The Collaborators (33 page)

Melchior waited in fear for the order to get out.

Instead, a couple of new water buckets were dumped on the wagon floor and a cardboard box containing several hard German loaves.

Just before the door slid shut again, Melchior glanced towards the bald man to show his gratitude. In the glare of the electric light he saw that Pauli was sitting, blank-faced, with the point of the knife pressed against the man’s kidneys. Then the door closed and darkness returned.

It took some time for their eyes to get accustomed to the gloom once more. In that time, someone managed to knock over one of the buckets and the bread box too was overturned and the loaves scattered. There was a lot of angry shouting and recrimination.

Fools, thought Melchior. On the other hand, you couldn’t fight the Boche without sustenance.

He crawled towards the bread and water and by calling out, ‘The children! The children!’ he managed to get a reasonable share.

Refreshed, they worked even harder and as the grey light of dawn began to seep through the gaps in the side of the wagon, the blade of the knife slipped completely through at one end of the second groove. Another ten minutes and all that held it in place was a thin splinter. Carefully Melchior sawed through this and withdrew the knife. The section of floorboard remained in place. Impatient suddenly, he stood up and drove his heel down hard. The cut-away square vanished and there a couple of feet beneath them was the stone-filled track rushing by like a pebbly torrent.

By now almost everyone in the wagon was aware what was going on. Men crowded round the aperture and peered down. It took some time for someone to voice the general thought.

‘Who’s going through
that?
A rubber dwarf?’

It was true, now it was finished, the aperture looked remarkably small. Eighteen inches by twelve perhaps. And it was also true that, even if it were possible to squeeze through, to drop on to that rushing track looked like certain death.

‘You’ll need to cut a section out of the next board too,’ advised someone.

‘Suddenly everyone’s an expert!’ said Melchior. ‘Where were you when we were sawing already?’

For answer the man snatched the knife from Pauli’s hand and began hacking at the next board. Another knelt down and tried to wrench the broken board upwards by main force, but it would probably have defeated a fit man, let alone this emaciated scarecrow.

Céci who, happily for her, possessed a cat’s power of being able to sleep at will and apparently for ever, was woken up by the activity and, because Pauli was not clearly in view, began to weep. Her brother went to her immediately and tried to comfort her.

‘We’re slowing down again,’ someone said.

‘Bugger! What is it? A station?’

One of those peering through the slats in the side of the wagon said, ‘No. It’s a bridge. I can’t see much. It’s dark. But there’s a river. Yes, definitely a river. A big river. It just goes on and on. Oh God. It must be the Rhine! We’re over now. We must be in Germany.’

The news chilled their hearts disproportionately. France which had done so few favours for most of them still felt like the land of home and freedom. Here they were in the beast’s own terrain.

Some time later, the train came to a halt. Again not a station, the man at the spy-hole reported. Nothing but trees were visible. At first the halt seemed a stroke of luck, giving them more time to work, but suddenly a couple of guards stretching their legs came to a halt outside the wagon, and their conversation was so clear that the man working with the knife was shushed to silence. It became clear this was a mere signal delay. The guards talked happily of having a real German breakfast half an hour up the line. But the worst news came when one of them said, ‘Jesus! What a stink from these wagons!’

‘Not to worry,’ said the other. ‘We’ll get ‘em out and have a bit of fun with the hoses when we reach the station!’

Laughing, they moved away. Maurice whose German was now excellent, translated what had been said.

‘That does it,’ said the man with the knife. ‘It’s now or never.’

He sat down and thrust his legs into the hole. It was at once clear that he wasn’t going to be able to get his thighs through, let alone his hips.

‘Get out, idiot,’ someone said. ‘Let someone try who’s got a chance.’

They all looked at Melchior. He dropped his skinny legs through the hole and slid downwards. When he reached his hips, he got stuck. The others pressed his shoulders but it was in vain.

Finally he said, ‘This is wasting time. Get me out.’

They pulled him upwards not without difficulty. He turned to the children.

‘All right, Pauli. Down you go.’

The skinny boy got through without difficulty. Next he passed down the little girl, her eyes wide at this latest extraordinary game she and Pauli were having to play.

‘Right, Pauli. Lie down between the tracks. Don’t move till the train has gone right away. Understand?’

‘Yes, monsieur. Please, Monsieur Melchior, can’t you come too?’

Whether the appeal was based on concern for the adult or the child, Melchior didn’t know. Either way it moved him greatly.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ he said. ‘All this rich living has made me fat. Now, if I had some nice goose grease, I might slip through!’

He saw the direction of the boy’s eyes. With a child’s clarity, he had identified the only possible source of lubrication in that wagon. Melchior rose and looked down into the slop bucket. His stomach turned over.

‘What the hell are you thinking of?’ asked one of others, revolted.

Melchior looked around at their faces, barely visible in the grey light, good faces, weak faces, bewildered faces, fearful faces, incredulous faces, defeated faces. What precisely lay at their journey’s end, none of them knew, but it came to Melchior then that there could be a time when he would recall his squeamish-ness standing over this slop bucket, and weep.

He began to slip off his clothes and toss them through the hole to Pauli.

Naked he bent with a handful of straw; retching, he plunged it into the bucket and then began to anoint his hips and skinny rump with the noisome slimy mixture.

There were cries of horror and disgust, but they didn’t bother him. His own feeling of nausea ceased. He knew he was right.

‘Stand aside, Pauli,’ he said.

He stepped into the hole. The vile lubrication worked and he got much deeper than before. But still he could not pass completely through, still there was a quarter-inch too much.

Suddenly there was shouting outside and the guards could be heard clambering back on board as a steam-whistle blew.

‘Help me!’ he cried at the watching men.

The bald man moved forward and flung himself on to Melchior’s shoulder. There was a moment of pain, then he was through. After him the bald man tossed a lump of bread.

‘Take this!’ he cried.

Melchior had no time for thanks. He felt the train beginning to lurch forward. He flung himself down. Pauli was already lying between the tracks, almost covering his sister. A foot from his head a huge wheel strained round. He watched it without flinching. If this child can bear this, what cannot I bear? Melchior asked himself as he buried his face in the gravel between the sleepers. On either side, the wheels found traction; the train began to move, gathering speed; the sound of metal kissing metal rang in his ears, the ground trembled beneath his belly.

Then it was past and away and fading.

The trio lay still a little longer. Then Melchior and Pauli rolled over on their backs and looked up at the dawn-grey sky. After a while Melchior rose and, stepping off the track, began to pull handfuls of dew-damp grass to clean the evil-smelling lubrication from his body.

‘What do we do now, Monsieur Melchior?’ asked Pauli.

‘We walk,’ said Melchior, pulling on his clothes. ‘Back that way towards the Rhine. Then we cross it and get back into France and go home. How does that sound, little prince?’

The boy didn’t speak but nodded enigmatically and turned to help his sister.

You’re right, thought Melchior. That’s how it sounds to me too. Hopeless! But now he came to think about it, he’d given up any hope many years ago and had always managed very well without it!

‘Are you ready, children?’ he asked brightly. ‘Then west we go. Homeward bound.’

7

It was more than a month since Mai had been to the Balzac.

Michel Boucher greeted him with undisguised pleasure.

‘Hey, I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.’

‘No,’ said Mai sharply. ‘Pressure of work.’

‘Yeah? The Resistance has certainly been busy since the invasion. Auntie Louise was saying you never go down to the bakery now. I think she’d have liked to ask your advice about the kids. Ask! I think she’d have got down on her knees and begged. I never thought I’d feel sorry for the old battle-axe, but she’s really taken it bad. Janine said there was nothing you could expect a German to do. Only she wasn’t as polite as that.’

The big man’s keen eyes were regarding him shrewdly.

‘She asked if I could help. I couldn’t,’ said Mai.

‘That’s what I reckoned. But I know you’d do your best, Günter.’

‘And how is Janine?’ asked Mai in a voice only just under control.

‘What do you think? The kids. Then Jean-Paul. I wanted to get her out. You know how it is with the Geste. Once they get their hands on a Resistant or his body they usually go looking for the rest of the family. But she wouldn’t. And they didn’t. Funny that.’

‘Yes, funny,’ said Mai.

‘People said some nasty things. I had to slap a couple of mouths.’

It occurred to Mai that Boucher was not the most convincing champion a woman accused of collaboration might select.

He said, ‘Is she ill?’

‘Ill? She ought to be dead by the look of her,’ said Boucher bluntly. ‘But she’ll keep going till she finds out something. She’s been wandering around everywhere. The Majestic, the Kommandantur, Avenue Foch. She even goes to Drancy, stands and waits for convoys to leave. Günter, are you sure there’s nothing you can do for her?’

Only destroy her completely, thought Mai. He had used and abused every bit of authority he had. The SD had blocked his every move. Fiebelkorn may or may not have been lying when he said the children had already been transported, but one thing was clear. Mai wasn’t going to find out anything different, and each passing day made it more likely that Fiebelkorn’s claim had become true.

So all he could say now to Janine was,
The children are lost. Believe it.

She would make him say it one day. No matter how much she despised him, in the end desperation would drive her to seek him out. For the past few weeks he had simply been avoiding the inevitable.

‘I’ve done all I can,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing more I can do.’

He must have sounded desperate for Boucher patted him sympathetically on the arm and said, ‘Don’t take it to heart. It’s not your fault. It’s those other bastards. You look a bit run down to me, Günter. I’d say a few days in the country is just what you need.’

Boucher had renewed his invitation to come and stay at his house at Moret. Mai would have loved nothing better. The invasion forces were still being held, though at great cost. There was a false sense of calm in the city at the moment. Perhaps he could sneak a day or two…

‘You’ll love it,’ said Boucher sensing his weakening. ‘Peace, booze, and lots of lovely grub. Hélène’s a marvellous cook. She’s really taken to the life. So what do you say?’

Mai was saved from answering immediately by the approach of the patron who whispered, ‘Monsieur Scheffer, your friend is here…I’ve seen her outside a couple of times recently…Do you want me to…?’

He made a gesture of dismissal.

Mai looked up. Standing in the doorway of the café was Janine. Framed by the light, she appeared only as a slim silhouette, but unmistakable.

The patron obviously thought there’d been a rift, followed by a refusal on her part to accept her marching orders.

He said, ‘No,’ stood up, went down the length of the café with the step of a man walking from the condemned cell to the execution chamber.

‘Janine,’ he said.

‘Where are the children?’

Her voice sounded calm. He wasn’t deceived. Now was the time to kill the hope.

He said, ‘Janine, I’m doing all I can…’

‘This too,’ she said. ‘Even in this, you deceived me.’

‘Janine…’ He couldn’t do it.

She turned and walked away. Hysterics, assault, abuse, anything would have been better than this cold certainty that he was beneath contempt. He wanted to run after her, but something in his will failed, and his muscles would not move.

‘Hey, was that Janine? What did she want? Are you all right?’

Boucher was standing by him looking anxious.

‘Yes, it was Janine,’ he said. ‘And yes, I’m all right.’

‘Shit. I know how much you’d like to help,’ said Boucher. ‘Me too. I’d do anything.’

The man’s sincerity shone out of him. They stood together united in helplessness. Suddenly Mai made up his mind. He had to get away or he’d go mad, or perform madness.

‘I’ll come to Moret,’ he said. ‘Next week, if that’s OK?’

‘That’s great,’ enthused Boucher. ‘I’ll pick you up and run you down in the Hispanola. You’ll have a great time, just you wait!’

For once the red-head’s assurances proved totally reliable and Mai enjoyed the stay even more than he expected. The sun shone and he spent most of the time walking or sitting in the extensive garden, reading books, playing with Boucher’s tiny daughter and eating huge meals.

It was only thoughts of Janine which darkened these sunlit days. He found himself imagining her in Hélène’s place and himself in Boucher’s, with Pauli and Céci playing on the grass, and he would drift so deep into these reveries that it often took a vigorous shake of his shoulder to bring him back to the painful reality.

Boucher was no great intellect, but it didn’t take him long to fathom the cause of his guest’s distraction. Over a bottle of Armagnac on the last night of his stay Mai found himself confiding in the man. Boucher’s response was both comforting and devastating in its directness and lack of complication.

‘I’ve always seen you were sweet on her,’ he said. ‘And she fancied you too, even if she didn’t want to.’

‘Did she?’ said Mai, amazed.

‘Oh yes. I reckon I saw it before she knew it herself. Not that you had any real chance while that Jew-boy of hers was alive. She was obsessed with him.’

Mai reached for the bottle.

‘It’s empty,’ said Boucher. ‘I’ll fetch another.’

The next day, Mai didn’t wake up till noon.

‘Oh shit,’ he said.

‘What’s up?’ asked Boucher from the doorway.

‘I should’ve been back this morning.’

‘Are you sure? What do your papers say?’

‘Leave of absence till the twentieth.’

‘There you are then. It’s the twentieth all day! And they won’t expect you to check in at midnight will they? Come and have some breakfast and then some lunch! I’ll see you’re back in your office by eight sharp tomorrow morning.’

What strength and what weakness lay in such a simplistic approach to life and its problems, thought Mai.

‘All right,’ he agreed.

Another idyllic day went by, free from pressures, free almost from the painful memory of Janine as he sat in the sunshine and allowed its heat to drug his already hangover-anaesthetized mind.

That night he was very temperate in his sampling of Boucher’s excellent cellar. The big red-head laughed at him and drank with his customary enthusiasm. Mai forecast to himself that in order to get back to Paris for eight in the morning, he would have to take upon himself his host’s reveille duties.

But when he was woken by a loud knocking, he thought sleepily that he’d done the man an injustice. It took a little time to realize that the knocking was downstairs at the main door. He glanced at his watch. It was still very early. The light coming through his curtains was the pearly luminescence of a summer dawn. He heard Boucher’s door open further along the landing and his voice booming, presumably to Hélène, ‘It’s all right, go back to sleep, it’ll just be some idiot gendarme checking on the black-out now the sun’s coming up!’

Mai went to the window. There was a long black car parked across the driveway. Two men leaned against it. One was smoking a cigarette. Both were armed.

His first thought was - Resistance raid!

He ran out on to the landing to warn Boucher but looking down the stairs into the hallway he saw it was unnecessary. His grumpy reassurances had been for Hélène’s benefit. He was moving swiftly and quietly towards the door with a machine pistol in his hand.

There was a spy-hole fitted on the door. The big man applied his eye to it, and let out an exclamation.

Then he stepped back, undid the bolts and the lock, and flung the door open.

‘Pajou!’ he said. ‘What the hell do you want?’

The weedy little Géstapiste stepped inside uninvited. He didn’t seem to be armed. He wore an ingratiating smile but his eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were darting glances everywhere.

‘Miche,’ he said. ‘Morning. Sorry to disturb you. Hey, it’s a lovely place you’ve got here!’

‘How the hell did you know about it?’ demanded Boucher angrily.

‘It wasn’t a secret, was it?’ said Pajou with mock surprise. ‘Well, you know me, Miche. Sharp eyes, sharp ears. But if it was supposed to be secret, then I’m glad I came myself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s just that there’s a bit of a flap on among our Boche mates, and they seemed to want Lieutenant - sorry,
Captain
Mai in a hurry, and I happened to know he was down here enjoying a spot of leave, so I offered to fetch him.’

He never looked directly up the stairs but Mai knew he’d been seen and the contemptuous reference to ‘our Boche mates’ had been dropped in for his benefit.

But for God’s sake, what could have happened to make this little rat so impudent in the presence of a
Wehrmacht
officer?

It was time to speak.

‘Pajou, what the hell’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘There you are, captain,’ said Pajou, advancing to the foot of the stairs and shielding his eyes as though from a great light. ‘You haven’t heard then? Well, how could you, down here, enjoying your leave? That’s a mark in your favour. You see, there’s bad news and good news.

The bad news is someone tried to blow up the Führer.’

‘What?’ exclaimed Mai, knowing as he saw Pajou’s cynical smile that he didn’t sound surprised enough. Why should he? Anyone with half a mind had known that it was only success that had made the old military families like Bruno Zeller’s put up with vulgar little Adolf so long. With the invasion forces established and advancing, some kind of revolt was inevitable. If Zeller had still been in Paris, he’d almost certainly have tried to involve his lieutenant. He’d dropped enough hints of disaffection in the past. So; a lucky escape or a missed opportunity, depending on how things had gone. Not that Pajou’s presence left much doubt of that.

’Tried,
you say?’ said Mai.

‘Oh yes. That’s the good news. The Führer was uninjured. A little annoyed, so they say, but completely safe! Heil Hitler!’

The revolting creature threw his hand in the air in a parody of a salute. Mai’s heart sank. Nothing was more ominous than Pajou’s confident impudence. But he couldn’t believe that even the SD would depute a French collaborationist to arrest a
Wehrmacht
officer.

He said, ‘Who sent you, Pajou?’

‘Well, Colonel Fiebelkorn, sort of. I’ll explain in private, shall I?’

Uninvited he came running up the stairs. Mai led him into his bedroom and quickly got dressed, the annoyance of being watched by those lizard eyes being preferable to the disadvantage of holding a conversation in his nightshirt.

‘Civilian clothes, eh? Very good. And no doubt you’ve got Monsieur Édouard Scheffer’s identification somewhere about you? That could be useful.’

Did this little bastard know everything? Mai recalled he’d once dismissed him as being not very bright. Something else he’d been wrong about.

‘All right, Pajou. Spit it out,’ he said brusquely.

The man had no intention of saying anything directly, but by hints and obliquities, he soon made his purpose clear. There’d been several hours during which it was believed Hitler was dead. The
Militärbefehlshaber
had ordered the arrest of senior SS and SD officers to prepare the way for the expected assumption by the Army of all powers, political and military. But news of the Führer’s survival, confirmed later that night by his voice, hysterical with fury, on the radio, had changed everything. Released, the SD were bent on revenge. The principal high-ranking officers involved would be returned to Berlin to be dealt with there. But smaller fry would be disposed of locally.

‘I just happened to be around while all this was going on,’ said Pajou. ‘I was at the Avenue Foch when some
Wehrmacht
chaps were invited in for a chat. That’s when I realized Colonel Fiebelkorn was keen to see you too, captain, and as I happened to know where you were…’

But he was here under his own steam, that was clear. And his reasons were soon clear too.

For a ‘consideration’, he would give Mai a running start to disappear into the countryside. For a larger consideration, he would even help him across the border into Switzerland.

When Mai packed his bag and announced his intention of returning to Paris, Pajou only laughed, assuming this was part of the haggling process.

‘Come on, captain,’ he said. ‘You must be loaded! I mean, you’ve been here from the start.’

The man really believed it! He could not envisage that a man with Mai’s opportunities wouldn’t have laden himself with plunder during the past four years.

But when it became clear that Mai meant what he said, his ingratiating manner ceased.

‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ he said. ‘But you can’t help that. All right, in the car! Sooner we get you back the better.’

‘Pajou,’ said Mai softly. ‘You forget yourself. To talk to a
Wehrmacht
officer in that insubordinate tone is a criminal offence. Men have been shot for less.’

This was the real test. For a moment Pajou looked uneasy and Mai felt triumphant. But when he turned to Boucher and said, ‘Right, Miche. Let’s go,’ Pajou said, ‘Oh no, captain. With me, not him.’