The Woman From Saint Germain

by J. R. Lonie

  The young assistant proceeded to suggest this and that. Eleanor was happy to smell each and every one she was offered from her favourite brands – Coty, Guerlain, Lelong. Top notes of citron, and could that be ginger? Rose in the middle note down to musk at the bottom. This was time out of time.

  Eleanor decided she’d buy her favourite Schiaparelli to replace the full one she’d lost when she had to leave behind her valise. All she had left was the tiny bottle she was carrying in her travelling kit and it was almost empty. But the price was what she would pay on the black market back in Paris. Had paid – indeed, how else could she have procured it? Waltzed into Printemps with ration cards or on the arm of a handsome Fritz? She noticed the prices also marked, if discreetly, in Reichsmarks. But like Cortez in search of Montezuma’s gold, why was she here? A philosophy discussion? She had none of the invader’s foul lucre and she’d used up most of her remaining supply of francs. Why shouldn’t she pay in dollars, as she had in the bookshop? This was an open black market in the guise of a maison de parfum.

  Eleanor made the suggestion but the proprietress countered, not unreasonably, that she might like to change her dollars into francs at a bank. Eleanor couldn’t do that. Too risky.

  Not that she could explain her dilemma.

  The parfumier explained hers. She would love to oblige, but if the police found her with dollars, they’d close her shop and lock her up in Gurs. ‘Even respectable people,’ she added, which certainly included herself.

  After such wild expectations, Eleanor realised she’d have to adjust her ambitions in a southerly direction. She saw a Lancôme and its companion crème that she liked. Were they beyond her as well?

  The proprietress named the price. Eleanor considered her situation. If she went ahead, she’d have about 500 francs left, when a miserable meal of ragoût of rat without ration tickets cost at least 50, and a cup of real coffee, if it were to be had, was almost the same.

  To hell with it, she thought and handed over the francs. What use were they in Spain or Portugal, and if she was going to die, she’d do it as elegantly as possible.

  Outside, the wind had turned even colder, for it was now whistling down from the north. She pulled her woollen hat tighter over her head and gathered up her scarf. Patches of blue began appearing across the sky, a good omen for tomorrow. If this continued, she and Henk would be on their way at last. She could return now to the hotel, for what more had she to do?

  Now that she smelt like a bunch of beautiful spring flowers, her mood was lighter, her thoughts gayer. She almost missed the salon de beauté, which was only metres from the parfumerie she’d just exited. Her hair would give Medusa a run for her money. She wondered if the prices would mock or beckon her. Clean, shiny hair, or her much diminished supply of francs? Caution to the wind, she went inside and almost kissed the coiffeuse when told the price. She’d be franc-broke, but damn it all, she wouldn’t look broke.

  COMMISSARIAT DE POLICE, PAU

  After 2.30pm, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  The duel and its consequences, still far from over, had frustratingly consumed Bauer’s energies and time for the rest of the morning. He learnt the details, some of which he had expected: Pichler had impugned Wolf’s honour. Wolf, who’d drunk too much, responded with a challenge, and on it went to an outcome that, at least to Pichler, had been unexpected. He had chosen fists as his weapon, knowing well that Wolf lacked a working hand, and had come off second best. That would have been a great surprise to Pichler had he been conscious, but in being felled, he’d hit his head on the stone paving and was now in a coma. It was best St Jean didn’t find out that this had happened on la terre sacrée et souverain de la France, in the middle of the Place Royale, right in front of the Hôtel de Ville. The Gestapo might be on the warpath but Bauer had more important matters to follow. At least he’d rescued Wolf, who was now safe and recovering.

  ‘You’ve got something?’ Bauer asked after hurrying back in response to Kopitcke’s urgent call. He was dog-tired so slipped another Pervitin into his mouth. That would keep him going.

  Kopitcke most certainly did have something. Following the Herr Kommissar’s dictum to discard most from the list of Wehrmact deserters they had received as fools, cowards or in girl trouble, he had eight possibles to show the boss. As he précised what he’d found, he handed each relevant file to his boss. Bauer saw they didn’t contain much detail, but enough.

  Two were soldiers with civilian backgrounds in petty crime, always in trouble for misdemeanours, the square pegs in a round hole that could be found in every regiment. Each had disappeared while on leave. Two others had absconded from labour battalions and four were Mischlings who’d been kicked out under the Führer’s special order the year before. Having been recalled in late August this year in the face of the Soviet campaign, these four had done a bunk. One of them, from Vienna, had been able to stay in the army much longer than the others because of operational circumstances and, it was suspected, because he’d been protected by his unit, which was mostly Austrian. Then he’d been caught escaping into Switzerland and was sent to Mauthausen as a deserter, although, strictly, he’d already been kicked out of the army. He too had been recalled like the others to the Eastern Front, but to a probationary platoon.

  ‘He was awarded an Iron Cross!’ Kopitcke exclaimed with some heat. His sympathy for someone who had fought well and wanted to fight outweighed the unfortunate 50 percent of the fellow that was Jewish. ‘I can imagine he’d be angry,’ he added, as cover for his own anger.

  Bauer perused the file. Father a member of the National Socialist Party, joined after the Anschluss, though he was a member of something called the Fatherland Front before that. ‘Sounds patriotic at least,’ he murmured. Mother, the Jew, was dead. The file did not explain when or where or how. The fellow had done time in an Austrian labour camp. No details apart from the dates. Bauer didn’t need the details. Kids were given to being hotheads. In any case, going into the army really had been the making of this fellow, whatever he had done before. Look how well he’d fitted in and how well he’d fought.

  ‘What of the other three?’ Bauer asked.

  One was an officer, a lieutenant with an impeccable record, Catholic until the Nuremberg laws, who’d never had any contact with Jewish culture and who had appealed all the way to the top. Mother a Catholic, the father was the problem. He’d even gotten his mother to testify that his birth was the result of her unfaithfulness with an Aryan man, but the blood test didn’t back that up. The other two were ordinary Landsers, Christians for at least one generation, Nuremberg Jews. One had been a clerk, with no front-line experience; the other, as with the one sent to Mauthausen, was an experienced front-line soldier.

  ‘They’d all be damn angry, don’t you think?’ Bauer said. He easily read poor Kopitcke’s confusion: how stupid we are kicking out perfectly good soldiers versus how clever we are kicking out these pretend Aryans.

  He immediately discounted the two petty criminals, both city boys. Rats back into a rat’s nest. The imagination of a street gangster was so dim, it sent them back to Hamburg or Berlin instead of trying to make a complete break. Of the other six, the two from labour battalions also had neither the creativity to organise flight nor the need, he figured. Sooner or later they’d be found hiding out in some rural backwater. Which left the four Mischlings. He discarded the clerk and kept the other three, each of whom would at least be able to kill if necessary.

  ‘What do you think about the one from Mauthausen?’ he mused. ‘The Aryan half earnt the Iron Cross while the Jewish half killed our soldiers?’

  His joke failed because Kopitcke agreed. ‘Herr Kommissar, that’s it!’ he cried and Bauer was yet again disconcerted by the way his assistant’s intelligence had been so assaulted by his years in the Hitler Youth. His two boys couldn’t avoid joining it, but Bauer had made sure they read widely and kept their Catholic faith as antidote. The thought of his sons spurred him. Activity would take his mind off
their predicament, and there was still this notion in him that if he caught the killer, his Georg would be found safe and sound. Yes, it was a bargain with God, but had not saint after saint made such a bargain?

  ‘We go with the three “maybes”,’ he said abruptly. ‘Until otherwise proven.’

  He sent Kopitcke to request that photostat copies of the official Wehrmacht photographs of the three be made and distributed. ‘Request, Kopitcke,’ he reminded his assistant, ‘don’t order.’

  Then came Bauer’s breakthrough.

  GARE DE PAU

  Around 3pm, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  Bauer and Kopitcke hurried through the vestibule of the train station passenger hall. A gendarme was waiting and took them into the office.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Bauer affably to two youths sitting on a bench. He shook the hand of each in turn, which impressed them. Usually, an adult hand on them was for reproof. One was a spindly reed who had shot up and out along his limbs, with manhood sprouting on his upper lip. The other was still a boy.

  ‘I hear you’ve got an interesting story to tell me,’ said Bauer.

  It was the boy who was the bolder, as if the other were muted by the awkward changes in his body. While the boy’s patois, which was littered with Occitan, taxed Bauer’s French, he thought it better to leave the youths with the impression he was M’sieur Le Commissar, as introduced, than to ask the gendarme to translate.

  They were farm boys, cousins; their families’ farms were across the Gave de Pau, beyond the spread of the town. In the hayloft of the barn in a far corner of the spindly lad’s farm, not much used, they had chased a kitten, but then a young man had jumped down after them.

  ‘He didn’t have no shoes or socks,’ said the boy.

  ‘Did he catch you?’ Bauer asked.

  Yes, he did. One had been whacked on the head, the other pushed over, with a bruise on his knee to prove it.

  ‘He was a Boche,’ said the boy. ‘He spoke Boche.’

  ‘How did you know it was German?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘From the newsreels,’ exclaimed the mute boy, suddenly unmuted.

  They had run to the railway station, to the gendarmes – it wasn’t far – and two gendarmes had gone with them to investigate, but the German was gone, a great disappointment to the boys.

  The gendarme, now taking up the tale, said this had been reported to the police as a matter of course.

  Bauer bade Kopitcke produce photographs of the three Wehrmacht Mischlings.

  ‘Him!’ cried the boy. The reed nodded his head vehemently. Hadn’t he said he’d been un vrai Boche? A soldier!

  Heinrich Pohl, lance corporal, the Iron Cross Landser from the Wehrmacht’s Second Mountain Division, via Mauthausen.

  Bauer radioed Inspector St Jean to expedite the distribution of Pohl’s photograph, not only to his men but to the border post at Col de Somport. He himself would have the Spanish authorities in Canfranc and Jaca alerted.

  ‘Add a reward,’ he said. ‘One thousand francs.’

  St Jean almost choked. The amount was a considerable enticement, enough to buy five pairs of leather shoes on the black market, but his office couldn’t possibly afford that. Assured by Bauer that this would be paid by the German authorities, St Jean hurried the printing of the photograph and reward on a wanted poster. The sooner he was rid of these damn Germans, the better.

  BOULEVARD DES PYRÉNÉES, PAU

  Around 3.30pm, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  Standing in woods on a rise, Henk had observed the gendarmes cross the open field with the two little pests who’d disturbed his hiding place. Pau and the small towns and farms around were alive with refugees, like fleas on a dog. Yesterday afternoon, he’d been chased off by a group who’d taken over a disused shed where he had hoped to hide until evening. He thought himself in luck to have found the barn and had returned that morning. He’d been able to shelter from the rain and sleet, been able to dry his clothes, his boots and socks, air the wounds on his feet and stay warm. The building had no livestock, and the rain presumably acted as a further deterrent to any visitors. Yesterday, when he’d left, the sun was well gone. Only the farm dogs had detected him as he returned to the town along the lanes, which had been deserted. He’d made a mistake today expecting he would be safe. The appearance of those boys in the afternoon had reminded him it was a Saturday. No school. For want of anything better to do, he had started to read her book and had not noticed time pass, let alone the entrance of these two intruders.

  They’d seen his kitten chasing mice across the floor and had tried to catch it, completely surprising him. Had this been war and they the enemy, he’d have been done for, caught reading a stupid book. Luckily for him, they were kids. Luckily for them, he hadn’t killed both. But he’d snarled at them in German. Stupid, stupid. As soon as they’d run off, he slipped away over a stone fence behind which he crouched for cover. Then he ran into the evergreen wood, where he waited to see if they returned.

  Which they had done, with two gendarmes. Better to know the authorities were on to him than not. Hopefully, they’d reckon on him heading south for the border. While the gendarmes inspected the barn, he doubled back, following a creek running through the evergreen wood towards the Gave de Pau; he eschewed the lanes he’d taken yesterday. The ground was slushy and frozen in parts. Few people were out braving the arctic wind at the spot where he emerged onto a path into the village and where he felt most exposed. Head down, beret pulled over his forehead, he trudged along the main street and across a stone bridge to the steep medieval streets below the chateau, expecting all the time to be picked up. His belief in himself was slipping.

  His trail took him past the square where yesterday, in his crazy reverie, he’d almost handed himself in. The memory of what he’d nearly done made him tense. He clenched his jaw, hunched his shoulders and willed himself on, although his legs suddenly each weighed a ton and his feet were sore. Nazi flags above the building flapped wildly in the strong wind, whipping the air. In the blink of an eye, he was back in Mauthausen, same flags, same sound, except it was the sound of the whip on his face and on his back. His knees buckled and he stumbled.

  ‘Young man, young man,’ cried an old woman who was passing in the opposite direction towards the funicular. She grabbed his arm. Although old, she was peasant-strong, and he was able to right himself.

  ‘Merci, madame,’ he gasped, shaken. ‘Merci.’

  Thank God he remembered to speak French, but that was the extent of it. He could barely say anything else, and she was asking him if he was sick. He hoped ‘non’ was the right answer. The old lady smiled.

  Pointing up to the German flags, she muttered a harsh curse, and he nodded and managed a grin. Then his kitten started to complain, and he couldn’t avoid showing the woman, who was even more charmed. She tore off a hunk of the bread she had in her basket and handed it to him, saying a few words which were as clear to him in their kindness as if she had spoken in perfect German. He knew what to say but was so touched, his lips moved but nothing came out. His eyes went moist. She saw and patted his arm and she spoke again.

  What she said was that he should always remember that God loved him.

  Again, words didn’t really matter. Her meaning was clear. Even had he understood, he’d hardly been a good Catholic, the faith in which he’d been raised to cover his mother’s Jewishness. After the fascist putsch in Austria in January 1934, when he was still at school, he’d discarded any semblance of religion to embrace the thrills of Marx. Discovering he was a Jew after the Nazis invaded in ’38 had done nothing to propel him back to religion. Marx had been a Jew, after all. Clearly you didn’t need to be religious to be a Jew.

  All this notwithstanding, the woman’s kindness was too much for him. His chest heaved as an involuntary sob tried to escape. He fought to suppress it, and he cursed as he ripped out his handkerchief to clean his face. What a mess he was, falling to pieces right on the lip of freedom. Look what had h
appened yesterday, right here, an act of insanity. Now this. He shouldn’t have started reading her damned book. How weak he was to let a story rip away his defences, exposing needs he thought he had under control. What had come first, that book or just being at the end of his tether, he didn’t know. What did it matter? Things were what they were. He had to focus. Yesterday had been a disappointment, but today, surely after all this, things would work out. His kitten purred under his chin. He tickled its neck.

  ‘Fingers crossed, cat,’ he murmured in German and gave the kitten a piece of the bread and tucked it back into his coat.

  STUDIO COLOGNE, CORNER COURS BOSQUET AND RUE SAMONZET, PAU

  Towards 4pm, Saturday, 13th December 1941

  ‘We’re one step behind,’ Bauer said as they walked back from the barn to the car, where Mascaro stood, smoking. ‘We’re always reacting, never getting ahead of the fellow. He’s a soldier, a good one. Do you think he’s headed for the Spanish border?’

  ‘No,’ Kopitcke replied. ‘Eventually, yes, but why didn’t he go yesterday? I would have.’

  Bauer agreed.

  ‘Why? What’s holding him up? What’s stopping him? The weather? No money to get a guide? He wouldn’t be the only one stranded here. All those Jews sitting outside the Spanish and Portuguese consulates, they haven’t killed two German soldiers.’

  ‘He’s not alone, sir,’ Kopitcke reminded him. ‘The woman. She can’t be his mother, the mother’s dead. It said so in the file. She was the Jew.’

  ‘Which makes this woman?’ Bauer asked. Poor Kopitcke reddened. ‘Until otherwise proven?’ Bauer added. Kopitcke couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.

  ‘Come now,’ Bauer pressed. ‘Haven’t you seen an older woman you fancied?’

  He had, but Kopitcke, raised a Protestant and now a Nazi, couldn’t possibly admit such a thing. ‘No, sir,’ he lied with vehemence.