‘No.’
‘When was it? 1996 or ’97. They died in the same week, and Hitch was much in demand – for “balance”. He said he was the only human being in America who was perfectly ready to dump on the pair of them. Especially the nun.’
‘Okay, but why’s he doing a media burn for Iraq? It was that sex breakfast he had with Wolfowitz.’
‘It was more like a sex snack. In the Pentagon. Hitch wants regime change. What he’s after is the end of Saddam. Who grew up as a bucketboy in the torture corps.’
‘…And what was the main thing Rumsfeld did?’
‘Herr Rumsfeld?’ For effect Martin took his time. ‘He called Jean-Jacques an elderly…That’s right. He called me one too. That reference to “old Europe”. According to him, we’re just a load of old elderly. I happen to find that very hurtful.’
‘Yes, and a bit snide too – considering your demographic troubles…My birth rate is sound. Yours is crap. So is Europe’s. That thing we saw about Italy. Italy.’*4
Additional coffees were gracefully served. Martin said,
‘Jean-Jacques’ crap birth rate has tormented him for centuries. Dénatalité. But he got to work on that and his birth rate’s now better than Mario’s. Or Miguel’s. Jean-Jacques isn’t touchy about his birth rate. But don’t say anything about his war record. That’s a tender spot.’
‘I’ll bet. If it wasn’t for me, they’d still be here.’
Even when they weren’t playing party games, he often wanted to ask Elena to recast certain sentences using proper nouns (in this case, If it wasn’t for America, the Germans would still be in France), but he hardly ever needed to: after a couple of seconds he always knew what she meant. The point being that she reflexively felt that her thoughts were his thoughts – and after a beat or two they were. It was that inestimable thing, never complete of course and for good reason: co-identity.*5
‘After all,’ she said, ‘I won the war.’
‘Not so, El. If it wasn’t for you, you claim, Fritz would still be here. In 1940, after the fall of France, who still stood, who stood alone? Me. I. I stood alone against the fascist beast. For well over a year. While you, you quailed before Lindbergh and what was it, “America First”.’
‘But then I rode to your rescue.’
‘Then you came in – but not until Fritz called you out. By declaring war on you, my dearest. It’s true that once you joined me in the struggle I knew we couldn’t possibly lose.*6 Uh…hang on, what does GI stand for in GI Joe?’
‘General Issue. Or Government Issue.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘So that was the earlier version of grunt…GI Joe didn’t win the war. Nor did Tommy Atkins. It was Ivan who won the war, Elena. Ivan absorbed Fritz. At the cost of twenty-five million lives.’
She thought about this. ‘But you can’t say that if it wasn’t for Ivan, Fritz would still be here. Ivan would still be here…Well, we’d have won in the end, you and I.’
‘Mm, I suppose. But yes, Elena, we’d have seen off Fritz, you and I. And Yukio. And Mario. In the end.’
‘Precisely…Look at you. You talk about not offending the French. And look at you.’
He saw what she meant. Martin had before him, at chest height, an eyecatching paperback called France and the Nazis.
‘Quite right too,’ she continued. ‘I’m going to take that book and brandish it on stage. Why should I mollycoddle Jean-Jacques? He hates me. So why the hell should I humour Jean-Jacques? Fuck him.’
America hates France back
Christine Jordis, Martin’s editor at Gallimard, briefly stopped by, and in her wonderfully finished English enlightened them about the meteoric Jed Slot – and all the huge prizes and genius awards that were sure to come his way…
As it progressed the afternoon was getting ever warmer. Elena naturally and eagerly wanted a long stroll on the beach, plus a real hike on the cliffs and the headlands; but she had a media burn of her own to deal with, starting at four…They looked up. A solitary senior, somehow detached from his friends and minders, veered around in harmless disarray, coming so close to their table that they could read the address he had pinned to his shirt: C/0 Dr Priestly, 127 Marine Parade, Brighton, Sussex.
‘Jesus. I went to school on Marine Parade. That boarding crammer, remember?…Uh, let me try some counselling, some guidance here, Pulc.’ Pulc was short for pulchritude. ‘I want to help you and France work it out.’
‘France started it.’
‘Quite true,’ he said (and he registered, as he often did, the bare fact of Elena’s birth order: the youngest of four). ‘Because you, my bride, represent soulless modernity, you’re mechanised, standardised – according to son-of-the-soil Jean-Jacques. Okay. Now you’re entitled to resent his anti-Americanism. But back home, you’re letting Francophobia get out of hand.’
‘I know I am.’
‘You’re having one of your funny spells. One of your neurotic episodes.’ One of your ‘orrible turns. Yes – like the time you tried to give up drink, like the time you feared Reds under your beds, like the time you test-drove your domino theory in South East Asia. ‘And now you’re coming down with a nasty case of –’
‘It’s true. You’ve seen all this about freedom fries…’
‘I have.’ At the present time – mid-March, 2003 – cafeterias in the House of Representatives were offering ‘freedom fries’ and ‘freedom toast’, served no doubt with freedom mustard and a garnish of freedom beans, and (let’s clunk on with this for a
