by Perrat, Liza
Once they disappeared from sight, I waded out of the river. Perhaps Martin was only wounded? I could not bring myself to think he might be dead.
I raced to his prone figure and knelt beside him. No rise and swell of his chest. My fingers shook, grappling for his wrist. No pulse. No heartbeat. In that instant of shock and disbelief, I simply grabbed his Luger from its leather holster, clicked a magazine into the butt, and started back along the path.
I caught up to Karl and Fritz in minutes. The strain of all the running had obviously taken its toll on the fat Fritz and he lagged behind Karl, who kept spinning around, frowning, and urging him on.
From behind a willow trunk, I watched them stagger to the river, crouch on the bank and scoop water into their palms.
As they drank, I crept closer, stealing from trunk to trunk, the Luger steady in my damp, gritty hand.
Martin’s words rang in my head.
… pull these two knobs backwards, until you see “geladen” which means, “loaded”.
The Luger levelled, I sidled the last few steps up to them, both still bent over the gurgling river. I knew the exhausted Fritz would be slower to react, so I shot Karl first, in the back of the head.
Fritz spun around and the next bullet caught him between his piggy eyes. Both Germans lurched forward and fell, with dull splashes, into the river.
I lowered the gun, startled at how easy it had been; astonished at my cold satisfaction. How I’d changed from Gabrielle Fontaine on her first mission at the Antiquaille hospital –– the girl who feared she could never kill a soul.
I sank down onto the gravelly shore. I’d felt calm, almost at peace, right before I shot them, but then I shook all over –– a numb, emotionless shudder –– as if my mind and body were no longer connected.
I scrambled upright and splashed water over my face, swallowed a few gulps and lay back on the smooth stones. The wind cooled my cheeks, and brought a scrap of singed paper floating to the ground beside me. I picked it up, and squinted through the scorch marks, recognising a few broken phrases of the catechism.
I toyed with the scrap of paper, thinking about how things looked. When the Germans found three of their own, murdered, they’d immediately think it smacked of Resistance. There would be more reprisals. I almost laughed. What more could they do? There was nothing, and nobody, left to punish.
But Madame Abraham, Anne-Sophie and Séverine needed help, and any others who might’ve survived the carnage. Without a backward glance at the corpses floating downstream, I heaved myself off the ground, the pain in my arm lancing me like the stab of a sword, and headed down the path towards Julien-sur-Vionne.
I glanced at Martin lying across the path beside my special riverbank spot –– our spot. A small square parcel lay beside the corpse, as if it had fallen from his pocket. I picked it up, tore off the wrapping and opened the box. My palm flew across my heart as I stared at the diamond ring –– the jewel with which Martin had hoped to tempt my brittle emotions.
The sun glinted off the edge of the single gem for, even to my untrained eye, I was certain it was a genuine diamond; no fake square of polished glass that might scratch, and shatter, over time. No, it was an eternal symbol of Martin Diehl’s pure emotions; the untarnished love I had not been able to reciprocate.
I snapped the box shut, slid it into my pocket and as I hurried away from the lifeless body, the blood surged through me like the Vionne in a storm, the pain swamping me as if I were caught in a great gaping floodway.
50
Bloodied, filthy and tear-faced, I stumbled into Uncle Félix’s shop.
‘Thank God,’ Maman said, folding me into her arms. ‘Thank God.’
‘Jesus, Blessed Virgin Mary,’ Aunt Maude said. ‘We saw the smoke. People are saying the Germans have burned Lucie. Surely that can’t be true?’
‘I wanted to come straight away,’ my mother said, ‘to see if you were …’
‘But the mayor forbade us to leave Julien,’ Aunt Maude said.
‘He said the Germans might still be there,’ Uncle Félix said. ‘That it could be dangerous. They told us to let the rescue teams go in first.’
My words gushed out in a twittery mumble. ‘I need to go back … M-m … Abraham, Séverine … presbytery garden.’
Maman set a cup of herbal tea in front of me. ‘Help is being sent,’ she said. ‘Word of this … this disaster has spread and your friends will be rescued.’
I sipped the tea, the sting of cognac warming me, and calming my trembling limbs.
‘Whatever happened, Céleste?’ Aunt Maude said. ‘Have the Boche truly burned Lucie? Why would they do such a thing? It’s simply unbelievable.’
My aunt’s words reverberated against the screams of the villagers –– a continual, tortured wail. The odour of scorched human flesh snagged in my nostrils and made me gag. Numb with the pain, the shock, and twitching with the spasms of guilt, I could no longer speak.
‘We’ll let Célestine rest now,’ Maman said. She sat beside me, dabbed a cloth into a bowl of warm water and started cleansing and disinfecting my cuts. ‘Instead of bombarding her with questions. I’m sure she’ll tell us everything when she’s ready.’
With deft fingers, she stitched the jagged gash on my arm and bound it with a clean bandage. I barely felt the pain of the needle going in and out of my damaged skin.
***
‘You know you don’t have to go back to Lucie so soon,’ Maman said the following morning.
‘I want to go … I have to. Don’t you see?’
‘You won’t find any answers, any absolution, Célestine,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you’re looking for. All that –– the reason for such a thing –– can only emerge later, once the shock passes.’
‘I’m going, Maman.’
With a grim nod my mother helped me climb up into Uncle Félix’s trap.
The sun was a fiery orange in a cloudless sky over Lucie. Fat pigeons cooed, swallows wheeled and sang, and sparrows hopped about, unalarmed. The joy of that spring life seemed unreal, offensive even, amidst the desolate scene no words could describe.
Obsessed only with escaping the murderous inferno, I saw it all then, all that remained of people and a village which only the day before had been full of life; everything from which, yesterday, my cocoon of shock had protected me.
Like a silent film in my head, running far too slowly, I watched them all going about their daily lives: Père Emmanuel, Miette’s parents and sister, Uncle Claude, Robert and Evelyne Perrault and Ginette and Yvon Monbeau, who would never open their doors to their prisoner-of-war sons.
The faces of Miette and Dr. Laforge too, flashed into my mind. I thought of them going about their work in Lyon, ignorant of what had happened back in Lucie.
The first rescue and salvage teams, many wearing the Red Cross armband, were busy with the gruesome task of recovering bodies. They found Agnes Grattaloup, weak and exhausted, but alive, huddled in her cellar, where she’d taken refuge when the SS arrived. We’d assumed the eccentric old woman hadn’t a clue there was a war going on but it was evident she’d known better than the rest of us what it was all about. The rescue workers pulled another handful of survivors from the cellars of their devastated homes –– those too fearful to surface yesterday.
It seemed that once the mass execution was over, the SS had gone on a manhunt, systematically shooting down any witnesses. The rescue teams were finding those bodies too, down wells, behind burned-out cars, and shoved into ovens.
There was also a large group of people who had family in Lucie, or those lucky enough to have been away the previous afternoon. Though I was certain those people did not consider themselves fortunate in any way.
They clustered together, walking amongst the smouldering ruins in a kind of unbelieving daze. It seemed they were all caught in that moment between sleeping and waking, when the veil of dreams is about to lift; when you reach out towards the light, relieved that it’s all been a nightmare, and force yourself into
wakefulness.
The women cried softly. The men remained silent, their heads bowed, and when they came upon their blackened homes, they stared in mute shock.
My fingers folded over my pendant, Maman and I walked amongst the debris of la place de l’Eglise: the black skeletons of the lime trees, the bodies of burnt bicycles, a baby’s pram, a child’s doll pecked with bullet holes. The ancient gallows posts had survived, untarnished.
The smell of suffering clotted the silent air and I gagged on the stench of burnt flesh, dry retching on the taste of my guilt. I rocked my angel back and forth along Martin’s gold chain, trying to feel the familiar comfort from the old bone; to calm my fretful, accusing mind.
Rubble, bits of metal and charred wood littered the broken-down interiors of what had been, just yesterday, warm and lively homes. Several were only partly incinerated, crockery and cutlery still sitting on the table, as if in silent remembrance of a meal begun but never finished.
Every sight stirred in me new shock –– a pair of tapestry scissors sitting next to an iron, as if the housewife would be returning to finish her work. In a child’s bedroom, a mermaid figurine and a hairbrush sat, undamaged, amidst a charred mess.
Instinctively I grabbed my mother’s arm as we came upon the entwined bodies of two children, hand in hand, their cherub faces still wearing their look of innocence.
We picked our way around the debris and up to Saint Antoine’s church. On the outside wall, an iron crucifix remained intact. I took a tentative step over the rubble of fallen stones, imagining the bronze organ pipes still ringing out their melancholy sounds, Père Emmanuel’s reassuring voice still booming out across the centuries-old flagstones.
From the blackened vestiges, shreds of smoke trailed into the silence. Bands of sunlight speared down through the holes in the roof, specks of dust and soot dancing in the beams. A twittering bird flew in, hovered over the wreckage, flapped its wings and shot back into the sky.
The sun lit up the bullet holes that pocked the walls and marred the white tablet listing Lucie’s glorious dead from the Great War. Twisted fragments of the church bell lay where it had fallen beneath the bell tower. I could hardly believe it would never chime out over the village and countryside again –– that sound I was born into, something so familiar I’d almost ceased to hear it.
‘Look,’ I said to my mother. ‘The bell was bronze, and it melted. But the altar and the confessional, made of wood, have survived. It makes no sense.’
‘Some things are senseless, Célestine.’
In disbelief, we gaped at the blood staining the church flagstones, and at the objects strewn across them: a toy horse, corset stays, hairpins, several nails from clogs.
We stepped back onto la place de l’Eglise, where people were standing alone or in small groups. No longer fearful of the Germans, a deep sadness seemed to hang over them; a sadness that became, as the morning wore on, tinged with the first stirrings of anger.
‘I’m going to check on Agnes,’ my mother said, nodding in the direction of old Madame Grattaloup who was slumped, alone, against a blackened wall.
I glimpsed Dr. Laforge at the fountain, and made my way over to him.
Two men were speaking with the doctor –– René Tallon and Raymond Bollet –– Uncle Claude’s farmer friends who’d been caught hiding guns. How trivial that all seemed then, being caught hiding guns.
‘They herded us into the barn,’ René was saying. ‘We were all just standing there, nervous and scared, but we still had no notion of what was coming.’
‘The SS officer set up his machine gun on a tripod,’ Raymond said, running a shaky hand through his hair. ‘Other soldiers were standing guard, waiting.’
‘Then from outside,’ René went on. ‘We heard a detonation –– obviously the signal to fire. Someone shouted a command and their bullets started mowing us down. Raymond and I were in the middle, all the dead falling on top of us. We didn’t move, did we Raymond?’
‘Not a single muscle,’ Raymond said. ‘Even when the soldiers stepped forward to give the coup de grâce to those who might still be alive.’
‘I felt my brother take his last breath, on top of me,’ René said, his voice breaking up.
‘They covered the bodies with straw and kindling,’ Raymond said, ‘and set fire to the building. Smoke filled the barn but we managed to grope our way out of a small back door that led into another barn. We hid there, in the loft.’
‘Then they set that on fire too!’ René said. ‘So we crawled outdoors and worked our way over walls and gardens till we reached the edge of the village. Behind us, the whole place was burning.’
Apart from their obvious shock, Raymond and René had, miraculously, not suffered the slightest injury. Though I was certain those sole survivors of the barns would be left with far deeper wounds; scars no medicine could heal. Dr. Laforge patted the men on the shoulder, and they moved off with a straggle of people.
The doctor turned to me and took my hand. ‘Thank God, Céleste, I couldn’t believe it when Madame Abraham told me about your escape from the church.’
‘Where is she? And Anne-Sophie and Séverine? Does Miette know what’s happened to her family?’
He shook his head. ‘Your friend is still unaware of the tragedy. And, for now, Anne-Sophie and Séverine are with a volunteer family in Julien. Many families in other villages have opened their doors to survivors.’
‘And Madame Abraham?’
‘In hospital,’ the doctor said. ‘Both ankles fractured, but she’s a tough old bird.’
‘And the others?’ I said.
Dr. Laforge frowned as if he hadn’t heard right. ‘Others?’
‘Yes, everyone –– Ginette and Yvon Monbeau, Monsieur Thimmonier, Evelyne and Robert Perrault, Père Emmanuel, Uncle Claude and his sons and daughter, your brother and his wife …’
‘But, Céleste … there are no others.’
‘I know,’ I said, the tears spilling. ‘Of course, I know. I just can’t believe it until someone says it aloud. It’s my fault, isn’t it? All of this is because of me.’
‘Don’t say such a thing,’ Dr. Laforge said. ‘There is any number of reasons why they might have done this. When the Allies landed, everybody thought the war was over,’ he continued in a hushed tone. ‘But the harsh fact, Céleste, is that these are the most dangerous of times. The Germans are hair-trigger edgy.’
‘Yes, but ––’
He held up a hand. ‘It might be reprisal for the gunpowder factory we blew up, or some generalised punishment for Lucie being an effective Resistance centre for the past year. It was the deed of an army in panic, caught in a race against time by the advancing Allies, harried by Maquisards. Out of contact with their superiors, they too behaved like terrorists.’
‘But I’ll never know, will I?’ I said. ‘Never know for certain I haven’t destroyed our village; murdered all our people?’
‘There’s no point thinking about who might be at fault,’ he said. ‘After this …’ He waved an arm across the square. ‘This evil massacre, we have far more to worry about.’
I nodded towards his burnt-out rooms and home, and the place where Simon’s chemist had once stood; where he, his wife, and three children had lived. ‘What will you do now? Where will you go? Back to Lyon with Jacqueline? Maybe I should come with you? I can’t bear the thought of staying here.’
‘You’ll return to Lyon later, Céleste. Once I’ve …’ The one eyebrow knotted. ‘Once I’ve started to digest all of this.’
He nodded at my mother, walking back with Uncle Félix. ‘Go back to Julien. Let Marinette take care of you; let her help assuage this self-reproach you’ve burdened yourself with.’
‘I’m taking you home now, Céleste,’ Uncle Félix said, his hand on my arm. ‘You need to rest.’
‘I must go to the farm first,’ my mother said. ‘To see if L’Auberge is …’
‘But the Germans are there,’ Dr. Laforge said. ‘They requisitioned i
t, after the school explosion. You knew that, Marinette.’
‘They’ve gone,’ I said. ‘I saw them leaving yesterday.’
I said nothing about the deaths of Karl and Fritz, or Martin. Someday I might tell my mother but there was far too much else to take in that day.
‘I’ll take you up to the farm,’ Uncle Félix said.
I winced, cradling my injured arm, as my mother helped me climb into the trap. My uncle took the reins and we headed off up the hill, away from the smouldering ruins.
As the horse’s hooves clomped away, the faces of the people I would never see again swam through my mind, their voices, their laughter and their smells: the sweet aroma of Uncle Claude’s pipe, the rough and tumble noise of his children. Everything swept away in a few horrific hours, all perhaps, because vengeance had consumed my mind. I couldn’t help thinking Dr. Laforge was simply trying to make me feel better, inventing alternative reasons for the carnage.
As the horse struggled up the hill to L’Auberge, I gathered up every one of those farms, shops and homes –– the two thousand-year old village of Lucie-sur-Vionne –– firmly, and forever, into my mind and my heart.
***
From the empty bottles strewn about, the splintered furniture, the cracked food jars lying on their side, it was obvious the Germans’ time at L’Auberge had been one great orgy of drinking and eating. There was not a single animal left, not one vegetable, plant or flower remaining in the trampled kitchen garden. The orchard was a wreck too, as if the Germans had deliberately destroyed whatever they hadn’t taken with them. My mother and I left Uncle Félix checking the outhouses, while we tramped up the steps and inside.
Maman stared at her muddied, scuffed tiles and parquet floors; at the pictures in the living room hanging sideways or lying, their frames cracked, on the floor. It was easy to sympathise with her distress, at the devastation of her usually neat and clean home.
I touched her arm. ‘I’m sorry … so sorry. It was my fault they came to L’Auberge. If I hadn’t … everything is my fault. But I’ll clean it all up, every last bit of this mess.’