Michel Boucher, when she told him this incidentally in a long account of her efforts, looked grim.
‘Transferred, is that what they’re calling it now? Poor Günter. It’ll be a long bloody transfer, I fear.’
No one, not even Pajou, knew precisely what had become of Mai but there were plenty of stories of the horrific treatment of other suspects in the July conspiracy. What Miche told her of his conversations with Mai at Moret persuaded her that she had probably misjudged him.
‘Poor Günter,’ she echoed.
But she could not get it out of her mind that being in bed with him had had some kind of causal link with Jean-Paul’s death.
So August came and sunny days succeeded each other, and Paris listened to the news from the west, and some watched to see what the Occupiers would do, and others made their own preparations.
‘They’re leaving! They’re going! Oh God, Crozier, is it ending at last? Is our ordeal over?’
Madame Crozier burst into the shop where Claude was leaning on the counter talking to a few hopefuls who’d come in vain to buy and stayed instead to gossip.
‘We may survive after all. It’s been long and hard, but it looks as if we’ve done it. Not much thanks to you! Thank God I kept my head and did my duty as a French citizen!’
Louise Crozier’s conversion to a flamboyant patriotism had gathered pace rapidly since the Normandy landings.
‘So, it’s happening, eh?’ said Crozier.
‘Didn’t I say so? You can hardly move in the streets. They’ve got soldiers directing traffic. It’s really inconsiderate of the police to pick this time to go on strike when they could be doing so much to speed the Boche on their way!’
The exodus had started the previous day and now it had swollen to flood proportions. But there was not yet any cause for rejoicing. Informed opinion pointed out that this wasn’t retreat but a clearing of decks for the battle to come.
It was the administrators who were leaving, the bureaucrats, the office staff, the petty officials who for most Parisians had been the public face of the Occupation.
‘I heard the Gestapo and all that lot are pulling out too,’ said a customer.
‘What do you expect? No stomach for a real fight, those bastards!’ growled someone else.
‘Don’t worry, friend. It’s the Wehrmacht that’s staying and whatever else you say about the Boche, you can’t say they don’t make good soldiers. You’ll get your real fight!’
‘Fighting? I hope there’s going to be no fighting round here,’ said Madame Crozier in alarm. ‘Crozier, get the shutters up. I haven’t endured so long to have my windows shattered now! Janine, dear, where are you going?’
Silence fell in the shop as Janine entered from the house.
‘Out,’ she said. ‘I’m going out.’
‘It might be better to stay at home, my love,’ said her father. ‘The streets are very busy.’
‘That’s why I’ve got to go. If the Germans are leaving, there may be some news.’
Claude Crozier had at first tried to argue in face of his daughter’s logic, had tried to steer her gently and with love to an acceptance that perhaps the children were lost for ever. But soon he had given up, recognizing that such an acceptance could only bring about his daughter’s complete destruction.
Behind him, Louise burst into tears and rushed into the house. Janine embraced her father and went out into the street.
She was recognized by several people in the immediate neighbourhood. Familiarity with her haggard looks had dulled what sympathy they had initially aroused, and now her passage was marked by threatening and contemptuous glares and sometimes outcries. She gave no sign that she saw or heard anything.
But when she reached the main streets, then she became animated, eyes darting glances everywhere, ears strained to hear everything. Her mother had not exaggerated. In every direction the streets were jammed with German traffic; staff cars, armoured vehicles, supply trucks, ambulances, buses, lorries, even horse-drawn carts, all of them packed with personnel, equipment and luggage.
‘The bastards are still taking everything!’ said someone angrily.
It looked to be true. No one from the highest officer to the lowliest private seemed willing to leave the loot of four years behind. Quite openly displayed in some vehicles were hastily loaded pictures, ornaments, racks of clothing, cases of wine, and even pieces of furniture.
Suddenly Janine’s mind was back on that other refugee-crowded road back in 1940. She saw the long traffic jam between the poplars, felt the children by her side.
She burst into tears and a man by her side, mistaking her grief, put his arm round her shoulders and said, ‘Take it easy, lady. We’ll make the bastards pay, be sure of that.’
She shook him off and began to push through the spectators peering closely into every vehicle. It seemed possible, indeed likely, that somewhere in this confusion she would glimpse those longed-for heads, hear those yearned-for voices.
Such a glimpse she believed would be enough, even if they then vanished eastward in this great exodus. It would refresh her parching faith, give it strength to carry on for however long God decided she must wait.
Her movement and desperation were in sharp contrast to the general demeanour of the spectators. Their mood was sullen and angry rather than joyous. Occasionally someone called out in mocking farewell, but the Germans either ignored it or waved cheerily and cried, ‘Don’t worry, mate. We’ll be back in a couple of days!’ reinforcing the feeling that this was no retreat but rather a military preparation for the battle to come.
And there were other feelings to keep many of the watching Parisians subdued. Like Janine, they too remembered how they had fled in panic and terror four years earlier, leaving their city undefended to drop like a perfect fruit into the hands of the invader. There was a need for action felt by many; in some it was a military need, a belief that what they did now could contribute to the success of the approaching Allies; in others it was a political need, a sense that the last battles of the war were already the first battles of the peace. But for most it had more to do with self-esteem than with tactics or politics; it was the need for expiation, and the hunger for revenge.
A truck had broken down near the Madeleine. The driver had got out and, urged on by his passenger, a middle-aged Gestapo officer, he was peering uncertainly beneath the bonnet. It was an open truck and there were several men in civilian clothes sprawling among the luggage in the back. Their passage had been marked with a perceptible heightening of hatred among the spectators. Many members of the Milice and other French fascist collaborationist groups had decided that soon Paris was going to be no safe place for them and were moving out with their protectors.
A young man detached himself from the crowd and strolled forward.
‘I’m a mechanic,’ he said smiling. ‘Here, let me take a look.’
He gently edged the driver aside and stooped to probe deep into the engine. After a moment he stood up, wiped his hands on a handkerchief and with a shrug said, ‘Kaput!’ then walked slowly away.
The driver looked back into the engine, spoke to the Gestapo man and pointed. The officer looked, turned round, pointed after the Frenchman, opened his mouth to call.
The front of the truck blew up. The driver and officer were hurled to the ground by the blast. One lay there twitching, the other crumpled and still. Flames rolled back from the cab and, screaming and swearing, the Milice fugitives began to scramble over the tailboard, beating at their smouldering clothes or rolling on the ground to put out the flames.
The alleged mechanic had halted and turned. From his jacket he produced an automatic pistol and taking steady aim he began to pump bullets into the burning men. German soldiers, attracted by the noise, began to leap off other trucks and the crowd scattered in panic from the pavement as the bullets began to fly.
Christian Valois paid no heed. When his clip was empty, he turned and walked away at the same steady pace till someone
grabbed his arm and forced him into a run. It was Henri, who’d transferred his allegiance whole-heartedly after Jean-Paul’s death, but soon found that his new leader was even more dangerous than the old.
Once out of range of the Germans he pushed the younger man into a café and made him sit down while a quick-
witted waiter rapidly provided them with two half-filled cups of coffee and a pile of saucers to give the impression they’d been there for hours. Sensitivity to the needs of the Resistants had never been higher.
‘Right,’ said Henri. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? I thought Jean-Paul was bad. He didn’t give a damn if he got killed or not. You look as if you want it!’
Valois smiled coldly and drank his coffee.
Henri said earnestly, ‘Don’t cock it up for the rest of us. Another week, we’ll all be free or we’ll be dead. I know which I prefer. The future stretches a long way beyond getting rid of the Boche.’
‘What future?’ said Valois.
‘Christian, I know it hit you hard, Jean-Paul’s death. And then the news about your sister.’
He saw the other’s grip tighten on the cup till it seemed the handle must break. The news that Marie-Rose Valois had been executed for terrorist activities had been released six weeks earlier, but no one had dared talk to Valois about it since. He seemed to have decided that single-handed he was going to kill every German in Paris. It was a miracle he had survived so long. And now the end was near, but the killing and the danger were rising to a climax. Henri desperately wanted to preserve the young man’s life.
‘She’s gone, Christian,’ he urged. ‘Accept it. Never forget it, but accept it.’
He realized Valois was no longer listening. He was staring out at a figure walking slowly by along the pavement, more ghost-like than human.
‘Isn’t that Janine?’ said Henri.
Valois didn’t answer but watched his friend’s widow out of sight with an unreadable expression on his face. Then he turned to Henri.
‘What future?’ he repeated.
2
And now at last Paris began to rouse herself. This was the best of times, the worst of times. The police occupied the Préfecture, the FFI fortified the Hôtel de Ville. It was tanks versus ancient hand-guns; the outcome for the Resistance was inevitable, but the outcome for the Germans was irrelevant, and they happily accepted a truce within the city the better to confront the danger without. But there were many like Christian Valois who wouldn’t accept any truce. They raged through the streets, throwing up puny barricades, firing at any enemy movement whether of men or armour, till it ceased to be clear if they were seeking, or simply offering themselves as, targets.
Other citizens took to the streets too. Fired by a pure vision of justice, or a cloudy lust for revenge, they hunted down, judged and sentenced their errant fellows. Some were beaten, stripped, humiliated; some were executed; some were thrown into gaol to await a formal judgement.
Meanwhile other gaols were being opened, other prisoners set free.
At Fresnes Prison on the southern approaches to the city, a pitched battle took place. It cost the Free French 2nd Armoured Division five tanks to overrun this strongpoint on their way to the Porte d’Orléans. Like the Bastille a century and a half earlier, it gave up very little. Most of the prisoners left behind after the last transports departed had been released when the Germans set about fortifying the strategically placed building.
But there were still a few inmates remaining, too ill to move or set free, or perhaps simply forgotten.
An American medical team took charge of these, transferring them to a nearby civilian hospital. The Americans looked aghast at the evidence of torture they observed on the bodies of some of their new patients, the French with no less revulsion but less shock. In some cases there seemed little hope. In others proper medication and nourishment plus above all the news of the imminent liberation of Paris brought rapid improvement.
And in one case, all these plus a night’s rest seemed to produce a really remarkable recovery.
‘Hey, doc,’ said one of the orderlies early the following morning. ‘We’ve lost a patient. One of those guys from the gaol.’
‘Well, they were pretty badly hurt, poor devils.’
‘No, I don’t mean he died. He’s just up and gone. The bed’s empty. He took some clothes too. Took? I mean stole!’
‘Perhaps the guy didn’t want to miss the celebrations! Which one was it?’
The orderly consulted his list.
‘Scheffer,’ he said. ‘Édouard Scheffer.’
Günter Mai made his way back into Paris in the wake of the 2nd Armoured Division. It was remarkably easy even for a man in his condition. As the liberators drove through the suburbs, the empty streets of early morning suddenly exploded with life far more overwhelming than any German ambush could have been. From every doorway, every window it seemed, poured shouting, singing, laughing, weeping people. Mai had never seen, never heard such joy. Under the cloudless summer sky, this turmoil of flags and banners and cheering and thrown blossoms and spurting wine looked like some great artist’s living realization of the spirit of joy. He recalled the stillness, the emptiness, the sense of cold eyes dully watching from shuttered houses, that had been the invading Germans’ greeting four years before. How delightful then it had been to savour even that pretence of welcome offered by people like Louise Crozier. But beneath it all had been fear, or greed, or hate - nothing of this pure, untainted upwelling of joy which was exploding all around him.
He was slightly delirious, he realized. Somehow he’d scrambled up on the back of a half-track where he clung, unremarkable in a convoy festooned with men, women and children, kissing the soldiers, waving their flags, singing the ‘Marseillaise’. He had to get back to reality, he told himself, to the here and now.
‘What’s the date?’ he asked a young woman who clung by his side, almost hysterical with joy.
‘It’s Christmas Day! All Saints’ Day! Easter Day! It’s everyone’s birthday!’ she cried.
‘But the date!’
‘August the twenty-fifth, of course! You’ll never forget it, none of us will!’
She was probably right. What it meant to him was he’d been in Fresnes for about three weeks. Fiebelkorn’s men had worked at him in a leisurely way, pushing him often to the edge of confession to complicity in the plot. That way surely peace and rest lay. But some stubbornness at his core refused to let these bastards make him lie.
‘I knew nothing. Nothing!’ he repeated through bloodily gaping lips.
And finally Fiebelkorn had believed him. Or got sick of him. Or simply forgotten him. He was transferred to Fresnes. ‘We’ll be back for you tomorrow,’ promised his SS escort. But they never came. And he lay on his prison bed, a cipher to his new guards, who were indifferent to his crime or nationality and indeed to everything except who’d placed him there. The conditions, the treatment, the food here, were not pleasant but they were Hôtel Meurice standards compared with what he’d suffered in the Avenue Foch. Slowly he’d started to explore his ferociously abused body. Cuts, bruises, missing teeth, a broken nose, even cigarette burns he catalogued as minor inconveniences. Cracked ribs and mangled fingertips were more lasting sources of pain, but these too would pass. What had worried him most because they felt most permanent were his left eye, which even when he forced the bruised and swollen flesh around it apart admitted no light, and his testicles, which were so puffed up and painful that walking was almost impossible.
Three weeks’ rest had worked no miracles, but at least the swelling round his crotch had gone down enough for mobility, though what the American doctor had hidden beneath the dressing on his eye he did not yet know. Perhaps he should have waited to find out. In fact why hadn’t he? What was he doing in his condition clinging precariously to this enemy vehicle? Was he trying to escape?
The thought made him smile. It felt unfamiliar, painful even. It was the oddest escape route imaginable! N
o, it was some basic instinct that was taking him back into Paris, the sense that the changes exploding through Europe now were so great, so cataclysmic, they might blow him anywhere; the fear that this was the closest to Janine he might ever be again. If there was a last chance to see her, he had to grasp it. And if there was a last chance to protect her, he had to take it. He prayed that all his files at the Lutétia had been burnt or removed or that he could get to them in time to destroy all references to Janine.
And then? Surrender? Escape to continue the fight? The fight for what? He looked down at his mangled finger ends and felt the throb and jag of all his other hurts. These had been inflicted on him in the name and by the authority of the State he served.
‘Here, don’t fall off,’ said the girl next to him, grabbing his arm.
He hadn’t realized he’d been slipping.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
She looked closely at him and said, ‘My God, you’ve been through the mangle, haven’t you? Did the Boche do this?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Yes. The Boche.’
‘Oh, the bastards. But this is the day they get their comeuppance! Think of that! Death to the Boche! Death to the Boche!’
Others took up the chant. And after a while, for the sake of verisimilitude he told himself wryly, he joined in.
And so, on the back of a liberator’s half-track, with tricolours flying around him and flower-petals in his hair, Günter Mai returned to Paris.
3
They’d come for Janine Simonian the previous night. There were about twenty of them, the men slightly drunk, some of them inclined to merriment. But the women weren’t drunk, and they certainly weren’t merry.
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