Wolfsangel (23 page)

‘There is nothing to explain, Céleste. I know he is not your lover. But do not worry, your act was convincing. Nobody would guess, besides me. The only person who knows your every gesture; every angle of your body language. Intimately.’

‘You followed me from the hotel, didn’t you, Martin?

‘I knew something was wrong; you were different. I had to find out what.’

‘We can’t talk here,’ I said, trying to put him off, to give myself time to think about what I could say.

He raised a long arm and rested it against the doorway above my head, effectively blocking my passage. Not that I was going to make a run for it, I knew that was pointless.

‘But we have nothing to talk about, my sweet Céleste.’ He bent down, leaning close to me, his lips almost but not quite touching mine. ‘Now I know what your Red Cross work is really about.’

I remained speechless as, without another look at me, Martin turned and walked off with his long powerful strides.

***

Hurtling back to Jacqueline’s flat in a panic would only draw attention to me, so I forced myself down to a brisk walk back to the old district. I took a roundabout route to ensure Martin –– or anybody else –– wouldn’t follow me.

I couldn’t stop shaking, and throwing furtive glances over each shoulder. It was certain Martin knew I was working for the Resistance, but what did he feel about that? With the shock of the arrests, and Martin surprising me, I hadn’t been able to gauge his reaction. Could I trust him to keep my work to himself, or would his patriotic duty overrule his heart and make him turn me in? But even if Martin Diehl did keep his mouth shut, Pierre and Antoine’s arrest had certainly compromised our operation, and perhaps all our lives.

My heart rapped in time with my three-knock door code, and when Jacqueline opened it, I fell inside, my words rushing out in a gibberish stream.

‘… militia … Pi-Pierre and Antoine … arrested …’

Jacqueline took my arm and almost pushed me into the sofa.

‘Sit, Gabrielle.’ She lit two cigarettes and handed me one. ‘Calm down and tell me the whole story.’

My knees knocked together as Jacqueline set a cup of
café Pétain
before me, my trembling hand spilling rivulets of coffee down my front as I told her about the failed mission.

I did not mention Martin, who only knew me as Céleste Roussel, unaware that Gabrielle Fontaine even existed. Even if he did turn in Céleste Roussel from Lucie-sur-Vionne, they could not connect her with Gabrielle, residing at Jacqueline Laforge’s flat. The very best I could do –– my only option if I wanted to cling onto the barest fibre of pride –– was flee Jacqueline’s flat as quickly as possible, and avoid endangering the others. I would have to return to L’Auberge and take all the flak myself.

Without a word, Jacqueline ground out her cigarette, picked up the phone and called her brother.

***

Dr. Laforge arrived with the news that the authorities were holding Pierre and Antoine in Saint Paul prison. I remained silent, trying not to think of our friends being tortured, perhaps even shot.

‘I know you’re certain you weren’t followed home,’ the doctor said. ‘But we’ll disband operations here. Jacqueline will start organising a new place immediately.’

‘The militia must not have seen or known about you, Gabrielle,’ Jacqueline said. ‘Otherwise they’d have arrested you too, but it would be safer if you disappeared for a while. Gabrielle Fontaine will go back to Lucie-sur-Vionne and assume her true identity,’ she said. ‘For the moment.’

‘Of course,’ I said, thankful she had come to the same conclusion as me, albeit for a different reason. ‘I understand, but I feel terrible about Pierre and Antoine. Maybe I should’ve done something differently?’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the doctor said. ‘Sadly, arrests like this are becoming more and more frequent.’

‘And sometimes we never even discover who the informer is,’ Jacqueline said. ‘I’m thankful you were able to warn us, so we can take precautions.’

I stuffed my few clothes into my bag and left Jacqueline’s flat with the doctor. My head hanging low, I felt closed up, tighter than a drum, trying to battle the war that raged between my heart and my head.

39

After several weeks as Céleste Roussel, away from the thrill and tension of city life, I felt bored, defeated and discouraged. I yearned for a friend, someone to rake over my fears about Martin’s knowledge, and what part he might have played in Pierre and Antoine’s arrest. I needed to talk to someone about how the whole thing with Martin might have been one great mistake from the beginning. But there was no one. I was totally alone.

When Maman asked me to cycle to the bakery or run an errand in the village, where I might run into Martin, I invented some excuse about feeling tired or ill. At least I knew he would never venture up here to the farm to ask where I was.

But it seemed Martin had kept his mouth shut, because the Gestapo did not barge into L’Auberge to arrest me, or to interrogate my mother as to my whereabouts.

My mother hadn’t questioned my return and I didn’t offer any explanation. On the evening of Pierre and Antoine’s arrest when I arrived back at the farm, she simply ordered me to sit at the kitchen table, placed a plate of lentils before me, with a few anchovies from her secret stocks, and muttered something about being glad I was safe.

I milked the goats, fed the few hens left after the German roundups, collected their eggs, carted water up to the kitchen, and lead Gingembre out into her pasture –– all those chores that passed the time but did nothing to ease my anguished mind.

I longed for Dr. Laforge to come to L’Auberge and take me back to Lyon, but the only people who came were sick villagers, for Maman’s cures, or girls for her services. My fascination with the angel-making process had waned to a kind of resigned acceptance though, and I no longer crept upstairs to stare through the keyhole.

***

One morning early in May, I was pacing the kitchen with my usual frustration, watching through the window as Maman turned the soil of her kitchen garden and spread manure around the bases of the fruit trees. The early breeze had strengthened to a gusty wind, whipping the grey-streaked hair across her pleated brow.

I could have gone out and helped her but I was far too agitated to be around my mother. On impulse I climbed the ladder to the attic, crossed the dusty space and slipped into the alcove where the Wolf family had hidden the morning of the Gestapo arrest.

I took the small wooden box from the place I’d stashed Max’s paintings and the toy soldier with its red coat, opened it and picked up the photo. With a fingertip, I traced across the high brow, down the slant of a chiselled cheek and around the curve of his lips. As I stared into his eyes, pale on the photograph but violet-blue in my mind’s eye, I thought I’d go mad if I didn’t see him soon; if I couldn’t know what was happening between us.

I replaced the box, took the roll of Max’s artwork and sat cross-legged on the floor. I unravelled the paintings, anchoring the stubborn corners with volumes of some rodent-gnawed book.

In the pale light slanting from the dormer windows, I studied Max’s image of L’Auberge, and its Lyonnais-style wooden gateway. My eye followed the slope leading down to
Lucie –– the village that had stood unchanged for centuries, even under the stamp of the German enemy.

At the foot of the slope behind the farmhouse, the silvery spine of river wove through an early pink mist. The sun slanted gold across the water and, beyond the Vionne, the Monts du Lyonnais rose in a moss-green backdrop.

The next painting –– a view from the opposite window –– portrayed Mont Blanc and its eternal crown of snow away in the distance, fringing the once great silk city of Lyon.

I flattened out several more sheets, in stronger, bolder colours: scarlet cherries, milky winter snow, and brilliant yellow, crimson and orange autumn leaves.

There was one of Sabine in a ballerina’s pose. She wore a tutu and ballet shoes, her hair a dark smooth spiral atop her head. Her creamy face, tilted upwards, looked even paler against the black background. The light from the window bathing her face looked so warm it seemed the sun was truly shining on her. In the attic silence, I saw her dancing again. I heard Max humming the tunes and the children’s proud applause.

The rest of the paintings were later scenes, from the Wolfs’ time at the convent. The difference was astounding. The long, fluid strokes of when they’d first come to L’Auberge were replaced with savage dabs and slashes.

I remembered Félicité saying how, towards the end, they’d barely been able to coax Max away from his art to eat. He’d said there was no time to waste on eating and drinking.

His final works echoed the torment that had consumed him; the mania forced upon him: terrified children, gleaming Citroëns and black-uniformed men rounding up groups of bedraggled people.

Outside, great white mushrooms of cloud obscured the sun. The sky was darkening to the hue of an old bruise and throwing the attic into a mustard-coloured shadow.

The first gusts of wind rattled the open window, and a chill scurried up my arms as I stared at Max’s final, unfinished painting –– a truck loaded with a blur of bewildered faces. I rubbed my arms, almost smelling those fumes that would have lingered on the road after the truck screeched away.

It was as if those bursts of wind were carrying the stink of it all to me; the stench of the whole awful mess, and it snagged in my throat as I battled to hold the paper down flat. The gusts snarled in through the window, stubbornly curling the edges of the painting as if trying to hide the images from me; to mask what I suddenly knew in the miserable but proper light of responsibility, was most important.

As I rolled the artwork back up, careful to replace the sheet of cooking paper between each painting, I knew I couldn’t skulk away at L’Auberge a moment longer, avoiding Martin; skirting the painful issue.

I hurried down the steps, leapt on the bicycle and sped down to the village
.

***

It was a normal day in Lucie. Despite the wind, housewives stood chatting around the fountain, the artisans were hard at work and the old men played cards in their usual spot at Au Cochon Tué.

Martin was not amongst the Germans on the square. Sunlight pierced the cloud cover, glinting off the silver stripes on their uniforms and metal belt buckles, and the energetic, joyful air they gave la place de l’Eglise seemed horribly ironic.

Some of the older women –– mothers of prisoners, or war widows –– had as usual drawn their curtains so they wouldn’t have to look at the Germans, but the young children still crowded around them, fascinated by the uniforms and horses. Justin and Gervais and Paulette and Anne-Sophie pawed at the soldiers’ jackets with grubby little fingers. The Germans smiled, and when they started filling their hands with sweets, it seemed every child in Lucie gathered around them.

‘Girls!’ Miette’s mother called, from the doorway of the carpenter’s shop. ‘Come back inside, now.’ Busy cramming sweets into their mouths, Amandine and Séverine seemed not to hear her.

‘Time for lunch, children,’ Simon Laforge’s wife called to her three little ones. The chemist’s children too, ignored their mother.

I parked the bicycle and walked towards the bar. One of the Germans was standing at the card players’ table, asking for a light.

Miette’s grandfather handed him a box of matches and the German saluted, turned and walked away. The old man rolled his eyes, which brought muted laughter from the others.

‘Just how long are they going to stay?’ Monsieur Thimmonier muttered, around the Gauloise clamped between his lips.

‘Seems like they’ve been here forever,’ Miette’s grandfather said.

‘They might be gone sooner than we think,’ Robert Perrault senior said. ‘I’ve heard things are going well on the Russian front.’

‘Let’s just hope they’ll be on their way soon,’ André Copeau’s grandfather said.

With a wave to Robert and Evelyne Perrault, I disappeared into the toilet and locked the door. I bent down. No message from Martin. I scrawled a hasty note:

Meet me tomorrow, usual time, if you can
.

40

‘I’m off out to gather the spring growth,’ Maman said the following afternoon. She took her basket from its hook on the kitchen wall and fixed the grey-green eyes on me as if she’d guessed where I was going. ‘Why don’t you come with me, Célestine?’

My mother had never asked me to accompany her when she gathered the herbs and flowers that she dried and stored in her special room. I should have been delighted after all those years but I knew she’d be gone for hours, losing herself in the woods and the valleys of the Monts du Lyonnais.

‘I … normally I’d have liked to,’ I said. ‘But I have other plans. I’ll come next time.’

My mother gave her chignon a pat and walked out, her basket swinging from her arm. From the kitchen window, I watched her cross the courtyard, thinking how strange it was to see her opening herself to me. Perhaps though, it was simply that even the coldest, most distant person needs some sort of company in the end, and I was her only choice. I watched her step through the gateway and disappear into the back garden towards the woodland path.

I filled the tin tub with hot water, and stripped my clothes off –– the trousers and blouse I wore, like Jacqueline –– and slid into the water. I scrubbed my skin until it tingled.

I’d been in my bath only minutes when I heard the rap at the door. I climbed out, hoping it was Dr. Laforge, or Père Emmanuel. The knock came again, more impatient.

I snagged my father’s old coat from the hook in the hallway. Traces of his yellow smell of sawdust still clung to it, and I draped it around my wet body and hurried down the hallway.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Requisition, madame.’

On no, not them again. I couldn’t imagine what more the Germans could possibly want from us. Like every other farm around, they’d almost stripped L’Auberge. I opened the door a crack and stared into the smug faces of Karl Gottlob and Fritz Frankenheimer.

Fear jolted through me. I went to shut the door but Karl jammed a shiny black boot in the doorway.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘We were expecting the abortionist. We were wondering where you’d got to, Céleste, weren’t we Fritz?’

‘We have almost nothing left on the farm,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to try elsewhere.’

‘But I see you have some goats, hens and a horse,’ Karl went on. ‘They’ll do us fine.’

‘Open up,’ Fritz said. ‘We’ve come on official business, nothing more.’

I had no choice, they’d only report me for being insubordinate so I opened the door wider.

‘Don’t take our animals,’ I said, clutching Papa’s coat tightly around me with one hand, the other fumbling for my pendant. ‘They’re all we have left.’

‘But we soldiers are hungry,’ Karl said. ‘How are we to fight a war on empty stomachs?’

‘That horse looks nice and juicy,’ Fritz said. ‘Tender flesh.’ He rubbed circles over his great paunch.

‘Gingembre? You want to
eat
Gingembre? No!’ My fingers tightened around the bone angel. ‘Our stomachs aren’t full either, but I’d starve before I ate my horse.’

‘Now, now, Céleste, don’t get nasty,’ Fritz said, pushing the door open wider. ‘It’s not our fault you French bungled up and lost the war.’

‘You haven’t won,’ I said. ‘The Allies are coming.’

‘The Allies are coming, the Allies are coming,’ Karl sneered. ‘What a tiresome joke that’s become.’ He pushed past me into the hallway. ‘Now, what did Fritz say, Céleste? Don’t get nasty. We don’t like nasty girls.’

I stared at them, not knowing what else to say, as their sinister leers ran from my head to my toes.

Fritz stepped towards me and my heartbeat quickened. The milky grey-blue eyes stared into mine, his onion and cabbage breath rank on my cheek. He unsheathed his Luger, and, with the butt, traced a line down one side of my face. I shuddered, my eyes darting to the kitchen; at the beam of sunlight splicing through the window. Karl stood before me too, his legs spread, one hand fingering his own gun. There was nowhere to run.

I trembled all over. ‘T-take the goats, the hens, Gi-Gingembre. Whatever you want but please, leave me alone.’

‘Aw look, Karl,’ Fritz said, a crabby hand clawing at my coat front. ‘Little Céleste is scared. What a pity big strong Martin isn’t here to save her this time.’

Karl’s lips curved in a mean smile, his cat-eyes almost luminous.

‘No, please no!’ I tried to back away again. I knew I was begging and I hated myself for that. I jumped with fright as the fabric of my father’s coat sheared apart in Fritz’s hands.

He grabbed my angel necklace, ripped it from my neck and flung it aside. I heard it clatter on the tiles and I felt not only naked, but totally disarmed.

Fritz clutched one of my bare breasts and squeezed it hard. His doughy cheeks flushed red, he flung me backwards onto the floor. Bent over me, he jerked my legs apart.

Karl laughed his hideous, throaty cackle, and when I saw the bulge in his trousers, I gagged on the rising vomit. 

‘No, no!’ I pleaded again. ‘Please, no!’

‘Shut up, bitch,’ Karl said.

Sweat pouring from his face –– the matte pink shade of a slaughtered pig –– Fritz fumbled with his trousers and, with a single stab, thrust into me. I gasped with the pain, so fierce it ripped through my entire body. I tried to clamp my buttocks together to close my legs, but it was useless. I was trapped, as helpless as a mouse in a crow’s beak.

‘No, stop, you’re hurting me!’

Karl laughed again. Fritz said nothing as he tore my flesh apart, hammering into my body –– a solid, unrelenting pounding that seemed to reach right to my womb with every stroke.

I closed my eyes and sucked my breath in, trying to tear myself from his clutch. My thighs ached more and more with each fresh stab, and pinned beneath Fritz’s huge hands, I felt my wrists would snap.

My body tightened into spasms as he battered me harder and harder. Droplets of his sweat, mixed with drools of saliva, moistened my breasts.

I fought to the edge of surrender; tried to scream. Fritz’s breath came hot and fast, the exhaled air rancid as sour milk. He grabbed my hair, wrenching my head backwards, forcing my eyes to meet his, glowering with furious triumph. He gave a single grunt and slumped, sweat-slick and heavy, on me.

He pushed himself off me, took a corner of my father’s discarded coat and wiped the sticky sheen from his rust-coloured fuzz.

When Karl Gottlob had taken his turn, they left me there, splayed on the uneven terracotta tiles like a wounded animal, shot purely for sport.

They swaggered away from L’Auberge without a backward glance.

I didn’t know how long I stayed there, too numb to move, but eventually I rolled onto my front and raised myself onto all fours. I crawled across to where my pendant lay, and clasped it in my bloodless fist, my tears leaking onto Maman’s waxed tiles.