Ken Embry said, “Talk about the Lizards, who’d’ve dreamt he’d be sorry to hear Berlin was smashed to flinders?”
The French papers, still German-dominated, had screamed of nothing else the past few days, shrieked about the fireball that consumed the city, wailed over unbelievable devastation, wept at the hundreds of thousands reported dead. Bagnall understood most of what the sheets proclaimed; his French was better than he’d giddily claimed in the moment of relief after the Lanc got down safe. Now he said, “I’d not have shed a tear if they’d managed to toast Hitler along with everyone else.”
“Nor I,” Embry agreed. “I’d not have minded carrying one of those bloody big bombs when we flew over Cologne, either. So long as it was us or the Nazis-but the Lizards complicate everything.”
“Too right they do.” Bagnall cast a wary eye to the sky, as if to watch for a Lizard plane. Not that seeing one would do any good, if it had on board a superbomb like the one that hit Berlin. If the papers were to be believed-always a risky business in France, and all the more so after 1940-one single bomb had leveled an area miles across. You couldn’t even run from a bomb like that, let alone hide. What point in watching the skies, then?
As Bagnall brought his gaze back to earth, it settled on a faded, tattered propaganda poster from the Vichy government; though it had never held sway in the German-occupied parts of France, this was not the first such poster he’d seen. In big, tri-color letters, it proclaimed, LABOURAGE ET PTURAGE SONT LES DEUX MAMELLES DE LA FRANCE. Underneath, someone had neatly chalked a comment: Merde.
The flight engineer ignored the editorial remark. He stared in wonder and fascination at the slogan, marveling that anyone could have written it in the first place, let alone committed it to print and spread it broadcast. But there it was, in letters four inches high, all tricked out and made to look patriotic. Quite unable to help himself, he broke out in great, braying guffaws.
“What’s so bleeding funny?” asked Joe Simpkin, the Lanc’s rear gunner.
Bagnall still could not speak. He simply pointed at the Vichy poster. Their attention drawn to it, Embry and Alf Whyte started laughing, too.
Simpkin didn’t. He really had no French, though he’d picked up a few words, not all of them printable, since the bomber had to land. The edifying sentiment of the poster still remained beyond him, however. He scowled and asked, “What’s it say?”
Something like Work and farming are France’s two tits Bagnall answered between wheezes. Translating it into English set him off again, and everyone else with him. A thin Frenchman in a ragged jacket and a black beret frowned at the spectacle of seven obvious foreigners falling to pieces in the middle of the street. Because there were seven of them, he didn’t do anything more than frown.
“Tits, is it?” Simpkin said. He was from Gloucester, and spoke with a western accent. “France has better tits’n those, and legs, too.”
As if to prove him right, a pretty girl rode by on a rattling bicycle that was probably older than she was. Her skirt showed a lot of tanned leg. Bagnall could hear every click of the bicycle chain as it traveled over the sprocket. He could hear other bicycles, around the corner and out of sight. He could hear horses’ hooves, and the rattle of iron tyres on cobblestones as a horsedrawn wagon made its slow way along the street. He could hear someone working a hand-powered sewing machine, and an old woman calling her cat, whose name was Claude and who was, she said, a very naughty fellow. He felt as though he could hear the whole city.
“Paris isn’t Paris without a horde of motorcars, all trying to run you down at once,” he said.
“No, but it’s cleaner than it used to be because the cars are gone,” Embry said. “Smell how fresh the air is. We might as well still be out in the country. Last time I was here, the petrol fumes were bad as London.”
“No petrol fumes to worry about now,” Bagnall agreed. “No petrol to worry about, either-the Jerries have taken it all for their planes and tanks.”
Footsteps from around the corner told of someone approaching. The footsteps rang, as if even the fellow’s shoes were imbued with a sense of his importance. When he appeared a few seconds later, he proved better fed and much better dressed than most of the Frenchmen Bagnall had seen. Something gleamed silver on his lapel. As he drew near, Bagnall saw what it was: a little pin in the shape of a double-headed ax-the francisque, symbol of Vichy and collaboration.
The man started to walk on by, but the sight of men in unfamiliar uniforms, even ones as dirty and ragged as those of the Lanc’s crew had become, roused his curiosity. “Pardonnez-moi, messieurs, mais-etes-vous allemands?” he asked, then switched languages: “Sind Sie deutsche?”
“Non, monsieur nous sommes anglais,” Bagnall answered.
The Frenchman’s eyes opened wide. Of itself, his left hand twitched toward that lapel pin, as if to hide the francisque. Bagnall wondered what was going through his head, how be felt, having accommodated himself to the German yoke, on meeting men from a country which refused to wear it.
He spoke English, too. “All the world today is a part of humanity.” With a nod, he edged past the Englishmen and hurried away, looking back once over his shoulder.
“Slimy beggar,” Alf Whyte muttered. “All the world, my left one. I’d like to give him my boot up his backside.”
“So would I,” Bagnall said. “But the devil of it is, he’s right, or how long d’you think we’d last here traipsing about in RAF blue? It’d be a Stalag for us faster than you can say, ‘Hands up!’ ”
“Maybe so, but I don’t much care to count blighters like that as part of humanity,” Whyte said. “If it was Lizards in Paris, he’d be sucking up to them instead of the Germans.”
The navigator didn’t bother keeping his voice down. The Frenchman jerked as if stung by a bee and walked even faster. Now his footfalls sounded like those of a mere mortal, not of one who was lord of all he surveyed.
Ken Embry clicked his tongue between his teeth. “We should count our blessings. We haven’t had to live under Jerry’s thumb the last two years. I daresay if Hitler had invaded and won, he’d have found his share of English collaborators, and plenty more who’d, do what they had to to stay alive.”
“I don’t mind the second sort,” Bagnall said. “You have to live and that means you have to get on about your job and all But I’m damned if I can see any of us sporting a silver jackboot or whatever the Mosle
y maniacs use. There’s a difference between getting along and sucking up. Nobody makes you wear the francisque you do it because you want to.”
The rest of the aircrew nodded. They walked deeper into Paris. The nearly empty streets were not all that made it feel strange to Bagnall. When he’d been here before, the Depression still held sway; one of the things he’d never forgotten was the spectacle of men, many of them well dressed, suddenly stooping to pluck a cigarette butt out of the gutter. But well-dressed men in London were doing the same thing then. Somehow the Frenchmen managed to invest even scrounging with panache.
“That’s what’s gone,” Bagnall exclaimed, as pleased at his discovery as if he were a physicist playing with radium. His comrades turned to look at him. He went on, “What did we always used to think of when we thought of Paris?”
“The Folies-Bergere,” Embry answered at once. “What’s her name, the Negro wench-Josephine Baker-prancing about wearing a few bananas and damn all else. All the girls behind her wearing even less. The orchestra sawing away down in the pit and no one paying it any mind.”
“Sounds good to me,” Joe Simpkin said. “How do we get there from here?”
Not without effort, Bagnall ignored the gunner’s interruption. “Not quite what I meant, Ken, but close enough. Paris stood for good times-Gay Paree and all that. You always had the feeling everybody who lived here knew how to enjoy himself better than you did. Lord knows whether it was really true, but you always thought so. You don’t, now.”
“Hard to be gay when you’re hungry and occupied,” Alf Whyte said.
“Occupied, yes,” Ken Embry said softly. “Straighten up, lads, here comes Jerry himself. Let’s look like soldiers for him, shall we?”
The German infantry of propaganda photographs looked more machined than born of man and woman: all lines and angles; all motions completely identical; hard, expressionless faces under coalscuttle helmets that added a final intimidating touch. The squad ambling up the street toward the aircrew fell a good ways short of Herr Goebbels’ ideal. A couple of them were fat; one wore a mustache that had more gray than brown in it. Several had the top, buttons of their tunics undone, something a Goebbels soldier would sooner have been shot than imagine. Some were missing buttons altogether; most had boots that wanted polishing.