The Offering, the Sacrifice. Cash given on a regular basis to keep the Party and its hierarchy going. The war effort also, of course.
‘Thirty thousand of us are now full members of the Party, Kohler. Well before the military call-up of August ’41, over 2,100 had volunteered. The Waffen-SS, the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe. You name it and we’ve boys there and girls too. This firm has lost five so far. Five highly valued employees to the families of whom I continue to pay wages since it may make their burden a little less.
‘More coffee? Some more of the Kugelhupf? Frau Macher always takes such good care of me. Tireless, I tell you, Kohler. Tireless. A woman with a sense of duty that is a model to us all. Here, have another of these.’
The small cigars, the Schimmelpenninck Havana Milds, but for the road, was it? ‘Generaldirektor, your son …’
Was Kohler like a broken record? ‘Ach, it’s good of you to remind me. This is my Alain. An Untersturmfuhrer but soon to be promoted. Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer Kramer thinks very highly of him.’
And if that wasn’t warning enough, what was? In his SS uniform, Lieutenant Alain Fernand Schrijen looked like so many: smartly turned out, a handsome young man with a nice grin, big ears and a somewhat narrower face than the sister. ‘He’s younger than your daughter.’
‘By four years. We really miss him here at the Works. Sophie tries, though hasn’t the technical background, but with the war, what can one do?’
But send him close to home where the only guns he’ll see or hear are those of his fellow SS and himself. ‘Did he ever visit the Karneval with the Fraulein Ekkehard?’
‘Alain? He might have. Now wait. I think he did go out there once with his sister and the girl, but that was last autumn. Late October, early November … well after the colonel had agreed to let them do what they wished. The Fraulein Bodicker was also with them, I believe. Frau Macher had a picnic basket made up for the young ones. Sausage, chicken, ham and a little of the 1940 Gewurztraminer, some of our late pears … How could I have forgotten? The Fraulein Bodicker fortunately has someone who can come in on short notice to tend that shop of her mother’s. A neighbour. A lifelong friend and widow from that other war. Frau … Liebe Zeit, what was it now? Frau Oberkircher. Ja, that was it.’
And yet another warning and example of his being well informed. ‘This bookseller, Generaldirektor. How long has your daughter known her?’
Kohler hadn’t liked the thought of his train companion tending the Bodicker bookshop. Perhaps it was a little too close for comfort. ‘My Sophie, you ask? At night she often finds a need to read herself to sleep. There are bookshops and bookshops, and that was one she had settled on. Young people are best when energy is demanded, as on a Winterhilfswerk Committee, and my Sophie makes fast decisions-at times too fast. The Fraulein Bodicker, I asked. A rejected schoolteacher? Surely there must have been a very good reason for her not to have been accepted back into the profession, but they worked well together, and when that happens, one learns to wait and watch.’
‘And you’ve no further concerns?’
‘I always have, but if you mean, do I for a moment believe my daughter was the intended victim of an imaginary murder plot Colonel Rasche has dreamed up for whatever reason, then no. Sophie was simply too busy here and had asked the Fraulein Ekkehard to go in her stead.’
Herr Kohler didn’t ask if a lift had been found for the girl in one of the firm’s lorries, he didn’t even ask if Sophie had arranged shy; such a thing. He simply waited to see the other photo that had been taken from the window shelf and perhaps he had better see it.
‘It’s of Sophie, myself and Alain with Gauleiter Wagner on the platform at the 12 October rally in 1941 in Strassburg. The Karl Roos Platz, formerly place Broglie, and thousands, Kohler. Thousands. Mein Gott, the cheering. They must have heard it in Berlin, similar rallies being held throughout Elsass. Herr Wagner was to have been the guest of honour at my son’s wedding in May. A very important man, very well liked and loved by many.’
And another warning, was that it?
‘Anything even remotely connected with my Works, Kohler, and I am to be informed of it. Go where you wish, ask what you will. If you need anything, it’s yours. Restaurants, theatres-those little diversions a man finds necessary especially when away from home. Anything. Just tell them Lowe sent you and it’ll be taken care of. Two suicides, nothing more. Then it’s back to Paris for that partner of yours and yourself, or first a little visit home if you wish it. All can be arranged.’
No problem. ‘Danke, Generaldirektor. I’ll be sure to tell Louis that it’s better to lie down with the lions than to hole up in some dumb old citadel and freeze.’
The street was narrow and winding and instantly it made St-Cyr think of the Middle Ages. Stepped facades of overhanging storeys, their shutters broken in places and crooked in others, climbed on either side to sway-backed, gabled roofs where tiles were loose or missing and storks could well roost in springtime. The half-timbered walls were of that faded pink, white or brown stucco, soot-stained by the centuries. Oriel windows, with leaded crown glass, looked to character, not to tidiness, reflecting shadows from their bottle-round panes while architrave carvings gave the story of each builder, those of a former wine merchant using the back-facing, S-shaped scrollwork of the Gauls, the Celts, to outline bunches of grapes.
Around one, life went on with that same suppressed interest as found in Paris and other cities in France. Always, too, it appeared, one had best look as if going about one’s business especially as a dark, forest-green Mercedes tourer, a big, powerful, lonely car, was all but blocking the street a short distance away, the red V of its licence plate signifying Verfugung, by order, by decree, and a petrol allowance, whereas in France an SP sticker, the Service Public, would have been pasted inside the front windscreen.
There was a Luftschutzkeller, an air-raid shelter, in a cellar nearby. Two of the Schupos, the Schutzpolizei, the urban constabulary, strolled toward him, he immediately stepping to the end of a queue and wishing he had a shopping bag. The gilded, black lettering of La Charcuterie du Pabst had been scraped away to be replaced by Delikatessengeschaft Pabst, the prewar lettering still showing faintly through.
None of the lovely wrought-iron shop signs hung anywhere. All had been either taken for scrap or hidden away.
Next door to the bookshop, which was beyond the tourer and at a bend, a woman bundled in black had paused while sweeping steps that didn’t need to be swept. She was looking back down the street at him. Guilty … was she feeling guilty about something? Still she hesitated, her eyes watering as he sought her out. ‘Frau Oberkircher?’ he asked, causing her to dart indoors and bolt the door.
Closed, her little sign read. By Order. She had eked out a living by making fruit-flavoured leathers and boiled sweets for schoolchildren, had returned from her brother-in-law’s funeral to find her means of support had fallen prey to being classed as nonessential now that the Reich had finally gone to full mobilization.
The lace curtain was very French and he’d seen thousands like it, but what, really, had she been up to? Watching the street for himself or for Hermann, was that it, eh? A Gestapo informant? And why had God put her next door to the bookshop?