She put up no resistance. Her father wasn’t in the house and her mother had screamed and run and locked herself in the bakehouse when she saw the mob, thinking they were after her.
But once she realized it was Janine they wanted, she reappeared and flung herself into her daughter’s defence, both verbally and physically, till two of the men had to restrain her.
‘Let’s do the old cow too,’ suggested one of the intruders. ‘She’s been arselicking the Boche for years and playing favourites with her miserable lumpy bread.’
‘My Crozier’s bread’s never lumpy!’ screamed Louise. ‘What would you know about lumpy bread, anyway, you with no teeth!’
The woman thus addressed flew at Madame Crozier and had to be restrained in her turn. Several of the other women urged that Louise should be brought to ‘justice’ with Janine but their leader said, ‘No, leave the old bird. She’s not for us.’
‘Why not?’
‘Never you mind. But her, she’s ours whatever anyone says.’
And they dragged Janine out into the street. By the time they reached their destination, a café a couple of streets away, their number had doubled. The café was already packed. In better times, they would have a singer or a musician here and there was a small stage at the back.
Tonight it was the focus of attention as if Chevalier himself had been appearing. Huddled together on it were half a dozen women. Their heads had been shaved and their bare feet trod on their own tresses. Their clothes had been ripped from shoulder to waist and on their naked breasts swastikas had been daubed in red and black paint. At least two of them clutched small babies in their arms, presumably the result of their so-called horizontal collaboration. At the front of the stage a fat man in a blue apron stood over a woman seated on a wooden stool. He was cutting her hair with a large pair of scissors, flourishing each tress triumphantly before throwing it over his shoulder, and occasionally taking a long draught from a wine bottle. The audience clapped and cheered, but fell silent when he put the scissors aside and took a cut-throat razor to perform the final shaving.
‘Hold still, liebchen,’ he said. ‘I’ve not cut anyone yet, but if I do, I might go all the way and take off your ears!’
He shaved her swiftly and efficiently and twisted her bald head to display the evidence of his expertise to the wildly applauding audience before stepping aside to let a trio of women get to work with their paint pots.
Janine closed her eyes wearily. This too she could bear.
Now she was up on the stage. She heard her name called to the audience: ‘… Janine Simonian who fornicated with a Boche officer while her husband was being murdered -’ the crowd howled their hate - ‘… and who stayed in Paris to indulge her lusts while her children were sent out into the country to be picked up and deported by the Boche…’
‘No!’ she screamed.
The change from corpse-like indifference to a vital, struggling indignation was so electrifying that for a second it reduced the mob to silence. Then they began to urge the barber on, but his was no easy task. She had to be held down while he used the scissors. Twice she overturned the chair, twice was forced back upright with increasing violence. And when the blue-aproned man came to take the razor, he looked with great unease at the wildly jerking head.
‘For Christ’s sake, be still!’ he hissed. ‘It’s only hair, woman!’
She spat in his face.
‘Cut! Cut! Cut!’ screamed the audience.
‘Right, you bitch,’ he said, pulling at his wine bottle.
He put the razor to her skull. She flung her head from side to side. Next moment there was blood streaming from a long cut on her brow. Now the barber seemed bent on proving that far from being an accident, this drawing of blood had been deliberate. Ferociously he hacked at the stubble and when the razor pierced the skin he did not draw back but removed skin and hair simultaneously. Soon her head was crowned with a bright red helmet of blood.
Then it was the women’s turn. Janine kicked one of them in the stomach, bit another’s hand to the bone. They retaliated with equal ferocity, tearing her clothes not just to the waist but to the knees and wielding their brushes as if they were chisels. Still Janine resisted and one of her assailants grabbed the barber’s scissors and screamed, ‘Let’s make yours permanent!’ Before she could be stopped, she had thrust the point and scored a huge, jagged-edged swastika beneath Janine’s breasts across her belly. The barber, already a little ashamed of the havoc he’d created with her head, jumped forward, swearing, to grab at the scissors. But the damage was done.
‘For fuck’s sake, get her out of here!’ he said, looking down at Janine’s bloody figure which had suddenly gone quite slack again. ‘The sight of her will spoil all the fun.’
They dragged her back through the streets and put her in the boulangerie doorway and left her there after banging at the door.
No one came. Louise Crozier was too terrified, not knowing what madmen might be roaming the streets to avenge imagined wrongs, and Claude Crozier was not yet home. She might have stayed there all night, if Michel Boucher hadn’t turned up an hour later.
He too was not in the best of conditions. There was blood on his face and his clothing was torn and dusty. But his bruised and swollen knuckles showed that he’d inflicted as well as taken damage.
‘Janine, what are you doing out here? Oh Jesus Christ!’ He had become aware of her injuries. ‘You too! The bastards got you too. Let’s get you inside. Come on, open up! Auntie Louise! Uncle Claude! It’s Miche!’
He thumped so hard on the door that the glass which had survived all the threats of the Occupation cracked right across. A light appeared somewhere within the house.
‘Hurry it up! Oh, Janine, Janine, you poor kid. They’ve gone mad. What have we done, eh? Me, I’ve tried to earn an honest living, nothing more. For that they tried to hang me! Would you believe it? They were throwing a rope over a lamp-post! There’s a couple of them will feel like hanging themselves when they wake up, I tell you. And that Pajou! He’ll wish someone had hanged him when I get hold of him. I should’ve been long gone, but when I went for my car, it wasn’t there. Pajou! The car, and everything else he could lay his hands on! The little shit, I’ll tear his head off. Come on, Auntie Lou! Can’t you see it’s me! Open this sodding door!’
And at last, Louise Crozier, trembling and terrified, unlocked the door and let them in.
Günter Mai found Paris, always a city of contrasts, now displaying to him the greatest contrast of all. Struggling through the joyous celebrating crowds where the most martial sound was the popping of champagne corks, he finally found space and peace. But before he could relax and enjoy it, he suddenly found himself back on the edge of the war.
He’d come in through the Porte d’Orléans. Taking his bearings now for the first time, he realized that the Observatory was behind him and ahead were the Luxembourg Gardens, source of the noise of combat.
That made sense, if anything in this madness could be called sense. He didn’t know who was in charge of defending Paris now; Fiebelkorn had told him that the old military commander and his close aides had gone back to Berlin to be dealt with for their part in the July plot; but whoever it was would probably concentrate his forces in strongpoints like the Luxembourg.
He certainly didn’t want to be there. He struck off left. He was tempted to make straight for the boulangerie but once seen there and recognized, he would almost certainly find his scope for action limited, possibly permanently. So first it was essential to get to the Lutétia and check what had happened there.
He didn’t need to get within more than a hundred yards to see he was too late. That his colleagues would have gone was obvious. Probably the non-fighting element in the Occupation Force had been withdrawn a good week before. But the hotel wasn’t deserted. There seemed to be a constant stream of men going in and out. Some of them had rifles. The Resistance had got there before him.
So; the boulangerie. For what purpose?
To see Janine once more before he met whatever fate was awaiting him? What he was hoping for from the encounter he couldn’t say. Something to dilute the bitterness of their last meeting, that was the most his mind could imagine, and that took an effort.
At the bakery, the noise of the fighting round the Luxembourg was very loud. He stood for a moment and looked at the shop. Soon perhaps it would be back to normal;
soon the old promise of ‘Pains Français et Viennois, Pains de Seigle, Chaussons aux Pommes et Gâteaux Secs’ would be fulfilled. Unless the Croziers were made to suffer for the welcome they had accorded him. That was very possible. This was a family he seemed destined to bring trouble to.
The glass on the door was cracked. Perhaps the trouble had started already. He pushed the door open and went in, passing through the bare and empty shop with the familiarity of use. Last time he had been here, it was to see Janine alone. Last time he was here, she had taken his hand and led him up these stairs…
He paused and looked up them. At the top of the stairs stood Madame Crozier.
‘You!’ she said. ‘You dare come here? You!’
‘Madame,’ he said. ‘Where’s Janine?’
‘You’ve come to see what they’ve done to her? Perhaps you should! It’s your fault!’
He ran up the stairs, all pain and weakness forgotten. Pushed open the door, looked at the bed where he and Janine had lain.
Now she lay there alone.
‘Oh God,’ said Mai. ‘What have they done to you?’
He advanced towards the bed but a voice behind him said, ‘She’s sleeping. Leave her.’
He turned. It was Claude Crozier speaking, his voice firmer, more commanding than Mai recalled. And in his hands with the hammer cocked was a large revolver.
‘Downstairs, please, lieutenant.’
He urged Mai ahead of him. Behind, Louise Crozier went back into the bedroom and shut the door.
‘What have they done to her?’ demanded Mai.
‘Punished her for associating with you, what do you think?’ said Crozier. ‘She resisted. They went further than they intended.’
‘You sound as if you almost sympathized with them!’
‘They’re Frenchmen. It’s a sense of their weakness not of their virtue that makes them act this way,’ said Crozier wearily. ‘You look as if you’ve had your own troubles, lieutenant. Sorry, it’s captain now, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not sure, not after my troubles,’ said Mai. ‘Tell me, Claude, how have you and your wife managed to escape? Why did these brave supporters of French justice pick only on Janine?’
‘Because of you. Because they couldn’t stomach her sleeping with you while Jean-Paul was being shot. If I’d been here, perhaps I could have intervened, kept them off her. Perhaps.’
‘Like you kept them off your wife? God, she’s fifty times more a collaborator than ever Janine was!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Crozier. ‘You’re right. But croissants aren’t embraces. And she is my wife.’
He glanced at his watch.
‘I have some friends arriving shortly. We’ll be going out on a matter of business. It’s probably best that they don’t see you. Come this way.’
He motioned Mai towards the bakehouse.
As they went through the door, Crozier said, ‘I don’t know why I should bother about you. Except that I came to think of you as honest.’
‘Because I praised your baking?’
‘That too perhaps,’ said Crozier. He gestured towards the left-hand oven, the bigger one, the one which shortage of flour and fuel had kept unused for more than three years.
‘Get in there,’ he said.
‘In the oven? What the hell for?’ demanded Mai.
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to bake you. And you should be reasonably comfortable, at least by Resistance standards. I’ve had plenty of time to pad it out, haven’t I?’
‘Pad it out…?’ Mai’s professional mind was suddenly back at work. He knew what Crozier must be telling him but he couldn’t believe it. How many times had he been in this bakehouse? Leaned against this very oven door? Chatted to Crozier and his wife and thought of himself as the great manipulator! ‘Oh shit,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ said Crozier allowing himself a brief smile of triumph. ‘I’ve had a lot of interesting people in there. Allied airmen, Resistants, escaped prisoners - and not a single search in all these years, for which I’ve got you to thank, I believe, Captain Mai.’
‘Madame Crozier too?’ said Mai disbelievingly. ‘Was she…?’
Crozier shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid not. She provided such good cover, I could hardly take her into my confidence. But I made my friends promise she wouldn’t be touched afterwards. But Janine…’
He fell silent, then sighed and said, ‘All right. In you get. I’ll be going out when my friends arrive. We have business to attend to.’
‘Killing Germans, you mean?’
‘If necessary,’ said Crozier mildly. ‘But not you. Not for an hour, anyway. My wife will release you an hour after I’ve gone. What you do then, where you go, is your business. Both of you.’
‘Both?’ said Mai, puzzled.
‘Oh yes. You’ve got company.’
He swivelled the iron bar which held the oven door shut and swung it open.
‘Hello, Günter,’ said Michel Boucher. ‘That little shit, Pajou. You were right not to trust him. He stole my bloody car!’
4
There was fighting yet to do; there was blood still to shed. While to the south of the river they were dancing in the streets and celebrating the victory, on the Rue de Rivoli and in the Tuileries Garden they were still fighting for it.
There were Parisians here too, many of them simply spectators, eager to see the final act of this epic drama. But there were others who weren’t content to watch, but who, unasked and sometimes unwanted, rushed forward to join the Allied soldiers in the last battle.
An American infantry section, pinned down by fire from a pill-box close to the Orangerie, settled to wait for the arrival of a tank to remove the obstacle.
A young man with an automatic pistol joined them. They’d observed him earlier blazing away at the Germans with apparent unconcern for his own safety.
Now he put down his empty pistol and reached out to the grenades which the section leader had dangling from his belt.
‘You permit?’ he said.
‘It’s your party, friend,’ said the American.
Taking two grenades, the Frenchman stood up and walked towards the pill-box. Perhaps his casual mien baffled the German gunners, or perhaps they thought he came bearing a message of truce.
When he got close enough to throw the grenades, they opened fire. But it was too late, for them and the Frenchman alike. The pill-box rocked, cracked, fell silent. And the Frenchman slid to the ground.
When the Americans reached him, they thought at first he was dead. So did he.
It was with a profound sense of disappointment that Christian Valois opened his eyes to see the anxious faces peering down at him.
‘He looks bad, sarge.’
‘Yeah. Call up the medics,’ said the sergeant. ‘This one ought to be kept alive for the shrinks to play with!’
General Choltitz, the German commander, surrendered in the Meurice early in the afternoon. General de Gaulle entered the city at four-thirty. On his way in, he may have passed Michel Boucher and Günter Mai on their way out. When Louise Crozier released them from the oven, Mai had asked to see Janine again. Her mother refused and threatened to call for help. Boucher seized Mai’s arm and said, ‘Come on, Günter. If they get hold of you today, they’ll lynch you! Look what the bastards tried to do to me!’
‘Where are we going?’ demanded the German as he was dragged, weak and bewildered into the street.
‘We’ll get a few things together, pick up some transport. You leave it to me. Then we’ll head off to my house at Moret. Hélène will be worried about me. We�
�ll hole up there till things quieten down. Just do what I tell you, OK?’
So they left, the Abwehr officer and the collaborator, while Janine lay, her eyes open, staring sightlessly at the cracked, uneven ceiling.
They came for her again in the first month of the Liberation, not a mob of them this time but two gendarmes in neat clean uniforms. They brought an official warrant.
‘What the hell is this?’ demanded Crozier. ‘Can’t you leave her alone? Look at her! You can see what they’ve done already.’
‘Sorry,’ said the policemen. ‘But she’s got to come. She’ll be safer with us anyway when the news of the charge gets out.’
‘What charge? That she was friendly with a German officer? Who wasn’t? You lot did more arse-licking than anyone, everyone knows that. Just because you decided to do a bit of fighting in the last few days doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten the years before!’
He spoke bitterly and the gendarme had difficulty in keeping his temper.
‘There’s no need for that, monsieur,’ he said sharply. ‘They’ve been going through files the Boche left behind. It’s not just having a bit on the side that your girl’s accused of. They’re saying she was a paid agent of the Abwehr. They’re saying it was her who gave away the meeting when her husband got shot!’
Janine hardly seemed to notice her arrest. In a state close to catatonia, only once did she show any sign of emotion. When the enclosed police van into which she was put came to a halt and she was urged out, she stood blinking in the sunshine for a moment. Then it registered where they had brought her and something like a smile floated across her thin, bruised face, but not a smile of hope or of humour. It was more an acknowledgement of what she had known instinctively for a long time. This world her husband had fought and died for, this world she had lost her children and her liberty for, was not too different from the world it replaced. Oppression and blood, revenge and hate; the basic materials were much the same. Even the locations clearly weren’t to be very different.
She fell to her knees and prayed to God, any god, to keep her children safe. Once before she had prayed the same prayer in much the same vicinity. Only that time she’d been outside and they’d been in. Now it was the other way round.
The Collaborators Page 40
