Throughout the week, the mural remained un-defaced. Bridgette had worried that without Achim’s protection, the wall would be an open invitation for vandals and dabblers to have their way, but to her awed surprise, the fierce pride residents took in the painting and the intensified presence of the admiring German patrols were deterrents enough. However, on the morning of Saturday, November 28, streetgoers noticed a diagonal line drawn through the central dragonfly. The same person who had marked the dragonfly similarly once before had slipped the gauntlet to leave his calling card sometime in the night.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

As the month edged into December and the year drew to a close, heavy snow began to fall in Paris, cloaking the city in an endless dreamscape of white, sculpting even the trash in the gutters into fantastical monuments of artistic wizardry, the glacial silence of the blanketed streets so deep that a mere cough sounded like a small explosion.

Parisians would have found the fairyland of snow-draped trees and downy rooftops, icicle-studded eaves, and lacy windowpanes a beautiful setting for the celebration of Christmas but for the rumble of German trucks transporting weapons and soldiers and the disturbance of bullhorns blaring German propaganda, oompah music, and the day’s orders to the population. The presence of the Germans was like a fog of pollution hanging low over the city, and hatred for the occupiers increased by the day as their restrictions against French citizens tightened, reprisals for the Resistance’s actions grew more frequent, and the hunt for food and fuel to stave off starvation and hypothermia became more desperate. Only necessity drove the conquered out to the streets from the dubious safety and warmth of their homes.

“And now this!” Major General Konrad March raged, slapping at a street poster of a public notice before his usual audience of Brad, Chris, and Madame Gastain, who had been invited to partake of fondue and wine and the comfort of a blazing fire in his house. “To think this—this sacrilege against the meaning of Christmas has been imposed on children in Germany and now in France!”

Throughout the day, German soldiers had been about the city tacking up posters and thrusting flyers into the hands of pedestrians that forbade any display of the Christian elements associated with Christmas. French newspapers had already lined up behind the Nazi pronouncement that Christmas had nothing to do with the birth of Christ. The holiday was derived from the ancient practice of celebrating the winter solstice and the rebirth of the sun. Santa Claus was a Christian concoction inspired by the Germanic god Odin. The poster provoking the general’s disgust depicted a gray-bearded Odin astride a white charger with a sack of gifts on his back. The manger scene of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus had been changed to a garden strewn with wooden animal toys.