Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown

He left the café without looking back. At home his parents had taken the dust sheets off the grand piano in the main drawing room and Anya was playing from memory, smiling beatifically, even though the instrument was harshly out of tune. Max senior stood behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders, his eyes closed, his expression distant and serene. Their son interrupted their reverie. “The day has come,” he said. “It’s time for us to run.” The elderly couple looked as if the universe had quivered slightly; then his mother put on her sweetest smile. “Oh, but it’s out of the question, dear,” she said. “You know that our dear friend Dumas’s son Charles receives his bachot tomorrow. We’ll talk about going once that’s done with.”

This was a dreadful statement. Charles Dumas was thirty, the same age as the younger Max, and not in Strasbourg. The day of their baccalauréat graduations was long past. “But you promised,” Max said, in great distress. “You said that if I ever came to you with this warning, you would do as I asked.” His father inclined his head. “It’s true we made a promise,” he said. “And you rightly stress the importance of our having given our word. Thus two great principles are in conflict here: honesty and friendship. We prefer to be good friends to our friends, and stay here for their family’s important day, even if that makes us dishonest in your eyes.” “For God’s sake,” shouted Max the younger, “there’s no such ceremony-you know perfectly well that all the schools and colleges have been closed since the evacuation, and even if they weren’t, this isn’t the right time of year…” Anya Ophuls prepared to resume playing the piano. “Shh, shh, my darling, for goodness’ sake,” she admonished him. “It’s just one day. The day after tomorrow we’ll pick up those bags we packed and scurry off to wherever you see fit.”

There was nothing for it but to acquiesce. On the piece of paper Bill had given Max at the bar was the location of the rendezvous point, a stable in a remote corner of the Bugatti estate in the village of Molsheim, and the word Finkenberger, which Max had always thought of as the name of a local wine, not a particular man. He took this to be the pseudonym of the passeur, the man who would be responsible for facilitating the run and getting the Ophuls family across enemy lines. That night, a moonless night which had no doubt been selected on account of its unusual darkness, Max bicycled twenty kilometers down the so-called wine road to Molsheim to inform M. Finkenberger that there would be a twenty-four-hour delay in the plan. The choice of meeting place was risky because the Bugatti factory was now in German hands; but then again, there were no risk-free places that fall. Molsheim, a beauty spot with old-world cobbled streets and leaning Geppetto houses, was so utterly charming that you expected to see blue fairies at its windows and the new Disney movie’s already famous talking cricket on its hearths. Tonight, however, the tragedy of the Bugatti family lay over the village like a shroud, darkening the unmooned darkness until it felt like a blindfold. The closer Max came to the great estate the darker it grew, until he had to dismount from his bicycle and grope his way forward like a blind man.

Within the space of a single year the legendary car designer Ettore Bugatti, “Le Patron,” had suffered the loss first of his son Jean-in an automobile accident-and then his father Carlo, who died just before the German invasion, as if reluctant to be a part of that future. Ettore had been living in Paris, and although he remained the company’s engineering genius, Jean had for several years been in charge of the coachwork design, the distinctive curved fenders, the futuristic body shapes. After his son’s death Ettore returned to the quasi-baronial Molsheim factory-estate, where all the buildings-even the pattern shop, the body shops, the foundry, the drafting room-boasted great, polished doors of oak and bronze. The Bugattis had lived in feudal splendor. There was a sculpture museum, a carriage museum, luxurious facilities for their Thoroughbred horses, a riding school. They kept prize terriers, prime cattle, racing pigeons. They had their own distillery, and housed clients in a spectacular residence, the Hotel of the Pure Blood. The grandeur of the private world he had built served only to twist the knife in Ettore’s heart, magnifying the sudden emptiness of his life. Within a few months of his return he sold out to the Germans-was forced to do so-and left Molsheim with the air of a man emerging from a tomb. He moved his manufacturing operations to Bordeaux, but no Bugatti cars were ever built again; Ettore now made crankshafts for Hispano-Suiza aircraft engines. Less well known was his work with the Resistance, into which many of his former employees followed their benevolent but dictatorial boss. One such employee, the leathery old horse trainer now known to Max Ophuls as the passeur Finkenberger, was waiting at the end of a tiny wooded dead-end lane behind the stable, sitting on a fence post, smoking. Max stumbled down the lane, colliding with other fence posts and sadistic trees, trying not to cry out. The lighted tip of Finkenberger’s cigarette was his beacon, and he swam toward it through the eyeless darkness like Leander in the Hellespont. When the horse man first spoke it was as if the night’s curtain had been torn. Around the words, Max Ophuls began to be able to see or at least imagine a face, which to his great surprise turned out to be familiar. “Fuck me,” were the waiting man’s first words. “I know you, don’t I? Fuck. ”

Max Ophuls had been on close terms with Jean Bugatti, had learned to fly planes with him, performing daredevilry in the innocent prewar sky. They had also ridden the length and breadth of this formerly blessed countryside on golden stallions across brilliant summer afternoons. Tonight, exhausted, filled with trepidation, Max was rushed back to that happier time by the unmistakable, obscene tongue of the passeur. “Ophuls, Max,” he said. “And sure, I know you, Finkenberger. Who could forget.” The other offered a cigarette, which Max declined. “Everything’s gone to fuck,” the horse trainer confided. “Nazis want to use the shop to build guns, obviously. Cunts. But they like the dogs and horses and of course they want to drive the fucking cars. I see a 57-5 with that fucking swastika flying on the hood, I want to fucking throw up. Fucking gutter rats playing at being aristos. Fucking pond scum. And that hotel, I always thought the name was a mistake. They fucking love that place. Hotel of the Pure Blood. It’s a fucking whorehouse now. Why are you alone, anyway? I was told three persons.”

Max explained the problem and there was an abrupt change of mood. The darkness itself seemed to tighten, to gather itself into a pair of clenched fists. Finkenberger threw away his cigarette and, to judge by his breathing, seemed to be making an effort to suppress his rage. Finally he spoke. “Le Patron, he left Molsheim and fucked off to Paris because he thought the workers weren’t grateful. Old school, he is. Take your fucking cap off when he comes by, touch the fucking forelock, bend the fucking knee, you catch my drift. And yeah, maybe there were those who weren’t grateful for the chance to behave like fucking serfs, even if they did get houses and benefits and such. There were those who weren’t too fucking grateful at all. Monsieur Jean was different. Common fucking touch. Had it in spades. Think yourself lucky you were his pal. If you weren’t his pal and came to me saying what you’re saying to me now I’d have told you to go fuck yourself. If you were one of Le Patron’s highfalutin pricks I’d have told you what you could fucking do with your twenty-four-hour delay. Do you know how fucking hard it is to set this stuff up, the danger of using the radio, the number of people waiting on you down the road that have to be stood down and stood up again tomorrow, do you know the fucking danger you’re putting them in? Fucking dilettante fuckers like you can’t think about anyone else. But you’re the lucky bastard, I say again, on account of Monsieur Jean, on account of his fucking beautiful fucking memory. Be here on time tomorrow the three of you or you can go fuck yourselves to death in the fucking synagogue on the fucking Sabbath day.”