‘I can’t concentrate with him here. He’s only interested in himself. He’s like a horse with blinkers on, he only sees what’s in front of him.’
Hadn’t she read in a work describing espionage for the general public that a spy must be asexual? The truth was that, being very used to the sight of human unhappiness and its several forms of relief in her ‘establishment’, she felt repugnance for the practical matters to which Monsieur Michette attempted to draw her back after his extended state of celibacy. She intended to remain chaste, convinced that in ‘high places’ close attention was being paid to her slightest actions prior to her selection for her great mission. The rigorous morals she had imposed on the girls at the Sirène, the attention she paid to their futures when they grew too old, matched a need in her to be respected for the work she did. Hadn’t she dismissed two girls who had confessed to falling in love, one with a soldier, the other — worse still — with a town councillor who was a freemason?
Through the offices of Blanche de Rocroy, Palfy had befriended Colonel von Rocroy in the course of mutually flaunting an exchange of entries from the Almanach de Gotha. In the belief that he had found someone from ‘his own world’ Rudolf had explained his Paris mission: to protect works of art abandoned by their owners when they had fled abroad. A mission to be performed quite disinterestedly by the Great Reich, which desired to maintain order in the new Europe, plus a redistribution of its riches among those who deserved them. Hadn’t Napoleon (who remained one of Hitler’s historical role models) acted very similarly in the creation of his own Europe? Rocroy had been put in charge of a depository at Boulogne-Billancourt where paintings and furniture were stored. He also happened occasionally to buy the odd contemporary master for himself and a few close friends, excellent investments at the exchange rate fixed by the victorious power.
Yet again Jean’s eyes were opened by Palfy. He was gradually becoming less easy to surprise, now seeing La Garenne’s small-scale frauds as amusing trifles in comparison with the rackets of Rocroy and Kapermeister. The difference lay in their manner. Léonard Twenty-Sous would never have their style, despite his mother welcoming princes to her bed. The deep disgust that sometimes overcame Jean might have pushed him to an extreme solution if he had not had Claude and the few hours they spent together at Quai Saint-Michel and occasional nights when he slept on her narrow couch. Since the night they had spent wrapped in each other’s arms, shivering and sad, not daring to take their caresses further, a new intimacy had grown up between them. He had accepted that she could not tell him a secret that was not hers to share, and took what she offered him with a sincerity that was completely genuine. Despite feeling sad, even gloomy sometimes, he asked for nothing more. Jogging back to Montmartre alone at night or daybreak, trying to stay fit, he felt rocks of despair falling on his heart and crushing it. Then, a few hours later, he felt Claude’s hand on his face, stroking his cheek, and heard the voice he loved most in the world say to him with a sweetness that instantly revived him, ‘No other man would put up with what you put up with. I feel ashamed. Will you forgive me?’
‘What for? I come here and I breathe fresh air. I’m not giving up. The truth is, I’ve never been so happy, and I’ve been a lot more unhappy.’
The apartment was no longer heated. Claude had installed a stove in the sitting-room fireplace, and with Cyrille she scoured the banks of the river and the Luxembourg Gardens for kindling. Jean arrived with logs Jesús had given him, himself generously supplied by the daughter of a coal merchant in Rue Caulaincourt. They ate dinner in front of the roaring stove and Cyrille fell asleep between them on the couch. Claude scooped him up in her arms and carried him to the double bed where she covered him up to his chin so that only his blond curls, his eyelids with their long, heavy lashes, and his nose, pink with cold in the morning, were visible.
‘I can never sleep on my own again,’ she said. ‘He’s my little man. Almost not my son. Since he started talking I don’t need to go to the cinema or theatre any more — he acts for me all day long — or open a book, because I feel I’m writing one with him in his head, with the names of the trees, the flowers, lessons about things, stars and fairies. I’m just afraid he likes you too. Too much …’
Jean understood without her spelling it out. When Georges Chaminadze came back Claude would say nothing, erasing Jean from her past, but Cyrille would talk. She hid her face in her hands.
‘It’s terrible not to know what’s going to happen. At this moment, I can tell you, I find it unbearable, absolutely unbearable.’
One evening, when she started to cry, he put his arms around her and kissed her tears away. He had discovered her weakness, so well masked by so much courage and warmth.
‘I want to take you away somewhere else,’ he said.
‘Yes, maybe, somewhere else.’
At the end of May 1941 Cyrille could not shake off a bout of flu. A doctor prescribed a period of convalescence in the Midi. But how could they get out of the occupied zone? Within hours Madeleine had obtained three travel permits. Jean bought their tickets for Saint-aphaël. La Garenne made his displeasure felt.
‘You’re really in tune with the times, aren’t you! Holidays? You think now’s the moment for holidays? With two million prisoners of war and a hundred thousand dead? London and Coventry are ablaze, and Monsieur Arnaud’s going on holiday. I’ll be a laughing stock if I say yes. Look at Blanche! Three years she’s worked for me, and not one day off! People are starving. Hostages are being shot. But Monsieur Arnaud doesn’t care. He’s off to the land where the oranges grow. Dear sir, you would die of hunger if I let you swan off to the Midi. You’re behaving like a silly romantic girl.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Bollocks.’
La Garenne reddened, then went pale with fury. He had the vicious look weak people have when their anger makes them forget their physical wretchedness and cowardice. Jean thought they might come to blows, which would have been laughable.
Blanche wrung her hands, begging, ‘Louis-Edmond, please …’
Some customers in uniform were waiting. They left with some drawings and a sheaf of photographs, the last pictures of Alberto Senzacatso, who had been arrested at the request of the Italian authorities. (He had not been taken into custody for his modest photographic output but for political ideas that he had long since abandoned in favour of his definitive study of Mannerism. A visitor to the gallery and admirer of his, always dressed sombrely in plain clothes and afflicted with a strong German accent, had expressed sympathy for the photographer’s predicament and promised to look into his case.)