A Hero of France: A Novel

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A Hero of France: A Novel Page 11

by Alan Furst


  “He pretended to be puzzled, what did the directeur think they were doing? Why was he being asked questions? The directeur wouldn’t say why—he was obviously being pressured by the police but he would never admit that to a student.”

  “Not bad,” Mathieu said.

  “But not over, I fear.”

  —

  21 April. Midafternoon at the Café Welcome, Mathieu and Jules were in the small kitchen, looking from time to time through the grease-flecked glass of the portholes in the door that led to the café proper. There was no sign of the “strange-looking man,” so, as Mathieu waited, Jules cooked him a sausage, and put a dab of hot mustard on the rim of the plate.

  “A good sausage, Jules,” Mathieu said.

  “Real pork, the butcher is my brother-in-law.” Jules shook his head. “These days, you can’t be sure what you’re eating.”

  The afternoon wore on. Mathieu kept looking at his watch—Annemarie was out buying a new jacket and shirt for Kalisz and he wanted to find out if she’d been successful, as they had to be on a train early in the morning. Jules chattered away, ran his fingers through his sparse hair, his conversation too often punctuated by a nervous laugh. You couldn’t tell about people anymore, he said, they might be police informers or blackmailers or anything. Over time it became clear to Mathieu that Jules wanted out, fear had overtaken him and he wanted them to stop using his café as a contact point but was too proud to say so. Still, when they returned from the south, Mathieu realized, a new café would have to be found.

  Mathieu was about to give up when Jules said, “Ah, here he is!”

  Mathieu went to the other porthole and saw what was indeed a strange-looking man, or, rather, a strange-looking boy, barely in his twenties. Standing at the bar and drinking a glass of wine, he had dark skin and dark eyes, wore a buttoned-up overcoat that was both much too tight and much too long, a hat with a wide, flat brim and a low crown, also flat, to which he’d added a bow tie that might once have belonged to a café waiter. With a pencil line of a mustache that traced his upper lip, he struck Mathieu as a boy dressed up to play his father.

  “Well?” Jules said. “You can leave by the back door, if you like.”

  “He used my name, you said?”

  “He did, more than once. He likes to talk.”

  “I better find out who he is.” Mathieu’s fingers, as though by themselves, brushed the handle of the automatic in his waistband.

  He went out into the café proper and sat close to the bar, wanting to see if the boy recognized him. But, if he did, he showed no sign of it and was now trying to start up a conversation with the barman, who apparently didn’t like him and busied himself drying glasses with a towel. Mathieu didn’t like him either, just didn’t, the boy was the sort of person that people didn’t like. Finally, Mathieu walked over to the bar and stood next to him. “Are you the fellow who’s been asking about Mathieu?”

  The boy stared, his face immobile. “Are you him?”

  “Let’s say he’s a friend of mine.”

  “I would prefer to speak with Mathieu himself. Tell him that, will you?”

  “I’ll give him a message, it’s the best I can do.”

  “Is it? Are you sure?”

  “Why don’t you just say what you want? Always best in the end.”

  “I want to help the Resistance, tell Mathieu I said so, he should be interested.”

  “Help. Help how?”

  “Maybe he needs somebody to…watch out for him.” The boy smiled, almost a smirk.

  “Alright, I’ll let him know. What’s your name?”

  “I am known as the Spider.”

  “Are you. And why is that?”

  “My enemies know why. Not the sort of spider who hangs from the ceiling, the sort of spider who hides, then strikes, and you’ll feel the sting for a long time.”

  “Oh, now I understand.”

  “Say, you’re Mathieu himself, aren’t you.”

  “No, I’m somebody else.”

  “It’s dangerous, the Resistance, maybe good to have somebody around who can handle himself in a fight, no? And I’ve got friends…” He drank down the last of his wine and said, “Mmm, that’s good, I think I’ll have another. And I’ll let you buy it for me.”

  “Not today, my friend, and not tomorrow. I’ll just bet you’d like Mathieu to pay you off, make sure you keep your mouth shut, am I right?”

  “Not such a bad idea—it’s the way things are done around here.”

  “Is that so? I didn’t realize.” Mathieu turned the boy’s empty glass upside down on the bar. “Now you’re done drinking, and don’t come back here, understood?”

  “You shouldn’t be that way, it might not be good for your health.”

  “Oh? Well, I’ll tell Mathieu what you said.”

  Then he turned and left the café, but the boy followed him, stayed ten feet behind, his hands now in the pockets of his overcoat. Mathieu ignored him, walked downhill on the Rue de Tournon, headed for the Odéon Métro. When he reached the station, the boy stood close by, so he could board the same Métro car. Now Mathieu tired of the game. There was a policeman standing by the tiled wall, Mathieu approached him and said, “Good afternoon, Officer.”

  The policeman responded by touching the brim of his cap with his index finger. Mathieu said, “Can you tell me if the trains are still running?”

  “Yes, monsieur, as near as I know, they are.”

  “That fellow”—Mathieu extended his arm and pointed at the boy—“says they aren’t, but I guess he’s wrong.”

  Mathieu thanked the officer and, when he turned around, the boy had disappeared.

  —

  At seven in the morning, Mathieu collected Annemarie and Kalisz at their hotel and made for the Métro that stopped at the Gare de Lyon, where trains left for the south. Kalisz was now wearing a gray, pin-striped jacket with the trousers of his blue suit—the jacket baggy, well used, and a little too big for him. “Where did you find it?” Mathieu asked Annemarie.

  “The used-clothing markets were stripped bare. I was desperate, so, in the end, I stopped a man on the street and bought his jacket. I had to offer him a great deal of money, but there was no other way.”

  The Gare de Lyon was crowded but the police at the control would not be hurried, making sure that the permit photographs matched the faces of the travelers using the documents. When the three finally reached the platform, they had to run, climbing onto the step of a railcar that was already moving down the track. Annemarie and Kalisz sat together on a bench in the third-class car, with Mathieu directly behind them.

  The local train was headed for Bourges, some hundred and fifty miles away, where they would take a two-car tram to the village of La Guerche-sur-l’Aubois and then, with the help of the local passeurs, cross into the Unoccupied Zone. He knew that the journey which lay ahead of them would be dangerous but, for the moment, he relaxed, by watching the countryside rolling past his window. Outside, a windy changeful day as the villages south of the city were replaced by plowed fields, with an occasional church steeple in the distance.

  In time, they reached the house in La Guerche where they would meet the passeurs and be guided past the border control into the Unoccupied Zone. There were two travelers waiting in the parlor but eventually they were led away and a local passeur, a middle-aged man with a full beard, showed up and, after formal greetings, took them into the oak forest at the edge of the village. As they approached a fast stream bridged by a tree trunk, the passeur held up a hand and put a finger to his lips. Mathieu looked around but could see nothing threatening; the forest was deep in shadow, with a silence broken only by the sounds of singing birds and rushing water. Then the passeur whispered, “Do you hear them?”

  Mathieu and the others concentrated until, at last, they heard dogs barking, their voices faint in the far distance. “Those are not local dogs after a rabbit,” the passeur said. “Those are pursuit dogs, tracking dogs.” He grabbed Mathieu by
the shoulder of his jacket and hurried him into the stream as the others followed. “We’ll use the stream, no scent for the hounds,” the passeur said. “It will take us back to La Guerche.”

  They were moving upstream and the water, some two feet deep, turned to frothing foam as it parted at their knees. It was difficult to fight the current, taking one step at a time, the spring flow was icy and, as their feet went numb, they had to fight for balance. The passeur plunged forward, breaking his fall with his hand. “All this be damned,” he whispered. “My wife told me to quit, but did I listen?” Kalisz swore under his breath, rich Polish oaths, one after the other. When Annemarie spread her arms and started to fall, Mathieu reached out to steady her and they both fell backward, Annemarie landing on top of him. When they’d struggled to their feet, Annemarie said, “Sorry, Mathieu,” as she wiped the water from her face.

  “It’s alright, I…” He was going to make a joke of it but an angry “Shhh!” from the passeur cut him off.

  After they’d been in the water for twenty minutes—the barking dogs still far away but getting closer as they waded upstream—the passeur beckoned them to follow and stepped onto a narrow bank at the foot of a hill. “Are you the leader?” the passeur said to Mathieu, who nodded that he was. “Come with me, we can see the control from the hilltop.” When the passeur and Mathieu reached the crown of the hill they lay flat and, peering over the edge, could now see the control below them.

  A hundred yards away, a country road appeared from the edge of the forest, crossed a weedy field, then climbed a low hill. Halfway up the road, the border between the Occupied and Unoccupied Zones was marked by a yellow metal sign that said ARRÊT!—halt, a striped crossbar that could be lowered to block the road, and a wooden hut with a tin roof and a French flag. An open, khaki-colored vehicle, a command car, was parked by the hut behind two motorcycles, and standing next to the command car were two gendarmes in army-style uniforms with their pistols drawn. Facing them, three civilians stood with their hands raised: a couple, perhaps man and wife, the man heavy and dignified, the woman wearing a hat and veil that had been knocked askew. By the woman’s side, a young man dressed as a paysan wore a beret pulled down to his forehead. Behind them were three more gendarmes, two of them restraining German shepherd dogs on long leads. The dogs pulled hard and barked furiously—their prey was right in front of them—until one of the gendarmes shouted at them and the dogs stopped barking and sat down. As Mathieu and the passeur watched, the other gendarme manacled the hands of the three prisoners then walked them toward the command car.

  “Good God,” said the passeur. “Do you see who they are?”

  Mathieu saw; here were the travelers who had preceded them—by a half hour—from the house in La Guerche.

  The passeur crawled backward from the crest, then hurried down the hill as Mathieu followed. When they reached Annemarie and Kalisz, Annemarie said, “What happened?”

  “The couple who left before us were caught in the forest and arrested.”

  “By gendarmes,” the passeur said. “This control used to be manned by local policemen working as border guards. No longer.” He thought for a moment, then said, “We’ll stay here until nightfall, then take a path through the fields back to La Guerche, and you can stay at my house until we figure out what to do next.”

  “Now that they know what goes on in La Guerche,” Mathieu said, “will they search your house?”

  “They might, they do anything they want. But we’ll be warned if they’re around—all the people in La Guerche know me, in fact I’m the village mayor.” He looked rueful, then said, “Ahh, what a mess, the passeur they arrested is my wife’s cousin.”

  —

  By moonlight, the steel rails glowed like polished silver as they crossed a field. At the edge of the railbed, a small trackwalker’s sign spiked to the gravel had numbers that showed the distance to somewhere. First they heard the sound of the approaching train, then they saw the light on the locomotive that cut a path through the nighttime ground mist. The mayor of La Guerche squinted at his watch and said, “Here it is. And on time.” The locomotive rumbled past them, followed by a long row of freight cars. As the train slowed to a stop, the couplings of the freight cars clanked and rattled, then, with a long chuff of steam from the locomotive, the train halted—the last car standing opposite Mathieu and the others.

  The mayor shook hands with each of them, repeating “Good luck to you” each time. “Here are some sandwiches for the journey,” he said, handing Mathieu a package wrapped in newspaper. “You will be in Paris sometime tomorrow, at the La Chapelle freightyards. You must get off there, because this is an armaments train and is headed for Germany.”

  “Thank you for everything you’ve done,” Mathieu said.

  “Remember me,” the mayor said. “I’m not done fighting.”

  The door of the railcar slid open and a man wearing a railway uniform looked out and said, “Good to see you, Mayor Gerard.”

  “Hello, mon vieux,” the mayor said. “Here are your passengers.”

  “Climb aboard, my friends.”

  The three entered the car, then made space for themselves amid mounds of canvas mailbags as the train pulled away. With the door closed it was dark in the mail car. Annemarie stretched out on one side of Mathieu, Kalisz on the other. “When is supper?” Kalisz said.

  Mathieu opened the newspaper-wrapped package and handed each of the others a sandwich then started on his own—a slice of sweet onion between thick slabs of bread smeared with margarine. Kalisz chewed slowly, relishing each bite. From Annemarie, an “Mmm” of pleasure, then she said, “I have eaten very good food in very good places but it was not nearly as good as this.”

  The long train moved slowly through the countryside, now and then passing unlit, deserted stations in darkened towns. Done with the sandwich, Mathieu settled back on his mailbags. Beside him, Kalisz began to snore. “He is very tired, our pilot,” Annemarie said.

  “We all are,” Mathieu said.

  “True,” Annemarie said. “It’s hard, all this…”

  “Well then, good night,” Mathieu said, closing his eyes. But he could not go to sleep, he had to calm down a little, unwind; it had been a long day, only luck had saved them. The image of the three people with their hands raised kept returning, though he tried to make it go away. Lying beside him, Annemarie was sound asleep, breathing audible. As he watched her face, he could see that she was dreaming.

  —

  28 April. At four in the afternoon on a cloudy day, Mathieu waited at the Rue de Rivoli entry of the ancient and wondrous department store, BHV—bay-osh-vay to Parisians, the Bazaar of the Hôtel de Ville, for his younger sister Natalie and his favorite niece, Simone, for an annual ritual these past few years, the buying of Simone’s birthday present. There had been dolls and toys in the past, but this year Simone was twelve, and Mathieu wondered what she might want.

  Natalie was three years younger than Mathieu and when their father, the mayor of a small municipality just north of Paris, died of influenza in 1910, Mathieu had become, even at the age of nine, Natalie’s protector, taking her to school, bringing her home, very much the caring older brother. Now he was an affectionate uncle. Simone and Mathieu liked each other, perhaps because there was more than a little of Mathieu in his niece: the way she watched the world, a certain fearlessness, and she had the same hair and eyes as he did.

  At four, Simone now home from school, she and Natalie came hurrying down the street for an eager and lengthy embrace as the crowd of BHV shoppers flowed around them. “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” Mathieu said, holding Simone back to have a look at her. “How does it feel to be twelve?”

  Simone shrugged. “The same, pretty much,” she said.

  “She is a beauty,” Mathieu said to his sister.

  “Isn’t she, the boys are already following her around.”

  “Don’t, Mom,” Simone said.

  “Let’s go shopping,” Mathieu said.
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  The interior of the BHV was classic, a great staircase ascended up the middle of the store, revealing shoppers at work on the floor below, wandering across the old, wooden floorboards from display to display. This April 28, the crowd was about two-thirds German officers, and one-third Parisians with enough money to buy the expensive—for the French—merchandise. At the foot of the staircase, Mathieu said, “So, what is it to be this year, chérie?

  “I think this year it ought to be a sweater, because it was so cold last winter.”

  As Mathieu stared at the store directory, Natalie said, “The kids’ clothes are on the second floor.” Clearly, the two had prepared a strategy. As the three climbed the staircase, Simone took one of his hands, Natalie the other. On the second floor, Natalie stood before a counter showing cardigan sweaters. “Oh these are very good,” Natalie said. “The wool is good, and warm.”

  “It is spring,” Mathieu said.

  “Yes, but she has plenty to wear for the summer.”

  “Plenty?”

  “Enough. Now, dear, look these over and see what color you like.”

  Mathieu wandered off a little way and called out, “Oh you should see these.”

  Simone and Natalie joined him and he held up a cashmere short-sleeved sweater with a tiny bow at the neck. “Um, this is cashmere,” Natalie said. “Very dear.”

  But Simone was rapt, she reached out and ran a delicate hand over one of the sweaters, a pale lavender. She then held the sweater to her shoulders and stood before a mirror, and a certain look came into her eyes.

  Natalie looked at the price tag and said, “Really, this is…”

  But Mathieu kissed his sister lightly on the cheek. “It will be so pretty on her.”

  With her prize in a small paper bag that said BHV, Simone hurried down the stairs, eager to be home. She had just the right skirt.

  —

  On the third of May, Parisians left their umbrellas at home and, as they walked out into the street, turned their grateful faces to the blue, blue sky. The real, true spring had arrived, the chestnut trees were in blossom, and the Boche could do nothing about it.

 

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