By the last day of Overbeck’s trial, Preiss himself was finally on the wrong side of the bars. Auburn was called back to the witness stand three times to clarify points of evidence. The prosecutor kept forgetting and calling him “Sergeant,” even though for this court appearance he was in uniform, which now included a brand-new set of lieutenant’s bars.
Copyright © 2012 John H. Dirckx
Previous Article
Next Article
Previous Article
DEPARTMENTS
FICTION
MARKET DAY
KENNETH WISHNIA
It was market day, and the streets were alive with hawkers of cheese, fruit, and even a few cuts of meat. The sky was clear and bright.
Karl Hoffmann stuffed the papers in a leather pouch and snapped it shut. Tiny dust particles swirled around him as the gray light filtered down through the floorboards above. He tried to button his shirt, but his hands were clammy and the buttons were thin and brittle. After all, the shirt had once belonged to someone with much smaller hands.
His wife Sofia reminded him there was still sweetness in the world when she took his hands in hers, warming them with her touch, and completed the delicate task of buttoning up his shirt.
He held her close, breathing in the scent of her hair along with the musty odor of damp cement that permeated their underground hiding place. He was still amazed by the strength that his young bride had shown during the past few months, doing everything possible to keep the two of them together while carrying their future child.
He wanted to hold her all day long and never let go, but the Dominican Father, l’Abbé Chalumeau, had come by that morning with more than the usual package of books concealed beneath the folds of his cassock so that the Hoffmanns would have something to read during the long daylight hours.
“I don’t mind the Flaubert and Appolinaire, but must you read Zola?” said the Father, complaining about Karl’s preference for a series of novels by that author, who was known for his fiercely anticlerical stances. They had chuckled over it for a moment, then the Abbé handed Karl the thick envelope and told him he had to take it to Madame Decroux’s place immediately, even though it was the middle of day and the sun was shining.
Less than twenty minutes later he was kissing Sofia goodbye and climbing the steps to the alley. As he was unlocking the bicycle, Madame Crenier stuck her head out the kitchen window.
“Monsieur Duffau!” she whispered hoarsely. “What are you doing out at this hour?”
He was carrying false papers that said his name was Georges Duffau, who lived at 33, Rue Diderot, Clermont-Ferrand.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It must be an emergency of some kind.”
“Well, be careful. I hear les poulets are going door-to-door asking a lot of questions.”
Just as long as they’re not getting any answers, thought Karl.
“Yes, I’ll be careful. Thanks for looking out for us,” he told her. Madame Crenier was much more than their landlady.
Karl swung his leg over the bicycle and pedaled away. He kept to the main streets because the side streets were crawling with patrols that were turning the factory workers’ neighborhoods upside-down searching for something or someone.
The last time there was a general roundup, their contacts had warned them in time and they were able to flee to the woods and hide out for a few days. But the next time?
Karl and Sofia had both heard the plane flying low over the city the night before. They knew it was one of theirs because they heard the Germans shooting at it. It must have been dropping supplies—tools, explosives, medicine—anything that supported the Resistance.
And now les poulets were scouring the city, looking for any kind of contraband, including books.
Madame Hermine, the fruit seller, scowled at Karl as he pedaled by, perhaps because Sofia always picked over her perfectly stacked pyramids of apples and plums in order to find the slightly bruised fruit so they could knock a few centimes off the price on the blackboard.
It was the darkest part of the war for them. In what seemed like a few short months, the Nazis had overrun half of Europe, from the coast of Brittany to the outskirts of Stalingrad. But there were pockets of resistance, especially in the broad swath of France run by a traitorous marshal who had no particular objection to working hand-in-hand with the Nazis.
As he reached the edge of the city, two German soldiers ordered him to stop. The dark-haired one lazily pointed his rifle at Karl’s gut while the blond-haired one held out his hand like a busy ticket taker at the local cinema.
“Vos papiers,” said the blond one in heavily accented French.
Karl handed over his identity papers.
The blond one flipped through the pages, turned to his comrade and said, in Swabian German dialect, “They could be handing me toilet paper and I wouldn’t know the difference.”
Karl had to press his lips tightly together to keep from laughing. He couldn’t let on that he understood German because it would raise too many questions. The soldier returned his identity papers without even looking at him closely, and waved him on.
Karl breathed more freely as he pedaled away from the city, which was nestled in the mountains of central France, toward the narrow lanes in the shadow of the five thousand–foot high Puy de Dôme. Even his neck muscles seemed to relax as he left the rigid cityscape behind for the glorious chaos of a forest in the Auvergne. The branches echoed with the sounds of birds beneath an azure sky just like in a poem—that is, if anyone was still writing poetry.
Sofia sometimes complained bitterly that they had been running for years, although they had never had to wear the hateful yellow stars because they left Germany as soon as Hitler came to power. It had taken them six years to learn how to speak French like natives.
But when the war broke out, the gendarmes rounded up all the undesirables and sent Karl to a French prison camp for being a German national. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the French authorities to realize that this Aryan-looking man with the hatchet nose was actually a German Jew—hardly the same thing as being a German—with a degree in French literature from the Sorbonne, and they released him on the condition that he join the French army as an interpreter. He enlisted on the spot, but when the French army was defeated in six weeks, he was captured and sent to a German prison camp for being a French national—and it was a good thing they believed he was French.
But those were the early days of the war, when the Germans were still trying to win over the people of the French colonies by releasing all the Algerian and Moroccan prisoners of war, claiming that Germany’s war with France did not involve them. So Karl and a few of his comrades wrapped white bath towels around their heads, smeared their faces and hands with axle grease, and trooped out of the prison with the other Moroccans, right under the guards’ noses because, he supposed, one black face looked just like another to the Master Race.
The memory of that moment brought a smile to his lips as he approached the turnoff to Madame Decroux’s farmhouse. It was almost too absurd to be believed, and of course, it would never happen like that today, not with—
His heart froze.
A Nazi staff car was parked in front of the farmhouse, and a high-level officer in a crisp black uniform was questioning Madame Decroux. The other man, the one in the dusty gray overcoat, must have been the officer’s driver.
Karl thought of turning back, but it was too late now. They had seen him, and he had no choice but to keep pedaling toward them and hope that the unwritten story of the next few minutes didn’t end in a puddle of red ink.
The kommandant studied Karl as his skinny tires crunched on the gravel. Karl swallowed and tried to breathe normally, but what man has ever been able to breathe normally while being closely watched by a hawk-eyed fascist with a Luger harnessed to his waist?
Karl’s cover story was that he was the math tutor for Madame Decroux’s children. He even had a set of blue-lined notebooks to supp
ort this, their yellowing pages filled with second-grade arithmetic problems. But when the kommandant asked for Karl’s papers, he studied the birth date and family information with great interest.
“What faith are you?” said the kommandant.
“Catholic, of course.” It said so right on his identity papers.
“Not one of those Protestant Huguenots of the region?”
“We are lifelong Catholics, Herr Kommandant.”
“And your father is Jacques Duffau, the bootmaker on the Rue La Bruyère?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. I could use a new set of boots,” said the kommandant, whose boots were a little scuffed, but otherwise appeared to be in perfectly good condition. “Let’s go pay him a visit.”
Karl’s knees turned to jelly. His new identity had been created using the names and dates on the birth certificate of a child who had died at the age of one month more than twenty-five years ago. He had no idea if his surrogate father was still alive, and if so, if the bootmaker’s shop was still at the same address, or if he could even find the address easily, and, if he somehow managed to clear the first three hurdles, if the man who was supposed to be his father would figure out what was going on quickly enough and play along, or denounce him on the spot.
“Right now?” said Karl.
“That’s not a problem, is it?”
“No, no, of course not.”
“We don’t really have time, Herr Kommandant,” said the driver. Karl’s heart leapt at the slim chance that his voyage into the unknown might be called off.
“Certainly we have time.”
“But the colonel wanted me to have the car back by five so I could wash it in time for tonight’s gala. It’s a complete disgrace.” The driver’s overcoat and goggles were coated with dust from the provincial roads, and his boots were spattered with mud. The car was in roughly the same condition.
“That can wait,” said the kommandant.
“But the orders are—”
“I’m giving the orders right now, Corporal.”
“Yes, my Kommandant. But that address, Rue La Bruyère, it’s all the way on the other side of the city—”
They went back and forth like this for several minutes until finally the kommandant prevailed. He ordered Karl to get into the front seat next to the driver. Karl could barely feel his legs as he climbed aboard thinking, This is it. I made it this far. Now we’re going to be separated forever. Goodbye, Sofia. Tell our child I love him.
“Smell that?” said the kommandant, patting the seats. “That’s good German leather.”
“Is that what the smell is?” Karl murmured.
“Let’s see if your French leather is as good.”
But when the driver turned the key, the engine made a noise like a coffee grinder, and refused to turn over.
Karl couldn’t help hoping that by some miracle the car wasn’t going to start. But what were the odds of that? How many times had he wished for the opposite, gently coaxing a reluctant motor to life, and been rewarded for his efforts? A well-maintained car almost always started if the driver knew what he was doing.
The driver gave it more gas, but the engine kept grinding until it sounded like a wire brush on a washboard. Then he switched off the ignition disgustedly, got out of the car and opened the hood. A few minutes passed while a slow trickle of sweat pooled in the small of Karl’s back, which turned cold before the driver gave up and admitted that he couldn’t fix the problem.
“We’ll have to send for a mechanic.”
Karl got out of the car, his undershirt damp with perspiration, calculating how long it would take them to get a mechanic out to this isolated farmhouse, diagnose the problem, and possibly fix it. And he allowed himself to hope that by then it would be too late in the day for the kommandant to indulge in his taste for a fine pair of handmade leather boots.
The kommandant barked an order, and the driver popped open the staff car’s enormous trunk, revealing a stripped-down motorcycle. The Nazis were nothing if not well prepared. The kommandant had Karl help the driver lift the motorcycle out of the trunk and set it on the gravel. Karl agreed, wondering why he was helping them to speed his own demise. But they couldn’t possibly expect to fit three people on this, could they?
The driver parked his rear end on the motorcycle’s black leather seat, started up the engine with a diesel-fueled roar, and smiled for the first time since Karl had laid eyes on him.
“Some other time then,” the kommandant promised.
“Yes. Some other time.” Karl nodded obligingly.
The kommandant climbed on the back of the motorcycle and the driver gunned the motor. The motorcycle lurched forward, turned sharply to follow the curved drive, then shot off down the road, spraying dust and gravel behind them.
“Mon Dieu, that was close,” said Madame Decroux.
“What on earth were they doing here?”
“They were looking for me,” said a voice from behind.
Karl turned. A man stood in the doorway to the barn wearing a pair of coveralls that were streaked with dirt and dust, and Karl knew right away that he was staring at the pilot from the downed airplane just as surely as the Nazis would have known it.
“Captain Isnard,” said the pilot, introducing himself.
“Georges Duffau.” They both knew his name was false, and as they shook hands, Karl saw the partially stripped copper wires in Captain Isnard’s other hand.
“Let’s not stand here in plain sight, shall we?” said the captain.
They went into the farmhouse and sat down to a cup of weak tea and day-old bread with a thin layer of jam. Captain Isnard explained that he had been hiding in the hayloft and had seen everything through a crack in the siding. Even from that vantage point, he could tell that something wasn’t right, so he crept down the old ladder and crawled nearly twenty-five feet across open terrain, slid under the staff car and ripped out a couple of wires, then crawled back to the barn. The pilot had risked his life for the sake of a complete stranger.
“They would have shot you on the spot if they’d caught you,” said Karl.
The pilot shrugged. “You’d have done the same for me, right?”
For a moment Karl was speechless, overcome by emotions he hadn’t felt in months as a surge of warmth filled his chest—a resurgence of faith in his fellow man, resistance, and survival, and a renewed sense that this world might still be worth fighting for.
Eventually he did his duty and delivered the papers, and climbed back on the bicycle.
“Vive la France!” his comrades called out. Karl returned their salute, and a minute later he was on his way, pedaling back to the city, perhaps never to see the brave pilot again.
The moist forest floor was teeming with renewed life, the birds were gliding toward the horizon on an invisible updraft, and even the moss growing on the crumbling walls around the sad-looking graveyard hinted that as long as there is life, all is not lost.
But when he got back to the street where they had once found sanctuary, two columns of Vichy police were rousting Jews from the basements and garrets with the help of Madame Hermine, the fruit peddler. A small group of detainees huddled together, their faces pale and drawn in the late afternoon sun. Sofia was among them.
The landlady cursed Madame Hermine and the others for collaborating with the oppressors. “Vous-êtes pire que les Boches!”*
His first thoughts were for the future of his family. Oddly enough, his second thoughts were for the books they had left behind. Who would read them when they were gone?
Sofia was looking at him, trying to communicate something with her eyes. Did she expect him to abandon her and keep fighting for the cause of freedom, or stay by her side for the good of their child? There was no time to think. He had to act now.
In the end, Karl joined his young wife because he had faith that wherever they were going, at least they would be together.
Copyright © 2012 Kenneth Wishnia
&nb
sp; * You’re worse than the Germans. Author’s Note: This story is dedicated to the memory of Konrad Bieber, and to all those who died so that we might live. Each day is a struggle to be worthy of their sacrifice.
Previous Article
DEPARTMENTS
DEPARTMENTS
The Lineup
JOHN C. BOLAND’S pseudonymous novel Long Pig, by James L. Ross, was nominated for a Shamus Award for best P.I. novel in the paperback original category. SHELLEY COSTA is the author of You Cannoli Die Once, the first book in a new cozy mystery series, published by Simon and Schuster Pocket Books. ...
MYSTERIOUS PHOTOGRAPH
Copyright © 2012 sashagala / Shutterstock.com New Wine in Old Bottles We will give a prize of $25 to the person who invents the best mystery story (in 250 words or less, and be sure to include a...
BOOKED & PRINTED
ROBERT C. HAHN
A trip to the Mediterranean promises romance, sunny islands, good food and drink—and in this month’s selections, murder. The many cultures that rim the wine-dark sea lend color and spice to...
THE STORY THAT WON
JOANN CORMACI
The May Mysterious Photograph contest was won by JoAnn Cormaci of Hancock, Maine. Honorable mentions go to Lowell Bergeron of Iowa, Louisiana; Wayne Savicki of Wyandotte, Michigan; Brian Spencer of...
FICTION
INFORMATION
Next Article
DEPARTMENTS
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 11/01/12 Page 14
