The girl’s pale blue eyes ignited at once, and Yves congratulated himself inwardly on his assumption concerning the girl’s situation. She rose to her feet and made an uncertain step forward, offering him her hand but then dropping it as if deeming her action inappropriate to the occasion.
“I’m sorry, Father. You don’t shake hands with your parishioners I suppose.” A barely noticeable accent could be detected in her voice as she spoke. Not as melodic and free-flowing as the Lyon one. A Northerner perhaps.
The girl touched her hair self-consciously. “My name is Blanche. I’m not from these parts. I’ve been sleeping on the steps of your church for the past two days, but last night the gendarme chased me away and almost arrested me… Maybe you know someone, who is hiring help around here? Or I can work in your church if you need a cleaning lady or a cook…”
Her voice faltered slightly, but she collected herself and glanced up at Yves with determination. “I’m a Catholic if that matters. And I can work hard.”
“Come with me; I’ll feed you first. Then, after you have your fill, we can discuss your employment.” Yves gestured for the rail-thin girl to follow him into his living quarters.
Not very priest-like from the Church’s point of view but Yves had decided a long time ago to live by God’s teachings, and not the ones set by the Vatican. God said to feed the needy, and so he would.
2
Lyon, November 11, 1940. Armistice Day
The street was a maddening kaleidoscope of lights, colors, and music. Etienne surveyed the spirited mob, marching with zeal, matching the goose-stepping Germans that he had had the “pleasure” to watch in Paris. Women were draped in prohibited tricolors, their eyes shining with national pride; their hair curled and decorated with red, blue and white ribbons fluttering in the wind; their voices full of resentment and angry patriotism, singing La Marseillaise to the faces of the gendarmes; the latter only looked away, shamed and laughed at for their uniforms. Collaborators. Traitors of La République. Boches-lovers.
Etienne leaned onto the wall, wisely staying away from the marching crowd, seeking to remain undetected by both the communist leaders, using this fine opportunity to hand out their leaflets to all passers-by, and the gendarmes who mostly looked at their feet and pretended the parade celebrating the victorious Armistice of 1918 wasn’t happening right under their noses. His camel-wool, tailored coat blended perfectly with the wall behind his back, and Etienne stilled, observing the celebration with a bare outline of a smile on his immaculately shaven face, partially concealed under a fedora hat. At least they could still march, he mused with bittersweet melancholy; an outlook a man experiences at the loss of the innocence of his youth perhaps, and the war, which had stripped young hearts of their purity more than anything in the world. Their counterparts in Paris weren’t as fortunate as the people of Lyon: repressed, subdued and hungry – not only for food and gas (all strictly rationed, bien sûr) but for the loss of freedom most of all.
His gloved hand dove inside his coat, feeling the folded paper inside. Unsuspecting communists – and most of the marching men belonged to the infamous Reds – went on with their leaflets and propaganda, emboldened by the meekness of the police. Etienne scrutinized every single agitator as they turned the corner from the side street leading into the Rue de la République, where he had taken up his position; he narrowed his eyes as he spotted the least agitated comrade, and observed his movements as the man silently handed his leaflets to the people on the sidewalk.
Unlike his peers, this one didn’t shout, didn’t seem drunk with emotion or driven by the same mob mentality that pushed the unfathomable parade forward. Etienne pushed himself off the wall and stepped closer to the passing crowd patiently awaiting the quiet communist. When the latter’s gaze met Etienne’s eyes, his hand stopped mid-air, still holding out a leaflet to him; one who would never fall for its red-lettered calls. The communist’s scowl deepened above his attentive eyes, sensing the falseness of the situation in which the well-dressed bourgeois took a communist propaganda flyer from him; yet the man stepped nearer as Etienne motioned him closer and discretely slid a paper in his hands, right under the leaflets he was holding.
“You know anyone who can distribute this if I give you more copies?”
The communistbacked away just a step, and Etienne’s gloved hand caught his forearm in warning.
“I’m not working for the gendarmes, don’t be afraid.” Etienne's quiet voice was almost drowned out in the crowd’s bellowing. The communist pulled closer, though with visible reluctance, to hear the enigmatic man’s words better. “I have a paper from Paris that I’m copying here, in Lyon. But I don’t have enough distributors. Do you know anyone who can help me?”
“With all due respect, Monsieur,” the communist assessed Etienne with his gaze, “you don’t look like a comrade.”
“I’m not,” Etienne replied flatly. The communist relaxed a bit, despite the admission. At least the bourgeois was not lying. “If you know anyone who can help me or want to discuss this further, meet me on the Pont Lafayette, next Friday at eight in the evening sharp.”
With those words, Etienne slid into the crowd of viewers standing on the sidewalk and dissolved without a trace. The communist searched for him with his eyes for a few more moments, then turned back hesitantly and joined the march, walking with more purpose this time.
Etienne took a silver cigarette case out of his pocket and paused to admire the finely detailed engraving on its top before extracting a cigarette he planned to enjoy before catching a taxi cab home. He had walked a long way, starting from the square itself, where the celebrations continued and in which he had no more interest, after making contact with just the kind of person he had been looking for.
Why celebrate feats of the past? The long-forgotten glory of a triumphant France was years long gone, packed away under layers of naphthalene, and nationalistic slogans only taken out once a year, shaken up and worn for an occasion which seemed like more of a mockery today, when former victors were now struggling under the imposed regime of ones they had presumed defeated some twenty years ago. The past was worthless, just like the new puppet regime, and Etienne simply saw no point in celebrating the old victory when his country so desperately starved for a new one.
Holding a glove in one hand, Etienne slid his finger across the silver case, smiling fondly at the memories. His father, Etienne Delattre Senior, had awarded him with it when he had graduated from École Polytechnique top of his class. Even at seventeen years of age, he was already imitating everything his father did, and smoking had become the latest of such habits. The key to success in everything – and in life itself – is in moderation, his father used to explain in his smooth, leveled voice, puffing on a cigarette. And so, Etienne only smoked five cigarettes a day even after his father’s death.
It was a rather wasteful death, too; Monsieur Delattre Sr. held the rank of a Major during the Great War but, revolted from everything that the war represented, he returned to his diplomat’s duties with immense relief as soon as it was over. Still, when the new war drew near France’s borders, he donned his long-forgotten uniform and headed to the front, to die heroically in full regalia only a day before the Armistice was signed. The Germans who had overpowered the position which he’d taken up with his soldiers allowed his men to bury their Major with full military honors – a young Corporal informed Etienne’s mother of such in an official letter. Etienne had visited his father’s simple, cross-marked grave only once, and had traveled back to Lyon deep with foreboding, wondering what direction his life should take now. He was, in no way, a military man; he was a brilliant strategist, though, a future diplomatic attaché just graduated from the University with honors, with more than a promising career ahead of him… Before the war broke out, that is, and claimed his father’s life instead of his.
It was a willing sacrifice, too; Etienne was aware of that from the hushed conversations that his parents held in the kitchen on winter ni
ghts in 1939 when the war was merely a topic for hushed discussion and not a brutal reality that would soon smash the nation in the face. Etienne Delattre Sr. was not supposed to travel to the front due to his age and previous honorable service, and yet he made up his mind, weighing his decision carefully as he always did and as he always instructed Etienne to do, greased some hands and took up his son’s place thus granting him the gift of life itself.
“Don’t try to talk me out of it and don’t contradict me,” Etienne recalled him saying the only time his father agreed to discuss the fateful decision with him. “You’re young, intelligent and earnest; you have a whole life ahead of yourself that can be full of wonderful deeds. I’ve lived my share; I left an heir; I lived my fill. It’s your turn now.”
Etienne pondered those words, forever emblazoned into his memory, while the train, headed south, measured kilometers of evergreen meadows, still unmolested, still pure and unravished by the shameless plunder following the invading army that was creeping after his train, or so it appeared in his disturbing dreams. By pure coincidence, only a few stations away from Lyon, having left his compartment to stretch his legs in the corridor, Etienne noticed someone’s newspaper, probably forgotten in the haste of getting off the train, laying on the narrow windowsill in plain sight.
Uncertain and bored, Etienne flipped the front-page open and suppressed a shocked gasp just as it was ready to escape his mouth. La Libération; an unofficial, criminal, prohibited edition of the underground newspaper stared back at him with its slightly faded, indigo letters, calling for people to join the Resistance and follow de Gaulle’s call. At the next station, with the paper burning through his leather valise, he acquired a one-way ticket to Paris and headed back north, a hopeful smile curling his lips upward.
Etienne didn’t believe in coincidences, only in some mathematically-predetermined order of things ruling the universe, which humankind was still too unintelligent to comprehend. Therefore, if such an occasion had presented itself and it was him, Etienne, that happened to smoke in that very deserted corridor on that very train on that very day and hour, it was intended for him to proceed with this highly dangerous affair. He possessed all the necessary attributes for it too; otherwise, the newspaper wouldn’t have landed into his hands, but into someone else’s. The fact that his father’s friend, who Etienne Delattre Sr. had advised him to visit in case of his passing, was an owner of a publishing house and might possibly know the people who produced the paper, was also another fateful X fitting into the equation, still unknown to him but in dire need to be solved. Etienne loved solving puzzles and tasks, ever since he was a young boy; this affair was also a task, or at least the way he considered it to be. He had to find the résistants publishing the paper, get into contact with them, organize a network of agents to distribute the paper all over France, contact London, offer his services to the Free French under Général de Gaulle’s command, and drive the Germans off his land – all in his father’s good memory. It was all rather simple if you break it into details, Etienne smirked to himself. Task by task, equation by equation, one simple affair with him in charge. Feasible, and none would persuade him otherwise.
Etienne flickered his silver lighter and drew a full chest of air, filled with musty whiffs of November leaves, gray transparent smoke, and satisfaction. Only a month had passed, and he had already ticked the first two points off his list; only another four remained.
Suddenly, a thin, blonde girl caught his eye. She was marching purposefully towards a monument that he had been gazing at for the past few minutes, a simple bouquet of flowers in her hand, pressed towards her chest with stubborn determination. Etienne scowled, his gaze shooting towards the gendarmes chatting next to the memorial towards which the girl was heading. The gendarmes had noticed her too, and straightened their backs, determined to snatch at least one protestor that shied away from the rest of the marching mob; a mob they feared to approach for obvious reasons.
The girl came to a halt in front of the memorial to the fallen heroes of the Great War, gazed at it for a good minute and finally lowered the flowers at its base. The gendarmes moved from their position the moment the flowers hit the ground as if that simple gesture was the only sign that they had been waiting for. Etienne weighed all the pros and cons during those few short moments, faltered a mere second, cursed inwardly, stubbed out his unfinished cigarette and moved towards the monument in quick, resolute steps.
She was already struggling in their arms, screaming that she hadn’t done anything wrong and demanding to know what was so criminal about honoring the fallen soldiers. Etienne’s shadow, emerging in the middle of this commotion, startled and muted all its participants at once, for no one, including the girl, expected such an elegant gentleman to protectively drape his arm around the poorly dressed young woman’s shoulder, and offer a most pleasant smile to the Messieurs les Gendarmes with his sincerest apologies.
“Pardon my sister, gentlemen.” Such fine, dignified notes were released in his baritone voice; such a thoroughly apologetic expression rested on his handsome face; and a twenty Franks bill, concealed in his outstretched hand in such a practiced manner that it remained invisible for any inquisitive eyes besides the gendarmes themselves, was so discreetly proffered. “She is not well. Beatrice, what’s gotten into you, running out on Maman in such a manner? You know perfectly well how it shatters her nerves when you do. Pardon me again, messieurs; she’s being looked after by a nurse, but the old woman just can’t keep up with our poor Beatrice anymore… Excuse her shouting and rudeness as well; it’s common for ones disturbed by the same illness…”
The bill was hastily snatched away, the proffered hand was thoroughly shaken, and the incident was all but forgotten. Etienne, with his arm still gripping the girl’s shoulder, led her away before she had a chance to recover from her temporary, and stunned muteness.
Ensuring that they were alone in a narrow side street, Etienne swiftly turned the young woman towards himself and looked at her pointedly.
“Do not ever go near any Great War monuments. Do not speak to communists and never, under any circumstance, keep their leaflets after reading them. Had you tried this stunt in the Occupied Zone, the Germans would be herding you onto a train heading to their fatherland by now. And, in a few more days, you would be breaking your back, hurling stones in one of their working camps. Now go, and keep away from the gendarmes next time.”
He had already turned to take his leave when the girl spoke behind his back, “Wait! How do you know about the Occupied Zone?”
Etienne kept walking, ignoring her hurried steps behind him.
“You’ve been there, haven’t you? You’ve seen it all, right? The Boches and what they do.”
Etienne looked straight ahead even when she clenched the cuff of his coat, trying to look him in the eye.
“I’m from the Occupied Zone myself. The Boches and their cursed occupation are the reasons why I ran.”
The girl refused to give up, he noticed, with a sense of mild irritation starting to grow inside his chest. He needed to get rid of her before they stepped from the narrow street into the broad avenue where such a strange pair would most definitely attract unwanted attention. Etienne shook her fingers off his sleeve, coming to a sudden stop to face her once again.
“Yes, I have. Yes, I’ve seen them. Now, show some gratitude for my rescuing you and head your own way, won’t you?”
“You hate them too, don’t you? That’s why you helped me; I understood everything at once.” A passionate gleam shone in her pale blue eyes as she caught his sleeve once again. “Do you know anyone from the Resistance by chance? Anyone who wants to fight… I’m new to this city and don’t know anyone yet—”
“Have you completely gone off your head, asking a man who you just met something of this sort?!” Etienne hissed at the girl. “I could be an undercover Vichy police agent, looking to arrest people like you!”
“You aren’t; otherwise why would you have helped me
?” She gave him a tentative smile. “I saw you in the train terminal a week ago. I wasn’t sure that it was you at first, but now I know. You just came back from the Occupied Zone, correct?”
Etienne didn’t betray himself by even a single bat of an eye, even though the possibility of this strange girl recognizing him and poking at his private matters was the least desirable turn of events in his mind. His mind began processing information at the speed of light.
“I travel for business. And that business of mine is none of yours.” He interrupted her before she even had a chance to open her mouth for yet another question. “Now, off you go.”
“You don’t travel for business. Businessmen are all collaborators. I know it; I'm not stupid. So, you’re into something different then. I won’t ask another thing of you, not even your name; just put me in touch with the right people, and I’ll be out of your hair once and for all.”
Etienne eyed her for one very long moment and then asked, articulating every word, “What did the Germans do to you that you have such a grudge against them?”
“One of them gave me life; a life that everyone around me turned into a kind of hell, just for that very reason,” she responded with unconcealed resentment in her voice. “Maybe if I kill enough of them, I’ll finally get rid of the stigma of being a half-German bastard.”
Too impulsive, too unreliable and too angry for her own good. Uneducated, from a struggling, unloving family, and her only motivation is pure revenge; motives for which she has got it all wrong. Confused and troubled; not a good recruit by any means. Nevertheless, a simple fact outweighed the rest: Etienne needed her out of his hair, and the sooner, the better.
“If I promise to put you in touch with the right people, you must promise never to seek me out again, to never inquire about me and completely erase this meeting from your memory. Understood?”
The Lyon Affair: A French Resistance novel Page 2
