The Indigo Rebels: A French Resistance novel Read online

  “And now what do we do?” Marcel, somewhat at a loss, looked up at the weary, tired woman with rough hands.

  She glanced back at him and shrugged indifferently. “We live. That’s what we do. We live, boy.”

  Live. The very meaning of this word changed for Marcel several weeks ago. From a history student with hazel eyes and russet bangs always falling on one eye, lively and curious, straightening proudly in his new uniform in front of the mirror of his family’s apartment where he still lived since his parents didn’t have enough means to provide him with a rented corner, to now, as he looked at his reflection in the farmers’ kitchen, not even recognizing his eyes. With dark brows tightly drawn together, sunken cheeks covered with a shade of stubble and mouth pressed into a hard line, he had the eyes of a hunted animal, searching and wary, and the color of the sea at storm, having lost their innocent glimmer.

  How could it be possible that only a few short weeks could transform him so? How could this uniform, stained with his comrades’ blood and begrimed with layers of dust and shame after he had run for cover from the metal exploding nearby, make him into a different man; terrified, bitter and empty? Yes, that’s exactly how he felt, empty inside, with nothing left – no pompous slogans, no national pride, no past, and no future in sight.

  As if guessing his thoughts, as mothers always do, true mothers who are mothers to every soldier, the farmer’s wife pressed Marcel’s shoulder slightly.

  “You should go to the Bussi’s farm. It’s not far from here, and my husband can even lend you a bicycle if you promise to return it of course. Their son, Philippe, is a communist as I heard. Maybe he can help you out. You know, for now. Before they,” the woman motioned her graying head in an uncertain direction, meaning the government as Marcel guessed, “sort all this mess out.”

  Marcel, who had always been more interested in the politics of the past instead of current events, nodded obediently. After all, apart from the plan the farmer’s wife had just presented, he didn’t have any of his own.

  2

  The sun emerged from behind the clouds, delicately touching the tops of the trees as if ensuring that they were still in their place, where it had left them before going into hiding. Its rays dusted off the roofs, rendering their lustrous appearance once again just as it was expected to be at this time in June. Its beams discovered the dew on the abandoned flower beds and painted it in multicolored mosaic; it peeked inside the windows, navigating its way through the shutters and looking for life inside; and, finally, fearfully and with mistrust, it probed the metal of the helmets covering the blond heads of men marching in columns towards the capital.

  Its curiosity growing, sunlight bounced off the helmets to the belt buckles, reflected off the silver buttons and crosses, sometimes blinding the soldiers and making them squint all while they sang their strange songs. Their high, melodic voices echoed off the walls of the narrow streets that they were passing, and made the contrast between their almost clerical singing and peculiar language, buzzing, deadly and cold like their Messerschmitts, even more pronounced. The calico cat cowered by the wall, pointed her ears, and glared at the invaders with her green eyes, her whiskers jittering invisibly as if tasting the unfamiliar sounds, smells, and noises. One of the marching soldiers noticed her, smiled and interrupted his singing to call her.

  “Kss, kss, katze!”

  The cat, mistaking his greeting for hissing, hissed in return, jumped under the stairs that she had been sitting on and disappeared from sight, just like the rest of the Parisians, who were now hiding behind bolted doors, tightly closed shutters and draped windows.

  Giselle, having taken her morning shower, walked over to the window, pushed it wide open and inhaled a full chest of June Parisian air, which was still tight with electricity after last night’s storm. She stretched her nimble limbs, smiled at the sight of the café being opened, where she usually took her morning coffee, and noted the visible hesitance of the frowning owner, who kept craning his neck in the direction from where Giselle could already hear the distant roar of approaching machinery, before she went to her dressing table.

  Giselle was filled with a sense of perplexing agitation; agitation that made the air tingle in her lungs as it might if she had just made a bold bet in a casino, or as if she had expected a worrying verdict from her editor after sending him her latest novel. Rarely did something excite her like this, but when it did she envisioned the suffocating feeling of a condemned person on the gallows who doesn’t know until the last moment if he is granted a pardon or whether he is going to be hanged in mere minutes. The feeling thrilled her to no end.

  She had already wiped her sweaty palms on her silk stockings several times, as she sat in front of the mirror in her underwear, powdering her face with meticulous thoroughness, like that of a brain surgeon performing a life-saving operation in front of spectators.

  At last, satisfied with her curled hair, painted lips and powdered neck, Giselle slipped into a bright yellow dress, tightened a leather belt around her waist making it even smaller, planted two dots of perfume behind her ears and on her wrists and, with a sly grin and with the gesture of a magician performing his most celebrated trick, lowered on top of her head her favorite straw hat with its green ribbon, bending it slightly sideways so that it covered one of her eyes.

  With a confidence that the café owner silently envied when watching her approach the table that she always occupied outside, Giselle removed her white gloves finger by finger, arranged her purse on a chair next to her, crossed her legs and ordered her usual: a mocha without sugar and an éclair.

  “Éclairs aren’t fresh, Mademoiselle Legrand.” The café owner’s voice croaked against his will, and he rushed to clear his throat, bowing slightly to his one and only customer.

  “They aren’t fresh?” Giselle lifted her eyebrows with the incredulous smile of a person who has just been told that the sun doesn’t rise in the east. “Come, Monsieur Richard, you must be teasing me. I know that you have only the best pastry in the whole of Paris on your counters. I wouldn’t be so faithful to you if you didn’t.”

  Monsieur Richard lowered his head and twisted the side of his mustache apologetically. “I’m afraid today is the exception to the rule, Mademoiselle. All the bakeries around have been closed for two days; no one is around to make fresh pastries…”

  He spread his arms in such a helpless gesture that Giselle found it almost comical given the circumstances.

  “Are they edible at all?” She tilted her head slightly to one side, looking at the man with her one mischievous green eye just visible from under her hat.

  “They are… it’s just that the crème… It’s stale, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, well… If I didn’t die from what these gentlemen have been throwing at us from the sky lately, I suppose I will survive some stale crème. Bring it here!”

  The roar of the machinery soon replaced the noise of Monsieur Richard’s coffee machine, and Giselle promptly took a little notebook and a pen out of her purse and placed them on top of the table. It’s not every day an invading army is marching through our streets, she thought, fixing her slightly squinted eyes at the plaza in front of her with curiosity. Any minute now they will appear. Oh, who else can brag about witnessing something of this sort? What a remarkable novel I will make out of this!

  Indeed, barely five minutes after Giselle took the first bite out of an éclair (while glancing skeptically at the yellowish crème inside, before shrugging and continuing to eat it), the first German appeared through the arc, riding his horse, his back unnaturally straight. There followed several tanks and motorized divisions, all passing by their only two spectators, Monsieur Richard hiding wisely behind his blonde patron, who turned out to be much braver than he was.

  Giselle was trying to keep her face straight after the first squadron of marching soldiers approached the spot where she was sitting, but the whole spectacle, as if it was played only for her entertainment given that there was n
o one else around, made her unwillingly give way to a smile. First it was just a sly grin, but then a contagious laughter emerged, which she couldn’t suppress even though she genuinely tried to cover her mouth with her hand. Monsieur Richard watched her in utter astonishment, wondering if he should quietly walk inside his café and hide, because who knew if these Germans would take offense at such cheerfulness at their expense and shoot them both. But the Germans only smiled in response, some of them waving at the girl in the bright dress who was enjoying her coffee without a care in the world.

  The last squadron that marched behind the long column appeared to be much more relaxed, for all the commanding officers were so far in front that they couldn’t possibly see them. The young lieutenant, who was walking leisurely by his soldiers together with his adjutant, as Giselle assumed anyways, stopped from time to time to take pictures of the sights around him, trotting to catch up with his men after he spent a little too long in finding the best shot. As soon as he noticed Giselle he started pointing excitedly to his orderly, and they both approached her with interest and amusing reverence, like that of little boys who see a caged tiger for the first time in the zoo.

  While the two exchanged hushed remarks in their language, which was impossible for her to understand, Giselle lifted her cup to her red lips, looking back at them with the same curiosity. The pair, in their pressed field gray uniforms and shining black boots – as if they didn’t just march for hours! – walked over to her, still looking a little hesitant, until the lieutenant clicked his heels and bowed slightly, and in broken French asked Giselle for permission to take her picture. Giselle chuckled, shrugged slightly, put her cup down and graciously rested her head on her hand. The beaming officer quickly snapped his camera, clicked his heels again, thanking her profusely, and then, after throwing a last longing glance at her, trotted back to his squadron, his adjutant running behind him, exclaiming something.

  “I wonder what he said,” Giselle murmured, looking at the tail of the marching army as it moved away.

  Monsieur Richard looked in the same direction and grinned with one side of his mouth from under his mustache.

  “He said you’re a true Parisian,” he translated, trying to sound scornful towards the Boches. Only, Giselle still caught onto the carefully concealed pride in his voice. Maybe you have conquered us, but we still have the best women.

  Giselle chortled and decided not to argue.

  Kamille, with her dark hair put away neatly in a bun, covered her head with a navy blue hat which matched the color of the two-piece suit that she was wearing. She checked her daughter’s appearance, smoothed out invisible lines on Violette’s dress and took her hand firmly in hers before leaving the house.

  “Now listen to me very carefully, Violette. The Germans are already in Paris. I doubt that they will venture to our outskirts today, but in case if they do, do not look at them, do not talk to them and under no circumstances let go of my hand. Do you understand?”

  Despite her mother’s stern expression and grave tone, Violette nodded eagerly because deep inside she was holding her breath in excitement, hoping that maybe, if she were lucky, she would see those mysterious Germans today. Her grandfather (her mother’s father, the grandfather who talked to her unlike the other one who never deigned to pay any attention to the little girl apart from a cold, condescending nod in response to her greeting) had told her many stories about those Boches as he liked to call them: the men from the North in pointy helmets who he had fought for four years during the Great War, and who left him limping slightly on one leg.

  “They were frightful, those fellows.” Grandfather Gaspar would make big eyes at little Violette, his tone taking a theatrically dramatic note. “Even if you only show your head out of the trench – tra-ta-ta-ta-ta! Machine guns would blow the earth all around you. I was very young back then, younger than your mother now, and when I just went to war, I thought I would immediately beat them all by myself.”

  Violette always giggled when Grandfather Gaspar started aiming at a far off distance with his imaginary rifle, screwing up one of his eyes in a funny manner.

  “I tried to jump out of the trench on my very first day, to show the Boches what’s what. And had my commanding officer not yanked me down by my legs – you wouldn’t have a grandfather now.” He tapped the little girl’s nose with his finger with a loving smile. “He saved my life then. They don’t give second chances, the Boches. They shoot first and talk afterward. Did I tell you how one time a German plane was chasing me all over the potato field? No? Well, listen then…”

  Violette grew up listening to Grandfather Gaspar’s war stories, but just like all those fairy tales that he entertained his only granddaughter with, those war stories always had a happy end; after all, he survived the Great War to tell her about them, didn’t he?

  Violette looked up at her mother, who was walking in a rushed manner with her brows drawn in a frown, and wondered if she should be afraid of those Germans, just like she was taught to be afraid of an old witch that lived in a gingerbread house, or a giant who ate little kids who misbehaved. Her mother’s sweaty palm should have persuaded her in this well enough, but her natural curiosity somehow still took over, and the little girl decided that she should see for herself, and make up her own mind about these Germans once she saw them.

  Oblivious to her daughter’s adventurous mood, Kamille was hoping that Madame Arnaud, the baker’s widow who inherited her late husband’s business and managed to run it quite successfully besides taking care of her five young children, would make good on her promise not to leave Paris with the rest of the townsfolk and have some fresh bread and flour that she could purchase in advance. Who knew what this German invasion would bring? Better stock up on all the necessities, because Kamille had learned all too well that it was only herself whom she could rely on.

  A little relieved with the absence of any signs of the occupying forces in the silent streets that she was taking, Kamille slowed down her steps so that Violette wouldn’t have to almost run alongside her mother. Paris was deserted, as if someone had taken a postcard and carefully erased all the people from it, leaving only bare sidewalks shadowed by blooming trees and empty houses, the eyes of their windows covered with white shutters. Strangely, but Kamille even preferred it this way; she was never too fond of the city’s hustle and bustle, deep inside longing for a quiet piece of countryside instead.

  Kamille breathed out in relief as she caught the first mouth-watering whiff of freshly baked bread as she turned around the corner. Madame Arnaud was not only at her usual place, not scared away by something so minor in her opinion as the occupying army, but loading fresh loaves of bread onto a little carriage, in front of which her sixteen-year-old son was smoking.

  “Ah, Madame Blanchard!” The baker’s widow, a plump, round-faced woman with cheeks that were always red and smiling, waved her greeting at Kamille as she saw her approaching. “Good thing you caught me in time. Louis and I are leaving in five minutes; someone has to cater to all those gentlemen who arrived without invitation, huh?”

  The woman burst out laughing at her own joke while Kamille just paled slightly, gripping Violette’s hand tighter.

  “You’re going to take your bread to the Germans?” she asked quietly, with an incredulous note in her voice. For the life of her, she couldn’t understand how one didn’t realize their blessing of not having any of those uniformed “gentlemen” in their streets but had decided to walk toward them willingly instead.

  “Why, yes, Madame!” Madame Arnaud’s voice gave way to her surprise at Kamille’s reaction. “I have all this bread and no clientele to sell it to. I’m not letting it go to waste! And my sister Genevieve, the one from Strasbourg, she told me that those Boches pay in cash, and pay double and even triple price without asking. Now, why would I let such an opportunity go? I will be one stupid woman if I do, that much I can tell you.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of them?” Violette voiced her mother’s unspoken
question.

  The baker’s widow laughed kindheartedly. “Now, why would I be afraid of a bunch of hungry boys?”

  “Boys?”

  “Why, yes, of course, they’re just boys, my little one. Like this one,” she explained to Violette, motioning her head towards her son. “But just in uniforms. There’s nothing to be afraid about them.”

  Ten minutes later, carrying four heavy bags filled with fresh bread and flour, Kamille murmured under her breath but so that only her daughter could hear her. “Don’t listen to Madame Arnaud, Violette. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. If they do come here, I don’t want to see you near them, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Maman.” Violette was shrewd enough for her age to agree with everything her mother said, which nevertheless didn’t stop her from doing whatever she pleased behind the unsuspecting Kamille’s back.

  “Young boys,” Kamille kept muttering as she panted imperceptibly from her heavy load, feeling how her gentle fingers were gradually growing numb. “Those young boys were bombing us relentlessly for the past few weeks, but she’s forgotten about that already. If they were as innocent as she says—”

  Kamille gasped, not able to finish her sentence as she stopped in her tracks, startled and pale, with terror in her wide-open eyes. The soldier who she had run into as she turned a corner, smiled at her widely and offered his sincerest apologies in very good French. Violette kept turning her head from the soldier to her mother in utter excitement as Kamille tried to comprehend where the soldier had come from and what his intentions were.

  Not getting any reaction from the apparently petrified woman, the German tilted his head slightly and asked with concern in his voice, “Did I hurt you, Madame?”