As part of my homage to the memory of fallen France,
I'm posting this excerpt from my as-yet unpublished novel The Adorations,
which deals, among many other things, with that cataclysmic event in June,
1940.
Paying
attention, are we, o influential editors and publishing mavens?
from The Adorations
Glory—and Its Opposite
June
28th, 1940, 8 a.m., under a cloudless sky, the temperature a pleasant 22
degrees C, winds freshening in the east.
Jean-Xavier
Durand, 52, was head porter at the Hotel Gray de Rastignac on the Avenue de
Maine. He was a native of Dole in the Jura and a communist de pure souche, the
son of communists, 1906 graduate of the Lycée Louis-Pasteur in Besançon, father
of one, grandfather of three, husband of Amélie Dudevant of Annecy in
Haute-Savoie, part-owner with her of the Dudevant bakery on Annecy’s Rue
Rousseau.
On
June 28th Jean-Xavier
stood atop the staircase at the entrance of the distinguished old Second Empire
hotel, on the job even with no job to be on. He looked down the splendid avenue
of swank shops and fashion houses that was deserted at 8 in the morning of a
weekday, except for a row of parked and empty RATP buses; a peculiar-looking
German military vehicle with a rigid swastika flag on its right front wing,
driven by at high speed by a uniformed German soldier; a Citroën Traction
driven slowly past by a man in a broad-brimmed hat, next to whom sat an
identical man who gazed thoughtfully at Jean-Xavier en passant; and a coal
delivery wagon drawn by a sprightly horse whose master coaxed him past the
entrance of the hotel in a gentle monotone, as if they were on a country road
in the windswept marshes of Charente rather than in the stilled heart of the
metropolis. Over on the Champs-Elysées there was no traffic to speak of, but
the night before the Germans had been parading up and down, celebrating their
victory. The brass and drums and woodwinds of their marching bands had been
audible all night, depending on the direction of the wind, but with the four
o’clock curfew still in force not many natives could go and see their damned parades,
not that anyone wanted to. Anyway, they didn’t care what the French thought.
The French were defeated, finished, humiliated, in a word: Kaput. And some
would say, Quite right too. Jean-Xavier, for one. He would say that, and had,
being known for his bolshie tendencies. Vive
la Révolution!
He was
wearing his head porter’s uniform and smoking his last Caporal, and he was more
worried about where he would buy his cigarettes than about the country’s fate.
France was corrupt, eaten away, everyone knew that, hadn’t old Blum been saying
it for years? And Blum was no saint, no genius, no, he was just a silly old youpin who read too many books, but he
was right about a few things. The collapse came as no surprise to any true
socialist with half a brain. It was historically inevitable, like the worldwide
proletarian uprising that would be led by the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, there
were the Boches, and say what you would about them, efficiency was what they
were made of, so maybe things would start working a little better for awhile,
until the Soviet Union triumphed over the capitalists. Efficiency was certainly
at a premium at the Hotel Gray de Rastignac, which, like every other business
establishment in Paris, was in something of an uproar. In the lobby, the few remaining
guests were forming different queues depending on nationality and ability to
bribe the manager, M. Blond, who was insisting the hotel be shut down for the
duration. But the owners, the Paoli brothers from Nice, visions of crisp
Reichsmarks dancing before their eyes, were demanding it be kept open. The
staff came down on both sides at once. None of it mattered, because everyone
knew the ultimate decision belonged to the Boches, who had already taken over
the Crillon and the Meurice and the Ritz. And as for him, Jean-Xavier, head
porter? Bof, he’d wait until things
died down in Paris and then he’d make his way down south to Annecy, in the
unoccupied Free Zone, and help his wife out with the bakery for a while. The
sooner the better, because trips down south weren’t as easy as they’d been.
Jean-Xavier’s stints at the hotel were for six months on, six months off, and
he hadn’t seen Amélie in four months; and he didn’t like the sound of the
fellow she’d just taken on to help grind the flour….a “baker” from Alsace,
hein? A runaway Paris banker or loan shark, or he, Jean-Xavier, was a singing
Jewish rabbi from Poland...
Jean-Xavier’s
wandering thoughts were immediately diverted into the channel of the here and
now when the eerie quiet of the Avenue de Maine was softly interrupted by the
appearance of a shiny Mercedes landau followed by another, identical Mercedes,
then a Wehrmacht staff car, then a soldier riding a motorcycle with sidecar, in
which sat another soldier, machine gun at the ready. The motorcade came to a
slow halt, exuding Importance. Jean-Xavier tossed aside his cigarette and
tugged nervously at his lapels. A man in the lead car, wearing a German
military cap with a long visor and a gray leather overcoat, stood up and looked
around. .
“Pardon!” The driver of the second Mercedes was beckoning. “You, monsieur. Here, please.”
Ensuring
with a glance over his shoulder that no other monsieur was intended, Jean-Xavier buttoned up his vest, patted
down his hair, and obeyed the beckoning finger, not daring as he hurried down
the steps to look at the standing man in the gray overcoat in the first car
because he didn’t need to look, he already knew who it was, it was
unmistakable, the mustache, the hat, the way he just stood there, one hand on
the windscreen, the other on his hip, surveying the horizon…
“I am
hoping this way is the right road for the Trocadéro, monsieur,” said the driver
in a pleasant German accent that reminded Jean-Xavier of his Swiss neighbors
back in the Haute-Savoie. “We have a very urgent schedule.”
“Yes,
yes,” said Jean-Xavier. “This is the right way. Continue on this street down to
the Place de l’Alma. Then straight on and you will see the Eiffel Tower, across
the river of course. The Palais Chaillot is at the Trocadéro, on this side.
There is a fine view from…”
“Thank
you, monsieur.” The driver drew a
wrinkled fifty Reichsmark banknote out of his breastpocket, unfolded it, and
handed it to Jean-Xavier as the convoy moved away and Jean-Xavier the head
porter at the Hotel Gray de Rastignac caught the eye of Adolf Hitler the
conqueror of France, and without a second thought, as if governed by instinct,
both men saluted each other.
“Bien oui, vous savez, I couldn’t help
myself, it just happened, like I was a marionette having its strings pulled,”
Jean-Xavier excitedly explained later in the staff kitchens to his intimates,
from whom he purloined cigarettes, and to whom he displayed the fifty-mark note
as evidence of his adventure. “I mean, you can say what you like, oh I know I
know I know, you don’t need to tell me, ben oui he’s crazy, he’s the enemy of
the working man, he wants to conquer the world and kill everybody and all that,
mais oui, and of course there he is
lording it over us, waltzing through our country he’s just kicked the shit out
of, but I can tell you, and don’t laugh, he had such an air, such an authority,
you know, just standing there in the front of his car like, I don’t know, like
a captain of the winning football team, an admiral on his destroyer, standing
in that beautiful polished gleaming Mercedes …and then what do you imagine, he
returned my salute, no, no, I’m serious, I gave him a salute, perfectly normal,
as you do in the army, you know, like that, just out of respect, and I swear to
you he returned it, like that, I mean the sacré
Fuhrer des Boches, nom de Dieu,
saluting Jean-Xavier Durand, petit français
moyen de rien du tout.” He grinned. “And you know? If I’d had a gun, I
could have shot him there and then!”
Hitler
had less to say about the encounter.
“I
told you Avenue de Maine was the correct route, Kempka," he remarked to
his driver. "I have memorized the city.”
