Hunting Ground

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Tommy, I’m worried about Marie. I must get back. It’s crazy for me to stay here like this,’ but he lay on top of me, and it felt so good to have him there.

  ‘Nicki and Dmitry are on the lookout. We’ll be okay.’

  A wren flitted nervously among the flowering dogwood, and in the distance I could hear the geese. Viviane would be feeding them again; Henri would be …

  ‘It’s been ages, Lily.’

  Halfway between the millpond and the village of Milly-la-Fôret there’s a place of much beauty called the Trois Pignons, the Three Gables. It’s a plateau of uplifted little escarpments that have been cut by gullies and strewn with scattered boulders.

  Always when I come here, I feel wild and free, able to climb to the highest parts, breathless while looking out over the surrounding terrain. It’s windswept up here in the late autumn, open to all weathers, and I can’t resist the temptation to stand out and let Dupuis and Schiller see me holding that Schmeisser if they’re nearby.

  Me, I wish I was wearing the brown beret, rucksack, Norwegian trousers, and boots that I used to have hidden with the Poulins, you understand. Ah, oui, oui, I always took precautions—everyone did. When things got tough, I had places to go to, but please don’t misunderstand. The Forest of Fontainebleau was far from wild and empty. During the Occupation, there were times when the Germans would come like tourists to hike or simply wander about, and times, too, when Parisians and others had to get out of the city, if allowed, to scrounge for mushrooms, acorns, and berries, or attempt to buy things from the surrounding farms.

  There were, and still are, lots of little restaurants and cafés on the fringes, some even in secluded bits of woods. We never used any of them, but with the worsening of the Russian campaign, that feeling of emptiness grew because men and materiel were steadily being withdrawn to the east. The Nazis had also increased their demands for forced labour. Though the Service du Travail Obligatoire, the much-hated STO, didn’t officially come into being until February 1943, any man between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five could find life precarious. As a result, some took to the woods, and when we could, we helped those who wished to join the maquis, who were beginning to form in the mountains of the Auvergne and other places.

  Tommy and Nicki were constantly on the move. I don’t think they ever stayed anywhere for long. A night, a few hours, no more.

  Using the potting shed, Dmitry did, however, end up with me, and I came to like him less and less, for he tried hard to pump the location of the artwork out of me. I knew he must be working for Moscow, yet I couldn’t get word of this to Tommy and the others.

  Of Dupuis, I saw little, of Schiller, nothing. It was as if the lieutenant had vanished. Occasionally, Nini brought word of Jules and the Vuittons, as did Simone and André, so it was, for me, mainly a time of summer, of working in my gardens and fields. That first arms drop was, however, a total bust since the aircraft never even showed up, but then it happened, right out there on that plain among the farms and fields. Clateau had given me a lift in his van with three others. The Feldkommandant in Barbizon had a taste for horsemeat, and Clateau had talked him into providing the necessary papers for being out after curfew. Tobacco smoke filled the cab, but I was hooked on cigarettes anyway and had brought some I’d filched from my boarders, cognac, too, and of course I was just as excited as everyone else. Scared, too, who wouldn’t have been, but I liked the company of these simple men. It felt good to be with them. And when we got to the drop site, everyone listened intently and craned their necks to search the darkened skies until, finally, the engines of a Whitley were heard and that drone increased with a slowness that was agonizing, for we all knew the Boche could also be listening.

  Clateau flashed his torch on and off in sequences of three but no one could have seen it from up there, yet when the chutes started coming down, everyone started running after them. Step-ins, slips, a chemise, and a blouse were on my mind, for they were of such beautiful silk, those first chutes, and we had such luck that night. There were six canisters, but it wasn’t until we got them to the Poulins’ that they were opened. Mills grenades, blasting caps, sticks of Nobel 808, fuse, wires, and pistols, too: Webley .45s with fifty rounds each.

  Tucked in amongst everything else were chocolate bars, cigarettes, even tea and a fifth of brandy. Every space had been used, and we knew that the British didn’t have much themselves.

  A fortnight later, we met in the forester’s hut that nestles among the boulders on a rocky ledge not far below me. Even with the Germans insisting on the French constantly logging the forest, this hut had remained empty for years, just like the other one.

  There’s still no sign of Dupuis and Schiller nearby, but far out on that plain, a small dark car is parked at the side of the road and the glint from a pair of binoculars is clear enough, for even as I have remembered the location of this hut, so have they.

  Satisfied, I begin to pick my way down. The boards are weathered grey and someone has left the door slightly ajar, but are there trip wires?

  Feeling around it, I search. The latch is but a simple hook and eye. My fingers move up some more, reaching out a little now, for the roof’s low, but there’s still nothing. Have I been wrong about their having anticipated me and having been here recently? Have they not remembered that we also used this hut?

  Below me, the gully opens in ledges of rock, spills of boulders, and clumps of brush. Sparrows and finches are after seeds. I walk away, find a boulder, heft it as a cricketer might, and toss it at that door, knowing there won’t be time to duck, but nothing happens.

  With the muzzle of the Schmeisser, I ease it open since I need to get in there, to remember how it was. The table’s still here—there’s a ruin of splintered chairs. Bullet holes are everywhere, the one little window completely obliterated, but as if God had willed it, the soot-clouded glass of the lantern is perfect even though glass was really what it was all about on that first night we met here. Broken glass, and Schiller will know this.

  Paul Tessier lovingly held one of the time pencils. That badly disfigured face paused to search out each of us. ‘You crush the right colour, eh? It releases the measured amount of fulminate of mercury, which begins to eat its way through the wire. Thin for a fast delay; thick for a slow one, and very thick for much longer.’

  About one-third of the time pencil was colour-coded. Tiny phials of fulminate—the acid—encircled the wire whose thickness varied with the colour and its length. ‘Red means a delay of four-and-a-half hours. Violet …’ He traced the length of the stem. ‘Violet, mes amis, gives one of five-and-a-half days. Orange, yellow, green, and blue provide delays that are in between, so you squeeze the woman of your choice, break the cherry, let the acid flood out to contact the wire, and voilà! it eats its way through. The striker pin is then released and the detonator struck.’

  I ignored the chauvinistic inference. No one stirred. There was not a murmur. All eyes were riveted to those hands until a finger was held up. ‘But beware,’ he said. ‘These things are sensitive to heat and sudden shock. The glass is so thin you could easily kill yourselves, so I’m recommending you carry them like this.’

  He took off his beret and shoved the time pencil between the Croix de Guerre and the material beneath it. ‘Mind you don’t become too hotheaded, though. Heat speeds up the rate of reaction.’

  ‘Aren’t there shorter delays?’ asked one of the railwaymen from Melun.

  Paul was all gestures. ‘We’ll get them next time perhaps.’***

  ‘And the “plastic,”’ asked another.

  Tessier was firm with us. ‘For now, it’s the Nobel 808 and a much stronger stench of bitter almond, so don’t breathe in the fumes too long or your head will split.’

  The map was unrolled. Roads, towns, villages became clear in miniature. The Forest of Fontainebleau was like a green stain. Railways were simple lines of black with tiny crossing lines spaced at regular intervals. Two for a single; four for a double.

&
nbsp; ‘The line from Paris,’ said Nicki. ‘London wants us to hit it close to the city where it will hurt the most.’ He was now totally committed to the offensive. What fools we were. Every person who was in this hut that night is dead except for myself.

  London would only have shrugged at the loss, or shaken their heads and said, ‘What a pity.’

  More likely, still, they would have blamed our lack of security, not realizing that we took what precautions we could.

  ‘Villeneuve-Saint-Georges,’ said the taller of the two railwaymen. ‘The Port Courcel and the bridge, the roundhouse and the marshalling yards along the river.’

  These were just downstream of the town, but it was the little guy who objected. ‘That bridge is so heavily guarded they open up if you fart ten kilometres from it.’

  ‘So fart then. We simply shoot them,’ said the bigger one.

  It was Tommy who reminded them, ‘The whole idea is to do the job in secret and get away, that’s why the time pencils. We let the sabotage happen when they least expect it.’

  ‘We want to make them afraid of us,’ said Nicki. ‘Certainly, the damage is important, but so, too, is the psychological effect. Kill only if you must, and then quietly.’

  There were nods of agreement. ‘With a knife,’ said someone, and I realized it was Dmitry and that it might be to Moscow’s advantage if all but he were killed.

  The gully is still empty. There’s only the sound of the birds and the wind as it sweeps under the eaves to lift a tattered piece of roofing paper. Out over the plain, some of the fields lie fallow, others before the plow, while behind me the escarpments climb and I know I should get out of here before Schiller and Dupuis come, yet I can’t seem to leave, can’t stop wanting to remember the past.

  Tommy handed me his cigarette. Hurriedly, I took a drag and handed it back, but he was not there anymore, though I wanted to warn him of Dmitry.

  That supplier of false papers was waiting for me when I got to my bicycle. ‘Dmitry, I don’t think it’s wise for you to use the potting shed anymore. I’m sorry, but I must ask you not to come back with me. Tommy feels Schiller must be up to something.’

  ‘And what does Lutoslawski have to say about it?’

  ‘Nicki? The same, I think, but perhaps you should catch up with them and ask. If they okay it, then fine.’

  ‘Trust is basic to everything we do, madame. I’ve risked my life time and again.’

  ‘As have others, myself included. Look, it’s not safe, that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Then I’ll come with you and pick up my Luger.’

  ‘That’s not possible. I’ve already passed it on to one of the others.’

  He knew I was lying. I could hear him following and yet I kept on pushing that bike of mine through the darkness until his voice came at me again. ‘Moscow wishes me to inform them of the hiding place, madame. They would rather the Germans didn’t recover the stolen works of art since some of them belong to Russia.’

  Nicki’s things … He had grabbed my bike! Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. In panic, I tried to fight back but he was too strong. With a final yank, he threw me to the ground, and as I lay under him, I heard the sound he gave as his throat was cut.

  ‘Tommy had to be convinced,’ said Nicki as he helped me up, ‘but for myself, I’m sorry I had to use you the way I did.’

  Where once there had been a mound over the hasty grave, there’s now a shallow depression. I’m not sorry Dmitry’s dead, only saddened that it had to happen. There’s still no further sign of Schiller and Dupuis. The forest is as it was back then, and soon, all too soon, there’s the sound of train wheels in my head, and I feel myself rushing inevitably towards the abyss. My children were beside me, and we were on our way into Paris, me with two large hampers, hidden in each of which were a kilo of Nobel 808 wrapped in much decorated bread dough, two Webley service revolvers, and a packet of cartridges, and I knew it was suicidal to attempt that. Having flour, even the grey of the ‘National’ was one thing. I’d added onions and had sliced some of them and bulbs of garlic, too. Though it was always chancy bringing food into the city, it was the smell of the Nobel that terrified me.

  ‘Ihre Papiere, bitte. Ausweis und der Passierschein, ja? Schnell!’

  This Scharführer couldn’t seem to let go of my papers but I’d raise his rank anyways. ‘I must have a medical checkup, Herr General. I’m pregnant.’

  He didn’t give a bloody damn. ‘What’s in the baskets?’

  ‘Food, a few spare clothes, a little bedding for my children. Things I’ll need so that the people with whom we’re staying overnight won’t have to provide everything.’

  He still didn’t give a damn. ‘Their names?’

  ‘Dr. André de Verville and his wife, Simone.’ He got the address, too. This he carefully wrote down in a small notebook before closing up my papers and handing them back. He knew I’d said ‘people’ instead of ‘friends.’ He thought Jean-Guy might be Jewish—sometimes it was hard to tell. Marie was far more Aryan, and he lay the tip of a forefinger under her chin and asked, ‘Mein Kind, what’s really in those baskets?’

  ‘Bitte, Herr General, my daughter only knows a few words of Deutsch.’

  ‘Guns and bombs,’ said Marie en français. ‘That’s why I’ve brought my paints and paper.’

  I stammered something and tried to pass it off with a grin, but he slapped her face and shrieked: ‘I could have you shot for that!’

  The Gare de Lyon was crowded. Flics in blue capes with their leaded hems seemed everywhere, so, too, those in plain clothes, but somehow we got through, and soon the station was behind us.

  ‘Will we see Papa?’ asked Jean-Guy.

  ‘Of course. As soon as we get to Simone’s I’ll call him to tell him we’re here.’

  ‘Are you really pregnant, maman?’

  It was Marie who asked and I couldn’t lie to her. ‘Oui. Is it such a bad thing, Jean-Guy?’

  ‘Only if you don’t know who the father is.’

  ‘Hey listen you, it’s Tommy’s, and you’d better not say anything about it for all our sakes.’

  Marie looked up at me. There was such innocence in her eyes. ‘Will Dr. André help you to get rid of it?’

  I shook my head, and she heaved a contented sigh and locked her arms more firmly about the handle of the basket. ‘Then I will help you and we’ll have a baby brother for Jean-Guy and me to play with.’

  Paris in the late autumn of 1942 was, if anything, shabbier than before. Oh, for sure, everything was wide open for the Nazis and those that were with them, but there were the beginnings of doubt even amongst the most ardent of collaborators. On 8 November, the Allies had landed en masse in Algeria and Morocco, on the 11th, the Wehrmacht, in retaliation, had ended the existence of the zone libre by taking over the whole of France, but were being held up at Stalingrad. If the winter should be particularly harsh, they might be stopped, even turned back, and the Allies were determined. Everyone knew there would be an invasion, but when?

  Sometimes we’d hear the RAF going over to bomb targets deep in the Reich, or they’d come closer to home to hit the Renault Works in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris. I remember being with André and Simone in that flat of theirs and watching. I remember so many things but what was it about the rue Mouffetard that made me so edgy? I’d left the children and the things I’d brought with Simone. Marcel was to pick up the Nobel 808 and the guns later when he came for me. Normally, there was a street market every Sunday morning, and there was one that day, but it didn’t seem right. Lots of people milling about, not a lot for sale, but it was as if everyone in that street sensed that something terrible was going to happen.

  The street climbed steeply. It was narrow, paved with blocks of stone, and you got that lovely closed-in feeling of a village and its market. The grey and pale-green of slate and copper roofs were often four or five storeys up to attic garrets and but a jumble, since some of the houses were very old. Innumerable chimney pots
reached for the sky, the windows shuttered or open, but no balconies. Shops lined the street. Basically, it was a nation of small shopkeepers, but many were down on their luck.

  I hurried along but kept asking myself what could be wrong? Me, I felt it, you understand, and at a point, one hundred metres from the courtyard that led to my sister’s flat, I foolishly broke into a run, someone immediately yelling, ‘Halt, verfluchte Französin!’ as another shouts, ‘Hände hoch!’

  I tripped, fell, banged my knees, and tore my only pair of stockings, but found that the courtyard door was locked. I shouted at it, nearly breaking my fists while down the street, people turned to watch. ‘JANINE, LET ME IN!’

  Throwing a shoulder against that door, I yelled for her again. Suddenly, it was flung open, and as some boys leaped aside, I ran the length of that courtyard and darted into the open doorway. The concierge looked out from her loge and started to object, but the Himalayas of those stairs were almost more than I can manage. One flight, two flights, round and round, me knowing they were after me now, that they wouldn’t stop until they had me, and never mind the child that was inside me. I had to get to Nini before they did, but there was no one in her room, and my heart was hammering so hard it was going to burst.

  The washroom was at the far end of the corridor, and I made a bolt for it, had to hide, but knew it was of no use, for the mirror was still there on that wall in its cheap frame, cracked like all such mirrors, and I saw myself breathlessly saying, ‘Nini … chérie, it’s finished for us!’

  That door opened. ‘Lily, what’s the matter?’

  ‘The street. The Boche. There were none of them until I began to run.’

  There, I’ve confessed that, too. I broke. I panicked.

  She grabbed me by the hand, and we raced back to that room of hers. Parting the cheap lace curtains, she glanced down at the street and said only, ‘We’ll have to go over the top.’