by Paul Watkins
Le Goff jerked his head in our direction. “Those two. Those friends of the Boches.”
I stopped looking at Le Goff and started looking at the Germans. They said nothing. Only watched. They seemed to have drawn closer together, as if waiting for some sign of agreement between them, before they threw the old man through the window.
“We’re all collaborators,” said Ivan. He said it so that everyone could hear.
“I’m no goddamned collaborator!” boomed Le Goff.
“You drink my coffee,” said Ivan.
“So?”
“Where do you think I get it? From a company that has a permit to sell coffee from the German authorities in Paris.”
“Well, no more coffee for me!” Le Goff looked around, the cigarette burning close to his lips, although he didn’t seem to notice.
“And bread? And milk? And the hot water in your house and the food you buy at the market? Everything you do and buy and the cigarette in that grubby mouth of yours is with the permission of the German government. France is a defeated nation. We are occupied. And you sitting there ranting about two people who are just getting on with their lives is”—he seemed to stumble with his words—“is not”—in his frustration, Ivan banged his fist down on the copper counter so hard it left a dent—“is not welcome here!”
Nobody moved or spoke. The silence lasted forever.
Slowly, Le Goff raised his arms from under the table, but where his hands should have been were shiny metal clips, with which he took the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it in the ashtray. “Mot de Cambronne,” he croaked out.
The whole room seemed to sigh.
Just then, no one had much to say about Ivan’s speech, but over the next couple of weeks, the Dimitri became the most popular bar in the neighborhood. Soldiers and people who hated the soldiers and women with babies and more Legion men than before came. Le Goff still showed up and minded his own business, never looking our way, as if we were a moving blind spot in his eye. Even a few German officers, Knight’s crosses at their throats and the badges of close combat on their chests, poked their heads in to see what was so special about this place.
I became what I had once taken for granted, but never would again—a regular at the Café Dimitri.
* * *
I HADN’T SEEN FLEURY for three days. I assumed he was busy at the gallery. I was just starting to wonder what had happened to him when Madame La Roche appeared at my door, telling me he had been home these last two nights. Then I knew something was wrong.
I went straight over to his gallery. It was a Saturday morning. As I rounded the corner of the Rue des Archives, I saw immediately that the place was closed. The windows had steel curtains pulled down in front of them. The accordion gate was drawn across the door and padlocked.
I wondered if he had run away. I didn’t know whether to feel bad for thinking it, or foolish for not having thought of it sooner. I walked up to the gate and took hold of the padlock. It was heavy bronze with a metal slide that covered the keyhole. I turned the lock over and saw, hammered deep into the orangy-green bronze, a circle in which were the letters RZM. Next to it, more deeply impressed, were SS lightning bolts.
The mug of tea I’d had before I left home now spilled into the back of my throat. I turned around and stared into the street. It was empty. Sunlight reflected off closed windows as if they were blinking at me.
I ran to the German Embassy. I didn’t think I was in any danger from them. If they had wanted to pick me up, they would have done it by now. I ran down the concrete steps to Behr’s office and found him sitting at his typewriter, pecking the keys with his index fingers. “I just stopped by Fleury’s gallery,” I gasped out. “It was all closed up.”
“Yes,” he answered. “I thought you’d know about that by now.”
“Know what?” I asked.
“He’s been taken away.”
“Taken where?”
“Off to Drancy,” said Behr.
“What’s Drancy?” I asked.
“It’s a railway junction on the outskirts of Paris. Where they take all the Jews before shipping them out of the country.” Behr eyed me. “I thought you’d be pleased about this.”
“Why the hell would I be pleased? And what makes you think he’s Jewish?”
“I thought you wanted Fleury out of the way, so we could deal directly with you. When I mentioned it to Abetz, he said he thought it might be a good idea. He was pleased with the Cranach you brought him. He wanted to find a way to get rid of Fleury. So he asked me if the name ‘Fleury’ had something to do with flowers. I mean, I didn’t know what he was talking about at first. But then Abetz said that the German for flower is Blume and that Blum is a Jewish name, and fleur is French for flower, so Fleury was probably Jewish. Then he asked me if I thought that was correct. I had no idea, so I didn’t say anything either way. The next thing I know, I get a call from Abetz to have the SS pick up Fleury at his gallery. I have no idea whether Fleury is Jewish or not, but if it’s Abetz’s word against Fleury’s, the SS aren’t going to care what Fleury has to say for himself.”
“Get him back,” I blurted out. “I said some of the paintings, not all of them! If you want to see any more stuff, get him back now!”
“But Abetz was doing you a favor—” he began.
I grabbed the phone receiver off its cradle and stuck it in Behr’s face. “Call Drancy,” I said. “Get him off the train.”
Behr seemed frozen at first, as if the request was so strange that he could not comprehend it. Then slowly he took hold of the receiver. “I want you to know I’m only doing this because Abetz says I have to keep you happy.”
“Hallo?” someone was saying at the other end. “Hallo?”
“Drancy,” said Behr. He rolled the “r” in his throat and pronounced it “Drantsy.” “Bahnhof Drantsy,” he said. He spoke for a while in German, sitting back in his chair, the receiver tucked under his chin. He wrote something on his blotter with a freshly sharpened pencil. “Dreitzehn Uhr. Verstanden. Danke.” Then he hung up. He looked at his watch. “The transport leaves in one hour.”
I lunged for the door.
“Wait!” Behr called after me. “You can’t just walk up and take him off the train. He’s a prisoner, for God’s sake. The SS have him now. You can’t get anywhere with them.”
“Well, what can I do?” I asked. “Please, you’ve got to do something to help.”
“I suppose I could type something up,” said Behr hesitantly. “But look, you’ve only got an hour. Less than that now. You can’t get out to Drancy in an hour.”
“Get me a car,” I said. I was standing by the door. I had to stop myself from running out of the building and trying to sprint all the way to Drancy. It would have done no good, but I couldn’t stand there doing nothing for much longer.
“I couldn’t get you a car,” replied Behr, “even if I wanted to. I haven’t got the authority.”
“Type up a note,” I told him. “Please.”
Behr turned slowly toward the machine. “Abetz is not going to like this.” He cranked out the document he had been typing. He pulled a fresh sheet from a drawer and rolled it in. Then he sat back and scratched at his chin. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Say anything!” I shouted. “Just do it now.”
In the rooms down the hall, the typing stopped. Then, after a moment, it started up again.
Clumsily, Behr began tapping out a document. He mumbled out the words as he typed them. “There,” he said. “That should do it.”
I reached over and tore it out of the machine. I held it up. “But this isn’t on embassy stationery,” I said. “I could have done this at home. How are they supposed to know it’s official when I show it to them?”
“That part I can fix.” Behr reached out for the paper. He picked up a heavy stamp from the desk, banged it on an ink pad, and brought it crashing down on the bottom of the page. When he lifted the stamp, I saw a slightly smudged
eagle and swastika with some German writing underneath. “These days,” said Behr, “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t get anywhere without papers.”
I took the paper and dashed up the steps to the corner. I went into a café and phoned Dietrich, using the number on the card he had sent with his invitation to the embassy party. I got transferred three times and finally Dietrich was on the other end. I explained to him what had happened.
“And you want me to get him off the transport?” asked Dietrich.
“Yes,” I said.
“I’ll have to pull some strings,” he said.
“Can you do it?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” he said.
I saw a streetcar coming. It flashed blue sparks along its overhead rails.
“I have to go,” I told him and hung up.
The streetcar was heading north, which the conductor said was in the right direction for Drancy, so I got on it. At the Gare du Nord, I changed to a bus. It was crowded and I had to stand, holding on to a bar above my head. It was raining outside. When the bus stopped to let people on and off, the smell of the damp came into the bus. The windows fogged up. The windshield wipers clunked back and forth in front of the driver.
I looked at my watch every minute and was making myself crazy so I took it off and put it in my pocket.
At last, I came within sight of the great corrugated iron rooftops of the Drancy marshaling yards. Rails ran alongside the road, twisting over each other and curving away toward the station.
At the next stop, I jumped off the bus.
I could see the station in the distance, past a huge expanse of tracks and then the long concrete platform with a green-painted roof, slick and glowing in the rain. There was a locomotive pulled up at the platform, with three cars behind it. Separating the road from the tracks was a high fence with barbed wire at the top.
I started climbing the fence. I wasn’t thinking. I just climbed. I reached the barbed wire and clambered over the top of it, tearing my jacket, and dropped to the gravel on the other side.
I ran toward the stationhouse. Rain was coming down hard. I slipped on the oily wooden spacers that separated the tracks. The tops of the rails were shiny from use. I was already out of breath and soaked.
The train began to pull out of the station, engine chugging, steam rising from its smokestack. I pulled Behr’s piece of paper out of my pocket and started waving it over my head. I kept running in the direction of the platform.
Someone was moving toward me from the stationhouse. He waved his arm. He had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder. Through my sweat and the rain, I could make out shin-length black boots and a helmet.
I ran toward him, waving the paper and shouting for him to stop the train.
The wagon’s wheels clunked from one set of track to another as it headed out.
The soldier unshouldered his gun. He was shouting. Keeping the gun at waist height, he leveled it at me and kept walking.
I’d never had a gun pointed at me before. I could see the black eye of the end of the barrel. I flinched, and a second later, I tripped over a rail and fell hard on the track spacers. Over my own breathing, I could hear the soldier but had no idea what he was saying.
I lay there gasping, facedown, holding up the piece of paper, which sagged over my fingers. I could smell the creosote that coated the spacers. The rust on the rails smeared against my clothes. Smears of blood and oil mixed with the torn-up skin of my palms.
The soldier’s boots crunched over the gravel, coming closer. He stopped right in front of me. “Betreten verboten,” he said. That was what he had been shouting the whole time.
I raised my head and saw the leather of his boots and the bumps of hobnails on the soles. I held up the soggy piece of paper.
He crouched down slowly. The black submachine gun rested on his knees. It had a long, straight magazine and a folding stock. He took the paper from my hand, unfolded it and read it. The gray-green steel of his helmet hid his eyes. I looked at the rough wool of his uniform and the pebbly finish on his uniform buttons. Only now did I feel pain in my knees from where I had fallen against a rail.
“Transport vier,” he said. Then he spoke to me in French. “Transport number four left yesterday,” he said.
Exhausted, I let my head fall forward. “I thought it was leaving today.”
“Transport five left today. About an hour ago. Whoever wrote this got the number wrong.”
“What was that train at the station?”
“A work crew. Going out to fix the rails. That’s all. Just a work crew.”
I rose up to my knees, then sat back on my haunches.
The soldier tilted his helmet back on his head. He had a thin face and pale blue eyes. His uniform was a little too big for him and he carried the Schmeisser like someone not used to carrying a gun.
We sat there on our haunches in the middle of all those rails in the pouring rain.
I had a strange feeling of standing far above myself. I was looking down from a great height at the maze of rails and the rain and the overflowing gutters of the station platform roof. I saw the two small figures that were me and the soldier. Then, just as suddenly, I was back inside myself again and looking through my tired, sweat-salted eyes.
He handed me back the piece of paper.
I balled it up in my fist and squeezed until drops of black-tinted water from the ink dripped out onto the tracks.
We got to our feet.
“You have to go,” he said. “It is forbidden.” Then he turned and walked away unhurriedly, lugging the burden of his gun, his long legs stepping carefully over the polished tracks.
I got back to the fence, climbed up over the barbed wire and dropped down to the street, jarring my knees. I stood waiting for the bus, with no idea when it would come again. My thoughts swung between anger and fear with the movement of a pendulum. The rain came down in sheets. There was no place to hide from it. No point in even trying.
* * *
BY THE TIME I reached my apartment, I felt sure I would never see Fleury again. I was exhausted, but knew I had to get out to the warehouse and tell Pankratov what had happened. I changed into some dry clothes and put my soaked wool coat back on, since it was the only coat I had.
I opened the door and was shocked to find Fleury standing there right in front of me. His clothes were dirty and torn and his hair was a mess. His shoes were gone and his socks were wet from walking through the rain. He smelled of sweat and piss. “Can I come in?” he asked.
He sat at my kitchen table and wept while he told what had happened.
Two plainclothes SS men had come for him at his gallery. They would not explain why they were arresting him, or even if this was an arrest. He was driven straight to Mont Valérien and put in a large cell with about fifty other people. There were men and women mixed together. There was not enough room for everyone to lie down so people took turns. There was a bucket in the corner, which had overflowed long before Fleury arrived. He was able to piece together that some of the prisoners were Jews, others former members of the Communist Party and people with records of petty crime. The first night, half the people in the room had their names called out and left. The only people remaining were Jews. Fleury told me he wasn’t Jewish, and neither was he a member of any political party, but he could think of any number of petty crimes of which he had been accused and never convicted. He didn’t know whether to stay where he was or summon a guard and explain the mistake. He decided to wait.
The next night, without having been fed, Fleury and the remaining people in the room were hustled down into the courtyard and searchlights were shone in their faces as their names were read off and they were piled into trucks. It was then that he had approached a guard, who told him to shut up and pushed him on toward the truck.
They were taken to Drancy and put straight into red military wagons which had barbed wire over the air vents. The cars were already overcrowded when they arrived. Fleury and the Mont V
alérien Jews were crammed in with the rest. He said he had expected the train to start moving immediately, but instead they were left there all night.
In the morning, the door was opened and his name was called out. He was driven back to Mont Valérien and returned to the room, which by now had a new set of people waiting inside.
He was called out of the room six hours later and found Dietrich’s driver, a man named Grimm, waiting for him down in the courtyard. Fleury was driven back to the Rue Descalzi and arrived home only a few minutes after I did.
I boiled some water and cooked a turnip I had been saving for a meal. I mashed it up and then used the water to make a drink. Fleury ate some and I ate what he left.
I told Fleury about Abetz’s decision to have him arrested and about my call to Dietrich.
“It’s my own fault,” he said. “I underestimated them. And I think, now that I’ve been to Mont Valérien, that we have all underestimated them.” Then he just sat there at the table, eventually falling asleep with his head on his folded arms.
I put a blanket over him and went to bed. When I woke up, just before dawn, he was gone, back to his own place, and the blanket was neatly folded on the chair.
* * *
TOMBEAU CALLED FOR ME the next day. I met him on a walkway by the Seine, where old men in berets fished for carp with long bamboo poles.
Tombeau walked with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, wooden-soled shoes knocking the stones. Already the heels were worn down.
I told him about what had happened to Fleury.
“Is he going to crack up on us?” asked Tombeau.
“Is that all you care about?” I fired back.
“It’s important,” said Tombeau.
“If he hasn’t cracked by now,” I said, trying to remain calm, “I don’t suppose he will.”
“He’d better not,” replied Tombeau. “There’s too much riding on this now.”
A breeze blew down the Seine, rattling the branches of the trees.
I stopped walking. Words had been taking shape inside my head ever since I saw Fleury standing at my door, terrified and filthy. The anger and the outrage which had eluded me before was here now, sifting like grit through my blood. “I can’t do this anymore,” I said.