The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  Bauer’s blood froze. ‘Well?’ he snapped, at breaking point.

  ‘It says: “Georg in hospital Smolensk. Stop. Recovering. Stop.”’

  ‘What else?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘Nothing, Herr Kommissar, just greetings from your wife. This is wonderful news, is it not?’

  Bauer thanked Kopitcke and signed off. He couldn’t stay here, so he excused himself and walked a short way along the road that led into the town. He came to an orchard whose trees were almost bare and let himself in. Sitting on the ground against one of the trees, he started to laugh. Then he fell back and looked up into the fathomless sky and he laughed and he laughed. If anyone saw him, what a sight. A madman? Sure, he was mad. Mad with joy. Mad with happiness. It was as if Georg was four and chuckling high in the air above him in his father’s hands. Then Georg was twenty-one, in his uniform, about to set off, oh so proud, and his old dad had wanted to hold him tight, but that would have mortified the poor boy. So they just shook hands. He didn’t know how badly wounded Georg was, but he was alive and he was recovering. This was as good an omen as he could get.

  Impatient as he was for details about Georg, he stuck to his duty, and with the Spanish boy in tow, he had himself driven to the roadblocks on the other routes leading in and out of the town. He liked to show his face and share a few words, and if the friendliness he encountered was any sign, he had managed to blur the fact that he was really a German. They knew, of course.

  Thence into the town. They were waved down near the railway station by a policeman. That got Bauer’s hopes up – but no, a train with foreign Jews had arrived to be taken by road to the camp at Gurs. Some had just escaped and the police were trying to round them up.

  ‘Like herding cats, sir,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Where do they make for?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘The nearest hole,’ the fellow replied. ‘But then they get hungry and hang around the cafés or the churches. Or if they’ve got any money or valuables, they get robbed. We usually pick them up after a few hours.’

  Soon the driver was able to continue. At the local commissariat de police, Bauer looked over those picked up that day, Jews on the run, smugglers, petty crims – he knew by their faces. The boy shook his head.

  Before he returned to Pau and the boy to his family, he quickly cabled his wife and then rang Kopitcke with detailed instructions to communicate directly with the Wehrmacht hospital in Smolensk: a message to Georg himself, requests for details about his condition from the doctor, and a message to his other boy, Karl, in North Africa.

  ‘How is Lieutenant Wolf?’ he asked.

  ‘We can’t find him,’ Kopitcke replied. ‘The Gestapo deny they’ve got him. They’re still angry, Herr Kommissar. Pichler is still in a coma. And that old fox the consul, I don’t know, he’s up to something as well.’

  ‘Up to something about what?’ Bauer wanted to know. ‘The lieutenant?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kopitcke. ‘I think he knows where he is.’

  ‘A curse on the lot of them,’ Bauer muttered. He was sick of the whole business and he was dog-tired. He took out another Pervitin pill. They didn’t seem to be working as well. Maybe he needed to take them a little more frequently, at least until he had the killers hanging from the end of a rope.

  HOUSE OF RETREAT, CATHÉDRALE SAINTE-MARIE D’OLORON

  Early evening, Sunday, 14th December 1941

  Fortified against the cold by a plate of meaty stew, fresh bread and a beaker of wine in the refectory, Eleanor joined her fellow pilgrims as they walked across the square to the cathedral. She gazed up at its Romanesque curves and massive bell tower, and went in under the marble tympanum celebrating the defeat of the Saracens by the church’s crusader benefactor. Inside, the spicy darkness enveloped her. She snuggled into a pew with her female companions of the Way. ‘Rejoice in the Lord always,’ the mixed choir sang in antiphon. Above the chancel and the altar, the vaulted arches of dark blue were dotted with golden stars, which glittered in the light of many candles. Purifying smoke billowed with each thrilling swing of the censer by the thurifer, who led the clergy down the nave in a train of carmine and sparkling gold. How she got herself up and down at the right moments was not of itself a mystery – the liturgy wasn’t all that different from her own, after all. She wasn’t drunk, at least not from the wine. The mystery was in how she didn’t just sit there in a stupefied sense of well-being. Whether she survived her coming journey seemed not to matter.

  The mood stayed with her as she returned with her companions across the dark square to the old monastery nearby, where she and the young men were being sheltered. Inside was a warren of tiny rooms, the cells of monks or nuns before the French Revolution. Now they were a refuge for those who had nowhere else to go. Only the large rooms had fireplaces, and here the walls rang with the laughter of the pilgrim boys and girls who had to be chased to bed by the priests. Eleanor and her companions for Spain were settled separately downstairs in the basement, where the rooms were few so only Eleanor had the luxury of a cell by herself, even if it was freezing. They had to be up in only a few hours, when they could eat with the nuns after lauds. Someone would collect them near dawn.

  Eleanor’s room was vaulted, not high enough for her to stand. The stone floor was bare of any matting. A single bed was against the wall on one side, with a tiny set of drawers as a bedside table, large enough for only a Bible and a breviary. A candle was in a sconce on the wall above the bedhead, and higher up, a crucifix. Below the arch of the vault was a tiny grated opening to let in the freezing air. She tried to fix her coat over it, but it hung too close to the candle, which she had lit. Monk’s cell this might be, but being neither monk nor nun, she put the coat back on. The thought of her absent mink made even Claude’s coat seem thin and cold, although waltzing south through France in a mink would have been something, especially in the boxcar. She sniffed the collar, wondering if she could still smell Claude, but could detect nothing. She tried to conjure up the smell of him but memory failed her. Or was it her imagination?

  In preparation for her journey through the mountains, she went through her remaining clothing and the contents of her rucksack. Would her boots survive? They looked worse than they were; they would hold up. She still had her warm socks at least and her long fleecy underwear, which had not been in the valise she’d lost. She counted her remaining hoard of Chesterfields. She was down to her last carton. With her US passport and her dollars, these golden cigarettes should be enough to clear any obstacles she faced entering Spain without a visa. She thought of Henk and her heart ached.

  She went outside for a cigarette. There, leaning against the galleted stone wall of the refectory facing the square, she found two of her fellow escapees stamping their feet now and then against the cold as they finished a shared cigarette. She couldn’t very well smoke without offering her pack to them, though watched carefully that each took one only.

  Had she seen all the yids inside? one asked. Infested, said the other.

  Cold as it was, Eleanor felt her face flame. They saw her reaction, which was as much a surprise to her as to them.

  ‘My family voted for Blum,’ the first added quickly, a reference to the leader of the socialist Popular Front before the war, who happened to be Jewish.

  ‘Mine too,’ the other chimed in.

  Had Eleanor been able to vote in France, she would most decidedly not have voted for any socialist. Now she was happy to leave the impression that she and Leon Blum were not only co-religionists but the Eleanor and Franklin of the French left. How the raptors would be dumbfounded.

  The lights of a car caught them as it trawled slowly through the square and turned away. It was a police car. While her heart had missed a beat, she noticed neither of her companions seemed at all bothered.

  ‘The priest says they know about the yids,’ said the younger, forgetting he believed he was talking to one. ‘They never come inside.’

  ‘They’ve got enough to worry ab
out,’ said the other, although what that might be, he didn’t need to say.

  They weren’t at all worried they’d be caught tomorrow. The police had been bribed; that was usually how it was done. They were young and scared of nothing. But what about the German troops up in the mountains? Eleanor asked. Yes, they’d heard about them too, but who knew the passes around the Somport better than the local guides?

  The cold drove them inside. As they parted and wished one another a good night, the elder of the two cheekily offered to keep Eleanor warm. The other immediately upped his pal’s offer on the grounds he was larger and therefore warmer.

  She laughed. To these two, she might be old and she might be a Jew, but she was a woman. ‘What is this,’ she quipped, ‘an auction?’

  They went their way and she went hers.

  On her way back inside, she encountered children playing on the stairs.

  ‘You lost, lady?’ one boy asked in accented but colloquial French.

  ‘Ten francs,’ said his offsider. Eleanor, who had thought the boy was being kind, realised this was a local extortion ring.

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ she replied, but instinct had her give him 5 francs. She was conscious of how few francs she had left but needed all the protection she could get. ‘I’m not here,’ she added. ‘Understand?’ On that thought, she offered each of these little refugee Artful Dodgers one of her precious cigarettes. This had more effect than the cash, if their eyes were a sign. ‘Don’t smoke them all at once,’ she added.

  Bidding them all goodnight, she heard the mewling of a cat and looked down to see a kitten brushing itself against her boot. Instinctively, she kicked it away just as she realised with a jolt that she recognised it. ‘Oh God,’ she cried and ran after it as it fled. The senior Arftul Dodger dashed past her and in moments returned with the biting snarling kitten in his hands.

  ‘Show me,’ Eleanor demanded. The Dodger hid the cat behind his back.

  ‘How much?’ It was his turn to demand.

  ‘I just gave you two cigarettes,’ Eleanor snapped. So much for rogue’s honour. But it worked and the little Dodger thrust the cat into her hands.

  The tiny creature liked her even less than the Dodger and chewed at her fingers in an effort to escape. She didn’t care. It was black, it had a white tip on its tail, it had recognised her. He was here and she was so happy that she, who loathed cats, drew the little bundle of fury up and held it fondly to her face, whereupon it lashed out at her.

  ‘You know who owns this?’ she asked.

  ‘Ten,’ the Dodger demanded. Cigarettes or francs, he didn’t specify.

  Eleanor was so wound up by now, she’d have handed over the contents of Fort Knox. She slapped 10 francs into the greedy hand. The Dodger led her along the corridor.

  ‘Where are you?’ she called out. The corridor was now so dark she couldn’t see the Dodger.

  ‘This way,’ came the voice out of the blackness ahead of her. ‘There’s steps,’ the child added. She bumped into him. He’d been waiting for her. ‘Here,’ he said.

  She followed him down. She had thought her cell was in the building’s basement. Now she was descending to yet a lower level. With no railing to hang on to, just the cold bare stones, she stumbled but an unseen hand steadied her out of the darkness.

  ‘Watch out, lady,’ he muttered.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ she said.

  ‘Down here,’ said the Dodger as they reached a corridor, where there was a faint light from some source up ahead.

  ‘There,’ the boy said, pointing, and hurried back up the steps. That bothered Eleanor. A little too quick to depart, she thought. She crept forward. As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she could see that the light was coming through the crack of a doorway. The kitten sprang from her arms, and just as it did, the door suddenly opened and the light shone into the corridor. A young man of slight build and dark hair appeared in a coat. He spoke German. ‘Katz.’ Her heart leapt out of her chest. But that coat was a Wehrmacht coat and she had seen this young man before. Oh God, yes, he was the one in the German uniform she’d seen coming out of the lavatory on the train at the Gare de Lyon. She cried out. He saw her. That wretched Judas of a child had just shopped her. She ran back along the corridor into the darkness to spread the alarm. As she found the steps up, she glanced back to see if the German was chasing her.

  He wasn’t.

  It was Henk.

  ‘Eleanor,’ he called out to her, the first time he’d called her by name. ‘Warte, bitte. Stop.’

  She didn’t stop, continued up the stairs, along a corridor and out through a door into the night, running she knew not where. She could hear his footsteps right behind her.

  ‘Please,’ he cried and grabbed at her arm. She pushed him away, flattening herself against the nearest wall, the base of the cathedral tower.

  ‘You going to kill me too?’ she challenged as he came to her.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said.

  ‘Who was that?’ she demanded. ‘I saw him on the train. Were you the one in the lavatory with him?’

  He sighed. ‘Oh Eleanor,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t you see?’

  If she wasn’t stone cold sober already, she certainly became so. Even then, her intellect as sharp as ever, what on earth was he saying?

  ‘We are – ’ and he paused, looking for the best way to explain. ‘David and Jonathan,’ he said. ‘He is my life.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she murmured as the truth hit her.

  Suddenly he grabbed her, and he kissed her passionately. She struggled but he kept her tight; he was strong. After what seemed an eternity, he released her. She pushed him away, and she ran back inside. Where the greatcoated ‘it’ had gone, she neither knew nor cared.

  Henk stood alone, caught in the lights of the police car that he had seen and Eleanor had not. Now the car was stopped, the window down, the policeman leaning out, laughing.

  ‘Go after her, you dope,’ he called out good-naturedly in Occitan.

  Henk laughed, put on the best impersonation in his life, tapped his head in salute to the cop and to male fraternity, and slipped back inside. Cold as it was, he was in a great sweat as he hurried in through the door.

  *

  After failing to cross the Spanish frontier, they had no alternative but to drive back the way they’d come and decided to try their chances in Oloron. The towns higher up and closer to the frontier were too small. Oloron was large and packed with refugees, among whom they would not stand out. Their chances of finding a guide would be better. With Hugo’s passable Spanish, they might even be able to hide among the Spanish pilgrims returning from Lourdes, for whom Franco had insisted the rail line south into Spain be kept open.

  Once there, they needed a roof over their heads. For want of any alternative, Hugo had suggested a church, so before dumping the car, they found the old cathedral and its presbytery. The priest, a monsignor, was elderly and frail and frightened by the appearance on his doorstep not of a young German Jew – such were not unfamiliar around here – but of a German military officer looking worse for wear and whose only protection against the cold was his Wehrmacht greatcoat.

  ‘Help us, father,’ Hugo had said in perfect French. ‘We’re on the run from the Gestapo.’

  He drew them inside. Then he cross-examined Hugo, who, while not lying, did not tell the whole story. Not understanding a word, Henk had sat anxiously through the conversation, only learning its details later.

  ‘We were soldiers, father,’ Hugo had explained. ‘We were doing our duty.’

  He then removed his shirt to show what the Gestapo had done to him.

  ‘Oh, my son,’ said the old man, who touched Hugo’s skin in pity.

  Strangely, the Monsignor had not asked how the two were bound to each other. He accepted that Hugo had gotten into trouble for the sake of his Jewish army comrade and friend who had escaped from Mauthausen. It offended the old man that the French authorities were assisting
the Gestapo.

  ‘You’re safe here for the moment,’ he said, then stated the obvious: ‘But for the guides, you need money.’ There were so many refugees, the church, alas, could provide only food and lodging. ‘Hier safe,’ he said to Henk, thinking English and German close enough. Henk couldn’t bring himself to believe the old man but Hugo was a Catholic, a real one, and he trusted the priest’s word, as the priest had trusted his.

  ‘I told him you’d been born and raised a Catholic,’ Hugo said once they’d been given a room. Henk was past caring what he was; that mattered only to the Germans.

  Now Eleanor was here too. Of course. Where else? He wasn’t all that surprised. He had to find her. He had to make things right between them.

  ‘Will she betray us?’ Hugo asked, after Henk returned to their room.

  ‘No,’ Henk replied. He told Hugo the story. Everything.

  ‘Is she in love with you?’ Hugo asked.

  ‘I don’t know if it is love,’ Henk replied. Even if this was just an infatuation, he had made her suffer. ‘Give her a little while. I’ll talk to her.’ He reached for Hugo and found his injured hand with its hard scarring, and he drew it to his lips and kissed it. ‘Don’t worry.’

  HOUSE OF RETREAT, CATHÉDRALE SAINTE-MARIE, OLORON

  Around 9pm, Sunday, 14th December 1941

  Driven by fury, Eleanor had nowhere else to go than her cell. She needed to be alone. The moment she pulled the door shut, she burst into tears, which made her even angrier. How could she be so stupid, she berated herself, so superficial? Who was he, after all? A mere youth, not someone she’d look at in Paris – rude, ignorant, a miserable sad sack who’d tugged at her heartstrings when she and he were at their most vulnerable. Her ego was hurt. She lit a cigarette, blow the rules. By dawn, she’d be on her way to Spain. Out of sight, out of mind. Now she would try to sleep. To distract herself, she needed to read. The choice was her own novel, to remind her of the contrast between real love and her own ridiculous situation. Then she remembered, he had taken it. She tried her Bible, letting it take her where it fell open randomly. As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so honour is not seemly for a fool. She read on but couldn’t really concentrate.