The Collaborators Read online

  As the queues of people slowly shuffled forward into the gaping doors of the buses, a middle-aged man suddenly stepped out of line and began walking away towards the Rue Pavée. He didn’t run or even walk very fast and the very normality of his gait disconcerted the supervising police. Then a couple of gendarmes ran after him. For a few paces they fell into step alongside him and they spoke as they walked. Then one of the officers seized his arm and brought him to a halt. He tried to wrestle free and punched the officer, making him stagger. The other pulled out his truncheon and struck him in the belly. Doubled up and sucking air into his grey lips with a bubbling, rattling sound, he was dragged back and hurled on to a bus.

  Finally the Simonians’ turn came. The bus was jam-packed, but a man rose and gave Sophie his seat. She drew Céci on to her lap and the little girl promptly fell asleep. Pauli leaned against her shoulder with his arm round her neck. Elsewhere on the bus, children were crying and mothers were making crooning comforting noises, but there was no attempt at adult conversation.

  The bus sped swiftly through the deserted streets. Sophie was vaguely aware that they crossed the river but otherwise she had little sense of where they were going. Her mind was going years back with Iakov Moseich, when she had lain on the floor of a crowded swaying train with her head pillowed on this very bag now jammed between her legs, and her ears drinking greedily the remorseless clack of the engine wheels bearing them westward to their long-dreamt-of new and better life.

  The bus stopped. A gendarme yelled at them to get out. They found themselves standing before a huge building she didn’t recognize.

  ‘What is this place?’ she asked no one in particular.

  ‘It’s the Vél d’Hiv,’ said Pauli whose secret wanderings had familiarized him with the far corners of Paris.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Vélodrome d’Hiver,’ he expounded. ‘Fifteenth Arrondissement. It’s a cycling stadium, Bubbah.’

  Another youngster recognizing the place said seriously, ‘Are we going to see a race, papa?’

  Once more they joined a queue and filed forward in an orderly fashion. But once they were inside the huge open-air stadium all sense of order vanished. There were people everywhere and more pouring in by the minute. Sophie was instantly aware of the first great danger which was separation. From all sides there came the cry of voices calling out the names of those they’d lost and most piteous of all, the voices of children calling simply, ‘Maman! Papa!’

  ‘Pauli,’ she said sharply. ‘Here, you must carry the bag. Can you manage it?’

  ‘Yes, Bubbah,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Now put your other hand in my pocket. There. Clench your fist. And don’t take it out, you hear me now, boy? Good.’

  She stooped and picked up Céci, who was fully awake again, staring round-eyed at this mad, crowded world she suddenly found herself in.

  ‘Now let’s try to find ourselves somewhere to sit.’

  They made their way across the centre of the arena. It seemed a long walk; they stumbled on unseen obstacles in the dark and people were continually crossing their path and colliding with them, while Pauli had to rest from time to time as the bag felt as if it was dragging his arm out of its socket. When they finally reached the other side, Sophie’s hope that they might find the grandstands there less crowded proved delusory. Finally she halted out of sheer exhaustion.

  ‘This will do nicely,’ she said as if she had been searching for just such a spot, and they all collapsed to the floor.

  It was Céci who spoke first.

  ‘Go home,’ she said plaintively.

  ‘Yes, darling. You shall go home. Very soon, shan’t she, Pauli.’

  ‘Yes, Bubbah,’ said Pauli leaning over his sister and murmuring into her ear. Finally she closed her eyes and fell asleep again, resting against his arm.

  ‘Bubbah,’ said Pauli. ‘How soon shall we go home, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, tomorrow I expect. What a boy for questions! Tomorrow when it’s light they’ll come, the authorities, and sort this chaos out, you’ll see. Now get some rest, Pauli. You’re a growing boy. You need your rest.’

  ‘Yes, Bubbah.’

  He closed his eyes but their lids became a screen on which memories of that strange night flickered like images cast from a magic lantern. And when sleep finally came, he bore the images into its shallow depths with him.

  And still the buses drew up outside the Vél d’Hiv and still the people poured in.

  10

  Janine awoke.

  She found herself lying in Pauli’s bed and for a moment was filled with a paralysing panic. Where were the children?

  Then she remembered, and sighed with relief. And remembering why she was sleeping in her son’s bed, she rose swiftly, and went through the open door into her own room.

  Jean-Paul lay as if he hadn’t moved all night. Then panic came oozing back. With the beginnings of terror she reached out to touch him.

  He opened his eyes. There was no recognition there, only blank bewilderment. He spoke. She couldn’t understand the language but recognized it as German. Then he tried to sit upright and the smooth marble of his face crazed with pain as his head fell back on the bolster.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said.

  ‘Jean-Paul, are you all right?’ cried Janine, hovering helplessly.

  ‘Oh yes. I am now. I thought for a moment I was back in hospital and those German bastards had started chopping pieces off me for fun!’

  He stretched out his good arm and she took his hand in both of hers.

  ‘You came for me,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’

  It was a good moment. Then she felt his hand pull away from hers and he clutched his side and grimaced.

  ‘I feel hot,’ he said. ‘Could I have some water?’

  She went to pour a glass. When she returned he was in a high fever.

  The next few hours were an agony. The doctor who’d treated him had left him a few tablets. For a while there seemed to be an improvement, then the fever flared up again, bearing Jean-Paul into a confusion of other worlds. In no particular order, he slipped in and out of childhood, student days, marriage, the war, hospital, and his contact with the Resistance. Janine was too concerned with his comfort to pay much heed to his often incoherent babblings, but he kept coming back to one incident with such passion that in the end it forced itself upon her consciousness.

  ‘… two of them…bastards! Two of them…on a French street…with French whores…they’re happy…they’re laughing…let’s see how you laugh at that mein’ lustiger Knab’, let’s see how your Aryan blood looks on the pavement, mein’ schöner Held!’

  And his hand came up as if aiming a pistol and jerked back with the recoil twice.

  By midday, Janine was in despair. Where was Henri’s doctor? If he didn’t come soon she would have to take the risk of sending for someone else. An hour later she had made up her mind.

  She ran to the door, opened it, and almost screamed. A man was standing there, heavy-jowled, badly shaven, with a cigarette drooping from the side of his mouth. He wore a crumpled black suit and carried a scuffed imitation-leather attaché case.

  ‘Henri sent me,’ he said. ‘How’s the man?’

  She took him through without question or demur. He looked down at Jean-Paul for a moment then said, ‘Where can I wash my hands?’

  When he returned, the cigarette was still in his mouth. He caught her glance, removed it, nicked it economically and put it in a small tin box he took from his pocket. She saw it contained many others. Next he opened the old attaché case. In it were crammed the essentials of his trade. He remarked, ‘Can’t lug a doctor’s bag out on jobs like this, can I? By the way, I let on to the concierge that I was selling you insurance.’

  He began removing the dressings, assuming without question that Janine would act as nurse. The arm and thigh wounds were clean and dry but the wound in his side was red and angry.

  ‘There’s your trouble-maker,’ he sai
d with satisfaction. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

  He worked swiftly and efficiently despite the fact that, as Janine had come to realize, he was dog-tired.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘With luck that ought to do the trick.’

  ‘Luck, doctor?’

  He smiled ruefully and said, ‘Madame, I should like there to be a lot less luck and a lot more medicine. A few days in hospital is what he really needs, but with three palpable bullet-holes in him, someone’s going to start asking questions.’

  He washed his hands again, lit a fresh cigarette.

  ‘I’ll call again in two or three days. In an emergency you can contact me through Henri.’

  ‘I don’t know how to contact Henri,’ she said.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about that,’ he smiled. ‘He’ll keep in touch.’

  He left. She went back in to look at Jean-Paul. He was sleeping peacefully. She went out into the living-room and sat down and wept, long and silently, for fear of disturbing the patient.

  Then she thought, Oh God. The children!

  She took another look at the still sleeping Jean-Paul then ran down the stairs to the telephone in the hallway. Three times she tried to call the concierge’s number at Sophie Simonian’s building but the line was clearly out of order. This was annoying but not unusual. Sophie would probably try to ring the other way, so would know what had happened.

  She returned to her husband’s bedside.

  At six o’clock that evening, Christian Valois appeared. His thin handsome face looked tired and worried.

  She greeted him with a smile, saying, ‘Henri sent a doctor like he promised. Isn’t he marvellous? Jean-Paul had a fever, but he seems much better now. He’s still weak, but I persuaded him to have a cup of soup. Come on through. I’m sure seeing you will cheer him up.’

  Her uncomplicated and unselfish delight should have been irresistibly contagious, but Valois seemed untouched by it and not in too much of a hurry to see his friend either.

  He stood in the living-room doorway and looked around.

  ‘Children not here?’ he said.

  ‘No. I told you. They’re with Sophie. I haven’t had time to go round there and collect them, as you can imagine. Besides, thinking about it, I wonder if it mightn’t be a good idea to let them stay with their grandmother a bit longer. I don’t want them to see Jean-Paul while he’s ill again. And he could probably do without the noise.’

  She laughed.

  Valois said, ‘That’s OK, is it? I mean for them to stay. You’ve talked with Sophie on the phone?’

  ‘No. The line’s out of order again.’

  She was looking at him closely. Open natures might find evasion difficult to contrive, but they were quick to spot it.

  ‘What’s up, Christian? There’s nothing wrong, is there?’

  ‘No, no. I’m sure not,’ he said unhappily. ‘It’s just that, well, you remember as we drove back last night, we kept on hitting those road blocks, and we thought at first they were for us, but no one seemed much bothered when we turned off? I found out the reason for that this afternoon. It seems they weren’t road blocks to stop traffic getting in, they were to stop people getting out. The police evidently sealed off half a dozen arrondissements, north of the river, last night. I got this from a friend at the Ministry of the Interior.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Janine. ‘Has there been a big robbery or something?’

  ‘No,’ said Valois wretchedly. ‘They were rounding up Jews.’

  ‘Jews? But…’ She was merely puzzled till visibly her mind moved from the general to the particular and she cried out, ‘Oh God! Which arrondissements? The Fourth? Was one of them the Fourth?’

  He nodded and said, ‘I believe so. I may have got it wrong, but I believe so.’

  ‘But why? You say it was the police? The French police, you mean? Our police? No Germans?’

  ‘That’s what I was told. Just our own. Over a thousand of them. All French.’

  ‘Then that must be all right, mustn’t it? If the Boche weren’t involved, I mean,’ she said, her eyes fixed unblink-ingly on his as though she hoped to mesmerize reassurance out of him.

  It was tempting to give in, tempting to take her hands and smile and talk soothingly. But this was not the time.

  He said, ‘The Boche were involved, of course they were involved! Who do you think organized the whole thing? They just think it looks better if they can get us to do our own dirty work. And they don’t find that too hard.’

  ‘But the police are fair, aren’t they? They wouldn’t do anything that was going to hurt anyone not a criminal?’

  ‘Crime is what the rulers say is crime,’ said Valois. ‘Listen; of course there’ll be plenty of cops who find all this as disgusting as we do. But there’s plenty more who are too stupid, or frightened, or just don’t care. And there were several hundred PPF thugs backing them up.’

  As he spoke, Janine was struggling into a light summer coat. Now she ran into the bedroom to peer down at Jean-Paul.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ she said to Valois, ‘but he’ll wake up soon. There’s some soup to heat up.’

  She made for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Valois. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Sophie’s, of course. I’ve got to see about the children.’

  ‘Wait! I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No,’ she said as if talking to a simple child. ‘You stay here, someone has to stay with Jean-Paul. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  Then she was gone.

  As she cycled through the evening streets, Janine forced her mind away from what might lie ahead. She was going too fast, she knew that: too fast for safety, too fast for endurance. Down the steep slope of the Rue Lacépède she sped with the Jardin des Plantes ahead, straight across the Rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire without a glance to left or right, into the long straight Rue Cuvier, still downhill, still gathering speed.

  Soon the Seine’s oily surface gleamed like a stream of metal in a foundry through the rails of the Pont de Sully. She kept up her speed till she was across the river, but as she turned along the Quai des Célestins she was already flagging and up the slight rise of the Rue Saint-Paul her breath began to burn her chest. It was dark in the canyons of the north-south streets, a darkness accentuated by the explosions of sunlight at east-west intersections. Above, the sky was bright but down here the shadows lay so thick that her tyres seemed to sink into them like wet sand. Rue Malher, Rue Payenne…and now at last Rue de Thorigny and Sophie’s house.

  Too tired and too fearful to go through the usual ritual of chaining up her bike and removing the pump, she let it slip into the gutter and went inside.

  There was no sign of Madame Nomary, the concierge. She went upstairs, each step requiring a real effort of strength, and of will. The apartment door was ajar.

  ‘Sophie?’ she called. ‘Pauli? Céci?’

  She pushed open the door, fearing the silence.

  ‘Oh Jesus, help me!’ she said.

  The room was in chaos with furniture overturned, curtains ripped down, and every drawer and cupboard door burst open. There was a smell of urine. She ran through into the bedrooms, the spare one first, then Sophie’s. A movement beneath a tangle of coverlets set her heart pounding, but what emerged was the head of a cat, wide-eyed and fearful.

  ‘Charlot!’ she said, reaching out her hand.

  The animal snarled, struggled out of the bedding and dashed past her through the door. She turned to follow it and stopped dead at the sight of a woman in the doorway.

  ‘Madame Nomary!’ she cried. ‘What’s happened here? Where are my children?’

  ‘It’s you, Madame Janine?’ said the old woman as if in doubt. ‘The police came last night. They took everyone away. Everyone who is Jewish, that is.’

  ‘The police did this?’ exclaimed Janine, gesturing at the wreckage.

  ‘No. That was the young men, the PPF they call themselves. They did some damage upstairs, but no o
ne was there. Here they did nothing till your mother-in-law and children were taken. Then they came back without the police and asked for my key. I told them I would not give it, I would call the gendarmes, but they broke my phone and said they would break my arm too. I had to give in…’

  Janine realized that the old woman was trembling.

  ‘Please, Madame Nomary, don’t upset yourself,’ she said. ‘But the children…is there nothing you can tell me?’

  ‘Madame Sophie left a note. I found it on the floor.’

  Janine recognized Sophie’s writing at once though it showed every sign of haste.

  Janine, two policemen are taking us away. The sergeant won’t let me leave the children. The constable is kinder but not in charge. Don’t worry.

  Sophie.

  ‘Where? Where have they taken them?’ cried Janine. The old woman could only shake her head helplessly. ‘Oh God,’ moaned Janine. ‘Oh God.’ And she did not know if it was a prayer or a curse.

  11

  ‘Pauli,’ whispered Céci. ‘I want to do pi-pi.’

  Pauli Simonian sat up. Beside him, his grandmother stirred but did not waken. They were huddled close together, partly for warmth, but mainly because of the sheer lack of space. Everywhere he looked the dim starlight showed him people, vague outlines of darker grey against the greyness of the night.

  He stood up carefully. He was dressed in his outdoor clothes plus a thick cardigan of his grandmother’s, worn like an overcoat. She didn’t feel the cold, she assured him. Old people had less sensitivity.

  ‘Careful,’ he admonished his sister as she too got up. He took her hand and gingerly they picked their way among the recumbent bodies towards the distant lavatories beneath the stand. The stench hit them long before they got there. The lavatories had packed up within the first twenty-four hours under sheer pressure of usage, and now they were open sewers. The only reason they were still used was the virtual impossibility of finding anywhere else that didn’t involve the risk of fouling someone’s sleeping space - or sleeping person.