Slocombe Monsieur Le Commandant

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-468-2
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 194 Seiten

French Academician and Nazi sympathiser, Paul-Jean Husson, writes a letter to his local SS officer in the autumn of 1942.Tormented by an illicit passion for Ilse, his German daughter-in-law, Husson has taken a decision that will devastate several lives, including his own.The letter explains why. It is a dramatic and sometimes harrowing story that begins in the years leading up to the war, when the Academician's gilded existence starts to unravel. Husson's confession is a startling picture of one man's journey: from pillar of the French Establishment and First World War hero, to outspoken supporter of Nazism and the Vichy government.

Born in Paris, Romain Slocombe is a writer who also works as a director, translator, illustrator, cartoonist and photographer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Slocombe, Romain

Weitere Mitwirkende

Browner, Jesse

Leseproben

3.
For several long months we heard no more about Ilse Wolffsohn. All through the autumn, and then the winter, I was taken up with calling upon members of the Académie Française, and inviting some of their number to dine at la Tour d’Argent, Prunier or Lapérouse. This was the third time I had set my sights on a seat in the Institute. I won’t go into the old grudges and jealousies that had scuttled my two previous attempts, the latter of which had been particularly painful to me. The elections in the spring represented my last chance. I beat my rival by a single vote in the second ballot and was enrolled in the immortal assembly, taking a seat that had once been occupied by the Dreyfusard Sully Prudhomme. As you might imagine, I would have preferred to take Racine’s seat! François Mauriac, who was younger than I, was elected a few months later; I would have found it humiliating had it happened the other way round. The year 1933 was equally important to your country, Monsieur le Commandant, as Adolf Hitler rose to the chancellorship in January and Germany withdrew from the League of Nations just a few months later, the first step in a plan to liberate herself from all encumbrances in order to achieve her great destiny. In November, Le Matin and L’Information, our most influential financial newspaper, printed interviews with Chancellor Hitler, conducted by Monsieur de Brinon, in which the great man guaranteed French security and expressed the finest regard for our country. Ilse Wolffsohn returned to France at Christmas that year, spending the holidays with us in Andigny. I went to meet the young actress and my son at the station, accompanied by Marguerite. To me, Ilse’s complexion seemed waxen, her face thinner. Olivier mentioned that she was still recovering from a nasty bout of flu, and that she had family worries. I must admit that my wife and I knew next to nothing about the Wolffsohns. Ilse, whose parents Olivier had met but once in Berlin, rarely mentioned them, and neither did my son. All we were able to gather was that her father was a chemist working in heavy industry, and that she had a younger brother, a student. When the children married in March 1934, it was that young man, Franz, who travelled from Germany for the ceremony, which was held in l’Église de la Madeleine. No other member of the family was present. It was a beautiful, big wedding; many members of the Academy did me the honour of attending. Ilse, delicate and radiant in her white veil, looked like a young goddess descended from the Nordic pantheon, and all without exception were love-struck. The student brother, a pleasant-looking but serious young man, shook me firmly by the hand and murmured solemnly in impeccable French: ‘Monsieur Husson, I am entrusting Dorte to you. So that through you – a war hero, a member of the Academy, and a great poet – and through all you represent, the spirit of Eternal France may watch over her!’ He called his sister ‘Dorte’, no doubt an affectionate nickname she had had since childhood. I did not have the opportunity to talk to him again. Early the next day, Franz Wolffsohn boarded a train at the Gare de l’Est and we never saw him again. I feel I should mention here that last year, on the occasion of the French writers’ visit to Berlin, I was saddened to learn that the young man, a member of a subversive organisation hostile to the government of the Third Reich, had been arrested, condemned to death and executed in 1940 at Hamburg prison. It will be easy for you to verify that information. Naturally, I did not tell Ilse this; better for her to imagine him still alive and hiding somewhere in Germany. * The year 1934 was, dare I say, the most wonderful year of my life. At the age of fifty-eight, in full possession of my intellectual and physical powers, I felt my literary efforts reaching their zenith. My work had been translated into any number of languages and performed in the best theatres; each of my novels had been hailed as a masterpiece by the critics. In the autumn, I was awarded the Prix Renaudot. My poetry collections were studied in schools and academies. I was offered very well-remunerated lectures. Unlike that of so many others, my wealth had barely been touched by the economic chaos, thanks to some wise investments and to two buildings in Paris that had come with Marguerite’s dowry. My son, a gifted musician, had recently wed a splendid young actress – I hoped that my daughter Jeanne would soon find her way to the altar – and shortly thereafter, proud and abashed, Olivier announced that his wife was expecting a happy event in November. Ilse seemed to have renounced her film career for good, which amazed me, since I had been so impressed by her performance in Mädchen in Uniform. But like Olivier I had no desire to see her head east again, and I hastened to suggest that my daughter-in-law move into Villa Némésis, far from the miasmas of the big city, at least for the duration of her pregnancy, which she could bring to term in conditions optimal for both mother and child. The idea of practising, like Victor Hugo, the ‘art of being a grandfather’ – which I would once have found repugnant – now enchanted me. Even Marguerite seemed to have overcome her early reservations about the German. We gave the couple our best guest room on the third floor, with a magnificent view of the bend in the Seine, with the island and the plain beyond, all the way to the cliffs of La Roquette. My son divided his time between the Eure and the capital, where he rehearsed with the orchestra while his wife settled in as our permanent guest in Andigny. * My God, what memories of that fine summer! Towards the end of June, we rented the Chalet Haset in Trouville – a little gem of art nouveau architecture – for ten days. The races and the Grand Prix de Paris were over and the season was just beginning; crowds invaded the boardwalk and pier, and all who were considered, in Paris and abroad, to be major figures in the arts, the nobility, finance and politics seemed to have come together to mount a common, elegant assault on the Normandy coast, jostling and mingling and swept up in the same whirlwind of activity. The recent troubles – the night of 6 February, ‘the magnificent, instinctive revolt, the night of sacrifice’, as it was welcomed by Robert Brasillach, that had rattled the Whore Republic, and the Bolshevik protests six days later – seemed to have been forgotten, at least for the duration of the summer season. Lounging serenely on the soft sand of the beach at the end of the day, I fell victim to a fantasy as I watched Ilse in the orange light of sunset, my eyes following her as she strolled along the water’s edge on my wife’s arm, the waves arriving and dying at their feet, their dresses blowing as one in the breeze. I fancied that I had suddenly been restored to my youth in the Belle Époque … I noticed, too, that the young woman was filling out at the waist. That face whose charming profile I so admired, now aglow in the failing light, radiated the promise of the new life growing within her. The only sorrow I felt, for a brief instant – the confession pains me, but you will read others far more terrible by the end of this letter – was the bitter, jealous regret of not being myself the source of that tiny seed now germinating in those tender depths. In November of that year 1934, the Franco-German Committee was established under the auspices of your current Ambassador to Paris, His Excellency Monsieur Otto Abetz. The members of the French Guidance Committee were: Monsieur Fernand de Brinon, now Ambassador of the Vichy Government to Paris; Monsieur Georges Scapini, Deputy, now Envoy for prisoners of war; Monsieur Gaston Henry-Haye, Senator, now Ambassador of France to Washington, DC; Monsieur Gaston Bergery, Deputy, now Ambassador to Ankara; Monsieur François Piétri, Deputy, now Ambassador to Madrid; Monsieur Jean Montigny, Deputy, former colleague of Monsieur Laval; Monsieur Jean Goy, Deputy, President of the Union Nationale des Combattants and ardent follower of the Maréchal since 1935; Professor Fourneau of the Academy of Medicine; My friend and colleague Abel Bonnard of the Académie Française, now Minister of National Education; Professor Bernard Faÿ, current Director of the Bibliothèque Nationale; and me, Paul-Jean Husson. My granddaughter Hermione was born on 2 October 1934, six weeks before her due date. The newborn being healthy and of normal weight, I concluded that she had actually been conceived several weeks before the wedding. Such things are of little importance to me. My wife, on the other hand, sought to keep up appearances by referring to Hermione for months as our ‘adorable little premature baby’. What did bother me, however, was that I had been expecting to welcome a miniature Ilse into the bosom of my family – a darling little blonde with her mother’s laughing blue eyes – whereas our Hermione had an olive complexion, brown eyes and dark hair. Just like my son Olivier, that is. Is that why I almost never behaved like the doting and protective grandfather that I should so have loved to be? The baby and later the toddler would laugh as she held out her little arms to me, but I could only ever respond with reticence to her touching invitations. I was wary when I picked Hermione up, hugged her reluctantly and hastened to find someone to relieve me of her. I now ask myself: Was it because she looked too much like Olivier, the son who...