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He wasn’t the only one, as the tears began to flow amid the panic, and soon the restaurant was empty, as they all left to find their loved ones and to prepare for a changing world.
In the weeks that followed, in the same railway car where twenty-two years earlier Germany had signed the armistice to end the First World War, Hitler delivered his own ceasefire terms to the French, a deliberate act intended to humiliate. Their former war hero, Marshal Philippe Pétain, was now to head up the new Vichy Regime, where the government had fled, leaving the Germans to occupy Paris. The country was divided into a ‘Free’ and an ‘Occupied’ zone, but both were to collaborate heavily with the Germans, particularly in its antisemitic treatment of the Jews. Later, the armistice document would become known to many throughout France as the ‘Article of Shame’.
Provence was to be part of the Free Zone. People fled the cities in their droves, taking with them all they could carry. Mothers, children, grandparents, arms aching, laden with suitcases full of clothes and whatever had been left in their pantries, headed to the Free Zone, where they hoped to escape.
Marianne watched as, days and weeks later, some of them arrived in Lamarin. She opened up her restaurant, and made big batches of soup. The villagers did what they could, opening up their homes; Marianne was no different. She overheard a tired and anxious young mother with two young boys tell an old man who’d come to Lamarin to live with his sister, that she too had come here to find her family: a distant relation, one of the few that was living, who was thought to live in their village. ‘But he left years ago, his neighbour said.’ As she spoke, tears leaked down her face that was covered in dust from her long walk. The older man patted her back as her boys began to run around and play and she broke down in sobs, her hand clutching the soup spoon like it was her only lifeline.
‘I have a place you can stay,’ she told the woman, coming forward and touching her shoulder. The woman looked up at her in shock. She had straggly light brown hair, her eyes were brilliant and green, shimmering with tears.
‘Y-you do?’
‘Yes. Your boys will like it there – lots of room to run around. Come, don’t cry. Eat your soup, and afterwards I’ll take you there.’
‘But you don’t even know my name?’ said the woman.
‘What is it?’
‘Melodie Bonnier.’
‘I am Marianne Blanchet. Now, see, we know each other.’
Melodie gave her a watery, grateful smile. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
Many people who came to live in the Free Zone, like Melodie Bonnier, found that life there wasn’t much better than in the Occupied Zone, since the Vichy Government increasingly toed the Nazi line, and the bulk of their food was sent to feed the German army.
Marianne watched in horror as new laws quickly came into effect, heavily supported by the collaborationist government, to demote Jews to second class citizens. Soon they were not allowed to work in certain areas like law, medicine, administration and education.
It turned her stomach. She looked at her beautiful baby girl and the anger that had been suppressed since Jacques was murdered – since he’d been forced to disguise his true identity because of this awful, pointless hatred for some imagined difference – began to boil. That the authorities could endorse any of these laws that would blight her daughter’s future made her clench her jaw at night, unable to sleep.
When she found a pamphlet designed to educate others on the ‘threat’ of the Jews, she crumpled it into a ball, only to uncrumple it and with her lipstick draw a large ‘X’ on it, then nail the pamphlet to the door of her restaurant.
When Melodie, who had begun to help out in the restaurant, enquired about it later that day, Marianne’s eyes were blazing, her expression like marble, and the woman took an involuntary step backwards, shocked. ‘If anyone believes that – they are not welcome here, do you understand?’
Melodie nodded.
‘Spread the word,’ said Marianne, who went back to chopping vegetables, her knife moving fast.
Melodie nodded. ‘I will tell them.’
Later one of her customers, Madame Lennoux, the old woman who had taken to wearing mourning garb, tentatively told Marianne that the town’s mayor wanted her to take the red-lined pamphlet down.
Marianne stared at Madame Lennoux, and the old woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t worry, I told him where to go.’
Marianne raised a brow, and the old woman pointed down. ‘Straight to hell.’
They shared a smile.
