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

They yanked me by the hair. I heard Charles Trenet again:

. . Formidable.

On se croirait au ciné-

Matographe

Où l’on voit tant de belles choses,

Tant de trucs, de métamorphoses,

Quand une rose

est assassinée. .

‘The second dunking will last longer,’ Bloch explains wiping away a tear.

This time, two hands press down on my neck, two more on the back of my head. Before I drown, it occurs to me I have not always been kind to maman.

But they drag me back into the fresh air.

Et puis

et puis

sur les quais,

la pluie

la pluie

n'a pas compliqué

la vie

qui rigole

et qui se mire dans les flaques des rigoles.

‘Now let’s get down to business,’ says Bloch, stifling a sob.

They lay me on the floor. Isaac takes a Swiss penknife from his pocket and makes deep slashes in the soles of my feet. Then he orders me to walk across a heap of salt. Next, Saul conscientiously rips out three of my fingernails. Then, Isaiah files down my teeth. At that point Trenet was singing:

Quel temps

pour les p’tits poissons.

Quel temps

pour les grands garçons.

Quel temps

pour les tendrons.

Mesdemoiselles nous vous attendrons. .

‘I think that’s enough for tonight,’ said Elias Bloch, shooting me a tender look.

He stroked my chin.

‘This is the prison for the foreign Jews,’ he said, ‘we’ll take you to the cell for French Jews. You’re the only one at the moment. But there will be more along soon. Don’t you worry.’

‘The little shits can sit around talking about Marcel Proust,’ said Isaiah.

‘When I hear the word culture, I reach for my truncheon,’ said Saul.

‘I get to deliver the coup de grâce !’ said Isaac.

‘Come now, don’t frighten the young man,’ Bloch said imploringly.

He turned to me.

‘Tomorrow, you will be advised about the progress of your case.’ Isaac and Saul pushed me into a little room. Isaiah came in and handed me a pair of striped pyjamas. Sewn onto the pyjama jacket was a yellow star of David on which I read Französisch Jude . As he closed the reinforced door, Isaac tripped me and I fell flat on my face.

The cell was illuminated by a nightlight. It did not take me long to notice the floor was strewn with Gillette Extra-Blue blades. How had the police known about my vice, my uncontrollable urge to swallow razor blades? I was sorry now that they had not chained me to the wall. All night, I had to tense myself, to bite my hand so as not to give in to the urge. One false move and I was in danger of gulping down the blades one by one. Gorging myself on Gillette Extra-Blues. It was truly the torment of Tantalus.

In the morning, Isaiah and Isaac came to fetch me. We walked down an endless corridor. Isaiah gestured to a door and told me to go in. Isaac thumped me on the back of the head by way of goodbye.

He was sitting at a large mahogany desk. Apparently, he was expecting me. He was wearing a black uniform and I noticed two Stars of David on the lapel of his jacket. He was smoking a pipe, which gave him a more pronounced jawline. Had he been wearing a beret, he might have passed for Joseph Darnand.

‘You are Raphäel Schlemilovitch?’ he asked in a clipped, military tone.

‘Yes.’

‘French Jew?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were arrested last night by Admiral Levy aboard the ship Zion ?’

‘Yes.’

‘And handed over to the police authorities, to Commandant Elias Bloch to be specific?’

‘Yes.’

‘And these seditious pamphlets were found in your luggage?’

He passed me a volume of Proust, Franz Kafka’s Diary , the photographs of Chaplin, von Stroheim and Groucho Marx, the reproductions of Modigliani and Soutine.

‘Very well, allow me to introduce myself: General Tobie Cohen, Commissioner for Youth and Raising Morale. Now, let’s get straight to the point. Why did you come to Israel?’

‘I’m a romantic by nature. I didn’t want to die without having seen the land of my forefathers.’

‘And you are intending to RETURN to Europe, are you not? To go back to this playacting, this farce of yours? Don’t bother to answer, I’ve heard it all before: Jewish angst, Jewish misery, Jewish fear, Jewish despair. . People wallow in their misfortunes, they ask for more, they want to go back to the comfortable world of the ghettos, the delights of the pogroms. There are two possibilities, Schlemilovitch: either you listen to me and you follow my instructions, in that case, everything will be fine. Or you continue to play the rebel, the wandering Jew, the martyr, in which case I hand you over to Commandant Elias Bloch. You know what Elias Bloch will do with you?’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘I warn you, we have all the means necessary to subdue little masochists like you,’ he said, wiping away a tear. ‘Last week, an English Jew tried to outsmart us. He turned up from Europe with the same old hard-luck stories: Diaspora, persecution, the tragic destiny of the Jewish people!. . He dug his heels in, determined to play the tormented soul! He refused to listen! Right now, Bloch and his lieutenants are dealing with him! I can assure you, he will get to experience real suffering. Far beyond his wildest expectations. He is finally about to experience the tragic destiny of the Jewish people! He asked for Torquemada, demanded Himmler himself! Bloch is taking care of him! He’s worth more than all the Grand Inquisitors and Gestapo officers combined. Do you really want to end up in his hands, Schlemilovitch?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well then, listen to me: you have just arrived in a young, vigorous, dynamic country. From Tel Aviv to the Dead Sea, from Haifa to Eilat, no one is interested in hearing about the angst, the malaise, the tears, the HARD LUCK STORY of the Jews. No one! We don’t want to hear another word about the Jewish critical thinking, Jewish intelligence, Jewish scepticism, Jewish contortions and humiliations, Jewish tragedy. . (his face was bathed in tears.) We leave all that to callow European aesthetes like you. We are forceful people, square-jawed, pioneers, not a bunch of Yiddish chanteuses like Proust and Kafka and Chaplin. Let me tell you, we recently organised an auto-da-fé on Tel Aviv main square: the works of Proust, Kafka and their ilk, reproductions of Soutine, Modigliani and other invertebrates, were burned by our young people, fine boys and girls who would have been the envy of the Hitlerjugend : blond, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered, with a confident swagger and a taste for action and for fighting! (He groaned.) While you were off cultivating your neuroses, they were building their muscles. While you were kvetching, they were working in kibbutzim! Aren’t you ashamed, Schlemilovitch?’

‘Yes, sir! General, sir!’

‘Good! Now promise me that you will never again read Proust, Kafka and the like or drool over reproductions of Modigliani and Soutine, or think about Chaplin or von Stroheim or the Marx Brothers, promise me you will forget Doctor Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the most insidious Jew of all time!’

‘You have my word, sir.’

‘I will introduce you to fine books. I have a great quantity in French! Have you read The Art of Leadership by Courtois? Sauvage’s The Restoration of the Family and National Revolution? The Greatest Game of my Life by Guy de Larigaudie? The Father’s Handbook by Rear-Admiral Penfentenyo? You will learn them by heart, I plan to develop your moral muscle! For the same reason, I am sending you to a disciplinary kibbutz immediately. Don’t worry, you will only be there for three months. Just enough time to build up the biceps you sorely lack and cleanse you of the germs of the cosmopolitan Jew. Is that clear?’