120, rue de la Gare by Léo Malet (Pan Books 1943)

 

Prologue:

Germany 1940-1941

Ushering people in was just the job for Baptiste Cormier. He had the soul of a flunkey as well as a name like a butler.

But he’d lost some of his starch since he left his last situation, and at present he was lolling in the doorway, gazing dolefully at the ceiling and picking at a tooth with a spent match. Then suddenly he abandoned the mopping-up operation and straightened up.

‘Achtung!' he shouted.

We all stopped talking, and with a scraping of benches and clatter of boots stood up and clicked our heels. The Aufnahme officer had just come on duty.

‘At ease!’ he said with a strong German accent, saluting and sitting down at the table that served him as a desk. We sat down too and went on with our conversations. There was still a good quarter of an hour till work was due to begin.

But after a few minutes spent sorting out papers the reception officer got up again and blew a loud blast on a whistle, indicating he had something to say to us. We stopped talking and turned to listen.

This time he spoke in German, then sat down again while the interpreter translated.

First came the usual instructions about the work, plus thanks for our efforts the previous day, when we’d registered a particularly large intake. He hoped that at this rate we’d be finished by tomorrow at the latest. As a reward each man was to be issued with a packet of tobacco. 

Some awkward Danke schons and stifled laughter greets this pleasantry: we were to get what had earlier been confiscated from the chaps we were about to register.

At a sign from the interpreter, Cormier abandoned his teeth and opened the door.

‘First twenty,' he called.

With a rattle of hobnailed boots a group detached itself from the crowd lined up in the hut and the day’s work began.

The entry consisted of men who’d arrived from France a couple of days before. My job was to sit at one end of a table, extract certain information from each of the newcomers, put it down on a sheet of paper, then pass it along to the other eight Schreibers. When the paper and the person it referred to reached the other end of the table, the POW officiating there completed the form and appended a print of the subject’s forefinger.

The dabs-taker was a young Belgian, and his task was lengthier if not more difficult than mine. At one point he asked me to slow down because he was getting submerged.

So I told Cormier not to send anyone to our table for a bit, and went outside to stretch my legs on the not-so-good earth.

It was July. The weather was fine. A warm sun shone on the barren landscape and a gentle southerly breeze was blowing. A sentry paced back and forth on his watchtower, his rifle barrel glinting in the sun.

I lit my pipe, and after a while went back to my table, puffing pleasantly. The Belgian had emerged from his traffic jam and we could get on.

Nazis in the Metro by Didier Daeninckx (Melville International Crime 1997)

Alaric unzipped the front pocket of his overalls and dug out a Gauloise Light from a dented packet.

—Isn’t it obvious? I’m out of here.

He offered Gabriel a cigarette.

—Thanks, but I haven’t quit quitting ... You’re really leaving? Closing up shop? Is business that bad?

Smoke streamed from his nostrils in two jets that merged into one.

—You kidding? I’ve got a list of orders as long as a day without bread ... No, the new owner’s kicking me out. There’s no romance in table legs anymore. He wants to gut the place and turn it into a gallery-cafe ...

—Another cafe! Well, we don’t have to worry about dying of hunger in this neighborhood anymore ... And where will you go? Back to Brittany?

Alaric nearly choked.

—Brittany, me? Never! I don’t even go there for vacation! I need streets, bars, cars, subways! The older generations might’ve had a hard time adapting, but I’m completely at home ...

Gabriel leaned his long frame against the wall.

—Of course, it’s been a long time ... The Alaric name has been on this shack forever ...

—You can say that again! Now we’re out on the street... It was my great-grandfather who came here first, from Finistere-Nord, at the end of the last century ... The recruiters arrived and sent whole villages into exile, giving advances to parents and wives ... Reimbursable from the first year’s pay. It was a little like Citroen and Bouygues with the Moroccans and the Turks ... But with us it was for the first Delaunay-Belleville cars. The plant was in Saint-Denis, not far from Briche. Steel frames, spoked wheels, wood interiors, all-leather upholstery ... They needed the best craftsmen in the country, and they went looking for them in Brittany and Auvergne ... I never had the chance to know my great-grandfather, but my grandfather lived basically the same shitty life as he did ... At first he didn’t speak a word of French, and on Saturday nights, after their shifts, Parisian workers would unwind by chasing down “foreigners” ... Because they spoke Meteque, because they were unmarried, because they didn’t eat the food everyone else ate. He was systematically beat up ... And you know what the bastards called those raids?

-No.

With an expert flick, Alaric propelled his cigarette butt into the clear waters of the gutter.

—Bretonnades! Can you imagine? Forty years before the ratonnades* against the Arabs ... It’s only proof that nothing ever changes: we just get used to it...

—And where will you go?

—When they ruin the provinces for you and then kick you out of the city, what’s left?

Gabriel Lecouvreur’s eyebrows rearranged themselves into a circumflex.

—I don’t know ...

—It’s obvious: the outskirts ... They’re sticking me with three thousand square meters in Montreuil, along the highway. It’s called Mosinor ... Twelve stories surrounded by a truck route. Three-quarters of the building is occupied by sweatshops, and the courtyard is used as a parking lot for those green dumpsters from the Department of Household Waste! It’s a dream come true!

—You do make it sound appealing ... You should reinvent yourself as a real-estate agent. Is there anywhere to get a drink, at least?

—Oh sure, these are civilized people, after all: they just opened a Burger King on the ground floor ... I’m going to have to get used to soft drinks ...

Footnote:

* The term ratonnade, deriving from “raton” (rat), a racial slur, referred originally to acts of violence in France against people of North African descent during the years of the French-Algerian war (1954-1962). By extension, the term has been used since then to refer to other racially motivated acts of violence.

On Leave by Daniel Anselme (Faber and Faber Inc 1957)

"Well?" Jean Valette asked in a drawl. "Well, so when's it going to happen, then, the end of the war? When will it come?"

"Soon," Luc Giraud said slowly. "A war like this can't last long."

"Why not?" Jean Valette asked.

"Because five hundred thousand young men," Luc Giraud said, syllable by syllable, "five hundred thousand . . . well, that gets about in the country. Because half a million young men over there means a whole mass of French families are affected by the war. Ask your sister."

"Yes," Colette chipped in. "Five hundred thousand young men over there means hundreds of thousands of mothers and wives and sisters and girlfriends fearing for their sons, husbands, brothers, and lovers. And that gets around in the country."

"Well then," Jean Valette said, "you mean that the more we are over there, the more it gets around over here?"

"In one sense you are right," Luc Giraud said. "It's dialectical. The more the war affects the masses, the nearer we are to peace."

"So tell me, then," Jean Valette said in a louder voice, "how many million soldiers do we need over there to make the masses move?"

"Jean!" Madame Valette said.

"No," Luc Giraud responded calmly, "that is not what I said."

"He's doing it on purpose," Colette said.

"What am I supposed to be doing on purpose?"

"Contradicting. Contradicting just for the sake of it."

"I'm just asking a question."

"An anti-Party question!"

"Colette, cool down," Luc Giraud ordered. "Let him speak for himself."

There was a pause, and then Jean Valette asked in an uncharacteristically tentative voice, "Luc, explain what you meant . . . You have to explain . . . you have to . . . "

You could feel he was trying hard to hold something back, but you couldn't tell, as his face was hidden by shadow, if he was on the brink of tears or of an angry outburst.

Another pause. For the first time Luc Giraud seemed uncertain.

"It's for you to explain yourself," he said at last, gravely, almost solemnly.

"I think what Jean meant to say . . . " M. Valette broke in softly.

"No," Luc Giraud cut him off. "It's for him to speak, if he wants to."

Jean Valette said nothing. He had his head in his hands and was looking down.

"But what is this all about?" Lachaume asked eventually. He did not understand what was going on.

Luc Giraud, to whom the question was addressed, raised his hand as if calling a meeting to order. Then, after allowing Jean Valette another moment for his last chance, he shrugged his arms as if to say, "I give up," and smiled at Lachaume. In fact, he looked relieved, and Lachaume guessed he had as much to do with Giraud's relief as did tongue-tied Jean Valette. In his mind all these little puzzles were somehow connected to the "proposal" that Luc Giraud was going to make to him. Lachaume was still thinking, seeing and listening to everything exclusively in the light of that "proposal." All through the long and frequent pauses in that tense and awkward conversation, and when nothing had caught his eye through the window, the thought of the coming "proposal" had made his heart beat faster.

A Very Profitable War by Didier Daeninckx (Melville International Crime 1984)

Sorinet and Goyon were first in the pile, followed by a show-case of militant anarchism: men with bald heads, with beards, with glasses, with the expression of hallucinating poets, hair sweeping their shoulders, civil servants in evening dress with bow ties and top hats  . . . the owner of the Carden was hiding at the bottom of the pile between a young woman who specialized in revolutionary abortions and a forger.

My Sorinet-Goyon was in fact called Francis Ménard, born at Ivry-sur-Seine, a librarian by profession. He wasn't wanted for much before '17: a few illegal occupations of private property, taking part ina few demonstrations that ended badly . . . Now they were looking for him for 'desertion in the face of the enemy in May '17'.

Nowadays the penalty wouldn't be much more than three to five years in prison near Toulon; before the armistice, he would have faced the firing squad.

He could count himself lucky, he'd managed to save his skin. Those who were no longer here to say the same thing could be counted in platoons.

Walking back to the car, I decided to follow the trail leading to the appropriation of apartments. Francis Ménard and the friends whose identity he had taken over were at the time part of the 'Tenants' Trade Union', an anarchist group that had had its moments of glory in the two years preceding the war.

The whole of Paris used to follow the exploits of their spokesman, Georges Cochon, and his confrontations, which always included a large dose of humour, for the rehousing of working-class families.

Paris high society followed as well, although its laughter was nervous.

I remembered certain episodes such as the day of action 'Against the Tyranny of the Concierges' during which the Cochonnards' commandos put fleas, bugs and cockroaches through the keyholes of the concierges' doors! One day, I had also come across a procession of the 'badly housed' who were going up to take over the barracks at Château d'Eau from the soldiers. They were marching in serried ranks behind their band, 'The Cacophony of Saint Copy-Cat', a heterogeneous group with music scored for saucepans, ladles, billy-cans, tins . . . 

The Socialist Party flags fluttered in the middle of the procession, mixed in with the black standards, and it wasn't unusual to come across the happy face of a Member of Parliament from that party. The party paper gave inflammatory accounts of the events and blamed everything on their bête noire, the Prefect Lépine.

Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette (NYRB Classics 1977)

"I am unarmed," said Lorque. "I want to talk to you. Listen here, I don't deserve to die. What have I done except follow the natural impulses of the human race? And even that is saying a lot. We are choirboys compared with our ancestors. Does the sack of Cartagena ring any bells with you? Some of Bléville's bold seafarers were there. I'm not talking about the first sack of Cartagena, that was Sir Francis Drake, but the second, when the French did the sacking. What I've done is nothing alongside the sack of Cartagena. Okay, so I worked a bit on the Atlantic Wall, I had to keep a low profile in South America for a while, then I came back and I've been giving employment to workers and making land productive. I've made my pile in the usual way. Just tell me one outrageous thing, one truly criminal thing, in what I've done, in what the baron had in his files, just name one!"

"I haven't read the baron's files," said Aimée. Lorque tensed and listened hard, apparently striving to determine the precise source of the young woman's voice. "I couldn't care less," Aimée observed. "Do you really imagine I'm interested in your crimes and misdemeanors? You must be joking!"

The Prone Gunman by Jean-Patrick Manchette (City Lights Books 1981)

Martin Terrier had no visible reaction when he grasped that Anne had left for good (if indeed he grasped it). During the night, he had audible reactions: he moaned or maybe groaned in his sleep, making that noise that others had called blabbering and had even tried to decode.

Every now and then, these days, Terrier still blabbers in his sleep. Otherwise, as a waiter in a brasserie, he is normal. He performs his duties properly, even if he is sometimes physically clumsy. It has recently been noted that his clumsiness increases when he drinks. Late at night, young people occasionally have fun buying him drinks until he behaves in an eccentric manner. He has even climbed up on a table and bleated like a sheep, interspersing this with grand operatic arias. Each time he is brought to such extremes, he gets angry and violent immediately afterward. But he is not dangerous, for he has indeed become so very clumsy that when he tries to hit someone, he succeeds only in falling on his face.

He lives in a small apartment.

Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette (City Lights Books 1976)

There is no way of saying how things will turn out for Georges Gerfaut. In a general way, you can see how things will work out for him, but not in detail. In a general way, the relations of production that contain the reason why Georges is racing along the ring road with diminished reflexes, playing the particular music he is playing, will be destroyed. Perhaps Georges will then show something other than the patience and servility that he has always shown up to now. It is not likely. Once, in a dubious context, he lived through an exciting and bloody adventure; after which, all he could think of to do was to return to the fold. And now, in the fold, he waits. If at this moment, without leaving the fold, Georges is racing around Paris at 145 kilometres per hour, this proves nothing beyond the fact that Georges is of his time. And of his space.

Brecht's Mistress by Jacques-Pierre Amette (The New Press 2003)

There was a welcoming speech in the hotel salon. As they thanked him for being there, Brecht drowsed and his mind wandered; he was thinking of a very ancient German folk-tale that he'd read at school in Augsburg and later remembered during his stay in California. A serving girl had noticed a familiar spirit sitting near her by the hearth; she'd made room for him and chatted to him during the long winter nights. One day, the serving girl asked Little Heinz (the name she had given the spirit) to show himself under his real identity. But Little Heinz refused. Finally, as she persisted, he agreed and told the serving girl to go down into the cellar, where he promised to show himself. The serving girl took a torch, went down into the vault and there, in an open barrel, she saw a dead child floating in its own blood. Many years before, the serving girl had secretly given birth to a child; she had slit its throat and hidden it in a barrel.
Helene Weigel tapped Brecht on the shoulder to bring him out of his torpor - or rather, his meditation. He sat up straight, put on a brave face and reflected that Berlin was a barrel of blood, that Germany, ever since his teens, at the height of the First World War, had also been a barrel of blood and that he was the spirit of Little Heinz.
There had been bloodshed in the streets of Munich, and modern Germany had been swamped in the rivers of blood that flowed through the old Germanic folk tales. He had come back into the cellar and what he now wanted was, with his modest reasonableness, to pull the child out, educate it, and wash away with cold water the blood that still lay on the cellar flagstones. Goethe had down the same with his Faust, Heine with his On Germany; but the stain was now bigger than ever; Mother Germany was half-drowned in it.