The Lyon Affair: A French Resistance novel

by Ellie Midwood

  “We’ll sleep on the floor.” Tommy shrugged without a care in the world. “It will be fun. Besides, my behind is still sore from the train’s wooden seats; spare me another night of that torture, I beg of you!”

  Marcel chuckled, felt his cheeks blush for some reason, but agreed of course. He knew all too well that it was impossible to fight with Tommy, for Tommy invariably won. What was so special about him that Marcel couldn’t force himself to say no to him? He cursed like a sailor, had the worst temper that Marcel had ever encountered, and defied any form of authority as it seemed. How did his MI6 superiors put up with him? But how could they not? He was made of the finest things, this boy with a halo of hair made of the finest silk, and eyes the color of molten gold; a sharp, brilliant mind and charisma that no one could help but fall in love with. Even Giselle liked him, and Giselle didn’t like anybody. Fat chance she would let Blanche stay in her apartment for the night, Marcel noted to himself. And now, look at her: arranging their sleeping nook with the affection of a sibling towards a British boy she’d just met, even asking him which way he wanted his pillow to face – the front of the room or the back.

  “The way Marcel wants his,” Tommy threw back nonchalantly, taking a drag on his cigarette. Something broke inside of Marcel after those words; a chord ripped and reverberated within his ribcage, sending the strangest waves of tingles all over his skin.

  Marcel pointed towards the window silently. They settled down, at last, Tommy’s warm back pressed against his, for Marcel had turned to face the wall right away, the further from the Brit, the better. In their place in Lyon, each had his own bed and therefore there were never any awkward moments like this. Marcel, even though he was exhausted from the trip, couldn’t possibly fall asleep because his body was so strained with tension, that even breathing became a chore.

  The air, hot and stifling even at night, didn’t seem to circulate through the opened window. Marcel lay wide awake, feeling streaks of sweat travel down the small of his back. And then Tommy turned towards him, pressed his hot body against his, threw his arm around Marcel’s stomach, which transformed into a rock at once, and completely smothered him with his unbearable heat and his even breathing, burning Marcel’s wet skin on his neck.

  Marcel swallowed with difficulty, his parched throat not listening to him after he tried to take shallow breaths as Tommy’s hand slowly moved down his belly. Marcel caught it and held it firmly, feeling the Brit chuckle soundlessly somewhere into his hair. Even before that, he knew somewhere deep inside, in the very pit of the stomach, now fluttering with a million butterflies, that Tommy wasn’t sleeping.

  “Stop it,” Marcel whispered through gritted teeth as Tommy’s leg moved on top of his, like a snake slowly hugging its victim.

  “Why should I?” The answer came together with soft lips pressing to the base of his neck.

  “Just stop.” Marcel was terribly afraid that their whispers, no matter how quiet they were, would awaken Giselle or, even worse, Philippe. But more than anything, even though he tried not to admit it to himself, Marcel was afraid that he would give in to the intoxicating embrace.

  Tommy crossed all borders when he traced his tongue around the back of Marcel’s neck, licking droplets of sweat from it. Marcel shoved him off rather rudely and kicked him in the leg that was draped still around him. Tommy chuckled again, but turned away, at last, giving Marcel some room. Soon, he started snoring softly. Marcel lay awake with tears streaming down his face – a bittersweet concoction of bliss and torture, and everything else he simply didn’t comprehend.

  The next morning, the train platform represented a swamp of green-gray uniforms, an ocean of concerned faces, constantly moving in waves, shifting towards the trains and disappearing in their cars.

  “What’s going on?” Marcel muttered, more to himself than to anyone in particular.

  Giselle stood next to him, boring her eyes into the green-gray crowd in front of her with an odd gleam shining in them. Philippe pulled his cap lower in an effort not to attract any unwanted attention to his hulking frame; however, the Germans were too busy to pay any heed to the tall communist. Even Tommy wasn’t his usual lighthearted self that morning, observing the Germans and seemingly immersed in appearing to be just as brooding as the Germans themselves.

  “All trains for the civilians will resume their schedule after the troops depart!” a train platform worker shouted out from the megaphone, repeating the same message as he walked along the length of the station.

  “What happened? They’re ending the occupation?” someone joked behind Marcel’s shoulder.

  “Hey, kameraden! Hallo! Kameraden!” Tommy called out to the Germans suddenly before Marcel had a chance to clasp his hand over the Brit’s mouth. But Tommy was already waving to a group of privates, who were smoking nearby, his beaming smile being the perfect weapon against any repercussion. “Where are they sending you this time?”

  “Russia,” one of the soldiers shouted back, stomping on his cigarette with disgust on his face. “The war started last night.”

  “With the Soviets?”

  “Ja.”

  The Germans huddled together, agitation and worry written all over their faces.

  “Well… Good luck to you then!”

  “Danke.” The soldiers waved Tommy goodbye and started moving closer to the next train car, which would take them to the endless steppes, from which only a few of them would return. Even the French were strangely quiet and weren’t gloating, as Marcel would have expected. Even he didn’t feel like gloating.

  Suddenly, Giselle pushed Marcel out of her way and rushed forward with the urgency of a person who had just seen an old friend boarding the departing train. Marcel traced her gaze and noticed a familiar face as well, gasping in worry and rushing forward to catch his sister before she made the mistake of attracting the man’s attention. Philippe turned out to be faster, though and caught his “spouse’s” wrist before she could make another step.

  The officer, who stood on the train’s step and watched the troops under his command board the train, locked eyes with Giselle – much to Marcel’s horror. He saw how the young German raised his hand in greeting, but then stopped abruptly and let it drop to his side, allowing only a shadow of a smile to light up his face.

  “Who’s the Hun staring at your sister?” Tommy’s whisper burned Marcel’s ear.

  “An old…” Friend? Marcel stopped mid-sentence and shook his head slightly. “An old acquaintance of hers. Ours. Helped me get out of the jail back in Paris. It’s a long story.”

  Giselle gave in to Philippe’s subtle pulls on her hand and followed him back into the crowd of civilians, with visible reluctance. Marcel watched her yank her wrist out Philippe’s hand and leave the platform altogether. Philippe sighed and followed her after a moment’s hesitation, waving his farewell to Tommy and Marcel. The latter’s face visibly clouded over; Giselle had to be truly upset not to even say goodbye. He knew that Giselle had used her female charms on the German, which helped hers and Philippe’s plan to get him out of jail, but who knew what the real story between the two was? At least Marcel liked this German slightly better than his sister’s late fiancé, Karl. Maybe she had harbored some feelings for the young fellow back then, in Paris, and now seeing him leave to meet his almost certain death, somewhere in the cruel steppes of Russia, had conjured up old flames of the past in her mind…

  Even Tommy shook his head and squinted against the sun.

  “Rotten business, the war. Have to feel bad for the poor lads. They should have told their Adolf to go fight Comrade Stalin himself if he’s such a feisty guy. A shame, they’re sending them all to slaughter. Ivans will end them all, you’ll see. And for nothing, too. They’re privates only. All of the generals will sit on their behinds and discuss strategy while boys like us will be murdered in the thousands. Rotten business, I tell you.”

  Marcel only chain-smoked his third cigarette in silence, glancing in the direction in which his sis
ter had disappeared. Yes. Rotten indeed.

  16

  Father Yves walked along a hallway that seemed endless, connecting two wings of the orphanage: one for the boys and another for the girls. Naturally, he was in charge of the first wing, while Augustine oversaw the second. Several nuns had arrived with children, all speaking with the distinctive accent that was ridiculed unmercifully by the general population. They arrived from the mostly German-speaking Alsace, from which the occupying troops kept forcing them out to free up space for the real Germans, and not some German-speaking French folk. So, both the nuns and the children struggled with their identity - French by origin and yet mockingly called “ya-ya’s” by their kin for their German-accentuated speech. How strange it was, how much hatred people could harbor in their hearts for the most defenseless of people, Father Yves pondered, his fingers moving the beads of his rosary absent-mindedly.

  He descended the stairs and almost ran into two men, carrying a heavy wooden box towards the open door of the basement. No one had given Father Yves the keys for it, and Jules had reassured him that there was nothing down there besides working equipment, left from the reconstruction of the building.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” Father Yves inquired, eyeing the strange couple with suspicion.

  “Just move out of the way, Father. Please. This damn thing weighs a ton.” One of them shifted the box in his strained arms.

  “What’s in it?” Father Yves still blocked their way, refusing to let go of the matter without proper explanation.

  “We don’t know. Monsieur le Sous-Préfet told us to store it here. It’s his property, so he can store whatever he pleases in his basement I suppose,” the same man retorted, clearly getting annoyed with the priest’s interrogation. “Now, be so kind to move away, please. We can’t hold it the whole evening.”

  Father Yves stepped aside, at last, letting the men through. They came out a minute later, locked the door after themselves and tipped their hats before disappearing as fast as they had arrived. Father Yves decided that he had not been meant to see them at all. Had his class not been substituted by one of the nuns, for he had to leave to attend to a dying man from his parish, he wouldn’t have seen them at all. No one would.

  Father Yves walked outside and narrowed his eyes in the direction in which the odd couple disappeared, wondering how many of such comings and goings had been taking place behind his back, and what exactly it was that Monsieur le Sous-Préfet desired to store in his basement with the utmost secrecy.

  He all but forgot the occasion, his mind busy with much more pressing matters and the orphans’ needs, when one night, heading downstairs to lock the orphanage for the night, Father Yves caught Augustine’s daughter, barefoot and dressed in her long-sleeved nightgown, placing a plate and a folded blanket next to the cellar’s door.

  “Lili?”

  The girl gasped and straightened out, her black eyes widening against her will.

  “I’m sorry, Father. I was just leaving.”

  She darted toward the rickety staircase when Father Yves stepped forward, blocking her way.

  “You were supposed to be sleeping two hours ago, Lili.”

  “I know, Father. I was just…” She shot a look at the items that she had left behind and shifted her gaze back to the priest, chewing on her lip in worry.

  “Who are you leaving the food and blanket for?” he asked in a mild voice, tilting his head to one side curiously.

  “The gnomes that live in the cellar,” the girl replied assertively as if it was the most obvious answer in such a situation.

  Father Yves chuckled. “Aren’t you a little too old to believe in gnomes?”

  Lili shook her head giving him an innocent smile.

  “I think your new friends from Alsace can use the food instead of the gnomes, no?”

  “The gnomes need to eat too,” she argued in a quiet voice, her eyes as serious as before.

  “Lili.” Father Yves crouched in front of the girl, adopting a new tactic. Something was very off about the whole scenario, and he didn’t want to let go of the matter before he got to the bottom of it. After all, this was not just some child he had only met, but Augustine’s daughter and he didn’t want the girl to become involved in any kind of trouble. “You know that whatever you tell me I won’t tell anyone else, right? Let’s just think of it as a confession, shall we?”

  “But I’m not Catholic.”

  Lili is far too smart for her age, he noted to himself with a smile.

  “But you believe in God, don’t you?”

  She nodded after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Well, I’m one of God’s servants, and whatever I promise in his name I have to do. And I promise not to tell anyone your secret, whatever it is. You know that you can trust me, right?”

  “And you can trust me too, Father. I’m not doing anything bad,” Lili announced, sounding strangely adult for an eight-year-old child. “The gnomes need their food and a warm bed just as much as the children upstairs.”

  “But Lili, the cellar is locked. How will the gnomes unlock it to get the food and the blanket?”

  “They aren’t there now. They come after midnight. Monsieur Jules brings them and locks the door after they go downstairs, and lets them out in the morning. But we shouldn’t talk about them.” Lili pressed her finger to her lips, making a gesture as if she were sealing them.

  “Monsieur Jules hides someone down there, doesn’t he?”

  “Loose talk takes lives, Father. I know; one German officer in Paris used to hide Maman and me too. That’s how we survived. If you want the gnomes to survive as well, let them be, Father. The gnomes are friends.”

  “Does Maman know about the gnomes?”

  “No. Nobody does. I saw them by accident one night. Since then I started bringing them food and blankets for the night. Monsieur Jules said it was all right.”

  “Well, if Monsieur Jules said so.” Father Yves also pretended to seal his lips, causing Lili to break into a wide grin. “You and your gnomes’ secret is safe with me.”

  He stepped aside, letting the girl go. “Now, run upstairs before you catch a cold. And don’t sneak out at night anymore; I’ll take care of your friends.”

  “Make sure they don’t see you though, or they’ll get scared.”

  “They won’t. I’ll make sure to leave the food before midnight.”

  Lili beamed before running upstairs. “Good night, Father!”

  “Good night, Lili.” He watched her disappear into a dark hallway and added quietly, “Brave little girl”.

  Giselle quickly wiped her tears away at the sound of the front door unlocking, and busied herself with her cigarette, looking out of the opened window from the windowsill on which she was sitting.

  “Look what I managed to get at le Marché Noir today! A whole chicken!” Philippe sounded so proud of himself that Giselle forced herself to turn her head and smile at the beaming man holding a dead chicken by its neck, still with its feathers. Apparently, her smile came out so pained that his also disappeared at once. “What happened? Are you still upset over that Boche that you saw on the station?”

  “Don’t call him that,” she reproached him softly. “He’s a good boy. He helped us save Marcel from jail.”

  “Unwittingly.”

  “Still…” She took a long drag on her cigarette – a disgusting, cheap brand she despised, together with everything else surrounding her – and looked away again, scowling.

  Giselle heard Philippe fumble with the bag that he had brought. He apparently wished to busy himself with something – anything – just so he didn’t have to talk to her.

  He left to the kitchen, but then walked, in his resolute step, back into the living-room and asked, with a strange note in his voice, “Do you love him?”

  Giselle held his gaze, a slow, contemptuous smirk showing itself, just as in old times, on her otherwise arresting face.

  “No. I don’t love anyone. Never have. Never will.
”

  “Ah. The nihilistic, sentimentality-denying, post-war generation. I beg your pardon; I forgot.” The sarcasm disappeared from his voice as soon as he heard her stifle a sob. “Hey, Giselle, no, please, don’t cry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it…”

  She almost laughed at how his attitude changed in a fleeting moment. He had already outstretched his hand to rub her back in comfort, but then pulled it away and just stood near her, agitated and vulnerable, not knowing what to do. The big feared communist leader, Giselle sneered, wiping the annoying tears away with the back of her hand.

  “No, Philippe. I don’t love him. He just reminded me of my former life, that’s all. When everything was normal. When I wrote my books, wore expensive perfume and dined at Maxims at least once a week. When chicken wasn’t a luxury, when my nails weren’t broken and black from the machine oil no matter how hard I try to scrub them off. When I wasn’t on the Gestapo’s most wanted list, when—” She stopped mid-sentence, took a ragged breath, raking her hand through her chestnut hair.

  “When you were engaged to its chief,” Philippe finished her thought.

  “Go ahead, ask me if I loved him,” Giselle threw over her shoulder, sounding positively sardonic.

  “Clearly not enough to keep him alive.”

  She allowed a mirthless chuckle to escape her lips.

  “You know, I used to think that he was a misguided, lost soul that didn’t have any chance for redemption. And now,” she sighed, frowning at the red glowing tip of her cigarette, “now I think I’m the one.”

  “Don’t say that. You did the right thing.”

  “Did I really?” Giselle pulled her knees towards her chest and rested her chin on them. “Remember which book used to be my favorite?”