Léon and Louise

by Alex Capus

  Historians would later record that the Führer had only three hours earlier landed at Le Bourget airport on his first and last visit to Paris, accompanied by his architects, Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler, and the sculptor Arno Breker. He had paid lightning visits to the Opéra, the Madeleine and the Place de la Concorde, had driven up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe, along the Avenue Foch to the Trocadéro, and on to the École Militaire and the Panthéon. When he drove past Léon he must already have been on the way back to his plane and would only make a brief stop at Sacré-Cœur, where he cast a last glance at the conquered city that lay, waking up ignorant of his presence, at his feet.

  If Léon had had a pistol on him, he often thought later, and if the pistol had been loaded and the safety catch off and he himself capable of firing it with relative accuracy, and if he had summoned up the requisite presence of mind and wasted no time on debating whether Christian and Western codes of conduct rendered it morally justifiable, he might possibly have performed a deed of historic importance. As it was, he merely stood there with his mouth open and the three baguettes under his arm, and their two- or three-second encounter had absolutely no effect on his or the Führer’s future existence. Even decades later, Léon used to shake his head in disbelief that this insignificant incident was still one of the most memorable in his life, and that the colours and light of that summer morning had etched themselves into the depths of his psyche, whereas the really important events in his life – his wedding, the births of his children, his parents’ funerals – lived on within him as vague memories, nothing more.

  But the laboratory remained devoid of exciting incidents. It was only every few days that he had to interrupt his statistical labours to examine a suspect specimen for rat poison or arsenic. He performed these tasks with his habitual care in the certain knowledge that, even under German occupation, he was serving the cause of justice, for whoever currently ruled the roost at the Hôtel Matignon or the Élysée Palace, the same basic principle held good: that no person should administer poison to another.

  Being a kind of police officer, Léon realized that he was, like it or not, a subordinate of Marshal Pétain and ultimately under German command, but as long as his duties were restricted to the technical investigation of suspected poisonings he could hope to preserve a relatively clear conscience.

  But then came the morning when he turned up for work at his usual time of eight-fifteen and once more found the Quai des Orfèvres black with policemen. They were standing sullenly on the cobblestones in the morning sunlight, smoking, and moored to the quayside was a barge which Léon recognized as one of the two that had fled downstream on 12 June, laden with several million index cards.

  Standing near Léon by chance was the same young colleague whom he had asked for information a month earlier.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  The young man shrugged. ‘What do you think?’ he growled. ‘The Germans captured the barge.’

  ‘Only the one?’

  ‘The other got away to Roanne.’

  ‘And this one?’

  ‘Got stuck.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At Bagneux-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau.’

  ‘So near?’

  ‘An ammunition ship blew up ahead of it and blocked the canal. Our people concealed it under trees and bushes as best they could, but the Germans found it. What do you expect? A barge like that is big and easy to spot. It was stuck in the canal. It couldn’t take off across country or fly away.’

  ‘All the same, it’s surprising the Germans are so well-informed about our canal system.’

  ‘And about what our barges are carrying.’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘Nothing. What are you implying?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The bells of Notre Dame had just struck half-past eight when the black Traction Avant belonging to the prefect of police pulled up on the Quai des Orfèvres. Roger Langeron himself got out of the left-hand rear door; the right-hand rear door disgorged a tall young man wearing a mustard-yellow hat and mustard-yellow trenchcoat, rimless glasses and a red swastika armband. His plump, clean-shaven face lent him the appearance of an amiable, short-sighted schoolboy. Going over to the men standing nearest him, he genially proffered a packet of cigarettes, then replaced it in his coat pocket when none of them helped himself. Meanwhile, the prefect of police had mounted the car’s running board with a megaphone in his hand.

  ‘MESSIEURS, YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. ALL POLICE JUDICIAIRE PERSONNEL ARE HEREBY ASSIGNED TO SPECIAL DUTIES UNDER THE PROVISIONS OF MARTIAL LAW. THE DOCUMENTS ILLEGALLY REMOVED FROM ROOM 205 ARE TO BE RETURNED TO THEIR RIGHTFUL LOCATION. ALL AVAILABLE PERSONNEL, FORM A DOUBLE LINE FROM THE QUAY TO ROOM 205 BY WAY OF STAIRCASE F, AND BE QUICK ABOUT IT!’

  A murmur ran through the crowd, and the men were slow to discard their cigarettes. They could see no reason for excessive speed now that the Germans were no longer advancing but had been on the spot for quite some time. The greyish-black sea of hats and coats formed two human chains as requested, but sluggishly and without enthusiasm. Patently resentful at having to replicate the chore they had already performed in June, but in the opposite direction, the men now took three or four times as long to carry out every part of the operation, with the result that, although there were only half as many documents as before, it took nearly twice as long to return them as it had to evacuate them.

  In Room 205, Prefect Langeron and the man in the yellow trenchcoat sat at the big desk, opened sundry cartons and found that the documents had suffered considerable damage. Canal rats, beetles and worms had nested in them during the barge’s one-month absence and water had leaked through the hull. The humidity resulting from summer storms had made ink run, paper swell, and cartons and wooden boxes disintegrate. Even before the lunch break, Langeron and the young German had decided that the whole archive, all three million index cards and other documents, must be copied and neatly stored in new card indexes and suspension files to be delivered within a week by the Ministry of Information.

  But preliminary mental arithmetic indicated that it would be quite impossible for Room 205’s hundred-strong staff to complete this job in a reasonable length of time because each of them – in addition to recording the new entries that came in every day – would have to produce around 30,000 copies apiece. Consequently, their colleagues in the other departments of the Police Judiciaire would have to shelve all but their most urgent work and help to copy the documents as a matter of priority.

  For Léon Le Gall this meant that he had to lay aside his scientific article for the time being. He locked up his notes and the laboratory diaries in a cupboard and resigned himself to the fact that his professional existence would, for the foreseeable future, revolve around smudged pink index cards curling up at the edges.

  The time passed quickly. Before he knew it, he had already spent three weeks deciphering Slav names, transcribing them on to snow-white cards, and depositing these in brand-new card indexes. The names, addresses and categories were legion: Vichnevski, Wychnesky, Wysznevscki, Wichnefsky, Wijschnewscki, Vitchnevsky, Wishnefski, Vishnefskij; Aaron, Abraham, Achmed, Alexander, Aleksander, Alexei, Alois, Anatol, Andrej, Andreji; Rue de Rennes, Rue des Capucins, Rue Saint-Denis, Rue Barbès; Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Communist, Communist, Communist, Communist, Freemason, Freemason, Freemason, Freemason, Gypsy, Anarchist, Homosexual, Amoral, Workshy, Alcoholic, Aggressive, Schizophrenic, Nymphomaniac, Racially Impure.

  Léon devoted himself to this job with an abhorrence which he had last felt at the age of sixteen, when made to copy out pages of Virgil in detention on half holidays, while the sea was washing up objects of great interest on Cherbourg beach. The difference this time was that the punishment additionally felt as if the teacher had gone mad and was holding a loaded gun to his head.

  At the same time, he had to admit that the Germans were exquisitely courteous in their personal dealings. Every afternoon, shortly before the
end of working hours, the man in the mustard-yellow trenchcoat toured the various departments of the Police Judiciaire and collected the copied cards like a bee-keeper collecting honey. His name was Knochen, Helmut Knochen. He padded around softly, always said an amiable hello, and was as touchingly considerate towards his worker bees as any good apiarist should be. In his correct but rather guttural French he almost daily enquired how Léon was, shook his hand, enquired if he had enough coffee, and wondered whether he didn’t need a brighter desk lamp. And all the while he looked him artlessly in the eye with his own pale-blue eyes, which the glasses strongly magnified.

  Léon murmured his thanks and said he was content with his coffee and desk lamp. He had remembered enough of his German lessons at school to appreciate the poetry inherent in Knochen’s surname, which meant ‘Bone’ or ‘Bones’. On the other hand, he found it hard to take the young man seriously as a potential threat, even though he was a Hauptsturmführer, or SS captain, and head of the Security Police. Given his age, which couldn’t have been much more than twenty-five, and his Boy Scout’s crew-cut, Léon found it impossible to imagine that this puppy could actually bite him with its sharp little milk teeth.

  One day in September, however, Knochen turned up early in the morning. Having jocularly tapped the opening bar of Beethoven’s 5th on Léon’s door, he opened it a crack and put half his face round it.

  ‘Good morning! May I intrude at such an unusually early hour? Am I disturbing you? Should I look in later?’

  ‘Come in,’ said Léon.

  ‘No false courtesy, please!’ Knochen exclaimed, baring the other half of his face as well. ‘This is your personal domain – the last thing I want is to keep you from your work. If this is an inconvenient time, I can always – ’

  ‘Please come in.’

  ‘Thanks, very kind of you.’

  ‘But I’m afraid I must disappoint you. At this hour of the morning I’ve only got two copies ready for collection.’

  ‘The cards? Oh, let’s forget about them for the moment. Look, I’ve brought us something. May I?’ Knochen sat down on a chair and clicked his fingers, whereupon a soldier outside in the passage took a tray from a trolley and deposited it on Léon’s laboratory table. ‘Look – or rather, smell! Genuine Arabian mocha from an Italian mocha jug. Quite unlike the wartime stuff you filter through roasted acorns and brew on your Bunsen burner.’

  ‘Thank you, but our coffee is just the thing for me. My circulation – ’

  ‘Nonsense, a little mocha never killed anyone. May I pour you a cup? Cream, sugar?’

  ‘Neither, thanks.’

  ‘Just black?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Oho, you’re a hard case! Is that your Norman blood? Or your profession? Have all those poisonings immunized you against the bitterness of life?’

  ‘Not in the least, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s more the other way round, isn’t it? I thought as much. One becomes thin-skinned in time – I’m just the same, or will be when I’ve had as much, er... experience as you. How do you find the coffee?’

  ‘Excellent.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it? I must make a note to send your department a packet every week. I’ll leave the mocha jug here, it sits on your Bunsen burner perfectly. Is there anything else I can offer you? A croissant, perhaps?’

  Léon shook his head.

  ‘You’re sure? My orderly has some. Absolutely fresh, made with real butter.’

  ‘Really not, thank you. Please don’t go to any trouble.’

  ‘As you wish, Monsieur Le Gall. But tell me, your place of work...’ – Knochen made a sweeping gesture with his slender, well-manicured hands – ‘...is it all right, as far as it goes?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve had many years to get used to the facilities here.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, because it really matters to me that you should be able to work in the best possible conditions.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘A man can only do a good job of work in decent conditions, I always say. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  ‘You must be sure to let me know if I can do anything for you.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  Knochen rose and went over to the window. ‘You have a splendid view from up here. Paris is a wonderful city – the loveliest in the world, in my opinion. Compared to Paris, Berlin is just what it always has been: a provincial Prussian dump. Am I right?’

  ‘If you say so, monsieur.’

  ‘Ever been to Berlin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t missed much, so far at least. I myself come from Magdeburg, which has even less to recommend it. But tell me something: Do you, as a Parisian, appreciate the beauty of the City of Light? Do you still notice the view at all?’

  ‘One gets used to it. After twenty years – ’

  ‘Magnificent – the view is simply magnificent. In here, though, the lighting is – how shall I put it? – a trifle dim, a little on the faint side. Are you sure you have enough light to work by?’

  ‘I manage.’

  ‘Really? I’m glad to hear that, because the thing is, a minor problem has arisen.’ Knochen clicked his fingers again and his orderly came in with two card indexes. ‘I hate to waste your time on trivia, but I’d like you to take a quick look at something. Know what I have here? These...’ – he indicated one of the card indexes – ‘...are the last hundred copies you produced. And these...’ – he pointed to the other – ‘...are the originals. Know what struck me when I compared the two?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘This is the unpleasant part. You mustn’t take offence.’

  ‘Please go on.’

  ‘I noticed that you make rather a lot of mistakes when you’re copying. That’s why it occurred to me that the lighting conditions in here might not be of the best. Please forgive me for asking, but how is your eyesight?’

  ‘Pretty good.’

  ‘Really? You don’t need reading glasses yet?’

  ‘Fortunately not.’

  ‘That’s good, because you aren’t as young as you were, are you? How old are you actually, if I may ask? Forty?’

  ‘I regret the mistakes, monsieur.’

  Knochen brushed this aside. ‘They’re only minor matters – venial sins, of course – so don’t take this too hard. At the same time, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that even tiny errors can have disastrous administrative repercussions.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘I knew I wouldn’t have to explain that to you, being a scientist. Look: here, for instance, you’ve written “Yaruzelsky” instead of “Jaruzelsky”. If this card were filed alphabetically under Y, we’d never be able to locate the man. Or here: “Rue de l’Avoine” instead of “Rue des Moines” – a street of that name doesn’t exist at all. Or this date of birth: “23 July 1961” – the man wouldn’t have been born yet. You see what I mean, Monsieur Le Gall?’

  ‘Yes, monsieur.’

  ‘I took the liberty of comparing all these hundred cards with the originals and totting up the defective ones, and do you know how many there were?’

  ‘I regret – ’

  ‘Guess! Go on, have a guess! How many do you think: eight? Fifteen? Twenty-three?’

  Léon shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Seventy-three! Seventy-three out of a hundred, Monsieur Le Gall! In percentage terms that makes, let’s see, just a minute – oh, of course, you idiot: seventy-three per cent! That’s a lot, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Nearly all the errors are minimal, but as Lichtenberg said, the most dangerous untruths are truths that have been slightly distorted. Do you agree?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Knochen made another dismissive gesture. ‘Don’t take it too hard, we all make the occasional mistake, though I’m bound to say your own mistakes are remarkably numerous. Do you know what your colleagues’ average percentage is?’

  ‘No.�
��

  ‘Eleven-point-nine.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m glad you see. What matters now is to eliminate the source of your errors and thereby improve your performance, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Monsieur Le Gall?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you an explanation for your high percentage?’

  ‘Many of the cards are hard to decipher.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Knochen, ‘but your colleagues have to contend with equally damaged material, don’t they? Or do you think it conceivable that you’re allotted a statistically significant preponderance of badly damaged cards? If so, is that preponderance fortuitous, or should we look for some underlying reason?’

  Léon shrugged.

  ‘That’s why I was concerned about desk lamps and reading glasses, you see. There must be some reason why you make so many mistakes. Needless to say, my SS colleagues are quick to suspect sabotage and high treason if they see a percentage like yours. Are you acquainted with any other members of the SS?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just between ourselves, some of them are thoroughly reprehensible hotheads – not the kind I’d care to meet in a dark alley some night. Do you know what they do to saboteurs? To start with, all kinds of unmentionable things. Then they take them to Drancy internment camp and put them up against a wall. Or throw them into the Seine in handcuffs. Or dump them in the nearest ditch with a bullet in the back of the neck. It’s martial law. They’re entitled to.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘They’re hot-headed youngsters, as I say. Ill-bred, some of them, but what can one do? Don’t worry, though, Monsieur Le Gall. For the time being, I still decide what happens in this establishment, and I say my staff must be provided with good working conditions if they’re to do a good job.’

  Knochen clicked his fingers yet again, and the orderly brought in a big desk lamp with a reflecting shade.