A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [149]
While everyone was still reeling from this disaster, the Germans were moving towards Paris. On 10 June the French government abandoned the capital because it could not be defended. While most citizens were glad their beloved Paris was saved from the destruction of siege and street fighting, they were still shocked and horrified to see the first advance units of German soldiers arrive in the city.
Yvette and Francçoise slipped away to see the German horse artillery pass through the Arc de Triomphe, and all at once they understood the reality of war as they saw the cold, stern faces beneath helmets, and the long trail of horse-drawn gun carriages. Within hours Paris was fully occupied, and although France didn’t surrender until 22 June, for Yvette, the day the first Germans arrived was the start of her war. She experienced her first real pang of fear, a foreboding that nothing would ever be the same again. Much later she was to see that day as the last of her childhood.
‘You’ve made me see it all,’ Fifi murmured against Yvette’s shoulder. It was dark now, and she could no longer see her friend’s face. ‘But go on; did the Nazis come for you and your mother straight away?’
‘No. But it was very frightening for everyone, Jews and gentiles. People were shot if they were caught in ze streets after curfew. The Germans walked into shops and demanded ze best produce, often refusing to pay for it. They would close businesses down, break windows, and often confiscated property. Just looking at them too boldly was enough to get punched or kicked.
‘Mama said we must stay indoors and only go out to get food. But each day it grew harder to find any, sometimes we had to go a long way just for a loaf of bread, and the German soldiers were everywhere. We tried so hard not to be noticed, for they would call for you to stop and demand to look at our papers. Mama would slip out sometimes to talk to people she knew. I think now she must get word how bad it was for Jews in Poland, back in Germany and in Holland. But she say little to me, only that she must get me away somewhere safe.
‘When Francçoise was sent away, I was jealous,’ Yvette admitted. ‘She had an aunt somewhere in the south to go to. I was lonely without her. Then a few weeks later Mama tells me I must go too.’
Fifi heard the catch in her friend’s voice, and stroked her cheek to encourage her to carry on.
‘You know, I can still see ze apartment, Mama’s face, everything, just as if it were only yesterday, not twenty-three years ago.’ Yvette sighed. ‘But maybe that is because my leaving was so sudden.’
She closed her eyes as she remembered the last hours in the apartment, and she could see herself climbing the stairs, puffed from running home from school in the rain.
The staircase was stone, with rusting fancy ironwork banisters, and wound around the centre of the building. The only light came from a skylight up on the fourth floor, and from the front door when it was left open.
All the smells from the other apartments, and there were four on each floor, stayed trapped in the building in summer, a pungent warm soup of garlic, cheese, herbs, laundry soap and sometimes drains. Madame Chevioux, the widow who lived on the ground floor at the front, had the biggest apartment, and she lorded it over the other tenants because she was a relative of the landlord and collected the rents.
The tenants came and went frequently because of Madame Chevioux, but Yvette and her mother had lived up at the very top in the attic rooms since Yvette was just a baby. Mama smiled sweetly at the bully on the ground floor. She scrubbed the stairs all the way down every week, cleaned the bathroom on each floor, and occasionally made Madame a skirt or a blouse for nothing, just to ensure she wouldn’t be evicted. Yvette had been warned a hundred times or more that she was never to be cheeky or rude to the woman, for cheap apartments were hard to get.
That day, as Yvette opened the door to the apartment, Mama looked