The fate of a man wanted for colluding with the enemy, who might or might not have survived the Dachau concentration camp, left me puzzled. What set of circumstances could have pulled him into such a conflictual situation? I thought of my father, who had weathered all the contradictions of the Occupation period, and who had told me practically nothing about it before we parted forever. And now here was Pacheco, whom I’d barely known, and who was also slipping away without providing an explanation.
He reappeared one Sunday night, in the Cité cafeteria. It was late and there was no one left around the Formica tables. I was sitting next to the window that looked out on Boulevard Jourdan and, when I saw him enter in his tan suit and suede moccasins — his hair a bit longer than usual and his skin tanned — my heart skipped a beat. He came over to sit beside me as naturally as if he’d left only moments earlier to make a phone call.
“I thought we’d never see you again,” I said to him.
“Air France sent me to work in an airfield in Morocco … In Casablanca … I had to stay for quite a while.”
“I found out you were interned in Dachau during the war,” I blurted.
“No.”
He sat without moving, staring straight ahead, as if he dreaded other revelations from me.
“And that you were wanted by the police after the war for conspiring with the enemy. It was back when you called yourself Philippe de Bellune.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“For a while, they thought you had died in Dachau …”
“Died?”
He shrugged.
“Why were they looking for you after the war?”
He sliced his pan-bagnat into very thin strips, using a fork and knife.
“You’ve got an active imagination … But this evening I’m very tired …”
He gave me a smile, and I understood that I wouldn’t get anything out of him. In the days that followed, we saw each other with the rest of the group, with no opportunity for a private conversation. He invited us to dinner, as was his wont, at the restaurant on Avenue Reille. His friend from Air Maroc was there that evening. And, as usual, he handed out “duty free” cartons of American cigarettes, perfumes, and fountain pens, and little souvenirs he’d brought back from Casablanca.
I didn’t want to embarrass him by asking if he really lived at the Pavillon des Provinces Françaises. We again had occasion, several times, to walk him back to his pavilion at night and watch him go up the large staircase, but I didn’t feel like sitting on the bench behind the privet hedges to see if he’d go out again a few minutes later.
One late afternoon in that month of September, while we were lying on the lawn of the Cité Universitaire, enjoying the last of the warm weather, Pacheco showed us photos of the airfield and the avenues of Casablanca. On one of them, we could see him in a steward’s uniform in front of a building whose whiteness stood out against the cerulean sky. Everything was distinct in that sundrenched décor: the whites and blues, the shadow jutting out from the foot of the building, the sand-colored steward’s uniform, Pacheco’s smile, and the gleaming fuselage of a sightseeing plane in the background. But I was thinking of a certain Philippe de Bellune whose contour had melted into the fog long ago. His fate had been so uncertain that they thought he’d died right after the war. He didn’t even use his real name. What had the life of that man been like, the one born in Paris on January 22, 1918? He must have spent the early years of his childhood at 4 Rue Greuze, in the home of his parents and grandparents. Out of curiosity, I’d checked the phone book: 4 Rue Greuze was now the seat of the Chaldean Church. They had probably turned the ground floor into a chapel, where they celebrated the rites of that Eastern religion. Had they left his childhood bedroom intact? I planned to attend a Chaldean Mass, then slip out of the chapel to go explore the upper floors of the private hotel. And perhaps find witnesses who had known Pacheco on Rue Greuze. At number 2, the building next door, a Princess Duleep-Singh had lived around 1920, and that name awakened a childhood memory: I’m waiting for my father one Friday evening, in a train station on the Normandy coast. Among the passengers getting off the train from Paris is a dark-complexioned woman surrounded by turbaned servants and several young English girls in riding breeches who seem to be lady’s companions. They pile a large number of suitcases onto carts. One of them jostles me as it goes past. I fall and hurt my knee. Immediately, the woman helps me up, leans over me, and, using a handkerchief and a small vial of perfume, rubs the scrape on my knee with a maternal gesture. She’s a woman of about thirty, and the gentleness and beauty of her face fill me with wonder. She smiles at me. She strokes my hair. In front of the station, several American cars are waiting for her.
“A Hindu princess,” my father had said.
In what boarding school had they enrolled young Philippe Riclos y Perez de Pacheco? Who were his friends in 1938, when he was twenty? What profession was he destined for? I imagined him being left to his own devices. The war and the Occupation had finished sowing disorder and confusion in a young man with a highly indecisive personality. He must not even have been very sure of his identity, since he called himself Philippe de Bellune at the time, as if trying to cling to the only reference marker he had in life, and a very distant one at that: his ancestor, Maréchal Victor, the duc de Bellune.
No doubt he had fallen in with bad company. The article from 1946 specifies that a warrant had been issued against him and several others, including a “countess” von Seckendorff and a “baron” de Kermanor. Were those noble titles as authentic as Philippe de Bellune’s? The list published in the newspaper from 1948 again contained their three names.
Proceedings brought by the Chief Inspector, Crimes of Collaboration, against:
1) Lebobe, André, born October 6, 1917, Paris 14. Broker. 22 Rue Washington.
2) Sherrer, Alfred, alias “The Admiral,” born March 26, 1915, Hanoi (Indochina). No known address.
3) Philippe de Bellune, born Paris, January 22, 1918, son of Mario Riclos y Perez de Pacheco and Eliane Werry de Hults, no known address.
4) Bremont, Roger, born February 24, 1910, Paris, alias “Roger Breugnot,” no known address.
5) Yevremovitch, Miodraf, alias “Draga,” born March 23, 1911, Valjevo (Yugoslavia), formerly of 2 Square des Aliscamps, Paris 16, no known current address.
6) Ruiz, José, alias “Vincent,” alias “Vincent Vriarte,” born April 26, 1917, Sestao (Spain), no known address.
7) Galleran, Héloïse, wife of Pelaez, born April 24, 1914, Luanco (Spain), no known current address.
8) de Reith, Hildegarde-Jeanne-Caroline, wife of von Seckendorff, born February 18, 1907, Mayen (Germany), formerly of 41 Avenue Foch, Paris, no known current address.
9) Léger, Yves, 14 Rue des Dardanelles, last known address.
10) Watchmann, Johannes, 76 Avenue des Champs-Elysées, last known address.
11) Fercrou, 1 Rue Lord-Byron, last known address.
12) Cremer, Edmond, alias “Piquet,” alias “baron de Kermanor,” born October 31, 1905, Brussels. 10 Rue Berteaux-Dumas (Neuilly), last known address.