Flame of Resistance

by Tracy Groot

  “Stop looking around,” Rafael said.

  They waited in a busy market area, moving around when Rafael got nervous. They were to meet the gentleman he’d met the day he was shot down, François Rousseau. The man was going to pick them up in an automobile, a vehicle commissioned for his cement factory by the Wehrmacht. It was decided not to take the train to Caen. It was too risky since they had not been able to get false identification for Tom. He was far too Nordic for any photographs they had available, a problem they’d never had before.

  He put his hands in his pockets, and Rafael told him to take them out.

  “You will kill us both,” he hissed. “I’ve never escorted someone who looks like he should be escorting me—to Gestapo headquarters. See how everyone stares? See the woman over there, in the beauty shop? The mean-looking vache looking right at us? She doesn’t know what to make of you.”

  Tom felt like a different person, getting a look like that. Though it was a glance quickly subdued when she found Tom looking back, it was one of unveiled hatred. Though he knew better, he felt it personally.

  “We’re on the same side, lady,” he muttered.

  It could have been his keyed-up imagination, but as he surreptitiously studied this French neighborhood, he could feel the tension as palpably as the shoes he stood in. Everybody constantly watched everybody else, openly or with quick, thorough glances. The group of men putting in a storefront window, the man selling newspapers, the woman in the beauty shop across the street, who watched more obviously than the others outside, thinking perhaps the window offered less scrutiny of herself—everyone watched everyone.

  “Feels strange here,” he murmured. “I’m standing in the street at the O.K. Corral.” Any minute Clemmie would appear with her waist guns.

  “Hurry up, Monsieur Rousseau,” Rafael said under his breath. He glanced at Tom. “Will you stop staring at everything?”

  “It’s what everyone else is doing. What’s that?” Tom couldn’t help gazing at a metal boxlike contraption affixed to the grille of a truck, which drove slowly past. Holes at the top of the box showed glowing embers below.

  Rafael growled between his teeth, then muttered something in French. He took out a pack of cigarettes—Tom’s cigarettes—and lit up. “The Germans take all the gasoline. We burn wood and coal to run the cars.”

  “You’re kidding. How does it work?”

  “The engines are adapted. Burned coal makes a by-product that goes in the carburetor. The result is rubbish. The engines have no guts.”

  Tom just barely kept himself from whistling, something Rafael had all but clubbed him for not five minutes earlier. “So this is the embargo on Spain. I wanna get back just to tell the higher-ups it’s working.” France could no longer get gasoline from Spain, with the embargo on fuel that Congress had slapped on it. Strange to see things he’d only half listened to in action. “Pretty ingenious. Run your car and have a barbeque at the same time.”

  “I do not know barbeque, but it is a pain in your keister. The engines do not run well, and you must forever stop to stir the coal or wood. The worst is this: whatever they burn to run trains and cars is not burned to heat homes. France is very cold, mon ami. And no one cares. They don’t care if we freeze or starve.”

  “I care,” Tom muttered, low enough so Rafael could not hear.

  “What if Canada wanted Michigan, hmm? And came and took it? What if all this, in your Jenison—this suspicion, this fear, this hunger? What if Canada turns your Jenison into such a place? Canada steals your food, your gasoline, your men to fight their war or work in their factories . . . what would you do?”

  “Same thing I’m doing now.”

  Rafael nodded grimly. “You would resist. You would be incompatible. You would fight to turn things back to the way they were, even if those things were not perfect. You would know they were far better than this. And you would come to love your country, though you did not love it before, or did not know you did.” Relief came to his voice. “Merci Dieu, here he is.”

  Michel slumped at his desk, his father’s copy of Mein Kampf in front of him. He idled with a corner of it, riffling the edge over and over.

  He was supposed to be working on a new gallery design for Braun, who was planning a subterranean command post in Fontaine-la-Mallet, not unlike the one recently completed in Caen for General Richter. He wondered why Braun didn’t simply duplicate the Caen design. The Todt Organization typically showed its efficiency in endless duplication of what worked the first time, from bunkers to radar stations.

  This particular edition of Mein Kampf was the Volksausgabe, the people’s edition. It contained both volumes. It was navy blue, no dust jacket, a gold swastika embossed on the cover. It was in German, of course. Michel wasn’t sure whether it had been translated into French. Not that he wanted it in his native tongue.

  Father had been a scholar at heart, and he’d left the running of the business to François once he was back from university. Michel was no scholar, nor did he have any interest in business, family or otherwise. He’d wanted to be an artist of some sort: an actor, a poet, a novelist, maybe all three. He reluctantly fell in at the Cimenterie to make money to fund his dreams. Somehow, he’d never left. Somewhere along the way, he stopped wanting to leave.

  When Hitler came to full power, what had been merely another dusted book became Father’s companion. While Michel sat at the desk, directing Charlotte, experimenting with new designs for casting and composites, reviewing production and labor reports with François, he’d often hear the mutterings on the other side of the room fan to full-blown diatribe. This he did for the benefit of his sons, Michel privately thought, and it annoyed the sons to distraction.

  “Mon Dieu! I give up, I tell you. How did this shoddy workmanship make it to print? A work of art, they tell me? Ha! Some work of art! The portrait is nearly as disgraceful as the frame! The grammar, the phraseology . . . his style sickens me. If I must read heresy, for heaven’s sake, let it be well-written heresy. I hate him all the more because he wrote his puke so poorly.”

  Father would snatch off his reading glasses in theatrical display of his contempt, and, protestations to give up notwithstanding, presently replace the glasses in the slow, haughty protest of a thinking man subjected to such a book.

  Michel smiled a little. For all the times Father declared he was giving up on it, he never did. He’d read every word. Now the book was Michel’s, and the going was hard. He glanced at the bookmark placement; he was only one-third through.

  His thumb riffled the edges of the pages again. Hitler’s deeds began to match his writings. One man. One wrath. What an absurd horror that Hitler had pulled off all he had so far. One man, and he got thousands to fall in behind—this, the centerpiece horror.

  He thought of her at times like these, when all he could think of was escape. The last time he’d seen her as herself, before the Nazis got to her, it was here in this room. She had spoken things he had not known, things he never dared hope for.

  She and Charlotte had stood in the doorway to his office, in hushed consultation, occasional looks thrown his way. He tossed down his pen.

  “Feminine collaboration,” he remarked dryly. “What is it this time? A blanket drive for the POWs? Let’s see. We already have boxes at the plants for your book drive, your clothing drive, and your soap drive. Any more boxes and . . .”

  But they ignored him. Charlotte whispered something emphatic to Jasmine; Jasmine whispered emphatically back, complete with arms-flung gestures. Charlotte folded her arms, lifted an eyebrow, and with a tiny move of her head, indicated that Jasmine should go in. At that point, Michel got a funny little flutter in his stomach. He suddenly wished there was another exit.

  Jasmine set her shoulders, turned from Charlotte, and came into the room. Charlotte, with a long, unreadable look at Michel, slowly closed the door.

  At that point, Michel began to perspire.

  He rose a little more hastily than intended and starte
d for Father’s end of the room, until he saw that was where she was headed, too. He detoured for the windows, made it look like that was where he intended to go all along. He pulled out a pocketknife. He began to chip at a sealed window casement. “This paint . . . it welded the window shut . . .”

  She came beside him. She slipped the pocketknife from his hands and set it on the windowsill. She’d never stood so close to him. Her nearness spiked his heart rate.

  “I would say that it is time for us to stop fooling ourselves,” she said, gazing up at him while he gazed helplessly back. “Charlotte says it is time for you to stop.”

  “Jasmine,” he protested gently. “You know I cannot afford to—I run a—large . . .” He was terrified. He couldn’t think straight. It couldn’t all break down now. He had been strong for so long, enduring all the times he had to send Rafael and Jasmine on assignments as a couple, wondering, heartsick, if they would become a couple. “I run Flame. And a business. And I have to—fix this window . . .” She was looking into his eyes as she had never looked before, and he lost speech.

  Finally he said, quietly, “Don’t do this to me.”

  She smiled at last, joy lighting her face. “So charming and humble with Braun. So deferential with the Milice. So complying with French officials. They all think they have you in their pocket, when you have them in yours. And all it takes to shake your composure is just an ordinary girl.”

  “You were never ordinary,” he whispered.

  “I will tell you when I fell in love with you. We were going over a mission to raid the commissioner’s office for ration books. And Wilkie was quiet. It was when his sister and her husband were sent to Neuengamme. Everyone knew they would be executed. Such despair was upon him . . .” Jasmine’s green eyes brightened with tears. “And when you finished the details of the mission, you looked straight at him and said, so commanding, ‘You are not powerless.’ You held up a ration book, and it was then, Michel; that was the moment.”

  Michel touched her cheek. She caught his hand.

  “You told him he had to do something, anything—it didn’t matter what it was. You shook that little booklet like it was a ticket to freedom, and you said, ‘Any act, however humble or bold, will strike at the same evil that holds your sister in her cell.’ You said if to defy evil were to simply stand in front of it, you would do it. Wilkie changed after that; do you remember? You gave him courage.”

  She kissed the hand she held. “You taught us not that we should fight evil, but that we could. You taught us not to do something, but anything. You taught us that the smallest action raised against wrong has dignity, how in raising a hand to save, we are saved. Michel—you taught us what it means to resist.”

  “You’re teaching me not to,” he said, eyes traveling her face.

  She smiled. “Charlotte won’t open the door even for Braun.”

  And because he was weak, or maybe because he was finally strong, he pulled her close, lips barely touching, and hesitated for a long moment, giving himself one last chance to push her away. Then he kissed her.

  He buried his face in her neck and held her close. Someone to share the monstrous burden, someone to share the fear. Even if he never spoke a word. In that moment, he was no longer alone. In that moment, he was no longer one.

  And now he was one. And now he was alone. He would be alone for the rest of his life, whether in chains, whether free.

  “I remember when your father read it,” came Charlotte’s soft voice. Her eyes were on his thumb, riffling the edge of Mein Kampf. “How he adored reading that book.” Any rare reference to his father was always in soft tones. “I don’t think anything gave him greater pleasure.”

  “Pleasure?” His thumb stopped. “Hardly. He hated it.”

  “Did you ever see him more alive?” Charlotte sat in the seat across the desk. In living memory, she had never done that. She had worked for the Rousseau Cimenterie since he was a boy, over thirty years, and if she ever sat in the office, it was in the tiny fold-up chair she pulled over from the corner.

  He pushed the book aside. He did not change his position, however; he remained in his lackadaisical slump, another action that had not occurred in living memory. Not in front of Charlotte.

  The look on her face was one he had not seen directed at himself. That motherly anxiety had belonged to his father. Charlotte took care of him until he died in ’39.

  “Do you like your job, Charlotte?” he suddenly wondered aloud.

  The question startled her. She began to rise.

  “No, no!” Michel said quickly, motioning her to stay put. “Oh—please, that’s not what I meant.”

  “I like my job,” she said a bit warily, easing back in place.

  “Good,” Michel said. “Good. You do it well. Always have. I don’t think I tell you enough. It should be said.” Posture restored, his hands sought small details on his desk. He aligned Mein Kampf with the desk blotter, he repositioned Rafael’s favorite paperweight. “Is anything on your mind?”

  “Yes. I don’t want you to read that anymore.” She looked at Mein Kampf as if it were about to sprout hairy black legs and scuttle off the desk.

  Good, forthright Charlotte. He firmly resisted a smile. “Why not?”

  “I see what it does to you. It does the opposite of what it did to your father.”

  “I’m not my father.”

  “No, Monsieur Rousseau. You are not.” It was carefully said, and he couldn’t guess at what she meant. Her steady gaze gave nothing away.

  “Why do you suppose it did that to him?” he said, forgetting himself, wondering aloud again. His hand sought the edge of the book, and his thumb resumed riffling. “It made him angry. It doesn’t do that to me.”

  “I wish it would.”

  “It is a cheat, you see. I have a fair amount of trust when I sit down to read a book. Some pact with the author, I suppose, a pact I didn’t realize existed until this book. With this the mind tries, as it normally does, to latch on to something. There is nothing to latch on to—not quite, not quite, and circling for it doesn’t find it. No place to rest. No pact. It is maddening. It makes me uneasy. It makes me—I feel like a caged animal when I read it.”

  “Then why do you read it?” she asked.

  The question surprised him. “Same as my father. I am a leader, a businessman. I am responsible to know the truth of my times.”

  “You are quite right, Monsieur Rousseau.” Charlotte rose, looking down on him with that steadfast gaze. “I have decided you know enough.” She picked up the large book with both hands, tucked it under her arm, and left the room.

  A few moments later Michel realized he was still staring at the door.

  He noticed a few sketches on his desk, a few photos of the Caen underground post, a list of Braun’s ideas for the new one. He touched a photograph.

  He took his pencil and sharpened it. He looked in his coffee cup and wished for more coffee. Then he went to work.

  An hour later he looked up into the face of a young man for whom Hitler would have shaved his mustache—an immense, blond-haired, blue-eyed German Viking. He put his pencil down, sat back in his chair, and thought for the first time since he’d heard it that perhaps François’s scheme wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  “No wonder you couldn’t find a photo,” Michel said.

  “Monsieur Rousseau,” Rafael said proudly, “I give you First Lieutenant Tom Jaeger. United States Army Air Forces. He flies the new plane. The P-47.”

  “Not so new.” Tom Jaeger shrugged. “She’s been around for a while.”

  Michel rose and put out his hand. “I confess, my instinct is to hide my Jews.”

  The Viking laughed with a trace of surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to find humor behind enemy lines.

  “That was a joke,” Michel assured, smiling himself. “Charlotte doesn’t think it funny. When things get too German, we say, ‘Quick, hide your Jews.’” He looked at Rafael. “I’m sorry I doubted you about n
ot needing a photograph. He is far too distinctive. No other likeness but his own will do. It is not just his face, but the force of his presence.” His focus went back to the blond monstrosity, where it couldn’t help but go. “The kind of attention he will receive means the documents must be flawless. We will make immediate arrangements for a photograph.”

  “Shall I contact Wilkie?” Rafael asked.

  “Who is Wilkie?” Tom said.

  “He is a member of Flame,” Michel answered. “By day he works with his father at a clothing store, by night he operates our transmitter—and performs other magic tricks, like producing hydroquinone in the middle of an occupation. Only God knows where he will get it.” To Rafael, he said, “He’ll be dropping by soon. Have him meet us at my apartment tonight. Where is my brother?”

  “Talking with Charlotte.”

  “How hard is it to get a photograph taken?” Tom asked, glancing from Rafael to Michel.

  “We must not only be sure we have the right film, we must develop it ourselves. We have the film, but getting the right chemicals is difficult. Some we can order through the Cimenterie, and it arouses no suspicion—sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, easy enough. Hydroquinone is another story. The censors would flag it. Everything is black market, my friend. Anything you really want.” Michel sniffed. The man smelled awful. His odor certainly didn’t match his looks.

  “It isn’t me. It’s these clothes,” Tom said, frowning at Rafael.

  “The pig farmer was the only man close to your size,” Rafael said, openly amused. “You would stand out even more if your pants came to your knees. Quit complaining. They don’t smell as bad as they could; there aren’t any pigs anymore.”

  “Magnificent, isn’t he?” François came into the room, arms stretched forth in triumph. “A resplendent example of Hitlery.” He stood next to Tom, beaming at him. He then called attention to various attributes; he might have had a pointing stick. “Attendez: This chin. This jaw. This eye color, to say nothing of this height; is he not perfect? Et voilà, attendez—the swelling, gone from his face, the bruise near the cut, diminished. Behold, the Lohengrin of the chancellor’s dreams, the one for whom Wagner surely wrote his opera.”