Hunting Ground

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Such as?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Merde, how should I know? A painting. Can’t you understand what a place like this costs? Can’t you understand that the price of everything we might sell is down?’

  ‘Either of the Lautrecs in your bedroom would fetch two hundred forty thousand francs at least,’ commented Marcel dryly.

  Vuitton glanced at his wife. Henri-Philippe looked as if he had swallowed something he shouldn’t have but didn’t want the hostess to know.

  ‘The dancers?’ exclaimed Jules, the argument bound to flare into absolute outrage now. ‘How could I possibly sell those?’

  ‘Quite easily,’ said Marcel, ‘but they would leave shadows on the walls to remind you of the loss.’

  He knew—oh, how he knew my husband, almost as well as I, if not better. The sweaty red silk kerchief was still knotted about his swarthy throat. The bristles were still there under the chin and on the cheeks.

  Subdued, Marcel had hardly spoken a word at the table. He had been short of money and had tried to borrow without success. Now I understood his outburst perfectly, or so I thought at the time.

  ‘Of course,’ he shrugged, ‘there’s another matter. Perhaps you should ask your charming wife about it.’

  The smile from Jules was swift and unkind, the looks from the Vuittons of broken glass. ‘What did you do with it, Lily?’ he asked.

  ‘With what?’ I managed.

  ‘The jewel box.’

  Jean-Guy, that brooch … ‘I don’t know what you mean. What jewel box? Your mother’s? It’s locked up in the bedroom, in the bottom drawer of that armoire your father bought.’

  There was only the two of us now, one at either end of that table, the faces of the others but a blur to me. ‘You know very well what I mean,’ he said. ‘Where is it?’

  I shrugged, gestured with my hands, and tried to lie my way out of it, then foolishly said, ‘What box? What jewellery? Is this something you’ve hidden away and tried to keep from me?’

  He smiled again, triumphantly now, but then let it fade, and I knew, as he glanced at the Vuittons, exactly how much he resented my intrusion into his affairs and theirs.

  ‘It was in the attic, Lily. Some bits and pieces my father gave to Angélique Morin.’

  ‘His mistress!’ I said, wondering what the hell the Vuittons had to do with it?

  Jules ran an agitated hand through his hair and then let me have it, ‘Yes! The woman who meant more to him than my mother ever could.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I want it back. All of it, Lily. If there’s to be any selling to pay the taxes or whatever, I’ll be the one to make that decision.’

  ‘And myself? Don’t I have some say?’

  ‘It’s not your concern. What I do with my family’s home and finances is my affair and mine alone. To put it bluntly, it’s none of you business. Jean-Guy will inherit everything.’

  I was shocked. ‘And Marie? Does she get nothing? Would you give everything to your son and nothing to your daughter for fear she would marry and someday inherit it all should Jean-Guy die? God forbid such cruelty. In a father who should care, it’s shameful.’

  ‘Lily, I want the jewellery. What did you do with it?’

  ‘Me? Pah! I know nothing. Ask them—ask your friends. Ask Marcel here. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he was short of money.’

  At an urgent knock, one of the nurses entered, saying, ‘Dr. Laurier, excuse me, please, but …’

  ‘Well, what is it?’ asked Dr. Laurier. ‘I told you not to bother us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but there’s an urgent call from Paris, form an Inspector Gaétan Dupuis. He’s asking if we have a patient by the name of Lily de St-Germain.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Two thirty-seven.’

  ‘Tell him to call back at a decent hour. There’s no one available to talk to him at present.’

  ‘He won’t take no for an answer.’

  ‘Then tell him we don’t have any patients by that name.’

  The nurse leaves us and Dr. Laurier says, ‘Would you like me to make us some coffee? I’d offer a cigarette, but Zimmermann has said they’re out of the question.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Thanks for listening.’ She’s so polite, so calm, has such a soft voice, but are we to avoid Dupuis like the plague?

  ‘We’re they all killed?’ she asks.

  ‘Not all of them, no.’

  ‘Jules—your husband?’

  ‘Jules wasn’t killed.’

  ‘Marcel?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you. I simply don’t know.’

  ‘But not your husband and not the Vuittons? Lily, exactly what have you in mind?’

  ‘Nothing. I simply want to go home so that I can remember how it was.’

  ‘But you’re burdened with guilt?’

  ‘Because I survived when others who were far more worthy didn’t. Because there are things I did for which I’m ashamed.’

  ‘You desperately need help. You know this, don’t you?’

  ‘What I need most is to remember. You see, they robbed us of everything else in the camps. They even tried to steal our memories, to ridicule them, to debase them, to grind us into the ground. I can’t lose my memories, not until …’

  ‘Until what?’

  ‘Never mind. Look, the least you can do is leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you. I never did! It’s far too hard for me. So hard, I feel like I’m breaking to pieces!’

  It’s an outburst I regret, but she reaches for my hand anyway and says she’s sorry. ‘Now that we know your name, there’s no need for us to slip you across the frontier. The French Embassy will provide you with a temporary identity card and passport.’

  ‘I never had a French passport. I wasn’t considered a citizen. Besides, I’d sooner slip across. No one else is to know exactly where I am. Not for a bit.’

  ‘This Dupuis?’ she asks.

  Sacré nom de nom, she’s so innocent! ‘Yes, him, especially.’

  ‘And the Vuittons?’

  ‘Them also, and my husband.’

  ‘And Tommy? What about him? How certain are you that he was killed?’

  ‘Very. There’s no question of it, nor that it was my fault. Me, I’m the only one who’s left.’

  ‘And Marcel—he’s a possibility, isn’t he?’

  She wants so much to offer hope, but hope is delusional. ‘Marcel might be alive. I really don’t know. We never could tell with him. There was always doubt in my mind. I’ll have to settle things about him later. As yet I’ve been unable to trace him.’

  I know she’s thinking I’ve made other phone calls and sent other little packages in the post—that black pasteboard I insisted on having, that piece of white chalk, but she doesn’t say this. ‘Is there more to that weekend you were telling me about?’ she asks.

  ‘A little.’

  She fidgets. She craves a cigarette almost as much as I do. ‘Dupuis will be here in the morning,’ she says. ‘He can catch a flight from Paris. Even with all the difficulties of travel, Zurich’s easy for such a one. He’ll have the authority.’

  ‘My things are packed. I need only to get dressed.’

  ‘You could tell me about it in the car. There’s a place I know of, a hut in the mountains. I could take you there until …’

  ‘They’d only kill you, Doctor. Just get me across the frontier. Please don’t try to alert the Swiss police. Dupuis will be watching for just such a thing and will only think you know more than you’re saying. Just let me deal with it myself.’

  ‘Strasbourg … We’d better cross over into Germany and head for there. At least, that way your transit papers will be of some use. I can simply say I’m returning you to the hospital in Bremen.’

  She’s so green it hurts. ‘Katyana crossed the frontier at a little place called Au-Dessus-de-la-Fin—Above the End. There are some fields and woods, rough farms, pastures. Tommy said she used a farmer named Marius Cadieux and his son. They’r
e good, reliable people. They never charged a sou for the service, and we used it several times. Not myself, you understand. Only some of the others and those they were taking with them. Packages, we used to call them. Downed British aircrew, escaped prisoners of war. Spain, too, of course.’

  It doesn’t take us long. The car is warm, the night still dark, and I know she’s debating whether to come with me and still thinks I’m suicidal.

  ‘Katyana … that’s Polish or Russian. Look, I really wish you’d confide in me, Lily. I’m certain we could help each other.’

  I stare emptily out the window towards the lake. There are houses in the darkness, moonlight shimmering on the water, trees, and more trees—sometimes I used to count them as the railway cattle trucks rumbled eastward with their cargoes of humanity. ‘Katyana was Nicki’s wife, but they came into things a little later on.’

  ‘And the rest of that weekend?’

  ‘Please slow down. Let’s open the windows and have a cigarette. Me, I’ll inhale the secondhand.’

  Rebuked, she begins to relax, and as I light a cigarette for her, she says, ‘Thanks. I needed this. So, okay, that weekend.’

  I begin it again. I remember it as it all was, my sister, the memory of her and of Pincevent. Barges plied the river. The Bugatti touring coupé Jules loved to drive was parked beside the economical two-door Renault I had forced him to buy in 1937. The night before, he hadn’t even come to bed.

  Janine was sitting on the sand, holding Marie between her knees. In the palm of her hand, there was a scraper, a small flint tool that had once been used to clean and prepare reindeer hide.

  ‘Where’s Jules?’ I demanded.

  ‘With Marcel.’

  ‘But I thought …’

  ‘Lily, what you thought wasn’t correct. Marie-Christine and I’ve been breaking open the clay balls, haven’t we, darling?’

  ‘Stone tools, Mommy. Hunters.’ She scrunched up her nose so seriously, we both had to laugh.

  We began to hunt in earnest, two sisters, two childhood friends, and the children. In spite of everything, I had come prepared. When nothing further was found, I let Nini see me take a Roman coin from my pocket and secret it in the sand. ‘Jean-Guy, try here. Here’s a good place, isn’t it?’

  With him digging between us, and Marie crawling into my lap, I looked steadily into my sister’s eyes but couldn’t say what I’d wanted so much to say.

  Later, with the children happily playing at our feet, I told Janine that I would try to go to England to see our father and perhaps stay for the duration of the war. Jules wasn’t to know. This she understood. ‘You ought to come with us,’ I said, only to see her shake her head and hear her say: ‘Ah, no, not me. I belong here. I’m far more French than you.’

  There wasn’t any sense in arguing. There never had been. ‘I’ll tell Papa we’ve been here. He’ll like that, and he’ll understand why I wanted us to be together. May I take the scraper to show him that we can still find things here?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. Please do.’ I knew she was thinking we might never see each other again. I felt the same myself, and couldn’t be angry with her.

  The knife was razor sharp. From the windows came the sound of driving rain, from the skies above, that of thunder. Lightning filled the kitchen, momentarily startling me so that the yelp I gave caught in my throat as the sound of thunder rolled away.

  Blood ran over Marcel’s fingers and thumb. He gripped the throat more tightly to still the jerking body. Then he laughed as the eyes glazed over, and he slit the skin, first around the neck, then down the stomach and around each of the legs.

  Yanking off the pelt, he gutted the thing into a basin. ‘A rabbit slips its skin like a whore sheds her clothes, Lily.’

  I had never seen Marcel kill anything before. ‘You took pleasure in that. Why couldn’t you have hit it on the head first?’

  The dirty stub of a dead Gauloise bleue clung to his lower lip. He gave a ragged cough, brought up quantities of phlegm, and spat into the sink. Swiftly lopping off the head and feet, he said, ‘Would it have mattered?’

  ‘If you had been the rabbit, yes.’

  ‘And the whore?’

  ‘I … I don’t know what you mean?’

  Jules, the Vuittons, and the others were upstairs in the library listening to the wireless. ‘That your sister’s being one and that because of what she’s done with Jules, you’ve accused me of stealing from him.’

  ‘And didn’t you?’

  Marcel washed the carcass and laid it with two others in the cast-iron casserole. Adding chopped garlic, some butter, thyme, and oregano, a liberal wash of the rough wine he preferred, he said, ‘I didn’t, and you know it. Lily, why must you hate me? Jules is my friend.’

  ‘Your benefactor. Hah! He couldn’t lend you any more money, could he? Are your things in hock? Has the concierge confiscated them in lieu of back rent?’

  He dried his hands on one of the tea towels, left streaks of blood, struck a match on the stove, and lit that filthy stub. Again, he coughed. ‘You’re jealous of me, of the attention Jules pays to my paintings. Aren’t you curious to find out what I would do with that piece you made in wax?’

  ‘You?’

  He tossed his head to one side, threw up his bushy black eyebrows, and became the Marseillais fisherman he ought to have remained. Short, swarthy, and with brawny arms, he had the gut that perpetual sponging brings.

  ‘Me, for sure,’ he said. ‘That piece, Lily. That gorgeous piece of ass. Janine.’

  He had had no business finding it, but he and Jules must have been searching for the treasure. ‘You would melt it down.’

  Sadly, he shook his head and began to cut leeks into the casserole. Some carrots, handfuls of quartered potatoes, the whole of a cauliflower followed, after which he laid strips of fatty bacon over everything.

  Then he stuffed the casserole into the oven, burned a thumb, and swore as he slammed its door.

  ‘I would do no such thing. I may be a pig, I may even be a poor artist in your eyes, but I know good work when I see it.’

  Apprehensive now, I asked, ‘What would you do with it?’

  ‘Me? Remember, madame, that it was me who suggested this. Me, I would take it to a foundry and have it cast in bronze. Even at a time of war, I would do this, paying a little extra, of course.’

  ‘You couldn’t pay a sou for anything.’

  ‘Then let’s leave it, eh? Let’s give it time. Then go to the Gallery Pascal on the rue la Boétie and see for yourself.’

  That was a street of old mansions, many of them cut up into little hotels, galleries, and other things, and I couldn’t believe him. I never could anyway.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to your sister?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps if you told her how you felt, she would leave Jules alone.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s not her fault. She’s not a whore. It’s Jules.’

  ‘Men can want a lot of women, but women can’t want a lot of men, eh? You’re a purist, Lily.’

  ‘I didn’t take that jewellery.’

  ‘And neither did I.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So now Jules trusts neither of us and we two hate each other a little more.’

  ‘Lily, I want it back.’

  ‘You’re afraid, my husband. Is it that you’re worried someone else might discover what’s in that box?’

  ‘Just what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘A certain tiara, I think. One that the Vuittons must know of. One with emeralds and diamonds.’

  I thought he would hit me, but he held back, flashed a cruel smile, and said, ‘It’s a fake. Worthless paste!’

  Had I been so wrong about it? ‘The box is in the cellar, under the barrel my sculpture’s on.’

  He didn’t sigh or smile with relief. He simply looked through to the other room to where that bitch Nefertiti was sitting. ‘I’ll tell them it’s safe, and you’ll put it back in the attic where you found it, but after we’re gone. Even thoug
h they were worried about it, your little outburst last night had the desired effect. Vuitton and that wife of his have agreed to use us as a repository for some of the extra pieces from the Louvre. They’ll be arriving in a few days. Give the men a glass or two of wine. Nothing from the cellar, but make a big fuss over them. Everything depends on our being designated.’

  Everything, even if they were worried about a fake.

  3

  At midweek, in the late afternoon, I took the children and walked down the road to see Georges and Tante Marie. The Morissettes had been retainers of the de St-Germains for years. Tante Marie had had a good deal to do with the raising of Jules. Childless, Georges looked up to him as he would to a son who had gone off to university and become a success.

  The news I was bringing wouldn’t sit well, but what else could I have done? Someone had to tell them their services could no longer be afforded. Not that Jules ever paid them much. Five hundred francs every quarter, sometimes seven hundred. What they didn’t get in cash, they more than made up for in bread, cheese, apples, pears, vegetables, a few old boards, some wire and nails, tools now and then, an old coat, whatever they could manage to scrounge or borrow. I’d have done the same, of course. Still it wasn’t fair of Jules to have forgotten to pay them this past quarter nor to have asked me to let them know. It could only bring trouble for me.

  Leaves blew about on the road or piled up in the ditches where Jean-Guy went to kick them. Marie-Christine kept stopping to examine something, an ant, a bug, a last butterfly that warmed itself. All about us the air was cool and full of the scent of autumn. The road went up and down over gentle rises and for a moment, one precious moment, there was nothing else but the three of us and the open road.

  Then the cottage came in sight, laid against the woods, basking in the last of the sun. Georges was splitting firewood in the yard. Tante Marie was taking in some laundry. Stuccoed years and years ago, the cottage was in need of repair. One old horse, a gaggle of geese, a few scruffy chickens, and a pig kept them busy. They had little else to do now but live from day to day and gossip.

  I knew that’s what they’d do once I’d told them the news. Straight off they’d hitch the horse to the wagon and go into Fontainebleau to see Tante Marie’s sister. Had they told her already of Tommy’s visit? Had Jules been informed of it and said nothing?