* The black market
* The Forbidden Zone that was along the coast and extended at least 20 km inland
* The women’s prison
* The guillotine, the widow- or widower-maker
2
The Jardin du Luxembourg was right across the rue d’Assas from the clinic. It had always offered sanctuary but now it couldn’t. Kraus would discover that those pencils must have been switched. First he’d find Martin’s little parachute in the dust of that window, and that would lead him to Dr. Vergès. Under torture Vergès would cry out the mayor’s name. And then, what then? asked Angélique. Kraus would pull out her fingernails.
The garden threw up the faces of the Occupation, the tired, the old, the middle-aged women in their Depression-era makeovers, the good-looking girls, les belles gamines strutting with their current lovers: Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, SS and Gestapo or simply those on “business” here and from the Reich.
Some of the Boches—and she must be careful about using that term—sailed toy boats on the terrace’s octagonal pond where Martin had launched his own, but what was she really to do? Go to Kraus and try to say, Me, I thought I should tell you … ?
Hide—where? she asked and cried out silently, Maudits salauds, how could you have done this to us? All your reassurances, eh, Monsieur le Maire? All of your protestations of, ‘Ah, it’s no trouble, mademoiselle. For you we will arrange everything. You and the boy will go to Paris, this I assure you.’
And she had actually thought he was being kind!
You’re an idiot, she said. You’ve still got a lot to learn.
Martin was hungry and thirsty, but had forgotten both. Toy sailboats always did that to him. In his imagination, he was right back there in time and crossing the Channel, sailing though to England, not to France, with his father in that one’s sailboat.
Sans moi, she said ruefully. Sans son amour, eh, Martin? But please bring him back to me, don’t sail away like that, even if only in your imagination.
She had rented the boat for the half hour. Five francs, it was a lot, but it would take Martin completely away from this city, this country, this thing that was happening to them, this little tragedy. And certainly he might remember her years later when a man and might say, I once lived with a Frenchwoman. She used to get me to scrub her back. We didn’t have much. It was during the Occupation, so we had to share the bath water. Sometimes I slept with her, sometimes she cried out through clenched teeth, both in joy and despair.
He might even say, I fell in love with her and was jealous of my father. He might, for jealousy was a part of it, but so, too, was anger and rebellion, and even power, for Martin knew he had a terrible hold over her and could use it any time he thought necessary. That little parachute.
Shade grew and the shadows lengthened, the sounds of the people always muted in the garden as in a dream. Lovers kissing, lovers holding hands or doing other things. Water trickling down her cheek and neck to run between her breasts. Cold water, softly whispered words. Angélique … Angélique, I love you. I’ve come back.
They kissed. She and that father of his held each other. They couldn’t get their clothes off fast enough. Her stockings were getting in the way. Her stockings …
Urgently Martin shook her, the sailboat dribbling water. ‘Ah, chéri, I must have fallen asleep. The suitcases … ? Ah non. Martin, did you see who took them?’
He grinned. He shook his head and nodded towards something.
The suitcases were behind the bench but she wouldn’t chase after him like she did at the farm, could only ruffle his hair and force a smile. ‘Your father was full of mischief too. Come on, we’d better find a place to eat and spend the night.’
Like his mother would have done, Angélique swept her eyes over him to see if everything was all right, and when she noticed that monsieur le maire’s pencil was missing, broke into tears and begged him to tell her what had happened.
Was completely shattered.
I lost it, he said, carefully mouthing the words so as to let her read his lips. It slipped from my shirt pocket and fell into the pond.
They searched. With suitcases in hand, they walked slowly around the pond, trying sometimes to get between others, always to peer into the depths, but it was so dark down there on the bottom. Dark and murky.
Just when she was thinking, Had it been a blessing, this loss, a man in a light grey business suit removed jacket and fedora, rolled up his sleeves and plunged a tanned and well-knit arm into the water.
‘Your boy’s pencil,’ he said in French so good it rang of the salons of the rue Saint-Honoré. ‘Allow me, please, to present it to you.’
He was clean-cut, about thirty or thirty-two, was blue-eyed, blond-haired, sharp-chinned, broad-shouldered, very proper and yes, quite good-looking.
‘Merci.’
‘Hans Albrecht Dirksen at your service, Madame … ?’
‘Mademoiselle Bellecour.’
There was a white chrysanthemum in the buttonhole of his jacket and when he put the jacket on, he laughed at himself and said, ‘I know I shouldn’t have picked it but couldn’t resist.’ And then, ‘The pencil, please. We’d better take it apart and dry it thoroughly. You don’t want it to rust, do you?’ he said to the boy, forcing her to tell him Martin didn’t have the use of his voice.
‘The Blitzkrieg,’ she said.
At once Herr Dirksen was concerned. ‘It will come back, Martin,’ he said. ‘You’ll see. All such things happen in their own good time.’
Sitting on the bench beside them now, and using a clean white handkerchief, he took apart the pencil and carefully dried and blew out the barrel, before drying it again. There was only one spare length of lead but it had broken in half and he placed the two pieces carefully on his left knee until ready to fit them back into the barrel. All of this was done under the watchful gaze of the statues that appeared as if gathered about the terrace, the queens of France. Marie de Médicis, Marguerite de Valois, Valentine de Milan, Anne de Beaujeu, Anne de Bretagne—she had known them all by heart once. Calliope, that muse of epic poetry, stood behind their bench, watching the three of them. Sainte Geneviève was over by the bandstand.
‘I used to love this park,’ she said, trying to find something inconsequential and regretting it immediately, only to recover and add, ‘On my rare visits to Paris, I always tried to come here because it was so restful, but I never lived in Paris. I always wished that I could,’ she shrugged, ‘but it was impossible. Just not in the cards.’
He asked what she did and she told him, knowing even as she did that he would simply ask himself, Weren’t secretaries in demand before this conflict the English caused? ‘We really must go,’ she said. ‘It’s late and we have to find a place to stay over for the night.’
Martin returned the sailboat to the man who rented them, and she thought, Will I have to pay a little more, but the man saw her with this German and abruptly turned his back on them not out of patriotism, for he willingly rented to these “visitors”, these “friends”, rather sensing perhaps a Gestapo or SS in mufti. But would that make any difference to her and Martin? Any at all?
‘There’s an excellent hotel just across the park,’ said Dirksen. ‘Please allow me to escort you, then perhaps a bite to eat. Yes, yes, that would suit. But a good meal, eh, Martin, not just a sandwich or a bowl of soup.’
It would do no good to say they had other plans, and with a sinking feeling, she said, ‘You’re very kind. Martin, the monsieur is to take us to our hotel.’
And then to a dinner she could not afford, the same, too, regarding that “hotel”.
At 7.00 p.m. Berlin time as well as here in Paris, ah yes, Dr. Albert-Émile Vergès closed the surgery and locked the door. Pocketing the keys, carrying umbrella and briefcase, and wearing an open, dark grey trench coat and grey fedora, he took the stairs, most of the lif
ts having been denied their electricity, but on reaching the ground floor, did not leave by the front entrance as was his custom.
Close and in shadow, a passage led to a small courtyard behind the building. From there, cutting diagonally among the lindens, the doctor went along the columned walkway on the left. One could hear the heels of his shoes on the granite paving blocks. Now a column, now a glimpse of him. Was he hurrying? That left heel always came down harder than the right.
He paused. He stood stock-still. Was he nervous?
Satisfied, he continued on to open a door into the building behind the courtyard. From there he took the stairs up to the third floor—was it impulse that had driven him to do so? Had he sensed someone was following him, or was this where he was to meet his contact?
It was too close to the surgery and therefore far too dangerous; the terrorists, the Banditen, liked to spread themselves out. The limp could, of course, simply have been created by placing wedges of cardboard under that left heel. The thicker the wedges, the more pronounced the limp.
He was standing in the corridor, just waiting and waiting. Fifteen minutes later he came down the stairs to leave by the door that led onto the impasse Vavin, a narrow, dead-end street, a slot flanked by towering houses that reeked of mould and urine in the heat and had all but shut out the early evening light.
He was shorter than most and hurried with that limp of his, the umbrella clutched at its middle, the briefcase in the other hand. Though he lived alone with an aged mother who was bedridden, he didn’t turn north towards the rue du Tournon and that fine old house that had been made over into flats years ago, but went south. When he got to the carrefour Vavin, the intersection of the boulevard Raspail and boulevard du Montparnasse, which was not far, he quickly lost himself in the crowd that flocked to get into the great brasseries of Montparnasse, the Café de la Rotunde, the Select, the Coupole and the Dome … Men in uniform milled about, men in suits and fedoras, men with their girls and others looking for a bit of female company. Vélo-taxis disgorged, people laughed … Where … where was he? Ah merde, had he vanished behind that gazogène* lorry or behind that open touring car?
Then there he was, sitting well back on the terrace of the Dome, pretending to read his Paris-Soir. There were alcohol-free days, but Fridays weren’t one of those. There’d be that ersatz stuff that had become so necessary with the shortages, but wine was different. Wine was so of the French it hadn’t been cut, no matter which day of the week.
Dr. Albert-Émile Vergès, age fifty. Nose, ear and throat specialist.
Marie-Hélène de Fleury breathed a sigh of relief. It had been good. He had done everything possible to have shaken her off, had been extra careful, but still, he should have left his paper on the table, left his glass of vin ordinaire right there and told the waiter he’d be back. Gone to the toilet and for a little look around.
This he now did, pleasing her immensely. And when she was asked by a Wehrmacht lieutenant who was hungry for a woman if she would like a cigarette, she smiled and said, ‘Monsieur, c’est exactement what I need. Mon amour, he hasn’t shown up yet and keeps me waiting!’
Refusing all other offers, she found a table inside and next to the far wall where she could see things better. The Dome had thick blue curtains for the blackout, but it was too early yet to have drawn them. Acetylene lamps would give light during the power outages, which had become far more frequent. At random, at will or out of just plain necessity, the Germans would switch the electricity off quarter by quarter, arrondissement par arrondissement. Sometimes it helped with her work, sometimes it didn’t.
The toilets were being watched by others. They weren’t her problem. Vergès’s table remained empty for about ten minutes, after which the doctor returned and sat down with his back to her.
‘Un café et un pousse-café, s’il vous plaît,’ said Marie-Hélène to the waiter. A coffee with a liqueur on the side. She was due it. ‘A brandy, I think.’
Vergès fiddled with his newspaper, glanced at his pocket watch, listened to the ticking of it and waited. Soon the tables on the terrace filled up but still his contact didn’t come. Had that one seen her and been forewarned? she wondered. Was the contact a waiter perhaps? In rapid sequence, letting her eyes sift over the crowd, she sorted people instantly into suspects and nonsuspects. Vergès was of the medical fraternity, therefore his contact could well be another doctor. But he also did a little teaching—perhaps a medical student then? It made the adrenaline flow, this constant searching and analysis, this clandestine following of another, and she was good at it, the best—far better than the Gestapo or the SS who were her backup because, ah oui, she was a Parisienne who could fit right in almost anywhere but also the lover, the mistress of Hans Albrecht Dirksen.
Self-interest always helped, as did dressing in a very subdued, very nondescript way, not unstylish, merely so that it didn’t cause one to stand out like a sore thumb.
At 8.16 p.m. the doctor tossed off the last of his wine and went home to his mother. Contact hadn’t been made.
Watchful still, Marie-Hélène stood in the gathering darkness beneath a fine old chestnut near the house on the rue de Tournon. The tall wrought-iron gates had gilded fleurs-de-lis atop each bar and, at the centre, an enamelled coat of arms, the Family Vergès. Aristocrats. The last of the line, and lucky too, for they’d managed somehow to have saved those gates from the Occupier’s scrap-metal purges.
She waited—it was now her turn to do so—but everything in her said, It will have to be tomorrow. Tonight was just a dry run. Tomorrow the drop will be made at a place so familiar to our doctor’s daily life, no one will suspect a thing.
Tonight he was just testing us. An expert, then? she asked, and thought back over the early evening before answering, They were worried Doumier had given them away and a trap had been set. The doctor must have been coached by someone pretty good, but had still been too nervous. This run will have given him confidence. Yes … yes, in a game of nerves only the cold and the calculating survived.
Patience … Hans was always urging patience. Even those of the Résistance had been forced to use it. In spite of the obvious need to pass the information on quickly, they had shielded themselves by waiting.
That had taken guts. It said something about the leader of this particular réseau. It said he was ten times more wary than others and wasn’t about to make a mistake. It also said, and this was clear to her, that the doctor didn’t know who his contact would be. That implied a safety net which would be very hard to break.
At 8.55 p.m.—6.55 the old time—there was still too much light for comfort in the place de l’Odéon. Of medium height, and dressed in a plain beige skirt that came well below the knee, and a soft cream blouse, no hat, no jewelery or makeup, Marie-Hélène threaded her way among the pedestrians just walking normally, not in a hurry so as to blend right in but were they watching her, those résistants? Was she now the target, eh? Ah merde, she mustn’t think like this. No one had seen her. None of the Résistance would know she worked for the Occupier. They probably didn’t even know that she slept with Hans.
But maybe someday that would be enough, she silently said and hated herself for thinking it. If the Germans packed up and left—if—things wouldn’t go well for people like herself. Ah no, they certainly wouldn’t.
When Kraus drew the black Peugeot sedan alongside her, Marie-Hélène kept on walking, refusing to notice him.
‘Get in.’
‘Idiot, do you want them to see us?’
He laughed at her distress. Rather than cause a scene, she scrambled into the backseat. ‘Salaud,’ she hissed. ‘Must you always torment me, always be so careless of my security?’
At the corner of the rue de Médicis and the boulevard Saint-Michel, he turned north and headed straight for the quays, straight to the Île de la Cité, to the place du Parvis and the Notre-Dame.
Here there
were few people about. The Préfecture de Police was just across the square, the Palais de Justice very close. The light had all but gone. ‘Look, I report only to Hans, not to you or to anyone else. That’s the arrangement, so why, please, have you brought me here?’
He was enjoying himself. She was quivering.
‘I thought it might remind you.’
‘Of what? That newborn babies were once abandoned here or that the condemned were forced to make a final confession before being carted off to the place de Grève* to be drenched in boiling oil and set alight?’
Sometimes they had used molten lead; at other times, pitch or resin. Five hundred years of such public executions had put their stamp on the square. For examples of utter savagery, the French needed to look no further than themselves and this so-called “centre” of the country. ‘The Standartenführer will want me to brief him when he finishes with the Bellecour woman and her son.’
The shrug she gave was dismissive. ‘Oh for sure he will, but I’m not presenting you with the gift of my thoughts so that you can claim them for yourself. Vergès didn’t make contact. That’s all.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing.’
‘Don’t be stupid. This is too important.’
‘Then take me to Hans. Let him have my analysis of the situation verbatim and from myself.’
The Schlampe!
She ducked away, swore, ‘Hit me then, eh, my fine SS? Mark my pretty face. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? Well, isn’t it?’
He hated her. He resented the successes, which had been far beyond their wildest dreams. The Mirabeau escape line in the south: Nice and a house on the avenue Mirabeau, then Toulon, Marseille, Nîmes, Montpellier and Perpignan to the Spanish border and freedom, all shut down. Two hundred and thirty-nine résistants in the bag, men, women, teenaged boys and girls. All sent to the camps and no one had better deny that those places exist. All of that bunch. All but those who had, of course, been shot or killed in other ways. Ah yes!
The Little Parachute Page 4