Soon they passed concrete blockhouses that once, long ago, had been part of Rommel’s famous Atlantic wall. Some were now tilted upward at weird angles, their guns pointing harmlessly at the sky. Others were mounds of rubble. Still others were untouched, remaining exactly as they were when their garrisons filed out with hands behind heads in surrender twenty years before.
The players watched them slip past uneasily. This was a defeat they preferred to ignore.
They went up a hill. The sea was smooth and calm in the evening light of June. Then the minibus rolled into a village of one street, the children parting in the road to watch it go by. All at once the bus slowed, groaned, stopped dead.
The driver shook his head in exasperation. “Ah, that damned magneto again.”
He opened the door, got down, and raised the hood in the rear. Immediately a crowd of youngsters gathered to watch. Behind the driver the players rose, stretched, and filed slowly into the street. The last man out was the baron. You could tell how stiff and sore he was by the careful way he left the bus, how he held the door handle as he descended.
Ernst, the driver, was now underneath the vehicle, and Sepp, who knew engines, was leaning down and talking to him. Just ahead, beside a low seawall, was a monument. The baron walked over and looked at it.
Nothing ornate, nothing overdone, the monument was neither elaborate nor expensive. It consisted of a slab of roughly hewn granite topped by a granite arm and fist rising into space. High above the water, it must have been visible far out at sea. Silhouetted against the sky, the stone fist held a sword broken just above the hilt.
On the slab was a metal plaque. Twenty years of moisture-laden fogs had weathered it so badly that it was barely legible. The baron bent down. With difficulty he made out names of those who had been his enemies, his friends.
MORT POUR LA FRANCE
————
June 5,1944
————
Georges Varin, Instituteur
Le Père Clement, Prêtre
Charles Lavigne, Gérant
Louis Marquet, Agriculteur
Marcel Deschamps, Pécheur
René Le Gallec, quinze ans, Étudiant
My God, thought the baron, this is Nogent-Plage! We’re on the Grande Rue and it is the fifth of June!
Chapter 11
YOUNG SCHROEDER AND HERBERGER joined him before the monument, leaning over to read the lettering on the plaque. What could it possibly mean to these boys? the baron wondered. They were but a few years old when it all happened, twenty years ago to the day.
The children of the village, openly curious, surrounded the strangers from the stranded bus. Once again the baron reflected, as he had so often in the past, on how appealing were the French youngsters. The boys wore shorts and striped jerseys, the girls checked dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats.
Like everyone else in the home town of Jean-Paul Varin, these children had spent the afternoon watching the game. Therefore, the face of Otto Schoen, the crewcut of Sepp Obermeyer, above all the lined, handsome features of the baron were familiar to them.
One boy, bolder than the others, edged toward the big man and with up-turned face asked, “Are you Monsieur the Baron von Kleinschrodt?”
For a minute the man almost shook his head. Then looking down at the child, he realized this boy could have been the son of René Le Gallec, had René Le Gallec lived and played for France. The denial died away in his throat. At least he owed the truth to those six whose names were on the simple monument. So he nodded.
Elated, the boy shrieked, jumping up and down, “Laurent! Kiki! Jules! Viens vite! Le Baron est à Nogent-Plage.”
They came from nowhere, they scrambled up the cliff, they swarmed about him, thrusting bits of paper and grubby pencils at him. Others rushed from their houses to join the group. He stood there signing his name, hearing as he did that familiar half slap, half crunch of the waves on the pebbly beach below. It took him back to that distant June afternoon, that day which began in such calm and quiet and ended in such disaster for everyone concerned. Suddenly he felt a jab in his sore ribs. It was the more painful side, where he had fallen and perhaps injured himself. It hurt. He looked up angrily.
Before his face were the eyes of a madman. It was more than mere madness; there was ferocity in those eyes, a kind of animal savagery. The man had quite obviously not shaved for a week. His hair was long and matted. In his hands was a hunting rifle. It felt most uncomfortable against the baron’s ribs.
The children immediately explained. “Ah, it’s only Pierre. Crazy Pierre, Monsieur the Baron, don’t take any notice of him.”
“It’s only Pierre Marquet. Don’t worry....”
“He was in a prison camp five years. He’s touched in the head....”
So the demented son of old Louis Marquet stood there, holding a deadly weapon, and incredibly, as if the madman simply did not exist, the boys kept after the baron for his autograph. The baron was a famous football player, the same as Jean-Paul. They had heard their elders talk about him many times in connection with the killing of six hostages from the village during the war. But to the children, the hostages were merely names on a monument, whereas the baron was a living legend, someone everybody had watched that afternoon on TV, the incredible German goalkeeper.
Suddenly Crazy Pierre was joined by a biggish man, also with an insane look in his eyes. He, too, had a weapon, a tommy gun cradled in his arm.
The boys spoke up. “It’s the Racleur. The fiddler. He was at Dachau five years. He’s mad, too.”
Vaguely the baron remembered a village youth who had assaulted a German officer when he was picked up in a labor sweep at Verville. That was all. How strange he should remember.
A big, wild-faced woman joined the growing circle. Her straggly hair blew about in the wind. The baron had recognized her coming down the street. She carried a small pistol which once belonged to some German officer.
Her voice was grating, menacing. “So, you have returned! You have dared to come back!” She next addressed herself to what was now a sizable crowd of villagers, young and old, crying out that the Herr Oberst had pretended to be a friend and then butchered her only son, René. Her rapid French was much too fast for any of the Germans but the baron to follow. She was taking over and the crowd was with her, stirring uneasily at her words.
“Monsieur Le Boucher,” she suddenly screamed. She motioned the baron ahead with her pistol. Crazy Pierre and the Racleur aped her gesture with their weapons. He moved along with his teammates and the minibus driver beside him.
On both sides of the street the wooden shutters of second-story windows flew open with that whanging sound he recalled so well. Women leaned out to watch. “Herr Oberst,” they said, pointing at him. “Herr Oberst.” They did not say it in a polite, pleasant fashion as they used to long ago. Now they mouthed the old familiar name in a brutal, savage way. The strange procession moved up the Grande Rue, followed by every child in town.
That house there was the home of the widow Dupont. She must be dead by now. She had a small white fox terrier, which stood outside yapping at everyone who passed. He never yapped at me; he knew I liked dogs. That’s where the Bleu Marin used to be. I see they call it the Café des Mariniers now. The awning is yellow and the chairs outside are different. I always liked those old iron ones.
Schroeder, Herberger, Obermeyer, Schoen, and the driver looked at him. What’s up? Where are they taking us? He had no idea, save that it was ridiculous. They must all be mad.
They paused before an unoccupied stone house. It was the Bloch villa.
Someone kicked roughly at the front door. It crashed open. They were all pushed inside by the insane French with their guns. The room on the right, he could dimly see, had been his headquarters. They were shoved down a flight of steps into the cellar, dark and dank, a dirty floor underfoot. This, he recalled, had been where those six hostages had huddled while he sat upstairs in the office so tormented and alone.
The five other Germans surrounded him, asking questions. What does it all mean? Who are these crazy people with guns? Did the end of the game upset them this much? Do they take football that seriously? What’s the matter with them? The baron’s teammates knew, of course, that he was the so-called Butcher of Nogent-Plage. What they did not know was that this was Nogent-Plage. So what’s going on, Herr Hans?
Footsteps echoed overhead. Then Madame Le Gallec’s voice could be heard giving orders. She was obviously in command. But what was happening? The minutes seemed eternal. Just so, thought the baron, they must have seemed to those five Frenchmen and a boy in this same cellar twenty years before.
Chapter 12
THE LITTLE RED RENAULT rolled along the back roads, following almost exactly the same course the two German buses had taken half an hour before. The packed crowd around the French dressing room had given Jean-Paul a tremendous ovation when he appeared, and the police had to wedge a path to his parked car. Now, out in the country, with his mother beside him, the bitterness of defeat still hung over his heart.
She knew how desperately he had wanted victory in that match and how badly he felt. So she said little at first. Then, as they spun along toward Nogent-Plage, as they drew farther and farther from the stadium, from the crowd and the noise and the scarred turf, above all from the black depression which had pervaded the dressing room, he began to answer briefly.
“Yes, to play well is satisfying. I did my best. But I was playing today for France. I was part of a team.”
“The whole team played well. You deserved to win.”
“Both teams played well; both deserved to win.” There was a hardness, a bleakness about his voice. Unfortunately he was right. Both teams deserved to win and fate had not smiled upon France.
She tried to change the subject. “You know the thing that amazed me about him?” No need to explain to whom she referred. “He seems so little changed. Prison and all the years since the war haven’t greatly altered him. How did he look close up?”
“Like Gibraltar. Like the world’s best goalie. Put him on our side, and we would have won by six to ten points. Not that Georges Bosquier isn’t a good goalkeeper; he is, the best in France. But the baron today... well, I’ve never seen anything like it and nobody else has either.”
She was silent for several miles. He was right; nobody had ever seen such a goalie in action before.
“You know, Jean-Paul, I’ve always felt all my life that there was something different about the Germans, even about the Herr Oberst, even before that day.... He... you see... they’ve been our enemies....”
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, Maman, they are no different from ourselves. They want to win; they would always give anything to beat us. We too wanted to win; we gave everything to beat them and failed. As a boy I felt we would never do the things the Germans did to us during the war. Then came our colonial wars, in Vietnam and in Algeria. Oh, especially in Algeria. Tortures. Massacres. Cruelty. Dropping bombs on innocent villages. You see the point is that everyone loses control in a war. Sometimes in sport, too.”
They were coming to the sea now, and it was calm in the June evening. Madame Varin started to protest. Surely this was going a bit far. She pointed out that the Algerian war was not the same as a World War.
“You must realize, Jean-Paul, Algeria was a département of France. It had been so ever since 1830... a long time, my boy.”
He was tired, ravaged by defeat when victory had been so close he could taste it. Although he loved his mother and tried to be patient, he burst out, “Yes, of course I know. Did I not hear this repeated a hundred times in school, in books, in the newspapers! I know it all. I can say it by heart, like every French schoolboy. I learned about the army that landed at Sidi-Ferraud on June 14, 1830. About the Insurrection of 1871 and the creation of the new département of Algeria. I know it all. But what is the fact? The fact is that we invaded North Africa and colonized it. We subjugated the people....”
“But Jean-Paul, surely Algeria is different. It had been French for over a hundred years. Even the Moslems were French citizens.”
“Yes, they were French citizens, and they were allowed to serve in our armed forces and die for France. What other rights did they have? Algeria had been settled by French colons for a hundred years....”
“My boy, you forget the Marêchal Lyautey. And how the Moslems prayed for him in their mosques during the war with the Riff and how they sobbed openly in the streets at his death. Ah, you are far too young to remember these things.”
“Maman, chère Maman, I know about the marêchal. He built Morocco into a fruitful consumer for French products.”
How stubborn he was, she thought, how exactly like his father with these strange ideas of Marxism and equality. “Jean-Paul, you forget that we poured money, French money, into North Africa, and lives too, thousands of them, some of our noblest and best, men who had the interests of the North Africans at heart.”
“Spare me, Maman,” he said, fatigue in his voice. “True, we poured money into North Africa, but we took millions more from it. We....”
His mother interrupted. “Look! What’s that? Ahead, off to the right. It looks like a glow on the horizon. A fire, perhaps. Could it be in Nogent-Plage?”
He looked ahead. There was a slight glow in the distance over the cliffs. “Well, it could be. But most likely it is Varengeville. They’re forever having fires there. We’ll be able to tell when we get around the next headland.”
He increased the little car’s speed. They zipped along the empty coastal road toward the glow in the distance. Soon it became larger. Yes, it could be Nogent-Plage.
Chapter 13
THE WHOLE TOWN was in the Grande Rue as he pulled up with his mother in the red Renault. They almost dragged him from behind the wheel, raised him to their shoulders, carried him up the street past the smoldering ruin of the Volkswagen minibus, twisted and charred.
“Var... IN! Var... IN! Var... IN!”
He’s ours. Ours, you understand, ours from Nogent-Plage. Win or lose, the greatest centre forward in all Europe, the best France has ever produced. Born right here in this village, too.
“Var... IN! Var... IN! Var... IN!”
At first the noise and excitement and the faces of the crowd confused Jean-Paul. What was it? What was happening? There was a smell of smoke in the air. In agitated tones a half-dozen voices shouted the explanation.
“They burned the bus, Jean-Paul. The bus that was carrying the Fritz back to Germany. The Germans cheated this afternoon at Rouen. They cheated....”
“Crazy Pierre started it....”
“He has the Germans locked up in the cellar of the Bloch villa, Jean-Paul....”
Now he began to understand. Something evil was happening. The evil could be seen in those faces. Immediately he forced his way down from their shoulders as they crowded about, yelling and cheering, echoing the same cry that had resounded over the Stade Rouennais that afternoon.
“Var... IN! Var... IN! Var... IN!”
“But attention! Listen to me! Those German players....”
“Oh they’re under lock and key in that cellar. And their baron, too. Ah, let me tell you the Feldwebel Hans is locked up in the cellar for a change. Et comment! We have him. Let him fry with the others.”
“Jean-Paul, Madame Le Gallec and Pierre are going to burn the place to the ground....”
“But you can’t do that!”
“We will. We are doing it already. We are burning that foul building where such harm was done in Nogent-Plage. And the baron shot your father, didn’t he? Didn’t he? He murdered six people from this town. Then this afternoon the Germans cheated; that’s why they won. France was the better team. Everyone knew it, everyone could see it....”
Jean-Paul shoved, pushed, worked his way out of the embraces, the back slapping, toward the Bloch villa. Crazy Pierre was carrying hay on a pitchfork, evidently to supplement the fire that he and M
adame Le Gallec had started, that now was beginning to blaze up in earnest. The boy knew the madman was capable of anything.
He fought through the crowd and stood facing them on the steps of the villa. It was easy to see the fever in their eyes. This was a mob, led in whole or in part by Crazy Pierre, and the mob was momentarily insane. He raised his hand and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Listen to me! Listen to me!”
Behind him he heard the crackle of old paint. He could smell the ancient wainscoting burning.
“Friends, neighbors, we must stop this insanity. We cannot....”
“Jean-Paul, he killed your father,” a woman screamed. “He murdered six of us.”
“He shot my boy, René,” Madame Le Gallec cried. “He shot your father, too.”
For a second Jean-Paul realized this sickness was the same malady which had swept the French stands in Rouen that afternoon. “Look, my friends. Today I was hurt. I was sore, bruised, inside and out....” Hurry, hurry, he thought to himself, in a few minutes it will be too late. “I also felt bitter towards those Germans. But we cannot take human lives. What would my father say, I ask you? He was a humanist; he would have told us we cannot continue to cherish grudges. If we keep feeding on these hatreds handed down to us by our ancestors, our grandfathers and great grandfathers, where are we? Friends, what good are wars? Who ever won a war? Who ever profited from them in the end?”
Slowly the madness that hung over the mob seemed to diminish and even the anger in the faces lessened. He could feel the decent people on the far edges of the crowd asserting themselves. Why, Jean-Paul is right. We cannot murder these men. We must not let them die in the cellar.
“Friends! Marcel! Pierre! Yves, you knew my father. You, Madame Bonnet, you also knew him. Reflect! There were six French in that cellar twenty years ago. Now, in the same cellar, we have six Germans. Shall we do to them what they did to us? If so, how are we different from those who murdered my father? If we kill them, we are guilty of the same crime. Somehow, somewhere, we must break this evil chain and look on each other as human beings.”
His Enemy, His Friend Page 11