He was at least a little gone, sitting in an armchair that could have engulfed a Sumo wrestler, much less a tiny, ancient Jew with so little time left he was afraid to wear a watch. His head seemed as big on his body as the head of an infant, and was shaped like an egg. The large part of the egg was uppermost, narrowing as it descended to the chin, where it met a body that widened as it dropped to the heavy, broad ballast of the buoy of his hips and his behind, from which extended two short legs that seemed as thin as lollipop sticks. Thanks to a magnificent terrace on the C?te d’Azur, he was the browned color of expensive leather. Because of his bald, egg-like head, a nose like a door handle, and huge, careful eyes, he looked not quite human but rather like a creature from Dante or Lewis Carroll. Before he was confined to chairs, wheelchairs, and the back seats of Rolls-Royces and Maybachs, he had walked like a goose, pivoting to left and right before catching himself to return to center, setting each foot down as if on a stepping-stone. The wonder of it had been endearing.
Opening onto the glow of Paris, the salon where he was ensconced was masterfully decorated – in gray, silver, and yellow – to soothe and impress. On one wall was a tapestry, its dominant colors yellow, rose, and gold. On another, a Fragonard portrait of a woman in yellow silks, like the one in the National Gallery in Washington. How beautiful she was in every detail, not least her fine concentration. Though gone for centuries, she was fresh and lovely enough so that every time Jules came into this room he fell in love with her. That she was, at most, powder in the grave, made no difference. By the flash of her indestructible soul in the painting, forever still, he knew and loved her. So did Shymanski, who sat across from her, frequently glancing, kept alive.
Only the tapestry and the painting were lit, by tiny spotlights out of sight behind a reveal. When Jules’ eyes adjusted to the darkness, he said, “There’s a swastika on the wall near the gate.”
“I saw it when I came in,” Shymanski said. “It’s not really a swastika. It’s backwards. Must’ve been drawn by an idiot.”
“Who else would draw a swastika?”
“Maybe Hitler, who was no idiot, and he doodled them. In conferences with his generals and when he was talking on the telephone – ‘Hi, it’s the Führer’ – he drew swastikas. Unfortunately, those people were not idiots. They were capable enough to destroy my family and yours. And although you and I are technically alive, they destroyed us too, didn’t they?”
“Yes, but not entirely, and it was different for me. You were old enough to have known and lived in the world. My universe was a dark, one-room attic with three vents and one high window to which I was sometimes lifted at night. That and my mother and father were all I knew. In the first minutes that I left that world it was destroyed. I’ve done my best since. I’ve loved, I’ve tried but failed to protect what I’ve loved. The only way I’ve been able to go back has been in music, and only teasingly. It brings me, as Moses was brought, to a height where I have a glimpse of the Promised Land. But I can’t go in.”
“I understand,” Shymanski said. “For me the war was an aberration, and I knew what it was that I wanted to find again. That kept me alive. For you, they would say it was trauma, but I wouldn’t. I’d say it was simpler, that like everyone else you have a paradise you long to restore, but your paradise is also hell. Although getting back is dark and dangerous, you won’t be deterred. Love draws you back. You can’t escape.”
“Escape is only for my daughter.”
“But maybe not, not in France, not now,” Shymanski told him. “Throughout my life I’ve observed that old men become wonderfully optimistic, and yet I’m not. What is France but a once magnificent house now occupied by ignorant squatters. By no means the majority, but enough to destroy the culture and the law. After all the confused, tragic, costly work through war, plague, famine, revolution, and wrong turns, the house stood beautifully nonetheless and with potential unmatched in history. And now they write on the walls, break the windows, and make fires on the floor. Perhaps I see it that way because I have no strength left. You have a grandson, isn’t that right?”
“I do.”
“I hope he won’t suffer, your daughter, too. I don’t know. Now I’m leaving everything behind. My children ….” He made a dismissive gesture, as if throwing something away. “They’re Brazilians, like their mother, not really French. They think life is cocktails, watches, and cars. It’s my fault: I couldn’t feel for them what I feel for my children who were lost. It was a sin, because, half Brazilian or not, they’re my sons. I made them what they are. I was cold to them. I pushed them away, and the more I did so the more they became what repelled me. I lost them when they were young and now they’re getting their revenge. They’ve stripped me of everything, but that’s all right. I deserve it, and what is everything anyway? Things? I know how to die. I’ve never left the war, not for one second. You too, I think, though I don’t mean to presume. I know the facts but I really don’t know enough about you. As for me, I’m not afraid of the swastika. Let them come. They came before. Most of them are dead now, and I’m alive. I’m just sorry for the youth. For them, no Holocaust, just the mist of it that every day they can read in the eyes of others, which is enough to color a life forever.”
“Unlike you, I didn’t experience the beginnings the last time. If it’s a mist, it’s opaque enough that I can’t see behind it.”
“I think it’s more like Dreyfus,” Shymanski said. “French anti-Semitism is immortal, but not strong enough by itself to make a holocaust. For that dance, the Germans must take the lead, or maybe now the Arabs.”
“In July,” Jules said, “I had to buy a part for my car. It’s an old car, and the part was cheaper in a little store near the Gare du Nord. So I was at the edge of the Quartier de Barbès when the disturbances began. There were just a few police, but the battle lines had begun to form.
“I was in Algeria during the war, but in the mountains. I’ve never seen anything like this. Hundreds, no, thousands of young men, muscled and trim …. They don’t have jobs. What do they do all day, lift weights and look at jihad videos? They had overturned cars and buses to build barricades. They tore up paving stones, made fires, and looted stores. The heat and wavy air from the fires mixed all the colors – green, red, black, metal – and smoke hung over everything. They were covered with sweat, screaming with rage, their eyes like coals. Bitter and unreachable, they wanted to kill and they wanted to die. Half of them were fitted out with iron bars, chains, clubs, knives.
“They had so much energy and were so worked up that when they weren’t charging they would jump up and down. They were an army, and I’ve never seen, even in photographs, so much hatred in so many eyes. Focused on the police, they paid no attention to me. Had I been identifiable as a Jew I’m sure they would have killed me. This happens all over France. It’s not just a mist.”
“It’s not the Wehrmacht, either.”
“No, but France is helpless before it, and when France is helpless, one way or another, it surrenders.”
“It hasn’t yet.”