“You mean?”
“He’s alive, yes. We need to make some room to bring him in here.”
But she was already on her feet, rushing out the door.
“Where is he?”
5
When she saw Marc fall, after Vauthier’s bullet hit him, Maud was instantly convinced he’d been killed. It was a strange reflex, but one that made sense to her, given the atmosphere of these last days. The violence, vengeance, and danger meant that death hounded the fugitives and filled all their thoughts.
Now when she saw Marc there outside, alive and even conscious, sitting on the ground holding one hand to his wounded shoulder, Maud succumbed to a flood of nervous tears mingled with joyful laughter. She fell on her knees in the snow and kissed him, she caressed his face, which was covered with dried sweat and a scattering of pine needles.
She got up and shoved the soldiers to get them to carry Marc into the hut at once. But he insisted on walking and she helped him stand. He put his good arm around her shoulder. It was a joy for her to feel his weight, which she almost could not bear, and to watch the warm vapor rising into the air before her face as she breathed with the effort. Marc staggered the last few feet and went into the hut. The terrified little girls were cowering by the door to the stable, their eyes huge with fright.
In the meantime Lionel and two soldiers struggled up the track carrying Vauthier. Unconscious, he was heavier than ever, and they had to put him down in the snow several times to catch their breath. When they were finally inside the hut, there was a crush; the room was small and there were many of them now, encumbered by the inert body in their midst. The Croats were shouting something in their language but no one seemed to understand. Initially they laid Vauthier down on the threshold, with his head outside. Then Lionel shoved the big table against the wall and they lifted him up to put him on it.
Marc sat in the only armchair in the room, his legs stretched out on the stool. The soldiers didn’t know whether they should stay there or go out, so they stood clustered by the door. Maud came and went, fetching water by the sink, taking sugar and alcohol from the cupboard.
Suddenly more men in uniform arrived. There were five or six of them, but there was no more room, so several of them stayed outside. All the soldiers stood at attention, because one of the newcomers was wearing an officer’s stripes.
Alex thought he had seen him somewhere before. Then he recognized him: it was Filipović, the “general” commanding the Croatian forces in the sector. He’d known him in Kakanj, although he had never been on such a friendly basis with him as Marc had. He went up to him and embraced him.
But this was no time for effusiveness. There were urgent decisions to be made. As the military leader, Filipović was the key to the situation. But above all, he was a doctor. He could examine the wounded men, give them first aid, and a prognosis.
Alex instinctively led the physician over to Marc, even though his case was less urgent.
Filipović hadn’t noticed him in the gloom. When he saw him, he went over and warmly shook his good hand.
“You came!”
“Yes,” said Marc, “and I kept my promise.”
On hearing their words and seeing the air of complicity between the two men, Alex frowned. Filipović must have known about Marc’s plans; perhaps he was even the one who had organized and financed this whole business with the explosives. And yet Marc had always pretended to Alex that he believed they were construction explosives. In short, he had lied. And maybe he was the one to blame for this whole sad affair.
Maud had been looking after the patient all the while. Not without difficulty, she had removed his fleece and now she was trying to cut away his shirt, which was clinging to the wound, sticky with blood. Filipović helped her and examined the wound.
“The bullet went out the back,” he concluded, standing up. “It went through the soft tissue in your shoulder. The only damage is to the muscles. Nothing serious. It was the shock that knocked you out.”
He took Marc’s blood-soaked shirt and tore off a strip of cloth.
“This will give you some relief,” he said, once he’d tied the knot on the makeshift splint. “When we get to a hospital, we’ll see what needs to be done.”
“Thanks,” said Marc, then pointing to Vauthier, unconscious on the table: “He’s the one you should see to, urgently.”
Before Filipović headed over to the table Marc held him back for a moment with his good hand.
“I brought what I promised,” he whispered.
The Croat gave him a knowing smile, but his expression was quizzical, almost pitying. He put his palm on Marc’s cheek.
“Don’t you worry about that,” he said.
He got up and went over to the table. With the help of one of the soldiers, Lionel had uncovered Vauthier’s stomach. He was dabbing at the wound; the cloth was already soaked with blood. Vauthier had regained consciousness but seemed to be drifting in a state of confusion and delirium. He was moaning, his skin drained of color.
After examining Vauthier for a long time, the doctor took Lionel to one side.
“The bullet didn’t touch any vital organs. But it’s still inside, and he’s losing a lot of blood. If he stops bleeding, he may survive, but it can start again at any time. We have to get him out of here urgently.”
“Isn’t there anything to give him for the pain? It must be terrible.”
“We don’t have any medications on us. We have to take him to town.”
“Okay, then, go ahead. Take him right away.”
“We can’t take him in any of our trucks. They’re for troop transport, the wagon at the back is open to the elements, and the springs are gone in the front seat, it’s no good. Are there bunks in your trucks?”
“In one of them, yes.”
“All right, then we can lay him down on it. Marc, can you sit up? We won’t be able to go very fast. The road is in poor condition. It will take us at least three hours.”
“I’ll be all right.”
Maud had given him something to drink and his color was slowly returning.
“Where is the truck with the bunk?”
“Down below, on the road.”
“Go get it and park it here, behind the other one.”
Lionel was preparing to leave when Filipović motioned to him. He took him aside again.
“How did this happen?”
“They shot each other, I think.”
“With what weapons?”
“Vauthier had a 9 mm, and Marc, too, I think.”
“Pistols? For Marc’s wound, that seems right. But the other guy had a bullet from a weapon of war . . . Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We have to get them out of here first.”
He waved to Lionel to go ahead and told two soldiers to go with him.
The departures left some space in the room. Alija had been waiting outside, and now he seized the moment to dash in. His sister rushed to him with a cry of joy.
The convoy was together again, almost like when it first set off, but that was the only joyful thing about it. They drove one behind the other, Maud’s truck in the lead with Marc by her side. Lionel followed, alone at the wheel, while Vauthier moaned on the bunk behind.
The sky had cleared as if to celebrate their reunion. A bright sun shone on the snow-covered fields. The dark summits filled the horizon to the north, and to the south, beyond the barren slopes, they could see the distant misty trace of the Dalmatian coast.
But this new convoy wasn’t anything like the one that had left Lyon a few weeks earlier. For a start, the trucks had suffered, particularly the one in the lead, where the tarp had been torn off and the load half emptied; it had been patched up as well as possible. Above all, they were no longer alone. In front of them was the general’s command car. Alex had asked to ride with him, because back at the hut he had
n’t been able to ask Filipović all the questions he was dying to ask. Behind them came two troop transports. Men in arms, muffled up in their long capes, stood clinging to the slatted sides.
In the first truck Marc sat sideways to avoid absorbing the bumps from the road in his injured shoulder. He had to turn his back to Maud as she drove.
She couldn’t see his face. she wondered if, as the pain ebbed, he would once again put on his tight, inscrutable daytime expression, or whether she would recognize his nighttime features, when the tension receded and he was open to tenderness. As there was no way of knowing, she remained cautiously silent and felt somewhat awkward. Once the time for anxiety and urgent gestures was behind them, she wondered how all this would affect Marc, what state of mind he would be in. She didn’t know whether he was grateful to her for her attentiveness or whether, on the contrary, he would resent her for having witnessed his weakness. She did not want to be the first one to speak.
Initially, Marc closed his eyes, drowsy. Then he looked out the window. Against the white screen of snowy landscape he was reliving the moments of the hunt in the forest. The images that came to his mind roused him.
“It happened so fast . . . ”
Maud wasn’t sure he was talking to her.
“He was right there in front of me. And then I heard Alex’s voice.”
Maud tightened her hands on the steering wheel. The road was full of potholes and she had to hold the truck steady so that it would not tip into the precipice. She gritted her teeth. She, too, saw the scene of the shooting again. She was outside the house. She heard the first shot. Marc fell, his face in the snow. And then she saw Vauthier . . .
“I would never have thought Alex would do such a thing for me.”
Marc went on talking to himself. Maud felt tears welling. She clung even tighter to the steering wheel, to stop the tears from coming.
“I thought he was mad at me. Actually, I’m sure he was mad at me. And yet, he did that.”
“What did he do?”
Maud had shuddered. Could it be that . . . On hearing her, Marc tried to turn to her but the pain stopped him midway.
“Kill Vauthier! Otherwise, I’d be dead already.”
Maud almost let go of the wheel from the emotion. All at once she realized the extent of the misunderstanding. She felt like laughing, and as her face lit up, a single tear slipped out, no longer warranted. She gave herself a moment to be sure her voice would not tremble with emotion, then she said at last, “It wasn’t Alex who shot Vauthier.”
It took Marc a moment to understand what her words implied.
“Who was it, then?”
He turned abruptly, and he winced with pain when his shoulder touched the hard seat.
Maud had never felt such a tangle of feelings inside her all at the same time.
She turned to him with a smile. They looked deeply into each other’s eyes. For the first time, she was certain he could see her. And that he was taking the full measure of what her love was capable of.
The general’s command car was an old Soviet model. The steering was loose. The soldier who was driving constantly swung his arms to the right then to the left, and his passengers were on the verge of feeling carsick.
Filipović was sitting in front. The dashboard and the door on his side were littered with empty beer cans and cigarette packs used as ashtrays. Alex was squeezed in behind, in a tight space among khaki backpacks and piles of old newspapers.
Filipović had not stopped asking him about their trip, the incidents that had happened along the way, and the reasons for the shoot-out between Vauthier and Marc.
Alex had to tell him everything and explain who was who in the group. As he summed up the events, he was struck by how absurd it all was. Why they had behaved the way they did remained a mystery, in more ways than one. The only thing that stood out in the midst of so much futile destruction was the encounter between Marc and Maud. It was the only edifice to rise from the ruins. As he thought about this, he returned to his own uncertainties and found the courage to interrupt Filipović and question him in turn.
“And Bouba?” he said.
The general looked down. He knew about Alex’s hopes.
“She’s fine.”
Alex waited. Filipović was silent for a long while. Then the doctor in him prevailed. Adopting the cheerful tone of the physician delivering an unfavorable prognosis, who does what he can to attenuate his patient’s despair, he decided to come straight out with it.
“She waited for you, Alex. The months went by and she waited for you, believe me. But you know how impatient young women can be.”
“I tried to write to her but it’s hard, with the war . . . ”
“I know, I know. I’m just trying to explain what she might have felt.”
Alex had leaned forward and was clinging to the general’s seat, unaware that under the pressure of his nails he was tearing the worn brown cloth.
“The main thing, for girls like Bouba, is to get out of this war, you understand, to go and live somewhere else. They know, perhaps better than we do, that time is passing . . . ”
“And?”
“And there was a team of German journalists who came to do a report on Kakanj.”
He broke off and looked furtively at the young man, and decided that it would hurt less if he delivered one clean, sharp blow.
“She left with a photographer. A very decent fellow, very serious. He arranged everything to get her out of Bosnia with her refugee papers. I think they got married as soon as they got to Leipzig.”
Alex was staring straight ahead of him. He had gone pale. Filipović, not turning around, laid a fatherly hand on Alex’s where it still gripped the seat back.
“Take heart,” he said. “It’s surely for the best.”
The winter sun, level with the mountaintops, flooded into the cab and dazzled them with its unbearably white light.
6
In the other truck the atmosphere was morose. On his bunk Vauthier was no longer moaning, and had fallen asleep.
Lionel was somewhat reassured to see the convoy back together again. It gave a semblance of normality to the mission. He hoped that from here on he’d be able to get everyone home safe and sound. To be sure, the materiel was damaged, and a good part of the load was missing. But none of that really mattered.
The two wounded men were more of a problem. However, their regrettable condition was the result of a purely private quarrel. If he analyzed the situation one element after the other, Lionel concluded that his case was less desperate than he had feared. Anyone who did not know what had really happened during the trip would think, when all was said and done, that the result was almost positive. The problem for Lionel was that he did know what had happened. He could not forget that he had completely lost control of events. As head of mission he had turned out to be a complete failure. He need not admit this to others; but confronted with himself, he could not hide it.
And yet, what troubled him the most, the source of his greatest anguish, was the realization of his utter solitude. In this regard, the most painful failure was Maud’s betrayal. All things considered, he had undertaken the trip for her sake or, at least, with an eye to winning her over. He had to admit that, in fact, he had neither the inclination nor the talent for working in the field, particularly in a position of responsibility. He had been at his happiest during his stint in Lyon, at the headquarters of La Tête d’Or. Were it not for his stupid plan to gain even greater influence over Maud, to win her once and for all, he would never have set out on this wild venture.
In their close quarters in the trucks, he had also come to realize that he was not at all popular with the others. In the end, the only one he felt close to, whom he might actually have befriended, was Vauthier. Of course he knew that Vauthier was using him. He had even gone so far as to threaten him. And yet Lio
nel went on feeling inexplicably drawn to him, more out of admiration than affection.
And now the only one he felt close to was lying on his bunk between life and death. Lionel felt that solitude and failure were leaving their mark on him. In the silence of the cab, he surrendered willingly to his brooding thoughts.
Suddenly he give a start: just behind his ear a deep voice had spoken. He glanced behind him and saw that Vauthier had turned slightly onto his side. His head was just behind the driver’s seat, so in spite of the engine noise Lionel could distinctly hear his words.
“Say, are you feeling better?” he asked. “You’re awake.”
“No point driving fast,” said Vauthier again.
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m going to die.”
Vauthier gave a weary wave of his hand. Lionel turned his head for an instant. He could see the purple shadows under Vauthier’s eyes, his waxy skin, his pinched nostrils searching for breath.
“What do you mean? You’re doing better.”
“I’d like something to drink.”
“Filipović said you mustn’t. Because of the wound in your stomach, you understand?”
“I’m fucked either way.”
Lionel protested again, but he noticed Vauthier’s parted lips, how terribly dry they were, his teeth covered with a sticky white coating. He reached for a plastic water bottle in the door and handed it to Vauthier.
“Thanks.”
He drank, stopping to breathe between each sip. There was a long silence.
“Tell me something.”
Vauthier’s voice was clearer now that he had drunk something.
“What?”
“Is he dead?”
“Who? Marc?”
“Who else?”
Lionel adjusted the inside rearview mirror to look at Vauthier. He could see his sharp gaze.
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