Dmitry had obviously watched the house for some time from the cover of the woods and had taken a wide circuit to avoid the guards and come in through the orchard.
I remember that he was in uniform, that he was drenched to the skin, and that he carried a small brown suitcase. I knew he must have gone AWOL, but I went downstairs to the kitchen and let him in, the children crowding round. Were they frightened by his appearance? Subdued … yes, that’s the word I want.
‘So what brings you here?’ I asked.
The flaxen hair was plastered to the stocky peasant’s brow. The faded, grey-blue eyes tried to smile, but he knew it was useless to lie. ‘A little “unofficial” leave, madame. The shit that stayed frozen all winter in the latrines of the Maginot bunkers has now begun to thaw. We were forced to stand ankle-deep in it and to lie in our bunks just above it, so the whole of my gun crew simply voted on a holiday. Now maybe the higher-ups will start shovelling.’
‘Or shoot you.’
‘May I?’ he asked. He didn’t bother with the children or propriety. He took down my washtub for his laundry and began to pull off his things. The boots came first.
‘Jean-Guy, some papers,’ I said. ‘Drain the boots and set them near the fire. Marie … chérie, go upstairs and find the monsieur two towels. Two, you understand?’
She was learning her numbers, so this had to be emphasized and every opportunity taken. ‘You haven’t got lice or bedbugs, have you?’ I asked, only to see him shake his head.
The forage cap and tunic fell into the tub, Dmitry pulling off the thick woollen shirt until naked, he stood warming himself at the stove, the marble of his flesh hard with muscles, but chapped on the inner thighs and on the knees by the coarse heavy wool of the trousers. His bitte was uncircumcised and drooping, but loosely extended and long enough, oh, for sure, the curly flaxen hairs damp even there. ‘I’ll get the towels,’ I said.
‘Some cognac, too, madame.’ There were goose pimples all over him. The broad back, strong arms, and buttocks were those of Michelangelo. Jean-Guy was mesmerized by the sight of him. Me, I was embarrassed because Dmitry felt he could do this in front of me, and must have heard something of what had happened.
Wrapped in towels, he wolfed the soup, bread, and cheese I set before him, and gradually the children regained their normal shyness. It was always nice to have a little company.
‘Would you like more soup?’
‘It’s so good, madame, I can only say yes. A thick potage of vegetables, leftover rabbit stew, and chicken stock, the very essence of the marrow. You don’t waste anything, do you?’
Even this opportunity to talk? I wondered but didn’t reply. I filled his bowl, then decided to feed the children and myself a little early. Was I hungry? Was I eating for two? I guess I was.
Together we shared our meal. Food always helps at times like that. He asked about Janine, and were Jules and she getting on? From these and other things he said, I gathered that he’d been in the army for some time. ‘Janine will pull through, thank God. Jules … he hardly ever comes here.’
‘And the Vuittons?’ he asked, looking hungrily at the bread. I made such good bread in those days.
‘He’s with them, I guess.’
He gave a nod, me telling myself that he knew all about what had happened to me and asking how could this possibly be: by letter from Janine, or by unofficial visit to Paris? I decided that he’d come through Paris but had chosen not to tell me.
‘How are Michèle and Henri-Philippe?’ he asked.
‘Good, I think, but I didn’t see him.’
‘But you and Michèle spoke of him?’
‘Not really. No … no, as a matter of fact, we didn’t.’ But was he interested in Michèle, I wondered, or worried for Henri-Philippe’s sake? I simply couldn’t tell.
Dmitry had a way of buttering his bread that was foreign to me. He would cut a thick slice and lay it on the outstretched map of his left hand. He’d scoop lots of butter, half-melted by the heat of the kitchen, and make three or four passes over this map before probing for pockets of resistance around the crust.
Then he would pause to examine the slice as if not just grateful for the privilege of devouring it, but satisfied he’d covered every bit of the terrain before doing so.
He had strong teeth, good and straight, not chipped or stained, and absolutely white. ‘Michèle, madame. Your sister’s very worried about her and unable, as yet, to do anything about it.’
‘Did Nini send you here?’
‘Am I not allowed to stay?’
‘For how long?’ I asked.
‘Two days. When the uniform’s dry, I’ll leave.’
‘And go back to the front?’
‘If the invasion hasn’t started by then.’
He did a strange thing then—unexpected at least. Jean-Guy was sent to fetch a jar of plum jam from the storeroom. That, too, was spread over the map as if to hide the butter before he sprinkled a few droplets of cognac over everything and cut the map into four sectors.
Presenting each of us with one of them, he said, ‘Your sister is getting much better, madame, and sends her love. For myself, I was sorry to hear what had happened to you.’
We ate in silence. Marie got jam and butter all over her chin and tried her best to lick it off.
Wiping her face with the dishcloth, I nervously said, ‘Have your coffee while I see if I can find some things for you to wear.’
The washroom of the de St-Germains—my God, you had to have seen it in those days to have believed it. The room was just along the corridor on the other side of the staircase and facing on to the orchard. Gargantuan, it had slabbed grey marble on the floor, white brick tiles on the walls, and the bathtub of white alabaster that was nearly twelve centimetres thick. How had they carried it into the house?
Gold taps gave water, with a brass rack standing nearby for the towels. There were mirrors on the armoire doors, glass and stained glass, the life-size statue of a standing nude on a little pillar, the girl with one arm upraised, her right knee a little forward, the left breast thrown up. A peacock was clasped like a pillow in the right arm, against which the cheek was pressed, her eyes closed. A delightful thing in white marble. Art Nouveau, of course. How many times had the old man passed his hands across her bottom, the bidet waiting?
Now it is all gone. The tub smashed to pieces like the broken shell of a strangely shaped coconut whose meat, now dried, still clings.
There are little heaps of mirror glass beneath each of the splintered doors to what’s left of the armoire, and I’m seeing so many images in this room. Tommy in that tub, ripples on the surface and steam rising. Me kneeling over him, laughing, kissing …
Dmitry wafted bubbles. The suitcase was with him even there. He had asked for the loan of a razor; if possible, a toothbrush and a bar of soap. So what, exactly, was he carrying in that little suitcase, and why had he never let it out of his sight?
He spoke of the boredom of the troops, of their drunkenness, their depressing searches for female flesh in the bistros and cafés near the front, their absences without leave. Many times, he had heard the propaganda broadcasts of the Germans from across the no-man’s land that led to the fortifications of the Siegfried Line and fifty Panzer divisions. ‘Frenchmen, lay down your arms. This is a British war. We have no quarrel with you.’
I sat on the little stool we kept for such things, but there was no way I could avoid looking at him. The mirrors took care of that. We drank wine now. Red or white, what did it matter? He was a little drunk; me more than that because there was something about him I simply didn’t like. ‘Which side are you really on?’ I asked. It was stupid of me, I confess.
Dmitry filled the sponge and squeezed it over his head. ‘No one’s but my own.’
‘You know lots about wireless sets.’
‘Merely enough to get by.’
‘And the Action française, how much do you really know about them?’
‘Enough to kee
p my nose clean, madame, but if you’re thinking I’m interested in that little bauble of your husband’s and the Vuittons, forget it. I only want to survive what’s coming.’
‘So why the interest in the contents of my attic and the coach house?’
I had found him in both places.
The shoulders lifted, the sponge came up again. ‘Janine told me to take a look.’
Did she keep that suitcase for him in her room? I wondered, but told him not to leave a lot of water on the floor.
‘Don’t you want to use the bath?’ he asked.
I hesitated—it took a lot of wood to heat that boiler. He looked at the statue but didn’t smile. Me, I thought I knew what he wanted and said no.
Later … how much later was it? One, two, maybe three o’clock in the morning. Just like now. There was a noise in the cellar, a scraping that drew me because it was so furtive. Rats? I wondered.
I had a candle then, too. In the wine cellar, there are broken bottles all over the place, but those were not broken then. But now I set the candle down and begin to pry at the wall. It took me five days of periodic searching to find this block of stone he’d removed. A space had been hollowed out behind it.
There were two French army service revolvers wrapped in oilcloths—Lebels, the Modèle d’ordonnance 1873—several boxes of the old black-powder, 11 mm cartridges, and a German Luger pistol, the 1908, 9 mm semiautomatic—yes, that’s the one that’s finally in my hands—but I couldn’t understand back then how he had come by it and the others. Stolen, the Lebels, yes, of course, but had he crossed the lines and killed a German officer to get this Luger? He could have, I was certain, but had he bought it perhaps?
There was a black leather wallet with snapshots of a blonde-haired girl of twenty. Papers and a passport gave the name of Daniel Albrecht, an electrician of German descent from Strasbourg in Alsace. The membership card for the SS had a number, and I didn’t quite know what to do. First, because of the SS, of course. Second, because he had thought it safe to hide such things in the house. And third, because he obviously intended to come back for them.
The weapon was, of course, covered with Vaseline, and still is, and it is in its holster. I used it many times and always was able to hide it here. The Vaseline comes away with each wipe of the rag I’ve brought, the metal blue and untarnished, and there’s a crosshatching on the butt that improves the grip immensely. It’s my gun, it was my gun. The clip isn’t quite full, but just the way I left it, though the spring is stiff, and I thumb this, pushing the bullets down and letting them come back. Several times I shuck shells into and out of the breech until I’m satisfied.
Then I reach into the hole in the wall to feel for the extra cartridges only to remember that I’d almost run out. Sacré nom de nom!
The knife is still where I left it wrapped in its oilcloth. I run a thumb over the nickel insignia of the SS, the lightning barb and the death’s-head we dreaded. Once, twice, I release the blade. It leaps. It’s fast. A shock hits your hand every time. Fifteen centimetres of cold, hard, double-edged, razor-sharp stainless steel.
Now I have what I need, and as the cellar holds me, I listen to the house, to the continual racket the wind produces before I snuff out the candle and sink down to the floor to lean back against the wall and remember.
Never good, the news grew steadily worse. On 9 April 1940, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway, the Danes capitulating in four hours.
I took to fretting. There had been no word from Tommy. Day by day, I felt I might have to leave France in a hurry. I packed two suitcases for the children, a third for myself, and kept these ready by the door. When I could, I bought extra petrol for the car, storing it in old wine bottles down in the cellar.
Food became precious. The roads south would be clogged by the fleeing. I would have to force my way northward through them to reach one of the Channel crossings. Would it be possible?
I was pregnant, and it was beginning to show. I want to stress this because it wasn’t Tommy’s child.
June … it was then June of 1940 at last.
‘But I am British! I have a British passport!’
‘I know, madam. I can see that, but you’re married to a Frenchman. Only those French women who are married to Englishmen can be granted visas.’
‘Visas? I have a passport. I have a house in Aisholt. My father was British and a veteran of the Great War, damn it!’
‘Madam, there’s no need for blasphemy. I assure you everything that can be done is being done.’
‘And you won’t let us leave the country?’
To him, I had cast my lot with the French who had broken and run from the Germans, so now I could bloody well put up with them! ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’
‘Listen, you, I have two children. I’m nearly four-and-a-half months pregnant.’
The assistant secretary at the British Consulate in Paris twisted the ends of his moustache. ‘Look, even if I were to do as you wish, I very much doubt you’d reach the Channel. The roads are clogged with refugees from Belgium and the north of France. They’re being bombed and machine-gunned—strafed, damn it—just as is everything else.’
‘I must go south, back to Fontainebleau and the house?’
‘It would be best. Find your husband. He really ought to be with you. Now there’s a good girl, eh? Next? Who’s next?’
‘Salaud! You have condemned me and my children to death!’
The City of Light was silent. Not a soul walked the streets, not a car passed by. All along the avenue Victor-Hugo and then down the Champs-Élysées there was no one. The cafés were all closed. Even the police seemed to have left, the pigeons, too. In Place de la Concorde, wind stirred the dust as I stopped to check for traffic. There was none.
Everyone had fled—nearly two million. Not the poor, of course, but everyone else who could. André de Verville and a Jewish colleague were the only ones left in a hospital with twelve hundred patients. Simone had gone to help them.
I drove through the empty streets. South of the city, the main roads were all blocked with every imaginable kind of vehicle. The wealthy and the middle class carried their birds in cages, their dogs, their goldfish. Some had mattresses on top of the cars to protect them from flying shrapnel and cannon shells. They honked, swore, cursed, and the line of traffic crept ahead. Others came from behind, and soon our little car was swallowed up.
Jean-Guy and Marie lay on the floor in the backseat, covered by blankets. They complained of the heat, the darkness, and of thirst while I shouted at them to be quiet and concentrated on the traffic.
Fresnes came up. We had made it to the prison, but even the guards had left, and though I couldn’t hear the prisoners crying out from their cells, I imagined it. The car began to overheat. Anxiously, I watched the gauge and gripped the steering wheel. When the sound of aeroplanes came, everyone else ran screaming from their cars, but the planes flew overhead, dark shapes against the sky. Me, I was simply far too petrified. Late that night, having been in the driver’s seat for more than nine hours, I managed to draw to the side of the road. Out of fear of losing our place, out of necessity, I had wet myself several times. The children had done the same and worse, but were now so exhausted and overcome by fumes that I had to drag them from the car and make them lie on the grass. As I went to get water, the child within me gave a wrench. I cried out and gripped my back, hung on to the pail, and shut my eyes.
The spasm passed.
We were near Grigny late in the afternoon of the following day. I would try for the farmhouse of my mother, would never make it even to Fontainebleau, but again people ran from their cars or tossed their bicycles aside and raced for the fields. This time, the furious tac-k-tac-k-tac of the machine guns ripped along the road, and I yelled at the children to hide themselves, but from all around me came the sounds of shattering glass and ripping metal. Rag dolls fell in the adjacent fields or were tossed to the road. People screamed hysterically, cried, wept, and huddled
.
When the Messerschmitt Bf 109s had passed, those that could picked themselves up but hesitated uncertainly. By a stroke of luck, the little Renault hadn’t been touched. I was near to the edge of the road. The ditch was shallow and wide, the field beyond it flat. In the distance, a side road ran parallel to us.
‘Hang on!’
The car wouldn’t start. Again and again, I tried it. Petrol, were we out of petrol?
The engine caught at last and I drove into the ditch and across the field. Racing along the side road, we passed the traffic. I took a left, another and another, went east towards the Seine only to be forced to the right, the right!
Back at the route nationale, I nudged our way into the traffic again as the day began to cool and the sun to set, and when the German fighters returned, I pulled the children out of the car and ran like everyone else, but the scream from the Stuka was petrifying. Nailed to the earth, I gripped the children and fought to shut out the sound of that siren. Jean-Guy was huddled beside me. Marie … Where was Marie?
The tac-k-tac-k-tac of the machine guns faded, but by then the sound of the bomb had come rushing back to engulf me. ‘MARIE! MARIE!’ I cried.
Knees … I must bend my knees. I must push hard. ‘Jean-Guy … Jean-Guy …’ I gave a scream, the first of many.
It’s morning now, and Dupuis, my husband, and the others haven’t come for me yet, but I know they will. The last leaves are falling from the pear, plum, and apple trees in the orchard behind the house. Dark red to brown or yellow, each leaf is different, unique, yet all are the same. They lie on top of the rabbit hutches, have been swept into corners here and there. Against the grey-white, sun-bleached wood, they look so beautiful but, of course, the rabbits are no longer here and the cage doors have been left wide open.
Hunting Ground Page 14