The Resistance Girl

by Jina Bacarr

  Not today.

  After I drop off the daffodils, Le Grand Rex overflows with Nazi brass when we arrive in Karl’s Mercedes staff car, people booing at us. They’re quickly dispersed by rifle-pointing German soldiers, but the effect lingers in my heart. What I find so disheartening is these same people will clamor to see the film next week, but their open disapproval of me here is a stab to my heart that hits me hard.

  I stumble through the evening, the endless chatter in the lobby, Emil hobnobbing with the top brass, my co-stars posing for pictures, the photographers flitting around like worker bees for the Party, snapping shot after shot of me posing with so many officers in uniform, they all blur.

  I beg off with a smile, retreating to a corner when a prickly jab hits me in the lower belly. Subtle at first, then intensifies. I shrug it off. Nerves.

  A bell rings, calling us inside the theater like we’re attending a grand opera.

  A sarcastic smile crosses my lips as Karl escorts me to my seat.

  The tension escalates when I find myself seated next to a sleazy general with grabby hands, pushing up my skirt when the credits roll. Running his hand up and down my thigh in the darkened theater. Snapping my garters against my skin. Whispering how lucky Karl is and why don’t the three of us have dinner at the Hôtel Ritz after the film and then who knows…?

  Disgust fills me. Two Exit lights are out, so the theater is darker than usual. Karl is not privy to my dilemma. Even if he was, I doubt he’d do more than scowl. Cross the general, he warned me earlier, and I’ll find myself having a long conversation on Avenue Foch. My body makes an impassioned plea to get this creep off me, but I risk offending the military man. He’s a decorated hero from the Siege of Warsaw, Karl whispers in my ear. Thinking about the horror this Nazi inflicted on those innocent people sends me into a state of panic. My body reeks of female hormones in overdrive, spiking from mixing with my spicy perfume. I’m flushed, my skin catching fire every time the Nazi rubs his thumb against my inner thigh.

  I feel sick.

  Horribly sick.

  The jab in my belly hits me so hard I double over.

  I want to retch all over his hated, grey-green uniform, but I’m no fool. Karl will insist I see a doctor, then they’ll be questions I refuse to answer. Karl will be shocked then… pleased? Whatever didn’t happen between us that night at my Trocadéro apartment won’t matter.

  He’ll think it did.

  And I’ll be more of a prisoner to the Nazi ideal of womanhood than I am now because everyone will believe I’m carrying an Aryan child.

  I work myself up into such a state, I don’t see it coming, don’t want to admit pregnancy brings a whole new set of rules to my game of espionage. I can’t let go of my fear for Jock. I nearly gave myself away earlier when I found the note slipped under my plate at the café.

  Yellow. Danger.

  I was trapped.

  I risked Karl’s anger if I feigned a headache. Insisted he take me home so I could sneak out and wait for Jock to show up at my place in the Faubourg. His ego reigns supreme in his decisions. He’d never escape the reprimand from his superiors, not to mention jibes from fellow officers, if he couldn’t produce the glamorous star of the film. So I made the daring decision to leave the flowers. The yellow daffodils are meant to warn Jock to stay in hiding and not make his way to the train station tonight to meet up with a résistant to escort him to the pickup point.

  A Gestapo stooge will be waiting for him instead.

  The Germans found out about the mission from a partisan they turned, a man as French as his beret who knows the streets and cafés of Paris so well, he was never suspected by his fellow résistants. Bertrand unearthed the informant who sold his soul to the Nazis for promise of a grand sum of money he planned to use for his own escape.

  He won’t have need of francs now. He met an untimely end for his betrayal.

  All I can think about is, is Jock safe? Did he get the message?

  When will I know? We said our goodbyes earlier. What am I saying? We’ve been saying goodbye since he first showed up at my apartment. We knew this day would come, but I keep to the faith he’ll be safe… now I don’t know. I didn’t tell him about the baby… why give him more to worry about?

  Then the pain jabs me again. I groan. Dizziness hits me. Hard.

  I’m fidgeting with the peplum on my skirt, my knees tightly closed, trying to concentrate on the dueling scene in the picture when I take down the pirate captain who kidnapped my little sister when I keel over.

  For real.

  The last thing I remember is landing face down in the general’s lap.

  ‘A brilliant stunt, Sylvie,’ Emil says, wiping my brow with a towel. ‘Everyone’s talking about it.’

  ‘Ooh, what happened?’ I moan, trying to sit up. I’m lying down on the divan in the powder room, alone with Emil. He told the press I’m suffering from exhaustion and shooed Karl and the general out of the room, insisting I need air.

  A chilly breeze blows through the tiny window high about my head.

  I need more than air. I need a doctor.

  The dizziness abates, but there’s an unsettledness within me, a trembling that tells me I’ve pushed my body to the limit.

  ‘Don’t try to fool me, Sylvie. I saw the distress on your face when you arrived and glanced over the unfriendly crowd. You pulled off this charade to gain sympathy so the press will write about how hard Sylvie Martone is working to make wonderful pictures for the French people. How much she loves them.’

  I can’t stop breathing heavy. ‘I did faint, Emil, but not because I need good publicity.’

  ‘Then why…?’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Telling Emil about my condition could have been either a complete lapse of judgment or the best move I made tonight.

  Fortunately, it’s the latter because he takes me to a ‘friend’ in a quiet neighborhood not far my apartment in the Trocadéro who looks me over in the back room of his clinic. The physician works at the American Hospital in Paris and is an old friend of Emil’s, having financed several of his pet film projects in better days. Seems the wily director has a redeeming quality in that cold heart of his. He brings the doctor much needed medical supplies he purchases on the black market.

  I can’t ask him why and blow my cover, though I suspect the doctor has been helping patch up wounded ‘evaders’. All that filters through my mind is what the friendly physician with a penchant for wearing a monocle tells me.

  ‘Nothing to worry about, mademoiselle.’ He smiles and I believe him. ‘You’ve been working too hard and under extreme duress. From what I can tell, your pregnancy is progressing normally. I would suggest you make regular visits here to the clinic so we can prepare to deliver your baby in a discreet manner.’

  I want to cry. I’ve been worried about what to do, praying I could find a midwife somewhere outside the city where I can hide out when the time comes. All I can do is nod.

  ‘My advice is to stay off your feet as much as possible and eat a good diet rich in iron.’ He sighs heavily. ‘Not easy to do in Paris these days, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I’ll find a way.’ I can’t tell him I dine on the best cuisine in the city, that to my fans I’m a Nazi sympathizer.

  Then, as if he reads my mind, he takes my hand in his. ‘I know who you are, Mademoiselle Martone,’ he says in a voice low and comforting. ‘I also know what you did for the family of a former patient of mine. Her husband is a screenwriter you’ve worked with. I attended to his wife until the end.’

  No names.

  No judgment.

  Of course. Raoul. I wonder how the doctor found out. I don’t believe Emil told him. The director suspects I’m involved with the Resistance, but he’d rather look the other way to protect himself should he ever end up in a Gestapo kitchen.

  If he knows nothing, he can tell them nothing.

  I smile as I pat my stomach and say a little prayer of thanks for my baby, then whisper, �
��Bonne nuit, mon enfant.’ I bid adieu to the doctor, promising to make regular visits to the three-story house surrounded by well-tended rose bushes. In disguise, of course. We’re not far from Avenue Foch.

  Emil drives me back to my Trocadéro apartment in a black Mercedes coupe he commandeered from the general with the excuse of taking me home so he and his staff could enjoy the rest of the picture.

  ‘Tell me, Sylvie,’ Emil says, never taking his eyes off the road, ‘who is the father?’

  My so-called ‘fainting stunt’ works.

  Parisians attend showings of Le Masque de Velours de Versailles in record numbers throughout the city and the suburbs. Prints are smuggled across the border and into the Unoccupied Zone. Emil is thrilled, excited, and doesn’t ask me again who the father of my baby is. I gave him an evasive answer that night, citing his credo of preferring not to know anything about my nocturnal activities.

  Which gives me breathing room.

  I admit I find the rest rejuvenating, my body changing in ways I never imagine, including a tummy bulge I proudly look at in the mirror each morning. The looking glass is the only witness to my daily ritual. I keep my visit to the physician to myself. No one but Emil knows about my pregnancy.

  I’m worried about Jock. Bertrand tells me when the French police found the body of the informant and reported the incident to the Gestapo, their plan was foiled. This allowed the formation of a new plan where the downed flier or ‘evader’ is moved from house to house using numerous hidden tunnels under the closed cinema until the evening of their departure.

  For Jock, it’s tonight.

  I have to see him, though I have brief contact with members of the Resistance at meetings. Always in hushed whispers, me as Fantine, as new plans are discussed, then changed and changed again. Tonight, I listen intently, looking at Jock when the lights dim, knowing though I can’t see his face clearly, he’s watching me, too. Then I close my eyes and lovely images of the two of us at Monte Carlo, Marly-le-Roi, and my place in the Faubourg flash before me like a montage of film clips. When the night is so still and the sky a deep purple holding up the stars, a scene so vivid and intense, I feel his body moving against mine…

  ‘It’s time, Fantine.’

  I open my eyes. It’s Bertrand.

  I nod.

  I wrap my long flowing veil around my head and shoulders and without another word, another look, we prepare to head for Gare d’Austerlitz for the evening train to Toulouse.

  ‘The lieutenant is going with you two,’ Bertrand announces before we leave. A sheepish young man, who looks like he should be attending university, gives us a salute. Canadian, we’re told.

  I’m to accompany Jock and the downed airman to the meetup point where they’ll be met by a local guide. He’ll take them over the high Pyrenees and sometimes hostile terrain to the Spanish border and from there to Gibraltar.

  Then to London.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve made the train trip with Allied airmen. But this is the man I love. I know the Foreign Office is anxious to have him back in England. He hints there’s talk of him returning as an SOE – Special Operations Executive – agent and parachuting back into France. I can’t think about that now. I want to go with him tonight in spite of the danger.

  We trek to the train station in the dark, hiding in alcoves, crossing the Boulevard Saint-Germain then making a sharp left on Rue Dante and continuing along the Seine to the station in case anyone is following us.

  I forgo the limp.

  We need to move fast and if the Canadian thinks anything is amiss, he doesn’t mention it.

  Once aboard the train we take seats in close proximity and since it’s late, not many passengers are interested in chatter. It seems longer than the nearly seven hours before we reach Toulouse. A difficult length of time for my two compatriots to keep quiet.

  Especially Jock.

  He mumbles a few words in French that mean nothing to anyone but me. My eyes shush him. It’s too dangerous. The Canadian smiles. I suspect he’s catching on to our game, though I imagine he’s wondering how such a dashing RAF pilot could be flirting with a dispassionate French woman with the sex appeal of a snapping turtle.

  A German officer saunters by, giving everyone surly looks if for nothing else than to make himself look important. When he asks the Canadian a question, Jock answers for him. Curt. Not too friendly, indicating the boy is mute.

  I grin. I’m always surprised why the German soldiers on board the trains never wonder why so many ‘Frenchmen’ are hard of hearing when asked a question in French or mute. Then the German turns his attention to me. He runs his fingers along my lace veil trailing on the floor of the railway car. It slipped off my shoulders.

  ‘This would make a beautiful gift for a pretty mamselle I know in Paris,’ he says in broken French. ‘How much, madame?’

  Which means he wants to confiscate it in the name of the Reich.

  Jock jumps to my defense. ‘You should have more respect for a woman her age, monsieur,’ he tells the Nazi in French. ‘A woman disabled with a limp.’

  If the situation weren’t so frightening, I’d let go with a chuckle.

  But I’m worried.

  I love this darling man for coming to my defense, but few if any of the men I escort speak the language well enough to be a local. I imagine a missed idiom or two flies right over the Nazi’s head. Still, we can’t take that chance, so I always advise them not to speak.

  Jock just broke that rule.

  I pray we don’t pay for it.

  The Nazi officer is the only German in the railcar and is none too happy when the rest of the passengers rile up against him.

  ‘Have you no heart, monsieur? Harassing an old lady.’

  ‘Bien. She could be your mother…’

  ‘It’s cruel to take the scarf from her when you Nazis have already taken so much.’

  A daring truth, but the Boche wants no trouble and, with hunched shoulders, moves quickly down the aisle and onto the next railcar.

  This is the first time I see a German officer back down.

  Outnumbered, I suppose. His Nazi pride wounded.

  It’s a small victory in a war that still must be won.

  When the train stops, we get off at the station and we move quickly to the meetup point – a safe house I’ve been to before – and here I must say adieu. I grab the basket of food and water left for me before I catch the next train back to Paris. A chance then to close my eyes and rest and dream of him. Till I board that train, I must keep my identity secret, but nothing could have prepared me for this moment. We can’t go off alone together to say our goodbyes. What if we’re seen? Jock and I stand at a distance from each other, leaning inward, our body language speaking volumes. We can’t kiss goodbye, hold hands, anything lovers do when they’re being torn from each other for what they believe will be the duration of the war.

  ‘Merci, madame, for your help,’ Jock says, exhaling loudly. I see the love in his eyes for me.

  I want to say something that will let him know how I feel. Give him a memory that will always be in his heart no matter what happens. Something so strong, he won’t have to think, just feel and he’ll remember this moment.

  I pat my stomach and his eyes widen, amazed.

  I smile. It couldn’t have been any clearer that I’m pregnant.

  30

  Sylvie

  A perilous journey into enemy territory

  Berlin

  1944

  The Nazis lied when they said Berlin was as beautiful as Paris.

  It’s not.

  Bien, Berlin has the Hotel Adlon across from the Brandenburg Gate where the posh society people and foreign diplomats hang out. And a palace or two still standing that haven’t been bombed by the RAF.

  It also has the Reichstag, the Parliament building that burnt down after Hitler came to power. I wonder if it will suffer a similar fate when the Allies and the Soviets reach Berlin.

  Meanwhile,
I’m stuck here in this city with more Nazis than I ever want to see for the rest of my life. Marching, goose-stepping, crowding everywhere.

  I hate it.

  But I have no choice.

  My world is turned upside down when I’m invited – no, ordered – by Emil, with Herr Geller breathing down his neck, to Berlin on a touring excursion to promote my Versailles film with German subtitles. I’ve resisted going on one of these junkets – Goebbels’ idea to show off French artistes – but Herr Geller requested me personally. I can’t afford to invite scrutiny from the Gestapo and jeopardize my work with the Resistance.

  Besides, my soul is in limbo with Jock gone.

  Doing his part with the RAF.

  Here in Berlin, I’m doing mine. If my grand idea works…

  I grit my teeth, holding a bouquet of red roses thrust upon me by the president of the German Cinema Abteilung, pushing down my volatile emotions as I smile for the camera and wave to the crowd swarming our entourage of French artistes.

  Three actresses.

  And a male crooner.

  All playing our part for the Reich. Just planting those hated words in my head makes me die inside. But I’m here and I have to make the most of it, trying out German phrases from the pamphlet the studio publicity department provided to connect to the ‘locals’, if not for anything else but to keep up my cover.