J. Janes - Carnival

These days the blackout’s constant exposure to that wash of laundry blueing over the glass made one despair of its presence ever ending. Hermann’s reflection was, of course, too blurred for detail. In spite of the scar the SS had given the left side of his face from eye to chin with a rawhide whip-the matter of a small murder that had turned sour because of this partnership’s penchant for pointing that finger-he still attracted the ladies as an orchard does bees, and rogue that he was, Hermann usually encouraged them. ‘ Ach , how else are we to find out what’s up?’ he’d say. ‘You should take better notice of how your partner works.’

‘A carnival,’ St-Cyr softly breathed and, finding a thumbprint-sized hole where some delinquent had scraped away the blueing, let the heat of a thumb melt its covering of frost and fog.

‘Louis, Frau Oberkircher was just telling me about a textile factory in Colmar. Poles, Russians, and a handful of French. Lazy, all of them, and worthless. It seems our Arbeitslager 13 manufactures rayon and Kommandant Rasche was one of my old bosses.’

Ah, mon Dieu, mon Dieu . ‘In the Great War?’

‘Where else?’

A ‘hot box’, an overheated axle bearing, emptied the train at Belfort. Having flipped up the box’s lid that had been hurriedly closed by a railwayman, Kohler gingerly plucked at the packing of chopped rag waste, and using the man’s glove, let some of it fall to the sooty snow. ‘A two-hour delay?’ he asked the cheminot .

The lantern was lifted. The jacket of the bleu-de-travail , the ubiquitous blue coveralls, was open, the gut, once that of a barrel. ‘Four,’ came the Occupation’s vegetable-rooted grunt.

Merde alors , panicked Henri-Claude Ouelette, this ‘Kripo from Paris-Central,’ this Kriminalpolizei , had shaken off the glove and was now rubbing some of the packing slowly between a thumb and middle finger, the perfume of burnt engine oil all too evident.

Sweating, was he? thought Kohler. Ah, bon , mon ami , now get ready for the surprise of surprises. ‘Then see what you can do, eh, but first empty that box and drop everything into the station’s stove.’

‘But … but the shortages, monsieur …’

‘Idiot, don’t argue. Just do it.’

So much of France’s rolling stock had been requisitioned by the Reich, scrapyard relics like this coach and the trucks and engines had been pressed back into service and were always causing trouble. Maybe, just maybe the Bahnschutzpolizei stationmaster, the SS Obersturmfuhrer or anyone else in authority wouldn’t think beyond that to take a closer look.

Silicon carbide had been added to the oil-soaked rag waste. It hadn’t taken him a split second to feel the sharpness. Probably done in Besancon or in L’Isle. Fortunately the bearing hadn’t melted and the train been derailed or set alight. Someone had wanted to stop them and free the N und Ns but hadn’t counted on its stopping where it had last night, thus cooling the bearing and giving it a lease on life. Of course they hadn’t considered that the prisoners might well have been killed. Miraculously, too, Louis and himself had avoided being caught up in the derailment or shoot-out, but had been awarded yet another delay.

The restaurant de la gare and its buffet were closed until 7.00 a.m., 5.00 the old time, the station overcrowded. Coughs here, sneezes there. Kids, old people, mothers without their husbands, babes greedily at the breast or wailing their little hearts out, Wehrmacht boys, too, returning to the front from the eager shy; arms of les filles de joie de Paris and dog-tired, naturally. Military police, the Felgendarmen, were on the lookout for deserters shy; coming through from the Reich. Gestapo plainclothes were vigilant too, and God help those unfortunate enough to be caught.

‘The Army’s mobile soup kitchen is serving hot coffee,’ hazarded Claudette Oberkircher.

‘Coffee … ?’ blurted Hermann, his mind still elsewhere.

‘It’s not for everyone,’ she said. ‘Only for our dear boys in uniform, but perhaps if … ’ She left the thought hanging like laundry in winter.

‘Use your charm, Hermann,’ quipped St-Cyr. Guiding her through to a far corner, he set her two suitcases and their small grip down. Evasively this infernal chatterbox Hermann had instantly struck up a conversation with, this Hausfrau ‘from home’ who had squeezed the French half of the partnership against the ice-cold side of the carriage as if getting back at the enemy, emptily returned his gaze, her dark brown eyes misting as she said to herself, Surete-he knew it, always did, but would she now confess to knowing how to speak French, thinking as she must, since she had been deliberately led to believe it, that he knew no Deutsch ? Or would she use Alsatian whose dialect was neither totally of the one or the other but that ardent distillation of the centuries of changing hands while demanding independence?

She would choose silence, Claudette told herself. These days people didn’t do what she had done in that coach-talked incessantly to a perfect stranger, a Gestapo detective at that. Even those who knew each other seldom spoke, and then only in whispers.

He took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, this Oberdetektiv from the Surete Nationale with the terrible bruise and stitches above the left eye. He looked ruefully at the contents of the pouch, found his Kippe tin, his megot tin with its collection of cigarette butts picked up here and there like everyone else and, opening it, explored the contents with a doubtful finger.

‘Your … ’ he began, struggling to find the word for suitcases , ‘are … ’ He couldn’t even find the words for ‘not heavy.’

But one must be careful these days. ‘I carry little,’ she said in Deutsch . ‘The one suitcase is all but empty; the other has but a few clothes and two newspapers bearing the notices of my brother-in-law’s death.’

Not understanding a word she had said, this Frenchman shrugged. Their coffee came, and for a time these two companions of hers were silent. ‘The Army should use parsnips,’ she said after taking a few exploratory sips. ‘This is good, ja , but it could be much better.’

‘Parsnips,’ echoed Hermann who had an encyclopedic interest in all such things of the Occupation. ‘Not roasted acorns and barley, and maybe with a touch of chicory if one is lucky?’

The Frenchman rolled his eyes in despair but had best be ignored. ‘You do not peel them, you understand, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter. Just wash in cold water and shred, then roast until black before grinding. Eighty turns of the mill, I give it until it is as fine as the flour we used to be able to buy. Then brew as you would that other stuff you mentioned. Ach , my little sister swore she couldn’t tell the difference and said it’s real!’

‘Louis, what have I always been telling you, eh? Right from the start of this war you people started, you French should have listened to your friends. Mein Gott , Frau Oberkircher, the answers to so many of the problems they’ve caused themselves and us, too, are often so simple and right to hand!’

Like the lack of real coffee.

‘Now don’t argue,’ quipped Kohler in French. ‘Let’s take a little walk. Bitte, meine gute Frau , you’ll hold our seats? A breath of fresh air will do this one good.’

The Bavarian was fifty-five years old, Claudette felt, the Frenchman perhaps three years his junior. Much taller and stronger looking, a giant of a man, Herr Kohler’s eyes were pale blue, the lids bagging and drooping from exhaustion, no doubt. And sometimes those eyes had been so empty when he had looked at one of the SS, his gaze had frightened her, but always when he had turned to her there had been that little rush of excitement in herself. Though those years had slipped away some time ago, Herr Kohler hadn’t let their absence deter him. He was not at all like a gestapiste , though he did have the chin and cheekbones of a storm trooper, the scar of a terrible wound and far more recent than those that other war had left, the shrapnel. A criminal with a knife? she wondered of that scar. A dueling sword? A bullet graze had recently brushed his brow. Occasionally the thick fingers would favour it as if he was counting his blessings. No ring of course, but probably married, the hair cut close and neither brown nor black but a shade in between, like his marital status, and flecked with grey.