Monsieur le Commandant

by Romain Slocombe

  ‘What year were you born?’

  ‘Nineteen twenty-two.’

  A heavy stone with sharp edges tore at something within my chest. Now I understood why his face had looked so familiar.

  He looked just like me when I was twenty.

  Madeleine’s features slowly swam into focus as I stared at the wretched young man in the chair. A brief affair, unknown to Marguerite, in the years after the Great War, with a café owner’s daughter. She fell pregnant and I had arranged for her to marry the local constable, a strapping man as yet unmarried. I never saw Madeleine again after the wedding … The others in the room had no idea; judging by their obtuse or curious expressions, I deduced that the theatrical scene had not been staged with the ironic and perverse aim of bringing father and son face to face as prisoners of this dreadful place. It was just another, cruelly treacherous stroke of the fate that had been cleverly toying with me for years.

  From the next room came the sound of a slap, followed by a jostling of bodies. I thought I heard a woman’s voice cry out. We all turned our heads in that direction. The door opened, and two new people entered the room.

  A tall young woman with long, curly chestnut hair was shoved in by a scrawny kid with a light moustache. Her hands were cuffed behind her back. She wore only a white underskirt and a brassiere of the same colour, and on her feet a pair of burgundy high heels. I noticed that, oddly, her hands were gloved – rather elegant short gloves of cream-coloured leather.

  The girl had a black eye, and blood ran down her thighs.

  I knew the young man with the moustache. He was an activist in the Andigny PPF whom I had seen running the propaganda and recruitment programme for the Legion of French Volunteers. In a triumphant voice he declared: ‘The girl woke up. It was great, lads! She still had her cherry, at twenty-three …’

  Then he saw me and shut up, embarrassed.

  The wall-eyed dwarf uncuffed the young woman, made her sit in a chair, tied her arms behind her back with a rope, and then strapped her by the chest, keeping it arched against the back of the chair. The dwarf’s movements were remarkably quick and precise, as were his knotting skills. His prisoner let out a moan. She stared at each of us in turn with a wild look on her face, still in shock from the defilement the poor child had just been subjected to. Tears had left tracks down her swollen face. It was a rather pretty face. Detective Cuvelier sniggered beside me.

  Martin Laugnac then turned to my son – for that is what I shall call him from now on, young André Pin whom I had never seen until this moment, as an adult. The SS officer punched him squarely in the face, knocking his head backwards.

  Laugnac asked my son, whose nose had begun to bleed, where the Allied airmen who had been shot down near Mesnil-Raoul were now hiding. He replied in a whisper that he didn’t know anything about it.

  The officer slapped him twice across the face, and said, ‘Too bad for her.’

  ‘But good for us,’ Cuvelier cackled, eliciting laughter from the others.

  Laugnac walked over to the suitcase and opened the lid. Inside, I saw more rope and various implements, scissors, hammers and spikes. He withdrew a large scourge, which had been customised with a series of knots to augment its efficacy – as he was pleased to point out. He then began to lash the legs, thighs, forearms and shoulders of his female captive. The blood quickly began to flow, and wherever the blows fell twice in the same place they flayed the skin, exposing raw flesh. The young woman screamed until I thought my heart would break. I wanted to get up, put an end to the horrific scene, but Simon continued, with a smile, to point his automatic at me. The officer rested; his arm was tired.

  ‘Surname, Christian name,’ he ordered, panting.

  Her head on her chest, his victim sobbed. Grabbing her by the hair, he pulled her face upwards.

  ‘I won’t say it twice …’

  ‘Lelouarn, Yvonne.’

  ‘Address.’

  ‘Avenue du Maréchal Foch, number eleven … In Evreux.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He’s a pharmacist …’

  ‘What’s your network?’

  ‘I’m not in the Resistance! I swear!’

  The SS officer raised his voice above hers.

  ‘What about the false identity cards we found on you?’ (He then called her by names that I shall not transcribe.)

  ‘Someone gave them to me … I was helping out …’

  ‘Do you think we were born yesterday? So who gave them to you?’

  She lowered her eyes without answering. Laugnac punched her. Blood spurted from her mouth.

  The officer bellowed: ‘We know you’re in the Rainbow Network! Filthy terrorist c**t! Give us the names!’

  He continued to hurl insults at her. The scourge fell again, tearing off strips of flesh. The blood streamed across her white skirt, down her legs … Sitting in the armchair, I trembled. I saw many dreadful things in the Great War, Monsieur le Commandant, but I had never seen a woman being tortured. My heart beat furiously, I felt sick to my stomach, my knees knocked together, my hands trembled. I beseeched the good Lord to put an end to her suffering.

  Beside himself, Laugnac threw the scourge across the room. He bent over, tore the shoes off Yvonne Lelouarn and began to stamp on her bare feet with his heavy boots. I closed my eyes, and I heard him break her ankles. Immediately afterwards, he shouted, ‘She’s all yours, José.’

  The dwarf approached the young woman, delicately took her one hand, and then the other, and pulled off the gloves. I watched him select a long lancet from among the implements in the valise, take the index finger of her right hand and plunge the instrument under its nail. The poor wretch howled like a wounded animal. We all watched in silence – horrified in the case of André and myself, fascinated in that of the others. When the wailing tapered off, the dwarf took up a second finger and inserted a second lancet. Leaving it in, he grabbed hold of the nail and ripped it off.

  ‘Stop,’ Laugnac interrupted. ‘Let’s first ask Pin if he wants José to do all the fingers … and then the other hand.’

  My son was weeping quietly. The young man in uniform bent over him. It occurred to me that they were more or less the same age.

  ‘Where are the airmen? If you tell me where they’re hidden I’ll stop the whole thing. We’ll take Mademoiselle Lelouarn for treatment in the infirmary at Caen prison. I will ensure that she is seen to. In a month or two, she’ll be free to rejoin her family in Evreux. We are not monsters. Personally, it saddens me to see a young compatriot who was naïve enough to fall for propaganda being treated this way because of those bastards who chuck bombs at French homes … Do you have any idea how many civilians have been killed? Bodies torn to shreds? Women, children …’

  André did not respond.

  ‘Call yourself a man?’ Laugnac muttered. ‘How can you bear to see that girl suffer because of you? When all you have to do is say two words to save her. The name of the farm. The name of the village.’

  My son shook his head. The officer stood up straight and sighed.

  ‘José!’

  The dwarf returned, with his lancets.

  Four bloody fingernails had been flung to the floor before my son cried out for them to stop.

  He gave the names of a farmer and a village.

  Laugnac ordered the youngster from the PPF to take notes.

  ‘And then you’ll take down the other names,’ he added.

  I didn’t understand. Cuvelier chuckled behind me.

  ‘Once they start to sing …’

  The Club stepped forward. The dwarf removed the handcuffs from André’s wrists. The giant picked up my son, dragged him to the door that led to the next room, and raised him up. Cuvelier and Simon grabbed one arm each and raised them towards the lintel of the door. The dwarf ran up with a chair.

  Laugnac had taken a mallet and two long black nails from the valise. He stepped onto the chair. I made as if to stand up, but the PPF fellow drew a pistol and forc
ed me to stay seated in the armchair.

  How can I write this?

  Monsieur le Commandant. They nailed my son’s hands to the lintel.

  The blood-drenched girl, tied to the chair, wailed and wept.

  I stood. The little fellow with the moustache hit me with the butt of his gun and I fell forward. I passed out.

  *

  When I opened my eyes, I was back in the armchair. I heard a series of steady blows.

  Detective Cuvelier grunted as he lashed my son, still hanging, across the back with a belt. The buckle had turned his back into one great open wound of bleeding flesh, in which the shredded muscles were clearly visible. André seemed to be unconscious.

  The dwarf amused himself by circling the young woman and pricking the skin of her neck and throat with the tip of a long kitchen knife. Simon ordered him to step aside and emptied the bucket of water over Mademoiselle Lelouarn. Detective Cuvelier stopped lashing the suspended André for a moment and turned to watch. Laugnac approached his prisoner, who dripped with water and blood. He gave her two sharp slaps.

  ‘Now, give us the names of your accomplices in the network. If you don’t, we’ll kill him, take him down and nail you up there in his place. Talk now before it’s too late … Before we get really mean.’

  Simon, the former policeman, approached in turn.

  ‘I’d talk if I were you, sweetie. These Gestapo boys from Caen are tough. I’ve seen them cut strips of skin off the soles of their suspect’s feet. And the really stubborn ones who still resist – well, it’s too bad for them. Laugnac and José reward them by sewing their mouths shut with wire. Is that what you want them to do to you? Think of your poor mother …’

  He waited, gazing at her mildly. He stroked her cheek. A few seconds later the girl mumbled a name. An address. Then another name. And another address …

  The PPF fellow feverishly wrote in his notebook. Sometimes she went too fast for him. Laugnac rubbed his hands together.

  When she had finished, they took André Pin down. They laid him out on his stomach to spare his ruined back. I prayed under my breath. I said the Our Father. Then I got up and went to kneel by my son, stroking his head. I looked at his hands, punctured like those of Our Lord. My tears fell, and I could do nothing to stop them. I cried for my son. For Yvonne Lelouarn. For Ilse and her children. For the French, and for myself, too.

  The men dragged the young woman into the next room. They raped her one after the other – all except Martin Laugnac, who stayed in the large room, sitting across from me and studying me in silence – before bringing her back, naked and dishevelled, covered in blood and semen. They had to hold her by the underarms because of her broken ankles. Her eyes were completely unfocused. Stupefied, she was already gone, far away.

  Laugnac picked up my son.

  ‘Follow us. We’re going for a stroll in the woods.’

  André could barely walk.

  ‘Let me write a letter to my parents first,’ he begged. ‘Please … And I also want to say goodbye to my little sister Germaine …’

  I heard the giant cackle.

  ‘With those hands? You couldn’t even draw a cross.’

  André’s fingers were all twisted and crooked. I offered to write the letter for him, at his dictation. I promised to bring it to Fresne-l’Archevêque myself, if I were allowed.

  ‘No time,’ Laugnac decreed. ‘We have to take care of these two, call for reinforcements, and head over to the farm to nab those Brits. I’ll go and see your mother. I’ll tell her myself that you ratted on everyone and then died like a dog.’

  ‘Bastard,’ I shouted.

  He smiled.

  ‘It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Commandant Husson.’

  Detective Cuvelier grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me back.

  The others left the room. I heard a door slam downstairs, then the car doors, and the two vehicles sped away.

  24.

  Simon and the Club returned to find me slumped in the armchair, under the watchful eye of the detective.

  The three men lit cigarettes, sat on the chairs, which were still spattered with blood, and laid out their demands.

  The plan had changed since the last time. It was no longer a matter of 5,000 a month. I now had ten days to gather and deliver a single payment of 250,000 francs. That is no small sum, Monsieur le Commandant, and I did not have it. But these crooks had done their homework. As I have mentioned, my marriage to Marguerite had brought me two buildings in Paris. By mortgaging one I could quickly borrow what I needed, and later, if necessary, repay the bank by selling the other. My thieving blackmailers knew it, and so did I.

  If I refused to pay, they would fetch Ilse from Rue Richer, bring her to the house of sorrows in Fleury-sur-Andelle, and leave her with Martin Laugnac and his men. Who would be very happy to have a Jewess to play with, according to the Club. Nailing people to beams is one of their favourite pastimes. These police auxiliaries trawl the province picking up Resistance or black-market suspects in their cars. They sometimes pass themselves off as dissidents, entrapping farmers or tradesmen with Resistance sympathies. Those who they do not kill on the spot in a hail of bullets they bring to the sort of place I had been taken to. Their bodies, buried in remote forests or flung down the deepest wells, are never found.

  I accepted their conditions. What choice did I have?

  These men had me.

  I did not know whether Cuvelier had arranged all this without Sadorski’s knowledge. It was very likely – in which case, he intended to slip him his share of the 5,000 every month and claim he had received it from me.

  What difference did it make? No matter how you looked at it, I was trapped.

  Here I must digress a moment.

  No one believed more than I did, and still do, Monsieur le Commandant, in the importance and the future of Collaboration between our two peoples. How could I write you such a letter, in confidential friendship, if I did not?

  I deeply respect the warrior’s uniform you wear. You and I are of the same rank, for that matter. Like my compatriots, it pains me to see that uniform, the uniform of the German Army, sullied by acts that you yourself would never commit, but which others who are not German undertake by exploiting and abusing the considerable authority that you undoubtedly erred in conferring upon them. Such men, who just nights ago I heard identify themselves to your Feldgendarmes as agents of the German secret police, deserve no other title but thieves, extortionists, murderers …

  If these flocks of gallows birds are allowed to run wild in our country with impunity, the Collaboration, that great endeavour, may well be compromised in my province and elsewhere. The integration of France into Europe must be more than an empty promise, a rhetorical flourish. It must be a tangible reality, accessible to all. Alongside its political and technical transformation, French society must be transformed morally. Your Ambassador, His Excellency Monsieur Otto Abetz – and I intend to write him a memorandum on this subject – would be well advised to demand the dismissal or apprehension of these wayward auxiliaries, as well as a ‘cleansing’ of corrupt elements who dishonour the French Police. Franco-German relations would thereby be completely overhauled, and men who, like me, are resolved to see the triumph of the policy of Collaboration in France would be ideally empowered to confound their enemies and rally their partisans.

  Has your Chancellor himself not written: ‘We Aryans can conceive of the State only as a living organism that not only ensures the continuity of the race but cultivates its intellectual and creative capacities to their highest degree of freedom and fulfilment’?

  The Führer would surely not gainsay me if I were to add that freedom and development can flourish only in a dynamic that is both spiritual and moral.

  A few days later, I plucked up my courage and placed a call to Rue Richer.

  As usual, Hermione answered the phone. I asked her firmly to let me speak to her mother. My granddaughter hesitated. I therefore asked her to info
rm her mother that it was about a certain lady she had visited on the third floor of a building off Rue de Rivoli …

  A moment later, I heard Ilse’s voice – for the first time in so long! – at the end of the line. It was muted and trembling. I heard her send Hermione from the room, and then she began by begging me to forgive her.

  ‘It was so awful. I didn’t want to do it, but …’

  In my most affectionate and reassuring voice, I gently reproached her for not having told me about her pregnancy. And then I asked her how she had found that woman.

  ‘It was Odette who … One of the dancers at the Opéra. They sometimes have that sort of problem. She asked one of her friends. And when I got the information, I made an appointment and went over there …’

  Deeply moved, I assured my daughter-in-law that had I not had certain religious principles I should have liked to be there with her.

  I heard her sobbing on the other end.

  ‘Can you ever forgive me, Paul-Jean? I climbed the stairs, I rang … That horrible old woman came to the door. The flat smelled bad. Behind the old lady was a table covered in a filthy chequered cloth. Water was boiling in a pot. I saw long knitting needles …’

  Mortified and sickened, I held my breath.

  ‘And then … I couldn’t do it, I turned around. I ran down the stairs, knocked into some man, into the street … I took the bus …’

  My fist gripped the receiver. And there was I imagining that the whole affair was long past! Stammering, I interrupted her story.

  ‘What do you mean …? You didn’t go through with it? Are you still …?’

  She was astonished. ‘But I thought it was that woman who told you … Otherwise, how would you have known?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. But then … What are you going to do?’

  Silence. My daughter-in-law began to cry. Between sobs, I heard her say: ‘I don’t know … It is already eleven weeks.’

  I buried my face in my hands. It was unbelievable, horrendous – every time I thought myself free from this nightmare it started up all over again! I tried to think, but no solution came to mind for the moment. I decided to play for time. I asked her if she didn’t want to keep the child. Ilse began shouting.