“Do you?”
“Yes.” He almost snarled the word. Then his tone softened. “For you and her and the child I hope not. For me – I’ll buy your land when you shake my hand on the deal.”
“Right.”
And he took the roll of paper that was his family’s future. And what of me, then? Don’t think about that.
Duty. Duty’s good.
He buried the money in the caves of the house, wrapping it in muslin. But as he took one last look he thought it looked like cheese. So he wrapped the muslin in an old shirt and tossed it on a pile of old rags down there. No. Finally he put it blatantly in a jar on the mantelpiece. Simone never mentioned it.
At the end of February Arbel saw his first Jewish prisoners. He had thought the Ukranians were badly treated but the state of these men was heart-stopping. They were marched through the town one Sunday, on their way to somewhere Lothar wouldn’t speak about, and the youth of the town hurled hatred and stones at them.
The stream of refugee children began to rush. Another child. Two one night. One March evening Madame Lacaze drove up with Herrisson in his civvies sitting with her.
“You’re too far gone. Stay here.”
The thaw turned the fields to slush and the men struggled to dry clothes on fires they ought not to build. A group had been attacked by Milice for their camp-fire smoke and three killed.
Valet toasted the terrorist’s death and everyone wished he’d shut up. The March rain set in, boots rotted, coats sodden, impatience and discomfort a deadly mix. It was hard everywhere now. Churchill told the English that the hour of greatest effort was at hand. As Hitler had Goebbels tell the German people. De Gaulle told the French the same. So did Captain Phillipe.
He targeted fifteen Miliciens across the department and one night fifteen executions were committed and fifteen uniforms taken. Next morning, as The Milicien of Latronquiere, he called the Germans saying the village was under attack from the Maquis. He and his group stood in the woods bordering the road into the village to wait and watch. A battalion – 30 of them came down the road in three sidecars and a lorry and piled into the village – the astonished Mayor denying everything and while the German investigation went on Phillipe’s men hacked down a lime tree across the first sharp corner out of the village and waited. The Germans returned, rounded the corner and ploughed into the tree. They killed six, set one side-car ablaze, had no casualties, and left.
A week later the trap was repeated near the village of Senaillac and four more Germans killed and after that no-one could call the Germans for help – they wouldn’t come – and The Resistance could press the Mayors for clothes and food and shelter. Breathing space.
The days lengthened, and the garden and their child grew. Simone bore her back-ache better than Jacques’ attentiveness.
“I’m not an invalid, I’m pregnant.”
“Sorry.”
“And stop saying that – just let me cook till I tell you I don’t want to – or can’t.”
“O.K. Sorry.”
“Oh, shut up – stupid caring fool.”
Then came a day Jerome had both longed for and dreaded.
“St. Cirgues,” said Phillipe.
“Milice?”
“None that I know of,” said Jerome.
“Valet! Galtier. Duthileul?” Bernadie spat. He’d been Mayor of Senaillac, St.Cirgues’ neighbouring commune. “Herrisson, Chibret, Mignon – collaborators all.”
“Lacaze?” Phillipe looked at him.
“It’s true of Valet. Galtier just hates. Mignon’s a coward...”
“Doing Germany’s work.”
“Yes.”
“And Herrisson?”
“I know he’s helped some people.”
“For sex – the shit,” said Bernadie.
“Oh, yes?”
“So,” said Phillipe, “Herrisson, Mignon, Valet. Duthileul?”
“Gives money,” Bernadie again, a concrete block of man, “money he can afford – he’s a chancer.”
“Ask your friend Vermande.”
“I will.”
“Chibret?”
“A puppet.”
“Whose strings?”
“Whoever’s.”
“If we kill the Mayor, the Gendarme and the requisitioning officer,” said Jerome, “what state will the village be in?”
“Rejoicing,” said Bernadie.
“Chaos,” said Jerome.
“Good,” said Phillipe, “out of chaos comes the new order. Tonight.”
Jerome had disliked these men all his life. He supported their execution – but he saw their wives’ eyes – and he saw his mother’s eyes and Sara’s and what if revenge was foisted on Sara and Zoe? “I want to be a part of this,” he said to Bernadie.
“Who?”
“Valet.”
“Good. Up close – what will you do?”
“Two shots – head and heart.”
“And if his wife answers the door?”
“Ask to see him?”
“No! You shoot her and find him before he reacts. You can’t leave her, can you?”
“She was my teacher from Maternelle.”
“Any good?”
“I can read. And you?”
“Oh, Chibret – indolent time-serving careerist shit.”
At ten that rainy night as he approached Valet’s house with his revolver in his great-coat pocket Jerome’s heart beat ice.
He was amazed he moved forward at all. He was going to kill.
To take life. That Thou Shalt Not.
He was going to kill. To purge France of one of its boils. Him – Jerome Lacaze...
He watched his hand knock.
His Maternelle teacher opened the door. A cardigan pulled over her big chest, a plain skirt and in her slippers and he stood calm and still, his hand on the cold metal.
“Jerome! What? You’re drowned. Come in.”
“Thank you, Madame. Is Monsieur Valet at home?”
“He is. Gaston – it’s for you.”
“Who is it?” Valet from the room at the end of the hall.
“Come and see! Lazy bugger,” she muttered to Jerome, dripping by the door.
“Putain de merde...”
The door to the living-room opened and Valet saw Jerome and the gun and the flash and heard the boom and his stomach burst open and air and blood seethed out of him and the second shot smashed his eye-socket as Madame Valet’s screams started and Jerome closed the door quietly behind him and ran.
Madame Valet stood screaming as her husband expired as quickly and as finally as a popped football before her eyes. She went to kneel by him and couldn’t. She just looked at the mess. Brain and blood clotting on the door he sprawled against. Her body backed away. Someone must clean that up, and clean that carpet. Wash it. With salt? Vinegar? Maybe. I don’t know. Just lift him out of here. Lift him out of my sight, out of this house. Out.
“OUT! OUT!”
Madame Vigne, who’d heard the shots and cowered in terror, recognised Madame Valet’s voice in the crazed screaming. She threw on a wrap and crossed the road and knocked hard on the door. Madame Valet fainted. Madame Vigne heard the slump on the floor, the silence, knocked again and pushed. Nothing. She ran home, dressed, and strode off to the Gendarmerie, where from a hundred yards through the rain she could hear Madame Herrisson’s howl. She stopped. Chibret must be dead, too. Mignon. Galtier. Duthileul? She hoped so. She forced Valet’s door open to find the fat woman wheezing and saw her dead wretch of a husband and heard herself think, “Good,” before kneeling to help Madame Valet.
Jerome ran hard, stumbling in the dark, round the bend in the lane, up the rise and up to Puech and in on Simone and Jacques. The dog barked till Jacques shushed it, then sat a yard from the invader, growling, threatening. Jacques pressed a cup of wine into Jerome’s shaking frozen sweating paw, Simone made coffee and he talked.
“Duthileul,” he said, “Watch him, please. We need proof – proof of his
loyalty – proof of his motives. Yes?”
Jacques and Simone both managed not to look at the jar of money. “Jerome, you know him – he’s for himself.”
“I know. But he quoted Buonoparte once. And he sends money.”
“He would,” said Simone.
“I killed a man tonight. I’ve fired at Germans but I killed tonight.”
Silence.
“You always said...” began Jacques.
“I know! I know what I spouted! My God. Ha! His eyes. And I left her. What will she do to Sara and Zoe?”
“Who?”
“Madame – his widow.”
“Killed a man here? You killed someone here?”
“I’ve said too much. You shouldn’t know. I shouldn’t have come. It’s just – I killed, I’m a murderer.”
There was a silence. Even the dog caught its weight.
“Jerome,” said Simone, “what you did was assassinate.”
“Perhaps.” He poured scalding coffee down his throat. “It’s kill or be killed. This isn’t civilization – it can’t be.”
“It isn’t – it’s War,” she said. “Go back to your men – they understand how you feel. They are your family.”
He looked at her. Big. Looking right in his eyes.
“I’ve risked my family’s life for a life with another family? This was never meant, surely?”
“Go. Take some food.”
“Got a bike?”
“Arbel had.”
“Fuck it – I need the walk.” And he went.
Chibret and Galtier had been in Aurillac; Mignon had cried, Herrisson was shot reaching for his revolver.
“I told you to shoot her,” said Bernadie.
“I couldn’t.”
“So? She knows. Your mother is in the village – your wife, child; my God but you are a humanistic dangerous cretin.”
“I couldn’t be judge and jury on her.”
St.Cirgues reeled and keened with the shock. Duthileul shivered. Chibret whitened and did truly thank God for his deliverance, as, later, so did Madame Herrisson. Mignon’s mother had always known this day would come – he had told her so – but the sight and touch of his cold ruined stillness laid itself in her heart for always. At the funerals Madame Valet had still not spoken. She looked no differently at Madame Lacaze or Sara than at anyone else. The Curé spoke of tragedy and redemption and it was meaningless mumble to a village corrugated with shock. Duthileul sat in his house listening to the church-bell pealing its droning call to come and share the grief and he stayed where he was. To pay respects to those men would be repeated – to deny that respect would be reported. He’d picked his horse.
The villagers prayed. That Mignon’s job would not be given to them or theirs. They wondered who or what or how many would replace Herrisson and they didn’t give a flying fig for Valet and if Madame Valet had any sense she wouldn’t either. She was in shock – and for that brief state she was even envied – but it wouldn’t last – and then what?
The German reaction was to settle two of its men in Chibret’s office, ten soldiers in the Gendarmerie, and their officer, Paul, a 20 year-old ambulance driver from Stuttgart, was ordered to police this lawless village and find and eliminate its Jews and Maquisard terrorists.
He walked up to the bar, straightened his uniform in the window, had a coffee, walked past the Mairie where Chibret was nodding agreement to every word he didn’t understand, walked round the Church – he’d been a church-goer – walked down to the cemetery and back, to the football pitch at the top of the village and back and wondered how the hell to fulfil his orders.
He couldn’t speak French, what was he supposed to do? But he must do something or the leather wasps in the Mairie would report him and he would be moved somewhere infinitely worse, and everywhere was worse now. Better this than any of the front-lines.
He piled his men into their truck, pulled up the tarpaulin and drove them rattling and visible round the village. Then up to some of the outlying farms including Puech. Jacques, seeing them from his field fled to the wood copse, the dog following, amazed at this game. The men fired some pointless bullets into Jacques’ barn wall and Simone held her stomach to calm the babe against her shock. When there was quiet Jacques hugged Simone as tight as he dared and crossed the road, shook Duthileul’s hand and Duthileul said, “I’ll take it when it’s over, eh?”
Jacques looked hard at the older man, trying to find the right words to be clearly understood.
“Where is your heart?” he asked.
“In lineage,” Duthileul lied.
Arbel was given a different pass, a ‘masbefhel’, which allowed him to go into the big town, Gorlitz. There was a cinema, occasionally showing French films and he was permitted, as ‘Vertraussman’ to take five with him. The maximum number allowed in any group of non-Germans. He and Claude watched the films, the others tried the new whore houses.
The young officer, Paul, knew what would happen. The Gestapo would wait then order a random reprisal. Or reprisals. Enemy people, but civilians. We’re killing innocent flies. It’s obscene. Dishonourable. It was four years since he’d heard Hitler speak and he’d lost that passion and certainty. Now all that was left was Duty. Whatever that was conceived to be.
Jacques stalled and prayed. That the baby would be born tonight. Eight months, isn’t that enough? If I could just see it, meet him, hold her, feel it. Please. I’ve pleaded for so much and been granted so much how can I be this selfish? But it’s real. Let me meet my child.
But when he looked at Simone, he saw his Duty and said, “Simone – you must go.”
“Like this?” She was big.
“Don’t you think you should go?”
“Jacques – you’re demented.”
“Am I? Because I want to see you safe?” She waited. There was more.
“Yes, I want to see him. Her. But if I can’t have both, if I have to choose – then you should go.”
“What about what I choose?”
He gawped.
“I hadn’t thought about that...”
“No. I know. Our child will be born in this house.”
“And then you’ll go?”
“Then we’ll see.”
St.Cirgues settled into the rhythm of the Occupied. Stripped of dignity. The German Commanders in Cahors and Toulouse realised, too late, that if they manned these mountain villages they could starve the Maquis into need, recklessness, and open combat. So the market town battalions were broken up and each St.Cirgues got its quota of death-police. It made the outlying farms like Puech more vulnerable. The Maquis demands for food were not sugared now with any philosophy; it was demanded as a right, taken gratefully or with violence were it withheld, and dreadful threats were it to be withheld again. Duthileul finally got his chance to demonstrate his loyalty. He gave two cows to be slaughtered. Telling himself he’d have Jacques’ soon enough.
One night towards the end of April the RAF dropped 3,600 tons of bombs on German occupied France and everyone waited to see what their reaction would be.
10
May 1944 in the department of the Lot and Hell gathered.
On May 1st – German National Day – the men were given a barrel of beer, half the day off, some jam, ten cigarettes and ten marks each. Arbel heard his first American and British bombers flying over to bomb the heart of Germany. It was changing. No letter from Ardelle now for months – but this war was turning. The first air-raid siren. The first time work was stopped. Not long, not long, oh God, not long.
German information solidified. The Allied invasion would be in the North. All units to prepare to move North, leaving enough to secure the towns. The High Command issued papers calling for the final push to settle with the powers against the Fatherland, to secure the future for their children and their children’s children and the Beauty of The Reich. The great gains in land and dignity the Fuhrer had given the people must be held for now and for a better world. It was Time.
It was Time. Simone knew. Jacques went to Duthileul and asked to use the telephone.
“Why? Who?” barked the old woman.
“Chayriguet.”
“The bastard is coming? Phone him.”
“I’ll drive you to him,” said Duthileul not moving from his chair.
“I’ll phone if I may.”
Chayriguet came.
Bringing Sara who sent Jacques for Ardelle and the three waited round Simone’s bed; Jacques left outside with the dog.
“Lie down. Lie down on your back, my dear,” said Chayriguet.
“I want to kneel.”
“She knows best,” said Sara, helping the gross child to squat.
“I want Jacques,” she said as another contraction began. “Vermande!” Ardelle bellowed. The dog cowered.
Jacques’ face appeared at the door and Simone laughed through the pain.
“Your face! Come here and help me, mister.” Jacques stood staring at the bed.
“Kneel behind me, sit behind me – take my weight.”
Chayriguet moved to a chair by the door. Sara held Simone’s right hand, Ardelle, on the other side alternately mopping at the sweat and running to check the water on the fire. Simone, groaning against the contractions, then with the contractions, gasping for air; and behind her, his eyes dilated into black snooker balls, Jacques took her weight. And the sweat. And so wanted to kiss her and didn’t and she went into another and screeched a little and Ardelle was there with a towel and the place was ready for the child and now they called for her to push to push and she pushed and Chayriguet came to cup with his hand beneath her and feel the head which waited whilst its mother gasped and grabbed at air and will and filled her lungs and pushed him, ripping her a little, out. Chayriguet looped the cord back over the tiny head as all of it came and Simone mooed with the movement and collapsed back crushing Jacques into the head-board and held her arms out for the child Chayriguet placed purple, intact, blood-spattered, male and perfect at her breast.
The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama Page 16