Lieutenant Schreiber's Country Page 2

  The old brochure mentioned the two soldiers in a surprising dedication: “To the memory of Colonel Desazars de Montgailhard, stubborn admirer of Pétain, and to the memory of Parachute Captain Combaud de Roquebrune, fervent Gaullist, both of whom were killed in 1944 for the liberation of France.” The title of the work was even more effusive: Vive Pétain! Vive de Gaulle!

  In my essay, I referenced the brochure primarily to highlight its polemic value: history—made up of contradictions and progressing by unforeseeable swerves—refutes the sober laws of reason and the calculations of good sense. The refusal to recognize this leads us to the diktat of single-mindedness that is wreaking such havoc in France today. Such was, in brief, one of the topics of the essay. Never could I have imagined that those two French officers, so opposed in their convictions and so united by their selflessness as fighters, might still survive in the memory of one of my readers.

  At our first meeting in June 2006, Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber told me about the two officers with the joy that friends who have been separated for a long time express when they are reunited.

  “One day during our imprisonment in Spain, I asked Combaud de Roquebrune an awkward question. ‘Listen, Guy, tell me honestly: if I asked your daughter to marry me, would you accept me as a son-in-law?’ He knew my origins and didn’t hide the fact that being both Jewish and a French officer didn’t seem to him to be something that could go unnoticed. In fact, more or less everyone in the army at that time thought the same thing. So he listened to this hypothetical marriage proposal and answered me with great sincerity: ‘Yes, Jean-Claude, I would give you her hand. However, if my son wanted to marry your daughter, I would be categorically opposed. Because of the blood.’”

  The old man let out a small, forgiving laugh. “The blood…. And yet, he and I spilled quite a bit of it during the war, all while fighting for the same cause. Still, I got along very well with Combaud; both of us were Gaullists, through and through. With Colonel Desazars de Montgailhard, it was another kettle of fish. During our incarceration we had plenty of time to argue. And it would get heated! He dreamed of nothing but going to ‘free the Maréchal [Marshal],’ as he would say. I, on the other hand, was repulsed by Vichy and called for the recapturing of the country by the free French. In short, the colonel didn’t have a special place in his heart for me. And yet, you see … life, what is real, is always more complex than all of our ideological schemas. In ’43, when we found ourselves in North Africa, that same Desazars de Montgailhard summoned me to ask me to serve in his regiment, the Fifth African Chasseurs. His offer seemed so insane to me that I burst out laughing, very disrespectfully. ‘Forgive me, Colonel, but after everything we said to each other in Spain? You’re joking, I hope! Me, a Gaullist, and Jewish, under your orders? I might as well go sign up with Uncle Rommel!’ Desazars harshly looked me up and down, and then his judgment fell. ‘Shut up, Schreiber. I know what I’m talking about when it comes to men!’”

  That night, the dedication in the old brochure appeared to be vibrating with truth: Combaud and Desazars, two real men, two infinitely unique beings with their passions, weaknesses, and prejudices, their sense of honor, their faith, and the sharpness of their convictions, were young again and had only a few months to live.

  “Colonel Desazars de Montgailhard, Parachute Captain Combaud de Roquebrune. Killed for the liberation of France.”

  This awakening of the past reminded me of a childhood memory, or rather the image of an old painting titled Le Départ, which depicts a column of soldiers, seen from behind, going off into the night. In the Russia of my youth, the war was often painted with a theatrical and tumultuous exuberance, as if the artists wanted to reproduce the horror of the millions dead and the scale of destruction with the piling on of bold colors, monumental compositions, battle panoramas, the bleeding realism of wounds, and the pathos of heroic postures. Several paintings bring Stalin back to life, usually placing him in the middle of the first line of trenches (even though he never actually went to the front!). Transformed into a giant by a servile brushstroke, he rises, immune to the bullets, surrounded by the ecstatic smiles of foot soldiers….

  Le Départ displays none of these extravagances. Very little color, the bare simplicity of the scene, and most notably the near total anonymity of the fighters moving into the twilight. We see only their backs, the rough woolen cloth of their coats, their helmets completely hiding their faces. I remembered this painting, and not the enormous, overcrowded ones, precisely because of that restraint. But most of all, because of that soldier: in the mass of impersonal silhouettes, he turns his head a little, giving us a view of the outline of his profile. His eyes seem to be trying to intercept the gaze of the people who stop in front of the painting. One feels, intensely, the urgent need to say something to him, to make some sort of gesture of friendship.

  The men Lieutenant Schreiber would tell me about often make me think of that soldier who turns briefly toward us, hoping not to be rejected into oblivion.

  The Museum of a Man

  The apartment, located on the third floor of a building overlooking a courtyard, has nothing exceptionally appealing about it, except perhaps for this pretty balcony, which overhangs a bouquet of shrubs and flowerbeds in bloom, vestiges of the rustic life between the Alésia and Plaisance stations in the old fourteenth arrondissement.

  The true originality of the residence is archeological: nine decades of a rather full existence are stacked within these rooms, blending the owner’s ages, the stages of his career, and the evolution of the family clan. A summary of places, travels, houses lived in at another time, of couples solidly built then divided, of faithful friendships, celebrations, funerals, and moments of solitude. Paintings, statues, old pieces of furniture, family photos, and a large amphora perched on its pedestal.

  The first impression is one of bourgeois comfort; a snug space, affluent and soothing.

  The notion of a trompe-l’œil comes after a more attentive observation. Of course, if all of the codes of the bourgeois habitat are respected, a person should live well, isn’t that right? But the more familiar one becomes with these walls, the more their décor reveals the hidden traces of an entirely different life.

  First are the little rectangles strewn here and there, simple snapshots of mediocre quality. One doesn’t immediately notice these pictures taken during the war. A young woman in uniform on a street riddled by shrapnel; soldiers who have just torn down the enormous swastika emblem from a pediment and left it on the ground. Among them we recognize a young Lieutenant Schreiber. This same officer, inside a tank, is trying to shoot down a Stuka (legend has it that the plane was on its sixth dive-bomb attack). There are also the daggers, hung very high (probably so children wouldn’t be able to reach them), which were trophies taken from the enemy. “The SS used to carry these; very useful in takeovers and hand-to-hand fighting,” the resident of this “bourgeois” apartment casually explains.

  And then, a Sherman; a tiny model of the American armored tank aboard which Jean-Claude commanded his platoon, all the way from the Mediterranean to Bavaria.

  A more bizarre presence is the ceramic statuette, a decapitated nativity figurine stained with dirt at the site of the break. An uninteresting piece of rubbish? Yet this scrap seems to have a suitably assigned place, one perhaps even more significant than those given to the paintings and bronzes. I don’t dare ask about the origin of this talisman.

  For some time now, our meetings being more frequent, I have been telling myself that an explanation for the figurine will come naturally, following the chronology of the narrative, its turns backward, its meanderings, its variations. I would certainly not like to press my friend for secrets. His words are paced by the shifting of the months, the light of the seasons that colors and then dulls the trees below his balcony. Such slowness parallels the breathing of this long past that is coming to life again, instant by instant, and that seems to have an eternity to be told.

  I hold onto this feeling
of unlimited time until the day I learn that the old man has been admitted to the hospital.

  “Nothing serious,” he tells me one week later, “annual motor maintenance.” (With his hand, he taps his chest.)

  I realize then that I have completely forgotten his age: almost ninety! I have gotten used to seeing the young Lieutenant Schreiber in him.

  This time, I observe the “museum” of his apartment with new eyes.

  Each of us possesses a few humble relics whose significance is unknown to other people. Pieces of our personal archeology, minuscule fragments of existence that even those closest to us, if we were to disappear, would be unable to date or connect to a specific memory. The people in our photos would become anonymous; a pebble collected long ago on a beloved shoreline, a simple little stone.

  And this decapitated nativity figure—mislaid in the living room of a Parisian home—a piece of junk to throw away.

  In truth, there is an intimate language involved, one whose words, materialized in these slivers of our singular mosaic, rapidly lose their meaning as soon as the voice that speaks their syllables fades away. Without the testimony that Lieutenant Schreiber imparts to me, this young woman in uniform will freeze, impersonal, a being without a future, without a soul, a silhouette reduced to that slightly worried gaze (the street where she is standing still resounds with the echoes of gunfire). Abandoned to her mute anticipation, her photo will arouse in other people a vaguely impatient pity: “Come on, we can’t hold onto all these old things! That little soldier, no one even remembers who she was, so …”

  This is how the language contained in objects dies. Silence creeps in. A whole world becomes unreadable.

  I notice the weight of this silence the day that Jean-Claude, while commenting on a photo, begins listing his comrades from the “guide platoon,” a unit that was part of the Fourth Cuirassiers. “There, in the middle, that’s Lieutenant-Colonel Poupel who led our regiment. On his right, Lieutenant Toupet. That one, that’s Brigadier-Chief Bigorgne…. That’s me, loaded down like a mule with all my gear….”

  The snapshot is a little blurry; the hand of the person holding the camera must have moved. Jean-Claude’s gaze, though, recognizes these faces down to the slightest expression; they are imprinted in his memory with the power of those moments that separate the life and death of a soldier. Yes, many of those whose names he mentions were killed only a few days or a few weeks after this was taken. “That one, that’s Bossard, a very brave guy. The other one, with the motorcycle goggles, that’s Le Huérou, François. He was taken prisoner. And him, that’s—”

  His voice breaks off suddenly, and in the look he gives me I catch a flicker of culpable dismay, a brief shimmer of panic.

  He has forgotten the soldier’s name!

  A tall man standing in the second row, his head leaning to one side, looking at once attentive and pained.

  “That’s … what was his name again? Wait … he was from Belfort, I think. A really good guy … killed near Dunkirk by a shot from a Stuka. His name was … ah!”

  This has nothing to do with a gap in his memory or, worse, the menace of Alzheimer’s. Jean-Claude’s lucidity and his capacity for recollection have always fascinated me. I have often told him that if we were pitted against one another in a memory test, he would beat me hands down. And besides, who doesn’t forget a name once in a while?

  Still, the anxiety I intercept in his eyes is far deeper than what we feel when a word escapes us. He must have a sense that this is not some trivial slip, the kind that everyone can allow themselves. Everyone except him. For if he is unable to remember his comrade’s name, this man will be, from now on, just that slightly tilted human outline; an unknown person misplaced in a grayish snapshot, an extra in a war which is itself somewhat forgotten. More than sixty years later, survivors of that June in 1940 are few and far between. The military archives are hardening, from year to year, like geologic strata under the weight of ages. And his descendants—if by chance this soldier’s face appeared in a photo album found in the attic—would at most experience a small awakening of idle curiosity: “Hey, that must be my grandfather when he was young! Or maybe my great-uncle…. By the way, that was during which war again?”

  This is what Jean-Claude must be telling himself right now, settled in his armchair, mechanically repeating, “Wait, it will come to me … this boy, I knew him very well. He had a kind of curious accent … so his name was … ah!”

  I formulate my proposal in a careful tone, almost as if I were giving him a hint that would make it easier for him to remember. “You should go back in your memories to the beginning of the fighting. This comrade, was he already with the regiment in May of ’40 or not? Try to remember the first time you met him, when he introduced himself, or if you saw him at roll call or during a drill. In fact, perhaps you should write down the names of all the soldiers in your guide platoon … or even a list of your missions, day by day.”

  Clearly, I am speaking to him about the book he should write, an idea I have expressed several times and which he has always refused, saying he is too old or too lazy, arguing that there is too little interest among the public today in those ancient events. I set out on the charge once more and then give it a rest, guessing that there might be a hidden reason for his refusal, the pain of which he probably wants to silence with arguments of old age and laziness.

  This time, though, he hedges with less conviction. “A book? Yes, maybe…. Except, at my age, you know … I no longer have enough time in front of me to write something that would be sufficiently complete. And also, as you’ve seen, I’m starting to forget names. No, it’s too late now.”

  I launch an attack with all the persuasion I am capable of. But no, age doesn’t mean anything! Look at Lévi-Strauss! And besides, what’s most important is to start. Then the chain of events will unroll all by itself. As for the public, there are still true readers out there, even if one only considers those who experienced the war years themselves at a very young age.

  Jean-Claude ripostes, but not as firmly as usual. I know the argument he’s going to put forward, and he does: so much has already been written about the Servan-Schreiber family; in fact, thirty years ago, he himself published a short narrative recounting the history of his family and his own professional career.

  I counterattack: That is precisely the point; in the book he had talked too much about his career, which for all its luster was nothing in comparison with the human density of the work he had done as a younger man! He narrated his encounters with the politicians of the time: one day he explained to Pompidou how advertising should be organized on television, another time he managed to put Mitterrand through to the second round during I don’t know which Homeric election in the Nièvre—actions that are certainly memorable, but which to me show more than anything else the terrible speed with which politics expires and devalues, losing its pompous currency. Yes, like the question, oh how burning, he was asking himself all those years ago: should a true Gaullist support Jacques Chirac’s brand-new RPR? Prehistory!

  “As far as your glorious affair in television advertising, if I were you, dear Jean-Claude, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to take credit.”

  He bursts out laughing, admitting that the things that had seemed so important to write back then seem quite unimportant today. Ads on TV, phooey!

  I take advantage of his mirth to drive in the nail.

  “On the other hand, what you’ve recounted far too briefly, in passing, without attaching any importance to it—yes, your memories as a soldier—all of that can only take on more value with time. Just like a wine that improves. Because those themes are eternal: the life of a human being who looks death in the face ten times a day and, in spite of that, continues to hope, to see beauty, and to love.”

  I am far from being sure whether my very inspired argument won Lieutenant Schreiber’s assent. He is not someone whose hand can be forced. I think he wanted, very simply, to remember at all costs the name of his
young comrade from the regiment, the twenty-year-old man who, on a beautiful sunny morning in the spring of 1940, lived the last instants of his life.

  Those instants were well worth a book.

  II

  His Three Wars

  The Identity of a Soldier

  In 1877, Jean-Claude’s grandfather, Josef Schreiber, left East Prussia, his country of origin, and came to settle in France. His departure was prompted by a disagreement with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, for whom Josef worked as a secretary. Was it a premeditated challenge on the grandfather’s part to choose a country that, a few years earlier, had experienced the Prussian invasion and a humiliating defeat? His wife Clara justified their decision with a reason that was far less controversial: she had wanted to live in France instead of England because when she was a child, a French governess had taught her to love the beautiful tones of the language of Molière.

  In his new homeland, Josef had three sons: Robert (born in 1880), Georges (1884) and Émile (1888). To feed his family, he opened what we would today call an import-export business. The two countries needed bilingual couriers like him to facilitate their commercial exchanges, for they were able to bring old enemies together better than the most skilled diplomats ever could.

  Jean-Claude recounts this distant past with the epic and smiling intonation befitting all family mythologies. In this case it is a very real myth, one inscribed in the experiences of several generations and, thanks to the Servan-Schreibers’ extraordinary fame, one that has been interwoven with the history of the Hexagon for many years. The heroes of this saga distinguished themselves in every area, leaving their mark in the worlds of politics, science, journalism, and cinema. Maintained by Jean-Claude’s father Robert, Josef’s modest initiative gave birth to Échos and, as one thing led to another, L’Express.