‘She’s full of surprises,’ he muttered to himself, ‘but so, too, is Thiessen. Why else would he not have sold these or at least sent them to his wife, some if not all of the clothing as well?’
Extra care had been taken to protect the three flacons the Bellecour woman had treasured, Thiessen having wrapped each perfume bottle in a slip or chemise and then in a small hand towel and placed them between layers of sweaters. One, in amber-coloured glass, was by Lalique from the turn of the century, and it showed in bas-relief Grecian, neoclassical figures of well-dressed noblewomen, highlighted by a russet patina.
Another was Roman, from the first or second century B.C., he felt. No more than seven centimetres in height, its bulbous little bottle fitted perfectly in the hand, the glass with opaline tones of a bluish-green iridescence over the original greenish amber, the piece extremely light and fragile.
The third was from the eighteenth century of the French nobility, of a deep cobalt-blue that had been enamelled in turquoise and gilt, and it bore the motif of an archer in a forest, a hare above him on the twist stopper.
Packing the flacons away, he then thought there would be little risk of their being missed. Wrapping all of them in but one chemise, he carefully tucked them into a jacket pocket. He would see what this Angélique Bellecour had to say of them, and then he would ask her about the boy’s little parachute.
There was still no sign of the two who had been following them, nor of his father, thought Martin. Constantly, but only at the best of times, he had looked behind, while Angélique had taken care of the people ahead and across the street. He knew she was frantic, that she couldn’t yet believe that it really had been his father. He wanted to say, He’ll save us. He’ll come only when it’s safest, but she really was scared and, if not very careful, would give it all away by throwing herself into his father’s arms as soon as they did meet.
Between the place du Palais-Royal and the place Vendôme, the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré was crowded. Here common soldiers mingled with generals; here the big boys of the butter-and-eggs business, the BOFs,* and the collabos bought expensive things for their girlfriends.
Distraught, hurrying along, she said, ‘It’s not safe for him, chéri. Our just catching a glimpse of him in that stairwell was enough.’
An open touring car went past, a Daimler full of high-ranking officers. A Rolls-Royce sedan was next, and then a Cadillac, a Ford, two Renaults and a Citroën—those that had been requisitioned or simply left behind in June of 1940, seemed to be here, with all the diesel fuel and gasoline needed, yet all vying with the bicycles and bicycle-taxis, the few autobus aux gazogènes and the lorries of the same or the horse-drawn wagons that were making deliveries.
The shop of M. Georges Avisse was up a little street and on the other side. The women were very stylish. Pillbox hats were all the rage, but so far what she had seen in the shop windows said that they weren’t handling what they used to. Still, the market was insatiable; business couldn’t have been better. And certainly it was one of the ways that money could be sent home, for at an exchange rate of twenty francs to the Reichskassenscheine mark, which had to be spent and couldn’t be sent home, there were bargains galore, and to live like God in France had been on every Wehrmacht’s lips before the war.
When they came to the corner of the rue d’Alger, they would have to cross over, but was it wise of them? ‘I used to love it here,’ she said. ‘Life was very sophisticated, business very upscale, and maybe God in His infinite wisdom had been trying to tell me I ought never to have aspired to such, but …’ She shrugged and found the will to faintly smile. ‘But I grew with it, Martin. I changed. I discovered I had what so few others have. That sixth sense for what is really the most important thing to look for in a fine antique. Its timelessness. Monsieur Georges, he found this in me and let me travel all over the country for him. Orléans, Aix, Nice, Toulon, Reims, Lille … Ah!’ she cried and pulled him back. ‘I have just given you the list of places I told the Sturmbannführer Kraus we had lived in.’
Sickened by the thought, she refused to cross the street. They mingled with the crowd and she again searched for those who might be following. Every once in a while she would stop suddenly to tie a shoelace and glance back at the crowd or go into a shop only to look out its windows at the endless faces.
‘It’s safe, I think,’ she finally said and let a breath escape. ‘Come on. Let’s get it over with.’
They crossed the street but as they neared the shop, Martin could feel her tensing up. Alarmed, he searched the faces, and when they reached it, she said, ‘We can’t. We mustn’t.’
There was a bronze head in the window, with coiling, fighting snakes instead of hair. Under its gaze was a naked lady in smooth, white stone, and with a long-necked swan caught between her legs. Elsewhere, the painting of a grinning fisherman who had one tooth missing—why would anyone want to buy that? wondered Martin. An open jewel case was better, a drummer beating his drum, a vase, a bowl, a goblet …
‘It’s Saint-Louis crystal,’ she said of this last, ‘and at least one hundred and fifty years old. Do you remember that paperweight I had in my place? The citrine-coloured glass ball with all those strings of tiny bubbles as if rising in it? The one you wanted so much to smash, Martin. That was one of the very first paperweights ever made, but at the time, I couldn’t understand how you felt, could I? It was thoughtless of me. I should have known.’
Urgently he tugged at her hand and nodded towards a man who then ducked away so that she couldn’t see him. Panicking, she said, ‘Come on. Hurry!’
They ran. When they reached the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, she clambered into a parked vélo-taxi, didn’t ask if she could, just dragged him after her and shouted to its driver, ‘Allez! Vite, vite! Allez!’
The man didn’t budge. Astride his bike, a dead fag end clinging to his lower lip, he just grinned. ‘Salaud!’ she shrilled. ‘Why won’t you help us?’
He had brought those two from the Louvre. He must have, she felt, but where were they now?
Another taxi pulled alongside, its driver shouting, ‘Get in and I’ll do what I can.’
The girl was young and brown-haired. Pumping hard, she got them moving and soon they were negotiating the traffic, she just concentrating on going as fast as possible. ‘Hurry,’ said Angélique. ‘Please hurry.’
The two from the Louvre followed, one of them running alongside that taxi and shouting at others to get out of the way.
A truck madly honked, the girl scraping past. At the rue Saint-Roch, she kept right on, the traffic closing in behind with other cars, other trucks, some gazogènes, some not and lots of bicycles and bicycle taxis. Not signalling, she turned sharply to the left and cut across and through the oncoming traffic and into a narrow passage, but crying out, ‘Ah merde!’ and very nearly hitting someone, the others still after them.
‘Hang on,’ she shouted, and turning left again, went up the rue des Pyramides. ‘Are they still with us?’
‘Yes!’
‘Ah, mon Dieu, I knew it wasn’t a good idea. Me, I had that feeling. My horoscope said I would be confronted with an “exercise of the conscience”, and you’re it!’
Making a U-turn in the middle of the avenue de l’Opéra, she took them right back through that passage.
‘Now lose yourselves. Run, mes amis. Vanish!’
There was no time to say thanks, no time to even pay her. Taking Martin by the hand, Angélique ran and only when they reached the river, did they stop to ask, How was it that when most needed, someone had been there to help?
It has to have been my father, said Martin, carefully forming the words with his lips so that she could read what was said. He’s pretending to be a lieutenant in the German army. He comes and goes as he pleases and they don’t even suspect who he really is.
Anthony had spoken Deutsch almost as well as he had French. Travel
ling to the Reich before the war had been necessary to his business, but was he really here in France?
From the attic of the house at number 37, the staircase wrapped itself around the antiquated lift, and the wire cage far below could be seen with its greasy cables rising to the crown-block above.
Dirksen drew back. The concierge, his face pale and grizzled, strained to see up into the attic to discern what was taking the visitor so long. A very worried man, no doubt, but one who absolutely had to be convinced the only course open was to cooperate.
Secretly Lemoine would have realized this by now. He had lied about the boy. He must have known Thiessen would leave nothing incriminating in the flat and couldn’t have noticed that pencil.
When he found the concierge in the tiny kitchen of his loge, the man’s back was to him and Lemoine leapt in fright.
‘Potatoes,’ he managed of the potage he’d been preparing over a gas ring. ‘The Frau Weber is most kind.’
‘I’m sure she is,’ said Dirksen. Most Parisians hadn’t seen potatoes since the autumn of 1940. ‘Sit, please. Let’s talk a little.’
Dieu le Père, have mercy. ‘Of course, monsieur … as you wish.’
Reluctantly he took off the apron, thought to offer a small glass of the Beaujolais the Leutnant Thiessen had given him, then thought better of it. This one across the table from him had to be from the avenue Foch.
‘The boy,’ began Dirksen. ‘You see, I’m puzzled.’
‘But … but why?’ he shrugged and threw out his hands. ‘That one was like any other.’
‘His name?’
‘Martin, as I mentioned earlier before you … you went up into the attic.’
For which no such permission had been given, but Lemoine was already sweating, so good, yes good. ‘How long had he and his mother lived here?’
To tell the truth was one thing, to lie but another, and to find a compromise, well that would probably not work either. ‘Not long. The boy, he came as a visitor. The woman was … Ah! she was the mistress of the boy’s father. They left three days later to join the exodus and that … that is the last I’ve seen of any of them. I swear it, Captain.’
‘Don’t presume to address me by rank. You’ll only make a mistake.’
A colonel, then, a Standartenführer. ‘Monsieur, I’m but a concierge who does not question things he should not question.’
Even though, right after the Defeat they’d all been told to watch and report just such things, and others too. ‘Isn’t it that these days one is required to question things that don’t appear to be correct?’
‘Ah oui, bien sûr, but you see Herr Thiessen, he is above reproach. Never have I had the slightest concern. Kind, courteous—the epitome of correctness. Like it used to be just after the Defeat, you understand, when all of you people … ah, forgive me, please. When les Allemands behaved correctly towards us French.’
But now, and for the past two years, we’ve had the arrests in the middle of the night, the Avis notices posted: so and so executed for such and such. Dirksen could see Lemoine thinking this. ‘Look, I’ll be frank with you. There are a few lines of enquiry my superiors want me to pursue. Men like the lieutenant travel a good deal as you’ve said, but we’re not in the least interested in him, so please don’t concern yourself unduly. It’s someone whom we have come to feel might be watching him.’
The shrug should be automatic, the gesture open-handed. ‘Ah, then, so that’s it. Now I begin to understand.’
Reaching for his glass, Lemoine brought it to his lips, only to hesitate and set it aside. ‘Can I offer you a little, perhaps?’ he asked.
‘With pleasure.’
They shared the wine and a packet of cigarettes Dirksen had lain on the table between them. Thiessen lived very quietly. When at home, he would listen to his wireless in the evenings, always the news broadcasts from Berlin and especially the Führer’s speeches, then perhaps the symphony. Among the newspapers he regularly read were Pariser Zeitung, the German’s Paris one, but also the Völkischer Beobachter, that of the Nazi Party, then too, Der Angriff. Le Matin and Paris-Soir were the local favourites of his. Invariably he ate at one of two places, so was a creature of habit perhaps. Either Laperouse, which was just up the street and was very good, or a little place on the rue du Cherche-Midi, not far from the boulevard Raspail. L’Ermitage du père spirituel aveugle-né, that of the priest who was blind at birth.
‘He always says it’s very good and quite inexpensive and that it allows him to mingle with the day-to-day so as to listen in and hear what their concerns are.’
Had Lemoine deliberately said this, it being close to the Hôtel Lutétia, the headquarters of Abwehr West, and with the Prison de la Cherche-Midi just down the street of that name?
‘La Vagendende, he says, is very restful on a Tuesday when the crowd, it is not so large, and that he wishes he could have taken his wife there at least once. Prunier’s for the sea-food, yes? And the Taverne Lyonnaise for its exceptional cuisine. Once, I think, Le Foyot. It’s on the rue de Tournon and much frequented still, I understand, by the grande bourgeoisie and others, of course. He had an excellent bottle of the Château Lafite there, the 1875, a treasure to be sure.’
It was a restaurant very near to the house of Dr. Albert-Émile Vergès. Marie-Hélène would have to be warned of it, and certainly the concierge had given enough places to rule out Thiessen’s being a creature of habit! ‘Does anyone ever visit him here?’
Lemoine shook his head a little too rapidly but one must not force things. ‘Not even a woman?’ asked Dirksen, smiling at the thought.
Again the concierge shook his head. ‘Not here. Perhaps elsewhere. This I wouldn’t know, of course, because one doesn’t ask such things of a tenant, but I have to tell you that he is very much the family man and has spoken often of the wife and children.’
‘Back home in … ?’
Ah, damn this one! ‘In Cologne, I believe, but in the suburbs, I think.’
Which made sense since so much of the heart of that beautiful old city had been destroyed by the RAF incendiary raids of a year ago last May. Hundreds killed, thousands horribly mutilated, tens of thousands made suddenly homeless. Troubles still in locating loved ones. The glow from the firestorms had been visible for over two hundred kilometres.
He would ask of the address. ‘Perhaps a letter the lieutenant gave you for the post? Perhaps one that had arrived? Surely there must have been something.’
This one was not going to leave it, so a little would have to be offered. ‘The Marienburg, I think. Yes, yes, I remember now. He did ask me to post some letters. All three were to an address in that place. One to the wife, one to the son, and the last to the daughter so that each would know he was thinking of them and not feel left out.’
‘When?’
‘Last week, on Tuesday. Herr Thiessen had just got in from Lyon and had to leave that evening for Berlin.’
‘Berlin?’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Monsieur, is there some reason Herr Thiessen should not go to Berlin?’
Lemoine having tripped himself, there would be no smile this time. ‘Then why wouldn’t he have taken the letters with him? It’s that simple, isn’t it? From here it could take days—weeks even, what with the railways being constantly bombed. From Berlin …’
‘Ah! of course, that would have been much easier and wiser, monsieur, but you see, the son wanted the postage stamps. Some new ones have just been issued.’
‘Oh, and did he now?’
‘As did the daughter. The two compete, of course, for the attentions of their father. Most do. Mine certainly did.’
Quickly crossing himself and kissing his fingers, Lemoine said, ‘The boy, the Ardennes. He was badly wounded and didn’t make it.’
Abruptly he drained the last of the wine into this one’s glass who, seemingly satisfied now, lamel
y asked if there was anything else. And then, ‘Such as a place where the lieutenant might perhaps be watched by others yet remain unaware of it?’
This one simply wasn’t going to leave it, so one must go carefully, and to each fabrication, the elements of truth to firm up the lie. ‘The Bois de Boulogne. He has often said that he liked to go there to take walks, that it reminded him of home.’
‘And are you sure of this?’
‘Certainly.’
But had Thiessen been watching Marie-Hélène on her walks? wondered Dirksen, alarmed at the thought. ‘What about the Jardin du Luxembourg?’
It would be best to shrug and shake the head and say, ‘A possibility, for sure, but he hasn’t mentioned it. Not to me.’
‘Then why was he there when this photograph was taken?’
Ah, nom de Dieu, what the hell was this? ‘Me, I don’t know, monsieur. How could I?’
‘Before I went to look at his flat, you said he had left for Caen today.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘But when, exactly, was it?’
Nothing but the truth would suffice. ‘Early, the one suitcase. The train was at seven,’ he said.
Dirksen tossed the photo onto the table and threw up his hands in despair. ‘Then how was it possible for that to have been taken in the Luxembourg this morning at about ten?’
A shrug would have to be given, but would it be the post, the little white square and the blindfold?
‘You’d best help us,’ said Dirksen. ‘It’s that or the Santé. We know he watched the Bellecour woman and her “son” but didn’t make contact with them.’
All along the quai des Orfèvres there were pollarded plane trees and from here, from the Île de la Cité where others strolled, Angélique and Martin could see across the left branch of the Seine to the house at number 37, but it only brought a sadness that was unbearable.
The Little Parachute Page 11