Chapter 1, Scene 5
Date: March 12, 1936
Location: Strasbourg, France — Quai Saint-Nicolas
The sun filtered through the bare branches of the poplars along the Ill River, scattering soft shadows across the cobbled path beside the Quai. The air still held a winter chill, but the cafés had begun to set their tables outside again, as if daring the cold to return. Mireille Lefèvre sat beneath a striped parasol, espresso in hand, her coat draped over the back of her chair.
She was reading aloud from a folded essay, her voice light, half amused.
“‘Property is theft,’” she quoted, “but of course Proudhon was not being strictly literal.”
At the table with her were two others. Jean Dumas, a theater director from Lyon, was already shaking his head. He had a pink scarf looped carelessly around his neck and a nose like a hawk. Next to him sat Béatrice Duhamel, a historian from the University of Strasbourg, who leaned back and sipped her wine with the practiced poise of someone who had read every word Marx had written and found most of them tiresome.
“Proudhon was a romantic,” Béatrice said. “He wanted mutualism without mechanism. Marx at least understood the inevitability of state violence.”
“I prefer a revolution that can be gardened,” Jean muttered. “Not one that needs a firing squad.”
Mireille grinned and raised her glass. “To impossible dreams.”
They clinked glasses. A street violinist played something lively a few meters away, and for a moment, Strasbourg felt like itself—French, fractured, but full of spring’s promise. Across the river, the rooftops shone with light. There was a murmur of tourists, and somewhere a baker called out the price of his croissants with operatic enthusiasm.
Then came the shouting.
It began subtly—raised voices near the far end of the quay, a whistle, a man in a leather coat barking into a telephone. Mireille didn’t look up at first. Strasbourg always had shouting. Market men, canal workers, students pretending to be radicals. But this had a different pitch.
Jean noticed it first. “That’s not the usual…”
From the street, a pair of policemen jogged past the café, rifles slung over their backs. One was breathless and pale. A few tables away, an elderly couple stood uncertainly, watching as a black Citroën sped through a stop sign and roared toward the city center.
Mireille furrowed her brow. “Is there a parade I don’t know about?”
A gendarme stopped near their table and gestured. “You must leave. Now.”
Béatrice blinked. “Is something wrong?”
“Military order,” he snapped. “Clear the street. All civilians to quarters.”
Jean stood. “What in God’s name is happening?”
The gendarme’s voice was low, urgent. “The Germans. They’ve crossed. This morning. They’re in the zone.”
Mireille felt her stomach twist.
“The Moselle?” she said. “That’s impossible.”
“Not anymore,” he said. “Now move.”
Ten minutes later, they stood behind the heavy doors of a school building a few blocks away, with dozens of others corralled inside. Students. Professors. Waiters in aprons. Mireille stared through the frosted glass of a class window, watching cavalry mill about in the street.
“I thought they couldn’t…” Béatrice whispered. “It’s demilitarized.”
“Was,” Jean said bitterly. “It was demilitarized. Past tense.”
Mireille said nothing. Her mind was turning too fast.
Why now? Why so bold?
The Germans were in violation. And the French—her country, her government, with its speeches and medals and revolutions—was panicking like a kicked anthill. She turned and saw a pair of reservists wheeling a recoilless gun across the street. One was smoking. Both looked confused. Jean sat heavily on a student’s desk. “We should have seen this coming.”
“How?” Béatrice asked. “We signed the Treaty. They signed it too.”
“They tore it,” he said. “Like paper.”
Mireille shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Germany isn’t strong enough. They must know we could crush them.”
“Could we?” Jean asked. “Or have we waited too long?”
A long silence followed.
In the corner of the room, a young postal clerk muttered something. Mireille turned. “What did you say?”
He looked up. Nervous, provincial.
“I said, they wouldn’t have dared if America hadn’t gone soft. Lindbergh told the world he won’t intervene. So now…” Mireille frowned. “You think the Germans care about an American speech?”
“I think they heard it, oui. The President said he’ll stay out of European wars. Herr Hitler heard that.” Mireille folded her arms. “France doesn’t need America’s permission to defend her borders.” He shrugged. “Germany doesn’t need their permission either…”
Outside, a siren wailed. Béatrice lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. “Do you think they’ll bomb us?”
“No,” Jean said. “They won’t need to.”
Mireille stepped away from the window. Her hands were cold. Her scarf was still on the café chair. She hadn’t paid for her espresso. Someone would yell at her tomorrow—if there was a tomorrow.
She leaned against the chalkboard, staring at the floor.
All those speeches in Paris. All the promises of strength, dignity, sovereignty. “The Rhine is the spine of France.” She remembered someone saying that in the Chamber just last year. Now the spine was cracking.
“They can’t hold the territory,” she said, trying to believe it. “It’s a bluff.”
Jean replied, “Then we’d better learn to call bluffs. Quickly.”
That evening, after the curfew was lifted and she walked home beneath a sky of flickering stars, Mireille sat at her apartment window and opened her notebook.
She didn’t write headlines or analysis.
She wrote only one word, three times:
Lindbergh. Lindbergh. Lindbergh.
Then, in smaller letters beneath it:
The world is shifting under silence.
She watched the river until dawn.