The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  ‘Going out?’ Madame Dumas enquired, poking her head over the counter.

  ‘One must eat,’ said Eleanor. If the steps were less of a problem, what about the concierge perched here all the time like Alberich guarding the treasure of the Nibelung?

  ‘It’ll rain later,’ said Madame Dumas, ‘it always does on that wind. Do you want an umbrella just in case?’

  Eleanor was unsettled by Madame Dumas; an excess of kindness never came without a sting. An umbrella wouldn’t be necessary, she replied, she wouldn’t be out long.

  ST MARTIN’S CHURCH AND HÔTEL DE FRANCE, BOULEVARD DES PYRÉNÉES, PAU

  Around 5.30pm, Friday, 12th December 1941

  The occasional wind gusts were strong enough to tear the remaining autumnal leaves from the trees and pull at Bauer’s cap as he walked along the footpath away from the commissariat de police. He’d sent Kopitcke on to their temporary office in the Hôtel de France to sift through the information he’d requested from Germany, some of which had arrived. There had been nothing more he could do at the police station, short of going out himself to inspect each and every hostel and hovel in Pau for the killers. If he’d been able to keep the dogs, he might have done just that. A flyer had been prepared for printing and distribution the following morning, and St Jean had assured him his informers had been told and would, in turn, inform, if and when they learnt something. When St Jean decided to cooperate, he was quite Teutonically efficient.

  The walk back to the office allowed Bauer to stretch his legs and be alone. Before continuing, he took a Pervitin tablet to keep himself going. After a slight rush, he suddenly felt sharp and alert, as if he’d drunk many cups of strong coffee, although without coffee’s side effects. It really was a wonder pill. He’d received no news about Georg, not even that they were still looking for him and his platoon. If silence were a sign, then the Russian counteroffensive outside Moscow that the German public knew nothing about was succeeding. He wasn’t ready to start grasping at the hope Georg and his men had been taken prisoner. He’d heard quite enough of what was taking place behind the lines in the east – the mass shootings of Jews, of captured Soviet officers, of civilians – to know that sort of hope was no hope. The Soviets wouldn’t discriminate between the Wehrmacht and the SS special forces.

  St Martin’s Church, a little further on along the boulevard, had been his goal all along. He sat at the back, although hardly in contemplation, for his emotions were in turmoil. He tried prayer, but what was he to pray for? His son’s soul? He wouldn’t permit himself to think of such a thing. The boy was strong. He would survive, and his father would help him with all his might. A priest approached and asked if he would like to join him in prayer, and Bauer said he would, thank you. First he told the priest he was German and was worried sick about his soldier son over in Russia who was missing. God knew, so why not the priest? The priest was only fleetingly startled before he prayed for the hope of peace and reconciliation and for Georg and all soldiers to be returned safe and sound to their fathers and mothers. He also gave Bauer a blessing, and for a moment, no longer, Bauer felt an echo of the comfort he once took for granted. But he couldn’t hang on to it. His boy might be lying in the snow. What was God doing to them all? What sort of God was He to allow all this to happen? His eyes flew open in anger. The priest was gone, leaving only a faint whiff of his physical presence in the stillness.

  Bauer sensed him nearby, probably returned to the confessional whence he’d come to offer comfort. The priest had tried. The church felt as cold as a tomb. Even the weather outside was better than this. As he went out, he thought of the priest, who was about his age, old enough to have experienced the last war. He wondered if he’d been a priest then or even a soldier.

  On return, he ordered dinner sent up to their office, which was in the Queens’ Salon. There he found Kopitcke, innocent of any French history before May 1940, sitting at his improvised desk under bad portraits of Henry IV’s queens, duplicitous Marguerite de Valois and ruthless Marie de’ Medici, she who could have taught Machiavelli a thing or two about power.

  ‘These just arrived, sir,’ Kopitcke said, pointing to copies of files of known deserters since August, the who, the when and the where.

  ‘About time,’ Bauer muttered.

  On the opinion of the French doctor who had performed the autopsy, Bauer had only the Wehrmacht knife to go on as possible murder weapon and had to take into account the possibility that whoever murdered those two soldiers might himself be from the Wehrmacht and thus a deserter.

  Kopitcke was still shocked, he who idealised the Landser that he could never be. How could a German soldier kill men so recently his comrades?

  ‘Deserters come in all sizes,’ Bauer replied, ‘from cowards to heroes.’ In his experience, some were just fools, some obsessed by a slight or perceived wrong, some just wanted to sort out a girl who might’ve written a ‘dear John’ letter. They faced a grim future if caught, sent east to a punishment battalion at a minimum, which really meant certain death. ‘Any, especially a coward,’ he said, ‘would kill to save his own neck, no question, as long as it was a knife in the back.’

  Dinner arrived. To Bauer’s dismay, it wasn’t French, it was German. ‘They’re very good here,’ said Kopitcke. ‘They know what we like to eat.’

  BOULEVARD DES PYRÉNÉES, PAU

  Towards 6pm, Friday, 12th December 1941

  Eleanor walked along the boulevard just on the hour. The breeze coming in from the west brought with it the salty tang of the sea. She did not quite believe it. Was the ocean not a hundred miles away? Her senses had not misled her, for this was indeed air carried in from the Atlantic, and with it came the memories of Bar Harbor holidays that this journey home seemed to be releasing so vividly. Those glorious long summer days; she could feel the sun and the salt on her skin. Fleetingly, she forgot the war, even her current plight, although her present bent for finding the dark cloud behind every silver lining brought some apprehension about going back. She was surplus to requirements, just an adornment, the bohemian aunt to nieces and nephews. That would soon wear off. And the only one she could talk to, Will, was off at the war.

  She strolled as casually as she could. Few people were about. Henk was not among them. Where the hell was he? Her anxiety and irritation rose in equal measure.

  The lights of a lone car poked out through the dark as it rolled slowly along the roadway, close to the footpath. Too slowly for Eleanor’s liking, too close. She slid behind a statue and waited till its sinister and familiar form passed by. Only then did she continue her search. She came to the end of the boulevard, turned and retraced her steps back towards the chateau. Henk was still not in sight. What if he’d been picked up? Then, suddenly, there he was, barely inches away, as if he’d stepped out of a crack in the pavement.

  ‘I was about to give you up,’ she said in a snappish whisper. The fronds of the palms rustled against one another in the breeze. He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Did you not see the Gestapo?’ he replied.

  ‘Of course I did.’ Closer, she saw his brow glistened with sweat and his face was red.

  ‘You’re not well,’ she said, unable to conceal her concern.

  ‘Not at all,’ he replied, as if she was being insulting.

  He had thrown up not long before, but not from any sickness of the body. He was still shaken by what had happened. She’d be the last person he’d tell.

  He’d been passing the Armistice Commission, where he’d seen the two German soldiers guarding the entrance. He’d stopped. Either of the Landsers standing there with his rifle on his shoulder could have been him. They could have been old pals. Why not go over? They’d happily greet him, even knowing he was a Mischling. He knew that didn’t count with them; they didn’t take him for one of those dirty Jews screwing Germany over. He was one of them; they’d have died for him, as he for them. He had a tin cravat around his neck to prove it, for God’s sake. What the hell’s the bloody army doing kic
king out fellows like our Heiner with his Iron Cross? That’s what they’d said.

  Good to see you, pal, they’d say again, let’s share a cigarette and a drink.

  Oh God, yes, a drink with mates, belonging once again, knowing they cared for you and you for them.

  Coming out of his reverie, God knows how, he’d caught himself barely metres away from them on the footpath opposite, about to cross over. The shock of what he’d been about to do froze him. He had willed his feet away from them and along the footpath, eyes front as if he’d been on parade. They must have been looking right at him, wondering what the hell he was doing. They might have put a bullet into him if he’d come any closer.

  Once he’d retreated out of sight, he’d thrown up like some scared-to-death kid. But he had been scared. He’d scared the hell out of himself. Thank Christ it was so dark. What the hell had he been thinking? Was he going crazy? Hadn’t he killed off that part of him when he’d knifed those two Landsers? He had to get a grip on himself.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he repeated impatiently when she kept looking at him.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said. He waited until she was ahead some distance, then followed along the opposite footpath, where through the windows of the cafés he saw the ghostly faces of the stranded. Gave him the creeps. They seemed to him to be waiting for death to come in and claim them.

  RUE DES CORDELIERS, PAU

  After 7pm, Friday, 12th December 1941

  They ate in a café that backed on to the ravine. The food available without coupons was Spanish and coarse, but after sausage and increasingly stale bread for a couple of days and latterly nothing but water, this could have been Maxim’s. She’d reminded Henk of the French for stew before they’d entered. The less he said the better. She’d persuaded him also to keep the cat inside his coat, although that was easier said than done when it smelt food. He ate quickly and took himself and his darling away to a discreet place where he could feed it without attracting attention.

  The cat was ravenous. ‘Poor little cat,’ he said in German. ‘Soon we’ll be in a place where the sun shines all the time and you won’t be cold or hungry anymore.’ When it had consumed every last drop of the stew, it quickly found a private spot for its ablutions. He liked its fussy ways. He’d be fussy too, come the day when they were safe and free. It returned to him, he picked it up, cuddled it under his chin and listened to its comforting purr.

  After he went, Eleanor wasted no time trying the waiter to test her hunch that this was exactly the sort of place she might seek their passages into Spain. It took only a word and few francs to open a door, for this was still the time when, despite the constraints, French rather than German authority ruled, and the market for escapees with money was less clandestine than later.

  She might have been entering an accountant’s office with its desk and chair and the occupant poring over his ledgers and accounts. In place of an accountant’s high collar and possible pince-nez was a rough open-necked shirt and dark eyes that needed neither magnifying glass to see nor a ledger to tote up figures. The man at the table in a fog of smoke from his constant cigarette was young and thickset, with beefy arms and hands. The lines on his face, Eleanor realised from his rough Spanish accent, were from the hard experience of escape and exile. With the memory of the Catalan nationalist back in Lyon and the minefield of Spanish exile politics, Eleanor got straight to the point. She wanted two passages into Spain as quickly as possible and as secretly as possible.

  He laughed. ‘You’re American, aren’t you? You got an American passport. All you need is a Spanish and a Portuguese visa. No problem. Just catch the train down to Canfranc.’

  Eleanor was furious with herself for letting her accent slip. Worse, she hadn’t noticed. She thought to deny it, but that would complicate her need. ‘I can’t go on a train. I need the utmost discretion,’ she said. That’s all she was going to say, otherwise the price would start going up.

  ‘Jesus Maria, lady,’ he replied in disbelief, ‘you can’t be a Jew.’

  ‘No,’ Eleanor confirmed.

  ‘This for you?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  He shook his head. Did she have any idea what the mountains were like right now? he said. The high passes weren’t passes at all, because of the weather, which, if she hadn’t noticed, was getting worse. How was she, a woman, going to hike it into Spain?

  She said that wasn’t his concern; if she died in the attempt, so what to him?

  ‘Yeah, but I’m not the one taking you to Spain,’ he replied. ‘The guides are fussy. They don’t want to be held up by no lady thinking she’s going for a stroll along the Champs-Élysées.’

  Eleanor said she understood the seriousness of the situation all too well. She might not be able to claim she was fit, but she was tough.

  ‘Look outside,’ he said, ‘you’re one of thousands.’

  ‘They’re mostly Jews with no papers or an American passport,’ Eleanor replied. She said she’d happily lie under a load of manure to get across the border. That’s all she needed. Just across the border.

  ‘Lady, that’s all you’re ever going to get,’ he answered pointedly. ‘Once you’re past the high point, that’s Spain, you’re on your own. At least it’s downhill.’

  ‘I need two passages,’ she said.

  ‘The other party the same as you?’ he asked.

  Eleanor had to have known she’d be asked this. ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Two ladies thinking they’re strolling down the Champs-Élysées’s double the trouble,’ he said.

  ‘He’s young and he’s fit,’ Eleanor replied.

  The man looked at her askance. ‘Oh yeah?’ Then he smiled.

  ‘It’s not like that,’ she snapped. Whether she convinced him, she didn’t know. She certainly hadn’t convinced herself.

  He lit another cigarette, took a few puffs to think it over, then told her to go to a café on Rue Bernadotte tomorrow at ten, the one that had a sign with two fishes over the entrance. He would send someone who would find her there.

  ‘How can I trust you?’ Eleanor asked. Anyone could come, and she’d end up in the hands of the invader.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, standing abruptly from the chair – this interview was over – ‘I’d be sitting at home in Cartagena if it wasn’t for the fucking Franco and the fucking Nazis, so if you want to insult me you can get your fat arse out of here right now. If I say I’ll send someone, you can trust them, even if they say no.’

  She took the reprimand. She was learning. Fight only when necessary.

  ‘What the fuck have you done, eh?’ he demanded. ‘Cut off Hitler’s balls?’

  ‘How did you know?’ she said, attempting a sly smile. He laughed, which relieved her. She was worried he might demand to know more.

  ‘One thing,’ she said. ‘Do not say I am American.’

  ‘Lady, your mouth says you are,’ he replied, shaking his head.

  ‘It won’t tomorrow,’ she replied.

  He didn’t believe her.

  ‘Do I have your word?’ she asked, favouring her request with a handful of francs. He said he wouldn’t mention it, and she believed him.

  RUE HEDAS, PAU

  Towards 9pm, Friday, 12th December 1941

  As she led Henk off the street down the alleyway, Eleanor told him they were about to enter a no-man’s-land that spoke Spanish. ‘You’ll feel right at home,’ she added. He grinned.

  ‘What’s so amusing?’ she asked.

  ‘You are,’ he said. ‘To survive, you should learn not to be so predictable.’

  The wind with its Atlantic tang buffeted the ravine. They’d have rain before long, which, she figured, meant snow on the mountains. While he waited, she went inside, hoping the concierge would be asleep. But there she was, her beady eyes through the tiny opening in her door reflecting the light in the vestibule.

  ‘Ah, Madame Roget,’ she called as she shuffled out and smiled. ‘You’re back safe and sound.’


  The front door opened and a middle-aged man entered, gaunt and sad.

  ‘Good evening, m’sieur,’ said Dumas with cheer.

  The man nodded gruffly and went up the stairs.

  ‘He’s a Dutch Jew,’ whispered Dumas, ‘waiting for his wife and children to arrive. It’s been two months, poor man. Have you heard him playing his violin? Such beautiful music.’

  Eleanor smiled. The woman was a terrible liar.

  *

  Eleanor hurried up to the room. Getting herself to the window at the end of the dormer wasn’t impossible, just ridiculously difficult, but she got there, opened the window and shook her head to warn off Henk. God knows where he would go – back into that crack in the pavement? She hoped the rain would hold off. But better to be on the safe side about Madame Dumas.

  While she waited for Madame Dumas to disappear, she took her basin down to the next floor, where she was able to find water that was blissfully hot. She took her fill and carried it back to the room. With the wind, she didn’t take any notice of the window rattling, and only when she turned did she see a figure tumble in through the window. Thank God she’d already set the basin down, because her instinct was to hurl it at the intruder. It was him. He’d climbed the drain pipe to the roof and over to her window like a cat burglar.

  ‘Unlocked,’ he said, shutting the window behind him and snibbing the catch so it was as locked as it could be.

  He removed cat and coat, pulled off his woollen jumper, shirt and undershirt, and immediately claimed her hot water and leftover soap as if she’d prepared it just for his arrival. Her dismay was actually disappointment. If only he’d waited a moment for her to offer it instead of just claiming it. Still, she thought, this was the first hot water he’d encountered at least since they’d crossed their Rubicon and probably well before that. She remembered the bruising and cuts on the pale soles of his feet. After he’d dried himself, she found her ointment, but he took it from her – no thank-you – and attended to his wounds himself.