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  The mental and physical stress of the taupe was immense, but I managed. The effect that time in Lyon had on my life has been extraordinarily deep and durable.

  6

  Horse Groom near Pommiers-en-Forez, 1944

  AFTER THE ALLIES’ JUNE 1944 LANDING in Normandy, the Lycée du Parc rushed to close. Everyone was chased from the dormitories and urged to leave Lyon. Our Angel appeared! Léon and I were told to report to an office in Roanne, a midsize town west of Lyon, to be assigned to neighborhood farms while we awaited further instructions.

  Léon’s farm made him work strenuously—and he did. Mine did not go as well. It was near a small town, Saint-André-des-Eaux, in a formerly volcanic region not far from Vichy. Its sparkling water was iron-heavy and covered the taps and all the landmarks with a smooth rust-colored patina. To work in mulch and manure, we wore wooden shoes—plain chunks of wood—on naked feet, and a kind of leather grew on a new wearer’s skin after the scabs came off. One day the yoke of the oxcart fell on my knee, and for several days I could hardly move. My boss, a kind old farmer, told me that he was better off without my help. I agreed.

  The Roanne office next sent me to an isolated horse farm, directing me to take a bus to Saint-Germain-Laval and from there to walk east, beyond Pommiers-en-Forez, through a fertile agricultural region between Roanne and Saint-Étienne, then a major center of mining and steel.

  I reached Le Châtelard late in the evening and was greeted by a generously built woman who the next day was revealed to be Countess Suzanne de Chansiergues d’Ornano. She had inherited Le Châtelard from her mother and lived there with her husband—the count—and her father, Monsieur de Rivière, who may have been sixty but suffered from arthritis and to me looked ancient. There were also a few house servants.

  At lunch the first day, I was told that they were raising horses—animals I had not dealt with since my summer in Belarus. At one point in the conversation, M. de Rivière became animated and began rambling, “In 1913, my horse Phoebus won the Derby de Lyon. He was a trotter.” He then recited the horse’s pedigree back several generations. No one at the table paid any attention. I learned that the horses in residence were Anglo-Norman half-breeds—a subtle balance between the extraordinary beauty (but notorious fragility) of English Thoroughbreds and an ability to perform marketable work. The art of breeding these horses largely consisted of hiring one of the stallions—ranging from pure Thoroughbred down to mixed breeds—available in the Haras Nationaux, a stud farm maintained by the government. Le Châtelard had dwindled at that time to two breeding mares, Rêveuse and Respectueuse, chestnuts with black mane and tail, and their foals.

  That night at dinner, M. de Rivière again became animated: “In 1913, my horse Phoebus won the …” I interrupted and recited the horse’s pedigree without one mistake. “Ça, par exemple! Nobody ever listens to me, but you did. And you remembered everything. You can’t be altogether bad.”

  Shortly afterward, M. de Rivière confessed that he needed a groom for his horses, and with everybody away at war, the choice was between me and “Jules” (his actual name escapes me now). “Jules knows everything about horses,” he said, “and you know nothing. But he is a thief, and you look honest. I take you, and you can continue to eat at the master’s table with us.” Phoebus is the ancient Greek word for the sun. Long after his death, that horse brought the sun to shine on me. His name is one I shall never forget.

  As a premium, I got a glimpse into a world of country gentry that would otherwise have remained completely closed to me. When M. de Rivière was young, his prowess as a horseman had won the love, the hand, and the roof of the heiress of Le Châtelard, who was no longer living. His closest friend was the daughter of his wet-nurse when he was a baby. A widow, she came on visits from nearby Saint-Étienne. The estate also included two little-used farms.

  Madelon, an ageless mixed-breed draft mare, did the heavy work and was unremarkable. Poor Rêveuse and Respectueuse were idle and skinny, but I learned to make them look good enough. Union Sacrée, an old half-breed, had long been retired. Every Sunday, as prescribed by my boss, I took her for a bit of exercise that was so strictly defined that I swear she knew it by heart. I was taught how to do her toilette with a checkerboard backside, to hitch her to the carriage, to hold the reins properly when bringing the countess and her father to church, to wait with her in a certain tree’s shadow, to bring her back home with her load, and finally to take her to her stable. I asked M. de Rivière, “What will happen when she becomes sick or helpless?” “I watched that horse being born, and I will never let her suffer. I shall take her behind the stable and shoot her with my old handgun—right between her eyes.”

  M. de Rivière decided to bring his mares and foals to a competition held on the racetrack near Feurs, the tiny historical capital of the Forez. I was told that at one time the cavalry used (or even sponsored) this competition to select new horses to buy from the breeders. By 1944, however, the word “cavalry” had shifted to denote tanks, and that competition had withered to an occasion for old friends or foes, isolated in their estates, to get together for drinks and gossip. Horses smell, especially when stressed and hot in summer, and so does their manure. Many horses brought together on a muddy field emit a stench—and neighing noises—that I still remember as I write.

  The cavalry’s criteria put Rêveuse and Respectueuse behind all the other mares—immediately preceded by one owned by Jules. His bay was broader and more muscular than our chestnuts—thanks to the oats he was reportedly stealing from us. One of ours limped, but the other was not that bad. M. de Rivière talked to his friends, and Jules’s mare was bumped to second from last, while our “good” one was promoted. Madelon took us all home, with the reins in my hands.

  The time arrived to give names to the foals. The initial letter of a registered horse’s name was set by the studbook and was cycled around. Rêveuse and Respectueuse, both born in 1940, shared an initial R. The compulsory initial letter in 1944 was A. Jules called his foal Algérie, and M. de Rivière—ever faithful to Greek names, which reminded him of his beloved Phoebus—settled after days of seclusion on Aphrodite and Apollo.

  Sad to say, Apollo had a limp—like Aphrodite’s mother—and had to be sold. The decision was made just in time for the Foire de la Bautresse, an international fair held near a place called Boen every year since the fourteenth century, in peace or war, in prosperity or famine. Madelon, Apollo and his mother, M. de Rivière, and I set forth to the fairgrounds to sell Apollo.

  Madelon was left near the carriage in a parking lot, and we moved to a spot reserved in advance. I was told to stand by my horses and tell all dealers that the price for the colt was forty thousand francs. M. de Rivière then left to join his pals. The horse dealers of half of Europe (or so it seemed) soon descended on me and immediately recognized a city rube. “Forty grand for both—that is a fair price.” “No, no. Forty for the colt, without the mare.” I don’t recall any second look at the limping little beast. Every so often, M. de Rivière came back to check on offers. Nothing to report.

  Dusk came and we trudged back home, a disappointed and exhausted little caravan moving so very slowly. Along the way, a noisy carriage filled with peasants drinking and singing passed us, and trotting behind was a colt with brown-yellow hair. A passenger hailed us. “So you did not sell your foal. I bought myself this nice one for twenty-two thousand francs.” Off they trotted, with M. de Rivière muttering, “No breeding at all.” At that point, the peasant holding the reins slowed down to let us catch up, and another passenger shouted, “I can use a horse at my farm. I shall pay you twenty thousand francs if you bring it to my place.” He also shouted his name and address, and then their carriage sped up and passed us again.

  A limping Anglo-Norman Thoroughbred had no value, yet consumed expensive food every day. M. de Rivière had to sell, even though Apollo had not yet been weaned. We took his mother along with a very long leash. “What for?” I asked. “Wait and you will see.”r />
  We reached the farm, and twenty thousand francs in small bills changed hands. After we had our drinks, M. de Rivière remained seated, and the farmer became impatient. “The horse has been paid for, and I have tons of work to do. Good-bye.” “But you have not yet bought the bridle from the groom.” “Is the groom this fellow?” the farmer asked, pointing to me. “Yes. Let me explain. The bridle itself is a worthless old piece of leather. But he had to work hard, and paying him for the bridle is a nice way of giving him a tip.” “No way, no way, nobody heard of such nonsense! Good-bye.” As we left, Mr. de Rivière muttered that he would “buy” the bridle from me, but I assured him that nothing was expected.

  The ride home was slow and exhausting. The mare dreadfully missed her foal and ran here and there seeking him. That is when the very long leash came in handy. I gave her rope to run, then pulled her back when feasible. That night, M. de Rivière had to stay up to milk and soothe her; I could not help.

  Politically, the horse-raising gentry of Forez were far from raging radicals. At lunch and dinner, we listened in respectful silence to the obviously biased news on Vichy radio. However, their resigned expectation of German victory and their acceptance of Marshal Pétain eventually wavered. I cajoled them, first to listen to Swiss radio in French, then to France Libre in London.

  The result was unexpected. Hearing London radio describe General Charles de Gaulle’s background, they all perked up and recognized him as one of their own—while I was becoming somewhat dubious. By pure fluke, through a flimsy partition, I had heard his famed June 18, 1940, appeal on the neighbor’s radio, urging the French nation to continue fighting. But during the war, neither side had found it politically advantageous to inform the French that this general had long been close to Pétain—he was, in fact, the godfather of his son Philippe. Only after the war did some writers argue that Pétain and de Gaulle were secretly playing the two sides of a “foreign” conflict. Incidentally, the patronymic de Gaulle is not aristocratic; in Flemish (the tongue of northern Belgium and France), it means “the horse.”

  My wartime hosts in Forez had wondered who I really was, never quite figured it out, but always behaved in a thoroughly civilized fashion. Perhaps, in their isolation, my unending stories had been entertaining. Many years later, Aliette and I drove by. France was becoming very rich, and Anglo-Norman horses were all the rage. But that estate looked abandoned, plain, and charmless.

  One final irony—our horses were either not broken in or too old, so I never learned to ride.

  7

  Alleluiah! The War Moves Away and a New Life Beckons

  ON AUGUST 15, 1944, the Allies landed in southern France. Shortly after, the occupying forces on the southern front broke position and rushed farther north, skipping the Forez altogether. On the northern front, Paris was liberated on August 25. Liberation was an explosion of joy combined with a settling of accounts.

  The war, with its fears and deprivations, left a mark on me that would never wear away. That mark persists in the obvious big things that have shaped my life. It also persists in small things—I still can’t throw away paper that might someday find a new use.

  My luck in wartime had been stark and simple. After just barely escaping the coming horrors in Poland, I had managed to survive the occupation of France, with its periods of astonishing “normality” alternating with hair-raising episodes. Not only was I never trapped, but—for one reason or another—I was repeatedly given a pass and never denounced. I received enormous help, and more help must have come along without my knowledge.

  I had absorbed enough taupe to do very well on the exams—but not nearly enough to fit any of the stereotypes that matter in France. Even more than my years in Poland, wartime made me “different” for life.

  My weeks at Le Châtelard put me in excellent physical shape. Yet, for years to come, I was continually told that I looked older than I was. This changed only after I met and married Aliette.

  As soon as it was feasible, Léon and I rushed to reunite in Roanne. Amazingly, a train ran west from there to Clermont-Ferrand—on schedule! Apparently, in those poor highlands, the railroad bridges had not been worth destroying. But the connecting westbound train had already left Clermont-Ferrand. At that time, no central authority set the clocks, and the southwest set its one hour ahead of the southeast.

  When we arrived at Tulle, our foreboding melted. Marvelous, incredible surprise—Mother and Father were waiting for us at the station! For quite some time, they had been meeting every train from the east and returning home empty-hearted.

  Deliriously happy family reunion with no one missing! We soon learned, however, that—like Oradour-sur-Glane (near Saint-Junien)—Tulle had witnessed a major abomination, which the news reports we heard had failed to mention. After we had left, the Resistance became organized and very active. In response, not long before being forced to move north, the occupying forces that smashed Oradour also hanged nearly a hundred young people from lampposts and balconies of a square right next to where we lived. One victim had been a classmate. Both of his parents were schoolteachers. Nice, brilliant, and all too secure, he was often heard expounding in a loud voice classic left-wing ideas that I would not have dared even whisper. Was he picked at random or fingered as a troublemaker?

  The bold plan our parents had devised—bless their hard-won survivor skills—had let them and their sons cope with events separately. This bet, the riskiest of our complicated lives, worked better than any realist could have hoped. Parents and sons soon returned separately to Paris. The railroad bridges across the Loire River near Orléans had been bombed out; passengers lugged their bags along a pontoon bridge. But this was nothing.

  To this day, my spoken French preserves traces of slum Parisian and Limousin. On balance, in my heart—though the Tulle where I lived has been swallowed by history—I shall always remain a Tulliste. I visit as often as I can. It becomes ever harder to associate what I see today with the tiny, ancient farms, the empty villages with big monuments that list the dead of 1914 to 1918, and the 1944 torrent of blood.

  An ever-optimistic Pangloss would say that flight from Poland and survival in wartime France were proper preparation for a life that never stopped being overly interesting.

  Nearing the age of twenty, I was acutely aware of entering a second stage of life and intensely hoped it would not be so hard. But the past cannot simply be left behind, especially a past like mine, so sharply synchronized with the Depression and the war. I never had any leisure time to “find myself”—except for my wild mathematical dream. As a student, I would do well, but being in control of my life was an unfamiliar situation. During this second, twelve-year stage of my life, I was not going to manage elegantly—as will be seen. So, in time, I deliberately provoked a belated third stage.

  8

  Paris: Exam Hell, Agony of Choice, and One Day at the École Normale Supérieure, 1944–45

  BY SEPTEMBER 1944, most Parisians, including my family, had moved on mentally to new and different challenges. Even before the actual armistice on May 8, 1945, the end of the occupation was an infinitely welcome relief, but it also posed a complicated turn in my life.

  My next task was to seek the best university that would both accept me and encourage or at least tolerate two self-imposed goals. I wanted to keep close to geometry and to prepare myself to realize in some way that Keplerian dream I had formulated not too long before. The scary exams proved a cinch and brought about the first, the freest, and most agonizing professional choice of my life.

  The Holy Grail: Les Grandes Écoles

  The École Normale Supérieure and the École Polytechnique drew applicants from the whole of the country and were absolutely the best France could offer in the sciences. They used to nearly face each other on the south and northeast sides, respectively, of the Panthéon in the Latin Quarter.

  In an extremely rough way, the École Normale Supérieure—or Normale, rue d’Ulm, or ENS—was a miniature Cambridge or Harvard
, casually nicknamed Gnouf. Of about two hundred rigorously screened candidates in math and physics, it was entitled to accept twenty-five for the 1944–45 academic year. The war had affected many, and that year’s admissions committee ended up accepting only fifteen. The school’s name suggested that it trained male teachers for the elite secondary and higher education. (The popular primary track described earlier recruited from the numerous écoles normales d’instituteurs.) By remaining tiny, it grew increasingly prestigious and evolved to train researchers and teachers for the universities and classes like the taupe I attended in Lyon. In 1945, its reputation depended on how a field was doing—high in pure mathematics but not in physics.

  The École Polytechnique is far smaller than MIT. It is generally called X, but the name I prefer is the one the students and alumni used in my time: Carva. This is an abbreviation of boîte à Carva, after the long-serving dean Moïse Emmanuel Carvallo, an activist and half-mythical figure. Since my time, the school has become coeducational, and its enrollment, curriculum, and opportunities for graduates have continually broadened.

  As I knew since the time Father introduced me to Paris, Carva was located at 5, rue Descartes. From two or three thousand top-level candidates, its entrance examinations selected about two hundred. Compared to Normale, Carva could be called either more diversified or weakly focused. Everyone knew that its alumni ran the gamut of French life—they could be found in many agencies of the state, as well as in private banks and businesses. A few were priests, monks, professional writers or musicians, even local or national politicians. Its long role as a military academy (it was the model for West Point) had largely disappeared. Early in its glorious history, it had produced the bulk of French scientists. This was followed by a lengthy gap, but the tradition has since been revived.