Lieutenant Essart felt implicated by the colonel’s assessment of the situation. “Herr General,” he said, “I believe this matter falls under the purview of the Gestapo, and the decision how to proceed from this point on should be the Gestapo’s to make.” The general did not like Essart any more than Colonel Hollinger did, but the Gestapo had extraordinary power in such matters. In addition, Essart seemed to have powerful sponsors in Paris and Berlin. The general had to tread lightly.
“It is a police decision, Lieutenant Essart, as you correctly point out, but it is mine to make. I think it would be unwise to execute any more hostages. But it would also be catastrophic to admit to any mistakes. And it would most certainly be catastrophic to publicly execute Private Treffel. If he is determined in court-martial proceedings to have committed the murder, he will be executed, but certainly not in public. And no public notice will be given.”
Private Treffel was tried in a summary military trial. He was found to have murdered Private Beckermann. He was taken back to his cell and, later that same day, to the prison courtyard. His rank and insignia were removed from his uniform, and he was executed by a firing squad of six men.
As Colonel Hollinger predicted, two days later everyone in Saint-Léon knew what had happened. It was as if someone of them had been present during the deliberations in military headquarters, in the prison, at the execution, in fact, every step of the way.
Liberation..….….….….……… May 19, 1941. Issue 3
Citizens of Saint-Léon, citizens of France, on the night of April 29, Private Johannes Beckermann was shot and killed at the bar Le Pêcheur in Saint-Léon-sur-Dême by Private Wolfgang Treffel. Private Treffel was executed by firing squad on the morning of May 16 in the military prison at Saint-Pierre-des-Corps. The boys Stephan and Antoine Duquesne may even have heard the gunfire, since they are imprisoned there for having committed no crime whatsoever.
Their mother and father were two of the five hostages gunned down on the town square of Saint-Léon because the minions of the Third Reich decided, without any examination of the evidence, that Beckermann was killed by a Frenchman. Forty-five hostages under sentence of death still await an unknown fate at the hands of the evil perpetrators of this abomination of justice, should they decide to arbitrarily execute some more French citizens for their own whimsical reasons.
Do our German persecutors have the courage, or the decency, to admit that they fomented a terrible miscarriage and killed innocents? They do not. And what about their French collaborators, our so-called “French” officials, the police particularly, who stood by and did nothing while innocents were shot dead? They are as culpable and as cowardly as their German masters.
Citizens, the collaboration is a mockery. France has surrendered its liberty and self-determination and gotten nothing but misery and abuse in return. How long will we put up with the abusive occupation by the unjust and barbaric Third Reich? How long must we put up with their lackeys, the police and the officials who call themselves French?
Not much longer, fellow citizens. Their demise is being organized in London. The English have been under terrible and unrelenting attack by the Third Reich. But they have succeeded in courageously repelling the Nazi assault on their country. And they have destroyed thousands of Nazi planes in the process. The Third Reich is not invincible. The day of reckoning for Hitler’s Third Reich is coming. We must organize and be ready when that day comes. Collect yourselves and be patient. If we are vigilant and brave, then victory will be ours.
Vive la Libération! Vive la France!
XI.
IT WAS A WARM JUNE evening. The moon was three-quarters full, a bright, white lozenge in the western sky. The air was filled with the sound of frogs and the smell of the warm, freshly turned earth. It was the happiest night of Onesime’s life.
Dancing was not against the law, but congregating in one place was. Jacques Courtois had organized a secret dance in that abandoned house where he and his friends had been caught butchering a hog. They had carefully sealed the windows this time. No light and little sound escaped. They had arrived silently in twos and threes. Madame Anquetille, down the hill, had no idea they were there, even though there was a crowd of them and they had a gramophone and a stack of jazz records.
Onesime was the last to arrive. The music stopped when he knocked. The lights went off before the door opened. A wave of heat swept over him as he stepped inside. The door closed, the lights came up, the room was full of happy people, and there, not two meters from him, stood Marie Piano. She looked at him with a smile and mouthed a hello in his direction.
When the music started again, Jacques Courtois seized Marie’s hand and spun her about. The two jumped and hopped in time to the music; her skirt swung about her knees. Beads of sweat gleamed on her lip. Her brown hair bounced to the music. Jacques turned and twirled her in a manner Onesime could only envy and admire.
The next song was slower. Onesime invited Marie to dance. He rested his hand on the small of her back. She smiled up at him. There was a slight gap between her front teeth. He could hear her humming bits of the song they were dancing to. Then the music sped up again, and he returned her to Jacques. But Jacques could see that she was still looking at Onesime. And anyway, there were plenty of other girls he wanted to dance with.
It was sweltering in the little house. At the next pause in the music, Onesime stepped outside. Before he could close the door, Marie Piano came out too. The door closed and the night enveloped them. The music started up again but it was faint and indistinct, as though it came from another, happier time. The night was bright; the moon cast sharp shadows. The sky drew their attention upward. It felt as though the sheer magnificence of it might lift them both and carry them away. If only, thought Marie, it could take me away, take us both away.
“You’re a good dancer,” said Onesime. “So is Jacques.”
“Remember that drawing you did of me?” said Marie. “You promised to let me see it. But you never did.”
“I will,” said Onesime. “Someday. I’m not happy with it.” He went silent. He had never really spoken to her very much. “I heard you sing last summer.”
“You did?” she said. “Where?”
“I can’t remember where it was,” said Onesime.
“I don’t sing that much anymore,” she said. Then she suddenly sounded serious. “Where was it?”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does matter,” she said.
“It’s just that it was so beautiful.” He could hear the melody. It had stayed anchored in his memory, so that even now, a year later, it rose to the surface. “It was…” He tried to hum a little bit.
“Schubert,” said Marie. “I sang that at the Count de Beaumont’s. I learned it in German. But you weren’t there.”
“It must have been somewhere else,” said Onesime.
“You were there, weren’t you?”
“No … yes.”
“Outside.”
“Yes.” They were silent for a while. “I’ve wondered,” said Onesime, “what was it like to sing for Germans?”
“Most of the guests were French,” said Marie.
“But what was it like?”
“There was only the colonel,” said Marie.
“But what was it like?”
“It was like singing,” said Marie. “It was music.”
“It was beautiful,” said Onesime again, and looked away. Marie took his head in her hands and kissed him.
“What was the war like?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” he said. How could he explain it? It was terrifying and exhilarating and stupid and sad and every other feeling rolled together. “In a way, it was like being in love,” he said finally. “It was completely confusing. I still don’t know what it did to me; what it took away from me and what it left behind; what part of me is gone and what is still here. I didn’t lose any physical part of my
self, not my legs or anything, like Léon. But I left something big there.”
“And now you’re trying to get it back,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen you,” she said.
“You’ve seen me?”
“Making your rounds at night.”
“No you haven’t,” said Onesime. He turned angrily to face her. He had done everything to make sure no one ever saw him. “When? Where did you see me?”
Marie smiled and took his hands in hers. “What were you doing at the Count de Beaumont’s that night? What were you looking for?”
The only believable explanation Onesime could come up with was truth. But how could he explain it? Before he could say anything, Marie Piano said, “I have a pistol.”
“What?”
“I have a pistol. A German pistol.”
“Let’s walk,” said Onesime. He walked so quickly, she almost had to run to keep up. He led her down the long driveway and past Madame Anquetille’s house and most of the way to the main road before he spoke again.
“How do you … why do you have a pistol?”
“I stole it. From a German.” She laughed lightly as though she were talking about taking a cookie from her mother’s kitchen. “From the colonel actually. The first colonel, when he was transferred back to Germany. I was in the bar at the Cheval Blanc when he was leaving. His things were being carried out and loaded into a truck. There was a lot of confusion. The pistol was on a side table with some other things. I slipped it under my jacket. I didn’t even think about it. I just did it.”
“Jesus,” said Onesime. “Do you know how dangerous that is? Why did you do it?”
Marie laughed again. “Why? In case I have to kill someone,” she said.
“I was at the count’s that night. But I didn’t know about the party ahead of time. I went there to go into his cave. You go into the cave beside the back gate.”
“Why?”
“To see where it goes.”
“Where does it go?”
“It goes to my grandfather’s cave. The Germans are using it.”
“Really? What for?”
“Storage. Ammunition. Artillery shells.”
“Will you show me?”
Onesime spread his jacket on the ground, and he and Marie sat down on it. She hugged her knees to her chest and looked at the sky long and hard. “Which direction is England?” she wondered.
“There,” said Onesime, and pointed in the direction of the moon. That very moment they heard a rumbling sound, as though his gesture had caused something, had summoned something. It got louder by the second. Then it was straight overhead. Airplanes. Lots of them. You could only glimpse shadows momentarily blotting out stars as they passed like ghosts.
“Bombers!” he said.
“English?”
“I don’t know. They must be,” he said. They were not the first bombers he had heard passing over in the night. But suddenly he felt such elation that he wanted to cry. He took Marie Piano in his arms and kissed her as hard as he could. And she kissed him back the same way, full of hope and elation and despair, all at the same time.
The Ninth Squadron out of Waddington had just attacked port facilities at Le Havre. They had damaged docks and shipyards and had managed a direct hit on some fuel storage tanks, which had erupted in a great ball of orange flame. There had been secondary explosions that leveled several buildings around the port, killing civilians. There had been surprisingly little antiaircraft fire during this particular attack. In fact, the bombing had gone so well that the commander had decided they should proceed to their secondary targets, which were the rail yards in Tours and nearby Saint-Pierre-des-Corps.
The rail yards in Tours were heavily damaged, as were those in Saint-Pierre, along with the nearby prison. There were a hundred dead in Tours and Saint-Pierre, including a few soldiers. Some inmates at the prison were also killed, including the brothers Antoine and Stephane Duquesne.
At first there was almost no antiaircraft fire, but then the world erupted. Three bombers were shot down. No one saw any of the crews bail out as the planes plunged to earth. The surviving bombers arrived back at Waddington just as the first pink of dawn was showing behind them.
* * *
After the most-recent issue of Liberation, everyone in Saint-Léon braced for the German response. But there was no response. Instead, the pressure seemed to abate. The change was palpable and, given the circumstances, ominous. Colonel Hollinger canceled his regular meetings with Mayor Schneider and all but disappeared from view. Lieutenant Ludwig as well. Lieutenant Essart and his Gestapo operation remained in Tours, apparently occupied with other matters. At the same time, military truck traffic in and out of Saint-Léon increased. Troops were seen being transported through Saint-Léon.
“Something is up,” said Jean.
“They’re going to hit us hard this time,” said Claude Melun. “That damn Liberation.” But nothing happened.
Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of Russia—had begun. Issue number 4 of Liberation informed the citizens of Saint-Léon that vast German armies were moving to the east. The Germans had secretly amassed more than a hundred divisions, over three million men, on the border with Russia, and on June 22 had launched a surprise attack. It was as though a volcano had rumbled to life just over the horizon. Nothing was different, and yet everything was different.
The German high command calculated that the occupation forces were more than sufficient to stabilize and secure France. Churchill was incapable of mounting an invasion any time soon. Moscow must be taken before the Russian winter set in. And so, over objections from Paris, the strength and utility of all military units were reassessed, and the redeployment of some forces began.
Colonel Hollinger was called to Tours. It had been decided, after careful assessment, that a reduction in force of 10 percent would not in any way impede his capacity to fulfill his mission. He argued vigorously. “I am already operating in a hostile environment,” he said. “Security is a big concern.”
“Have you had any clandestine or partisan activity?”
“We have a seditious pamphlet that regularly incites—”
General Wallenstein picked up a stack of papers from the table behind him and dropped it heavily in front of Hollinger. “Colonel,” he said, waving at the papers, “everyone has seditious leaflets to contend with. You will just have to adjust.”
As far as Colonel Hollinger was concerned, the only good thing to come out of the reduction in force was that Captain Hartenstein was gone. He had volunteered for the eastern front and was gone within a week.
* * *
Yves Renard had two strange visits that summer. The first came one sultry day in August. He was working at his desk. The overhead fan moved the air around but did little to cool him. The door to his office opened and a woman entered. Yves stood up. He did not recognize her immediately. She wore a light cotton dress, and the breeze from the fan caught her hair and tossed it about. “Monsieur Renard, I hope you are not too busy at the moment?”
“Not at all, madame.” He saw that it was Edith Troppard, the widow from Villedieu. He had not remembered that she was so pretty. “Please sit down, madame.” He motioned toward the chair. “What can I do for you.”
“I am sorry to bother you, monsieur. It is not exactly a police matter, but then again perhaps it is. You know I live not far from Stephanie and her mother. I spoke with them both. Stephanie said that I should talk to you.”
“Stephanie? I see,” said Yves. “Well then. I will help if I can, madame.”
“It is not something I need done, monsieur. It is … information that I have.”
Yves held up his hand in protest. “If it is information you have, Madame Troppard, perhaps you should talk to the German officers. Or to the Gestapo.”
She looked sharply at Yves before she spoke again. “I see,” she said finally. “You think that … you know about my friendship with Helmut Bü
chner.”
“Madame, I really do not think this is a matter that I should … a matter of concern to me. If you—”
“He’s dead, you know. Helmut Büchner. He’s dead.”
Yves did not speak. What could he say? Should she be comforted for the loss of her German lover? “Madame,” he said, and then nothing. He tried again. “Madame, perhaps the German officers—”
“He was executed. In Berlin. Ein Genickschuss. Do you know what that means, monsieur? A shot in the back of the neck. For conspiring to assassinate Hitler. He was guilty of course, if there is any guilt in that. They said he was being transferred when he left Saint-Léon, but it was only to be arrested. He was taken to Berlin, where he was tried—along with many others—and shot. They were all shot. That is what I came to tell you—that he was taken away and executed.”
“Madame, why are you telling me this? It is not a police matter.” Why did he keep saying this? Why couldn’t he think of anything else to say?
“No, of course. I know. It is not a police matter. But people should know it, you should know it, everyone should know what they did, what they do.”
Yves looked at Madame Troppard. “What can I do for you, madame? I do not see how I…” He could not make himself finish the sentence. “I am very sorry, madame,” said Yves.
“I want it known,” she said. “How he died. They are monsters, these people. But then again they are not all monsters. Still, it should be known. We should all know. That is all I wanted to say, monsieur. Thank you.” She stood and held out her hand. Yves stood up so quickly that he nearly knocked over his chair. He took her hand. She smiled, thanked him once more, and left.
“Why did you tell her to see me, of all people?” Yves asked Stephanie that evening.
“She is heartbroken,” said Stephanie. “And she is angry. She wants everyone to know. I think she would like to do something. To have her revenge. Of course she didn’t say so, but I think that is what she would like. She has loved two men, and the Germans have killed them both.”
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