The Nansen passports are being called in. Three people he knows, aged between eighty-one and eighty-eight, have had letters from the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs: The bureau that handles those rare and special passports is closing down. Polish political refugees do not exist any longer. They have been turned into Polish citizens (this is the first they’ve heard of it) and should apply to their own embassy for suitable documents. Two of the new citizens are an engraver, who still works in an unheatable studio on the far side of Montmartre, and another artist, a woman, who once modeled a strong, stunning likeness of Magda. She could not afford to have it cast, and the original got broken or was lost — he can’t remember. It was through a work of art that he understood his wife’s beauty. Until then he had been proud of her charm and distinction. He liked to watch her at the piano; he watched more than he listened, perhaps. The third is a former critic of Eastern European literature who at some point fell into a depression and gave up bothering with letters.
“… and so, ipso facto, Polish citizens,” the engraver told M. Wroblewski, over the telephone. “What are they going to do with us? Ship us back to Poland? Are we part of a quota now? At our age, we are better off stateless.” Perhaps it is true. They never travel and do not need passports. Everyone has a place to live, an income of sorts. Two of the three still actually earn money. In a way, they look after one another.
No one has made a move. As the engraver says, when you are dealing with world-level bureaucracy, it is smarter to sit still. By the time you have decided how to react, all the rules may have been changed.
It is true and not true. One can quietly shift a pawn without causing a riot. M. Wroblewski’s attitude runs to lines of defense. Probably, some clerk at the ministry is striking off names in alphabetical order and is nowhere close to the W’s. After several false starts, he has written and mailed a letter to the Quai d’Orsay asking for French citizenship. He might have applied years ago, of course, but in the old days refusal was so consistent that one was discouraged at the outset. By the time he and Magda had their work, their apartment, their precious passports, the last thing they wanted was to fill in another form, stand in another line. He made no mention in the letter of refugees, status, or citizenship — other than French — but drew attention to the number of years he had lived in France, his fluent French, and his admiration for the culture. He spoke of the ancient historical links between Poland and France, touched briefly on the story of Napoleon and Mme. Waleska, and reminded the ministry that he had never been behind with the rent or overdrawn at the bank.
(He sent the letter more than a month ago. So far, there has been no word from the Quai d’Orsay: an excellent sign. One can coast with perfect safety on official silence.)
In the meantime, something new has turned up. About three weeks ago he received a personal letter from the bank, written on a real typewriter, signed with real ink: no booklets, no leaflets, no pictures of a white-haired couple looking the Sphinx in the eye or enjoying Venice. There was just the personal message and one other thing, a certificate. “Certificate” was printed in thick black letters, along with his name, correctly spelled. A Mme. Carole Fournier, of Customers’ Counseling Service, entreated him to sign the certificate, ask for an appointment, and bring it to her desk. (Her own signature seemed to him open and reliable, though still untried by life.) According to Mme. Fournier, and for reasons not made clear, he was among a handful of depositors — aristocrats, in their way — to whom the bank was proposing a cash credit of fifteen thousand francs. The credit was not a loan, not an overdraft, but a pool into which he could dip, without paying interest, anytime he needed ready money but did not wish to touch his savings. The sums drawn from that fund would be replaced at the rate of two thousand francs a month, transferred from his current account. There was no interest or surcharge: He read that part twice.
For fifteen thousand francs he could fly to Australia, he supposed, or go on a cruise to the Caribbean. He could buy Magda a sumptuous fur coat. He would do none of those things, but the offer was generous and not to be rejected out of hand. He had opened an account with his first salary check in France: Perhaps the bank wanted to show gratitude for years of loyalty. Besides his current account, he possessed two savings accounts. One of these is tax-free, limited by law to a deposit of fifteen thousand francs — by coincidence, the very amount he was being offered. Some people, he supposed, would grab the whole thing and dribble it away on nonsense, then feel downcast and remorseful as they watched their current account dwindle, month after month. The gift was a bright balloon with a long string attached. The string could be passed from hand to hand — to the bank and back. He saw himself holding fast to the string.
Before he had a chance to do anything about it, he had a dizzy spell in the street and had to enter a private art gallery and ask to sit down. (They were not very nice about it. There was only one chair, occupied by a lady addressing envelopes.) His doctor ordered him to take a week’s rest, preferably miles away from home. The preparation that was required — finding someone to sleep at the flat, two other people to come in during the afternoons and on the weekend — was more wearing than just keeping on; but he obeyed, left nothing undone, turned Hector over to the concierge, and caught the train for Saint-Malo. Years before, in an era of slow trains and chilly hotels, he had taken some of his students there. Uncomplaining, they ate dry sandwiches and apples and pitched the apple cores from the ramparts. This time he was alone in a wet season. Under a streaming umbrella he walked the ramparts again and when the sky cleared visited Chateaubriand’s grave; and from the edge of the grave took the measure of the ocean. He had led his students here, too, and told them everything about Chateaubriand (everything they could take in) but did not say that Sartre had urinated on the grave. It might have made them laugh.
He left the grave and the sea and started back to the walled city. He thought of other violations and of the filth that can wash over quiet lives. In the dark afternoon the lighted windows seemed exclusive, like careless snubs. He would write to his friend, “I wondered what I was doing there, looking at other people’s windows, when I have a home of my own.” The next day he changed his train reservation and returned to Paris before the week was up.
Magda recognized him but did not know he had been away. She asked if he had been disturbed by the neighbor who played Schubert on the piano all night long. (Perhaps the musician existed, he sometimes thought, and only Magda could hear him.) “You must tell him to stop,” she said. He promised he would.
Mme. Carole Fournier, Customers’ Counseling Service, turned out to be an attractive young woman, perhaps a bit thin in the face. Her hollow cheeks gave her a birdlike appearance, but when she turned to the computer screen beside her desk her profile reminded him of an actress, Elzbieta Barszczewska. When Barszczewska died, in her white wedding dress, at the end of a film called The Leper, the whole of Warsaw went into mourning. Compared with Barszczewska, Pola Negri was nothing.
The plastic rims of Mme. Fournier’s glasses matched the two red combs in her hair. Her office was a white cubicle with a large window and no door. Her computer, like all those he had noticed in the bank, had a screen of azure. It suggested the infinite. On its cerulean surface he could read, without straining, facts about himself: his date of birth, for one. Between white lateral blinds at the window he observed a bakery and the post office where he bought stamps and sent letters. Hector, tied to a metal bar among chained and padlocked bikes, was just out of sight. Had the window been open, one might have heard his plaintive barking. M. Wroblewski wanted to get up and make sure the dog had not been kidnapped, but it would have meant interrupting the charming Mme. Fournier.