Patrick Modiano - The Occupation Trilogy - La Place de l'Étoile – The Night Watch – Ring Roads

The parents’ association were up in arms, the headmaster summoned me to his office.

‘Schlemilovitch,’ he told me, ‘Messieurs Gerbier, Val-Suzon and La Rochepot have filed a complaint charging you with assault and battery of their sons. Defending your schoolmaster is all very commendable but you have been behaving like a lout. Do you realise that Val-Suzon has been hospitalised? That Gerbier and La Rochepot have suffered audio-visual disturbances? These are elite khâgne students! You could go to prison, Schlemilovitch, to prison! But for now you will leave this school, this very evening!’

‘If these gentlemen want to press charges,’ I said, ‘I am prepared to defend myself once and for all. I’ll get a lot of publicity. Paris is not Bordeaux, you know. In Paris, they always side with the poor little Jew, not with the brutish Aryans! I’ll play the persecuted martyr to perfection. The Left will organise rallies and demonstrations and, believe me, it will be the done thing to sign a petition in support of Raphäel Schlemilovitch. All in all, the scandal will do considerable damage to your prospects for promotion. Remember Capitaine Dreyfus and, much more recently, all the fuss about Jacob X, the young Jewish deserter. . Parisians are crazy about us. They always side with us. Forgive us anything. Wipe the slate clean. What do you expect? Moral standards have gone to hell since the last war — what am I saying? Since the Middle Ages! Remember the wonderful French custom where every Easter the Comte de Toulouse would ceremoniously slap the head of the Jewish community, while the man begged ‘Again, monsieur le comte ! One more, with the pommel of your sword! Batter me! Rip out my guts! Trample my corpse!’ A blessed age. How could my forebear from Toulouse ever imagine that one day I would break Val-Suzon’s vertebrae? Put out the eye of a Gerbier or a La Rochepot? Every dog has his day, headmaster. Revenge is a dish best served cold. And don’t think even for a minute that I feel remorse. You can tell the young men’s parents that I’m sorry I didn’t slaughter them. Just imagine the trial. A young Jew, pale and passionate, declaring that he sought only to avenge the beatings regularly meted out to his ancestors by the Comte de Toulouse! Sartre would defend me, it would take centuries off him! I’d be carried in triumph from the Place de l’Étoile to the Bastille! I’d be a fucking prince to the young people of France!’

‘You are loathsome, Schlemilovitch, loathsome! I refuse to listen to you a moment longer.’

‘That’s right, monsieur le proviseur , loathsome!’

‘I am calling the police this instant!’

‘Oh, surely not the police, monsieur le proviseur , call the Gestapo, please.’

I left the lycée for good. Debigorre was upset to lose his finest pupil. We met up two or three times at the Café de Bordeaux. One Sunday evening, he did not appear. His housekeeper told me he had been taken to a mental home in Arcachon. I was strictly forbidden from seeing him. Only monthly visits from family members were permitted.

I knew that every night my former teacher was calling out to me for help because apparently Léon Blum was hounding him with implacable hatred. Via his housekeeper, he sent me a hastily scrawled message: ‘Save me, Raphäel. Blum and the others are trying to kill me. I’m sure of it. They slip into my room like reptiles in the night. They taunt me. They threaten me with butcher’s knives. Blum, Mandel, Zay, Salengro, Dreyfus and the rest of them. They want to hack me to pieces. I’m begging you, Raphäel, save me.’

That was the last I heard of him.

Old men, it would seem, play a crucial role in my life.

Two weeks after leaving the lycée, I was spending my last few francs at the Restaurant Dubern when a man sat down at the table next to mine. My attention was immediately drawn to his monocle and his long jade cigarette holder. He was completely bald, which gave him a rather unsettling appearance. As he ate, he never took his eyes off me. He beckoned the head waiter with an insolent flick of the finger: his index seemed to trace an arabesque in the air. I saw him write a few words on a visiting card. He pointed to me and the head waiter brought over the little white rectangle on which I read:

VICOMTE CHARLES LÉVY-VENDÔME

Master of Ceremonies, would like the pleasure of your acquaintance

He takes a seat opposite me.

‘Excuse my rather cavalier manner, but I invariably force an entry into other people’s lives. A face, an expression, can be enough to win my friendship. I was most impressed by your resemblance to Gregory Peck. Aside from that, what do you do for a living?’

He had a beautiful, deep voice.

‘You can tell me your life story somewhere more dusky. What do you say to the Morocco?’

At the Morocco, the dance floor was utterly deserted despite Noro Morales’ wild guarachas blasting from the loudspeakers. Latin America was decidedly the vogue in Bordeaux that autumn.

‘I’ve just been expelled from school,’ I explained, ‘aggravated assault. I’m a young hoodlum, and Jewish to boot. My name is Raphäel Schlemilovitch.’

‘Schlemilovitch? Well, well! All the more reason that we should be friends. I myself belong to a long-established Jewish family from the Loiret. My ancestors were jesters to the dukes of Pithiviers for generations. Your life story does not interest me. I wish to know whether or not you are looking for work.’

‘I am looking, monsieur le vicomte .’

‘Very well then. I am a host. I host. . I conceive, I develop, I devise. . I have need of your help. You are a young man of impeccable pedigree. Good presence, come-hither eyes, American smile. Let us speak man to man. What do you think of French girls?’

‘Pretty.’

‘And?’

‘They would make first-class whores!’

‘Admirable! I like your turn of phrase! Now, cards on table, Schlemilovitch! I work in the white slave trade! As it happens, the French girl is particularly prized in the market. You will supply the merchandise. I am too old to take on such work. In 1925, it required no effort; these days, if I wish to be attractive to women, I have them smoke opium beforehand. Who would have thought the sultry young Lévy-Vendôme would turn into a satyr when he turned fifty? Now, you Schlemilovitch, you have many years ahead of you; make the most of them! Use your natural talents to debauch your Aryan girls. Later, you can write your memoir. It will be called The Rootless: the story of seven French girls who could not resist the charms of Schlemilovitch the Jew only to find themselves, one fine day, working in brothels in the Orient or in South America . The moral of the story: they should not have trusted this Jewish lothario, they should have stayed on the cool mountain slopes, in the verdant groves. You will dedicate your memoir to Maurice Barrès.’

‘As your wish, monsieur le vicomte .’

‘Now, to work, my boy. You leave immediately for the Haute-Savoie. I have just received an order from Rio de Janeiro: “Young French mountain girl. Brunette. Husky.” From there, you will move on to Normandy. This time the order is from Beirut: “Elegant French girl whose ancestors fought in the crusades.

Good provincial landed gentry.” The client is clearly a lecher after our own hearts! An emir who wants to avenge himself for Charles Martel. .’

‘Or the sack of Constantinople by the crusaders. .’

‘If you prefer. In short, I have found what he requires. In the Calvados region. . A young woman. . descended from a venerable aristocratic family! Seventeenth-century château! Cross and Lance heads with fleurs-de-lis on a field Azure. Hunting parties! The ball is in your court, Schlemilovitch. There is not a moment to lose. We have our work cut out for us! The abductions must involve no bloodshed. Come, have one last drink at my place, then I will accompany you to the station.’