by J. R. Lonie
‘Whoever it was passed this way,’ Bauer reported as they waited. If they had time and the manpower, they’d search the whole town and find evidence for sure. Would they find who murdered those two boys? No. The killers were now on their way south – Lyon if they were headed for Perpignan, or Clermont-Ferrand and on to Toulouse if, say, they were headed for Latour-de-Carol, the easiest gateway into Spain by train.
‘Lyon’s my hunch,’ he said. ‘Especially if you’ve knocked two German soldiers off. I’d be wanting to get out quick smart.’
Absent a definite lead, Bauer admitted to himself that ‘young and male’ was hardly a useful description. He’d attract derision if he ordered the French police to check the trains arriving in Lyon or Clermont-Ferrand for ‘young males’. He wondered about the cat, black with a white tip on its tail. He couldn’t quite credit anyone except a sentimental old lady carting a cat across the demarcation line. The combat knife, French or German, was something else. Young, male, armed with combat knives, at least one of them belonging to a Landser, an ordinary Wehrmacht soldier. That would be a start.
The boat arrived. Bauer and Kopitcke boarded, Bauer ordering the rower to get a move on. They would get a car to Lyon, where he’d organise more French help and tap into their intelligence. Speaking fluent French opened all sorts of doors.
‘And Kopitcke,’ he added, ‘you get yourself into civvies before we go. This is a murder case and you’re a cop, not a field marshal; and we’re in France, not Germany.’
BACK ROADS EN ROUTE TO LYON THROUGH THE AUVERGNE, VICHY FRANCE
Late morning, Wednesday, 10th December 1941
The truck Silvan drove was his own and he kept it on the Vichy side of the line. He’d initially thought it too old to interest the Boches but it was American, which meant it was not only sturdy but simple and easy to maintain. The Wehrmacht didn’t seem fussed about national provenance. These Fords, they’d run forever with only the slightest attention. He’d hidden it on a pal’s farm and now it was handy for ferrying his passengers once they’d arrived in what was laughingly called the zone libre, the free zone. Petrol was expensive, but you could get it. The quicker you got your passengers out of your hair, the quicker you could go back for more, and the more money you made. And sure, it was a way to cock a snoot at the bastards.
In the back on one side were the two sisters, the Hungarian and the silent Jew clutching his parcel to his chest. On the other were Darlene and Luc, Eleanor and Henk. The young, taciturn man Eleanor had first encountered when she arrived at their departure point sat with Al on the floor with their backs to the cabin. Along these back roads, the ride was uncomfortable. The protection they had from the cold was no protection at all: a tarpaulin with flaps over the rear, which were tied together with twine to stop anyone seeing in. You also couldn’t see out, so there they were, squashed like sardines into a claustrophobic box with the wind whistling in through gaps in the tarpaulin. The revving motor and the gearing were the only way they could tell if they were climbing or cruising downhill, turning this way or that way across the undulating landscape of bare fields and trees. Better than any alternative any could think of, and that was it.
Henk’s cat seemed their only collective interest as he let it attack his hands and fingers, a game both seemed to enjoy. Al asked Henk how come he got lost so easily.
Eleanor had to remind him again that Henk didn’t speak French. She also doubted that Al’s interest was innocent. Attention returned to the kitten, whose tail swished and whose pupils were wide with excitement as it coiled itself and leapt at Henk’s fingers.
‘Where’d you cross, pal?’ Al asked in English.
‘The fog was thick and it was dark,’ said Henk. ‘How do I know?’
‘Rocks? A weir?’ Al persisted.
‘I take off my clothes and walk through the water,’ Henk replied, his attention on the game with his cat. ‘It is not deep.’
‘That’s right,’ said Eleanor. ‘I was with him.’
Al nodded. ‘You never saw no Boches?’ he asked her in French.
‘We thought we did, so we hid behind a wall until they went away,’ she replied, ‘but the fog was so thick, it was hard to see.’
‘Yeah, a real pea-souper,’ said Al flatly.
Did he believe them? Eleanor sensed he did not. It was natural he’d be suspicious. Who, after all, had a knife and seemed to know how to use it? She wondered what Al might do if he knew for sure, a thought that left her uneasy. She caught Henk’s eyes and could tell he didn’t trust Al.
He didn’t trust anybody he didn’t know intimately. Yet he couldn’t afford not to trust this rich American and that put him on edge. He let the cat maul his finger until it hurt.
SAINT POURÇAIN SUR SOUILE, AUVERGNE, VICHY FRANCE
Midday, Wednesday, 10th December 1941
They seemed to have been driving for longer than their watches told them – so many turns this way and that way, enough to disorient even Eleanor’s acute sense of direction. They knew they were headed for Lyon, so when the truck stopped and the motor was turned off, there was a sense that the journey was over. Nothing happened. Al didn’t move. They heard no movement from the front cabin. Trouble? No one said a word as they waited. Suddenly, Silvan drew back the flaps, startling everyone. The sun, bright and chilly, poured in from just above the roofline of a small, deserted courtyard. This was not Lyon. Ridiculous. Lyon was miles away.
‘Lunch,’ said Al without much enthusiasm.
Silvan helped Eleanor and the two sisters down.
They were to eat at a restaurant on the corner of the square and had to pay for themselves. It was all arranged. They were to enter down a narrow alley off the courtyard, which he pointed out. Since it was not a market day and there would be few outsiders in town, they were to enter in ones and twos, not as a group. The town might be quiet, but given what had happened, the Germans would have their eyes out and about. ‘Trust no stranger,’ he said, ‘and no flapping your mouths.’
Eleanor, ever-practical, walked quickly down the alley and in through the back door where Silvan indicated. Starving would hardly help her situation. She needed to eat. First she needed a bathroom. One glance in the mirror at her face and hair confirmed the horror. Yes, in the present scheme of things, she well understood the judgment others might make as she repaired the damage, but if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to think straight and that was that. Besides, judgment, as with vengeance, was the Lord’s. When she emerged, she at least felt as if she looked like a human being. The waiter, an elderly man, gestured with a nod of his head where Eleanor should sit. The others followed in dribs and drabs.
‘All this is available?’ she asked in surprise when given the menu, forgetting Al’s order not to flap her mouth. The Polish Jew looked alarmed. She was too engrossed in the menu. She couldn’t believe it, and of course it was too good to be true. She could have beef stew, and if that was it, she would not complain. Beef. It was enough to make her dizzy, and even dizzier when her meal arrived in moments from the stove, where it had been cooking for hours. Her taste buds, made acute by shortage, detected the merest hint of butter in the mashed potatoes. The bread was made with flour and not sawdust. She drank greedily from the glass of wine like a thirsty peasant. Memory was true: this was how it used to be. Her entire being focused on her stomach as she savoured every mouthful. Until she noticed Henk at a table by himself, feeding his cat from a crust of bread. He was not eating.
‘It’s on me. Order what you want,’ said Eleanor, remembering now at least to keep her voice down.
‘I am not hungry,’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she replied. ‘You haven’t eaten anything since we left.’
‘I said I am not hungry,’ he repeated, and she thought, well, please yourself.
‘Why do you not eat the lady’s food?’ said the thin Polish Jew in soft English. Eating the same beef stew doubtless accounted for the improvement in his demeanour as much as it caused hi
m to let down his guard. Even his parcel was no longer held to his chest but sat casually on his lap. Eleanor was startled he could speak at all, let alone English.
‘Only the rich eat,’ said Henk. Be damned if he was going to have to rely on her again. He’d rather starve.
The thin man laughed, shook his head, spooned a large portion of his own meal onto a plate and pushed it over towards Henk. ‘Be rich, my friend,’ he said, ‘on a poor Jew from Warsaw.’
‘Thank you, comrade,’ said Henk and shared the food with his cat, which ate as greedily as he. Eleanor watched, part bemused, part exasperated. He was a poseur and the sooner she was rid of him, the better. He irritated her beyond reason. It was like being in the company of a petulant child. She ignored him and contented herself with enjoying her meal. Even now, the writer in her couldn’t help mulling on what was happening to her and how she might tell this story. For a moment, she had to remind herself it was actually happening, not something she was conjuring up.
She sipped her wine and gazed through the windows to the square. Opposite was a hipped-roof building, another restaurant whose windows and doors were shuttered. Beyond was a church and an ancient round stone tower whose clock could have been on 1938 time. Here she was in la France profonde, seemingly unchanged by defeat and the occupiers sitting on the other side of the river Loire not so far away.
‘Madame,’ came a voice, and she looked up to see a large man with a round face, red from the heat of the kitchen, the owner of the restaurant and its chef. He was honoured to serve a dear American lady. Eleanor wondered if her itinerary hadn’t been sent on in advance. She supposed Al or Silvan had said something, but then it came. ‘I heard you speaking English,’ he said, ‘and wanted to meet you. You are our great hope, madame.’
Eleanor let pass the fact that, as far as she knew, the United States was at war only with Japan, but thanked him. Mostly she thanked him for the food. They became momentarily a mutual enthusiasm brigade as they beamed at each other, until the waiter came over to him and whispered quickly into his ear.
‘Gendarmes, madame,’ the owner said quietly to her. They were coming through the back entrance, the same way Eleanor and her fellow travellers had come. She saw how surprised he was. He’d probably paid them off, which was why Silvan brought the escapee business to him. But something had gone wrong and she knew what that might be.
‘Have your papers ready,’ said one of the gendarmes.
Conversation stopped. Henk retrieved his kitten. The Polish Jew began to sweat. Eleanor could smell his fear and it frightened her. The Hungarian, charming in his accentless French, handed over his papers first. Slowly the gendarmes worked their way around the tables, where steaming food was being left to cool and curdle. Eleanor handed over her fake identification papers. She realised that she had forgotten who she was supposed to be and where she was supposed to be from. She remembered only that she was originally Madame de Lisle, but now?
‘Madame is American?’ the gendarme asked.
‘Originally,’ she said as lightly as she could, trying to be aware whether she was sounding too American or not American enough. ‘But married to a Frenchman for twenty-three years.’
The gendarme’s colleague pushed over to peer at Eleanor’s papers before handing them back to her. ‘Born in Hollywood,’ he said approvingly, as if she were royalty.
‘It was smaller then,’ Eleanor replied with remarkable élan.
Henk handed over his papers, which both gendarmes studied.
‘Same name,’ one pointed out to the other. ‘You are with this lady?’ he asked.
Henk, with hardly any French, stared out the window. If it was insolence, the boy was a good actor, Eleanor thought, but this was not the time for insolence or causing any damn trouble. The little shit just sat there. The gendarme repeated his question.
‘He’s my son,’ Eleanor told them. ‘We quarrelled. He won’t speak to me. He refuses to speak to anyone.’
The gendarme smiled, handed Henk his papers. ‘A good son should obey his mother,’ he said. He tickled the cat’s neck.
The other gendarme studied the papers of the Polish Jew, clutching his precious parcel back to his chest. Eleanor could see the sweat dripping off the poor man.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the gendarme.
‘Marcel,’ replied the Pole.
‘Marcel what?’
‘Marcel Tua . . .’ he faltered.
‘Says here your Christian name is Armand,’ said the gendarme. Eleanor realised the poor man hadn’t bothered to learn his new name. She could hardly blame him for that.
‘Marcel,’ said the Pole, trying to smile.
‘Where are you going, Marcel?’ the gendarme asked, toying with him because already they knew they had him. Why not a little bit of fun?
‘Off to Spain for a holiday, are you?’ the other gendarme asked.
‘Marcel,’ said the Pole, though with a rising inflection, as if this were now a question. Even he sensed he was done for.
‘You’re just another yid on the run, aren’t you?’ said the gendarme, lifting him from his chair.
Eleanor felt the weight of the owner’s hands pressing down on her shoulders to keep her still and calm, which she most decidedly was not. The Polish Jew burst into tears as they led him out the front door, still holding his parcel tight. No one said a word. When he was gone, Eleanor gesticulated but no words came, only tears.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ explained the owner. He didn’t know what had gone wrong. Sometimes, it didn’t work. At least the gendarmes had taken only the foreign Jew; they were always fair game.
Eleanor sat in mute despair. ‘You gotta eat, babe,’ said Al, pointing to her half-eaten lunch.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she snapped in French, sick of Al and his gangsterisms. Henk reached over and took her plate for himself, and he began to finish it. He was famished, even after polishing off the food the Polish Jew had shared with him and his cat. Disgusted, Eleanor pushed back her chair and stalked out into the square, only to see the back of the police car taking away the Polish Jew. She and everyone she knew had heard stories about Gurs, the concentration camp on the Spanish border, where Vichy let its undesirables rot and die. The fumes from the exhaust of the departed car hovered around her like the stench from a corpse. Leaning against the fountain, which had been emptied for winter, she was too immobilised even to smoke.
Henk appeared with his cat. ‘You did not pay,’ he said.
‘I barely touched it,’ she responded, which was not entirely true.
‘But I eat,’ he said.
‘Then you pay for it.’
‘You said you would pay.’
‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘You do not think you owe me one miserable meal?’ he demanded, ratcheting up their mutual anger.
‘I didn’t ask you to kill those two men.’
‘They are soldiers. Nazis.’
‘How do you know they were Nazis?’
He couldn’t believe this. Was she stupid or just obtuse?
‘You know better, do you?’ he launched into her. ‘Same uniform, same army, but no, he is not Nazi, he is a good German. That one over there, he is the real Nazi, he has Nazi eyes and Nazi hair. You stupid woman, all Germans are Nazis now, and you think you have no responsibility, you can sit to the side and enjoy your precious life. How annoying it must be to you that I save it.’
‘Don’t you lecture me, sonny,’ she snapped. ‘I wish I’d been caught now. At least my conscience would be clear.’
‘Your conscience,’ Henk taunted, his finger pointed barely an inch from her face. ‘What does your conscience say to Nazis killing Jews? Huh? Our job is to survive and so far we survive very good.’
‘At the cost of three lives.’
‘Forget the Polish Jew. His time is finished long ago.’
‘Really? How do you know that?’
‘Because I am here and he is not.’ His finger hooked the cr
ucifix Madame Teixeira had given her, and pulled her towards him. ‘And so, Madame Rich Christian American, are you. Please,’ he gestured to a bench nearby, ‘sit out this war, let others fight it for you.’
She pushed him away in fury, but then his face froze. She turned instinctively to see what he was looking at.
‘Oh God,’ she muttered as her heart and stomach sank to her shoes. They were staring across the square at the mairie, the town hall, where an elderly man, doubtless a bureaucrat in his high collar and vest, hurriedly closed the door where, drawn by their eruption, he must have heard them. She had to assume the worst, that he had understood them perfectly. They both grasped the weight of their stupidity and ran inside to find Al.
‘We must leave,’ said Eleanor. She plonked down enough money to cover the meal. ‘Now,’ she added. Her tone and demeanour didn’t require an explanation for Al. He bustled everyone out, had a quick conversation with Silvan, and in minutes they were on their way, silent and grim. The arrest of the Polish Jew was reason enough. As they fled the town, Henk and Eleanor sat as far from each other as was possible in the squeeze.
SAINT GERMAIN DES FOSSÉS, AUVERGNE, VICHY FRANCE
Afternoon into evening, Wednesday, 10th December 1941
A short while later, the truck slowed and, after some turns, stopped. Silvan opened the flaps and beckoned them out. They had arrived outside a railway station, which was all they could see as they alighted. There wasn’t much to it. Circumstances had changed, said Silvan. They would continue to Lyon by train from here. The French among them took the news with some relief: at least a train would be more comfortable. Al, who was to be their guide to Lyon, hopped into the front passenger seat.
‘The contacts in Lyon!’ exclaimed the Hungarian, who realised before Eleanor and Henk that they were being dumped. ‘You were paid to take us there.’