woods and soldiers shooting them down.
“The Russians retaliated. An SS Obergruppenführer heard a rumor about buried gold at the Polyakovo state farm. He led a unit to the farm and they started to rip the buildings apart, looking for it. The manager begged them to stop, explained that without shelter the peasants would die of cold when winter arrived. Please, he said, give me twenty-four hours to produce the gold. The SS officer agreed, and left a detachment of four men there to ensure the manager didn’t make a run for the forest. The next day, the SS unit returned. All the buildings had been burned down, only the office was left standing. Inside, on a desk, was a large leather box with the word Gelb, gold, written on it in white paint. When they opened the box, they found the heads of the four soldiers they’d left on guard.”
Degrave paused, waited for Casson to respond.
“And this is just the beginning,” he said.
“That’s right, and it may go on for twenty years. The FTP leadership is certainly under intense pressure from Moscow—do something, anything—which is why we feel they can be approached.”
He went for a walk after the meeting, to clear his head in the night air, and thought about what Degrave hadn’t said. The war between the secret services and the French communists went back a long way—maybe all the way to 1789. The working class and the aristocracy had been at it for at least that long. Casson remembered a time when he was at university, at the École Normale Supérieure . Some of the conservative normaliens, wearing white gloves, had taken over the running of the buildings to break a strike by the maintenance workers. Degrave, and no doubt his colleagues, came from that class, which had always provided officers for military service. Not so much rich as old, very old, a landed aristocracy that took its names from the villages it had named in the Middle Ages. What, Casson wondered, were they doing with somebody like him? He wasn’t a leftist, but he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a Jew, but he’d worked in a Jewish profession. He was, when all was said and done, a Parisian. And not a Parisian from the deux-cents familles.
He stopped at a café, stood at the bar, and ordered a beer—it would do for dinner. He’d told Degrave the story of his escape from the Gestapo office. “Don’t worry about it,” Degrave said. “Their list of wanted suspects runs into the thousands. We think you’ll be safe if you stay out of trouble—most of the people arrested these days are betrayed. Jealous neighbors, jilted mistresses, that kind of thing.”
No danger there, Casson thought.
More than likely, the communists would kill him. These people didn’t spend time brooding about your motives. If they sensed a threat, they shot you. They were idealogues, at war with anyone who stood in their way. One of Casson’s university friends used to say, with a flicker of contempt, “They believe everything they can prove, and they can prove everything they believe.” True. But they’d fought in Spain, and they died for what they believed in.
He left the café, headed away from the hotel. He was restless, wanted to avoid the small, silent room as long as he could. Suddenly, the streets were familiar, somehow he had worked his way back to his old neighborhood, the Passy district of the 16th. He crossed the rue de l’Assomption, where his wife, Marie-Claire, lived with her boyfriend, Bruno, the owner of an automobile dealership. Casson stared up at the blackout curtains. Were they home? You could usually tell if there was a light on. No, he thought not. They were out, probably at a dinner party. He moved on. Coming toward him, a Luftwaffe officer with a Frenchwoman on his arm. A handsome man, hawk-nosed, with proud bearing, the brim of his hat shadowing his eyes. “Oh but no,” the woman said, “that can’t possibly be true.” Then she laughed—apparently it was true.
The rue Chardin. His old
“The Russians retaliated. An SS Obergruppenführer heard a rumor about buried gold at the Polyakovo state farm. He led a unit to the farm and they started to rip the buildings apart, looking for it. The manager begged them to stop, explained that without shelter the peasants would die of cold when winter arrived. Please, he said, give me twenty-four hours to produce the gold. The SS officer agreed, and left a detachment of four men there to ensure the manager didn’t make a run for the forest. The next day, the SS unit returned. All the buildings had been burned down, only the office was left standing. Inside, on a desk, was a large leather box with the word Gelb, gold, written on it in white paint. When they opened the box, they found the heads of the four soldiers they’d left on guard.”
Degrave paused, waited for Casson to respond.
“And this is just the beginning,” he said.
“That’s right, and it may go on for twenty years. The FTP leadership is certainly under intense pressure from Moscow—do something, anything—which is why we feel they can be approached.”
He went for a walk after the meeting, to clear his head in the night air, and thought about what Degrave hadn’t said. The war between the secret services and the French communists went back a long way—maybe all the way to 1789. The working class and the aristocracy had been at it for at least that long. Casson remembered a time when he was at university, at the École Normale Supérieure . Some of the conservative normaliens, wearing white gloves, had taken over the running of the buildings to break a strike by the maintenance workers. Degrave, and no doubt his colleagues, came from that class, which had always provided officers for military service. Not so much rich as old, very old, a landed aristocracy that took its names from the villages it had named in the Middle Ages. What, Casson wondered, were they doing with somebody like him? He wasn’t a leftist, but he wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a Jew, but he’d worked in a Jewish profession. He was, when all was said and done, a Parisian. And not a Parisian from the deux-cents familles.
He stopped at a café, stood at the bar, and ordered a beer—it would do for dinner. He’d told Degrave the story of his escape from the Gestapo office. “Don’t worry about it,” Degrave said. “Their list of wanted suspects runs into the thousands. We think you’ll be safe if you stay out of trouble—most of the people arrested these days are betrayed. Jealous neighbors, jilted mistresses, that kind of thing.”
No danger there, Casson thought.
More than likely, the communists would kill him. These people didn’t spend time brooding about your motives. If they sensed a threat, they shot you. They were idealogues, at war with anyone who stood in their way. One of Casson’s university friends used to say, with a flicker of contempt, “They believe everything they can prove, and they can prove everything they believe.” True. But they’d fought in Spain, and they died for what they believed in.
He left the café, headed away from the hotel. He was restless, wanted to avoid the small, silent room as long as he could. Suddenly, the streets were familiar, somehow he had worked his way back to his old neighborhood, the Passy district of the 16th. He crossed the rue de l’Assomption, where his wife, Marie-Claire, lived with her boyfriend, Bruno, the owner of an automobile dealership. Casson stared up at the blackout curtains. Were they home? You could usually tell if there was a light on. No, he thought not. They were out, probably at a dinner party. He moved on. Coming toward him, a Luftwaffe officer with a Frenchwoman on his arm. A handsome man, hawk-nosed, with proud bearing, the brim of his hat shadowing his eyes. “Oh but no,” the woman said, “that can’t possibly be true.” Then she laughed—apparently it was true.
The rue Chardin. His old
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