The Corsican

by William Heffernan

  “Tell me, Francesco. What will you do when all this has ended?” Sartene asked.

  Francesco shrugged his thick shoulders. “Probably rob a bank and retire,” he said. He withdrew his knife from a sheath strapped to his calf and began stroking it against a whetstone.

  Sartene laughed softly as he watched the younger man sharpen the blade of his knife. The knife was like an extension of the arm, he noted. And he was constantly sharpening it as though it gave him some inner comfort to do so.

  “Stealing from banks is a poor profession, my young friend,” Sartene said. “It’s better to own the bank and steal by charging high interest. A clever man always finds something that others want and then finds a way to control it. That gives him wealth and it also gives him power.”

  Francesco nodded; his eyes appeared to focus on something distant. “Is that what you’ll do when it’s finished?”

  “Yes. If I’m as clever as I hope I am.”

  “How will you do it?” the younger man asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about going to Southeast Asia. It’s easier to find that sort of thing in a place that isn’t developed and where customs aren’t completely foreign. I’m told there are many Corsicans there already.”

  “Perhaps I’ll go with you, Buonaparte,” Auguste said. “And perhaps I’ll ask Benito to come too. This war has made me lose my taste for Europe.”

  “I’d like that, my friend. You’ve been like a brother to me these past years.” Sartene nodded toward Francesco. “And in many ways you’ve become a second son. I’d like you with me too, Francesco.”

  “Perhaps I will, Buonaparte. They tell me oriental women are very desirable.”

  Sartene wagged a finger at the younger man. “You’re Corsican. Stay with your own blood. Your own blood can always be depended upon.”

  Peters marched noisily up beside them. It amused Sartene. He had never been able to understand how a man in Peters’ profession had never learned to walk quietly. “I was just going through some papers that Kraut officer left in the house,” he said. “I think I came up with some good stuff.” He glanced around at the bodies of the dead Germans. “These Krauts are already starting to stink,” he said. His face was unusually solemn.

  Sartene followed Peters’ gaze. The bodies were already swollen and covered with flies, the hot sun having done its work, but there was no great odor yet, except for the excrement the dead had given up in a final offering. He stared up at the American. He seemed agitated.

  “Look, why don’t you fellas go back to Bellegarde and see if you can hire some people to come out and bury these Krauts, before it gets any worse. They dumped their field packs and there was only one shovel in their truck.” Peters glanced around at the bodies. “I want to stay here and see if I can find anything else on the other bodies.”

  “Francesco and I will go,” Sartene said. He raised his chin toward Auguste. “You’d better stay here and rest your ankle.”

  “Look, you can take their truck,” Peters said. “Then Auguste can have a doctor take a look at the ankle back in town.”

  “The truck’s no good,” Francesco said. “I checked it before. The partisans took what they could from the motor. They’ll probably sell the parts to your army when it arrives.” He smiled at Peters, enjoying the mild insult. Peters seemed not to notice it.

  “It’s better if Auguste stays with you anyway,” Sartene said. “The partisans might come back and they might not wait to check your nationality. Auguste can keep watch. Anyway, he speaks the language better than you.”

  Sartene and Francesco stood and slung their machine guns over their shoulders.

  “How long do you think it will take you?” Peters called after them.

  “One hour. And whatever time it takes to find men with shovels,” Sartene called back. “We’ll find a truck too, so my friend’s old legs don’t have to walk him back.”

  “They’re no older than yours, Buonaparte. You remember that,” Auguste called after them.

  Sartene and Francesco walked in silence for ten minutes. The narrow country road was deserted, and the only sound came from the large crows that dominated the abandoned fields on each side of them. Sartene stopped suddenly, taking Francesco’s arm.

  “Tell me something, Francesco. Am I being suspicious, or did our American friend seem anxious-to be rid of us?”

  “He seemed nervous,” Francesco said. “But I assumed it was because of the bodies.”

  Sartene shook his head. “He’s seen death before. It’s no stranger to him.” He stood quietly for a moment. “You go on to the village,” he said finally. “I am going back. There’s something about this that bothers me.”

  Sartene was two minutes away from the place he had left them when he heard the shot. He broke into a run, pulling back the bolt on his weapon as he did, so it would be ready to fire. When he neared the place he veered to his right, taking advantage of a dense line of trees for cover, then slowed his movements and crept forward, crouching low to the ground.

  When he reached the clearing, he could see Auguste’s body sprawled beneath the trees outside the house where they had sat talking. Sartene looked around the clearing, checking the other bodies. Peters was not among them.

  Quietly he moved forward, his body flat on the ground, propelled by his knees and elbows. When he drew near Auguste he reached out and gently took his arm. Auguste opened his eyes.

  “He shot me,” he said. “The bastard shot me.”

  “Peters?” Sartene asked.

  Auguste nodded his head. His breath came in gasps and it was difficult for him to speak.

  “Where is he now?” Sartene whispered.

  Auguste shook his head from side to side, his breath coming even faster with the effort.

  “On the second floor of the house, I think.” He reached out and held Sartene’s arm with surprising strength. “There’s a fortune in there, Buonaparte. Paintings, gold, jewelry. The Boches had started to hide it under the floor before the partisans came. I found Peters trying to finish the job and …” He began to cough.

  Sartene covered his mouth with his hand to hide the sound. “Be silent. Rest,” he whispered.

  Auguste squeezed his arm again, and Sartene removed the hand from his mouth.

  “I told him we could share it,” he whispered. “He said no, it had to go to the authorities. The fool. I tried to stop him, brought him out here at gunpoint, but he was too quick. We fought and the bastard shot me.”

  “He’s back up there now?” Sartene asked.

  Auguste nodded; his eyes fluttered. “I think so.”

  “I’ll be back,” Sartene said, touching his shoulder. “Lie quietly.”

  He moved to the doorway and listened. Above, to his left, he could hear the sound of someone moving. Slowly, crouching low, he moved up the stairs, placing his feet gently on each step. The noise grew louder as he entered a small hall on the second floor, still moving cautiously, taking care to avoid anything that would give him away. Through an open door to his left, he saw Peters. He was on his knees, over a hole in the floor; he was refitting the planks, using the German field shovel when necessary to force the boards into place. His rifle was five feet away, leaning against the wall.

  Sartene stepped into the room and leveled his weapon at the American. Peters froze with the movement. His eyes darted quickly toward his rifle, but he didn’t move. It was too far. He looked back at Sartene. Fear filled his eyes; his lips trembled.

  “I didn’t expect you back,” he said. He looked into the hole. “You found Auguste?”

  Sartene nodded.

  “It’s not what you think. It’s not ours, Buonaparte. I tried to explain that to him, but he wouldn’t listen. I had to stop him. It’s orders. The stuff has to be turned over. Dammit. Why didn’t you take him with you like I said?”

  Peters’ hands had begun to tremble, and as Sartene shifted his feet and adjusted the stock of the machine gun more securely against his body, Peters’ eyes
suddenly widened.

  “Look, I didn’t want to kill him, but he was gonna kill me.”

  “You didn’t kill him,” Sartene said.

  Peters exhaled heavily. “Then it’s okay. Look, it’s yours. You can both take it. You can do anything you want with it. You’ll have enough money to start a whole new life. It’s like you said before. You’re entitled to something after all this.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a trace of dirt on his lips. “You can do just what the Krauts planned. Hide it here, then come back for it after the war. Then you can sell it and take the money into Switzerland. The Swiss never ask where money comes from. I won’t tell anybody. Nobody at all.” He grinned nervously.

  Sartene shook his head at the grinning figure. “Fool,” he said. “How could I ever trust you?”

  Peters’ body rose off the floor and flew back like a rag doll as the machine gun erupted in Sartene’s hands. He kept his finger on the trigger, watching the American’s body bounce across the room until the weapon jammed. He walked forward and stopped in front of the hole. The partially uncovered rolled canvases lay next to boxes that would contain the gold and jewels. He knelt and pried open a box with a knife and fondled a heavy diamond necklace. He dropped the necklace back and pulled the floorboards across the opening, then walked over to Peters’ body and reached down, grabbing him by the shirt. The top of his head had been ripped away, and as he dragged the body toward the door, bits of brain and bone fell to the floor. He dragged the body from the room, down the stairs and out the front door.

  Auguste was still conscious when he reached him. Sartene opened Auguste’s shirt and probed the wound. “The fool’s dead,” he said, as he gently wiped the blood away. “Fortunately, he also had the aim of a fool. But I must get you to a doctor. You’re losing too much blood.”

  “Why did he do it?” Auguste whispered. “We could have shared.”

  “He was a fool.”

  “You must hide it,” Auguste said. “Someone will find it. Hide it first, then take me to a doctor.”

  “It’s hidden well enough for now. If someone finds it, he finds it. There will always be more. First I’ll take care of you, then I’ll come back and find a better place.”

  He picked Auguste up in his arms, staggering slightly under his weight. “Have I ever told you that you eat too much?” he said. He looked down at him. Auguste was smiling through the pain.

  “You’re just weaker than you used to be,” Auguste said. His head fell against Sartene’s shoulder and he fainted.

  Sartene walked toward the road, carrying his friend tightly in his arms.

  Chapter 4

  LAOS, OCTOBER 1946

  The child ran across the open field, his straw-colored hair flying wildly about his head. He called out to himself as he ran, wrapped up in his own private game-world, paying no attention to the two men who watched him from the veranda of the house.

  Sartene’s eyes were soft as he followed his grandson’s movement. His son, Jean, standing beside him, smiled and shook his head.

  “He plays like a little wild man,” he said, without looking at his father.

  “He’s happy to be out of the city and the small yard he has to play in,” Sartene said. “It’s good for a child to know this sense of abandon. You were the same. You had so many cuts and bruises as a child your mother always feared the other villagers would think we beat you.”

  Jean glanced at his father and smiled to himself at this uncharacteristic sentimentality. He was a large, boxlike man in his late twenties, with a thick neck that seemed part of his shoulders, and the smile appeared out of place on his square dark face.

  He was dressed in the same manner as his father, in a shirt and tie, and the linen jackets of their suits were laid side by side over the railing of the veranda. But the similarity ended there. Sartene’s features, his manner of standing, of speaking, reflected the intrinsic cunning that was so much a part of his being. His son had the look of a gentle brute. He had his father’s dark, piercing eyes, but they were set in a peasant’s face, giving them a softness that did not exist in the man. To Jean, cunning was something that was used only when violence was not possible, a time-consuming process that should usually be avoided.

  Behind them the sound of workmen echoed through the empty house and out across the veranda, as the final detail work on the interior neared completion. The house had been under construction for almost a year, delayed, as all things were, by the annual monsoon rains. Sartene had come to the house several times each week during its construction, more as an excuse to have an outing with his grandson than to inspect the work.

  He had designed the house himself, making sure there was enough room for his son’s family and for Auguste and Auguste’s brother, Benito. The house in Vientiane, which he had purchased upon his arrival in Laos, would be kept as an office and to house Francesco, who would handle business matters in the city.

  The choice of Francesco had angered Jean, but he had not challenged it. When he had first met the man, more than a year ago, he had told his father that he did not trust him, but his father had only smiled and said it was wise never to trust someone not of your own blood, until years of association had proved that trust was warranted. Jean did not know whether this meant his father’s years with Francesco during the war had proved him trustworthy, or if he was still withholding judgment. Yet he knew, now that the decision had been made, he had no right to question it. But he did have a right to question Francesco, at least in his own mind. And he knew that it was not that he feared him as a rival. He simply questioned his loyalty to his father.

  The child ran toward the veranda, stumbled and fell, got up and ran again with even more abandon than before.

  “Grandpère,” he shouted as he reached the house and stared up at them. “Come play with me, Grandpère.”

  Sartene grunted in a feigned harshness and shook his head. “I’m too old to play in this heat,” he said.

  The child held a long stick in one hand and waved it back and forth frantically. His eyes were a deep blue, and they implored his grandfather to do as he wished. He had the face of an angel, Sartene thought. Very much like his French mother.

  “What’s that you have in your hand?” Sartene asked.

  The boy looked at the stick and his small face became very serious. “It’s a gun,” he said. “If we see a tiger I’m going to shoot it.”

  “Ahh, I see. You want to hunt tigers today.” Sartene moved past his son and started down the steps of the veranda. “I think it’s too hot to hunt tigers,” he said. “They will all be asleep under a nice shady tree. But if you like we can go for a walk.”

  The boy extended his hand, and Sartene took it, then turned to Jean. “Would you like to come with us?” he asked.

  “No, I think I’ll go in the house and see how my wife is terrorizing the workmen. If we’re not careful she’ll change everything.”

  “Let her change what she wants. Don’t be fooled by the myth that men are masters of their homes.”

  The boy was pulling at his arm, eager to go on. They moved away from the house, toward the river. Sartene walked slowly, taking into account the child’s smaller legs. But the child’s exuberance was too great, and he pulled away, ran ahead, then turned and ran back to his grandfather, urging him to hurry.

  Sartene ruffled the boy’s blond hair, then squatted and took him by the arm.

  “You must learn to take your time, Pierre,” he said. “A man who moves slowly and steadily has time to look about him. Eventually he gets to the same place as the man who rushes ahead. But he knows more about where he has been and what lies behind him. So he’s wiser than the man who hurried.”

  He held on to the child’s arm, keeping his face toward him. “What’s behind you now?” he asked.

  The boy twisted his head and looked back over his shoulder. Across the plain, at the edge of the dense forest, a Laotian man stood next to a large, low-hanging nipa palm, its leaning trunk a
nd feathery leaves offering both concealment and shelter from the sun. There was a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “That’s just Lam,” the boy said. “He’s always there.” He turned back to his grandfather and shrugged his small shoulders, as though the fact was of no consequence.

  “But you didn’t see him, because you were in such a hurry.”

  “But I know he’s always there.” The boy raised his eyebrows as he spoke, as if he were being patient with his grandfather.

  Sartene repressed a smile at the precocious six-year-old. “But what if he wasn’t there? What if a tiger had come and frightened him away?” He emphasized the word “tiger” and watched, amused, as the child’s eyes widened. “Because you hurried, you would not have noticed that he wasn’t where he should be and that there might be danger.”

  The boy freed himself from his grandfather’s grasp and turned toward the forest, raising the stick to his shoulder like a rifle. “If a tiger comes I’ll shoot him,” he said.

  Sartene stood and took the boy’s hand again and started again for the river.

  “I know you would,” he said. “But you must always be sure you see the tiger before he sees you. And to do that you must always take care to see what goes on about you.”

  They walked on toward the river and the wide twenty-foot dock. Along the dock a large motor launch sat motionless in the flat still water. An identical launch was kept in Vientiane. The launches were used by the family only when the monsoon rains made the road to the house impassable. At other times the boats carried merchandise integral to Sartene’s business interests, trips that normally occurred at night.

  “Grandpère, can we take the boat back to the city today?” the boy asked.

  “Why, Pierre? Don’t you like the car?”

  “I like the boat better.”

  “If you wish. Someone else can drive the car back.”

  Sartene ran his hand across the top of his head. The midday heat had reached its zenith, and he knew they should not remain out much longer. Across the river the air shimmered, making the opposite bank look as though it were being viewed through badly made glass.