Her fever-induced shivering had turned into violent convulsions and then back into subsiding trembles a few days ago, but her body was still fighting for its existence. Now, she barely felt anything at all, not even the snow under her bare skin.
“Shall we leave you to it?” It was the first German again.
A shovel hit the ground near her head.
“Of course! Why waste time waiting for me to bury them all? The ground is frozen, so it will take hours… I’ll finish just in time for the following train to pick me up.”
“Well, tell them who your commanding officer is, and they’ll tell you where to go once you cross the territory of the Reich.”
“Jawohl.”
“Danke, Kamerad!”
The train started moving just as the shovel sliced into the ground next to her. Giselle began slipping back into unconscious bliss when she swore she heard his voice calling her name.
“Giselle!” The familiar voice fell faintly on her ear. He was shaking her again, her tormentor who refused to leave her alone to meet her death. “Wake up, Giselle! Look at me!”
She didn’t want to look at him. She wanted him to let her die in peace, but she guessed she didn’t deserve an easy death for he wouldn’t leave her be for even one second. The worst part was that she couldn’t even fight him as he rubbed her skin with a rough rag, over and over, flipping her from side to side like a broken doll; he did seem to carefully avoid touching her broken ribs, though.
“Giselle. You owe me, Giselle. I can’t allow you to die, and you know it. Now, open your eyes and look at me!”
She fluttered her eyelids and tried to focus on the dark features of the man leaning over her. His coal black eyes lit up as a smile transformed his usually somber face. Karl.
Giselle allowed a cynical smirk to appear on her grayish face as, thinking with distant curiosity that maybe the Bible that she used to mock didn’t lie after all: maybe she was dead already, and this was her personal hell, and he was the demon who would torment her for eternity.
“Do me a favor and swallow at least a spoonful of soup, will you?” Karl shifted her to a seated position, propping her against a haystack, judging by several painful jabs from pieces of straw that pricked her back. He held a spoon near her mouth. “Giselle, please. We need to get some food into you.”
Why, if she was already dead?
He touched her lips, cracked and broken from when she had bitten them, trying to lessen her pain, the tantalizing aroma of the broth awakening her senses. Giselle opened her mouth and allowed him to carefully slip some broth between her lips. She smiled, savoring the taste; she couldn’t recall when she had last tasted any kind of food. Karl was smiling as well.
“That’s my girl. Now, one more, for me.”
He kept feeding her spoon after spoon, gently wiping the corners of her mouth with his handkerchief and muttering something encouraging about how they were both safe now, and how they would disappear as soon as she was strong enough, and how great their life would be. Together, just you and me. They think you’re dead, you know. No one will look for you anymore. You’re safe with me. I’ll look after you, just like I promised I would…
Giselle kept scrutinizing his familiar features, trying to make sense of it all. Karl was dead. She killed him. Yet, he had appeared in her cell earlier, to offer salvation; he had taken her off the train heading to Germany; and now, he was feeding her very real broth in a barn and talking about their future together.
“Just one more,” he cooed, navigating the spoon into her mouth. “Good girl. Now, rest. I’ll hold you tight to keep you warm.”
She peered into his eyes as he lay next to her, covering them both with a woolen army-issued overcoat with SS markings on it, his body far too real and warm.
“Why?” Giselle finally managed to whisper, summoning all her strength. She hasn’t spoken in days, and her voice was weak and raspy, even after the warm broth had soothed her aching throat a little.
“Why what, chérie?”
Giselle frowned. Karl never called her chérie. Schatz or Herz, but never chérie. He despised everything French, well, except for her.
“Why nurse me back to life, after what I’ve done to you?”
A frown crossed his handsome features, and another subtle smile replaced it as he brushed her hair off her forehead softly.
“Well, you do happen to have the most terrible temper I’ve ever encountered in a woman, and you tend to climb on your high horse far too often, but…” He sighed and planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. “I guess, I love you, Giselle.”
Karl had never told her he loved her. He didn’t, and she knew it well enough, just like she had never loved him. The two were a pair, a new breed of people as he called it, far too intelligent for any lowly, human feelings; utter nihilists purposely denying everything moralistic simply because they belonged to a generation that had grown up on Nietzsche and despised everyone who thought otherwise. The will to power was the idea that allowed his people to take lives without any regard to humanistic qualms; ironically enough the same will to power allowed her to take his, for she had turned out to be stronger than his breed, exactly because of those moralistic feelings that she had so carefully denied in herself. A perfect paradox.
“You don’t love me,” she argued, willing for her eyes to stay open for another few moments until she could make sense of everything. “You can’t love me. You can’t even be here. I killed you.”
His gentle smile dropped, his expression turning confused and sad for some reason.
“Giselle, who do you think you’re talking to?” he asked her quietly, after a pause.
“Karl,” she stated the obvious, a little irritated with his unusually compliant state.
He scowled, shook his head slightly and kissed her once again, feeling her burning forehead with his lips. “I’m not Karl, Giselle. Karl is dead. You killed him. He’s in your head only. I’m Philippe, your no-good husband-communist, remember?”
With her last reserve of power, Giselle lifted her hand to his face and touched it with mistrust. Her vision started blurring again, and Karl’s features slowly morphed into a different face, one that belonged to a man she didn’t mind falling asleep next to. Yes, Philippe. Her no-good, husband-communist.
“Where did you get the uniform then, comrade?”
“I secured a new passport and volunteered for the French Legion of the Waffen-SS; it was my only chance to get near you. Besides, I thought you’d like the look, you Boche-lover!”
“It’s better than your workers’ overalls.”
He chuckled, with relief as it seemed. Giselle grinned serenely and allowed her eyes to close at last.
Epilogue
Lyon, November 1941
Marcel wept, clinging to Etienne’s overcoat until his legs gave out and he fell to the floor, burying his head in his hands. Augustine dropped to her knees right next to him, soothing him with her words and gentle hands on top of his head.
“Pauvre garçon, mon pauvre garçon…”
There was nothing that could be said to console him now, and they all knew it. Only three people were left of their cell, and they all stood in a tight circle around him.
“Tommy died a hero, Marcel.” Etienne lowered his hand on Marcel’s shoulder, shaking with sobs. “Just like Giselle did.”
“I killed him.” Marcel’s words came out in ragged breaths. “It was me, my fault… I told him to go; I said such terrible things to him!”
“He did what he felt was right,” Etienne’s tone was level, masking the subdued emotion he was trying to conceal. “He tried to save your sister.”
“And now, they’re both dead! All because of me!” He burst into tears again.
“No, all because of Lucienne,” Yves remarked with ice in his voice, also lowering to the floor next to the crying man. “At least, she’s dead as well. The Gestapo hanged her; Tommy faced a firing squad, like a soldier. It’s a noble death, befitting a hero.”
>
“What are you saying?” Augustine shot him a reproachful look, still cradling Marcel’s head on her chest. “Noble death! They killed the poor boy, for nothing, the beasts! Just like they did—”
She stopped herself before finishing the sentence, but Yves understood everything well enough and bit his tongue inside his mouth. Just like they killed her husband.
“We’ll avenge them both, I swear to you,” he whispered, catching her wrist, and then let his arms drop over Marcel’s shoulders to enclose him in a tight embrace.
It had been so long since he allowed anyone to get so close to him, refusing himself the right to any kind of human companionship, separating himself from the rest with his black robe and a guarded look. But now, these people, united with nothing else but a common goal – a country free of its gray-clad invaders – had become closer to him than any family kin could possibly be, and Yves swore to himself that he would gladly give his life for any of them.
“What happened to Philippe?” Marcel lifted his wet face to Etienne, who had just returned from the Occupied Zone.
“I only know that he wasn’t arrested. He’s disappeared it seems. We lost contact. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“Where did they bury Giselle?”
Etienne lowered his eyes and shifted from one foot to another. “I don’t know, Marcel. I tried to ask as subtly as I could, and I found out from one of the Germans connected to the SD in Dijon that Giselle Legrand was put on one of the transports heading to Germany, and she died from fever during the transportation. That’s all that I could find out. I’m sorry.”
“I won’t even have their graves to visit.” Marcel shook his head, tears streaming down his face. “Both of them, gone…”
“They’re not gone.” Augustine stroked his hair again, knowing his pain better than anyone there. Her husband disappeared the same way, buried somewhere with other Jewish prisoners of war, in an unmarked grave with no one to lay flowers on it. “They will live forever, in our memory, and in the memory of the people who they helped. One day, people will write books about them, and build memorials in their honor. No, they didn’t die; on the contrary, they will outlive all of us, as heroes of France.”
Marcel sat without moving for some time, sniffling quietly and pondering something. Finally, he turned to Yves, his eyes much clearer and determined.
“Could you say a prayer for them, please?” he asked quietly. “Tommy was an atheist; well, he wasn’t too fond of the church because… well…”
Yves smiled and nodded. “Of course, we’ll say a prayer for them both. It doesn’t matter who Tommy was; to all of us, he will always be a hero and a dearly loved brother, first and foremost.”
Marcel’s grin came out pained, but he still breathed out with relief. “Thank you, Father.”
“It’s Yves. Just Yves.” He kneeled and clasped his hands together; his head lowered in a solemn bow to his chest.
Etienne, Marcel, and Augustine joined him, repeating the words of the prayer together with the priest.
“Today we bury our dead,” Yves concluded, opening his eyes and looking each one of them in the eye. “Tomorrow, we kill our enemies. They might be stronger just now, but the righteous cause is on our side. And we won’t stop until every last one of them is gone, or dead. Whatever it will be, is up to them to choose.”
Day was breaking over the orphanage, as children slept in their beds upstairs, undisturbed and blessed in their peaceful slumber. From the cellar, the four résistants made their way upstairs, coming out of the darkness, ready to face what the new day brought, more determined than ever.
Paris, December 1941
Michel Demarche, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Demarche Publishing House, cleaned his hands thoroughly after spending another night in the cellar of his building, printing copies of La Libération – the Resistance newspaper which had survived against all odds and even travelled as far as the Free Zone thanks to his late friend’s son, Etienne Delattre. He hadn’t heard from the young man for a long time, accepting the news of his appointment as a Sub-Prefect of Lyon with a dose of concern and skepticism.
Having no children of his own, Michel always thought of his writers as his children, and Etienne even more so, as he still remembered rocking the boy on one knee when Etienne’s father visited his publishing house in Paris. Hopefully, the boy had grown into being a fine young man with the sharp mind and diplomatic abilities of his father, and wouldn’t get dragged into anything that would end up badly for him. Michel chuckled, observing the new copies of the underground newspaper, still smelling of fresh ink and ready to be picked up tomorrow by one of the résistants working in Paris.
Being used to moving around the dark building at night without the help of a flashlight, Michel made his way upstairs into his office where he would once again spend the night on his sofa. His back would hurt the next day, but that was a rather low price to pay to keep his fellow countrymen’s spirits high, especially before Christmas. The news from the Eastern front was that the Boches were regretting their blitz against the Soviets more and more every day, freezing by the dozens in the severe Russian temperatures. He was busy all day, composing articles so they were ready for the late-night print, allowing fresh copies of the newspaper to travel around Paris the following day.
Grinning, Michel pushed the door open and walked over to his table in absolute darkness, feeling for the cognac bottle that he had left there before heading downstairs. A shot of the finest French brandy was his reward for his day’s work – the only indulgence he allowed himself.
“Salut, Michel.”
The voice, coming from the other side of the room, startled him so much he dropped the glass on the floor, spilling the cognac on his patent leather shoes. Michel spun on his heels, facing the figure sitting on his sofa. Two figures, mere shadows against the subtle light coming in from the blackout curtains.
“Did you miss me?”
Michel faltered before stepping forward, refusing to believe the music that her voice was to his old ears.
“Giselle?” he whispered, holding his breath while waiting for a response. “Is that you?”
“Bien sûr, c’est moi, mon ami.” She burst into laughter, something he had missed so much, and jumped to her feet to enclose him in the tightest of embraces. “Remember Philippe?”
Laughing through his tears, Michel held out his hand to the other figure that had also stood up and found his palm in the darkness.
“Philippe, my friend! Giselle! What are you both doing here? I thought you were dead, ma petite! The German papers said…”
“The German papers lied, like they always do, Michel. As for what we’re doing here, I came to tell you such a story which, once it’s published, will become a best seller like you won’t believe.”
Michel could swear he saw her give him a coy wink before taking a serious air once again. “But before that, Michel, my friend, we have some Boches to get rid of.”
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The Lyon Affair: A French Resistance novel Page 25