by Ariel Lawhon
She snaps at his thumb with her teeth. “A bit late, I’m afraid.”
He makes a show of sighing, but really, he’s enjoying this. She’s taken to the lesson and—filthy as the habit is—it’s no less sexy than watching her smoke. “Enculé,” he says. “It’s really the worst word that I know.”
Nancy sets her feet on the floor and scoots forward on her chair. “What does it mean?”
Sometimes it’s harder to say the meaning than the actual word. “Ah…” He clears his throat. “It means ‘one who has been…’ Ah…I believe the English word is ‘buggered.’ ”
“Oh. I say that all the time.”
“Non.” He shakes his head. “It’s different in French. In English it’s flippant. But in this language, you mean it literally. Enculé! It’s something you say to the person you hate most.”
Nancy doesn’t miss a beat. She offers Henri a waspish smile. “Marceline ‘la’ enculée.”
The fact that her voice is so pleasant and sweet as she speaks that particular sentence makes the insult spectacular. Henri leans back in his chair and shakes his head a bit in appreciation. “You’re a natural.”
Nancy rises from her chair and straddles his lap. She places one gentle kiss on his lips. “I have an excellent teacher.”
As always, when she kisses him, Henri is consumed. He glances at his watch. He has only five minutes. It’s more than enough time to make sure she gets a proper kiss.
* * *
MARSEILLE
Hôtel du Louvre et Paix, September 3, 1939
Henri set a wedding date of November 30. I think he did this so as not to alarm me. To give me time. Allow me to ease into the idea of being a wife. He insisted there was no rush, but I know this is a statement made only for my benefit. He would most certainly love to rush. He would swan-dive into matrimony given the chance. As it stands, however, we take our time. In the interim I have taken up residence at the Hôtel du Louvre et Paix, until our new flat becomes available on the first of December. We spent all spring and summer having light, frivolous fun, as though living at the very top of a soap bubble. But now we have settled into a regular routine filled with wedding plans and the daily chores needed to build a life together.
Henri works his usual, long hours, starting at five in the morning, and ending, promptly, twelve hours later. He does, however, meet me in the hotel bar for pastis at eleven—our favorite prelunch pastime—before we wander into the city to find a bistro. And then, once we’re stuffed to the gills, he heads back to the office and I to my room upstairs, for a nap. My job, once I wake in the early afternoon, is to begin the process of furnishing our flat. I go into the city and meet with retailers. I look at lavish fabric for draperies and upholstery for chairs. I order Persian rugs and a bar for the drawing room. I pick out china patterns, crystal glasses, and flatware, making my orders, and instructing everything to be delivered to our new flat the second week of December. I’ve never set up a home before and I find the process both maddening and therapeutic.
I look up from my table in the corner when Henri walks into the bar—smiling, as always—to see him. He’s fifteen minutes late today and there is a sense of urgency to his movements.
“Turn on the radio!” he orders Antoine, and I jump at the sound of his voice—booming and authoritative.
Antoine flips it to the BBC French Service and Henri settles into the chair beside me. I look at him but do not ask any questions. His head is bent to the side, listening, as the static gives way to a familiar voice. Neville Chamberlain.
“This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”
There are only a handful of people in the bar but each of us draws a long, somber breath. It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming. Of course we knew. Germany invaded Poland two days ago and Chamberlain delivered his ultimatum for withdrawal. The threat of war has been crackling in the air for several years. But hearing it announced is not a thing you are ever prepared for.
Henri reaches for my hand. Squeezes it. Antoine glances at my face and hands me a napkin. He expects me to cry. And I might. We listen as Chamberlain expresses his dismay with these circumstances, with England’s failed efforts to arrange a “peaceful and honorable settlement between Germany and Poland.” How Hitler has categorically refused these efforts. Chamberlain tells us how Hitler can be stopped only by force. I remember Berlin. I think of him standing there beneath the Blutfahne, the blood banner, and I know that Chamberlain is right. The spilling of blood is the true legacy of Adolf Hitler.
“We and France are today, in fulfillment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack on her people. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel themselves safe has become intolerable. And now that we have resolved to finish it, I know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.”
Antoine returns to his place behind the bar and shifts from one foot to another. Every time his weight goes to his left leg he winces slightly. Like Henri, he fought in the Great War, and I wonder if he is thinking of fighting again.
For the next few moments, Neville Chamberlain gives instructions to those who have joined the Civil Defense. He encourages his countrymen to carry on with their jobs.
“Now may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against—brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution—and against them I am certain that the right will prevail.”
We forget about lunch. About work and shopping, and all the small business that usually fills our days. Henri and I sit in Antoine’s bar and listen to the radio as more and more people file in. Antoine hands us each a glass of brandy and we sip, slowly, listening to the British, and then the French, read their declarations of war. Sometime later, King George takes to the airwaves.
“In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself. For the second time in the lives of most of us we are at war. Over and over again we have tried to find a peaceful way out of the differences between ourselves and those who are now our enemies. But it has been in vain.”
I am Australian to the bone. And yes, I have taken on a second life as a Parisienne. France is my home now. But there are the moments when a woman returns to her roots, and the voice of my monarch reminds me that I am, and always will be, a member of the British Empire. I sit up straighter and swallow the emotion that builds in my throat. Henri drapes his arm across my shoulders.
“This is the ultimate issue which confronts us. For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the world’s order and peace, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet the challenge. It is to this high purpose that I now call my people at home and my peoples across the Seas, who will make our cause their own. I ask them to stand calm, firm and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, and war can no longer be confined to the battlefield. But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God’s help, we shall prevail. May He bless and keep us all.”
In a moment, just like that, every person in Antoine’s
bar is struck with the sense that our laughter and our joy will soon turn to tears.
“What does this mean?” I ask Henri.
His gaze goes soft as he stares at the table. “It means, ma chère, that one day we will remember our friends and count the dead.”
Madame Andrée
MONT MOUCHET, CANTAL, FRANCE
March 21, 1944
Fournier is waiting for us when we return to the encampment. I am driving the stolen Nazi bus and Hubert follows behind in the Renault. It makes me chuckle to see him behind the wheel. He’s a big man and it looks like he’s been crammed into a tin can. Getting through the checkpoints was a bit tricky, given my new vehicle, but the Maquis guards recognized me and I had all the passwords, so they let me pass. I pull the bus into the clearing and park halfway to the fire pit. Hubert is at the door and up the steps before I can even get out of my seat and stretch.
“Have you ever actually driven a bus before?” he asks.
“No. Have you ever hot-wired one before?”
He laughs. It’s a surprising sound, deep and filled with humor. I don’t hear it often enough. “Many times.”
“Well, thank you.”
He scratches his chin with two fingers. It’s been over a week since Hubert had a proper shave and he’s gone a bit woolly as a result. “What do you intend to do with this anyway? You can’t just go riding around in a German transport vehicle.”
“I mean to live in it. If I’m going to be stuck in the woods indefinitely, I’d like a bit of privacy and space.”
Hubert looks at me as if I’ve just declared that I’m going to set up residence in the Louvre. “You are going to live in this?” He sniffs. “It smells like Nazi crotch.”
This makes me laugh and I am grateful, after the horrors of the day. “I don’t even want to know how you can identify that scent. Besides, I can open the windows. Air the thing out. And honestly, I think you’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.”
He looks around the bus, considering the possibilities. “Actually, yes, I am a bit jealous. I think I’ve got a permanent bend in my spine from weeks spent sleeping on the ground.”
“Well, if you’re nice I’ll let you in occasionally.” I waggle a finger in his face. “But only if it’s raining.”
“I’ll take what I can get. Besides. I’m just glad you won’t be motoring around in this thing. You’re an awful driver.”
“I am not! I just like to take my half out of the middle.”
Hubert looks over his shoulder. “Come on, then. Fournier is out there, pacing. We’d best see what he wants.”
“You have a visitor,” Fournier says, the moment we step out of the bus.
“Who?”
“Henri Tardivat.”
We’ve not seen the suave little Frenchman since he delivered us to Gaspard’s château the night we flew in. It was unclear to me at first what role Tardivat plays in the Resistance, but I have since learned from Fournier that, in addition to collecting counterintelligence—and the occasional parachuter—Tardivat leads his own band of merry men in the forest at Allier. The thing, Fournier insists, that makes Tardivat such a spectacular saboteur is that he has perfected a very specific technique in which he targets German supply convoys, letting most of it pass through his bottleneck before attacking the last two vehicles. By the time the main firepower at the front circles back, they are confronted with torched vehicles, dead soldiers, and vanished Maquis. As Fournier tells me, this ensures ravaged supply lines for the Germans and crushing blows to their morale. I liked Tardivat to begin with, but this knowledge has made me very fond of him indeed. And his timing is excellent because I need to inform him of the target he’s been assigned to destroy in the event of an Allied invasion of France. Fournier has his targets already and has been preparing his strike team since we arrived.
Fournier leads us toward his newly acquired tent—thanks to London—where Tardivat sits inside, muddy boots propped up on a stump, arms behind his head.
“Bonjour! I don’t know how you stand that track,” he says, motioning across the clearing to the dirt road he’s just driven up. “I nearly bottomed out in a rut a mile back. Thought I’d scraped my transmission clean off.”
“We’ll make sure to have it paved before your next unexpected arrival,” I tell him.
He grins. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“Whether or not you plan to drop me into Gaspard’s hairy little paws again.”
“Funny you should say that…,” he says, looking around the tent, and then at me, as though surprised to see that I’ve lasted this long under such rough conditions. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
“The tent is Fournier’s. That bus”—I hook my thumb over my back—“is mine.”
“You’re going to sleep in a bus?”
“I will once I find a mattress.”
He gnaws at his thumbnail. “I might be able to acquire a mattress. If you’re willing to barter.”
“For?”
“Sten guns for my men.”
“Find me a mattress—a clean one—and I’ll request your guns.” I laugh. “But that’s not why you’re here. Get to the point. What’s this about Gaspard?”
“He despises you.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Okay.” Tardivat drops both feet to the ground. “Patrice is dead.”
Hubert stiffens beside me, and I’m sure the look on my own face is one of dismay. I am one of only three SOE agents in the area who have direct contact with Maurice Buckmaster. The others are Victor—farther north in the Allier region where Tardivat is based, and Patrice in the Auvergne.
“What happened?”
“He was killed last night by a German agent sent to assassinate Gaspard. But the agent has been captured and Gaspard sent me to ask if you would like to interrogate him. He said it was an olive branch.”
“I don’t—”
“Listen. If you want to get information from this German agent, you’ll have to come with me. Now. Knowing Gaspard, I doubt he’ll be alive much longer.”
* * *
—
The distance between Fournier’s encampment and Gaspard’s is little more than fifty kilometers as the crow flies. But they are separated by rugged terrain interlaced with mountains, valleys, and narrow byways. What should be a forty-five-minute drive takes almost two hours as we creep through half a dozen villages and small towns.
There are two ways to get to Mont Mouchet, but we choose to go east, then north in a wide half circle to avoid the German garrison at Montluçon. The last thing we need is to run across an enemy patrol and have to shoot our way through. As we drive I give Tardivat his target: the munitions factory near Montluçon, and he fills us in on what happened to Patrice.
“Early this morning, a German agent was halted by Patrice at a checkpoint four kilometers from Mont Mouchet. He gave the correct password, then requested to be taken to Gaspard so he could join the Maquis. Patrice and one of his maquisards got in the car and guided the agent through that tangled mess of roads that leads to Gaspard’s headquarters.”
“How could a German so easily fool the Maquis?” Hubert asks.
“Because he wasn’t German at all.”
“A collaborationist?”
“Yes. His mission was to locate, then assassinate, Gaspard, and he would have likely gotten away with it had Patrice not noticed the key ring that hung from the ignition.”
I lift my gaze from the road to look at Tardivat. But I do not interrupt him or ask for clarification. Tardivat fancies himself a storyteller and appreciates a pregnant pause.
“It was engraved with German lettering,” he says.
I nod. “Ah. So Patrice would assume that the man he was taking to Gasp
ard was either a Resistance worker who had commandeered a German vehicle or—”
“—that he was in fact working with the Germans,” Tardivat finishes for me. “As the captive tells it—albeit under duress—Patrice and his maquisard began to whisper in the backseat. The agent had his pistol ready beneath his thigh, and the moment he saw Patrice reach inside his coat for his revolver, he turned and fired, hitting Patrice squarely in the throat. Then he shot the maquisard once in the forehead.”
“Merde.” I wince.
“Unfortunately for the agent, this altercation happened just as they passed into Gaspard’s territory. They were surrounded immediately.”
“What of Patrice?” Hubert asks from the backseat.
“He died almost immediately. But he did manage to get three shots through the seat and into the agent’s back before bleeding out.”
This is a terrible blow to the work we’re doing, and I feel my shoulders sag. I lean against the passenger-side door, trying to think of what this will mean for communications with London and our own responsibilities with Fournier’s group. We are already shorthanded, and Patrice did the work of ten men.
“I take it none of Patrice’s shots hit the mark?” I ask.
“They did little damage,” Tardivat says. “The agent was wearing a bulletproof vest.”
“Of course he was,” I mutter, and then something occurs to me. “How do you know all of this?”
Tardivat takes his eyes from the road and turns to me. The look on his face is indecipherable. It could be relief or disgust. Pride or horror. “Gaspard and his men have been torturing him for information.”
* * *
—
The first thing we notice when we arrive at the château is the smell of burning flesh. As on our first visit, Tardivat brings his vehicle close to the front door. As soon as we step out of the Renault, the pungent, stomach-churning odor hits us like an invisible cloud. The broad front doors of the château are propped open and guarded by two of Gaspard’s men. I don’t recognize either of them, but they clearly know who we are, because they step aside and motion us in.