CROSSROADS MARSEILLES 1940 (1980) 

VILLA AIR-BEL (2006)
Chapter Killer, pp. 224-230 (verbatim)

[p. 84]  Next morning, the man at the consulate strongly urged all citizens to leave the country. These were dangerous times. (…) He sounded worried and hard-pressed the way small bureaucrats always sound in times of crisis. He gave me to understand that it was my duty to go and get out of the way.

[p. 224] When Mary Jayne Gold checked in with the American consulate on her arrival in Marseille in early August, the officious young man at the passport desk told her it was her duty to go back to America. In these dangerous times, she would only be in the way.

[p. 84]  The consulate occupied a handsome old building on the shady Place Félix Baret (…). As I came out, I spied on my left a blue awning whose bright yellow letters spelled out Pelikan Café Bar. (…) I sat down [p. 85] (…), gathering my thoughts. I didn't really want to go back to the States.

Crossing Place Félix Baret with Dagobert in tow, she sat down under the blue awning of the Café Pelikan and pondered her choices.  She didn’t really want to return to the States.

[p. 84]  During the last year I had lived through some extraordinary events, close to the mainstream of history (…).

During the past year she felt she’d been participating in a momentous historical upheaval.

[p. 84]  "C'est finie, la grande aventure, Dagobert," I murmured in my almost native French.

“C’est finie, la grande aventure,” she said disconsolately to Dagobert.[1]  The adventure was over.

[p. 84]  Preparations for the departure involved a lot of red tape. Even American citizens had to have French exit visas, Spanish and Portuguese transit visas.

For the next few weeks she would be trudging from one bureau to the next to get the French exit visa and the Spanish and Portuguese transit visas that even an American required.

[p. 90]  Miriam Davenport also turned up in Marseille, early in August. We quickly become close friends, seeing each other every day.

But she hadn’t counted on Miriam Davenport. That August in Marseille the two women had become close friends, seeing each other almost every day.

[p. 90]  She had taken a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy called Gussie under her wing and persuaded him to follow her to Marseille, where she found lodgings for him in her fleabag of a hotel a mile or so up the Rue Paradis.

Sometimes Miriam had Gussie in tow. He was the young fifteen-year-old Jewish boy whom she’d convinced to follow her to Marseille. He was completely alone in the world and she was keeping [p. 225] an eye on him.  She’d found him an attic room in her run-down Hôtel Paradis Bel-Air on rue Madagascar.

One day, in the midst of her usual gay patter, punctuated by giggles, Miriam confessed to Mary Jayne that she’d invited three Foreign Legionnaires to lunch. She’d slipped in the bit about lunch a little sheepishly because Mary Jayne would surely have to pick up the tab--but the men obviously needed a decent meal. Imagining three suntanned soldiers looking like Rudolph Valentino in white kepis, Mary Jayne was delighted.[2]

[p. 91] Two of them were Americans who had joined the Legion for the duration of the war (…).
"Robert Selmer, Dartmouth, class of thirty-seven," he said seriously. "It's awf'ly nice of you to ask us to lunch.  [He]  presented the other two: Sarge Newman of the Chicago News (…).

Two of the men turned out to be American journalists who had joined the Foreign Legion to fight Hitler.  They had good American names: Robert Selmer, whom everyone called Beaver, and Sarge Newman. 

The third man was French.

He was a slight, darkly compelling man in his twenties with black hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow.

[p. 91] The other wore a fixed grin and kept staring eagerly through thick glasses, thrusting his hand forward automatically as he heard his name—Claude Aubry. (…)  [p. 98]  Claude's tight, polite smile I had noticed at the beginning of the day had relaxed.  [p. 93]  "Shut up, Jacques, uh, Claude," ordered Beaver.

He wore thick glasses, or sometimes large steel-rimmed sunglasses, and when he allowed his constrained smile to break into a wide grin, he had a seductive look. He answered to the name of Claude Aubry, though Mary Jayne noticed his friends stumbled suspiciously over the name whenever they addressed him.

[p. 94]  He had been a regular Foreign Legionnaire stationed in Sidi-bel-Abbès in Algeria.  (…) [T]hey set him to building roads, digging and shoveling in the hot sun. (…) [Y]ou got pretty stir-crazy. (…). In the spring when they heard there was to be an expedition, practically every man in the Legion volunteered. He was one of the lucky ones (…) shipped off to England.

He’d been with the Foreign Legion in Algeria. He said he’d dug ditches in the Sahara all through the drôle de guerre so that it was a relief when real war broke out and he was finally shipped to England. 

[p. 94] Claude had been (…) sent to Narvik, in Norway, in April. (…)I lost a lot of friends (…) [T]he Germans didn't take prisoners."
He paused and glanced in my direction. His lips were tightened.
"After a while, we didn't either."
"Didn't what?"
"Take prisoners."

In Norway he’d lost a lot of friends.  He also claimed to have done a lot of killing. The Germans shot their prisoners so the Legion did, too.

[p. 95] We walked in silence for a while.(…) I'd never had a conversation like that before. I'd never met a young man who had had such close commerce with death.

There was, no doubt, a certain amount of bravado in his story, but it had the desired effect.  Mary Jayne was shocked but fascinated.

[p. 95] How do you shoot a man with his hands up?

“How do you shoot a man with his hands up?” she’d wondered.[3]

[p. 96] The Legion landed in Brest on June 17, when the Army was in full flight (…). When his colonel (…) learned that Pétain had asked for an armistice, he (…) said, 'you have a long tradition for deserting. Desert!

“Claude’s” company had landed in France days after the surrender. When the Armistice was signed, their commanding officer was so disgusted that he told his men to desert.

[p. 97] Killer: "We collected a bloody lot of weapons.  (…) [W]e (…) buried them. (…) And I'm going to use them.  (…)  [W]e kept a few guns and sniped our way down."

“Claude” had made his way south, sniping at the Germans and burying the weapons he’d found abandoned by French soldiers en route. He was sure he’d return to dig them up for the future fight.

[p. 100] The problem (…) was to get Jacques [Mary Jayne Gold’s disguised name for Raymond Couraud], yes, Jacques, not Claude, out of the country before the police picked him up as a deserter.

By the end of the evening, Mary Jayne had learned that Claude’s real name was Raymond Couraud.[4]

[p. 99] Killer: "This fucking Vichy government wants to send me back to Algeria to sit on my ass or make roads—or fire on the English. To hell with that...."  Mary Jayne: "[T]hen you're AWOL without any papers."  Killer: "Oh, no. No. I have papers all right."  (…) [H]e had gone into the captain's office while he wasn't there, made out his own papers in the name of one Claude Aubry, and stamped them with the official stamp.

And he was AWOL, having quit [p. 226] the Foreign Legion by forging his own demobilization papers.  He said that the Vichy government was planning to send the Legionnaires to Africa to fight the English, but he was having none of it. He intended to join de Gaulle’s Free French Forces in London.

[p. 100] [I]f he were ever caught as a deserter with forged papers, the offense would be compounded.

If he were ever caught as a deserter with forged papers, however, things would not go lightly for him.

[p. 100]  Mary Jayne: "You sure have confidence in yourself, I have to hand it to you," I said.

Mary Jayne was captivated.  Raymond’s narrative was heroic and dangerous, and his self-confidence seemed boundless. There was an erotic edge to his roughness:

[p. 100] Killer: ” (…) [D]on't you worry, bebby, I'm gonna get to England (…)"

“Don’t worry about me, bebby,” he said.[5]    He’d get to England on his own.

[p. 107]  Mary Jayne: "Where did he get that language?"  Beaver: "(…) That lingo of his sure is movie-tough. It's Paul Muni in Scarface. That guy sure can massacre the English language. He's a killer all right," Beaver summed it up.

His English was so full of expletives that he reminded Miriam and Mary Jayne of the actor Paul Muni in the popular 1932 film Scarface. They dubbed Couraud “Killer” because of the way he massacred the English language.

[p. 107] Killer: "Oh, très honoré, très honoré." (…) But I didn't learn English at a girls' pension," he added.

He pretended to be amused, remarking that he hadn’t learned his English at a girl’s private school.

But when Mary Jayne complimented his French as correct and proper, he smiled with the shy pleasure of a boy.

[p. 83] (…) Marseille was (…) jam-packed. (…) I zigzagged back and forth, trying every hotel [p. 84] in my path, hostelries both great and small. (…) I finally found a room with bath at the Continental, a middle-class hotel, clean and comfortable enough.

In crowded Marseille, Mary Jayne had finally found accommodations at the Continental, a mid-range hotel that was at least reasonably comfortable.

[p. 103] We finished the evenings at my place at the Continental to listen to the late news over the BBC from London. The little room (…) was dark even in the daytime.

Late into the evening the group of five friends would end up in her small hotel room where the nights had a clandestine charm.

[p. 103] I kept a bottle of whiskey (…) in the armoire (…).

Mary Jayne kept a bottle of whisky in the armoire.

[p. 103] Miriam used to tank up on a huge cone-shaped glass a foot high called a formidable.

Miriam was usually already a little tipsy on her preferred drink—the foot high glass of beer called a formidable.

[p. 104] I retain a picture of Beaver stretched across the foot of the bed with Miriam perched somewhere in between. Paper of a cold blue-gray (…) covered the walls. Miriam (…) pronounced them "hotel botanicals" (…).

She would become antic, stretching out across the bed, amusing the others, identifying the flowers on the dingy wallpaper as hotel botanicals.[6]

[p. 113] Shortly before one o'clock (…) Miriam was already on her knees in front of the [radio], her head bowed, her eyes closed, as her delicate fingers on the dials guided the waves through the barrage of electronic jamming. Then it came: "Ici la France. Cinquante-troisième jour de l'occupation allemande." The late communiqué from the British Air Ministry was reassuring.  “ After the enemy's severe trouncing yesterday, today's attacks were mainly concentrated in southeast England...150 severe attacks directed at the RAF airfields. (…).”It was apparent that the Battle of Britain was reaching its peak, and the RAF seemed to be holding out. (…) After the "Marseillaise" Miriam changed the plugs and the pink bed lamp lit up.

At 1 A.M., in the half light cast by the single overhead bulb, Miriam, on her knees with her ear to the radio, would adjust the dial with delicate fingers, trying to focus the signal. In silence the friends listened for the BBC French news broadcast from London. Almost inaudible through the electronic jamming, came the words: Ici la France! Trentième jour de l’Occupation allemande.[7] The British Air Ministry’s account of statistics in the Battle of Britain would follow.[8]  The German air attacks on Britain had started on July 10. The English were holding out. There was still hope.  The broadcast always ended with a rousing chorus of the “Marseillaise.”

[p. 227] Slowly Mary Jayne managed to piece together Raymond Couraud’s exotic career.

He claimed to have joined the Legion to escape a crime boss whom he’d double-crossed. He’d been ordered to deliver a group of prostitutes to Algiers, but, instead, he’d let them off at a port near Oran so they could elude their pimps.

[p. 109] Mary Jayne: "Why, Killer," I burst out, "you're the Boy Scout of the Year!"(…)  Killer possessed a readiness for adventure that was beginning to win my heart.

Mary Jayne wasn’t sure she believed him; nevertheless, she was spellbound by his wildness and unpredictability.

[p. 101] We became inseparable. The five of us would join up at lunch-time and stay together until late at night. We hardly ever ate at the same restaurant because Beaver felt that by keeping on the move Jacques stood less of a chance of being recognized and arrested by the military police.  (…) It was (…) to the Vieux-Port that we seemed irresistibly drawn.

The five friends saw one another constantly. They met up at noon, and spent their nights in the cafés of the Vieux Port, plotting how to keep Raymond out of the hands of the Vichy police and how to get the three men to England.

[p. 117] "Now listen," broke in Killer, "I want to talk to you seriously. About this boat. Are you sure you want to pay for it?" (…) She would probably cost a few thousand dollars. I told him I hadn't spent much money since the declaration of war and that it would be worth the price if he could pull it off.

They concluded the only way to escape Marseille was to buy a boat and sail it to Spain. Mary Jayne immediately offered to extend the money for the boat.

[p. 118] I found him very endearing. He had such courage. I must have been smiling at him admiringly, because he knew he had scored a point, and moved a little closer, then halted (…).[p. 119] Then he put his arms around me and kissed me in broad daylight, right there in front of all those sea gulls.  (…) [W]e decided we would slip away from the others that evening.
[p. 124] Beaver: "Killer has been arrested. (…) Right in front of our rooms, as we came down, they were waiting for him. Plainclothesmen."
Sarge: "Some bastard has weaseled on him." (…) "They've taken him to the police station."

She was deeply attracted to Killer, but before the two had a chance to become lovers, the police arrested him for desertion.  Somebody had set him up.  Plainclothes officers were waiting for him outside his hotel. Beaver had been with him and informed the others that they’d taken him to the local police station.

[p. 124] Beaver told me that Killer had said I was his fiancée. This surprised me at first, but (…) I decided immediately to go along with the idea and rushed up to my room to effect a rapid transformation into a desirable bride-to-be.

Apparently Killer had told the  [p. 228] police that Mary Jayne was his fiancée.  Presumptuous as that was, she agreed to play the role and accompanied Beaver and Sarge to the jail to see if she could help.

[p. 128] Suddenly [Killer] broke away, pounced on me, flung his arms around me, and kissed me full on the mouth. (…) He held me in this embrace and then I could feel his hand slipping up between my thighs. This was no time to begin erotic games; I slid my hand down to play interference.  (…) [p. 129] Suddenly I became aware of a faint crinkle of paper between my legs. Killer: "My fake discharge papers. Here, destroy them," he whispered. (…)
[p. 130] It was a Turk. A terrible Turk—a sunken basin about a yard square and six inches deep with two raised islands for your feet. (…) [p. 131] Confronting Beaver and Sarge with a brief explanation, I handed each one half of the papers. "Here, I can't make it. You'll have to tear the papers and wash them down with your own pee."

Killer knew that to be found with forged papers was a more dangerous offense than being a deserter, and so, audaciously, he used a passionate embrace to slip Mary Jayne his forged discharge papers, which she and the two Americans eventually managed to flush down the Turk (a primitive toilet that was just a hole in the ground). 

[p. 134] Then Killer turned to me. "You're staying. You won't let me down."
"But of course not. I'm staying. I'll see you through." [p. 135]

"It's so easy to be forgotten, you know."

"Not this time, Killer."

As he was being led away to his jail cell, Raymond turned and appealed to Mary Jayne:

“It’s so easy to be forgotten,” he said.

“I’m staying,” she replied. “I’ll see you through.”[9]

Raymond Couraud was lucky in Mary Jayne. She was incapable of letting anybody down.

[p. 205] I was a sucker for brave words and derring-do. Sullivan quotation is from Miriam Davenport Ebel, An Unsentimental Education.

And she was a “sucker for dangerous men and had a taste for derring-do.”

[p. 137] [The lawyer] warned me (…) that it would be months before Jacques would be brought to trial. (…) Lawyer: “But this case is not hopeless." (…) A very good military record. Croix de Guerre avec Palmes at Narvik.  (…) [p. 209] [The lawyer] had been quite encouraging, saying that the court might show leniency on account of Killer's extreme youth. This surprised me, as he had told Beaver, Sarge, and myself that he was twenty-eight. Well, youth is a relative thing, I thought (…).

The lawyer she hired to represent Raymond said it would be months before his case would come to trial. But there was hope. His military record was excellent—he’d won the Croix de Guerre avec Palmes in Norway—and his extreme youth would be taken into account. This puzzled her since Raymond had told her that he was twenty-eight, but she let it pass.

[p. 137] I promised that I would stay on until the end of the case. [p. 153] Then one day at the Pelikan she spoke of the increasing numbers of refugees who were turning up. She mentioned that the funds both in their pockets and in the coffers of the Emergency Rescue Committee were running low. I reminded her that I could turn over several thousand dollars, the money that did not go to our ill-fated escape boat.

Now that she had decided to stay on in Marseille, Mary Jayne was eager to help Miriam at the Centre Américain de Secours. Miriam had spoken of the increasing number of refugees turning up at the center; there wasn’t going to be enough money to help them all. Mary Jayne immediately offered the committee five thousand dollars, almost double the initial amount Fry had arrived with. It was the money she’d set aside to buy the boat for Raymond and his friends’ failed escape.

[p. 159] Miriam (…) kept urging Varian to meet me (…). I'm afraid Miriam in her enthusiasm, and perhaps in her innocence, painted an overly glowing picture of the expatriate playgirl, spending her summers in Biarritz or on the Riviera, skiing all winter, drifting around from Ritz to Ritz-Carlton, flying her own plane. (…) [p. 160] [H]e assured Miriam that I must be exactly the kind of American who surrounded herself with the most reactionary Europeans with fancy titles.
Sullivan footnote is for closing quotes from Miriam Davenport Ebel, An Unsentimental Education.

Mary Jayne waited to be introduced to Fry, and was a little puzzled when Miriam put her off. On her own Miriam had already approached him about bringing her friend on board. She had painted an enthusiastic portrait of Mary Jayne, with her private plane, Biarritz vacations, and fancy lifestyle. Fry dismissed her out of hand. He said he disliked her type. She was just a rich playgirl with a “passion for dukes” and “ultra-reactionary friends.”[10]

[p. 153] (…) I could be a regular contributor...."
I looked over at Miriam.
Silence.
(…) "Varian," she said at length, "says that people like you don't exist. He says people don't just barge in and offer a lot of money without a reason."

[p. 229] When she told Mary Jayne of Fry’s reaction, Miriam tried to be diplomatic: “Varian…says that people like you don’t exist. He says people don’t just barge in and offer a lot of money without a reason.”

[p. 153] (…) "Does he think I'm trying to infiltrate or something?"
(…). "Well, I'll be—! Miriam, I'll have to meet him."

“Well. I’ll be—!” was all Mary Jayne could say.[11] She wondered if Fry thought she was trying to infiltrate his group, perhaps for Vichy or for the American State Department.

[p. 160] One day (…) I heard Miriam say, "Look. There they are."  (…)  [S]he then presented me to Varian Fry and Albert Hermant.  "Let's all meet in about half an hour at Basso's for an apéritif," [Hirschman] said (…).

A chance encounter with Fry and his young German assistant Albert Hirschman on the Canebière led to the four of them having an aperitif at Basso’s in the Vieux Port.

[p. 162] We began talking like people who basically held the same values; we speculated on the fate of Édouard Daladier, Léon Blum, Paul Reynaud, and some of the other former leaders of the Third Republic who were being "administratively interned" (…); they were awaiting trial for having led France into the war—later, for having lost the war.

They talked in generalities about the war, how the former leaders of the French government like Édouard Daladier, Léon Blum, and Paul Reynaud were now “administratively interned” and were awaiting trial on charges of treason.

[p. 162]  Varian asked me if I had been in the famous exodus. I think it was my description and moral indictment of Madame Leduc that convinced him I was the right sort.

When Fry asked her if she had joined the exodus of millions who fled Paris before the Germans invaded the city, she described her flight to Bordeaux, ending with a contemptuous portrait of Madame Leduc.

Mary Jayne was obviously on the right side.

[p. 163] Soon he told me to come around to the new office (…).

Fry told her to come round to the office

[p. 206] (…) I am happy to say that it was my monetary contributions that made it possible for the Committee to branch out so quickly. (…) Hermant (…) had led me to little Boris Kourillo, the money changer. Later on, a great deal more money came from the United States and from Great Britain, and I just kept on contributing as much as I could.
Also adapted from Miriam Davenport Ebel, An Unsentimental Education.

This was a lucky break for a large number of refugees. Her ongoing, generous financial assistance enabled the committee to draw up a second list of lesser-known refugees desperate to leave France.  Miriam dubbed it “the Gold list.”

With the help of a black market money changer named Boris Kourillo, dollars drawn on her accounts in Great Britain and the United States were converted into a great deal of money.

[p. 166] Franzi (…) in no time had me almost convinced that I was a fully fledged interviewer.

She also joined the office as an interviewer.

This was a very daunting job. She was dealing with people who had reached dead end and were shattered, often holding on to their humanity only by threads. 

[p. 166] The first thing one had to find out was whether the individual had a usable passport or other travel document, and whether he (or she) had an overseas visa, preferably to the United States or Mexico. Did he have the means, the contacts, to get one on his own? Any overseas visa to anywhere would do in a pinch. In the absence of these papers and visas, the Committee would try to provide them. I was to ask discreetly if the documents were genuine or false. (…) Then I had to ask the applicant what he had done to oppose nazism, and what he had done that put him in danger of reprisals or extradition.

And of these desperately fearful people questions had to be asked about the numbers and types of documents they held; whether the documents were real or false; whether they had contacts overseas who might vouch for them financially; what kind of anti-Nazi activities they had engaged in to put themselves in danger. The political exiles told stories about the twilight zone in which they lived, hounded from one hideout to another, from one country to another.

[p. 177]  Then one day I was sent out to deliver messages.

Soon Mary Jayne also worked as a courier. 

[p. 177]  Somebody had noticed a little buzz and click when they picked up the receiver (…) [O]ur phone was being tapped. It would now be necessary to deliver some of the messages in person.

CAS had discovered that the police were tapping its phones and so messages had to be delivered [p. 230] in person.

[p. 177]  When my client was in strict [p. 178] hiding, (…) I had to dodge around a lot, to shake off a possible plainclothesman. It meant dashing across the street unexpectedly, ducking into doorways, suddenly hopping on and off streetcars, looking around to see if I was being followed.

Some clients were in strict hiding. To reach them, Mary Jayne had to dodge through buildings and abruptly change streetcars to shake off any pursuers.

[p. 175] [A police officer] let it be known that agents of the Gestapo, the infamous Kundst [sic] Kommission, had come over that morning and had nosed through his files looking for the whereabouts of certain persons, [p. 175] he was not sure whom. The commission was a branch of the Gestapo whose purpose was to gather information on the whereabouts of certain anti-Nazis, for future reference.

There was always a chance of being followed by a member of the Kundt Kommission, a commission that had been set up after the surrender of France to oversee article nineteen of the Armistice.  A branch of the Gestapo, they roamed freely in Marseille gathering information on anti-Nazi refugees.[12] 

[p. 202] [A prominent refugee couple] was brought to Marseille where he and his wife took up residence in a maison de passe. A maison de passe is a rooming house where you rent by the hour and bring your own girl.

Occasionally Mary Jayne’s excursions took her to a maison de passe, one of the rooming houses rented by the hour where a madame might hide refugees for a reasonable price and where the police had already been bribed to look the other way.

[p. 165] It sounded too important and ominous, as if I had the destiny of a human being in my hands.

Like the others, Mary Jayne often felt overwhelmed. She was holding the destiny of individuals in her hands.

Inevitably, on her say-so, some people would be saved, while others would be turned away.