Wolfsangel (30 page)

‘Maybe he’s a prisoner of war on his way home?’ Miette said. ‘The government
is
encouraging us all to receive returning workers with open arms, whether they are family or not.’

‘Oh yes! While that same government doesn’t even give most of them a fresh set of clothes or a homeward bound train ticket,’ I said. ‘It’s scandalous.’

My mother was hurrying to the tramp, who spread his arms wide.

In all the years before they’d sent Papa to Germany, I couldn’t recall seeing my parents touch each other, but then they hugged and kissed like impatient young lovers. For the first time ever, I think, I heard the sound of my mother’s laugh. A real laugh, from the heart.

52

On a scorching summer day of 1946 I married Olivier Primrose. It was a double wedding, with Patrick and Juliette Dubois.

Miette insisted the ceremony take place in the charred remains of Saint Antoine’s church. ‘So my mother, and Amandine, will be with us,’ she said. ‘And so many of our friends.’

When Rachel Abraham had learned of the planned nuptials, she limped up to L’Auberge from her home in the new Lucie-sur-Vionne and presented my mother with a bolt of cream-coloured cloth and a skein of exquisite antique lace, from which Maman fashioned two beautiful gowns.

Aunt Maude and Uncle Félix arrived in the trap from Julien, with my cousins, Jules and Paul.

‘Come on, Félicité,’ my father said. ‘We’ll be late for the wedding. You know Céleste’s getting married today.’ His face spread in a silly grin, his arms stretched wide towards his beloved invisible daughter. ‘And your mother’s prepared such a feast. You’ll have to feed yourself up, look at you, how much weight you’ve lost. Oh what lovely days we’re going to spend together, Félicité, now the war is over.’

My father never uttered a word about those lost years, and we heard the Germans had allowed prisoners to send letters home only until July of 1943, to boost morale and control the anxiety of those back home. After that, they’d forbidden any correspondence.

He’d been back from the labour camp only a few days when we noticed his mind had gone astray. The visions of Félicité began as soon as we told him how his daughter died a heroine, and he began to resurrect treasured memories, recalling certain words she’d said, gestures made with a little girl’s hand. He spoke of the pink smock she wore as a child, and the way she cried and held out her arms to him when she’d been stung by nettles.

But for the most part he was still lucid, quite aware his daughter was gone, as he was then, as the wedding party stood on la place de l’Eglise, before the ruins of Saint Antoine’s church.

‘She came from a different world,’ he said to Maman, clamping his wrinkled, stick-thin arms across his chest. ‘People talk about Heaven, but they only think about this world. Saints like her are sent here to make up for our sins. Félicité came from God and she must be very happy now.’

His shoulders heaved, tears coursing down his cheeks which he swiped at angrily. He hid his face in his cupped hands and my mother boosted him up as he bent into her shoulder.

Between those imaginary sightings and conversations with Félicité, my father spent most of his days staring at nothing with a bored, milky gaze, even more so when he was forced to stop working the wood.

We learned that failing eyesight was a common problem for those who’d worked in the
Reich
rayon factories. While it was important for manufacturing German army uniforms, the workers had inhaled volatile carbon disulphide, increasing their chances of heart disease, toxic effects to the nervous system and serious eye problems.

So Papa simply sat in the same chair in the kitchen, staring at his hands, which he turned over and over –– the wood carver’s hands in which something unique and splendid had lived, and died. Oh yes, we were one of the lucky families. Our father had made it home from the terrible German labour camps in which countless had perished. He had survived!

Olivier’s parents also came for the wedding. They’d learned of the Lucie tragedy while still in London, but had no wish to return to the scene of their devastated home, or the painful reminders of Uncle Claude, Justin and Gervais, and little Paulette.

‘We’ve bought a home down south,’ Olivier’s father, Edward Primrose, told us.

‘But we understand why Olivier is staying,’ his mother said. ‘He has his roots here; everything he knows and loves. And now he has you too, Céleste, but I hope you’ll both visit often.’

As I stood in the ghost-like silence of la place de l’Eglise, Miette and I swathed in our elegant gowns, the sun and shade painting our bare shoulders, I couldn’t help recalling how it was before. I saw the leafy lime trees, and the blooming roses. I heard the clatter of familiar footsteps on the cobblestones, the trickle of the fountain, the creaking of wheelbarrows, the
bawk-bawk-bawk
of hens.

I lifted my arm in a wave, as Dr. Etienne Laforge arrived with his sister, Jacqueline. Pierre and Antoine were with them too, released from prison after the liberation, and continuing their law degrees.

Jacqueline Laforge’s reputation as an ardent women’s rights worker was widely known. I pored over her magazine and newspaper articles and attended the meetings and demonstrations she led in the city. She still drank and smoked like a man, and occasionally came to L’Auberge for a Sunday picnic with her brother, who continued his doctor’s practice from one of the new homes of Lucie.

All the guests had arrived, and we moved across to the vestiges of Saint-Antoine’s. Summer heat filling the blackened chamber, I stood with Olivier, Patrick, Miette, and the girls –– Séverine, Anne-Sophie and Talia –– proudly holding their bright posies.

The priest came from the church they were building in the new Lucie, and while his sermon was pleasant, it was the soothing, learned voice of Père Emmanuel I heard booming from where the pulpit once stood.

The ceremony over, I let Olivier’s hand go and walked across to the three windows on the apse wall, behind the altar. I knelt down before the largest one and bowed my head. I didn’t attempt to pray; I simply placed my bouquet of red roses and sunflowers, sprinkled with baby’s breath, against the blackened wall.

‘For you, Sister Marie-Félicité,’ I whispered. ‘Our bride of Christ.’

***

With Sabine and Madame Abraham’s help, my mother had prepared a feast at L’Auberge.

It had been stiflingly hot all day, and we only started to breathe easily as the sun cast its final orange glow across the Monts du Lyonnais. The sweet-smelling dusk dropped and Maman threw the doors and windows open, welcoming in the night freshness.

My mother’s garden was at its most beautiful. The heat had withered the daisies and carnations, but around the well the cluster of rose bushes was in full bloom, their sugary scent splayed across the cobblestones.

Amidst the racket of crickets and the laughter and chatter of my friends and family, my new husband drew me close and kissed me. He lifted my angel pendant from where it lay against the laced edge of my wedding gown.

‘Let’s hope there’ll soon be someone to hand this down to.’

‘Not
too
soon,’ I said with a smile. ‘You know I need to finish my studies and get a job. I might be a wife now, Olivier, but I’m still a free woman!’

He laughed. ‘And so you’ll always be, I fear.’

I tilted my face to the moon, which was rising like a gigantic blood-orange in the sky. One of the stars glowed brighter and larger than the others, and winked at me. As the light disappeared and I lowered my eyes from that golden crown, I had no regrets, convinced the dark-headed childhood friend by my side was the perfect husband.

My mother brought the cake out, a three-tiered creation layered with cream and edged in raspberries and redcurrants.

‘I want to cut it,’ Anne-Sophie said.

‘No me, let me,’ Séverine said.

As usual, Talia watched from a distance in wide-eyed silence. It seemed nobody dared tempt her to speak, perhaps for fear of causing more damage, if that were possible. At least she’d joined us today instead of taking refuge in the attic, hunched over her father’s paintings.

‘Don’t bicker, girls,’ Maman said. ‘You’ll both have a turn cutting the cake.’

Anne-Sophie and Séverine clapped their hands but Talia remained wordless, though I did catch a glimmer in those sad pearl-grey eyes as the girl turned to her mother.

Clad in a billowy skirt and ballet shoes, her hair shining blue-black in the moonlight, Sabine glided across the grass towards us. Nobody uttered a sound as she clasped her hands in prayer position close to her heart and fixed her eyes on her daughter.

My father must have known about Sabine’s show, because a silly grin lit his face as he stood over the gramophone player.

‘When you’re ready,’ he said to Sabine. ‘Céleste, go and call your sister, she’ll love this.’

Maman’s brow creased and I patted the chair next to me.

‘Félicité is already here, Papa, all set to enjoy the show. Why don’t you put the music on, then come and sit next to me?’

Sabine gave the slightest nod and the first melodious notes struck the night air. Her head extended high and proud, she began to dance, each practised step light, and liquid as a high-running spring river.

‘What’s the music?’ I whispered to Madame Abraham, as Sabine hovered over the sun-warmed grass.

‘It’s Swan Lake,’ she said. ‘The story of a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer’s curse.’

We watched in enchanted silence –– Sabine’s languid arm gestures, and the way she balanced on her tiptoes and pirouetted like a spinning top. The music grew louder, faster, as if it were rolling across the garden, over the cobblestones and echoing deep through the secret valleys and the frill of trees that looked like hooded nuns shuffling into the woods.

The music began to fade. Sabine raised her arms and slid to the earth in a final, graceful arch.

Talia was the first to clap. Like a thousand stars from the summer night sky shining on her at once, a smile lit her face.

‘Maman’s the best ballerina in all the world,’ she said.

The applause stopped. All eyes turned to Talia.

‘Well, I never,’ Papa said. ‘The child’s come home to us.’

He began pouring half-finger doses of Maman’s
confiture de vieux garçon
into the
digestif
glasses.

‘Why’s it called old boy’s jam?’ Séverine asked, sniffing at the liqueur in her sister’s glass. ‘What’s in it?’

‘Just a bit of fruit left over after the jam,’ Maman said. ‘Strawberries, raspberries, cherries, plums. All soaked in cognac.’

Our faces glowing in the moonlight, the smoky perfume of lime-blossom, lavender, oak and chestnut bark filling our nostrils, my father lifted his glass.

‘To the happy couples,’ he said.

‘Happy couples,’ everyone chanted.

We lifted our glasses to the sky, from where the sun would rise tomorrow over Mont Blanc, flinging its broad rays across the Monts du Lyonnais; from where the wind and the birds would glide across the fields and woods, and from where the Vionne River would spring from the hills and carve its timeless path through the valley.

We drank to the glory of people walking from one place to another in freedom.

I made a silent toast to that other person who was gone too; the one whose diamond ring and photo were gathering dust in a little wooden box, the corners curling with the winter damp, the handsome features fading so that they’d become so hazy I could no longer define the face.

‘To our friends and loved ones,’ Maman said. ‘Who will never leave us.’

Nobody spoke as we raised our glasses to Sister Marie-Félicité; to Max and Jacob Wolf.

We rarely mentioned them those days. Nor did we speak about the people who’d perished in the Lucie massacre. It was as if none of us, besides my father whose tortured mind gave him no choice, wanted to linger in our tragic pasts, and we simply carried our individual burdens of grief; our guilty millstones, close to our hearts.

Author’s Note

Oradour-sur-Glane

The idea for
Wolfsangel
, and the factual event upon which the Lucie-sur-Vionne massacre is based, came to me when I visited the memorial site of the original village of Oradour-sur-Glane, a commune in the Limousin region of west-central France.

On 10th June 1944, four days after the Allied landings in Normandy, SS troops encircled the village and rounded up its inhabitants. In the marketplace they divided the men from the women and children. The men were marched off to barns and shot.
Only five of the 186 male civilians survived, by staying –– partly covered by dead bodies –– in the barn and pretending to be dead. The SS set the barn alight fifteen minutes after the execution to cover the tracks of their massacre.

The soldiers locked the women and children in the church, shot them, and set the building (and then the rest of the town) on fire.
Two women and one child survived. One was 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche. She hauled herself out of a window behind the altar, followed by a young woman and child. German soldiers shot all three of them, killing the woman and child and wounding Rouffanche, who escaped into nearby foliage where she stayed until she was rescued the following day.

Those residents of Oradour who had been away for the day, or had managed to escape the roundup, returned to a blackened scene of horror, carnage and devastation. Those moments of unthinkable atrocity obliterated the lives of many and broke those of the few survivors. The fact that so few survived the savage slaughter is a testimony to the efficiency of the German plan. Moreover, the reasons why the SS committed such a crime against humanity have never been determined. Some of them were brought to trial, either in Bordeaux or Berlin, the others escaped retribution. Among German crimes of the Second World War, the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre of 642 men, women and children is one of the most notorious.

A new village was constructed on a nearby site, but on the orders of the French president, Charles de Gaulle, the original site was maintained as a permanent memorial. He wanted the ruins to be preserved so that future generations might see, realise and never forget where such evil folly may lead. These ruins demand respect and sorrow of all who visit them.

If you would like to learn more about the true story behind the book, please visit the
Wolfsangel
page of my website: www.lizaperrat.com

Elise Rivet

The character of Félicité Roussel is based on Elise Rivet, a Roman Catholic nun who became Mother Superior in 1933. She concealed refugees from the Gestapo in her convent, and stored weapons and ammunition for the Resistance movement. Eventually arrested by the Gestapo, she was taken to the Montluc Prison in Lyon, and shipped to Ravensbrück concentration camp. On 30 March 1945, only weeks before the war ended, she volunteered to go to the gas chambers in the place of a young mother. In 1961 the French government honoured her with her portrait on a postage stamp. A street bearing her name (rue Mère Elise Rivet) was inaugurated in Brignais (Lyon) on December 2, 1979. In 1977, she was posthumously awarded the
Médaille des Justes
and in 1999, the Salle Elise Rivet was named for her at the
Institut des Sciences de L’Homme
in Lyon.

Angel-maker

Marie-Louise Giraud (November 17, 1903 – July 30, 1943) was a 39-year old housewife, mother and laundress who became one of the last women to be guillotined in France. Giraud was a convicted abortionist in 1940s Nazi occupied France, executed on July 30, 1943 for having performed 27 abortions in the Cherbourg area. She was the only
faiseuse d’anges
(angel-maker) to be executed for this reason. Her story was dramatised in the 1988 movie
Story of Women
, directed by Claude Chabrol.

Despite these historical facts, this novel is a work of fiction; a work that combines the actual with the invented. All incidents and dialogue and all characters, with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.