perverse idyll

Every year a bobcat mama gives birth to a litter of kittens on my roof. I set up a camera this time around. 

Every character in this book who’s survived to the present day is walking around under the immense weight of both victim and perpetrator trauma thanks to this culture of clan extermination and if we’re not engaging with that then what are we even doing with these characters, you know? That’s the meat, that’s the juice! Does it change how the murderer carries the weight of their act if the murdered old woman was your own mother, or your enemy’s mother, or an old sex worker nobody cared about? If you did it for revenge or personal gain or to save your own life or the lives of your family? Does it change how you carry the loss of your loved ones if you understand the reasons they were killed? If it was socially sanctioned? If they were guilty or innocent, soldiers or civilians?

Remember when Lil Nas X beautifully explored his sexuality, seduced and killed the devil to the banger of all time, and instead of cheering on this openly gay and proud Black artist for his artistry and fighting back against respectability politics, suddenly said respectability politics was all the Queerest Place on the Internet cared about? Hm. Wonder what happened there.

She didn't sneak into occupied France under cover of darkness. She walked calmly to the front door, rang the bell, and smiled.

"I'm looking for a room to rent," she said in perfect German, her manner gentle and unassuming.

The Wehrmacht commander saw exactly what he expected to see: a harmless middle-aged woman, polite and refined. A widow, perhaps. Someone who posed no threat whatsoever.

He had no idea he'd just welcomed a British spy into his home.

Her name was Lise de Baissac, and she was one of Winston Churchill's secret weapons—a Special Operations Executive agent tasked with setting Europe ablaze from within. Every morning she greeted her landlord with warmth and pleasantries. Every night she slipped into the darkness carrying explosives, meeting with resistance fighters and whispering her golden rule:

"We work quietly, or we do not work at all."

He thought she was his tenant. She was his surveillance. She was sabotage personified, living under his roof, studying his routines, gathering intelligence while he slept one room away.

But this audacious arrangement wasn't where her story began.

September 24, 1942. A British Whitley bomber roared through black skies over occupied France. At thirty-seven years old, Lise de Baissac jumped into the void—alone, armed with nothing but false papers and unshakeable resolve.

Her parachute snapped open over enemy territory. She hit the ground hard, hands frantically burying the silk and British equipment that could mean instant execution. Within minutes, she transformed.

Lise de Baissac vanished. "Madame Irene Brisse" appeared—a cultured widow with a passion for archaeology, sketching Roman ruins and cycling through the French countryside.

Perfectly invisible.

But in her bicycle basket lay coded messages, detonators, and maps of German positions. In the shadows, she built the Artist network—recruiting French resistance fighters who grew from dozens to hundreds to thousands. She established her apartment as a safe house for incoming British agents, briefing them, arming them, teaching them how to survive in a land where one mistake meant torture and death.

Her apartment sat one hundred yards from Gestapo headquarters.

The hunters passed her on the street every single day, never recognizing the ghost they walked beside.

Then came betrayal. June 1943. The Prosper network collapsed. Agents screamed in German cellars. Lise had minutes to live or die. She burned every document, smashed her radio, and sprinted across a moonless field to a waiting Lysander aircraft. As the plane climbed into darkness, searchlights clawed at the sky.

She didn't flinch.

London welcomed her home. Safety. Recognition. Rest.

She refused all three.

Eight months later, she parachuted back into France under a different identity. D-Day was coming, and she had work to do. She cycled hundreds of miles carrying weapons disguised beneath vegetables, smiling politely at German soldiers she passed on the road.

"They think women are invisible," she told fellow resisters. "They should fear what they cannot see."

And when she needed lodging in a heavily garrisoned town? She did the unthinkable—she rented that room from a Wehrmacht commander, living under the same roof as her enemy, gathering intelligence over tea and casual conversation, then vanishing into the night to coordinate sabotage operations.

June 6, 1944. Allied forces stormed Normandy beaches while behind enemy lines, Lise's network went to work. Roads exploded. Bridges collapsed. Trains derailed. Fuel depots erupted in flames.

The feared Das Reich Panzer Division should have reached Normandy in three days. It took seventeen—seventeen crucial days bought by bicycle chains, whispered codes, and carefully placed explosives. Days bought by quiet hands the enemy dismissed as harmless.

For two years, Lise operated deep behind enemy lines. Two parachute jumps. Two networks built from nothing. Torture always one mistake away. Execution always one betrayal near.

She survived.

After the war, she received the MBE, Croix de Guerre, and Légion d'honneur. But the French Resistance fighters who worked alongside her gave her the only title that mattered: "She was one of us."

Lise de Baissac quietly returned to civilian life, planting flowers instead of bombs, watering roses where she once watered courage. She never sought applause or recognition. True heroes rarely do.

She lived to ninety-eight—a graceful woman who broke an empire with patience and steel, who proved that courage isn't loud or showy. It's the archaeology enthusiast on a bicycle. It's the polite tenant who smiles at breakfast. It's the person the enemy never bothered to fear.

Until it was far too late.