Papyrus and his cousin Vincent were both twenty-one when they left for the front. Geoffroy was two years older. I know nothing about what happened then, if they returned home often, or how they found the strength to withstand the horror. I imagine it changed them a lot, that war was so bloody and they were so young. All I know is that they were fighting close to our home in the department of the Somme and that Papyrus for some unknown sentimental reason had placed the medal of the Virgin Mary around his neck. My mother regularly told us the story of the medal, it was her war story, the victory of faith over the battlefields: a German bullet lodged in the center of the medal without Papyrus receiving the least scratch. He may have been a rowdy fellow, but that experience appears to have shaken him into thinking he’d better marry the young, timid girl who had given him the medal. He must have considered her like a guardian angel, and since she was his neighbor and not unattractive, he decided to be patient and ask her to marry him.
According to my mother, at the moment Papyrus caught the bullet with the holy medal, the Germans were launching an offensive in the area near her family’s little château. She used to say, and each time with the same emotion, that her father ran to the village church to join the priest and eat all the sacrament wafers before they fell into enemy hands.
“Wouldn’t it have been better to fight to keep the Krauts from taking them?” Gabriel asked one day.
“But can you imagine what it would have meant for our Savior Jesus Christ to have fallen into the hands of those butchers?”
“Why? Because the Krauts don’t believe in Jesus?”
“You don’t understand, Gabriel, that your grandfather was a hero, and Abbé Delvaux too. They held communion for hours without a thought for the debris that was falling down around them, the pieces of woodwork and the crumbling walls. They carried out this communion slowly, praying with each host for the salvation of their souls and the souls of the French. I would be very proud of you if one day you had to do the same.”
“Okay, but I think that Papyrus was a real hero, he fought and so did Uncle Geoffroy and Cousin Vincent…and all the soldiers in the trenches too.”
“Of course, but your grandfather was an even bigger hero because he was serving God first of all and France came just after.”
Gabriel didn’t want to hurt our mother’s feelings, but her story, which we’d heard since we were very young, lost its prestige little by little as we got older. As children we thought our grandfather was admirable, and if our mother had not constantly gone back over it, we would have kept a heroic impression of him. The problem was she didn’t have many other stories in her repertoire. There were only about one hundred people in our village. There were a few château owners in the area that we were more or less related to, but she wasn’t a gossip or mean. In fact I think she was fairly ignorant. I never saw a book in her hands other than the biography of some saint or other. She spent her days occupied by the morning mass, managing the domestic servants, meals, five o’clock tea, and a few social calls where she was either the hostess or a guest. At six o’clock she went to her room to repeat prayers. Then she prepared dinner and voilà! — another day was done and another step closer to eternity had been taken. What a horrible life! But let’s go back to before her marriage to the end of the First World War.
Papyrus resumed his military life between adventures, balls, and mistresses of every kind. The only woman that he, Geoffroy, and Vincent thoroughly respected without question was Bette. While she was back in Basel at the home of her parents, those three companions spent lots of their leave time in Paris at the home of Vincent’s mother, our rich and worldly aunt Gertrude, who had fled as best she could their sad country home in Picardy. It was there that Bette reappeared in 1920.
Papyrus and his companions would sometimes smoke opium at the home of the Count de Redan, an old partier who organized sumptuous, refined soirées. He liked inviting these three musketeers, whom he found amusing and available. Debauchery united them and they often spent the afternoon in one of those red salons decorated with Asian fabrics and motifs. They would recline on comfortable mattresses while an old Chinaman prepared the opium. Papyrus claimed that they also carried on serious philosophical discussions, but I don’t know how much that is to be believed.
Spiritism was very fashionable at the time and the salons of the nobility were filled with mediums and stories of the dead communicating with the living. Papyrus participated in all that without taking it seriously but simply to go along for the ride with his friends, who found it intriguing. During one alcohol-soaked evening at the home of Charles de Redan, Papyrus was introduced to a stunning young woman from America, Julia Stenton, who claimed she communicated with the spirit of Kate Fox, the youngest of the three sisters who had launched the vogue for Spiritism in the United States and then in Europe. The Fox sisters lived in Hydesville, New York. After regularly hearing knocking coming from inside the walls of their house, the women imagined that it could be the dead trying to communicate. They developed a kind of code in which a given number of knocks corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. It was in this way that a certain Charles Haynes became known to them and claimed to have been assassinated in the house before the Fox family moved there. The three sisters pleaded with their parents for a search to be undertaken, and that search led to the discovery of the remains of a human skeleton. This story created an enormous sensation and the Fox sisters toured the country retelling it. The young women attracted the attention of scientists as well as the curiosity of the general public. When it was revealed that they were using some gimmick during public attempts to communicate with the beyond, the Fox sisters’ prestige rapidly declined, but the passion for Spiritism persisted and made its way around the globe.
After dessert, guests were invited to return to the drawing room, and Julia Stenton asked for complete silence. She and six others sat at a round table. They each placed their hands down on the table with outstretched fingers lightly touching. Papyrus and Charles de Redan looked on from a few steps away.
“Even Doctor Ribaud is indulging in this game. I can’t believe my eyes!” exclaimed the Count.
“Indeed, now we’ve seen everything. You should perhaps change doctors, unless, that is, you don’t mind having your prescriptions written out by ghosts.”
“Yes, and look at your aunt Gertrude and that air of the possessed.”
“True, but with her it’s different. She follows every fashionable turn in the road. If tomorrow’s high society were to begin exercising on balance beams, Aunt Gertrude would become a gold-medal gymnast.”
Julia Stenton was unable to enter into contact with Kate Fox and had to make do with Victor Hugo. The Count’s guests were impressed to hear the table make loud noises to answer yes or no to questions or to indicate letters of the alphabet. Papyrus became bored and said his goodbyes. He returned along the river and was happy to be by himself. He walked with a lively step as usual, though he had no particular amusement in mind, nor did he feel sleepy. He noted the long gray silhouette and shadow of the Eiffel Tower. He thought of Guy de Maupassant, who apparently often liked to dine there because it was the only place in Paris where it could not be seen. At the Pont Royal he stopped to contemplate the Seine and the moonlight reflected in the water. He was tempted to let himself feel sad, but chased the idea from his mind and resumed his walk back to Aunt Gertrude’s residence.
The following week, Papyrus, Geoffroy, and Vincent were again in the Count’s home smoking opium. A heavy-set gentleman with a mustache spoke out in short breaths to describe a newfangled body language, the materialization of music, and an art of movement that was being called eurythmy. He was telling everyone of his keen interest in these new forms of expression that aspired to an ideal and in the spiritual mission of the artists who practiced them.
“Is this another one of those Spiritism exercises that my friends and I love so much?” asked the Count with a dry mock.
“Not at all! Nothing to do with that! You have to see it to believe it. The vogue for Spiritism is ridiculous; anthroposophy on the other hand is a true science of the mind. One mustn’t confuse them! I have a good Swiss friend, an anthroposophist, her name is Elisabeth de Louvenel, and she will be giving a performance of eurythmy to some friends this evening. Come along with me if you like.”
“What’s her name did you say?”
“Elisabeth de Louvenel.”
“My, what a coincidence! She’s the widow of our old friend Enguerrand de Louvenel! Of course we’ll come along and give her a little surprise while we’re at it.”
Having never taken drugs myself, it’s not easy for me to describe exactly the mind-set of these three men who were forever united by Picardy, their childhood, and the untold horrors of war. What I do know is that on that evening they were in sufficiently good form to knock at the door of the large residence near Trocadéro that belonged to the Count and Countess von Sonnenreich, two charming Austrians who welcomed them warmly. Once inside they were able to set about organizing their surprise for Aunt Bette. Their hosts served them champagne in lovely Baccarat crystal glasses as well as the most exquisite petits fours. A string quartet was playing Schubert in a corner of the drawing room and in the next room one could see a stage had been erected at one end. The elegant yet cozy atmosphere and the joy of seeing Bette again must have been strong enough for Papyrus to overcome the visceral displeasure he felt upon hearing German spoken, or perhaps that came later with the Second World War. In front of the stage three rows of chairs and a sofa had been arranged to accommodate about thirty people. The Countess gracefully came forward and turned to the audience with her back to the stage.
“This evening, our friends Elisabeth de Louvenel, Anette Morgenstjerna, and Olga Berdiaeva will interpret an extract from Goethe’s Faust, the ‘Walpurgis Night.’ You all know the importance that Rudolf Steiner gives to this piece from Faust within his admirable understanding of the spiritual world. Our friends will be performing for you this remarkable example of eurythmy, which we owe to the immensely talented Marie von Sivers. I will now let the movement speak for itself.”
The Countess then gathered her long green satin dress and sat down in the middle of the sofa. The three dancers arrived onstage with light, lively steps. They were dressed in white outfits adorned with colorful veils. Bette wore a pink veil and the other two dancers wore yellow and orange. They ran from one end of the stage to the other before coming to a halt in front of their public. They then each held one arm over their hearts and with the other seemed to be grasping something out of the air. A man’s voice emerged from among the onlookers and recited a text in German that the three friends didn’t understand in the least, but since they were probably still high on opium, they found the whole thing very pleasant. The three women continued their odd but elegant and expressive choreography. Bette, totally absorbed in her art, didn’t even notice them. At the end of the performance, which was enthusiastically applauded, Bette disappeared to change into a proper dress embroidered with little gray beads. She wore a matching diadem in her hair and she was all the more striking now that a period of mourning had removed an excess of healthy pink naïveté. Her eyes were wilder, her voice deeper, and her steps more catlike. She showed every sign of being enchanted to see her old friends.
“What a wonderful surprise! I can’t believe my eyes! I never would have imagined finding you in a situation such as this! From now on we shall be inseparable! I want to learn all about you, every minute of everything you’ve been doing in the past twelve months. And how is Picardy doing? And my in-laws? I abandoned everyone to pursue this marvelous adventure of anthroposophy. Oh, we have so much to tell each other! Let’s never separate ever again!”
The three musketeers were immensely flattered by this warm reception, even though they didn’t understand much of what Bette was telling them.
“Bette, my dear,” Geoffroy finally dared to say, “what is all this you’re talking about? We are only soldiers and don’t understand a thing about all this anthroposophy business.”
“There will be plenty of time for me to tell you all about it, but what did you think of the performance? Did you like it?”
“Oh very much,” they all replied warmly.
They spent the rest of the evening evoking pleasant memories of Enguerrand and their friends. Bette also asked for news of her new sister-in-law. Papyrus didn’t hesitate to share the strange story of how she saved his life with the medal and Bette was enormously stirred up by it — so stirred up in fact that they found it worrisome. Then with a pale and distant stare she pronounced these oracular words:
“So many signs mark the way. It’s up to us to open our eyes and notice them. Do you understand Louis,” — Papyrus’s real name was Louis—“that my sister-in-law protected you from a distance with the force of her love?”
“I don’t believe in that sort of thing, you know, but all the same I was very struck by it, no pun intended.”
“Where is the medal?”
“I always carry it with me. It’s in the pocket of the coat I left in the vestibule.”
“Would you mind getting it? I’d like to see it.”
Papyrus was only gone a minute and then returned with the medal and handed it to Bette. An elegant Russian gentleman joined their little group and Bette introduced him. The Russian took the medal in his hand and reacted enthusiastically to the miraculous story.
“It’s indeed quite amazing, I agree,” said Papyrus. “But I don’t believe in the supernatural one bit.”
“And so what do you make of it? Purely an accident?” asked the Russian in impeccable French.
“Naturally. I must seem rather rough around the edges to you, however…”
“However, you keep it in your pocket,” Bette interjected softly.
“Yes, because it was given to me by a pure and innocent hand, and after all, this little piece of silver did save my life.”
“It’s really quite amazing,” repeated the Russian, taking the medal in his large hand again. “You know, I too was until recently quite skeptical of such things, but lately I’ve been coming upon more and more bizarre incidents.”
“For example?”
“Do you know my good friend, the painter Wassily Kandinsky?”
“No, you are probably the first Russian I have ever met.”
“Well, Kandinsky is in my opinion the greatest painter alive today, but that is not why I bring him up. The reason is he told me about an experience dating back a few years that left him rather upset. After a lively dinner with his friends Thomas and Olga von Hartmann, they decided to try to talk with ghosts by turning a plate with an arrow and the alphabet around the outside. They were then stupefied by the contact made with a female spirit named Musutsky who had lived in Ufa in Bashkiria, where she is buried. She asked them to pray for her cousin and she spelled the first three letters of his name: S, H, A.”
“Yes, but your Kandinsky and his friends may have been having a collective hallucination.”
“That is precisely why he wrote to the priest in Ufa to ask if he had known a parishioner by that name.”
“And what was his reply?”
“He replied one month later that the cemetery contained many named Musutsky, but only one with a cousin named Shatov. Rather curious, don’t you think?”
“No, most likely just a coincidence. You will not convince me.”
“But that is not my aim,” said the Russian laughing freely. “I’m not sure I’m convinced myself. I simply wonder at it, that’s all. I’m humble, more humble than you are.”
“So you only believe in physical matter, Louis, despite what this little medal tells you?” said Bette.
“I believe in God, but I maintain a strict boundary between the world of the living and the dead.”
“There are so many things that we must talk about, my dear Louis,” whispered Bette as she took him by the arm.
The four met again frequently and ran into each other at the same social events. I know that Vincent soon became tired of Bette’s theories and started going to Paris less often. He had also begun courting a young, levelheaded Norman woman whose lighthearted teasing turned Bette’s earnest theories into uproarious laughter. That woman would become our aunt Elodie.