The Resistance

by Peter Steiner

  “Renard?” said Onesime.

  “Yves. The cop,” said August.

  “He caught us butchering a hog the other night up in the old Tricon place. Old lady Anquetille reported us,” said Jacques, and laughed.

  “It’s not so funny,” said August. “The Germans don’t show much mercy with that kind of thing.”

  “The Germans,” said Jacques. “Do the Germans give a shit about a pig?”

  “Renard’s all right,” said Jean.

  “All right? He was there to report us,” said Jacques. “We gave some pork to the mayor to put the lid on it, but Renard still showed up.”

  “Did he file the report?” said Onesime.

  “Schneider said he did,” said August. “But Schneider’s sitting on it.”

  “Or so he says,” said Jacques. “But Yves Renard was always a jerk.”

  “Maybe,” said Jean. “But I don’t think he’d work with the Germans.”

  “Sure he would,” said Jacques. “He’s a cop. Who else is he going to work for? The cops work with whoever’s in charge. And even if it weren’t his job, he’s the type. He’s afraid of them.”

  * * *

  In his room that night Onesime worked on his map. He drew Bandot’s farm, his cave, the Beaumont vineyards and caves. He drew the big room they had visited as best as he could locate it, and then on a transparent overlay on onionskin he added the numbers of the four trucks and the date. He knew they belonged to an artillery battalion. The map was now full of information about trucks, numbers of men, movements of matériel from one cave to another. He now knew most of the caves the Germans had appropriated. When Jean knocked on the door, Onesime said, “Come in,” without putting the map away.

  Onesime expected to be scolded by his older brother. Instead Jean said, “You’ve been paying attention.” He studied the map. “I’m impressed,” he said. “What do you plan to do with it?”

  “Nothing,” said Onesime. “It just interests me.” Then: “Who knows? It might be useful someday.”

  “Do you think so?” said Jean. He considered Onesime’s map for a moment. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and left the room. When he returned he was carrying a large black ledger under his arm. He put it on Onesime’s table beside the map and opened it to the first page. It appeared to be a sort of logbook or calendar. Each page had a date at the top followed by columns of entries. Jean wrote in large round letters like a schoolboy. Everything was clearly legible, although the meaning of things was not readily apparent.

  “What is it? What’s this?” said Onesime, pointing to the first entry.

  “Nine-forty, that’s the time—9:40; CB means Cheval Blanc, and the name followed by in means that person went in, and out means that person came out. The notes say anything else I noticed at the time. Like here, at 9:40 Schneider went in and came out here, at 10:04. He was carrying a briefcase.”

  “How did you see all this?”

  “I work at Melun’s, remember? And I get our rations. I don’t see everything, and I’m not there all the time. But the lines are long, and when I’m waiting I watch. I mean bread, groceries, it’s all right by the hotel. Look: Here’s the German colonel leaving with his driver and going east out of town. And here…”—he turned a few pages—“here they are again the next day leaving in the same direction at the same time.”

  “Where are they going, I wonder,” said Onesime.

  “I don’t know. Toward Villedieu, but once they leave the square I don’t know.”

  “Let me see something,” said Onesime, turning a few pages ahead, then back. He found an entry that had the colonel leaving with his driver. It was the evening he had seen them at the count’s. “They went to a party at the château here,” he said. “I saw them.”

  “You were there?” said Jean. “So that’s where you went.”

  “I was. I went to explore Beaumont’s cave. I followed it to Grandfather’s. But there was a party, and I looked through the windows.”

  “I’ll write it down,” he said. “Who else did you see?” He paused in his writing.

  Onesime tried to remember. “The count. His wife. The colonel. Maybe another German in plain clothes. Monsieur Dupont. Madame Terterrain. The priest—what’s his name? Father something. Some others I don’t know. A German in uniform was outside with the cars. Probably the driver. I have the numbers of some of the other cars on the map. And Marie Piano.”

  “Marie Piano was there? Really?”

  “She sang. In German.”

  Onesime suddenly felt slightly dizzy. He was struck by the momentousness of what he and Jean were doing, by how dangerous it was. “We’re spying, Jean. Aren’t we?” He spoke softly.

  “I guess you could say we are spying,” said Jean, “although I don’t think of it that way. I mean, we’re not working for anyone.”

  “Still. They’d kill us for this if they caught us.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Onesime. “Isn’t that amazing when you think about it? It just somehow seems right to do it. But I don’t really know why. I’m not spying for anybody. Are you?”

  “No,” said Jean. “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. The English maybe.”

  “Me? No,” said Jean. “Are you against the Germans?” Jean was whispering now.

  “Yes. I was in the war against them. Although I can’t say I feel anything much about them. I didn’t have to shoot them. But I would have. Still, I don’t like having them running things, no matter how bad our own government was. I just don’t like it. This is France, not Germany.”

  “Me either,” said Jean. “I hate that they killed Papa and Uncle in the Great War. And just seeing them in their trucks and uniforms makes me angry. I mean, it’s like we’re prisoners in our own town. In our own house. I just go out, and sooner or later I run into them and feel like I’m in prison and they’re the guards. That makes it feel almost natural to work against them.”

  “I guess so,” said Onesime. He paused. “I have the feeling that things are going to get worse too. They’ll crack down at some point, come down hard on somebody for something. And when they do, then I will be against them. Automatically. Definitely. I’ll have to be against them. There won’t be a choice. I might as well get ready for that day. Then all this—my map and your diary—might be important. Do you think we’re the only ones?”

  “The only ones?” said Jean.

  “The only ones watching them, keeping track.”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t see how we could be.”

  “Who else do you think could be … involved? The way we are, I mean?”

  “Involved?” said Jean. “Are we involved in anything?”

  “It’s not whether we think we’re involved in anything. It’s what the Germans would think, or the mayor would think, or the police would think. They would all say we’re seriously involved, so I guess we are. And you know? I don’t think there’s any turning back.” They sat silently and thought about that for a minute.

  “So who else is involved?” said Jean finally. “Do you think the mayor is, or Renard?”

  “No,” said Onesime. “They can’t be. Although they must both know a lot about what’s going on. More than we do.”

  “Do you think they’re against the Germans or with them?” said Jean.

  “I don’t know,” said Onesime.

  “What about Jacques?”

  “Courtois? No, Jacques is mainly a big mouth. If he’s up to anything, it’s to show off. He’ll be the first one to get in trouble. The thing with the pig almost got him in serious trouble. And Renard stopped it.”

  “What about Monsieur Bertrand? He almost got arrested for speaking out. That’s what I heard, anyway.”

  “What about the count? He’s a bit of a puzzle,” said Onesime.

  “He’s been in and out of the Cheval Blanc on a regular basis. And he had that party. And he’s got petrol, which makes me wonder how he gets
it.”

  “Yes, but there’s the room in the cave and the map turned to the wall. What’s he doing with a secret map? Maybe we could get a look at the map. That might tell us something.”

  “That won’t be so easy.”

  “Nothing’s going to be easy from here on out. And the Germans are only going to get tougher as time passes. Someone’ll get in trouble, and then they’ll crack down hard. Sooner or later it’ll happen. It has to. We’ve got to be careful from now on. Where do you keep your ledger? No, don’t tell me. But hide it really well.”

  “But we should share information.”

  “Some of it. But not all of it. What we’re doing changes things. Even being brothers.”

  VII.

  THE GERMAN OCCUPATION had changed everything in Saint-Léon-sur-Dême. And it had changed nothing. The people went about their business as usual. They tended their gardens, their chickens, their goats. They picked the count’s grapes and the grapes in the other vineyards. They crushed them in the big wooden hoppers. The sweet liquid drizzled into barrels, which were rolled into the caves to ferment and age. They made cheese, they gathered eggs, milked their cows, and traded with one another—cheese for eggs, milk for cigarettes, lettuce for peas or potatoes. They fished in the Dême. The days shortened, the weather cooled, the shadows grew longer.

  The severe shortages and deprivation that people in the cities and larger towns suffered as rationing tightened did not come to the French countryside. Some things were in short supply of course. But no one was going hungry, as they were in Paris or Tours or Le Mans. Everyone in Saint-Léon had potatoes and squashes and pumpkins spread on the floors in their cellars and caves. They had stores of wine and brandy and honey and cheese. They learned to make coffee from barley, and tea from mint and chamomile. They went to the forests and woodlots to cut firewood for their stoves, as they always had.

  The last hay had been cut and put away. The winter wheat was planted. Hunting season came, and the count invited Colonel Büchner to hunt with him. The colonel accepted his invitation. The hunting party shot pheasant and rabbit and boar.

  It seems astonishing now, but Pétain and his colleagues in Vichy, the mayors and other officials of Tours and Le Mans and Nantes, even most officials of the small towns and villages behaved as though the German occupiers were their partners. They truly seemed to expect that the spirit of collaboration and cooperation would continue and would hold the wrath of the Nazi regime at bay indefinitely. And their citizens by and large believed it too.

  In July the Free French radio had reported from London that there had been a plot against Hitler by some of his own generals. There had been arrests in Germany and in Paris, and more arrests were expected.

  “Even the Führer’s own generals know him to be an insatiable monster. They know he is driving his own country—and all of Europe—to ruin. Do not be fooled, Frenchmen, Frenchwomen. Do not be seduced by the smooth face of collaboration. Collaboration is wicked at its very heart. General Pétain is a traitor to France.”

  “They are wearing gold stars in Tours,” said Claude Melun one rainy morning. He had just come back from the city where he had gone to get bicycle parts.

  “Gold stars?” said Jean. “Who is wearing gold stars?”

  “Jews are. To show that they’re Jews,” said Claude. “I saw them. And shops have had signs painted on them saying they belong to Jews.”

  Jean said nothing.

  “I’m just saying…,” said Claude, but he did not know how he should finish the sentence. He determined that he would return to Tours again for a better look.

  “Let me know when you go,” said Jean.

  The shortage of petrol meant steady work for Jean and Claude at Claude’s shop. A lot of bicycles were being pulled out of barns and sheds and were in need of rehabilitation. Claude had also figured out how to retrofit gasoline engines—on motorcycles in particular, but also in cars—so they would run on kerosene. He was trying to figure out how to make a car run on wood.

  Most nights Jean and Onesime compared notes and exchanged information. Onesime had a series of maps covering all of the months of occupation. He went around the valley, buying cheese from Courbeau, trading bread his mother baked, milk from the cow, butter and eggs for what he could get, and gathering information.

  The more Jean and Onesime discovered, the more complete the picture of the occupation of Saint-Léon emerged. By laying maps and logs side by side, they could track the expansion of the German network of caves, the patterns of importation of matériel by truck and by train, as well as which caves were being used for the storage of which matériel. There were artillery shells in some, stores of petrol and kerosene in others. Some appeared to be emergency bunkers, and two had been outfitted to become field hospitals, if the need arose. There were also stockpiles of automatic weapons, of uniforms, and of small canisters, which Onesime speculated might contain poison gas.

  “We had a general here last week,” said Louisette Anquetille. “He passed right by here in a big sedan.”

  “A general?” said Onesime. He sounded doubtful. He looked at his feet and shuffled them through the leaves that had blown into a pile by her doorstep. “Here are the eggs you wanted. Four, you said. Is that right?”

  “I know a German general when I see one,” she said. “He went up to Ageneau’s farm, turned around, and came back. I saw him twice.”

  * * *

  Jean kept the door of the mechanic’s shop open so he could see what was going on. “Close the door,” said Claude. “Jesus. It’s freezing out there.”

  “Well, it’s too hot in here,” Jean said.

  Claude put another log in the stove.

  Colonel Büchner’s weekly departures toward Villedieu eventually took him to Tours to meet with his superior, General Otto von Wuthenow, the general Madame Anquetille had seen. “There he goes,” said a customer, nodding in the direction of the hotel. The colonel’s car was pulling away. Jean was working on the man’s bicycle. He focused on the chain wheel he was repairing. “Hold this,” he said to the man, as he strained to loosen the rusty connection. Jean leaned on the large wrench, and the wheel broke free.

  “You know where he goes?” said the man. He wanted to talk.

  “Who?” said Jean.

  “Your colonel.”

  “No, where?” said Jean, trying to sound indifferent.

  “He goes to Tours,” said the man.

  “That’s not the way to Tours,” said Jean.

  “He goes by way of Troppard.”

  “Troppard? Where’s that?”

  “The widow Troppard. Her husband was killed at Verdun.”

  “Do you know Madame Troppard?” Jean asked his mother that evening. They were eating the last of a bread pudding Madame Josquin had made the day before.

  “In Villedieu? I do,” she said. “Edith Troppard. Her husband died at Verdun the same day your father did.”

  The two sons sat silently for a long time.

  Finally Jean spoke. “Someone was talking about her today. At the shop.”

  “You mean about the German colonel?” said their mother.

  Jean and Onesime did not conceal their astonishment.

  “Why are you looking at me that way?” she asked.

  “How did you know that?” said Jean.

  “I know a lot of things you don’t know,” said Anne Marie. “Why should that surprise you?”

  “What things?” Both Jean and Onesime spoke.

  “For one thing,” she said, “I know loneliness.” She rose from the table to clear dishes. Her sons watched her.

  “How did you know about the German colonel?” Onesime said.

  “I go to town too,” she said. “I talk to friends. Now don’t you interrogate me. And until you lose your spouse and have lived with that loss for half a lifetime, don’t you dare judge anyone who has.”

  “The German…,” began Jean.

  “His name is Helmut Büchner,” she said. “He is a wi
dower.”

  “You know him?” said Jean.

  “I know about him,” said Anne Marie.

  Back in his room Onesime looked at the maps and overlays he had drawn. He turned them over one by one. Jean knocked and came in.

  “What are we doing?” said Onesime. “What is all this?” He waved his hand at the stack of maps.

  “I know,” said Jean. “That was a surprise to me.”

  “Do you think she knows what we’ve been doing?” said Onesime.

  “I didn’t think so before. Now I don’t know.”

  “Do you think she would be … against it?” said Onesime. “Against our doing it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jean.

  “Should we tell her?” said Onesime.

  “No,” said Jean.

  “Aren’t we placing her in danger?”

  Jean did not answer. Finally he said, “Yes, I think we are. Either way, we’re placing her in danger. Whether we tell her or not.”

  “Still,” said Onesime, “we should talk to her. We have to talk to her. We can’t just leave it like this.” The two men went down the narrow, sloping stairs. Their mother’s room was behind the kitchen. Her door was closed. Jean raised his hand to knock and then stopped. He put his finger in front of his lips. “Listen,” he whispered.

  Onesime inclined his head toward the door. His mother had the radio on. The signal was very poor and there was a lot of static, so she had turned up the volume as loud as she dared. Onesime pressed his ear to the door. He heard someone speaking English, which he could not understand. Then someone began in French.

  “My fellow citizens, Frenchmen, Frenchwomen, I send you greetings, during this, France’s darkest hour. I am speaking to you from London, where thousands of French heroes, brave men and women, have assembled with the sole purpose of rescuing our imperiled country from the invaders. We may accomplish this with the aid of our English allies. But nothing can be accomplished without you. You are now the guardians of our great and noble civilization. The Nazi occupiers will do everything they can to break your spirit. They will try to divide you, Frenchman against Frenchman, but it is up to you to resist.…”