The Collaborators
From the bestselling author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series, a superb novel of wartime passion, loyalty – and betrayalParis, 1945. In the aftermath of the French liberation, Janine Simonian stands accused of passing secret information to the Nazis.She is dragged from her cell before jeering crowds, to face a jury of former Resistance members who are out for her blood. Standing bravely in court, Janine pleads guilty to all charges.Why did Janine betray, not just her country, but her own husband? Why did so many French men and women collaborate with the Nazis, while others gave their lives in resistance?What follows is a story of conscience and sacrifice that portrays the impossible choice between personal and national loyalty during the Nazi occupation.
Читать The Collaborators онлайн беплатно
REGINALD HILL
THE COLLABORATORS
Copyright
Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1987
Copyright © Reginald Hill 1987
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007212064
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007290079 Version: 2015-09-16
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
PART TWO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART THREE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART FIVE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
PART SIX
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
PART SEVEN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART EIGHT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
By Reginald Hill
About the Publisher
Dedication
Car la collaboration, comme le suicide,
comme le crime, est un phenomène normal.
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Qu’est-ce qu’un collaborateur?
Chacun son Boche
Communist rallying cry,August 1944
Acknowledgements
For permission to reprint copyright material the author and publishers wish to thank the following: Éditions Gallimard, for quotations from the work of Louis Aragon and Jean-Paul Sartre; Les Éditions de Minuit, for two extracts from Paul Éluard’s collection Au rendez-vous allemand; and Macmillan, for a quotation from Vercors’ Le silence de la mer.
Prologue
March 1945
Sur mes refuges détruits Sur mes phares écroulés Sur les murs de mon ennui J’écris ton nom
Paul Éluard, Liberté
1
She dreamt of the children.
They were picnicking on the edge of a corn field, Pauli hiding from his sister, Céci giggling with delight as she crawled through the forest of green stalks. Now she too was out of sight, but her happy laughter and her brother’s encouraging cries drifted back to their mother, dozing in the warm sunshine.
Suddenly there was silence, and a shadow between her and the sun, and a shape leaning over her, and a hand shaking her shoulder.
She sat up crying, ‘Jean-Paul!’
‘On your feet, Kraut-cunt. You’ve got a visitor.’
It was the fat wardress with the walleye who pulled her upright off the palliasse. A man in a black, badly-cut suit was standing before her. Without hesitation or embarrassment she sank to her knees and stretched out her hands in supplication.
‘Please, sir, is there any news of my children? I beg you, tell me what has happened to my children!’
‘Shut up,’ said the wardress. ‘Here, put on this hat.’
‘Hat?’ She was used to cruelty but not to craziness. ‘What do I want with a hat? Is the magistrate bored with the sight of my head?’
‘Your examination’s over, woman. Haven’t you been told? She should have been told!’
He spoke with a bureaucratic irritation which had little to do with human sympathy. The wardress shrugged and said, ‘She’ll have been told. She pays little heed this one unless you mention her brats. Now, put on the hat like the man says. See, it’s like one of them Boche helmets, so it should suit you.’
She was holding an old cloche hat in dirty grey felt.
‘Why must I wear a hat? This is lunacy!’
‘Janine Simonian,’ said the man. ‘The examining magistrate has decided that your case must go for trial before the Court of Justice set up by the Provisional Government of the Republic. I am here to conduct you there. Put on the hat. It will hide your shame.’
Janine Simonian was still on her knees as if in prayer. Now she let her arms slowly fall and leaned forward till she rested on her hands like a caged beast.
‘My shame?’ she said. ‘Oh no. To hide yours, you mean!’
