by Kurt Magenta
Inside it was crowded and eye-wateringly smoky, but with a cosy feel augmented by the ancient potbelly stove that took up star position at the back of the room. Its crook-armed chimney vanished through a hole in the ceiling. The walls were hung with oriental carpets whose patterns were blurred by years of ash and dust; very few pieces of furniture had any kinship with the rest, and many of them were barrels.
Lili waved to him from the far corner, where she was sitting on a bench with one flamboyantly dressed young man beside her and another opposite. Glasses of red wine and a half-empty carafe stood on a low Moroccan table.
‘Salut brother.’ Lili stood to receive cheek kisses. ‘We saved a glass for you.’
He shook hands with the men, who introduced themselves as Grégoire and Ambroise. He sat beside Ambroise while Lili filled the spare glass.
‘What a look you all have,’ he commented.
The young men could have been related. Ambroise had a narrower, darker face and heavier brows, while Grégoire had softer features and fairish brown hair; but both of them sported thin moustaches and a distinct sartorial style. Their hair was long and greased and somewhat bouffant, strands of it dangling over their eyes. They wore wide splashy ties and oversized double-breasted plaid suits; a glance down revealed turn-ups and gleaming black shoes with thick soles. In fact they looked like caricatures of American jazz musicians.
‘They’re students at Les Arts Deco,’ Lili said. She meant L’École des Arts Decoratifs. ‘Aren’t they delicious?’
Lili had adopted a version of their look: her hair was more tumbling and luxuriant than before, her white blouse had puff sleeves, her black skirt brazenly short and worn over fishnet stockings, while her stack-heeled shoes verged on the clumpy. Her lipstick was stoplight red. When she reached for her glass he glimpsed an earring that looked like a real feather.
‘They’ve started calling us zazous, after a jazz song,’ said Grégoire. He shrugged. ‘People always need to call you something.’
‘A bit of colour in dark times,’ explained Ambroise. ‘And a thumb in the eye of the Boche.’
‘How did you meet Lili?’
‘Oh, everyone knows Lili.’
‘So I’m beginning to realise.’
She warned, ‘This is just a first stop, to warm up. There’s something else you need to see.’
‘What about the curfew?’
‘Pff – nobody cares about that.’
Which turned out to be the case. After the bar they walked deeper into the quartier, eventually taking a sharp turn into a slender pedestrian cut-through: the Passage des Patriarches, according to a blue plaque. Pale grey façades; flaking shutters tightly closed. About halfway down, a young man in a leather jacket loafing outside a doorway. Doing nothing much, his attitude said, just hanging around. Popped out to smoke a cigarette. His gaze settled on Lucien – who’s this guy? ‘He’s with me,’ Lili said. ‘Family.’
The sentinel shrugged and nodded them in.
Through the lobby, across a small courtyard, along a dingy hall, down some winding steps.
The cellar, naturally. A place that looked no bigger than a paddling pool, with a vaulted brick ceiling and packed with people dressed like Lili and her friends. They were dancing to a three-piece swing band – guitar, clarinet and violin, portable instruments – or helping themselves to wine from bottles strewn across a rough table at the back. Lili produced a bottle from her bag and added it to the collection.
‘You may as well dance with me,’ she shouted in his ear. ‘We’re stuck here until five in the morning.’
He tried his best, but she did all the moves that made him look good, spinning and dipping and twirling.
Afterwards they leaned against the cool damp wall, and under the covering racket of jazz she answered his questions.
Dédé was principally in touch with two different groups, she said: the Communists, who fully intended to take power if the Nazis were ousted, and the criminal classes – the Milieu, essentially gangsters – who had access to the guns and guts that armed resistance required. But he was also building up a réseau of ordinary disgruntled folk in useful positions: secretaries, administrators, and employees of the SNCF, the national railway corporation, privatised in 1938 and now under German control. Some policemen, too, although many of them had gone to work for the Nazis with few qualms.
Dédé did not see himself as an organiser of resistance, rather as a gatherer of the intelligence that would make resistance effective. One of his goals was to save lives: to identity specific military targets for the British bombers, so these could be destroyed with minimum civilian casualties. Lucien smiled thinly at this, doubtful of the accuracy of a falling bomb. But Dédé was nothing if not quixotic.
‘And your friends?’ he asked Lili, nodding at the dancing throng. ‘What will they do?’
‘Most of them, probably nothing. Provocation through fashion, that’s their thing. Having a lark while feeling good about themselves. But some of them…’ she indicated Ambroise talking to a girl in the corner, his face dark and sharp and serious. ‘Some of them might act, when the time comes.’
The time. Lucien looked at his watch. Just after midnight. Less than two days before he was due to leave France.
And there it was again, the sudden weakness in his limbs, the queasy fluidity that came when he measured the true precariousness of his situation.
He turned to reach for a glass. Perhaps he could blot out the fear with wine and dancing, just like the rest of them. He took a sip, then another, then put it down.
A signal, unseen by him, and the music stopped. A sibilant whisper slid around the room: ‘Police…police!’ The musicians snapped their instruments into cases. The partygoers scattered in different directions, ants fleeing hot water. Some left by the cellar door, others seemed to fade into the darkness at the back of the space.
‘There’s a door to another cellar, then a tunnel,’ said Lili in a harsh whisper. ‘To the old catacombs under the city.’
But she was pulling him hard in the opposite direction, toward the door.
‘So where are we going?’ he asked.
‘I prefer to go up. A bit claustro, remember?’
She tugged him left, towards the wooden staircase that coiled to the top of the building. He followed her, taking the steps two at a time, panting. On the top landing there was a narrow wooden ladder leading to a single paned skylight. He wasn’t sure his shoulders would make it through.
Lili was already at the top and shoving the skylight up. With a quick heave and a push she was gone, legs slithering out of sight. Her shoes had been abandoned, he noticed. He followed, the ladder’s rungs vibrating under his feet. At the top his head and shoulders were in fresh air. He wriggled the rest of the way out, the tight frame blazing his flesh, turned in a crouch and gently closed the skylight. Then he followed Lili along the rim of the roof, hidden from the street on the other side by its gentle slope. He could hear whistles and running footsteps.
They said nothing for a while, prowling across the roofscape, a faint light from a three-quarter moon voyaging through shreds of cloud. In this quartier, where the buildings were fond neighbours, it was not so difficult to move from one roof to another. Sometimes nerve was required to make a short jump, but they both had courage enough.
The shouts and the whistles faded, then died.
Finally they reached an urban valley larger than the others.
‘Let’s sit for a minute,’ she said. ‘You can see the Seine from here.’
Parisians, he thought. They always call the river by its name.
They sat with their backs to a squat beige chimney stack, feet braced on a ridge of zinc. Through the buildings he glimpsed a shimmer of water.
After a long moment he said, ‘I lost someone, in London. A friend.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice was low. ‘I
’m sorry. It must be awful there. We’re not supposed to know about the bombing, but of course we do.’
He shrugged. ‘The strange thing is that you absorb the loss, as if it’s normal. Or maybe I’m just used to it. After Papa.’
Lili took a perfectly rolled cigarette from the breast pocket of her blouse and offered it to him. ‘Take it. I’ve got another.’
He shook his head, so she shrugged and slid it between her lips. Then she produced a fold of matches.
‘Do you have to do that?’ he asked.
‘Worried about my health?’
‘Worried about being seen.’
She hesitated. ‘Suppose you’re right.’ She tucked the ensemble away.
‘Shame about your shoes,’ he remarked. ‘You must get through a lot of them.’
‘Oh, I know where I hid them. I’ll go back when it’s safe.’
Once again, he marvelled at her sang froid. ‘What are you doing here, Lili?’
She looked at him. ‘Same as you – I’m here for Papa.’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted you here.’
‘I think he would. This was our home.’ She looked out over the city, the slanting rooftops and higgledy chimney pots, the sleeping grey buildings, the black streets and the river beyond. ‘We shouldn’t have let them take it. And we’re certainly not going to let them stay.’
Chapter 20
The Second Floor
Last day in Paris. On rue de Rochechouart, the long street that spider-legged up from the commercial boulevards to the artistic enclave of Montmartre, he met Dédé at an antiques emporium the size of a warehouse. Not so long ago it had been a printing works – its presses churning out advertising posters for beer and biscuits and hot chocolate. Now the place was a junkyard of sad furniture and tarnished mirrors. Lampstands and candelabra poked up here and there like weeds. The location made sense: walk far enough up the street and eventually you’d hit the giant flea market at Clignancourt.
Dédé liked to visit the place to buff up his cover story, occasionally haggling with the owner over small pieces. That afternoon he wandered with Lucien deep into its bowels, where there was a syrupy smell of old varnish and the useful gloom of towering wardrobes.
‘Ah, what have we here?’
Dédé had spotted a gilt-framed picture with its back turned to them, propped against the bow leg of a cabinet. He stooped and tilted it towards him. Lucien caught a glimpse of a girl on a swing, a froth of bright blue crinoline, a parasol. Dédé let it go with a wince. ‘Faux Fragonard. And bad at that.’
‘Sometimes I forget you actually know about these things.’
‘One day, I hope, they will allow me to retire in comfort.’ They walked on. ‘So, is this another goodbye?’
‘If Maddox’s plan works, yes.’
‘Don’t share the details. In my experience too many people know them already.’
‘Is there anything else you want to tell me? For Passy? Or for Maddox and his crowd?’
He hesitated. ‘You know, if we’re going to win this war we’ll have to deal with people many might consider unsavoury. Reds. Crooks. Even the Nazis themselves, if we can turn a few of them. Your friend de Gaulle won’t like it. Neither will the British.’ He ran his fingertips across a table-top and examined the dust. ‘About Maddox…’
‘Yes?’
‘Keep an eye on him. As you know, I have some experience of the man. He’s been a spy, a professional, for decades. By now he’s on nobody’s side but his own. He is…unpredictable.’
‘I got that impression, yes.’
Dédé stood still, head cocked.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘A car – stopping outside.’
‘A problem?’
‘Currently, a car is always a problem.’ Dédé waited. The bell over the door rang. In the distance, muttering voices. Dédé pressed a finger to his lips – quiet!
Lucien strained to hear if the accents were German or not, but the voices were indistinct. Beside him, Dédé made a gesture, palm down. They crouched, hidden in the forest of bric-a-brac. Dédé moved again, reaching into his coat, and Lucien felt a tingle of horror when he saw the automatic pistol.
The voices continued. Questions? But if the men were looking for someone, why didn’t they just search the place? Sweat slicked his skin at the prospect of a shoot-out.
The voices ceased. The bell rang again.
After a moment Dédé rose and stuffed the gun back into the pocket of his raincoat. He laughed nervously. ‘The worry will get me before the Nazis do. Still, I’d better go first. Give it ten minutes before you leave. If you hear a shot, take the back exit. The door is always unlocked.’ He opened his arms. ‘So, mon ami, once again…’ They hugged briefly. Then Dédé touched the brim of his hat and walked away down the gully of furniture.
Lucien turned and looked uneasily at the back wall, but there didn’t seem to be one – every available space was crammed with junk. He waited, his shoulders hunched.
At least he had what he came for. Confirmation that Dédé was alive. Details of a nascent intelligence network. Even a coded message, of sorts, for the British. Plus the unexpected bonus of seeing his sister again, no matter how alarming the circumstances. Now all he had to do was get back to London. Just a minor detail.
The gunshot outside was a crack like a dry branch snapping. He stood for a second, barely able to believe he’d heard it. Wasn’t it just a car backfiring?
No, it was not.
He made for the back exit.
The wall was a mosaic of skewed picture frames, but as if by magic a door materialised. On impulse he lofted one of the frames from its nail and tucked it under his arm. With his cap and glasses, he might pass for a delivery boy. He pushed through. A short corridor and then another door with an opaque glass panel in it. The doorknob turned under his slippery palm. It opened onto a courtyard, just large enough for a delivery van, with an open steel gate in a high wall.
Walk, don’t run. A couple of pigeons took flight, wings riffling like shuffled cards.
He made it through the gate onto the street. On the left there was a grey motorcycle with a uniformed rider, a man in plain clothes standing casually beside it. Lucien kept walking. It’s not me they’re after. But the man beside the bike stepped out in front of him, all business now, palm raised. Dark flannel suit, beige raincoat, eyes the colour of rain.
‘Halt! Papiers.’
Lucien’s heartbeat accelerated and his body flushed with heat. Another man, previously unseen, came up behind him. They’d been covering both exits.
Lucien lowered the frame, propping it against his leg, and handed over his carte d’identité. The man glanced at it without interest and slipped it into his inside breast pocket.
‘I am afraid you will have to come with us.’ His French was only lightly accented. Lucien’s body twitched as he imagined hefting the frame, using it as a weapon. The man gripped his arm. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Leave that. This job is hard enough as it is.’
He let go and Lucien’s arms were jerked back by the man behind him. The snick of handcuffs and the clasp of icy metal on his wrists – a new sensation.
The first man picked up the frame. ‘Let us return this, shall we?’ He took the lead as they went back through the emporium, Lucien being half-dragged by the man who’d cuffed him. The leader dropped the frame with a clatter. At the till by the door, the shop’s proprietor kept his head down. The bell rang.
A black Traction Avant waited outside. Lucien’s chest felt tight as he was shoved onto the cold brown leather upholstery at the rear of the car. No sign of Dédé. He’d escaped, then? Or been shot?
The man in charge rapped out a command and the car pulled away. They did not go far: Lucien recognised the area. It appeared that the Gestapo had a base of some kind in square Montholon, about a
ten minute walk from where he had lived, eighteen months and a century ago. There was the little park with the plane trees and the marble sculpture of four belle époque ladies in bonnets, huddled together as if posing for a photograph. Pray for me, he thought.
Who’d betrayed Dédé? His money was on Willi. Or perhaps Yvonne, making a deal to save her beloved Max. He hated himself for even thinking that, but fear brought a serpentine evil with it.
The seat beneath him juddered as they traversed the cobblestones. The car stopped with a squeak of brakes.
‘Out!’
They piled out and the bulkier subordinate held him hard above the elbow, fingers pinching into the muscle. They passed through a porte cochère flanked by a pair of sentry boxes and stacked sandbags, into a courtyard with a dead fountain. Then a glass door with a neat white-painted iron frame and a dainty brass handle. On the façade above, cream shutters and twisting brown ivy. Around the time the belle époque ladies were parading on the boulevards, this had been a bourgeois home. Now it looked like the kind of place one went to see a lawyer. Inside, a staircase with a polished wooden rail, its black bars a premonition.
‘Second floor,’ said the one in charge. Lucien was thinking fast. Everything might work out: his papers were good, his cover was solid, he had been trained for this. Just keep your head.
On the second floor, a blank landing and two doors facing one another. The sound of typing and a sudden booming male laugh. The man who had stopped him knocked on the door to their right. A barked response.
The door opened and he was manhandled into a wooden chair in front of a plain desk with a green-shaded reading lamp. There were varnished floorboards beneath his feet and the wallpaper was cream with a burgundy stripe. One might have imagined a picture of the Führer, or at least of Pétain; instead there was a so-so oil painting of sunset over the Seine.
An office, then. An ordinary office.