Promise At Dawn. Memoir. Romain Gary. Born Roman Kacew in Lithuania 1914. Died in Paris, of a self inflicted gunshot wound in 1980. Where does one even start with this book. Have read it many times since my teens. Beautiful, funny, and tragic beyond measure. The people he met along the way, carrying their stories along with his own. The New Yorker called him a liar. But that critic can go and do one. Even if every last word was a lie, and how would he know, point-scoring inchworm - it takes away nothing. Fact, truth. Poetic truth. Go measure some marigolds.
CHAPTER 7
Not all the members of the audience found so screamingly funny the dramatic revelation of my future greatness made by my mother to the tenants of Number 16, Grand Pohulanka. There was among them a certain Mr. Piekielny—which in Polish means “infernal.” I do not know in what circumstances the ancestors of this excellent man came by such an unusual name, and perhaps there were some among them who did something to deserve it. But not so our neighbor. Mr. Piekielny looked like a melancholy mouse, meticulously clean and with a gentle, preoccupied air. He was as self-effacing as a man can be when, by force of nature, he is compelled to rise, if only so little, above the surface of the earth. He was an impressionable soul, and the complete assurance with which my mother had launched her prophecy, laying her hand on my head in the best biblical manner, had a profound and lasting effect upon him. Whenever he passed me on the stairs, he gave me a serious and respectful look. Once or twice he ventured to pat my head. He gave me a dozen lead soldiers and a cardboard Foreign Legion fort. Then, one day, he took me into his flat, where he plied me with pastry and Turkish delight. While I stuffed myself to the bursting point—who can say what tomorrow may bring?—the little fellow sat on the edge of the chair facing me, stroking his goatee stained yellow with nicotine. He invited me several times—and then one day came the moving request, the cry of the heart, the confession of the devouring and proud ambition which this kindly human mouse had been carrying hidden beneath his vest.
“When you become . . .”
He looked away with an embarrassed stare, as though conscious of his naïveté and yet unable to control it:
“When you become . . . everything your mother says . . .”
I studied him with absorbed attention. I had eaten the raisin cake but I had as yet scarcely touched the box of Turkish delight. I guessed instinctively that I had no right to it except by reason of the dazzling future which my mother had predicted for me.
“I’m going to be a French Ambassador,” I said with complete self-assurance.
“Have some more Turkish delight,” said Mr. Piekielny, pushing the box toward me.
I helped myself. He coughed discreetly.
“Mothers,” he remarked, “have a way of feeling these things. Perhaps you will really be someone of true importance. . . . Perhaps you will meet the famous and the great of this world. . . .”
He leaned across and laid his hand on my knee.
“Well then, when you meet them, when you talk to them, promise me one thing. Promise me to tell them . . .”
His voice shook a little and there was a wild, crazy light of hope in the eyes of the mouse: “Tell them there was once a Mr. Piekielny who lived at Number 16, Grand Pohulanka, in Vilna. . . .”
He stared into my eyes with a dumb look of supplication. His hand was still resting on my knee. I ate my Turkish delight, gazing at him for a while without committing myself, and then I nodded briefly.
At the end of the war, in England, where I had gone to continue the struggle after the fall of France, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, mother of the present sovereign, came to inspect my squadron at the Hartford Bridge Airfield. When she stopped opposite me and, with the sweet smile which had made her so deservedly popular, asked from what part of France I came, I tactfully answered “from Nice,” so as not to complicate matters unnecessarily for Her Gracious Majesty. Then something happened in me. I could almost see the little man jumping up and down, stamping his feet and tearing at his goatee in a desperate attempt to attract my attention and remind me of my promise. I tried to choke back the words, but they rose unbidden to my lips, and, suddenly determined to fulfill the dream of greatness of one little mouse at least, I heard myself announce to the Queen in a loud and perfectly audible voice:
“At Number 16, Grand Pohulanka, in the town of Vilna there lived a certain Mr. Piekielny. . . .”
Her Majesty politely inclined her head and moved on. The officer commanding the “Lorraine” Squadron, my dear friend Henri de Rancourt, shot at me, as he followed her, a venomous look.
But I didn’t care: I had at last earned my Turkish delight.
The friendly mouse of Vilna long ago terminated his tiny existence in a Nazi crematorium, along with several million other European Jews.
I, however, continue scrupulously to keep my promise in my various encounters with the great ones of the earth. From the United Nations building in New York to the French Embassy in London, from the Federal Palace in Berne to the Elysée in Paris, from Charles de Gaulle and Vishinsky to ambassadors and high dignitaries everywhere, I have never failed to mention the existence of the little man, and during my years in America I often had the pleasure of telling millions of television viewers that at Number 16, Grand Pohulanka in Vilna, there lived a certain Mr. Piekielny, may God bless his soul.
But what has been done cannot be undone,the little man’s bones, transformed into soap.
I still have a passion for Turkish delight. However, since my mother always saw me as a combination of Lord Byron, Garibaldi, d’Annunzio, d’Artagnan, Robin Hood and Richard the Lion-hearted, I now have to keep a watchful eye upon my waistline. I have not been able to achieve any of the immortal deeds which she expected of me, but at least I have managed not to develop too prominent a paunch. Every day I twist and turn on the floor and twice a week I go for a run—I run, I run, I run—oh, how I run!—but somehow I never manage either to reach, or to leave behind—I don’t know which. I also indulge in other attempts at mastery—fencing, archery, target shooting, weight lifting, writing, juggling: it is, I agree, rather foolish, in your forty-fifth year, to believe everything your mother told and foretold you, but I can’t help that. I was to be a shining hero, a champion of the world, and what is left of me today still keeps trying, longing, remembering. I have not succeeded in reforming the world, in defeating the gods of stupidity, of prejudice, of hatred, in establishing a reign of dignity and justice among men, but I did win the ping-pong tournament in Nice in 1932, and so I can say that I have truly done my best. "
This book is like a primal scream. The anguish, the hunger, the observation and the warmth- That's the spell, the glamour, the enchantment.
