"Thirty Days" - 1940
THIRTY DAYS
30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:16 PM.
The fashion in which they both grip their guns is intriguingly identical, down to the quirk of knuckles on the safeties, click, click, one and then the other.
"One of these isn't loaded," Italy says, apologetically, with a one-shouldered shrug.
France laughs, throwing his head back and leaning as nonchalant as he can against the sun-warmed brick wall.
"Are you entirely sure I cannot have a cigarette?"
---
30 September, 1940 A.D. 9:07 AM.
Italy's pistol goes off into the air.
The noise is flat and hard and, from half a meter away, exceedingly loud. France blinks, that automatic and senseless reaction of shutting off one's sight when one's hearing is assaulted, and thus misses Italy's agile dart forward and to his left. When he unscrews his eyes and shakes his head, clearing it, Italy has already wrapped gloved fingers around his wrist, and shortly after that Italy's knee takes up brief and unpleasant residence in his kidney. France drops to his knees in the gravel, which stings enough that he'll probably be washing tiny spots of blood out of his pantlegs later, and considers trying to escape.
The cool press of metal along the side of his chin is the slim barrel of that pistol, isn't it. Perhaps escape is not the best plan right this moment. France sighs, lets the tension drain out of his shoulders - it is actually very comfortable to not be actively fleeing anything - and holds up the hand that isn't in Italy's grip, empty.
"Good morning, Italy," he says. "Is this entirely necessary?"
Italy, the sentimental thing, hugs him around the shoulders. With the arm holding the gun, of course. It's a Luger. Which isn't unexpected, but is still amusing.
"Got you!" Italy says cheerfully.
"I've only been wandering around the Piedmont for five days," France tells him, which technically is four days longer than France expected to be wandering around the Piedmont, doesn’t anyone know how to take up a surrender these days, dieu. They knew well enough in the nineteenth century, which was the last time Prussia was in Paris -
Actually, France would prefer not to think about Paris just now.
"I had to make sure that Germany would know where we are," Italy is explaining, "and you're pretty good at hiding or anyway there's a lot of mountains and we stopped in Turin first. To see the factories."
Italy is also helping him up, and keeping that Luger precisely nestled at the small of his back at the same time. The precision reminds France of Germany, but Italy is smiling and babbling as always, and Germany would never bounce to his feet like this, or take his prisoner's hand in a pretty white leather glove as if they were off to wander through a pastoral.
It's a bit late in the year for pastorals, France thinks. Not enough lambs in September.
"And I took Germany to the Cathedral of San Giovanni and showed him all the relics and the paintings, and he really liked them, so that was nice. I'm sorry it took so long!"
"I'm not," says France. Italy ignores him. France shrugs, disregards the fractional slide of metal down his spine, tilts his face up to where the thin morning sun is burning off the clouds. It is going to be very hot later, he suspects.
"Where to, then?" he asks. It really is nice not to be running.
"Germany's going to meet us by the river," Italy tells him, smiling so very brightly.
Almost, France shivers.
-
1 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.
The other end of the line buzzes somewhere in Moscow, tinny rings interspersed with the rapid hissing of overstretched and overstressed telephone cables. France waits the requisite six rings, and then two more for good measure, before he slams the phone back down into its cradle. The buzzing stays inside his head, echoes and rattles around. Panzer tanks running over the wires in Belgium, he thinks, and grits his teeth into an approximation of a smile.
Some ally Russia is! All that talk about fellow-feeling and comradery, thrown neatly away the moment Russia's attention is caught by something so small as a full-scale invasion. Such an ungrateful, easily distracted creature, dear Russia, and perhaps France should have known better than to expect anything concrete from him, he remembers the seventeenth century and the way Russia has always batted at baubles and forgotten to send anniversary presents, but surely he could answer his God-damned phone -- hasn't France taught him that much of basic courtesy -- solidarity in the face of impudence -- fraternite --
Dieu, but he has a headache. Also, someone is knocking at the door of his office.
"Oh, come in already," he says, "it’s not as if I can stop you."
His visitor is General Gamelin, the poor man, travel-stained and gaunter than he should be, which describes them all, this war, the things this war is doing to the Continent, ah. He was never so crass with it, when it was his Empire spreading out on eagle's wings across all of Europe. Different tastes, he supposes. Nothing to be done about it except to prevent Prussia from getting airs like this again any time soon - oh, Gamelin is still waiting. France waves him to a chair, which he folds into like a tall accordion.
"Shall I ask about the Maginot Line," France inquires of him, "or do you have some sort of pleasant news for me?"
Gamelin shakes his head. His mouth purses and opens, wordless, like the face of a grotesque or a man horrified by some secret he dares not say. France goes over to him with a sigh - the room spins distractingly when he does, pounding in time with his head - sinks to one knee and catches lightly at his General's hand, holding the fingers in his own while he smiles up at him.
"If you cannot discuss the fate of your Nation with your Nation, cher, with whom could you? I have already forgiven you for whatever failures you imagine are your responsibility. The line?"
"-holds," Gamelin says, even while he looks anywhere but his enclosed hand. France's heart, traitorous thing, leaps in his chest. "But it will be broken before tomorrow evening. The German forces are simply too quick, too strong - "
Perhaps France should be used, by now, to the way hope melts, over-exposed like a photograph, and renders itself entirely meaningless.
"Well," he says, brightly. "Where is the strategic reserve, then?"
"Aucune," says Gamelin. There is none.
France lets go of Gamelin's fingers so that he can cup his face in his hands while he laughs, harsh convulsions of diaphragm and throat that hurt, hurt enough that the pain is just as amusing as the entire lack of anything standing between Germany and Paris, and really, this is not how this war was supposed to proceed. Gamelin is staring at him, France is sure, so he takes his hands away and lets the laughter lift him to his feet and he is certain that his teeth are ground together tight enough to chip when he grins and stares down at the General's bowed head.
"How do you plan to organize the counter-attack," he asks, for formality's sake - he knows better, he's known better from the moment Gamelin knocked on the door, of course he has! "Perhaps the left flank? Or would you prefer the right?"
"… inferiority of numbers," says Gamelin.
This, after France had mobilized almost a third of all his able-bodied young men, nearly six million armed, this! This, and the piles of the dead in their foxholes in Belgium, rotting in the summer heat, this and the thin frames of human bones crushed under the treads of those same Panzer-tanks that are, surely, the thing that is disrupting the phone lines.
"Inferiority of method," Gamelin goes on, "and inferiority of equipment."
"Yes," France tells him, all courtesy. "Yes, I realize."
Is it, after all, his own failure?
Ah, but to be otherwise than what he is would have been to surrender to Germany all the way back last October, when he had sent that terribly insulting offer of peace-before-the-fact. As if France would simply capitulate. Even now, there will be no simply about it. He gives Gamelin his orders. Gamelin doesn't argue, which France regrets, just a little, and his face reminds France of mud and trenches and the way you actually can learn to sleep through artillery fire, if you have long enough to try.
Then he goes outside. There are still garden cafes in Paris. There will always be garden cafes in Paris along the Champs d'Elysees, as long as there is the Arc d'Triumph to look at from them, and they still serve milk with their coffee, even if France takes his black. Really, it is the least he can do, out of respect for everything else that is rationed and scarce. The late-summer light is warm on the back of his neck, and black coffee tastes decadently bitter, an indulgence of austerity.
By now, on his command, they are burning the government archives in the National Assembly.
France imagines it, his eyes half-lidded against the sun: the careful progression through basements and back rooms and offices, each classified folder lifted from its place and put, ceremoniously, to the extinguishing flame. If Germany wants to have Paris, he can very well roll his tanks down this street, past this café, even, but he will have ashes for his trouble. There will be nothing left of France, or of his government, for Germany to take; they will have gone off to Bordeaux, perhaps. Or Varennes, if the mood takes him to play the Antoinette.
Germany will have to find something else in France's city to amuse himself with. Possibly he will go to a museum. The acculturation surely wouldn't hurt.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 9:42 AM.
The river in question is the river Po. Italy informs him of this, as if he is a provincial Englishman on the sightseeing portion of the Grand Tour. France could bother to be insulted, but it seems slightly beside the point. The remains of some aristocratic country villa grow out of the near bank, along with the knee-high yellowing grasses and low, twisted trees, the sort of things that sip at the water and give up olives, apricots, other untended delicacies.
Italy's houses have always had this propensity to turn into beautiful ruins. Or else he simply keeps using Rome's, France isn't entirely sure.
"Germany knows where to meet you?" he asks, rather than letting Italy go on with the agricultural tour.
Italy looks concerned for a moment, his forehead creasing with a vertical line. France would tell him that really, he isn't planning on trying to escape before Germany can get here. After all, there isn't anywhere left to go, unless he could somehow follow the river across to the Adriatic and then down towards the Mediterranean and Africa - not that that sea isn't full of Fascists, too. Change out the flags, doesn't change a thing.
-- actually, Italy isn't pointing the Luger at the small of his back at the moment --
-- because he's shooting it into the air. That is still an exceptionally loud sound.
"Now he does!" Italy says cheerfully. "That's a signal. Won't you come inside, France?"
France does. There are even chairs. Three of them.
Italy smiles when he sits down.
-
9 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.
Mathematics, France decides whilst flipping through the mission reports from the Armee de l'Air, is a depressing discipline.
Five days, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen missions, five hundred and eighteen bomber sorties, and one thousand two hundred and seventy-four of his aviators shot out of the sky, spiraling down in plumes of smoke that France can sometimes see, distantly, out his office windows to the east. Whatever it is that Germany has done to, or with, his Luftwaffe, it seems to have rendered all opposition from the air entirely meaningless.
There is a very good word for what has just happened to his aerial corps, France thinks. Decimation. It has just the right air of punitive destruction. And really, what has he ever done to Germany to deserve this?
Well.
But even all of that was nothing that Prussia and England and all the rest hadn't done to France himself, once! This wholesale destruction is a bit much, in terms of retribution -- but then Germany seems to have an affinity for nihilists and all manner of similar extremity, if his philosophers are anything to go by.
France still has a headache. And the Goddamned Luftwaffe are going to be bombing Paris next, if his current luck holds. Ah, and now he cannot accuse Germany of unreasonable and outré nihilism, unless he wishes to accord himself the same.
He contemplates, along with the vicissitudes of mathematics, the phone. Russia is entirely a lost cause, and besides, France is quite angry with him at the moment. That leaves - dieu, that leaves America. France is not calling America. America has never had the slightest idea of how to behave on the Continent. England's fault, of course, he was never properly taught --
Oh, that will do! England. He dials.
"Who's calling?"
England is as brusque and impolite as ever. It is quite nearly refreshing. "France. Bonjour, England, I see that your phone manners have deteriorated to even lower levels than usual."
"You've interrupted something," England says, and sighs, slow, languorous. Something muffles the receiver, and there are shuffling footsteps. France rolls his eyes. Really, and people accuse him of spending an inordinate amount of time in bed? "And now that you have," England goes on, at length, "you'll tell me why."
"It is the highest joy and entire purpose of my evening to inconvenience you," France tells him. "I cannot imagine what takes up so much of your time."
"And here I thought the vagaries of human activity were the subject of your every thought."
France props his elbows on his desk, shuts his eyes, and grins at nothing at all. "Oh, but they are -- it is merely that I am continuously surprised that you have found someone willing enough to indulge your perversity as well as your general ineptitude, and so often."
"Only you, France, would call me about my sex life when the sky is falling."
He startles himself by laughing, but it is actually funny. Isn't it? England doesn't join in - not that he thought he would have. "I don't imagine that aircraft engines careening out of the clouds are terribly conductive to even your sex life, no."
"Yes, but it's not falling here."
Of course it isn't. If France opens his eyes he can see if yet another faint spiral of smoke is interrupting the Parisian skyline - "Doubtlessly you're somewhere in the Pacific again, safely removed from all of this."
"You called me at home, France," England says, annoyed. "Or have you forgotten? A relapse of the old French crowns, perhaps?"
France ignores that. "Oh, close enough to watch," he purrs into the receiver, and imagines England's predictable twitch. "And here I thought you'd be enjoying the opportunity to test out your Royal Air Force."
"And what, save you?"
Actually, that would be - nice.
"Or help Germany get on with it, one or the other." He pauses. Sighs, opens his eyes again. Wall, window, blue - unmarred! - late-afternoon sky. "Don't you think he'll get bored when he's done with me?"
"Are you admitting defeat? My god, it's historical."
"Alert your presses," France snaps. "And I am not, I am admitting German air supremacy and nothing more."
"Well then, it's all right, if you want him to have the Continent, he can have the Continent."
Is it possible that England is incapable of getting the point? "I do not want anything of the kind, you insufferable creature, I do not know why I've called you."
"Because you want something of me."
Almost, France hangs up the phone. The silence on the line buzzes, hums. France isn't entirely sure he truly desires to know how long he could stay quiet before England would say anything.
"-- are you actually planning on sitting out the entire war?"
"No, I plan on profiting off of it," England replies, as if it were obvious. "I think you'll agree that's a sensible course of action granted what happened after the last one."
"Do explain how Germany - 'having the Continent', was that how you put it? -- profits you. I'm terribly curious."
"He's got no designs on the sea, for one--and even fewer across the ocean. And unlike you, he knows how to manage an economy."
Dieu, that again? "That mess was entirely not my fault," France says, indignant. "Please, do not attempt to pin your complete inability to educate America on matters of finance on me."
"You're not helping yourself by blaming me," England retorts, and France would really like to get his hands around his scrawny, unhelpful, self-involved neck.
"Would you prefer obsequious flattery?" he lilts. And then, considering he cannot reach through the phone and across the Channel - "Or do you get enough of that already?"
"It," England says, "and you."
Perhaps if France cared, that would have stung. But it is England with whom he is talking. "Of course. But not enough of Germany and Prussia, yet. You will, I'm sure."
"France." England quite nearly sounds - resigned. France waits, because of that. There are more footsteps on the other end of the line, the hiss of a whisper - has Japan been standing - no, he would be kneeling, there, the entire time, shameless, England, really - the soft click of a door shutting. And should he be pleased that England is willing to speak to him alone?
"France, I am bound," England says, at length. "I am in an alliance that has persisted close to half a century, and it stipulates if I find myself at war with more than one power that Japan is obligated to follow. Germany has Italy. If I aid you, I pull Japan in as well."
"I am not a fool, England." He's shut his eyes again. It is easier to conjure up allies in the dark. "I am, in fact, quite conscious of the consequences of what I am proposing -- non. Asking, of you."
England is silent. France hears him breathe, still, steady, even.
France can wait.
"He will side with them, you know."
Can bargains like these only be made without light? "-- will you?"
England doesn't answer him. The buzz of silence on the line will get into France's bones, resonate there.
"I'm ordering the remainder of the Armee de l'Air to North Africa," he says. "If Germany wants the Continent, he'll have to claim it on the ground. Good, old-fashioned trench warfare." He opens his eyes. Nothing in the sky, still, still! "Do call me if you decide, one way or the other."
He has to shake the circulation back into his fingers when he's hung up the phone, unbend them from how tight they've gripped.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 11:21 AM.
Wistfully, Italy cups his chin in his hand and braces his elbow on the table between them, next to the gun. "Remember when I asked you if it would be okay if I had Tunisia for a while?" he says. "I really wish you'd have said yes. 'cause now there's going to have to be an invasion there, too. Uhm. More of one."
France sighs and redrapes himself so he can lean on the arm of his chair and gesture in the vague direction of Tunisia with the other. It is possible, now that he is in Italy, that French Africa is all of France. Perhaps he should tell Italy that, for all that it might encourage him. "I wasn't about to hand you my colonies because you wanted them," he says, instead. "Go ahead, invade. You and Germany will have to run out of supplies eventually."
Italy is incapable of looking ashamed of himself. "Oh, I wouldn't bother Germany with it. He's so busy, and I'm really trying to be helpful and useful and - do you think I've been helpful? I think so. I found you, Germany's really going to like that!"
"Found me, invaded me, added innumerable insults to unquantifiable injury, yes -"
"Well, Germany said that you were headed this way and I thought -"
"-that you'd help."
"Well, you could have surrendered to Germany," Italy says, as if that settles the matter. "He asked. We both asked."
This recent blackshirt affectation of Italy's, it makes him look even younger than usual, all slim shoulders and boyish, pretty features. He probably knows just what the contrast looks like, too. Appetizing and unavailable, marked out for some crueler goddess than Aphrodite - if such a creature is possible, in either myth or its latter-day prose antecedents.
"Your asking makes absolutely no difference to me," France says.
Now Italy has managed to be either insulted or offended - most likely the latter, considering he says, "I don't see why not," and gets up. The gun goes with him - my, but Germany has taught him something after all - all the way over to what turns out to be a victrola on the sideboard.
"Are you really in the habit," France asks him while he shuffles a record out of its sleeve and nestles it onto the turntable, still only three-quarters-turned away from where France sits, that Luger trained expertly somewhere between his throat and his knees, "of believing you can have whatsoever you desire because you desire it?"
The needle descends, spins hissing around the outermost india-rubber tracks. Italy's face is wide open, an artist's rendition of innocence.
"I think that if someone really wants something, something important, then he should do whatever he has to do to get it," he says.
If not for the way that Italy says it , as if he's never been denied, by the world or God or pure insufficiency, which are almost the same thing, really - well, France would have to agree. The music has started. It takes France a moment to recognize it; it's not one of his.
Of course it isn't. Italy wouldn't -
Ah. The Eroica. Beethoven. Maybe he would.
"Sentiment, Italy?"
Italy blinks, comes back to the table. "No? Sentiment about what?"
"Frivolity, then."
"Music isn't frivolous! Music is beautiful! Beethoven's music too."
"-perversity, then, cher, that's what's left if I stop according you the other two."
Italy's mouth comes open to retaliate - impossible creature - and then his expression dissolves completely, and he says, "Germany!" and bounces to his feet and charges across the room. France turns, looks behind him.
They are hugging, or at least Italy has one arm wrapped enthusiastically around Germany's middle and his face buried in his chest. His other arm is still pointing the gun, unerringly, at France. Germany shrugs, as if to apologize for Italy's behavior.
France would really prefer he apologized for his own. But one does not always get what one wants.
-
11 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.
Mon cher Russia, France writes, I can only hope that what occupies you so very well on the Eastern Front will be a passing encumbrance and nothing more. It would be a shame for you to have to wait and pray for winter to absolve you of paying attention to whatever it is Prussia insists on attempting. There are other matters to occupy you, if you would look just over Prussia's shoulder and notice what his brother is doing in the West -
Enough of this. I shall ask nicely. I am sure you remember that I am capable of doing so, as the pleasantness between us has so often resulted from politesse and affection, don't you think? I certainly recall some such moments with entirely pleasurable intensity. For the sake of our friendship, Russia, then - do finish with Prussia with some haste and send me a battalion or nine of your comrades and soldiers. I have a great many Germans for them to glut themselves on. Better yet, come yourself, while I still possess a flat in Paris to entertain you in --
He cuts the letter off when the young soldier delivers him this morning's intelligence from the front. This is quite like being an Antoinette, actually - the only news anyone brings him is bad.
The hour is civilized, a perfectly reasonable eleven in the morning. France has had coffee and bread and cheese, and thus he cannot, by reason of all these things, blame lack of sleep or food or caffeine for the vividness with which he can imagine what is about to happen to Cambrai.
It has a perverse circularity. There has been a Battle of Cambrai, a surfeit of Battles of Cambrai, for that matter, considering that by the time the second one was finished in the spring of 1918 there really wasn't much left of Cambrai to have a battle over. Trenches and tanks. France remembers; France remembers exquisitely, especially the mud and the shades it turns when liberally mixed with blood and shards of exploded brick. Perhaps Germany is the one who has forgotten.
The German line, the Panzer Corps, is pushing west-northwest, his intelligence says. It is prepared to crush Cambrai just as it has crushed Vervins and Sain-Quentin and Perrone, all in the last day.
Blitzkreig. All of Germany's language is as deliberate as he is.
France picks up the pen, holds it over the letter. It doesn't drip ink. Modern contrivance, that, so convenient.
I would very much like to hear from you, cher, even if it is just a brief note to reassure me that you are not thrown in some oubliette of Prussia's.
Yours, as ever --
What, exactly, is the point of allowing it to happen again?
He calls for that same attaché, and folds up the letter while he waits. It is sealed and signed by the time the young man dances attendance for him, all military perfection, as if the cleanliness of his uniform and his stance is sufficient to make up for the fact that there is only one of him, and France isn't sure why he's been spared from the front this long, regardless.
"Abandon Cambrai," he says, smiling and handing the envelope over. "Pull back. Reconvene from -" ah, the things he still has the will to say! - "a position of strength."
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 12:01 PM.
They are all three of them around the table, as if they were having a meeting of the League of Nations or some similar pretense of civil behavior. Germany also has a Luger, appropriately enough, and after he had laid it down on the smooth wood - threat or simply so he didn't have to sit with the thing poking into his hip, France really couldn't care less - Italy had appropriated it.
Now Italy is playing with the guns, opening the chambers and arranging the bullets in little patterns and piles. He spins them in time with the third movement of the symphony. There are only four. France counts shots, in his head, and then smiles at Germany.
"Whatever happened to your ammunition?" he says. "Spent it all shooting partisans on the way?"
Germany shrugs. There is a clean, spare eloquence to him that France is really becoming quite tired of. "I'll get more," he says.
"Not," says France, propping his elbow on the table, "from me." His fingertips brush his temple, drift outward to encompass the room, the Piedmont beyond it, and he finds his smile has shaded into a grin. There is a lightness to it all that he thinks he will enjoy, while it lasts. "You've already had all you can get."
Germany regards him, measured. "I don't see why the factories in Creusot would stop producing munitions now. Or in any other place."
"Ah, but Creusot is French."
It is actually quite chilling when Germany smiles, mostly because it is far closer to a suggestion than an expression, something more rooted in the eyes than in the lips. "Creusot lies within the borders of the Third Reich."
"So much semantics, Germany. I could just as easily say that the Confederation of the Rhine was French in 1806, and I think we both agree that Prussia would have my head for that."
"Oh yes," Italy says. "Prussia wouldn't think that was true at all!" He spins one of the guns around itself, keeps it spinning with careful touches of his fingertips. "Prussia is very proud of things Prussia makes." The look he gives Germany quite nearly causes France to feel a certain amused fondness - it is so blatant, so adoring, so absolutely fixated, so pleased to have found a way to compliment his object of affection without truly doing so. And Italy insisted on a lack of sentiment!
He wonders if Germany knows, or how well Germany knows.
"The situation is somewhat different," Germany begins. His hands are folded on the table, still in every way Italy's are not.
France interrupts, leans closer, leans in. "Oh, is it, cher? Are you so certain of my people's hospitality?" He looks at Germany's almost-expression again, this time through the scrim of his eyelashes. "Or of mine?"
"I am not sure what hospitality has to do with it, France. They are my people as much as they are yours."
Italy drops one of the bullets. It pings on the floor, glimmers when he bends to pick it up, ceases to do so when he places it back inside the chamber of one gun or the other. The noise of the magazine sliding home is like the click of his teeth together when he smiles, wide.
"It has everything to do with it," France begins, before Italy cuts him off.
"Germany is being polite," he says. "You're in my house, now, France, so it's my hospitality that matters."
-- ah. Whether or not Germany knows, Italy knows France does, now. He turns to him, then, mirrors and matches the dazzle of that smile.
"Oh, then, how do you treat your guests, Italy?"
"Guests are different than prisoners of war," says Italy. "Isn't that right?"
-
14 September, 1940 A.D. Orleans.
Orleans is not Paris, nor could it ever be.
However, unlike Paris Orleans does not at the moment contain any Germans. This fact is providing France with a certain amount of appealing gloss to spread on every edifice and with which to adorn every street. He can still walk here, for a few more hours, at least, disturb the cobblestones with something other than the treads of tanks - really, this entire expedition is quite like a pilgrimage, an affectation out from before everyone bothered to become so very enlightened. All of his government dispersed and heading south, carrying only the most necessary relics and reminders with them - guns, grenades, something to sing, quietly, so as not to be overheard by German troops.
Turning the streetcorner, France trails his fingertips against the plaster and stucco and marble of each house. He has been singing, for lack of Germans - for lack of Germans, and for lack of good intelligence, and for lack of all sorts of things he wishes he had. Which include, lately, the plaisir d'amour of this song, however amusing the melody --
There had been no attack at Cambrai, of course. There was never going to have been an attack at Cambrai. It was a feint, a gesture, something simple and obvious which he should have seen through - third chorus! Minor key! -- chagrin d'amour he has, or at least chagrin, Cambrai was precisely the sort of trick Prussia adores, and now -
Well, now Cambrai is full of Germans, unopposed.
At least there was opposition in Paris. Opposition, occupation. Germany is there now, Germany and Germany's boss, that rhetorical martinet of his. France does hope they are enjoying the Seine. It is too much to hope for that they will enjoy it so much that they will stay, stop pushing south.
He considers how long he will be able to stay in Orleans. Another half a day? The government is already gone ahead. It is really very funny, this entire mess. But Paris has been occupied before. Paris will be occupied again.
France can wait for the mail, in Orleans or Nevers or even Lyon. If he must.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 1:38 PM.
"-I thought what deGaulle did was really brave," Italy is saying. "Maybe not so smart, but really brave. Your people love you a lot, France!"
France considers the distinct possibility that he may, in fact, be in Hell.
"Yes," he says, "yes, they do." Whatever Hell ordained for him would come with this sort of conversation. It could be an interrogation if Germany was leading it. Germany is not.
"It's too bad it didn't work," says Italy.
"It couldn't have worked," Germany adds, meditative. "Not in a permanent fashion. Your Fourth Armored Division did not have enough men, or any air support. Even so, I admire his attempt."
Italy nods, shuffles the two Lugers back and forth without looking at either of them. "It was a good try. And he was right at the front, too. That's the brave part, not hiding behind anyone else just because you can order them to go first."
France cannot keep the wince off his face.
"It was like a painting," Italy goes on. "Germany told me all about it, the charge and the tanks - you really didn't have enough tanks, France! - and what the explosions looked like."
"He attempted to head north, afterward," Germany says, as if doing France a favor by telling him. "I think he meant to cross the Channel."
"Meant to," France says. Leadingly. Leadingly, ah, he is damned, whether or not this is Hell yet. To want to hear.
"Some actions are essentially futile," Germany says.
His head is too heavy. He puts it in his hands, stares down at the table, and does not care if his voice shakes when he says, "Oh, yes, some actions are. But was it art, how he died? Italy, was it beautiful enough?" When he looks up they are both watching him. "Did you care, let us not ask Germany if he cared -"
Germany interrupts him. "Why would I not care?"
France grins. "What's another death on your hands? Surely you aren't worried about the state of your soul."
"-we go to church!" Italy protests. As if that mattered. It likely does, to Italy, if he took Germany to San Giovanni and made him gawk at the Shroud of Turin.
"Of course you do," he says. "And give confession on your knees, too. Hm, Germany?"
Germany is cold. "This is not about God."
"Naturally not," France tells him, laughing. "God surely would have noticed this many sparrows shot down with artillery, if it was about Him. "
-
22 September, 1940 A.D. Compiegne.
France recognizes the railway car.
It is the same railway car in which the Armistice of 1918 was signed. He was there. He would know. To be more precise, he was here, and now he is here again. Germany, his boss, and the delegates of the French Second Army Group are all inside that railway car, hearing some kind of preamble about the terms of surrender.
"What did you do, go dig it out of a museum?" he says to Prussia, who is standing next to him, hands on his hips, the most outrageously casual parade rest France has ever witnessed.
"Actually, yeah. We did," says Prussia. "Not my idea. My little brother's boss, he came up with it. He gets fixated on some shit, that one. Not so hard, though, it was just a couple blocks away."
"Ha. And here I thought I'd have to accuse you of developing a sense of irony."
Prussia laughs. "C'mon, France, even you have to think it's funny, signing the armistice right where you made us sign it?"
"It isn't funny so much as it is blatant," France begins, because truly, he cannot just stand here and watch this surrender and allow Prussia to enjoy himself - Prussia has his hand fisted in France's collar, twisting, tight enough that France chokes aloud and almost doubles over. The white of Prussia's hair gleams over his uniform, makes the silver SS-pins at his throat dull in comparison.
"Shut up with the aesthetics," he grins. "You don't get to decide, not this time."
-- the problem is that's true. France knees Prussia in the stomach and shoves him off, regardless. Prussia pushes back, hard, harder than France was prepared for, and the packed earth hurts when he lands on it. Prussia's still standing, watching him with one eyebrow arched.
"Yes," France says, spits, getting to his feet. "But I don't have to watch it, cher." He expects Prussia to stop him when he turns to leave. He doesn't bother. Perhaps France should be insulted.
"No, you don't," Prussia calls. "But just because you're not staying to see doesn't mean you're not surrendering!"
Now that, France thinks, walking south. That is funny as well as true.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:09 PM.
France has lost track of which gun Italy has loaded up with bullets. For that matter, he isn't exactly sure which gun belongs to which Nation at the moment. They look precisely the same between Italy's hands, the slim barrels gleaming in the afternoon sun that comes slanting in through the windows.
"What I continue to fail to understand," he says to Germany, who is watching the guns as well, "is why an armistice wasn't enough for you."
Germany shakes his head. It's not dismissive, exactly. "An armistice is a declaration of my military superiority over yours. That was never the point."
Five hours in this little room is enough, France thinks, to drive any man or nation mad. "What was the point, then?" he asks, and then repeats himself when Germany doesn't answer fast enough. "What was the point of chasing me across every place on my land that I have ever loved, and driving me out of each of them in turn -- has Prussia really made you that much of a sadist, cher, I expected better from you both, and especially from you, Italy, I -"
He breathes. This sort of outburst is - unsuitable, and entirely useless, unless he is planning on crawling on his belly. Which he is not.
"The point is," Germany says, "a demonstration of the superiority of my people, over yours."
Chills, France notices. Up his spine. Down his hands.
Italy rolls his shoulders back, stretches so that his shoulderblades arc against the blackshirt. "Germany," he says, "I think we should go outside now."
Germany's smile, for Italy, is an actual expression. How - sentimental.
"Yes," he says, and holds out a hand. Italy puts one of the guns in it. Then both barrels rotate, turn, transfix France in their sights. France nods, braces his palms on the table to stand.
"I was wondering when you two were going to get on with this," he says.
Italy laughs. "Didn't you have a good time, France? I did! I like talking to you."
France walks between them all the way out to the courtyard behind Italy's house, a rambling, vine-encrusted thing encircleted by a brick wall. It should be marble, France notes, marble would match the architectural conceit far better, remind him of Rome and all the past glories of the mortal age. Architecture is for memory, after all - he opens his mouth to tell Italy so, and then closes it again. The gunbarrels are black eyes, watching him.
"Over there," Germany says, gesturing. France backs up. Farther. Until his shoulders touch the sunwarmed bricks.
"Dieu," he says, realizing what the play of this is going to be, "you're supposed to provide a last cigarette, first."
Italy steps into line with Germany. They raise the guns, together.
-
25 September, 1940 A.D. Genable.
On the road east out of Genable, it is morning, and grey, the sort of weather that does not care about the despair of men or Nations, having quite enough of its own. Furthermore, there is a small child who is pressing a fraying rope into France's hand. The other end of the rope is attached to a dog lying on its side in the dampening dust.
"Can you watch my dog, he won't get up," says the child.
"-no, actually, I need to be leaving - " France protests, but the child, who is grubby and skinny and apparently terrified enough of either his mother or the advancing German line on the other side of town to run off without further conversation, does just that. France remains. With the dog.
Which, now that he bothers to look at it more closely, is dead.
That explains why it won't get up.
Germany's face, this morning, across the long green stretch of battlefield no one had bothered to bloody just yet, had been so perfectly expressionless. France would say dispassionate, but that would be an unjust sort of lie, wouldn't it? Germany is exceptionally passionate about chasing France across every last kilometer of what, until three days ago, had been his land. For the past millennium, his. Doubtlessly, back in his little castle in Bavaria, Prussia is laughing his bleached-white ass off.
Walking through Genable, France can imagine his steps unmarking the earth, erasing every trace of where he has been. If that's true, everything north of the Rhone is empty now - but nevertheless his people have persisted in greeting him. Everywhere. Oh, but they are French. Hope, hopelessness. The same. And he loves them, always -
-- of course, none of that meant there was any mail in Genable either. He had thought of calling England, but the phone lines were all dead. And what would he say? Angleterre, I am running out of cities without Germans in them?
This isn't even a farce. First of all, in a farce, the dog would be alive.
Possibly he should drop the rope.
---
30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:17 PM.
Germany shakes his head. "I said before. I don't have any cigarettes." He is terribly serious. It is a shame. Doubtlessly Italy thinks so, too, the composition for a firing squad is all skewed without the appropriate accoutrements first - unless the point is a sort of purity of brutality, the prisoner denied even the bare appearance of civility. There are films, like that, or at least there were, in Paris -- Germany looks the part. Italy does not.
If the purpose of all of this theater is to terrify France, ah, then, he'll be terrified. It is somewhat elegant for one of Prussia's schemes, but Prussia has his own perverse sense of artistry, Germany himself is proof of that, all clean violence and reassembled drive. France can be frightened under their guns, such a thing is easy, simple, he can cringe and simper and even beg, he has done and will do worse, and for better causes than this --
"Ready?" Italy asks.
Dieu, always --
-- that gun is too loud, whichever it is --
Oh.
Oh, it is all merely noise.
-
---
-
Much of Germany's 1940 blitzkrieg campaign, which canonically took place between May and June of 1940, has been here condensed and relocated to the month of September of that same year. This change results from England's altered position in the war. For the same reason, the French government-in-exile was not able to escape to Britain. Perhaps Italy was not the best second choice.
General Gamelin, whose conversation with France was once a conversation with Churchill, and Brigadier General de Gaulle, who led the Free French in a universe where the Free French existed.
The first battle of Cambrai.
The Erioca Symphony and Plaisir d'Amour.
The Armistice with France.
One of those guns wasn't loaded.
30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:16 PM.
The fashion in which they both grip their guns is intriguingly identical, down to the quirk of knuckles on the safeties, click, click, one and then the other.
"One of these isn't loaded," Italy says, apologetically, with a one-shouldered shrug.
France laughs, throwing his head back and leaning as nonchalant as he can against the sun-warmed brick wall.
"Are you entirely sure I cannot have a cigarette?"
---
30 September, 1940 A.D. 9:07 AM.
Italy's pistol goes off into the air.
The noise is flat and hard and, from half a meter away, exceedingly loud. France blinks, that automatic and senseless reaction of shutting off one's sight when one's hearing is assaulted, and thus misses Italy's agile dart forward and to his left. When he unscrews his eyes and shakes his head, clearing it, Italy has already wrapped gloved fingers around his wrist, and shortly after that Italy's knee takes up brief and unpleasant residence in his kidney. France drops to his knees in the gravel, which stings enough that he'll probably be washing tiny spots of blood out of his pantlegs later, and considers trying to escape.
The cool press of metal along the side of his chin is the slim barrel of that pistol, isn't it. Perhaps escape is not the best plan right this moment. France sighs, lets the tension drain out of his shoulders - it is actually very comfortable to not be actively fleeing anything - and holds up the hand that isn't in Italy's grip, empty.
"Good morning, Italy," he says. "Is this entirely necessary?"
Italy, the sentimental thing, hugs him around the shoulders. With the arm holding the gun, of course. It's a Luger. Which isn't unexpected, but is still amusing.
"Got you!" Italy says cheerfully.
"I've only been wandering around the Piedmont for five days," France tells him, which technically is four days longer than France expected to be wandering around the Piedmont, doesn’t anyone know how to take up a surrender these days, dieu. They knew well enough in the nineteenth century, which was the last time Prussia was in Paris -
Actually, France would prefer not to think about Paris just now.
"I had to make sure that Germany would know where we are," Italy is explaining, "and you're pretty good at hiding or anyway there's a lot of mountains and we stopped in Turin first. To see the factories."
Italy is also helping him up, and keeping that Luger precisely nestled at the small of his back at the same time. The precision reminds France of Germany, but Italy is smiling and babbling as always, and Germany would never bounce to his feet like this, or take his prisoner's hand in a pretty white leather glove as if they were off to wander through a pastoral.
It's a bit late in the year for pastorals, France thinks. Not enough lambs in September.
"And I took Germany to the Cathedral of San Giovanni and showed him all the relics and the paintings, and he really liked them, so that was nice. I'm sorry it took so long!"
"I'm not," says France. Italy ignores him. France shrugs, disregards the fractional slide of metal down his spine, tilts his face up to where the thin morning sun is burning off the clouds. It is going to be very hot later, he suspects.
"Where to, then?" he asks. It really is nice not to be running.
"Germany's going to meet us by the river," Italy tells him, smiling so very brightly.
Almost, France shivers.
-
1 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.
The other end of the line buzzes somewhere in Moscow, tinny rings interspersed with the rapid hissing of overstretched and overstressed telephone cables. France waits the requisite six rings, and then two more for good measure, before he slams the phone back down into its cradle. The buzzing stays inside his head, echoes and rattles around. Panzer tanks running over the wires in Belgium, he thinks, and grits his teeth into an approximation of a smile.
Some ally Russia is! All that talk about fellow-feeling and comradery, thrown neatly away the moment Russia's attention is caught by something so small as a full-scale invasion. Such an ungrateful, easily distracted creature, dear Russia, and perhaps France should have known better than to expect anything concrete from him, he remembers the seventeenth century and the way Russia has always batted at baubles and forgotten to send anniversary presents, but surely he could answer his God-damned phone -- hasn't France taught him that much of basic courtesy -- solidarity in the face of impudence -- fraternite --
Dieu, but he has a headache. Also, someone is knocking at the door of his office.
"Oh, come in already," he says, "it’s not as if I can stop you."
His visitor is General Gamelin, the poor man, travel-stained and gaunter than he should be, which describes them all, this war, the things this war is doing to the Continent, ah. He was never so crass with it, when it was his Empire spreading out on eagle's wings across all of Europe. Different tastes, he supposes. Nothing to be done about it except to prevent Prussia from getting airs like this again any time soon - oh, Gamelin is still waiting. France waves him to a chair, which he folds into like a tall accordion.
"Shall I ask about the Maginot Line," France inquires of him, "or do you have some sort of pleasant news for me?"
Gamelin shakes his head. His mouth purses and opens, wordless, like the face of a grotesque or a man horrified by some secret he dares not say. France goes over to him with a sigh - the room spins distractingly when he does, pounding in time with his head - sinks to one knee and catches lightly at his General's hand, holding the fingers in his own while he smiles up at him.
"If you cannot discuss the fate of your Nation with your Nation, cher, with whom could you? I have already forgiven you for whatever failures you imagine are your responsibility. The line?"
"-holds," Gamelin says, even while he looks anywhere but his enclosed hand. France's heart, traitorous thing, leaps in his chest. "But it will be broken before tomorrow evening. The German forces are simply too quick, too strong - "
Perhaps France should be used, by now, to the way hope melts, over-exposed like a photograph, and renders itself entirely meaningless.
"Well," he says, brightly. "Where is the strategic reserve, then?"
"Aucune," says Gamelin. There is none.
France lets go of Gamelin's fingers so that he can cup his face in his hands while he laughs, harsh convulsions of diaphragm and throat that hurt, hurt enough that the pain is just as amusing as the entire lack of anything standing between Germany and Paris, and really, this is not how this war was supposed to proceed. Gamelin is staring at him, France is sure, so he takes his hands away and lets the laughter lift him to his feet and he is certain that his teeth are ground together tight enough to chip when he grins and stares down at the General's bowed head.
"How do you plan to organize the counter-attack," he asks, for formality's sake - he knows better, he's known better from the moment Gamelin knocked on the door, of course he has! "Perhaps the left flank? Or would you prefer the right?"
"… inferiority of numbers," says Gamelin.
This, after France had mobilized almost a third of all his able-bodied young men, nearly six million armed, this! This, and the piles of the dead in their foxholes in Belgium, rotting in the summer heat, this and the thin frames of human bones crushed under the treads of those same Panzer-tanks that are, surely, the thing that is disrupting the phone lines.
"Inferiority of method," Gamelin goes on, "and inferiority of equipment."
"Yes," France tells him, all courtesy. "Yes, I realize."
Is it, after all, his own failure?
Ah, but to be otherwise than what he is would have been to surrender to Germany all the way back last October, when he had sent that terribly insulting offer of peace-before-the-fact. As if France would simply capitulate. Even now, there will be no simply about it. He gives Gamelin his orders. Gamelin doesn't argue, which France regrets, just a little, and his face reminds France of mud and trenches and the way you actually can learn to sleep through artillery fire, if you have long enough to try.
Then he goes outside. There are still garden cafes in Paris. There will always be garden cafes in Paris along the Champs d'Elysees, as long as there is the Arc d'Triumph to look at from them, and they still serve milk with their coffee, even if France takes his black. Really, it is the least he can do, out of respect for everything else that is rationed and scarce. The late-summer light is warm on the back of his neck, and black coffee tastes decadently bitter, an indulgence of austerity.
By now, on his command, they are burning the government archives in the National Assembly.
France imagines it, his eyes half-lidded against the sun: the careful progression through basements and back rooms and offices, each classified folder lifted from its place and put, ceremoniously, to the extinguishing flame. If Germany wants to have Paris, he can very well roll his tanks down this street, past this café, even, but he will have ashes for his trouble. There will be nothing left of France, or of his government, for Germany to take; they will have gone off to Bordeaux, perhaps. Or Varennes, if the mood takes him to play the Antoinette.
Germany will have to find something else in France's city to amuse himself with. Possibly he will go to a museum. The acculturation surely wouldn't hurt.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 9:42 AM.
The river in question is the river Po. Italy informs him of this, as if he is a provincial Englishman on the sightseeing portion of the Grand Tour. France could bother to be insulted, but it seems slightly beside the point. The remains of some aristocratic country villa grow out of the near bank, along with the knee-high yellowing grasses and low, twisted trees, the sort of things that sip at the water and give up olives, apricots, other untended delicacies.
Italy's houses have always had this propensity to turn into beautiful ruins. Or else he simply keeps using Rome's, France isn't entirely sure.
"Germany knows where to meet you?" he asks, rather than letting Italy go on with the agricultural tour.
Italy looks concerned for a moment, his forehead creasing with a vertical line. France would tell him that really, he isn't planning on trying to escape before Germany can get here. After all, there isn't anywhere left to go, unless he could somehow follow the river across to the Adriatic and then down towards the Mediterranean and Africa - not that that sea isn't full of Fascists, too. Change out the flags, doesn't change a thing.
-- actually, Italy isn't pointing the Luger at the small of his back at the moment --
-- because he's shooting it into the air. That is still an exceptionally loud sound.
"Now he does!" Italy says cheerfully. "That's a signal. Won't you come inside, France?"
France does. There are even chairs. Three of them.
Italy smiles when he sits down.
-
9 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.
Mathematics, France decides whilst flipping through the mission reports from the Armee de l'Air, is a depressing discipline.
Five days, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen missions, five hundred and eighteen bomber sorties, and one thousand two hundred and seventy-four of his aviators shot out of the sky, spiraling down in plumes of smoke that France can sometimes see, distantly, out his office windows to the east. Whatever it is that Germany has done to, or with, his Luftwaffe, it seems to have rendered all opposition from the air entirely meaningless.
There is a very good word for what has just happened to his aerial corps, France thinks. Decimation. It has just the right air of punitive destruction. And really, what has he ever done to Germany to deserve this?
Well.
But even all of that was nothing that Prussia and England and all the rest hadn't done to France himself, once! This wholesale destruction is a bit much, in terms of retribution -- but then Germany seems to have an affinity for nihilists and all manner of similar extremity, if his philosophers are anything to go by.
France still has a headache. And the Goddamned Luftwaffe are going to be bombing Paris next, if his current luck holds. Ah, and now he cannot accuse Germany of unreasonable and outré nihilism, unless he wishes to accord himself the same.
He contemplates, along with the vicissitudes of mathematics, the phone. Russia is entirely a lost cause, and besides, France is quite angry with him at the moment. That leaves - dieu, that leaves America. France is not calling America. America has never had the slightest idea of how to behave on the Continent. England's fault, of course, he was never properly taught --
Oh, that will do! England. He dials.
"Who's calling?"
England is as brusque and impolite as ever. It is quite nearly refreshing. "France. Bonjour, England, I see that your phone manners have deteriorated to even lower levels than usual."
"You've interrupted something," England says, and sighs, slow, languorous. Something muffles the receiver, and there are shuffling footsteps. France rolls his eyes. Really, and people accuse him of spending an inordinate amount of time in bed? "And now that you have," England goes on, at length, "you'll tell me why."
"It is the highest joy and entire purpose of my evening to inconvenience you," France tells him. "I cannot imagine what takes up so much of your time."
"And here I thought the vagaries of human activity were the subject of your every thought."
France props his elbows on his desk, shuts his eyes, and grins at nothing at all. "Oh, but they are -- it is merely that I am continuously surprised that you have found someone willing enough to indulge your perversity as well as your general ineptitude, and so often."
"Only you, France, would call me about my sex life when the sky is falling."
He startles himself by laughing, but it is actually funny. Isn't it? England doesn't join in - not that he thought he would have. "I don't imagine that aircraft engines careening out of the clouds are terribly conductive to even your sex life, no."
"Yes, but it's not falling here."
Of course it isn't. If France opens his eyes he can see if yet another faint spiral of smoke is interrupting the Parisian skyline - "Doubtlessly you're somewhere in the Pacific again, safely removed from all of this."
"You called me at home, France," England says, annoyed. "Or have you forgotten? A relapse of the old French crowns, perhaps?"
France ignores that. "Oh, close enough to watch," he purrs into the receiver, and imagines England's predictable twitch. "And here I thought you'd be enjoying the opportunity to test out your Royal Air Force."
"And what, save you?"
Actually, that would be - nice.
"Or help Germany get on with it, one or the other." He pauses. Sighs, opens his eyes again. Wall, window, blue - unmarred! - late-afternoon sky. "Don't you think he'll get bored when he's done with me?"
"Are you admitting defeat? My god, it's historical."
"Alert your presses," France snaps. "And I am not, I am admitting German air supremacy and nothing more."
"Well then, it's all right, if you want him to have the Continent, he can have the Continent."
Is it possible that England is incapable of getting the point? "I do not want anything of the kind, you insufferable creature, I do not know why I've called you."
"Because you want something of me."
Almost, France hangs up the phone. The silence on the line buzzes, hums. France isn't entirely sure he truly desires to know how long he could stay quiet before England would say anything.
"-- are you actually planning on sitting out the entire war?"
"No, I plan on profiting off of it," England replies, as if it were obvious. "I think you'll agree that's a sensible course of action granted what happened after the last one."
"Do explain how Germany - 'having the Continent', was that how you put it? -- profits you. I'm terribly curious."
"He's got no designs on the sea, for one--and even fewer across the ocean. And unlike you, he knows how to manage an economy."
Dieu, that again? "That mess was entirely not my fault," France says, indignant. "Please, do not attempt to pin your complete inability to educate America on matters of finance on me."
"You're not helping yourself by blaming me," England retorts, and France would really like to get his hands around his scrawny, unhelpful, self-involved neck.
"Would you prefer obsequious flattery?" he lilts. And then, considering he cannot reach through the phone and across the Channel - "Or do you get enough of that already?"
"It," England says, "and you."
Perhaps if France cared, that would have stung. But it is England with whom he is talking. "Of course. But not enough of Germany and Prussia, yet. You will, I'm sure."
"France." England quite nearly sounds - resigned. France waits, because of that. There are more footsteps on the other end of the line, the hiss of a whisper - has Japan been standing - no, he would be kneeling, there, the entire time, shameless, England, really - the soft click of a door shutting. And should he be pleased that England is willing to speak to him alone?
"France, I am bound," England says, at length. "I am in an alliance that has persisted close to half a century, and it stipulates if I find myself at war with more than one power that Japan is obligated to follow. Germany has Italy. If I aid you, I pull Japan in as well."
"I am not a fool, England." He's shut his eyes again. It is easier to conjure up allies in the dark. "I am, in fact, quite conscious of the consequences of what I am proposing -- non. Asking, of you."
England is silent. France hears him breathe, still, steady, even.
France can wait.
"He will side with them, you know."
Can bargains like these only be made without light? "-- will you?"
England doesn't answer him. The buzz of silence on the line will get into France's bones, resonate there.
"I'm ordering the remainder of the Armee de l'Air to North Africa," he says. "If Germany wants the Continent, he'll have to claim it on the ground. Good, old-fashioned trench warfare." He opens his eyes. Nothing in the sky, still, still! "Do call me if you decide, one way or the other."
He has to shake the circulation back into his fingers when he's hung up the phone, unbend them from how tight they've gripped.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 11:21 AM.
Wistfully, Italy cups his chin in his hand and braces his elbow on the table between them, next to the gun. "Remember when I asked you if it would be okay if I had Tunisia for a while?" he says. "I really wish you'd have said yes. 'cause now there's going to have to be an invasion there, too. Uhm. More of one."
France sighs and redrapes himself so he can lean on the arm of his chair and gesture in the vague direction of Tunisia with the other. It is possible, now that he is in Italy, that French Africa is all of France. Perhaps he should tell Italy that, for all that it might encourage him. "I wasn't about to hand you my colonies because you wanted them," he says, instead. "Go ahead, invade. You and Germany will have to run out of supplies eventually."
Italy is incapable of looking ashamed of himself. "Oh, I wouldn't bother Germany with it. He's so busy, and I'm really trying to be helpful and useful and - do you think I've been helpful? I think so. I found you, Germany's really going to like that!"
"Found me, invaded me, added innumerable insults to unquantifiable injury, yes -"
"Well, Germany said that you were headed this way and I thought -"
"-that you'd help."
"Well, you could have surrendered to Germany," Italy says, as if that settles the matter. "He asked. We both asked."
This recent blackshirt affectation of Italy's, it makes him look even younger than usual, all slim shoulders and boyish, pretty features. He probably knows just what the contrast looks like, too. Appetizing and unavailable, marked out for some crueler goddess than Aphrodite - if such a creature is possible, in either myth or its latter-day prose antecedents.
"Your asking makes absolutely no difference to me," France says.
Now Italy has managed to be either insulted or offended - most likely the latter, considering he says, "I don't see why not," and gets up. The gun goes with him - my, but Germany has taught him something after all - all the way over to what turns out to be a victrola on the sideboard.
"Are you really in the habit," France asks him while he shuffles a record out of its sleeve and nestles it onto the turntable, still only three-quarters-turned away from where France sits, that Luger trained expertly somewhere between his throat and his knees, "of believing you can have whatsoever you desire because you desire it?"
The needle descends, spins hissing around the outermost india-rubber tracks. Italy's face is wide open, an artist's rendition of innocence.
"I think that if someone really wants something, something important, then he should do whatever he has to do to get it," he says.
If not for the way that Italy says it , as if he's never been denied, by the world or God or pure insufficiency, which are almost the same thing, really - well, France would have to agree. The music has started. It takes France a moment to recognize it; it's not one of his.
Of course it isn't. Italy wouldn't -
Ah. The Eroica. Beethoven. Maybe he would.
"Sentiment, Italy?"
Italy blinks, comes back to the table. "No? Sentiment about what?"
"Frivolity, then."
"Music isn't frivolous! Music is beautiful! Beethoven's music too."
"-perversity, then, cher, that's what's left if I stop according you the other two."
Italy's mouth comes open to retaliate - impossible creature - and then his expression dissolves completely, and he says, "Germany!" and bounces to his feet and charges across the room. France turns, looks behind him.
They are hugging, or at least Italy has one arm wrapped enthusiastically around Germany's middle and his face buried in his chest. His other arm is still pointing the gun, unerringly, at France. Germany shrugs, as if to apologize for Italy's behavior.
France would really prefer he apologized for his own. But one does not always get what one wants.
-
11 September, 1940 A.D. Paris.
Mon cher Russia, France writes, I can only hope that what occupies you so very well on the Eastern Front will be a passing encumbrance and nothing more. It would be a shame for you to have to wait and pray for winter to absolve you of paying attention to whatever it is Prussia insists on attempting. There are other matters to occupy you, if you would look just over Prussia's shoulder and notice what his brother is doing in the West -
Enough of this. I shall ask nicely. I am sure you remember that I am capable of doing so, as the pleasantness between us has so often resulted from politesse and affection, don't you think? I certainly recall some such moments with entirely pleasurable intensity. For the sake of our friendship, Russia, then - do finish with Prussia with some haste and send me a battalion or nine of your comrades and soldiers. I have a great many Germans for them to glut themselves on. Better yet, come yourself, while I still possess a flat in Paris to entertain you in --
He cuts the letter off when the young soldier delivers him this morning's intelligence from the front. This is quite like being an Antoinette, actually - the only news anyone brings him is bad.
The hour is civilized, a perfectly reasonable eleven in the morning. France has had coffee and bread and cheese, and thus he cannot, by reason of all these things, blame lack of sleep or food or caffeine for the vividness with which he can imagine what is about to happen to Cambrai.
It has a perverse circularity. There has been a Battle of Cambrai, a surfeit of Battles of Cambrai, for that matter, considering that by the time the second one was finished in the spring of 1918 there really wasn't much left of Cambrai to have a battle over. Trenches and tanks. France remembers; France remembers exquisitely, especially the mud and the shades it turns when liberally mixed with blood and shards of exploded brick. Perhaps Germany is the one who has forgotten.
The German line, the Panzer Corps, is pushing west-northwest, his intelligence says. It is prepared to crush Cambrai just as it has crushed Vervins and Sain-Quentin and Perrone, all in the last day.
Blitzkreig. All of Germany's language is as deliberate as he is.
France picks up the pen, holds it over the letter. It doesn't drip ink. Modern contrivance, that, so convenient.
I would very much like to hear from you, cher, even if it is just a brief note to reassure me that you are not thrown in some oubliette of Prussia's.
Yours, as ever --
What, exactly, is the point of allowing it to happen again?
He calls for that same attaché, and folds up the letter while he waits. It is sealed and signed by the time the young man dances attendance for him, all military perfection, as if the cleanliness of his uniform and his stance is sufficient to make up for the fact that there is only one of him, and France isn't sure why he's been spared from the front this long, regardless.
"Abandon Cambrai," he says, smiling and handing the envelope over. "Pull back. Reconvene from -" ah, the things he still has the will to say! - "a position of strength."
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 12:01 PM.
They are all three of them around the table, as if they were having a meeting of the League of Nations or some similar pretense of civil behavior. Germany also has a Luger, appropriately enough, and after he had laid it down on the smooth wood - threat or simply so he didn't have to sit with the thing poking into his hip, France really couldn't care less - Italy had appropriated it.
Now Italy is playing with the guns, opening the chambers and arranging the bullets in little patterns and piles. He spins them in time with the third movement of the symphony. There are only four. France counts shots, in his head, and then smiles at Germany.
"Whatever happened to your ammunition?" he says. "Spent it all shooting partisans on the way?"
Germany shrugs. There is a clean, spare eloquence to him that France is really becoming quite tired of. "I'll get more," he says.
"Not," says France, propping his elbow on the table, "from me." His fingertips brush his temple, drift outward to encompass the room, the Piedmont beyond it, and he finds his smile has shaded into a grin. There is a lightness to it all that he thinks he will enjoy, while it lasts. "You've already had all you can get."
Germany regards him, measured. "I don't see why the factories in Creusot would stop producing munitions now. Or in any other place."
"Ah, but Creusot is French."
It is actually quite chilling when Germany smiles, mostly because it is far closer to a suggestion than an expression, something more rooted in the eyes than in the lips. "Creusot lies within the borders of the Third Reich."
"So much semantics, Germany. I could just as easily say that the Confederation of the Rhine was French in 1806, and I think we both agree that Prussia would have my head for that."
"Oh yes," Italy says. "Prussia wouldn't think that was true at all!" He spins one of the guns around itself, keeps it spinning with careful touches of his fingertips. "Prussia is very proud of things Prussia makes." The look he gives Germany quite nearly causes France to feel a certain amused fondness - it is so blatant, so adoring, so absolutely fixated, so pleased to have found a way to compliment his object of affection without truly doing so. And Italy insisted on a lack of sentiment!
He wonders if Germany knows, or how well Germany knows.
"The situation is somewhat different," Germany begins. His hands are folded on the table, still in every way Italy's are not.
France interrupts, leans closer, leans in. "Oh, is it, cher? Are you so certain of my people's hospitality?" He looks at Germany's almost-expression again, this time through the scrim of his eyelashes. "Or of mine?"
"I am not sure what hospitality has to do with it, France. They are my people as much as they are yours."
Italy drops one of the bullets. It pings on the floor, glimmers when he bends to pick it up, ceases to do so when he places it back inside the chamber of one gun or the other. The noise of the magazine sliding home is like the click of his teeth together when he smiles, wide.
"It has everything to do with it," France begins, before Italy cuts him off.
"Germany is being polite," he says. "You're in my house, now, France, so it's my hospitality that matters."
-- ah. Whether or not Germany knows, Italy knows France does, now. He turns to him, then, mirrors and matches the dazzle of that smile.
"Oh, then, how do you treat your guests, Italy?"
"Guests are different than prisoners of war," says Italy. "Isn't that right?"
-
14 September, 1940 A.D. Orleans.
Orleans is not Paris, nor could it ever be.
However, unlike Paris Orleans does not at the moment contain any Germans. This fact is providing France with a certain amount of appealing gloss to spread on every edifice and with which to adorn every street. He can still walk here, for a few more hours, at least, disturb the cobblestones with something other than the treads of tanks - really, this entire expedition is quite like a pilgrimage, an affectation out from before everyone bothered to become so very enlightened. All of his government dispersed and heading south, carrying only the most necessary relics and reminders with them - guns, grenades, something to sing, quietly, so as not to be overheard by German troops.
Turning the streetcorner, France trails his fingertips against the plaster and stucco and marble of each house. He has been singing, for lack of Germans - for lack of Germans, and for lack of good intelligence, and for lack of all sorts of things he wishes he had. Which include, lately, the plaisir d'amour of this song, however amusing the melody --
There had been no attack at Cambrai, of course. There was never going to have been an attack at Cambrai. It was a feint, a gesture, something simple and obvious which he should have seen through - third chorus! Minor key! -- chagrin d'amour he has, or at least chagrin, Cambrai was precisely the sort of trick Prussia adores, and now -
Well, now Cambrai is full of Germans, unopposed.
At least there was opposition in Paris. Opposition, occupation. Germany is there now, Germany and Germany's boss, that rhetorical martinet of his. France does hope they are enjoying the Seine. It is too much to hope for that they will enjoy it so much that they will stay, stop pushing south.
He considers how long he will be able to stay in Orleans. Another half a day? The government is already gone ahead. It is really very funny, this entire mess. But Paris has been occupied before. Paris will be occupied again.
France can wait for the mail, in Orleans or Nevers or even Lyon. If he must.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 1:38 PM.
"-I thought what deGaulle did was really brave," Italy is saying. "Maybe not so smart, but really brave. Your people love you a lot, France!"
France considers the distinct possibility that he may, in fact, be in Hell.
"Yes," he says, "yes, they do." Whatever Hell ordained for him would come with this sort of conversation. It could be an interrogation if Germany was leading it. Germany is not.
"It's too bad it didn't work," says Italy.
"It couldn't have worked," Germany adds, meditative. "Not in a permanent fashion. Your Fourth Armored Division did not have enough men, or any air support. Even so, I admire his attempt."
Italy nods, shuffles the two Lugers back and forth without looking at either of them. "It was a good try. And he was right at the front, too. That's the brave part, not hiding behind anyone else just because you can order them to go first."
France cannot keep the wince off his face.
"It was like a painting," Italy goes on. "Germany told me all about it, the charge and the tanks - you really didn't have enough tanks, France! - and what the explosions looked like."
"He attempted to head north, afterward," Germany says, as if doing France a favor by telling him. "I think he meant to cross the Channel."
"Meant to," France says. Leadingly. Leadingly, ah, he is damned, whether or not this is Hell yet. To want to hear.
"Some actions are essentially futile," Germany says.
His head is too heavy. He puts it in his hands, stares down at the table, and does not care if his voice shakes when he says, "Oh, yes, some actions are. But was it art, how he died? Italy, was it beautiful enough?" When he looks up they are both watching him. "Did you care, let us not ask Germany if he cared -"
Germany interrupts him. "Why would I not care?"
France grins. "What's another death on your hands? Surely you aren't worried about the state of your soul."
"-we go to church!" Italy protests. As if that mattered. It likely does, to Italy, if he took Germany to San Giovanni and made him gawk at the Shroud of Turin.
"Of course you do," he says. "And give confession on your knees, too. Hm, Germany?"
Germany is cold. "This is not about God."
"Naturally not," France tells him, laughing. "God surely would have noticed this many sparrows shot down with artillery, if it was about Him. "
-
22 September, 1940 A.D. Compiegne.
France recognizes the railway car.
It is the same railway car in which the Armistice of 1918 was signed. He was there. He would know. To be more precise, he was here, and now he is here again. Germany, his boss, and the delegates of the French Second Army Group are all inside that railway car, hearing some kind of preamble about the terms of surrender.
"What did you do, go dig it out of a museum?" he says to Prussia, who is standing next to him, hands on his hips, the most outrageously casual parade rest France has ever witnessed.
"Actually, yeah. We did," says Prussia. "Not my idea. My little brother's boss, he came up with it. He gets fixated on some shit, that one. Not so hard, though, it was just a couple blocks away."
"Ha. And here I thought I'd have to accuse you of developing a sense of irony."
Prussia laughs. "C'mon, France, even you have to think it's funny, signing the armistice right where you made us sign it?"
"It isn't funny so much as it is blatant," France begins, because truly, he cannot just stand here and watch this surrender and allow Prussia to enjoy himself - Prussia has his hand fisted in France's collar, twisting, tight enough that France chokes aloud and almost doubles over. The white of Prussia's hair gleams over his uniform, makes the silver SS-pins at his throat dull in comparison.
"Shut up with the aesthetics," he grins. "You don't get to decide, not this time."
-- the problem is that's true. France knees Prussia in the stomach and shoves him off, regardless. Prussia pushes back, hard, harder than France was prepared for, and the packed earth hurts when he lands on it. Prussia's still standing, watching him with one eyebrow arched.
"Yes," France says, spits, getting to his feet. "But I don't have to watch it, cher." He expects Prussia to stop him when he turns to leave. He doesn't bother. Perhaps France should be insulted.
"No, you don't," Prussia calls. "But just because you're not staying to see doesn't mean you're not surrendering!"
Now that, France thinks, walking south. That is funny as well as true.
-
30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:09 PM.
France has lost track of which gun Italy has loaded up with bullets. For that matter, he isn't exactly sure which gun belongs to which Nation at the moment. They look precisely the same between Italy's hands, the slim barrels gleaming in the afternoon sun that comes slanting in through the windows.
"What I continue to fail to understand," he says to Germany, who is watching the guns as well, "is why an armistice wasn't enough for you."
Germany shakes his head. It's not dismissive, exactly. "An armistice is a declaration of my military superiority over yours. That was never the point."
Five hours in this little room is enough, France thinks, to drive any man or nation mad. "What was the point, then?" he asks, and then repeats himself when Germany doesn't answer fast enough. "What was the point of chasing me across every place on my land that I have ever loved, and driving me out of each of them in turn -- has Prussia really made you that much of a sadist, cher, I expected better from you both, and especially from you, Italy, I -"
He breathes. This sort of outburst is - unsuitable, and entirely useless, unless he is planning on crawling on his belly. Which he is not.
"The point is," Germany says, "a demonstration of the superiority of my people, over yours."
Chills, France notices. Up his spine. Down his hands.
Italy rolls his shoulders back, stretches so that his shoulderblades arc against the blackshirt. "Germany," he says, "I think we should go outside now."
Germany's smile, for Italy, is an actual expression. How - sentimental.
"Yes," he says, and holds out a hand. Italy puts one of the guns in it. Then both barrels rotate, turn, transfix France in their sights. France nods, braces his palms on the table to stand.
"I was wondering when you two were going to get on with this," he says.
Italy laughs. "Didn't you have a good time, France? I did! I like talking to you."
France walks between them all the way out to the courtyard behind Italy's house, a rambling, vine-encrusted thing encircleted by a brick wall. It should be marble, France notes, marble would match the architectural conceit far better, remind him of Rome and all the past glories of the mortal age. Architecture is for memory, after all - he opens his mouth to tell Italy so, and then closes it again. The gunbarrels are black eyes, watching him.
"Over there," Germany says, gesturing. France backs up. Farther. Until his shoulders touch the sunwarmed bricks.
"Dieu," he says, realizing what the play of this is going to be, "you're supposed to provide a last cigarette, first."
Italy steps into line with Germany. They raise the guns, together.
-
25 September, 1940 A.D. Genable.
On the road east out of Genable, it is morning, and grey, the sort of weather that does not care about the despair of men or Nations, having quite enough of its own. Furthermore, there is a small child who is pressing a fraying rope into France's hand. The other end of the rope is attached to a dog lying on its side in the dampening dust.
"Can you watch my dog, he won't get up," says the child.
"-no, actually, I need to be leaving - " France protests, but the child, who is grubby and skinny and apparently terrified enough of either his mother or the advancing German line on the other side of town to run off without further conversation, does just that. France remains. With the dog.
Which, now that he bothers to look at it more closely, is dead.
That explains why it won't get up.
Germany's face, this morning, across the long green stretch of battlefield no one had bothered to bloody just yet, had been so perfectly expressionless. France would say dispassionate, but that would be an unjust sort of lie, wouldn't it? Germany is exceptionally passionate about chasing France across every last kilometer of what, until three days ago, had been his land. For the past millennium, his. Doubtlessly, back in his little castle in Bavaria, Prussia is laughing his bleached-white ass off.
Walking through Genable, France can imagine his steps unmarking the earth, erasing every trace of where he has been. If that's true, everything north of the Rhone is empty now - but nevertheless his people have persisted in greeting him. Everywhere. Oh, but they are French. Hope, hopelessness. The same. And he loves them, always -
-- of course, none of that meant there was any mail in Genable either. He had thought of calling England, but the phone lines were all dead. And what would he say? Angleterre, I am running out of cities without Germans in them?
This isn't even a farce. First of all, in a farce, the dog would be alive.
Possibly he should drop the rope.
---
30 September, 1940 A.D. 2:17 PM.
Germany shakes his head. "I said before. I don't have any cigarettes." He is terribly serious. It is a shame. Doubtlessly Italy thinks so, too, the composition for a firing squad is all skewed without the appropriate accoutrements first - unless the point is a sort of purity of brutality, the prisoner denied even the bare appearance of civility. There are films, like that, or at least there were, in Paris -- Germany looks the part. Italy does not.
If the purpose of all of this theater is to terrify France, ah, then, he'll be terrified. It is somewhat elegant for one of Prussia's schemes, but Prussia has his own perverse sense of artistry, Germany himself is proof of that, all clean violence and reassembled drive. France can be frightened under their guns, such a thing is easy, simple, he can cringe and simper and even beg, he has done and will do worse, and for better causes than this --
"Ready?" Italy asks.
Dieu, always --
-- that gun is too loud, whichever it is --
Oh.
Oh, it is all merely noise.
-
---
-
Much of Germany's 1940 blitzkrieg campaign, which canonically took place between May and June of 1940, has been here condensed and relocated to the month of September of that same year. This change results from England's altered position in the war. For the same reason, the French government-in-exile was not able to escape to Britain. Perhaps Italy was not the best second choice.
General Gamelin, whose conversation with France was once a conversation with Churchill, and Brigadier General de Gaulle, who led the Free French in a universe where the Free French existed.
The first battle of Cambrai.
The Erioca Symphony and Plaisir d'Amour.
The Armistice with France.
One of those guns wasn't loaded.