A Packhorse Called Rachel

by Marcelle Kellermann

  Vallette returns to the building to plan his next move, undefeated it seems. He invites me to go with him but I am drawn to follow the slushy path taken by this demented circus.

  A strong grip gets hold of my arm and leads me back to the university compound. Only then does Vallette let go. He doesn’t speak until we arrive at the front entrance, then he says:

  “Go home. To-morrow is another day”.

  Making my way to the cours Sablon where I live I sing ever so softly but with a burning throat Schumann’s newly discovered Lied ‘Das alte Ross” (the old steed). I wish Vallette could hear me, share with me this pure and simple song just to lessen the hurt in my soul and possibly his. But he shut the main gate with a bang, turning his back on the world…and to me.

  Mein Kamerad, wie schad, wie schad

  Dass alles, dass alles ist aus

  Und der Schnee hat verweht den Pfad

  Und das Herz tut so weh, so weh!

  My friend, how sad, how sad

  That everything, everything’s gone

  And the snow has covered the path

  And my heart feels such pain, such pain!

  2.

  The Bothy.

  Daylight creeping through the bars of the tiny east side window of my bothy amazes me. It is all so new and incredibly quiet!

  My bothy! Of course it isn’t mine but it belongs to me for now as it belonged to generations of shepherds in the Auvergne. I am told they used to build these huts with their own hands with blocks of limestone and thatch made of reeds collected from the shores of the lakes lying down in the valley, their waters quite still, as beautiful as they are treacherous, swampy, unapproachable. They surround themselves with sludge and quicksand where snakes and mosquitoes hatch among the reeds.

  The birds in the giant poplars which tower above my hut are beginning to sing. Theirs are the only perches to be found in the barren volcanic moonscape of this part of the Central plateau where fate has placed us, me and my dog. They ruffle their feathers among the pale young leaves as they gather to celebrate the dawn and share my crumbs. I thank them for making nature speak for me alone, for there is no one else in this desert of deserts.

  Nourse gets up from the palliasse we share, shakes himself out of his sleep, stretches and yawns showing his fierce strong teeth and his pink shiny gums. Just look at my proud young sheepdog - he’ll swallow his tongue if he doesn’t close his mouth this instant! I kiss his moist muzzle -black as a truffle and smelling just as good- in return for this reassuring display and I stretch myself out on the straw full of minute transparent lice scarcely visible to the naked eye which dart all over my bare skin. Though they annoy me I’ve found a way to tolerate them but they add to the unease I feel, like that in my worse nightmares. My thoughts turn to you, my lanky, pensive Visachel Rosenthal and wonder what they did to you that evil day in February and in the days that followed. I need so much to know!

  * * *

  Every morning at dawn they wait for Nourse and me at the bothy of Savignole, our Maquis, every day God sends. It’s my job to bring the bread, the potatoes, the blue-veined cheese, and sometimes chunks of smoked jambon. I have another job. Colonel Gérard wants to know, if like sister Anne, I see ‘someone coming’. (“Ma soeur Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir?”) I listen, then go out and watch with my binoculars the troop movement of the enemy shuttling between Murol, Mont Dore and Clermont-Ferrand. Their route lies well above my bothy to the east, on the hillside. Everything except the living lies, it seems, on a hill side in the bare landscape that encircles me. Even the deer dare not venture there. Exists are hidden from me. In the hollow of the swelling mountains I am at least safe from view. So I thought at the time…

  With my binoculars I count the number of vehicles in each convoy, especially the tanks, and note the time of their passing. Scattered throughout the southern half of the country, these convoys coming from Italy are now funnelling to the north to reinforce the German contingents at present attacked day and night by the Allies or the now well-organized ambushes on the ground. Hence they are in a hurry. I can tell; their drivers have their foot down, their big vehicles not on parade this time! I rush out of my bothy for Savignole where Gérard and his men are billeted. The colonel takes action as soon as he has gathered a sufficient contingent to create an ambush. It is easily achieved because the boys are always fully prepared, mainly with hand grenades. It is a sight to see them running like rabbits ‘till they have reached the strategic point of attack. Recent orders from the Free French are that the German armies of the north and the south have to be prevented from joining up, no matter what it costs, and the costs are heavy in human lives since the enemy is now hunted down fearlessly, without respite.

  Gérard’s boys come to us from all over the place; from England or the north of France, from Lyon or the Massif central, sometimes already armed (with Dad’s rifle), sometimes bare chested, young or not so young, Communists or non-Communists, someone’s son or no-one’s. They have no ration cards because they have to register to get them. They are all ravenous. This means that I am always received with open arms and plenty of kisses. We share everything; the provisions, the soup, the grief which assails us when one of our comrades does not return to the fold, his place still warm, the straw-bed still carrying the imprint of his last sleep. New recruits are parachuted in, irregularly and not often enough, in spite of our wireless operator’s SOS messages to London. There is a reason for this which I shall explain later. Like young crusaders they all have untroubled brows, fixed ideals and complete self-denial. If they have ever been selfish they certainly aren’t now. I love them, even though they come and go. The loss of one of them causes great pain and makes me cry with frustration and anger… and hatred, never leaving me.

  During the winter my bothy, called Buron in the Auvergne, was only half an hour’s journey from the bothy of Savignole. I could travel quickly over the snow-clad mountains and hills on my un-waxed skis which I used to coat, for want of anything better, with layers of cooking fat which the snow soaked up much too quickly. I made stylish zigzag descents through the dense, silent forests, I practiced ski de fond along new path no-one else ever took, besides iced lakes, on top of frozen swamps. But since the snow has melted, though it still lingers on the higher summits, it takes me a good hour to reach Savignole, depending on how much weight I have to carry on my back. They say walking is good for your health. I don’t deny it, though I do not give a damn about my health anymore. If you must know, I am covered with boils as big as your fist, walking brings them on and my rucksack which weighs sometimes up to twenty kilos makes them erupt. To use an expression dear to my suffering Mamoshka: “I am going through Hell on earth!”

  She certainly went through hell on earth when the Germans marched in in 1940. They had parked their tanks and heavy vehicles in front of our rented house in Clermont-Ferrand and hit our door with their boot. Mamoshka let them in.” Oh, mon Dieu!” were her last words.

  I was behind her. She collapsed on the floor with a stroke. The two Wehrmacht who had already stepped in retreated after one of them said to the other: “Ich glaube die Frau ist tot”.

  Mamoshka, or Moshka as I like to call her for short, died three days later without recovering consciousness.

  ‘La Défaite’, for me, was complete.

  The memory of my mother’s unconscious fight for life during the sultry days of August 1940 is still burning me inside. The whole sequel of her sudden collapse in front of the Invaders and the three days that followed describe better than any historical account the utter cruelty of the times, the quasi-impossibility for us French to comprehend what was happening to us, the madness which befell all of us.

  Looking at my father I can see he is in deep shock. He lay on the bed beside my mother, holding her hand. All he can say is ‘call the doctor’. Both looked like they had wanted to die together and were waiting patiently for it to happen. Panic-stricken I ‘phone the emergency service at the hospital. No-one l
ifts the receiver. Would it be possible that they had left in a hurry? After what seemed an eternity a doctor is on the line. I tell him about our predicament, he interrupts “how old is your mother”? I say fifty, he says “It’s a case of menopausal fit…give her an infusion of orange-blossom” and he hangs up after refusing to visit. I find it pathetically risible. This man’s shameful response to my cry for help forces me to be sane. I suddenly remember the existence of Dr. Julius May, an acquaintance of ours who had left Paris about the same time as we did after telling my father on the ‘phone that he had taken up a temporary post at the hospital of Royat, a spa famous for heart patients and a suburb of Clermont-Ferrand. I ask for Dr May, I insist it is extremely urgent. We are cut off. I try again. And again. Finally, he is at the end of the line. “My poor Rachel” he says with a broken voice, “I am in no position to help. I am leaving right now. So sorry. It sounds as if your mother has had a stroke. Call on the Little-sisters-of-the-Poor, they might give your mother some relief by applying cupping glasses”. I apologize for disturbing him in these grim times. He sobs. I am in tears myself. I think of my father; should he get away too, NOW? Back to the bed-room I see he hasn’t moved, lying still next to Mamoshka, holding her hand. I tell him I’m fetching help. He doesn’t react. The convent is not far, I reach it by bicycle in less than five minutes.

  Mother Superior receives me, listens to me, then says: “my child I am very sorry but our order allows us only to help and serve the poor”. I say: “But Mother Superior, my father and I are poor, we are losing our most precious possession…a wife and a mother”.

  She relents. Two sisters join us later in the evening carrying a box filled with leeches instead of cupping glasses. We turn my poor Mamoshka on her tummy and apply the leeches to her back. She frowns. I am seized by a crazy hope; would there be some cognition left in her? Some life?

  After the worms have dropped one by one, replete with Mamoshka’s blood, the sisters place them back in the box and seem to be in a great hurry to leave us. Would it be that loitering for too long in the home-of-the-rich means for them committing a sin? I give them money. No, no, they mutter. I understand that for them it is evil money.

  Meanwhile, father turns Mamoshka round on her back again. Her laboured breathing continues non-stop, it is loud, oh so loud! Her chest and belly are heaving up and down, like a machine. Her distorted face expresses anger. The frown hasn’t left her. Her struggle to breathe is hurting her so.

  3.

  The Long March

  Now, how I got to be at my godforsaken bothy, with Gérard’s binoculars, squire Raboullet’s potato sacks full of provisions, and my suppurating boils (sorry if I disgust you) is a rather long story…an itinerary along tracks which didn’t exist until I took them and which I would never have thought I could negotiate. Many a time, I must confess, I have an irresistible urge to sit down, lean against a tree and suck pebbles. But wanting to make time stand still is the same as turning back, and that I must not do. So the second of February had its tomorrow, as might have been expected, and it gave rise to many more. From then to the fragrant and still misty dawn which greets me through the bars of the east window of my bothy, two long months have run their dizzy course.

  After Moshka’s death I seem to have no resistance to emotion. Or this is what I felt very powerfully at the time until Flora, my friend, came into my life. We both had a heavy load to share, didn’t we, dearest Flora? You were looking for a haven yourself having come from Poland where your father, a famous heart surgeon had been interned by the Nazis in l941. Although not a Jew he had given shelter in his large house to several Jewish children who had fled from the Warsaw ghetto and were roaming the streets of Warsaw hungry and in a desperate search for shelter. After your father’s arrest you fled Poland, made for France, enrolled as a medical student at Clermont-Ferrand to continue your interrupted studies and were immediately taken care of by your benefactor, Maître Sarlange, a barrister. In a few months you will be a doctor. I am so proud of you! You and I are a bit like orphans, our lives fused by the music we make, whenever we can, often at unsociable hours, playing ever so softly– because of complaints from the concierge and the neighbours of my little apartment, Cours Sablon. We play the work of our favourite composers, you improvising on your guitar, I providing the accompaniment on the piano. I do so love it when you sing with your pure vibrant voice Lieder by Schumann, Schubert, Hugo Wolf… in moments of happiness and relief beyond compare!

  The day after the raid on the university you came to see me. It was 1O o’clock in the evening. The night was cold and calm. Instead of knocking lightly on my ground floor window, as you usually did, you chose to sing Chopin’s Tristesse to your guitar. Nourse barks and wags his tail for joy, knowing your voice. I open the window and the shutters, you pass me your guitar and you hitch yourself over the balustrade with a ‘whoops’ so familiar and heart-warming, your heavy body, your rounded thighs and matronly bosom not quite suited for this kind of nocturnal sport. I close my shutters and windows as quickly as I can to keep out the cold. Then you throw your guitar on my bed and hold me tightly in your arms. In your musical Polish accent you say:

  “Maître Sarlange told me… it’s awful!” Tears stream down our cheeks. I say: “Visachel has gone…with the others…with Baumgartner and his son”.

  “I know,” you say. “The names of the deported are already known”. We sit down, you on my bed, I on my piano stool. Worried about you I say: “‘Tomorrow it might be the turn of the medics…”

  “No, no fear of that! We look after their own wounded” you say with a bitter laugh. “That’s ironic!” I say. You reply:

  “Oh, you know, wounded men are all the same, lying there, under their white sheets, weak, asking for help, for love. The former hate in their hearts dissolves in their wounds. They are like children. As for us doctors, all we see are bodies to be treated…bodies which have lost their nationality…their history and their aggression” and then you ask me point-blank: “What are you going to do now?” “Join the maquis…what else can I do?” The thing I had been wanting for too long to happen becomes a reality in a flash. I see myself already living in the midst of nameless men and women called terrorists, becoming a terrorist myself, sharing the lives of those men and women who had made their choice at the beginning of the hostilities.

  The long, often agonizing wait had its reasons, purely filial ones and which I do not regret to this day.

  When my father fled from Clermont-Ferrand shortly after my Mamoshka’s death he had made me promise to avoid all kinds of ‘heroics’ (his own words) which might lead to my arrest and subsequently his. He had compelling reasons for the request: He had been on Hitler’s black list since Hitler came to power. Besides being a Jew, his notorious anti-German activities whilst director of the Sunlight soap factories in Mannheim had become known on both sides of the German-French divide. Having obtained German nationality after escaping from the pogroms in his native Romania at the age of nineteen my father, who spoke also fluent French, was put in charge of the French prisoners arriving in droves at the factory from 1916 onwards. He saw to their welfare personally and accorded them many privileges which alarmed the German military. Why should Herr Direktor Henner spoil the French prisoners while German prisoners in France were known to be miserably treated? Father’s pro-French deeds did not stop there. He impeded, in fact sabotaged, the manufacture of the explosive tri nitro-glycerine (one of the by-products in the manufacture of soap) which had been imposed as a matter of great urgency by the German Ministry of War during the winter of 1917/18. The quantity of explosives expected to be delivered on time failed to materialize. An order for Dr Henner’s arrest was issued, but by that time he had fled to Switzerland. Two months later the Armistice was signed and Father made for Paris to join my Parisian mother whom he had secretly married when on a vacation in the capital in l913. He was given French nationality on account of his courageous acts of defiance during the war and the Légion d’Honneur
shortly after. How very nice it would have been if Father’s epic history had terminated at this point. But it was not to be. In l940, a German acquaintance stationed at the German embassy in Paris warned him of a damning report which had reached his desk. It described in detail his ‘treasonable acts’ twenty two years before in Mannheim, declaring him an enemy of the Reich. So here I was, his daughter, a prisoner of chemistry lab., a place of isolation from normal living, stashed away, forced to be the impotent witness of other people’s totally committed lives. Yet feeling strong. Always hopeful. Was this due to my friend and surrogate mother Flora? To the BBC broadcasts listened to every night with unabated excitement? To the support of my supervisor and to the students so keen on getting their analysis right to please me? Or to my concierge’s sustaining gifts of her home-made pâté de campagne given to me when not drunk or just foul tempered as she was most days? Or to my faithful dog Nourse who loves me? Yes, I am sure it was, it was due to each of these who in their own ways conspired (inspired me) to keep me going…

  * * *

  Flora asks: “‘What about your father?” This is a brutal question. (Not welcomed after what I experienced yesterday). But it’s the way you never beat about the bush. The thought of my father confounds me and you know that I’ve decided not to look back. I say: “You’ve left your father too, haven’t you?” “Not the same. I left Poland a few days after my father’s arrest. Anyway, he wanted me to finish my studies in France and had said so long before they arrested him. “Ah yes,” I say, “I remember… ”

  So here I am, unable to justify my decision. My selfishness is intolerable. In the rare letters to reach me my father writes “You have taken your mother’s place in my broken heart.” He says this each time. I dread receiving his letters…