Her husband's most recent letters seemed to indicate a heightened sense of tension in Paris. More young Communists had been shot, more Jews had been rounded up, and in his frequent meetings with the Kommandostab, it was becoming increasingly clear that they were cracking down on Paris. The Resistance in the villages was reaching an alarming strength, and it was important to them that they keep a tight rein on the capital to keep it as an example. As such, the Germans were turning increasingly to Armand now, expecting him to account for artwork that couldn't be found, people who had disappeared, and people in Pétain's flanks who allegedly had Communist leanings. They needed someone to turn to each time there was a problem that couldn't be blamed on the Germans, and Armand was invariably it.
He provided a comfortable buffer for Maréchal Pétain, but it left him perennially tense and exhausted.
And as he sat in his office in the Hotel Majestic on a warm June day, André Marchand walked in and dumped a fresh stack of papers on his desk.
“What are these?”
“Reports on the people arrested last night. The High Command wants to know if there's anyone important here, masquerading as peasants.” Marchand liked nothing better than turning his countrymen over to the Germans, and Armand was only sorry they didn't draft him and send him to Russia. If he wanted to be a German so badly, let him.
“Thank you. I'll take a look when I have time.”
“The High Command wants them back by tonight.” He looked Armand in the eye.
“Fine. I'll see to it.” He wondered lately if Marchand had been assigned to him to make sure that he was faithful to Pétain and the Germans. But that was a ridiculous thought. Marchand was a child, a man of no importance. They couldn't possibly use him as a watchdog. Armand smiled to himself. He was so tired, he was seeing dangers everywhere now. The night before he even thought he was being followed. He turned to the reports on his desk then, adjusting the glasses he now wore to read. It was just as well that he got it done anyway. He was meeting with Moulin tonight, before the man went back to London.
At six o'clock he left the Hotel Majestic, and went home to the Place du Palais-Bourbon, as he always did, although tonight he had left earlier than usual. He went into the kitchen, which now showed months of disuse. It didn't look like the same house where Liane had once lived with the children. The copper pots had turned dark, the stove no longer worked, and he kept almost nothing in the icebox. There was a thick coat of dust everywhere. And he really didn't care. He used it as a place to sleep. But tonight he sliced some cold sausage that he had bought, and munched on an apple. He made a few notes to himself before he drove out to Neuilly. And he looked around carefully as he started the car, but no one was watching.
He made the short drive without a problem. He had a special emblem on his car now, which told the German soldiers posted in the street that he worked with the government. And he parked the car two blocks from the house where he was going. He knocked twice, and then rang the bell. He was let in by an old woman who nodded and closed the door, and then walked him into the kitchen, where he descended a stairway to her basement. And there, together, they shoved aside a pile of old boxes to reveal the trap door to the tunnel that had been made. He crawled through it, as he had before, into the next house, where three men were waiting. One was a man with short gray hair, in workman's pants, a cap, and a black sweater. It was Moulin. He held out a hand to Armand as the other two watched. They had come with him from Toulon this time. These two were new, but Moulin was familiar.
“Hello, my friend.”
“It's good to see you.” Armand smiled. He only wished that he knew the man better. He was doing great things for France. He was already a hero of the Resistance.
“It's good to see you too.” Moulin glanced at his watch. He didn't want to waste time. He had half an hour before he was to return to Toulon, he had already completed his work in Paris. And that night, he would sneak back across the channel to London. “I have a proposition to make to you, De Villiers.” Armand was surprised when he heard Moulin's proposal. “How would you like to come to London?”
“But why?” Nothing he did could be of use there. He was important where he was. “To what purpose?”
“A good one. To save your life. We have reason to believe that they suspect you.” Armand nodded. He showed no fear.
“Why do you think that?”
“Some reports we intercepted from the Germans.” Two guards of the High Command had been killed the week before, and they had been carrying the commanding officer's briefcase, which had disappeared into the hands of the Resistance. Von Speidel had been livid.
“Was that you last week?” Armand inquired quietly.
“Yes. There were papers that lead us to think … we're not sure … but we don't want to wait until it's too late. You should go now.”
“When?”
“Tonight. With me.”
“But I can't….” He looked frightened, he still had half a dozen important projects. There was a Rodin piece he wanted to spirit into Provence, a Jewish woman and her son hiding in a basement, a priceless Renoir lying hidden beneath a building. “It's too soon. I need time.”
“They may not give it to you.”
“But are you sure?”
Moulin shook his head. “Not yet. There is nothing definite. But your name was mentioned in two reports. They are watching.”
“But you got those reports, Speidel didn't.”
“We don't know who had seen them before that. Therein lies the danger.” Armand nodded, and then he looked hard at Moulin again.
“What if I stay?”
“Is it worth it?”
“For the moment, yes.”
“Can you finish what you're doing quickly?”
Armand nodded slowly. “I can try.”
“Then do it. I'll be back in two weeks. You'll come then?”
Armand nodded, but there was something tentative in his face, which Moulin recognized at once. There were others like him; those who couldn't bear to give up the fight—beyond reason.
“Don't be a fool, De Villiers. You will serve France better if you stay alive. You can do a great deal from London.”
“I want to stay in France.”
“You can come back. We'll give you new identity cards and put you in the mountains.”
“I'd like that.”
“All right.” Moulin stood up and the two men shook hands, then Moulin swiftly crossed the room and left. He exited by the same route that Armand had come, and a moment later Armand followed. He knew that they would be gone when he reached the street. Moulin always disappeared like the wind. But not tonight. As Armand walked to his car there was a sudden movement near him, and then suddenly armed soldiers leaped out from their hiding places with guns blazing. They didn't get a clear view of him, but in the distance there were three men running. Armand pressed himself quickly against a wall and the soldiers flew past him. There were more shots in the night, and Armand disappeared into a garden, where he hid, and he began to feel a dull throbbing in his leg, and when he touched it, it was damp with blood. He had been wounded.
He waited until there were no more sounds, and he made his way carefully out of the garden, praying that Moulin had fled, as he always did. Armand returned to the house where they had met, and the people there took him in and bandaged his leg. At midnight he went home, but his whole body was trembling, and he wished desperately that he still had some brandy. And as he sat and gazed at the rough bandage they had made, he realized how grave a problem it was for him. He could not go to the office the next day with a limp. And it was much too warm for him to convince anyone that he was suffering from rheumatism again. He practiced walking across his living room without a limp, wincing terribly with each step from the pain. There was no way he could do it, and yet he had to. He practiced again and again as the sweat poured down his face, and at last he mastered it. And with a horrible groan he climbed into his bed, but he was too exhausted to sleep.
And he turned on a small light and took out a notebook. He hadn't written to Liane in over a week, and he needed her tonight. Suddenly he longed for her gentleness and her comfort, and as he wrote he did something he never had before. He poured out his heart and his soul and his anguish for France, and he told her just how grim it all was. And at the end of the letter he told her that he had been wounded.
It is nothing serious, my little love. It is a small price to pay in this fearsome battle. Others have suffered so much more than I. It grieves me that I have so little left to give. Even this small piece of flesh is not enough…
And then he told her of Moulin's suggestion that he go to London, and that possibly in a few weeks he would be there, before coming back to France with new papers.
He said something tonight about putting me in the mountains. Perhaps then I shall truly join the fight. They are doing remarkable things there, troubling the Germans at every step … it would be a heavenly change from the damp walls of my office.
He folded his letter four or five times and placed it under the innersole of his shoe, lest something happen to him during the night, and the next day he dropped it behind a planter on the Rue du Bac. It was a drop he used often, although he preferred giving his letters to Moulin when he could. But he knew that the letters dropped here had reached Liane too. And this one did as well.
As Liane read it two weeks later tears streamed down her face. He was blind to what he was doing and she knew it. She read the lines where he told her that he had been wounded and she felt sick. If they were coming that close, and Moulin wanted him in London, it was almost too late. And he didn't see it. She felt desperation creep up within her like bile. She wanted to shake him, to show him what he wasn't seeing. Was he so blind that a portrait, a statue, a stranger, were all more important than her and Marie-Ange and Elisabeth? She sat there crying for half an hour, and then she did something she hadn't done for a long time. She went to church, and as she sat there and prayed, she knew what was wrong. It was what she had done with Nick. She had turned her values upside down. She had turned her back on her husband, and he had felt it. It was so clear to her now that it was almost as though she had heard voices or seen a vision. And as she returned to the house on Broadway, she sat for a long time, looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge. She had written to Nick every day, but she had only written to Armand once or twice a week. He must have felt the distance between them. And it was clear to her now what she had to do. She had known it all along, but she hadn't wanted to do it.
It took her hours to write the single page. She sat and stared at the paper and thought that she could never do it. It was more painful than leaving him at Grand Central Station or in the hotel room in San Diego. It was more painful than anything she had ever done. It was like cutting off her right arm. But as the Bible said, “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.” And it felt as though that were what she was doing. She told Nick now that she knew that what they had done was wrong, and that she had led him to believe that there was hope for the future, when there wasn't. Armand needed her now. He needed her full support, full attention, full belief. He needed all she had to give. And to do it right, she could no longer betray him. She told Nick that she loved him with her whole soul, but it was a love that neither of them had a right to. She wished him well with all her heart, and she would pray for him each day of the war, but she could no longer write to him. She told him also that if anything happened, she would honor her promise and stay in touch with Johnny.
“But that won't happen, my darling … I know you'll come home. And I only wish …” She could not write the words.
You know what I wish. But our dreams were not borrowed, but stolen. I must return now to where I belong, in heart, in soul, in mind, to my husband. And remember always, my darling, how much I have loved you. Go with God. He will protect you.
With a sob wrenching at her throat, she signed the letter, and walked outside to mail it. She stood at the mailbox for a long time, her hand trembling, her heart breaking, but with a force of will she didn't know she had, she opened the mailbox and dropped in the letter. And she knew that it would find him.
hen Armand returned to his office the morning after the incident in Neuilly, his face was pale, and his palms damp with perspiration, but he did not limp as he walked to his desk, and he sat down at his desk as always. Marchand came to give him a stack of reports to read, forms to fill out, and assorted messages from the local generals.
“Will there be anything else?”
“No, thank you, Marchand.” His face was drawn but his voice was normal. And for the next week he went on with his work, working at a furious speed. The priceless Renoir disappeared from under the building. The Rodin was hidden. The Jewish woman with her child was concealed in a basement in a farmhouse near Lyon, and there were countless other projects he saw to at full speed. He knew he had precious little time. And day by day the leg grew worse. It was badly infected but he had none of the things he needed to care for it. Each day he had to force himself to walk as though nothing were wrong with him. It took more strength than he had ever drawn on before, and he was gaunt now. He finally looked his age, and many years older.
And as he worked furiously every day, he stayed in the office long after the nightly blackout. And he was so anxious to complete his job that he took longer and longer to burn his notes, and it was difficult now to create a reason for making a fire. He often told Marchand, as he rubbed his hands and smiled, that his old bones needed warmth. Marchand only shrugged and went back to his work at his own desk.
There were only four days left until his next meeting with Moulin and he knew that he had to hurry. He left his office after ten o'clock one night, and when he went home, he had the feeling that someone had been in the apartment. He didn't remember leaving the chair quite so far from his desk. But he was too tired to care and the wound in his leg throbbed all the way to his hip now. He would have to have it looked at in London. He looked around the apartment that night, and out at the Place du Palais-Bourbon after he'd turned out the lights, and a piece of his heart ached to know that soon he would be leaving Paris. But he had left her before, and he would return again, and she would be free the next time he saw her.
“Bonsoir, ma belle.” He smiled at his city and thought of his wife as he went to bed. In the morning he would write to Liane … or maybe the next day … he didn't have time now. But his leg pained him so badly that he awoke the next morning before dawn, and after he lay in bed in vain, he decided to get up and sit at his desk to write to her. He felt the now-familiar chill of his fever as he pulled a sheet of paper toward him.
There is very little to tell since I wrote to you last. My life has been a frenzy of work, my darling.
And then suddenly he realized something and he smiled.
I'm afraid that I've become a shocking husband. Two weeks ago I missed our thirteenth anniversary. But perhaps due to the extraordinary circumstances, you will forgive me. May our next thirteen be easy and peaceful. And may we be together soon.
And then he went on to talk about his work.
I'm afraid the leg isn't doing well. I regret now that I told you about it, for fear that you will worry. It's nothing, I'm sure, but I walk on it every day and that doesn't help. I suppose I've become an old man, but an old man who still loves his country … à la mort et à tout jamais … to the death and forever, and at all costs, no matter how dear. I would gladly give the leg, and my heart, for this land I love so much. She lies pinned to the ground now, raped by the Germans, but soon she will be free, and we will nurse her back to health. You will be at my side again then, Liane, and we will all be happy. And in the meantime I am glad to know that you are safe with your uncle, it is a better life for you and the girls. I have never regretted sending you back to the States. You will never know what it has been like to watch France strangle at the hands of the Germans … their hands at her throat, leering as they watch her choke. It breaks my heart to be leaving soon wi
th Moulin, but the only thing that cheers me is the knowledge that I will come back shortly, only to fight harder.
It never occurred to him to stay in England, or to return to Liane. He thought only of France, even as he signed the letter.
Remember to give the girls my love, and keep a great deal of the same for you. I love you very, very dearly, mon amour … almost as much as I love France—
He smiled as he wrote
—perhaps even more, but I dare not let myself think of that now, or I shall forget that I am an old man, and run to where you are. Godspeed to you and Marie-Ange and Elisabeth, and my warmest thanks and regards to your uncle. Your loving husband, Armand.
He signed it with a flourish, as he always did, and on his way to the office he left it in the usual location. He had thought briefly of saving it until he left with Moulin, but he decided not to. He knew how anxious she was for letters and how much she worried. He could hear it in the questions she wrote, which still reached him through the censors.
And as he looked up at the calendar above his desk on the opposite wall from the portraits of Pétain and Hitler, he realized that his meeting with Moulin was only three days away. He was frowning as he was deciding what to do next when André Marchand walked into his office with a smile, and an officer of the Reich on each side of him, but neither of them was smiling.
“Monsieur de Villiers?”
“Yes, Marchand?” He didn't recall an appointment with the Germans this morning, but they were always calling him to the Hotel de Ville or the Meurice or the Crillon unexpectedly. He sat where he was and waited. “Am I expected somewhere?”
“Indeed you are, sir.” Marchand's smile grew broader. “The gentlemen of the High Command wish to see you this morning.”
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