the very objects of my horror and compassion?’
A burst of laughter in the darkness. The Khedive looked up.
‘So you played mah-jongg while you waited for us?’
And he scatters the ivory tiles across the desk.
‘Alone?’ asks Monsieur Philibert.
‘Have you been waiting for us long, my boy?’
Their voices are punctuated by whispers and grave inflections. Monsieur Philibert smiles and gives a vague wave of his hand. The Khedive tilts his head to the left and stands, his cheek almost touching his shoulder. Like a stork.
In the middle of the living room, a grand piano. Purple wallpaper and drapes. Large vases filled with dahlias and orchids. The light from the chandeliers is hazy, as in a bad dream.
‘How about some music to relax us?’ suggests Monsieur Philibert.
‘Sweet music, we need sweet music,’ announces Lionel de Zieff.
‘“Zwischen heute und morgen?”’ offers Count Baruzzi. ‘It’s a fox trot.’
‘I’d rather have a tango,’ says Frau Sultana.
‘Oh, yes, yes, please,’ pleads Baroness Lydia Stahl.
‘“Du, du gehst an mir vorbei”,’ Violette Morris murmurs plaintively.
The Khedive cuts it short: ‘Make it “Zwischen heute und morgen”.’
The women have too much make-up. The men are dressed in garish colours. Lionel de Zieff is wearing an orange suit and an ochre-striped shirt. Pols de Helder a yellow jacket and sky-blue trousers, Count Baruzzi a dusty-green tuxedo. Several couples start to dance. Costachesco with Jean-Farouk de Méthode, Gaetan de Lussatz with Odicharvi, Simone Bouquereau with Irène de Tranze. . Monsieur Philibert stands off to one side, leaning against the window on the left. He shrugs when one of the Chapochnikoff brothers asks him to dance. Sitting at the desk, the Khedive whistles softly and beats time.
‘Not dancing, mon petit?’ he asks. ‘Nervous? Don’t worry, you have all the time in the world. All the time in the world.’
‘You know,’ says Monsieur Philibert, ‘police work is just endless patience.’ He goes over to the console table and picks up the pale-green leather-bound book lying there: Anthology of Traitors from Alcibiades to Captain Dreyfus. He leafs through it, and lays whatever he finds between the pages — letters, telegrams, calling cards, pressed flowers — on the desk. The Khedive seems intently interested in this investigation.
‘Your bedside reading, mon petit?’
Monsieur Philibert hands him a photograph. The Khedive stares at it for a long moment. Monsieur Philibert has moved behind him. ‘His mother,’ the Khedive murmurs, gesturing to the photograph. ‘Isn’t that right, my boy? Madame your mother?’ The boy echoes: ‘Madame your mother. .’ and two tears trickle down his cheeks, trickle to the corners of his mouth. Monsieur Philibert has taken off his glasses. His eyes are wide. He, too, is crying.