The Resistance

by Peter Steiner

  “And everyone?” said Louis.

  Yves smiled.

  Once as they walked out of town across the Dême, Yves paused at a small expanse of rubble. “There used to be a tavern here. A rough place.” Farther on they reached a broad, open field. “This is a beautiful spot. Saint-Léon is there, just out of sight.” On the way back they went past the Beaumont château. Louis stood on tiptoe by the front gate and tried to see inside, while Yves kept walking.

  Louis came to believe there was a theme to these walks. “It’s as though he’s telling me a story without actually telling it,” he said to Solesme. They were sitting in Louis’s kitchen with their feet by the woodstove.

  “Do you know what the story is about?” she said.

  “The war. I think maybe he’s showing me places where important things happened. For instance, he stopped at a spot by the Dême. But all he would say was that there had been a tavern there.”

  “Le Pêcheur? Was that it?”

  “He didn’t say. And he didn’t say what happened there. If anything.” Louis paused. “Maybe he’s guarding secrets,” he said. “Guilty secrets.”

  “Or,” said Solesme, “maybe he’s protecting someone. Or he’s protecting the events. Or maybe the facts, the events themselves, are too complicated to talk about. Or too confusing.”

  “It’s as though putting things into words means you get it wrong.”

  “Yes. Something like that,” said Solesme. “Certain things.”

  * * *

  Stephanie telephoned Louis. “Yves and I would like to invite you for dinner. Jean and Isabelle will be there.”

  It was early March. But the day had been sunny and warm, and Louis decided he would go on foot. Renard and Isabelle could give him a ride home. Louis could smell the freshly turned earth as he walked. In some fields it looked like the wheat was already growing. Birds were sweeping busily about the darkening sky.

  Louis shook Yves’s hand. He kissed Stephanie on both cheeks. He pulled a bottle from the pocket of his overcoat. “Some wine,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Stephanie.

  Renard and Isabelle arrived a little while later.

  They ate dinner in the kitchen at the long table by the fire. Stephanie set a large bowl on the table. Everyone leaned forward to take in the sight and the smell of the spaghetti with its creamy sauce of peppers and sausage. They scooped it onto their plates, and it disappeared quickly. Then came a salad of tiny greens, then a pear tart.

  They talked about the feeling of spring in the air, about Stephanie already getting garden greens, about the baby that Isabelle was expecting. Isabelle had not been sick at all. She was feeling very good. “And looking radiant,” said Louis. Everyone agreed.

  Somehow the Paris student revolt of 1968 came up. It was now six years later, and they debated whether or not it had served any useful purpose. Oddly enough, everyone deferred to Louis’s opinion, since he had worked in Washington and therefore must understand politics. Louis tried to persuade them that a career in politics probably made his opinion less, not more, reliable than other opinions. And anyway, in the end, politics was essentially incomprehensible. “People in high places act as though they know what they’re doing. But they don’t. They are groping about in the dark.”

  “That’s right,” said Yves. He pronounced the words with such authority that the room fell silent.

  Yves himself looked startled. He had not meant to state an opinion so definitively. And yet he felt compelled to finish his thought. “Even if people know what they’re doing,” he said, “they can’t guess what others are doing or will do. And that is why in politics—I’m talking about the student unrest of ’sixty-eight—events always take over in unexpected and unpredictable ways. Things come alive on their own when they shouldn’t.” He went no further. He closed his mouth tightly. His lips turned white from being pressed together. It was clear to everyone that Yves was not really talking about 1968.

  Why Yves chose this moment to say what he had never said, to speak about what had until now remained unspeakable was anybody’s guess. He was not old or infirm, although maybe he still knew somehow that he did not have long to live. Louis had sensed during their walks that a story was building, and now it was trying to find its way out.

  “There were twelve murders,” Yves said. He smiled faintly and shrugged his shoulders as if to apologize for bringing it up. “At least, that’s what I call them. Of course, there was so much death then. You couldn’t even tell what was the war and what was murder. Anyway, it’s almost impossible to imagine now, even for me. My memories seem like something left over from a terrible and impossible dream.

  “There was death everywhere. All twelve of those who died were maquis—resisters; they were operating outside the law. They knew they were risking death. Maybe their deaths were even inevitable. I’ve tried to tell myself that sometimes.

  “These twelve … I was the only policeman.… Some of my friends, some of them … An air drop was expected.… Finally, I was arrested.” It was as if Yves were trying one door and then another, looking for a way back into the past. He had thought about it almost constantly, but he hadn’t spoken of it ever.

  Particular memories surfaced like long-forgotten bombs that had burrowed into the earth but failed to explode. Until now. The arrival of the Germans: “Orderly, efficient. A big sedan first. Then trucks. No one was in the streets. The whole town watching.

  “There was that picture of Hitler in the colonel’s office. I knew nothing would ever be the same again. Four years,” he said after a long pause. “One night in 1944—a dark night, no moon—the twelve…” Yves peered upward through tears. “I shouldn’t … have.…” Stephanie held his hand in both of hers. “It seems clear now; it didn’t then. What was to be done? What would save France? Who betrayed her? Did it matter? Did it even matter?…”

  Yves decided to stop talking. And, having so decided, he started up again, torn between the silence in which he had sealed his memories and the need to bring them all to light. He thought saying them would make them easier to bear. But it didn’t. Stephanie stroked his hand. Louis and Renard and Isabelle sat motionless, fearful that even the slightest movement might cause him to stop for good, and fearful, at the same time, that he would continue.

  “We were listening to the radio. I was waiting for a signal, and then I heard it. Then I heard another one. The enchanted trout still eats her young. And then again. They always said everything twice. There was supposed to be a parachute drop. But I ended up waiting with fascists who were going to kill my friends.

  “I saw them coming out of the shadows—Onesime, Jacques, Marie Piano, Anne Marie. The rest. One by one, gathering for the airdrop that wasn’t coming, that was an ambush. They were only faint shadows in the dark, but I knew them. I recognized them. They were looking up into the sky, but there were no planes.

  “They started running and the militia started shooting. People fell everywhere. No one screamed or cried out. They just fell. Collapsed. Onesime. Marie Piano, Anne Marie—Oni’s mother—Jacques, all of them running in every direction with the militia shooting. Then everything went silent again. They were all dead.”

  Yves put both hands over his face. His body heaved with a great silent sob. He sat with his face covered for a long time. Finally he lowered his hands.

  “The Germans arrested me. I knew they would. I was sure they were going to kill me. Instead they sent me to prison. I don’t know why they did that. I wanted them to kill me. They thought I was a maquis. What was I? What side was I on?” He gripped Stephanie’s hand and searched her eyes as though he might find the answer to this strange, desperate question there. “I was with … but I …

  “The Germans shackled me and put me on a prison train to Germany. And when the Russians liberated the camp, they put me on a train to Russia.”

  As soon as Renard and Isabelle got home, Renard took a pen and paper and wrote down everything he could remember of what his father had
said. He organized it just as though he were writing up a report of crime. “June 1940 (?) Yves Renard—policeman (21), called to Cheval Blanc to meet with German commandant (Colonel Büchner) and SS Lieutenant Ludwig. Also there: Mayor Michel Schneider; town council.” He wrote “1944” and the names of the murdered, those his father had named: Onesime Josquin, Marie Livrist called Marie Piano, Anne Marie Josquin, Jacques Courtois. He wrote until he couldn’t think of anything more to write.

  XXIV.

  THE NEXT MORNING Renard took a new file folder and labeled it: COLLABORATION/RESISTANCE. He put it in the top drawer of the file cabinet so that he would see it every time he opened the cabinet. Investigating the killing of Onesime Josquin and the others would not be like investigating an ordinary case. Historical truth of the sort Renard was pursuing was, as Louis had said more than once, and as his own father had implied, primarily an act of imagination. Like an archaeologist, you guessed at a likely spot and then dusted at it with a tiny brush until, if you were lucky, something revealed itself. Except, where were the likely spots? And if something revealed itself, what was it? What did it mean?

  Renard searched the town hall records. Those from the time of the German occupation had been removed. Even innocent papers like ration allotments and minutes of town meetings were gone. No one knew where they had been taken or by whom. And when there was a scrap of paper from back then, figuring out what it was, deciphering its arcane references, even figuring out who had signed it were all but impossible.

  He tried to talk to Stephanie, but she did not want to talk.

  “But you were there,” he said.

  “I was. And I don’t want to talk about it. I didn’t then and I still don’t. The times were difficult and painful. People had to do terrible things. We all did. Your father was taken from me. He was gone for nearly five years.”

  “Why was he taken?”

  “There was no reason.”

  “There was no reason?”

  “No reason was given. He was taken away the day after they were killed. That was all I ever knew.”

  “How did you know he was taken away?”

  “Because he didn’t come home. That is how I knew.” Stephanie turned away for a moment and then turned back to face her son. “Stop asking me these questions, Jean. Let it be. Stop asking. It doesn’t do any good. There are no answers.”

  * * *

  “Maybe she’s right,” said Isabelle. “Maybe you should leave it alone.”

  “I can’t,” said Renard.

  “I know,” said Isabelle.

  “There are the names in Papa’s story and in the leaflet. And there are five Duquesnes, two Arnauds, and two Chenus in the telephone directory. I have to knock on some doors.”

  The five Duquesnes included the three surviving Duquesne children and their offspring. All three children were now in their forties. All three wept when Renard asked them about their long dead brothers.

  “And don’t forget our parents,” said Fanny Piqueoiseau, the youngest child. She had been twelve when they were executed. Fanny covered her eyes, trying to block out the memory of their bodies lying on the village square.

  Why did this have to be brought up now, thirty-some years later? Why make them go through it all over again? They were not at all comforted by the thought of unknown culprits being brought to justice.

  “Culprits? What culprits?” said Fanny. “The Germans were the culprits. Anyway, it won’t bring them back, will it?”

  “What do you remember from that time?” said Renard.

  “What do I remember? I’ll show you.” Fanny left the room and came back with a framed photograph of a smiling family. “There they are, Monsieur Renard.” She pointed as she named them. “Stephane, Antoine, Maman, Papa. And François, Paul, and me. 1939. That is what I remember.”

  Renard looked at the faces gazing out from the picture. “I’m sorry, madame.”

  “Then why bring this all up again?” said Gilles Piqueoiseau. He stepped forward and put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “What’s the point, Renard?”

  “Justice,” said Renard. He regretted having said it as soon as it was out of his mouth.

  “Justice? For who? They’re all dead, the good and the bad.”

  “Not all of them are dead,” said Renard. He thought of Yves. “And even if they were, we have to know what happened.”

  “Maybe you have to know what happened. I’m sorry, Renard. We can’t tell you anything.”

  Renard worked his way through the “witnesses,” as he called them, one by one. He asked each one what they knew from that time, what they remembered, what various references in the handbill meant, whether they knew anyone he should talk to. And each time he came away empty-handed.

  Like all the others before her, Janine Chenu, the widow of Charles Chenu, the son of the long-dead town councilman, had nothing to say. “I can’t tell you anything, monsieur,” she said. “I lived through it. But I don’t know anything.”

  “Do you remember your father-in-law?”

  “Barely,” she said. “I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him then. I didn’t even know Charles.”

  “You weren’t married or engaged?”

  “Oh, no, monsieur. Not until after the war.”

  “Is that you, madame?” said Renard. A framed photograph on the center of the mantel had caught his eye. It showed a young woman with two young men, their arms around one another, leaning toward the camera and laughing.

  “Yes, monsieur,” said Janine, without turning to look.

  “May I say, madame, you were a beautiful girl.…”

  “Were, inspector? That is not very gallant,” said Janine. She smiled slightly.

  “A beautiful girl is different from a beautiful woman, madame. I was about to say, and you have become a beautiful woman.”

  “Liar,” said Janine, with a laugh.

  Renard stepped up to look at the photo. “Is one of these men your late husband?”

  “Oh, no, Monsieur Renard. One is an old boyfriend, the other his brother. That was before the war.”

  “What became of them, madame?”

  “I had other boyfriends. And then I met Charles,” she said.

  “And yet you have this photo standing in a place of honor, madame.”

  “Yes, it is a good photo, don’t you think? And, well, he, Jean, the one on the right”—she reached out as though she were going to caress the photo—“was my first love. You know how first love is, monsieur.”

  “I understand, madame. And was that here, in Saint-Léon?”

  “Oh, yes, they were from here.”

  “And are they still living?”

  “No, monsieur. That is, Jean moved away after the war. I don’t know where. I doubt that he’s still alive. His brother—Onesime—was killed in the war.”

  “Would that be Onesime Josquin, madame?”

  “Onesime Josquin,” said Janine, and turned away from the photo. “And Jean Josquin. Yes, monsieur. Jean and Onesime. Jean and Onesime.” She repeated the names as though they were the refrain in a song.

  XXV.

  JEAN JOSQUIN WAS ALIVE. He lived not thirty kilometers from Janine Chenu in a small cottage on the other side of the village of Bueil-en-Touraine. He was weeding his garden when he heard a car coming up the gravel lane. He stopped and leaned on his hoe and watched the car approach.

  Renard stopped the car, got out, and raised his hand in greeting. Jean returned the greeting.

  “Bonjour, monsieur. I am Jean Renard, the police inspector from Saint-Léon.”

  Renard offered his hand and Jean Josquin took it. It was a strong, rough hand. “You look like your father,” he said.

  “Ah, then you know my father,” said Renard.

  “Is he still living? Yes, I knew who he was,” said Jean.

  “Yes, he is still alive. It is because of my father that I’ve come to see you, monsieur.”

  Jean Josquin remained silent.

  “May I ask
you some questions, monsieur?”

  Jean still remained silent. It was as though he regretted having spoken at all.

  “I would like to ask you about the war.”

  Again Jean remained silent. Then, as Renard was about to speak again, Jean said, “Why?”

  “Because, monsieur, I am investigating the annihilation, the murder, of the resistance in Saint-Léon, and I was hoping you could help me.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Jean.

  “Because you don’t know about it, monsieur?”

  “That’s right. I don’t know anything about it. I cannot help you, Monsieur Renard. I’m sorry.”

  “Do you have other family members living around here, monsieur?”

  “Here?” Jean made a gesture toward the fields in front of his house.

  “Around Saint-Léon,” he said.

  “No,” said Jean. “My sister died a few years ago. No one is left.”

  “No brothers?” said Renard.

  “My brother died in the war. On the front. He was a soldier. He was killed in the war in the Ardennes Forest.”

  “He died in battle, monsieur?”

  “He died in battle,” said Jean.

  “But I had heard he came back from the war.”

  “No, monsieur. He died in battle, Oni did.”

  * * *

  Renard found Louis sitting on the terrace of the Hôtel de France. Louis had waved at him, and Renard took it as an invitation to sit down for a cup of coffee. He took out a cigarette. “Tell me what you know about those little pistols,” he said.

  “You know,” said Louis, “in the United States, smoking is becoming less and less acceptable. The evidence that it is bad for you is overwhelming.”

  “Ah? Is that so?” said Renard, lighting up. “Is that what brought you to France?”

  Louis smiled. “It will happen here too, you know,” he said.