“I think I ought to be the judge of that. Are you ready, Sister Barbara?”
Colette opened her mouth to take the offering, uneasy about her new name.
Wasn’t Barbara shut up in a tower somewhere? Oh God, why can’t I remember...?
“Good. Well done.”
But when her back was turned, Chloë made her stick out her tongue and removed all the pink fragments. “Vitamins, my foot.” She stuffed them in the ashtray, then craned forwards, worried she’d missed some kilometres as signs for Fontainebleau and its chȃteaux came and went. “Can’t you see they’re trying to bloody kill us?”
The Sister Superior who followed the trolley suddenly rang her bell causing the driver to turn and look in her mirror. She then switched off the tape.
“We now have Grace.” She folded her hands but kept her eyes on each picnic package as it was seized. “Benedicite, benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona...”
A piece of yesterday’s baguette, a tomato, and portion of chicory heart. The Pauvres Soeurs, including the triplets, tore off the wrappings and crammed their cheeks full.
“Since when have we become swine at the trough?” glowered the Sister Superior. “You and you,” she pointed to the main culprits, Sisters Ursula and Margaret, who blushed red and began choking, “will say three Aves, and Sister Cecilia will hear your confession when we arrive.” She then put her mouth near their ears and hissed. “We can’t afford to put our débutantes off. Do you understand?”
“See, they’re worse than the bloody Gestapo.” Chloë left her snack untouched. “And this stuff’s got God knows what in it.” She took Colette’s bread and sniffed it. “Told you so. Look, from now on, you and me are going to move Heaven and earth to get out of this...”
“This is a relative Heaven to me already.” Colette murmured. “Why should I want to leave?”
“That’s such crap! See those poor fuckers?” Chloë pointed to the front of the coach, to where triplets Stéphanie, Victorine and Adèle, still in red, sat squashed together on one seat. “That’s how we’ll end up, I’m bloody telling you...”
Colette recalled their simple faces, their eyes of the blind before birth. What she’d been once and could be again. But other things were slowly imposing themselves like a mosaic reconstructed, bit by bit. A man’s body brushed with dark hairs, the weight of him warm and firm seemed to press on her in that very space. His scent from somewhere, and then another, different, softer, Bébé Bise talc. White, with a pink top and a matching nappy-wearing rabbit on the side.
That was it.
Unforgettable. And the child himself had been so sanguine, so easy... Her “petit bâtard” whose face she could no longer find.
“You OK?”
“I don’t know.”
Evening shadows fingered the land as the coach headed into the dying sun, and Madame Falco who’d pulled her visor down, shouted she needed the toilettes. The Sisters Marie-Ange and Agnès stood up. “As you know,” said the older nun, “when we stop, it’s for our driver only. You’re all to stay on board and the usual arrangements will apply.”
“It’s disgusting.” Chloë’s voice too loud. “Worse than the cattle trucks!”
“Hush.”
“They were sent from near here, you know. Beaune la Rolande.”
“And Pithiviers.” Colette stared out looking for evidence of those hateful railway lines amongst the flat, shaved land. “We’re no different.”
Once signs for Blois and its châteaux had come and gone, the driver turned into the Aire de Mauvoy. She leapt from the cab, stretched her arms then jogged towards the shop. Forty pairs of eyes followed her every move, every smallest show of freedom, and of course, she exaggerated for their benefit, Chloë could tell.
“Bitch.”
Immediately the Sister Superior sprung to her feet and like a wraith, flew up the aisle.
“The Devil has lodged in your soul, Sister Marthe. I knew that from the moment we took you in.”
“Let me go, then.”
A wary silence descended as all heads turned.
“Alas, that is a luxury we cannot grant you. You will serve your penance at Libourne and make good the evil that is now your incubus.”
“You’re murderers!”
“And what are you, pray? See everyone, how our Sister here is digging worse than her own grave. She would be wise to consider her fate, and the soul of the child she murdered.”
Chloë tried to wriggle free but the woman with the advantage of height, held her down as Sister Agnès shot Natolyn deep into her arm. Colette was helpless, but something made her gasp. She recognised the phial and its lettering. Natolyn was the latest product from Medex. For sleep and truth. The most effective yet developed and also if misused, the most deadly.
This doesn’t make sense... no sense at all... what’s going on?
Chloë’s head slumped into the gangway. Colette tried to shake her, anything to rouse her but she looked like death and Colette called out in fright.
“You’ll be next if you keep that up.” Sister Agnès was giving out bedpans to the few with their hands up. No longer the kindly soul Colette had met in the Paris park, but someone with duties to perform and a régime to sustain. Her face seemed to belong to someone else, her mouth just tight skin showing her age.
“You’re a heretic of the lowest order,” she spat as Colette cowered against the window. “The things you’ve told us, upon Our Lady’s Heart, you will live to regret. Our partners in Christ – our brothers, the priesthood – have been defamed and defiled by your treacherous words, and by implication, the whole of our mother Church. We will remove the honour of St. Barbara’s name unless you recant.”
Colette screamed but nothing would clear her head.
Recant what? For the love of God, what have I done?
“We know that Father André is one of the most dedicated of priests in the south and that Father Jean-Baptiste of Ste Trinité has raised the stature of his church through his great love of music. How dare you!” Her breath strong enough to move the sunset from the sky, fan flames of terror into the safety of the coach. There was no escaping the witches’ fire. No escape.
Colette felt for the comfort of her string of garnets, her grandmother’s precious gift, but realised with growing horror, the rosary had gone.
XIX
Vidal’s watch was still showing fast. He slipped it off his wrist and flung it into the metal bin. The noise made Duvivier rear up; go for his gun under the bolster.
“Holy Jesus!”
“That’s trash. I need new.”
“OK, so we’re shopping today.”
“Good.” Vidal was first into the bathroom to shave and shower, then first to dress. It was important, and more so without his timekeeper. Duvivier eased his white legs from the warmth of his bed and Vidal saw calves flabby off the bone and toenails edged in dirt.
“By eleven-thirty you’ll all be fixed up. Professionally.” Duvivier gargled Aqua Vit and dribbled it back into the glass while the other rolled up his robes carefully. There’d be no time to iron anything back in Lanvière, what with Vespers at six and his chief choir master Moussac griping as usual.
He stored his razor inside his spare socks and zipped up his bag with the noisy finality of someone who must stay on top. To make sure the Provençal had too much to do to go hunting for Colette. He’d failed once. He wasn’t going to fail again.
The others stirred. Mathieu looked dazed and rubbed his eyes open while Plagnol strolled naked across to the en suite. Vidal stared in disgust. He’d always been partial to blancmange, even as a kid, but no longer. The man was an aberration. Pappy breasts and a groin-overhang lined by red sweat.
“You’ve a Jew’s prick,” he observed. “How come?”
“He asks how it comes. I’ll show you.” Plagnol started to work it but Duvivier pushed him through the door.
“What advantage then hath the Jew?” he said. “Or what profit is there of circumcision? Much e
very way; chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. So, my man,” he sneered, “consider yourself in exalted company. Now cover it up.”
“What a pity,” Cacheux smirked. “I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
“You filthy little runt.” Vidal raised his shoulders and clenched his fists like the boxer he’d once been at school.
“Hush please.” Duvivier opened his Breviary, its pages ochre against the tabletop. “We have more pressing matters. First an Indulgence to the Lord then breakfast. After that, you’ll go to the Entrepôt Tronchet warehouse with my list. They’re expecting you at ten. By the way, my good friends, feedback suggests that yesterday at the Mass was an unmitigated success. No doubt you’ll find your flocks increased upon your return. That’ll keep the shekels rolling in.”
Plagnol emerged from the en suite accompanied by the toilet flush, his hair wet, smooth as a mole. He struggled into a pair of dingy underpants while Mathieu chose to dress under cover as Duvivier continued. “Even though we’ll be scrambling and descrambling with new codes, we continue with our Trucker-speak on our phones. Understood? These numbers are the only ones we use, so log them into your brains. This way the G.I.C. won’t be able to touch us. Hincel are market leaders, so we’ll have the best.”
To Plagnol first, he passed a sheet of lavatory paper bearing five lines of personal digits. The Pigface was too slow in memorising them so Vidal relieved him of it, scowling. “It should have come to me first.”
“Who says?”
“I’m second in command. Correct?” He searched Duvivier’s face for agreement, but the brief generosity had expired.
“That is no more than an abstract notion. Like the argument of Seraphim versus Cherubim. I will use whoever I choose, sire. Now,” he turned to Mathieu, “I’ve ordered a 125 mm zoom. Pocket size. I want trial shots by the 30th and the real thing by the birth of the Blessed Virgin. Understood?”
The Breton nodded his unruly head and fixed his flies with shaking fingers.
“You fill me with such confidence,” Duvivier sneered. “And you,” his pock-eyes fell on Plagnol, “will sort that fucking white car. No sale, no trade in, just dump it. It’s not your woman for God’s sake though you act like it is. Plenty of possibilities between here and Drancy I’d have thought.”
Mathieu shivered at that name as his comb made an uneven parting on his head.
“We’ll be hiring on the day.”
Cacheux, who’d been cleaning his shoes with the sanitary towel provided in the bathroom, looked up. “In whose name?”
“Never you mind.” Duvivier’s finger pressed the prayer book pages open and closed his eyes. “Oh God and gentle Jesus, we kneel in your presence and pray to you with all our souls to engrave in our hearts the feeling of hope and charity.”
Then, with the Pater over and the timetable of the skills and fitness programme in place, together with weapons allocation, the occupants of Room 25 made their way down to the dining room.
Vidal rehearsed his questions, including the identity of Duvivier’s typist – enough to last the half hour and delay the chase for Colette. But the southerner’s appetite didn’t extend to answers, just ham, the hard-boiled eggs and a noxious bowl of prunes.
He was on his own, as he always would be. The Breton, no longer biddable, just stared from one to the other, while Duvivier having pinched his biceps told him that by the Feast of St. Jérôme he wanted to feel iron instead of muscle under his skin, and hear an engine instead of a heart. “We’re the new Jagdverbande, remember. The hunting élite.” He ejected a black prune stone in the youngest priest’s direction.
And Vidal thought of pigs with wings.
XX
Saturday August 23rd
It was 09.15 by the Breton’s watch and still no mention of Colette. He’d tried phoning her flat. No reply, but something told him her line was tapped. Probably by the exchange in Lanvière, or the Caserne de Latour Maubourg’s octopus had spread its tentacles east.
By the time the small party had gathered outside the hotel, Vidal knew from every syllable that had issued from Duvivier’s mouth, that the Kommandant did indeed have other things on his mind, and his distracted handshake on the corner of the Rue Goncourt and the Boulevard Ara seemed to bear this out.
“Gare de l’Est at noon,” he said. “We’ll debrief during lunch before our various departures. On this occasion, the flesh has parity with the soul. Amen.” Duvivier’s hat cast the top half of his face in shadow so Vidal couldn’t read his eyes. “If by chance I’m detained, be so good as to wait.” With that he slipped his case under his arm and set off in the direction of the Pont d’Iena and the Eiffel Tower.
Vidal was tempted to follow, to find out what the southern snake was up to, but the warehouse was twelve stops away in the 20ième, and trains were likely to be busy.
“Forty-one minutes.” He conferred with Cacheux. “And when we get there, I’m the front man, OK?”
“Oh yes?” Plagnol’s face alive with anger, but after Cacheux whispered a sweet something, he backed off.
Mathieu slouched along, making no attempt to dodge the happy and confident tourists who strode through him as though he was invisible. Sometimes he lurched between the other two collaborators who let him rebound one to the other like a pinball. Gone the clinging novice, now a man dizzy with guilt.
“Sort him out!” Vidal snapped, keeping his distance in front. Something in the air refuelled him, reminded him of Eberswïhr at the end of summer 1982. The day his father got his ‘licenciement’ from his employers Goldman and Berger after almost forty years of impeccable timekeeping and maintaining the looms to perfection. The same late sunlight on the wax tablecloth and the big man-tears shining the backs of his hands.
Sepp Goldman, whom the young seminarian had met only once, had ended his dismissal with a helpful quote from the Torah. “Return you backsliding children and I will heal your backsliding...”
The Jew from Lübeck had dished out the final insult. After that, father and son both joined the Croix de Feu, agitating in secret and daubing their croix gammées on the ‘Jews’ Tower’ apartment block.
Vidal began to jog, to fill his diving lungs and flex his legs moving at last towards his mission with a clear conscience. Like Christ on the waters of Galilee, the tide of Paris life seemed to recede before him. At last, justice for the Gentile underclass. The Aryan indigene. After all, hadn’t S.S. Sturmbannführer Sommer torched a few Paris synagogues in his time with plastic bombs, and his own late copain Pol Marnon fire bombed the ‘Jewish Barracks’ at Sachsenhausen? Not to mention the youthful Pope’s employment at I. G. Farben?
He’d not felt so uplifted since leaving Dégrelle’s funeral three years before. His hero, who’d likened the Waffen-SS to a holy order of young apostles, carried by a faith nothing could check, had spoken to him from the grave and now it was his turn. He was one of the chosen race, the Kingdom of priests.
The vision of his choir too, fuelled his spirits to new heights – never mind he had The Pigface, the queen and the misfit in the Cause, the Armée Contre Juifs was now his second Saviour, and the memory of Sepp Goldman’s heartless smile spurred him on.
XXI
Duvivier was sweating with nervous anticipation after only ten minutes yet, when he stopped to cross the Avenue Gustav Eiffel, he introduced a tie to his neck. He then rolled his duffel coat and hat tight under his arm and straightened his cuffs, flattered by the girl who stood close enough alongside for him to feel her body through his clothes.
“Hi.” She groped for his hand. “You busy?”
Another Magdalene, a ten-a-penny whore, when his mother and all the other women he’d admired had been regally tall, this one was too small and her cheap perfume overdone.
“I am.”
“Well, I can wait. I like you.”
Never in his whole life had anyone ever said that to him. Neither the girls who used to hang around until dawn for the fishing boat Delphine to
come in, only to take his brother Hubert away to bedrooms he’d never know. Nor even his mother, Madeleine Irma Büber.
Two earnest blue eyes bore the hair-line edges of contact lenses, her lips full and red lay half open ready to mouth his reply.
“And what do they call you?” he asked.
“Yveline. And I’m not what you think.”
“Where you from?” Not that he was interested, but questions had over the years become a habit.
“Montrouge. Off the Rue de Bagneux.”
“Ah. You must know the Maison des Tisserands, then?” If she was lying, this would do it. He’d once stayed in the pension next door while visiting his grandfather, old Jean Büber, just before he died.
“They’re the best craftsmen in all the world,” she said with authority.
“That is truly amazing, Mademoiselle, considering they’d all departed this life by 1875. It’s now a Museum. Ten francs a go.”
“Oh.” The girl blushed.
“So what’s all this about? Who set you up?” His grip tightened and her rodent cry gave him a frisson of excitement.
“No-one. I just thought...”
“You’re coming with me, Mademoiselle.” He glanced right then left before stepping off the kerb, and then with the Champs de Mars under his feet, he began to march and holler the Marseilleise. They made an odd pair, but in the aftermath of the Mass, there was enough camouflage with other couples still mooching about the tourist attractions.
Suddenly his smell became a problem as Jacques Ange-Gabriel’s entrance to the École Militaire loomed up in front. It suffused her, choked her. Garlic and neglect.
“Let me go!” She struggled, disadvantaged from the start, trailing him up the steps.
“I have certain business matters here, and while I attend to them you’re to remain in the vestibule under observation. Understood?”
She fell silent, using that interlude of collusion to study and remember as much as she could. The maps of sweat under each armpit. That damaged face he could never quite keep hidden, and the hat she knew he never usually wore. Things had gone wrong but her wits hadn’t yet deserted her.
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