Lyon, August 1942
“That children, that women, that men, that fathers and mothers should be treated like a vile herd, that members of the same family should be separated from one another and sent to an unknown destination – this sad spectacle, it was reserved for our times to see… You cannot do whatever you wish against these men, against these women, against these fathers and mothers. They are part of humankind. They are our brothers.”
Father Yves finished reading out loud and grinned at Etienne. The latter sat across the desk from him, toying with a gold pocket watch – his father’s. He never used it, only carried it on himself as some sort of talisman ever since his father’s death.
“The famous Cardinal Saliège’s letter,” he said, a small smile passing over his face as well.
“The infamous letter, according to the Vichy government,” Yves spat out the last two words as if they tasted sourly in his mouth. “They proclaimed the man senile.”
“And yet his letter found its way not only to the churches, where it was read to the parish by your fellow defiant priests, but also to the communist press, and from there – across the border, to Switzerland, Spain, the Soviets, and Britain. Finally, someone had enough gall to say that this can’t be done to people. Maybe now the world will believe our ‘propaganda’ as the Germans so desperately try to call it; that they aren’t sending them to work; they’re taking our young French men for that, but the Jews, they’re sending them to death.”
Yves was quiet for some time, then nodded pensively. “Yes. Maybe now they will start doing something.”
So far, it was them, Etienne and Yves, who were “doing something” while their own government chose to close their eyes to the sufferings of its own people. When an order came for the roundup of Lyon Jews, Etienne defied Prefect Bouillon’s wishes for the first time and sent Yves to gather all the children from the families that had been locked up in an old, abandoned factory in the suburb of Vénissiex, awaiting their transfer to Drancy. When Yves expressed his doubt that the parents would even give them their children no matter how persuasive he and Patrice were going to be (“And what persuasion are we even talking about? They’re foreign Jews; some of them hardly speak any French!”), Etienne simply replied that people often obeyed orders more readily than requests. Much to Father Yves’s surprise, the tactic worked, and the following night there were eighty more children sharing the roof of the orphanage with its regular inhabitants. Etienne, however, was very aware of the fact that the orphanage would be the first place where Bouillon’s people would start looking for the missing kids and promptly advised Yves to place the Jewish children with Catholic families as soon as possible. When Bouillon called Etienne’s office and demanded to hand over the “missing Jew-brats,” Etienne feigned ignorance and told his immediate superior that Catholic priests must have hidden them somewhere.
“You aren’t planning to arrest the Archbishop, are you?” he asked the Prefect, trying to keep the irony out of his voice. Bouillon hung up with a huff, and at that, the matter was dropped. But not forgotten – of that, Etienne was sure.
“How’s our ‘nurse Mariette’ doing?” Etienne asked.
“She sent me some great news; apparently, her friend has agreed to spy for us while in Germany. She’s asking if it’ll be possible to somehow transmit the information she collects to our friends in the UK? They could certainly use it better than us, with their RAF. You’re still in touch with the Free French, aren’t you?”
“I’m in touch with everyone; the Free French, the Comintern, MI6 – anyone who is willing to help us,” Etienne promised confidently.
The problem was that the actual physical help, at this point, was coming only from the Comintern. De Gaulle’s Free French were snug and comfortable in their British lodgings, enjoying their allies’ hospitality and the British whiskey. The MI6 dropped some ammunition and food from time to time and left it at that. Not that Etienne blamed them; they were, after all, busy deflecting the Luftwaffe’s attacks on their own cities. The communists and their no-nonsense tactic of “a chacun son Boche” – “to each his German” – was the only reliable savage, unrestrained fighting force currently at Etienne’s disposal. Indoctrinated and hell-bent on appeasing their party leaders, the French communists didn’t fear reprisals, shrugging off the shootings of innocent civilians almost with callous indifference. The more hostages the Boches shoot, the more resentment it will cause. The more resentment, the more fighters in our midst – that was their simple motto. Judging by their growing numbers, it seemed to be working.
Etienne decided to leave his car near the salon several streets away from the café where he was supposed to meet with Giselle for their usual afternoon coffee, and give his feet some exercise. Walking always helped him think better. The sky was without a cloud; pure, a radiant blue. Lyon smelled of the dust of the freshly-swept streets and barge oil as Etienne marched along the riverbank, the humid air intensifying the river odor a thousand times. Etienne was used to it. He lit a cigarette absent-mindedly, passed a lazy glance around himself, grinning at his native city and its people.
No wonder the Germans had been grumbling their discontent on Lyon’s account for quite some time, mighty dissatisfied with the decision to leave the city behind the Demarcation Line. Lyon was destined to be the heart of the Resistance – a second, clandestine one. Paris was the enfant rebelle, unnecessarily loud and far too demonstrative. Lyon, on the contrary, was more Swiss than French in its aristocratic austerity. Here, the old money and a good name ran the scene. Here, people kept to themselves, took great pride in their bourgeois virtues and hardly ever accepted outsiders. For centuries, throughout wars and feudal clashes, the city was fractured into secret societies, hidden circuits, and clubs into which one could be accepted only if one knew someone. The people of Lyon didn’t submit to any authority except for that old money and a good reputation, and therefore they would never willingly submit to some Germans, who, in their eyes, lacked both. Lyon was fiercely independent and secretive, and that was a dangerous combination.
Giselle was already waiting for him at the bouchon – a typical Lyonnaise café, with only eight tables, no sign outside, and a menu to die for – where they met every day after she finished her work. An opened bottle of wine and a half-empty glass stood on the bare lacquered wooden table – the owner, for some reason, despised tablecloths.
“A tough day at work?” Etienne nodded at the bottle, taking off his hat and sitting next to her.
“It’s all right.” She shrugged it off. “It’s a prison. But I’m getting used to it.”
Both waited while the waiter laid out the menus before them and spoke only after he disappeared again.
“That man you asked about,” Giselle whispered in his ear, burning his skin with her breath. He hadn’t noticed before how sultry it was inside the cafe. “Everything’s taken care of. They have just sent him to the infirmary. He’ll run tonight. The ward Matron will leave the window open. I need money to pay her though.”
“I’ll give it to you tomorrow. Let’s have lunch together; there’s a nice cafe across the street from Montluc. The owner is a friend.”
He’d have to go to the bank first thing in the morning. Etienne didn’t have any more cash, and even his account was being slowly bled dry by all the bribes. As long as it saves lives, he told himself.
“At twelve?”
“Yes. I’ll be waiting for you there.”
The waiter returned. They ordered soup de jour and roast pork. Lyon still had the luxury of not having to ration its meat. Etienne barely touched his food, watching Giselle attack her plate instead, with a subtle smile playing on his lips.
“Are you being careful?” he asked suddenly.
She stopped eating and looked at him, surprised. “Bien sûr.”
“Are you only meeting them where I told you to?”
“Yes. Etienne. You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Being ov
erprotective.”
“I worry about you.”
She found his fingers and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t. We’re a good team. We’ll be fine.”
We. He nodded in his usual restrained manner and returned to his soup without looking at her. I’m falling in love with her. God help me, I’m falling in love with her.
8
Paris, August 1942
Marcel rolled up the leg of his wide trousers to undo the ties, which held the contraband. Once again, he managed to smuggle it inside the factory, tied to his own two legs. Philippe chuckled and shook his head, taking four sticks from Marcel’s hands.
“Hasn’t Arthur warned you that these explosives are highly sensitive, and particularly to heat? Aren’t you afraid to blow yourself up one day?”
“That’s why I try to keep as close to the Boches as I can, in case I get lucky,” Marcel sneered in response.
The lavatory stall, where they stacked the explosives in a specially organized purpose-built hole under a loose tile, had borne the sign “out of order” for as long as anyone could remember, and therefore was a perfect hiding place where the Germans wouldn’t show their noses.
“Did Arthur tell you how much more we need?” Philippe inquired after replacing the tile back in its place.
“Yes. We need five times more than what is already in that hole, and that’s just to set off one conveyor belt. To blow them all up, as we planned, I’ll have to carry these things on myself for two more years.” Marcel came out of the stall following his comrade and put his hand over the door’s top, putting the latch back in place. “Either we’re blowing up just one, or we need some other plan. This is taking much too long.”
“If we want to be careful…”
They did sabotage what they could, all of them. When the Germans took over the production of local factories so that they could supply their war machine, they didn’t take into consideration that it wasn’t their patriotic fellow countrymen who worked there, but the same French folk as before. The workers, in their overpowering majority, consisted of communists, and the communists were famous for following the Party policy no matter what. So, it happened that up until June ’41 the Party policy happened to align with the occupants’ goals, however, as soon as Hitler decided to march into Soviet Russia and stir the proverbial hornet’s nest, that very policy, which had come in so handy for the Germans, made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. Now, the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front must have been puzzling over their tanks which started to fall apart after a few days use, guns that wouldn’t shoot, and ammunition which seemed to be the right caliber but still wouldn’t work properly.
Marcel concealed a triumphant chuckle each time he noticed one of his comrades in their grease-covered overalls drop a detail on the floor and kick it under the conveyor; tighten the bolts a little too much or leave them too loose; over-grease or under-grease a certain part or even skip one of the steps of production, necessary for an excellent final product. The best part about all the invisible sabotage work was that their collaborators/supervisors were none the wiser. But even Philippe, an ever-so-careful communist leader, understood that the Comintern demanded decisive actions, and therefore, they had to come up with some plan and fast.
“Is there a chance to bring explosives some other way? In a false bottom of a truck perhaps?” Marcel mused out loud as the two headed back to their respective working places.
“Perhaps. But it’ll take a lot of money. Also, we’ll need to be particularly careful about who we approach on that matter.”
“Jean, the one who supervises the supplies on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I heard, he might be crooked.”
“Or le corbeau, forking for the Gestapo, who only pretends to be crooked,” Philippe grumbled under his breath.
They could speak as loudly as they wanted in their workshop; the press on top of the conveyor worked with such force that Marcel always left with a pounding headache at the end of the shift.
He missed Lyon, yes, but it was good to be back with Philippe. It was Philippe after all, who took him in after Marcel ran from the approaching German army in June ‘40, leaving his gun, uniform, and dignity behind. It was Philippe who taught him what it meant to be a good communist and, more importantly, a good patriot. Marcel never forgot that.
“You know better,” Marcel conceded, like he always did, with this menacingly-looking but incredibly kind-hearted giant of a man. “I know you’ll think of something.”
“I will. Just give me time. No reason to rush.”
The shrill sound of the whistle signaled everyone to attention. Shift supervisors had stopped the conveyors and were herding the workers towards the metal overpass above their heads, where the director himself stood, framed by two uniformed gendarmes behind his back. He cleared his throat, awaiting perfect silence, before reaching into his pocket to put his glasses on the wide bridge of his nose. Marcel and Philippe exchanged glances.
“I have an executive order from the Kommandant von Groß-Paris,” the director started reading in an unusually high voice. “Every man, aged 18 to 55, must register in my office as potential candidates for the Legion of French Volunteers. No one who is within that age range leaves the working place today until they do so.”
A thunder of discontent rolled through the workshop, threatening to spill into something that the director, judging by the desperate pacifying gestures he was making with his white hands, was hoping to avoid.
“It’s a measure of simple bureaucracy, messieurs! No need to get so agitated; no one will send you to Germany against your will. Our German colleagues only need these lists to submit to their supervisors – they don’t mean anything, I promise it to you right now.”
“Wasn’t that the same song they sang to the Jews, coaxing them to register with the prefecture?” Philippe muttered, nudging Marcel with his elbow.
“You will all stay here; I can personally guarantee it,” the director continued in the meantime. “Unless, of course, you volunteer yourself to go to Germany. You heard Premier Laval’s speech; for every one hundred and fifty thousand workers that we send to Germany, our German friends agree to release fifty thousand of our French prisoners of war. If you volunteer, you will not only receive immense gratitude from mothers, wives, and children who are suffering without their husbands and fathers, but it will be most beneficial for you as well. You will be living in warm, comfortable lodgings – much better than those that most of you now occupy – will eat three times a day and enjoy a day off on Sunday. In sum, you will enjoy all the privileges of your fellow German workers and be treated with the same respect.”
“Mhm,” another worker snorted under his breath. “Exactly the things they promised the Jews. ‘Come register; we’ll send you to Poland, you’ll be living in a wonderful housing project, you’ll be working in the commune, you’ll be taken such good care of…’ And then they put them all in cattle cars, a hundred and fifty persons in each, with two buckets of water for the trip. Excuse my skepticism, but just that small transportation fact makes me seriously doubt the rest of their promises.”
Rumors of the true fate of the Jews started to swell after a letter, thrown out of the window of one of the trains, was found by a résistant working on the railroad. It was duplicated in ten thousand copies and distributed all over Paris and even reprinted in Lyon. The letter was written by a woman named Sarah and addressed to the concierge of an apartment block in Paris, who was looking after Sarah’s two children:
Épernay, 27-7-42
I do not know if this letter will get to you. We are in a cattle-wagon. Everything has been taken from us, even the most essential toilet items. For a three-day journey, we have hardly any bread and a tiny supply of water. We have to go to the toilet on the floor, men and women, with no privacy. One woman is dead. When she was dying, I called for help. She could have been saved. But the wagons are sealed, and no help came. Now we have to put up with the smell of death. We are threatened with being
beaten and shot. My sister and I are keeping each other's morale up, and we still have hope. Kisses to you all – the children, the family and our friends. Sarah.
No one knew what had happened to Sarah or her children.
“What are we going to do?” Marcel turned to Philippe.
“You heard the patron. No one will leave the workshop until we all register.” Philippe shrugged as though stating the obvious. “Nothing we can do.”
“But—”
“Buts are for ashtrays,” Philippe joked grimly. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Once again, Marcel only nodded silently.
Lyon, September 1942
Giselle left her work at five as usual. She smiled brightly as her co-workers called, “Au revoir, Sophie!”; the women still in their summer dresses and with tanned legs. There were fifteen of them, secretaries of different sorts, working in the Montluc prison. At least three of them were résistantes, living and working in Lyon under false papers, just like Giselle.
It wasn’t difficult reinventing herself. From a scandalous socialite with bright platinum locks Giselle, to a shabby, overall-clad factory worker called Laure with dark curls, and lastly, to an inconspicuous secretary called Sophie who had wavy chestnut tresses, carefully styled into a modest hairdo, horn-rimmed glasses and a serious air about her, always carrying a book under her arm. Crossing the street to the café owned by Etienne’s friend, Giselle grinned to herself, thinking that now, in her dark jacket with a stiff collar, she resembled a writer much more than when she was famous Giselle Legrand. Only, the irony, in this case, was that she didn’t write anything besides official papers anymore.
She greeted the owner with a friendly wave of the hand and proceeded to sit in the furthest corner, facing the entrance. She thanked Etienne’s friend, Jean-Pierre, for the coffee (he always poured her the real stuff, not chicory), lowered her head over the book she held and broke into a wide grin when a complete stranger – a woman in her early thirties with black, anxious eyes, shouted loudly in a theatrical voice, “Sophie! I have not seen you in ages! Imagine meeting you here? How have you been, ma chérie?”
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