apocalypse watch | Page 5

told.”

“Then kill me, you-sons of bitches! I'd rather die here, knowing I was so close, than go on living!”

“Oh, no, the general wouldn't approve,” added the whipper.

“You could have told others what you intended to do, and we don't want people looking for you or your corpse on this property. You're insane, Jodelle, everyone knows that. The courts made it clear.”

“They're corrupt! ”

“You're paranoid.”

“I know what I know!”

"You're also a drunk, well documented by a dozen cafes on the Rive Gauche that've thrown you out. Drink yourself into hell, Jodelle, but get out of here before I send you there now. Get up!

Run as fast as those spindly legs will carry you!"

The curtain rang down on the final scene of the play, a French translation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, revived by Jean-Pierre Villier, the fifty-year-old actor who was the reigning king of the Paris stage and the French screen as well as a nominee for an American Academy Award as a result of his first film in the United States. The curtain rose and fell and rose again as the large, broad-shouldered Villier acknowledged his audience by smiling and clapping his hands at their acceptance.

It was all about to erupt into madness.

From the rear of the theater an old man in torn, shabby clothes lurched down the center aisle, screaming at the top of his coarse voice. Suddenly he pulled a rifle out of his loose trousers, held by suspenders, causing those in the audience who saw him to panic, the panic instantly spreading throughout the succeeding rows of seats as men pushed women below the line of fire, the vocal chaos reverberating off the walls of the theater. Villier moved quickly, shoving back the few actors and members of the technical crew who had come out onstage.

“An angry critic I can accept, monsieur!” he roared, confronting the deranged old man approaching the stage in a familiar voice that could command any crowd.

“But this is insane! Put down your weapon and we will talk!”

“There is no talk left in me, my son! My only son! I have failed you and your mother. I'm useless, a nothing! I only want you to know that I tried.. .. I love you, my only son, and I tried, but I failed!”

With those words the old man spun his rifle around, the barrel in his mouth, his right hand surging for the trigger. He reached it and blew the back of' his head apart, blood and sinew spraying over all who were near him.

“Who the hell was he?” cried a shaken Jean-Pierre Villier at his dressing-room table, his parents at his side.

“He said such crazy things, then killed himself. Why?”

The elder Villiers, now in their late seventies, looked at each other; both nodded.

“We must talk,” said Catherine Villier as she massaged the aching neck of the man she had raised as her son.

“Perhaps with your wife too.”

“That's not necessary,” interrupted the father.

“He can handle that if he thinks he should.”

“You're right, my husband. It is his decision.”

“What are you both talking about?”

“We have kept many things from you, my son, things that in the early years might have harmed you-”

“Harmed me?”

“Through no fault of yours, Jean-Pierre. We were an occupied country, the enemy among us constantly searching for those who secretly, violently, opposed the victors, in many cases torturing and imprisoning whole families who were suspect.”

“The Resistance, naturally,” interrupted Villier.

“Naturally,” agreed the father.

“You both were a part of it, you've told me that, although you've never expounded on your contributions.”

“They're best forgotten,” said the mother.

“It was a horrible time-so many who were stigmatized and beaten as collaborators were only protecting loved ones, including their children.”

I “But this man tonight, this crazy tramp! He so identified with me that he called me his son! .. . I accept a degree of excessive devotion-it goes with the profession, however foolish that may be but to the point of killing himself in front of my eyes? Madness!”

“He was mad, driven insane by what he had endured,” said Catherine.

“You knew him?”

“Very well,” replied the old actor, Julian Villier.

“His name was Jean-Pierre Jodelle, once a promising young baritone at the opera, and we, your mother and I, tried desperately to find him after the war. There was no trace, and since we knew he had been found out by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp, we assumed he was dead, a non-entry, like thousands of others.”

“Why did you try to find him? Who was he to you?”

The only mother Jean-Pierre had ever known knelt beside his dressing-room chair, her exquisite features bespeaking the great star she had been; her blue-green eyes below her full, soft white hair were locked with his. She spoke softly.

“Not only to us, my son, but to you. He was your natural father.”

“Oh, my