‘I understand, Édouard. You’ve been away so long, and it reminds you of home.’ She smiled in a sympathetic way, and I turned away, because I couldn’t bear for her to look in my eyes and see the guilt.
A few days later, just before lunch, I was summoned back to Avenue Foch. I followed Freitag up the stairs with my stomach churning in trepidation. This time the guards were on duty outside the cells, and from that I guessed the cells must all be full. An old woman in an overall was cleaning the walls with a cloth and bucket, and a strong smell of bleach and disinfectant hung in the air. I stared as I passed, and the woman moved aside to let me pass, her cloth dripping on the wooden floor. The marks on the walls looked like smears of blood.
We turned into the interpreters’ office.
‘You’re to take this one,’ Freitag said, indicating a leather-topped desk with its back to the door and facing the back of the building. ‘Vogt’s busy with the interrogations today. There are some radio messages for you to translate here. Then leave them in that tray — they’ll go downstairs to be decoded.’
‘Can’t I take them away?’
‘No. Too sensitive. You’ve to do them here. Vogt’s orders.’
I sighed and sat down. No café lunch for me today. I reached for the file and began translating the French and English into German. As usual, the messages were opaque, presumably in code. I’d been at it about fifteen minutes when the noises began. Thuds and shouts, then groans. A man was moaning, not just once but over and over. ‘Non! S’il vous plait… Non, je connais rien!’ I know nothing.
The blonde secretary who was typing a memo ignored the sounds as if they were no more than the buzz of traffic passing below. Freitag continued to talk on the telephone, a slightly irritated look on his face, turning his back to the door and cupping one hand over his ear.
A scream, instantly stifled, then whimpering. The words were too indistinct for me to hear, but I couldn’t help trying to decipher them. I could no longer write; my attention was distracted entirely by the noises outside. A moment’s silence, then another cry, this time a cry of agony. Every hair on my body stood on end.
Freitag calmly got up and went over to the bookcase where a radio stood. Moments later, the room was filled with the crashing sound of a Wagner concerto. The music was designed to drown out the noise from the corridor, but somehow it had the opposite effect, making me listen even harder for the noises outside.
At her desk, the secretary was unwrapping a half-baguette and eating it between typing. I couldn’t work. I read the same phrase over and over. ‘Le cerf est dans les bois’. The deer is in the woods. It was followed by some numbers: 7, 16, 26, 53. I could make no sense of it. The world seemed to have lost its meaning. A man was screaming and I was translating nonsense and a pile of numbers into German.
I rested my head in my hands, blinked.
The screaming had stopped. Freitag leapt up and turned down the radio, and the secretary looked up from her typing, suddenly alert and thrusting her sandwich into a drawer. From this, I realised Vogt had come in behind me.
‘A clean shirt, please, Elise,’ Vogt said. He was drying his hands on a towel.
As he passed, I saw his cuff was splattered with blood. Elise opened a cupboard and drew out a new shirt, still packaged in cellophane. She passed it to him and he took it and went through into his office.
The door behind me was open, and there were still groans echoing from further down the corridor. I ached for the men who would hear those noises from the cell next door, knowing they might be next.
The two guards outside the door behind me were laughing and joking. ‘You weren’t in long, Fritz.’
‘I’ll have you know I timed it. Seventeen minutes.’
‘You win. I reckoned he’d only last ten. I owe you five francs.’
The banter continued. They were betting, actually betting, on how long it would take a man to give in to torture.
I turned to see who was speaking. A large loose-limbed man with a misshapen nose that looked like it had been broken like mine, more than once. He gave me a grin. ‘I’m gagging for a smoke,’ he said.
‘Tell you what, Schuster,’ the other guard said, ‘I’ll watch the doors whilst you go. Vogt won’t come back, not now he’s got his clean shirt on. He’s meeting Baroness Orlov for lunch.’
‘Tip me the wink if he’s coming, then.’ Schuster disappeared down the corridor.
A few minutes later, Vogt appeared again. I turned to catch a glimpse of him, his white shirt pristine under his suit jacket.
‘Bauer?’
One of the guards replied.
‘Where’s Schuster?’
‘Toilet, sir.’
‘Again? That boy must have a weak bladder. Number six is done with, so take him out the back way to the Bois de Boulogne. You know what to do.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Having given his orders, Vogt passed by with a whiff of starch and hair oil.
Although I tried to concentrate, I couldn’t. I heard Schuster return from his smoke and Bauer complaining. A few moments later, there was the rattle and clank of a lock, the slow creak of a cell door opening and the scrape of a man being dragged out. A moan, and the words: ‘Prie Dieu.’
I saw them go from my window. The tall belted figures of Bauer and Schuster, their breath steaming in the cold air, hauling a young man by the armpits, his dark blue shirt bloody, an almost-corpse. One bare foot dragged in the wet dirt. I couldn’t see his face, but his useless hands hung misshapen like lumps of raw meat. At the end of the street they disappeared into the thick of the woods.
A half hour later I saw them return, and Schuster stopped for a sneaky cigarette just off the main thoroughfare on one of the riding trails. Bauer rubbed his hands and stamped from foot to foot. He was obviously keeping watch as they skived. Of the prisoner, there was no sign.
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold a pen. My only thought was to finish as soon as possible, but my mind didn’t seem to want to function. I realised I’d been staring at the same words for more than five minutes.
Towards the end of the afternoon Vogt approached me, a whiff of garlic on his breath. ‘You’ve finished?’
‘Not quite,’ I said.
‘How much longer?’
‘A half hour perhaps.’ My voice was calmer than I felt.
‘Give them to Eva when you’re done.’
I watched him go, watched how everyone in the office followed his progress but nobody looked at him directly. Once he was out of sight, the room itself almost exhaled.
I did as he asked, and when I went out of the office I saw the same elderly woman still in the corridor, mopping and cleaning. The stink of disinfectant made me gag.
Back in my freezing apartment that night, I made myself a meagre meal of stale bread and tomatoes, which I left untouched on the plate. I couldn’t face going to the café, but I couldn’t eat either. The thought of what I’d heard at Avenue Foch made my stomach queasy. I tried to reason it out: that this was war, and no doubt the other side used just such methods. But the man’s cries haunted my thoughts, the feeling that I should have done something.
Over the next few weeks, they called me to the office several more times. Often the radio was on loud, and Schuster and Bauer were stationed outside the doors, when they weren’t inside with Vogt. Sometimes the prisoner was taken out to the woods and never returned, sometimes he was taken away in a van from the front of the building, presumably to a prison camp somewhere. I did my best to ignore everything, fixing my eyes on my desk and resolutely blocking out what was around me. Each time, my disgust grew. Not just for them, but for myself.
One afternoon, the sounds were different, higher pitched. A woman. My heart jumped. Was it Berenice? There was no way of knowing. Nobody but Vogt and his ‘special’ guards, Bauer and Schuster, went in the cells.
Calm down, it can’t be her, I told myself.
The muffled screaming went on until I had to get up and
go to the window and put my head outside. Feeling nauseous, I inhaled the sharp cold air of the street.
‘Getting to you, is it?’ Vogt had come up behind me.
‘A little,’ I said.
‘That’s war for you,’ he said. ‘It’s what the Kommandant fails to realise. The front line exists here, as well as the one in the east with the tanks and artillery. At least we won’t be blown to bits by cannon fire. Warfare’s always bloody. Now take the ancient Greeks. They thought nothing of tearing their enemies limb from limb by tying a man to two different chariots and having them gallop in different directions. Do you read the Greek myths?’
I gave a non-committal grunt.
‘Worth reading if you want to know what a hero looks like. The interrogations … well, it always takes a while to get used to it. You have to ignore it because they rely on us weakening. Of course, if you let them go without breaking them, and they carry on their operations, more of our men will die. The important thing is the German lives we’re saving. Think of those, Huber. Last night, thanks to information from one of those internees, we uncovered a cache of machine guns and ammunition that would have been enough to wipe out a whole platoon. The bastards would kill our men as soon as spit on them. And if we don’t stop them now, it’ll spread like a fungus.’
He clapped me on the shoulder like my uncle used to do when he came to visit. ‘Come on, I’ll show you something.’ He beckoned me towards his office. Reluctantly, I followed him in as he shut the door behind me. His office was oppressively hot; a coal fire glowed furnace-like in the hearth.
‘It’s bloody, this game,’ he said. He rummaged in his desk and brought out a brown glass bottle. He stood it in front of me and tapped the lid. ‘Cyanide capsules.’
I was about to pick it up, but he slapped his warm damp hand over mine so it was pinned fast to the desk.
‘There are eight capsules in there, all removed from enemies of the Reich. This is what we are up against,’ he said, his eyes on mine. ‘They’d rather die than give us what we need to know. The true sign of a fanatic.’ He released my hand, patted it reassuringly. ‘When we’re less busy, I’ll have time to show you. We have to search everywhere — all the body’s hiding places. They even drill a hole in a tooth to hide the capsule from us. But we always find it.’ He smiled. ‘We don’t let them cheat us.’
I looked down at my knees and caught a glimpse of a metal waste paper bin, into which he had stuffed his blood-spotted shirt.
CHAPTER 16
Fred
By the time the spring came, birds were beginning to return to Paris, but the sounds of Avenue Foch haunted me. I could hear the nightmare screams in my head even when I was awake. How could I look the French in the face? The guilt made me avoid the café, until I became so curious as to how Berenice was doing that I had to call in, just to set my mind at rest that she was still there. I was relieved to see her sturdy figure rushing between the tables just as she usually did.
‘Ah, Édouard!’ she said. ‘I’m so glad to see you. Where’ve you been hiding? You’re just the man I need! I wondered if you’d mind helping out again? Just for a night. I wouldn’t ask, but I’m desperate. I’ll pay you of course.’
‘What is it you need doing?’
‘It’s Nicole. She’s just given us notice.’
‘And left you in the lurch?’
‘Says she’s got a better offer. Stupid girl. Gone to be a receptionist at a Soldatenheim. The big one on the Avenue de la Motte-Picquet. Of course, she’ll get her perks, like all collaborators do.’ Judging by Berenice’s scathing expression, and the scorn in her voice when she said ‘perks’, there was no greater sin.
‘What needs doing?’
‘Kitchen duties. Sorry.’
Berenice would struggle if there was no one else in the kitchen. And I felt for her. Paris was fast becoming nothing but a Nazi playground. There were now cinemas especially for the troops, and cafés that served only Germans. And I knew her time was limited. I feared the threats might really materialise and they’d ship her off to a work camp somewhere.
Washing the dirty pots felt like sanity. I liked the clatter of plates and cups, the swish of the water. Washing felt like a sacred act after a day at the Avenue Foch. Being in Berenice’s ordered kitchen was like breathing clean air. We smiled at each other as we worked, in the simple companionship of stacking the clean plates back in the cupboards, and polishing the glasses.
‘Édouard, did you mean what you said?’ Berenice asked me, in a low voice. ‘About helping us?’
‘Of course,’ I said, replacing an ashtray carefully on the draining board. ‘I’m happy to do this any time.’
‘No, not that. I meant … well, I think the Germans might be watching us,’ she said. ‘There’s a couple of soldiers who hang around more than necessary.’
‘Perhaps they just like the food,’ I said.
‘Ha! Not unless you like beets and cabbage. But still, it makes me uneasy. And I had a message: Antoine needs a safe place to stay. Just for a couple of nights. I thought of you.’
I spoke too quickly. ‘I’ve not much room; my apartment’s tiny. And I’ve only the one bedroom.’
‘Oh.’ I saw her face fall, and it bit into me hard. She masked her disappointment. ‘That’s quite all right. I’ll try and find somewhere else.’
What to do? In a split second, my mouth had opened again. ‘It’s fine, Berenice. He can come to me. He’ll have to sleep on the floor or something. When will he come?’
‘Tonight. Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. I’m glad to help.’
Her warm smile was reward enough. ‘He’s only passing through. He’s on his way to meet some other friends of ours near the coast.’
‘How did you get to meet Antoine in the first place?’ I asked.
‘You might as well know,’ she said. ‘He’s my son. Antoine Chaput is just a nom de guerre.’
‘Is his father…?’
‘His father and I are separated.’ A pause. ‘He died last year in an automobile accident. Pierre blames me. Since then we’ve been…’ She shrugged and looked away.
‘Oh.’ There was obviously a history there she didn’t want to share. I had never asked Berenice’s surname, though I had seen the name Severin on the café’s stationery and knew there must be a family connection. Apparently, that too had been a fact missed by Vogt at security headquarters.
She turned back to me. ‘So if he comes, look after him, won’t you?’
When I got back from the café that evening, I was in a cold sweat. What had I done? I was caught in a cleft stick now, one of my own making. I just had to hope that Vogt didn’t decide to send Freitag or Foucault round. I should never have got involved with Berenice in the first place. What if the Gestapo were watching me too? I closed the shutters and pulled the curtains tight together. Meticulously, I cleared the place of German papers, the German soldiers’ gazetteer, and burned the contents of the wastebasket in the empty grate. As I passed, I caught sight of the photograph of Céline that was propped on the mantelpiece.
I stared at it a while, at her smiling face, her eyes bright with humour. She’d taken off her specs for the photo, and it made her look younger. I’d written from Cherbourg through the army but could tell her only basic facts. Now, no letters would get past the German blockade unless I asked Vogt to send them. I didn’t like the idea of Vogt’s fingers on my letters. What would she think? It was all so complicated. I just had to hope Antoine’s visit would be a one-off.
In the event, Antoine didn’t arrive until bang on curfew. I ushered him inside.
‘Sorry, it’s not much,’ I said. I indicated the small sofa, which was far too short for his rangy six-foot frame.
‘I’m used to it,’ he said simply, dropping a battered holdall down beside it. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a drink?’
I remembered the bottle of brandy and got out two small tooth-glasses.
I filled them half-full, and he dow
ned his in one gulp before flopping onto the sofa. ‘That’s better. Thanks for this, Édouard.’
I sat down opposite him in the easy chair and sipped at my brandy, grateful for the sudden flush of warmth. He ran his hand through his fine brown hair. He was filthy, I realised, his hair sweaty and fingers black.
He saw me looking. ‘I know. I look like a down-and-out.’
‘Bathroom’s through there,’ I said. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘Can’t eat,’ he said. ‘I just need to calm down. I’m still all of a jigger. I had two of them on my tail, and they got a shot at me, but I managed to get in the car just in time. We dumped the car of course, and I walked the rest. Félix has gone to a different house. Doesn’t do to be seen together.’
‘Sabotage?’ I just stopped myself asking if it was a railway line, information I wasn’t supposed to know.
‘Yep. We wanted to disrupt the coal going to the armaments factory. The blast was bigger than we reckoned, and we didn’t get away quick enough.’
‘What were you using?’
‘Simple pipe bomb. Couldn’t get gelignite, so it was gunpowder. From the old firework factory. Bloody awkward to work with, but it’s more or less impossible to get explosives anymore.’
‘Have you tried making your own?’
He stared. Too late, I realised I’d have to continue the conversation now I’d started it. I said the words in English, hoped they were the same in French. ‘Nitromethane, and an oxidising agent — ammonium nitrate, say — and you’ve got something with just as much firepower as gunpowder.’
He understood. ‘Really?’ he said in French. ‘But where would we get ingredients like that?’
‘Ammonium nitrate’s just fertiliser,’ I said in English, before reverting to French. ‘Nitromethane — well, that’s more awkward, but it’s found in some paint solvents.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘That’s what chemistry at university does for you. As a student, all you want to know is how to make the biggest explosion.’ I realised that in my enthusiasm I’d nearly said the German name of where I studied. I shut my mouth quickly. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t childhood chemistry, it was bloody war.
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