Free April in Paris by Michael Wallner

tightly. The attack came so unexpectedly, I 72 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R
    banged my head on the counter. Gasping, I tried to turn around, but the iron grip I was in didn’t yield at all. Two men pulled me upright and shoved me ahead of them. As I staggered, I recognized one of them as old Joffo. He and the other man took me into the stockroom. I braced my feet against the floorboards, tried to free my arms. A trapdoor in the floor stood open. They drove me toward the opening; I started to cry out, got pushed, staggered; they held on to me when I was on the verge of falling through. I struck my head against a beam and felt my feet stumbling down some stairs until I reached solid ground. Packed earth: a cellar. They set me on a chair. Now I recognized the second man—it was the barber from rue Jacob. He skillfully tied my hands behind my back while Joffo closed the trapdoor above us.
    Cutting pain in my wrists. I straightened up a little and stared into the light of a single swaying lightbulb.
    “Welcome,” said Joffo. He pulled up another chair and sat down. “Today was the day you paraded down our little street once too often.”
    My throat was dry, and there was a pounding in my temples.
    “What is the meaning of this, monsieur?”
    “Who are you? What do you want from us?”
    I tried to sit up straight despite my bonds. “What are you talking about?”
    The barber felt my pockets. His nose cast a heavy shadow over his mouth. Finding nothing, he drew his hand back. “Where are your papers?”
    In that moment, I saw myself the way I had seen others. Tied to a chair under a blinding light, and asked questions to which there were no answers.
    A P R I L I N PA R I S . 73
    “They got lost.”
    “Who are you?”
    “A Frenchman, like yourself.”
    “A Frenchman and a collaborator,” the barber replied.
    “Who says so?” Angrily, I shifted myself forward.
    “Who are the people you’re in contact with? Vichy? Gestapo?”
    I considered my answer. The truth was worse than either of them guessed. I wasn’t collaborating; I was the real thing. I was the most complete and immediate witness to the interrogations, the first to learn everything the SS wanted to know. When I stopped and thought about it, I realized that at that moment I was face-to-face with the enemy. Thought fragments flashed through my head.
    Communist workers, courageous priests, and veterans of the first war belonged to the Resistance. There were duplicating machines in cellars. Slogans scrawled on house walls and palisade fences.
    Some woman on the cleaning staff had smuggled information out of Transport Command. There was the boy who stole the carburetors in order to cripple a prisoner transport. Mostly isolated cases. There didn’t appear to be any organization or any hierarchy, just a few weapons. Was this the adversary that Leibold and his team feared and fought against with all their might? An old bookseller and a bad-tempered barber?
    “How did your papers get lost?”
    “A raid. The Germans,” I replied.
    “You’re an informer,” the bookseller declared, shaking his head.
    I looked at him indignantly. “Don’t informers always have the best papers?”
    Joffo smoothed his bushy beard. “Tell me what happened to your passport.”
    74 . M I C H A E L WA L L N E R
    I searched my memory of the interrogations in rue des Saussaies. When was Leibold most likely to believe his prisoners?
    When they gave up and whimpered, or when they grew outraged and rebellious? I looked Joffo straight in the eyes.
    “They stopped the Paris train,” I said sullenly.
    “Where?”
    “A little before Thiers. Supposedly, the tracks were cut. Every -
    one had to get off. The soldiers took away my ID. To verify it, they said. I never got it back.”
    “What kind of soldiers?”
    “The ones with the death’s head.” I didn’t take my eyes off the bookseller.
    “Why should the SS take an interest in you, of all people?”
    The barber stepped closer to