The Collaborators
Reginald Hill
From the bestselling author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series, a superb novel of wartime passion, loyalty – and betrayalParis, 1945. In the aftermath of the French liberation, Janine Simonian stands accused of passing secret information to the Nazis.She is dragged from her cell before jeering crowds, to face a jury of former Resistance members who are out for her blood. Standing bravely in court, Janine pleads guilty to all charges.Why did Janine betray, not just her country, but her own husband? Why did so many French men and women collaborate with the Nazis, while others gave their lives in resistance?What follows is a story of conscience and sacrifice that portrays the impossible choice between personal and national loyalty during the Nazi occupation.
REGINALD HILL
THE COLLABORATORS
Copyright
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1987
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1987
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007212064
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007290079
Version: 2015-09-16
Contents
Cover (#u18bffbd6-7b5f-5811-97fe-8702085c5ef3)
Title Page (#u8e1777da-c478-5af2-bf6e-3569d2bc4131)
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
PART TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART FIVE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
PART SIX
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART SEVEN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART EIGHT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About Reginald Hill (#litres_trial_promo)
By Reginald Hill
About the Publisher
Dedication
Car la collaboration, comme le suicide,
comme le crime, est un phenomène normal.
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Qu’est-ce qu’un collaborateur?
Chacun son Boche
Communist rallying cry,August 1944
Acknowledgements
For permission to reprint copyright material the author and publishers wish to thank the following: Éditions Gallimard, for quotations from the work of Louis Aragon and Jean-Paul Sartre; Les Éditions de Minuit, for two extracts from Paul Éluard’s collection Au rendez-vous allemand; and Macmillan, for a quotation from Vercors’ Le silence de la mer.
Prologue
March 1945
Sur mes refuges détruits Sur mes phares écroulés Sur les murs de mon ennui J’écris ton nom
Paul Éluard, Liberté
1
She dreamt of the children.
They were picnicking on the edge of a corn field, Pauli hiding from his sister, Céci giggling with delight as she crawled through the forest of green stalks. Now she too was out of sight, but her happy laughter and her brother’s encouraging cries drifted back to their mother, dozing in the warm sunshine.
Suddenly there was silence, and a shadow between her and the sun, and a shape leaning over her, and a hand shaking her shoulder.
She sat up crying, ‘Jean-Paul!’
‘On your feet, Kraut-cunt. You’ve got a visitor.’
It was the fat wardress with the walleye who pulled her upright off the palliasse. A man in a black, badly-cut suit was standing before her. Without hesitation or embarrassment she sank to her knees and stretched out her hands in supplication.
‘Please, sir, is there any news of my children? I beg you, tell me what has happened to my children!’
‘Shut up,’ said the wardress. ‘Here, put on this hat.’
‘Hat?’ She was used to cruelty but not to craziness. ‘What do I want with a hat? Is the magistrate bored with the sight of my head?’
‘Your examination’s over, woman. Haven’t you been told? She should have been told!’
He spoke with a bureaucratic irritation which had little to do with human sympathy. The wardress shrugged and said, ‘She’ll have been told. She pays little heed this one unless you mention her brats. Now, put on the hat like the man says. See, it’s like one of them Boche helmets, so it should suit you.’
She was holding an old cloche hat in dirty grey felt.
‘Why must I wear a hat? This is lunacy!’
‘Janine Simonian,’ said the man. ‘The examining magistrate has decided that your case must go for trial before the Court of Justice set up by the Provisional Government of the Republic. I am here to conduct you there. Put on the hat. It will hide your shame.’
Janine Simonian was still on her knees as if in prayer. Now she let her arms slowly fall and leaned forward till she rested on her hands like a caged beast.
‘My shame?’ she said. ‘Oh no. To hide yours, you mean!’
Impatiently the wardress dropped the hat on her skull, but immediately Janine tore it off and hurled it at the official.
‘No! Let them see what they’ve done to me. I’ll strip naked if you like so they can see the lot. Let them see me as I am!’
‘That will be the purpose of your trial,’ said the official, retrieving the hat. ‘Now, if you please, madame.’
’Madame, is it? What a lot of changes! A hat, and madame. What’s wrong with Kraut-cunt? Or Bitch-face? Or Whore? Oh, Jesus Christ!’
She screamed as the wardress twisted her arms behind her and locked them together with handcuffs so tight that they crushed the delicate wrist-bones beneath the emaciated flesh.
‘You’ll hear worse than that before the trial’s over, dearie, never you fret,’ said the wardress, ramming the hat down over her brow with brutal force. ‘Now, on your feet and follow the nice man, though it’s a waste of time and money, if you ask me. Straight out and shot, that was the best way for your kind. I don’t know how they missed you.’
‘Keep your mouth shut, woman,’ ordered the court officer. ‘You’re a Government employee. Show some respect for the law.’
The wardress glared resentfully at his back as she urged Janine after him.
‘Jumped up fart-in-a-bottle,’ she muttered.
She got her revenge twenty minutes later as they paused outside the courtroom. Suddenly Janine lunged her head at the jamb. She gave her skull a sickening crack but she dislodged the hat. The official stooped to pick it up, but before he could retrieve it, the wardress had pushed Janine through the doorway.
On the crowded public benches, the ripple of expectancy surged momentarily into a chorus of abuse then almost instantly faded into an uneasy silence.
They had been expecting to see a woman they could hate. Instead they found themselves looking at a creature from another world, whose pale, set face, eroded to the bone line by hunger and cold, was completely dehumanized by the high, narrow dome of the shaven skull. In the six months since that first punitive shaving, her head had been razored three times more as an anti-vermin measure. Now the shadows of regrowing hair, and the scars and sores where the razor had been wielded with deliberate or accidental savagery, gave her skull the look of a dead planet. Even the jury, selected for their unblemished Resistance records, looked uneasy. There were only four of them. The new Courts of Justice were desperately overworked and personnel had to be spread thin. Janine, indifferent to change or reaction, fixed her gaze on the single presiding judge and cried, ‘Please, Your Honour, I don’t care what you do to me, but if you have any news of my children, please tell me. Surely I’ve a right to know, a mother’s right.’
For a moment the plea touched almost every heart, but at the same time it made her human again and therefore vulnerable, and they had come to wound.
‘Probably the little bastards’ve gone back to Berlin with their dad!’ a voice called out.
Eager for release from their distracting sympathy, the majority of those present burst into laughter. But this died away as a man on the benches reserved for witnesses leapt to his feet and cried angrily, ‘You’re wrong! Take that back! The father of this whore’s children was a hero and a patriot. Don’t slander him or his children. He couldn’t help his wife and they can’t help their mother.’
Again the courtroom was reduced to silence under the contemptuous gaze of the speaker, a man of about thirty with prematurely greying hair and a face almost as pale and intense as the prisoner’s. He leaned heavily on a stick, and on the breast of his smart black business suit he wore the ribbons of the Médaille de la Résistance and the Croix de l’Ordre de la Libération.
This time the judge, a grey-faced, tired man of perhaps fifty, broke the silence.
‘Monsieur Valois,’ he said. ‘We are delighted to see you restored to health and honoured to have you in court, particularly as your testimony is, I understand, essential to the prosecution of the case.’
Now his tone changed from polite respect to quiet vehemence.
‘However, you must remember that during the course of this trial you are as much subject to the discipline of our country’s laws as the prisoner herself. Therefore I would respectfully ask that you offer your testimony in due order and form.’
Christian Valois subsided slowly and the judge let his weary gaze move unblinkingly over the public benches. He had lost count of how many of these cases he had had to deal with since the Courts of Justice had finally creaked into operation here in Paris last October. He knew there was work enough to keep him busy for months, perhaps years to come. Well, it was necessary; justice required that those who had betrayed their country’s trust should be brought to account, and the people demanded it. But it was well for the people to know too that the days when the Resistance wrote its own laws were past, and the judiciary was back in control.
Satisfied that his point was made he said, ‘Now let us proceed.’
There was some legal preamble, but finally, in an intense silence, the charges were read.
‘Janine Simonian, born Crozier, you are accused that between a date unknown in 1940 and the liberation of Paris in August 1944 you gave aid and comfort to the illegal occupying forces of the German Army; that during the whole or part of this same period you acted as a paid informant of the secret intelligence agencies of the said forces; that you provided the enemies of your country with information likely to assist them in defeating operations and arresting members of the FFI; and more specifically, that you revealed to Hauptmann Mai, counter-intelligence officer of the German Abwehr, details of a meeting held in June 1944, and that as a result of this betrayal the meeting was raided, several resistants were captured and subsequently imprisoned, tortured and deported, and your own husband, Jean-Paul Simonian, was brutally murdered.’
The official reading the charges paused and the spectators filled the pause with a great howl of hatred. Janine heard all the abuse the wardress had promised.
She looked slowly round the room as if searching for someone, her gaze slipping as easily over the anxious faces of her parents as all the rest.
‘Janine Simonian, you must plead to these charges. How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?’
She sighed deeply, seemed to shrug her thin shoulders and spoke inaudibly.
‘The court must be able to hear the prisoner’s plea.’
Again that shrug as if all this was irrelevant.
But now her eyes had found a face to fix on, the pale, drawn features of the man called Christian Valois, and she raised her voice just sufficiently to be heard.
‘Guilty,’ she said wearily. ‘I plead guilty.’
PART ONE
June 1940
Ils ne passeront pas!
Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain,
Verdun 1916
1
The poplar-lined road ran arrow-straight from north to south.
At dawn it was empty. The rising sun barred its white surface with the poplars’ shadows so that it lay like an eloper’s ladder against the ripening walls of corn.
Now a car passed down it fast.
A few minutes later there was another.
Both cars had their roof-racks piled high with luggage.
The sun climbed higher, grew hotter. By ten there was a steady stream of south-bound traffic. By eleven it had slowed to a crawl. And it no longer consisted solely of cars.
There were trucks, vans, buses, taxis; horse-drawn carts and pony-drawn traps; people on foot pushing handcarts, barrows, prams and trolleys; men, women and children and babes in arms; rich and poor, old and young, soldiers in blue, priests in black, ladies in high heels, peasants in sabots; and animals too, dogs and cats and smaller pets nursed by loving owners, cows, geese, goats and hens driven by fearful farmers; here in truth was God’s plenty.
By midday the stream was almost static, setting up a long ribbon of heat-haze which outshimmered the gentler vibration above the ripening corn. Cars broke down under the strain and were quickly pushed into the ditch by those behind. Janine Simonian sat in her tiny Renault, terrified that this would soon be her fate. The engine was coughing like a sick man. She glanced at her two small children and tried to smile reassuringly. Then she returned her gaze to the dark-green truck ahead of her and concentrated on its tailboard, as if by will alone she hoped to create a linkage and be towed along in its wake.
Her lips moved in prayer. She’d done a lot of praying in the past few weeks.
So far it hadn’t worked at all.
There were four of the green trucks, still nose to tail as they had been since they set off from Fresnes Prison that morning.
In the first of them, unbeknown to Janine, sat her cousin, Michel Boucher. It was to his sister, Mireille, living in what seemed like the pastoral safety of the Ain region east of Lyon, that she was fleeing.
Boucher himself wasn’t fleeing anywhere, at least not by choice. And given the choice, he wouldn’t have thought of his sister, whom he hadn’t seen for nearly ten years. Besides, he hated the countryside.
Paris was the only place to be, in or out of gaol. Paris was his family, more than his sister and her peasant husband, certainly more than his cousin and her fearful mother. Bloody shop-keepers, they deserved to be robbed. And bloody warders, they needed some sense kicked into them.
Rattling his handcuffs behind him he said, ‘Hey, Monsieur Chauvet, do we have to have these things on? If them Stukas come, we’re sitting ducks.’
‘Shut up,’ commanded the warder without much conviction.
He was thinking of his family. They were stuck back there in Paris with the Boche at the gate while he was sitting in a truck conveying a gang of evacuated criminals south to safety. Something was wrong somewhere!
‘Know what this lot looks like?’ said another prisoner, a thin bespectacled man called Pajou. ‘A military convoy, that’s what. Just the kind of target them Stukas like. We’d be better off walking.’
‘You think your mates would be able to spot you at a couple of hundred miles an hour, Pajou?’ said the warder viciously. ‘No, my lad, you’ll be getting your Iron Cross posthumously if the bastards come!’
Pajou looked indignant. He’d been a charge hand at a munition factory near Metz. A year before, he had been sentenced to eight years for passing information about production schedules to German Military Intelligence. He had always loudly protested his innocence.
Before he could do so now, Boucher rattled his cuffs again and pleaded, ‘Come on, chief, you know it’s not right. If them Stukas come, it’s like we were staked out for execution.’
The warder, Chauvet, opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Pajou cried, ‘Listen! Look!’
Looking and listening were almost the same thing. Two black spots expanded like ink stains in the clear blue sky in a crescendo of screaming engines; then came the hammering of guns, the blossoming of explosions; and the long straight river of refugees fountained sideways into the poplar-lined ditches as the Stukas ran a blade of burning metal along the narrow road.
Boucher saw bullets ripping into the truck behind as he dived over the side. With no protection from his arms, he fell awkwardly, crashing down on one shoulder and rolling over and over till a poplar trunk soaked up his impetus.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he groaned as he lay there half-stunned. All around were the cries and moans of the terror-stricken and the wounded. How long he lay there he did not know, but it was that other sound, heard only once but now so familiar, that roused him. The Stukas were returning.
Staggering to his feet he plunged deeper into the field which lay beyond the roadside ditch. What crop it held he could not say. He was no countryman to know the difference between corn and barley, wheat and rye. But the sea of green and gold stems gave at least the illusion of protection as the Stukas passed.
Rising again, he found he was looking into Pajou’s pallid face. His spectacles were awry and one lens was cracked but an elastic band behind his head had kept them in place.
‘You all right, Miche?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What now?’
Why the man should offer him the leadership, Boucher did not know. He hardly knew Pajou and didn’t care for what he did know. Robbing the rich was one thing, selling your country another.
But people often deferred to him, probably simply because of his appearance. Over six foot tall, Titian-haired, eagle-nosed, he had the kind of piratical good looks which promised excitement and adventure. Also he was known from his name as Miche the Butcher, and if his easy-going manner made anyone doubt his capacity for violence, his sheer bulk generally inhibited them from testing it.
But Pajou’s question was a good one. What now? Run till they found a friendly blacksmith?
‘Hold on,’ said Boucher.
An image from his mad flight from the road had returned to him.
He retraced his steps to the roadside. Lying in the ditch just as he had remembered was the warder. There was no sign of a bullet wound, but his head was split open. Despite the freedom of his arms, he must have fallen even more awkwardly than Boucher.
The bloody head moved, the eyes opened and registered Boucher, who raised his booted foot threateningly. With a groan, Chauvet closed his eyes and his head fell back.
Squatting down with his back to the body, Boucher undid the man’s belt, then fumbled along it till he came to the chain which held his ring of keys. It slid off easily.
Standing up, he found that Pajou had joined him.
Looking down at the unconscious warder, he said admiringly, ‘Did you do that? Christ, you can handle yourself, can’t you, Miche?’
‘Let’s go,’ said Boucher shortly.
They set off once more into the green-gold sea, sinking into it like lovers after a couple of hundred metres.
It took ten minutes working back to back to unlock the cuffs from Pajou’s wrists, two seconds then to release Boucher.
Released, Pajou was a different man, confident of purpose.
‘Come on,’ he said, massaging his wrists.
‘Where, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Back to Paris, of course,’ said Pajou in surprise. ‘With the Germans in Paris, the war’s over.’
‘Tell that to them back there,’ said Boucher curtly gesturing towards the road.
‘They should’ve stayed at home,’ said Pajou. ‘There’ll be no fighting in Paris, you’ll see. It’ll be an open city. Once the peace starts, it’ll be a German city.’
Boucher considered the idea. He didn’t much like it.
‘All the more reason to be somewhere else,’ he growled.
‘You think so?’ said Pajou. ‘Me, I think there’ll be work to do, money to be made. Stick with me, Miche. The Abwehr will be recruiting likely lads with the right qualities, and they’re bloody generous, believe me!’
‘So you did work for them,’ said Boucher in disgust. ‘All that crap about being framed! I should’ve known.’
‘It didn’t harm anybody,’ said Pajou. ‘If anything, it probably saved a few lives. The Krauts were coming anyway. Whatever helped them get things over with quickest was best for us, I say. It’s them silly military bastards who went on about the Maginot Line that should’ve been locked up. We must’ve been mad to pay any heed to a pathetic old fart like Pétain . . . Jesus Christ!’
Boucher had seized him by his shirt front and lifted him up till they were eye to eye.
‘Careful what you say about the Marshal, friend,’ he growled. ‘He’s the greatest man in France, mebbe the greatest since Napoleon, and I’ll pull the tongue out of anyone who says different.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Pajou. ‘He’s the greatest. Come on, Miche, let’s not quarrel. Like I say, stick with me, and we’ll be all right. What’s the difference between robbing the Boche and robbing our own lot? What do you say?’
For answer Boucher flung the smaller man to the ground and glowered down at him.
‘I say, sod off, you nasty little traitor. Go and work for the Boche if you must, and a lot of joy I hope you both get from it. Me, I’ll stick to honest thieving. I may be a crook, but at least I’m a French bloody crook! Go on, get out of my sight, before I do something I probably won’t be sorry for!’
‘Like kicking my head in like you did that warder’s?’ mocked Pajou, scrambling out of harm’s way. ‘Well, please yourself, friend. If you change your mind any time, you know how to find me! See you, Miche.’
He got to his feet and next moment was gone.
Michel Boucher sat alone in the middle of a field of waving cereal. It was peaceful here, but it was lonely. And when the bright sun slid out of the blue sky, he guessed it would also be frightening.
This was no place for him. He was a creature of the city, and that city was Paris. Pajou had been right in that at least. There was nowhere else to go.
The difference was of course that he would return as a Frenchman, ready to resist in every way possible the depredations of the hated occupiers.
Feeling almost noble, he rose to his feet and, ignoring the path trampled by Pajou, began to forge his own way northward through the ripening corn.
2
Janine Simonian had dived into the ditch on the other side of the road as the Stukas made their first pass. Like her cousin, she had no arm free to cushion her fall. The left clutched her two-year-old daughter, Cécile, to her breast; the right was bound tight around her five-year-old son, Pauli. They lay quite still, hardly daring to breathe, for more than a minute. Finally the little girl began to cry. The boy tried to pull himself free, eager to view the vanishing planes.
‘Pauli! Lie still! They may come back!’ urged his mother.
‘I doubt it, madame,’ said a middle-aged man a little further down the ditch. ‘Limited armaments, these Boche planes. They’ll blaze away for a few minutes, then it’s back to base to reload. No, we won’t see those boys for a while now.’
Janine regarded this self-proclaimed expert doubtfully. As if provoked by her gaze, he rose and began dusting down his dark business suit.
‘Maman, why do we have to go to Lyon?’ asked Pauli in the clear precise tone which made old ladies smile and proclaim him ‘old-fashioned’.
‘Because we’ll be safe down there,’ said Janine. ‘We’ll stay with your Aunt Mireille and Uncle Lucien. They don’t live in the city. They’ve got a farm way out in the country. We’ll be safe there.’
‘We won’t be safe in Paris?’ asked the boy.
‘Because the Boche are in Paris,’ answered his mother.
‘But Gramma and Granpa stayed, didn’t they? And Bubbah Sophie too.’
‘Yes, but Granpa and Gramma have to look after their shop…’
‘More fool them,’ interrupted the middle-aged expert. ‘I fought in the last lot, you know. I know what your Boche is like. Butchering and looting, that’s what’s going on back there. Butchering and looting.’
With these reassuring words, he returned to his long limousine, which was standing immediately behind Janine’s tiny Renault. He was travelling alone. She guessed he’d sent his family ahead in plenty of time and been caught by his own greed in staying behind to cram the packed limo with everything of value he could lay his hands on.
Janine reprimanded herself for the unkind thought. Wasn’t her own little car packed to, and above, the roof with all her earthly possessions?
Others were following the businessman’s example and beginning to return to the road. There didn’t seem to have been any casualties in this section of the long procession, though from behind and ahead drifted cries of grief and pain.
‘Come on, madame! Hurry up!’ called the man, as if she were holding up the whole convoy.
‘In a minute!’ snapped Janine, who was busy comforting her baby and brushing the dust out of her short blonde fuzz of childish hair.
Pauli rose and took a couple of steps back on to the road where he stood shading his eyes against the sun which was high in the southern sky.
‘They are coming back,’ he said in his quiet, serious voice.
It took a couple of seconds for Janine to realize what he meant.
‘Pauli!’ she screamed, but her voice was already lost in the explosion of a stick of bombs only a couple of hundred metres ahead. And the blast from the next bowled her over back into the protecting ditch.
Then the screaming engines were fading once more.
‘Pauli! Pauli!’ she cried, eyes trying to pierce the brume of smoke and dust which enveloped the road, heart fearful of what she would see when she did.
‘Yes, maman,’ said the boy’s voice from behind her.
She turned. Her son, looking slightly surprised, was sitting in the corn field.
‘It flew me through the air, maman,’ he said in wonderment. ‘Like the man at the circus. Didn’t you see me?’
‘Oh Pauli, are you all right?’
For answer he rose and came to her. He appeared unscathed. The baby was crying again and the boy said gravely, ‘Let me hold her, maman.’
Janine passed the young girl over. Céci often reacted better to the soothing noises made by her brother than to her mother’s ministrations.
Turning once more to the road, Janine rose and took a couple of steps towards the car. And now the smoke cleared a little.
‘Oh Holy Jesus!’ she prayed or swore.
The bomb must have landed on the far side of the road. There was a small crater in the corn field and a couple of poplars were badly scarred and showed their bright green core, almost as obscene as torn flesh and pulsating blood.
Almost.
The businessman lay across the bonnet of his ruined car. His head was twisted round so that it stared backward over his shoulders, a feat of contortion made possible by the removal of a great wedge of flesh from his neck out of which blood fountained like water from a garden hose.
As she watched, the pressure diminished, the fountain faded, and the empty husk slid slowly to the ground.
‘Is he dead, maman?’ enquired Pauli.
‘Quickly, bring Céci. Get into the car!’ she shouted.
‘I think it’s broken,’ said the boy.
He was right. A fragment of metal had been driven straight through the engine. There was a strong smell of petrol. It was amazing the whole thing hadn’t gone up in flames.
‘Pauli, take the baby into the field!’
Opening the car door she began pulling cases and boxes on to the road. She doubted if the long procession of refugees would ever get moving again. If it did, it was clear her car was going to take no part in it.
She carried two suitcases into the corn field. As she returned a third time, there was a soft breathy noise like a baby’s wind and next moment the car was wrapped in flames.
Pauli said, ‘Are we going back home, maman?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Will papa be there?’
‘I don’t think so, Pauli. Not yet.’
If there’d been the faintest gleam of hope that Jean-Paul would return before the Germans, she could never have left. But the children’s safety had seemed imperative.
She looked at the burning car, the bomb craters, the dead businessman. So this was safety!
‘Maman, will the Germans have stopped butchering and looting now?’ asked the boy.
‘Pauli, save your breath for walking.’
And in common with many others who had found there is a despair beyond terror, she set off with her family back the way they had come.
3
Under the Arc de Triomphe, a cat warmed herself at the Eternal Flame. Then, deciding that the air on this fine June morning was now balmy enough to be enjoyed by a sensitive lady, she set off down the Champs-Élysées. She looked neither to left nor right. There was no need to. Sometimes she sat in the middle of the road and washed herself. Sometimes she wandered from one pavement to the other, hoping to find tasty scraps fallen beneath the café tables. But no one had eaten here for at least two days and the pavements were well scavenged. Finally, when she reached the Rond Point, she decided like a lady of breeding whose servants have deserted her that she’d better start fending for herself and bounded away among the chestnut trees where the beat of a bird’s wing was the first sign of life she’d seen since sunrise.
Christian Valois too was reduced to getting his own breakfast, in his family’s spacious apartment in Passy. Four days earlier the Government had packed its bags, personal and diplomatic, and made off to Bordeaux. With them had gone Valois’s parents, his young sister, and the maid-of-all work. Léon Valois was a member of the Chamber of Deputies and a fervent supporter of Pétain. By training a lawyer, he reckoned there weren’t many things, including wars, which couldn’t be negotiated to a satisfactory compromise. His son, though a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance, was a romantic. To him the move to Bordeaux was a cowardly flight. He refused to leave Paris. Neither his father’s arguments nor his mother’s hysterics could move him. Only his sister, Marie-Rose’s tears touched his heart, but couldn’t melt his resolve.
At work he got less attention. His superior, Marc du Prat, smiled wearily and said, ‘Try not to spill too much blood on my office carpet.’ Then, pausing only to remove the Corot sketch which was his badge of culture, he left.
For three days Christian Valois had conscientiously gone to work, even though he had nothing to do and no one for company. The Ministry occupied part of the great Palace of the Louvre. What was happening in the museum he did not know, but in his section overlooking the Rue de Rivoli, it was eerily quiet, both inside and out.
This morning, because he found himself very reluctant to go in at all, he had forced himself out of bed even earlier than usual. But when he arrived at the Louvre almost an hour before he was officially due, the thought of that silent dusty room revolted him and his feet took him with little resistance down towards the river.
He saw few signs of life. A car crossed an intersection some distance away. Two pedestrians on the other side of the street hugged the wall and looked down as they passed. A priest slipped furtively into St Germain-l’Auxerrois as though he had a secret assignation with God.
Then he was on the quay, looking at the endless, indifferent Seine.
Was he merely a posing fool? he asked himself moodily as he strolled along. Perhaps his father was right. With the army in flight or simply outflanked, the time for heroics was past. It was time for the negotiators to save what they could from the débâcle. Perhaps the Germans wouldn’t even bother to send their army into Paris. Perhaps in the ultimate act of scorn they would occupy the city with a busload of clerks!
At least I should feel at home then, he told himself bitterly.
He had crossed to the Île de la Cité. When he reached the Pont du Change, he headed for the Right Bank once more, half-resolved that he would waste no more time on this foolishness. If he truly wanted to be a hero he should have fled, not to Bordeaux, but to England or North Africa, and looked for a chance to fight instead of merely making gestures.
So rapt was he that his feet were walking in time with the noise before his mind acknowledged it. Once acknowledged, though, he recognized it at once, for he had heard it often, echoing in his dreams like thunder in a dark sky ever since the war had passed from threat to reality, and his imagination had not deceived him. It was the crash of marching feet, powerful and assured, striking sparks off the paving stones as if they made an electrical connection between the conquerors and the conquered. He stopped and leaned against the low parapet of the bridge, overcome by his own mental image.
Then suddenly he could see as well as hear them, and the reality was even more devastating. In columns of three they were striding into the Place du Châtelet, passing beneath the Colonne du Palmier whose gilded Victory seemed to spread her angelic wings wider and hold her triumphal wreaths higher in greeting to these new and mightier victors.
Now they were on the bridge and coming towards him, trio after trio of strong young men, their faces beneath their heavy helmets grave with victory. Past him they strode with never a sideways look. He turned to follow their progress, saw the leaders halt before the Palace of Justice, saw them turn to face it, saw the great gates swing open and the gendarme on duty stand aside as the first Germans entered.
Now once more it was essential he should be at his desk.
He walked as fast as he could without breaking into an undignified trot which might be mistaken for fear. By the time he reached the Louvre the Rue de Rivoli had come to life once more, but what a life! No colourful drift of oppers and tourists, but a rumbling, roaring procession of trucks and tanks and cars and motor-cycles; and above all, of marching men, an endless stream of grey, like ash-flaked lava flowing inexorably, all-consumingly, through the streets of Pompeii.
Seated at last at his desk, he realized his calf-muscles were shaking. He experienced the phenomenon distantly as though the trembling were external and did not have its source in his own physical core.
Minutes passed, perhaps an hour.
Suddenly, without hearing anything, he knew they were in the building. He’d grown used to its emptiness, its sense of sleeping space.
Now…
Noise confirmed his intuition. Footsteps; steel on marble; regular, swift; certain.
The trembling in his legs grew wilder and wilder. It was beginning to spread through the whole of his body, must surely be evident now in his arms, his shoulders, his face. He tried to control it but couldn’t, and prayed, not out of fear but shame, that they would not after all find him.
But now the steps were close. Doors opening and shutting. And at last, his.
In that self-same moment the trembling stopped.
It was the young soldier who looked in who showed the shock of his discovery, clearly taken aback to find anyone here.
‘Yes?’ said Valois testily.
The young man levelled his rifle, turned his head and called, ‘Sir! Here’s someone!’
More footsteps, then a middle-aged warrant officer came into the room, pushing the soldier’s rifle up with irritation.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he said in execrable French.
‘Valois. Junior Secretary, Ministry of Finance.’
‘You what? I thought this was a museum. Where’s all the pictures?’
‘That’s another part of the Palace. This wing holds the Ministry of Finance.’
‘Does it, now? Don’t suppose you keep any money here, though!’ the man laughed.
Valois did not reply.
‘No. Thought not. All right. Don’t go away. Someone may want to talk to you.’
Turning to the soldier, the man commanded, ‘Stay on guard outside!’
The soldier left. The warrant officer gave the mockery of a salute. ‘Carry on with your work, Monsieur Valois,’ he said smiling.
Then he was gone.
Valois slowly relaxed. The trembling was starting again, but less violently now. He felt a sudden surge of exultation through his body.
He had seen the enemy face to face and had not flinched.
But best of all, he had felt the upwelling of such a powerful hatred that it must surely spring from a reservoir deep enough to sustain him through the long, bitter and dangerous struggle that lay ahead. He’d been right not to flee to Bordeaux or even England. Here was where the real resistance to the Boche would start. Whatever the future held for France, the worst it could hold for Christian Valois was a hero’s death.
Suddenly he felt a surge of something much stronger than exultation move through his body. He rose and hurried to the door. The young soldier regarded him with alarm and brought his rifle up.
Making a desperate and humiliating mime, Christian pushed past him. There were driving forces stronger than either terror or patriotism. He was discovering a truth rarely revealed in song or saga, that even heroes have to crap.
PART TWO
June-December 1940
Fuyez les bois et les fontaines Taisez-vous oiseaux querelleurs Vos chants sont mis en quarantaines C’est le règne de l’oiseleur Je reste roi de mes douleurs
Louis Aragon, Richard II
1
There was no getting away from it, thought Günter Mai. Even for an Abwehr lieutenant who was more likely to see back alleys than front lines, it was nice to be a conqueror. Not nice in a brass-banded, jack-booted, Sieg Heiling sort of way. But nice to be here in this lovely city, in this elegant bedroom in this luxurious hotel which for the next five? ten? twenty? years would be the Headquarters of Military Intelligence in Paris.
He gazed out across the sun-gilt rooftops to the distant mast of the Eiffel Tower and saluted the view with his pipe.
‘Thank you, Paris,’ he said.
Behind him someone coughed, discreet as a waiter, but when he turned he saw it was his section head, Major Bruno Zeller.
‘Good morning, Günter,’ said the elegant young man. ‘I missed you at breakfast. Can my keeper be ill, I asked myself.’
‘Morning, sir. I wasn’t too hungry after last night’s celebration.’
‘You mean you ate as well as drank?’ said Zeller lounging gracefully on to the bed. ‘You amaze me. Now tell me, do you recall a man called Pajou?’
Mai’s normally round, amiable face lengthened into a scowl. A hangover reduced his Zeller-tolerance dramatically. In his late twenties, he had long got over the irritation of having to ‘sir’ someone several years his junior. Such things happened, particularly if you were the son of an assistant customs officer in Offenburg and ‘sir’ was heir to some turreted castle overhanging the Rhine, not to mention a distant relative of Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr.
But that didn’t entitle the cheeky child to wander at will into your bedroom and lie across your bed!
‘Pajou. Now let me see,’ said Mai. Yes, of course, he remembered him well. But having remembered, it now suited him to play the game at his speed. From his dressing-table he took a thick black book. It was an old Hitler Jugend Tagebuch which he’d never found any use for till he started in intelligence work. Now, filled with minuscule, illegible writing, it was the repository of all he knew. He guessed Zeller would pay highly for a fair transcript. He saw the young man’s long, manicured fingers beat an impatient tattoo on the counterpane. The movement caught the light on his heavy silver signet ring, reminding Mai of another source of irritation. The signet was the family heraldic device, basically a Zed crossed by a hunting horn. On first noticing it, Mai had remarked unthinkingly that he had seen a similar device on some brass buttons which he thought came from a coat belonging to his grandfather. Zeller had returned from his next visit to his widowed mother delighted with the news, casually introduced, that there had been an under-keeper called Mai working on the family’s Black Forest estate till he’d gone off to Offenburg to better himself. ‘And here’s his grandson, still working for the family in a manner of speaking! Strange how these things work out, eh, Günter?’
Thereafter he often referred to Mai as ‘my keeper’, though it had to be said he didn’t share the joke with other people.
Mai took it all in good part - except when he had a hangover. Basically he quite liked the young major. Also there were other shared pieces of knowledge which dipped the scales of power in his favour.
One, unusable except in the direst emergency, was that Zeller was as queer as a kosher Nazi and was no doubt already looking for some Gallic soulmate to criminally waste his precious Aryan seed on.
Another, and more important for everyday working, was that Mai was twice as good at the job as his boss, though Zeller compensated by taking twice the credit.
He began to read from the book.
‘Pajou, Alphonse. Worked for the National Armaments Company. I recruited him in Metz in ‘38. No political commitment, in it purely for the money. Got greedy, took risks and got caught. Tried and gaoled just before the war. Lucky for him. Any later and he’d have got the guillotine. So, what about him?’
‘It seems he got an early release, unofficially I guess, and would like to make it official by re-entering our employ. He’s not very trusting, however. The duty sergeant says he insisted on dealing with you when he rang earlier this morning.’
‘Why didn’t he put the call through then?’ asked Mai.
‘The sergeant says that you left instructions last night that you weren’t to be disturbed by anything less than a call from the Führer and not even then if he wanted to transfer the charge.’
Mai grimaced behind a puff of smoke.
‘Sorry about that, sir. Look, I’m not sure Pajou’s the kind of man we want just now. Basically he’s a nasty piece of work and he’s not even a native Parisian. What we ought to be doing now, before the first shock fades and people begin to take notice, is establishing a network of nice ordinary citizens who’ll feed us with intelligence just for the sake of reassurance that the dreadful Hun is a nice ordinary chap like themselves.’
‘Clever thinking, Günter. But in the end we’ll doubtless need the nasties, so we might as well recruit Pajou now. If we don’t no doubt the SD will when they arrive.’
The Sicherheitsdienst was the chief Nazi intelligence gathering service. With France under military control, the SD ought not yet to have a presence, let alone a function.
’When!’ said Mai. ‘I heard the bastards were already settling in at the Hôtel du Louvre. And I’m sure I saw Fiebelkorn in the restaurant last night - in civvies, of course, not his fancy SS colonel’s uniform.’
‘Let’s hope it was a drunken delusion,’ said Zeller with a fastidious shudder.
‘One thing, if they’ve started showing their faces, it means the fighting’s definitely over. Right, sir, I’ll talk to Pajou if he rings back.’
‘No, you’ll talk to him face to face,’ said Zeller, rising gracefully. ‘He left word that he would look for you by the Medici Fountain at ten-thirty this morning. That gives you just half an hour.’
‘But breakfast…’ objected Mai, genuinely indignant.
‘I thought you weren’t hungry. Anyway a good keeper should have been doing the rounds of his estate at the crack of dawn. Let me know how you get on, won’t you?’
With a smile and a sort of waving salute, Zeller left.
‘Go stuff yourself,’ murmured Mai, but he began to get ready. Zeller expected obedience in small matters, and though Mai had been looking forward to his favourite hangover cure of sweet black coffee and half a dozen croissants, it wasn’t worth the risk of irritating him into some petty revenge.
He clattered through the lobby of the hotel trying to look brisk and businesslike, but once out into the gentle morning sunlight, he slowed to strolling pace. Sod Pajou. He could wait. What was more, he would wait. He wasn’t selling information today, he was applying for a job!
It was good to see how things were coming back to normal. The Bon Marché emporium which he could see at the far side of the garden opposite the hotel had reopened and looked to be doing good business. He must go on a shopping expedition himself soon. Victory or no victory, there’d soon be shortages he guessed. And a nice supply of silks and perfume would be useful on his next home leave.
He strolled on, taking deep breaths of the rich enchanted air. His mind, ever ready to deflate, reminded him that at this hour of the morning the air would normally have been rich indeed - with the stench of exhaust fumes.
You see how we’re improving things already! he mentally addressed the city.
Gradually he became aware that the air was indeed richly scented. Wandering by half-memory, he had turned into the Rue d’Assas. It ought to lead him roughly towards the Luxembourg. In any case, he liked the sound of the name. Eventually he reached a narrow crossroads where the Rue Duguay-Trouin entered and the Rue de Fleurus intersected the Rue d’Assas. Looking left, he could see down to the Gardens. But his nose was turning him away to the right. He followed it along the narrow street till his eyes could do their share of the work and identify the source of that rich, warm smell.
It was a baker’s shop, not very big, but dignified by the words Boulangerie Pâtisserie parading above the windows in ornate lettering, and decorated by glass-covered designs around the door which featured a sturdy farmer and his elegant wife and promised ‘Pains Français et Viennois, Pains de Seigle, Chaussons aux Pommes et Gâteaux Secs’.
On the glass of the door was engraved ‘Crozier Père et Fils depuis 1870’, underlined by a triangle of curlicues, eloquent of the pride with which that first Crozier had launched his business seventy years before. The same year in which, if Mai’s history served him well, the Franco-Prussian war began. Perhaps other occupying Germans had been customers at this shop!
The shop window was fairly bare. But the smell of baking was rich and strong.
He pushed open the door and went in. There was one customer, one of those Frenchwomen of anything between fifty and a hundred who wear black clothes of almost Muslim inclusiveness whatever the weather. She was being served by a stout woman in middle age with the kind of flesh that looked, not unfittingly, as if it had been moulded from well-kneaded dough.
The black-swathed customer looked in alarm at Mai’s uniform, said abruptly, ‘Good morning, Madame Crozier,’ and left.
‘Good morning, Madame Duval,’ the stout woman called after her. ‘Monsieur?’
Her attempt at sang-froid failed miserably.
He set about allaying her fears.
‘Madame,’ he said in his rolling Alsatian French. ‘I have been drawn here by the delectable odours of what I’m sure is your superb baking. I would deem it an honour if you would allow me to purchase a few of your croissants.’
The woman’s doughy features stretched into a simper.
‘Claude!’ she shouted.
The door behind her opened, admitting a great blast of mouth-watering warmth and a man cast in the same mould, and from the same material, as his wife.
‘What?’ he demanded. Then he saw the uniform, and his face, which would have made him a fortune in the silent movies, registered fearful amazement.
‘Good day, monsieur,’ said Mai. ‘I was just telling your wife how irresistible I found the smell of your baking.’
‘Claude, are there any more croissants? The officer wants croissants,’ said Madame Crozier peremptorily.
‘No, I’m sorry…’ began the man.
‘Well, make some, Claude,’ commanded the wife. ‘If the officer would care to wait, it will only take a moment.’
The man went back into the kitchen and the woman brought Mai a chair. As she returned to the counter the door burst open. A good-looking woman of about twenty-five with dishevelled fair hair and a pale smudged face rushed in. She was carrying a child of about two years and at her heels was a boy a few years older.
She cried, ‘Maman, are you all right? Madame Duval said the Boche were here!’
‘Janine!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘What are you doing back? Why aren’t you in Lyon? Oh the poor baby! Is she ill?’
The child in arms had begun to cry. Madame Crozier reached over the counter and took her in her arms with much cooing.
‘No, she’s just hungry,’ said the girl, then broke off abruptly as for the first time she noticed Mai sitting quietly in the corner, almost hidden by the door. She was not however the first of the newcomers to notice him. The young boy’s eyes had lit on him as soon as he came in and the lad had thereafter fixed him with a disconcertingly level and unblinking gaze.
Mai got to his feet.
‘I’m sorry, madame,’ he said. ‘Please do not let me disturb this reunion.’
‘No, wait,’ cried Madame Crozier. ‘Claude! Where are those croissants?’
‘They’re coming, they’re coming!’ came the reply, followed almost immediately by the opening of the door. Once again Mai had the pleasure of seeing that cinematic amazement.
‘Janine!’ cried Crozier. ‘What’re you doing here? Why’ve you come back?’
‘Because the Boche dropped bombs and fired bullets at everyone on the road,’ cried Janine vehemently. ‘They could see we were a real menace. Men, women, children, animals, all running south in terror. Oh yes, we were a real menace!’
Sighing, Mai put on his cap. Not even the best croissants in the world were worth this bother.
‘But you’re not hurt, are you? And the children are all right? Claude, the officer’s croissants!’
The man put the croissants in a bag and handed it to Mai. He reached into his pocket. The woman said, ‘No, no. Please, you can pay next time.’
A good saleswoman thought Mai approvingly. Ready to risk a little for good will and the prospect of a returning customer. The young woman was regarding him with unconcealed hostility. As he took the croissants he clicked his heels and made a little bow just as Major Zeller would have done. She too might as well have her money’s worth.
He left the shop, pausing in the doorway as if deciding which way to go. Behind him he heard the older woman say, ‘Oh look at the poor children, they’re like little gypsies. And you’re not much better, Janine.’
‘Mother, we’ve been walking for days! We slept in a barn for two nights. Has there been any news of Jean-Paul?’
‘No, nothing. Now come and sit down and have something to eat. Pauli, child, you look as if you need fattening for a week. Claude, coffee!’
Mai left, smiling but thoughtful. These French! Some of his masters believed that, properly handled, they could be brought into active partnership with their conquerors. With the baker and his wife it might be possible. Be correct, avoid provocative victory parades, use clever propaganda, offer them a fair armistice and business as usual; yes they might grumble, but only as they grumbled at their own authorities. But they’d co-operate.
Alas, not all the French were like Monsieur and Madame Crozier. Take that girl, so young, so child-like, but at the same time so fierce!
He turned left at the Bassin in the Luxembourg Gardens. As he skirted the lush green lawn before the Palace, he saw two German soldiers on guard duty. They were looking towards him and he remembered he was still in uniform. The sooner he got out of it the better. One of the joys of being an Abwehr officer was the excuse it gave for frequently wearing civilian clothes. The sentries offered a salute. He returned it, realized he was still clutching a croissant, grinned ruefully and bore right to the Medici Fountain.
Slowly he made his way alongside the urn-flanked length of water to take a closer look at the sculpture. In the centre of three niches a fierce-looking bronze fellow loomed threateningly above a couple of naked youngsters in white marble. Us and the French! he told himself, crumbling a croissant for the goldfish.
A hand squeezed his elbow. He started, turned and saw a thin bespectacled man showing discoloured teeth in a smile at once impudent and ingratiating.
‘Hello, lieutenant. Didn’t use to be able to creep up on you like that!’
‘Hello, Pajou,’ said Mai coldly.
The man turned up the ingratiating key.
‘I was really glad when I realized you were in town, lieutenant. That Mai’s a man I can trust, a man I can talk to. So here I am, reporting for duty. Do you think you can use me?’
Mai returned his gaze to the crouching cyclops, Polyphemus, poised so menacingly over the entwined figures of Acis and Galatea.
‘Yes, Pajou,’ he sighed. ‘I very much fear we can.’
2
Sophie Simonian was praying for her son when a knock at the door and a voice calling, ‘Bubbah Sophie, it’s me, Janine,’ made her hope for a second that her prayers had been answered.
Leaning heavily on a silver-topped cherry cane, she went to the door, opened it, and knew at once that there was no good news in her daughter-in-law’s face. On the other hand, there was no bad news either, thanks be to God for small mercies.
‘Bubbah, how are you? You look well,’ said Janine embracing her. ‘Is there any news of Jean-Paul?’
‘Nothing. No news at all. Sit down, my dear. Where are the children?’ In sudden alarm, ‘There is nothing wrong with the children? Why are you back in Paris?’
‘No, they’re fine, really. Pauli sends his love, and Céci too. I’ll bring them round soon. But I thought I’d come myself first so we can have a good talk.’
Quickly she described her abortive flight, her slow return. Unlike her own parents, Sophie had approved her decision to leave, though refusing (thank God!) Janine’s offer to take her too. Nearly seventy with a rheumatic knee, a return on foot would have been quite beyond her. Besides, she’d done her share of refugeeing almost forty years before, after the great pogrom of 1903 in Kishinev. France had offered a new life in every sense. It was here in Paris when hope seemed dead that at last she had conceived and given birth to a son. Iakov Moseich he was named after his father, and Jean-Paul, to tell the world he was a native-born Frenchman.
Her husband had died of a heart attack in 1931. Jean-Paul had wanted to abandon his university place due to be taken up the following year and get a job to look after his mother. She had told him scornfully that his father would have struck him for such self-indulgent sentimentality. It was time to start acting like a real Frenchman and not a joke-book Jewish son.
He certainly took her at her word, she later told herself ironically. During the next few years, he abandoned his religion, declared himself an atheist, flirted with the Communist Party, and announced that he was going to marry Janine Crozier. This last was perhaps the biggest shock of all. Some left-wing intellectual shiksa from the university she could have understood. But this wide-eyed child, of parents whose attitudes were as offensive to his new political religion as to his old racial one, was a complete surprise. When finally she had been unable to contain the question, ‘Why! Why! Why do you want to marry this child? She isn’t even pregnant!’ he had given her the only reply which could silence her: ‘Because whenever I see her, I feel happy.’
But six years and two grandchildren later, Sophie was completely converted, and during this trying time she had derived much comfort from her daughter-in-law.
As Janine finished her tale, there was a knock at the door and a man’s voice called reassuringly, ‘It’s only me, Madame Simonian. Christian.’
Janine opened the door. Christian Valois was standing there, in his arms a dark ginger cat with a smudge of black hair around his nose.
‘Janine!’ he said. ‘Is there news?’
Janine shook her head and said, ‘No. Nothing. Hello, Charlot, you’re fatter than ever!’
The cat purred as she scratched him and then jumped out of Valois’s arms and bounced on to Sophie’s lap.
‘I met him on the stairs,’ said Valois, kissing the old lady. ‘You’ve heard nothing either, madame? Of course not. Why doesn’t he write to one of us?’
His voice was full of concern which slightly irritated Janine. True, he was a very old friend of Jean-Paul’s, but this hardly entitled him to put his concern on a level with, if not above, that of a wife and a mother.
‘We are going to have some tea, Christian. Will you stay?’ said Sophie.
‘Just for a moment. I have to get back.’
‘Back where?’ asked Janine in surprise. ‘Surely there is no work for you to do. I thought everyone to do with the Government had run off to Bordeaux?’
‘I stayed,’ said Valois shortly.
In fact, his gesture in staying on at the Ministry was proving rather a strain. It hadn’t taken the Germans long to realize that he had neither authority nor function. A friendly Wehrmacht officer had suggested that if he was worried about his pay, he’d quite happily sign a weekly chitty certifying that the undermentioned civil servant had attended his place of work. This kindly condescension was far more infuriating than any hostility or threat could have been.
‘That was brave,’ said Janine sincerely.
Valois’s thin sallow face flushed. He opened his mouth, realized he was going to say something pompous about duty, bit it back and said instead, ‘Thank you.’
The two young people smiled at each other. Sophie Simonian noted this with approval. She liked young Christian and it had always seemed a shame that he and Janine didn’t get on. A man’s first loyalty was to his family, but he needed his friends too, much more than a woman did.
As they sat and drank their tea, Janine told her story once more. Valois frowned as she told of the German planes attacking the refugee column.
‘Bastards!’ he said.
‘It’s war,’ said Sophie. ‘What do you expect? Stop the war is the only way to stop the killing.’
‘You think so? Perhaps. Only the war will not stop, will it?’
‘But the Marshal is talking with the Germans about a truce,’ cried Janine. ‘It was on the wireless.’
‘Truce? Defeat, you mean. Is that what you want?’ demanded Valois.
‘No! I mean, I don’t know. I hate the Germans, I want to see them thrown out of France, of course I do. But the only way for Jean-Paul to be safe is for the fighting to stop! I mean it’s stupid, he’s out there on the Maginot Line somewhere and all the Germans are here in France behind him! I mean it’s just so bloody, bloody stupid!’
She was close to tears. Sophie put her arm around her and frowned accusingly at Valois.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You know I’m worried about Jean-Paul too. Listen, there will be a truce, an armistice, something like that, I’m sure. He’ll be safe. But that’s not what I mean when I say the war won’t end. De Gaulle’s gone to England, a lot of them have. I heard him on the British radio saying that he would fight on no matter what happened back here.’
‘De Gaulle? Who’s he?’ asked Janine.
‘He’s a general, a friend of the Marshal’s.’
‘But the Marshal wants a truce, doesn’t he?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And everyone says the Boche will be in England soon too. There’s nothing to stop them, is there? What does this de Gaulle do then? Go to America?’ asked Janine scornfully.
‘At least there’s someone out there not giving up,’ said Valois.
He finished his tea and stood up. Janine saw his gaze drift round the room coming to rest on the large silver menorah on the window sill.
‘Are the other apartments still occupied?’ he asked casually.
Sophie said, ‘A lot went. Soon they’ll be back when they see it’s safe, no doubt. Madame Nomary, the concierge, is still in the basement. Like me, too old to run. And Monsieur Melchior is still upstairs.’
‘Melchior?’
‘You must have seen him,’ said Janine. ‘The writer. Or artist. Or something like that. At least he dresses that way, you know, flamboyantly. I think he’s…’
‘He likes the men more than the ladies is what she doesn’t care to say in front of silly old Bubbah,’ mocked Sophie. ‘But he’s a gentleman and very quiet, especially since the war. I think he’s been hiding up there, poor soul. Why so interested in my neighbours, Christian?’
‘No reason. I must go, Madame Sophie. Take care.’
‘I’d better go too and rescue maman from the kids,’ said Janine, jumping up. ‘Bye, Bubbah. I’ll bring Pauli and Céci next time.’
‘Be sure you do, child. God go with you both.’
Outside in the steepsided canyon of the Rue de Thorigny they walked in silence for a little way.
Finally Janine said, ‘What’s worrying you about Sophie, Christian?’
He shot her a surprised glance then said, ‘I thought I was a better actor! It’s nothing. I was just wondering how I could suggest that it might be politic not to, well, advertise her Jewishness…’
‘In the Marais? Don’t be silly. And why would you say such a thing?’
‘You must have heard how the Boche treat Jews. Some of the stories…’
‘But that’s in Germany,’ protested Janine. ‘They wouldn’t dare do anything here, not to Frenchmen. The people wouldn’t let it happen!’
‘You think not? I hope so,’ he said doubtfully.
‘I’m glad you didn’t say anything, though. It would really have worried Bubbah.’
‘It wasn’t just her I was concerned about,’ said Christian gently.
‘Me? Why should it worry…oh my God. Jean-Paul, you mean? If they capture Jean-Paul…’
She stood stricken.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It probably won’t happen. And he’ll be a prisoner-of-war in any case, under the Geneva Convention…where are you going?’
She’d set off at a pace that was more of a trot than a walk. Looking back over her shoulder she cried, ‘I’ve got to get back to the children, see they’re all right. Goodbye, Christian.’
‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’ll call…’
Already she was out of earshot. He headed west, frowning, and in a little while turned on to the Rue de Rivoli. He walked with his shoulders hunched, his head down, and did not see, or at least did not acknowledge seeing, the huge red and black swastika banners which fluttered everywhere like prospectors’ flags to mark out what the Germans were claiming for their own.
3
‘Hey kid, what’s your name?’
Pauli looked up at the man who’d just appeared in the doorway of the little courtyard behind the baker’s. He was a big man with long red hair, a longer beard and a strong curved nose. He looked as if he’d been living rough and as he moved nearer, Pauli realized he smelt that way too.
‘Pauli,’ he said. ‘Well, Jean-Paul, really. But maman calls me Pauli.’
‘Pauli, eh? Maman, you say? Would that be Janine?’
‘Yes, that’s maman’s name,’ said the boy.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed. And look at the size of you! Little Janine’s boy! Well, I’m your Uncle Miche, Pauli. Not really your uncle, more your half-cousin, but uncle will do nicely till I’ve stood out in the rain long enough to shrink to your size.’
This reversal of the usual adult clichés about growing up into a big boy amused and reassured Pauli. He stood his ground as the big man moved forward and rested a hand on his head. He noticed with interest that this new and fascinating uncle did indeed seem to have been standing out in the rain. His shapeless grey trousers and black workman’s jacket were damp with the moisture which the morning sun was just beginning to suck up from the high roofs. Here in the confined yard, it was still shadowy and chill. Michel Boucher shivered but with a controlled shiver like an animal vibrating its flesh for warmth.
‘Why don’t we go inside and surprise Uncle Claude?’ he said. ‘I bet it’s nice and warm in the bakehouse!’
It was. There were two huge ovens, one down either side of the vaulted ochre-bricked building and both were going full blast. Claude Crozier was removing a trayful of loaves from one of them to add to the morning’s bake already cooling on the long central table. Boucher looked at the regiments of bread with covetous eyes and said, ‘Morning, Uncle Claude. How’s it been with you? Christ, there’s a grand smell in here!’
The baker almost dropped his tray in surprise.
‘Who’s that? Michel, is that you? What the blazes are you doing here?’
‘Just passing, uncle, and I thought I’d pay my respects.’
‘Kind of you, but just keep on passing, eh? Before your aunt sees you.’
Crozier was not a hard man but his nephew was an old battle, long since lost. The baker had been more than generous in the help he gave his widowed sister to bring up her two children. But when within the space of a year, their mother had died of TB, Mireille had married a farmer on holiday and gone to live in the Ain region, and Miche had got two years’ juvenile detention for aggravated burglary, Louise broke her disapproving silence and said, ‘Enough’s enough. Not a penny more of our hard-earned money goes to that ne’er-do-well. He’ll never be more than a crook, you’ll see.’
Now here he was again.
‘You can’t stay,’ said Crozier urgently.
‘Oh I won’t stay, uncle,’ said Boucher. ‘Just long enough for a bite of breakfast, eh?’
The baker’s consternation at this prospect changed to terror as the door to the shop opened and his wife came in.
She stopped dead at the sight of Boucher.
‘Morning, Auntie Lou,’ he called cheerfully. ‘Just dropped in to pay my respects. And have a bite of breakfast.’
He took a couple of steps nearer the tray of new-baked bread as he spoke.
‘My God!’ cried the woman, peering closely at him. ‘You’re wet! You’re dirty! You’re unshaven! And you smell!’
Her tone was triumphant as well as indignant. There were few pleasures dearer to her bourgeois heart than being justified in a fit of moral indignation.
‘Yes, well, I’ve been down on my luck a bit,’ said Boucher.
Suddenly Pauli moved forward to the table, picked up a roll and presented it to the man.
‘Thanks, kid,’ he said, already shedding crumbs with the second syllable.
‘Pauli, what are you doing! How dare you?’ thundered Louise.
‘Maman, what’s going on? Why’re you shouting at Pauli?’
Janine, attracted by her mother’s bellow, had appeared in the doorway. She looked at Boucher without recognition.
‘I just gave Uncle Miche a roll,’ explained the little boy tearfully.
‘Hello, Cousin Janine. This is a good lad you’ve got here,’ said Boucher. He stuffed the rest of the roll into his mouth. ‘Delicious! Well, I’ll be on my way. Don’t want to outstay such a generous welcome. Cheers, kid.’
He patted Pauli on the head again, gave a mock military salute and left.
Pauli ran to his mother and said, ‘Maman, he was all wet. He says he stands out in the rain to shrink.’
‘You’ll have to do something about that boy,’ said Louise, annoyed at feeling in the wrong. ‘The sooner he gets off to school, the better.’
Janine glared at her mother, then turned and ran back into the shop. A moment later they heard the shop door open and shut.
She met her cousin as he came out of the passage which led into the rear yard.
‘Here,’ she said, stuffing a note into his hand. ‘It’s not much, but I haven’t got much.’
He looked at the money, making little effort to hide his surprise.
‘Thanks, cousin,’ he said. ‘Things have changed, eh?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Last time we met, you were still at school, I think. You told me you weren’t permitted to speak to degenerates. Exact words!’
Janine flushed, then laughed as she saw Boucher was laughing at her.
‘People grow up,’ she said.
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Not if I can help it.’
‘What are you doing, Miche?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I thought somehow, when this lot started, I’d be fighting the Boche, slate wiped clean sort of thing. But the first flic who recognized me came charging after me waving his cuffs! So I’ve had to keep my head down. It’s been a bit rough, but it’ll get sorted sooner or later I don’t doubt.’
‘Haven’t you got anywhere to stay?’ asked Janine sympathetically.
‘No. Well, I was all right at first. I shacked up…I mean lodged with an old friend. Arlette la Blonde, stage name, does an exotic dance at the Golden Gate, I don’t expect you know her. Well, that was all right, only a few days back, they opened up again and well, late hours and that, it wasn’t convenient, you know these show people…’
He tailed off as he realized that this time she was laughing at him.
‘You mean she brings friends back for the night and they don’t care to find your head on the pillow already!’
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ he said grinning. Then he stopped grinning.
‘I could have hung on there, slept days. Only I found she was bringing back Krauts! That really got up my nose! So I slung my hook.’
‘You won’t have to be so choosy, Miche. Not now they’re our friends.’
‘Friends? What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t you heard? It was on the radio this morning. An armistice was signed yesterday.’
‘Armistice? Signed by who? Not by the Marshal! He’d not sign an armistice with these bastards. Not the Marshal.’
‘Yes,’ said Janine. ‘Pétain signed it. At Compiègne. In the same railway carriage.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Boucher shaking his head in bewilderment.
‘Janine!’ called her mother’s voice from inside.
‘I’d better go.’
‘Yeah. Sure. Thanks, cousin. We’ll keep in touch, eh?’
She smiled, pecked his cheek and went inside.
Boucher turned and walked away, not paying much attention to direction. Despite his experiences, he’d still gone on hoping that somewhere in this mess there was going to be a chance for a sort of patriotic redemption. But now it was over before it had really begun and he was back to being a full-time wanted man.
He paused to take stock of his surroundings. He’d almost reached the Boulevard Raspail. There was a car coming towards him. It didn’t look particularly official, but any car you saw on the streets nowadays was likely to be official. He coughed in his hand, covering his face, just in case.
But the car was slowing. It pulled into the kerb just in front of him. His head still lowered, he increased his pace as he went by. A door suddenly opened. His legs tensed themselves to break into a run.
‘Miche? Miche Boucher? It is you!’
He paused, glanced back, turned.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Pajou.’
4
Maurice Melchior carefully examined his black velvet jacket for dust or hairs. Satisfied, he slipped his slender arms into it, spent some time adjusting the angle of his fedora, then stood back from the mirror to get the total effect.
Stunning, was the only possible verdict. He was a creature perfectly in balance, at that ideal point in his thirties where youth still burnt hot enough to melt the mature, and maturity already glowed bright enough to dazzle the young.
He tripped light as a dancer down the rickety staircase in this tall old house. On the floor below he met Charlot, the ginger cat belonging to old Madame Simonian. Charlot wanted attention. It was hard to resist those appealing eyes, but, ‘Not when I’m wearing the black velvet, my dear,’ explained Melchior.
A few moments later he was out in the sunshine.
This was not the first time he had been out since the Boche came, but his previous expeditions had been furtive, frightened things, at dusk, well wrapped up, to buy a few provisions and scuttle back to his lair. Really, a man of his sensibility should have fled as soon as the invasion became a certainty, but as usual he’d put off the decision till the sight of all those jostling refugees made it quite impossible.
And what had happened? Nothing! Life, he had gradually been reassured, was going on much as before for those courageous souls who had refused to be panicked into craven flight. Today he was going out in broad daylight and not just round the corner to the grocer’s shop. Today he was strolling south, leaving the Marais behind, and heading where he truly belonged.
The Left Bank! Saint-Germain-des-Prés! Everything he dreamt of was here…to hear his wit applauded at the Deux Magots, to have his custom valued at the Tour d’Argent…Dreams indeed. But even though he could rarely afford the latter and was barely admitted to the outermost circles of the former, merely to cross the river once more felt like coming home. If it hadn’t been that the dear old man who had set him up in his little flat in the Rue de Thorigny all those years ago had arranged in his will for the rent to be paid as long as he stayed, he’d have moved across the river long since.
After his first exhilaration at being back in his old haunts, a certain uneasiness began to steal over him. Everything was so quiet. Not many people about and next to no traffic, except for the odd German truck which still sent him diving into the nearest doorway. He found himself thinking of going home.
Then he drew himself up to his full five feet seven inches and cried, ‘No!’
Whatever this day brought forth, Maurice Melchior, aesthete, intellectual, wit, man of letters, gourmet, not to mention homosexual and Jew, would be there to greet it.
Overcome with admiration for his own courage, he stepped unheeding off the pavement. There was a screech of brakes and a car slewed to a halt across the road. It didn’t actually touch Melchior but sheer shock buckled his knees and he sat down. Out of the driver’s window a man in grey uniform began to shout at him in German. It wasn’t difficult to get his gist.
‘Be quiet,’ said an authoritative voice. ‘Monsieur, I hope you’re not hurt.’
And Maurice Melchior looked up to see a Nordic god stooping over him with compassion and concern in his limpid blue eyes.
‘My name is Zeller. Bruno Zeller. Call me Bruno. And you, monsieur…Melchior?’
They had come to a café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel where Melchior used to meet, or seek, student friends. The vacation and the situation combined to make it empty at the moment and the patron had been delighted to have their custom, greeting Melchior by his name, a fact which seemed to impress the German.
‘Yes. Melchior’s my name! Magus that I am! Bearing gifts of gold! From the East I come!’
It was a little verse from a Nativity Play which he used occasionally to quiz his Christian friends. Zeller laughed in delight.
‘But call me Maurice,’ he went on. ‘Cigarette?’
He offered his gold case, inscribed (at his own expense) ‘To Maurice - In remembrance of times past - Marcel.’
‘English,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ said Zeller. ‘I have no prejudice.’
He smiled then let his gaze fall to the case which Melchior had left on the table.
He read the inscription and said, ‘Good Lord. Is that…?’
‘What? Oh, yes. Dear Marcel. I was very young of course. A child. And he was old…ah, that cork-lined bedroom…’
He spent the next hour idly reminiscing about the past. His conversation was liberally laced with references to great figures of the worlds of art and literature. Nor was his familiarity altogether feigned. Though a gadfly, he’d been fluttering around the Left Bank too long not to have been accepted as a denizen.
Zeller was clearly impressed. Melchior soon had him placed as an intelligent and reasonably educated man by German standards, but culturally adolescent. Paris was to him the artistic Mecca which held all that was most holy. He needed a guide, Melchior needed a protector. They were made for each other.
But he mustn’t overdo it. Was that a flicker of doubt in those lovely blue eyes as he mentioned that his mother, a laundress in Vincennes, had been mistress to both Renoir and Zola? He quickly asked a question about the German’s family. The story which came back of a widowed mother living a reclusive life in the family castle high above the Rhine had to be true or Zeller’s invention outstripped his own!
‘Major Zeller. I thought it was you.’
A black Mercedes had drawn in at the kerb close to their pavement table. A man was looking out of the open rear window. He had a heavy, florid face with watery eyes in which hard black pupils glistened like beads of jet. Melchior felt something unpleasantly hypnotic in their gaze. Perhaps Zeller felt it also for he rose with evident reluctance from his chair and went to the car. But when he spoke, his tone wasn’t that of a man controlled.
‘Ah, Colonel Fiebelkorn. On leave? I hope you have long enough to take in all the sights.’
Melchior recognized aristocratic insolence when he heard it.
‘The interesting ones.’ The cold eyes slipped to Melchior. ‘A guide is always useful. Why don’t you introduce me to your friend, major?’
‘This is Abwehr business,’ said Zeller coldly. But Melchior had already come forward. He examined Fiebelkorn with interest. In his fifties, a powerful personality, he guessed. In the lapel of his civilian jacket he wore a tiny silver death’s head. Too, too Gothic!
‘Maurice Melchior,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘Walter Fiebelkorn,’ said the German, taking it and squeezing gently.
Good Lord, thought Melchior. Two out of two! If all German officers were like this pair, this could yet be France’s finest hour!
‘I’m glad the security of the Fatherland is in such safe hands,’ said Fiebelkorn. ‘Major, Monsieur Melchior. Till we meet again.’
As the car drew away, Melchior said testingly, ‘Nice man.’
‘If you can think that, you’re a fool.’
‘Oh dear. And that will never do if I’m to be a secret agent, will it?’
His boldness worked. Zeller laughed and took his arm.
‘Let’s see if we can find something better suited to your talents,’ he said.
5
As the summer ended and the sick time of autumn began, Pauli caught measles. Soon afterwards Céci went down with them too. It was a worrying time but at least it focused Janine’s mind outward from her daily increasing fears for Jean-Paul.
There were all kinds of rumours about French prisoners, the most popular being that now the war was over they’d be sent home any day. But the long trains had rolled eastward since then carrying millions into captivity. Only the sick and the maimed came home, but at least most families with a missing man had learned if he were dead or alive.
But Jean-Paul Simonian’s name appeared on no list.
It was to her father that Janine turned for support and sympathy. She had never forgotten the look on her mother’s face when she’d run into the shop those seven years before and announced joyously that she and Jean-Paul were to be married. It had been her father then who had comforted her and made her understand just how many of his wife’s prejudices had been roused in a single blow.
Briefly, by being an anti-clerical, intellectual, left-wing Jewish student, Jean-Paul Simonian was offensive in every particular. The fact that his religious targets included Judaism was a small mitigation, and getting a job as a teacher was a slightly larger one. Charm, which he always had, and children, which they quickly had, had finally sown the seeds of a truce with his mother-in-law, but it was a delicate growth and peculiar in that Jean-Paul’s absence seemed to threaten it more than his presence had ever done.
Louise Crozier’s attitude to the Germans was soon another point of issue.
‘That nice lieutenant from the Lutétia was asking after the children this morning,’ said Madame Crozier one lunchtime.
‘The fat Boche? What business is it of his?’ said Janine.
‘He was only being polite,’ retorted her mother. ‘You might try it too. Politeness never hurt anyone. He always comes in on pastry day and asks for three of your brioches. I told him you hadn’t done any. He wasn’t at all put out but asked, very concerned, how the children were. I think he’s charming.’
‘He’s a pig like the rest of them,’ said Janine, who was tired and irritable. She had got very little sleep the previous night. ‘I don’t see why you encourage them to come into the shop.’
‘Don’t talk stupid!’ said her mother. ‘The war’s over, so who’s the enemy now? All right, the Germans are here in Paris, but they’ve behaved very correctly, you can’t deny that. All that talk about burning and looting and raping! Why, the streets are safer now than they’ve ever been!’
‘How can you talk like that!’ demanded Janine. ‘They’ve invaded our country, killed our soldiers. They nearly killed me and the kids. They’ve probably killed my husband or at best they’ve locked him up. And you talk as if they’ve done us a favour by coming here!’
‘I don’t think your mother really meant that, dear,’ said Claude Crozier mildly.
‘Permit me to say for myself what I mean!’ said his wife. ‘Listen, my lady, I run a business here. I don’t pick my customers, they pick me. And we don’t have to like each other either. But I tell you this, there’s a lot of our French customers I like a lot less than Lieutenant Mai.’
‘Maman,’ said Pauli at the door. ‘Céci’s crying.’
55
‘Shall I go?’ offered Louise.
‘No thanks,’ said Janine. ‘She doesn’t speak German yet.’
She left the room, pushing her son before her.
‘She gets worse,’ said Madame Crozier angrily. ‘I don’t know where she gets it from. Not my side of the family, that’s sure.’
‘It’s a worrying time for her what with the children being ill and no news of Jean-Paul,’ said her husband.
‘If you ask me, she’ll be better off if she never gets any news of him,’ said the woman.
‘Louise! Don’t talk like that!’
‘Why not?’ said Madame Crozier, a little ashamed and therefore doubly defiant. ‘It was a mistake from the start.’
‘He’s a nice enough lad,’ said Crozier. ‘And there was never any fuss about religion. The children are being brought up good Catholics, aren’t they?’
‘That’s no credit to him,’ replied Madame Crozier, who had never seen what consistency had to do with a reasoned argument. ‘You can’t respect a man who doesn’t respect his own heritage, can you? There’s someone come into the shop. Are you going to sit on your backside all day?’
With a sigh, Crozier rose and went through into the shop. A moment later he returned, followed by Christian Valois.
‘She’s upstairs with the little girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her you’re here.’
‘Thank you. Hello, Madame Crozier.’
Christian was a little afraid of Janine’s mother. One of the things he admired about Jean-Paul was his mocking indifference to his in-laws. ‘They’re made of dough, you know,’ he’d said. ‘Put ‘em in an oven and they’d rise!’
Louise for her part was ambivalent in her attitude to Valois. True, he was one of her son-in-law’s clever-clever university chums. But he came from a good Catholic family, had a respectable job in the Civil Service, and was unfailingly polite towards her.
‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘How are your charming parents?’
56
She’d never met them but knew that Valois senior was an important deputy. That was how to get the good jobs; have a bit of influence behind you! She felt envy but no disapproval.
‘They are safe and well, madame,’ said Valois. ‘My father continues to look after the country’s interests in Vichy.’
He spoke with a bitter irony which seemed to be lost on Madame Crozier.
Janine came in.
‘Christian, is there news?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid. But my contacts in the Foreign Ministry are still trying. And I’ve written to my father asking him to help.’
She turned away in disappointment and flopped into a chair. He looked at her with exasperation. Clearly she regarded his efforts on Jean-Paul’s behalf as at best coldly bureaucratic, at worst impertinently intrusive. His sacrifice of pride and principle in writing to his father for assistance meant nothing to her. Why Jean-Paul had ever hitched himself to someone like this, he couldn’t understand. A silly shop-girl, good for a few quick tumbles.
He said brusquely, ‘There’s another matter.’
‘Yes?’ said Janine indifferently.
‘Perhaps a word in private.’
‘Come through into the shop,’ said Janine after a glance at her mother, who showed no sign of moving.
In the shop, Valois said, ‘Have you seen Madame Simonian lately?’
‘Not for a while. I usually take the children on Sundays, but they’ve been ill. Why? She hasn’t heard anything, has she?’
The sudden eagerness in her voice irritated Valois once more.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s her I’m worried about. I went to see her earlier. The concierge said she’d just gone down to the greengrocer’s so I went after her. I found her having an argument with a German sergeant who’d seen her pulling down the JEWISH BUSINESS poster the greengrocer had put in his window.’
‘What poster’s that?’ interrupted Janine.
‘Don’t you pay attention to anything? It’s been decreed that all Jewish shopkeepers have to put up these posters. Fortunately the sergeant clearly thought there weren’t many medals in arresting a seventy-year-old woman for threatening him with a bunch of celery, so he was glad to let me smooth things over.’
‘Yes,’ she said, taking in his neat dark suit and his guarded bureaucratic expression. ‘You’d be good at that, Christian. Personally I think you’d have done better to join in bashing the Boche with the celery. If we all did that, we’d soon get things back to normal!’
‘All? Who are these all?’ wondered Valois.
‘People. You don’t think any real Frenchman’s going to sit back and let the Boche run our lives for us, do you?’
He said, ‘Janine, it’s real Frenchmen who are putting their names to these decrees. I’ll tell you something else that real Frenchmen have done. It’s been suggested - that’s the word used - suggested to publishing firms that they might care to do a voluntary purge on their lists, get rid of unsuitable authors such as German exiles, French nationalists, British writers, and of course Jews. They’ve all agreed! No objections. Not one!’
‘Oh, those are intellectuals with their heads in the clouds, or businessmen with their noses in the trough,’ said Janine wearily. ‘It’s the ordinary people I’m talking about. They won’t let themselves be mucked around by these Boche. Just wait. You’ll see. But thanks for telling me about Sophie. I’ll keep an eye on her.’
As she spoke, Valois realized just how much on edge she was; emotionally frayed by worry about Jean-Paul, physically exhausted by her work in the shop combined with sleepless nights looking after the kids, and doubtless worn down by the simple strain of daily life with the formidable Louise.
Behind him the shop door opened and a German officer came in. He was a stocky fellow of indeterminate age with an ordinary kind of face, were it not for a certain shrewdness of gaze which made you think that every time he blinked, his eyes were registering photographs.
‘Good day, Ma’m’selle Janine,’ he said in excellent French. ‘I hope the children are improving. I was asking after them when I talked with your excellent mother earlier. I thought perhaps a few chocolates might tempt their appetites back to normal…’
He proffered a box of chocolates. Janine ignored it and glanced furiously at Valois. She was angry that after what she’d just been saying, the civil servant should see her on such apparently familiar terms with this Boche. Feeling herself close to explosion, she took a deep breath and said, ‘No thank you, lieutenant. I don’t think they will help.’
‘Oh,’ said Günter Mai, nonplussed.
He regarded her assessingly, placed the box carefully on the counter and said, ‘Forgive the intrusion. Perhaps your dear mother, or you yourself, might enjoy them. You’ll be doing me a favour.’
He patted his waistline ruefully, touched his peak in the shadow of a salute and brought his heels gently together in the echo of a click.
It was the gentle mockery of these gestures plus the diplomatic courtesy with which he’d received her rejection that finally triggered off the explosion.
She pushed the chocolates back across the counter with such force that the box flew through the air, struck him on the chest and burst open, scattering its contents all over the floor.
‘Why don’t you sod off and take your sodding chocolates with you?’ she shouted. ‘We don’t want them, do you understand? I can look after my own kids without any help from the likes of you.’
59
The door from the living quarters burst open.
‘What’s going on!’ demanded Madame Crozier. ‘What’s all the noise?’
‘It’s nothing, madame. The young lady is upset. Just a little misunderstanding,’ said Mai with a rueful smile.
‘I’ve been telling your Boche friend a few home truths,’ cried Janine. ‘You talk to him if you want, maman. Me, I’ve had enough!’
She pushed her way past her mother and disappeared.
‘Janine! Come back here!’ commanded Madame Crozier. ‘Lieutenant, I’m so sorry, you must forgive her, take no notice, she’s overwrought. Excuse me.’
She turned and went after her daughter. Soon angry voices drifted back into the shop where Mai and Valois stood looking at each other.
‘And you are…?’ said Mai courteously.
‘Valois. Of the Ministry of Finance.’
‘Ah. Not in Vichy, monsieur?’
‘Finance remains in Paris.’
‘Of course. Good day, Monsieur Valois.’
No salute or heel clicking this time. He turned and left the shop. Christian Valois went to the door and watched him stroll slowly along the pavement. His back presented an easy target. With a shock of self-recognition, Valois found himself imagining pulling out a gun and pumping bullets into that hated uniform. But if he had a gun would he have the nerve to use it? He realized he was trembling.
Behind him, Louise re-entered, her face pink with emotion.
‘Has he gone? Such behaviour! I don’t know where she gets it from, not my family, I’m sure. She’s never been the same since she married that Jew.’
She sank to her knees and began collecting chocolates. Janine came in. Ignoring her mother, she said, ‘Christian, no need to worry about Sophie. Soon as the children are well enough, I’ll be coming to stay with her. Will you tell her that, please? I’ll be round later to sort things out.’
60
’It’s a very small flat,’ said Valois. ‘You’ll be awfully crowded.’
‘Not as crowded as we are here, knee deep in Boches and their hangers-on.’
‘Listen to her. Such ingratitude, she’ll get us all killed,’ muttered Louise, crawling around in search of stray chocolates.
Pauli came in and looked curiously at his crawling grandmother.
‘What’s gramma doing?’ he asked.
‘Rooting for truffles,’ said Janine. ‘Goodbye, Christian.’
Stepping gingerly over Louise, Christian Valois left the bakery. As he walked along the empty street, he began to smile, then to chuckle out loud.
Unobserved in a doorway on the other side, Günter Mai smiled too.
6
In October, a census of Jews was announced. They were required to report in alphabetical order to their local police station. When Janine expressed unease, Sophie laughed and said, ‘It’s our own French police I shall see, not the Germans. In any case, would the Marshal have met with Herr Hitler and shaken his hand if there was need to worry?’
Janine too had taken comfort from the meeting at Montoire. If things were getting back to normal, surely prisoners must soon be released? He wasn’t dead…he couldn’t be dead…
At the police station there was a long queue. When she reached its head, Sophie filled in her registration form with great care. Only at the Next of Kin section did she hesitate. Something made her look over her shoulder. Behind her, winding around the station vestibule and out of the door, stretched the queue. Conversation was low; most didn’t speak at all, but stood with expressions of stolid resignation, every now and then shuffling forward to whatever fate officialdom had devised for them.
‘Come on, old lady,’ said a gendarme. ‘What’s the hold-up?’
She put a stroke of the pen through Next of Kin.
‘What? No family?’
‘A son. Until the war.’
‘I’m sorry. Thank God it’s all over for the rest of us. Now sign your name and be on your way.’
It felt good to be out in the street again and her confidence rapidly returned as she walked home as briskly as her rheumatic knee permitted.
As she reached the apartment building, Maurice Melchior emerged, resplendent in a long astrakhan coat which he’d been given by accident from the cloakroom at the Comédie-Française the previous winter and at last felt safe in wearing.
‘Good day, Madame Simonian. And how are you? Taking the air?’
Piqued at being accused of such unproductive activity, Sophie said sharply, ‘No, monsieur. I’ve been to register.’
‘Register?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘How quaint! Good day, madame!’
Melchior set off at a brisk pace, eager to put as much distance as possible between himself and this silly old Jewess who’d gone voluntarily to put her name on an official census-list. How desperate people were to convince themselves that everything was normal. Normal! All they had to do was stroll along the boulevards and look in the shop windows. Everything had gone. Ration coupons had been introduced the previous month. And the forecast was for a long, hard winter. The only people who had any cause for complacency were the black-marketeers.
I must make some contacts, thought Melchior. But not today. Today he had more immediate and personal worries.
Bruno was close to dumping him, that was the brutal truth. A couple of nights earlier they’d visited the Deux Magots where Melchior, rather full of Bruno’s excellent brandy, had spotted Cocteau in a corner.
‘Do I know him? Blood-brothers, dear boy! Of course I’ll introduce you.’ And he’d set off across the room, big smile, outstretched hand, with Bruno in close formation. The Great Man (pretentious shit!) had thrust an empty bottle into the outstretched hand and said, ‘Another of the same, waiter. A bit colder this time,’ and all his arse-licking cronies had set up a jeering bray.
Zeller turned on his heel and stormed out of the door. By the time Melchior got out, he was in his car. The engine drowned Maurice’s attempts at explanation and apology, and as he grasped the door handle, the car accelerated away, pulling him to his knees in the gutter.
Perhaps it was the supplicatory pose; or perhaps Zeller was reminded of the circumstances of their first meeting. He stopped the car, reversed and opened the door.
‘Get in,’ he said.
They drove away at high speed up the Rue de Rennes and turned into the Boulevard Raspail.
‘Are we going to the Lutétia?’ asked Melchior.
‘Yes.’
Melchior relapsed into a nervous silence. Once before he had suggested provocatively that Bruno should take him to dine at the Lutétia. The German had said coldly, ‘The only Frenchmen who come into Abwehr Headquarters are agents or prisoners. It can be arranged.’
Now Melchior recalled that moment and shivered.
The trouble was things hadn’t been going well for some weeks. As life returned to something like normal it had grown increasingly difficult to maintain his claim to be at the artistic heart of things. Name-dropping was only successful if the names dropped kept a decent distance from the city. But many had returned, and even when they were polite, they made it very clear they were not intimate with him. Usually he was able to bluff it out but a snub like tonight’s was too unambiguous for bluff.
They entered the hotel by a side-door. It was clear he wasn’t going to see the public rooms. ‘Who’s duty officer?’ Zeller demanded of an armed corporal.
‘Lieutenant Mai, sir.’
‘Fetch him.’
When Günter Mai arrived, annoyed at having been dragged from his dinner, he recognized Melchior instantly but concealed the fact. His superior’s sexual impulses were his own affair as long as they didn’t compromise the section’s security. As soon as the inevitable happened and Zeller found himself a ‘friend’, Mai had done a thorough check. In the light of official Party attitudes to Jews and perverts, Maurice Melchior was not an ideal companion for a German officer. But it was clear he hadn’t a political thought in his head. Motivated entirely by hedonistic self-interest, conceited, cowardly, the little queer posed no security risk at all. But what on earth was he doing here?
‘This is Monsieur Melchior,’ said Zeller. ‘I’ll be interviewing him immediately. Is there a room?’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Mai. ‘This way.’
In the sparsely furnished room, Zeller waited till Mai had closed the door behind him, then said, ‘Let’s talk seriously, Maurice.’
‘Delighted. But why have you brought me here?’
‘So you’ll understand quite clearly what I’m saying to you,’ said Zeller softly. ‘Maurice, you haven’t been honest with me, have you? You’ve been a naughty boy.’
‘Always willing to oblige,’ laughed Melchior.
‘Shut up! It seems that far from being the celebrity you claim, you’re a nobody. Worse, you’re a bit of a laughing stock. That’s your bad luck, but by your idiocy, you’ve got me involved in it too. I don’t care to be made to look ridiculous, Maurice. Getting mixed up with you was a mistake. Some people can forget mistakes. I can’t. I need to correct them.’
‘What do you mean, Bruno?’ demanded Melchior nervously.
‘You’re going to have to start earning your keep,’ said Zeller spitefully. ‘As a cultural guide, you’re a dead loss. As a sexual partner, you have your moments, but frankly, with the exchange rate the way it is, I can afford troupes of prettier, younger, more athletic friends than you, and there’s no shortage of offers. So that leaves only one avenue.’
‘What’s that, Bruno?’ asked Melchior, his mouth dry.
65
‘When we first met, you asked if I was going to make an agent out of you. Like you, I took it as a joke. But by Christ, Maurice, the joking time is over. Those big ears and sharp eyes of yours must be good for something. From now on, if you want protection - and the alternative, let me assure you, is persecution - you’re going to earn your keep. Do you understand me?’
Hell hath no fury like a German officer made to feel ridiculous, thought Günter Mai who was listening in the next room. But trying to make an agent out of a creature like Melchior, that really was ridiculous. There could be trouble there. Should he try to warn Zeller? He thought not. It would mean admitting his knowledge. And Zeller probably wouldn’t listen. Besides, he thought with a smile, a bit of trouble wouldn’t do that gilded youth any harm at all.
A not unkind man, Günter Mai might have been rather more concerned, though not much, if he could have shared Melchior’s growing panic as October turned to November and Zeller’s threats became more and more dire. He tried to explain how terribly difficult it was for someone like himself to become an agent. He was more than willing to oblige, dear Bruno must believe that, but the kind of gossip he was so expert at collecting was not, alas, the kind which held much interest for the guardians of military security.
But at last a break had come. There were rumours everywhere that, angered by the complacent acceptance by their elders of the German Occupation, the university students were planning some kind of demonstration on November 11th, armistice day. Melchior spent all his spare time in the cafés on the Boul’ Miche where once he had sought the occasional pick-up. The youngsters were happy enough to let him pay for their drinks, but laughed behind his back at his efforts to draw them. Did someone who had so shamelessly flaunted his Aryan nancy-boy really believe they were going to spill their plans for a few cups of coffee?
66
But there were others who noticed and did not discount his efforts so scornfully.
On November 10th, he was sitting disconsolately in the café where he’d taken Bruno after their first meeting. The owner no longer greeted him by name now his usual clientele were back, and not even free coffee seemed able to buy him company today. As one student had explained, thinking to be kind, ‘You’ve grown so dull, Maurice, since you stopped trying to screw us.’
He rose and left. As he walked along the rain-polished pavement observing with distaste the spattering of his mirror-like shoes, footsteps came hurrying after him. He looked round to see a youngster he knew as Émile approaching. He was a pale, sick-looking boy, and shabby even by student standards. When he caught up, he glanced behind him furtively, then drew Maurice off the boulevard into a doorway.
‘Monsieur,’ he said. ‘I need money.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Melchior. ‘A couple of francs is all I have…’
‘I need a thousand. Five hundred at the very least.’
Melchior looked at him sharply. This was obviously no ordinary touch.
He said, ‘Even if I had such a sum, which I don’t, why should I loan it to you?’
‘Not loan. Pay. Look, monsieur, everyone knows you’re very interested in the plans for our demo tomorrow. Well, I can tell you it’s not going to wait till tomorrow. Come midnight tonight, and you’ll be able to see to read, if you’re in the right places. I know those places.’
‘But that’ll mean breaking the curfew.’
‘It’s not the only thing that will be broken,’ said Émile. ‘Come on. Are you in the market or not?’
‘Why are you doing this?’ asked Melchior.
‘Because if I don’t, I’ll be flung off my course by the weekend, if I don’t get flung off a bridge first by the people I owe money to.’
These were reasons Melchior could understand. He said, ‘I’d need proof.’
‘For God’s sake, what’s proof? I’ve got a copy of the plan with timings and locations, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Melchior who despite everything was quite enjoying getting into his role. ‘You give me the plan. If it works out, I’ll pay you five hundred francs tomorrow.’
‘Go and screw yourself, you little fairy,’ said Émile angrily. ‘You don’t imagine I’m going to trust someone like you!’
Melchior smiled, unhurt, and said significantly, ‘It wouldn’t be me you were trusting, Émile. Your payment would be guaranteed, believe me.’
The youngster weighed this up. Strange, thought Melchior. He knows I mean the Germans and he’ll doubtless end up by deciding he can trust them more than he’d trust me.
He was right.
‘OK,’ said the student reluctantly. ‘Payment tomorrow morning, nine sharp, the Tuileries Gardens, by the Orangerie. And it’ll be the full thousand for extended credit, all right?’
‘Agreed,’ said Melchior, holding out his hand.
A folded sheet of paper was put into it, then Émile turned on his heel and hurried away into the gathering dusk.
Melchior walked along, studying the paper. There were going to be torchlight processions starting in the Place de la Bastille at 11.30. And once the authorities’ attention had been concentrated on the processions, the Embassy, in the Rue de Lille, and the Hôtel de Ville were going to be the objects of the main demos at midnight. Melchior practically danced along the pavement in his elation. No hint of such early activity had emerged hitherto. This would be a real coup for Bruno. Surely he must show his gratitude by restoring their relationship?
But now as quickly as it had come, his joy faded as a sense of revulsion swept over him. What the hell was he doing? Giving this to Bruno meant hundreds of youngsters could be walking into a trap. And the Boche wouldn’t be gentle, that was sure. No! He wouldn’t do it. Bruno could go jump in the Seine!
He walked on, feeling incredibly noble.
Then he heard the sound of breaking glass. He turned a corner and saw a tobacconist’s with its window shattered. Pasted on the door was a now familiar sign saying JEWISH BUSINESS. Two youths with the armbands of the Parti Populaire Français were standing laughing on the pavement. They fell silent as he walked past. Then he heard their footsteps coming after him. Faster and faster he walked till he was almost running.
Finally, exhausted by effort and fear, he stopped and turned.
He was alone. But he had left his feeling of nobility far behind.
7
Every year on November 11th, Sophie Simonian went to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior to leave some flowers and make her own personal thanksgiving.
‘Bubbah, this year say thanks at home or in the synagogue,’ urged Janine.
Sophie looked at her in surprise and said, ‘Why should I change the habit of twenty years, child? I owe it to Iakov for his safe return.’
Realizing she had no hope of winning the argument, Janine insisted on accompanying her, leaving the children in the care of a neighbour.
As their train pulled into l’Étoile métro station, she saw that the platforms were crowded and the crush of people getting into the carriage prevented the two women from getting out. When Sophie began to grow agitated, a middle-aged man who’d just entered said, ‘Take it easy, old lady. You’re better off down here than up there. You’d not be let out of the station anyway!’
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Janine.
‘Chaos,’ he said. ‘There’s been demonstrations, students mainly. The Boche are clearing the streets, and not being too gentle about how they do it.’
They managed to get off at the next station. Janine wanted to cross platforms and head straight home, but Sophie ignored her pleas and, clutching her small posy of Michaelmas daisies, marched out of the station and turned up the avenue towards l’Étoile.
Janine half-expected to find a howling mob. Instead what she saw was a lot of people, scattered enough for passage among them to be relatively easy, and not making a great deal of mob-noise. But the atmosphere felt electric.
‘Janine! Madame Simonian! What are you doing here?’
It was Valois, his sallow face flushed with excitement.
Janine told him and Sophie flourished her posy.
‘I’d get rid of those,’ said Valois. ‘The Boche seem allergic to flowers. Oh Christ, here they come!’
An armoured car was moving steadily down the centre of the avenue with soldiers fanning out on either side. They held their rifles at the port and their trotting feet kept perfect time so that the thud of the boots was a powerful heartbeat under the panicking cries of the crowd.
People started to scatter and run.
‘Come on!’ urged Valois.
But Sophie had neither the strength nor the inclination to flee and the best Janine could manage was to pull her behind an advertising stand which would at least part the advancing line.
The soldiers broke, re-formed, passed on. Except one, a cadaverous, pock-faced man who looked frightened enough to be brutal.
‘Go on,’ he snarled. ‘Fuck off out of it quick! Run! Run! Run!’
He thrust at them with his rifle as he spoke. Janine and Valois tried to protect Sophie but she pushed between them.
‘I’m going to the tomb,’ she said clearly. ‘To lay these flowers.’
She held out the posy. The soldier looked at it in puzzlement as if imagining it was being offered to him. Then he struck it from her grasp and said, ‘Get off out of it, you old bag. I won’t tell you again.’
‘You bastard!’ cried Valois. Before he could move, Janine flung her arms round him. She could see the soldier was keyed up enough to shoot.
‘We must get Sophie away,’ she urged.
Valois’s tense body relaxed. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘There’ll be time for that.’
They hurried the old lady to the station. A sergeant and two privates were lounging there, cheerfully waving back anyone still trying to emerge. When they saw that the newcomers wanted to go in, they politely stood aside.
‘That’s right, darling,’ said the sergeant. ‘Home’s best today. I wish I was coming with you!’
And the soldiers’ mocking laughter followed them down the stairs.
Half a mile away, a German corporal was growing very irritated. He’d been up since before midnight, first of all lying in wait to quell an assault on the Embassy which never happened. Then, when at last he was stood down, he’d just had time to have some breakfast and stretch himself out on his bunk before he was ordered out again to deal with some real demonstrations. All was quiet now, and he could be thinking of getting back to that bunk if this funny little twerp would stop babbling at him in broken German.
Maurice Melchior had woken up to a terrifying silence. No one was talking about midnight marches and torchlight processions and assaults on the Embassy. He was supposed to meet Zeller early to collect Émile’s pay-off, but he had the sense not to keep that appointment. He did go to the Orangerie, however, and hung around in growing despair till news of the disturbances at l’Étoile had brought him hurrying here, hoping against hope that somehow his disturbances had moved on in space and time.
The corporal grew angry. The little fairy was apparently taking the piss about last night’s abortive ambush! Only his eagerness to get to bed stopped him from arresting him. He turned away. The Frenchie grasped his shoulder! That did it. He turned and hit him in the gut. Melchior sank to the ground. The corporal swung back his foot.
‘No,’ said a voice from a staff-car which had drawn up alongside.
Through tear-clouded eyes, Melchior recognized a face. No. Two faces. One, looking at him through the window, was Colonel Fiebelkorn’s. The other, less frightening but more incredible, belonged to a man getting out of the car. He looked at Melchior and smiled as he walked past. It was Émile.
‘Monsieur Melchior,’ said Fiebelkorn opening the door. ‘Won’t you join me?’
For days there were rumours of pitched battles, hundreds killed, thousands arrested. The truth was less dramatic. No deaths, a few injuries, and only one arrest on a serious charge.
‘Some poor devil miles away from the demos got jostled by a drunken Boche and jostled back. Now he’s facing the death penalty for violence against the German Army! At least it’ll show people what kind of monsters we’re up against.’
‘Isn’t that a big price to pay for an illustration?’ wondered Janine.
‘Don’t give me that bourgeois sentimental crap,’ retorted Valois.
‘All I mean is a man’s life seems more important to me than anything else.’
‘Oh yes? And to get Jean-Paul home safe and sound, how many death-warrants would you be prepared to sign? One? Two? Three? A hundred?’
‘I don’t know. That’s different. It would depend…I don’t know!’
‘It’s a question of objectives and priorities, isn’t it?’ said Valois bleakly.
‘Christian, are you a communist?’ asked Janine.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he replied, suddenly gay. ‘Didn’t you know, the communists are Herr Hitler’s friends, bound to him by formal agreement? They’re finding it even harder to be consistent than you are!’
It was true. This seemed a time of inconsistencies. On December 15th the Marshal had his vice-president, Laval, arrested. Abetz, the German ambassador, immediately went to Vichy to have him released. Meanwhile, at midnight on December 16th, a gun carriage rumbled through the curfew-emptied snow-feathered streets flanked by a mixed escort of French and German soldiers. On the carriage was a coffin containing the body of the Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon’s only son, exhumed from the imperial vault in Vienna, and returned at Hitler’s own behest to be set at his father’s side in Les Invalides. For a short while Bayreuth came to Paris and under the flaming torches of this Wagnerian stage-setting, all the civic dignitaries, French and German alike, shivered through their walk-on parts. This conciliatory gesture was followed a week later by the execution of the man arrested during the November demonstrations.
Then it was Christmas.
‘You must go to your parents, for the children’s sake, especially, but for your own sake too,’ said Sophie firmly.
‘But what about you?’ said Janine. ‘Why should you be left alone at Christmas?’
Sophie laughed merrily.
‘What are you saying? An old Jewess alone at Christmas? What’s Christmas to me, liebchen?’
‘All right, I’ll go,’ said Janine. Then she added, guiltily aware that despite her objection she had really made up her mind before Sophie spoke, ‘I was going to anyway.’
‘I knew you were,’ said the old lady laughing. ‘You’re a good daughter.’
‘You think so?’ said Janine doubtfully. ‘I don’t always feel it. I don’t feel grown-up yet. Adults should be prepared to suffer the consequences of their own decisions, shouldn’t they? In any case, it’s me who has the rows with maman, but it’s papa and the children who suffer the consequences.’
Sophie shook her head.
‘Yes, when I first knew you, that was very much how you were. But you’ve grown a lot since then, child. And you’re still growing.’
‘Am I? Have I far to go, Bubbah?’ she asked, half-mocking, half-serious.
‘Further than I care to see, it sometimes feels,’ said the old lady, for a moment very frail and distant. But before Janine could express her concern, Sophie laughed and said with her usual energy, ‘And when I said you were a good daughter, I meant to me as well as to Madame Crozier.’
The welcome they received on Christmas Eve made Janine ashamed that she could even have dreamt of staying away. Louise burst into tears of joy at seeing them and later, while she was out of the room putting the children to bed, Claude said confidentially to his daughter, ‘If you’d not come here, we were going to come round to see you tomorrow.’
‘Maman too? But she said she’d never visit Sophie’s flat again.’
Never set foot in that heathen temple had been the precise phrase.
‘I told her it was Christmas and she’d have to swallow her pride,’ said Claude. ‘She shouted at me a bit, but deep down she wanted to be told.’
‘Yes,’ said Janine ruefully. ‘I know how she feels.’
The truce lasted all that evening and even survived Janine’s amazement the next morning at the way in which rationing and growing food shortages did not seem to have affected her mother’s preparations for Christmas dinner. Probably all over Paris, housewives were performing similar miracles, she assured herself. But she had a feeling this miracle had started with a bit more than a few loaves and fishes.
Just on midday with the house rich with the smell of baking and boiling and roasting, the door burst open to admit a tall, broad-shouldered, red-bearded man, resplendent in a beautifully cut suit, pale grey almost to whiteness, a virginal silk shirt and a flowered necktie fastened with a diamond-studded gold pin. He had the look of a pirate king dressed up for his bosun’s wedding. On his arm was an elegantly furred woman with tight black curls, a great deal of make-up, bright-red nail varnish and a good figure, slightly thickening with rather heavy thighs.
‘My God, Miche, is that you?’ said Janine.
‘Cousin Janine, how are you, girl?’ Boucher cried, stooping to give her a kiss which went a little way beyond the cousinly. His beard was soft and fragrant with attar of roses.
‘I hoped you’d be here. I’ve brought a few things for the kids. Hey, this is Hélène Campaux, by the way. La Belle Hélène, eh? She dances at the Folies. Some mover! Now where are those kids? And where’s the old folks?’
‘I think they’re in the bakehouse,’ said Janine. ‘I’ll go and tell them…’
Warn them, she meant. But it was too late.
The door opened.
Madame Crozier stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the newcomers.
Then spreading her arms, she cried, ‘Michel, my dear. You’ve come!’
And with an expression of amazement which matched anything her father ever produced, Janine saw these old antagonists embrace with all the fervour of dear friends, long parted.
It soon became clear that the reconciliation had taken place some time before and obviously had much to do with Cousin Miche’s new affluence. He presided over the feast like a red-bearded Father Christmas, commandeering Pauli’s help to fetch in from a rakish Hispano-Suiza bottles of champagne, a smoked ham, a tub of pâté de foie gras and a whole wheel of Camembert. In addition there were the promised presents, a huge fairy doll for Céci and a football and a penknife for Pauli.
Janine demurred at the knife.
‘He’s far too young. He’ll cut himself.’
‘Nonsense!’ said her cousin. ‘Me, I was carrying daggers and knuckle-dusters at his age!’
This reference to his criminal past, far from offending Louise, provoked her into peals of laughter. But she went on to say, ‘Janine’s right. He’s too young for a knife.’
Pauli said, ‘Maman, it’s not all a knife. It’s got all kinds of things.’
He demonstrated, pulling out one after another a corkscrew, a bottle-opener, a screw-driver, a gimlet.
‘I can’t cut myself with these,’ he said earnestly. ‘If I promise not to open the blade till I’m old enough, can I keep it? Please, maman?’
He fixed his unblinking wide-eyed gaze upon her, not beseeching, but inviting her to retreat before the logic of his argument.
As usual, there seemed nothing else to do.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Only, Pauli, I’ll decide when you’re old enough, you understand?’
‘Yes, maman.’
‘Then promise.’
‘I promise,’ he said solemnly.
‘Janine, are you sure? He’s only a child,’ protested Louise. ‘You’re far too soft, I always said.’
‘Except when you said I was too hard,’ retorted Janine.
This small crack in good will was smoothly papered over by Hélène, who said, ‘Isn’t it lovely to see them opening their presents? I just long to have children of my own, Janine. You’re so lucky to have this beautiful pair.’
She sounded as if she meant it and Janine found herself warming to her. Soon they were deep in domestic conversation, while Madame Crozier busied herself being the perfect hostess, and Boucher and Monsieur Crozier talked nostalgically about the great cyclists of the thirties. One thing that no one mentioned was the immediate past or the foreseeable future. The Paris - indeed the France - that lay outside the door might not have existed. Christmas, always a game, was being played with extra fervour this year.
Only a child to whom all play is reality could not grasp the rules of this game. Pauli ate his dinner silently, and drank his wine and water, and looked after his little sister who still found it hard to discriminate between nose and mouth. And all the time he hardly ever took his eyes off Michel Boucher. But Janine knew, and the knowledge wrenched her heart, that it was his father he was seeing.
And now her own father, as if catching the thought, broke the rules too and said quietly when Pauli had taken his sister to the lavatory, ‘Any news of Jean-Paul?’
Janine shook her head. Boucher said, ‘That man of yours not turned up yet? That’s lousy. Have you tried the Red Cross?’
‘I’ve tried everything,’ said Janine dully. She listed all her channels of enquiry. Hélène put her hand over hers and squeezed sympathetically, while Boucher snorted his opinion of civil servants and bureaucracy.
Then Louise came in with brandy and chocolates and the subject was shelved.
When the time came for the visitors to go, Janine showed them out. After he had put Hélène in the car, Miche came back to the shop doorway and kissed her in a fairly cousinly manner.
‘It’s been great today,’ he said.
‘That’s good, Miche. And it was lovely having you and Hélène here.’
‘Yeah. Surprising too, eh?’ He laughed. ‘I saw your face! Thing is I’ve always liked your dad. He’s been good to me over the years, more than the rest of you know. All the family I’ve got, you Croziers. It was meeting Hélène that made me realize a man needed a family. So when I started doing well enough to get round Auntie Lou, I thought, what the hell. I can put up with her funny little ways.’
‘I’m glad, Miche. You and Hélène are really serious then?’
‘Do me a favour!’ he said. ‘I’m too young to be really serious. But serious enough. Look, Jan, none of my business, but about Jean-Paul, if you like I’ll have a word with my new boss, see if he can help.’
‘Your new boss. Who’s that, Miche?’ asked Janine suspiciously.
‘Doesn’t matter, if he can help, does it?’ laughed Boucher. ‘And if he can’t, then it doesn’t matter either. I’ll be in touch. Hey, what are you doing on New Year’s Eve? Fancy going to a party?’
‘I don’t think so, Miche,’ said Janine. ‘I’m not really in the party mood at the moment.’
‘No? On second thoughts, you probably wouldn’t enjoy this one anyway,’ he said with a grin. ‘Cheers, kids. Pauli, you look after your mother now. Wiedersehen!’
And as Janine frowned her displeasure, he smiled, shrugged and said, ‘When in Rome, sweetie, do like they do in Berlin. Leb’wohl!
8
So the year drew to its close. Winter like the Germans came swiftly, hit hard, felt as if it was here to stay.
‘I’ll tell you something, Günter,’ said Major Zeller. ‘I never thought it would be so easy.’
‘Victory, you mean?’
‘No. Not victory in the field, anyway. It was always possible that that would be easy. No, the remarkable thing is the degree to which we have got ourselves accepted. More than accepted. Welcomed! I actually feel at home in this city, a visitor rather than a conqueror.’
He paused, then went on, ‘It would please me, Günter, if from time to time as I spoke to you, that you gave a little nod of agreement or let something other than lugubrious doubt light up that gamekeeper face of yours.’
‘Sorry,’ said Mai.
‘You don’t agree?’
‘It’s early days, sir,’ said Mai. ‘You knock a man down, he may be concussed and in shock for a long time afterwards. He may even believe that he didn’t really mind being knocked down. But you’d better wait till he’s fully himself again before deciding if you really want him holding the ladder while you’re cleaning windows.’
Zeller regarded him curiously.
‘Cleaning windows? How quaint you sometimes are, Günter. I do hope you will not put your quaintness forward as official Abwehr thinking tonight. The SD are keen enough to undermine us without giving them ammunition in the Embassy.’
‘I’ll try to remember my manners, sir. I expect in any case I’ve only been invited to hand out drinks to the distinguished foreign guests. Is Monsieur Melchior attending on our ticket, by the way?’
A glittering New Year reception was being held at the Embassy. All the main sections of the Occupying Authority had been asked to submit suggestions for the guest list. Mai knew very well that there was more chance of Zeller suggesting Winston Churchill than Melchior. The major was still being ribbed by officers in those units put on alert for the non-existent midnight disturbances. He was convinced that somehow the SD had been behind the fiasco to make the Abwehr look ridiculous. Mai didn’t discount the possibility but didn’t reckon Melchior would have had the nerve to fool Zeller knowingly.
‘I should prefer not to hear that revolting creature’s name mentioned, lieutenant,’ said Zeller dangerously. ‘I don’t know where he’s been hiding for the past weeks, but when he finally crawls out of his hole, he’s going to wish he’d burrowed down the centre of the earth.’
Going to give him a spanking, are we? thought Mai. But the look on his superior’s face convinced him it would be unwise even to hint he found the matter more amusing than tragic.
That night as he stood in the most obscure corner of the huge reception room in the Embassy, feeling itchy and uncomfortable in his dress uniform, he wondered if perhaps Zeller hadn’t been right about one thing. Looking round the glittering assembly, it was easy to believe that all the richest, most influential members of the Parisian ruling classes were here. Women in elegant billows of silk and satin, necks and bosoms gleaming with gold or dazzling with diamonds; men in tail-suits that actually fitted, some with the medals of other campaigns in other wars pinned proudly on their chests; smiling, dancing, drinking, joking with their conquerors. Could it be that Zeller was right? Could they not only have won the war, but somehow managed to win the peace?
As if summoned by his thoughts, the major appeared. He looked vital, assured, handsome, a true conqueror.
‘Enjoying yourself, Günter? The perfect end to a perfect year, wouldn’t you say? Triumph after triumph! There’s been nothing like it since Augustan Rome!’
‘Remember, you are mortal, major.’
‘What?’
‘Didn’t the Romans use to set a slave close behind the conqueror in his triumph to whisper as he acknowledged the cheers of the crowd, Remember, you are mortal?’
‘Did they? And is that the role you think God’s allocated you?’ said Zeller sarcastically. ‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Basically you’re too arrogant a bastard to think of yourself as a slave.’
Mai smiled. He wasn’t about to be provoked into a public row with his superior. That kind of fight was no-contest.
In any case, he definitely hadn’t been picked to remind Zeller of his human frailty that night. God had chosen quite another champion. Mai knew this because, over the major’s shoulder, he could see him approaching. And soon they could both hear his voice, fluting its deflating message.
‘Bruno, dear boy! I thought it was you, so unmistakable from behind! I’m so glad you could make it!’
Zeller swung round to confirm with his eyes what his ears found incredible.
‘What in the name of God are you doing here?’ he cried, bewilderment as yet stronger than rage.
Maurice Melchior raised his eyebrows.
‘I’m having a really delightful time, that’s what.’
He turned round, his elegant silken dinner jacket giving a quick flash of a brilliant scarlet lining.
‘Walter, I told you he’d be here. Bruno, my dear, you know my friend, Walter, of course. But let’s be formal, I know how much protocol matters to you military boys. Lieutenant-Colonel Fiebelkorn, may I have the honour of presenting you to Major Bruno Zeller?’
Mai saw the delight trembling through Melchior’s whole body as he made the introduction. Even clearer was the fury that held Zeller stiff, his fists clenched so tight that the silver signet ring stood out like a weapon. Melchior could live to rue the day he had made the major an enemy.
But as Günter Mai looked at the SS colonel’s impassive face and unblinking watery gaze, he felt a sudden certainty that it had been a far more dangerous day for Melchior when he had made Fiebelkorn his friend.
Across the room, a gorgeous French film star fanned her nearly naked breasts and complained how warm it was. A gallant Panzer officer immediately leant forward, drew back the heavy brocaded curtains and began to wrestle with a window.
‘The black-out! Remember the black-out!’ called someone.
‘The black-out?’ said the Panzer officer. ‘Why bother? There’s no danger up there unless Churchill starts sending trained pigeons from Trafalgar Square!’
There was a burst of laughter which became general as this shaft of Aryan wit was passed around the room and for a while the open curtain was forgotten, allowing the brilliance of the many chandeliers to spill its diamantine glory into the darkness outside.
A crowd had gathered earlier in the Rue de Lille to see the notables arrive, but as midnight approached, despite a rumoured assurance that the curfew would be suspended for this night, most of the watchers had drifted away to their own houses and their own meditations on the dying year.
A few remained, however. Among them was Janine Simonian. She had felt compelled to get out of Sophie’s tiny flat that night. She’d let herself drift but hadn’t been surprised to find herself in the University quarter. She had been brought here first by Jean-Paul. It was here that her eyes had been opened to a world outside the bakery, a world of ideas and imagination, of criticism and curiosity. Finally the memories had become too much and to escape them she joined the watchers in the Rue de Lille.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked someone.
‘It’s a ball, just like the old days,’ was the reply.
At that moment the curtain was drawn back and the spectators could see right into the reception hall. Music drifted out, and laughter. Elegant women in expensive clothes were drinking with attentive men in formal evening dress or colourful dress uniforms. It was a scene of assurance and power; it stated more forcibly than marching troops or rumbling gun carriages that we, here, inside, are the conquerors and will be for ever; while you, outside, are for ever the conquered.
A flurry of snow passed overhead, leaving flakes on her cheeks like tears. The last watchers began to depart. Someone said, ‘Happy New Year,’ but no one replied.
Janine said, ‘Jean-Paul, wherever you are, Happy New Year, my love.’
Then she too turned and walked slowly away from the light.
PART THREE
February—December 1941
Dans une telle situation, il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte.
Madame du Deffand
1
If it wasn’t the coldest February in years, to most Frenchmen it felt like it.
Monsieur Édouard Scheffer of Strasbourg sat in the Café Balzac near the Quai de Grenelle métro station and shivered. Not even two thicknesses of overcoat, a Homburg hat and frequent additions to his vile coffee from a gun-metal hip flask could keep him warm. The patron, who valued his custom, was apologetic. He and Monsieur Scheffer had done a few small blackmarket deals in the couple of months since Miche the Butcher had introduced them, so he was sure that Monsieur would appreciate the problem of fuel shortage.
The seated man nodded and thought of his beautifully warm room at the Lutétia. Bruno Zeller would never undertake assignments which involved freezing to death. In fairness it was difficult to imagine Zeller being able to pass himself off as anything other than a German officer, but just now Günter Mai didn’t feel like being fair.
The door opened. Two figures entered. One was Boucher, the other was the girl. Boucher peered down the long shadowy room in search of him. He always sat at the furthermost end near the kitchen door, partly for security, partly to avoid the draught.
Now Boucher saw him. Spoke to the girl. Pointed.
She looked, saw, recognized.
In that instant he could see she’d had no idea who she was going to meet. He’d assumed Boucher would have told her, and he’d been surprised when nevertheless the redhead had confirmed the meet was on. But all that he’d read into this was that the girl was desperate, and desperate people made easy recruits.
She was trying to leave but her cousin was hanging on to her arm. Mai willed him to let her go. If she was forced to confront him now, his cover could be blown and he found Édouard Scheffer very useful.
She was coming. Damn. He signalled the patron to bring more coffee. The girl arrived and glowered down at him.
‘Darling, how good to see you. Not still angry with me, are you?’
She was taken aback. The patron, arriving with the coffee, grinned lecherously, scenting a lovers’ quarrel. Angrily she sat in the chair he ostentatiously pulled out for her.
Mai took out his flask and poured an ounce of liquor into her glass.
‘I don’t like schnapps,’ she said. But he noted with approval that she waited till the patron retired out of earshot.
‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘That’s why I carry cognac.’
She drank, enjoyed, didn’t try to hide it. Or perhaps couldn’t. Not the best quality of a prospective agent, an inability to hide your feelings, thought Mai. Still he wasn’t really thinking of her as a Mata Hari.
‘I didn’t know it was you,’ said Janine.
‘You wouldn’t have come?’ asked Mai.
She shook her head then added, ‘Not because of the shop, what happened that time, but…’
‘Because I’m not a general, someone important? I take your point.’
She was much calmer now. It didn’t surprise him. This was what he was noted for - baiting, hooking, playing, and not so much landing the little fish as persuading it to jump out of the water.
He produced his pipe, held it up in a token request for permission, and lit it. Women often found a pipe reassuring.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Someone important.’
He studied her through his pipe smoke. On her entry to the café he had thought she was plumper than he remembered. Now he realized that like himself she was just wearing several layers of clothes against the cold and was in fact rather thinner than he recalled. It was a good face, not beautiful but intriguing, full of life and mobility despite the wasting effects of this long winter.
‘Don’t you even want to talk about your problem?’ he asked.
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Oh? You’ve managed to track down Corporal Jean-Paul Simonian of the Light Infantry then?’
She went red with shock and anger.
‘He shouldn’t have told you,’ she said. ‘He had no right.’
‘He didn’t tell me anything,’ said Mai. ‘I got the details elsewhere.’
For a moment she looked puzzled then it dawned.
‘Maman!’ she said. ‘She’s been talking to you, hasn’t she?’
He was right. She was no fool. He nodded.
‘Mothers like to talk about their children,’ he said. ‘Even when they quarrel. She doesn’t blame you. She told me you were on edge because you’d no idea what had happened to your husband. So when Miche said you had a problem, I guessed.’
‘Very clever,’ said Janine. ‘What else did maman say? That I’d be better off if Jean-Paul never came back?’
Mai shrugged, a good French shrug.
‘He mightn’t, you know that? In fact it’s the likeliest explanation.’
‘Of course I know that.’
Her anger had faded. She drank her spiked coffee. He drew on his pipe. He could see she was building an equation, checking what it meant. At last she shook her head. There was neither relief nor disappointment in her voice when she spoke.
‘This is a waste of time. For both of us. I’ll be honest with you. Since Miche arranged this meeting, I’ve been wondering why any German should even think of helping me. There’s only one possible reason. He’d want me to agree to be an informer, a spy, something like that.’
She paused. He asked, ‘And what had you decided?’
‘I decided anyone who got me as a spy would have made a bad bargain,’ she said with an unexpected flash of humour. ‘Though I suppose, now that I know Miche’s boss isn’t a stranger, there could be another possibility.’
It took him a couple of seconds to work it out. He had to make an effort to keep the surprise out of his face, but Janine put his thoughts into words.
‘But I daresay that German officers have found easier ways of getting girls. Anyway, the point is, now I’ve seen you, there’s no point. I can’t see a mere lieutenant being any more useful to me than the Red Cross or a Vichy deputy. So thank you for the drink and goodbye.’ She rose to leave.
He didn’t try to stop her.
She walked straight past Boucher at the bar without saying a word.
‘Hey, Janine,’ he cried, going after her. ‘What’s up?’ he demanded as he overtook her in the street. ‘Won’t he help?’
‘He’s a lieutenant, Miche. A nobody. You should have told me. What can someone like that do?’
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said walking fast to keep up with her. ‘You’re probably right. Except that he strikes me as a clever sod, despite appearances, and my mate, Pajou - he’s the one who got me the job - he reckons old Günter really runs half the show at the Lutétia.’
She stopped and turned to face him.
‘This job of yours, what is it exactly?’ she asked.
‘It’s all above board,’ he assured her. ‘We help the authorities recover things. Food that’s been hoarded, valuables that have been hidden, illegally I mean.’
‘You help the Boche to loot!’
‘No,’ he said with genuine indignation. ‘It’s just recovery. People abandon their houses, make no proper provision for storing delicate antiques, the authorities take care of them.’
‘Rich Jews’ villas, you mean? And what do you know about delicate antiques, Miche?’
He grinned and said, ‘Not much. But they have experts to deal with things like that. And it’s not just Jewish stuff either. I reckon it’s a lot of rubbish this stuff about the Boche being down on the Jews. So there’s a bit of trouble sometimes, but there’s never been any shortage of our lot ready to have a go at the Jews. Ask your mum-in-law. I bet she can tell a tale or two. It just goes to show.’
It struck Janine that what her cousin was really wanting to show was that he was quite justified in working for the Germans. And it struck her also that she was feeling rather holier-than-thou for someone who had lain awake all night debating just what she would agree to in return for hard information about Jean-Paul.
But it had all been a waste of time. She was running out of hope. That was the point she was trying to steer away from in this idle chatter with Miche.
She didn’t realize she was crying till Miche said, ‘Hey come on. No weeping. Not outside anyway. You’ll get icicles on your cheeks. Let’s get you home. Tell you what, why don’t I use my influence and see if I can dig you up some proper fuel, and perhaps a kilo of best steak so you can all feast your faces tonight?’
He dropped her in the Rue de Thorigny promising to be back within the hour. He meant it too. Miche the Butcher had a soft heart. But he was even softer when it came to resolution.
As he drove along the Rue Montmartre toward his well-stocked, well-fuelled apartment, he saw a familiar small but exquisitely packed figure, swaying along beneath an explosion of golden hair.
‘Arlette!’ he called. ‘Arlette! How’s it going?’
She looked in surprise at the impressive car pulling into the kerb, then recognized Boucher.
‘Miche, it’s you. God, you’re doing all right, aren’t you?’
‘Not bad,’ he grinned. ‘Long time, no see.’
In fact he hadn’t seen Arlette since she’d put him up when he came back to Paris last June. They’d parted in a quarrel. He recalled throwing some very nasty names at her, not because she’d needed him out of her room so that she could ply her trade, but because he realized her new customers were Germans.
Well, he’d been a patriot then. Still was, only the Marshal had changed the shape of patriotism.
‘Fancy a drink?’ he said.
‘Why not? My place or yours?’
Hélène was at his place. She was dancing tonight and liked to have a good rest. He’d been quite looking forward to disturbing her. On the other hand it would probably be a kindness not to.
‘Yours,’ he said. ‘Hop in.’
Janine had watched him drive away: assertive, positive, athletic. She’d felt envious. What must it be like to be a man and be able to adapt your environment to your needs instead of having to mould your needs to your environment! These men could do anything! Finding a lost husband, or providing food and fuel within the hour, it was all one to them.
But as she shivered hungrily to bed that night, she made a bitter adjustment to her conclusion.
Promising to find a husband; promising to provide warmth and nourishment; promising to come back from the wars safe and sound and soon; it was these resounding promises that were all one to them. All vibrant with sincerity, and all completely vain.
2
It was an April evening, but the wind that met Christian Valois head on as he cycled back to the family apartment in Passy was full of sleet. He carried his bike up the stairs and into the apartment with him. Cars had practically vanished from the streets. There was little petrol to be had and, in any case, you needed a special Ausweis from the Germans to use one, so bikes were now pricey enough to attract the professional thief.
As he took off his sodden coat, the phone rang.
The line was poor and the female voice at the other end was faint and intermittent.
‘Hello! Hello! I can’t hear you. Who is that?’
Suddenly the interference went and the voice came loud and clear.
‘It’s me, your sister, idiot!’
‘Marie-Rose! Hello. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. Listen, quickly, in case we get cut off. Are you coming down this weekend? Please, you must, it’s my birthday, or had you forgotten?’
She was seventeen on Saturday. Seventeen. A good age, even in awful times. But could he bear to go to Vichy? His parents had urged him frequently to join them, or at least to come for a visit. So far he had refused. But Marie-Rose’s birthday was different. Despite her youthful impertinence his sister adored him and he was very fond of her.
He said, ‘I don’t know. The weather, it’s so awful…’
‘Damn the weather! Please, please, it won’t be the same without you.’
‘I’ll see,’ he said. ‘I won’t promise but I’ll see.’
Shortly afterwards they were cut off.
The next morning, spring finally exploded with all the violence of energy too long restrained. On the Friday afternoon, he caught the train to Vichy.
At the crossing point into the Free Zone, they were all ordered out to have their papers checked. Valois had had no difficulty in getting an Ausweis. When your father was a Vichy deputy and you were a respectable civil servant, you were regarded as quite safe, he thought moodily.
Not everyone was as lucky. Somewhere along the platform an argument had broken out. Voices were raised, German and French. Suddenly a middle-aged man in a dark business suit broke away from a group of German soldiers, ran a little way down the platform, then scrambled beneath the train.
Valois jumped into the nearest carriage to look out of the further window. The man was on his feet again, running across the tracks. He was no athlete and he was already labouring. A voice cried, ‘Halt!’ He kept going. A gun rattled twice. He flung up his arms and fell.
He wasn’t dead, but hit in the leg. Two soldiers ran up to him and pulled him upright. He screamed every time his injured leg touched the ground as he half-hopped and was half-dragged the length of the train to bring him back round to the platform.
Valois turned furiously from the window and made for the platform door. There was a man sitting in the compartment who must have got back in after him.
He said, ‘I shouldn’t bother.’
Valois paused, realizing he recognized the man.
‘I’m sorry? It’s Maître Delaplanche, isn’t it?’
‘You recognize me?’
The lawyer’s face, which was the living proof of his Breton peasant ancestry, screwed up in mock alarm.
‘You’re often in the papers, and I attended several meetings you spoke at when I was a student.’
‘Did you? Ah yes. I seem to recall you now.’ Face screwed up again in an effort of recollection as unconvincing as his alarm. ‘Valois, isn’t it? Christian Valois. Of course. I knew your father when he practised, before politics took him over.’
Delaplanche was well known in legal circles as a pleader of underdog causes. Whenever an individual challenged the State, his opinion if not his counsel would be sought. He had spoken on a variety of socialist platforms but always refused to put the weight of his reputation behind any programme except in his own words, ‘the quest for justice’.
‘Nice to meet you,’ said Valois. ‘Excuse me.’
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ repeated the lawyer as Valois opened the door on to the platform. ‘I presume you’re going to make a fuss about the chap they’ve just shot? I’ll tell you his story. His papers were obviously forged. He made a run for it and got shot. He’ll turn out to be a blackmarketeer, or an unregistered Jew, or perhaps even an enemy agent. All you’ll do is draw attention to yourself and get either yourself or, worse still, the whole train delayed here a lot longer.’
‘That’s bloody cynical!’ snapped Valois. ‘I thought you were famous for fighting the underdog’s battles.’
‘Against the law, not against an army,’ said Delaplanche. ‘Against an army, all the underdog armed with the law does is get fucked!’
He smiled with the complacency of one who was famous for his earthy courtroom language. On the platform German voices were commanding the passengers back on to the train. Delaplanche picked up a newspaper and began reading it. Feeling defeated, Valois stepped down on to the platform but only to return to his own compartment.
His gloom lasted till the train pulled into the station at Vichy, but lifted at the sight of his sister, long black hair streaming behind her, running down the platform to greet him.
They embraced. Since he last saw her she’d become a young woman and a very beautiful one. She tucked her arm through his in delight and led him to where their mother was waiting.
‘Where’s father?’ asked Valois as they approached.
‘Busy. He sends his apologies.’
‘No. I understand. Without his constant efforts, the country would be ground down under the conqueror’s heel.’
‘Shut up and behave! I don’t want my birthday spoilt!’
He just about managed to obey the injunction, but there were difficult moments. Vichy disgusted him with its opulent façades all draped with tricolours. Everywhere he looked, red, white and blue, like make-up on a leprous face. He preferred the stark truth of those swastikas he could see from his office window flapping lazily over the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli. The people, most of them, were the same. ‘Like characters on a film set,’ he told his sister. ‘Or worse. Vichy is like a folk-tale village in a pop-up book. Only a child thinks it’s really magic.’
‘I agree,’ said Marie-Rose. ‘It’s so boring here. That’s why I want to come back to Paris with you!’
He looked at her in alarm. This was the first he’d heard of this idea and the more he thought about it, the less he liked it. In Paris, by himself, his decisions only concerned himself; it was a time of danger and it would get worse.
He tried to explain this to Marie-Rose and they quarrelled. But by way of compensation, he found an area of common ground with his father who was absolutely opposed to any such move.
Indeed he and his father kept the peace till the time came to part. His mother presented him with a bag full of ‘goodies’ and his father with a piece of paper.
‘It’s a permit to use the car, the Renault. I’ll want to use it myself whenever I come to Paris and it’s absurd for it to stand in the garage all the time, so I got a permit for you too.’
His instinct was to tear the paper in half and it showed on his face.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Father, have you any idea what it’s like in Paris? The kind of people who’re still driving around in cars, well, they’re not the kind of people I want to be associated with. There’s still a war on, father, believe me!’
‘No, there’s an armistice on, you’d better believe me!’ snapped Léon Valois. ‘Face up to reality, even if you don’t like it. The facts are that the Germans are in control and likely to stay that way. With or without us, they’ll rule. Without us…well, I dread to think how it might be. With us, we can restrain, influence, perhaps eventually control! They’re a rigid race, good for soldiering, poor for politics. Believe me, Christian, my way’s the only way to build a future for France!’
He spoke with passionate sincerity but there was no place for them to meet. The one good thing about their quarrel was that it reunited him with his sister just as their row had temporarily brought him closer to his parents. She kissed him tenderly at parting and asked, ‘Is it really so awful under the Boche? I worry about you.’
‘Oh it’s not so bad really,’ he assured her.
‘No? Well, no matter what you say, one day I’ll surprise you and come and see for myself!’
She grinned in a most unseventeen-like way and hugged him once more with a childish lack of restraint before he got on the train.
He leaned out of the window and waved as long as he could see her on the platform. As he turned to sit down, the compartment door opened.
‘We meet again,’ said Delaplanche. ‘How was your trip? What did you think of Vichy?’
His eyes glanced at Madame Valois’s bagful of expensive cans, as if he were reading the labels through the cloth, and when they returned to Valois, he felt as if the man could see through to the car permit in his pocket.
‘I’ll tell you what I thought of Vichy,’ he said savagely.
Delaplanche listened in silence. Finished at last, Valois waited for approval.
‘I hope you’re not always so indiscreet,’ was all the lawyer said. ‘Especially with strangers.’
‘Strangers? But…’
‘What do you know of me?’
‘I know your reputation. I’ve read about, listened to you. I know you’re a man of the people, a socialist, some even say a…’
‘Communist? Yes, some do say that. Of course, if I were a communist, that would put me in the German camp, wouldn’t it?’
‘No! On the contrary…’
‘But Russia and Germany have a non-aggression pact.’
‘Yes, but that hardly means the communists support the Nazis!’
‘No. But wasn’t it enough to stop you from joining the communists just when you were teetering on the edge?’
The paper went up again. And the rest of the journey passed in silence, with the lawyer reading and Valois brooding on the man’s apparent detailed knowledge of his own background.
Their farewells in Paris were perfunctory. Valois felt tired yet restless. It had been an unsettling weekend and it was with a sense of relief and homecoming that he entered the apartment building. Perhaps his outrage at the idea of the car permit ought to extend to his use of his parents’ large well-appointed flat, but he was glad to find his mind could accommodate this as comfortably as it accommodated him.
The old lift had become an uncertain vehicle with lack of maintenance and power irregularities, so he headed for the staircase, ill-lit by a shrouded bulb to comply with the black-out regulations. The apartment was one floor up. He could hear a distant wireless playing music. It was a lively popular piece, but the distance, the hour and his own mood made it a melancholy sound. He sighed as he reached his landing.
Then fatigue and melancholy vanished in a trice, for terror lets no rival near the throne. There was a man crouched in the shadow of his door with a submachine gun under his arm. It was too late to retreat. The waiting man had seen him.
‘Monsieur Christian Valois?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve got a message for you.’
The man moved forward into the dim light. And the machine gun became a wooden crutch under his left arm. And the lurking assassin became a haggard, grey-haired man in a baggy suit.
‘A message? Who the hell from?’ demanded Valois, trying to cover his fear with aggression.
‘A friend,’ said the man. ‘Jean-Paul Simonian. Can we go inside? I’m dying of thirst!’
3
‘But he’s alive?’ demanded Janine for the sixth or seventh time.
‘Yes, yes, yes, how many times do I have to tell you!’ said Christian Valois with growing irritation. ‘He got shot in the head. He was critically ill for a long time but now he’s recovering. He’s in a military hospital near Nancy, but soon he’ll be shipped off to join the rest of them at some camp in Germany. But he is alive, he is all right.’
‘Why did he contact you, not me? Why didn’t he get in touch earlier? Why doesn’t he write instead of sending messages by this man Pivert?’
Janine knew how absurd all these questions must sound, but they forced themselves out against her will. The truth was, at first she didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it, when Valois, unnaturally flushed with suppressed excitement, had burst in, crying, ‘He’s alive! Jean-Paul’s alive!’ Finally, as details of the story began to adhere, there had started these other emotions, erupting like jets of steam from a hot spring, scalding, unforecastable, uncontrollable. Doubt was there, panic, fear, anger and plain resentment. Then the door opened and Pauli, attracted by the noise, rushed in crying, ‘Maman, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’
‘No, Pauli. It’s your father. He’s alive!’
For a moment the little boy stood perfectly still. Then he sat on the floor and began to cry, not the silent, half-concealed tears she had grown used to, but howling like his little sister.
‘Pauli!’ she said, kneeling beside him and hugging him close. ‘It’s all right, my love. It’s all right. Daddy’s alive!’
And suddenly it was all right. Her sobs joined the child’s and at last her emotions ran as clear as her joyful tears.
‘I’m sorry, Christian,’ she said a little later as they sat and drank a glass of wine. ‘I didn’t dare to believe you. Do you understand that? Now quickly, now I’m calm, before Sophie comes back from shopping, tell me it all again so I can break the news to her the best way possible.’
Corporal Major Pivert’s story had been told with an old soldier’s rough directness. He had been second in command of the section in which Jean-Paul was serving. They had held out for a day and a half against a ferocious onslaught.
‘Most of the Boche just went round us, leaving half a company to mop us up. Well, we showed the bastards! Mind you, we took a pounding. It brought us real close together. We’d been a tight-knit group before, got on well despite all our differences, but being under heavy attack together, losing some of your mates, that really binds you close as cement. It’s a grand feeling, but Christ, the pain of it, when another of your mates gets hit. You see, you’re all one. Every wound, every scream, every death, it’s yours. Do you see what I mean?’
Christian said, ‘I think so, I’m trying…’
The old soldier regarded him keenly and said, ‘You’ve had no service, have you, sir? You can’t understand without knowing it for yourself.’
Valois flushed and said, ‘Go on.’
‘It hit Simonian bad. His best mate, a young lad from Auxerre, died in his arms, spilling his guts all over him. I think he’d have gone over the top himself then, trying to take the bastards on single-handed, but the lieutenant stopped him. He was a good lad, that lieutenant. Fucking children they’re putting in charge now, I said when I first saw him. But he was all right.
‘Finally the lieutenant decided to call it a day. Our wireless had packed up, see, and for a long time we thought it was like the first war again, with us part of a long line running all the way from the sea to Switzerland. Little Verdun, that’s what I called the place we was. Except we found when we got the wireless going again, that just about every other bugger had packed up and gone home, or they were sitting on their arses waiting to be rounded up and trucked off east. Well, now the case was altered. Simonian was keen to go on fighting at first, but the lieutenant persuaded him for the sake of his mates to give it up. So we made a white flag, but before we shoved it up, the lieutenant said, “Hold on. Simonian, take this,” and he handed over the dead lad from Auxerre’s pass-book. “What for?” asks Simonian. “So you can chuck your own away,” says the lieutenant. “I was in Berlin before the war and I assure you that you’ll be better off not to have the name Iakov Moseich Simonian in your pass-book when the Boche get round to checking their prisoners.” “No,” says Simonian. “I’m not using these papers, I’m not having his parents told he’s alive and well and a prisoner when he’s lying dead and unburied out here.” “Please yourself,” says the lieutenant. “But let’s have a look at your own book then.” And he takes it and he scratches and tears it, then hands it back, looking right scruffy but no worse than many another after what we’d been through. “There,” he says. “You’ve been christened in every sense!” And I glanced at the book and saw that all that remained of his name was Jean-Paul Simon!
‘Now we waved the flag. The only trouble was that Fritz seemed to be a bit short-sighted. Or more like a bit short-tempered for all the bother we’d caused. So they just shot the flag to pieces and us with it. There were only four of us left alive and of these, only me and Simonian lasted long enough to get to hospital, me with one foot shot off and him with a bullet in his head.
‘And that was it, more or less. They were sawing bits off me for the next few months till they’d got as far as they could go. I didn’t even know Jean-Paul was still alive till a month or so back when I was getting around on my crutch and ran into him, so to speak, in a wheelchair. He didn’t seem to recognize me at first but when we got to talking, I could see it all gradually coming back to him. The thing was, he was still down in the books as Jean-Paul Simon. I asked one of the nurses about him. She said it was sad, he never said anything about his past life and there didn’t seem to be any next of kin to inform. At least he was getting better, though he’d been very ill. Well, I guessed that he was just playing dumb because, having changed his name, he could hardly start talking about a family called Simonian, could he? And from what I heard people saying, the lieutenant had been right. Iakov Moseich was not a good label to wear in the heart of Bocheland, which is where he’ll likely end up.
‘Me, well, there was no use sending a one-legged man to a POW camp, even the Boche could see that. So they decided to discharge me back home. When I told Jean-Paul, he asked me to get in touch with you, Monsieur Valois, and tell you he was alive and well. He didn’t want to risk putting anything down on paper in case I got searched. So here I am and that’s my message!’
‘By the time he finished it was nearly curfew or I’d have come round last night,’ concluded Valois. ‘He slept in the flat and this morning I sent him off with some money.’
‘Did you get his address? Can I talk to him?’ demanded Janine.
‘Of course,’ said Valois. ‘Though not straightaway, eh? I’ll fix it up later. There’s still a slight risk now, and it’s best not to take chances.’
This wasn’t the real reason, but Janine in her joy and excitement was easily persuaded to accept it. The truth was that Valois had other cause to feel uneasy about a meeting between Pivert and Janine. He’d censored all references to the mental scarring left by Jean-Paul’s wound.
‘I knew he was married with kiddies,’ Pivert had said. ‘You talk about these things when you’re under fire like we’d been. But first time I mentioned them in the hospital, he just looked blank. Another time he talked about them, but like he was talking about something in a dream. Most of the time he just wanted to talk about our old comrades. I had to go through how each of them died, he was so desperate to believe that some others might have survived.
‘But you he seemed to remember all the time, sir. You and his old mother. He said to contact you first so you could break it to the old lady. Good news can sometimes shock even more than bad, can’t it?’
Good news so mixed with cause for unease certainly could, decided Valois. And he had taken it upon himself to convey only the joyous essentials of the tale to Janine and his reward was to see her face light up like a spring dawn.
When Sophie returned from shopping, complaining bitterly about the lack of most things and the price of the rest, Valois diplomatically withdrew. They needn’t have worried, however. She short-circuited Janine’s tentative approach to the subject with a crisp, ‘What’s this? You’ve got news of Jean-Paul, haven’t you? Well, praise be to God, he’s alive!’
‘Bubbah! How did you know?’ demanded Janine amazed.
‘Know? I’ve always known! And how did I know you were going to tell me? Well, I’ve not seen your eyes sparkle like that for over a year, so I didn’t think you were going to tell me he was dead! Come here, child!’
Laughing and crying together, Janine fell into the old woman’s arms.
After joy came decision. Day to day existence had gone out of the window. There was now a future to be planned.
Janine wanted to sit down and write a long loving letter to Jean-Paul straightaway and once more found herself at odds with Christian.
‘You can’t just write,’ he said. ‘Letters are censored. I don’t know how much danger Jean-Paul would be in if they discovered his background, but they’d certainly sit up and take notice if they did find out he’d been misleading them about his name. So it can’t help him if suddenly out of the blue he starts getting letters from his family, can it?’
To Janine’s surprise and disappointment, Sophie supported Valois. ‘There are stories told in the schul of what these Nazis have done in Germany. If my son is soon to go into one of these prisoner camps, better he go as Jean-Paul Simon, Catholic, I think.’
‘But we have to let him know that we’re all well, Bubbah, you, me and the children!’ cried Janine. ‘And if we don’t contact him straightaway, how will we ever know where they send him? Oh, don’t let’s lose him again so soon after finding him! Couldn’t I travel to Nancy to see him? Christian, couldn’t your father help me to get an Ausweis?’
Valois shook his head in exasperation.
‘Please, I beg of you, Janine. Do nothing without consulting me first, eh? Look at it this way. The Germans have got themselves a prisoner, an ordinary soldier of no particular importance, called Jean-Paul Simon. The only danger is from us, his friends, if we draw the Germans’ attention to him in any way.’
Suddenly all Janine’s other emotions were blanked out by a single memory. Up to now she’d completely forgotten her interview with the Abwehr lieutenant. Now Valois’s warning brought it all back. Just how much had her mother told Mai about Jean-Paul?
She shook her head. What did it matter? The Abwehr were hardly going to concern themselves with one French soldier who, as Mai had pointed out, was probably dead.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Valois.
‘Fine. It’s just the excitement. So tell me, what do we do?’
‘Here’s my idea. The only person who can contact Jean-Paul without drawing undue attention is Pivert. So let’s send a parcel through the Red Cross with a note allegedly from Pivert saying he’s not forgotten his old fellow-patient. In the note, Pivert can say that he’s safely back in Paris, and has found his own family, Sophie, Janine, Pauli and Céci, safe and well. And he can tell Jean-Paul to write to him, care of my address. It’s a risk, but not much of one and we’ve got to give him an excuse to write back. How does that sound to you?’
Janine considered. It sounded cautious, reasonable, well-planned. It sounded so many things she found it hard to be but which she knew she was going to have to learn.
‘It sounds all right,’ she said.
When Christian left she accompanied him to the street door. He was in a quiet mood which contrasted with his excitement as the bearer of good news earlier. She guessed he was still worried that by some impulsive act she might endanger Jean-Paul. The thought annoyed her. Didn’t he know that while there was an ounce of strength in her body she would fight for Jean-Paul? Then she thought, of course he knows it, just as I know that while there’s any strength left in his mind, he will be fighting alongside me.
‘I’ll be in touch then,’ he said.
Awkwardly he leaned forward and kissed her cheek. She jerked her head back and for a second he thought she was going to thrust him away. Then her arms went round his shoulders and she pulled him close.
‘Thank you, Christian,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for being such a good friend.’
Before he could think of what to reply, she released him and slipped back into the house.
He stood in the doorway for a while after she’d gone, not thinking anything in particular but savouring the memory of her slim, strong body pressed against his like the reverberation of music after the players have laid their instruments down.
Then he smiled as if at some recognition of his own foolishness and set off walking towards the centre of town.
4
Maurice Melchior was bored with his job.
He was bored with the countryside. He was bored with bumping around in a smelly army truck. And he was bored with his companion, SS Sergeant Hans Hemmen, who had no conversation whatsoever. What he did have was a certain Nordic beauty but when Maurice had let his hand brush those firm swelling buttocks on an early excursion, Hemmen had bent his fingers back till they almost broke.
Also, though this he kept very well hidden, he was beginning to get a little bored with his patron, Colonel Walter Fiebelkorn. The man had a certain hard wit, but little refinement. His sexual demands were sadly unimaginative and always contained a strong element of humiliation. And if only he looked like Hemmen!
It was of course Walter who’d got him attached to the SS’s Art Preservation Section. Everyone was at it, the SS, the Abwehr, the Embassy, not forgetting visiting notables like Goering. Melchior had eased his early pangs of conscience by assuring himself there was real preservation work to be done in places where the owners had been too concerned with packing everything portable to worry about protecting what wasn’t. Winter was the worst enemy. Delicate inlays developed a bloom, the frames of fine old pianos warped into discord, the pigment of paintings cracked and flaked. Yes, there was work to be done here.
But in the end it came down to looting.
This was brought home to him beyond all doubt one glorious June day in a villa on the Heights of the Seine. The usual anonymous delation had told them that the owner had gone for a long ‘holiday’ in Spain. The tipster must have been very keen for the house to be ‘preserved’ as he had evidently informed the Abwehr preservation group too. Melchior recognized one of them, a big piratical red-head who occasionally visited old Madame - or perhaps young Madame - Simonian in the flat below. He seemed an amiable fellow, which was more than could be said for his mate, a nauseating little man called Pajou whose bloodshot eyes behind their thick frames never stopped moving.
It was Pajou who said, as the argument reached its height, ‘Look, let’s not be silly about this. We’re all in the same game, aren’t we? Spin of a coin, winner takes the lot.’
Hemmen rejected the offer angrily, but it turned out to be merely a time-wasting tactic anyway, to give an Abwehr captain time to turn up and throw his rank about. Hemmen, with the weight of the SS behind him, refused to be intimidated, while Melchior retired in disgust.
All in the same game indeed! Whatever game he was in, it certainly wasn’t that little rat’s. His indignation led him into temptation. There was a beautiful piece of Nevers verre filé in a niche, a tiny figurine of a young girl strewing flowers from a basket. She probably represented Spring, one of a set, overlooked when the family packed and ran. Its intrinsic value was not great but it gave him great pleasure to look at. What would its fate be if it fell into the hands of either set of looters? And if preservation really was their job, who would preserve it more lovingly than he?
Checking that Hemmen was too immersed in the row to keep his usual distrustful eye on him, Melchior slipped the figurine into his pocket.
Five minutes later it became clear that the sergeant too had merely been playing for time. A staff-car drew up outside the villa and Colonel Walter Fiebelkorn got out.
Now there was no contest but Fiebelkorn seemed ready to be a good winner.
‘We are after all in the same line of business, my dear captain,’ he said echoing Pajou’s words, but with a wider meaning. ‘We both look after our fatherland’s security in our different ways. This is merely a diversion, not something to sour friendship over. Why don’t we simply divide the spoil? You take the ground floor, we take the rest.’
It was not an offer the Abwehr man could refuse even though it was clearly based on Hemmen’s intelligence that the ground floor had been almost entirely cleared, the upper floors much less so.
It didn’t take Pajou and Boucher long to remove what little remained downstairs. Fiebelkorn watched with an impassive face.
‘All done?’ said the disgruntled captain.
‘Not quite,’ said Pajou.
‘What else is there?’
‘If we are to have everything from down here, what about the figurine that little fairy’s got in his pocket?’
All eyes turned to Melchior. He felt no fear yet, only irritation that in his eagerness to be sure he was unnoticed by Hemmen, he’d ignored Pajou’s shifty gaze.
‘Oh this?’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
He held out the little Spring.
‘This is a serious offence, colonel,’ said the Abwehr captain, delighted to have captured the initiative from the SS. ‘Theft of works of art sequestered to the State is punishable by death.’
‘You want him killed?’ asked Fiebelkorn indifferently.
‘Well, no,’ said the captain. ‘I just wanted to be sure the SS would take the serious view I think this case demands. Examples should be made.’
‘I agree,’ said Fiebelkorn. ‘Sergeant.’
Hemmen approached Melchior, his eyes alight with pleasure. In his hand he held his machine pistol. For a terrible second, Maurice felt sure he was going to be shot. Then the figurine was swept out of his outstretched hand by the dully gleaming barrel. Before it hit the floor, the gun had swept back, catching Melchior along the side of his face. He felt no immediate pain, only a warm rush of blood down his ravaged cheek. Then the barrel came back, laying open his temple this time, and now he felt pain. His scream seemed to incense Hemmen, who drove his knee into the little Frenchman’s groin and as he collapsed sobbing to the ground began to kick furiously at his chest and stomach.
Melchior rolled this way and that in his effort to avoid the blows, finally fetching up at Fiebelkorn’s feet.
He looked up into that blank face and choked, ‘Walter…please…’
Perhaps something moved in those dead eyes, but the voice was perfectly calm as the SS man said, ‘Well, captain, is this sufficient to satisfy the Abwehr’s understandable demand for an example to be set?’
‘Yes. Enough,’ said the captain unsteadily.
‘Good. Rest assured, if our friend here troubles us again, we will not be so merciful.’
To Melchior remembering the moment later, the most horrifying thing was to recognize that Fiebelkorn had been utterly sincere. In his eyes this beating had been an act of mercy. But just now he had no thought for anything but pain. He lay very still, heard footsteps leaving the room, heard them more distantly mounting the marble stairway. Then silence. Then a hand on his shoulder. He screamed in terror.
‘Come on, my little hero,’ said Michel Boucher’s voice. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn about thieving, my friend. Here, let’s clean you up a bit.’
A large red kerchief was applied with surprising gentleness to his cheek.
‘Now, can you stand? We’ll get you out of here before Attila returns.’
Unsteadily he rose. Something crunched beneath his feet. He looked down and saw the little Spring had strewn her flowers at last.
He liked to think some of the tears in his eyes were for that.
‘Aren’t you the chap who lives upstairs from old Sophie?’ asked Boucher as he helped him out. ‘My cousin’s married to her son who’s missing.’
‘Melchior’s my name, sage that I. . .’ His words drowned in blood.
‘Christ Almighty, Miche,’ said Pajou as he saw the big red-head half-carrying the groaning figure towards their truck. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing with that dirty little fairy?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Paj,’ said Boucher laying Melchior gently in the back of the truck. ‘It’s nearly midsummer day and I just fancied a little fairy of my own, OK? So now drive carefully, or me and my friend here might just take it into our minds to make an example out of you.’
‘Today,’ said Günter Mai, ‘is the twenty-first of June, the longest day. Hereafter begins the darkness.’
‘I hope I don’t detect a metaphor,’ said Bruno Zeller sardonically.
‘Why? Can they arrest you for metaphors now?’ He was rather drunk, but it had seemed ungracious not to take full advantage of the major’s unexpected hospitality, particularly when it involved the Tour d’Argent’s superb duck, with wine to match. He looked out of the window. Below he could see the Seine darkly gleaming, with willow reflections reaching up to form an osier cage with their own realities. In such a cage his ex-gamekeeper grandfather had kept a blackbird. It never sang till one day by accident Mai had set it free. Such a torrent of bubbling music poured from its golden beak as it sped away that he forgot to be afraid of the consequences till the old man’s angry blows reminded him.
‘You’re strangely rapt, my friend,’ said Zeller. ‘Not more metaphors?’
‘Perhaps. Tell me, Bruno, sir, what precisely am I doing here?’
‘In Paris, you mean?’ said Zeller, deliberately misunderstanding.
‘No. I know what I’m doing in Paris. There’s a war on, remember?’
‘Really?’ Zeller looked round the crowded room. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’
‘Not if you look out of the window. Out there, under every roof, there’s at least one person who knows he or she is fighting a war.’
‘So you do have X-ray vision! It explains such a lot.’
‘The major is pleasant. But in a way he’s right. Even here I can look towards the kitchen and see them spitting in the soup.’
‘How fortunate we avoided the soup then,’ said Zeller, suddenly impatient. ‘But you’re right. There is of course a reason for our little tête-à-tête. Günter, you’re one of the best men we’ve got. Well, I know you know it. I just wanted you to be sure that your superiors know it too.’
‘Good Lord,’ said Mai. ‘This isn’t a party to celebrate my promotion, is it?’
‘The lieutenant is facetious,’ said Zeller. ‘Now, a serious question. What do you think the greatest danger is to the Abwehr’s work?’
‘Easy,’ said Mai without hesitation. ‘The SD.’
‘Explain.’
‘A military occupation with a Wehrmacht chain of command is not to their taste. To them security is not just a means of keeping the peace but putting their ideology into action. Where our areas of work overlap, their best way to complete control is to discredit us and through us the military administration. Also men like your friend Fiebelkorn honestly believe that the only safe condition for an occupied country is one of constant terror.’
‘Don’t mention that bastard to me,’ said Zeller. ‘That trick of his with that runt Melchior last November was just a beginning. Listen, Günter. I’ve been unofficially authorized to organize a small section to keep an eye on whatever the SD are getting up to. Forewarned is forearmed. I’d value your assistance.’
Mai sipped his wine and said, ‘You realize the best you can hope for is a delaying action? Behind us we’ve got generals, and of course an admiral. They’ve got politicians. It’s no contest.’
‘So you won’t help?’
‘Of course I will. You knew that before you ordered this excellent dinner. In fact I’ve taken a step or two in that direction already. Though, as doubtless you know, I should imagine our work load’s going to be increased quite a bit after tomorrow.’
The remark was made so casually that Zeller found himself nodding in melancholy agreement till its implications struck home.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/reginald-hill/the-collaborators/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.