‘Will I still be able to say, “Excuse my French”?’
‘Excuse my French? Meaning sorry my French is crap?’
‘No. As in, He’s a rotten little prick, if you’ll excuse my French.’
‘I don’t see why not. Sure.’
They read their books. Elena had another coffee; and he took the opportunity to order a modest beer…Actually America, at present, would by no means excuse your French, in the literal sense. Francophobia was playing so well that it was on course to decide the 2004 general election. (‘Hi,’ began one Republican bigwig as he opened a meeting, ‘– or as John Kerry might say, Bonjour.’)…Martin received his beer and lit a cigarette to go with it. Most American politicians had foibles and episodes they wanted to play down: that ten-year relationship with the very special (if somewhat troubled) Times Square rentboy; that billion-dollar big-oil kickback for thwarting the environmentalists. And so it was with Kerry, who as a child had learnt to speak French. The rentboy was morals, the kickback was ethics, but speaking French was something like treason. Martin said,
‘You seem to have forgotten that France was your crucial ally in the Revolutionary War. Jean-Jacques helped Uncle Sam – to spite Tommy Atkins. Yorktown, Elena. If it wasn’t for France, I’d still be there. In America.’
‘No. I’d’ve crushed you and swept you out long ago.’
‘All right. But you know on prize day they’re going to hate your fucking guts.’
‘Of course.’
‘Because you’re an American Jew.*8 This is the land of the anti-Semitic riot. Our George Steiner says that at any time you can get an “explosion” of French chauvinism against Jews.’
‘Not up here, surely. It’s like America – for that kind of thing you have to go south. Anyway, if there’s so much as a whisper of dissent on Friday, then I’ll…’
He said, ‘Now now, Pulc. Now now.’
Oradour
He sat back and sipped his beer and inhaled his fill of smoke. Oh, as Christopher often said, the miracle of the cigarette…
‘Are you going to stop?’
Stop what? he thought – but only for a moment (he knew very well what was coming, but as usual he sought to delay it or divert it). Stop what? Stop being a sap for Phoebe’s depth-charge venganza, stop brooding about Larkin, about Hilly? Stop thinking about suicide? Stop boning up on war and dearth and megadeath?
‘Stop what?’ He raised his eyes from the page. ‘Stop reading about massacres?’
She said, ‘I saw the books you brought along. What were they?’ Sadly Elena shook her head. ‘The Rape of Nanking and uh, the one about Rwanda.’
‘We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families.’
‘There was one about an endless battle. Verdun. And a huge biography of Genghis Khan. Why? Why read about massacres?’
‘I don’t know.’ And he wondered, Why do we read what we read? Because it answers our state of mind? ‘There were plenty of massacres in wartime France. France and the Nazis deals with two of them. Tulle and Oradour.’ Elena seemed attentive (and unimpatient), so he continued. ‘In Tulle the SS ransacked people’s attics and cellars – looking for rope. They hanged ninety-nine men on the Avenue de la Gare. Off lamp posts and balconies. That was a reprisal for forty Germans killed by the partisans. But the next morning the same SS division went to Oradour and murdered absolutely everyone. The –’
‘Christ, well you’re not quiet any more…Would your mum like to hear all about Oradour?*9 Would your daughters?’
He frowned and said, ‘I think I read about violence because I don’t understand it. It’s the thing I hate more than anything else on earth and I don’t understand it…I’m like the memory man in Saul’s novella.’ This was The Bellarosa Connection (1997). ‘He has that Holocaust dream, and he’s shattered to discover that he doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t “understand merciless brutality”. Me neither.’
‘I don’t know, maybe that’s as it should be. Who does understand it?’
‘In the months before Liberation there were lots of little Oradours all over France…In your acceptance speech, Elena, don’t dwell too long on 1940 to 1944. Spare France that. Mm, I suppose it’s not especially considerate of me, reading this in the town square. The cover…’
He pushed the book across the table. There was the famous stock photograph (one of the most gruesome ever taken): Hitler at dawn in Paris, as conqueror (with the splayed calves of the Eiffel Tower in the background), sauntering around at the head of his aides, all of them in collar and tie, in leather greatcoat (and nearly toppling over backwards with power and pride); and there he is, his pale and pouchy face under that crested cap, wearing an expression of imperturbable entitlement.
‘Imagine if that was Big Ben. I don’t know, if that’d happened, I wouldn’t…’
‘What?’
‘I wouldn’t have been fit to marry you, El. Seriously. I would’ve choked even as I begged for your hand.’ Her face showed clemency as well as curiosity, so he continued, ‘Well, think. Let’s tick them off. Great Britain easily crushed in battle by the Wehrmacht. A fascist regime installed in uh, Cheltenham. With its militia sworn to combat democracy and “the Jewish leprosy” and defend Christian – i.e., Catholic – civilisation.
Meanwhile, SS massacres in Middle Wallop and Pocklington. And Jews being rounded up – by English bobbies following English orders – and carted off to Silesia.*10 Ferries from Hull to Hamburg…Given all that in my past, would you consent to be mine?’
Being alone freely
When I say he thought about suicide, I don’t mean he was sizing it up as his next move. He just went on thinking about it: suicide. And he seemed to believe that everyone else was thinking about it too: he was aware that they weren’t, but he seemed to believe that they were. This kind of mental tic was known in
