Hunting Ground (25 page)

‘There’s a small back room off the wine cellar. Rats have often got in there only to die from eating poisoned bait but, of course, they’re awfully difficult to find.’

He thought about this, my Rudi. He knew there was an element of truth. Reluctantly, he reached for his rifle and followed me to the house. Neumann had gone to Paris to prepare for Göring’s visit. Schiller, having sent Michèle and Henri-Philippe to Paris by car, was off somewhere, but I’d no idea when he’d return.

We buried the pieces I’d cut up and wrapped in canvas and butcher paper. Rudi never questioned me openly, he simply did what he’d been asked, and as a last stone was put back in place and the floor surveyed, said, ‘Marie, has told me of this one, madame, but your secret is safe with me.’

I still have nightmares. All through the camps, I had them especially. Some are of the butchering, others of the burial, and in one Collin awakens to ask what I’m doing to him. In another, it’s Schiller who asks and Rudi who answers.

I made five trips to the farm that winter in hopes of finding Tommy. I used the road, slogging it on foot or bike through snow, rain, or ice pellets with Marie. I would start out at five a.m. and arrive at about eight or nine, if lucky. There would then be a trip to Barbizon to check with the mayor and then the Feldkommandant because the house was empty and I was afraid they’d requisition it. Each time, I told them mother was returning in the spring and I was getting things ready for her.

Postcards, with preprinted messages in heavy black type, were now being allowed through from the
zone libre
and I had heard from her at last, but as to her coming back, this I really didn’t know. On the postcards, one crossed out the words one didn’t want, and the rest allowed for so little after the censors had got at it with their black pens, that the result was often unintelligible.

The Nazis thought of everything, and if not them, their French friends in Vichy, especially the Maréchal Pétain, that old warrior who had given in, Pierre Laval, and others, too. Criminals all of them. Collaborators.

Nothing stirs but the occasional falling of the leaves. The sun has risen and it floods my courtyard to warm the bricks against which I stand and lean, and I feel their roughness, the indentations where the trowel has worked the mortar. All are like a map to my memory. As the Schmeisser makes its sound, the Sten has its own, the Bergmann MP-34, Mauser 98, Luger, Walther P38, and Lebel Modèles 1873 and 1896, too. So many different sounds the ear becomes tuned to them, as the ornithologist’s is to each birdcall.

I’ve made a careful circuit through the forest and have come up behind my husband’s house. Hidden in the forest, I can just see the faded, peeling white framework of my little potting shed. From there to the courtyard is about three hundred metres diagonally through the orchard. Sufficient brush about the shed still gives good cover and the washed-out orange-red brick of its half-walls form shoulders behind which one can hide, but will they come looking for me there? I desperately need to rest, still have things I must remember.

Tommy found me in the forest, standing here. I was watching the house just like now, was wondering what I should do as I tried to grab a moment’s peace. ‘Lily …’ He had such a way of saying my name. Softly, urgently. My whole being simply rose to it. I turned. My back was to one of the trees. Suddenly, I had to tell him what I’d done to Collin and yet … and yet I couldn’t.

‘Göring,’ I said. ‘He’s coming here.’

The loss of the Raphael had needed to be given the ointment of something else.

There were two very fine belle-époque chandeliers in our main dining room. Exquisite draperies of crystal and candlelight, but a lifetime to clean. The Luftwaffe did all that. The first of the lorries to arrive was Göring’s mobile kitchen. Actually, there were two of them, with trailers and twenty or so cooks and cook’s helpers. Stainless steel like I’d never seen.

They took over my kitchen, too, but backed those trailers right up into the courtyard. There were bushels of beets, onions, carrots, bunches of leeks, potatoes, cabbages, crocks of sauerkraut, pickled pork hocks, suckling piglets rammed on to skewers, sides of venison and beef, pickled beets, pickled cucumbers, enough mustard sauce for an army, Black Forest hams, et cetera, et cetera. Never had I seen so much food. Marie was quite intrigued; Jean-Guy absolutely mesmerized.

One huge man in white, with a cook’s hat, sharpened a butcher knife that needed no sharpening. Orders flowed. The head cook, a Bavarian of sixty and of immense proportions, marshalled everything under his gaze and nose, the sweetbreads, the livers they would chop with onions, the pâté and the cheese, the wines—
Dieu merci
, they didn’t seem to know of my husband’s precious
cave
.

Magnums of champagne were offloaded: the Dom Pérignon, no less, the 1911. For the wine, there was such a selection: Château Lafite, Château Latour, both of early vintages, but German wines also; Bernkastel, Johannisberg, and Balbach Erben. Though I was terrified, depressed, so many things, I can still remember thinking, If only I could sink my teeth into some of this stuff, I could flog it off for the rest of the Occupation and never have to worry about money again.

They cleaned the house and laid the table, but never mind the china of the de St-Germains. Göring had his own: Augsburg silver from the eighteenth century, white porcelain dinnerware with fine gold rims and traceries of blue from the Royal Bayreuth factory in Bavaria, 1834, Venetian flute glasses, very old, very rare, 1732.

‘Madame, my compliments. I’m Hauptmann Karl Janzen, the Reichsmarschall’s adjutant and maître d’ for your little dinner party. Please, the dress is for you, with the Reichsmarschall’s compliments.’

Janzen clicked his heels smartly together and bowed. He was all grins and smiles, was of Tommy’s age, tall, good-looking, your perfect Aryan who also spoke beautiful French. I was later to learn that he polished it on his mistress.

The strapless evening dress was of emerald-green silk, low cut and very finely made. Two of the
Blitzmädels
were with Janzen, hard-eyed, arrogant bitches but in smart blue Luftwaffe uniforms, not the field grey-green of the Wehrmacht that had earned most of them the epithet of the ‘grey mice’. They were to take charge of the children and help me to get dressed, which meant a bath, a washing of the hair, a manicure, the whole bit, and
Ach du lieber Gott,
I’d better not object. You’d think I might have had lice or something.

But what do I remember most about that dinner party? The noise, of course, the gluttony and drunkenness, the women—good-looking, young
Parisiennes
who laughed a lot and played around a lot more: theatre people, singers, dancers, and models for some of the big fashion houses who were still all in business. My sister was there, too, and Michèle Chevalier. My husband had made certain of that, but there was one woman Jules hadn’t known. An absolutely stunning redhead with lovely sea-green eyes: Nicki’s wife, Katyana Lutoslawski. ‘Giselle,’ she said, extending a hand. ‘What a charming little house you have.’

Neither Tommy nor Nicki had told me she’d be present, and had let her appearance come as a complete surprise. ‘Just what do they intend on doing?’ I asked when we had a private moment.

‘Nothing. Don’t worry. Let’s just wait and see.’

The talk was most often in German and loud. There were perhaps seventy or eighty ‘guests,’ a real flowering of the Nazi and collaborationist elite, a party such as the de St-Germains might once have thrown in Napoléon’s time. Beautiful women in absolutely stunning dresses, some caught with laughter in their eyes, their reflections imprinted in ornate, gilt-framed mirrors that were so old I can still remember them.

The Germans were mostly in uniform, those of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, but there were others of the Gestapo and the SS, and those early dress uniforms of theirs were the colour of anthracite. Tall, short, thin, big, plump, fat, grey-haired, or not, some of the men were handsome, most quite ordinary, but all had varying degrees of the sinister, for these were the conquerors, and I still can’t bring myself to think of them in any other way.

The buyers and dealers of art and antiques were among them, some from Switzerland, others from the Reich, and still others from each of the occupied countries and territories, but they were not in uniform. Instead, it was tuxedos or expensive business suits, and they appeared as sprinklings among the black, field-grey, or navy blue uniforms and all those lovely evening dresses. Yet it was business as usual for them and others, too, of the Paris elite. Everyone was overly polite, overly attentive, silly, or serious, and sometimes all in quick succession since few really knew one another and those who did were hard to find.

I circulated as I had to. I, the woman of the house who had recently butchered and buried the body of a young Canadian pilot, had to smile and welcome everyone because that’s what a hostess does, and I saw that the Oberst Neumann, my star border, felt a little out of place. The Feldkommandant of Fontainebleau was flattered that the Reichsmarschall should pay his district a visit and stay, of course, in the
palais,
the hunting lodge of former kings.

The Vuittons were watchful. Always they kept that little bit of distance between them and whomever they were talking to. That bitch had her black hair piled high and pinned with spun gold skewers that were centuries old. She wore a low-cut gown of black velvet, a necklace of gold and turquoise, and I saw the gap between her breasts as a chasm.

Dupuis from the Sûreté smoked his pipe as he groused around or stood alone, watching everyone in the mirrors. Clever, eh? He looked as if he’d still got his rubbers on, but don’t let that fool you. He was far more sinister than most of the others.

And Göring? Göring was resplendent in the soft, dove grey-blue uniform he had made especially for himself and that the Führer had let be different from all the others. There were medals on his chest like I’d never seen before, but don’t get the impression they weren’t deserved. That one was a flying ace in the Great War and had a bullet from that, also splinters of paving stone and lead that were lodged in the thigh muscles and groin from something that came later, a Nazi thing. That’s when he turned to drugs. He sat on one of the couches, all but filled it, his great hams spread. A glass of champagne was always in hand; the other often dunked into a cut-glass bowl with frosted nymphs that Lalique had wrought, a masterpiece that was filled with jewellery. Art Nouveau to please him, amethyst and aquamarine, rings, bracelets, little butterflies, the cheap and the gaudy hiding the good. Rubies and sapphires, my diamond earrings. Agates, malachites, and lapis lazuli, strands of pearls but most of all, emeralds to match my dress and remind me of the tiara of the Empress Eugénie. A little warning from my husband and his friends, but now there were other priceless pieces that were far more recently stolen in Paris from the Jeu de Paume auction.

Katyana was feeding the Reichsmarschall herring on toast, thin wedges of it. I was introduced again by my husband as the sculptress. Göring looked me up and down but didn’t say a thing about the tiara. Did he even know what happened to the real one?

Jules said, ‘She’s the one who made that bronze of this one, her sister.’

He took Nini by the hand and brought us face-to-face with him. Nini had the shadow of a bruise under one eye, but with that Midi beauty it was perhaps hidden enough.

‘Two sisters. Yes, I see the resemblance,’ said the great one. ‘The sculpture is very good, madame. You should do something more.’

Giving him a defensive shrug, I tried to find my voice. ‘I haven’t the energy, Herr Reichsmarschall.’

‘Then your husband should see that you have all the help you need.’

Ah, merde alors,
what an idiot I was. More Nazis in the house, more of their comings and goings!

It was Nini who took charge by sitting at his feet. ‘Lily’s really quite able to manage, Herr Reichsmarschall. Like all artists, she simply needs peace and quiet and the encouragement of an expert like yourself.’

‘A bronze of the three of you, then. Yes … yes, that would be suitable. That one,’ he points at Michèle. ‘And yourself and that one.’

Katyana—‘Giselle.’ ‘
En costume d’Ève,
Herr Reichsmarschall?’ she asked, for his French was excellent. Her eyes were saucy as she stroked his sleeve.

‘
Toutes nues?’
he roared with laughter, his cheeks becoming bright red, the champagne sloshing out of his glass onto the Aubusson carpet. ‘The Three Graces. Yes, that is exactly what I would like. ANDREAS!’ he bellowed, the crowd quieting as glasses were deliberately lowered, but so slowly one would hardly notice. ‘Andreas, another commission for you to negotiate.’

Walter Andreas Hofer was little, with thinning hair but sharp, shrewd eyes, a real dealer and the man who would play such a part in the evening to come. Göring’s chief buyer could and did secure the release of wealthy Jewish art dealers and see them into Switzerland so as to use them there, a man with connections, lots of them, riding on the swift-winged horse of the times.

‘Andreas, the Fräulein Sculptress will do a piece for me.’

Had he forgotten my name already? Remember, please, that he commanded the German air force and was responsible for what happened to Rotterdam, but failed to bring Britain to her knees.

‘In wax,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Then you can take it to whichever foundry you wish.’

‘Marcel could look after that,’ said Jules. Was my husband so wrapped up in this crowd he has forgotten that he had kicked his former friend?

‘Marcel, yes … yes. Marcel Clairmont, the artist, could see to the casting for you,’ I managed to blurt.

‘He’s the one who handled that little piece we found in Carrington’s hotel room,’ said Jules.

‘Yes,’ said Hofer, who, like Göring, didn’t know a thing about that room or the man who was killed instead of Tommy. Asking what the Reichsmarschall wished to pay, he suggested, ‘Something modest?’

There was a curt nod, not only of dismissal but of censure. The pay-off. I was not really that good. Even so, Hofer and I began the negotiations. ‘Three hundred thousand old francs,’ I told him.