‘Don’t you want to use the bath?’ he asked.
I hesitated-it took a lot of wood to heat that boiler. He looked at the statue but didn’t smile. Me, I thought I knew what he wanted and said no.
Later … how much later was it? One, two, maybe three o’clock in the morning. Just like now. There was a noise in the cellar, a scraping that drew me because it was so furtive. Rats? I wondered.
I had a candle then, too. In the wine cellar, there are broken bottles all over the place, but those were not broken then. But now I set the candle down and begin to pry at the wall. It took me five days of periodic searching to find this block of stone he’d removed. A space had been hollowed out behind it.
There were two French army service revolvers wrapped in oilcloths-Lebels, the Modèle d’ordonnance 1873-several boxes of the old black-powder, 11 mm cartridges, and a German Luger pistol, the 1908, 9 mm semiautomatic-yes, that’s the one that’s finally in my hands-but I couldn’t understand back then how he had come by it and the others. Stolen, the Lebels, yes, of course, but had he crossed the lines and killed a German officer to get this Luger? He could have, I was certain, but had he bought it perhaps?
There was a black leather wallet with snapshots of a blonde-haired girl of twenty. Papers and a passport gave the name of Daniel Albrecht, an electrician of German descent from Strasbourg in Alsace. The membership card for the SS had a number, and I didn’t quite know what to do. First, because of the SS, of course. Second, because he had thought it safe to hide such things in the house. And third, because he obviously intended to come back for them.
The weapon was, of course, covered with Vaseline, and still is, and it is in its holster. I used it many times and always was able to hide it here. The Vaseline comes away with each wipe of the rag I’ve brought, the metal blue and untarnished, and there’s a crosshatching on the butt that improves the grip immensely. It’s my gun, it was my gun. The clip isn’t quite full, but just the way I left it, though the spring is stiff, and I thumb this, pushing the bullets down and letting them come back. Several times I shuck shells into and out of the breech until I’m satisfied.
Then I reach into the hole in the wall to feel for the extra cartridges only to remember that I’d almost run out. Sacré nom de nom!
The knife is still where I left it wrapped in its oilcloth. I run a thumb over the nickel insignia of the SS, the lightning barb and the death’s-head we dreaded. Once, twice, I release the blade. It leaps. It’s fast. A shock hits your hand every time. Fifteen centimetres of cold, hard, double-edged, razor-sharp stainless steel.
Now I have what I need, and as the cellar holds me, I listen to the house, to the continual racket the wind produces before I snuff out the candle and sink down to the floor to lean back against the wall and remember.
Never good, the news grew steadily worse. On 9 April 1940, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway, the Danes capitulating in four hours.
I took to fretting. There had been no word from Tommy. Day by day, I felt I might have to leave France in a hurry. I packed two suitcases for the children, a third for myself, and kept these ready by the door. When I could, I bought extra petrol for the car, storing it in old wine bottles down in the cellar.
Food became precious. The roads south would be clogged by the fleeing. I would have to force my way northward through them to reach one of the Channel crossings. Would it be possible?
I was pregnant, and it was beginning to show. I want to stress this because it wasn’t Tommy’s child.
June … it was then June of 1940 at last.
‘But I am British! I have a British passport!’
‘I know, madam. I can see that, but you’re married to a Frenchman. Only those French women who are married to Englishmen can be granted visas.’
‘Visas? I have a passport. I have a house in Aisholt. My father was British and a veteran of the Great War, damn it!’
‘Madam, there’s no need for blasphemy. I assure you everything that can be done is being done.’
‘And you won’t let us leave the country?’
To him, I had cast my lot with the French who had broken and run from the Germans, so now I could bloody well put up with them! ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible.’
‘Listen, you, I have two children. I’m nearly four-and-a-half months pregnant.’
The assistant secretary at the British Consulate in Paris twisted the ends of his moustache. ‘Look, even if I were to do as you wish, I very much doubt you’d reach the Channel. The roads are clogged with refugees from Belgium and the north of France. They’re being bombed and machine-gunned-strafed, damn it-just as is everything else.’
‘I must go south, back to Fontainebleau and the house?’
‘It would be best. Find your husband. He really ought to be with you. Now there’s a good girl, eh? Next? Who’s next?’
‘Salaud! You have condemned me and my children to death!’
The City of Light was silent. Not a soul walked the streets, not a car passed by. All along the avenue Victor-Hugo and then down the Champs-Élysées there was no one. The cafés were all closed. Even the police seemed to have left, the pigeons, too. In Place de la Concorde, wind stirred the dust as I stopped to check for traffic. There was none.
Everyone had fled-nearly two million. Not the poor, of course, but everyone else who could. André de Verville and a Jewish colleague were the only ones left in a hospital with twelve hundred patients. Simone had gone to help them.
I drove through the empty streets. South of the city, the main roads were all blocked with every imaginable kind of vehicle. The wealthy and the middle class carried their birds in cages, their dogs, their goldfish. Some had mattresses on top of the cars to protect them from flying shrapnel and cannon shells. They honked, swore, cursed, and the line of traffic crept ahead. Others came from behind, and soon our little car was swallowed up.
Jean-Guy and Marie lay on the floor in the backseat, covered by blankets. They complained of the heat, the darkness, and of thirst while I shouted at them to be quiet and concentrated on the traffic.
Fresnes came up. We had made it to the prison, but even the guards had left, and though I couldn’t hear the prisoners crying out from their cells, I imagined it. The car began to overheat. Anxiously, I watched the gauge and gripped the steering wheel. When the sound of aeroplanes came, everyone else ran screaming from their cars, but the planes flew overhead, dark shapes against the sky. Me, I was simply far too petrified. Late that night, having been in the driver’s seat for more than nine hours, I managed to draw to the side of the road. Out of fear of losing our place, out of necessity, I had wet myself several times. The children had done the same and worse, but were now so exhausted and overcome by fumes that I had to drag them from the car and make them lie on the grass. As I went to get water, the child within me gave a wrench. I cried out and gripped my back, hung on to the pail, and shut my eyes.
The spasm passed.
We were near Grigny late in the afternoon of the following day. I would try for the farmhouse of my mother, would never make it even to Fontainebleau, but again people ran from their cars or tossed their bicycles aside and raced for the fields. This time, the furious tac-k-tac-k-tac of the machine guns ripped along the road, and I yelled at the children to hide themselves, but from all around me came the sounds of shattering glass and ripping metal. Rag dolls fell in the adjacent fields or were tossed to the road. People screamed hysterically, cried, wept, and huddled.
When the Messerschmitt Bf 109s had passed, those that could picked themselves up but hesitated uncertainly. By a stroke of luck, the little Renault hadn’t been touched. I was near to the edge of the road. The ditch was shallow and wide, the field beyond it flat. In the distance, a side road ran parallel to us.