The Indigo Rebels: A French Resistance novel Page 10

  “What makes you think that I don’t want to go?”

  Kamille only shook her head instead of replying, fearing that her voice would betray her with its trembling if she spoke even one word.

  “Kamille?” His voice whispered right in her ear this time, and Kamille’s heart faltered as she realized that Jochen had called her by her name for the first time, without the pretentious title ‘Madame’ attached to it first.

  Jochen lowered his hands gently on her shoulders, and Kamille’s slippery fingers lost their grip on the plate she was holding. It fell into the sink, knocking down glasses and silverware. Ignoring the cacophony of tumbling dishes, Kamille turned swiftly to face the German. A soft grin was playing on his face.

  “You’re a beautiful woman, Kamille. A most beautiful woman.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’ve been drinking,” Kamille retorted coldly, trying to get a hold of her feelings which were all over the place.

  “I have.” The German lowered his head in a somewhat comical manner, like a reprimanded child. “I shouldn’t have. Your sister made me.”

  Kamille pursed her trembling lips and waved him off with his apologies, leaning against the sink and wishing for him to just leave her alone to her misery. Nobody needed his drunken apologies or compliments here.

  “Kamille.”

  “Go away!” She had had too much wine herself; if she had been sober she would have never allowed herself to speak with such rudeness.

  “No. I have to… how do you say it?” He was searching for the foreign words which kept escaping him. “I have to express my feelings.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “No, I insist that I explain myself, because… there has been a misunderstanding. And you’re upset with me over it, and I can’t leave it this way.”

  Jochen winced at how disjointed and German his speech likely sounded due to the wine, as if the soft, purring language itself was against him that night. As if to make her understand him better, Jochen held her delicate arms again, turning her towards him a little too forcefully, to see that she was crying. Kamille pushed against his chest, leaving wet marks on his white shirt, trying to worm her way out of his arms, and then, all of a sudden, he caught her face in his palms and pressed his mouth to hers. Kamille froze, as all of her thoughts suddenly disappeared into thin air, and dissolved into his warm breathing mixing with her own and drowned in the unsteady rhythm of her wildly beating heart. He had just parted her lips slightly with his and then moved away as unexpectedly as he had kissed her, stopping himself before it was too late. Wiping her tears with his thumbs, Jochen kissed Kamille’s eyelids with infinite gentleness while she stood there, both terrified and elated at the same time.

  “You’re a most beautiful woman, Kamille,” he repeated quietly, whispering his words into her hair, covering the top of her head with soft kisses as he spoke. “But you’ve got it all wrong. I’ve been so distant with you, as you put it, only because I’ve been so drawn to you from the first day that we met… I worried that it wouldn’t lead to anything good. You just lost your husband to war, and less than anything do I want evil tongues to tarnish your good name because of me. You’re right: you’re nothing like your sister, Kamille. She could pull this sort of a stunt, and no one would bat an eye because she’s a different type of a woman. But you… You’re sweet and kind, and fragile; you wouldn’t be able to deal with all the hatred directed at you. It would break you eventually, ruin your whole life, and all because of some man, who couldn’t fight his infatuation? I would never let this happen to you, my dearest, dearest Kamille. You mean too much to me to use your kindness in such a manner. Yes, I know, I’m drunk and I’m babbling all sorts of nonsense that I will be embarrassed to even remember tomorrow, but I’m glad that I told you this tonight. You are a most amazing woman, Kamille, and please, never, never change. One day you’ll make some lucky man so very happy.”

  “I don’t want any other man,” Kamille muttered, stunning herself with her boldness. She stood on her tip toes, wrapped her wet arms around his neck and found his mouth once again.

  “Kamille, please—” Jochen tried to sound stern, not realizing that his fingers were already unbuttoning Kamille’s pearl buttons on her blouse. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll regret it tomorrow.”

  Kamille pulled him close again in some kind of desperate gesture, refusing to let him go. “No, I won’t. I most definitely won’t.”

  10

  Marcel walked purposefully along the street, keeping his head high and back almost unnaturally straight, even though his heart betrayed him by skipping a bit cowardly each time a group of uniformed Germans passed him by. There were fewer of them here, in this residential area of Paris, where narrow streets were connected into an endless labyrinth of row houses, stitched together by garlands of laundry, stretched out from one window to another, and hidden backstreets, which the Boches tried to avoid.

  Marcel breathed in the familiar air of starched sheets, cabbage and naphthalene, and smiled to himself. It was the air of his youth, his childhood when life itself was much simpler and he didn’t have to glance over his shoulder fearfully, making sure that the two young charges, who were following him within twenty steps hadn’t been stopped and interrogated by the Germans. Marcel was home. He had just turned the last corner leading to his parents’ house; only it didn’t feel like home anymore, more of one big prison of a city, in which all of them had been incarcerated.

  Marcel waited for Pierre and his brother Jerome to turn the corner as well and waved them to follow him inside a dark doorway, leading to his parents’ apartment on the third floor. He saw from the outside that the shutters on the windows were closed, and breathed out in relief, guessing that his mother and father had most likely run from Paris during the exodus and either hadn’t returned yet or, better yet, decided to stay with their relatives behind the Demarcation Line.

  Marcel came to a stop in front of the familiar door with its small and clean, albeit worn-out, mat in front of it and knocked indecisively. Listening to the stillness inside and the shuffling of the boys behind his back, Marcel turned to them at last, admitting that now they faced a new problem.

  “Just like I thought, my parents aren’t home. They probably left for the South, and now the Boches won’t let them back across the line.”

  “But that’s good, isn’t it?” Pierre fixed his cap, trying to look older than he really was in his baggy suit, no doubt borrowed from his father before the two brothers set off on their journey to Paris with Marcel. “It means that we have an apartment all to ourselves.”

  “How are we going to get inside that apartment?” Marcel crossed his arms over his chest, becoming irritated with the kid’s inability to see the obvious, which had landed him and his brother in trouble in the first place.

  Having returned to his childhood home, Marcel experienced a sudden pining for that old, comfortable life, which he could have resumed now. He could have come back to the Uni and continued his studies, become an ordinary citizen again, and not some criminal on the run, which he was made into against his will. It was Philippe’s hypnotic influence that made him fall for his dangerous ideas, join some communist cell, and become a part of a movement which had been prohibited. And now he was with these two scoundrels on his hands, having to care for them when he didn’t know how to care for himself…

  His uneasy thoughts were interrupted by Jerome, who shrugged nonchalantly, moving Marcel out of his way with his shoulder, even though that shoulder of his barely reached Marcel’s.

  “We’ll pick the lock of course. What’s the big deal?” the youngest of the scoundrels proclaimed casually, extracting a pin out of the pocket of his pants with a knowing look.

  Under Marcel’s incredulous stare the fourteen-year-old kid squinted his eyes slightly, feeling his way inside the lock with his pin, and in only a few seconds declared a victorious “Voilà!” before pushing the door open. Pierre snorted under his bre
ath at Marcel’s dropped jaw and pulled his brother aside, allowing the master of the house to enter it first, giving him the chance to somehow restore his dignity.

  “Thank you,” Marcel muttered, wiping his feet before stepping through the door.

  “Pas de problème,” Jerome replied, throwing the pin up in the air and catching it swiftly.

  Right, Marcel thought grimly. No problem at all. Except that they had no money left and the boys were wanted by the feldgendarmes and Marcel was implicated in the anti-governmental activities. Apart from that, everything was peachy.

  Giselle stared at the ceiling for so long that her neck went numb. She sat on her chair in front of the typing machine with her head thrown back, and with her mind as blank as the ceiling in front of her eyes. The coffee had long gone cold, and Coco had fallen asleep on her lap. At least someone benefited from her idleness, Giselle smirked to herself.

  “Would you like to hear my opinion?”

  Karl’s voice made her wince imperceptibly. The thrill and novelty of her latest romance hadn’t passed yet, but those details about him that seemed insignificant at first had started to gradually irk her. His manner of speech, too accented and coolly disjointed; his habit of herding her to the bedroom as early as eleven in the evening, completely ignoring her protests that she was a nocturnal creature and liked writing at night; his autocratic manner, in which he always expressed his opinion on subjects that no one had asked him about…

  “Concerning?” Giselle asked, still staring at the ceiling.

  The tall German stepped forward, his dark features coming into the periphery of her vision. She outstretched her arm and caressed the smoothness of his immaculately shaven cheek.

  “Concerning your writing. Or, actually, the lack of such.”

  “Oh?” She grinned, humoring him. “I didn’t know that you were a literary critic. But go ahead.”

  “I read your manuscript.”

  Giselle’s smile dropped, together with her arm. “I usually don’t allow anyone to read my unfinished manuscripts.”

  “I read all of your books,” he continued, ignoring her remark. “They’re all good. Especially your very first one.”

  “Why, thank you very much.” Giselle hoped that it didn’t come out too sarcastic. “It’s nice to be acknowledged internationally.”

  “I don’t read for pleasure. It’s a rather useless pastime if you ask me.”

  Giselle arched her brow.

  “Why bother with my novels then?”

  “I was studying you.”

  “Studying me?”

  “Yes. Your personality, your views and your ideas on different subjects. As I’ve said, I rarely read without purpose. This time my purpose was to better understand you. I’m very aware of the fact that writers project their personalities on their characters, so I decided to learn who Mademoiselle Giselle Legrand really is.”

  “And who is she?” This time Giselle sounded genuine. He was strange, this somber Karl with his invariably poised demeanor, too collected and impassionate even for a German, but one thing she had to give him: he was a highly intelligent man. She was curious to hear his opinion.

  “You’re a rebel. A rebel and a nihilist. Your first novel was so good because you wrote it while in need. I believe you wrote it under the influence of the Great War even though you wrote it years after it had ended, and most likely your circumstances differed slightly from the lifestyle that you’re leading now. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “Were you investigating me, Monsieur Staatspolizei?” she asked, slightly unnerved by such a correct characterization.

  “I asked you not to call me that.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  “No, I wasn’t investigating you. I made my conclusions solely based on what I read in your novel.”

  “Maybe you should have become a literary critic.” Giselle leaned forward and busied herself with fixing a new sheet of paper in her typing machine. The waste bin next to her was filled with crumpled pages.

  “You can’t write because you’re too comfortable,” the German behind her back spoke again with almost infuriating calmness.

  Giselle fought the urge to get up and storm out of the room, away from him and his opinions, which didn’t interest her in the slightest anymore. Who the hell does he think he is? Only, the problem was that she had no place to go – he occupied her apartment just like the rest of their German lot occupied her whole country, and now all of them had to listen to what they had to say.

  “You are too comfortable, and you’ve lost your edge, your voice, with which you made Jean-Marc, your protagonist, the hero of the war, take an axe to the new age, which was born out of that war. It was a little too… revolutionary and unnecessarily loud, in my opinion, but it was… What’s the word?” He snapped his fingers sharply several times. “Fascinating, ja. He was heading to the gallows with his ideas, your Jean-Marc, but it was impossible not to watch him until the last moment, when the rope was sprung, metaphorically speaking. That first novel of yours was written with passion, with feeling... Your other books were all right I suppose, but this last manuscript… It’s too contrived. The characters are flat and overfed. They want for nothing, and they have nothing to fight for. They’re bored, as you are. Bored and comfortable. That’s why you can’t write. Not because I’m here and interfere with your thinking process – I even spend most of my day in the Kommandatur, like you asked me to. Nein. You can’t write because you have no conflict, and therefore no plot.”

  Giselle bit one red painted nail angrily, trying her best not to throw some venomous remark back at him. What angered her even more was that the damned Boche was right through and through, and he had just shoved her face into what she had refused to acknowledge to herself. She pondered her options, collected herself and turned in her chair, facing him with an overly sweet smile.

  “If you’re such an expert in writing, maybe you can advise me on what to do?”

  Karl shrugged, either not detecting or purposely ignoring the irony in her voice. “If you can’t write anymore, maybe it’s time to think about family?”

  “About family?”

  “Ja. You understand, husband and children,” he clarified as if to a child.

  “You know what, Karl?” Giselle said in a menacingly leveled tone, getting up and putting her dog on the floor. She straightened and stepped as close to him as she could. “Why don’t you find yourself a husband?”

  The German frowned slightly, confused with her response. He followed the seething woman with his gaze until she disappeared behind the door of her bedroom, which she slammed with force. He leveled the typing machine so it would be perfectly paralleled to the edge of the desk, reorganized randomly thrown pages in a neat stack and picked up her mug with unfinished coffee, satisfied with his arrangements. She could throw tantrums all she wanted, just like her fellow countrymen did at first before they came to the realization: the Germans were here to stay, and they would discipline them into the correct order, either willingly or not.

  ‘Conflict, you say? I have no goddamn conflict?’

  Giselle’s fingers were flying over her typing machine, to which she had returned to just as soon as both Karl and Otto left to go to the Kommandatur.

  ‘I’ll show you conflict, you bastard!’

  The article was coming along so nicely and effortlessly that Giselle burst into a fit of giggles, elated with the sudden flow of inspiration, which that damned Boche had triggered, not even suspecting it. Just two hours ago she had no idea what she could possibly submit to Michel’s first edition of his underground newspaper. Now, the words were flowing from under her fingers in a forceful stream of defiance and pure provocation, targeting not only the Vichy government and the Boches in charge but every single policy imposed on the nation by the new order.

  “They think that they can march in here and make us submit to their will like some defenseless sheep going to the slaughterhouse? They believe that t
hey can tell us what to do in our country, and treat us like secondary citizens while they are acting like rightful masters in each house, each arrondissement that they so insolently took over? Well, that, bloody hell, is not going to happen! We’ll raise our voices first, and soon our weapons will follow, until the very last one of the blood-sucking occupants stops muddying our streets with their black boots.” She muttered, outlining a rough draft of her article, out of which she would most definitely have to weed out all the curse words and exclamation marks. “No conflict, you say? I’ll show you such conflict that you’ll be spitting fire for the next few weeks after this paper comes out!”

  11

  The sunset that evening was exceptionally glorious. Giselle and Antoine Levy stood on the Pont Alexandre III – undoubtedly the most ornate bridge in the whole of Paris – leaning on the exquisite railing and gazing at the amber sunbeams shimmering on top of the waves. The wind, still uncommonly warm for September, caressed their hair and grinning faces as they exchanged knowing looks once again, like two naughty children sharing a secret that grown-ups would never expose. Some of these “grown-ups” in their gray field uniforms had just passed them by, also enjoying a stroll by the river in the glowing dusk.

  “Can you believe that we’re actually going through with this?” Antoine whispered to his colleague, as soon as the Germans were far enough away.

  Giselle brushed a platinum lock of hair away from her eyes and turned to face him, resting her elbows on the railing and leaning onto it with her back. “No. I won’t believe it until I see the paper with my own eyes.”

  “Michel is staying overnight tonight to print a thousand copies, he said.”

  Giselle grinned at the novelist. From the perspective of others, the two looked like an ordinary couple on a date. Both were dressed with discernible taste – he in a striped woolen suit (custom made undoubtedly) and wing point and immaculately polished shoes; she was clad in a powder chiffon blouse matched with a brown skirt and holding a masterpiece of a hat with an ostrich feather in her hands. They spoke in hushed tones, but still enjoyed that certain feeling of satisfaction that comes to people who know that they can get away with anything just because they belong to a particular class that never raised any suspicion in the Germans. Dubious looking factory workers with begrimed hands and worn out shoes were subjects to regular checkups, but Giselle and Antoine, so far, were spared from the necessity to produce their cartes d’identité at the first demand, for no one would ever suspect them in something so utterly audacious and criminal as to contribute to an underground newspaper, which called for the support of Général de Gaulle and advocated any form of resistance to the occupying forces. Communists were expected to do such a thing, but definitely not successful novelists, who even in the eyes of the general public didn’t suffer from the hardships of the occupation.