28 EVERYTHING IS TODAY
28
E VERYTHING I S T ODAY
The main floor of the Théatre du Chatelet filled within ten minutes. The German soldiers, who occupied the first rows and the lateral boxes, sat, took off their caps, and spoke in low voices as Damien’s oboe played a note for the rest of the instruments to tune to. Sometimes, a soldier let out a laugh, the Saturday afternoon kind, when obligations give way to a truce. In the last rows of the stalls sat those who entered peacefully, who wanted a peaceful afternoon, who wished for the music to distract them for a couple of hours, and who wanted to avoid a confrontation with anyone. The women had dressed up to the best of their abilities. There were some who’d made dresses from the clothes of men who would never return. All of them had learned to make the most of shirt pieces and old sheets. Going to the theater, for a performance or a concert, was an occasion to demonstrate a certain firmness. But it was also the occasion to show that whatever the situation may be, they were women, they were French, and they wanted to have fun. It was a way of saying that not all was lost to the German superiority. They could have Paris, all of France, and half of Europe, but they would never be able to take away their air, elegance, and good taste.
Every five minutes, Ferdinand Dutronc opened the service door on the side of the theater, checking it wouldn’t close on him again and peeking out onto the street to see if his daughter had arrived. The third time he wedged the door open with his foot, he saw Margaux walking quickly on the quai de la Mégisserie. She was wearing a black jacket and a knee-length checkered skirt that mixed gray with yellow.
“Come on, honey, we’re running late,” he shouted from a distance.
“I had to walk around, because they cut ... There were two burned cars.”
“It doesn’t matter, Margaux.”
“But Papa—”
“Hurry up, girl. They’re about to start.”
He let her in and shut the door to the street. She knew the way. As a child, before the nightmare started, she had accompanied her father to work many times. She liked the theater drop scene. The smell of wood and turpentine, the darkness, the electrical boxes, and the counterweights on the hundreds of wires meant to lift and lower the set. What satisfied her the most was that her father had a solution for everything. Everything he had to fix was a challenge he could overcome with a little skill and time. A handyman like him never faced the same challenge twice in the theater.
“Where do I go?”
“Grab that chair and sit here between the wings.”
Between the curtains, Margaux tried different positions to find out where she could watch Damien best. Once she located his profile, she tried to greet him discreetly. Softening the reed with his lips, he hadn’t noticed her. Margaux didn’t know how to grab his attention, but, as focused as he seemed, she didn’t want to bother him the moment the lights went out in the main hall. He looked nice in his black suit, white shirt, and bow tie. He looked older, more serious, more important. Even more handsome.
Suddenly, the conductor bumped into her. As he passed, he hit her funny bone.
“Hey, girl, you’re being a nuisance here.”
Delphin Moureau let his bad mood dissipate, forced his best smile, and entered into the spotlight. The musicians stood to greet him onstage, and the hall applauded them all preemptively. When the conductor turned toward the audience to bow, he located the two German officers sitting in the fifth row. The one in green and the one in black. Center aisle.
He faced the orchestra again, hoping to feel more at home. With a wet finger, he made sure the pages of the score would turn. He did not hurry to begin. It was his way of reclaiming power and concentrating all eyes on him. He closed his eyes to inhabit the spirit of Rimsky-Korsakov. He picked up the baton with his right hand, and he raised it high enough so the musicians became alert. From that moment onward, not even a fly could be heard in the hall.
The first note came from the trombones, magisterial and peaceful. Right away, with the first violin solo that introduces Scheherazade, Damien’s gaze wandered in a quiet moment to the emergency light on stage right. There, between the wings, he discovered Margaux’s loving eyes watching him. With a twinge of his heart, he returned his gaze to the score and the conductor, who was gesticulating more today than he had in other concerts. That Saturday afternoon, Delphin Moureau hardly waited to work up a sweat. The conductor didn’t look at the oboes, not even by chance, throughout the whole performance. He kept them in front of him, directly in the middle of the orchestra, to evenly distribute their sounds throughout the theater. He didn’t give them a sign or an entrance. Moureau’s gaze, protected by the violins, looked past the oboes and fell on the percussion section. Damien, waiting to read, play, and draw out the perfect sound, saw the baton out of the corner of his eye, but at no point did he notice Delphin Moureau ignoring him.
At the end of the third movement, Damien, who was dedicated to playing the music of the young prince and princess, straightened his neck to look at Margaux. Not having taken her eyes off him once, she blew him a kiss that he received instantly. His hands occupied, Dédé caught the kiss with his lips midair and sent it back with a loving smile. He played the last movement of Scheherazade earnestly. The vibrato left the oboe with the timber of an enamored soprano. Never in any of his rehearsals had he managed to draw out a sound that so resonated with him. He was the instrument, with his spirit serene.
The clever audience didn’t applaud until the end of the concert, and when they did, it reverberated throughout the hall, sounding professional, rhythmic, and very German with its exact length and lack of passion. Standing next to her father, Margaux clapped enthusiastically.
“How lucky is it that I came, Papa? It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m so happy, Margi,” said Ferdinand, still clapping the third and final time the conductor came out to greet everyone.
Once the hall was silent, the dance began. People paraded in the street, soldiers chatted in the hall, and the conductor hurriedly slipped back into his dressing room. The only thing he told his musicians was “Thank you, all”—which was routine—and he disappeared. The performance of that Rimsky-Korsakov deserved kind words, even if it was a brief, warm elegy. But Delphin Moureau exited as the orchestra members began packing their instruments and discussing the notes they’d missed.
“Today’s audience won’t have noticed.”
“They come here like they’re going to see the circus.”
“Let’s see if we get a review in the Je suis partout .”
“Do you think we might? I didn’t see any critics in the hall.”
“They don’t have to come. These people write what they want. They do the same thing with the war ...”
Damien took apart his oboe and wiped the inside with a cloth to dry the wood. He grabbed the upper body of the instrument, held it up to the light, and looked through the hole like a pirate looking through a telescope. He glanced to his right to make sure his lover was still there. Then, he put the lower body and bell inside the case. Once he closed it, he saw Ferdinand in his uniform holding his daughter by the shoulder. Margaux pretended like she was applauding him at full speed, her hands together at her chin, but without making any noise.
“I’m coming.” Damien moved two chairs to clear his path and walk toward the Dutroncs. At that second, someone called to him from stage right.
“Damien Devère?”
He stopped and turned on his heel. Between the curtains stood two German soldiers.
“Come here, please.” The man with the burned face was authoritative.
“But—” With his hand, Damien signaled he was going the other direction.
“You’re Damien Devère, are you not?”
“Yes, yes ...”
“Please do us the favor of coming with us. Accompany us, please.”
He questioned whether he should take a step forward or backward. Margaux noticed his anxiety, and she moved to walk onto the stage.
“No, Margaux.” Her father grabbed her arm, holding her back.
Damien lowered his head and resigned himself to slowly walking toward the soldiers.
“Dami, don’t go,” Margaux shouted.
Her father continued to hold her back with both of his hands so she wouldn’t escape.
“Who is she?” the man with the burned face asked. “Do you want her to come with you?”
“No, no ... She’s just a girl,” he responded in a low voice so she wouldn’t hear him from the other side of the stage. “Just a family friend.”
“And that?” the soldier asked, pointing to the case Damien carried in his hand.
“My oboe case,” he responded, making his way closer to a possible abyss.
“No need to bring it.”
“I bring it with me everywhere.”
“You won’t need it where we’re going.”
He lifted his eyes to hold the soldier’s gaze. The man with the burned face had hatred in his eyes.
“Damien!” he heard from the other side of the hall.
Margaux’s hoarse cry resounded throughout the whole theater.
Her desperate howl coincided with the moment they forced that Pierné Orchestra oboist to abandon his instrument on the last chair of the stage. It was the instant Damien noticed the silent soldier was forcefully grabbing him by the wrists. It was the moment Ferdinand, who understood like no one else the gravity of the situation, hugged his daughter with all his might and said, “My love. We’ll get past this. I promise we’ll get past this.” She barely heard what her father was saying. She had just witnessed Damien’s arrest. She had him in front of her, and they hadn’t been able to say goodbye. He hadn’t even turned around to look at her one last time. But why hadn’t he done so? In her seventeen years of life, Margaux had never cried so much.
Her father waited some time to give her the letter. He couldn’t find the right moment to disrupt his daughter’s mourning. He feared she’d become even more consumed by the matter if she read what Damien had written. He watched her whimper through those first few long weeks. For all the years she lived, she would never experience such pain again. Ferdinand knew it, because parents are experts in two things: the trajectory of life, and their children.
A devastated Margaux had returned home and placed the black oboe case on top of the chest of drawers in her room. In the following days, she sat on her bed and spent hours looking at it, as if it were a picture you carried with you forever. At times, it was a totem of hope. At times, it was a prayer altar. Absentmindedly, she contemplated the case Dédé always carried in his hand. He never let it go for the world, and she hoped it was an amulet of good luck. She only prayed that one day her love could put together his oboe, blow the reed, and draw out that calm and loving music only he could. With its perfect sound and temperate spirit. Sometimes, she shut her eyes as furiously as a clenched fist and wished for it with all her might.
Ferdinand didn’t know what Damien had said in the letter he kept hidden, but he could imagine. Words of first love that are never forgotten. A declaration of love for good measure. Maybe thoughts of a short life expectancy, because in times of sirens, death, and misery, who thinks five years into the future? In war, no one asks how the day has gone. Everything is today. If you’ve made it to the next night and things are the same as they were the night before, you can be thankful. Ferdinand had thought at some point that, with the young musician’s sensibility, the letter would be sheet music with an unedited and dedicated composition Margaux could play now that she was pretty good with the oboe. He’d been tempted to open the letter, read it, and seal it again. In his handiness, he could do it without anyone noticing. But he didn’t dare. If Margaux ever caught him, she wouldn’t forgive him.
As time passed, he safeguarded the letter, but Damien’s words repeated inside his head. “Never give it to her. Only if they arrest me or if I disappear.” To give it to her or not. He had promised to follow the instructions. Had they arrested him? Yes. Had he disappeared? No one might ever know what the Germans were doing to Damien. Everyone had heard stories of families, neighbors, and good-faith people who’d been arrested or who’d disappeared, and weeks went by without any news. The earth swallowed them up. The more he thought about it, the less obvious it became what he should do.
One night in bed, tired of being alone in his distress, he decided to mention it to Michelle, who immediately became alert.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Damien ...”
“Do you know something?” She turned on the small lamp on the nightstand.
“No, no ...” He cleared his nose with a handkerchief he’d kept scrunched up under his pillow for some days. “Damien asked if he could speak to me the same day of the concert, before he was arrested. Right before the concert. He took me away from the orchestra, and he gave me a letter. A letter for the girl.”
Ferdinand opened the nightstand. He took out a letter, and he gave it to his wife regretfully.
“What does it say?” Michelle brought it up to the lamp. “‘For M. D. (in case of emergency).’ What does that mean?”
“Ah. That’s what’s keeping me from sleeping. Damien asked me to never give it to her. Only ... only if they arrested him or if he disappeared.”
“You have to give it to her, Ferdinand. I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”
“I’m confused. What do you want from me? The kid hasn’t officially disappeared.”
“Who knows where he must be right now. What they say about the trains is terrible.”
“And if they let him go? If he returns tomorrow, but I’ve already given her the letter?”
“For the love of God, Ferdinand.” Michelle shook her head.
“What’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re so naive sometimes. I can’t believe you think that ... In these past three disgusting years, how many people have we known who’ve been arrested like Dédé and who’ve never been seen again? How many, Ferdinand? Tell me.”
“A million.”
“You have to give her the letter.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow.”
He took a deep breath, frightened.
“If you don’t do it, I will.” She put the letter on top of her nightstand and turned off the weak light bulb. “Good night, love. Now, try to sleep. You’ve already kept me up long enough.”
Michelle couldn’t believe that two “Our Fathers” later, Ferdinand was already snoring like the letter didn’t exist, like Margaux didn’t exist, like they hadn’t arrested Damien, and like Imtold hadn’t disappeared. But she could not fall asleep. Two thoughts kept spinning in her head like two obsessions where one took over the other in a loop that never ended. Damien’s letter and the photograph in Signal . The letter that Ferdinand hadn’t given his daughter. The magazine photo of the girl on a bike she hadn’t shown anyone. Not Margaux, not Ferdinand. She should have explained how she’d discovered it, what her coworkers at the Galeries Lafayette accused her of, but she wanted to save her family from the stress. It was not fair for them to hear her say these things. And of course, a cat hadn’t scratched her face. Everyone protects their silence for survival. And the more she thought about it, the more serious the letter became, the bigger the photo grew in her mind, and for all her tossing and turning, she didn’t know how to position herself. The worry lasted until the first movement of the sun.