“The thing is,” said Henri, “if you really think you can sit on the fence, then you need to come and see how wrong you are. Things are further along than you can imagine. The meeting is behind Aseline’s shop, Friday at ten.”
By the time Jean arrived, there must have been thirty men and a few women crowded into the room behind Aseline’s shop and spilling out into the shop itself. He knew half of the people there.
Aseline made a little speech welcoming everyone, especially the newcomers, and most especially the women. There was talk about the local maquis, who they were, how they might be organized, how they might be infiltrated, and who might do it.
The most likely candidate turned out to be Jean. “After all,” said someone whom Jean didn’t recognize, “I hear he’s one of them. That’s the perfect cover. He shouldn’t have any trouble getting in with them.”
Jean shrugged his shoulders and turned red. Everyone was looking at him. They all seemed to agree that he should try to join the maquis. “Then what?” he wondered.
“What do you think?” said Piet Chabrille. “We kill them.” Jean hadn’t even noticed that Piet was there.
“I’ll work with you,” said Henri.
But within days Piet Chabrille announced triumphantly that he and Aseline, and not Jean, had flushed out a cell of resisters. The normally reticent Chabrille could not stop talking about it.
Aseline’s father-in-law, himself a veteran of the Great War, had joined in a late-night card game with a group of veterans. After several hours of drinking and playing cards, the father-in-law enticed some of the men into making treasonous remarks about the Germans and Pétain. One old veteran wished aloud for the defeat of the Germans and the overthrow of Pétain. Another called Pierre Laval, the Vichy head of government, a fascist pig.
Aseline and his associates streamed into the room, herded the men together, and marched them off at gunpoint. They were driven to an abandoned warehouse behind the Dupont factory. The six arrested men were turned over one by one to a team whose job it was to extract confessions and information from them.
Piet Chabrille, the leader of the team, was an enthusiastic and enterprising interrogator. He had never been trained in that art, but he seemed to know instinctively how long you could hold a man’s head in the toilet without drowning him. He knew how to use a small knife blade under a man’s fingernails. He invented other methods, some so ferocious that his team members had to stop him.
To his great misfortune, Jean Charles Arnaud, the terrified pharmacist and town councilman, was among the card players. Though he had said nothing remotely treasonous—in fact he had admonished the others to be careful about what they were saying—he was tortured like everyone else. Very soon he had confessed to wishing Pétain ill, to having a variety of other treasonous inclinations, and, most damningly, to being involved in a conspiracy to commit sabotage. It was his intention, he sobbed, to blow up both the tracks and the electric lines along the Paris rail line. The men he named as partners in the conspiracy—each time his head was pulled gasping and crying from the toilet, he mentioned someone else—were obviously names that had come to mind because Jean Charles simply wanted the drowning to stop. In fact the conspiracy itself was a figment of his desperate imagination.
A number of men from the card-playing group were sent to prison to await trial at Saint-Pierre, as were several from the group named by Jean Charles. As for Jean Charles himself, whether it was the gravity of the crimes to which he had confessed or the disgust his craven fear aroused in his interrogators, he was left to the untender ministrations of Piet Chabrille, who continued working on him long after Jean Charles had anything more to say or, for that matter, could say anything. Eventually Jean Charles was dead, and Piet Chabrille emerged panting from the makeshift interrogation room.
XVI.
Liberation..….….….….…… February 18, 1943. Issue 16
The past year has been a dark and bitter one for France. We are living under a murderous regime governed by treachery and deceit. Our own government has made it shameful to call oneself French.
The persecution and deportation of Jews has begun in earnest. Last June and July tens of thousands of Jews—French and foreign—were rounded up all over France. This is part of what Hitler has called “the final solution,” meaning the murder of every Jew in Europe. Our government, Pétain, and Laval have gone along enthusiastically.
Our civil servants and police not only aided in this cruel business, but in many cases they initiated it. All over France you could see French police forcing their way into the homes of innocent people and taking them off, never to be seen again. At first the roundup of Jews was supposed to include only those between 16 and 40 years of age, but the reprehensible Pierre Laval insisted that children under 16 should be included. Our police were not deterred. They executed the entire operation in impeccable fashion. The Nazis could not have done a more-thorough job.
On November 8 British and American troops landed for the first time in Morocco and Algeria. To our everlasting shame, what remains of our own French army did all it could to drive them out. General Pétain broke off relations with the United States and declared them our enemy. Meanwhile our dear friend Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich army of marauders marched across the border into Vichy in complete violation of the armistice. All of France is now occupied by the German army. This is how all our French groveling has come to naught.
Could things get worse? They could and they have. Laval and Pétain and their minions are now enslaving Frenchmen. German soldiers are dying like flies on the vast frozen wastes of Russia. Therefore there are no longer sufficient German men in the Reich to do the devil’s work. But fear not! Laval and Pétain have come to Hitler’s rescue. Under their new OWS Act—the Obligatory Work Service Act; it could better be called the Slave Labor Act—they have begun to snatch Frenchmen from their homes and families and ship them off to do forced labor in the Reich’s foundries and armament and munitions factories. Are they not needed at home? Do their farms and families and businesses not need them?
This OWS enslavement has begun in big cities and is spreading across the country. It is only a matter of time before the young men of Saint-Léon are rounded up and torn away from their loved ones. They will be packed into trains as the Jews have been. And their ultimate fate will be no different. WE ARE ALL JEWS NOW!!!
Vive la France!!! Vive la Libération!!!
On March 8, a gray and chilly Monday, groups of young men stood huddled on the platform at Saint-Léon’s station. Each had been checked against a master list of those notified to report. Each had a suitcase or a rucksack containing the provisions he was entitled to bring with him. The train of carriages waited on the track beside them, steam rising from beneath the black locomotive in great hissing bursts. Henri looked around. Onesime Josquin was there. He stood looking at the ground. Henri’s friend Lucien was there. Aseline was there. No one was there to see them off. Henri searched the crowd and found others he knew.
There were already men inside the train, but you could hardly see their faces. The train had taken on men in Angers and Château-la-Vallière. It would proceed up the line to Blois, where it would be attached to another train. The windows would be blacked out, and they would continue through Paris to Germany to who knows where. Armed German Gestapo in plain clothes stood on the other side of the station house, in case of trouble. But there was no trouble.
At exactly nine o’clock the doors of the train cars opened, and a German soldier stepped from each door. Each was carrying a machine pistol. The soldiers signaled that the waiting men should board. In a few minutes they were all inside, crowded onto the wooden seats with their suitcases and bags on their laps. No bags were allowed in the aisle or on the racks above them. Onesime found a seat at the rear of the car. He clutched his small tattered suitcase to his chest. The German guards stationed themselves at both ends of the car. The train lurched into motion.
No one spoke as they rolled along
the track. No one had said that they couldn’t. They just didn’t. What was there to say? It was sad and desperate and humiliating all at the same time. Onesime was seated not far from Henri. He kept his eyes downcast.
Henri gazed out at the landscape and watched it pass. From a train the countryside looked completely unfamiliar. The car swayed gently; the wheels clicked rhythmically on the rails. He felt as though he were dreaming.
They crossed the Dême, and the bridge made a hollow sound. Henri took a package of cigarettes from his pocket and looked toward the German guard, as though to ask whether he could smoke. The guard looked past him without expression. Henri put a cigarette between his lips. He was reaching for his matches, when the train lurched so violently that he was thrown from his seat.
The train’s steel wheels locked and squealed against the tracks as the car tipped sideways. The first shot came from behind Henri, and, when he turned, he saw Onesime seizing the fallen guard’s gun with one hand and putting his own pistol away with the other. A second shot rang out. The guard at the other end of the car, who was no more than a boy, really, stood with a bewildered look on his face as though he didn’t yet know that he was dead. A man Henri had never seen before grabbed the boy’s gun.
The train sat listing crazily halfway down the embankment. It was making strange groaning and hissing noises, like a mortally injured animal. Onesime was the first to get a door open. Outside armed men ran toward the train. Guards fired from inside the other cars, but their guns soon went silent.
Onesime turned to Henri. “Are you going, or are you going to wait here? You think the Gestapo is going to reward you for being a good boy?”
“Let’s go,” said Lucien. “What are you waiting for?”
Henri didn’t say anything. My life has just changed forever, he thought. There’s nothing I can do about it. If I sit here, I’m done for; if I go, I’m done for. He followed Lucien and Aseline out the door.
All along the train, doors opened and men stumbled out, still clutching their suitcases and packs. During the night the spikes holding the rails had been removed. The train had headed off the rail bed before sinking into the mud. The engineer stood beside his engine with his hands high in the air. “Shoot him,” someone said, and someone else did.
The men fled in all directions, some inexplicably running toward town, where the Gestapo would certainly be waiting for them. Others wandered off in twos and threes, staying with those they knew, hoping to make their way back to Angers or wherever they had come from. Others attached themselves to the armed men. One consequence of the OWS Act of February 16, 1943, was that many young Frenchmen who had nowhere else to go found their way to the resistance.
Onesime joined with other armed men as they moved quickly across the fields. An hour later as they approached the Le Mans highway, Onesime broke off from the group and took a small field road that led above a quarry. He went along a vineyard, cut across another vineyard, and came down the hillside just above the Count de Beaumont’s cave, near where he had cut hay what seemed like an eternity ago.
He slid down the steep hillside and knocked on the cave door. The door opened immediately. Jean pulled Onesime inside the cave and closed the door. The cave was still lit by a single small bulb. “Take my hand,” said Jean. He led Onesime into the darkness. When they came to the door that had been locked the last time they were there, Jean knocked. There was silence for a few seconds before the door opened.
Alexandre de Beaumont, the count’s wife, stood before him. The kerosene lanterns and candles flickering around the room bathed her in orange light. Onesime imagined that he had been killed at the train and now found himself in heaven. “Come in,” she said.
There were cots around the edge of the cave, divided from one another by makeshift partitions. The large table at the center was now surrounded by chairs. The board with the map leaned against the wall.
There were people sitting together on two of the beds. They regarded Jean with curiosity. They looked like a family, except the parents were dark, the three children blond. “They’re not related,” said Alexandre, as though she knew what Onesime was thinking. Alexandre had a low, husky voice. Onesime had never heard her speak before. “The Shapiras have no children of their own. But they were rounded up at the same time as the Herzog children next door. The Herzog parents had been taken away the night before and the children were alone in their apartment.
“That was in Chartres. The Shapiras managed to slip under a baggage cart. They pulled the children under with them. They weren’t missed and the train left without them.”
“Are they French, madame?” said Onesime.
“Yes,” said Alexandre.
“Where are they going?”
“We’ll have to see what we can do,” she said.
“Oui, madame,” said Onesime.
“I have to go home,” said Jean. “You’re staying here for now.” Onesime still had the machine gun slung over his shoulder. Jean took it. “I’ll put it with the others.”
Onesime lay down on a cot with his hands behind his back and gazed at the orange light dancing on the ceiling. The next thing he knew Maurice de Beaumont was shaking his shoulder. Onesime sat up. “Excuse me, monsieur.”
“It’s all right, Onesime. You must be exhausted. I’m glad to see that you are all right.”
“I am fine, monsieur.”
“More then two hundred men escaped from that train, Onesime, thanks to you and the others. By the time the Germans heard of it, the men were gone. Most will head back to their towns and the territory they know.”
“What about me, monsieur?”
“For now you have to stay out of sight. But look, the Germans don’t have the time or the means to look for those that evade this draft. The French police may be another story. But their hands are pretty full too. And they’re short of men for this kind of thing. And frankly I don’t think they have the stomach for it.
“The resistance is growing. Finally. After nearly three years, the OWS was the last straw. Lots of those men will join us. They have no choice now.”
“My brother-in-law was there. He was with Aseline’s militia. Aseline was there too. If they join the resistance, how can you can trust them?”
“We don’t have to trust them in order to make use of them.”
“Is there a ‘we,’ monsieur?”
“There is, Onesime. You’ve seen that yourself.”
“What about these people?” said Onesime. “What about the Jews over there? What’s to become of them?”
The count looked at Onesime for a long moment before he spoke. “That depends in part on you, Onesime. Come look at the map.
“We are here,” said the count, pointing at the map. “We have to get our Jews to … here.”
“That is not far, monsieur.”
“A night’s walk, Onesime. And then a night to get back.”
“And why there, monsieur?”
“There is someone with whom they will be safe. And he will pass them on to someone else. That is how they got here from Chartres, and how they will get to Spain.”
Onesime studied the map. “You know, monsieur, the Germans are here, right here”—he pointed. “And here too. It’s a bit longer to go this way, by the marsh and then along the river, but it’s wide open. No Germans anywhere.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have been … watching, monsieur. And making maps since the Germans arrived.”
“Watching?”
“Oui, monsieur. I know which caves they’re in and what they have in the caves. I know where they have billets, where they have storage dumps and depots. I know how they come and go. I know, for instance, that your wine cave runs to my grandfather’s cave, and that the Germans have artillery shells stored in that cave along with small arms. I know there is always a guard outside, but not inside. I know which caves meet which caves.… I’m sorry, monsieur. Forgive me. It was not my business, I know. And I don’t know all of the ca
ves. Not all of them, of course. But many.”
“Do you indeed?” The count rarely smiled, but he did so now. “I am not surprised, Onesime. I always knew you were resourceful and smart. I knew you would find out what went on here.…”
“But I didn’t, monsieur. I swear it.…”
“But I knew you would find out when it became necessary.”
And that is how Onesime found himself leading the Shapiras and the Herzog children over field roads to the next stop on their way to Spain. They left the next evening after dark and walked all night. As the early morning sky was brightening behind them, they arrived at the small church on the edge of the village of Coulangé.
It seemed even colder inside the church than it did outside. A few votive candles were flickering up front, where someone had been saying early morning prayers. The priest was in the small room behind the church having his breakfast of bread and warm milk. He was old, and he stood up from the rickety table with great difficulty as they entered the room. He embraced Onesime, whom he had never seen before, and then pinched his cheek as though he were a boy.
One after the other he took the Shapiras’ faces and the Herzog children’s faces between his rough, gnarled hands and gazed at them with watery eyes in a kind of silent benediction. “Come with me, my children,” he said finally, and led them into a small courtyard. He lifted a wooden trapdoor. They all followed him down a steep wooden stairway that disappeared into the darkness.
At the bottom he lit a lantern. Skulls sat stacked on crude shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling. Some of the skulls had crosses or dates painted above their empty eyes. “This is the church crypt,” said the old priest. “And these are my dead parishioners.” He said it as though he had known them all personally. He caressed one of the skulls. “Their spirits will all watch over and protect you.” He made the sign of the cross.
The priest had arranged a table, three chairs, and two beds in the narrow space. The beds were covered with ragged sheets and blankets, and there was a threadbare cloth on the table. A jar of water held a single daffodil. A wooden crucifix hung high on the wall.
The Resistance Page 19
