A Hero of France: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  As Mathieu reached the lobby of the Saint-Yves, the proprietor, as usual behind the reception desk, had a beaming smile for him. “Ah, monsieur, it is here at last,” she said. “Le printemps!” Outside the door, a faint breeze on the Rue Dauphine; Mathieu felt it warm his skin and his heart as well, but he realized that the pleasure of the day would have to be postponed until he’d completed a difficult task—he was off to the Café Welcome to tell Jules that the use of his café as a contact point would have to be ended. It can’t go on forever, too many people know about it, and they talk, he thought to himself, rehearsing the line he would take with Jules.

  He could have used the Métro but this was no day to be underground so he walked to the Rue de Tournon. The usual crowd of bicyclists was in the streets but the weather had affected them; they’d slowed down and stopped ringing their bells at each other, and the women had celebrated by wearing whatever spring colors they had—dusty rose, or lilac, or lemon yellow.

  As the Café Welcome came into view, Mathieu saw that Jules was out in front, sweeping the sidewalk—likely a welcome chore in the midday sunshine. But, as he neared the café, he saw that Jules was not sweeping up dust and bits of paper, he was sweeping up shattered glass, the remains of the café window.

  Jules stopped when he saw Mathieu approaching. “Look what they did to me,” he said.

  “Jules, what happened?”

  “Some fascist kids smashed my window, is what I think.”

  Mathieu took the dustpan from Jules’s hand and said, “Let me help you.” Kneeling on the sidewalk, he held the dustpan level and, after Jules had filled it with glass, headed for the kitchen garbage can that had been moved out to the street. Meanwhile, people passing by, faces grim, shook their heads and detoured around the sparkling fragments.

  As he swept, Jules mumbled angrily to himself.

  “Tell me, Jules, did that ‘strange-looking’ boy ever come back here?”

  “No sign of him. You think he visited last night?”

  “It’s possible. Likely.”

  “Well, I’ll have to board up the window—you can’t find glass these days.”

  “Your customers won’t mind, everyone in Paris knows this goes on. And, as for a new window, we’ll find a way to get you one, and then we’ll pay for it.”

  Jules looked down at Mathieu, holding the dustpan. “If you can, Mathieu, I would appreciate it, but this isn’t your fault, I won’t hold it against you, and I’ll continue on…to work for you and our friends.”

  So much for the rehearsed lines, Mathieu thought. When they were done, Jules invited him in for a glass of wine.

  —

  At ten-fifteen that evening, Mathieu was sitting with Max de Lyon at his table in the Le Cygne nightclub. De Lyon ordered a bottle of cognac and lit one of his brown cigarettes. “Salut,” he said, raising his glass to Mathieu. “What brings you out tonight?”

  “Troubles. I need advice, Max.”

  “Something gone wrong?”

  “We’re trying to move this Polish pilot down to Spain. The British sent a plane for him but it crashed in a field, then we tried to take him into the Unoccupied Zone and ran into, not the usual border guards, but gendarmes with dogs and motorcycles, and we almost got caught.”

  “The war is changing,” de Lyon said. “The British are building warplanes day and night, the size and number of the bomber raids are increasing and some of them are going to be shot down. That means more work for the escape lines, which the British themselves mean to run; that’s why Edouard showed up here. Meanwhile, there are too many fugitives getting through and the big shots in Berlin don’t like it. They put pressure on Vichy, Vichy sends in the gendarmerie. Will it work? Not for long. The Wehrmacht will have the job next, and, in time, you can expect to see the SS and the Gestapo here. So, if you think you have troubles now…”

  Mathieu finished his cognac, de Lyon refilled his glass. “I don’t know,” Mathieu said, defeat in his voice. “I really don’t, maybe we should just keep trying…”

  “Maybe not,” de Lyon said. On the bandstand, the pianist, using only his right hand, was playing Paris Sera Toujours Paris—Paris will always be Paris, a hopeful, popular song from 1939, while his left arm was around the waist of a dancing girl who stood by the keyboard. Finally, de Lyon said, “Do you remember my friend Stavros?”

  Mathieu nodded that he did. One of de Lyon’s gangster associates, he was a swarthy bear of a man with oiled hair who wore a baggy silk suit—Stavros the Macedonian.

  “Maybe he can help,” de Lyon said. “Tonight he’s entertaining an old friend, a fellow Macedonian. He’s the captain of a tramp freighter so…who knows, there might be something there for you. Do you want to meet him?”

  “Yes, I’ll try anything.”

  “They’ve taken a room at the Ritz, why don’t you go over there? You have time until curfew.”

  “The Ritz?”

  “Uh-huh. Stavros likes to treat his friends to a good time. Tell you what, I’ll telephone the hotel, they’ll know what room he’s in.” De Lyon grinned. “Will they ever.”

  Mathieu finished his cognac and was preparing to leave, then he said, “One more thing, if you don’t mind.”

  “Me? No, I don’t mind, ask me anything you want.”

  Mathieu told de Lyon about the “strange-looking” boy who called himself the Spider and had tried to blackmail him. By the time he was done, de Lyon’s good spirits had vanished, replaced by a darker mood. “Not good, these types can be really hard to deal with—kids who want to be tough guys. In fact you can’t deal with them, that only encourages them, so…” He let it hang there, as though Mathieu knew the rest, then said, “…you may have to solve the problem the old-fashioned way, if you can find him before he denounces you.”

  “The old-fashioned way…”

  “You know what I mean, Mathieu.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Now, get going, see Stavros at the Ritz. If nothing else you’ll have a good time, forget your troubles.”

  —

  There was a coal-fired taxi waiting in front of Le Cygne and Mathieu was at the Ritz in minutes, entering the elegantly furnished lobby with a group of men in tuxedos and women wearing diamonds. When he asked at the desk for Monsieur Stavros, the clerk studied the register, then said, “Unfortunately, monsieur, we have no guest with that name. Perhaps another hotel…?”

  Then Mathieu described Stavros and the clerk knew right away who he was. “That would be room forty-seven, monsieur, shall I telephone that you’re on your way up?”

  “You needn’t bother, he’s expecting me.”

  Mathieu shared an elevator with a monocle-wearing German officer who determinedly did not, given Mathieu’s everyday clothes, choose to see him. They both got out on the fourth floor and, when Mathieu knocked at the door of room 47, the officer was not far behind him. Close enough so that when the door opened, and a great cloud of cigarette smoke came billowing out, the smoke flavored with champagne fumes, heavy scent, and hashish, Mathieu could see him speed up, running away from whatever went on in that room.

  Stavros, wearing only drawstring underpants that came down to his knees, greeted him with a powerful, sweaty hug. “Mathieu! My friend, Mathieu! Welcome,” Stavros said, his words slurred, his body swaying. Once Mathieu was in the room, Stavros said, “Meet my friend Bogdan, the ship captain.” Bogdan, also in his underdrawers, was big and beefy, his nose with the bump that meant it had been broken, probably more than once.

  Like Stavros, Bogdan spoke a primitive form of French. “Happy to meet Stavros friend,” he said.

  Further into the room, three women, two blondes and a brunette, also in their underwear, were sprawled out amid the tangled sheets and blankets on the spacious bed. Prostitutes? Not quite, Mathieu thought. A classier version of the breed, Parisian ladies out for a night to make money. Tomorrow, proper bourgeois women. “Come have a champagne,” Stavros said, shoving an arm and a leg out of the way so they h
ad room to sit on the edge of the mattress. Stavros poured champagne into the toothbrush glass from the bathroom—a silver tray on the floor held what remained of a few delicate champagne flutes, a few more had been thrown into the fireplace.

  The brunette sat up suddenly, eyes unfocused, modestly holding a pillow across her lap—the frilly, red panties on the bedpost, Mathieu guessed, likely belonged to her. “Why is he dressed?” she said, pointing at Mathieu before collapsing back on the bed. Bogdan and Stavros looked at Mathieu who, with a tolerant smile, took off his clothes, keeping only his new-style boxer shorts. “Hey!” Stavros said, grabbing Mathieu’s bicep. “You play sport?”

  “Not for a long time,” Mathieu said.

  Bogdan put the champagne bottle to his lips, took a long drink, mumbled something in Macedonian, and drew the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “Poor Bogdan,” Stavros said.

  “What’s wrong?” Mathieu said.

  “He has ship in Marseilles, but he can’t go back to his own port. Salonika, you know?” The Germans had occupied Salonika in early April. “Maybe now, the Boche take the ship.”

  “No!” Bogdan said, with the sudden anger of the very drunk. “I fly Venezuelan flag! Neutral, neutral.”

  Stavros caught Mathieu’s eye—his friend the sea captain didn’t know the Germans. “That’s right, Bogdan, I forgot about the flag.”

  “Does the ship have a cargo?”

  “In ballast,” Bogdan said. “Where do I go now? No charters from Salonika, the company maybe finished.”

  One of the blondes woke up, wiggled to get comfortable, rested her leg across Mathieu’s thighs, then went back to sleep. “Hey, you…,” Stavros said.

  “It’s alright,” Mathieu said. Turning to Bogdan, he said, “Would you take a passenger?”

  “Where you go?”

  “Not me, a friend of mine wants to get to Spain.”

  “He’s in trouble?”

  “On the run,” Mathieu said. “If you’ll take him to Spain, I can pay you for the voyage.”

  The brunette rolled off the bed and, still holding the pillow across her middle, staggered toward the bathroom.

  “Pay?” Bogdan said. “Is twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  Mathieu’s heart sank, they had nowhere near that amount of money.

  Stavros watched him for a moment, then spoke quietly to Bogdan in Macedonian, spoke for half a minute. Finally Bogdan answered him, then said to Mathieu, “Is now, for friend of Stavros, five thousand. Always good to help Stavros and his friends because maybe, sometime, you need them to help you. So, mister, you got five thousand dollars?”

  “I do.”

  Stavros licked the palm of his right hand, made a fist, then smacked it into the palm of his other hand. It meant, in certain parts of Europe, that a bargain had been struck. That done, he grinned and said, “Now we drink on it!”

  He looked around for more champagne and found a bottle—on its side under a pillow—that still had half its contents, the bedding had absorbed the rest. He topped off Mathieu’s glass, then drank from the bottle and passed it to Bogdan, who finished it, yawned, said, “Lie down now,” wedged himself between the two blondes and, almost immediately, began to snore.

  “Here’s to you, Stavros,” Mathieu said, gesturing with the toothbrush glass. “Tell me, how did the captain get to Paris?”

  A puzzled Stavros said, “By train. The express from Marseilles.”

  “How did he cross the border?”

  Now he understood where Mathieu was going and said, “He has a German paper.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “It’s in his room.” He pointed down the hall.

  “Tomorrow I’ll be back here with the money and I will need to borrow the paper for a day. Then he’ll get it back.”

  “Sure, Mathieu, that’s alright. You’re going to the forger, heh? Have him make a paper like it for your friend?”

  “I am. And, thanks to you, my friend can go home.”

  As Mathieu retrieved his clothing from a chair, Stavros said, “Say thank you to Max, he can get things done. You want to stay? Have one of the girls?”

  “Not tonight, Stavros. Next time.”

  —

  Mathieu did not make it home before curfew but there were no patrols out—the Rue Dauphine was deserted; he could hear his footsteps echo as he walked. Above him, ranks of blacked-out windows and a curved sliver of the new moon, which shone up at him, reflected by a puddle on the cobblestones in front of the shuttered umbrella shop. Then he stopped, just by the entry to the Saint-Yves, and tried to see if there was light at the edge of the blackout curtain in Joëlle’s room, but he saw none. So, she was asleep.

  Mariana was waiting for him, just inside the hotel vestibule, and gave him a long, inquisitive sniff—What have you been doing? In his apartment, she lay on her side, tongue out, and watched as he prised up the floorboard. When he’d counted out five thousand dollars, and a few hundred more for expenses, he said, “We need to find more money, girl.” Ghislain’s crowd—lawyers, businessmen, a few children of wealth—had been generous, and would be again, but…

  The only alternative was the dreadful Edouard. “Really, the British ought to pay for their pilot, no?” But that money came with strings attached. He found himself going back over de Lyon’s theory about the expansion of the German effort to destroy the escape lines, and decided it was a good theory. Not only that, but his bargain with Stavros’s friend the sea captain had a lesson for him if he cared to see it. Yes, Stavros had done him a favor, but he ought to have been able to pay the twenty-five thousand dollars. “Should I have a talk with Edouard?” he said. Mariana knew what a question was and answered always in the same fashion—a double thump of her thick, flowing tail. “I’m afraid so, girl.” He put the floorboard back in place, and, exhausted, lay down on the coverlet. It’s just for a minute or two, he told himself, then I’ll take off my clothes and get into bed. Mariana knew better and, now on guard for her sleeping master, settled on the threshold in front of the door.

  —

  The following day he stopped at the Ritz, handed the money to Bogdan who, red-eyed after a strenuous night, paged through the documents in a fat, leather passport wallet until he found the Ausweis and handed it to Mathieu. “Your friend is First Mate, I think,” he said. Then Mathieu was off to the two-story hotel in the Marais where the forger worked. Next, he sent Chantal to see her friend at the Préfecture, to secure a permit for Kalisz to leave the city. Finally, he made his way to the Café Welcome, its window now boarded up, where he found Jules behind the bar.

  “Dark in here, now,” Jules grumbled, setting a cup of occupation coffee in front of Mathieu.

  “Not the same without the window,” Mathieu said.

  “No, it isn’t, there’s no street to look at. No people.”

  “As soon as possible, Jules, we’ll change that. Tell me, have you seen the boy who calls himself the Spider?”

  “He hasn’t come around.”

  “He may reappear, now that we’ve been taught a lesson, to see if we’ve changed our minds. Or, he may even telephone.”

  “Some lesson.”

  “Let’s pretend it worked,” Mathieu said. He reached into his jacket and counted out five hundred occupation francs he’d taken from beneath the floorboard. “If he comes in here, give him the money, from ‘Mathieu’s friend,’ and tell him to come back in a week for another payment.”

  “You know best, chief,” Jules said, a dubious eyebrow raised. “Sometimes one might as well just pay the money.”

  “And if he telephones, tell him that Mathieu’s friend left something for him. No, not something, an envelope, he’ll understand that.”

  Jules put the money in his pocket. “An envelope, I’ll tell him.”

  “And make the delivery for a certain time on a certain day.”

  From Jules, a look of alarm. “Mathieu, please, not in here.”

  Mathieu hesitated, then said, �
��We may take him from here, then we’ll go somewhere quiet.”

  “He’ll fight, Mathieu, right here in the café. The flics will show up.”

  “Do you have, what’s it called…chloral something.”

  Jules scratched his head, said, “What…?” Then said, “Do you mean a Mickey Finn?”

  “Yes, a free glass of your finest wine, with a little powder in it.”

  “I don’t have anything like that. Why would I?”

  “We need a pharmacist, or maybe we can just buy it, I’ll have somebody try.”

  “Mathieu, maybe we should just pay, heh?”

  “At least we have to have a long talk with him, in private, and scare the piss out of him. At least.”

  Jules was relieved. “That’s better, that’s a good idea, give him a fright.”

  “I think you’re right, that’s exactly what we’ll do,” Mathieu said, with sincerity, as though it were true.

  When he’d finished his coffee, he left the café and returned to the Saint-Yves, wrote, on a scrap of newspaper, Would you like to come up and visit tonight? Or tomorrow? and put it in Joëlle’s mailbox by the registration desk. Then he went out to the Rue de Buci market stalls, stopped at a crémerie, showed Madame a hundred francs, accompanied her to the storeroom, and discovered, to his delight, a ripe vacherin; soft, smelly, cow cheese produced at mountain dairies.

  —

  5 May. At nine-thirty that evening, Mathieu and Joëlle stood in the kitchen, he in boxer shorts, she in bra and panties. She was, he thought, good to look at with her clothes off—dark, slim, and lithe, with a supple waist, almost a sprite. They had each had a taste of the vacherin before wrapping it up in its newspaper so she could take it home. Mariana, now on her folded blanket in the corner, where she stayed when she wasn’t wanted in the bedroom, also got a taste—those pleading eyes could not be resisted. Mathieu poured out two glasses of red wine, and he and Joëlle went into the bedroom. The window was open, blackout curtain drawn, a candle burning on the night table.

  For the pause that preceded lovemaking, they had discovered that underwear and a drink went together very well, and sat close enough so that one of them could keep a hand on the other. Reaching over to the night table, he turned his radio on and waited for it to warm up. “Sometimes at night…,” he said, fiddling with the dial until the signal grew stronger, “you can hear jazz on this station, I think it comes from England.” Amid the static, a slow piano backed by a bass and a drummer using brushes. “It’s called Willow Weep for Me,” Mathieu said.