The Avignon Quintet (107 page)

They had taken an oath to save the French nation from a besetting Jewry and on them was beginning to fall the onus for the rounding-up of the victims; it had become almost as familiar a processional feature of the town’s life as the dustbin round had once been, and would again be when they got it going. The air of solemn legality was absolutely breathtaking when one understood the issues at stake. Constance could hardly believe her eyes as she watched them pass down the boulevard upon their appointed errand, flanked and headed by motor-cycle combines.

The most important thing, she reflected, as she stood on the balcony of the Mairie which formed a most useful belvedere over the town, was to make her appearance as commonplace and down at heel as possible, so as not to appear conspicuous in so much shabbiness. The Prince, who stood beside her, stirred uneasily in his cold shoes and said, but without much conviction, “I suppose it will all settle down one day.” He had spent an active and not unsuccessful morning in taking up old contacts dating from his Provençal sojourn, and he was relieved to find that many had gone to ground in strategic positions – some in the
police des moeurs
, some in the Milice, some in road-haulage and land speculation. With their help he had even made a brief visit to the brothel where he was accustomed in the old days to pass an occasional evening, but he found the girls somewhat dispirited and depressed. Their clients were now a superior officer class, but mean with the money. All the girls had been issued with ivory swastikas which they wore over their tin crosses and birthday medallions. They were pleased to see the Prince, though they at once concluded that he was pro-Nazi and this somewhat dampened their elation. Nothing he could say would convince them of the contrary. Nor was there time to do much more than distribute some sweets to the pallid rachitic children. It was with something of a pang that he said goodbye.

There were days when one felt like this – that all was lost, or that the war could not be finally won in under a decade. How could one blame people for not believing in the Allies, for picking up the shattered pieces of their lives and trying to reassemble them again, even in the shadow of the black swastika? He sighed and she looked at him affectionately, saying, “You are in a mood today, aren’t you?” He nodded. It was true, and there were a number of reasons. He was not happy about leaving her here in order to go north for discussions over the Jews which he now felt would be fruitless. He had thought at first that the French were simply hostages to fortune, forced to do the bidding of the invaders; he had been disillusioned and disgusted to discover that, on the contrary, quite a number were active anti-semites at heart and only too glad to assist in the persecution of this gifted and ill-fated tribe. He had heard stories of the French concentration camps which froze his blood with indignation and horror – places with such poetical names as Rivesaltes and Argelès, as Noé and Récébédou in the Haute Garonne; but nearest of all was the camp of Gurs in the Pyrenees, which had become a byword for its open brutalities. He became quite pale as he retailed these stories to Constance. “I have been wondering what we could do, if anything; could we ask to visit them? I know, it’s premature. I’m jumping the gun. Let us get established first. O my dear, things are much worse than I imagined. These Germans, they are not only foul, but they revel in foulness for its own sake. What have we done to deserve such things in this century?”

She did not know what to say to console him. Almost every day now the buses went the rounds of the old town, openly, industriously, like bees from flower to flower, combing out their human prey with all the appearance of solemn legality. A uniformed officer presided, holding a typed list of names of the wanted Jews. Nor did the victims ever seem to fly, they waited in a kind of paralysed apathy for the green buses to draw up at their door. There was never a struggle, a protest. The Gestapo was using the familiar green buses known to Parisians, with the broad balcony astern, secured by an iron chain and bolt. This made a characteristic click as it slipped into place. Years afterwards Constance was to remember that little click in the post-war Paris, for the same type of bus was still in use.

She was thinking of other things. She said, “Tomorrow I am to visit the house once more!” She squeezed his arm as she said the words in order to make her voice sound even and natural. It was hard, for emotion and excitement welled up in her when she thought of that bleak little manor-house in the woods, with its high windows and dormer roofs set at ungainly angles. It stayed in her memory like a human face – the face of some meek old housekeeper worn down by a life of household cares. She recalled the last look back at it, as the gate clicked shut – clicked shut upon what had now become the last summer in Eden before the Fall. She had some vaguely stirring premonition that much would be decided by this visit, though in telling herself this she could not exactly explain in what sense, nor fully account for the heightened sense of expectancy. It was as if she might meet her lover there once more, by accident – or something of that order. What rubbish!

The chilly airs at last drove them back into the bright high-windowed rooms of M. le Maire, but not before they had become aware that down there in the almost deserted square a new sort of movement had begun to come into being; by slow seepage a crowd was forming and advancing gradually down the side streets towards the Monument des Morts. It increased in density as it slowly pushed its way through the narrow arteries which all led in the direction of the Mairie with its wide central square. Yet the pace was slow, almost leisurely, like that of a flock of sheep being coaxed along; in this case, though, the shepherds were uniformed men armed with automatic rifles, a sight which stirred their every anxiety. Their thoughts turned to reprisals, punishments, massacres – the last months had conditioned them to expect the unexpected. But no, apparently, for the mayor took his place beside them inside the sheltering windows, and said, “Ah! It’s the bicycles.” She echoed the word at him in surprise and he smiled reassuringly and said, “It is for today, together with the handing-in of shotguns.”

They saw now that the crowd indeed consisted only of cyclists wheeling their machines; they were ushered, urged, guided into the main square where under the tutelage of the soldiers and the Milice the bikes were abandoned on the ground while the owners were motioned back to the perimeters of the square to become no longer actors but spectators of the scene which was about to take place. It took a little time but gradually the thick carpet of bicycles spread over the ground; many of the owners, now watching from under the trees, were schoolgirls. They were in tears. They felt that something dire was to befall their machines and they were not wrong. Quiminal caught sight of her own daughters in the crowd and asked to be excused so that she could descend and offer them her comfort against the loss they were to suffer. She slipped across the square towards the pretty young adolescents, herself as graceful as a doe. She put her arms comfortingly round their shoulders and spoke to them smilingly. A silence fell for a moment.

Presently there came a stir and some senior German officers made an appearance, obviously to preside over the proceedings and to emphasise their significance. They climbed up on to a dais, whereupon a signal was given at which, with a rustle of steel meshes, two light tanks wallowed into the square, like bulls into a ring, and commenced to devour the bicycles with great zest. Like minotaurs they addressed themselves to the fallen bicycles and reduced them to shivers with their jaws. The officers watched with approval, the crowd with disdain and sadness. The operation proceeded with speed and method. The carpet of bicycles was gradually rolled back, and as gradually the Milice started to dust the residue of steel towards the centre of the square, forming it into heaps for disposal. Here and there a bicycle which had arrived late on to the scene was fed to the tanks like a Christian being fed to the lions. “It’s unbelievable,” cried Constance, watching. “What unbelievable spitefulness!”

“Au contraire,”
said the mayor, who had come back to her side after taking a telephone call, “it’s a calculated military move to prevent messages being carried to the Resistance in the hills – supposing that there is such a thing!”

“In what way?” she said, and he smiled as he replied, “A bike does some ten miles an hour. They already control petrol and the cars. It would be hard for me to send a message to the hills, and harder now without bicycles. They are very thorough, our friends.”

Together they watched the systematic destruction for a long moment, the conversion of the bicycles into mounds of dusty steel fragments. By now, too, brooms had been produced and the watching crowd was invited to sweep the débris into the middle of the square where a lorry might gather it all up.
“Ainsi soit-il,”
said the mayor sadly. “For those who live in the villages and shop in town it will be very cruel indeed. Horses would come back into favour – but I fear the majority have already been eaten! What more can I say?”

There was nothing to be said. The performance was over and now the shepherds began to manifest impatience with the sloppy, tearful crowd which still surrounded the square, as if unable to disperse, to tear itself away from the sad spectacle. Those who had come from the villages were indeed wondering how they would get home. Now they were ordered to disperse, with gruffness; they obeyed slowly and reluctantly – too reluctantly for the Milice in their new get-up. There was a menacing clicking to accompany the orders as the firearms were primed for action. Those with brooms started to sweep literally, at the feet of the crowd, driving it back into the side streets from which it had emerged to form this assembly – now riders sans steeds. Nancy Quiminal had rejoined them now, still smiling but albeit somewhat tearfully – on behalf of her daughters, so to speak. “It’s too much really,” she said. “Every day something new. The poor
lycéens
are stricken to the heart, for their bikes were gifts for first communion or good work or whatnot. Thank God we live in the town.”

When it came to taking their leave she elected to walk Constance back to her hotel, and together they crossed the icy marble halls of the Mairie and descended the broad stairway outside which a lorry was busy sweeping up the litter left by the bicycle episode. A chill wind stirred the trees and Constance thought with distaste of the unheated hotel and her cold bed which awaited her. As they fell into step Quiminal said, “I would have liked to have you home for some tea – I managed to get some fuel for the old wood central heating today: but I am expecting a visit, alas! I suppose the mayor has told you about me?”

“Yes,” said Constance, surprised and relieved in a way that there should be no secrets between them. “He warned me against you!” Quiminal smiled. “Good,” she said. “It’s his duty and his right. He is for Pétain – what can you expect?”

“But I was surprised.”

“Were you?”

“Yes. I wondered why; and moreover I wondered why Fischer of all people. But it’s not my affair, after all.”

They walked in silence for a while and then the French girl said, “It isn’t much of a mystery really; I have a husband I love who is dying of a rare spinal complaint. He is bedridden. A musician, an artist! At all costs my two children must eat and drink – no sacrifice would be too great. My job as documentalist with the municipal library vanished with the war. My work for the Red Cross earns me a pittance as you know …”

“I see. Therefore!”

“Therefore!”

On an impulse the two girls embraced and said no more. In the window of the bookshop which angled the narrow street they saw a cluster of slogans and pamphlets and portraits of the Marshal which suggested that the bookseller had responded to one of the “warning visits” of the Milice. Yet on the outside of the window, written perhaps with a moist piece of soap, were the words
“le temps du monde fini commence”
. It was like a douche of cold water, life-giving and sane and truly French in its cynicism and truthfulness. Quiminal laughed out loud, her composure completely restored as she said,
“C’est trop beau.”
It was as if a ray of light, a glimpse of the true France, had peeped out at them through the contemporary murk of history. They walked on awhile before the girl said, but almost as if talking to herself, “It is he who controls the lists of the taken.” Constance guessed that she was speaking of Fischer. An expression of weariness and sadness settled on her features. “Sometimes he ‘sells me lives’ as he calls it. I buy as many as I can!” For the moment Constance was silent, though she did not quite understand the purport of the last words. But she felt great warmth and sympathy for the girl and admired the world-weary resignation which was so very French, and so very far from everything that she herself might be, or might wish to be. The basic Puritanism and idealism of the north held back from such an open acceptance of life with all its hazards. But there was no knowing how she might have reacted under similar strains, similar circumstances. Much later Nancy Quiminal was to describe her strange harlot-like relation with Fischer. The names of the Jews and other undesirables gathered up in the weekly list
of battus
, as they were candidly called by the Gestapo “beaters”, were transcribed on long spills of paper and in this form were delivered to the Mairie where the Etat Civil of the victim could be checked and his or her name transcribed in the register. There was nothing underhand about all this, it was legal and above board – it satisfied the Nazi sense of self-justification for what they were doing. But then Fischer would arrive with these lists, unbuckling his belt and throwing it upon the hall table like a wrestling champion making his claim, issuing a challenge. She had to wait for him there in a kimono of silk which he had sent her – ready for business. But sometimes they sat and talked and drank some stolen liquor, a bottle lifted from the house of one of his victims. For the most part, however, the Gestapo did not loot; they gave a note of hand for everything they took, for they revelled in the intense legality of their actions. Naked on the bed with her, he would become heavily playful, touching her body and her lips with the long spills of parchment-like paper, and asking her whom she would buy from his list. It was the sexuality of the satrap – he allowed her one or two, sometimes three, slaves of fortune. Their names were crossed out and were not transferred to the great official register. Such victims were surprised to be released the next day. But it did not always work, sometimes he was captious and capricious; after promising her he withdrew his promise and reinstated the names. It was a curious way to redeem these unfortunate hostages – by her very embraces. It was queer, too, sometimes to come upon them alive still and walking the streets, unaware that they owed their good fortune to her. But even this sacrifice did not always work, for Fischer went through variations of mood; sometimes he was full of vengeful thoughts and desires and she found him hard to handle. Once he asked abstractedly why her daughters were never present when he visited the house, and she did not answer, though a cold thrill ran down her back. She had to beg for every sou, to plead, to wheedle, and he would gaze at her with that bright dead smile, anxious that she should grovel; sometimes half-playfully she did, sinking to clasp his ankles, and he stood there with his hands on her shoulders, suddenly switched off, his attention elsewhere; he gazed into some remote distance and went on smiling from the depths of this complete abstraction. She described him as
“un drôle d’animal”
, and mixed with the distaste and disgust for this relationship there was a certain pity – an inbuilt French regret at the spectacle of someone who deliberately chooses the road to unhappiness, who revels in self-immolation and the misfortunes of others. Sometimes he fell asleep and had nightmares during which he cried out and wept, and once after such an occasion he discovered the adolescent sources of much of his instability based on shame – for he wet his bed. It was a shock, and he did not reappear for some time – it was she who, needing money, set about finding him. But all this information came later; on that first evening the two women merely shared a coffee at the bar of the hotel before saying goodbye and promising to meet on the morrow for the visit to Tu Duc.