“What’s that?” Jules had asked, hearing the faint strains of the Marseillaise. For fear that it might somehow, in a circumstance they could hardly imagine, give him away, he hadn’t been taught it.
“That’s the Marseillaise,” Cathérine told him. “It’s the song of France. They’re singing because they’re happy the Germans have gone away.” Having whispered for four years, she whispered still.
As she spoke, Philippe sat down and pivoted his cello into position, but this time he held the bow. This time, he would play music sounded out. And now Jules would hear music not through walls or at a distance or in the abstract.
It would have been appropriate to play the Marseillaise, but it was not what Philippe chose. He wanted the first music his son would hear to reflect not a secular glory but something more powerful. Philippe chose instead the choral part of a Bach cantata, which before the war he had transcribed and which he heard, despite the lack of sound, almost every day of their confinement – Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren. Even to a Jew hiding in Reims in 1944, that it was Christian and that it was German was of no consequence, for it had been written as if in divine light, it was perfect, it was joy expressed through mourning, like the darkest clouds when lit by radiant beams. It was as if a mother were singing her last song to her child, confident that, like her love, the melody was invincible and would endure. Hearing music close and immediately for the first time, Jules was astounded, and loved it so that he knew that this was what he would follow for the rest of his life.
But he was not the only one who was moved. The cello had sufficient power to pour forth from the vents and fill the street immediately below, where, at first not hearing it, as the Lacours and the Mignons had not heard them, a detachment of Germans in three command cars and a half-track had come to a halt so as to listen carefully to the movement of armor in the distance. Like hunters in the forest, the SS troops and their commander, splintered from the barbarous 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division G?tz Von Berlichingen, froze, cocked their heads, and strained to determine the location of what they were hearing. The unmistakable rumble of tanks came from the northwest, quite far away. This they could tell if only because they were themselves part of an armored division, from which they had been separated, serving in Paris for two months. They wanted to stay away from the tanks above all, although they knew that PIATs or heavy machine guns could at any moment and from any redoubt or casual position do them in almost as well.
They heard an ocean-like hiss of crowds to the north and east. These, too, were an obstacle, although a way through them could be cleared with a few bursts of fire. And everywhere, they could hear the Marseillaise, played from many sources and therefore with a dissonance that was intolerably irritating to the fifteen hardened soldiers seeking escape through backstreets. In their silence – listening, still, stiff and straight – they accurately conformed to their image of themselves. They were self-contained, stoic, and ruthless. They had deliberately ceased long before to wonder about war and death so as to be hardened and unafraid. War was now a duty that, were it not necessary to be highly agile and alert, they would have conflated, even in its most savage parts, with tedium. When they did fight, they fought bravely, efficiently, and without emotion of any kind.
Nonetheless, the retreat had taken an invisible toll. The reality of loss and defeat had opened to them. In a surge of the kind of feeling so often coupled with resignation, they experienced a vision of – and an intense love for – the things of the world. Thus, standing absolutely straight in the lead vehicle, face turned to the sky as he listened for what he had stopped to hear, the major in command was moved, for the first time in a long time, by the music coming from above. For so long having denied himself such feeling, he decided that he would compliment the cellist, not only for his skill, but for being sagacious and catholic enough to play Bach at the moment of liberation, when probably no one else in France was playing anything but the Marseillaise or would dare play anything German. The major was greatly and uncharacteristically softened by this. He wanted to be kind, to give a gift, to share with whoever was playing the music, which he recognized exactly, the admission that they were in fact brothers, that the war would be over, that there were higher things.
He dismounted. Shadowed automatically by a corporal and a private each armed not as he was with a pistol but with a submachine gun, he went to the bakery. Not surprisingly, it was closed, but with his riding crop he rapped hard on the door. He expected to be received, and that someone would appear expressly to receive him. One thing he did not lack was authority. The glass nearly broke.
The sound of this startled the Mignons as they were gathered around the radio, listening for news of their liberation. Keeping himself hidden behind the curtains, Louis looked out the window. Then he backed into the room. “Germans,” he said. “They’re right there.” As the radio was switched off and the dial turned from the BBC, he heard the cello for the first time since the Lacours had been hidden. It was beautiful, and for an instant he noted that, but then signaled Jacques to run upstairs and silence it. As Louis went downstairs to answer the door, Jacques raced upstairs and knocked with a broom handle against the ceiling. The cello stopped instantly, and Jules held position as in the game he had learned from his beginnings.
Louis was used to officers, who came often to the bakery – but not so much to the SS. Perhaps his fear showed, although what fear he had was largely neutralized by his natural courage and discipline, the knowledge that Reims was very nearly liberated, and the conviction that the war would end with Germany prostrate. For the moment, however, he could not let this confidence show. In the last act, all they had to do was get through, just as they had come through four years of war and occupation. These were only the few remaining minutes. The major was smiling. It was obvious that he meant no harm.
“I want to compliment the musician,” he said, “not only for his talent but especially for playing German music.”
“Thank you,” Louis said. “I’ll tell him.”
Still benevolent and unsuspecting, the major said, “I’d like to tell him myself, if I can.” He was polite.
“I’ll get him,” Louis announced.
“No no no,” the major insisted, wanting to save him the trouble. Here, the indelible habit of absolute authority took over. “I’ll go myself.” He started up the stairs, untroubled by the impoliteness of doing so without invitation. His men followed, and the stairs creaked with their weight.
Louis had no idea what would happen. He waited, thinking that this might be the end for them all. He heard the major encounter Jacques descending from the third floor. “Are you the cellist?”
“Yes,” Jacques answered. It was not convincing.