The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  He had already wound down the window. ‘I am Kommissar Bauer of the Geheime Feldpolizei,’ he snapped in German, showing his identification. ‘Open up the gate now, or you’ll be on the first transport to the Russian front.’ That focused the man’s attention. He jumped to open the gate, and even saluted as Bauer’s car passed through.

  From outside, one would think nothing was amiss. With its turrets and cornices washed clean, the place looked picturesque in a Grimms’-fairy-tale sort of way. Bauer jumped out of the car, swept up the steps and inside.

  With his ID held open in his right hand, shoulder high, he went straight to the agent at the desk, a uniformed SS corporal. He’d take pleasure in informing St Jean of this insult to French sovereignty. ‘Take me immediately to Lieutenant Wolf,’ he ordered.

  ‘B–b–but, sir,’ the fellow stammered.

  ‘Immediately,’ Bauer snapped.

  ‘I have to call the guard, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘Unlock the door or I’ll see you’re sent to Russia in the very next detachment,’ Bauer ordered.

  Chastened, the corporal jumped to it. Bauer followed. So far so good, Bauer thought. They passed through a doorway, along a short corridor and down stone steps to the floor below.

  ‘Where is Lieutenant Wolf?’ Bauer demanded of the guard, who looked to the corporal. ‘I’m the one giving orders,’ Bauer bellowed, which was enough for the guard to move at the double down another set of stone steps to an ordinary cellar, with Bauer on his heels.

  The guard opened the wooden cellar door, and Bauer pushed him aside.

  Wolf was sprawled on the cold stone floor. He instinctively covered his nakedness. Pathetically, he had only his hands, the left of which was clawed and covered nothing. His body was bruised all over.

  ‘Get his clothes,’ Bauer ordered the guard. ‘Now.’

  ‘Up,’ he said firmly to Wolf, bending down to take hold of his arm and help him to his feet. Wolf stood, not without difficulty. Bauer heard no cry but saw the pain on Wolf’s face, then the reason: a deep cut on his arm, doubtless from a knife. He apologised, but that’s all he had time for. The guard returned with Wolf’s uniform. Bauer noticed it had been folded oh so neat and tidy, not a mark on it, in great contrast to its owner. He helped Wolf draw on trousers and shirt. That would do for the moment.

  ‘You have to walk,’ he ordered Wolf. ‘Move.’

  Wolf nodded, held on to Bauer. They left the cellar, awkwardly made their way up, step by step, and then up the next set of steps to the first floor and out into the reception area.

  Here, at last – Bauer had been expecting it – they were challenged by an officer whom the corporal had alerted. He burst through the front door in a fury.

  ‘Halt,’ the man shouted. ‘Return this prisoner to the cell immediately. This is a Gestapo matter. The army has no right to interfere.’

  The fellow was not in military uniform, but Bauer knew from the tirade and the leather coat that he was Gestapo. ‘And who might you be?’ he asked so dismissively that he thought the fellow might explode.

  ‘I am Captain Leske of the Geheime Staatspolizei,’ he shouted.

  Same rank, Bauer noted. ‘The army has every right to interfere, particularly the GFP,’ he countered, firm in his knowledge of military law. ‘Lieutenant Wolf is a serving Wehrmacht officer.’

  ‘He’s a traitor,’ Leske shouted back.

  Bauer crisply and coolly repeated chapter and verse of the regulations. ‘Furthermore, captain,’ he said, ‘we are on French sovereign territory. What you have done and are doing is illegal under the terms of the armistice. I intend reporting the details to the highest authority.’

  ‘Are you threatening a Gestapo officer in the course of his duty?’ Leske demanded.

  Bauer saw sweet reason was lost on this thug. ‘If you don’t get out of my way,’ he said, drawing his pistol for the first time in anger since joining the GFP, ‘I will arrest you. If you resist, I will shoot you, paragraph fourteen (a) if you care to look up the GFP regulations.’ There was no such regulation but now wasn’t the time to quibble about legality, especially with the Gestapo.

  Leske’s face went from red to purple to white.

  ‘Russia or dead,’ Bauer said, cocking his pistol. ‘I can’t tell you the pleasure it would give me to pull the trigger.’

  ‘You will regret this, captain,’ said the officer. ‘The Reichsführer takes a dim view of his agents being attacked.’

  Bauer couldn’t be bothered arguing. He was sure the Reichsführer did take a dim view of a Wehrmacht officer felling one of his men, but the Reichsführer was in Berlin and they were in Pau. Leske glowered as he walked ahead of Bauer’s pistol, out through the door and down the steps to Bauer’s car.

  ‘Start the engine,’ Bauer ordered the French driver, a roly-poly middled-aged man whose name was Mascaro. ‘Over there,’ he motioned Leske away with his revolver as he pushed Wolf into the back seat of the car. ‘Open the gate,’ he ordered the guard at the entrance. As Bauer got into the back seat, Leske moved in front of the car. ‘Go,’ Bauer ordered Mascaro loud enough for Leske to hear over the sound of the engine. Mascaro hesitated. ‘Run him down,’ Bauer shouted.

  ‘With pleasure,’ Mascaro said under his breath, putting his foot down hard and releasing the clutch. The car leapt, Leske shrieked and jumped but the front mudguard collected him and sent him sprawling. The guard started to close the gate. Mascaro drove right through it. As they sped away, the car skidded dangerously on the slushy roadway. Mascaro quickly brought it under control. He grinned into the rear-view mirror at Bauer, who had not decided yet where to take Wolf.

  ‘Drive around,’ he said, ‘in case our friends follow.’

  Follow they did. Mascaro indicated to Bauer, who looked back to see another car like theirs leave the villa and try to tail them. In vain. Mascaro knew his town better than they did, and, with a cavalier attitude to speed, it pleased him immensely to give a finger to the Gestapo, even if it was in favour of another of the occupiers. All it took was one sharp strategic turn. Mascaro headed into the old town. The Gestapo nearly went over the cliff on a long detour down to the railway station.

  ‘The Hôtel de France,’ Bauer directed. Better there than the commissariat de police, where St Jean might arrest poor Wolf because of the duel, diplomatic immunity or no. At the Armistice Commission, Wolf would at least be under the direct protection of the Wehrmacht. He asked Mascaro to radio for a doctor to be called urgently.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Wolf murmured.

  ‘Young man,’ said Bauer, ‘what on earth have you done?’

  ‘Can you tell me the time, sir?’ Wolf asked.

  Bauer showed Wolf his watch. Well after eleven. Wolf nodded and slumped back.

  ‘They took me from my hotel,’ he said. ‘I need to get into my room,’ but he was shivering so much he stopped, and Bauer, foraging about in the back for something warm, told him he could talk later. His search was unsuccessful, so he removed his coat and covered Wolf with that, though his feet stuck out the bottom, bare and cold.

  ‘God almighty,’ Bauer muttered. Even his feet were bruised.

  A BOOKSHOP, RUE LAMOTHE, PAU

  Early afternoon, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  By early afternoon, Eleanor’s optimism was fading. She had tried the low end of the town without success. Now she went to one of the cafés along the boulevard in which refugees, stateless and out of money, gazed out to a safety that was beyond their reach. Eleanor had a passport, the best passport of all, and she had dollars, which would stand for the Spanish visa she did not have. Henk’s lack of papers – well, she thought, her dollars would solve that once they were across the border.

  Determined, she placed some francs into the hand of the waiter and asked straight out. He laughed, said nothing, pointed to the weather, pocketed the money and returned to his routine. What was she going to do? Call the police? This put her off any of the other cafés along Boulevard des Pyrénées. Boulevard de
s Voleurs, she thought, boulevard of thieves. She couldn’t just keep going from one café to the next, seeking passage into Spain. Their German pursuers were in Pau, after all. It would never have occurred to her their number was but two. In her imagination they were the Gestapo and they were many.

  Soon she was sitting in the foyer of the hotel of her ill-fated honeymoon. Didn’t the miserable place owe her? She’d been there hardly five minutes when a man tried to sell her coffee. Tempted as she sorely was, she replied she didn’t need coffee, she needed to get to Spain. The fellow nodded. He might be able to help.

  ‘How much?’ she asked.

  ‘It depends,’ said the man, whose shifty smile confirmed her suspicions that she was talking to someone who could and might do a deal.

  ‘On what?’ she asked.

  ‘Coffee and other goods one way,’ he said airily, ‘people the other, the risks are bigger.’ He himself could, for a fee, take her to someone who might help. They haggled, but briefly. The desk manager behind his pince-nez was taking too close an interest in what might have been obvious to anyone running a hotel, even in normal times. Should she be flattered? she wondered, but decided the manager was being intolerably impertinent. She flashed him a waspish look as she tailed her gold-toothed rat out of the foyer and onto the street.

  She followed him at a good ten yards’ distance as he scurried along the street named for a famous French marshal. Just past the post office, he nipped down a side street – it was all she could do to keep up – and stopped outside a bookshop. Eleanor joined him and they both pretended to peruse the books displayed in the window.

  ‘The woman,’ he murmured, indicating the woman at the counter inside. ‘Say M’sieur Edouard recommended you to her.’ He strolled away, never to be seen again.

  Eleanor easily kept her gaze on the books inside; she couldn’t have moved if a truck had hit her. Among the volumes on the shelf, with its cover facing out, was her last book in its French translation, La Femme Américaine. Alongside was a small picture of her by a young photographer whose name she now forgot. She wasn’t sure whether to feel proud or terrified. There was the life she was leaving, the life ruined by this race of barbarians. She thought of Sylvia and of Madeleine, and she missed them so much her heart hurt. Really, she wanted to cry, and she wanted a shoulder to cry on. But this descent into feeling sorry for herself wasn’t getting her anywhere. Better to feel terrified. That at least was motivation.

  The bell tinkled as she entered the bookstore. The woman behind the counter, of a similar age to Eleanor, said a bright ‘Good day’. There was something attractive about her, beyond the obvious sympathy that an author might have for a bookseller, especially one who displayed her photograph and book in the front window. Eleanor wondered if the woman might recognise her, but managed for once to dismiss her vanity.

  Eleanor responded and smiled, and then wandered the shelves. How was she going to raise the subject of a guide into Spain? she wondered. The smell of books, the warmth of the shop, so warm she removed her coat and put it over her arm – this was making her heart ache. Oh God, more photographs: Gide, Alain-Fournier, Breton, Aragon, even raptors like Hemingway. She would concede him a place. Just. Hah, no James Joyce, she noted. That made her feel better. All the bookseller needed to do was offer her a cup of tea. Eleanor found a book. Just the ticket. She went over and placed it on the counter, a Michelin guide to Spain, discreetly covering it with her coat.

  ‘An excellent choice,’ said the woman. ‘Have you made your travel arrangements yet?’

  ‘No,’ Eleanor replied. ‘A M’sieur Edouard recommended you most keenly.’

  The woman looked about, and though no one else was in the shop, she lowered her voice. ‘You are American, are you not?’ she said in perfect English. ‘Surely you can cross into Spain on the train to Canfranc without any difficulty.’

  Why now? Eleanor cursed herself. It infuriated her.

  ‘Believe me, madame,’ Eleanor replied in English, for any further pretence would have been insulting, ‘if we could cross legally, I wouldn’t be here making a nuisance of myself.’

  ‘We?’ the woman asked.

  ‘The other is my son,’ Eleanor said. She saw the woman’s face register the obvious. ‘She’s taking a child across the Pyrénées in winter?’

  ‘He’s twenty-one,’ Eleanor hastily explained, only to realise she’d made things worse. The woman clearly didn’t believe for one moment she had a twenty-one-year-old son, and while this was flattering, her flaming face told the truth, for any with the eyes to see.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Eleanor exclaimed, forgetting entirely her own imaginative skills, which were on display on a shelf only a few feet away, ‘he’s not my son but if I explained it, you wouldn’t believe me in a month of Sundays, and it’s best you don’t know. Just believe me, we can’t cross into Spain legally.’

  She wasn’t sure if this had broken the ice. The woman didn’t reply immediately.

  ‘Madame,’ said the bookseller gravely, ‘you have no idea how hard it is at this time of year. Even our guides find it difficult. You would probably die in the attempt.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Eleanor boldly. ‘Our winters are much colder than these, and I am as strong as an ox. I take it from your answer, though, that you might be able to oblige?’

  ‘You are in luck,’ said the woman. ‘We have room for only two more.’

  ‘How much?’ Eleanor asked urgently.

  ‘Three thousand francs,’ said the woman. ‘Each.’

  Eleanor blanched. ‘At least we’re dearer than butter,’ she muttered; it was the current gold standard on the black market.

  ‘Are people not worth more?’ the woman said, undeniably correct.

  At this price, Eleanor would use up just about all her remaining francs unless she was foolish enough to go to a bank. She quickly calculated. Three thousand was about 80 dollars at the current Vichy official rate, 50 at the black-market rate. What on earth was she complaining about?

  ‘I’ll give you fifty dollars US for each,’ she said. ‘One hundred for two.’

  ‘In dollars, one hundred and sixty,’ the woman said, quoting the official rate.

  Eleanor protested. Dollars were dollars, after all. The black-market rate should apply.

  The bookseller shrugged her shoulders. If it were up to her, she explained, it would be no problem, but the local police were cracking down hard on the black market. The new inspector from Vichy. If you were found with dollars, you went straight to Gurs as a black marketeer. Having dollars on you was proof of guilt.

  It took all of Eleanor’s self-control not to go to the display shelf at the window, take down a copy of La Femme Américaine and declare herself the author. Did not the seller of books have a moral duty to help authors, especially one whose book had sold well and, since it was on display, was still selling?

  ‘Is this yours?’ Eleanor heard the bookseller ask, and for a moment wondered if indeed she had worked out who she was. Then she saw in the woman’s left hand Finnegans Wake, which had fallen from the pocket of her coat onto the counter. Her right hand, shaking, was fingering each page as if it were made of gold leaf. This brought Eleanor back to reality with a jolt.

  ‘You could have your journey into Spain in return for this,’ the woman offered.

  There in front of her for the third time on this journey was Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, Old Nick himself, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, God’s favourite cherub. ‘Accept,’ he urged her. ‘Who would know? Isn’t your need greater at this moment?’

  Eleanor gently but firmly took the book from the woman’s hands. ‘It’s not mine to sell,’ she said. This, her final rejection of temptation, was, like Jesus’s, the hardest – but unlike Jesus’s, it came through gritted teeth. She quickly took 160 dollars from her belt and handed them over.

  The woman slipped them into her pocket. Eleanor was suddenly alarmed. What the hell had she done? No receipt, no evidence of her money o
r what it was supposed to buy.

  ‘Please,’ said the woman, putting her hand on Eleanor’s. ‘Trust me. I won’t cheat you. Believe me. I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

  With no proof other than the sympathy she’d first felt, Eleanor did believe her.

  She and her young friend, the woman explained, were to come to the shop tomorrow, Sunday, at 10.15 in the morning.

  ‘That’s it?’ Eleanor asked.

  ‘You don’t need to know any more,’ said the woman.

  Eleanor nodded her agreement. ‘Until tomorrow,’ she said, and departed in as cheery a mood as the events of the past eight or so days allowed, the gaping hole in her stash of dollars notwithstanding. She had their passages, and how fitting that they were procured through a bookshop.

  STUDIO COLOGNE, CORNER COURS BOSQUET AND RUE SAMONZET, PAU

  Around 2pm, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  An even greater balm was to discover a parfumerie on the corner opposite the post office. As people who knew Eleanor well would have said, this was akin to a whisky bar for an alcoholic.

  Worse, it was open.

  She daren’t go in the way she looked – she’d be like a visitation of the plague itself, she thought. She’d lost most of her cosmetics; her hair was a greasy rat’s nest. And her face? She didn’t have a face anymore, just a series of expressions, most of them sour. Madeleine would understand, if only she were here. But wouldn’t Madeleine, following Wilde’s dictum about dealing with temptation, barge right in? Why not, if you’re on your last legs carrying the plague? She pushed open the door.

  The aroma was intoxicating. The proprietress and her younger assistant, both elegant in black and with complexions a worthy advertisement for their trade, neither pushed her back out the door nor held crosses up against her. Instead, they smiled, wished her a good day and asked how they could be of service. How wonderful, Eleanor thought. She smiled with the pleasure of it.