Thus far the Art & Aventure works had not been raided or seized by the city’s new authorities, but it was only a matter of time. Max did his best to conceal his forging materials from view, finding a number of ingenious hiding places both at the quai Mullenheim and at home, but a thorough search might easily uncover some damning cache, and after that… well, he preferred not to imagine what might happen after that. This increasingly uneasy and precarious state of affairs lasted until the spring of 1941. Then, one evening at Le Beau Noiseur, Bill told Max in whispers that an escape route had been readied for use, and that he and his parents had been selected to make the first run. Members of the faculty and student body of Strasbourg University-les non-jamais-had refused to return to the “Motherland,” the Gross Reich, and had remained in internal exile in Clermont-Ferrand, in spite of the risk of being declared deserters by the Germans. The vice-chancellor, a certain Monsieur Dungeon, had somehow persuaded Vichy officialdom to maintain the Strasbourg University at this “external campus,” and for the moment the Germans were prepared to let Pétain’s people have their way. A history professor named Zeller, assisted by student and teacher volunteers, and with some help from the Clermont-Ferrand military governor, had spent the summer building a large “country cottage” at Gergovie, near the well-known Gallo-Roman excavations, about which Bill knew nothing except that they were well known. “You leave tonight,” Bill said, passing him a piece of paper. “If your family can reach Gergovie, you will be contacted there and given new orders.” Max Ophuls kept a poker face throughout this briefing, telling Bill nothing he did not need to know, keeping his university connections to himself. Gaston Zeller, he thought. It will be good to see his ugly mug again.
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.”