J. Janes - Hunting Ground

‘And this dog?’ asks Dupuis. ‘It knows you and wouldn’t have barked.’

‘That dog has always been fed by me and my children. If you will release it, I’ll tell it to go to my kitchen.’

They watched as that creature made a beeline for its supper, and I realized suddenly that I’d just condemned myself, for it was Dupuis who says, ‘Ah, bon.’

The noise from the dining room was almost more than I could bear-laughter, hooting, jeering. They’d rounded up most of those who escaped from the cattle trucks, had shot a few and had a bit of fun, were still breaking dishes and glasses when the moment struck them. Jackboots graced the dining room table. Brandy, cognac, and wine had been looted from my husband’s cave, and I’d had to do the cooking and feed them all.

The sculpture was in the storeroom. Schiller rested his fingers on the head I’d done of Michèle Chevalier. She had such a fine young body, and I’d been true to it in every detail, but a general in Paris seemed likely to caress the real one, not himself. ‘Herr Obersturmführer, I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, I had nothing to do with that robbery or that fire.’

He fingered Michèle’s buttocks and thighs, didn’t care for the feel of the wax and turned the piece to gaze at her front again, for she was leaning back and the three figures were holding hands in a circle.

‘Yet you take the train on the evening of that outrage and end up but a few kilometres from it?’

‘Chance, that’s all. Ah, mon Dieu , Lieutenant, I’ve a commission to do, an order , damn it, from the Reichsmarschall Göring. It’s not easy for me to find the time. It’s taking a lot longer than I had thought.’

Now it was Katyana’s body that he fingered, and I knew he was going to tell me that I had earlier denied knowing anything of her, but instead, he said, ‘The piece looks finished enough.’

‘Not if you keep pawing it! Besides, there is still the base to make. Something very French and of the Fontainebleau Forest. Leaves, vines, rocks, birds …’

‘We’ll have a little surprise for you tomorrow.’

I stood before one of the dining room windows, looking out through the icy rain across the emptiness to where Rudi was again on guard and marching back and forth with that Mauser appropriately over his shoulder.

I waited. Cigarettes wouldn’t help, but those bastards from the ratissage had left packages and butts all over the house, and there were plenty for me to pick up. It was now nearly noon of the following day, and they hadn’t yet come for me. Has Schiller forgotten his little surprise, or is the delay simply more torture?

The children would be in school. I lit another cigarette and took a few quick drags. Tommy and the others hadn’t been caught yet, not in so far as I knew, but Schiller’s surprise could well be that they had, and when I saw Rudi turn suddenly to look along the road, I felt the cigarette leave my lips to pause as the smoke trailed up into my eyes.

A breathless Alphonse Picard appeared on his balloon-tyred bicycle, obviously struggling desperately against a clock whose hands would not stop, and when Rudi challenged him, the mayor simply shouted, ‘Emergency! Out of my way.’

The wind and the rain beat against my face when I stepped outside. ‘Madame, hurry! Hurry! They’re about to shoot your son.’

‘Rudi … RUDI, IT’S JEAN-GUY. HE’S HOSTAGE. I MUST GO TO HIM!’

Continually, Picard called out to me, ‘Madame, please wait! It’s best to arrive at the same time!’

They were all in the street before that school-the children, their teachers, everyone in town. Most were without their coats and hats in the pouring rain.

Two sad-looking men had been tied to posts in front of a wall. One was younger, the other older, my son a third. I pushed my way into the crowd. A gap opened for me, but no one said a thing, and when I was at the edge of that semicircle, it was Jean-Guy who cried out, ‘MAMAN!’ nothing else. Not, please tell them what you know. Not even, Please, maman, they’re going to shoot me!

The Wehrmacht kept the crowd back. There were forty or fifty of them: lorries, cars, machine guns, helmets in the deluge. Schiller and the Oberst Neumann were near, the latter grim-faced, the former all business as a priest begged them to release my son, but he was not our regular priest. Father Damien was away in the south for the duration.

The lieutenant nodded to one of the officers. I started to cry out in anger, but bit my tongue as Jean-Guy glared at me from across that distance. He couldn’t believe I wouldn’t come to him, nor could any of the others. To them I was to be damned, and I knew this was what Schiller also wanted.

Someone tried to take the bicycle from me, but I yanked it back, had to stand firm. There was the metallic sound of the rifle bolts being slammed home, but if I offered myself in Jean-Guy’s place, I’d be made to tell them everything.

The younger of the two men found a last shred of bravery and cried out, ‘Vive la France!’

I tried to tell myself to run to my son, that nothing else mattered, but turned aside to sob, ‘No … please, no,’ and as the sound of the shots came to me, I felt Jean-Guy in my arms. They’d cut the ropes and let him go, and I was smothering him with kisses as Schiller stood over us saying nothing.

Only then did I realize that I had been pleading with them in English, and that I must have said a lot more than I could ever remember.

In my orchard, there were old apple trees much revered for their gnarled, outreaching branches and their bountiful harvests. Rudi would help us pick the apples. When he first came to us, those trees at the back of the orchard formed a bond between us.

His helmet lay on the ground catching the rain. Beside it were his rifle and, neatly folded, the greatcoat they’d issued him. ‘Rudi, forgive me.’

He made no sound. He’d bitten through his tongue and lifted his eyes to a heaven I was not sure he even believed in. The rain had plastered the dark brown hair over his brow, and as he slowly turned, I begged him again and again to forgive me. A dear, dear friend.

Jean-Guy tugged at my hand. Marie, in her white dress, hesitantly stood in the kitchen doorway, down through the tunnel of barren bows, afraid to join us, horrified by what had happened. It had been a morning of utter agony.

‘ Maman, why didn’t you try to stop them from shooting me?’ He had to know-had every right to be told.

I looked into the eyes of my son. ‘Because I couldn’t. Because for all of us, there are more important things than one single life.’

I couldn’t tell him that they would all have been killed had I given up and told the lieutenant where they were, but he knew, and I knew, too, that at the moment of that execution I was thinking of Tommy more than of anyone else. ‘Don’t hate me, chéri . Just try to understand.’

Schiller was so clever. He knew that by exposing the truth to my son, he could turn Jean-Guy against me. This wasn’t to be a sudden process, but something so gradual I didn’t notice until it was too late.

Out over the Barbizon plain, there are distant lights in some of the farmhouses, the night at its darkest just before dawn. Instinctively, I search for the ashes of my mother’s house and find, on the near horizon, the deeper darkness of her willow.

Dupuis and Schiller kept the pressure up all through that winter of 1942. There were repeated searches, the executions of all the hostages, the endless days of waiting, never knowing if someone would talk.

I was sent to Paris for a medical examination by a German specialist, but fortunately André saw me first and gave me an anticoagulant so that I bled like a stuck pig, became weaker by the day, and was finally allowed to go home. They gave me six months to live. Actually, it was nearer to three years.