Chapter 38 #2
But they’d survived. They hadn’t been caught.
Margot followed Joséphine’s gaze back to the prisoners and noticed among them a woman with salt and pepper hair that fell in wild, uncombed curls. She suppressed a gasp.
It was Madame Guerin.
Her friend, her loyal customer who loved books, who always had at least one or two stashed under the counter of the café where she worked.
She’d been almost as enraged as Margot had been when she’d found out that the Germans were banning books.
A kind, funny woman, who’d lost her husband like Margot had, and who loved to dive into stories.
She must’ve been caught in the tunnels going home from the bookshop. Margot clutched Theo’s arm as an agonising shard of guilt went through her.
Would Madame Guerin have said anything to give them away: the book club and the banned books, the maps they’d rounded up for the resistance, Chevalier’s own baby…?
Although she’d been brutalised and couldn’t see from behind her blindfold, although they’d done their best to dehumanise her and humiliate her, Madame Guerin held her chin up high. And that stance of noble pride told Margot everything she needed to know: Madame Guerin had said nothing.
‘This is your resistance,’ Lauterborn sneered the word as the soldiers lined the prisoners up in front of the wall.
‘Old men and simpering bitches, whimpering and pissing with fear! In Germany, they wouldn’t be fit to sweep the streets!
In Germany, we would’ve thrown them into a pauper’s grave years ago! ’
‘We don’t fear you,’ said one of the blindfolded men in a rasping voice.
Margot recognised him too, though she didn’t know his name.
He was the smiling, usually immaculate elderly gentleman who opened the door to guests of the hotel where she had spent her honeymoon.
‘There are more of us than you can guess.’
The ghost of a whisper passed through the crowd, so softly that it could’ve been the sigh of the sea.
Margot wanted to fight her way through the crowd and save them all, but she had no idea how.
It wouldn’t do any good; she’d only be blindfolded and beaten, too.
And where would that leave Isabelle? She glanced from one wounded, defiant figure to another, her heart in her throat. Could one of them be Daniel?
But none of them were tall and heavyset like he was.
‘A legion of useless old men, snivelling Juden and grovelling bitches?’ Lauterborn asked.
Then he drew his holstered pistol, raised it and shot a man between the eyes.
It was the elderly hotel doorman, who was always so ready with a polite tip of his top hat.
He did it so casually, barely pausing before he went on, ‘I will delight in killing each and every one of them.’
Margot flinched. The gunshot echoed and rang inside her head. Through the sound of blood rushing in her ears, she heard horrified gasps in the crowd.
Children started to cry, and their teacher urgently hushed them.
And then he pulled the trigger again. At Margot’s side she felt Theo flinch too, as the children squeezed their eyes tight shut. Joséphine started forwards before holding herself back as Lauterborn walked down the line, squeezing the trigger time after time until only Madame Guerin was left.
He stopped in front of her, then turned on his heel and held out the gun towards Theo. The blood of her fellow French citizens spattered Madame Guerin’s clothes and face, and she was gulping with fear. But still, her chin was defiantly raised.
Tears rose in Margot’s eyes for her friend, but she didn’t dare shed them with Lauterborn standing so close by.
‘Brother,’ Lauterborn said in French, ‘Why don’t you prove yourself a good German to all the people of this sorry hovel?’
Theo swallowed. He shook his head and whispered, ‘Because I am a good German. And I’m not the only one left.’
Margot’s heart swelled in her chest with pride even as it hammered with fear, and she slid her hand from Theo’s arm, entwining her fingers with his. If he was about to die, she would go with him.
Lauterborn narrowed his eyes and told his brother, ‘You are a weak German. And the Third Reich has no need of weak Germans. Tread carefully, Professor; your family name will not save you when the time comes.’ Then he turned back to Madame Guerin and told her, ‘This is the price of resistance, Madame.’ And he pulled the trigger one last time.
Margot closed her eyes, trying everything she could to hold back her grief. She shuddered with sobs she couldn’t release and tears that she didn’t dare shed. Another friend had been taken by Lauterborn’s bullets. Another friend had been murdered right in front of her.
As Madame Guerin slumped to the floor, Lauterborn put the pistol back into its holster and addressed the crowd once more.
‘From now on, breaking the curfew in any way will not be tolerated. This region has been indulged long enough, but no longer. You are all under my personal watch!’ He strode back towards the car, pausing only to call over his shoulder to his troops, ‘Burn this rubbish where it lies; let the whole damned village stink of it!’ At the car door his hand shot up into the salute and he bellowed, ‘Heil Hitler!’
Margot finally let her tears fall. She had never seen anything so brutal, so vicious; eight murders with hundreds of witnesses, all in the village square. Anger and desperate sadness battled inside her. How long would it be before more locals were dragged out to be shot against the town hall?
As she watched Lauterborn leave the square, she squeezed Theo’s hand and whispered to him, ‘Vive la France!’
‘Vive la France,’ he whispered in reply.