The Kindly Ones

I went to see Thomas. I was pleased he was leaving with me: as a student, he had spent several years in France, and his French was excellent. “What a face!” he said when he saw me. “You should be happy. A mission—they’ve given you a mission, that’s all.” I suddenly realized that in fact it was a godsend. “You’ll see. If we succeed, that’ll open quite a few doors to us. Things will start moving, soon, and there will be room for people who know how to seize the moment.” He had gone to see Schellenberg, who was acting as Heydrich’s main advisor for foreign affairs; Schellenberg had explained to him what they were expecting of us. “All you have to do is read the papers to know who wants war and who doesn’t. What’s more delicate is to gauge the actual influence of the various groups. And especially the actual influence of the Jews. The Führer, apparently, is convinced that they want to lead Germany into another war; but will the French stand for it? That’s the question.” He laughed openly: “And also in Paris you eat well! And the girls are beautiful.” The mission went off without any obstacles. I found my old friends—Robert Brasillach, who was getting ready to tour Spain in a mobile home with his sister Suzanne and Bardèche, his brother-in-law, Blond, Rebatet, some others I didn’t know as well, all my old comrades from my preparatory classes and my years at the ELSP. At night, Rebatet, half drunk, dragged me through the Latin Quarter to comment knowledgeably about the freshly painted graffiti, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, on the walls of the Sorbonne; during the day, he sometimes took me to see Céline, who had become extraordinarily famous and who had just published a second vitriolic pamphlet; in the Metro, Poulain, a friend of Brasillach, declaimed whole passages of it to me: There is no fundamental, irremediable hatred between Frenchmen and Germans. What does exist is a permanent, implacable, Judeo-British machination to prevent at all costs Europe from reforming into a single unified Franco-German nation, as it was before 843. The whole Judeo-Britannic genius lies in leading us from one conflict to another, from one carnage to another, slaughters from which we regularly emerge, always, in an atrocious condition, Frenchmen and Germans, bled dry, completely at the mercy of the Jews of the City. As for Gaxotte and Robert himself, who L’Humanité claimed were in prison, they explained to anyone who would listen that all of French politics were guided by the astrology books of Trarieux d’Egmont, who had had the good fortune to predict with precision the date of Munich. The French government—a bad sign—had just expelled Abetz and the other German envoys. Everyone was interested in my opinion: “Ever since Versailles has gone to the scrap heap of history, there is no more French question, for us. No one in Germany has claims on Alsace or on Lorraine. But with Poland, things aren’t settled. We don’t understand what’s motivating France to get mixed up in it.” And it was a fact that the French government wanted to get mixed up in it. Those who didn’t credit the Jewish theory blamed England: “They want to protect their Empire. Ever since Napoleon, that’s been their policy: no single continental power.” Others thought that on the contrary England was still reluctant to intervene, that it was the French General Staff that, dreaming of a Russian alliance, wanted to attack Germany before it was too late. Despite their enthusiasm, my friends were pessimistic: “The French right is pissing in the wind,” Rebatet told me one night. “For honor’s sake.” Everyone seemed glumly to accept the fact that war would come, sooner or later. The right blamed the left and the Jews; the left and the Jews, of course, blamed Germany. I didn’t see Thomas much. Once, I took him to the bistro where I would meet up with the team from Je Suis Partout, introducing him as a university friend. “Is he your Pylades, then?” Brasillach acerbically snarled at me in Greek. “Exactly,” Thomas retorted in the same language, modulated by his soft Viennese accent. “And he is my Orestes. Beware the power of armed friendship.” He himself had developed contacts in the business world; while I was making do with wine and pasta in attic rooms crowded with excited young people, he was eating foie gras in the best brasseries in town. “Taubert will foot the bill,” he laughed. “Why should we stint?”