her he grew certain it was not because of him.
CARDINAL CECCANI DIED in Italy in 1352, some rumors suggested by poison, and was buried in Naples. A hasty, careless internment befitting a man who had—no one knew why—fallen utterly from favor. He was placed in a vacant grave in the cathedral of Naples, which was then covered with a slab of marble. His name was eventually carved on it. That was all; unlike other more fortunate cardinals, he had no grand tomb with a carved representation of his appearance in life. The only reminder of what he looked like came from the painting by Luca Pisano, high up on the wall by the entrance to the cathedral.
But thanks to the Italian’s skill, his face remains, and is known. No such fortune attended either Manlius Hippomanes or Sophia, or Olivier or Rebecca. Their faces exist still, but only Julien ever half suspected who they were. Many times he had thought of what they might look like, and imagined Manlius to be like his prose: stiff, formal, somewhat severe yet with a hint of his wit about him—in the eyes, or the mouth, perhaps. He dressed him in his mind in traditional Roman clothes, even though by his day no one had worn the toga with any regularity for nearly three hundred years. He was influenced, perhaps, by the fanciful imaginings of André Thevet, cosmographer to the king of France, who published a set of idealized engravings of great Frenchmen and Gauls in 1584. Certainly, he tended to imagine a face that fitted in with his supposed character.
Ceccani’s portrait was a perfect reminder of the foolishness of the mind, for what Pisano painted bore no relation whatever to what Julien knew of his character. There he stands, half obliterated by peeling paint, wearing a huge hat that makes his head seem childlike and innocent as he contemplates the Virgin and her child. The shoulders are rounded, almost with a stoop, the gorgeous robes he wears look as though they are suffocating; perhaps Pisano caught something of the way high office and great power bore down on him. Only in his eyes is there a sign of calculation, or of cunning. That, of course, might have been a trick of the light. But why should people appear like their character? Who in Julien’s knowledge did? And whose character was fixed in any case? Did Julia look as she was, for example? And if they did, then Marcel Laplace should have had an entirely different face, not the chubby, childlike, innocent one he in fact possessed.
It was Bernard who pointed this out to him. A strange thing to discuss at that moment, perhaps, but then it was a strange meeting, organized hurriedly and in shock after Julien met him one Friday morning in February 1943, two months after the Germans had invaded the south and extinguished the pretense that France still existed in anything but name and memory.
It was just outside the café where he often had lunch; he came out, nodded to the owner, crossed the rue de la République, and began to walk back to his office; and as he strolled along trying to remember the last time he had tasted meat that was truly worth eating, a man came up, slipped his arm through his, and said quietly, “Good afternoon, my friend. I trust you ate well? Keep walking. Don’t slow down, and please don’t look surprised.”
So he did as instructed; it never occurred to him to do otherwise. “I want to talk to you,” Bernard said as he guided him down a narrow, empty alleyway. “Tomorrow would be best. Where do you suggest?”
And Julien had suggested the cathedral. High above the esplanade, next to the papal palace, dominated by a gigantic gilt Virgin, it was out of the way, rarely visited these days for there were few casual voyagers anymore, and it was too isolated to attract any but the determined worshiper. It was always dark and ill lit, offering a refuge for those who wished to sit without being noticed. Bernard nodded and slipped away; Julien kept on walking. It took him under a minute longer than usual to get back to his office.
It never occurred to him either not to keep the appointment; he went there exactly on time, stood on the forecourt overlooking the huge and deserted
Bernard was late. Bernard was always late, one of those who could never understand the irritation such a habit could produce in others. He wandered in fifteen minutes after the appointed time, walking with a strolling gait that suggested a man without a care in the world. He peered up at Cardinal Ceccani.
“Not a man to be trusted,” he said. “Who is he?”
“The patron of Olivier de Noyen,” Julien replied impatiently. “Bernard, what are you doing here? Did you change your mind?”
“Not exactly. You like de Noyen, don’t you? Why is that?”
“Bernard . . .”
“Tell me. You made me read him once. I found him a dreadful bore. Hysterical, out of control.”
“I am finding things out about him. He is more interesting than you think.”
He grunted. “Good to see the war is making you concentrate on the important things in life, then. Anyway, to answer your question, I didn’t change my mind. I went to England, and now I’m back, to be part of the Resistance. My name is not Bernard Marchand, you understand. Shall we walk? Will you hear my confession?”
So they walked down the cathedral until they found a side chapel neglected by the faithful with no candles burning, only a small baroque altar to Saint Agatha, and a few pews. Bernard led the way in, and half-closed the iron grill to discourage any sudden outburst of devotion, and they sat down in the gloom of the dim light filtering through the dirty stained glass.
“To resist in what way?” Julien asked.
Bernard said nothing; instead he stared up at the painting of the saint and cocked his head to one side.
“Five weeks ago, I hear, in Tours, a German soldier was shot by people calling themselves resisters,” Julien commented to fill the silence. “Fifteen people were taken hostage. Six were executed. Two weeks ago, just outside Avignon, more resisters wanted to blow up a member of the Milice. They killed four other people in the blast. Is that the sort of resistance you have in mind, Bernard?”
“It’s a war, Julien.”
“Not for us, it isn’t. We are not fighting. The Geneva Convention, remember? Noncombatants sit tight. Leave the fighting to soldiers. Do that and we are safe; we have the law on our side.”
“And the Germans are great respecters of that, I know,” Bernard said quietly.
“It has limited them a little. Break it, have civilians take up arms, and there will be no restraints on them at all. Our job is to watch history take its course, and survive it. Or people will die pointlessly. Does that not bother you?”
“It makes the Germans watch their backs. It makes them realize there are French people who will fight. It builds morale among the Resistance. It is not pointless.”
“The Germans take only part of the blame, you know. Your heroic fighters are not winning so many hearts.”
He snorted. “I don’t care about people’s hearts. They’ll celebrate in the streets soon enough when the Germans are beaten. What is important is that we take a part in that defeat. Nothing more. Otherwise we will either have anarchy when the war is over, or a settlement dictated by the Allies. This is not a time when responsibility matters. Responsibility means not doing anything.”
“Like me, you mean?”
“Dear me, no. You have chosen your side. All those articles, those speeches, your job. We know all about that. What do you think you’re doing, Julien? I know you, or at least I thought I did. I knew you weren’t a raving communist, of course, but what are you doing working for Vichy? For that moron Marcel, of all people. And now for the Germans?”
“I’m not working for the Germans,” he answered stiffly. “I was asked by Marcel to write some things for the newspapers. Give talks, that is all. And then I was asked to be in charge of paper allocation. Which means I decide who gets published, which journals and magazines survive, and which close down because they have no paper to print on. Do you know how hard I have to work to keep some papers going? How often I turn a blind eye to things?”
“But how often do you not turn a blind eye? How often do you say no?”
“Sometimes. But not as often as those who would do my job with more zeal.”
Bernard remained silent, his point made. He found it all so easy.
“Look, Bernard, while the Germans are here life must go on. Not as we would want, not as it was, but it must continue. Not everybody can scuttle off to London and take a high moral tone. And by living with them, cooperating, we can change them, humanize them. Civilize them.”
