‘I like the name. Who thought of it?’
‘I did,’ he says casually, lighting another cigarette.
Having got the business at hand out of the way, he says, ‘I have booked our room.’
‘When?’
‘The usual,’ he says.
She rises from her chair, careful of the wall of books behind her. He rises too, taking her hand. When she reaches the door he is there, and – the office as tiny as it is – they are pressed against each other. And they stay like that for some time. Such, Dominique tells herself, is the value of tiny rooms and close spaces. Electric days, both of them constantly switched on: bright, transparent. Everybody knows. They must.
She leaves – the slightly stooped figure of Jean leaning in his doorway, the longing still in his gaze – and passes the office next to Jean’s, the domain of the house Nazi, eyeing it warily. As much as Jean might casually call him their window display, their convenience, a pawn-like figure in the little game they play with the Germans, it is nonetheless a reminder, and a depressing one, that they are there. Deep inside the everyday life of the city.
5.
It’s curious how quickly a room begins to feel like your possession. Your room. How the room accommodates you. How the bed retains the impression of your bodies. Or seems to. How the chair bears your coats and clothes like a loyal footman, bowed and ever ready to help. How the table by the window welcomes your small change, room key and cigarettes. In short, how quickly a room yields, no longer the possession of everyone who has stayed here and will stay here. This room is now yours, you its.
She smiles, the taste of him still in her mouth, taking the room in. But it is a pained smile for this is the hour they must leave. His wristwatch is never taken off. Their thieved hours pass with a rapidity that the everyday hours don’t. It never ceases to astonish her that one moment they are entering the room and the next they are preparing to leave, no sooner undressing than they are dressing – what happens in between taking no more or less time than it takes for a match to flare and fade.
Her underpants are somewhere in the room. She looks about, no desire to find them, reluctant to put them back on, her body aching for one last shudder to be wrung from her. He lounges on the bed, both staring at each other, and each knowing the other’s thoughts without need of speaking: must we go? But their time is up and, resigned to their fate, she picks her pants up from the floor.
While they are dressing she looks at the bed, the pillows still bearing the hollows of their heads. But where they never slept. The time is too precious for sleep. And there is sadness in this realisation for she knows that they will never sleep together. Not for a whole night. And at the same time she wonders if she would have it any other way. For they are creatures of the night, and these few hours together a few evenings a week have an intensity that she is convinced could never be stretched into the conventionality, the routine of a couple waking to each other every morning and returning to each other at night: the one to prepare the evening meal; the other to put the rubbish out. No. They will always rise from the bed with regret, bodies still aching for each other.
He embraces her.
‘To work.’
Of course. He will be up until midnight and beyond, printing the novel so that it will be ready in time to be smuggled out all over France and to London and eventually America. So that French fighters everywhere might buy it, knowing that people risked their lives to print it. But are they all just deluding themselves; will it really make any difference? Is it really possible to fight bullets with words? All the same, words scare their occupiers and all their lackeys, as much as the sight of smut unsettles them.
‘And I,’ she murmurs, still wondering about the value of any of it as she pats her satchel, filled with pamphlets for delivery.
Dominique removes a long strand of her hair from his coat before Jean turns towards the secret printing press not far away. As she watches him go, some impulse that she can’t explain tells her to take the pamphlets from the satchel and stuff them underneath the front of her cardigan. When she has done this, she buttons up her coat, which secures them tightly. All that’s left in the satchel now are essays for correction from her afternoon class on French literature.
She strolls along the footpath, just anybody walking home. A local church sounds the half-hour. Eight-thirty. People still about. No cars, no laughter. A woman passes her on a bicycle, and she eyes it enviously. A bicycle would be good. But bicycles are as scarce as stockings. She couldn’t buy one if she wanted, she’d have to steal one. And she only thieves time.
She crosses the boulevard Saint-Germain, its cafés open, lights muted, a ghostly mixture of German soldiers and French men and women, girlfriends and prostitutes (and while she likes to think she can pick the difference, she also concedes that she’s not so sure any more), all filling the tables, occasional music and talk wafting out onto the footpaths with the smell of smoke whenever a door opens.
She leaves the boulevard and wanders into a network of streets, vaguely contemplating why, in all her thirty-five years, she’s never ridden a bicycle, when she hears the steady clip-clop of horses’ hooves coming towards her. And she knows straightaway that they are Germans. She finds herself looking up at two German soldiers, helmets glinting in the moonlight, rifles over their shoulders.
‘Guten Abend,’ one of them says, leaning down towards her, no playful French here. And for a moment she freezes, thrown by the very sound of German, as though she’s never heard the language of the enemy before. ‘It’s late,’ the other one says, noticing her hesitation in returning the greeting. And she curses herself, for she knows full well that hesitation, like lingering, is dangerous.
‘Where are you going?’ he asks in phrase-book French.
‘Home.’
‘Where is your home?’
She explains and then he too leans forward and points to her bag. ‘What is in there?’
She does not hesitate. ‘School work. Essays for correction.’
‘Show me,’ he says, putting his hand out.
She gives him the satchel and he casually opens it, eyeing one sheet of paper after another. When he is satisfied, he closes the satchel and hands it back to her.
‘It’s dark. You are alone. Where have you been?’
What should she say? With my lover? A few stolen hours that pass like minutes? ‘Teaching.’
They dismiss her, sitting high once more on their horses as the steady clip-clop of their patrol resumes and they leave her motionless on the footpath, hand across her stomach. What intuition told her to hide the pamphlets? Perhaps Jean is right, she is a natural. Sheer terror and exhilaration surge through her: a feeling she could get to like. The street’s stones glint in the moonlight, and she imagines the occasional onlooker behind a window noting the lone woman on the street as the steady clip-clop of the horses tapers into the night.
After dropping the pamphlets in the letter box she turns quickly for home, the curfew hour not far away. The back of her neck still tingles from the encounter; the whole city is familiar but alien, spread out around her, everybody – resistants, lovers, informers and Germans – either preparing to sleep or slinking out to their midnight work.
Part Two
Pauline Réage
Paris and Normandy, late 1943
6.
Over the next month, as autumn shifts into winter and the cold weather closes in, she continues to deliver pamphlets to various letter boxes around the city. There is a creeping sense of futility about the work: what once gave every day a sense of meaning and purpose is now as routine as a job. Who reads them? Who cares?
As she walks towards the church to meet Jean, there is impatience in her strides. They sit at the back, as usual. Nobody near them. A mass is in progress, the priest, in his wooden pulpit, suspended above the congregation like a deus ex machina from a Greek tragedy. For a moment she is spellbound by the smell of incense, drawn to the robes of the priest and the murmu
ring of the congregation, transported back to the ritual and colour of childhood services. Jean gets straight to the point, breaking the spell.
‘There is someone who wants to meet you,’ he whispers.
She turns from the spectacle in front of her, and from the look on his face and his tone she can see that he tells her this reluctantly.
‘Who?’
‘An Englishman.’
‘An Englishman? Here, in Paris?’
‘Yes.’
She knows what this means: a spy or secret agent.
Jean adds, ‘He has money.’
She pauses, taking this information in, as well as the touch of anxiety in Jean’s voice. Has her restlessness conjured up this Englishman? Is the time right for a bigger risk? A stronger drug? ‘What does he want?’
Jean shakes his head slowly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘When does he want to meet?’
‘This evening.’
‘So soon?’
Jean turns to her. ‘You don’t have to go.’
She notes, in his response, a hint of imploring. A tone that says always remember that we fight with words.
‘I know,’ she murmurs, taking his hand reassuringly, the gesture telling him that she does not take the request lightly. Then, eyebrows lifting, she adds, ‘But who can resist a rabbit hole?’
The mass continues, the question and answer, the voice of the priest and the chant of the congregation.
He shrugs. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I’m just passing on the request.’
He then nods in the direction of the door, and they rise. Outside, evening is falling. They stand on the steps looking out over the place Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin. She squeezes his hand. ‘It may not be anything much. Not really,’ she says, her voice still low.
‘I know the Englishman.’
‘And?’
‘When he pays you, he buys you. And believe me, whatever he wants, he will expect his money’s worth.’
They stand in silence, occasional figures passing across the small square, Dominique weighing up Jean’s words.
‘If it’s important he won’t have to pay me.’
‘They like to pay you. Then they control you. We may be at war, but money still speaks.’ He sighs, looking to the sky, eyes unusually glum. ‘If it’s not the Germans, it’s the English. How did we get here?’
‘Let’s find out what he wants, shall we?’ She waits for a reply but there isn’t one. This is a different Jean. The world is not filling him with astonishment or wonder. He’s looking like a man who’s feasted long on wonder and the thrill of fear, a man once ready to eat the world and has now had enough. He’s scared, but not for himself. ‘Where is he?’ she asks.
‘A house nearby.’
‘Do we have time to go to our room?’
He smiles, shaking his head. ‘Our room will have to wait.’
‘A pity.’
‘You don’t have to go. Just because they summon you.’
She is touched by the concern in his eyes, but with a frowning resolve, acknowledging that there will be a day of reckoning when she will answer to herself for not going. ‘I think I do.’
He nods, as if to say if you must, you must. The air is cold, an early winter, signalling a long one, falling on them as they descend the steps, the metallic crunch of leaves under their feet as they walk down towards the river, holding hands. Her owl is quiet.
‘This will be dangerous,’ he eventually says. ‘Far more dangerous than anything you’ve done until now.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘Impressive, but cold. Sir so-and-so. But whatever name he gives, if he gives one at all, won’t be his real name.’
She grins. ‘A sir!’
She’s always associated knights with those childhood games and tales she once lived in. Not this murky half-world of blackouts and curfews.
A few minutes later they stand before a door facing the river. Jean presses the buzzer and the concierge lets them in. They mount the stairs and on the second floor are led into an apartment. The air is smoky. Two men sit at a table. A Frenchman greets them, but Dominique barely listens because she is struck by the other man seated at the table.
Without saying a word he simply raises his finger to the Frenchman, like a schoolmaster calling for silence, a gesture that quite clearly says he will take over from here. This man, Dominique knows straightaway, is the reason they are here. With calculating eyes he looks Dominique up and down then rises and extends his hand to both of them, saying in a rich English accent, ‘Good evening. Pleased to meet you.’ He offers no name, merely points to two chairs and they all sit. The fourth man pours wine, they sip in silence, waiting for the Englishman to light his cigarette, which he smokes through a holder, clamping it in his teeth and inhaling deeply. He has, she concludes, a distinguished face, but there is something cruel about it. Jean was right. He exhales smoke, breaking the silence.
‘Madame Aury,’ he says, eyes steady as he takes her in. ‘I have a job for you.’
‘I expected you might.’
He raises his eyebrows approvingly. She’s hit the right note, it seems: considered, direct and proud. Even a touch of the playful. They could almost be initiating some sort of game, sizing each other up.
They continue in this manner, as if conducting a job interview (which, Dominique realises, it is) for a few more minutes. She answers his questions with a coolness she knows is being noticed – by this Englishman, the French contact beside him, and by Jean, who is looking at her with the same impressed air as the others, albeit reluctantly. It is a serious game, and she is aware of playing it well. There is a job. For her. But this Englishman is taking the opportunity of some last-minute judgement: deciding if, indeed, she is the one for it.
He pauses for some time, as if his mind is calmly ticking over, before plunging in. ‘One of our agents, a very important one, has been denounced. To the French police, thankfully. Luckily, the letter denouncing her is still at the bottom of someone’s tray.’ He pauses again, his silence more or less saying we have people on the inside. ‘We have time, but not much. Our agent, a woman, has for the last year . . .’ here, he raises his eyes to the ceiling as if seeking there the right words, ‘. . . befriended a German major.’
He lets the point sink in. ‘Difficult, distasteful work. She is very brave. For the last year she has relayed very valuable information back to us. But she is no longer safe. Her time is up, and we must get her out of the country. Now.’
He butts his cigarette and takes out another. ‘She has been working underground. Very few knew, only those who needed to. To those who may now find out, she is guilty of . . . what shall we call it? Horizontal collaboration. You understand?’
‘Of course,’ she replies, in a manner that suggests she is neither a child nor a fool. ‘But why me?’
‘A young woman travelling alone, especially this woman,’ he says, in a down-to-business tone that tells Dominique he has decided he can trust her, but also in a tone that suggests he knows women, ‘draws attention. Or can.’ He then adds, with a nod, ‘This woman, most certainly. Could be a risk and we don’t want that. She also doesn’t know the area you’ll be going to. You do.’ He lights his cigarette. ‘Two women travelling together. Old childhood friends, that is a different matter. No threat, quite the opposite: vaguely touching. Even charming.’ He exhales smoke. ‘Charm matters. Two old friends, they can help each other. And it’s quite likely the authorities won’t be looking for two women, but one.’
At this point Jean speaks up, in French, echoing what they all know.
‘This is dangerous.’
‘True,’ the Englishman says in French, then reverts to English, looking from Jean to Dominique. ‘These are dangerous times.’ A touch of contempt in his voice.
The implication is clear. Do you want these people, these invaders, out of your country or not? If you do, you must accept that in dangerous time
s dangerous things must be done – by those who feel the need to do them. ‘Your whole country buckled,’ he says, open distaste now in his voice. ‘Paris was saved. Two cheers. London has been bombed every day since. These are dangerous times.’
It is a clear challenge: you can accommodate, collaborate or you can fight. Which is it? He draws deeply on his cigarette. ‘Well?’
Dominique tilts her head to one side in thought, as though weighing things up, when, in fact, she has already decided. ‘Tell me more.’
The Englishman leans forward over the table, pleased with what he hears and sees. ‘You’re from Avranches?’
‘Yes.’
‘You grew up there?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you know the area.’
‘Of course.’
‘Good, because that’s where you’re going. You may even still know some locals, if needed.’
She shrugs. ‘Possibly.’
He leans back in his chair, putting his cigarette in the ashtray. ‘You and this woman will take the train to Granville. You know the journey?’ It is more a statement than a question.
‘Yes.’
‘It is long enough in peacetime. Twice as long now. And there will be checks, all the way along. Random and frequent. At Granville you will be met by your uncle.’
‘My uncle?’ she says, amused.
‘Yes, your uncle. And he will drive the two of you to a field just outside Avranches, where a plane will meet you. The place has already been determined by London. We have a man on the ground in Granville. He chose Avranches, that’s why we thought of you.’
He pauses to clamp yet another cigarette (French, she notices) into his holder. And while he does, she dwells on what he has said. They thought of her. People she had never met until now thought of her.
‘Our agent will board the plane, the plane will leave, and your job will be done.’ He continues, ‘Two women, you see. Old school friends travelling together back to their childhood haunts. Nice distracting cover. Simple.’
O Page 5