Author's note: I started writing this one last June 6th, during the D-Day commemorations; typically, I only finished it now. Darn that writer's block!

Disclaimer: Tiger belongs to Albert Ruddy and Bernard Fein's estate, the other characters are mine.

The Violins of Autumn

"Ici Londres … Les Français parlent aux Français …"

The familiar dot-dot-dot-dash, almost inaudible behind the German jamming, was barely recognisable as the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. But after four years Tiger was so used to searching for the BBC's French service that she had no great trouble finding it.

She leaned forward in her chair with a feeling of mixed satisfaction and anticipation, and batted away Rodrigue's hand from the knob. This was as clear as the radio set would get.

Rodrigue sat down at the table with his notepad and his pen, still looking as though he was itching to try for a better frequency. Whether there was one or not, Tiger didn't want to risk missing a Radio Londres broadcast that could very well deliver a decisive message to their small network.

Broussard grunted in approval and crossed his arms. The radio was his, after all. He didn't appreciate the young man fiddling too much with his stuff.

Since her capture and subsequent escape from the Gestapo headquarters in Paris, Tiger had stayed clear of the capital; her cover was blown there and too many people could recognise her on sight. She had fled to a small town (or what, to her, seemed like a small village after Paris) in the outskirts of Caen, joined the local Resistance network, and continued to gather and pass intelligence to London. Said network was quite small – nothing like what she had been used to in Paris. But they were just as determined as she was to drive every single Nazi out of France and help the Allies win the war.

There was Rodrigue, an STO dodger who had run away from home to avoid working in Germany, an idealist probably not older than twenty; and Broussard, a middle-aged farmer, whose barn served both as centre of operations and shelter whenever German patrols went sniffing by. Others stayed in town – the local schoolmaster, a young mother of two (widow of a soldier killed in 1940), a man who Tiger was pretty sure was a baker … She sometimes envied their everyday lives, the fact that they could speak with their loved ones, that they could go home in the night and sleep in their own beds … Clandestinity was something she never had quite got used to, even after all this time.

Nobody had called her 'Marie-Louise' in years. She had grown to use 'Tiger' even in the privacy of her mind, and the codename still stuck even though she could only answer to it with a few choice people. To Rodrigue and Broussard, she was Claude – a conveniently gender-neutral name, common enough to make people who had never seen her naturally assume they were looking for a man. 'Rodrigue' was likely to be an alias as well, and Broussard went by his real surname, but hadn't told anyone his first name. They could have tried to find it out, but respected his need for privacy.

She caught herself wondering when she had last addressed someone by their real name … Her mind immediately provided the answer. Robert Hogan.

The thought made her smile – a too-rare occurrence lately.

Then she focused on the muted voice from the wireless.

"Veuillez écouter tout d'abord quelques messages personnels. De Henriette à Gauthier: reçu bonnes nouvelles de Dominique, je répète …"

The 'personal messages' were the principal means of communication between escaped prisoners, or Free French abroad, and their families. Those were not always in code, like Resistance messages, but it was impossible to make sense of them unless you were the intended recipient.

"Le cuisinier secoue les nouilles, je répète, le cuisinier …"

Broussard raised an eyebrow, and Rodrigue chuckled.

"Naughty spoonerisms now. They must be having fun coming up with those."

"Good. God knows we need something to smile about," said Tiger, already waiting for the next message.

"De Robert à Marie: le tigre ch—"

The crackle overcame the broadcaster's voice. Tiger's heart leapt in her chest. This wasn't one of the messages she had been expecting – but she had hoped.

"—Répète, le tigre chasse dans les hautes herbes …"

She allowed herself a quick but heartfelt smile. Hogan was still there, still safe (for a given value of 'safe', anyway) and he knew she had gone to ground.

In a manner of speaking, of course. And hopefully not for very long.

"La chèvre est un animal rancunier, je répète …"

The personal messages were done, and now all three were listening raptly to the nonsensical sentences. The only other sounds were the loud, steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock between the door and the pantry and an owl hooting from somewhere nearby, probably the roof of the barn. Outside, the farm was dark and silent; the moon would not rise for a few hours still, but the light was enough to make out long, thin blankets of mist rising from the wet ground. Even in Broussard's rustic kitchen, the humidity made Tiger's hair start to curl, and the tip of her nose was cold.

One would hardly think this was early June.

Silent though it was, every sound fell on Tiger's ears like a peal of thunder. A heavy feeling of anticipation had hung in the air for the past few days, as if the world around them was holding its breath. Maybe it was. There had been hints to a massive Allied landing for a long time now. The Germans could jam the BBC frequency on French soil and hunt down people who listened to it, but a majority of French people still searched for the British radio, the only one where they could get trustworthy news … and, occasionally, receive personal information.

Hence why there were so many messages these days. Tiger was never quite sure which ones were real and which ones were only there to flood the actual messages in nonsense, to keep the Nazis from sorting out true from false and decoding them. So far, it appeared to be working.

"… Bercent mon cœur d'une langueur monotone …"

"They got it wrong," said Rodrigue. "It's 'blessent mon cœur' in the poem, not 'bercent'. Honestly."

"What difference does it make, if it means something to someone?" Broussard asked tersely. "Doesn't matter if it's gibberish, does it?"

"What diff—but it's Verlaine!"

"Look, lad, I don't give a damn about fancy words or pretty poetry if it don't help ya milk the cows or protect your trees from apple scab. I got my certificat d'études when I was thirteen and I'm glad I did, but bloody Verlaine's never been much use around here."

Tiger shushed them and both promptly shut up. Still, Rodrigue kept stealing bemused glances at Broussard, as though he just couldn't comprehend such disdain for French belles-lettres.

She had had the young man pegged as a student of humanities, probably originally well-off, from the start.

Apparently she hadn't been wrong.

"Jeannot met sa chaussette gauche … Mettez les champignons dans la poêle, je répète, mettez les champignons…"

Tiger's heart skipped a beat.

"That's us!" Rodrigue said tightly. He was right, of course. So much, actually, that voicing the fact seemed redundant.

Broussard seemed to think the same thing, but for once he kept silent. He grabbed the lantern and headed out the door, stepping aside for Tiger on the threshold. For all his brisk and somewhat gruff demeanour, the farmer was decidedly old school when it came to chivalry.

The barn was warm and smelled of cows and fresh hay, which made Tiger's nose twitch. Broussard's cows watched them placidly as Tiger followed Broussard to the cache. One of the animals was standing on the hidden trapdoor; Broussard shooed it and started shovelling the soiled hay covering the trapdoor. The cow trotted away and settled near another to share its warmth and comfortably flatulent atmosphere.

Broussard lifted the box of explosives with a grunt and deposited it in Tiger's waiting arms. It was only a little less heavy than she thought it would be.

"Are you sure you won't come with us?" she asked quietly as he closed the trapdoor and shifted hay back on it. The cow ambled back to its former spot and lay down again, its tail batting a couple of flies away from its rump.

The farmer shook his head.

"With my bum leg? I wouldn't be much help if you happen on some Boches, or those damn miliciens. Dirty bastards." He spat on the ground. "If the big landing is indeed headed our way, we'll have our work cut out for us, cleaning France of Nazis and collaborator scum."

Tiger wished she could put down the heavy box to lay a hand on his arm.

"We'll be out in the open soon. That'll make a difference, and a big one, believe me," she said earnestly, hoping her tone conveyed everything else she wanted to say. Broussard nodded and gave a tight smile.

"No more hiding. I can't even remember how that feels. Maybe I'll take up smuggling when the war is over, to keep on my toes."

If Broussard had been a different sort of person, he might have asked her what she used to do before the war, and what she had to come back to when they were done. As it was, he didn't, and Tiger was oddly glad of this. Her eventual post-war life was a question she didn't look forward to answering just yet. After all, she mused, she could be caught and killed any time, so it was a moot point anyway. At least, that was what she told herself, and tried to believe it.

Rodrigue was waiting for them near the farm's open back door. While they were still out of hearing range, Broussard muttered, "Be careful. And watch out for the kid, too – he still looks wet behind the ears to me."

"We'll both be careful," she assured him. He had a point, though; chances were that Rodrigue, or whatever his real name was, had had to do a lot of growing up in very little time recently. Sometimes his youth and inexperience were painfully obvious. But he worked seriously, diligently, and he was still alive. In that line of work, that simple fact told a lot about someone.

When he saw Tiger carrying the box, he pocketed his torch and stepped up to take the heavy load, proving that chivalry was not necessarily a question of generation. After a brief goodbye to Broussard, they set out on the small pathway leading into the starlit countryside.

A city girl at heart, Tiger was unsettled by the sounds, the smells and all the sensations of the Normandy 'bocage' – little roads lined with high hedges, thickets, and ancient low walls running unevenly along the fields and the fallow lands. It gave her the odd impression of something both inescapable and infinite, as though she was entrapped by the endless succession of trees, hedges and grass ridges. Even in the shadiest, most narrow Parisian alleyways, with both Gestapo and Carlingue (their French counterparts) thugs at her heels, she had not felt so vulnerable.

Still, she refused to let the foreign sounds and sudden sharp smells of wet earth and ripening fruit rattle her the way they seemed to rattle Rodrigue. The young man – boy, really – often jumped at unexpected noises. Some of his nervousness could, however, be explained by the fact that the explosives box prevented him from seeing where he stepped.

"Do you think there are vipers around here?" he whispered after a little while.

"I have no idea," she answered truthfully.

"It's just – I'm not used to snakes, so I can't tell which ones are dangerous. Obviously vipers are, but I don't know what they look like."

Apparently Rodrigue didn't come from a country background, either. Tiger almost asked him where he was from, but thought better of it. This kind of small talk, harmless enough in peace time, could turn into vital information if she were to be captured and interrogated.

War and occupation not only meant the loss of their freedom, the humiliation of defeat, the hunger when supplies grew scarce, random mass arrests in the street, people disappearing overnight or outright killed … It also had considerable impact on even the most basic of relationships. Tiger had not seen her parents in three years, had not communicated with them directly by phone or letter in eighteen months – too risky. Her younger sister had been arrested last year after leaflets calling for resistance had been found circulating in her lycée; Tiger had no doubt Françoise had in fact been involved, but thankfully she had been found not guilty and released.

Tiger had not contacted any of her friends from before the war since autumn 1941. Except for Christine, who had been with her in the beginning, but Christine was gone now, most likely dead.

Nobody knew her, and she truly knew nobody. Casual acquaintances were a luxury one couldn't afford when anybody – a stranger in the street, the butcher you saw every week, your next-door neighbour, even your family – could betray you to the police or the Germans. Of the men and women she worked with, with whom she spent most her time and had that strikingly intimate relationship that can only come from sharing the constant threat of death, she knew precious little. There was no time for casual discussions about politics or the last Marcel Carné movie, let alone for soul-baring conversations about one's childhood over a cup of coffee. She knew nothing about the young man walking next to her in the dark, not his tastes, his personal history, how he felt about things, or even his name – except that he believed so fiercely in freedom that he risked his life on a daily basis. That, and he was wary of snakes. Not exactly enough to call it a friendship.

Sometimes the loneliness became so hard to bear that she took a pen and a sheet of paper and let her mind wander over what she might, but never could, write, and to whom.

Maman, Papa … You would probably say I'm too skinny, but I am well enough … I travel a lot; you would not believe the places I've been to – all over northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and even Germany … I'm seeing things that make me sick to my stomach and think the human race is doomed to destroy itself; but in the same time there are other things that remind me of our capacity for fighting back, protecting, loving …

They didn't really ease the pain of solitude, these not-letters, but it reminded her that she had to keep going.

Besides, if the landings were indeed imminent, it probably meant the beginning of the end – that is, if they were successful, which partly depended on everybody fulfilling the mission they'd been given.

Tiger's and Rodrigue's were to blow up the Pont du Morson, a reasonably large bridge that allowed cars to cross the little Morson river. The road, really little more than a country lane, cut across fields to later join up with the larger road to Caen; once the bridge was gone, there would be no means in a two-kilometres radius for the Wehrmacht stationed in Caen to send tanks and trucks to the coastline. Other résistants were presumably taking care of railways and locomotives, telephone lines and other such strategic structures.

If this was indeed the night, then it was going to be a busy one.

Apart from his earlier question about vipers, Rodrigue had not uttered a word since they had set out from Broussard's farm. In a way Tiger was grateful; both were straining their ears for patrols or any noise out of the ordinary, and stealth didn't really allow for small talk anyway. But the longer they walked, the more obvious it became that Rodrigue had something on his mind. It didn't seem urgent, otherwise he would have shared it by now, which made Tiger think it was probably not related to their current mission. But from the way he frowned, the way his jaw was set, it was likely to be important nonetheless.

Just when Tiger was checking one last time for nearby noises before asking Rodrigue what was wrong, he murmured, "Do you … Do you ever get scared?"

Tiger looked at him sharply. She'd been wrong – it wasn't that important, comparatively speaking. Not really a priority, at the very least …

Or maybe it was. Her pointed retort died in her throat.

"Of course I get scared. Everyone does."

"Nobody ever looks scared."

"They're just better at not showing it. What we do is dangerous; you'd be a fool if you didn't feel fear from time to time."

Rodrigue drew in a shuddering breath. "Yes, but … I'm always afraid. All the time. Even when I'm not doing anything remotely dangerous, I'm afraid the Germans will shoot me in the street, or the police will arrest and torture me, and I won't have the guts to – you know, do what I have to do. Sometimes I'm just standing in line to buy bread and I start shaking all over, sweating, everything."

In the dark Tiger could see his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and the tautness of his shoulders. Clearly he had been agonising about this for some time.

There were two ways she could do this: terse "pull-yourself-together" style, or comforting honesty. Their current situation called for the former, but she quickly decided to go for the latter.

"That can be a problem," she said gently, keeping her voice low. "But you've done well so far. Raymond said you kept your cool admirably during that raid last month."

"Are you joking? I came this close to wetting my trousers, I was so terrified."

"Well, you did a great job hiding it. And you and Raymond got away, didn't you?"

"Yes, Docteur Larcher's papers checked out."

Tiger stopped and pinned him with a deadly serious stare.

"Papers are only as useful as the stuff they're printed on, genuine or fake. Yes, they were good, but if the police had had more than a passing doubt, you wouldn't be talking to me right now. You did good, Rodrigue. Accept it and believe it. You'll probably have to do even better soon enough."

Docteur Larcher was an ally of theirs in Caen; he had helped them out of many a tight spot by delivering unfitness certificates for young men who should have been sent to STO in Germany but were not rich enough to bribe their way out of it. Rodrigue's certificate, matching his fake ID, stated he suffered from chronic, debilitating back pain; he even carried medication just in case. Those painkillers had come in handy more than once.

Rodrigue nodded, still looking uncertain, and did not speak again until they reached the bridge. As they set to work, though, he stole a glance at Tiger and whispered, "I know you left Paris because you were … Because they caught you."

Tiger stiffened.

"Did they … I mean … How did you manage not to talk?"

Thinking about the time she'd spent in Colonel Backscheider's cells never failed to make her feel cold all over, so she avoided that kind of reminiscence. Her memory, usually so precise, tended to gloss over those few days lately, a fact for which she was thankful. The only thing she could still recall with agonising clarity was the sound of water rushing in her ears.

"What makes you think I didn't?" she murmured, concentrating on handling the explosives carefully. Rodrigue looked at her – a straight, honest gaze this time.

"I reckon you wouldn't be here if you had."

She forced her hands to remain steady.

"You're right, I didn't talk. But I probably would have if I'd stayed there much longer."

"What happened?"

Now that kind of memory she would probably keep for the rest of her life. The mixture of terror and elation that surged in her when she stepped out of her cell had been powerful enough to make her throw caution to the wind and kiss Hogan as though it was the last thing she would do in this world … She still found it hard to believe that the ridiculously fake Himmler impersonator with his equally fake moustache had fooled the Gestapo, especially after he bumped his head and started speaking with an unmistakably Russian accent. Like most of Colonel Hogan's gambits, it should never, in a million years, have worked … But, again like most Hoganesque schemes, it had.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you, she thought with a small, warm smile.

"It's a long story," she ended up saying as they prepared the safety fuse. And, because he raised an eyebrow at her sudden good spirits, she added, "Maybe I'll tell you sometime."

A flash of light from somewhere in the south, followed by a subdued but powerful rumble, prevented any more questions. If Tiger's estimate was correct, the railway line was now cut between Caen and Bayeux. There was no time to lose.

Five minutes should give them enough head start to be safely on their way back; they finished setting up the explosives, checked their handiwork one last time, and set off at a brisk pace on the path towards Broussard's farm.

Another explosion, nearer the coastline this time, made Tiger look up. What she saw made her stop in her tracks and freeze. Rodrigue's mouth fell open.

Parachutes. Dozens of them.

They seemed to drift on the wind in absolute silence, slowly, gracefully, like white snow from an ink-black sky. The thought of snowflakes in June struck Tiger as absurd, but she couldn't look away from the strange slow waltz. Her heartbeat drummed through her chest and down to the tip of her fingers. This was what she and so many others had hoped for, for four years give or take a month; now that the day had come, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She felt a hand grasp hers; when she glanced at Rodrigue, she saw that his face was shining with tears. He, too, was staring up at the sky.

"It's really happening, isn't it," he murmured. She nodded, even though he probably wouldn't see her.

"There's still a lot of work to do until Hitler is defeated for good."

"Yes, but … This is … Now we have a fighting chance again."

The first paratroops had barely touched ground behind the rows of hedges in the east when more parachutes, this time in the north-west – somewhere around Cherbourg, maybe, or Valognes – blossomed in the darkness, making Tiger's breath catch in her throat. She squeezed Rodrigue's hand, grateful for the warmth of a fellow human being at her side, glad that they were there to witness history happen. She had been in Paris on June 14th 1940, when German motorcycles, trucks and tanks had first trickled, then poured into the capital. History had tasted like ashes that day. The memory of greenish grey uniforms all over the city still burned white-hot in her mind. Seeing those parachutes took some of the sting from that memory; it was not only renewed hope, but also a promise that the end might be in sight – still a long way away, but finally a real possibility.

Rodrigue was right. They had been fighting before, fiercely, with whispered words as well as guns, knives and explosives, but now they would be able to meet the Nazis on open ground, take arms, and reclaim their cities and land as their own.

And they would win. They owed that much to the dead, the living and the people who would die in that great final struggle.

If it was indeed the final struggle …

The Morson Bridge exploded in a brilliant flash of light and a mighty roar, breaking the moment. Time resumed its normal course; Tiger let go of Rodrigue's hand, Rodrigue self-consciously dried his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and they set out again. It was out of their hands now; they had done their part for the night.

Things would be a lot different when dawn came, but one thing remained the same: they would still be fighting.

THE END

Notes/Translations:

Ici Londres: "London calling".

Les Français parlent aux Français: "The French speak to the French", the title of the broadcast. For many people in occupied/Vichy France, the news bulletin that followed was the only source of genuine information about how the war progressed as well as communication with Resistance coordinators in England.

The STO, Service de Travail Obligatoire (Compulsory Work Service) was created to replace German workforce. The Vichy regime tried to present it as voluntary at first (one POW would return for every three workers), but Nazi Germany deemed it not efficient enough and put in place a conscription system. The rich could bribe their way out and/or obtain fake ID papers, but about 650, 000 young French people (a majority of men) didn't escape it. The ones who did fled to the maquis (originally a type of vegetation – bushes and thickets – and a Corsican expression, "prendre le maquis" [to take (to) the maquis], "escape authorities or personal vendettas") to join the ranks of the Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur, the French Resistance. Exiled Spanish Republicans also joined the Resistance in large numbers. The STO maquisards were, for the most part, eager but untrained and inexperienced young men and women, often sadly lacking in firearms and munitions. A lot of them were later integrated in the newly reconstructed French Army.

While the term "dodger" generally has negative connotations (as in "draft dodger"), the French word réfractaire has become associated both with dodging military service (back in the day, as it doesn't exist as such anymore) and refusing compulsory service in Germany during the Occupation.

The first stanzas of Verlaine's poem Chanson d'automne go:

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne (The long sobs of autumn's violins)

Blessent mon cœur
D'une langueur
Monotone … (Wound my heart with a monotonous languor)

It's the correct word "blessent" (wound) in The Longest Day, but you can clearly hear "bercent" (rock, cradle) in the recording of the genuine article. The first part was used to warn some of the Resistance cells that the Allied would land very soon; the second stanza set the landings for the next morning and relayed orders for résistants to cut all communication lines along the Normandy coast. Today it remains the most famous D-Day code, to the point that people often believe it was the only D-Day code.

The Milice française (French Militia) was a paramilitary organisation created by the Vichy regime; miliciens were volunteers only. They took an oath to Hitler, participated in political assassinations, tortured and murdered people suspected of being Communists, Freemasons or résistants, and organised round-ups of Jews. Unlike the Germans and some of the police, they were local people, who were perfectly familiar with their regions' geography and accents/speech patterns, making them that much more dangerous. They (and their actions) are why the word "milice" and concept of civilian militia parallel to police forces has a very bad reputation now in France.

Veuillez écouter tout d'abord quelques messages personnels. De Henriette à Gauthier: reçu bonnes nouvelles de Dominique, je répète …: "Please listen (/stand by) first for a few personal messages. From Henriette to Gauthier: received good news from Dominique, I repeat …"

Le cuisinier secoue les nouilles : "The cook shakes/is shaking the noodles." Innocuous enough, but swap a couple of consonants and the hapless cook ends up tying up his testicles, which sounds really painful. Probably one of the tamest naughty spoonerisms.

Le tigre chasse dans les hautes herbes : The tiger hunts in the tall grass.

La chèvre est un animal rancunier : The goat is a resentful animal.

Jeannot met sa chaussette gauche : Jeannot puts on his left sock.

Mettez les champignons dans la poêle : Put the mushrooms in the pan.

I had fun coming up with those, but the "cuisinier" one is genuine. I haven't been able to find out what it meant for the intended recipients, though … (Also, don't look for the "Morson" river – it's a shout-out to Lazy Company, a French comedy series about four GIs during the Battle of Normandy, set in an imaginary place called "le Morson". It's completely weird, generally hilarious and I wish they would dub and export it.)

Sorry for the lengthy history lesson and thank you for reading! I hope you liked it :o]