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‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘While everyone else was either closing theirs down, or escaping to the Free Zone, or had theirs commandeered by Nazis – in enforced collaboration – she decided to open up her own establishment.’
It sounded even worse when he put it that way. Sabine blinked. ‘Why? Why in Occupied Paris?’
‘It’s a good question. Many people assumed it was mercenary – the only ones with the money during that time to visit a restaurant were the Nazis, of course. But I never got that sense from her. The way she phrased it to me was as a sort of act of defiance. That while soldiers’ boots were running roughshod over our streets and elsewhere, and the war was busy tearing things down, she would build something instead. Something for our people – the ones left behind.
‘She told me that she was going to negotiate – not collaborate with them – in order to ensure that her neighbourhood didn’t go starving. She would feed the officers good, wholesome food in a welcoming environment and the only thing she would ask in return was that she was able to feed as many neighbouring families as she could at affordable, subsidised rates.
‘By this stage, the city had been occupied for a year and despite the rations, people were often going to bed hungry. Later, the citizens would condemn anyone who collaborated with the Nazis as the worst kind of traitor – but I’ve never seen it that way, so black and white. Thousands of women and children were left alone, the men gone, apart from the young or the very old. Their government literally abandoned them for Vichy, the ones who survived did so based on their wits, they shouldn’t be judged so harshly.’
‘I agree,’ said Sabine.
He looked at her in surprise. Even today there were those who would argue with him, red-faced and outraged at such an idea.
‘It’s easy to think what we would have done, in times of peace and prosperity, to think we’d be brave and so full of integrity, to starve rather than collaborate. But there were children to feed, and the elderly to care for – the truth is most of us would act exactly the same if it ever happened again. We’d put on a smile if it meant we could keep ourselves and our loved ones alive. Humans don’t really change, even if we like to think we do.’
He nodded. ‘Well, that’s what I thought too.’ Then he laughed. ‘I figured, actually, I could do both – work for her, keep the Nazis happy, and also work for the Resistance – distributing pamphlets.’
She stared at him in awe. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I joined one of the student rebellions a few months after we opened the restaurant.’
‘Wow – that’s incredible. What was it like in the beginning when you first started to work there?’
Sabine couldn’t imagine how terrifying it must have been working in an Occupied city, with German soldiers everywhere. In a war, while your whole family relied upon you, at just fourteen.
‘In the beginning, it was just her and me, really, working all hours to get the restaurant opened; painting, doing repairs, but it was all under their supervision, and that added an extra layer of stress.’
‘I can imagine, it sounds like a lot of work.’
He nodded. ‘It was but I was happy to do it, the days went past fast. To be honest after that first harrowing year of Occupation, it was a relief to have something take up so much of my time. But it was more than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, like I said, I was fourteen,’ he explained with a half smile at his former self. ‘She was easy to like, easy to be around, and for a long time, I thought that I was in love.’
