by Marge Piercy
“Then why not start now?” M. Faurier asked. He looked ill with nerves.
“Too early. All right, suppose we start at midnight?” Lev rubbed his hands together briskly. “Now, take a nap. A sho in gan eyden iz oych gut.”
To which Mme Faurier said with a little girl’s grin, “Az me hot a sach tsu ton, leygt men zich schlofn.”
Daniela glanced at Jacqueline and Jeff, smiling benignly as she translated: “Even a short time in the Garden of Eden is good. And if you have much work to do, go to sleep first.”
“Mme Faurier, you must stay here to serve as message center,” Jeff said. Her face drooped. Lev however winked at him. Obviously he too considered Mme Faurier might prove more dangerous to them than to the Germans. “Sophie must hurry to the scouts, telling them the messages have come and they’re to travel to the Montagne Noire maquis to fight. Then both children should be sent somewhere safe, if one of the families around here will hide them while things are hot.”
“If I am here, and you are all gone, they are safer with me.”
The Jewish scouts had taken to the maquis life some months before, and now all groups were closely allied with each other and under the command of the local Armée Secrète, the military arm of the Resistance. At first the scouts had trained with sticks, but at last drops had equipped them. Some of Lev’s people went to the scout encampment Friday evenings for services, as they had a rabbi with them.
During the long night, they blew the bridges they had been assigned, cut the cables underground and blew the tracks in two places, without casualties. The night reminded Jeff of Halloween in Bentham Center, when he had run wild with his friends setting bonfires, breaking windows, letting horses loose, Bernice at his heels dressed in his clothes, which fit her. He thought too of escapades with Zach, buzzing the town, landing on a frozen lake, stealing exam papers. He felt the same sharp tang of excitement alerting the nerves, the same camaraderie, the same pleasure at collective and individual boldness. It was reprehensible to admit, but this was fun. His life had for too many years since been a long mid-western highway through stubble fields down which he crept with a dust bowl wind darkening the huge sky.
He thought, we will bring our kids back here in ten years to this bridge over the Agout, and say, look, children, your mother and I blew that bridge up the night the troops landed in France to drive the Germans out. The children—he imagined a boy and a girl almost the same age, as he and Bernice had been—would stare obediently at the bridge, long rebuilt bigger and more modern, and would not believe them.
At dawn they were standing on a treeless mountain with a view for miles and miles into the blue distance, over the long low ridges broken by cliffs. The cultivated fields were russet, the rocks grey, clumps of trees dark green. Viperine and columbine glinted purple at the road’s edge. Beside the path they were climbing up from the car hidden under a haystack, lizards were crawling out on the rocks to sun themselves. Wild roses were in bloom and among the grass he found a few last wild tulips, striped, and three-color violets. I am freeing this land and it will be mine, he thought: earned.
They got to bed finally at ten in the morning. When they woke, Mme Faurier had news. The Allies had landed in Normandy: both Vichy radio and the BBC agreed. “Normandy,” Jacqueline said sadly, folding her arms across her chest. “That’s so far away. I hoped they would land in the south.”
They had targets for the day, although they had to move more circumspectly and under what cover they could contrive. They had a train to derail, a highway to block. When they returned, Captain Robert, their FFI representative, was waiting. “We want your troops in the Montagne Noire where we expect to be attacking the SS columns as they attempt to move toward Normandy. Get your people and weapons together and move out. It’s the general uprising. The signal has come. We must strike to free France.”
Jeff frowned. “All right, we’ll get ready to move. I still think Mme Faurier should stay here. She can work on the information and encode it for Achille, and keep track of where he’s hiding. But I have to make new arrangements with my informants before I shift locales.”
“You’re only moving a matter of sixty kilometers, Vendôme. We have orders to strike. Your soldiers should move.”
“I have a meeting tomorrow with one of my people, and it’s relevant.”
Lev said, “No problem. We’ll march and Vendôme can follow us after he sees his contacts.”
Captain Robert grunted. “You’re wearing too many hats, Vendôme. That makes for trouble.”
“Lev knows these mountains better than I do. The next day, I’ll rejoin everybody. What’s the rendezvous point?”
“Gingembre took you to a village nearby, when you met Lapin. I will draw you a map now. Memorize it and then burn it, at once.”
When Captain Robert had left them, Jacqueline announced, “If you risk going into Toulouse, I’m going with you. You would have walked into the trap they set when they took Raymond, if I had not been there. Who are you meeting?”
“Thibaut, from the mairie, and Margot, most important of all, who works for the Milice. Actually, I’m only meeting Thibaut face-to-face. Margot and I communicate through a drop. Safer for her, as well as us. I have one other drop to visit too, where I’m expecting information on the guards at a munitions dump.”
The meeting with Thibaut was easy enough, a matter of both Jeff and Thibaut using a bistrot toilet and the packet changing hands. Then they headed for Jeff’s old neighborhood, where he had a drop in the big cemetery, in a cornucopia showing off ceramic roses, mounted on a tomb. Under the flowers the cornucopia was hollow. It was also empty. Jeff frowned. What had gone wrong? He must try to find out what had happened to Guy, his spy at the dump.
Unfortunately they had a few hours to kill before they could expect anything from Margot at the next drop, outside the Cathédrale St-Etienne. They went to the movies and watched a story set safely in the days of Louis XIV, whom the groveling director had attempted to link with Hitler in an attempt to flatter.
They came out and argued about lunch. Jeff wanted to eat at a restaurant; Jacqueline felt the chances of being recognized if they sat about for two hours were great. Jeff slipped into a charcuterie and bought some ham, which Jacqueline would not eat. Very slowly he ate it, sitting on a bench, while she fidgeted. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Many Jews eat ham.”
“I don’t like it.” Her lip curled.
“What does it really mean to you, rational as you otherwise are, to cling to a religion suitable for a desert people four thousand years ago?”
“I knew this would come out someday, I knew it!”
“What would come out? I’m an anti-Semite if I don’t agree refusing to eat lobster or ham is intelligent? And you do eat lobster—I saw you.”
“That was crayfish,” she said irrelevantly. “So, I can’t resist it. But I don’t eat ham. That’s symbolic.”
“Of what? What has what you eat to do with your religion or with a belief in God, which you may or may not have, from what I can figure out.” Why were they quarreling? Nervousness, perhaps. Probably he was also irritable because appetizing odors of the Toulouse cooking he adored filled the air from a nearby restaurant. Jacqueline ate so little, she did not understand he required a real lunch, and furthermore, she did not sympathize with his being a little tired of the Jewish cuisine of the camp. He longed for cassoulet, for ham, for sausages, whose presence the spicy wind from the restaurant advertised.
They looked at each other warily, neither wanting to quarrel but on the verge. Jacqueline finally permitted him to put his arm around her as they approached the cathedral. “I suppose I am touchy about the subject because I’m not consistent. Mme Faurier isn’t touchy. She keeps kosher.”
“You don’t imagine your father does, up on Montagne Noire.”
“Oh, my, we’re going to see him tonight.” Jacqueline moved closer, peering into his face. They sat on the rim of the fountain in the cobblestone square before St-Et
ienne. “Does he frighten you?”
“He did at first, bristling with weapons, that huge bodyguard shadowing him.” Jeff stared upward. This was not the church he liked, St-Sernin, with its rose and cream simple soaring interior. St-Etienne was built of the same brick but strange and hybrid-looking, with a fortified tower lunging up massively beside the rose window. His drop was in the cathedral garden. “If Lev looks like a corsair, your father is the image of a maquisard. He gives the impression of being a big man. It wasn’t until he embraced you that I saw that he’s only a little taller than you are.”
“The two of you seemed to like each other.”
“I think we did. But that was only the preliminary inspection. No matter how hot the battle we may be heading into, I’ll bet your father will have some attention left over to watch us.”
“Then you must not tease me about ham.”
“I so solemnly swear.” He stopped her in her tracks. “In here.”
“Already?” Jacqueline was startled and gave a quick glance around the square.
Jeff slipped into the garden, sitting on a bench. Just under the bench a brick was loose. Yes, Margot had left two leaves there. Between them, folded up and stuck to the upper leaf was a report written on very thin paper. Jeff had just detached it from the leaf and was slipping it into his pocket when a voice ordered him, in French, to surrender and raise his hands or be shot.
In a glance he picked out a marksman in the church tower, two Milice on either side, as he heard Jacqueline cry out. Someone struck him across the back of the neck and threw him down to be searched. They took his .38, went through his pockets and found the tiny wad of paper. They also found his sheath knife and the report from Thibaut. He was glad he had followed Captain Robert’s instructions and burned the map as soon as he and Jacqueline had memorized it. As they pushed him ahead of them, he saw that one of their black sedans was already coming down the street. Jacqueline was thrust against the cathedral wall, held by two brutes of the political police. It had happened so fast he could not believe it. He had not even had time to swallow the wad of paper.
They had his hands cuffed behind his back, so he could not see his watch, but when they arrived at the commissariat of the Milice, a big old clock with Roman numerals ticked on the wall. Four-thirty. Why hadn’t they taken them directly to the Gestapo headquarters on rue Alexandre Fourtanier? This was a leak inside the Milice; probably they would not turn them over to the Gestapo until they had questioned them and attempted to find out the extent of headquarters penetration; with luck, they might not turn them over at all, but might tuck them away in a French prison. He realized as a high sign was exchanged and two officers marched out and then came back with Margot that they were only arresting her now. They had waited for the drop to be visited. At some point they must have followed her.
He had to think quickly. They had Margot. They probably knew nothing about him. He would claim to be an escaped American prisoner of war. He had met Margot only recently, asking for help getting back to England or Africa. What would she say? They would have no reason to believe he had contact with the maquis. Could he persuade them Jacqueline had no connection with him, that she was his cover? But they had her description, and her new papers were not the best kind.
The three of them were thrown into cells on the next floor up, at the back of the ancient building. There was nothing in the cell except a cot with a mattress perhaps a quarter of an inch thick, a high barred window and a can to piss in. He was left there for about an hour. They had taken his watch so he could only try to guess the time. The women were locked into cells some distance away, so that he could not communicate with them.
After a long time he heard the guards in the hall, opening a cell door. Margot or Jacqueline? Why not him? He cursed himself for allowing her to accompany him. He cursed himself for trying to run an intelligence network and work with the maquis at the same time. Vainglory. OSS was right. Each job got in the other’s way. If he had not tried to do both, they would be safe with Jacqueline’s father right now.
He heard the guards come and go another time before they came for him. Why was he last? As they hustled him down the hall he called out, “Cat. Are you all right?”
From one of the cells someone moaned. His stomach seized on itself, contracting. He imagined her raped, maimed. He saw her bleeding, torn open. A rage burned his vision almost blind and then subsided into cold fury.
They threw him into the interrogation room, where he lay on the floor. Each of the guards kicked him in the ribs, almost playfully. The door opened and boots came in. “This is no way to treat a prisoner, according to the laws and honor of Marshal Pétain,” the boots said in a tone of gentle reproof. “Pick up the prisoner and put him in a chair, correctly.”
The two guards muttered apologies and sat him in a chair as directed. “Now do remove the handcuffs. How am I to talk with the prisoner?” The voice of sweet reason belonged to a man in early middle age with brows darker than his greying hair, the same color as a small neat chevron mustache nestled under his arched nose. He offered his cigarette case to Jeff. “Now, then, you seem quite interested in the work of my department, M. Corrèze, although of course that is not your name. I suspect you’re not French either, are you?”
“You have my identification.” He declined the cigarette with a shake of his head.
“There’s a little Jew in Toulouse, we caught her but then we lost her, although we’ll pick her up again soon, no doubt, who makes very nice papers of identity.”
“I am not a Jew,” Jeff said coldly.
“You’re not French either, are you?”
“Are you German?” Jeff asked.
His interrogator nodded in the direction of the portrait of Marshal Pétain on the wall. “I am French, of course, a veteran and a patriot.”
“Then why do you do the Germans’ work for them?”
“Here we support the marshal and the work we do is for our New France. You Jews who care only for money would never understand that.” He must have touched a buzzer because a door opened and the two guards came in and lifted Jeff from his chair. “Our young friend says he is not a Jew. Take his pants down.”
One of the cops took his pants down while the other grabbed his prick hard, turning it, and then reached under and grabbed hold of his balls, twisting them so that Jeff fell to the floor and writhed there, unable to speak. “A kike,” the cop said, nodding to his superior, and went out with the other.
His interrogator drew on his cigarette and watched a perfect smoke ring drift up to the ceiling. When Jeff had finally pulled himself back into the chair and zipped up his pants, the interrogator spoke again, gently reproving. “Lying is such a waste of time.”
He had trouble catching his breath to speak. He was still doubled forward in pain. He must speak clearly, though, must summon from whatever reserves he had a semblance of strength. “I am not lying. In the United States, all males born in the hospital are circumcised. It is believed that this is more sanitary.”
His interrogator made a face of disgust. “First, I don’t believe you. No people no matter how crude would do that to little babies, except the Jews. And the Muslims, of course. Are you going to tell me you’re a Mohammedan?”
“You can check my statement with any doctor who knows the United States. Or anyone who has lived there long enough to know.”
“Now you are saying you are an American spy?”
“I’m an American officer. I can give you my rank and my number. That is all.”
“Oh, come now, even if you should happen to be an American officer, you are not in uniform and you are a spy, so the Geneva Convention does not apply to you.”
“I escaped from a camp.”
“What kind of camp?”
“A prisoner of war camp.”
“And where is this mythical camp located?”
He tried to remember one he had heard of. “I don’t want to go back there,” he temporized. He was in pain and his
eyes teared involuntarily. He could not find a position that did not hurt his balls. The pain reached high up into his belly. He kept wondering if they had torn something.
“And just where is it that we do not want to go back, American officer imaginary?”
“Chieti, in Italy,” he said, hoping that even if the interrogator happened to know about Italian prisoner of war camps, that one would be long overrun by the Allies and the records hard to check.
“Oh, and you flew here on the wings of a little dove.”
“I walked. I hitched rides in trucks. I took a train partway. Mostly I borrowed a bicycle and pedaled.”
“Then why linger here? This story grows more and more inventive.”
“I haven’t been able to make contact with anyone who could help me to escape either by sea or over the mountains to Spain.”
“Ah, you just happened to meet our secretary and get her to work for you and your other friend.”
“That one’s a girl I picked up today in Toulouse and took to the movies. I feel safer on the streets with a woman. Didn’t she explain to you that she knows nothing about me?”
“Enough of this.” Again he must have signaled, because the two men came back. They wasted little time, but began beating him, first slapping him around and then settling down to working over his solar plexus and belly. At some point he threw up the remains of the ham sandwich and they rubbed his face in it until he choked. At another point he wet himself, after one or more of them kicked him repeatedly in the kidneys. He passed out.
When he came to he was lying on the floor in an anteroom. One of the guards who had beaten him saw his eyelids fluttering and went off to announce he was ready for more. They flung him into the interrogation room again. Outside it was dark. “We had fun with your girlfriend,” one of the guards said to him. “Nice pussy. We’ll have to help ourselves to some more of that.”
The interrogator was behind his desk, a few crumbs in his mustache that had not been there earlier. As he caressed it, he carefully removed them. Then he sighed. “You’re less dashing now, that’s certain. Now shall we have a truthful conversation? Where are you from?”
