21 YOU WOULD THINK HE’S LOUIS ARMSTRONG
21
Y OU W OULD T HINK H E ’ S L OUIS A RMSTRONG
Damien and Margaux met the traditional way the next week. Margaux’s father, Ferdinand Dutronc, the Theatre du Chatelet’s electrician and odd-jobs man for the past seventeen years, made the introductions. He waited for the orchestra to finish their Saturday morning rehearsal before meeting Damien at the main lobby in front of the coat-check hangers, and he said the sentence he’d practically memorized.
“This is my daughter, and as I mentioned after the concert, she’s got a strong hankering to learn to play the oboe.”
“Did you watch the rehearsal?” the musician asked before he gave the girl three kisses.
“Yes, of course. It was fantastic.” She had turned her enthusiasm into formality. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“The girl’s not too old to learn the instrument, is she?” her father asked in the way that fathers who talk too much do.
“Late? It’s never too late to learn anything,” Damien assured. “We have a family friend in Britain, where we spent summers before everything started, who bought a trumpet when he was fifty years old. He bought it for himself without ever having touched a trumpet. If you closed your eyes and heard him now, you’d think he was Louis Armstrong.”
Father and daughter laughed without knowing what he was talking about. Having had essentially a week to think about Ferdinand’s offer, Damien continued: “The problem isn’t that you’re ...”
“Sixteen years old.”
“Perfect. The problem is whether I know enough to teach you.” He hugged his oboe case close to him. “Yes, I play it. I’ve never spent more time with anyone or anything than my oboe. They hired me here because the circumstances are what they are, and it’s an honor to be a part of the Pierné Orchestra, but ... I’m no oboe professor. I’ve never given classes before. I’ve taken many, that’s true. I’ve had some very good teachers too. But when it comes to experience, I have none at all. Of course, if you’re willing and you want to, let’s try. There’s always a first. We’re living in novel times, huh?”
“Of course,” Margaux replied.
“Everything is different. We have to adapt to the new circumstances, and we have no choice but to do things we never thought we would,” said Ferdinand.
“Good. If you want me to teach you, I know it’ll be worth the effort. And I think we’ll succeed.”
“Me too,” she said, fascinated by the enthusiasm the young man radiated when he spoke.
“No need to discuss it further,” said her father, who had previously agreed on payment for the first-time teacher. Every private lesson would cost him seven francs and a piece of fruit. Whatever he had, whatever he could get depending on the week.
Once they sealed the deal with a handshake, Ferdinand returned to the stage to fix a small lamp on the conductor’s music stand. It wasn’t just the whim of some fussy bigwig. The maestro had complained that the light bulb would sometimes go out on him. It would flicker, and if the notes on the music sheet shook, then good luck. “They look like ants running in circles,” Delphin Moureau said, never losing his sense of humor.
When Margaux and Damien were alone, they sat on the bench at the entrance of the theater, and he asked, “So why exactly the oboe? Why not the flute, the bassoon, the clarinet?” Overcoming her embarrassment, Margaux confessed the event that had made an impression on her maybe a little more than a year prior in that same theater. Her father had asked her to accompany him to see a work by Prokofiev. He was sure she would like Peter and the Wolf . And he was right. She didn’t know what she was about to hear, and the surprise that each character had its own instrument sounded like a world of fun. It was original. She watched the performance, her mouth agape, and she wondered how the composer had known to match each sound with each character. The clarinet for the cat’s footsteps. The delicate flute for the birdie. The timbales were the surly hunters. The beloved grandfather moved to bassoon notes. The three trumpets were the dangerous wolf, so sure of the power of his canine teeth. And Peter, daring Peter, would always risk it all to the plucking of strings. But what she liked the most by a long shot was the duck’s voice. The sweet sound of the oboe contained so much love in itself, held so much beauty when it appeared on stage, that she became emotional. It was the first time music made her cry. There, glued to her wooden seat, Margaux noticed the special connection between her and that instrument. Since that morning of enthrallment, she’d become a nuisance at home. Quite a nuisance. There wasn’t a day that passed when she didn’t tell her parents she wanted to play the oboe. Months went by, the Germans entered Paris, the Luftwaffe rained bombs down on them, family friends started exoduses toward unknown places, and she still maintained her obsession. In the end, her father found someone who promised to teach her how to play.
In the span of a few weeks, Damien Devère had accumulated a couple strokes of luck.
The Germans had set his mother free after detaining her in a random street raid; he’d been hired in a famous orchestra; and now an opportunity had presented itself to bring home more money and a little bit of fruit in exchange for private lessons.
He’d been able to join the Pierné Orchestra thanks to a school friend, Imtold Lefebvre. They knew each very well, and their schoolboy years had bonded them so much that the outcome was clear in no time.
“The Pierné is looking for an oboist. Would you be interested?”
“What do you think about it?”
“One of the two we had ... You know how things go these days. They’re not allowed to even play anymore, what with the Jewish Statute. Are you interested?”
“Yes. Very.”
“Honestly, I already talked to Delphin Moureau about you. He’s a good conductor. He’s set in his ways, but he’s got a good baton.”
“If they hire me, I won’t let you down.”
“Like hell they won’t hire you. We have concerts scheduled. We have the Unfinished Symphony eight days from now, and between the members who’ve left and the members those sons of bitches have taken, we’re completely handicapped.”
Damien Devère and Imtold Lefebvre had gone to school together for many years, and during a couple of school years, they’d shared a desk. At that time, Lefebvre was a little different from the rest. He played the violin from an early age. He was the only boy in the class who played an instrument—at a school that was all boys—and when he went to class with a case bigger than he was, his classmates were intrigued. He opened it, took out the violin and the bow, played three notes in secret, and became a hero. But everyone watched how he struggled during gym class. The teachers also knew what a terrible experience it was for him. They forced him to do somersaults with not an ounce of compassion but rather the pedagogical certainty that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Barking imperatives, his teachers told him how he had to first curl up and then push with his feet to complete the somersault. But Lefebvre couldn’t do it, as frozen as he was. It was even worse to those miliary ticks. Sometimes he even trembled. It was then that the teacher, without any consideration, grabbed him, placed him in front of the mat, made him crouch, supported him from the back of the neck with a hand, put the other arm behind his knees, and on a count of three, helped him somersault. If he got up with his legs twisted, they forced him to do it again. Again and again until he stood up straight, martial attitude intact and spirit crushed.
The suffering of the schoolboy years, marked by short pants, ended when the weak boy placed his violin on his shoulder. At fifteen years old, he was already performing concerts in the small halls of Paris. He played Saint-Sa?ns’s Rondo Capriccioso and left everyone astounded by his virtuosity. Soon, he made a small name for himself in the city’s musical circles. So much so that when Delphin Moureau had a free space in the Colonne Orchestra, Lefebvre scheduled an audition with him. Moureau said, “Today you’ll play Mahler’s Fifth with the whole group,” and after listening to Lefebvre play, he said, “You start Monday.” It’s true that he put both his hands on his shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and warned him he’d be the youngest of all the musicians.
“There’s no showing off when you’re in an orchestra. Only contributing. Everyone in service of the score. Understood?”
And Jean Lefebvre had agreed. Jean was his name. Imtold was the nickname his friends had given him. It had stuck with him even at home. Sometimes, he signed unimportant documents that way. “Imtold L.” It bothered him at first that they were making fun of him, but trying to stop it would have been worse. What would he have achieved from getting angry? He had to admit he had the obsession—he’d call it a habit—of beginning his explanations, anecdotes, and gossip with the unavoidable “I’m told.” It’s true, he was always careful not to reveal his sources. He couldn’t remember a single time he’d betrayed the person who’d told him a secret. That was another thing. He never revealed anything to do with his own life.
During the previous weeks, ever since Marshal Pétain’s speech asking the French people to collaborate with the invading forces of the Third Reich, Imtold Lefebvre had to share the rumors he’d heard. So as not to put his foot in his mouth, he shared information only with those he thought, like him, resisted the idea that the occupation of half of France would be forever and the new European order was definitive.
“I’m told Hitler came to Paris in the morning. He was only interested in seeing the inside of the l’Opèra and then immediately left. Like a dog pissing to mark his territory.” “I’m told the Germans confiscate cameras. Did you know that? We’re not allowed to take pictures now as an occupied country.” “I’m told these Kartoffeln sack the apartments of Jews, Americans, and British, and remove any art they find. They use the Jeu de Paume as a warehouse. They take the good art back to their country.” “I’m told Radio Paris—what a disgusting station—settled in on 116 Champs-élysées.” “Be careful, friends, because I’m told there are people who counterfeit bread ration cards. I’m told who’s trafficking these cards.” “I’m told our conductor, the maestro Moureau, has a lover. And I’m told it’s not exactly a woman.” “I’m told.” Imtold Lefebvre. If he hadn’t been the violinist for the Pierné Orchestra, he would’ve been a good journalist. Or a top spy. When anyone whispered this to him, he simply smiled.
Damien explained to Margaux that Imtold had always been that thin, that the lack of cheeks underneath those bony cheekbones was not a consequence of the war. At school, he ate like a bird. On more than one occasion, Damien, who was always a small boy, ate any plate from the school mess hall that Lefebvre didn’t like. In exchange, Imtold asked to copy Damien’s math homework. Margaux listened and laughed but had only one thing on her mind: to find out the day and location of her oboe lesson. Out of a sense of security, she proposed holding them at her house. One afternoon a week, once she got out of school. If her father wasn’t needed at work, he would be home by the time the lesson started. Her mother wouldn’t come back until the Galeries Lafayette closed in the evening. She was a shop assistant at the building on boulevard Haussmann in the ninth arrondissement, a fifty-minute walk from their house.
Michelle had started as an apprentice in the perfume section and, over the years, had moved up to the women’s clothing floor. She sold haute couture to the neighborhood bourgeois just as she sold ready-made dresses, the everyday street wear of Paris. Since June, however, the store had lost almost all its clientele. Loyal and lifelong customers had stayed in the city but had locked themselves at home, frightened and with very little desire to expose themselves. If a client did go out, she no longer wanted to spend money on dresses and skirts. She had to save for whatever might happen and had to make do with the clothing she had at home. This order traveled from person to person, from house to house. From what Michelle said at dinnertime, only German soldiers entered the Galeries Lafayette since the start of fall. Never by themselves. They came in pairs and sometimes in groups. They climbed one staircase, went down another, and looked at everything. They were all fascinated by the number of products they said they’d never seen in their country. They bought them, wrapped them, and packaged them to mail home. Even food. Michelle, who had opinions about the Germans but maintained a perennial smile behind the counter, said that despite everything—and she emphasized “despite everything”—these people behaved politely in her store. They didn’t seem like scum in there. They asked, they made themselves understood, they inquired regarding the prices of things, they paid the marked price in francs without haggling, and after everything, they said merci . Many times, in French and in their native language. When they left, packages in hand, it didn’t feel like they were murderers.
The day Damien and Margaux met each other, Imtold Lefebvre ran into them chatting at the entrance of the theater. With his violin case under his arm and an exuberance unbecoming of a classical musician, he told them he was going to the Rive Gauche. “I’m told they’ve opened a German bookstore for only German soldiers. I can’t believe it.”
“Where’d you say you’re going?”
“To the corner of boulevard Saint-Michel and place de la Sorbonne. I want to see it with my own eyes.”
“Imtold ...” Damien knew his friend better than anyone else.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, not stopping in his tracks.
“Be careful. Don’t make them angry.”
“Me? Don’t worry about it.”
“Remember you can’t win the war by yourself.”