The Indigo Rebels: A French Resistance novel Read online

  “We can’t risk the Nazis coming here and arresting them both,” Philippe explained tiredly, rubbing his forehead with his hand. “You’ll have to take them to your sister’s in Paris, and all three of you will have to hide there until I make other arrangements for them.”

  Pierre’s arguments were drowned out in the stream of Marcel’s protests.

  “No, no, no, that’s impossible! Giselle’s apartment is a busier place than a market on a Saturday morning! And it’s small on top of it!”

  “I’m not talking about Mademoiselle Legrand’s place,” Philippe interrupted him at once. “I would rather risk Pierre being arrested by the Boches than sending him to that capitalists’ nest. I was talking about your other sister. You said that she lived somewhere in the suburbs, didn’t you?”

  “Kamille? Well… I suppose…” Marcel pondered out loud. “She does have a big house. Only, I don’t know if her husband is there with her. He might pose a certain problem. He was drafted into the army together with me, but I don’t know if he’s back or not.”

  “It seems that you’ll just have to improvise on the scene, Marcel,” Philippe concluded calmly. “You’re a smart man; I know that you’ll come up with something. And I promise to do everything in my power to get the boys off your hands as soon as possible.”

  Marcel nodded as Philippe squeezed his shoulder slightly. He only wished he had as much faith in himself as Philippe had in him. After all, not only his own life but another two other lives now depended on him.

  7

  Kamille had stood in front of the heavy wooden door for quite some time already, cowardly lowering her small, gloved hand each time she raised it for a knock. She had been rehearsing her speech all the way to her sister’s house, and yet as soon as she climbed the last carpeted step leading to Giselle’s door, her courage failed her. Kamille took a deep breath, smoothed out a non-existent wrinkle on her plaid skirt, fixed her hat in a nervous gesture and rapped on the door quickly before she could change her mind.

  The steps on the hardwood floor behind the door were far too loud to belong to Giselle, who, Kamille knew, preferred walking around her apartment barefoot. Kamille had just mentally cursed herself for not calling prior to making a visit as it was obvious that her sister had company when the door swung open and Kamille couldn’t suppress a gasp at the sight of who stood in the doorframe.

  The German, and it was most definitely a German – jodhpurs, tall black boots and an immaculately white shirt all in place, only a uniform jacket lacking – looked her over assertively, with a scowl never leaving his otherwise handsome face.

  “Can I help you, Madame?”

  Even though his French was impeccable and grammatically correct, his cold, slightly hissing pronunciation lacked the warmth and charm that Jochen, her German, had.

  “Yes, pardon…” Kamille stumbled under the scrutinizing gaze of his black eyes but forced herself to regain her composure. “I’m looking for Giselle Legrand.”

  He arched his brow at the inquiring intonation in her voice.

  “And who would you be?”

  Kamille felt heat coloring her cheeks at such a shameless interrogation.

  “I’m her sister, Kamille Blanchard.”

  “A sister?” The German looked askance at her, studying Kamille’s face closely. “I hardly see any resemblance between the two of you.”

  “Karl! Let her in! That’s ma petite Kamille!” Giselle’s melodic voice sounded from behind the tall German’s back and in an instant a familiar arm moved him away from the door without further ceremony. Kamille grinned as Giselle flashed her brightest smile at her. “I haven’t seen you in ages!”

  Giselle squeezed Kamille in the tightest embrace and stepped away, still holding her sister’s hands in hers.

  “Look at you, how pretty you are!” Giselle turned her blonde head towards the grim looking German and beamed at him. “Karl, this is Kamille. Kamille, this is Karl… Oh, I beg your pardon; Sturmbannführer Wünsche for everyone around who is not me.”

  The German finally broke into a grin at the sound of Giselle’s giggles and bowed his head slightly.

  “It is my pleasure to meet you, Madame Blanchard.”

  As Kamille still tried to process Giselle’s new acquaintance’s mysterious appearance and why her sister acted at such ease in his presence, Giselle surprised her even more by clasping the German’s arm with both hands and pecking him on his cheek.

  “Karl, Kamille and I are going for a walk. Our girls’ gossip will bore you anyway so…” Giselle moved behind his back to get her purse and a hat from the mail table. “Have you seen my sunglasses? The sun is blinding today!”

  “I think they’re in your purse. You put them away yesterday in the car, and I don’t remember you taking them out.”

  Under Kamille’s stare, who observed them both incredulously, Giselle indeed fished out a pair of sunglasses from her clutch and waved them in the air victoriously.

  “He always remembers everything!” Giselle winked at her sister before hiding her green eyes behind the dark shades.

  “Where are you going?” the German demanded as Giselle got busy with putting white sandals on her bare feet. “Shall I send Otto for you with a car in a couple of hours? I don’t want you to walk all the way back.”

  “No need, chéri.” Giselle caught his arm to steady herself while fasting the buckle on her other sandal. “I have no clue where we’ll be heading or how long we shall stay out. And besides, if your people left us at least some gas which would allow us to drive cars, this wouldn’t be a problem at all. I could have caught a cab back.”

  “It wasn’t my decision to make.”

  “Right.” Giselle snorted and waved goodbye.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Madame Blanchard.” The German nodded curtly to Kamille as Giselle began to already descend the stairs. Kamille nodded in response and followed her sister.

  The heatwave washed over them as soon as the doorman pushed the heavy, gilded door outwards to the street, bowing his graying head to Giselle and her companion. Kamille pulled her hat slightly forward, trying to shield her eyes from the stinging sunlight, and Giselle started waving her face at once with her cherry-colored leather clutch.

  “The Germans didn’t kill us, but this sun certainly will!” The blonde circled her arm around her sister’s, pulling her closer for a moment. “I missed you, ma petite.”

  “Who is that man?” Kamille asked without acknowledging her chirping sister’s words.

  “Who? Karl? He’s my new lover.” Giselle flashed her another smile, nudging Kamille with her elbow slightly. “Did you like him?”

  “Giselle, he’s a German!” Kamille muttered reproachfully before she recalled what she had come to ask Giselle for, and bit her tongue at once.

  She wasn’t so innocent herself, longing for her German, so what right did she have to criticize her sister for her behavior? Or was it siblings’ jealousy again, showing its ugly head? After all, it was Giselle who always dived head first into every new adventure that came her way, so was it really so surprising that out of them both that Giselle was the one who had quickly started a scandalous relationship with one of the uniformed occupants?

  “So?” Giselle shrugged dismissively. “He’s just a man. A little too regimented for my taste and tries to show his character a little too much, but I’ll teach him how to behave eventually. He has…certain positive qualities that counter all the negative ones, if you know what I mean.”

  “Giselle, I don’t want to hear about that.” Kamille tried to ignore her sister’s innuendo.

  They walked in silence for a few minutes towards the Place de la Concorde, listening to the hustle and bustle of the city around them. Bicycles, dragging trolleys chained to them, had become quite an ordinary sight now after the new masters of the capital seized all the gasoline, and passed them by with a familiar ringing of the signal, sending dust up from the road into the hot, dry air. Street vendors, who usually got
out of their way to sell their merchandise to the Boches, lounged lazily in their folding chairs, hiding from the scorching heat in the shadows of striped awnings.

  A slight gust of wind ruffled the blond hair on the soldiers’ heads in a group of them who initially strolled smartly on the opposite side of the sidewalk but then rushed like a bunch of adolescent boys to an ice-cream pushcart that stopped on the corner. Giselle snorted softly, motioning her head in the Germans’ direction, who were storming the pushcart with the same fervor with which they had stormed their enemies.

  “There are your terrifying Germans,” she said jokingly. “Dreadful, aren’t they?”

  “I’m sorry, Giselle,” Kamille spoke in a soft voice. “It wasn’t my business to judge you. I just… Didn’t expect to see him there, that’s all.”

  “Oh, in this case, you’d better get used to the sight of him, because you’ll be seeing a lot of him in the future. He lives with me now.”

  “He lives with you?”

  Giselle nodded and tugged her sister in the direction of the nearest café, which advertised ice cold lemonade on a bright sign.

  “He does. Not that I invited him, of course.”

  The blonde dug in her purse for the money and handed several bills to the vendor, who eyed them suspiciously. Kamille noticed that they were Reichsmarks and not the usual Franks.

  “What?” Giselle snapped at the merchant, almost shoving the money into his hands. “Take it already and stop staring at me like I’m the enemy of the state. It’s the only currency that the bank had to give me when I went to cash my check.”

  The vendor muttered something under his breath about the damn Boches and handed the women two sweating bottles of the lemonade. Giselle opened hers with a bottle opener that hung on a string from the vendor’s table, and took several greedy gulps, satisfying her thirst. Kamille was still struggling with her bottle and the opener which kept slipping from her gloved hands until Giselle took it from her and snapped the bottle open with virtually no effort.

  “Would you really rather die from thirst than walk outside without your gloves on for once?”

  Kamille had to laugh together with her sister, who shook her head mockingly.

  “And you’re wearing stockings! In this heat!”

  “Maman always used to say that a lady should always wear stockings,” Kamille replied defensively, but envying Giselle inwardly, who wore a thin white sundress revealing her shoulders and part of her back and which ended just below the knee.

  “Yes, a lady probably should,” the blonde conceded, looking over her bare legs and bursting into giggles once again.

  “I have a German living with me, too,” Kamille confessed at last, hiding her embarrassed gaze under the rim of her hat.

  “You do? How exciting!”

  “Two actually. Jochen and his adjutant, Horst.”

  “Oh? I see you’re on first name terms with them both, little Mademoiselle Prim-and-Proper!” Giselle teased.

  “I call them Monsieur Jochen and Monsieur Horst. And they call me Madame Kamille if that’s the same as being on first name terms.”

  “Don’t be so defensive; I’m just teasing you. Are they handsome?”

  “They’re…pleasing to the eye, yes.”

  “Which one do you like?”

  “Giselle!”

  “What? Is that why you finally graced my humble residence with your presence? You like one of them, but you don’t know how to show it to him, right? Oh, please, do tell me that I’m right!”

  Giselle was laughing contagiously, turning the heads of the uniformed men who also strolled along the Place de la Concorde in the direction of the Seine. Kamille was desperately trying to hush the blonde but to no avail.

  “That is not what I came for at all!”

  “Really?” Giselle arched her brow skeptically.

  “Really. I came to… I wanted to ask you to give me the number of that salon that you go to… you know… to do your hair.”

  Giselle stopped in her tracks, studying her sister closely. “Why? What do you want to do with your hair?”

  “I just…” Kamille tried to shrug, but the gesture came out contrived. “I just wanted to change something. I want to dye it blonde, like yours, that’s all.”

  “You want what?”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a group of officers, who approached them with cheerful banter and in pigeon French asked them if they could take a picture with them. Giselle broke into a wide grin at once, gesturing the beaming officers towards the railing of the river.

  “Bien sûr! Let us all stand over there; the view here is breathtaking, don’t you find? You don’t have anything like that in your Prussia!”

  Kamille watched the officers swarm around her vivacious sister, and once again felt left out; it was always like that with Giselle. She offered a tight smile to a German, who circled her waist with his arm and pointed her to his comrade, who was taking the picture. Back home everyone will probably be asking them who the blonde is, Kamille thought bitterly.

  Offering bright smiles with overt generosity, Giselle apologized her way out of the officers’ invitations to share a lunch with them, and pulled Kamille’s arm further along the promenade, waving off her new admirers.

  “So, why would you want to dye your hair?” she asked, as soon as they resumed their walk.

  Kamille only gestured helplessly towards the officers, who still turned their heads back to the two women, and gave her sister a small and apologetic smile. “I just want to be pretty like you.”

  “You want to be pretty like me?” Giselle repeated in disbelief.

  Kamille stopped the speech that she knew was coming with a gesture of her delicate gloved hand. “Yes. You were right about everything. I do like Jochen. Very much. So much that I… I just want him to look at me with the same eyes that all those men have always looked at you.”

  “And you think that bleaching your hair will make him fall in love with you?”

  “I shouldn’t have come here,” Kamille muttered and turned around to leave, tears stinging her eyes mercilessly. Of course, he wouldn’t fall in love with her, Giselle was right. Her sister had a personality that matched her looks, and she, Kamille, didn’t have anything.

  “No, no, I’m sorry, it came out wrong!” Giselle caught her elbow and made Kamille face her. “All I wanted to say was that you don’t need to change yourself to attract his attention. Pretty like me? Kamille, you’re so much prettier than me, that I don’t even understand why such a silly idea crossed your mind in the first place. Look at you, look how beautiful your eyes are! I always wanted to kill for those blue eyes of yours. And your skin, and hair… Look how gorgeous your hair is now! I never had such a lustrous, long, thick braid that you always have. I envied you so much because of your hair that I cut mine as soon as I turned twenty and have had to do a perm ever since, and my artificial curls still can’t compare to yours! What are you even talking about, pretty like me? You’re a natural beauty; you have no need for those masks, and powders, and blushes, and mascaras and lipsticks that I have to buy in tons. And when I wash all that stuff off my face in the evening? Do you think I still look pretty without it?”

  “Your German doesn’t seem to mind,” Kamille muttered, grinning.

  Giselle chuckled together with her. “He likes me because I challenge him all the time. Men are strange creatures; they’re only happy when we start defying them instead of showing compliance.”

  “You’ve always been much more courageous than me. I’d never be able to do that.”

  “Well, maybe, in this case, I should tell your German about your feelings.”

  “Giselle, no!” Kamille opened her eyes wide in horror, clasping the blonde’s arm. “Don’t you dare!”

  “Why? I say it’s a date. When is he usually home? By dinner time?”

  “You’re not coming to my house!”

  “You came to mine and met my Karl. Now it’s my turn to come to yours and me
et your Jochen.”

  “Giselle, you can’t possibly be serious!”

  “I’m very much serious, ma chéri. I have to meet my publisher tomorrow at five, so right after that I’ll hop on the train and be right by you by seven.”

  “You’ll never make it back home by the curfew.” Kamille tried one last argument.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. Karl will send Otto for me with his car.”

  “I hate you, Giselle Legrand.”

  “That’s not true. You love me very much. By the way, please, do not make fish for dinner. I hate fish.”

  “You’re impossible; you know that?”

  “Yes. I’ve been told quite a few times.”

  Giselle took her defeated sister’s hand, and the two headed towards the nearest bench to enjoy their lemonade.

  8

  Marcel craned his neck, observing his surroundings from behind a tall stone wall, separating Kamille’s garden from the cobblestoned street outside. He had wisely decided to leave Pierre and his fourteen-year-old brother, Jerome, at an open café two streets away, paying in advance for their tea and butter croissants with the meager money that Philippe had provided him with. Paris was swarming with Germans, and Marcel didn’t want to run the risk of bringing the boys into the house before he checked for himself that it was safe to do so.

  It was far too quiet, and Marcel soon realized that Kamille most likely wasn’t at home. Or, he wondered, had she run together with the rest of her fellow Parisians two months ago and decided to stay behind the Demarcation Line, which had cut the country into two halves – Occupied France and the so-called Free Zone, with the Vichy government in the middle?

  Marcel kept chewing on his lip that had long ago become raw without him noticing it, and concentrated his gaze on details behind the wall, through the crack of which he was peeking inside. The garden with Kamille’s prized flowerbeds was in too much of an impeccable state to have been abandoned, with the ground freshly raked and the grass pulled out recently as it seemed. Golden leaves that had already started to cover the ground with a luxurious carpet were also swept away from the stone path, leading towards the back door. And one of the windows on the second floor – how had he not noticed it before? – was open, with sheer white curtains moving lazily in the wind. Only, it wasn't Kamille’s bedroom, that much Marcel remembered from the few times that he had visited her house.