My mother’s war – Bookanista

Driving 2cV back to Paris through the dark forests of the UAS, Lucy imagined the dialogue of her process:
“Have you ever been a Nazi?”
“Of course! I was a very happy Nazi.”
“You were really a Nazi?”
“Why not?”
“You know, you are the first person we have ever heard to admit it.”
Lucy imagined that the whole courtroom stared at her and burst into laughter. Saved by prison on the basis of honesty and loyalty.

–

Sometimes my mother would be buried with sadness after saying goodbye to her girl. Unable to see through her tears, she would pull on a grassy stretch on the road, turn off the engine and call her eyes. Everything was mixed in her head. It was so difficult to be a mother. It’s so difficult to continue. After a while, she gathered together, deepened her bag for a handkerchief, then moved around the coupe of the gloves, finding a piece of goat horse, which was useful during the war to filter the fuel from the German planes, eventually laying on the face to use the wigs. Then, chin down, fibers attached to her lips, she threw a headscarf around her son, captivated her on the neck of her neck, scraped some lipstick on her lips from the very bottom of the tube – the treasures in the coupe of the small car were obviously not, and they were not in the mirror of The rearview mirror. Finally, she reduced some more lipstick on her cheekbones and checked her face in the mirror for the last time. She was ready to leave. She removed the throttle, then listened to the engine’s resistance for a moment until he started with a cough. She maneuvers the car from the road and back to the sidewalk. It was the same Citroën 2cV – the French version of Volkswagen Beetle, “The Car of People”, ordered by Führer in 1938 – she was driving since the early 1950s. For Lucy, this was a mythical object, the court of all her dark aspirations. Animal vehicle: The only car that has ever driven. It was called in France the walnut shell, the nun car, DeudeucheS No other car would suit her. She paid so little attention to the rules of the road that only the sluggishness of the engine kept it safe.

When the night began to fall, it turned on the headlights. It was what Friedrich called “Witch Hour.” She leaned over the steering wheel and scanned the road. This reminded her of the eclipse. It would soon be black on the pitch, the road forward only by the pale yellow headlights of the car. She resumed her monologue, locked in her memories, on the threshold of madness.

It wasn’t as if she lacked support. There was her family, the inner circle, Gynaeeum, who held her like molluscs to a rock. They made up the frame of her life – though sometimes they felt like a mill around her neck. They had the merit of being there, like furniture, part of the decor, memory protectors. They had gone through the same experiences, shared this world with her, some of the happy few who knew him. She was the queen bee, and her hive was more or less under control. They knew each other so well.

She had her former laws, Friedrich’s family, the one of her first eternal, real husband. Lucy remained in contact with Friedrich’s sister throughout their lives, her faithful ally, with her proudly accepted and unwavering Nazi beliefs. When she was twenty-nine dressed in a dark suit, more like those worn during the occupation by women known as Souris Grises -Jr. French women who worked as secretaries for the German occupying army-she married a pale man, a little head in the clouds, so much weaker that he was almost as if he had already climbed to heaven. It was in 1950, six years after Friedrich’s death, and his sister, strictly, still wore, as if she were her brother’s widow. She continued to wear a torch, the true Nazi of the family, increasingly decreasing to everything else.

Not so long ago, mothers give their sons to the Fuhrer, but still Lucy was a little shocked by how much her daughter -in -law became.

Then there were other Lucy laws, from her marriage to Charles. They just generated unpaid levels of boredom. In addition to the children of their cousins, who have not yet happened – or have not become bourgeois, small and harmful, to be with them was an endless circle of empty chat and annoying anecdotes, stemmed from narrow provincial minds. Her authoritarian mother -in -law, with whom Lucy always turned to Madame, was unsettled by this daughter -in -law, who refused to worship the convention. Quick, effective, bordering on rude, Lucy was difficult to conceal his impatience to the destroyed way of thinking created by Catholic fanaticism. Even their anti -Semitism was pathetic. Without a true ideology. At least Lucy’s anti -Semitism was brave. Her manners horrified her husband’s family, though they politely delayed it to eccentricity. Oh, Lou-May …

No, she had no regret. On the contrary. If all the French were on the right, Germany would win the war. All you had to do was look at what prosperous country had happened once more. “

From time to time, over the years, Lucy looked back at his life. She had worn so many masks that at the same time helped her, and they were hindering, methodically erasing past lives when they were no longer appropriate for her current reality. But for decades, her life has followed a straight and narrow path, and she allowed herself from time to time the affair simply made life more bearable.

As for the horrors of the last war, well, They must have done something to deserve it, right? She hated the sinister expression “Profits of War.” Everyone knew that the apartment was that Des Pyramidi was free when she and Friedrich moved, but this was the choice of the tenant to move and he had the funds. How was Lucy’s fault? The couple was looking for a place to establish. It wasn’t as if she had posted a classified ad: “A couple looking to launch an apartment.” And when you think how hard she worked! It deserves an appropriate recovery. Their apartment on the spot Des Pyramids – appropriately called – and the one of the Quai de l’Archevêché – an address too religious for their secular family – distributed for her sister’s husband, and they were both in recognition of the services provided.

Lucy never was much interested in what she called “things”. “They are just things“She would say, referring to confiscated property, a term she used frequently. To justify herself, she is binding to a legal term,” in trust “, which means” a person appointed to a person in good faith. “Lucy loved the concept of conscientiously. It was not yet a law in France, but it would be. Uti posidetis jurisWhich, in her opinion, means something like “you possess what is already in your possession.” As for Lucy, it was always a matter of possession.

With extreme resourcefulness, she gave one person, took from another, returned, exchanged, sells, buy back, redirects and discarded as she enjoys “things”, her own, as well as those of others. Every time she arrives somewhere new, she will always look around to see what she can leave or negotiate with. It can also be clothing like an apartment. She has always renamed her newly acquired possessions, assuming that otherwise it would be possible to follow them back to their original owners.

No, she had no regret. On the contrary. If all the French were on the right, Germany would win the war. All you had to do was look at what prosperous country had happened once more. Friedrich was no longer there, but he would have returned. They had to remain unchanged for each other. They had done everything right. It was just a difficult period they had to go through. The Reich will be reborn in one form or another. Vichy will continue. It was just a dirty trick that the story played on them. Fortunately, there were many people who remained unbeaten and unbeaten. While Friedrich, with his usual touch of pompi, he once wrote to Lucy: “We will focus on the future, our conscience is clear and our heads behaved high, true to our conception of the world and this life.” It was now Lucy’s turn to turn to Friedrich. My honor is my faithfulness. VAE VICTISWoe to the defeated. The story is always written by the winners. And the loot goes to Victor.

The “things” were always completely simple. It was the people that complicated them.

from PropagandistTranslated by Natasha Lerer (Swift Press, £ 14.99)

–

Cécile Despraies is a specialist in German civilization and historian of the Nazi occupation of France. The author of several historical works on the occupation and Vichy regime, she was born in Paris in 1957. PropagandistHer first novel is based on the collaboration of her own family with German occupying forces and for his prolonged consequences. The French edition was on the list for the list for the Prix Goncourt in 2023.
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Natasha Lirer he has translated books from Georges Battle, Robert Right, Vivator Naolen, Chantal Thomas and Dalai Lama. Her joint conversion of Natalie Leger Barbara Lodian Won the Scott Moncriff Award for 2017
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