The Resistance

by Peter Steiner

  An hour later Onesime lay on his back in his bed with his hands behind his head. He stared into the darkness. What was he doing, he wondered, spying on the count, spying on the Germans? The war was lost. It was over. France had been invaded, but what was that to him? What little he knew about Pétain and all the rest of them filled him with disgust. They were fighting over power. Like the Germans. People like Onesime and Jean and their mother were always the ones caught in the middle and ground into sausage.

  France’s brilliant leaders had sent his father and his uncle and hundreds of thousands of other fathers and brothers and uncles and sons to die in the mud in the Great War, and now they had done it again. He thought of his dead father, his dead uncle, of François, Gilles, and Luc, who were dead or in prison, of Léon with his legs cut off, of all the dead soldiers he had seen, French and German, and of those he hadn’t seen. He thought of the dead refugees by the roadside. The dead, the dead, the dead. Onesime saw them in a great pile rising into the darkness above him. He rolled onto his side with his back to the window.

  Onesime did not know that the words Marie Piano had sung had been written a century earlier by a Jew, Heinrich Heine. Because the poem was universally known and loved in Germany, the Nazis could not ban it. So they had declared it a folk song and declared Heine a non-person. Onesime did not know any of that. He did not know whether he had ever even met a Jew. He fell asleep to the memory of Marie Piano singing.

  V.

  THE MEETING ROOM in the Saint-Léon town hall was always dark, even on the brightest days. But now with only one bulb burning, thanks to electrical shortages, most of the room lay in deep shadow. The town council sat in silence. It was not their first meeting since the Germans had come. But Jean Charles Arnaud was still afraid. “Should we be meeting? Did you clear it with Colonel Büchner?”

  “It is our regular meeting,” said Michel Schneider, the mayor, sitting up straight and speaking forcefully. “We are carrying on as usual.” He shuffled the papers before him. “We have some town business to deal with. And, yes, Jean Charles, I told the colonel that we are meeting. I invited him to attend. He declined.”

  “He declined? But did you get his permission? Why did he decline?” Arnaud grasped the edge of the table with both hands, as though it might be a life raft adrift in a stormy sea.

  “Perhaps we should leave the door open. That way…” This was Pierre Chenu. “I mean, just how can we go on with business as usual?”

  “We can and we must,” said the mayor. He studied the agenda before him, looking for minefields. The allotment for a new town garage door was easily dealt with. An estimate of the costs had been submitted. Mayor Schneider had sent a copy to Colonel Büchner and had heard no objection from his office. A supplemental allotment of petrol for the town to run its tractor had also been negotiated. The veterans’ celebration—a toast and speech to be held in front of town hall—was another matter.

  “The veterans’ celebration is a bad idea,” said Pierre Chenu.

  “We do not want to antagonize … anyone,” said Jean Charles Arnaud.

  “We should let it drop,” said Pierre. “Like we did Bastille Day. Whose idea was it, anyway?”

  “Is this what it has come to?” said René Bertrand. Bertrand was the schoolmaster, a tall, ungainly man with a fringe of hair above his ears and a little spike of a beard. He enjoyed rising to his full height when he had an important point to make, as he did now. “Has it come to this?” His chair scraped across the floor, and Arnaud and Chenu looked right and left as though someone might come charging in because of the noise.

  “Has it come to what?” said Mayor Schneider, rattling his papers angrily. He wanted to keep the council moving ahead in an unobtrusive and cooperative way. “If you have some objections to the cancellation of the veterans’ celebration, then state them, please, in a businesslike and civil fashion. My understanding is that it will be forbidden anyway. Like July fourteenth. In the interest of tranquility.”

  “Businesslike and civil?!” said Bertrand. He seemed to be considering where he should begin.

  But before he could speak, Yves Renard, the young policeman who sat on the town council ex officio, as its only unelected member, spoke up. His voice was soft, his tone was deferential. “I hope you will remember, Schoolmaster Bertrand, what exactly our situation is. We are obliged to keep…”

  Bertrand’s face grew red, and he seemed to stand even taller as he listened to the admonition of the young policeman, who had been his pupil not very many years before. “It is exactly this situation, Monsieur Renard”—he spoke the policeman’s name with a sneer—“that I believe must not be allowed to continue.”

  The other members of the council froze. They stared at the schoolmaster in horror. The German colonel had laid down the rules, which, harsh though they might be, were understandable in light of the fact that Germany was at war on various fronts. Of course they would want, above all, to maintain strict order in the territory they occupied. And whether one liked it or not, they had the right and the power to do so.

  Yves Renard spoke up again. “I am deeply sorry, Monsieur Schoolmaster, to be obliged to warn you to watch what you say. You are walking on dangerous ground. I am the representative of the law. And the prevailing law forbids saying … certain things in … certain ways.”

  Renard’s awkward expression caused Bertrand to explode in derisive laughter. “The prevailing law?” he said. “The prevailing law?” But before he could continue along that path, his former pupil was on his feet and at the schoolmaster’s side. “Come with me, Monsieur Bertrand. I am taking you to the police station.”

  Now the men around the table erupted in outrage and disbelief. “See here, Renard.…” “You can’t mean it.…” “You can’t just…” The din stopped only when Renard took the schoolmaster firmly by the arm and marched him from the room.

  * * *

  “I am astonished,” said the schoolmaster, and indeed he looked truly astonished. His eyebrows were as high as he could raise them. He had removed his glasses, the better to bathe the young policeman in his angry gaze. The two men sat facing each other across the policeman’s desk. “Shame on you, Yves Marie Renard,” said Bertrand. The schoolmaster was the only one who had ever called Yves by all three names. And the last time he had done so, Renard had been sitting at a school desk in his class.

  “I am doing my duty, Monsieur Bertrand,” said Yves. He continued filling out a form without looking up. “My duty is to keep order in the town.”

  “I taught you better than this, Renard,” said the schoolmaster. “You know better than this. You are better than this.”

  “What is your full name, monsieur? And your exact address?”

  Bertrand suddenly looked old. His shoulders slumped and his head hung. Only his eyes still burned as he glared at Yves. He recited the information as though he were speaking to a functionary he had never seen before. He added, “Occupation: schoolmaster,” without being asked.

  Yves wrote everything down in his careful hand. Then the two sat in silence while the policeman filled in a number of boxes, completing one side of the form and turning the paper over. Bertrand spoke. “And you are charging me with…?”

  “You violated the law by speaking seditiously about our occupiers,” said Yves, reading everything over to be certain he had filled in every blank space.

  “And I suppose I am going to be punished? For doing what everyone should be doing? For saying what everyone should say: France is crushed and the world is in mortal peril—” he began.

  Yves interrupted. “Monsieur Bertrand, I am not the one who punishes those who break the law. I only report what they have done to the judicial authorities, who then decide the punishment. Whether or how you are punished is not up to me.”

  “And if it were? These are things you should think about, Renard. These are things I taught you.…”

  “Monsieur Bertrand,” said Yves, and he spoke with such authority in his voice that Bert
rand stopped speaking.

  “Monsieur Bertrand,” said Yves again. “Do you hate the occupation of our country by the Germans and the collaboration required by the armistice? Do you hate Marshal Pétain and the National Revolution?”

  “I believe…,” began Bertrand.

  “Forgive me, monsieur, but it is a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no.”

  Bertrand laughed derisively. “And you expect me to fall into your childish trap and incriminate myself further?”

  “You are mistaken, monsieur. It is not a trap. I expect you to say, no, you do not hate the occupation of France or the armistice or the National Revolution. I expect that of you, because I think of you as a wise and prudent man—and a thoughtful man.”

  Bertrand sat up straight and stared at the young policeman.

  Yves Renard crossed his hands in front of him and studied them before he continued. “Perhaps you remember, monsieur,” he said, looking directly into the schoolmaster’s eyes, “how in the sixth grade I got into a terrible fight with Jacques Courtois because he had been teasing me. He teased me so relentlessly and continuously that one day I simply exploded and went after him in the middle of French class. He, of course, knocked me over with one punch and bloodied my nose. You punished him severely. He was caned and was required to remain after school for an entire month.”

  “Of course he was, because…”

  “Excuse me, monsieur, but I am not finished. Perhaps you remember that you punished me too?” Bertrand looked at the young policeman; he did not remember the incident. “Well, you did. You punished me too.

  “And do you remember why you punished me? Let me remind you, monsieur, because it is important. You said in front of the class and in front of Jacques Courtois that you were punishing me for taking the law into my own hands. But then, afterward, when you and I were alone in the classroom, you told me what the more-serious infraction had been. You don’t remember it, but I will never forget it.

  “You punished me for not being patient, for not waiting for the right moment, the right time and place, to sort things out with Jacques. ‘Victory,’ you said, ‘always goes to the patient. Take a good and true measure of the situation and act accordingly, Renard.’ Those, monsieur, were your exact words, which I never forgot. ‘Victory always goes to the patient.’

  “And so, with the utmost respect and admiration, monsieur, I repeat them back to you now, your own wise words: ‘Victory always goes to the patient. Take a good and true measure of the situation and act accordingly.’”

  Bertrand had been a strict schoolmaster. He still was. Never in his recollection had one of his students, or for that matter one of his former students, spoken to him in this manner. Reflexive indignation rose through his body like volcanic magma. But before he could erupt, young Yves Marie Renard, not his best student ever but a decent student all the same, raised a finger in front of Betrand and added: “Monsieur, you are in danger. And if you are in danger, then you might endanger others. You are in danger, and the best thing I can do for you is to remind you of the wisdom of your own words.”

  Bertrand sat with his mouth agape, staring in shock and only slowly dawning comprehension of what this boy with the wispy, blond moustache—a boy really; not even a man—was telling him. “Your speech, monsieur,” Yves continued, “which was clearly going in a seditious direction, was not yet serious enough to warrant my forwarding a report. But I am issuing you this written warning, monsieur.” With that Renard passed an official-looking paper across the desk.

  Bertrand was having difficulty grasping what had just transpired. He studied the document that the policeman had put in front of him. “You arrested me, you humiliated me in front of the council, in order to warn me?” The schoolmaster was incredulous.

  Yves Renard studied his former teacher for a moment. “Monsieur,” he said, “you are free to go.”

  * * *

  When Renard returned to the town council meeting, the room fell silent. “Where is Monsieur Bertrand?” they wanted to know. “Did you arrest him?”

  “I did not arrest him,” said Renard. “I issued a written warning. And I will not hesitate to issue more such warnings or to make arrests when the circumstances warrant it. We are charged with keeping order, and we must do so for the well-being of our citizens as well as for our own well-being.” He sat down at the table and waited for the meeting to continue.

  As it happened, the next order of business, the situation with the unauthorized use of an abandoned barn, fell under the policeman’s purview. Reports had reached the mayor that a private house, which years before had been converted into a hay barn and then had eventually been abandoned, was being used at night for secret rendezvous of a mysterious nature. “Is it partisans?” Arnaud wondered immediately. “What if it’s partisans?”

  “It’s probably Gypsies,” said the mayor. “Someone filed a complaint. They saw a light.…”

  “Who?” said Chenu.

  “Someone reliable. I have the name. That is all you need to know. She saw a light. And heard something too.”

  “Ah,” said Arnaud. “That will be Louisette Anquetille. She’s always seeing things. Imagining things.”

  “Someone reliable, I said.”

  “I will investigate tonight,” said Yves Renard.

  “And report back,” said the mayor.

  “Of course,” said the policeman.

  The abandoned hay barn was not far from town. Yves walked there that night. He found a loose shutter and pulled it aside. He shined his flashlight through the window. The glass was dusty and covered with cobwebs. The inside was empty of furniture, and no one was there. But there was a dark stain on the center of the floor, and a large hook hung from the ceiling.

  “There is nothing going on at the barn,” said Yves the next morning.

  “I am glad to hear it,” said the mayor. “I’ll look for your report.”

  That night, Yves returned to the barn. This time light was coming through a space where the shutters didn’t quite meet. Yves stopped and listened. He heard low voices inside. He knocked on the door, and everything fell silent. After a long pause the door opened a crack. “What do you want,” said Jacques Courtois.

  “Someone saw a light up here. This building is private property and is not authorized for your use, as far as I know.”

  “As far as you know,” said Jacques. Yves could see several men behind Jacques.

  “Well,” said Yves, “I have to check. Let me in.”

  Jacques had no choice. He opened the door. But he did not step aside. Yves had to squeeze past him. The other men—there were three of them, and Yves knew all three—muttered a greeting.

  The room was dimly lit by a kerosene lantern. A half-butchered pig hung from the hook, its black blood dripping into a tub. Two of the men held knives, and there were packages of meat wrapped in greasy paper stacked beside the door. “What you are doing is illegal,” said Yves. “Whose pig is it?”

  “Mine,” said one of the men.

  “You can check,” said Jacques.

  “You still need special permission to slaughter animals, except chickens and rabbits. You know that.”

  “We have to eat,” said Jacques. “We’ve got families.”

  “You need permission,” said Yves, “and you don’t have it. I will have to file a report.”

  “Do what you have to do,” said Jacques.

  “And we’ll do what we have to do,” said one of the other men.

  “I will file my report tomorrow,” said Yves.

  The men remained silent while he walked to the door. Jacques stood in front of the door for a long moment and then stepped aside so that Yves could leave.

  As he passed her house, Louisette Anquetille opened the door and peered into the darkness until she could make out Yves walking past.

  “So, who was it?” she shouted. “What’s going on up there?”

  “Go back to bed, Madame Anquetille. Everything is all right.” />
  “And what about the light?” she said. “Who’s up there?”

  “Gypsies,” said Yves.

  “Gypsies?” she said. “Mon dieu.”

  “Just children, madame. Gypsy kids. Kids being kids. I sent them home.”

  “You’re just a kid yourself,” said Madame Anquetille with a snort, and closed her door.

  “Oui, madame,” said Yves.

  The next day he filled out his report and took it to the mayor. “It was just as you said, Monsieur Mayor. It was Gypsies. I chased them away. Here’s your copy.” He handed the mayor a description of his encounter with the children, how he had admonished them and chased them back to their encampment on the edge of town.

  “So,” said the mayor, studying Yves. “Gypsies.”

  VI.

  ONESIME KNOCKED LOUDLY on the heavy door, and Maurice de Beaumont appeared. “Monsieur,” said Onesime, “I think today is a good day to cut hay.” Maurice stepped outside. The two men stood in front of the château on the terrace. It was made of flagstones with moss growing between them and, like the back terrace, it was surrounded by a low stone balustrade.

  “Yes,” said Maurice, squinting into the bright September sky. Tiny clouds drifted here and there. “Where will you start?”

  “I’ll start out back, if that is convenient with you, and then get the outlying fields tomorrow. It looks like a very sweet crop. What with all the rain we’ve had.”

  “That’s fine, Onesime.”

  “I just wanted to be sure to tell you, monsieur. Before I get the horses.”

  “Thank you, Onesime. Only use the tractor. I’ll unlock the barn.”

  “The tractor, monsieur? You have petrol?”

  “For now I do. Use the tractor.”

  Maurice went inside and returned with a ring of keys. The two men walked around the house to the barn. Onesime avoided looking at the terrace where he had listened to Marie Piano play.