V for Vengeance Page 6

  One or two people got up and left. Madeleine would have liked to do so too, but Pierre showed no sign of moving, and she did not wish to spoil his evening; so she sat on and they saw the second picture—a rather indifferent comedy—after which they went home, as the Paris cinemas were now being kept open as late as in peace-time, and the René Clair film was coming on again.

  When they got back she told Pierre how much she had enjoyed herself, although she was not really quite certain if she had or not. She had certainly enjoyed her good dinner and the René Clair film, and it had been a very pleasant change to go out again after all this long time; but Pierre’s account of how the Germans were bleeding her country white with their useless paper money, and to see them lording it everywhere and ordering French people about, caused a fresh intensification of her bitterness against them.

  June had been a month of tragedy and July a month of suspense, while Paris seemed to hold her breath in fearful anticipation as to the possible results of her captivity; but in August, with certain exceptions, things almost seemed to have gone back to normal, and everywhere people were picking up the threads of their lives again. Rations had been severely cut, and the big stocks of clothes and tinned foods were now rapidly disappearing from the previously well-stocked shops. The sight of the grey-green uniforms in the streets was a constant reminder of the presence of the enemy, but good order was maintained in the city, and its inhabitants no longer feared for their lives or security; so Paris breathed again.

  In spite of German jamming, the Parisians still managed to get most of the British news over their radios, and by early August it was abundantly clear that Britain, if at present quite incapable of materially harming Hitler through lack of arms, had very definitely settled down with grim determination to making the arms, which would at least enable her to defend herself in no mean manner.

  For some seven weeks the war had lapsed into a state of almost pre-blitz unreality. Perhaps the Germans were too astonished by the magnitude and swiftness of their success to be able to exploit it fully; or it may have been that their passion and genius for achieving one hundred per cent efficiency in their organisation before making any major step had for once betrayed them into devoting priceless time to preparations which, had they continued to prosecute the war with the utmost intensity without waiting to perfect their future plans in every detail, could have been used to infinitely more advantage; but at last they swung into their stride again, and the long-expected attack, which everyone on the Continent anticipated would administer the coup de grâce to Britain, was launched.

  4

  Those Who Fight On

  From the 8th of August onwards a large part of every news bulletin was devoted to the doings of the Luftwaffe. For a fortnight it concentrated upon Allied shipping and the nearest British ports. Dover harbour was reported as blocked with wrecks, and all the Thanet towns as in ruins. Then the Germans carried raids much farther inland, attacking all the air bases in south and south-eastern England, and penetrating as far as London.

  Each night these triumphs were announced over the radio with impressive figures of British planes destroyed both in aerial combat and on the ground. In spite of British counterclaims, it seemed to the people of Paris that this was the beginning of the end of their ex-Ally. It was common knowledge that the Germans were massing a great Army of Invasion all along the Dutch, Belgian and French coasts, and clearly they were only waiting until they had driven the numerically inferior R.A.F. from the skies before despatching the great flotillas which would carry the irresistible panzer divisions across to England. The friends of Britain could only watch and pray.

  Stefan Kuporovitch was by now rapidly regaining his strength. As soon as he had recovered his powers of thinking and talking clearly he had expressed the keenest interests in all news, and, having nothing to occupy him, decided to improve his scanty English, so that he might hear at first hand as much of the B.B.C. broadcasts as escaped the German jamming. For the purpose Madeleine bought him a Russian-English primer and dictionary, and each evening, as she spoke English well herself, she gave him a lesson. His concentration on the subject and the fact that he could spend hours on it each day without interruption enabled him to make rapid progress, so that in quite a short time he was able to understand most of the broadcasts and converse with Madeleine in passable English.

  By mid-August he was allowed to get up; by the end of the month he was able to dress himself unaided and walk about the apartment. He now spent a portion of each day sitting with Madame Lavallière, and she took a great fancy to him. While, in fact, being an extremely shrewd realist, he appeared to have all the irresponsibility and lack of care for the future of the traditional Russian. He never tired of talking, and he laughed a lot, making light of the many little hardships which were now beginning to be felt by the Lavallières as a result of the Occupation.

  He told them that to know what hardship really meant they should have lived in Russia during the years immediately following the Revolution. As a young man he had been a Czarist officer, and it was in those days that he had been used to visit Paris on his leaves. Only the confusion of the Civil War and later a passionate admiration for Marshal Voroshilov had caused him to throw in his lot with the Bolsheviks.

  That he had managed to avoid a firing-party and attain the rank of General in the Soviet Army was ample testimony of his extraordinary ability in steering a course through the troubled water of Russian political intrigue; but, although he had so skilfully backed the right people at every turn of the wheel, he was at heart a reactionary, and in secret had always disliked the Soviet régime. For years he had seized every chance to make illegal purchases of foreign valuta against the day when, with this hoard of dollars, pounds, francs, marks and lire to support his old age, he would be able to get out; and Gregory Sallust’s coming to the Castle of Kandalaksha, far away upon the White Sea, of which he had been Governor at the time, had given him his longed-for opportunity.

  He was now no longer suffering so acutely from headaches, as Madeleine knew very well, since when he had a bad one she could always see the pain of it reflected in his eyes, but he pretended that he was, particularly in the evenings, as that gave him an excuse for long sessions of holding her hand. She did not mind that in the least, and it rather amused her to see him pretend that a headache was coming on, only to forget it completely ten minutes later for a good half-hour; then suddenly to remember for a short while that he was supposed to be in pain and stop laughing rather guiltily. He now made no secret of the fact that he adored her, but he made no attempt to kiss her, as Pierre had predicted he would, nor did he make any other advance. She was glad of that, although it struck her as rather strange, since he spoke with the utmost freedom and evident relish of the innumerable affairs he had had with an infinite variety of women in a long life which seemed mainly to have been devoted to fighting and amorous adventures.

  But she soon guessed the reason for the great circumspection which he exercised with regard to herself. He had his own particular code of chivalry. She had nursed him back from the shadow of death to health and strength with unremitting care and patience. Therefore he placed her in a class apart. Nothing would have induced him to embarrass her for a single second by attempting to make love to her while he was still a guest under her roof, in spite of his at times almost overpowering desire to do so. Outwardly, at least, he appeared perfectly content simply to be with her, and often they would sit up far into the night while her entertained her with a seemingly endless flow of amusing reminiscences.

  Pierre’s assistance in moving the invalid was now no longer necessary, but he continued to look in every day and often joined them at their simple meals, bringing his own rations. At first Madeleine had feared that his jealousy of Stefan would cause trouble between them, but the Russian was such a charming person that, almost despite himself, the young artist was won over to a cordial liking for him. Pierre too had now become as bitterly anti-Nazi as the others, sinc
e the presence of the Germans in Paris was affecting him personally.

  During the month of July he had worked hard on two pictures, and when they were finished had taken them along to Emile Martin’s Galerie in the Rue Bonaparte, where his work was usually displayed for sale. A week later Monsieur Martin had rung him up to tell him apologetically that he had been compelled to part with them to a German officer for a handful of paper marks. At their proper price the two pictures would have kept Pierre for the best part of three months; as it was, they had only fetched barely sufficient to keep him for three weeks. Naturally, he was furious at the way in which he had been cheated of the full results of his work, and even more resentful about the future for himself that the incident foreshadowed. Few Parisians could any longer afford to buy works of art, so artists must now depend upon the Germans for such sales as they could make, but at the prices the Germans were paying this meant that Pierre would have to work at least three times as long hours as he had done previously and slave from dawn to sunset every day of the week to earn even a bare living.

  Another thing which was now embittering all Parisians was the huge number of German civilians which in recent weeks had flooded into the French capital. Towards the end of July half the wealthier population of greater Germany seemed to have woken up to the fact that Paris was now open to them. Thousands of German officers and S.S. men had sent for their wives, daughters, and sweethearts, and thousands upon thousands more German civilians of all ages and both sexes had descended, of their own initiative, upon Paris.

  Once there, they had begun a positive orgy of buying—silk stockings, hats, furs, models, jewels, wine, scent, cigars, toilet soaps, beauty preparations, and above all tinned foods of any kind that they could lay their hands upon. For a month past the shops had been as crowded as in an autumn sales week and the wretched shop-girls were absolutely worn out from attempting to serve an unending stream of fat, pimply German hausfraus, all arrogantly demanding instant attention, and quarrelling to the point of violence with each other over lengths of material and garments, which they snatched from the counters and rows of hangers. The locust flight was easing now, but it had left the great Paris stores and luxury shops almost bare.

  This licensed sack of Paris had naturally increased the rancour of the French against their conquerors, because it affected them personally, striking deep at the pockets of the traders, both great and small, and at the standard of comfort to which all but the poorest sections of the community had long been accustomed. It was now only possible for them to get meagre supplies of the most simple things, such as salad oil, fresh fruit, eggs, soap flakes and toilet paper, with the greatest difficulty, while the delicacies which they loved were obtainable only at fantastic prices through the black markets which were springing up everywhere.

  Yet this sudden dearth of everything also had the effect of intensifying anti-British feeling. German propagandists and their French collaborators never tired of pointing out by radio and Press that all the ills which were afflicting France were attributable to her ex-Ally.

  It was urged that if the wise counsels of such men as Bonnet, Laval, Baudouin and other pro-Fascist leaders had been heeded France would have taken the hand of friendship which Germany had proffered in 1939; but she had foolishly preferred to reject it and sacrifice herself to the interests of Britain, who, as ever, had been unprepared to defend her own bloated Jew-controlled Empire. Then there was the now old story of the British having begun their preparations for evacuation three weeks before the final decision was reached in France, and having gone home directly the really serious fighting started. It was conveniently forgotten that the British Army had been under the French High Command, that Gamelin had ordered it forward into Belgium and that it had been forced to retire only because its position had been rendered untenable by the French collapse hundreds of miles farther south at Sedan.

  Churchill’s refusal to allow the bulk of the R.A.F. fighter squadrons to cross the Channel during the critical phase of the Battle for France, and the attack on the French Fleet at Oran, were also constantly dug up, but the main point upon which the Nazi propagandists were tireless was that the British decision to fight on was now the sole cause of all that France was suffering.

  As long as the British remained obdurate no proper peace could be established, and until that happened Germany could not withdraw her Armies of Occupation. Almost unarmed as the British were, and with every one of their Allies already knocked out, how could these madmen conceivably hope ever to defeat Hitler? Therefore, it was argued, for humanity’s sake, they should have had the decency to throw in their hand and bring an end by a negotiated peace to the nightmare which was now afflicting all the people of Europe.

  This feeling became so strong in Paris that great numbers of the French openly gave their support to Laval’s policy of co-operation with the Germans, in the belief that the only way out of their own miseries now lay in bringing about Britain’s complete defeat as speedily as possible.

  By the beginning of September Kuporovitch was well enough to go downstairs, and each afternoon he went for a short walk, at first round the colonnades of the Palais-Royal and later, when he was stronger, in the Jardin des Tuileries and up the Champs Elysées, with Madeleine. The weather was excellent, and being out in the open air on those sunny September afternoons caused him to achieve a great bound forward in renewed vitality, so that towards the middle of the month he declared himself once more fit for anything. It was on the 19th he impulsively announced that to celebrate his full recovery they must go out that very night to dinner, and she smilingly agreed.

  It was nearly thirteen weeks since his accident, and in all that time he had not had a meal in a restaurant, so he insisted that they should go somewhere really good. She suggested the Vieux Logis, a place famed for its Alsatian dishes, which was situated up on the heights at no great distance from the Sacré Cœur. Only a limited number of taxis were still running, but having walked as far as the Opéra they managed to get one and then drove up the famous hill that such countless thousands of people of all nations had mounted in happier days to nights of gaiety which ended only with the dawn.

  But the Vieux Logis had nothing in common with a Montmartre boîte or the larger, more celebrated, places such as the Bal Tabarin, the Moulin Rouge, Café de l’Enfer or L’Abbé Téleme. It was a fair-sized raftered room, having the appearance of an old barn which had been converted into a restaurant. There was no band, but a quiet sedate air reigned, appropriate to the serving and enjoyment of good food. It was only about half-full, but some of the more discerning German officers had discovered even this quiet haunt, and groups of them occupied three tables.

  Having ordered their meal, they examined with amusement a gigantic pear, pickled in spirit, inside a water-carafe, which was on a nearby window-ledge. Obviously, it could not have been pushed through the narrow neck of the bottle, so the only explanation of this phenomenon was that the pear had been inserted, when quite small, and the carafe tied on to the branch of the pear tree until the fruit had reached its amazing size, through having grown in what would have amounted to a miniature hot-house of its own.

  Madeleine had just remarked with a sigh that she wondered how long it would be before people had the leisure to devote to growing such oddities again when she noticed an elderly priest sit down at a table behind Kuporovitch and directly facing herself. There was nothing very remarkable about the priest, save that he was an exceptionally small man, and his lovely silvery hair, which, as he wore it quite long, made a strange contrast to his bronzed, wrinkled little face.

  Restaurant meals were now restricted by law to one main dish, but the more expensive places were still able to provide a good selection of side-dishes. The hors d’œuvre at the Vieux Logis proved excellent, and they followed them with a partridge en casserole, cooked in peasant fashion with young cabbages, carrots, turnips, onions, mushrooms and beans. They then had crêpes Suzette, and Stefan insisted that they should finish up w
ith pâté de foie gras.

  This admirable meal was made ten times more enjoyable by the fact that for weeks past they had lived upon the most simple fare, and that it was washed down with a bottle of 1923 Chambertin. With their coffee they drank some old Alsatian Kirsch, and they were both in the highest of good humours when, to their intense annoyance, a wireless was suddenly turned on full blast.

  The Germans had decreed that all news bulletins were to be given in every public place in the city, and it was one of the things which grievously aggravated the French that if they happened to be in a café or restaurant at the time the news came on they were compelled to listen to it whether they wanted to or not.

  With evident relish the announcer gave the most gory details of the Luftwaffe’s latest activities. For the past two nights great fleets of German bombers had been over London. It was stated with sickening hypocrisy that this was in retaliation for night raids made by the British against the Rhineland and Berlin. Thousands of tons of explosives had been dropped so that during the first night’s attack the docks and a great portion of the East End of London had been set ablaze. The fires had been so extensive that they were still burning when the German airmen arrived over their targets on the second night to spread further devastation. In one breath the announcer declared that, unlike the brutal British, the Germans had confined themselves to military objectives, yet in the next he stated that a great portion of London now lay in ruins and the casualties inflicted were known to be immense.