A Vintage End

by D'arcy Kavanagh

  And still Hélène and Claude held each other, occasionally whispering into the other’s ear.

  Finally, Claude pulled back.

  “My angel, I don’t mean to create a scene – although it seems that’s too late to wish for,” Claude said. “I just had to see you.”

  They hugged once more for several seconds.

  Burke looked at the terrace crowd. Every single set of eyes was on Claude and Hélène

  “I’ll sleep tonight in my own bed and tomorrow we’ll talk,” Claude said, pushing his niece to arm’s length.

  Hélène nodded. She wanted desperately to be with Claude, but she was needed at the café. It would be a long wait till the next day, but he was home and that was what counted. Burke knew she could handle a few more hours.

  And then Burke watched as a strange thing occurred.

  The terrace was populated by mostly locals and one of them, an elderly gent in his 80s who lived at the north end of the village, shuffled over to Claude, a wide smile on his face.

  “You are back, Claude, and I am happy to see you, very happy indeed,” the old man said.

  Then he leaned in and kissed Claude three times on the cheeks.

  A moment later, his wife did the same.

  And so, too, did the couple who ran the small fruit shop, the retired gay couple, and the woman who owned the hair salon and her husband.

  Except for two people Burke didn’t know, every person on the terrace – and the half dozen customers inside – came over and greeted Claude.

  Claude was initially speechless and then he smiled, like a man who just realized his value in life. The scene made Burke think of the celebrated Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life when a depressed businessman considers suicide and then finds himself embraced by his neighbours. But this was better because it was real.

  Burke noticed tears streaming down Claude’s cheeks. Beside him stood Hélène, her face showing love, pride, gratitude but also some worry.

  “I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to be here with you, my friends,” Claude said as nearly all the café customers stood around him. “I didn’t know how I would be greeted when I returned, but now I know. I am incredibly lucky.”

  The old gent stepped forward.

  “We all know where you went, but it is more important that we all know the kind of man you really are,” he said.

  Claude brushed away a tear. So did Hélène, a dozen others and Burke himself.

  A few minutes later, everyone was back at their tables and Hélène was attending to their needs. Burke spotted the two outsiders on the terrace who were getting an explanation from the gay couple.

  As Burke walked to his car with his friend, he admitted to himself that he, too, hadn’t had a clue about how anyone would greet Claude. Now he knew. The first test could not have been passed more brilliantly.

  “I’m glad I was there, Claude,” Burke said once they were inside his vehicle. “That was very special.”

  Claude nodded. “I will never forget it. Never.”

  Burke drove him to his apartment three blocks north of Place Massena in Nice. He parked the car and accompanied his friend despite Claude saying he was fine.

  Claude buzzed the concierge of his apartment building and then shared a hug and some niceties with the elderly man who, as Claude explained, had once been in the French Foreign Legion. He got his keys and then walked up to his fourth-storey apartment with Burke at his heels.

  “I made arrangements to have the apartment looked after in my absence,” Claude said. “We’ll see if it was money well spent.”

  It was. The apartment was immaculate and Burke thought it would be next to impossible to spot a speck of dust in the place. On the coffee table in the living room was a large vase overflowing with flowers.

  “Ah, perfect – forget-me-nots and lilies of the valley and even some daisies,” Claude said. “Élise, my housekeeper, knows my tastes.”

  They chatted for a couple of minutes and then Burke said he needed to go.

  At the front door, Claude put a hand on Burke’s left arm: “I thought prison would be the worst time of my life and, in some ways, it was. But today, after what happened back at the café and with these simple flowers here, I know that none of it would have happened without me going to Corbas.”

  Burke could only nod in response.

  “Sometimes you learn the strangest lessons in the strangest of ways,” Claude said.

  Chapter 45

  When the sun streamed into their bedroom the following morning, Burke slowly woke Hélène, letting his fingers float over her nude body. He hadn’t seen her the previous night because he had fallen asleep before she came home late from the café, and he knew he should let her sleep a little longer, but he had missed her so much and he didn’t want to wait. Once she grew alert enough to understand his intentions, she groaned and then, with a sly smile, she relented and they made love very slowly, as if trying to capture the memory for posterity.

  After, Hélène demanded a coffee in bed and Burke was happy to comply. As they lay in bed, enjoying the sun and the birdsong through the open window, they chatted a while about Claude. And while Hélène initially sounded worried, the longer she talked, the more Burke realized she knew her uncle would survive and thrive.

  “Now that you’ve had your way, I want another coffee,” Hélène said. “After that, I may just stretch out and relax, or take a shower. But your little tricks won’t work again, at least not till much later in the day.”

  Burke provided her with a coffee and then said he’d go for a ride. With a long day at the café and likely another long evening ahead, Hélène seemed pleased at his decision and Burke figured she might squeeze in some more sleep despite the two coffees.

  After dressing quickly, Burke took his racing bike outside and cycled to the main road entering his village and then, on a whim, he knew where he had to go. He turned right and headed up the hill, keeping tight to the side of the road as a small convoy of trucks sped by.

  He was going to ride to the spot where, the previous summer, he had been forced off the road and had crashed into a tree, breaking several bones and nearly dying in the process. Before today, he hadn’t wanted to go near the place.

  Burke worked hard and was soon sweating heavily. The road tilted upward with only a single flat stretch and, in spots, he felt the urge to stop for a break. But he didn’t, unsure if his resolve would remain if he relaxed.

  After 40 minutes, he was at the spot where he’d gone off the road.

  He stopped.

  There were no vehicles within sight; most of the traffic had continued on the main route when he had taken the turn to this area. A handful of old farmhouses dotted the largely barren hills. At the clutch of trees where he had finally stopped, Burke could hear birdsong.

  It was remote and peaceful.

  Burke involuntarily shuddered though, recalling vividly the last few seconds before his near-fatal crash.

  But he had survived and now he was back, alive and on his bike and happy.

  The accident was entirely in the past and Burke smiled. He had a lot to be thankful for.

  He turned his attention back to the birds. They were singing a dozen songs, almost as if greeting him. He told himself he’d come back up here, not to conquer any demons but just to enjoy a spot that was so different from the non-stop action along the coast far below.

  Then he turned his bike around and rode home.

  To his surprise, Hélène was dressed and having another coffee, her thick, shoulder-length auburn hair slightly wet from a shower. Burke had expected she’d still be in bed, catching a few more minutes of sleep.

  “I couldn’t get back to sleep after you awoke me and after our coffee and chat,” Hélène said with a smile. “But it was all worthwhile.”

  Then she said she had to go with her chef to the Nice market, kissed Burke gently on the lips and left.

  Burke showered, dressed in a linen shirt and linen trousers t
o stay cool because the prediction was for a low-30s temperature and then he sat down at his computer. He had some thoughts he wanted to explore.

  He recalled Madame Benoit’s comment about how people take their passions with them throughout their lives. Then he considered how Yablonski had talked about his Uncle Sébastien who had influenced his love for bicycling. How far back did Sébastien’s own connection to bicycles go? Before the Second World War? Had he been just a cyclist or had he somehow made a living from bicycles?

  Burke wondered if the uncle was the link between Yablonski and his tormentors.

  The first challenge was determining which areas of France or even Europe to put Yablonski and Uncle Sébastien in. Although Yablonski had supposedly grown up in Switzerland, Burke wondered if the family might have roots in France. Yablonski’s French didn’t seem to have any of the Swiss flatness of accent; if anything, Yablonski sounded like he had grown up in the French heartland or maybe up in the north.

  Burke then recalled how the Yablonski “extremists” had made references to Oradour-sur-Glane so Burke figured he’d start with bicycle shops in the Haute-Vienne area where the village was located.

  It was frustrating work.

  He couldn’t find a website that told him anything about bike shops going back 70 to 80 years in the region. However, he did read how the German SS apprehended six cyclists who didn’t live in Oradoursur-Glane, but were just riding through the village when the Nazis arrived. They ended up being killed.

  Burke tried other avenues and got nowhere.

  But he didn’t quit. He had some time and no plans for the rest of the day except to do one blog for Lemaire and that could wait until later.

  Recalling that some of the soldiers involved in the massacre had come from French Alsace and how those Frenchmen had argued later in post-war courtrooms they had been forced into the German army, Burke changed his research region to the Alsace, that northeastern section of the country that had bounced back and forth for generations between control of the French and German governments.

  Since the region was large, he picked a small community as a starting point – Wissembourg.

  He got nowhere except to learn that the town was in a corridor of open terrain that enabled effective troop movement during the Franco-Prussian War – and the Second World War. He even read about an impressive war memorial in Wissembourg.

  However, Burke knew he wasn’t any closer to determining the link – if any existed – between Yablonski and the Second World War.

  He tried other communities with the same result. He was definitely learning about the region, enough that he thought he and Hélène should visit it, but he was failing to find what he was seeking. Still, he kept on, deciding to check into the use of bicycles during the Second World War. Maybe he’d see a circumstance that involved Yablonski’s uncle.

  Tens of millions of links showed up in a half second. At first glance, some links were barely related to the topic, but others seemed full of information. The challenge was where to start.

  Burke realized he could spend years or even the rest of his life just going through the material that had erupted from his key search words.

  But he didn’t quit.

  Two hours later, Burke knew how the Germans had studied the use of the bicycle during the First World War and then, during the Second World War, had employed cyclists for reconnaissance work, especially in Russia and, later, elsewhere, even creating in 1943 a bicycle battalion. He saw photos of soldiers on both sides riding into battle on sturdy, steel bikes, a scene that looked positively bizarre to Burke.

  He also read how some conscripts into the German army had found themselves not on the front lines, but on bikes riding back and forth between vital areas with information. One day you’re farming or working in a shop, the next day you’re dodging bullets as you try to get information to the next outpost. And that’s when he wondered if Uncle Sébastien had been gathered up by the German war machine and put to work – and somehow prospered as a result.

  But without a last name for Uncle Sébastien, Burke could find no proof for that theory.

  Then he wondered about the Yablonski surname. He punched in a new search and learned that the Yablonski name had Polish-Jewish roots, but was uncommon in France, regardless of whether it was spelled with a “ski” or “sky.” He tightened the search and learned that one person named Yablonsky had done well in France as a musician while another had earned a reputation as an artist. There was no pattern as to where the few Yablonskis settled in France unlike in the U.S. where plenty of them with the surname, in either spelling, had gone to Pennsylvania and New York. Burke was surprised to see that another area that attracted people with the surname was southwestern Scotland, but further research into that matter was for another time.

  Burke knew he needed access to records that dated back to before the Second World War and definitely during the war.

  He knew he didn’t have the skills to obtain that information, but he knew someone who might be able to help.

  Chapter 46

  Antoine listened to Burke’s request and then responded with one of his giant sighs that Burke was beginning to know well.

  “You know I have a job, right?” Antoine said.

  “I know I’m asking a lot,” Burke said. “But it could pay off.”

  “I don’t know how,” Antoine said.

  Burke started to offer the benefits of doing the work, but his friend cut him off.

  “Forget the sell job, Paul,” Antoine said. “Without a surname for this uncle, do you know how difficult it is?”

  “I have some … .”

  “But the real challenge is that I’d have to go through records for not just one community but potentially dozens, maybe even hundreds.”

  “I know, but … .” Burke said, starting to sense he wasn’t going to get anywhere with his friend.

  “And then there’s the matter of which records to look for,” Antoine said. “Business licences, if they were kept at all, phone books, taxpayers’ lists, voters’ lists.”

  “I understand,” Burke said.

  “And I’d probably have to hack into the databases for that information. And thanks to some big-time hacks that have received international attention, many communities are investing on more secure servers.”

  “OK, I get it,”” Burke replied.

  “And then there’s the possibility that a lot of those records were lost during the war,” Antoine said.

  “I apologise, Antoine,” Burke said. “I don’t think I knew what I was asking for.”

  “Paul, I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” Antoine said. “Your request could conceivably take up dozens or even hundreds of hours.”

  Burke was beaten. He couldn’t get the information and he certainly couldn’t push Antoine to try for him. Besides the time required, there was also the risk of being detected. And courts were being harsher than ever with anyone convicted of computer hacking. If he was caught, Antoine could end up in Claude’s old cell – and maybe for a longer period.

  No, it was time to quit, and keep to his blogs. If something happened in Vaison-la-Romaine, he wouldn’t ask a single question. It would be exclusively a police matter.

  “The research you’re asking about,” Antoine said, still adding to his argument, “is the type that maybe a doctoral candidate or masters student has done or is doing. It’s the kind of work that needs months and likely a couple of years to complete.”

  “You went to university, didn’t you, Antoine?” Burke said.

  “Yes, here in Nice and then up in Paris.”

  “Did you get a masters?”

  “I did although it definitely doesn’t reflect itself in my salary or job status,” Antoine said. “But that’s OK because I enjoy the work and get to talk to interesting characters such as you, Paul.”

  “Did you do much group work with your masters?” asked Burke who had barely made it through high school back in Canada.

  �
�I did and I could definitely tell you some stories,” Antoine replied.

  “Was it just you and another person or did you work in bigger groups?”

  “I don’t know where you’re going with all this, Paul, but I will tell you I often did research alone, but sometimes I worked in a group of two or three others because we had some joint interests. After all, we were all techies and that was the nature of the work – combining efforts.”

  “I appreciate your time, Antoine,” Burke said.

  “That’s it? What are you thinking, Paul?

  “That I might have a better idea about the people after Bosco Yablonski. And how they can be traced.”

  “You can’t leave me hanging like that, Paul,” Antoine said.

  “I have more thinking and more research to do,” Burke said. “When I’ve done that, you’ll be the first to hear. And maybe then you can tell me if you think I’m crazy or on target.”

  “So you aren’t going to tell me,” Antoine.

  “Not now.”

  “Then you owe me another bottle of cassis for such suffering,” Antoine said and then he ended the call.

  Chapter 47

  For the next hour, Burke sat on his living room couch and looked out the window. But he didn’t see anything because he was absorbed in his thoughts.

  He was trying to tie together all the strands of information and it wasn’t proving easy. In fact, he was getting a mild headache from so much thinking, but, for whatever reason, he couldn’t quit. He felt almost like an addict – he needed something. In this case, it was an understanding of what had happened in the races and what was involved with Yablonski’s past.

  Of course, Burke thought, if he ever connected them, then what could he do? Talk to the police? Tell Lemaire? Write a blog? Do nothing?

  Feeling he needed more information, Burke returned to his computer for a new round of research, ignoring that he needed to pack for his trip the next day to Vaison-la-Romaine.