A YOUNG SUCCUBUS NAMED DELICIA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 4 – FIRST STEPS TO ORGANIZED RESISTANCE

09:10 (Paris Time)

Saturday, July 27, 1940

Local bakery, Rue de l’Éperon, Quartier Latin

6th Arrondissement, Paris

Mélanie was in an increasingly bad mood as she entered the small bakery shop adjoining a café-terrace on the Rue de l’Éperon, some 200 meters from the ‘Mille et Une Nuits’ Cabaret. Two other bakeries nearer to the cabaret had already refused to serve her, ignoring her requests to buy bread. Such cold hostility to her and the other occupants of the cabaret was now spreading around more and more every day and she was getting mightily pissed by that. This time, she found only a handful of customers in line at the counter of the bakery and joined the lineup, anxious to buy fresh bread for the cabaret. Thankfully, nobody seemed to recognize her here, at least for the moment, so she was able to buy without problems a half dozen long and thin crusty French ‘baguettes’, plus three big loaves of whole wheat bread and a dozen croissants. Feeling better, now that her fishnet bag was full, she stepped out on the sidewalk, next to the café-terrace. The smell of strong coffee, something she liked a lot, made her debate for a moment if she should take the time to enjoy a cup of espresso coffee. She was about to go take place at one of the small, round tables of the terrace when a male voice tainted with sarcasm made her snap her head around.

‘’HEY, IF IT ISN’T ONE OF OUR LOCAL GERMAN-LOVING WHORES FROM THE ‘MILLE ET UNE NUITS’!’’

The Parisians nearby who were either walking around or sitting at the café-terrace all looked at once at Mélanie and at the man who had called her up, a tough-looking man in his thirties dressed in informal, cheap clothes. An angry Mélanie quickly recognized the man as being one of her more obnoxious and annoying neighbors.

‘’And what do you want my mother to do, you moron? Refuse to serve Germans and then get her cabaret closed by them as a result?’’

The man, swaggering up to her and getting nearly nose to nose with her, nearly shouted in her face in response.

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‘’THERE IS ONLY ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE YOU AND YOUR MOTHER, LITTLE SLUT: COLLABORATORS!’’

The man then slapped her hard on her left cheek with his open hand. He did not have time to slap her a second time, as Mélanie replied in a flash with a powerful uppercut to the jaw that made the man literally fly off his feet before falling flat on his back on the pavement, moaning and bleeding.

‘’You want to look tough but you are only talk and no action, asshole. There is more than one way to resist the German occupation but you are too stupid to understand that. You attack me again, Lagrange, and I will kill you!’’

She then walked away quickly, making a point of stepping on the man’s stomach as she started heading back to the cabaret, making him jerk and shout with pain. A man close to his forties and dressed in a good but well used suit got up from his chair at the café-terrace, where he had been sipping a cup of coffee, and hurried to catch up with her after putting some money on the table to pay for his cup. Mélanie turned around quickly when she heard him approach at a near run, ready to defend herself. The man stopped at once and raised his opened hands to show that he was not going to attack her.

‘’Calm down, miss: I want you no harm.’’

‘’Then why were you running after me?’’ asked Mélanie, suspicious. The man slowly put down his hands and gave her a friendly smile.

‘’I was having a cup of coffee at the café-terrace and I saw and heard the altercation between you and that man. What you said about more than one way to resist the German occupation struck me.’’

That only made Mélanie reinforce her suspicion and she gave him a sharp look.

‘’Why? Are you a German or a collaborationist of some kind?’’ The man shook his head briefly and answered her in a calm voice, unaware that Mélanie was scanning him telepathically to see if he was telling the truth.

‘’Oh dear, no! In fact, I fought the Germans as an army officer until the armistice was called. I now run a bookstore specializing in Russian literature on Rue de la Pompe, in the 16th Arrondissement.’’

‘’So? That doesn’t tell me why you came after me.’’

‘’Uh, could we go somewhere a bit more discrete to continue this conversation, miss?’’

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Sensing that he was not lying and had no hidden hostile feelings towards her, Mélanie looked around her and pointed at another café-terrace, situated on the corner with the Rue Suger.

‘’Very well! Let’s go to that café-terrace.’’

Walking together to one of the tables of the terrace, they sat opposite each other and eyed each other in silence for a moment. Mélanie found the man fairly handsome, with a long, oval face, high forehead and eyes full of intelligence. He was tall and fit, but not really muscular. On his part, the man devoured her with a mix of curiosity and lust.

‘’I must say that you are extremely beautiful, miss. I am happily married, with children, so I am not saying that to try to date you, though.’’ Mélanie giggled briefly at that.

‘’Mister, I have met tons of happily married men who wanted to bed me. Men will be men!’’

It was the turn of the man to look amused before becoming very serious and speaking in a low voice.

‘’So, what did you mean when you spoke outside the bakery, miss?’’ She put up a hand to make him stop talking, then twisted her head to look at the approaching waiter and ordered an espresso coffee. The stranger also ordered a coffee at that time, but it was Mélanie who spoke next once the waiter was gone, keeping her voice low while bending forward.

‘’First off, I don’t know you and you don’t know me. Let’s keep it as is as much as possible: the less we know about each other, the less the Germans could learn if they ever interrogated or investigated one of us. Just call me ‘Lilie’ for the time being.’’ The man stared at her for a moment, impressed by her surprising maturity and sense of operational security for a young teenager like her.

‘’And how old are you exactly, miss? You sound like quite an experienced person.’’

‘’I am sixteen, mister. So, by what first name can I call you?’’

‘’You may call me Pierre, miss.’’ replied Pierre Brossolette. ‘’Sixteen, you say? You look more like eighteen or nineteen to me.’’

‘Try thirteen, buster!’ thought Mélanie before speaking. ‘’My age is not important, Pierre. What is important is that I have acquired and still am acquiring every day some interesting German military information by using pillow talk with German officers. Unfortunately, that moron at the bakery could not see further than his nose and believes

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that I bed Germans because I side with the Nazis. My big problem actually is that I have no one to which I could pass on that information so that it could be acted upon. Would you know by chance someone who has ways to transmit information to General de Gaulle and his Free French Forces in London?’’

Pierre slowly shook his head while looking soberly at Mélanie.

‘’Unfortunately, no. People in France are still under the shock of our defeat and things are still disorganized in terms of resistance. However, I know a few people here in Paris who are talking about forming a group in order to resist the Germans, mostly by countering their propaganda with patriotic leaflets. As for me, I want to do something but I am alone, with very few means at my disposal, no radio and no weapons.’’ Mélanie sighed, a bit discouraged by his words.

‘’I suppose that I will have to wait a while then, until someone from London establishes some kind of clandestine information pipeline between Occupied France and England. Uh, you did say that you were an army officer and fought the Germans until the signing of the armistice, correct?’’

‘’Yes! I held the rank of captain and commanded an infantry company. Why do you ask?’’

‘’An infantry officer? Excellent! Then, you must be knowledgeable about firearms, right?’’

‘’Of course, miss!’’ said Pierre, now frankly intrigued. ‘’Again, why do you ask?’’

‘’Because I have hidden a few weapons which previously belonged to the French Army, weapons which I may want to use in future months. However, I have no training whatsoever in firearms and need to at least learn how to handle and maintain them and, hopefully learn as well how to shoot them.’’

‘’You have hidden weapons? Why not simply give them to men who would be willing to fight?’’

Pierre realized that he had just said something wrong when he saw her face harden with anger at once.

‘’Why give them to men? You think that I have no business in fighting in a war, just because I am a girl? Is that it?’’

‘’Uh, please don’t take my words as an insult to you, Lilie. It is just that women are not usually involved in fighting.’’

‘’And I could say that girls normally don’t knock down a strong man with one single punch, Pierre.’’

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‘’Touché!’’ recognized Pierre, who was quickly reevaluating that most unusual girl. ‘’So, you want some basic courses in small arms care and handling, that’s it?’’

‘’Correct! Would you accept to teach me about firearms?’’

‘’I see no problems with that, Lilie. The only thing is that it will be impossible for you to actually fire weapons to practice your aim, unless you want to alert all the Germans in the neighborhood. We would thus be limited to what I call dry firing, practicing aiming and pressing the trigger with an empty weapon.’’

‘’That would already be very helpful to me, Pierre. So, you would accept to train me in firearms use?’’

‘’I do, yes!’’

‘’When could we start? Are you busy today?’’

‘’Uh, I came to the Quartier Latin this morning to look for more used books on Russian literature, but I certainly could give you a couple of hours at the least today and some more hours tomorrow. We will however need a safe and discreet place to conduct that training.’’

‘’Of course! Since that moron at the bakery mentioned out loud that I work at the ‘Mille et Une Nuits’ cabaret and since you heard him, I figure that you know already where I live. We could thus go train in the basement of the cabaret.’’

‘’That sounds alright with me, Lilie.’’

‘’Good! One last thing before we go to the cabaret: stay as discreet and anonymous as possible there and don’t give out your name: if we get burned by the German secret police, then all the girls at the cabaret could suffer severe consequences.’’

‘’I perfectly understand that, Lilie. I must say that you speak and act like a true professional, compared to the members of the group I told you about. Those members are intellectuals with somewhat naïve notions of how clandestine resistance works.’’

‘’Thanks for telling me that, Pierre. In that case, I would appreciate if you never mention me in any way to them. They sound like an accident waiting to happen.’’ Mélanie could not know then how right she was about that. The waiter then came with their cups of coffee and served them. They quietly sipped their cups dry in a few minutes, then paid and got up. However, before leaving, Mélanie got close to Pierre and whispered in his ear while acting as if she was hugging him.

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‘’I will go ahead first, to get weapons out of their hiding places inside the cabaret. Wait around here for about half an hour, then approach the service entrance of the cabaret on Rue Séguier but wait until I appear in the doorway before coming in.’’

‘’Uh, okay! You really sound like someone who has played that game a long time already, Lilie.’’

Mélanie gave him a strange look then.

‘’Pierre, before I was adopted, I lived in a Hell where you had to watch yourself all the time if you wanted to survive and where you couldn’t trust anyone. Remember: wait another half hour, then come within sight of the service door but don’t enter it until you see me.’’

‘’Understood!’’

Watching Mélanie walk towards the ‘Mille et Une Nuits’, whose sign was visible one street block away, Pierre was able to see the side entrance she used once at the cabaret. With now a half hour to kill, he looked around him, trying to decide what to do during that time. He smiled on seeing nearby a used books store that he had visited a couple of times in the past and walked gingerly into it.

Inside the cabaret, Mélanie went at once to the kitchen, to drop off her fresh bread. There, she found her adoptive mother, along with their cook, Sylvie Renaudin. Marie, who was sipping a cup of coffee, gave her a questioning look.

‘’It took you a long time to buy bread Mélanie. Did a nice-looking man cause that delay?’’

Mélanie sighed as she put her bag of baguettes and loaves on the kitchen counter.

‘’Actually, I had to go to three bakery shops before they accepted to serve me, Mother. The bakers at the two first ones wouldn’t even talk to me and refused to sell me bread. I finally had to go to the bakery on Rue de l’Éperon to be accepted as a customer.’’

Marie Laurent shook her head slowly in discouragement at those words.

‘’The business is good, thanks to all these German officers coming to the cabaret and spending freely, but I really don’t like the bad name we are earning with our neighbors. I hope that this won’t result one day in one of my girls being attacked in the street by so-called patriots.’’

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‘’That’s already old news, Mother: that moron of René Lagrange loudly called me a whore and a collaborator as I was exiting the bakery on Rue de l’Éperon. He then slapped me hard in the face. I broke his jaw in return.’’

Both Marie and Sylvie Renaudin gave Mélanie sharp looks then, with Marie becoming very serious.

‘’I was hoping somehow to avoid that kind of incident, but it seems that I was way too optimistic in that regard. You however acted in self-defence, so I certainly can’t fault you for shutting up that idiot. Did anybody else attack or insult you?’’

‘’No! Uh, could you come for a moment to our storage room, Mother?’’

‘’Sure, Mélanie!’’ replied Marie, who understood at once that her daughter wanted to speak in private with her. Getting up from her chair, she followed Mélanie to the small storage room near the service entrance, where her daughter closed the door behind them before looking at her somberly.

‘’Mother, I made a mistake at the bakery: after knocking down that Lagrange, I told him that there was more than one way to resist the Germans, but that he was too stupid to understand that. Another man drinking coffee at the adjacent café-terrace heard that and approached me to ask what I meant. Don’t worry: I scanned him telepathically and saw that he was no German undercover agent or collaborator. In fact, he is an ex-army officer who fought the Germans until the armistice. On learning that, I asked him if he could train me on the care and use of firearms and he accepted.’’ Marie became alarmed at once.

‘’And you told that stranger that we had weapons hidden inside the cabaret? What were you thinking, Mélanie?’’

In response, Mélanie touched her right temple with her right index.

‘’Like I said, Mother, I scanned him telepathically before asking him to train me. I also was vague about our weapons. Right now, he believes that I have only a few old French Army weapons which I hid after the armistice. I intend to conduct my training with him in the basement, but I won’t show him the rotunda where I hid all the weapons I stole at the École Militaire.’’

Marie nodded her head slowly then, a bit reassured. Mélanie had returned to the basement storage rooms at the École Militaire on half a dozen consecutive nights, stealing and then teleporting weapons and ammunitions to the cabaret while the Germans, who seemed then to be busy with more pressing tasks, delayed their planned inventory of the captured French weapons and ammunition they held. As a result, and

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with Mélanie giving priority to stealing the most modern types of weapons and their ammunition, they had now in the subterranean rotunda an impressive arsenal of over 300 weapons, going from pistols to light machine guns, along with more than 2,000 fragmentation grenades, over 140,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibers, 350 pounds of TNT explosives in one pound blocks and spare magazines and accessories to go with those weapons. There was as well a reserve of gasoline and of coal briskets stolen from the Germans at the École Militaire.

‘’Very well, Mélanie, but be very discrete with that man and tell him as little as possible. To be frank, I am not too confident about the pretended patriotism of some of our neighbors: they would sell their mothers if that could get them more food and luxury goods. Others could as well denounce us out of plain jealousy.’’

‘’Believe me, Mother, I know that too well. Well, I am going down to the rotunda to go get a few choice weapons to start my training, then I will signal my new friend to enter via the service entrance. Could you try to keep our domestic staff away as much as possible from the side entrance for the next half hour or so?’’

‘’No problem, Mélanie. Have a good training session.’’

‘’Thank you, Mother. Afterwards, if you would like, I could teach you in turn how to handle a pistol.’’

‘’That could indeed be a useful thing for me, Mélanie. Thanks for thinking about that.’’

While Marie returned to the kitchen, Mélanie went to the old stone staircase that went down to the basement of the cabaret and climbed down the well-used steps, arriving in a small room with a single basement window and two doors, one on each side of the staircase. Going through the right-side door, Mélanie entered a large, semi-obscure and dusty room containing an eclectic assortment of old pieces of furniture, foot lockers, travel chests and cardboard boxes, the lot well sprinkled with spider webs and dust. The air of the storage room was quite stale, as there was no ventilation system per say in the basement. Going to the end of the room, Mélanie used her superhuman strength to move a massive wooden locker aside by a few feet, uncovering an opening in the stone masonry wall big enough for a man to pass while bending down. Going down the ancient stone spiral staircase beyond that opening, Mélanie soon stepped into what she now called her ‘Ali Baba Cave’, a large rotunda carved out of the rock in medieval times and into which six tunnel entrances and one other cave connected.

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However, except for two of them, those entrances had been blocked or had collapsed a long time ago. Now, apart from the staircase leading up to the basement of the cabaret, a person could use the two remaining tunnels to move around under Paris, one connecting with the sewer system, the other connecting with the city’s subway system. If things went really bad, Mélanie would thus be able still to escape through these tunnels, helped by her power of dark vision and her extensive knowledge of the complex subterranean network to be found under this part of Paris. Not bothering with lighting one of the oil lamps hooked near the staircase and using her dark vision, Mélanie went to a pile of wooden boxes and opened the top box, uncovering six MAB Model D French Army pistols. She took one of the pistols, then closed back the box and went to another pile. In five minutes, she had taken from her reserves two pistol, one MAS Model 38 submachine gun and one MAS Model 36 rifle, along with empty magazines for those weapons and a box of cartridges for each model, plus the appropriate cleaning kits. Thinking for a moment, Mélanie took as well two extra magazines for a MAB Model D pistol, along with two more boxes of .38 ACP caliber rounds. With her arms loaded down with weapons and ammunition, she climbed back to the basement and spread the lot over the top of an old travel chest in the storage room. She took the time to put back in place the large wooden locker hiding the staircase entrance and lit two oil lamps before going up to the cabaret’s ground level. Looking at her watch, she saw that there was still about ten minutes left before Pierre was supposed to approach the side entrance. She thus took the time to wash off the dust and spider webs she had collected in the basement, then returned to the service entrance, looking through its small window. To her annoyance, she saw that Pierre had already approached the cabaret and was sitting on a nearby street bench, pretending to read a newspaper. Waiting for a couple of minutes, until there were only a few other people around on the sidewalks, Mélanie half opened the service entrance door and made a discreet sign to Pierre. The man saw her and got up from his bench, then crossed the street and quickly slipped inside the cabaret, past Mélanie, who closed and locked at once the door behind him.

‘’Follow me, Pierre!’’

Leading Pierre down the staircase to the basement, Mélanie brought him inside the storage room, where she showed him the weapons, ammunition and accessories laid on top of the old chest.

‘’We can start with these weapons for the moment, Pierre. You have here a Model 1935A pistol in 7.65mm Longue, a MAB Model D pistol in .38 ACP caliber, a MAS

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Model 38 submachine gun and a MAS Model 36 rifle, plus empty magazines, cleaning kits and ammo for them.’’

Pierre’s eyes lit up as he examined the weapons spread before him and he slowly went to take in his hands the MAB Model D pistol.

‘’All these weapons appear to be in good condition and well maintained. My personal weapon until the armistice was signed was a MAB Model D pistol like this one and I know that type of weapon well, like the others. Unfortunately, I was forced to give back my pistol when I was demobilized.’’

‘’Well, as a thank you for accepting to train me in firearms, you will be able to keep this pistol, along with two extra magazines and two boxes of fifty rounds of .38 ACP, plus a cleaning kit.’’

A big grin appeared on Pierre’s face on hearing that.

‘’Really? That is quite a gift, in view of the actual situation in Paris.’’

‘’Maybe, but I believe that this pistol could be useful to you, if the Germans ever go after you. Just don’t start shooting German soldiers left and right around Paris with it: the key word here and now is ‘discretion’.’’

‘’Don’t worry, Lilie: I am no idiot or hot head. Well, let’s start your training with this MAB Model D…’’

Helped by her high intelligence, near-photographic memory and superb eye-hand coordination, Mélanie quickly assimilated what Pierre taught her in the next two hours and was now comfortable with handling all four types of weapons she had practiced with by the time Pierre left by the service entrance, his new pistol hidden on him. She however took the time to kiss him quickly on the lips as he was about to open the door.

‘’Can I see you again here at the same hour, next Saturday? I will have more weapons to teach me about.’’

‘’More weapons? Decidedly, you are a girl full of surprises, Lilie.’’

‘’You have no idea, Pierre.’’ she replied with a malicious smile before letting him out and closing the door behind him.