“About what? Nobody listens to us, nobody cares. Fascists, the maquis, they all hate us. Can’t everybody just leave us alone? We don’t care about you or your stupid war.”
“Roger, I saw Hoekman, he interrogated me,” Gabriela said. “And you know what happened? He—”
She was ready to tell him everything. Whatever had him spooked, it couldn’t be worse than what Hoekman had over her. Maybe there was something he knew about the colonel that could help her find her father. Or maybe Hoekman played the same game with both of them and they could help each other.
But at that moment there was the sound of screaming and shouts from the other side of the trees. A harsh, jeering laugh.
“Oh, no,” Roger said. “Oh, god. No, it’s all wrong.”
A girl ran through the clearing, screaming. Her clothes were dirty, her blouse ripped open.
“Listen to me!” Roger said. He snatched up his portfolio. “You’ve got to hide. Do it now!”
Roger’s warning snapped Gabriela from her stupor. Christine looked frozen with fear. Gabriela grabbed her arm and pulled her from the footpath. Just off the path she spotted a bare patch of dirt curving up the side of the hill toward the top of the cascade, perhaps leading to a secret rendezvous spot for lovers. Gabriela dragged Christine up the hillside. They scrambled up on hands and knees.
The women reached the bushes at the top of the hill. “Gaby, I’m scared!”
Gabriela pulled Christine to the ground. “Keep down!”
A young man burst into the clearing, spotted Roger. “Whitey!” he screamed. “It’s the JPF. Run!”
Two other young men caught him and threw him to the ground. They wore the blue uniforms and black berets of the JPF—Jeunesse Populaire Française—the youth fascist organization. “Scalp the zazous!” one of the men yelled. Another man yanked back the long hair of the zazou. The other had a pair of shears and hacked away. The two men laughed while the boy tried to free himself.
Roger clutched his portfolio to his chest and shrank back with a pale expression until his back pressed into the statue of the crane.
“Whitey!” the young man on the ground yelled. “Roger, help me!”
Roger didn’t move.
As soon as they finished with the hair, the JPF tore at the zazou’s clothes, then started kicking him in the ribs. Other zazous fled past, pursued by JPF. One girl was completely stripped to her panties. A red-faced man pursued her with a leer. He caught her and pushed her to the ground just out of view. The girl screamed. More zazous and their attackers. Nowhere did Gabriela see any of the zazous fighting back.
Christine was crying. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”
Gabriela slapped a hand over her mouth. “Shut up, now.”
And then there were others joining the fray. Men in gray uniforms and hats with silver skulls and eagles clutching swastikas. Gestapo. The JPF thugs shrank out of their way. Time to let their masters do the real work. The Gestapo beat the zazous with clubs, pistol-whipped one boy who resisted. They slapped them in cuffs, threw them on the grass. Minutes later, they were dragging them away, kicking them, hitting them about the head. The boys and girls were weeping, begging for mercy, half-naked and filthy. Soon, a quiet descended on the clearing, disturbed only by the water that spilled over the edge of the cascade into the pool.
Nobody had touched Roger Leblanc. He sat frozen with his drawings clutched to his chest until they were gone. And then he moved with a terror of his own, grabbing his easel and turning to flee. The drawing on the easel fluttered to the ground. He didn’t seem to notice.
Gabriela stood up. “Roger, wait! Roger!”
“Go away, just leave me alone.” He fled.
Gabriela rose to her feet and made her way down the hill. Christine followed.
“Did you see that?” Christine asked. “Did you see how they went right past him? How did they miss him? He was right there, they didn’t even see him.”
“They saw him.”
“What are you talking about? They left Roger alone. If they saw him, why wouldn’t they take him, too?”
“Yeah, why?”
The ground was marred with heavy boot prints, the signs of a struggle here and there on the grass. Gabriela picked up Roger’s drawing. The bleak factory, twin smokestacks that stretched toward a leaden sky.
“Gaby, for god’s sake, can we go now? Please?”
She’d missed a detail in her initial glance, something about the red rooster perched on the edge of the factory, out of proportion to the rest of the scene. It was detailed for something so small, drawn with pastels. The rooster wore a gold star on its breast, with the word zazou written across the center. The rooster had a beak, feathers on its head, but wore a human face.
The face of Roger Leblanc.
Chapter Twenty:
Helmut’s face was warm and sympathetic as he leaned across the private train compartment. He rested his hand on Gabriela’s. “How did they catch your father?”
“It was my fault. If I hadn’t been there, Hoekman never would’ve arrested him.”
“Why don’t you tell me about it.”
She would have recoiled from his touch just a few days earlier. She’d distrusted him, hated everything he represented. But then, as was usually the case, the truth was more complex than she’d initially guessed. Helmut was more complex.
Now she found his touch comforting. Of course some of it was this train ride, the culmination of all her hopes and fears, that did it. But the truth was, she’d been fighting to maintain her dislike for some time now. Since the day he gave Monsieur Demerain the sulfide drugs for his pneumonia, probably saved his life. It was a relief to just give it up.
Any residual defenses had melted yesterday when he’d arrived at Alfonse’s flat and handed her an envelope. “Train tickets for Strasbourg.”
“The occupied zone? Whatever for?”
“We’re going to take a little trip.”
“Why? Seriously, I can’t figure out why you keep dragging me around the country.”
She thought about what Christine said about men who tried to rescue prostitutes. Was he acting through some sort of misguided charity or was it all about Colonel Hoekman? The last two times she’d seen him he hadn’t mentioned the Gestapo.
“Do you have something better to do?” he had asked as she retrieved her coat and a bag with a few personal effects. “Surely you don’t want to sit around Alfonse’s flat all day, moping about until he comes home.”
“Well, no. But you’re always busy and working. What am I doing, just keeping you company?”
“I like your company, I admit it.”
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Because when I’m with you I can think about something other than the war for a few minutes, I can pretend the world is a simpler place.”
“So you’re bored, that’s all.”
“Not today I’m not.” A mysterious smile flickered across his face. “Today is a big day for you. I’ve got a surprise.”
“I’m living in Paris under occupation. I’m not sure I like surprises. They usually turn out badly.”
“You’ll like this one.”
“Oh?”
“I found your father.”
She caught her breath, felt light-headed. “Papá? Is he. . .? Is he. . .?”
“He’s alive. Would you like to see him?”
The next few hours had been the slowest of her life. But finally, the Alsatian countryside clattered outside her window. It was hilly, with German-looking villages, which was presumably why Germany kept insisting on ownership. It had been two years since she’d been more than fifty kilometers from Paris; she found the escape exhilarating. Now that they were approaching Strasbourg, her heart was thumping.
Gabriela wanted to share with Helmut; she’d never told anyone before what had happened. She was very aware of his hand resting on hers.
“You must love your father very much to keep searching after so much time,” he s
aid. “Most people would have given up, but you keep hoping.”
“I have to. He’s the most wonderful man in the world and he would have done anything for me. You know, I loved my mother, of course, and my brother, too, but it wasn’t the same.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I can’t even think of where to start.”
“How about what he did for a living. That usually defines us more than anything.”
“He owned a bookstore in Madrid before we came to France. New books, used books. Carried everything you could imagine. He’d point me to the best novels, sometimes something subversive. He loved to read, himself. I guess that’s why people usually go into books, isn’t it? Not for the money.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so,” Helmut said.
“He could read for hours at a stretch. Anything, like his bookstore. When he wasn’t curled up with an adventure novel he’d bury himself in philosophy. Too much for his own good. He loved to talk politics or anything philosophical.”
“He raised you on philosophy? That sounds dry. And I’m a German, I’m supposed to love that stuff.”
“I know, it makes Papá sound like a bore, but he wasn’t, not at all. He was a writer too, always making up stories. And he had a wicked sense of humor. He liked to play practical jokes. Nothing mean, he just loved seeing people laugh.
“He was an idealist at heart,” she continued. “Not a compromiser. When the civil war started in Spain, he published a tract and smuggled it into Nationalist territory. They tried to arrest him when Madrid fell. They got my mother, and he turned himself in to serve time in her place, since he was the one they really wanted.”
“How did you end up in France?”
“Franco won the war, half the country fled to France. My mother turned Nationalist—at least she claimed as much—but my father couldn’t, and wouldn’t make pretenses. She came with us to France, but then went back with my brother. Didn’t matter if she’d turned Nationalist, the fascists still came for her in the end. She died ’resisting arrest,’ whatever that means. My brother in prison, a year later. Typhus, they said.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded. Painful memories, not helped by the estrangement between her parents those last couple of years. Papá had sent numerous letters from Paris, but mother always refused his pleas.
“Paris looked like a safe bet at the time. We spoke French and knew the country well. There was trouble with Germany, but nobody took it seriously. I mean, if there was a war, it would probably turn out like the last one, right? Years of trench warfare with life carrying on behind the lines. We didn’t count on the boches overrunning the country so fast.”
“The Germans, as a people, are frequently underestimated.”
“Nobody underestimated the Germans. They were terrified of them. It’s why France fell apart like it did.”
“Sorry, go ahead. Why did the Gestapo arrest your father?”
“My father got a job for the British embassy, translating intercepted documents between Madrid and Berlin. They were worried Franco would join the Axis. The other Spaniards at the embassy were all former Republicans and anti-fascists. We fled the city, reached the coast just as the British and French armies were evacuating Dunkirk. My father bought passage on a fishing boat—he said it was for both of us—but he lied. He couldn’t get us both out, so he was going to send me on alone.”
She hesitated at the horrible memories of her struggle through Dunkirk. The bombings, the dead bodies. The screaming women and children. A man’s leg, lying in the road.
Helmut said nothing, and at last she regained control and was able to continue.
“I couldn’t leave him, so I went back.”
“You should have gone. He made a great sacrifice.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Helmut. And so was my father. Either together or not at all.”
“And what happened?”
“I begged, threatened, lied my way back to the hotel where he was waiting out the siege with the rest of the low-level embassy staff. I got there too late. Or not late enough, depending on your point of view.”
Was that right? Would it have been better if she’d arrived ten minutes later, when the Germans had taken everyone away? If she hadn’t seen Colonel Hoekman, hadn’t known any of it?
“The Germans had figured out who they were by then, and were lining them up against the wall. It looked like they were going to gun them down. I came running, I had to stop it.”
“Maybe they weren’t going to kill them. Maybe they were just searching.”
“Well, yes, I know that now. They took some of them away, but most of them they let go. How could I know?”
“You couldn’t. Don’t blame yourself.”
“As soon as they figured out who I was, the Germans singled my father out for a more rigorous search.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples, wishing she could erase the horrible memories. “It was all my fault.”
“How was it your fault? It was nothing more than bad luck. You were trying to help.”
“No, it was my fault. Even after that, we still almost got away. They took out my father’s trunk and searched it. He had his questionable books and papers but it was all in Spanish. They didn’t see what he’d written about the Germans in Spain. They confiscated everything, but you could see it in the officer’s eyes. He was disappointed, but he was going to let us go. There were too many other suspicious people, and not enough Germans to hold them all and they could only fit the most important embassy staff in the truck.”
“You’re lucky you were in France,” Helmut said. “In the Ukraine they would’ve taken you off the road, shot you just to be sure.”
“Yeah, lucky us.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know it could be worse. I could be a Jew or a Pole or a communist. I could be my brother. He’s dead. It’s just hard to feel fortunate given everything I’ve been through.”
“I understand, it came out wrong. So what happened?”
“The officer decided to give us one last humiliation before sending us on our way. He barked something at his men and they stripped me naked in front of everyone. As soon as they started groping me, my father lost control.”
She took a deep breath. Helmut squeezed her hand.
“The officer threw him to the ground. I begged Papá to be still, but by the time he stopped it was too late. They beat him. And the officer wanted more. He said his men would rape me unless Papá confessed everything.”
“Confess what?”
“Exactly. He had nothing to confess. He was just a translator, he wasn’t a spy.”
“The officer?” Helmut asked. “Was it—?”
“Yes, it was. Hans Hoekman. I don’t think he was a colonel then.”
“The bastard.”
“Of course Papá confessed. He said he was a communist. It was sort of true, I guess. He helpfully explained his books and papers, everything they hadn’t understood before. ’Don’t worry, hija,’ he said, ’I haven’t done anything, they’ll let me go.’ I knew he was lying. It’s not like the fascists in Spain hadn’t already taught me better.”
“And they arrested him?” Helmut asked.
“Dragged him away and let me go. Hoekman kept his word. His men left me alone after that. I wish they hadn’t. I wish they’d raped me and my father had kept his mouth shut. I could have taken it.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say.” A terrible look came over Helmut’s face and he looked out the window. When he returned his gaze, the look was gone. “It was a great thing your father did. He must love you very much.”
“I know it, I never stop thinking about it. I looked for him, I wrote letters to the police and to Vichy. I bribed a French official. I queued for days at the German embassy. Nobody told me anything.”
“So what did you do, how did you survive?”
“I sold my father’s possessions and I looked for work. There wasn’t
much, but I did what I could. Laundry once, sweeping. Even some trash picking. But there were still things I told myself I wouldn’t do. I despised girls like Christine, I never would have sold myself. I didn’t understand they were just girls trying to survive, like anyone else.”
“Then how did you end up at Le Coq Rouge?”
“I was desperate, and I met Christine, who got me a job washing dishes. Leblanc fed me leftovers, but there was no salary. I still wouldn’t have turned to prostitution, but then Hoekman came into the restaurant and I could tell he was going to return. Luck, I guess.”
“Not so lucky. You were smart to get a job where the Germans come.”
“I didn’t think about that at the time,” she admitted. “I was just hungry. But then I discovered it was a great place to watch for Germans and eventually Hoekman came in. The night they arrested Roger was my first night as a hostess.”
“With the idea of seducing Hoekman?”
“Yes, exactly. I’d seduce him and convince him to release my father.”
“It’s a horrible thing to become the lover of the man who arrested your father.”
“But you know what,” she said. “I never slept with him. I was going to, but you saved me.”
“I didn’t save you, you saved yourself. Not many people can do that. This war crushes people, but you managed to fight through it and come out on top. And you found your father.”
“I can’t believe it. After all this time. It’s almost too wonderful to believe.”
Gabriela took a deep breath. Helmut was still holding her hand. She felt an unfamiliar flood of emotions. A warmth that spread through her body with such a rush that she felt light headed.
Helmut must have seen it on her face, or maybe he was feeling the same thing, because suddenly he was leaning forward. Their lips met. There was nothing tentative in his kiss. He held her in a fierce embrace.
She could feel his hunger. It was almost desperate. And she wanted him with such a need that it overwhelmed her. Her heart hammered. Was the door of the private compartment locked? How quickly could they be out of their clothes? How long until the train pulled into the station? She didn’t care. She wanted him.
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