Leni's Involvement in Resistance Espionage and Eventual Death

Leni’s Involvement in Resistance Espionage and Eventual Death is a film-within-the-novel story narrated by Molina, in which romance and espionage become inseparable under German occupation. Leni, a singer from Alsace who insists on her loyalty to France, is drawn into the Maquis’s effort to uncover a German ammunition dump. The operation turns her affection for a German counterintelligence officer into a source of danger, while the resistance’s threats and her own acts of defiance carry her toward a fatal ending.

Occupied Paris and a Murder

The story opens in Paris a few months after the German occupation begins. German troops march beneath swastika flags at the Arc de Triomphe and on the Eiffel Tower, while French women applaud them. In this occupied city, Leni performs as a singer. A fellow performer, a blond chorus girl, visits her dressing room to say that she is pregnant by a German lieutenant and expects to marry him. The disclosure troubles Leni, who knows the woman is unmarried; the girl, however, hints at an unnamed fear before leaving.

That night the chorus girl walks through dark streets toward the lieutenant, who leans from a window and drops her a key. A clubfooted man and an accomplice in a car are nearby. The car runs her down as she bends to retrieve the key, then disappears into the empty streets. The lieutenant reaches her as she lies dying. She tells him not to be afraid, saying their child will be born healthy and make its father proud, and then dies. Her murder makes the private romance between the chorus girl and the German lieutenant part of a larger, covert struggle.

The next morning, German police question Leni because she was the dead woman’s friend. Leni knows only that her friend loved a German lieutenant. The police detain her, but a telephone order secures her release in custody so she can perform that evening. After the show, a young German officer introduces himself as the head of counterespionage in Paris and apologizes for the questioning. He has sent Leni flowers from the Upper Palatinate, where he was born, and invites her to supper. Their first exchange exposes the political divide between them: Leni says she comes from Alsace and has been taught to love France, while he defends the German occupation as a campaign against Europe’s supposed enemies. She barely touches her drink and lets him take her home, still unable to accept him simply as a lover.

Coercion into the Maquis Mission

Leni’s cousin later arrives with the clubfoot, the man involved in the fatal attack on the chorus girl. They reveal that the dead performer had belonged to the Maquis and had begun a mission to discover the location of a large German ammunition dump. According to the clubfoot, she fell in love with the lieutenant and refused to continue; the resistance then had her killed before she could betray its members to the occupation authorities. He demands that Leni complete the mission by obtaining the location from the German officer’s documents.

Leni refuses at first, saying she lacks the courage and knowledge for such work. The clubfoot counters that the officer’s love for her makes the task possible, then threatens reprisals. Leni discovers that her cousin is being held as a hostage: the Maquis will kill him if she does not cooperate. She agrees to try, not from commitment to espionage but under pressure to save him.

At the officer’s house, Leni searches for the information while the German majordomo watches her suspiciously. During a garden lunch, she asks for a rare wine that only the majordomo can retrieve from the cellar. When he leaves, she uses the opportunity to enter the officer’s study. She has taken the key to his desk and uses a recording of her own singing, accompanied by piano, to make the others believe she is performing in the adjoining room. She finds a map showing the German arsenal’s location, but footsteps force her onto the study balcony, exposed to the people gathered below. As the single-song record ends, she slips back to the piano. The guests applaud, convinced they have heard her sing live, and her deception goes undetected.

Leni meets the clubfoot and her cousin in a vast museum overlooking the River Seine. She has the location but hesitates to hand it over after the clubfoot says this is only the beginning of the work expected of her. Seeing her cousin trembling, she gives the clubfoot the name of the French region and the exact village where the ammunition is hidden. He tells her that the German officer will hate her when he learns of her betrayal. The cousin then tries to push the clubfoot through a museum window; the clubfoot fights back, and the cousin sacrifices his life by hurling them both into space. Leni escapes recognition in the crowd by wearing a veiled hat.

Love, Divided Loyalties, and Exposure

Leni’s feelings for the officer deepen, but a private moment changes how she sees him. In bed, she overhears him on the telephone recommending the execution of two black-market criminals. She later challenges his claim to fearlessness, asking whether killing a defenseless enemy might instead reflect fear of facing that enemy in the future. He does not understand her point. Having heard how readily he accepts a death sentence, Leni regards him as less admirable and decides to pass the arsenal information to the Maquis.

She arranges to contact a resistance member at the theater, using rehearsals as cover. Before she can deliver the information, an official arrives with a telegram inviting her to star in a major film at Tobis-Berlin Studios. The invitation comes with a representative of the occupation government, and she must pack for Berlin immediately. Rather than abandon the mission, Leni insists that she be allowed to meet the Maquis high command before handing over the secret. The officer and his soldiers follow the car taking her out of Paris, but the driver—a criminal accomplice associated with the clubfoot—changes course to lose them.

At the castle, Leni discovers that the German majordomo she had feared is the head of the Maquis. She gives him the ammunition-dump secret, expecting the officer to arrive and rescue her. When no one comes, she overhears the driver telling the leader that he suspects they were followed. Remembering the majordomo’s earlier surveillance of her, she tries to use his interest in her to create an opportunity. The officer and his patrol eventually find the trail through the rain and approach the castle.

Death and the Memorial Ending

When the Maquis leader makes a sexual advance, Leni grabs a carving fork and kills him. The officer and his men arrive, and Leni tries to escape through a window. The driver, who is waiting below, fires at her as he is dying. Leni catches herself on a curtain and remains standing until the officer reaches her. She tells him she loves him and that they will soon be together again in Berlin, but he sees blood on his hands and realizes she has been shot. She dies in his arms.

The film’s final scene shifts to a Berlin memorial for heroes, presented like a Greek temple. Leni appears there as a statue in a tunic, her arms extended; the officer places flowers on them and walks away with tears in his eyes. An inscription says, in effect, that the fatherland will never forget its heroes, while the officer leaves alone along a sunlit road. The public monument turns Leni into a national emblem, but the image of the grieving man and the outstretched statue preserves the intimate loss that official commemoration cannot undo. Molina’s narration also keeps the story visibly in the act of being told: he pauses, corrects himself, and admits uncertainty about some details, so the elaborate film plot arrives not as impersonal history but as a remembered tale shared inside the prison.