The Collaborators (5 page)

4

Maurice Melchior carefully examined his black velvet jacket for dust or hairs. Satisfied, he slipped his slender arms into it, spent some time adjusting the angle of his fedora, then stood back from the mirror to get the total effect.

Stunning, was the only possible verdict. He was a creature perfectly in balance, at that ideal point in his thirties where youth still burnt hot enough to melt the mature, and maturity already glowed bright enough to dazzle the young.

He tripped light as a dancer down the rickety staircase in this tall old house. On the floor below he met Charlot, the ginger cat belonging to old Madame Simonian. Charlot wanted attention. It was hard to resist those appealing eyes, but, ‘Not when I’m wearing the black velvet, my dear,’ explained Melchior.

A few moments later he was out in the sunshine.

This was not the first time he had been out since the Boche came, but his previous expeditions had been furtive, frightened things, at dusk, well wrapped up, to buy a few provisions and scuttle back to his lair. Really, a man of his sensibility should have fled as soon as the invasion became a certainty, but as usual he’d put off the decision till the sight of all those jostling refugees made it quite impossible.

And what had happened? Nothing! Life, he had gradually been reassured, was going on much as before for those courageous souls who had refused to be panicked into craven flight. Today he was going out in broad daylight and not just round the corner to the grocer’s shop. Today he was strolling south, leaving the Marais behind, and heading where he truly belonged.

The Left Bank! Saint-Germain-des-Prés! Everything he dreamt of was here…to hear his wit applauded at the Deux Magots, to have his custom valued at the Tour d’Argent…Dreams indeed. But even though he could rarely afford the latter and was barely admitted to the outermost circles of the former, merely to cross the river once more felt like coming home. If it hadn’t been that the dear old man who had set him up in his little flat in the Rue de Thorigny all those years ago had arranged in his will for the rent to be paid as long as he stayed, he’d have moved across the river long since.

After his first exhilaration at being back in his old haunts, a certain uneasiness began to steal over him. Everything was so quiet. Not many people about and next to no traffic, except for the odd German truck which still sent him diving into the nearest doorway. He found himself thinking of going home.

Then he drew himself up to his full five feet seven inches and cried, ‘No!’

Whatever this day brought forth, Maurice Melchior, aesthete, intellectual, wit, man of letters, gourmet, not to mention homosexual and Jew, would be there to greet it.

Overcome with admiration for his own courage, he stepped unheeding off the pavement. There was a screech of brakes and a car slewed to a halt across the road. It didn’t actually touch Melchior but sheer shock buckled his knees and he sat down. Out of the driver’s window a man in grey uniform began to shout at him in German. It wasn’t difficult to get his gist.

‘Be quiet,’ said an authoritative voice. ‘Monsieur, I hope you’re not hurt.’

And Maurice Melchior looked up to see a Nordic god stooping over him with compassion and concern in his limpid blue eyes.

‘My name is Zeller. Bruno Zeller. Call me Bruno. And you, monsieur…Melchior?’

They had come to a café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel where Melchior used to meet, or seek, student friends. The vacation and the situation combined to make it empty at the moment and the patron had been delighted to have their custom, greeting Melchior by his name, a fact which seemed to impress the German.

‘Yes. Melchior’s my name! Magus that I am! Bearing gifts of gold! From the East I come!’

It was a little verse from a Nativity Play which he used occasionally to quiz his Christian friends. Zeller laughed in delight.

‘But call me Maurice,’ he went on. ‘Cigarette?’

He offered his gold case, inscribed (at his own expense) ‘To
Maurice
-
In remembrance of times past
-
Marcel.’

‘English,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ said Zeller. ‘I have no prejudice.’

He smiled then let his gaze fall to the case which Melchior had left on the table.

He read the inscription and said, ‘Good Lord. Is that…?’

‘What? Oh, yes. Dear Marcel. I was very young of course. A child. And he was old…ah, that cork-lined bedroom…’

He spent the next hour idly reminiscing about the past. His conversation was liberally laced with references to great figures of the worlds of art and literature. Nor was his familiarity altogether feigned. Though a gadfly, he’d been fluttering around the Left Bank too long not to have been accepted as a denizen.

Zeller was clearly impressed. Melchior soon had him placed as an intelligent and reasonably educated man by German standards, but culturally adolescent. Paris was to him the artistic Mecca which held all that was most holy. He needed a guide, Melchior needed a protector. They were made for each other.

But he mustn’t overdo it. Was that a flicker of doubt in those lovely blue eyes as he mentioned that his mother, a laundress in Vincennes, had been mistress to both Renoir
and
Zola? He quickly asked a question about the German’s family. The story which came back of a widowed mother living a reclusive life in the family castle high above the Rhine had to be true or Zeller’s invention outstripped his own!

‘Major Zeller. I thought it was you.’

A black Mercedes had drawn in at the kerb close to their pavement table. A man was looking out of the open rear window. He had a heavy, florid face with watery eyes in which hard black pupils glistened like beads of jet. Melchior felt something unpleasantly hypnotic in their gaze. Perhaps Zeller felt it also for he rose with evident reluctance from his chair and went to the car. But when he spoke, his tone wasn’t that of a man controlled.

‘Ah, Colonel Fiebelkorn. On leave? I hope you have long enough to take in all the sights.’

Melchior recognized aristocratic insolence when he heard it.

‘The interesting ones.’ The cold eyes slipped to Melchior. ‘A guide is always useful. Why don’t you introduce me to your friend, major?’

‘This is
Abwehr
business,’ said Zeller coldly. But Melchior had already come forward. He examined Fiebelkorn with interest. In his fifties, a powerful personality, he guessed. In the lapel of his civilian jacket he wore a tiny silver death’s head. Too, too Gothic!

‘Maurice Melchior,’ he said, holding out his hand.

‘Walter Fiebelkorn,’ said the German, taking it and squeezing gently.

Good Lord, thought Melchior. Two out of two! If all German officers were like this pair, this could yet be France’s finest hour!

‘I’m glad the security of the Fatherland is in such safe hands,’ said Fiebelkorn. ‘Major, Monsieur Melchior. Till we meet again.’

As the car drew away, Melchior said testingly, ‘Nice man.’

‘If you can think that, you’re a fool.’

‘Oh dear. And that will never do if I’m to be a secret agent, will it?’

His boldness worked. Zeller laughed and took his arm.

‘Let’s see if we can find something better suited to your talents,’ he said.

5

As the summer ended and the sick time of autumn began, Pauli caught measles. Soon afterwards Céci went down with them too. It was a worrying time but at least it focused Janine’s mind outward from her daily increasing fears for Jean-Paul.

There were all kinds of rumours about French prisoners, the most popular being that now the war was over they’d be sent home any day. But the long trains had rolled eastward since then carrying millions into captivity. Only the sick and the maimed came home, but at least most families with a missing man had learned if he were dead or alive.

But Jean-Paul Simonian’s name appeared on no list.

It was to her father that Janine turned for support and sympathy. She had never forgotten the look on her mother’s face when she’d run into the shop those seven years before and announced joyously that she and Jean-Paul were to be married. It had been her father then who had comforted her and made her understand just how many of his wife’s prejudices had been roused in a single blow.

Briefly, by being an anti-clerical, intellectual, left-wing Jewish student, Jean-Paul Simonian was offensive in every particular. The fact that his religious targets included Judaism was a small mitigation, and getting a job as a teacher was a slightly larger one. Charm, which he always had, and children, which they quickly had, had finally sown the seeds of a truce with his mother-in-law, but it was a delicate growth and peculiar in that Jean-Paul’s absence seemed to threaten it more than his presence had ever done.

Louise Crozier’s attitude to the Germans was soon another point of issue.

‘That nice lieutenant from the Lutétia was asking after the children this morning,’ said Madame Crozier one lunchtime.

‘The fat Boche? What business is it of his?’ said Janine.

‘He was only being polite,’ retorted her mother. ‘You might try it too. Politeness never hurt anyone. He always comes in on pastry day and asks for three of your brioches. I told him you hadn’t done any. He wasn’t at all put out but asked, very concerned, how the children were. I think he’s charming.’

‘He’s a pig like the rest of them,’ said Janine, who was tired and irritable. She had got very little sleep the previous night. ‘I don’t see why you encourage them to come into the shop.’

‘Don’t talk stupid!’ said her mother. ‘The war’s over, so who’s the enemy now? All right, the Germans are here in Paris, but they’ve behaved very correctly, you can’t deny that. All that talk about burning and looting and raping! Why, the streets are safer now than they’ve ever been!’

‘How can you talk like that!’ demanded Janine. ‘They’ve invaded our country, killed our soldiers. They nearly killed me and the kids. They’ve probably killed my husband or at best they’ve locked him up. And you talk as if they’ve done us a favour by coming here!’

‘I don’t think your mother really meant that, dear,’ said Claude Crozier mildly.

‘Permit me to say for myself what I mean!’ said his wife. ‘Listen, my lady, I run a business here. I don’t pick my customers, they pick me. And we don’t have to like each other either. But I tell you this, there’s a lot of our French customers I like a lot less than Lieutenant Mai.’

‘Maman,’ said Pauli at the door. ‘Céci’s crying.’

55

‘Shall I go?’ offered Louise.

‘No thanks,’ said Janine. ‘She doesn’t speak German yet.’

She left the room, pushing her son before her.

‘She gets worse,’ said Madame Crozier angrily. ‘I don’t know where she gets it from. Not my side of the family, that’s sure.’

‘It’s a worrying time for her what with the children being ill and no news of Jean-Paul,’ said her husband.

‘If you ask me, she’ll be better off if she never gets any news of him,’ said the woman.

‘Louise! Don’t talk like that!’

‘Why not?’ said Madame Crozier, a little ashamed and therefore doubly defiant. ‘It was a mistake from the start.’

‘He’s a nice enough lad,’ said Crozier. ‘And there was never any fuss about religion. The children are being brought up good Catholics, aren’t they?’

‘That’s no credit to him,’ replied Madame Crozier, who had never seen what consistency had to do with a reasoned argument. ‘You can’t respect a man who doesn’t respect his own heritage, can you? There’s someone come into the shop. Are you going to sit on your backside all day?’

With a sigh, Crozier rose and went through into the shop. A moment later he returned, followed by Christian Valois.

‘She’s upstairs with the little girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her you’re here.’

‘Thank you. Hello, Madame Crozier.’

Christian was a little afraid of Janine’s mother. One of the things he admired about Jean-Paul was his mocking indifference to his in-laws. ‘They’re made of dough, you know,’ he’d said. ‘Put ‘em in an oven and they’d rise!’

Louise for her part was ambivalent in her attitude to Valois. True, he was one of her son-in-law’s clever-clever university chums. But he came from a good Catholic family, had a respectable job in the Civil Service, and was unfailingly polite towards her.

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘How are your charming parents?’

56

She’d never met them but knew that Valois senior was an important deputy. That was how to get the good jobs; have a bit of influence behind you! She felt envy but no disapproval.

‘They are safe and well, madame,’ said Valois. ‘My father continues to look after the country’s interests in Vichy.’

He spoke with a bitter irony which seemed to be lost on Madame Crozier.

Janine came in.

‘Christian, is there news?’

‘Nothing, I’m afraid. But my contacts in the Foreign Ministry are still trying. And I’ve written to my father asking him to help.’

She turned away in disappointment and flopped into a chair. He looked at her with exasperation. Clearly she regarded his efforts on Jean-Paul’s behalf as at best coldly bureaucratic, at worst impertinently intrusive. His sacrifice of pride and principle in writing to his father for assistance meant nothing to her. Why Jean-Paul had ever hitched himself to someone like this, he couldn’t understand. A silly shop-girl, good for a few quick tumbles.

He said brusquely, ‘There’s another matter.’

‘Yes?’ said Janine indifferently.

‘Perhaps a word in private.’

‘Come through into the shop,’ said Janine after a glance at her mother, who showed no sign of moving.

In the shop, Valois said, ‘Have you seen Madame Simonian lately?’

‘Not for a while. I usually take the children on Sundays, but they’ve been ill. Why? She hasn’t heard anything, has she?’

The sudden eagerness in her voice irritated Valois once more.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s her I’m worried about. I went to see her earlier. The concierge said she’d just gone down to the greengrocer’s so I went after her. I found her having an argument with a German sergeant who’d seen her pulling down the JEWISH BUSINESS poster the greengrocer had put in his window.’

‘What poster’s that?’ interrupted Janine.

‘Don’t you pay attention to anything? It’s been decreed that all Jewish shopkeepers have to put up these posters. Fortunately the sergeant clearly thought there weren’t many medals in arresting a seventy-year-old woman for threatening him with a bunch of celery, so he was glad to let me smooth things over.’

‘Yes,’ she said, taking in his neat dark suit and his guarded bureaucratic expression. ‘You’d be good at that, Christian. Personally I think you’d have done better to join in bashing the Boche with the celery. If we all did that, we’d soon get things back to normal!’

‘All? Who are these
all?’
wondered Valois.

‘People. You don’t think any real Frenchman’s going to sit back and let the Boche run our lives for us, do you?’

He said, ‘Janine, it’s real Frenchmen who are putting their names to these decrees. I’ll tell you something else that real Frenchmen have done. It’s been suggested - that’s the word used -
suggested
to publishing firms that they might care to do a voluntary purge on their lists, get rid of unsuitable authors such as German exiles, French nationalists, British writers, and of course Jews. They’ve
all
agreed! No objections. Not one!’

‘Oh, those are intellectuals with their heads in the clouds, or businessmen with their noses in the trough,’ said Janine wearily. ‘It’s the ordinary people I’m talking about. They won’t let themselves be mucked around by these Boche. Just wait. You’ll see. But thanks for telling me about Sophie. I’ll keep an eye on her.’

As she spoke, Valois realized just how much on edge she was; emotionally frayed by worry about Jean-Paul, physically exhausted by her work in the shop combined with sleepless nights looking after the kids, and doubtless worn down by the simple strain of daily life with the formidable Louise.

Behind him the shop door opened and a German officer came in. He was a stocky fellow of indeterminate age with an ordinary kind of face, were it not for a certain shrewdness of gaze which made you think that every time he blinked, his eyes were registering photographs.

‘Good day, Ma’m’selle Janine,’ he said in excellent French. ‘I hope the children are improving. I was asking after them when I talked with your excellent mother earlier. I thought perhaps a few chocolates might tempt their appetites back to normal…’

He proffered a box of chocolates. Janine ignored it and glanced furiously at Valois. She was angry that after what she’d just been saying, the civil servant should see her on such apparently familiar terms with this Boche. Feeling herself close to explosion, she took a deep breath and said, ‘No thank you, lieutenant. I don’t think they will help.’

‘Oh,’ said Günter Mai, nonplussed.

He regarded her assessingly, placed the box carefully on the counter and said, ‘Forgive the intrusion. Perhaps your dear mother, or you yourself, might enjoy them. You’ll be doing me a favour.’

He patted his waistline ruefully, touched his peak in the shadow of a salute and brought his heels gently together in the echo of a click.

It was the gentle mockery of these gestures plus the diplomatic courtesy with which he’d received her rejection that finally triggered off the explosion.

She pushed the chocolates back across the counter with such force that the box flew through the air, struck him on the chest and burst open, scattering its contents all over the floor.

‘Why don’t you sod off and take your sodding chocolates with you?’ she shouted. ‘We don’t want them, do you understand? I can look after my own kids without any help from the likes of you.’

59

The door from the living quarters burst open.

‘What’s going on!’ demanded Madame Crozier. ‘What’s all the noise?’

‘It’s nothing, madame. The young lady is upset. Just a little misunderstanding,’ said Mai with a rueful smile.

‘I’ve been telling your Boche friend a few home truths,’ cried Janine. ‘You talk to him if you want, maman. Me, I’ve had enough!’

She pushed her way past her mother and disappeared.

‘Janine! Come back here!’ commanded Madame Crozier. ‘Lieutenant, I’m so sorry, you must forgive her, take no notice, she’s overwrought. Excuse me.’

She turned and went after her daughter. Soon angry voices drifted back into the shop where Mai and Valois stood looking at each other.

‘And you are…?’ said Mai courteously.

‘Valois. Of the Ministry of Finance.’

‘Ah. Not in Vichy, monsieur?’

‘Finance remains in Paris.’

‘Of course. Good day, Monsieur Valois.’

No salute or heel clicking this time. He turned and left the shop. Christian Valois went to the door and watched him stroll slowly along the pavement. His back presented an easy target. With a shock of self-recognition, Valois found himself imagining pulling out a gun and pumping bullets into that hated uniform. But if he had a gun would he have the nerve to use it? He realized he was trembling.

Behind him, Louise re-entered, her face pink with emotion.

‘Has he gone? Such behaviour! I don’t know where she gets it from, not my family, I’m sure. She’s never been the same since she married that Jew.’

She sank to her knees and began collecting chocolates. Janine came in. Ignoring her mother, she said, ‘Christian, no need to worry about Sophie. Soon as the children are well enough, I’ll be coming to stay with her. Will you tell her that, please? I’ll be round later to sort things out.’

60

’It’s a very small flat,’ said Valois. ‘You’ll be awfully crowded.’

‘Not as crowded as we are here, knee deep in Boches and their hangers-on.’

‘Listen to her. Such ingratitude, she’ll get us all killed,’ muttered Louise, crawling around in search of stray chocolates.

Pauli came in and looked curiously at his crawling grandmother.

‘What’s gramma doing?’ he asked.

‘Rooting for truffles,’ said Janine. ‘Goodbye, Christian.’

Stepping gingerly over Louise, Christian Valois left the bakery. As he walked along the empty street, he began to smile, then to chuckle out loud.

Unobserved in a doorway on the other side, Günter Mai smiled too.