Hunting Ground (12 page)

A hardness crept in to Nicki’s voice that I was to hear again and again. ‘Not in uniform, so of course he claimed he wasn’t of the SS but of an insurance firm my family had once used. Thirty-two years old, blond, arrogant, tall, and extremely handsome. The blue-eyed Teuton with a scar down the left cheek that he wears with pride.’

‘A
Schmiss
, a duelling scar,’ said Tommy. ‘Apparently, Schiller fences with some of the Prussian nobility, but he’s solidly of the Sicherheitsdienst.’

‘The Security Service of the Nazi Party, their SS and their Gestapo,’ said Nicki. ‘Has your husband ever had contact with this man?’

‘Schiller?’ I managed. What did I know of the SS and the Gestapo? I shrugged. I think I said something lame like, ‘Jules, he doesn’t tell me everything. I’m just a wife.’

‘But has the lieutenant ever visited your house?’

‘The château?’ I shook my head. ‘Jules is very jealous of his family’s estate and very protective of the works of art and other things his father left him. Please, you must remember that, in France before the Great War, there was no income tax, so his father, he could buy lots of lovely things and did.’

‘Then you’ve no idea how your husband came by that fake?’

Nicki had done the asking; Tommy the waiting. Me, I was caught between the two of them as I shook my head, so it was then that I mentioned that last weekend with Jules and of how my husband and my sister had brought their friends: the Vuittons, Louis and Dominique, my Nefertiti; Dmitry Alexandrov, the Russian student of electrical engineering; Marcel Clairmont, also.

Nicki glanced shrewdly at Tommy as we reached the house, a half-timbered, canted, ramshackle place dating from the mid-seventeenth century. Standing in the rain, they detained me a moment more.

‘Was your husband completely fooled, Lily? Tricked by the Vuittons?’ asked Tommy. ‘I don’t know of them and neither does Nicki, so anything you can tell us would be useful.’

‘Or was it this young Russian?’ asked Nicki. ‘Someone must have sold it to your husband, who couldn’t have looked too closely and was far too anxious to lay his hands on it.’

A fake he had then discovered and hidden away with the rest of that stuff. ‘If I knew I would gladly tell you, but I simply don’t.’

We went indoors to shake off the wetness and hang our things in the great hall beside a roaring fire. There were several of Nicki’s compatriots—the place was a refuge for them. Nicki’s wife was circulating, now a touch here, now a word there.

The tiara sat on a little table all by itself. I remember that they both stood back a little as I looked at the thing. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ I said, ‘even if it is a fake.’

Neat vodka, ice-cold and in small, clear glasses, was offered, and I took one and quickly downed it as the others did. ‘Why not try it on?’ asked Nicki’s wife. She had such a lovely, all-encompassing smile, warm yet shrewd, a toughness, too, I was to learn much later. The thick mass of red hair was worn loose, yet stunning, the sea green eyes the most beautiful I had ever seen.

Katyana Lutoslawski handed that thing to me and I turned it this way and that, felt the emeralds, knew that all eyes were on me as she said softly in the most beautiful French, ‘Please put it on for us. Don’t be ashamed to wear it even if it is a fake.’

How could I have known then what I know now? I put the tiara on. They all oohed and aahed. The men bowed. Someone proposed a toast and the partying began.

I don’t remember when it was that Nicki and Tommy told us of the last wolf hunt they’d been on. I do remember reliving it as if I’d been there.

They have a way of hunting wolves in eastern Poland that must be unique. In the depths of winter, the snows lie deep. The frost is so cruel, it snaps the branches and makes them creak as the moon gives shadows of silver to the ribbons of ice that are the rivers.

A freshly killed pig is drawn behind the sleigh, and the wolves come to this if not to the scent of the terrified horses. They snap at the pig, dash ahead to nip at the forelegs and tendons of the horses. One man controls the reins, the other shoots. Both are bundled in furs, and they race through the forest, laughing, shouting, drunk on vodka and excitement, the sleigh bells jangling.

‘It’s a way of taking wolves,’ said Nicki, the nostalgia all too clear. ‘We share with them the thrill of the hunt.’

I remember touching the base of my throat. Somehow the top buttons of my blouse had come undone. I was thirsty. I was hot. ‘Does the sleigh never turn over?’ I asked.

Nicki held me with a look. ‘What if it did? Would it not be better to die like that than to live like this?’

We telephoned the children at their suppertime. I was most conscious of the need to reassure them. Marie-Christine gave wet kisses and tears to the telephone. Jean-Guy was very brave and told me not to worry, that he had been given a puppy to look after and that he was being allowed to take it for walks.

‘On my own,
maman
. I don’t get lost anymore.’

I let Tommy speak to them. It was he who told Jean-Guy to be careful and not to wander far from the house. He was to keep an eye on his little sister and to tell Arthur if anything was not as it should be. ‘Your mother will be home tomorrow.’

Two days—that’s all the time I was away.

Nicki’s friends and associates were mostly fellow cavalry officers. I remember that there was a major with a snow-white moustache, a ready laugh and an eye for the ladies. The hands, too.

I remember that the talk was of the war, of a savagery I couldn’t have imagined.

We went up to bed early. We excused ourselves—they’d talk and drink all night. They’d scheme and do so all over again, just itching to get back at the Nazis and the Russians.

Tommy built up the fire. There was no furniture in that timber-ceilinged room, other than a single chair and a heap of fox furs and wolf skins. Wrapped in my lover’s arms, glowing with the warmth of alcohol, animal skins, and that fire, we experienced sex at its most pleasurable, and in the morning my children were gone.

‘You’re going home just like you did back then,’ said Dr. Laurier. ‘Your children had been taken from you.’

‘Yes, but because of me, they’re now gone forever.’

‘Lily, let me come with you. I want to. I think I need to.’

It’s Oradour-sur-Glane all over again for her. ‘You wouldn’t last a minute.’

‘Must you be so harsh? It’s not in your heart to be unkind.’

‘Oh? Hey,
écoute-moi, ma chère doctoresse
, I’ve a Luger and some other things stashed in that house. Me, I’m heading for it and when I have that gun, I’m going to make them feel how it really was for us.’

‘I still think I should come with you.’

‘It’s impossible. I’m sorry. You haven’t an inkling of what’s involved.’

The land before us is grey with snow. Fir-clad hills flank the mountain to spill down into a valley through which a stream flows. On the other side, the valley wall rises through a turf-covered, rocky slope to a low stone wall. Marius Cadieux is the typical Jura peasant. Proud, lean, wiry, wizened, weather-beaten, and suspicious, but able to grin about it. A man of about sixty-five or seventy—it’s hard to tell—but just being with him makes the past seem all that much closer.

‘I can breathe the air of France,’ I tell him.

‘Ice fog more likely,’ he quips. ‘If we’re to go over, madame, we had better leave now.’

‘How far is it?’

‘Only a few kilometres. There’s a road on the other side at
Derrière-le-Mont
—Behind-the-Mountain. My son has the sawmill. He’ll help us. I’ll get him to take you to the train.’

‘So, it’s good-bye, Doctor.’

I reach out to shake her hand. The wind is from the north and it stings my eyes. ‘Please contact me,’ she says. ‘Telephone the clinic and let me know the moment you get there.’

She’s so innocent really, a lot like Michèle but much older, and again I have to tell her, ‘Don’t go back. Not for at least a fortnight. Ring up Zimmermann if you must, but don’t, for any reason, let him know where you’re staying.’

‘I have my other patients, Lily. If I’m not going with you, then I have to go back.’

How many times was I to hear people say to me that they had to go back, how many times was I never to see them again?

‘Please don’t. Please just listen carefully. Dupuis wouldn’t be so anxious were it not for the crimes he committed. He and the Obersturmführer Schiller always worked together, and what the one didn’t know, the other did. Both would kill you without hesitation.’

‘Then why go after them?’

‘Because Schiller can’t possibly be there and the others never worked that way with Dupuis, so I’ll have him all to myself.’

‘Telephone the clinic. Let us know how you get on. Promise me you’ll keep in touch. The war’s over, Lily. It’s time to let things lie. It’s time for the healing to take place.’

She’s so earnest, I know she’s grown very fond of me—a mistake one must never make if one is to survive.

‘Send that cable to Dr. André de Verville as I’ve asked you to.’

‘What about that firm in London? They were going to get back to us today.’

She can’t bring herself to let go. Another mistake one must never make. I look back at her. ‘Forget about them.
Ah, mon Dieu,
Doctor, don’t be such an idiot. Go into hiding for a little like I’ve asked you to. Give me a chance to settle everything.’

We reach the stone wall. I’m all out of breath from such a climb. Cadieux says, ‘Are you ill or something?’

I shake my head. ‘Just tired.’

She’s still standing there watching us. Not a wave, not a last gesture of farewell. Just a lonely woman on a hillside with the mountains all around her.

‘The Louvre, please. The office of Middle Eastern Art and Antiquities, Egyptian desk. A Madame Dominique Vuitton. Yes … Yes, of course I’ll wait.’

Those dusty back corridors will ring with her steps. The confusion at the Gare de Lyon is the usual—streams of hurrying, indifferent people, trains coming, others leaving. Paris again—I can’t believe I’m really here.

From Besançon I caught the train to Dijon, and from there to here.
Ah,
mon Dieu,
the destruction along the way. Locomotives on their sides, tracks ripped up—delays and delays while the work crews repaired things. Whole villages in ruins, parts of towns but shattered shells. A country awakening from the ravages of war, but I must confess, the sight of locomotive boilers ripped apart still continues to excite me. A fistful of properly placed plastic can do a lot. You mould it against a bearing housing out of sight. It’s just like bread dough. You make a rope and tuck it up against a rail …

‘Madame … madame, this is Lily. I thought you’d like to hear from me personally.’

As with Dupuis and Jules, there is a momentary silence as she wonders if the sound of my voice is correct, but finally says, ‘You can’t be Lily de St-Germain. She died in a concentration camp.’

‘Oh? Which one, please?’

‘Bergen-Belsen.’

The acid’s there, and I let her hear the traffic in the station. ‘Madame, you and the others are to meet me at the house. That’s where things began, and that’s where they’ll end.’

‘Dupuis has gone to Zurich.’

‘Good!’

‘You’re crazy. We’ll never agree to meet you.’

‘Madame, the Résistance and its tribunals may have cleared you for lack of evidence, but I’ve come back to put the icing on the cake. You’ve a choice,
n’est-ce pas
? Either we meet at the house, or I go directly to them now.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Which station do you think?’

I leave the receiver dangling. I pick up my little cardboard suitcase and walk away from the counter of this bar, on which I found the telephone and purchased the still necessary
jeton
for the call. There are no SS hanging about, no plainclothes Gestapo, either, or
gestapistes français
, and this I can’t understand at first. Just Parisian
flics
with their hem-leaded capes and white, leather-covered, lead-weighted truncheons, and those boys, they’re the same as ever. Not dampened at all by what happened and what they did to help it happen. You’d think they’d all been in the Résistance
,
just like everyone else.

The taxi driver sucks on a dead fag and gives me a disdainful look as if I didn’t have a sou. This hasn’t changed much, either, but he’s had to put up with operating a
vélo-taxi
for four years, so there’s a hint of humbleness when he realizes I might have suffered and actually been in the
Résistance.

We negotiate. Me, I don’t want to waste money, but time is essential and the request a little unusual. ‘I’ll pay you in Swiss francs, which you can readily exchange on the black bourse for American dollars.’

‘Get in.’

I’ve hit the right nerve. He won’t say another thing. In silence, I’ll close my eyes and talk to Michèle and Simone, to Tommy especially and to the others. I’ll say, Hey
, mes amis
, I’m finally going home.

From Milly-la-Fôret, the road runs east into the forest, winding a little past some hills and valleys where the aqueducts are quite clearly seen below and to the left. We climb a little more, reach the hill called the “mountain,”
la montagne,
and finally turn towards Arbonne. Then it’s east again and on to Fontainebleau. Every tree and hill and rock and valley bears a name, for the French pride themselves in calling each part of their wilderness something apt and lovingly descriptive. It was the winter of 1940 when I made this same journey with Tommy, dusk already, just as now, but then there was snow, and among the trees I knew there would be no other sound but its soft falling. A hush that was and still is so beautiful.

Tommy was at the wheel. Two months it had taken us to leave England. The British—my God, they could be stubborn. The Winter War in Finland was the excuse. The Russians and the Finns, the Nazis waiting.

Through the long tunnel of the forest, the road ran beneath branches to which the snow clung, and that, too, was beautiful, but there were ruts in the road, those of the woodcutters’ wagons. I searched, I hunted for something more to still the aching in my heart, for we’d hardly spoken.