Authors: Marcus Sedgwick
It had been evacuated a few days before the liberation, and was now in the hands of the Americans. I started to doubt if the Major knew what he was about; a British officer arriving on their doorstep caused quite a stir.
While the private lounged in the jeep in the sun by the gates, I hung at the Major’s heels while he explained what he wanted. As it slowly dawned on the American company commander what exactly that was, his mood relaxed, and then he waved a hand.
‘Sure. Go ahead. The whole place is yours. Just don’t take anything home with you, right?’
He laughed, and the Major gave a small, embarrassed nod, thrown by the directness of the American’s wit.
‘Won’t it all have been taken away?’ I asked. ‘Put into storage?’
‘Yes, some of it will, but they cannot possibly have moved everything. Look! You see?’
We walked through corridor after corridor, and the Major was right; on every side hung paintings and tapestries of obvious antiquity, but what the Major was after was many thousands of years older, and of that there was no sign.
For the first time since we’d arrived in Paris, his mood worsened, but then, as I began to think the whole thing had been a waste of time, a piece of luck.
As we stood at the top of a flight of stairs, wondering where to look next, a voice called to us.
‘
Je peux vous aider?
’
We turned and saw an old man inspecting us from a doorway.
‘
Messieurs? Vous cherchez quelqu’un?
’
The man was clearly nothing to do with the military, on any side. He was very short, had white hair and a slight stoop, and looked exactly like a museum curator should, which was almost exactly what he was.
The Major stepped forward, pulled his cap off his head, and stuck his hand out.
‘Edward Greaves. So very pleased to meet you.’
Monsieur Dronne was, in fact, a caretaker, but there was something about the way he referred to the place as ‘
mon musée
’ that told us he knew as much about the collections as the directors of it did. Probably more.
M Dronne confirmed for the Major what I had feared, that most things had been taken away and put in safe storage, but much had not, including items that didn’t appear to be obviously valuable, among which was the Major’s precious Venus.
The old caretaker led the way down to the lower levels of the chateau and into the cellars, where row upon row of cabinets stood.
By the feeble light of dim, bare bulbs overhead, the two men began to speak excitedly in a mixture of mostly French and some English about the pieces Major Greaves had come to see.
As M Dronne reverentially pulled out a drawer with a great show of drama, I could see the Major holding his breath.
‘My word . . .’ was all he said as M Dronne unwrapped it and placed it on the cabinet.
His Venus turned out to be a tiny piece of ivory, not two inches long, carved into the head and shoulders of a woman. I looked at it, and looked at it, but couldn’t quite get excited.
The Major’s hands, on the contrary, were trembling, and he was speechless, though not for long.
As he and M Dronne chatted away about how old it might be and where it had been found, who made it and how and why, they moved on to look at other pieces, and I, forgotten, dawdled behind them, gazing for a while at each one.
I looked again at the Venus; her face was a simple triangular shape, seemingly calm, with no sign of a mouth. Her hair hung in what seemed to be tight plaits. I looked harder and began to feel a little of its mystery, but there were other things to look at; more figurines found in the same ancient layers of earth as the Venus.
There was an engraved antler, the outline of a woman’s body scraped into the flat of the bone. A series of markings that were thought to be fish. And then there came something that did arrest me.
Another figure of a woman, again in bone. The figure was headless, and the arms had either been broken off or never carved. The breasts were absent too, and so the only thing that showed it to be a woman was a gouge for the vulva. Something nagged me about it as soon as I saw it and then I realised what it was. The carving seemed effortless, so that it did not intrude at all upon the depiction of the body; it was almost as if the bone had been found that way, so smooth and subtle was the carving of the body and legs. But the cleft between its legs was deep and scratched, a little clumsily done. Almost frantic, I felt, though I knew I was probably imagining too much. I speculated that perhaps the mark that showed her to be a woman had been done later, by another, more forceful hand. There was the faintest splotch of colour there, too. Brown. Maybe red that had faded.
The only other thing I remember looking at was a bowl, apparently Assyrian, which M Dronne showed us as a curiosity. It was a dirty white bowl, mostly in one piece, upon the inner face of which was a sequence of figures. He pointed at one couple.
‘
Ce pot, dit-on, montre la représentation la plus ancienne au monde d’un vampire.
’
I looked closer, thinking I must have misunderstood him. It was a gruesome little scene, picked out in red glaze, of a man copulating with a woman. I should specify, a decapitated woman. It was a highly stylised depiction; the woman was slender, with legs awkwardly long.
M Dronne explained that the female figure was a vampire, and that the image was a talismanic device to ward off such creatures; if they did not heed the warning, their fate would be that of their colleague on the bowl.
How any of this was known, M Dronne did not say.
My head swam, and in the darkness of the cellars I felt a return of the nausea from earlier.
‘I’m going up for some air,’ I called to the Major, but I don’t think he even noticed me.
I climbed back up into the daylight and, suddenly feeling desperate for some air, found my way out into the grounds beside the chateau, overlooking the city.
In the distance I could see our jeep and the private with his legs draped over the steering wheel, so I turned away and took a walk around the park, breathing in as much of the gently warming air as I could.
That was when I saw it.
The bunker. In fact, there were several of them, two by the chateau alone, more in the park. I found out later that, as the HQ of Oberbefehlshaber West, Saint-Germain in general and the chateau in particular had had numerous concrete bunkers and air-raid shelters constructed there, but why I wandered over to the one I did, I have never known.
I wondered later if I’d heard something, but I don’t think so, not consciously at least. Maybe I just picked up on something without really knowing it and that was what took me over to the bunker’s mouth to look in.
Though it was a bright morning, little light penetrated beyond the open doorway, and yet despite this I felt compelled to enter. I put my foot on the first step, ducked my head under the low lintel of the entrance, and went down, into the gloom.
Then I did hear a noise, but it was very faint and I could not determine what it was. I trod quietly, the ground levelled off in front of me, and I took another step, waiting for my eyes to grow used to the dark.
There was that noise again, just a little way ahead of me, and without making a sound, I pulled a book of matches from my pocket.
I tore off one of the matches, lit it, and held it out in front of me, shielding my eyes from its light.
What I saw there . . .
What I saw there I saw only for the length of time it takes a single match to burn down, and yet it changed my life.
Crouched on the ground, just a little way away, was a man. He was hunched over something, and as I lit the match, he stopped what he was doing, and turned to look at me.
Underneath him, the lifeless body of a woman lay on a raised slab on the floor. Her head hung back off the stone step, her hair splayed out. She was dressed, mostly, though her blouse was torn a little around her neck and breast. She was young.
I saw that.
At the same time, I saw the man. I couldn’t see what he was wearing – some dull uniform of sorts, but it was too dark to tell whether it was British or American. Or even German. His hair was short, dark, swept to one side, and from his mouth blood dribbled on to the woman’s once white blouse.
His hand was on her left shoulder, holding back her clothing to expose a long and fresh wound from which blood flowed freely, and from which, I understood at once, he had been drinking.
I didn’t move.
It might sound like madness, but I didn’t move. I can only explain it as if I’d come across a giant wolf in the woods, and my body and mind had frozen from the fear. Somewhere, at the back of my mind, that’s how I felt: frozen. And yet I also knew instantly that I was in terrible danger. As a medical officer, I was unarmed, but that was not the source of my fear; my fear came from the look on the man’s face.
He’d been discovered in the midst of some appalling act, and yet he didn’t even move, much less get up and run, or fight.
All he did was look at me, and it was the look that terrified me, for it was a look of amusement, but not at what he was doing.
He was amused by
me
.
All that, in the time the match took to burn my fingers, and then, though I am ashamed to admit it, I turned and ran from the hole, stumbling back up into the sunlight. I staggered away from the bunker to a bench, where I sat down and was sick.
I don’t know how much time passed. Suddenly I felt afraid again, as I realised I was sitting with my back to the hole, though it was perhaps a hundred yards behind me.
I stood, and turned.
Below me lay Paris in the August sunshine. The morning was wearing on, and the heat was building. I could see for miles, beyond free Paris, maybe as far as land still occupied by the retreating German Army, I didn’t know. Yet it reminded me that the war was still on, that this sojourn in Paris was some strange anomaly, not what life really was.
On the ground between my feet I saw the book of matches; I must have dropped it there. I stooped and picked it up, and turned back the way I’d come.
Forcing my eyes over to the bunker’s mouth again, and knowing I ought to do something, I set off towards the hole. Even in times such as this, times of great stress, the mind is still able to throw up irrelevant details. I noted the grim coincidence of the picture of the vampire I had just seen, and what I’d seen the man doing, and then I wondered if I’d imagined it all; if my tired and drunken mind had shown me things in the shadows that weren’t really there.
I think I was about halfway there when my steps began to falter and my legs to tremble. I stopped, forced myself on again for a few feet, and then stopped again.
‘Captain?’
I turned to my right and saw the private a few paces away. He appeared to be less grumpy now he’d had a bit more sleep in the sunshine.
‘The Major’s waiting. Time to go, sir.’
I nodded, but didn’t move.
I hesitated. ‘Private,’ I said. ‘Do you see that bunker there?’
‘Sir?’
‘Would you . . .’
I stopped. Wondered what exactly I was asking.
‘Would you . . . take a look in it?’
‘Sir?’
The private stared at me.
‘Are you well, sir? You don’t—’
‘I’m fine. Just do as I ask, will you? You needn’t go far in.’
The private nodded, seeming to think it would be faster to accede to my strange request than question it. He set off towards the hole.
Watching him about to enter, I felt a sudden pang of guilt at my cowardice. What was I doing, sending this man instead of me?
I caught up with him and, afraid to make any noise, made a dumbshow that I would come down with him.
At once the look on his face changed.
‘No, sir,’ he almost barked at me. Disgust spread to his mouth. ‘I’m not like that.’
He held my eye for a moment, and before I even realised what it was he thought of me, he turned.
‘I’ll wait for you at the jeep,’ he said. ‘Sir.’
The penny dropped and my face burned.
‘No!’ I cried after him. ‘No, no, I—’
But he was gone. My shoulders hung, and I turned to face the hole again.
I waited, glancing at the chateau, where I could see the Major talking to the private.
My breathing had almost stopped, my chest tightened as, with shaking hands, I pulled out the matches from my pocket again, striking one as I rushed down into the hole.
There was nothing there. No one.
I began to doubt myself further, wondering if I had indeed had some strange hallucination, and I called out.
‘You there!’
There was no reply but a tiny dead echo.
My match went out and I lit another, approaching the place where I’d seen him, and then I knew I wasn’t losing my mind, because there was blood on the ground.