April in Paris

by Michael Wallner

  I had imagined Chantal greeting me in a hundred different ways. Joyful, sleepy, effusive. Or unspeaking perhaps. Paris was months ago. I was sure she’d surprise me, as she always did.

  I reached the farm. The door on the street side was locked. I assumed Chantal and her family would be coming back from Mass soon, and so I opted to wait. A dozen people passed, eyeing me curiously. I lost patience and walked around the stone house, whose western wall was covered with black slate. Behind the house, I came to an expanse of well-trodden ground, the center of the farmstead. No grass; muddy puddles; a manure pit, enclosed and stinking. Four pigs in a ramshackle pigsty, lying idly in the sun. All at once, I saw myself as the tramp that I was. Would the family come back and run me off? I was relieved to see there was no dog. The only sounds came from the pigs, snuffling in the slop.

  The back door opened. An old woman looked out and disappeared again. On the floor above, a young girl’s face appeared; when I noticed her, she stepped back from the window. Inside the house, the old woman spoke with someone who was deeply ensconced in the front room. I took a few cautious steps, holding my hands up and to the side to show that I was unarmed. When the door opened a second time, I heard a baby crying. Light from the other end of the hall, and inside the light an approaching shadow.

  Old Joffo stepped into the farmyard. His hair was snow-white and blowing in the wind. The imposing boar had been transformed into a pallid, stooping creature. In spite of my disfigurement, he recognized me. We faced each other warily in the windy farmyard.

  “From where?” he asked tonelessly.

  “Paris.”

  “Who knows you’re here?” The wind blew his voice away.

  “No one.” I stepped closer to him. His eyes fell on my splint.

  “No one followed me,” I insisted.

  The window on the upper floor went up. The young woman in the light blue overalls bore a distant resemblance to Chantal. Joffo noticed her.

  After a little hesitation, he said, “It’s Roth.”

  She jumped. Movement in the house. The old woman appeared in the hall. My name changed something, but it didn’t elicit friendliness, only curiosity. The baby cried again. The young woman left the window. Joffo pointed indecisively toward a rain-bleached table that stood outside, near the house, on the only patch of green. I sat down, stretching out my leg with an effort; my uphill charge had done me in. Joffo took a seat on a stool across from me. The old woman remained at the back door. I was thirsty, but I said nothing. The young woman appeared on the ground floor, a bundle in her arm. The bundle was a baby, swaddled in linen. Only its dark hair was visible.

  “And Chantal?” I could no longer hold the question back.

  Joffo gazed at the child. I followed his eyes. “Is she here?”

  “No,” he said. “She’s not here anymore.”

  I nearly collapsed from sheer disappointment. “When do you expect her back?”

  Joffo sat still; only his hair moved. I realized he didn’t think she’d be back soon. Chantal wasn’t in church or walking in the woods; Chantal was far away. I could feel it. Maybe fighting with another underground Resistance group, on the coast. So many weeks, such a long way! I’d been on an obstacle course. I’d reached Balleroy, but not my goal. I laid my hands on the table, one on top of the other.

  “Would you take some food and drink?” a soft voice asked. The young woman placed the infant in the shade. She had bigger eyes than Chantal and dark hair. She walked like Chantal.

  “Are you her sister?” I asked.

  “Her cousin,” she said with a serious air.

  “Your baby?” Now I could see the infant better. Black hair, wrinkled face, the eyes two sleeping slits.

  The young woman didn’t answer my question.

  “How old?” I asked.

  “Three weeks.”

  “Will you stay for lunch?” Joffo asked.

  “Yes, gladly.”

  The woman went inside.

  The grandmother sat on the bench that ran along the house wall and watched the young woman serve me. I ate bread and cream, along with a couple of carrots, and drank some tart old cider that cleared my head. I wasn’t a guest in this house; I was a transient they were putting up with. They noticed how hard it was for me to chew. The left half of my jaw ground away uselessly. I gnawed the carrots like an old dog.

  Joffo confirmed my fears. “Where do you intend to go?”

  “To Chantal.” It was the only answer. “Where is she? I’ll find her.”

  The cousin took a step toward me as though she wanted to say something. Joffo silenced her with a gesture. He stood up and walked along the wall of the house. In the shade of a pear tree, there was a cellar door. He lifted it and disappeared inside. The old woman, the baby, the young woman, and I waited in silence. I bit off a piece of bread. Chantal’s cousin filled my glass.

  Joffo came back with a bottle of brandy. The old woman went inside and brought us two glasses. Joffo poured. The young woman sat on the ground beside the baby and shaded its face with her hand. Joffo glanced at the sun. At that moment, he was once again the narrow-eyed boar. We emptied our glasses.

  The Germans had moved into Balleroy unexpectedly. A decimated company from the south, on the way to Pas-de-Calais. They required food, drink, and lodging, and they commandeered quarters in three farmsteads.

  “The captain was correct,” Joffo said. “A man you could talk to. The men occupied the barns, and the officers came to the main house.”

  He filled the glasses again and drank. I waited.

  “Chantal and Jeanne gave up their room.” He moved his head in the cousin’s direction. She was totally focused on the child.

  “The two of them slept in the storeroom attached to the barn. We brought out our provisions; the women cooked them up. The soldiers didn’t say much. They were on their way to the front. We thought—everyone in the village thought—it would be over in two days.”

  A carrot had rolled off the table. Joffo picked it up and put it next to my plate. He drank a third glass of brandy. I stopped eating. A jackdaw shrieked somewhere nearby.

  “The night before they moved out, one of the lieutenants discovered the cellar under the henhouse.” Joffo pointed to the south, where there were some young walnut trees misshapen by the wind. “That was where we hid the things that weren’t meant to be found.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Supplies for a year. Weapons. The captain confiscated the weapons but forbade any looting. They all took their fill of the wine. Officers and men got drunk together.”

  The old woman sat beside Joffo and looked past me, up the hill. He stayed quiet for a while.

  “Later that night, the lieutenant went into the storeroom. Without paying attention to Jeanne, he pounced on Chantal. Jeanne came running out and woke me up. I grabbed a piece of firewood and ran out to the storeroom. When I got there, it was too late.”

  Joffo ran his hand over his forehead.

  “The lieutenant was dying, bleeding from many wounds. Chantal had pulled a dagger out of her belt and stabbed away. I told her to get away to some safe place. Chantal sat on the bloody bed and stared at the dagger. Then she tried to leave, but Jeanne’s screaming had awoken the Germans.”

  Joffo stood up and walked to the center of the yard.

  “The captain had his men bring her here,” he said. “Right here.” He hung his head. “We were all outside. The baby was asleep in my father’s arms. My brother, the women, two workers. Chantal stood and faced the captain. It was cold that night. She was shivering. Without hesitating a second, without a single word, the captain pulled his pistol, pushed Chantal to the ground, and shot her in the back of the head.” Joffo’s finger designated the spot.

  He came back to the table. “The shot woke up the baby, and it started crying.” He stopped in front of me and stared at the faded tabletop. The old woman
remained seated, bolt upright.

  “They put my brother against the wall, and also a worker who just happened to be at the farm that night. Then the soldiers came for my father. He gave Jeanne the baby, very carefully, and went and stood with the others. They were shot immediately.”

  Joffo sat down and put one hand on top of the other. “For every German killed, ten French citizens have to die,” he said. “That’s the ratio. But the captain was content with four. Dawn was already breaking. He ordered his men to move out. By sunrise, the company had left Balleroy. My father would have been eighty today.”

  I caught myself doing the arithmetic. How many days, how many weeks? If I had set out earlier, if I had stuck to the main roads, if I had increased my daily distances…

  Joffo went into the house and came out with the dagger. He laid it on the table.

  “No one thought to take it.”

  I hesitated. Then I drew the blade from the dark gray sheath. The blood had been washed off. I fixed my eyes on the steel.

  “Was she buried?”

  Instead of Joffo, the cousin answered. “Do you want to see it?”

  I ran my finger along the sharp blade. Clouds were gathering above the walnut trees. The wind died down all of a sudden. I had learned everything and understood nothing.

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “Live on,” the bookseller said.

  “We still have the child.” The old woman’s eyes remained fixed on the hill.

  I emptied my glass. The brandy was strong. I gazed at the little linen-swathed creature. “What’s its name?”

  “Her name is Antoinette,” Joffo said.

  I turned around. Slowly, I stood up; my splints knocked together. I hobbled over to the tree and bent down. The baby was asleep. She looked concerned, as though sleep required a lot of effort. I wanted to touch one of her little hands but didn’t dare.

  “Chantal’s baby?” I asked. My knees trembled.

  Nobody spoke.

  I stared at the tiny face. “And the birth?”

  “Easy,” the old woman said.

  I thought of Chantal in the pale green dress, Chantal in rue Faillard. I looked directly at the sun and fell into whiteness. Stroked the little head. She flinched and made a face.

  “Antoinette,” I said softly.

  Later on, Jeanne made me a sleeping place in the barn. I sat on the blanket spread out on the hay. Flecks of sunlight played with motes of dust. I contemplated my hands, my missing finger, my splinted leg. Drawing the dagger out of the sheath for the second time, I set the point on my chest. I couldn’t feel much through my jacket. I opened my shirt and pressed the dagger against my skin, watching it tighten and split open, watching the drop of blood spill out. I laid the dagger down beside me. All of a sudden, the hay smelled like Chantal’s hair. I inhaled the scent, reaching for the dancing points of light. I screamed and clapped my hand over my mouth at the same time. I screamed into my hand. Saliva flowed into the folds of my palm. When dusk came on, I’d been staring out the window for hours. Chantal and Antoine. The time we escaped the raid. The time we kissed each other in Leibold’s face. The time she was on top of me in rue Faillard. Her hair, her breasts. Never. Nothing.

  That evening, I went to the main house and ate with the family. I sat there and chewed like the others. No lamps were lit. The spreading darkness united us. Afterward, I asked to see Antoinette. Jeanne led me into the storeroom. I took the baby girl out of her cradle and held her against my chest. She didn’t wake up. I squeezed her tightly. Her breath on my neck. She cried out. Jeanne reached to take her, but I held on to Antoinette and rocked her until she fell asleep again.

  That night, I wanted to stay there. In Balleroy, close to the sea. I wanted to stay there; and the war was far away. Antoine and Antoinette. As I lay in the straw, I thought about the word father. I had no feeling for it.

  The next day, they allowed me to carry Antoinette around. But when I headed out to the fields, they sent Jeanne after me. Later, I tried to help Joffo split firewood. He put the ax down without a word and went into the house.

  They let me share their meals. They asked nothing and wanted to know nothing. They were hospitable to me, and yet they remained distant. I didn’t talk about Paris or about my journey. I walked down the hill with the baby and Jeanne and asked her where the sea was. Too far, she replied, and anyway, you couldn’t get there now. They were building bunkers and fences. Jeanne hadn’t been to the beaches in a long time. We turned around. The baby was taken out of my arms and carried into the house.

  “She’s my child,” I said that night into the straw. “They want to mourn without me, and they want to keep me away from my child.” Bewildered, I laughed into the rafter beams. “I’m practically their son-in-law!”

  The next day, I asked Jeanne to show me the grave. We took Antoinette with us. We had to go through the village to reach the cemetery. No one was outdoors, but I knew there were people watching me. I was the boche; they’d heard about me. In the second line of houses, there was one with its windows open. The radio was playing. The melody, carried on the wind, got louder and softer by turns. Someone was singing. I could understand very few words, but I recognized the tune. The singer was Chevalier, snappy and brazen: “Avril prochain—je reviens.” I started hobbling faster, trying to get closer to the house, but a fence barred my way. Carrying the baby in one arm, Jeanne followed me in amazement. By the time she caught up with me, the song was over.

  The mounded earth was fresh. There was no gravestone, only a stone cross. A couple of flowers. I tried to kneel down, but my splint prevented me. Antoinette started to cry; the sun was strong. A heap of earth, with other graves around it. All that had nothing to do with Chantal. We turned back. It was unusually hot for the beginning of June. On the way back to the farm, I thought, You can’t stay. They won’t allow it.

  I spent my days in the barn, presenting myself only to eat and to see the baby. One evening, I stayed after dinner and told the story of the executions in Heudebonville. Joffo shook his head.

  “There’s no brigade that calls itself Libération Normandie,” he said. “There are just gangs. They see the Germans withdrawing from the interior and they take advantage of the situation.”

  “They weren’t bandits,” I answered. “This was a planned operation.”

  The old woman went outside. Jeanne bent over the baby in her lap.

  “Then the farmer must have been a collaborator,” Joffo said. “Reprisals are necessary.”

  “Communists?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  The next day, he asked me to join him outside. Antoinette was lying in the shade.

  Without a prologue, he said, “When are you going to leave?”

  I wanted to reply, but I didn’t. I asked about the baby.

  “How do you know you’re the father?” he replied, stone-faced.

  I just looked at him. “Maybe, when all this is over…”

  I fell silent.

  “Antoinette is French. Her family is here,” the bookseller said. “You can’t take her away with you, and you can’t stay here yourself. It’s not possible.”

  I looked at the hill. “How far is it to the sea?”

  He gazed at my leg. “Too far for you.”

  “I’d still like to see it.”

  He wiped his forehead. “Yes, fine,” he said in a friendlier voice. “Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow.”

  The next day, I took Antoinette for one last walk in the fields.

  I talked to her and told her about her mother. We fell asleep in the grass. She woke up agitated; her crying was smothered and soundless. I picked her up, stroked her back, and began to sing. About the girl I fell in love with, in the city, in April. I didn’t know the right words, and soon I fell silent. Antoinette looked at me attentively. I told her I had to go now, and
that it would be better for her to forget me. I said it for my own sake. Afterward, I gave the child back to Jeanne and received a bundle of provisions from the old woman and a pair of boots from Joffo. No more was said about the trip to the seashore.

  I left in the gray light of dawn, no less an outsider than on the day I’d arrived. I took with me the dagger Chantal had used to defend herself. Many kilometers beyond Balleroy, ships were emerging from the early-morning fog; the first troops were landing, trying to gain a foothold. It was the sixth of June. I knew nothing about that. I was on the road.

  AFTERWORD

  Readers often ask me how the story of April in Paris originated and what sort of research I did into the historical background of the time.

  The origin of my tale is quickly told. A few years ago, while hiking along a cliff on the Normandy coast, I realized I’d overestimated my strength and clambered out too far. I could neither advance nor retreat, and then it started to rain. Stuck on a ledge in the middle of a storm, I spotted the ruins of one of the German Wehrmacht’s defensive bunkers on a tongue of land opposite me. And there on that ledge, I had the idea for April in Paris: the story of a young German soldier, all alone in a foreign land, striving to stay out of the conflicts of his day but unable to disengage himself from the inhumanity of the occupation regime. From that beginning, the entire constellation of an impossible love story developed.

  For the portrayal of the historical background and the evocation of “everyday life” in occupied Paris, I have drawn on many sources, from historical city maps to reference books and contemporary literary accounts. I’m particularly indebted to two authors and two books. The first is Arthur Koestler, whose work I greatly admire, and whose novel Darkness at Noon, first published in 1940, provided me with authoritative insight into prison conditions and interrogation methods in totalitarian countries. It was from Koestler’s book that I first learned of the quadratic tapping alphabet, which my Corporal Roth also uses in his cell. The second author is Felix Hartlaub, a German soldier who was posted in Paris, among other places, during World War II. He died under murky circumstances in 1945, in the last days of the conflict. I learned a great deal about the soldiers’ jargon of the time from his posthumously published book, In den eigenen Umriss gebannt: Kriegsaufzeichnungen, literarische Fragmente und Briefe aus den Jahren 1939 bis 1945 (In the Restricted Zone: Notes from the Second World War), which was first published in 1955. Hartlaub was a rarity—an uncompromising and discerning witness. In a letter from Paris, he wrote about the atmosphere in the occupied city: “The typical climate here is arctic. I see so many examples of progressive dehumanization, hair-raising egoism, and cold-blooded apathy that I constantly have to defend myself against invasions from these inner regions.” Perhaps Corporal Roth would have seen things in more or less the same way.