Wolfsangel

by Perrat, Liza

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She seems worse.’

  I rushed to the bedside. Miette told me Dr. Laforge had returned to Lucie on an urgent call and Jacqueline had left to grab a few hours’ sleep at the flat.

  Ghislaine’s breaths were shallow and weak. A grey mask had dropped over her face –– the veil I’d seen on the faces of so many Montluc prisoners; a gauzy screen I knew no medical treatment could lift.

  ‘Get the nurse, please, Miette. Hurry!’

  Miette returned with the nurse after several minutes.

  ‘She looks worse,’ I said. ‘Can’t you do anything?’

  The nurse shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry, we’ve done all we can for her.’ She left the room with a sympathetic look.

  Miette and I stood on either side of the bed. We didn’t speak, each of us holding one of Ghislaine’s hands, our watchful eyes filling with sadness and despair.

  For a long time there was no sound in the room, except our friend’s spasms of breath, as she slowly lost her grip on life.

  ‘She’s cold,’ I said, tucking the blanket more closely around her.

  Ghislaine’s lips turned the hue of faded hydrangeas, and we dabbed the sweat from her damp face.

  Several hours later the scarlet band of dawn pierced the sky, as if smearing blood across the night darkness. Ghislaine raised her head slightly. She turned and gazed outside to the coming sun and gave us a small smile. Perhaps it was our countryside love of a heavenly dawn, in which we’d always sensed hope, that renewed my energy. I felt, with that new day, she would be all right.

  She fumbled for my hand, which I put in hers. ‘Please … take care … my father.’ Because they were so simple, her choked words seemed sadder.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ I said, the burning tears blinding me. ‘But you’re going to get better. You must fight this and come back to us.’

  Our friend slumped back on the pillows, her dark hair fanned like an Egyptian queen’s. She never spoke another word.

  Miette and I held onto Ghislaine until the end, so tightly that when finally she was gone, we couldn’t pull our hands away, and we remained standing on either side of her, clasping her cooling fingers.

  The sadness, the numbness, paralysed me. I couldn’t cry. I was somewhere beyond all pain and grief. I kept hold of my friend’s hand. Perhaps that way I imagined she wouldn’t truly be gone from us.

  37

  Our grief warped the silence as Dr. Laforge drove Miette and me back to Lucie for Ghislaine’s funeral. No words, no feelings seemed adequate for the void in which I felt suspended.

  ‘We all knew it was dangerous,’ Miette finally said, shaking her head. ‘We knew, we knew! But I never thought … never imagined …’

  She dabbed her swollen eyes, and I took her hand and we kept them clamped together for the rest of the journey.

  ‘I told Bernard Dutrottier his daughter died a heroine,’ the doctor said. ‘Fighting for our country.’

  ‘I bet that was comforting,’ I said, feeling the first spark of rage ignite from the pit of my sorrow.

  ‘I’m not sure the poor man quite understood what I was saying,’ Dr. Laforge said as he parked the Traction on la place de l’Eglise. ‘Right, I’ll see you at the church tomorrow, girls,’ he said. ‘Be strong.’ He grabbed his black bag, got out of the car and headed across the square to his rooms.

  ‘I’m going to call in on Ghislaine’s father,’ I said to Miette. ‘Before I go up to L’Auberge. Not that I can give him much comfort, but he might appreciate a friendly face. Or perhaps I shouldn’t go … maybe I’ll remind him too much of her?’

  ‘Yes, you should go,’ Miette said. ‘I could come with you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Both of us might seem like too much of a crowd … or something. You go to your family, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  The shop was unlocked, but that didn’t surprise me. Nobody bolted doors in Lucie. The shelves were empty –– such a pity to see no enticing displays of joints, cutlets, tongue, pigs’ feet or sausages, though I still caught the familiar edges of the bloody, butcher’s tang.

  I knocked on the flat door. No answer. Not a sound from inside. Where was the sister from Auvergne who was meant to be caring for him? Maybe she’d popped out on an errand.

  I entered the silent home. ‘Monsieur Dutrottier?’ Still no answer. ‘Anybody there?’ I called again, as I passed through the kitchen.

  The door of the living room, where I expected to find Ghislaine’s father in his rocker, was closed. I pushed it open.

  My first instinct was to pick up the armchair that was lying sideways on the worn parquet floor, but my next step stopped me. It made my head spin, and my heart start beating out of control. My horrified gaze travelled from the two dangling legs up to the swollen, purple face and the neck about which the cord was pulled, taut.

  ‘Oh God!’ I ran from the flat, stifling my screams, and the swell of bile rising in my throat. I dashed across the square and banged on Dr. Laforge’s door.

  ***

  My mother and I joined the solemn procession winding from Saint Antoine’s church and out along the road to the cemetery. The whole of Lucie had come to the funeral of Ghislaine and her father and, united in our grief, it seemed we moved as one single mourning body.

  Just as the winter winds came from nowhere, snapping off tree branches and whipping rooftops in their blind rage, so the gales had disappeared, carrying off the last of the snow on the Monts du Lyonnais. As we struggled up the hill like a defeated battalion, the sun broke through the grey, its wan light haloing the foothills.

  As chief pallbearer, Père Emmanuel led the way. Dr. Laforge and his brother Simon, Miette’s father, Uncle Claude, Yvon Monbeau, Robert Perrault and Monsieur Thimmonier also bore the weight of the coffins on their shoulders.

  Nobody spoke much. People clung to their loved ones and pressed handkerchiefs to their eyes, the priest’s words from the service still clear in our minds.

  ‘Courageous girl … sacrificed herself trying to save others …’

  ‘… our loved and respected butcher. A man the war broke …’

  I caught the whispers of several people who were nodding at Rachel Abraham.

  ‘… refuses to wear a star.’

  ‘… Germans … Madame Lemoulin.’

  I was glad to see the gentle old woman was still safely with us, whatever name she was forced to go by. I nodded a greeting as she gave me a small wave.

  ‘I still can’t believe we’ll never see Ghislaine again,’ Miette said, walking beside my mother and me.

  ‘It won’t be the same here, without her,’ I said. ‘I really thought we’d be all right … that we’d survive this thing.’

  ‘But Ghislaine didn’t,’ Madame Dubois said, with a glance at my mother. ‘And I’ll wager Marinette wishes, as much as I do, that you two would give it all up and come back to Lucie.’

  ‘Well someone has to try and get rid of the despicable swine,’ my mother said. ‘We can’t just let them stay here, trampling all over us for the rest of our sorry lives.’

  If I hadn’t been so filled with sadness, my mother’s uncharacteristic words might have made me smile.

  ‘We’re very careful, Madame Dubois,’ I said.

  ‘So, I imagine, was Ghislaine.’ Miette’s mother was still shaking her head.

  The line of mourners passed through the wrought iron gates that stood wide open as if the graveyard were expecting us. Our solemn faces matched the sober rows of tombs, some of them well tended by loving families at the fête des morts each All Saints Day. Weeds and wisps of dead grass littered other, more ancient graves, the neglected headstones leaning towards the ground as if they too, longed to lie down like the dead.

  Despite the crowd, it remained quiet. I looked around me, at all those silent notches in the earth, at the jam jars filled with flowers, and the framed photographs.

  Obviously bored, Olivier’s cousins Justin and Gervais broke from the group and
started scampering along the rows of graves and upsetting the jars, the flowers spilling out in their rowdy wake.

  Their sisters, Paulette and Anne-Sophie, began gathering the flowers and bunching them into little posies with the help of Miette’s two sisters.

  ‘Boys!’ Uncle Claude hissed. ‘Stop that, right now.’

  People were staring at the children and whispering amongst themselves.

  ‘Amandine, Séverine,’ Miette’s mother called. ‘Put those flowers back in the jars and come here.’

  The children eventually settled, several people coughed and sniffed, and it was quiet again.

  As the silent arc of mourners lined up around the thin brown lip of the Dutrottier family tomb, Père Emmanuel began speaking again. The men removed their berets and held them with both hands across their fronts. No one looked anyone else in the face. We all stared blankly into the hole in the earth, as if it might hold the answer as to how a lovely girl could die such a tragic death. As the clouds obscured the sun again, painting the graveyard a mournful grey, I gripped my bone angel between my thumb and forefinger, glad I’d taken it from the attic for the small comfort it gave me on that terrible day.

  ‘What are they doing here?’ my mother said, a corner of her mouth hitching up in scorn as she nodded at the group of uniformed men marching through the cemetery gates –– Germans, from the garrison. Grouped so close, it seemed they were joined by the perfect seams of their uniforms.

  ‘The nerve of those Fritz,’ Uncle Claude said with a scowl, and people started shaking their heads.

  I picked out Karl’s lean figure and the fat Fritz Frankenheimer. I stiffened when I saw Martin’s blond head.

  His eyes flicked towards me, and away just as quickly.

  I ignored my mother’s grim-lipped stare.

  ‘Merely come to give our condolences,’ one of the officers called. ‘To pay our respects.’ The Germans all held up a saluting hand.

  ‘How dare they?’ Yvon Monbeau said, as the villagers fixed dark, guarded stares on the occupiers. ‘Isn’t it enough they imprison our sons for years on end? Now they think they can barge in on private funerals.’

  ‘Hush, dear,’ Ginette said, laying a hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Whatever you say, it’ll do no good.’

  ‘I’m amazed nobody’s found out about her sleeping with that fat Boche yet,’ Miette said, as I caught Denise Grosjean sending Fritz Frankenheimer a sly wink.

  ‘Yes, incredible, isn’t it.’ I felt the blush darken my face, and cleared my throat. ‘Just incredible.’

  As the pallbearers looped straps beneath the two coffins to lower them, I glanced at Martin again. His gaze was directed straight ahead, but I could tell he was looking at me from the corner of his eye.

  He lifted a hand to his nose and rubbed the top of it. I caught a flash of white paper. He lowered his hand back into his pocket.

  I felt my mother’s hand on my elbow; a brief squeeze and she let her arm drop. Was it a sympathetic gesture for the loss of a lifelong friend, or had she too, glimpsed Martin’s message?

  Sweat slated my brow as I stared into the hole, teetering on my trembling legs, afraid I might slide into that vast, dark tomb with Ghislaine.

  A chill skittered down my arms as they replaced the great concrete slab over the opening. The dull thud echoed across the graveyard as we laid Ghislaine and her father to eternal rest alongside Marc, brother and son, and their mother and wife. An entire family gone forever.

  I shifted uneasily, not daring to glance in Martin’s direction.

  After that there was nothing else to do, so we all turned from the grave and started walking away. The first rain of spring began to fall from the bleak sky; it came heavy and urgent and I pictured it carving its way through the layers of soil down to the mysterious dark heart of the earth.

  38

  10 am. Hôtel des Traboules.

  I read Martin’s message over and over. It was more than a month since I’d picked up his note in Au Cochon Tué after Ghislaine’s funeral, and I had to be certain that, in my anticipation, I hadn’t mistaken the time or place.

  If I was to waltz into a city hotel as a woman the staff wouldn’t suspect, or question, I needed to look the society woman. So, to meet Martin, I’d raided Jacqueline’s mission supplies and taken the same clothes I’d worn to blow up Librairie Voltaire.

  Miette and I had been back in Lyon for over three weeks but the tragedy of Ghislaine’s death, and our misery, still hung over us like a storm-stained cloud. Interspersed with Resistance missions, I continued my Red Cross work at Perrache station, flitting from one to the other so as not to leave myself a moment to dwell on her absence.

  We continued holding our meetings in Jacqueline’s flat, speaking in muted tones –– rendezvous, times, places, codenames –– the fear of arrest, torture and death a constant, volatile ticking in our minds. Jacqueline kept playing the piano, effectively masking the noise of our clandestine printer.

  From across the street I watched Martin enter the hotel, and wrapped the chic coat more tightly around me. Though it was quite warm, April was an unpredictable month when sunny days raised hopes until grey clouded the skies again.

  I swept into the hotel five minutes later. With a self-assured smile at the receptionist, I slid into the lift and got off on the second floor. I hurried along the hallway to room twenty-four and tapped on the door.

  ‘Yes?’ Martin’s voice called.

  His lean figure reclined on the bed, one elbow propping himself up, the other stretched in a welcoming gesture. I dumped my coat and bag on the chair.

  ‘Oh là là, as you French say. Fancy clothes.’

  ‘I wanted to look nice for you, for a change,’ I said, falling into his arms.

  We kissed, our tongues searching, our fingers frenzied, grappling with each other’s clothes. Embraced in Martin’s sturdy protection, my grief and despair boiled away for a few heavenly moments.

  It was only afterwards as we lay quiet and sated, our limbs interlaced, that those familiar, frantic twitches of guilt seized me like a bat flapping about in a hot attic. How could I stay in a hotel room doing this when my father and my sister were imprisoned in some far-off work camp? If they could see me lying naked with a German officer –– Miette, Jacqueline, Dr. Laforge, Patrick and Olivier; Olivier who’d been there my whole life, someone I knew better than I knew myself.

  After all, who was Martin Diehl, really? All I knew of him, besides that he was a poet and not a soldier, were our snatched moments of pleasure –– the heat of two bodies thrown together to shunt the cold, which had invaded us both in one way or another.

  I checked my watch. ‘I’ll have to go soon.’

  ‘More Red Cross work?’ A fingertip trailed up my arm and caressed the crook of my elbow.

  ‘I’m working at the Perrache Welcome Centre now,’ I said. ‘If it wasn’t for us, the hungry passengers wouldn’t get a thing to eat or drink. And I want to do something useful for our effort. I know you don’t care much about the war anymore, but surely you can understand that?’

  ‘Oh I do understand,’ he said. ‘But where did you say you were living? Do not look so worried, I would not think of going there. I’d just like to know where you are, so I can picture you when we are apart.’

  ‘I told you, Martin. I’m staying at a friend’s flat. You don’t know her.’

  ‘At least it’s a “her”. I wonder, sometimes, if there is not somebody else.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, nobody could replace Martin Diehl.’ I smiled, unlacing my limbs from his. ‘But your jealousy does flatter me.’

  ‘Something is wrong; something has changed. You are not the usual Céleste.’

  ‘Would you be your usual self if your father and sister were being held in some camp where you claim people are being exterminated? And I still miss Ghislaine terribly. I’d known her since ––’

  ‘I am most sorry for your family,’ he cut in. ‘And your friend.’

  �
��And her poor father,’ I went on. ‘He’d lost his entire family. No wonder he couldn’t bear to live any longer. Your lot took every last thing from him!’ I felt, suddenly, ridiculously self-conscious of my nakedness. I lurched from the bed and scrabbled about for my clothes.

  ‘“Your lot?”’ His eyes widened, the hurt look crumpling his features.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just … angry. So mad at this unfair world. I know you aren’t my enemy; you aren’t one of those heartless barbarians.’

  ‘We should not have secrets from each other,’ Martin said. ‘That is no way to start a life together. A marriage.’

  I felt a panicky fluttering inside my chest, unsure if it was excitement at the prospect or terror it might actually happen. ‘Aren’t we a bit young to think of marriage, Martin? Isn’t there so much else to do before?’

  ‘I thought that is what you wanted?’ he said, as I drew away from him and started dressing. ‘Besides, what else is there?’

  ‘Lots of things … study, get a good job, travel the world. I’ve always wanted to go to Hollywood, haven’t you? And see all those Sunset Boulevard stars. Now I really must go, they’re expecting me at the station.’ I shrugged into my coat.

  He stood, still naked. I didn’t trust myself to leave that model of human perfection, so I averted my eyes.

  ‘I am staying in Lyon for a few days, Céleste.’

  My eyes snapped back to him. ‘Staying in Lyon?’

  ‘I have some more leave. I hoped we might see more of each other if I stayed in the city. Perhaps you could come back this evening, after your work? I would get something nice for our supper. We could have our first whole night together.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, shifting towards the door. ‘But I never know how long I’ll be caught up with the trains. I’ll see how the afternoon goes.’

  I gave him a peck on the cheek and hurried out. I hesitated in the hotel lobby, checking left, right and behind, and stepped back outside into my real world.