But what has this to do with our pleasant little town, where the only stars one sees, at the weekend or during the summer, are worn by a few fortunate owners of second homes?
My work on the Town Council has allowed me to learn that we have among us a certain Amédée Lévy, who has been appointed as the official caretaker of the town cemetery. He is 100 per cent Jewish, a childless widower with no military record who has never appeared on any list qualifying him for employment in a reserved occupation. He was given the job even though French veterans wounded in the Great War – of whom I am one myself – have been left to moulder on those selfsame lists.
How is it, moreover, that this person should have been sworn in even before he had been naturalised? His naturalisation, too, could well be ascribed to certain connections within the former republican regime. In any case, his presence on the public rolls is highly suspect. His insolent swagger is a disgusting challenge. He has been summoned to the town hall on several occasions because of his status as a Jew, but the man, cunning like all of his race, has always ‘fallen on his feet’.
By dint of what secret influence?
Amédée Lévy managed to obtain a veteran’s certificate, no doubt fraudulently, but he has been stripped of it. In the meantime, his case cannot drag on forever. This individual’s file must be fat with surprises. The police or the gendarmerie would be well advised to look into it!
That is why I demand that a thorough investigation be launched of this person, who is occupying a public post that is not his by right. We need to know now by what authority he is exempt, as he claims to be, from having to wear the Jewish insignia.
I find it alarming that exceptions are made for every bit of scum that has washed up on our shores from foreign ghettos since the days of the Popular Front. Enough is enough – people will tolerate this no more! And yet the solution to the ‘Jewish problem’ is simple. Until they can be sterilised or exterminated, the Jews should all be sent to labour camps. Real Frenchmen wish to see the Jews stooped over French soil, mattock in hand.
Let us rid the cities of France of their Jews! Our sub-prefecture has given refuge to one single Jew. Kick him out!
In setting such an example of public health policy, Andigny would become the first town in France without a single Jew!
I signed it: ‘Paul-Jean Husson, member of the Académie Française, Officer of the Légion d’Honneur, veteran of 1914–1918, decorated for bravery, war-wounded, Collaboration Group registration No. 50-144-H, literary section.’
Having had no news from Rue Richer in ten days, I called. The phone rang for an unusually long time, and then Hermione answered. We exchanged a few words, and the child told me that her mother had a migraine and couldn’t speak to me. I said that I wished her a speedy recovery and that I would call again the following day.
Jittery and anxious, I couldn’t bring myself to do it, but called back two days later. Hermione again answered the phone, and informed me that her mother was out. But I briefly thought that I heard Ilse’s voice in the background.
I lost heart, and did not call again for several weeks. Happening to pass by Rue du Buet, where Amédée Lévy, the cemetery caretaker, lived, I noticed that the shutters were closed and that the brick walls were covered in graffiti, written in forceful vernacular, strongly encouraging our Yid to pack his bags for Palestine if, among other unpleasant options, he did not want to find himself ‘in the oven’. Tickled by the eloquence of certain colourful expressions, I wrote them down with the idea of reusing them in my reportage. I had the opportunity of doing so in July, when a mass round-up of foreign Jews, first housed at the Vélodrome d’Hiver and later in the camp at Drancy – ultimately to be transferred to the labour camps in the East – proved that our French police had finally decided to take serious measures.
July passed without any contact between me and my family in Paris. I was also concerned for their health, as I knew that the material circumstances of city-dwellers were in continual decline. Food was growing scarce, disappearing off the shelves. Artichokes and tomatoes were now available only with ration tickets. At dawn, hours before the shops opened, women gathered in long queues on the streets, monitored by police officers, in the hope of obtaining a bit of salad or a pound of rotten fruit. As for me out in the country, living quite well on the generosity of our farmers, I vegetated, my heart stricken, wounded, plunged into an abyss of confusion and sorrow. I understood that I would have to give up on Ilse; that our wonderful night would never be repeated; that in burning my bridges I had unwittingly cut myself off from my love for good and all; and that the Lord had judged me severely for the sin of having lain with my son’s wife and, worse yet, a Jewess.
On 5 August came the attack in the Jean-Bouin stadium. Hidden behind a hedge like cowards, three men hurled grenades at a group of some fifty German soldiers who had been training on the track. Eight were killed and thirteen wounded, and the criminals escaped.11 All that morning, I was told, soldiers patrolled the streets, sub-machine guns at the ready, arresting passers-by at random. In reprisal, General Oberg, your Higher SS and Police Leader, had eighty-eight hostages shot, only eighteen foreigners among them. Many of the French citizens sacrificed that morning on Mont Valérien had committed no direct action against the occupying forces, and had been jailed on minor offences. I was deeply upset at the thought that a bunch of Bolsheviks, Jews and Gaullists had caused innocent French blood to be spilled once again, and that the policy of Collaboration between our two great peoples was again under threat because of an act of abject terrorism.
On 19 August, the Anglo-Americans attempted a landing at Dieppe. Your Wehrmacht easily repulsed them after a few hours of fighting. But this sharp clash gave us a good idea of what to expect if France’s ‘liberators’ managed to gain a foothold on terra firma. Our territory would become a battlefield, our cities and villages reduced to ashes, our monuments razed, our population decimated. Two days later, Monsieur de Brinon sent a telegram of thanks to Marshal von Runstedt on behalf of Maréchal Pétain, congratulating him on having so quickly foiled the enemy’s advance.
A few days later, during the afternoon of the 27th, I heard the rumble of an engine and then the crunching of gravel on my drive. It was a very hot and lovely day. Although Monsieur de Brinon had invited me, I had not attended the high Mass at Notre Dame, followed by the military parade at Les Invalides in celebration of Legion Day, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the departure of our first contingent of volunteers to the Eastern Front. I went down in my shirtsleeves, having been upstairs writing in my office. The gardener had left the main gate open, and a black Citroën saloon had taken the opportunity to pull up willy-nilly at my front door. Two strangers, both in hat and trench coat despite the heat, were standing beside the car and gazing up at the villa’s gables. I went out. One of the men asked to speak to Monsieur Husson.
They looked like policemen, and I thought they might be on the trail of my son. I told them that Olivier was abroad. The one who had spoken first corrected me. ‘No, we’re looking for Paul-Jean Husson.’
‘That’s me.’
He took out his card and showed it to me. He belonged to the national police force, there was no mistaking it. I ushered the two officers into my drawing room.
The first introduced himself and his colleague.
‘Deputy Chief Inspector Sadorski. And Special Detective Cuvelier. General Inquiries,12 Third Brigade.’
They sat. I asked the maid to bring them something to drink. I joined them in a cognac – I felt the need for one, because something told me that the visit boded no good.
We drank in silence. Special Detective Cuvelier seemed fascinated by the Boilly painting, the intertwined group portrait Amour familial.
‘We’re here to take custody of the Jew Lévy, the cemetery caretaker,’ Deputy Chief Inspector Sadorski explained to me. ‘You see, the Feldgendarmes picked him up at home at dawn, and it’s our job to take him to jail in Paris. I had a look at his file,
and saw the article you wrote in it. Bravo, and congratulations. Without it, the chicken would have flown the coop. The Yid’s in for it now!’
I heaved a sigh of relief. The police, it seemed, were only interested in my denunciation. They had come, no doubt, to take my testimony.
‘We were told that you spend your time in town these days,’ the inspector went on. ‘So this is a lucky break. Your name is not unknown to me, as it happens.’
Assuming that the officer had heard of my work, I asked him if he had read any of my books. He seemed amused.
‘No, I don’t have time to read. You can’t imagine how much work we have to do. My group specialises in bagging Jews.’
I was unfamiliar with the expression; Inspector Sadorski explained it to me.
‘Our section is on the “public areas” beat, assigned to non-terrorist Jews and foreigners. We have about fifteen detectives. We sometimes get a hand from the youngsters in the PPF,13 sometimes from the IV-J Division of the Gestapo security service. We mostly work the railway stations and public places. For instance, yesterday at the Gare d’Austerlitz, I see two young girls about to board a train, carrying little suitcases. Look like Jew girls to me … I can tell them straight off. I have a good eye for it. Names I might forget, but faces, never. And even those who don’t look Jewish, I know they’re Jews. I’m wrong once in a thousand times. Me and my colleague, we ask for their papers. They’re sisters; they hand us their identity cards, which I’m surprised to find are not marked “Jewess”. But their foreign surname looked kikey to me, even if their first names were as French as they come. I ask for their parents’ Christian names. The older one answers quick as you like, “Bernard and Pauline”. We search their bags, nothing suspicious, just clothes.’
‘And underwear,’ Detective Cuvelier chimed in with a sly smile.
‘Shut up, we’re in respectable company here. Pardon my colleague, Monsieur. Three years ago he was a simple constable; he still hasn’t learned good manners. Anyway, fine, it all seems a little fishy to me, but the girls are pretty and we give them the benefit of the doubt. Plus, the heat is murderous and I’m dying to stop for some liquid refreshment. We return their papers, the girls thank us before heading off for their train, all smiles after the nasty little scare we’d given them. So Cuvelier and me, we have a laugh and go for an anisette on a café terrace. And there, who do you think I see walk by, heading into the station we’d just left? A woman in her forties, looking upset, in a hurry, nervous – suspicious, in other words. And the thing is, she looks just like the two girls we’d just stopped. And she has that same Jew face. I get up and order Cuvelier to follow me. We catch up with her in the main hall. Police, your papers. Her card has the same surname as the two sisters, though her first name isn’t Pauline, but most importantly, the pretty little word “Jewess” stamped in red letters. Cuvelier collars the lady while I run off to the platform. Another stroke of luck – the train for the Free Zone hasn’t left yet. I give orders to stop it leaving and I inspect the carriages. I pick up the two girls and make them get off. March the whole little gang down to the station. And looking closer with the magnifying glass, you can see that the girls had “washed” their cards. So, if the mother hadn’t had the lousy idea of giving her children a surprise send-off at the station, they’d have had us.’
‘They’ll have all the time in the world to think about that in Drancy,’ Detective Cuvelier added. ‘Family time.’
This story left me with a rather bitter aftertaste. But as I had told my daughter-in-law, that June night on Mont Saint-Michel, France is occupied. Some people are responsible for this state of affairs, and now steps are being taken. And you know as well as I do, Monsieur le Commandant – you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
Detective Cuvelier pointed to his colleague.
‘You know, at headquarters they call Sadorski the “Jew-eater”. But it seems that you’re one, too. That’s what they told us at the town hall, in any case. Is that so?’
I didn’t answer. Inspector Sadorski leaned forward and said, ‘Monsieur Husson, let me tell you the truth. In the national police, including General Inquiries, the pay is terrible. And to think some people are making a fortune these days! So to survive, we make ourselves a little on the side, you see. We protect people who might otherwise have certain problems with the law. Thanks to us, they have nothing to worry about. And as a token of their gratitude, they offer us a monthly stipend. For example, I know a certain Madame H. who works out of a little alleyway behind the arcades on Rue de Rivoli. Her profession is … how can I put it? Well, she makes pretty little angels, who go to Heaven before they get a chance to see what a rotten place this Earth can often be. Good for them, I say. And Madame H. helps an awful lot of people. Only, under the Maréchal, she’s playing with fire. So I see to it that she’s protected. As it happens, I dropped in last week to read the meter. The lady lives on the third floor. I was almost knocked down on the stairway by a young woman coming down at breakneck speed. I was just able to catch a glimpse of her face. As I told you, Monsieur Husson, I sometimes forget a name but never a face. And this one looked familiar …’
Without asking permission, the Deputy Chief Inspector helped himself to more cognac.
‘Unfortunately, a face without a name isn’t much good to a police officer. But you know, my dear Monsieur, the world is a funny place. Take yesterday, on the café terrace outside the station – that Jew mother shows up right under our noses! Then, the cemetery caretaker’s file lands on my desk the same week! And inside I find a press clipping from Le Journal d’Andigny. An article signed by Paul-Jean Husson. Well written, has some style to it. You gave him what for, that Lévy. But that name, the writer’s, rang a bell. Husson, Paul-Jean …’
He stopped to fix me with an ironic gaze. I was not at all happy with the turn the conversation – or rather, the monologue – had taken. I smiled.
‘My family name is not uncommon.’
‘Quite right. On the other hand, Paul-Jean is much less common than Jean-Paul. And strangely enough, somewhere in my bureaucratic mind, where everything is labelled and in its place, those names, first and last, were linked with the face of the pretty blonde I had run into on the angel-maker’s stairway.’
I didn’t understand, but I was growing more and more alarmed.
‘My career in the French police suffered a setback a few years ago, Monsieur Husson. I was dismissed over some little fuss … But now, I’m happy to say, they’re hiring with a vengeance, and Commissioner Lang, who remembered my talents, reinstated me in his RG branch. In between, I’d been working for a private agency, located on Rue de la Lune in the second arrondissement of Paris. Next to the School of Wireless Telegraphy. Does that mean anything to you?’
I felt as if my heart had stopped beating.
And a new question almost immediately popped into my thoughts. A question that terrified me.
What had Ilse been doing in some squalid flat where secret abortions were taking place?
Sitting across from me as I broke out in a heavy sweat, Inspector Sadorski went on in his calm and vaguely insinuating tone.
‘I speak Chancellor Hitler’s language fluently, Monsieur Husson – my mother is from Alsace. It can be useful, especially nowadays. And that’s why, back in’39, old man Dardanne thought of me for your little investigation in Berlin.’
‘Ah, Berlin!’ Detective Cuvelier echoed under his breath, either in envy or nostalgia. I hardly heard him. Cuvelier meant nothing to me – I was mistaken in that, as subsequent events were to demonstrate – and at that moment my eyes and ears were focused exclusively on his fearsome colleague Sadorski.
‘I had the time to go through my old archives before we set off to see you, Monsieur Husson. The photo of the blonde wasn’t very hard to find, nor was the corresponding file. The Wolffsohn/Berger case, upon request of one Paul-Jean Husson, 20 Quai de Verdun, Andigny, Département de l’Eure. All the pieces were falling into place. It was
the same town the Commissioner was sending us to pick up the Jew! Quite amazing, but it made sense, and it gave me and my colleague here the chance to kill two birds with one stone, and save on petrol too …’
I was too rattled to answer. Inspector Sadorski chuckled heartily and pulled a beige envelope from the pocket of his trench coat. And from that envelope he withdrew, with calculated slowness, a black-and-white photograph.
Elsie Berger, dressed in a ball gown, in Das Flötenkonzert von Sans-souci.
Detective Cuvelier leaned in for a closer look at the picture and whistled, not without reason. But I was in absolutely no mood to smile, let alone laugh. I desperately tried to think of some way to get us, my daughter-in-law and me, out of this indelicate situation. But first, I needed to understand the intentions of these men from the special branch of General Inquiries. They now knew that I was protecting an undeclared Jewess. I prayed that their only reason for visiting me in my home was to ‘read the meter’, as Sadorski had put it. Blackmail was the lesser of the potential perils in this story. So long as the demands of these swindlers remained within reasonable limits, I was quite capable of meeting them.
What was truly shattering to me was that my daughter-in-law had been caught visiting an abortionist.
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