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

‘Decidedly, Schlemilovitch, your time here at Fougeire-Jusquiames did not do you much good! The scents of old France have quite turned your head. When is the christening? Planning to be a 100 per cent pureblood Frenchman? I have to put a stop to your ridiculous daydreams. Read the Talmud instead of poring over histories of the Crusades. Stop slavering over the heraldic almanacs. . Take my word for it, the star of David is worth more than all these “chevrons à sinoples” or “Gules, two lion passants”, or “Azure, three fleurs-de-lis d’or”. You don’t imagine you’re Charles Swann, do you? You’re not planning to apply for membership of the Jockey Club? To join the social whirl of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. You may remember that Charles Swann himself, that idol of duchesses, arbiter of elegance, darling of the Guermantes, remembered his origins when he grew old. If I might be permitted, Schlemilovitch?’

The vicomte gestured to the violinists to interrupt their playing and, in a stentorian voice, declaimed:

‘Perhaps too, in these last days, the physical type that characterises his race was becoming more pronounced in him, at the same time as a sense of moral solidarity with the rest of the Jews, a solidarity which Swann seemed to have forgotten throughout his life, and which, one after another, his mortal illness, the Dreyfus case and the anti-Semitic propaganda had revived. .’

‘We always return to our own people, Schlemilovitch! Even after long years of straying!’

In a monotone he recited:

‘The Jew is the substance of God; non-Jews are but cattle seed; non-Jews are created to serve Jews. We order that every Jew, three times each day, should curse the Christian peoples and call upon God to exterminate them with their kings and princes. The Jew who rapes or despoils a non-Jewish woman or even kills her must be absolved in justice for he has wronged only a mare.’

He removed his turban and put on a false, preposterously hooked nose.

‘You’ve never seen me play the role of Süss the Jew? Picture it, Schlemilovitch! I have just killed the Marquise, I have drunk her blood like a self-respecting vampire. The blood of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her valiant knights! Now I unfold my vulture’s wings. I grimace. I contort myself. Musicians, please, play your wildest czardas . See my hands, Schlemilovitch! The nails like talons! Louder, musicians, louder! I cast a venomous glance at the Watteau, the Philippe de Champaigne, I will rip up the Savonnerie carpet with my claws! Slash the old master paintings! In a short while, I will run about the château howling in a terrifying manner. I will overturn the crusaders’ suits of armour! When I have sated my rage, I will sell this ancestral home. Preferably to a South American magnate. The king of guano , for example. With the money I shall buy sixty pairs of crocodile-skin moccasins, emerald green alpaca suits, panther-skin coats, ribbed shirts with orange stripes. I shall have thirty mistresses, Yemenites, Ethiopians, Circassians. What do you think, Schlemilovitch? Don’t be afraid, my boy, all this hides a deep sentimental streak.’

There was a moment of silence. Lévy-Vendôme gestured for me to follow him. Outside on the steps of the château, he whispered.

‘Let me be alone, please. Leave immediately. Travel forms the young mind. Go east, Schlemilovitch, go east! A pilgrimage to the source: Vienna, Constantinople, the banks of the Jordan. I am almost tempted to go with you. Leave France as soon as possible! Go! This country has wronged you. You have taken root here. Never forget that we are the international association of fakirs and prophets. Have no fear, you will see me again. I am needed in Constantinople to engineer the gradual halt to the cycle. Gradually the seasons will change, first the spring, then the summer. Astronomers and meteorologists know nothing, take my word for this, Schlemilovitch. I shall disappear from Europe towards the end of the century and go the Himalayas. I will rest. I will reappear here eighty-five years to the day from now, sporting the sidelocks and beard of a rabbi. Goodbye for now. I love you.’

IV

Vienna. The last tramways glided into the night. On Mariahilfer Straße, we felt fear overcoming us. A few more steps and we would find ourselves on the Place de la Concorde. Take the métro, count off the reassuring rosary: Tuileries, Palais-Royal, Louvre, Châtelet. Our mother would be waiting for us, Quai Conti. We would drink lime-blossom and mint tisane and watch the shadows cast on the walls of our bedroom by the passing river boats. Never had we loved Paris more, nor France. A winter’s night, a Jewish painter, our cousin, staggering around Montparnasse, muttering as he died ‘ Cara, cara Italia’ . By chance he had been born in Livorno, he might have been born in Paris, in London, in Warsaw, anywhere. We were born in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Île-de-France. Far from here, Tuileries. Palais-Royal, Châtelet. The exquisite Mme de La Fayette. Choderlos de Laclos. Benjamin Constant, dear old Stendhal. Fate had played us a cruel trick. We would not see our country again. Die on Mariahilfer Straße like stray dogs. No one could protect us. Our mother was dead or mad. We did not know our father’s New York address. Nor that of Maurice Sachs. Or Adrien Debigorre. As for Charles Lévy-Vendôme, there was no point calling on him. Tania Arcisewska was dead because she had taken our advice. Des Essarts was dead. Loïtia was probably slowly becoming accustomed used to far-flung brothels. We made no effort to clasp them to us, these faces that passed through our lives, to cling to them, to love them. Incapable of the slightest act.

We arrived at the Burggarten and sat on one of the benches. Suddenly we heard the sound of a wooden leg striking the ground. A man was walking towards us, a monstrous cripple. . His eyes were luminous, his sweeping fringe and his stubby moustache glistened in the darkness. His lips were set in a rictus that made our hearts pound. His left arm, which he extended, tapered to a hook. We had expected to run into him in Vienna. Inevitably. He was wearing the uniform of an Austrian corporal the better to terrify us. He threatened us, bellowing: ‘ Sechs Millionen Juden! Sechs Millionen Juden! ’ Shrapnel from his booming laugh pierced our chests. He tried to gouge our eyes out with his hook. We ran away. He followed us, shrieking: ‘ Sechs Millionen Juden! Sechs Millionen Juden! ’ For a long time we ran through the dead city, this drowned city washed up on the shore. Hofburg, Palais Kinsky, Palais Lobkowitz, Palais Pallavicini, Palais Porcia, Palais Wilczek. . Behind us, in a rasping voice Captain Hook sang ‘Hitlerleute’, thumping the pavement with his wooden leg. It seemed to us we were the only people in the city. After killing us, our enemy would wander these empty streets like a ghost until the end of time.

The streetlights along the Graben help me see things more clearly. Three American tourists persuade me that Hitler is long since dead. I follow them, trailing a few metres behind. They turn onto Dorotheergasse and go into the nearest café. I take a table at the back. I don’t have a schilling and I tell the waiter I am waiting for someone. With a smile, he brings me a newspaper. I discover that last night, at midnight, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach left Spandau prison in a big black Mercedes. At a press conference in the Hilton Hotel in Berlin, Schirach declared: ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting so long.’ In the photo, he is wearing a turtleneck sweater. Cashmere, probably. Made in Scotland . Gentleman. Former Gauleiter of Vienna. Fifty thousand Jews.

A young, dark-haired woman, chin resting on her open palm. I wonder what she is doing here, alone, so forlorn among the beer drinkers. Surely she belongs to that race of humans I have chosen above all other: their features are harsh and yet delicate, in their faces you can see their enduring loyalty to grief. Anyone but Raphäel Schlemilovitch would take these anaemics by the hand and beg them to make their peace with life. As for me, those I love, I kill. And so I choose those who are weak, defenceless. To take an example, I killed my mother with grief. She demonstrated exceptional meekness. She would beg me to have my tuberculosis treated. I would gruffly snap: ‘You don’t treat tuberculosis, you nurture it, you cherish it like a dancehall girl.’ My mother would hang her head. Later, Tania asks me to protect her. I hand her a razor blade, a Gillette Extra-Blue. In the end, I anticipated her wishes: she would have been bored living with a fat man. Slyly suicided while he was singing the praises of nature in springtime. As for Des Essarts, my brother, my only friend, was it not I who tampered with the brakes of the car so he could safely shatter his skull?