by Hilton, Lisa
JUNE 1944
Laurent struggled on through the dawn. His leg itched frantically, it was surely infected, though it had been worth it. His bewilderment was deepened by the exhilaration of their success, and now he was soaked too, having forded the river below Saintonge. He tried to think it through clearly. He and Prof had arrived back at ‘base camp’, as they called Pastre’s farm, without a hitch, and the others, who had ridden in the truck, scrambled into the clearing an hour later. The truck had been fired down a bank on the old Monguèriac road and, as they had expected, Pastre, Lebre, Nenet, Pan and Ceba had been able to watch the dispatch rider pass on his way to the chateau from their hiding place in the woods. It had been about four o’clock, Laurent reckoned, when he set off on foot back to the village. Physically he was exhausted, but he felt wide awake, fearless. The plan was for him to return to Murblanc and wait until the village was clear. JC said the Americans were only days away. But as he came to Chauvignat’s, he saw that there were lights in the village. He scrambled back into the tree cover and worked his way slowly along, hampered by his crutch in the summer growth, until he was above Teulière, from where he could make out that there were lights in the Mairie. It would be too risky to go through the village, so he doubled back and now, after an agonized hour of pushing along the hedgerows, he was at Aucordier’s. Oriane might know something.
The kitchen door stood open and Laurent knew before he entered that there was no one inside, but he still went through the big rooms, calling softly, hoping that William would hear his footsteps and jump out to surprise him. The cradle he had made for Jacky was empty except for a little grey flannel rabbit with two mismatched buttons for eyes. Oriane must have stitched it. The breakfast coffee was waiting in the pot by the fire, and Laurent was poking up the wood to heat it when he heard activity on the road.
It came to him in the same few seconds it took to haul himself back up the stairs, when he realized the car was not stopping in the yard. They knew no one was here, they hadn’t come looking. They had found the gun. They had searched the dance and found the gun, they would know where it came from. Then they would have had the news from the railway. They would know immediately that there was a connection because of the dead one. That would lead them to Papie. They would see that the dead soldier was revenge because they had killed Papie. Then they would just have to look at the Milice list of the STO evaders for the names and if they were quick they would guess, and now, with the railway, they would know who to look for. It must be because of him they had taken Oriane, they would be questioning her, assuming she knew. Thank God he had never told her everything, but it was possible she might tell about the guns. They had Jacky too, she would surely tell about the guns, and he couldn’t blame her.
They had his son, his baby boy. He thought of trying to get into the barn, from where he would be able to see any movement on the road, but it was a risk that would tell him nothing. Laurent was not afraid for himself, though his body told him otherwise. He could go to the chateau and give himself up, but that could betray the others. He groaned drily, wished that JC was there. The only thing he could do was wait out the hours in the knowledge that whatever was happening in Castroux, to William and Oriane and their child, it was all his fault.
René knew Officer Hummel well. They had spoken in the Mairie many times about regulations, the permission for the procession at Toussaint. Hummel had expressed his personal condolences about the terrible business of Papie Nadl and the Milice. He seemed a correct young man. René imagined he was well-educated, a gentleman in his own country, and apparently he played the piano. Riding next to him in the truck, Hummel stared frigidly ahead like a passenger in a crowded train whose neighbour has committed the indecency of falling asleep and slobbering on his shoulder.
‘I think this is the place.’
The other trucks pulled in behind. As they began the climb through the woods, René concentrated on placing his feet carefully, scanning the undergrowth for the right opening of the steep path. He knew all the hunting tracks around the village, but there was a part of him that wanted his eyes to miss the place, so they could just shoot him here in the woods. Perhaps they would find it and he would have been wrong, his guess misplaced, and then they would shoot him too. Or even if he was right they might still kill him. If he lived, he would have to explain. Père Guillaume would support him. No one else in Castroux knew about Oradour. If this was the only way to save them, then surely it had to be the right, the only, the impossible choice?
JUNE 1944
Thanks to the deep shade, the chestnuts in the avenue were still magnificent, their parchment-coloured candles preserved intact. Von Scheurenberg had liked to walk here in the twilight with a cigarette, watching the smoke curl into the canopy, the throb of the bees calming as the sun went down. He was revolted by what Bernd had done. The man was always a barbarian, but this had a histrionic pettiness to it that von Scheurenberg found mortifying. He no longer cared to disguise his contempt, though he doubted this would penetrate through Bernd’s lappings of flesh. How fond he had been of those chestnut trees. It irked him that not only had Bernd made them appear weak, but had spoiled the last beautiful thing he could reasonably expect to see. Von Scheurenberg kept his eyes front, but when the driver stalled as he turned on to the bridge something knocked against the window and it took all von Scheurenberg’s self-control not to recoil as the crimson face of the village drunk bobbed at the pane, purpled orbs of eye-flesh oozing inches from his own.
‘Was it necessary,’ he asked when they were finally on the road to Landi, ‘to hang them upside down?’
Bernd’s jowls undulated in a placid chuckle.
‘Well, we shot them first.’
For hours after the men had been marched out of the square, Charlotte and Magalie kept watch at the window. A few bold pigeons hopped around the two bodies, and the Charrots’ skinny tabby, bulging like a sack of apples with another load of doomed kittens, came out to sun herself against the pot of pink geraniums outside the café. When the convoy began to roll past, heading for Landi, Charlotte saw the eyes of the men slide to the corpse tumbled against the wall of the Mairie. None of them looked towards William. Charlotte was surprised that she no longer recognized any of the faces, apart from the head officer and the fat man who had ridden in the first car. They had melded back together, these men she had seen on the roads and about the village, of whom she had forgotten to be afraid. One of them had helped Magalie’s youngest boy pick up his books when he dropped his satchel, Charlotte had seen him from the schoolhouse window. The smart officers had played cards in the lamp light of the café, a younger one had carried an armful of baguettes on Christmas Eve. She and Magalie changed places every ten minutes, though there was nothing new to see, even the tanks had become familiar to them. Finally, Charlotte watched the last of the cars go by, craning her neck as it turned the corner to the road. The sound of the engine died like a dream, with only the two heaps in the square as proof that any of it had ever happened.
René was huddled on the stone parapet outside the tiny chapel in the woods. As the hours passed he told himself that he would get up in a moment and begin to drag the bodies together, do what he could to make them decent, as soon as he stopped shaking, but the shaking continued and occasionally he burst into dry, choked sobs. The gunfire had begun as soon as they reached the clearing. They had no chance. He saw Boissière fall, and a fist-sized hole open in Nic Dubois’s chest. Then René had fallen to the ground, where he lay for what seemed only a few astonishing seconds until the pounding stopped and he knew dismally that he was still alive. They left him there, that seemed right to René, because this Hell was of his own making. Several times he attempted to rise, but his head swam and he clutched the parapet for support. His left eye was swollen shut and he was very thirsty, there might be water in the house but that would mean dragging himself between the six bodies. The air lilted with the hum of insects, he watched the sun twist the shadows of the trees
across the ground. One of the Luthier brothers had a knife, he could see the sheath twisted half under his hip. His legs had scrabbled a while in the dust before he was still. He could cheat them, he could escape from Hell, if he could get to the knife. Slowly he pushed his hands along the stone, so warm under his bloodless fingers, until he managed to stand. Not to look. That was the thing, then only a few more steps. That was how the priest found him, kneeling beside a headless corpse with a hunting knife in his hand, praying for the strength to drive it home.
It was the shots that had woken Laurent. He was starving hungry, and the breeze that stirred over the Landine as he limped across the bridge added to the odd feeling of cleanness inside him. He had seen dead men before. Somehow he felt distanced from everything, his senses blurred so that he could concentrate easily on the next thing, his crutch on the pale road, Oriane and the little baby hunched on the ground outside the church. Relief came then, but her swollen eyes as she turned to him were red coals of hate, she pushed him away, so hard that he sprawled at her feet, scrabbling in circles to right himself like a maimed rabbit. She bent forward over him so her hair fell around his face.
‘You did this. You killed William. Just you keep away from me and Jacky now.’
She bent closer so he could feel the vicious lap of her tongue in his ear. ‘He’s no son of yours, see? You’re a joke of a man. He’s one of theirs, understand? But you killed my William, not them. I hate you, Laurent Nadl.’
There were hands pulling him up, trying to lift him, and he heard the baby screeching, far away. René’s voice came, babbling ‘I did right, Laurent. You see? I had to. I did right.’ The square was full of the women, René’s face was joyful. ‘You see, Laurent, you see! I did right. I can see them, I can see my wife!’ Laurent saw the women, their heads bare, pulling silently at a horseless wagon. When one of them, the schoolteacher it was, stooped from beneath the shaft, he saw what they were pulling, and knew.
They had lined the men up in the avenue and asked who amongst them had fought in the first war. Yves Contier stood forward at once, so did Bernard and so did Camille Lesprats. No one contradicted him. Nine others did not choose. They were all shot where they stood, with the remaining Castroux men looking on. When the last car had driven away, the women had streamed from the church to find their men, except for Oriane Aucordier, who knelt over her brother’s body in the dust. They went to the chateau and found them there, hanging, bobbing among the chestnut flowers in the sound of the bees.
AUGUST 1944
The village of Castroux was liberated by American troops on the twenty-second of August 1944. Das Reich had been gone since the seventeenth of June. Jean-Claude Larivière, former hero of Verdun, rode triumphantly into the square in an open topped American jeep, a tricolore wrapped around his shoulders. He no longer used the code name ‘Mula’; he preferred to be addressed as ‘Capitaine’. Beside him sat Laurent Nadl, the only other living member of Maquis group ‘Le Moto’. As they approached the village, Laurent watched the unharvested sunflowers in Teulière’s field, their swollen blackened heads bowed in the painful heat. They shuffled in the dull breeze, a desert army of corpses. Castroux seemed drab after the colour and busyness of his weeks in Cahors, bleached out beneath the thickened August sky. A few women emerged from the houses and watched the Americans as they jumped energetically from their vehicles, but they were silent, their eyes as colourless as their dreary bundled clothes. The presbytery door opened and Père Guillaume came out in his black cassock, supporting Madame Larivière by the arm. Laurent watched bleakly as she threw herself against Jean-Claude’s chest.
The Americans were surprised and somewhat offended by the lack of interest or gratitude shown by the people of the village, until Jean-Claude explained to them in English, another startling acquisition of his transformation, that Castroux was still recovering from the shock of the departing troops’ revenge. In addition to the slaughter of six Le Moto members, they had shot a seventh comrade – Jean-Claude adjusted his vocabulary here in response to a surprised look from the American sergeant, a seventh brother – right here in the square. They had done it in front of the eyes of all the women and children who had been imprisoned for days in the church without food or water, and who included the man’s own sister and her tiny baby. But still this was not the worst, Jean-Claude went on. All the remaining men of the village had been forced to watch as twelve of their number had been shot and then hanged by the feet in the avenue of the chateau, which was that castle up on the hill, yes. It belonged to Monsieur d’Esceyrac (even now Jean-Claude could not bring himself to use the title), who had fought with the Division Blindée in Normandy under Leclerc.
The Americans took photographs of everything. They puffed up to the bell tower to see where the courageous priest, Père Guillaume, had hidden his radio set, and Jean-Claude explained how it was he who had provided the supplies for Le Moto’s camp, collected from the presbytery each evening by the third surviving Luthier brother. Jean-Claude hoped he would not have to introduce Luthier, since no one, it seemed, distinguished the brothers by Christian names. Père Guillaume said he would be surprised if they had any, and later, when it came time to put up the memorial, this proved to be true. He asked the remaining brother if he thought Pierre and Léon were nice names, but Luthier expressed the opinion in his few words of French that it didn’t matter much, ‘being as they’s deaded’. He continued to live on his own up at the hamlet for many years, appearing at the market with his cheeses, and people took to leaving little offerings at the bottom of the track for ‘Luthier le Vivant’.
Jean-Claude no longer spoke in Occitan with Laurent, he said it was an outdated patois and that people should show their patriotism by speaking French. He explained this as they lined up outside the church for the photograph of ‘Le Maquis’, holding their borrowed American rifles. There were men from Cahors with them, men from the brotherhood with whom Jean-Claude had been working for four years, and they stood in for François, for Nic and Marcel and Jean, the Luthiers and William. Laurent thought of saying that William had not really been a member of the gang, but it didn’t seem to matter. He posed at the end of the group beside the R44C, the bike pulled up in front of him to hide his bad leg. Children pattered about in the white midday heat, encouraged by Jean-Claude and a liberal sprinkling of ‘candeez’ to raise a cheer as the flag was hoisted over the Mairie. Two days later, the Americans left and General de Gaulle entered Paris. The Marquis d’Esceyrac marched with him along the Champs Elysées.
Jean-Claude and his men waited until their liberators had departed before turning to the unpleasant side of the business. There was no need to let them see the depths to which some French people had sunk. He could not listen either to his mother or Père Guillaume, who pleaded that René had acted as he thought best, in an attempt to save the people of Castroux from the fate of those in Oradour. It was not his fault he had been tricked into giving away the others.
Although no blame could conceivably attach to himself, Jean-Claude was aware that any mercy would involve him with suspicion that would be the ruin of his ambitions. He had been unconcerned with Laurent’s trembling admission of how the gun came to be in William’s violin case, and insisted that what happened at the chateau was a response to the railway explosion and therefore nothing to do with Laurent personally. William had been granted a hero’s death, defending France in his own poor way, elevated to the rank of a partisan brother. And besides, he said, Laurent shouldn’t trouble about it, these idiot types usually died young.
In the case of his own father, he could afford no leniency. René had been locked up in the Mairie, and was referred to as ‘the prisoner’. Cécile Chauvignat gave evidence that René was involved in the black market, that he had claimed to have powerful connections in Germany. Cécile had been forced to hide pigs for him, fearing René’s threats against her husband, conscripted to the STO against his will. The very night of the raid on the dance she had been forced to make a delivery of
meat to the mayor’s own house. Jean-Claude’s men spoke to several people in Castroux who remembered the mayor’s furtive appearance on the night war broke out. They had looked to him for guidance, and instead he had looked as if he had something to hide. They had had their suspicions even then. He had certainly spent time closeted in the Mairie with one of the officers. Betty Dubois testified that when she had fetched a glass of water for the Marquis d’Esceyrac, that night, the mayor was trying to ask him questions, surely spying on what was going on in Paris. The Marquis was a hero now, so maybe he knew some secrets.
Magalie Contier and Charlotte Boissière quarrelled in the square when the schoolmistress said that witch-hunting wasn’t going to bring Yves back and if anyone was to blame it was the maquisards of whom her own husband was one. Père Guillaume insisted it was all nonsense, that he and René had worked together to hide the radio, which was their only connection with the truth, and one of the Cahors brothers looked at him pityingly and said that charity was all very well, but there was no reason for even a priest to be naïve. Larivière was clearly a double agent, he had even tricked his own son, and any help he had given to Laurent and his band was part of a double bluff. It was just as well they had not told him of the planned attack on Monguèriac, which had been instrumental in the defeat in Normandy.
Hitler had been replaced with De Gaulle in Dubois’s café. Jean-Claude had made his feelings clear, and so, though nothing was said, a few of the Cahors men slipped away from the cluster of drinkers under the chestnut tree, and after an hour or so, they slipped back. Laurent wondered if the body would ever be found. He was drinking hard, trying to avoid Jean-Claude’s eye. Jean-Claude had hinted at an alternative, but Laurent could not bring himself to accept it, and unlike Jean-Claude, he would have to join in. He was beginning to feel nauseated, it was an effort to swallow the thick wine that Betty could not pour enough of, but he held his breath when it threatened to rise up in his throat. Jean-Claude made it seem so clever, all those long evenings in Cahors.