Read A Troubled Peace for Free Online

slice of coarse, brown bread and sat down next to him. He nodded his thanks to her. “What’s an ‘RMA,’ monsieur ?”
    The owner’s voice filled with disdain. “An RMA is a ‘resistant of the month of August.’ The RMAs collaborated with the Vichy, the puppet government Hitler set in France. Then, when the Allies approached and Paris rose up in rebellion, they suddenly changed their allegiance. They put on the Free French armband and followed General de Gaulle. How you say, ‘turncoat’?”
    Henry hesitated, spoon midair. The man had been so sad over FDR’s death that Henry had followed him to the kitchen without thinking. But hadn’t the gunman accused this man of being a collaborator? Henry lowered his spoon back into the bowl and looked down at the table. His appetite was suddenly gone. What if his host had turned over Resistants, the maquis, to the Gestapo, like whoever betrayed Pierre’s mother?
    The woman frowned and glanced up at her husband. “Il n’aime pas la bouillabaisse.”
    She looked so disappointed that Henry’s manners got the best of him. “Non, madame. C’est superb.”
    â€œAhhhhh. Vous parlez français?”
    â€œUn peu, monsieur, un petit peu.” A very little.
    The owner leaned up against the white stucco wall and folded his arms across his chest. His expression clouded. “So you understood what that filth said of me. Little is black and white, monsieur. The world is full of grays, in-betweens. Especially France right now. Yes, I fed the Nazis, les boches. I swallowed my hate and served the swine. That was so I heard things to pass on to the Resistance maquis. So I had money tofeed the Allied airmen I hid in my cellar—British, American, Canadian, Russian. All of them safe to the Pyrenees because of the ruse my wife and I kept.
    â€œBut after Marseille was won, we were arrested as collabos. I would have been shot except one of my comrades, a known maquisard , was in the next room, interrogating others. I recognized his voice through the wall. I shouted for him. He told them what I had done, what we had risked. We ran to where they held my wife. They were about to tar her beautiful face with a swastika.”
    The owner’s own face reddened. “They have made many such mistakes in their hurry for revenge. For some of us, the best cover for our Resistance work was to be friendly to the Germans.”
    It was this statement that made Henry believe the restaurateur. Madame Gaulloise had gathered money to buy Henry’s escape by gambling at a casino in the company of a Nazi official. The fat German had been completely infatuated with her, and she had used that. Henry could hear her silken voice: I play a high-society coquette to disarm my enemy and to keep myself a mystery. They think they know me for something I am not.
    Henry fought off the sickening image of the pork-sized Aryan interrogating the sophisticated woman who had arranged his trek to freedom.
    â€œMy ship captain told me that collaborators are tried incourt now,” said Henry. “Why don’t the police stop men like those guys who hassled you from falsely accusing people?”
    The owner snorted. “The purge is run by people desperate to prove their allegiance to Free France. The RMAs denounce fellow collaborators with the same joy they once turned over the maquis to the Gestapo. They go after easy targets—maids, cooks, servants, laundresses who worked for the Nazi occupiers to feed their children. These hungry workers were cowards, yes. But traitors? No. They did not help the Reich deport Jews or capture political prisoners. The simple people who cannot afford lawyers go to jail while businessmen who dined with Nazis and made millions of francs building things for them are left alone. Vichy officials—who enforced Hitler’s anti-Jew laws—are still judges, mayors. De Gaulle pardons many to keep the