Under Occupation : A Novel (2019) by Furst Alan

Author:Furst, Alan [Furst, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Saint-Nazaire. The heart of the beast.

Ricard had been there before and found it a busy, commercial port. The town was located at the southern end of Brittany, near the town of Nantes, where the river Loire emptied into the Atlantic. Once upon a time, the port had been a sleepy Breton fishing village. In 1914 it grew into a town known for its dry docks and shipbuilding industry and its maisons tolérées – its brothels. Now it was a war city. Walking from the railway station to the Place Marceau, site of the Café Le Relais, Ricard passed naval guard-posts where, twice, he had to produce his papers. The Germans were taking no chances here because this was the front line of the U-boat war: anti-aircraft positions every other block, their crews lounging on the emplacements, sitting on purloined garden chairs, smoking, sunning themselves, waiting for the next RAF attack.

It would come. For every submarine damaged, more than a few merchant ships survived.

On a street that faced the waterfront, Ricard saw a beached U-boat, its superstructure bent and twisted by gunfire, where wounded sailors, in Kriegsmarine uniforms, were being carried off the boat on stretchers. Many buildings had been hit by RAF bombs, façades tumbled into the street, revealing piles of wreckage, mounds of burnt brick and broken glass. The Germans clearly could not protect the town.

What they could protect, Ricard saw, were the U-boats themselves, which were berthed in a line of pens beneath a concrete roof thirty feet thick.

In time, he reached the Place Marceau, a block from the waterfront, and there found the Café Le Relais. The interior was dark, a hand-lettered sign on the door said fermé. Not far from the place, he found the office of the notary, its windows boarded up, where he retrieved the keys to the café and the names of its three former employees; the barman Louis, the waitress Marcelle, and Victorine – Vicki, the cook. He found two of them right away, left a note for the third, and they showed up the following day, ready to put the café back in order.

Louis the barman was short, with slicked-back hair, and talkative, rattling on endlessly about nothing in particular, a barman’s stock-in-trade. Never politics; bad manners in France to raise such issues. Instead, observations on life in general, customers always had something to say about that: marriage, family, work. And Louis – who preferred his name said in the English manner, Louie – had a real gift for chatter about the weather. He’d lived his whole life in Saint-Nazaire and he knew when a storm was coming, or when they needed rain, or how long the humidity would stick around. A true prophet of the weather, Louie the barman.

Marcelle the waitress was fiftyish and seductively plump, well worth ogling in her snug waitress uniform – black dress and white apron – and Ricard ogled her attentively as she washed down the twelve tables in the café, Ricard daydreaming about finding themselves alone after work.

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