FORT MONT-VALÉRIEN‚ PRESENT DAY
At ten in the morning, Evie and Hugo met Clément for their visit to the Mémorial de la France Combattante: the Memorial to Fighting France.
‘Bonjour, Hugo. So glad you could join us.’ Clément glanced sideways at Evie as he shook her son’s hand, before kissing her on both cheeks.
‘I thought this was something Hugo should see,’ she replied a little too quickly, while Clément’s beard pressed against her cheek. ‘You said it was important,’ she added, trying to keep her voice even. If Clément found it awkward that she’d roped her son into joining them, he was gracious enough not to show it.
She was glad she’d worn her runners as they wound their way up a wide path through the magnificent park carved into the side of Mont-Valérien. They walked past dark towering pines and stubbier yew trees, maples, elms and grand oaks. Children wobbled bicycles and made way for cyclists in lycra who moved in a peloton. Families lay on the lawns, reading, picnicking. A young couple lay with their Dr Martens entwined, kissing as though their lives depended on it.
‘Don’t stare,’ hissed Hugo, striding up the path past her towards the entrance to the fort.
‘Joy of teenagers,’ Evie said with a weak laugh, hoping Clément didn’t notice her embarrassment.
‘Hugo’s great.’
‘Hmm. This park is incredible—I can’t believe I’ve lived in Paris for twenty years and never made the forty-minute train trip out here.’ She and Hugo had returned to Paris for a few days and caught the train out together.
‘The chapel I want you both to see is up near the fort, but in medieval times this was a popular path for pilgrims as they made their way to the hermitage at the top.’
‘What a beautiful place to absolve sins.’ Evie plucked a reddening leaf from a nearby tree. She turned the leaf over, studying the veins, the way the green rippled into the red. ‘Cornus sanguinea.’
‘Sounds fancy.’
‘Not really.’ She pulled a face. ‘This is your good old garden-variety dogwood. And that big one over there is a sessile oak.’
Evie unzipped her purse and slipped the leaf inside as they approached the arched entrance to the fort. She collected leaves all the time and pressed them into her notebooks to draw, but she wasn’t sure it was quite the done thing to flog a leaf from a sacred site.
They passed through the entrance and stepped into a huge courtyard paved in pink stone, with a cobblestone path leading to an enormous pink cross set against the far end of the fort. The wall either side of the cross was studded with sixteen gigantic bronze sculpture reliefs.
Hugo stood beside Evie, their shoulders almost touching. She could hear him swallow as he tried to make sense of what they were seeing: a man struggling to free himself from octopus tentacles, two hands offered up in hope, another yanking a life from chains, more hands tearing at barbed wire lacing a tortured heart, a proud raptor, a soldier dressed as a phoenix, a lion, a furious snake.
Hugo was transfixed by the phoenix sculpture. He ran his fingers over the feathers before photographing it from every angle, documenting the destruction and transformation. Resistance. ‘Each of these reliefs represents one of the sixteen battles or events that people fought for France from 1939 to 1945. The bodies of Resistance fighters are in the crypt.’ He pointed to a small gold door tucked under the cross.
Goosebumps rose on Evie’s skin as she read the plaques describing the battles of the air force, the Resistance fighters in the woods, and soldiers along the Rhine, in the mountains overlooking Italy, Algiers and as far off as Norway. As they stepped along and observed the sculptures, Hugo snapped more photos with his phone. Evie reached out to trace a finger along the barbed wire; the bronze was icy, despite the warm day.
Hugo wandered ahead.
Clément looked at Hugo’s disappearing back and said, ‘I used to come up here when I was doing my thesis. Some days I’d sit in front of one of these and imagine myself in the front line in Libya.’ He touched a star flanked by two forearms. ‘Other days I tried to imagine myself in the depths of winter along the Rhine.’ He stepped closer to look at the relief depicting water pouring into the soil—the river looked almost fluid. ‘But the truth is, I can’t imagine. You know how I told you about my grandfather’s night terrors? Well, they informed everything I studied. You see, I was raised by my grandparents. My parents …’ He shrugged. ‘They weren’t exactly neglectful so much as absent. They were archaeologists. Always in Egypt. Iran. Israel. Anywhere but home.’ His voice softened. ‘But they loved their work, and it was important work. Inspiring work. Now here I am doing almost the same thing: chasing stories of dead people. Working with relics, articles, statues. Trying to give a voice to those without one.’
‘This place is why you became an historian.’
‘One of the reasons. I want to understand war. Why it keeps happening. How people pick themselves up and recover.’ Softer again, he added, ‘Or not.’
Evie shivered. She’d come here looking for Joséphine Murant’s story; to find the story of Raph and Hugo’s family. But, of course, the search was personal for Clément too.
She looked around for Hugo.
‘He’s already gone through to the chapel. C’mon.’ Clément took her hand, firm and tender, and she clasped his in return. She wanted to stand in the sun for a moment more and enjoy the sensation, but he led her to the door of the crypt, where sixteen tombs lay covered with the tricolour flag.
‘I can’t go in,’ said Evie, shaking her head.
Clément’s grasp was gentle. ‘I understand. I just wanted you to see it.’
Still holding her hand, he led her to the little white chapel, and they stepped inside. Hugo was already there, snapping photos of graffiti scratched into the wall. Clément let go of Evie’s hand as they entered.
When they reached Hugo near the far wall where the altar once stood, he quickly wiped his eyes and turned away. Evie put a hand on her son’s shoulder as he said in a tight voice, ‘This is where they locked up the Resistance fighters before they were marched outside and shot.’
‘One thousand and ten, according to German records,’ said Clément. ‘But now they think it’s quadruple that.’ He pointed to where half a dozen hand-whittled coffins were clustered on a plinth. ‘They placed the bodies in simple coffins and buried them in mass graves anonymously under the cover of darkness, in cemeteries all over France. So, families never knew where their loved ones ended up. And no one could mark a site, so it couldn’t become a symbol of Resistance solidarity. A martyr prevention program, if you like.’
Evie thought of how she and Hugo went to visit Raph’s gravesite. They’d bring flowers, sit at the headstone—sometimes she’d pour a glass of good pinot—and talk about everything and nothing. She didn’t think Raph could hear them; she certainly wasn’t woo-woo about spirits and an afterlife. It was just comforting, in a strange way, to know he would always be in that spot. Closure, she guessed some would call it. Except her heart would always be full of Raph.
She held her breath as she gazed at the coffins. Standing in the chapel made Joséphine’s story come alive for her—and that of others too. For the first time, Evie felt she fully understood why Clément wanted an exhibition. Why a research paper wouldn’t suffice. He wanted people to feel the price of war.
‘What are those?’ Hugo asked, pointing to the dozen shredded telegraph poles.
‘Those,’ said Clément, swallowing quickly, ‘are execution posts. The prisoners were tied up against them—blindfolded, if they wanted to be—and shot by a unit of forty soldiers. Their comrades, the next ones to be shot, would be lined up to watch before it was their turn.’
‘Fucking hell!’ said Hugo.
Evie didn’t have the energy to glare at him for swearing in a chapel. She stepped over to read the graffiti and tried to imagine what it must have felt like to be locked in this tiny chapel—a place of worship—to await the march to execution.
October 2, 1942
I kiss all: my dear René, my children Geneviève, Louis, Gilbert,
Hélène, my mother, Gustave, André.
Long live France
Died for France long live the Soviet Union
Long live the Communist Party
It struck Evie that all the messages were proof of an honourable life, love or liberté. She couldn’t see any hateful comments or calls for revenge. Long live … She read the lines over and over, until she felt dizzy. These were Resistance fighters about to die, and their final thoughts were for the future. For a life beyond the war. For their families and loved ones. For their country.
The magnitude of their bravery made her shiver, along with the cold. She was stepping away, heading outside, when she saw two names etched side by side that stopped her in her tracks.
Timothée Martin was the name of the crusading detective in Joséphine Murant’s first three novels. He was brave, fierce and modest, and he didn’t stop until the criminal was gaoled. Evie called Hugo and Clément over, and pointed out the names. ‘Do you think it’s a coincidence?’
‘Who knows?’ said Hugo, a slight croak to his voice. ‘I’m going outside.’
‘Maybe, but probably not. Perhaps she knew these men through the Resistance.’ Clément took down the names in his notebook, and Evie thought this charming, especially as Hugo had already taken a photo. ‘I’ll add it to my list of things to look up on the former Wehrmacht database.’
Clément and Evie followed Hugo out of the chapel, and she was relieved to feel the sun once more on her face. She followed Hugo along a wide path that meandered from the chapel to a pretty clearing in the forest. Under different circumstances, it would have been magical walking through the golden dappled light amid elm, maple and oak trees, but her throat felt dry and she found it hard to swallow.
So many brave people had walked this path, been lashed to a post and shot.
In the clearing, Hugo was sitting on a log with his head in his hands. In front of him was a simple sandstone memorial slab and tricolour flag. Evie sat beside him and gave his back a rub. She’d expected him to pull away from her touch, but instead he relaxed. Not wanting to push her luck, she didn’t offer any soothing words and just kept stroking his back.
Clément stepped to the other side of the clearing and walked further into the forest, perhaps sensing they needed space. She was grateful for his thoughtfulness.
Together, she and her son sat in the clearing snuggled into the side of the mountain. She noticed some tufts of wild parsley at her feet and was moved by the way their fronds unfurled. She took out her sketchbook and started to draw the outline of the herb with an ink pen, shading one side and etching in the bark.
‘Not bad,’ said Hugo, leaning against her. ‘You should do it more. I mean, you don’t have many hobbies, and Papa always said you neglected your art by working all the time at the shop.’
‘Cheeky! You’re my main hobby!’ She nudged his shoulder while she continued to draw.
‘Right! Better get a new one, then. I’m outta here next year.’
Her chest tightened. Hugo was on the cusp of leaving to forge his adult life. Opportunity and freedom stretched out in front of him, because of the very people who had died here. They had given their lives fighting for what they loved.
Evie thought of the brave young men executed in this grove. Men whose freedom was torn from them. Still they refused to be crushed, scrawling their own names and those of family, and messages to loved ones all over the chapel walls. Prisoners whose heads and hearts were full of those they loved right until the end.