The Indigo Rebels: A French Resistance novel

by Ellie Midwood

  “I hope so.” Giselle glanced back at the door before asking, “How are our guests?”

  “Given the situation – they’re fine. Would you like to pay them a visit?”

  Giselle agreed eagerly, and Michel proceeded to open the door for her, not forgetting to lock the office after following her into the corridor, filled with the unceasing buzz of typing machines.

  “Write down a message for me if someone calls,” Michel instructed his secretary. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Oui, Monsieur Demarche.”

  He grudgingly agreed to take the stairs instead of waiting for the ancient elevator, which he knew Giselle detested with all her might, especially when it was crammed with people like it always was during the day. Nodding his greeting to the man with the formidable mustache who was guarding the entrance leading downstairs, Michel inquired about his wife’s knee that she had unfortunately broken a few weeks ago, tsked several times sympathetically, and patted the man’s shoulder, insisting that the man should immediately let him know if Madame needed anything. Michel Demarche prided himself in knowing all of his employees by name, no matter if they were successful novelists or simple janitors, and treated everyone with equal respect, thus ensuring not only the most welcoming of working atmospheres but the employees’ undisputable loyalty. The latter they needed the most now, Giselle thought to herself, descending the stairs after Michel.

  “Mademoiselle Legrand presented me with something utterly remarkable today,” he said to the guard, before heading downstairs. “I think such fine writing calls for an equally fine bottle of wine.”

  The building itself, which Michel had renovated right after purchasing, dated back to the eighteenth century, and, just like most buildings of that era, had the most impressive underground chambers, corridors and secret passages, one of them even leading as far as the Catacombs of Paris. Rumor had it that the original owner was a Huguenot preacher in hiding, who made it his mission to hide and transport to freedom the arrested congregants of his faith. Two hundred years had passed, and now Michel Demarche was hiding Resistance members while managing his little press enterprise from the same basement. The French and their love for free spirit and defiance will never change, Giselle thought, with the somewhat conceited pride of a typical Frenchwoman.

  Michel headed further into the catacombs, as Giselle mockingly called the underground system under the building, passed the wooden door leading to the wine storage and confidently turned corner after corner, easily navigating his way in the labyrinth of corridors. At last, when Giselle found herself to be completely and truly lost, Michel came to a sudden halt at one of the doors and knocked in a certain pattern, before fitting a skeleton key into the lock.

  “Your friends are armed,” he explained in regards to his precautionary measures.

  “I know. By now I am used to their leader meeting me with a gun aiming at my chest,” she replied, not trying to conceal her irony.

  Michel pushed the thick iron door open with visible effort, and Giselle scrunched her nose at the smell of mold and humid air, which was even more pronounced here than in the corridor. All four men – Marcel, Philippe, Pierre and his brother Jerome – rose from their seats, which they had occupied around a small wooden table which was covered with the remains of their lunch.

  “Giselle.” Marcel rushed to embrace his sister, positively beaming. “I never got the chance to thank you.”

  “I did nothing,” she replied with the same radiant smile. “Thank your friends over there.”

  She nodded at Philippe, who responded with a nod which looked slightly awkward.

  “I see you’re feeding them here quite well,” Giselle addressed Michel, who stood behind looking out of place, not only among the poorly dressed men but also in the general environment with its bare, stone walls and scarce furniture.

  “I hardly bring them anything,” he confessed. “These enterprising gentlemen correctly pointed out to me that carrying sacks of food to work daily, would raise suspicion and reassured me that they had no trouble walking to the Catacombs, where a lot of Black Market sellers operate. I only give them money, and they take care of themselves.”

  Giselle removed her gloves and pinched her brother’s unshaven cheek affectionately.

  “I’m so glad that you’re safe and sound.”

  “Me, too. I admit I was ready to say my farewells to life in that prison.” Marcel took his sister’s hands in his and noticed a ring on one of her fingers where he had never seen any rings before. “What is this?”

  “An import from Germany.” Giselle smirked.

  A long, pregnant pause followed.

  “Are you saying…You’re engaged? To him?” Marcel whispered, refusing to believe his own eyes. But the ring was there, golden and very real, with two rubies in an intricate setting.

  “I suppose I am.” She shrugged with almost infuriating carelessness.

  Philippe, who was also scrutinizing Giselle’s hand from behind Marcel’s shoulder, spoke with sudden emotion, “How could you agree to something like this?!”

  Giselle arched her brow, surprised with the reaction which was even stronger than her brother’s, but only waved it off dismissively, with the same smirk in place.

  “You see, he didn’t particularly ask me.”

  In meaningful, accusing silence, she raked her memory for the events, which followed that memorable night of Marcel’s escape.

  Karl was strangely quiet on the way home, only asked her what she was doing with Hartmann’s orderly. After she had presented him with a long ago prepared story about meeting Horst incidentally in the street, from where the damned terrorists kidnapped them, he only nodded, and the car was once again immersed in silence. The silence disturbed Giselle much more than accusations and reprimands would have, which she, frankly speaking, had been expecting.

  As soon as they stepped through the doors of her apartment, he proceeded to the bathroom and drew a hot bath, almost ordering Giselle to get undressed and get into it despite her protests.

  “You were sitting on the frozen ground for over twenty minutes before they found you,” he said, with an edge of authority that was not meant to be questioned. “For women, it’s especially dangerous. Didn’t your mother warn you against sitting on stones?”

  “She warned me against everything, but I never listened,” Giselle grumbled, lowering herself into the almost painfully hot water.

  Karl took his uniform jacket off, rolled up his sleeves and sat on the edge of the tub, rubbing her shoulders with a washcloth with the look of a doctor treating his patient.

  It seemed almost surreal to her, this whole scene that was unraveling in front of her eyes: him, suddenly so concerned about her well-being, and this strange feeling of intimacy, stemming from the very fingertips of the man who was everything but naturally gentle and caring.

  “What is it with you tonight?” Giselle caught herself smiling against her better judgment.

  The impenetrable mask of his cold, handsome face remained intact. “I told you that I couldn’t have you sick.”

  “Why the sudden concern on my account?”

  “You didn’t think I cared about you?” He replied in the same emotionless tone that he always used. It was his hands that were warmer than his voice, sending strange, relaxing waves of pleasure through her body, even though he was treating her with the mindset of a therapist, not a lover.

  “I didn’t think you would choose me over your prisoner,” she admitted at last.

  Karl didn’t bother with a reply and only proceeded to rub her forearms and chest in practiced, precise motions, relaxing her tense muscles.

  “Why did you do it? Ordered his release, I mean?” Giselle pressed, in dire need to hear his reply for some reason.

  He indulged her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His smiles never did actually. He just didn’t know how to smile it seemed, in the way that most other people did.

  “What if I told you that I
had fallen deeply and irreversibly in love with you?”

  She snorted, rolling her eyes.

  “I’d call you a liar and demand the real reason.”

  “You don’t think I love you?”

  “Karl, we both know perfectly well that you don’t. You are incapable of loving. Just like I am.”

  He paused for a moment, scrutinizing her eyes, and then renewed his cleaning motions.

  “You’re right. That’s what attracts me to you. You think with your head, not with your heart, and it’s a sign of superior intellect. We are intellectual beings; we aren’t meant to be driven by instincts, as Darwin correctly stated in his works. You and I are representatives of such intellectual beings. We stand higher on the steps of evolution than those who aren’t capable of controlling their urges. I worried about you at first; you seemed a little hot-headed to me with your defiance, but then I realized that it wasn’t due to your temperament. You were simply fighting for your territory, that I took over as you thought, but as soon as you understood my motives and accepted me as your equal – you recognized the same nature in me that you possess. Then, you calmed down and became the partner I would like to have by my side. I decided that I would like to have you as my wife, Giselle.”

  She burst into a fit of chuckles.

  “You’re asking for my hand in marriage then? In a most romantic way, too, I should note.”

  “I’m not asking you. It’s only logical, and you should see my reasoning behind it. Our union will benefit not only us personally but the strengthening of the relationship between our countries as well. You’re a renowned novelist, and I’m the chief of the Gestapo in Paris. The union will show that we can coexist and cooperate on more levels than one.”

  “Isn’t it illegal? Relationships between the occupying forces and the local population?” Giselle was observing him with a sense of amusement.

  “For now it is. However, there can be exceptions in certain cases. I have already spoken to Reichsführer Himmler about the prospect of our marriage, and he found it to be a brilliant idea as well. After all, his Chief of the Intelligence Schellenberg married a woman of Polish descent. Surely, Himmler favors someone of French descent much better.”

  “Ah! So, you’ve not only thought everything through, but you’ve also weighed all the options, counted all pros and cons, and even asked your superior to marry me. Shouldn’t you have gone down on your knee at some point and given me a ring? Or have I fallen behind the times, and that’s not how it’s done anymore?”

  The irony was not lost on him, but Karl didn’t seem to care to be offended by it.

  “You’re not a romantic type of a person, Giselle. Hence, I preferred to speak to you like to an equal partner, not some damsel from a cheap romance book that you find so distasteful – I remember you saying it yourself.” He grinned, once again with his mouth only. “As for the ring, I have one that I bought after I got permission from Reichsführer. I wanted to give it to you on Christmas, but since we’ve started this conversation, I might as well give it to you now.”

  Giselle gave in to the soothing touch of his skillful hands as he shifted closer to the other end of the tub and started rubbing her feet, placing her heels on top of his uniform trousers. A sudden sense of disappointment filled her, the same type she would have experienced if she’d found out that a beautiful flower that she admired in someone’s window was fake. That’s exactly what he was, now she was sure of it, the last of her doubts disappearing together with the pain from her aching feet – he was a beautiful, almost breathtaking masterpiece of a man, in which some higher power forgot to put a soul.

  Or maybe his highly praised Darwin was right, and they were representatives of a new, evolved species: utter nihilists, perceiving the outside world through the prism of a carefully organized thinking process and not through emotion like others used? But was he also right in his assumption that she was just like him, a cold-hearted creature who only acted out of rational thinking, and never with her heart? Didn’t her father tell her that she was far too cynical for her age? Too calculated, too devoid of morals and principles, too practical and unable to understand that she could hurt people around her with that coldness… Could Karl truly see through her with the same eyes that she saw the world with, and recognize a kindred spirit in her? A partner… He didn’t even make it sound like a marriage, but like a partnership, profitable for both sides. And the worst part about all that was the fact that for some reason she wasn’t offended by his words, but had instead started weighing them in her mind, processing, calculating…

  “So you aren’t married after all,” she said, just to say something, just to stop her mind from the constant processing.

  “I told you before that I wasn’t.” He frowned slightly as if confused by her words.

  “Well… I thought you might have been lying.”

  “Why would I?”

  “Why did you never marry before?” she asked, following his practiced motions with her gaze.

  “I was married. I divorced my wife two years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “She couldn’t have children.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be. You and I are going to produce the finest offspring that can be desired. Just imagine how brilliant our children will be, combining the genes from both of us.”

  “How do you know that I will be able to produce offspring?” Giselle inquired, with amusement at how certain he was on account of their future. “Maybe I also won’t be able to have children?”

  “I thoroughly checked your medical history before deciding on our marriage.” He seemed to have an answer for everything. “You have had three abortions, according to your medical history. Abortions, not miscarriages. Not the best scenario, to be truthful, for it can cause some problems along the way due to the scarring of the tissue, but nothing drastic. I’ll just monitor you closely, and you’ll have the easiest pregnancy, I can guarantee it.”

  “Good to hear,” Giselle mumbled, deep in her thoughts.

  “We will raise our children in Germany, of course. I don’t want any of that free-spirited French influence clouding their minds. Don’t take it personally, but you could see for yourself through that escaped terrorist’s example the damaging effect this influence can produce.”

  Giselle regarded Karl for some time before finally asking the question that had been nagging at the back of her mind since she’d met him. “Why do you hate French people so much?”

  “I don’t hate them.” He carefully tried to feign indifference, but Giselle detected barely concealed emotion in his tone.

  “Yes, you do,” she pressed in a mild voice. “You even prohibit people from addressing you as ‘Monsieur.’ You can’t stand anything French. Except for me, I suppose.”

  “You’re different.”

  “That’s not an answer to my question.”

  “I have my reasons for it.” Karl jerked his shoulder irritably.

  “Still not an answer.”

  Karl gave her a pointed glare, went silent for a few long moments, and uttered at last, “Because of what they did to my family after the Great War, your highly praised compatriots.”

  “The soldiers?”

  “Yes.” He swallowed with difficulty, escaping Giselle’s inquiring gaze. “Our house was in Alsace. My family settled there after the Franco-Prussian War, and, therefore, after the Treaty of Versailles had been signed in 1919, they were proclaimed to be ‘enemy aliens,’ unlike the French citizens or descendants of the French citizens, and we became subjects for forced deportation back to Germany. Only, the soldiers that came to our house to carry out these orders thought it would be amusing to physically throw us out in the street. My father was still a prisoner of war somewhere in the South, and I was only thirteen and far too young to protect my mother and siblings. They threw her down the stairs; thankfully she only suffered a couple of bruises, just as I did. However, my five-year-old sister and seven-year-old brother wer
en’t so lucky. They threw them out of the window of the third floor.”

  Giselle gasped involuntarily, appalled by such atrocious treatment of innocent children. War made many men mad, but this was sheer bestiality even to her, who wasn’t sensitive by any means.

  “Did they die?” she whispered, noting how her voice faltered.

  “Gretl did. The cobbled road on which she fell fractured her skull.” Karl’s unblinking gaze was full of long-forgotten emotions still brewing deep inside. “Friedrich, my little Fritz, was a bit more fortunate. He only broke his spine. Or maybe, not so fortunate after all... Such a lively, active boy, paralyzed from the neck down.”

  “I’m sorry,” Giselle murmured, reaching for Karl’s hand that was resting on top of her leg. He didn’t remove it from under hers, much to her surprise. “Is that why you decided to become a neurosurgeon? To help your little brother?”

  A scowl creased his forehead at the distasteful sentimentality of her words. A painful revelation flashed in Giselle’s mind at how stubbornly this man detested every weakness of the human heart, even though in this case emotion was more than justified.

  “Ja,” he admitted at last, though with visible reluctance. “I thought I would make him walk again.”

  “Well?” Giselle encouraged Karl when he became immersed into his memories once again. “Did you?”

  “Nein.” He slowly shook his head. “I graduated top of my class. I assisted the best Swiss surgeon, a true innovator in his field, while working in my practice. I did become an excellent surgeon eventually, yes. My success rate was almost ninety percent, and this is taking into consideration that spinal and brain surgery was such a new, barely studied field with few rare specialists working in it... I practiced for several years on others before putting Fritz on my operating table. I was sure of my success prior to the operation... And yet, he died. He died under my knife. I did everything right; it wasn’t my mistake. It couldn’t have been!”

  Karl inhaled a full chest of air, bringing his emotions under control. Then he whispered, seemingly calm once again, “I never make mistakes.”