A Hunting Trip to Daghestan and other stories, Page 2

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  “And they are still doing it. Several times this morning I was actually forced to step aside to let someone go by, or slow down to avoid crashing into someone's back. Even though I have learned — it took me many a year — how to angle sideways to overtake slow pokes who don't even know that they are supposed to stand aside to let me by. Sometimes these people are so misguided as to also drift sideways, just when I am about to overtake. I used to have to exert the strongest grip on myself to refrain from knocking them aside. Yes, they burn me up, even more than those who, walking toward me, seeing me with their own eyes, yet continue almost straight, with barely a streamlining of their shoulders, forcing me to do the same in order not to collide.

  For the longest time I could not understand why, in heaven's name, they would not respectfully give way. I would even have done without the "respectfully". After all, we are in a so-called democracy. No one needs to tug his forelock any longer. But that they would insist upon impeding my progress was beyond me!

  Perhaps it is age that brought me understanding, if not wisdom. I can only pity them all, now. They know no better. No wonder, with the sad state of education, where so many high-school, nay, college graduates are illiterate, or practically so, when so many immigrants throng the streets of New York, who do not understand the gringo’s body language. How can they be expected to recognize my uniqueness, my peerless value for them and the universe, fated as it is to last only as long as I remain alive? Particularly since nothing in my outside appearance distinguishes me from the teeming millions. Of course I could change that. But I do not will it. I prefer to remain inconspicuous, lest my unique value pushes the throngs to smother me with inane precautions, which their lust for life would unfailingly force them to push on me. No, I do not want them to be aware that their grip on life, on the miseries of life, which they love so much, depends entirely on my tenuous existence. Yet at the same time, cussedly contrary, I marvel that they do not disperse from my path, and act as if I were but one of them, — an illusion I do my best to maintain.

  The first inkling of this anomalous situation came to me when a young man. I was handsome, well spoken, and, they all said, shy and reserved. Little did they know! There was never a reason to put myself forward, to push for my share of sunlight, to manipulate them and myself toward my own ends. I am my own end, always was. I am unique, powerful, rich in ways common mortals cannot fathom or understand. So that young me remained oh so surprised that not all pretty girls were throwing themselves at him, not every group wanted to take him in not so much as a leader, an honor that would have been too revealing, but simply as an icon around which to coalesce. So that even then I remained in splendid and miserable isolation so much of the time, base me yearning to belong, yet preempted by real me, who knew all along.

  Now, many a decade later, I do not pretend any longer. Let the world go on, uncaring. Let people, in their ignorance, obstruct my footsteps as I walk these thronged pavements. Suffice that I know, and pity them all, doomed to disappear.

  Alone I am, alone I am not. Oh, let there be Death after death!

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  8. A Surprise Party

  “Above all, if someone happens to ring the bell, you immediately and quietly go upstairs and hide on the second floor, and you don’t move,” R. explained, as best he could in his faltering English, to the two British pilots who, of course, didn’t understand a word of French. “And I mean it literally: you don’t move at all! In this house everything can be heard. The walls are thin, the floors creak, so that you must really stay totally still until I come tell you all is well.”

  The year was 1944. The Allies had started an intense bombing campaign against military and transportation targets in France in preparation for the Normandy landing — not that we knew it at the time, of course. One of the most important tasks of the resistance movement was to recuperate and deny the Germans the allied airmen who had managed to parachute or otherwise escape from their shot- down aircraft, hide them, and eventually help them return to Great Britain.

  A recycled pilot was a fearsome warrior, one more plane to continue fighting. By 1944 all of France was occupied by the Germans, who had invaded and seized the Vichy French Free Zone after the Allied landing in North Africa. Thus the escape route that used to go through the South of France had been shunted through the Pyrenean mountains to Spain, thence to Portugal, from where it was legal to sail to England.

  R. was not actively part of a resistance network. However his sympathies were very clear : he hated the Nazis, and second to them he hated the Soviet Union, the first because of his deep felt convictions, the second because, contrary to a lot of people who were still hoodwinked by the Soviet propaganda, he knew full well the horrors of the Stalinist Gulag: his parents had been obliged to flee Georgia when the Red Army invaded that small country in 1921. And, even though he had been born in Paris, he had been kept informed of the realities of the Stalinist dictatorship, and he knew that between the Nazis and Stalin there was hardly any difference in the terror they inflicted everywhere.

  He was, however, pining for the Allied victory despite their alliance with the Soviets, so that when a friend approached him with a special request it never even dawned on him to vacillate. He was sitting in the café Dupont on the Boul’Mich’ — Boulevard Saint Michel —, his usual haunt, when Catherine Pouget, whom he had know for a couple years from the political Sciences Institutes where they were both students, came by looking for him. Making sure no one was within earshot, she asked:

  — I’m so glad to find you! Didn’t you tell me your parents were out in the country, and that your house is empty except for you?

  — Yes, he answers. But why are you asking?

  — Well, I am in a quandary. You won’t tell anyone, will you?

  — Of course not, he said.

  — Sure?

  — Yes, sure, if you tell me not to.

  She then explained that she had in her charge two RAF pilots who had been shot down over northern France, that she was supposed to shelter them for two days and then pass them along into the next stage of their escape. But there was a snag and she didn’t know what to do with them.

  “ I was to bring them to my apartment on Gay-Lussac street and keep them there. Fortunately we were late arriving. As always upon coming back I carefully checked around, just in case, and spotted a police van on a side street, and suspicious-looking cars nearby. I believe my parents have been arrested, and that the Gestapo is still watching. So I left my two guys sitting in the Luxembourg Garden and came here hoping to find you. I really don’t know what do with them. I am really at my wits ends.”

  R. did not hesitate : “Ok, I’ll go right back home. Bring them as soon as you can. But will you also stay with us?”

  “No, it’s better that I do not.” Catherine responded. “I’ll stay with some relatives and try to learn what really happened at home. But I warn you: if you are caught sheltering them, you will be send in one of these awful concentration camps. As for them, the worst that can happen is that they will be sent to one of the POW camps, where the conditions are infinitely better! So think about it.”

  “It’s all thought out,” replied R. “I’m on my way.”

  And that’s how it came to pass that a Saturday of April 1944 he had in his house these two British pilots whom he was to keep safe until they would be picked up two days later.

  Despite his bad English, R. understood that the two guys were members of the crew of a De Haviland bomber shot down over Belgium. They had managed to parachute out of their burning airplane, had been found and hidden by some peasants, taken in by the Aureole network – that’s the only name they knew – and handed from cell to cell until they had finally reached Paris, to find themselves unexpectedly in R.’s small house.

  Finally in a safe place, although only temporary, they could relax a bit, wash, wash their clothes, and sleep. They were brimming
with thanks that with the help of the Resistance they would probably succeed in going back to England to again risk their lives, rather than rot away in a stalag.

  Calm did not last long. They had hardly been at the house two hours when the doorbell rang, and the invasion took place: a half-dozen of R.’s buddies yelling: “Surprise, surprise!”, squeezing inside right past him, not paying any attention to his protests, laughing and brandishing bottles of wine:

  --Come on, we know your parents aren’t home; we’ll have some fun. The others are coming soon.

  And they spilled all over the house, brought glasses from the kitchen, put a jazz record on the turntable, and in no time at all the party was in full swing.

  As instructed, the pilots had rushed upstairs as soon as they heard the bell, and remained quiet as mice. But there was no way they could remain hidden for long with all these people in the house, so R. ran up, explained what was happening and told them:

  — Above all, don’t say a word, not even Oui or Non. Your accent would betray you. I’ll introduce you as Georgians who do not speak a word of French. You’ll be Merab, and you Tariel. Come on, repeat: Tariel, Merab.”

  — Merab.

  — No, not like that: Mé-rab.

  — Merab.

  — Again.

  — Mérab.

  — Ok, your turn now: Tariel.

  — Tariel.

  — Repeat: Tariel, Tariel.

  — Tariel.

  — Ok, that will have to do.

  Fortunately they were both dark-haired. But as for looking Georgian: “No one in the crowd knows what a Georgian is supposed to look like,” he reflected. And he led them downstairs to meet everybody.

  By 10 p.m. the party was in full swing: music, dancing, jitterbugging, conversations, drinking, flirting: where could they have found all that wine in these times of scarcity? They were perhaps twenty youngsters all in all. Good friends such as Jean, Marc, Olivier, Gégé, Reine de Mars, who tended to rub herself against all the boys, Muriel, who was wont to recite verses at any occasion, Tedo who all by himself could drink more than six, and did, all the while striking airs to impress the girls, also Huguette the painter, Marik du Troc, as she was called to distinguish from the other Marik, the real one from Brittany, to her disgust, since she considered herself the real Marik, of course.

  There were also a few that R. knew only vaguely, by sight, and as always in a surboum — surprise party — several that nobody seemed to know, young people who came to the party just like that, simply because they had heard it was happening.

  Among them was a red-haired young man with horn-rimmed glasses, who seemed quite a bit older than most, and who stood out because he was wearing real leather boots. He was better dressed, and appeared in better health than any of the others, with a clear complexion and a well-filled out appearance, rare in these times of extreme scarcity. He had quickly made himself popular by the simple expedient of bringing with him a half-dozen bottles of good wine, which he shared generously.

  Everybody was having a good time dancing, drinking, discussing, flirting, singing with the music, that decadent jazz and jitterbug music banned alike by the Third Reich and its arch-enemy the Soviet Union. R. could not manage to have an unabashedly good time, as he was keeping an eye on the two false Georgians, fearful that their flimsy cover could crack at any time. But they seemed to remain totally unconcerned, drinking, dancing, enjoying themselves, and uttering strange nonsense syllables under the impression that the others would think they were talking Georgian.

  The party was going great guns, when, around midnight, the doorbell rang peremptorily. “Oh shit, “ thinks R. “Who could that be?” He runs to the front door followed by a couple of friends and opens it. There in the street stand two policemen in uniform. They are polite.

  —Your neighbors are complaining about the noise you’re making: you can be heard all over the block!

  —Oh, I didn’t realize, says R. apologetically.

  — Ok, we understand, youth will be youth,” the older one says. “But be nice, try to quiet down everybody and turn down the music, that way there’ll be no trouble. We don’t particularly feel like busting you all and taking you to the precinct.

  R. readily agrees, tells his buddies to get quiet and turn down the music, when a shout is heard that reverberates throughout the sleepy street: “Mort aux Vaches! “ —Death to the Pigs!

  It is that idiotic Tedo who, perched on the toilet bowl, has managed to stick his bearded head out of the bathroom skylight! And he yells again: “Mort aux Vaches! “, before someone manages to pull him away and shuts him up.

  Naturally the police are furious.

  — So, that’s how you treat us! All right, your ID’s! We’re checking everybody!” And they push their way into the house.

  Catastrophe! R. is at his wits end. What to do? The pilots of course have no papers. Various impractical schemes flash through his head: have them run out of the back door into the yard and jump the wall that separates the villa from the neighbors, or sneak into the cellar somehow without anyone noticing, or slip into the attic. But as soon as a scheme comes to him he must reject it: here they are, the false Georgians, in full view of everybody, not understanding what was happening.

  Already the police are in the living room: “Everybody! Your papers!” they order. That’s when the young man with boots comes to the fore, plants himself in front of the two policemen, whips up an ID with an official-looking badge and declares in an authoritative tone of voice : “ Milice! I am taking responsibility for everything that’s going on here!”

  Unbeknownst to all, the young man turned out to be a member of the dreaded Milice, the organization composed of French pro-Nazi fanatics and thugs that throughout France collaborated with the Gestapo in the hunting and capturing of all deemed enemies of the Reich. They were considered the worst of the worse, yet had been given authority over all French law enforcement agencies, including the police.

  Seething, the two policemen have no remedy but to give back everyone’s papers and to leave.

  —Ouf! That was a close call!” thinks R., without reflecting any further.

  The party continues, quieter, but the mood has been broken. Soon they turn off the music completely; everybody calms down. The milicien leaves together with several of the unknown guests: he has nothing to fear from the curfew. Some friends fall asleep in a corner, others talk in a low voice while waiting for the end of night and the first subway.

  Come morning, all have left. The two pilots remain in the house, now quite subdued. They don’t dare go outside nor even show themselves at the window. Two days later, as promised, Catherine comes back to lead them to the next cell of the network that will help them get back to England and continue fighting.

  When the Allied forces liberated Paris in August, R. was arrested for “collaboration with the Milice.”