Hunting Ground

by J. Robert Janes

  Another of Marie at the age of two is in the bath, splashing. Always, she loved to do that! Ah, mon Dieu, you should have seen her.

  Another shows the dog we once had before Jules got tired of it and Georges hit the poor creature with the axe. Yes, the axe!

  There are others of my father and mother, from the days before the 1914–1918 war. The candlelight makes the photographs a deeper shade of amber, but the wind comes back and a sudden gust sweeps through the house stirring the dust and the ghosts, banging things and creaking others as it drags the candle flame out and I let go of the photos to remember Paris in that winter of 1940, my sister near to death. André de Verville had come at my summons. He was a very good doctor, but even he was doubtful and furious with good cause, for the concierge hovered about the door to Nini’s room, and at his, ‘For God’s sake, Lily, do something!’ I gave her five thousand francs in exchange for her silence and promise to keep my sister’s room. Abortion was illegal, you understand.

  ‘We’ll take her to the hospital now,’ I told the woman. ‘Nothing will be said of where she lived.’ It’s a reassurance she questioned, as she should, but André, he went downstairs to bring his car closer while I sat in the chair he had vacated and I reached for Nini’s hand.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘To do such a thing, Nini?’

  Her eyes were closed. She was so pale. ‘Marcel told me what that husband of yours had let them do to you on the orders of the Vuittons. Me, I couldn’t keep the child a moment longer.’

  ‘So you went out and got some butcher?’

  The nod she gave was very slight. There were tears and these flow freely. ‘I didn’t want it to live, Lily. I wanted us both to die.’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  There was a brief smile, a shake of the head. ‘I only went with Jules to show you what that bastard was really like.’

  She’d have done it too. ‘Imbécile, you could simply have told me!’

  Again, there was that brief smile, gone too soon. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me.’

  ‘So he’s left you, just like this, that pig. I’ll kill him!’

  Nini didn’t respond. Anxiously, I pressed my fingers to her wrist. The pulse, it was too faint.

  She had a sepsis in her womb.

  At a noise, the present comes back, and I know I must get that Luger before it’s too late, but am afraid to go down into the cellar, afraid of what it will tell me about myself, and can’t yet leave the memories of that visit to Paris.

  The Fourteenth Arrondissement was the home of Breton immigrants, of impoverished writers, poets, and artists. Most of the prostitutes there were Bretonnes, chunky, blonde- or brown-haired farm girls who’d come in hopes of finding work of a different sort. Montparnasse was full of them. Cow-eyed, docile until beaten by their pimps, they eyed me as I walked along the streets, searching always until at last, I found the address.

  Number 7 rue de l’Ouest—how I remember it still. There was a very long courtyard with a ramshackle, two-storey house at the far end, behind which there was a solid stone wall that rose out of question.

  The house had arched French windows, all but one of whose shutters were closed. There were two round windows to the left of these, and at the base of that wall, there was a heap of broken boards. Iron grilles guarded the cellar windows while a broken down-spout hung precariously from the eaves, and children played in the ever-damp and freezing cold as an old woman rinsed pots at the courtyard tap, behind which thin frozen dishcloths hung, and there were cats, cats and a dog that was afraid.

  There was a carpenter’s shop for the picture framing, so that was handy unless the credit had all run out. Practically all of the other windows were tall and narrow, some with curtains, their shutters open. Others were with their shutters closed, those, too, of the concierge’s loge. Marcel’s window faced straight down the length of the courtyard, and I gave it a last glance before pulling the rusty chain that would, I hoped, ring a bell.

  Of course, nothing happened, and when I stood back to look up again at that window behind which some shreds of gauze hung, I noticed that half the louvres were missing from the shutters. Frost was on the glass. Icicles lined the sill.

  ‘Marcel, it’s me. Oo-oo. Hey, up there, Marcel!’ My breath steamed. The children stopped their games as I yelled again.

  Finally, a small boy with a runny nose and hair down over his eyes, handed me a small stone. ‘Not too hard, madame. He’s painting the lady again, and you mustn’t break the window.’

  The stone hit the glass. Several seconds passed until there’s a bellow, ‘Nom de Jésus-Christ, can’t a man work in peace?’

  It was the first time I’d ever heard Marcel talk like a real artist. Even in my troubled state of mind, I was humbled.

  ‘Lily … ?’

  ‘Marcel, I need to talk to you.’

  He had a paintbrush in hand, and I heard him saying, ‘Merde!’ just under his breath but not under it enough. ‘A moment then.’

  The woman was the mother of the boy who handed me the stone. Shyly, she smiled at me and reached for her clothes. She was chunky, big-breasted, had hips and a seat that flared, was all woman. We waited while she got dressed. Marcel asked me if I’d any money. ‘Just a little, Lily, for the boy.’

  I wanted to say, I’m sorry I spoiled your fun, for I know he and the woman would have gone to bed later, but I gave him a hundred francs of Tommy’s money. ‘For the boy. Ask her to buy him a hat and a scarf.’

  The woman disappeared, and for a few moments silence reigned as we sat among the clutter of paints, brushes, and canvases, the two of us staring into our glasses at the cheap vin rouge he had offered.

  ‘Nini’s in the hospital now. I’ll ring them later.’

  He tossed off the wine and wiped his lips on the back of a hand. ‘For what it’s worth, I tried to get Jules to help her and when he wouldn’t, I tried to get her to go to a doctor.’

  ‘I know. I wanted to thank you. Marcel … ?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘How deeply is Jules involved with those people?’

  ‘Don’t question things, Lily.’

  ‘I have to! They tried to kill my …’

  ‘Lover? The American …’ Marcel nodded and set his glass aside. Again, I heard him say, ‘I shouldn’t tell you, but I will. The robbery was to gain them money with which to buy guns and explosives since they are no lovers of the Third Republic. Half the loot came here to Paris in a van, the other half …’ He gave a shrug. ‘Those paintings and things could be anywhere.’

  ‘Brussels, I think.’

  ‘Perhaps. Who knows? Vuitton and that wife of his are in very deeply. It was she who convinced Jules to put the money up for the tiara so that they could hold it out to the new France as a reminder of a heroic, regal past, once the country has been defeated.’

  ‘Hence the mortgages on the house.’

  ‘And his anger, Lily. They’re afraid of what you and Thomas Carrington might do. If I were you, I’d take the children and try to get back to England. The Boche are coming, and when they do, the Channel will be closed and the door shut so tightly no one will get out.’

  ‘Have you been to any of the Action’s secret meetings?’

  ‘Me? That bitch would never allow such a thing.’

  Then Jules had tried to get him in, and Marcel had been turned away. ‘Where do they hold such meetings?’

  ‘Never in the same place, so it shouldn’t matter to you, and I wouldn’t ask if I were you.’

  ‘Have you seen this man with the scar?’

  ‘Schiller? Ah, merde, I’m such a fool, aren’t I? Yes … Yes, of course, I’ve seen him. He was here with Jules not long after you had your little “accident.”’

  ‘Is the Swiss frontier such a sieve to the Nazis?’

  ‘His French is very good, very Parisian. He’s a real organizer, too. Probably a different passport every time.’

  ‘Was he with them when they tried to kill Tommy?’

&n
bsp; Marcel shrugged and asked, ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Because I’m asking, mon ami, not accusing you of having been aware of it beforehand. I simply need to know.’

  ‘Then yes. Yes, I think he was, but he would have let the Action gang do the dirty work. Who was he, the one they claimed your lover had killed?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just somebody who stuck his head out of a room. They needed a body and they got one.’

  ‘And the American?’

  ‘Gone back to England, I think, but may never know if he got safely away.’

  ‘Then don’t wish for letters that can be opened and read. They’ll kill you, too, if you’re not careful. They won’t even ask Jules. They’ll just do it, the children or not, even them if they have to.’

  ‘Are some of the things they took hidden away among those crates from the Louvre?’

  Marcel dragged out his cigarettes and offered them, but I shook my head, for I didn’t use tobacco back then.

  He struck a match and let the flame burn down a little as he thought things over. ‘Those crates …’ he said. ‘Yes, yes, I think they could well have done that, now that you mention it.’

  I asked him about Dupuis and he said there was a good chance someone from the Sûreté could be working with this Nazi and the Vuittons. ‘The Action française have lots of such connections, even within the Church.’

  ‘And this war the Boche have started?’

  ‘Here very soon, I think, but not soon enough for them.’

  ‘And Jules, my husband?’

  ‘Every bit as anxious as they are. He has to be, doesn’t he, with a mortgage like that?’

  Number 104 rue des Amandiers is in Belleville, the Twentieth Arrondissement, a place of hills, narrow streets, and hastily thrown-up houses of long ago. Originally, there were three villages—peasants, small landholders, truck gardeners, a few pigs, vines, some fruit trees, that sort of thing. Paris overtook the place. Peasants from the Auvergne came, then Russian and Polish Jews, Ionian Greeks, Armenian Communists and, more recently, German Jews.

  It was a melting pot with the largest cemetery, and I was struck by the thought that Marcel also lived near a cemetery. The room of Michèle Chevalier was above the clothing shop of a Russian Jew who had taken a French wife, his third or fourth, I think, for the place looked as if he’s given to drink and still wished he was home in Mother Russia.

  The shop was not far from the gully through which the ceinture ran day and night, so that Michèle and all others there had the sounds of whistles in the night and the shunting of freight trucks.

  She would also hear them on her way to Germany but later, you understand.

  The Russian looked like Tolstoy but was all gush when it came to his beautiful princess. ‘The virgin,’ he said, fingering the cloth of my coat. ‘You’re in luck, madame. She’ll be sitting up there all alone, wringing her hands instead of practising for the concert. She’ll have counted her sou for the tenth time and realized that all things must have their price, even her little capital.’

  How very French of him, but I didn’t say another thing. I simply went up that narrow staircase, which seemed to reach for the sky if it could, and sure enough, that’s exactly how I found her. The deep brown eyes were wide and full of anguish, her light brown hair brushed across splendid shoulders to catch the sunlight.

  ‘Michèle, I must talk to you.’

  ‘Nini’s going to die, Lily!’ The girl burst into tears and I had to comfort her—how many times was I to do just such a thing? She was only eighteen. A genius with the violin. ‘Jules … Jules wants me to dine with him after the concert,’ she blurted. ‘I can’t, Lily. I’ll throw up all over the place.’

  So he’d already made approaches! ‘He has the organ of a cockroach, Michèle.’ I was very firm with her, very strict. I stood in front of her bowed head and told her about Nini and my husband, told her all about the whores he must have had and their diseases, how the itch of the vagina scratches the inside of the scalp, though, of course, I had positively no experience of such.

  She sobbed, tried to blow her nose. Somehow I got her calmed down. The offer of a thousand francs was gratefully accepted, but we both had to wait for another rush of tears to pass. I told her I wanted her to keep an eye on Janine. She was to let me know the moment there were suicidal signs. ‘If she survives.’

  ‘Nini wouldn’t do that, Lily.’

  ‘I think she might. Now tell me, please, did she ever confide in you about my husband? Not their sex life. With that I can use my imagination. His relationship to the Vuittons. Nini’s to the left, Michèle. Not a Communist yet, but someday who knows?’

  She smiled wanly. ‘You’re the older sister with whom she has always tried to compete but looked up to.’

  We shared an apple, she eating it slowly as she said, ‘Jules is very far to the right, Lily, but still careful of what he says to others, so I don’t know what he’s really after. More and more, though, he’s become involved with important people in the government. Tonight, we were to dine with the minister of finance.’

  ‘Let him give coins to some whore. You’ll do the concert then spend the night at the bedside of my sister. Tomorrow, you’ll take the train to Avon, and I’ll meet you there.’

  I gave her another five hundred francs and this, too, she took without a word. ‘Jules is involved in something dangerous, Michèle. No matter how broke you become, you are always to come to me for help, not him, is that understood?’

  She nodded and I placed my hands on her shoulders and tried to ease the tension. Her hair was so soft, her skin like the surface of a pearl. She was really still a child, and I wondered what would happen to her if the Germans should come.

  ‘He has a diamond bracelet, he plans to give me tonight, Lily. It’s very old—Russian, he said—but from Poland. Madame Vuitton insisted that he give it to me with her compliments.’

  ‘The concert’s cancelled for you. Get your coat and hat. Pack a few things. We’ll go to the hospital and just have time to catch the five thirty. I must call Simone and ask her to take the children to the station. Yes, that would be best.’

  Those eyes looked up at me. She took me by the hands and shook her head. ‘I have two solos. If I don’t show up, I’ll never get another chance.’

  Could I trust her not to weaken? I was to ask myself that question time and again, but I nodded. ‘All right then, it’s fate, but don’t go to dinner. If you do, the Vuittons will be there to watch what happens when you receive the bracelet.’

  Michèle walked with me to the door. We embraced as dear friends should. ‘Have you seen Marcel?’ she asked. ‘The casting of your sculpture of Nini is superb, Lily. So beautiful. It was bought right away from the Gallery Pascal on the rue la Boétie. By an American, I think. A man with a great big car.’

  ‘And the money?’ I hazarded.

  ‘Eighty thousand francs. But … but I have thought that this … ?’ She clenched the bills I’d given her. ‘Didn’t Marcel tell you it had been sold?’

  Seventy percent of eighty thousand francs was fifty-six thousand, not a sou of which had I seen! ‘Marcel, forgot to tell me.’

  ‘Then that is shameful of him.’

  Once again, I listened to the wheels of a train. The children were nestled against me. I hadn’t had time to visit with Simone. If Nini pulled through the next few days, she’d live but be sterile. André had asked to give me a checkup, but I’d told him I’m okay. To miss one period is not much. The trauma of the rape, that sort of thing should make a woman stop for a while.

  But how things rush in to haunt me. Tommy would have lost the car, that bit of sculpture and all the other things he’d had with him in Paris. So who, then, had my sculpture? And what about Dmitry Alexandrov, that other Russian, that student of electrical engineering and friend of Nini’s?

  Just give me a little time. We are almost to the war and its subsequent Occupation, and of all of us, Dmitry was the most prepared.

 
5

  The walls are close, the house silent. As I run a hand along the plaster, I step over rubbish, picking my way through, must make no sound.

  My son’s room is a shambles—no furniture. That’s all been broken up for firewood or carted off. Books, papers, smashed toys, and his clothing are scattered, bringing instant grief that must be suppressed. On one wall, there’s the tattered picture of a fighter aeroplane that was cut with great diligence from a magazine and glued, against all the rules of his father first and then of the Germans, for the fighter is French.

  The model we worked so diligently on has been crushed. Animals of some sort have been in, for their droppings are dried, grey, ash-white, crinkled, and with little hairs sticking out of the pellets. Was it an owl? I wonder.

  I know I absolutely have to have the Luger that’s in the cellar yet still can’t force myself to go down there, for the horror of what I did is too much. Instead, I rub the glass of the only windowpane that’s left, using a sleeve of this coat they’ve given me. Like the shoes and all the rest, I don’t know where they got it. Some poor corpse, I suppose. Some poor soul who didn’t make it.

  I hold the candle away. The orchard is out there. My potting shed … I remember that it was raining heavily the day Dmitry came to see me. I think it was towards the middle of March. The exact dates are blurred, you understand, but the war in Finland had ended, so it must have been just after 12 March 1940.

  Tensions had begun to climb. The army had sent two men from the barracks at Fontainebleau to stand guard at the gates. There was a notice on it, also on the entrance to the house and doors to the coach house—REPOSITORY OF THE LOUVRE. TRESPASS FORBIDDEN. TRANSGRESSORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE.

  The guard was changed regularly and kept up twenty-four hours a day. Me, I had nothing to do with them except perhaps to exchange an occasional greeting or offer coffee, that sort of thing. Nice boys. Shy and not knowing when or if the war would come. Lebel rifles, the old 1914–1918 Model 1886 with the small, round magazine for the 8 mm cartridges, and useless if all you had were captured German 9 mms, or the .303 leftover British stuff from Dunkerque, but I only came to know of this later on, you understand.