‘Find me the one who is!’
The Captain came. The priest stumbled free of the crowd and emerged on the front steps. His cassock was torn, his cheek badly grazed. He had lost his glasses. He blinked, looking lost.
‘You,’ said the Captain. ‘I’d forgotten about you.’
‘What are you doing with these women and children?’
‘They’re going to church, father. Perhaps you could read them a lesson.’
‘Why?’
The Captain shrugged and waved his arm towards the burning village. ‘Where else can they go? What was it our Lord said before he died? I will prepare my father’s house for you.’
‘Don’t you dare quote scripture at me!’ spat the priest.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ sighed the Captain.
‘I will not let you deface the house of God.’
‘Fine.’ The Captain turned to Jonas and Alois. ‘Private Bucher, shoot the priest.’
‘I . . .’
‘Do it!’
The priest fell to his knees. Alois turned away but out of the corner of his eye he saw the old man murmur as he crossed himself, and felt a grudging respect.
‘These are innocent people,’ said the priest. ‘God will have retribution.’
‘There are no innocents in war,’ said the Captain. ‘Only winners and losers. Now, please, Private Bucher.’
Jonas screamed and fired. Father Julien fell to the ground, his body bouncing under the impact of a second bullet.
*
Fifty soldiers stood around the church, their rifles trained on every exit. A dozen more pushed the last women and children into the building while two soldiers placed a large box in the middle of the central aisle and lit the strings which trailed from it. The box exploded, belching gas. The last of the fleeing soldiers slammed the doors shut.
The walls of the church were a metre thick in places. From where Alois stood the sound of the screaming inside was muted. He saw a figure appear at a window and watched it topple back into the building under a volley of bullets.
‘Too slow,’ said the Captain.
His men smashed more windows and hurled in incendiary grenades, threw open the doors to machine gun the crowd. When they were sure there were no survivors, they piled straw and poured paraffin over the bodies and set them alight.
As he watched black smoke billow up into the sky, Alois knew that it was carrying what was left of his soul to hell.
xiii
Paul heard somebody whimper, closer than the screaming from the church, and realised that the noise was coming from him. He cried properly then, real sobs, not caring if anyone heard him. A timber from the roof crashed into his ditch and he howled. Smoke began to fill his den.
Every spring, Elodie smoked out the moles which wreaked havoc in her garden.
‘They have to come out,’ she explained. ‘Or they will suffocate.’
‘But when they come out, you will kill them.’
‘They don’t know that. They care only about the most immediate danger.’
Anger swelled from deep within him, breathing life back to his cramped limbs. That it should come to this! Cowering below ground like a helpless blind creature, smoked out by the Nazi equivalent of his great-aunt! There was no room in the den for Paul and his fury. To hell with the soldiers, their tanks and their guns. To hell with the burning church and whatever else was going on out there! Paul erupted on to the market square with a bellow of rage, ready for anything. Through the smoke, he made out the shapes of soldiers with guns. Guns which had been trained on the church but which now were all on him. He turned and saw more men behind him. He froze. So did they. There was no way out.
Footsteps, and the smoke appeared to dissipate around the figure of a single man who strode towards him out of the grey, flanked by another soldier and the giant he remembered from the lake.
The leader stopped a few feet from Paul and examined him gravely. The big man did not look at him. The boy – Paul saw now that he was just a boy, only a little older than Luc – appeared to have been crying. He registered the fact without emotion, then dragged his eyes back to the leader.
‘Well,’ said the Captain. ‘What the hell do we have here?’
*
The Captain, Alois knew, was close to breaking point. He knew it from the feverish glint in his eyes, and the tone of his voice, which for all its calm bordered on the hysterical. The slight frown, the pursed lips testified to his anger towards the people and circumstances which had allowed this to happen. The kid would have to be dealt with. Someone would have to kill him, but the solitary killings were always the hardest. Especially when the target was a child. Orders were orders, but everyone had a limit.
The Captain cleared his throat. ‘Private Bucher.’
‘Sir?’ Jonas sounded as if he were dying.
‘Nothing.’ It seemed even the Captain had a conscience. ‘Alois, I don’t suppose you . . .’
‘No, sir.’
‘Even if I order you . . .’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘What difference,’ murmured the Captain, ‘can one more make?’
‘I won’t shoot a child in cold blood, sir.’
Together they stared at the boy. He was filthy, his face streaked with dirt, his limbs covered in scratches, his clothes torn, his extraordinary red hair matted with grime. He half crouched before them like a cornered animal.
‘I suppose it is a child,’ mused the Captain. ‘Though it hardly looks like one. Where did it come from? Underground?’
‘I believe so, sir.’
‘But people don’t live underground, Alois. People live in houses. Animals live underground. That’s completely different.’
‘With respect, sir, this child is not an animal.’
‘When did you last talk to a child, Alois?’
‘A long time ago, sir.’
‘Hardly an expert then, are you? Private Bucher!’
‘Sir!’
‘Explain the rules of play to the prisoner.’
‘He doesn’t know the rules, sir.’
‘Well, then you tell Private Bucher, Alois, and he can translate. Is he or is he not my official interpreter?’
Alois took Jonas to one side to explain. ‘I won’t do it,’ said Bucher. He began to cry again. ‘You can’t make me.’
‘I’ll deal with him later,’ said the Captain when Alois reported back.
He led the boy to the centre of the square himself. From a distance, there was something almost intimate about the sight. The way they walked, with the Captain leaning forward, his hand on the boy’s shoulder, the boy’s face raised towards him – they could have been father and son out for a Sunday morning stroll.
‘All done.’ The Captain walked back to Alois’s side. ‘I told him to make for the far wall. I think it’s best if we focus on that one. If he gets past it, we let him go. I said he shouldn’t go back towards the village, there are too many houses burning, it would be dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘And I also told him it’s only me who’ll be shooting. That’s fair, isn’t it? To be honest, I don’t think the men would be too happy if I asked them. I mean, you don’t want to do it, and you’re completely used to this sort of thing.’
‘Used to it . . .’
‘Alois, I do believe you’re going senile in your old age.’ The Captain drew his pistol from his belt. ‘On my count, give the signal. And for God’s sake stop repeating everything I say.’
Before the Occupation there was probably an animal fair on the village square on the first Saturday of every month, just like there was at home. Children would have petted horses and wet-nosed calves just separated from their mothers, chickens would have squawked in cages. There would have been bartering and negotiation, the smell of dung and fried food, the cries of cowmen and horse traders. But now there were several dozen soldiers on the edge of the square, indistinguishable from each other through the smoke. Burning buil
dings on three sides. A boy standing straight as an arrow in the centre, his eyes trained on the wall of the only house not burning. Three men standing together. One with a pistol, another with a rifle, the third with his face in his hands. No sound but the crackling of fire.
‘One,’ said the Captain, and Alois raised his pistol.
The boy had been the same age as Wolf, and when they found him he was frozen solid . . .
‘Two.’
The wind picked up, blowing fat clouds across the summer sky. A shaft of sunshine pierced the pall of smoke which hung over the square. Sun danced on ash, a pillar of light.
‘Three.’
Clara. Her name meant light.
The Captain could hit a running rabbit from the back of a galloping horse. He could hit a single starling mid-flight. Once, after a vodka-induced argument in Belorussia, he had shot a button off another officer’s tunic from forty paces, before passing out cold for fourteen hours. The square was wide open. The kid didn’t stand a chance.
A cloud scudded over the sun. The pillar of light vanished only to reappear stronger than before when the cloud moved on. The Captain stood a few feet before him, but his eyes were trained on the boy. The pistol felt heavy in Alois’s hand. He raised it slowly. It would be so easy . . . so easy . . .
‘For Christ’s sake, Alois, what are you waiting for?’
‘I . . .’
‘You!’ The Captain barked at one of the privates on the edge of the square. ‘Give the signal.’
‘Sir!’
And the private’s pistol cracked, and the boy was running, and the Captain had taken his first shot. He missed by inches. On purpose, of course. He reloaded. His face was flushed. He was laughing. He was not here any more, but on the heathlands of home, shooting hare, pheasant, deer. There was no sign now of the man close to breaking point.
The Captain was enjoying himself.
His rifle was pressed against his cheek. The boy was fast. Two chances left, if he was quick about it. His finger was on the trigger, squeezing.
The sun grew brighter. A sob broke through Alois Grand’s lips. He dropped his gun. The boy, with an uncanny sixth sense, swerved to the right as the bullet whistled past him. The Captain swore.
The pillar of light was burning now, but nobody else appeared to see it. It swayed gently as the breeze blew through the swirling ash giving it, for a fleeting moment, the shape of a woman.
A woman dancing. A woman beckoning. A woman smiling upon him with forgiveness in her eyes, telling him what to do.
The line of the Captain’s cheek, smooth against the wooden rifle butt. Two bales of hay in a stable, a half-drunk bottle of vodka. A forest clearing, a bonfire for the dead. A gramophone record playing Puccini.
The index finger of a manicured hand, pulling back a trigger. The long pale fingers of Clara as she worked. A single rose on his son’s bedside table.
Alois howled and threw himself against the Captain.
Evening
Baptiste had died hours ago.
Luc sat on the floor with his back against the wall, watching him. There was no light coming through the chink in the shutters anymore.
Soon, he thought. Soon, I will break out and go.
He tried to move but his limbs would not obey him.
Footsteps. His body came to life and he was on his feet, bolting to hide behind the door, straining to listen. Whoever was there had a key. There was no sound of a door being forced, but someone was walking down the passage towards the kitchen, was in the kitchen now. Someone walking slowly with dragging steps, someone crying, someone calling out in a very small voice.
‘Luc?’
‘Ari!’ he bellowed. ‘Oh my Christ! Ari! I’m in here!’
*
In the big bedroom at Lascande, Arianne sat curled in Luc’s lap in one of the gilt-edged armchairs. Their eyes were red from crying, their arms locked around each other. She tried to move but he would not let her go. She pulled his head to her shoulder and pressed her cheek to his hair.
‘It was my fault,’ he whispered.
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘No, no, no.’
He got up and walked over to the window.
‘Don’t open it,’ she begged.
‘No one’s going to come now.’
He leaned his hands on the sill.
‘What should we do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. You’re shivering. Come away from the window.’
She coaxed him towards the bed then limped to the bathroom, where she washed in freezing water. He was asleep when she returned. She lit a candle and placed it in a lamp, then pulled the covers up around him and dropped kisses on his closed eyelids, just as she remembered her mother doing to her. He stirred and she tiptoed away carrying her lamp, back to the gilt-edged armchair where she sat and stared into the night.
Out in the woods, Paul stumbled, moonlight on his flaming hair. Every inch of him was filthy and his face was streaked with tears. He did not think of where he was going, but he knew that there was only one place. A bend appeared in the road and he saw the iron gates, standing ajar. He slipped through them, still keeping to the shadows. In the window at the end of the house he saw his sister’s lantern.
The forest was dark and still. Paul stopped for a moment and breathed it in. Then he squared his shoulders and walked the small remaining distance towards the light.
Who knew that once you died you could see so clearly?
Samaroux burned on long after the soldiers left. Hours dead, and I saw everything. I saw the rats and crows nosing around the few corpses which had not been set alight, the dogs hungry for their evening meal. I saw the body of Alois Grand, killed by the bullet meant for Paul, and I saw Jonas Bucher and the pistol with which he took his own life. I saw a man crawl out of the cornfield where he hid when they took his family, and I saw villagers returned from town, bawling like babies. I saw my parents, my schoolfriends, my neighbours. All dead. I saw Arianne and Paul and Luc, crying in the big house at Lascande.
I could have loved him too. Oh, not like she does! She’ll love him till the day she dies. Me, I just fancied him. I saw him from my bedroom window and I thought, I’d like some of that. Those cheekbones, those lips! That breath of fresh air, straight up from the south! We could have had fun. I wish we had. I wish . . .
Mainly I wish that I were still alive.
We might have stopped it too, Romy and Father Julien and I. We all knew where Luc was hiding, or at least where he was heading to. We could have led them straight there, but we didn’t. I wonder if it would have made a difference?
I think about a lot of things, now that I am alone. Our lies and betrayals, our quarrels and silences, our messy sacrifices. I think of all the things we do for love.
I think about Luc and Arianne together at Lascande, and about what it means to be a hero.
I think that I loved her and I’m glad she’s still alive.
I think, I did not want to die.
*
I should leave now.
I should follow the others. Mother and Father and Elodie, Thierry and Marc and Jérôme, Father Julien and Mayor Jarvis and Monsieur Félix. Romy and Alois and Jonas. They’ve all gone. There’s only me left now.
The liberating armies never did come to Samaroux when the war ended. What would have been the point? They marched down other village streets, down boulevards strewn with flowers, cheered by girls who fell in love and children hopeful for sweets, while the pavement here vanished under grass and dirt. Those who do come walk our streets in silence, and the flowers they bring are for our common grave. Alois’s wife came, with her little boy. Monsieur Félix’s son, returned from fighting with the Allies. Joseph Dupont’s brother, whose name is really Golstein and who escaped to England at the beginning of the war. And Arianne.
She came with her father and Paul and Luc. Her father drove them in a second-hand Citroën with a Bordeaux number plate. Bordeaux, where her mother studied! Close enough to remember, far
enough to forget. She wore a new dress and she looked so pretty.
They all cried except her. My uncle fell to his knees in the dirt and howled, and Luc cried quietly in front of the church. Paul made straight for his old house, climbed into the ruins of it and refused to come out, but Arianne came to the graveyard. She laid wild carnations on her mother’s grave and then she came to us and sat on the grass right where we are all buried together.
‘Hello, Sol,’ she said.
That was all, but it was enough. She sat for a long time, and through her silence I felt everything. Her grief, her confusion. Her hopes, too, for the future. I like to think it helped her, coming back. I like to think she felt me too.
And then she also left.
I should stay. Who would speak for us, if I went too? Years from now when people stray here, I could tell this place’s secrets. Stop a while, I could whisper to them. See how the shadows sway in the breeze? Children were born here, fought and made up. People loved and laughed and died. It wasn’t always like this. Stop a while, and I will tell this place’s story.
But then again . . . the sky is bright and beckoning and I am quite alone. Where once I had a body I now see earth and trees and stone. I have become insubstantial as the air and I find I do not mind.
It is time for me to leave this place.
It is time for me to go.
Afterword
My book is a story, my characters fiction. But on 10 June 1944, at around 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich really did enter the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane and ordered all the inhabitants to assemble on the market square, under the pretext of checking their papers. What happened next was much as I described it, though I have been sparing in the detail. The men were separated from the women and children, taken to selected locations and shot. The women and children were herded into the church. When attempts to asphyxiate them failed, the church was set on fire.
Nobody during the eventual trials or in the years of study and examination which followed has ever understood why this happened. There was no train crash in real life, no Resistance activity. Only a quiet village, minding its own business, hopeful that soon the war would end. Theories abound. One of the more popular is that Oradour-sur-Glane was confused with another village some distance away, Oradour-sur-Vayres, where the Resistance were more active. Another is that the Allied landings in the North panicked the occupying forces, and that this massacre was no more than a flexing of muscles, a reprisal for the kidnapping of a German officer somewhere nearby the previous day. Oradour was small and contained enough to destroy with just a handful of men – 150 soldiers to 642 villagers.
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