The Young Lions Part 43

The bicycles nearly stopped and Christian could see the two men turning inquiringly toward each other. Then they hunched lower over their handlebars and quickly gained speed. They pa.s.sed quite close to Christian, twenty-five or thirty meters away. He got a good look at them, worn, brown, cold faces, expressionless and stony under the dark-blue caps. Then they were gone. They made a turn behind a high dune, which obscured the road for almost two kilometers on the other side of it, and then the road and the countryside all around Christian was empty, falling swiftly into the rich blue of twilight, with only the rim of the ocean still violent clear red.

Christian raised his arm, as though to wave at the two men, as though he could not believe that they were not still there, as though it were only a trick of his wound that had made him think they had merely pedaled away. He shook his head. Then he started to trot toward the cl.u.s.ter of houses he could barely see in the distance.

He had to stop after a minute, because he was panting heavily, and his arm had begun to bleed again. Then he heard the scream. He wheeled around and stared through the gathering darkness at the place where he had left Behr. There was a man crouching over Behr, and Behr was trying to crawl away in the sand, with a slow, dying movement. Then Behr screamed again, and the man who had been crouched over him took one long step and grabbed Behr by the collar and turned him over. Christian saw the gleam of a knife in the man's hand, a bright, sharp slice of light against the dull shining silver of the sea. Behr started to scream again, but never finished it.

Christian tore at the holster on his belt with his left hand, but it was a long time before he could get the pistol out. He saw the man put his knife away, and fumble at Behr's belt for the pistol. He got the pistol and stuck it in a pocket, then picked up Christian's boots, which were lying nearby. Christian took his pistol out and laboriously and clumsily got the safety off with his left hand. Then he began firing. He had never fired a pistol with his left hand before and the shots were very wild. But the Frenchman started to run toward the high dune. Christian lumbered down the beach toward Behr's quiet form, stopping from time to time to fire at the swiftly running Frenchman.

By the time Christian reached the spot where Behr was lying, stretched out, face up, arms spread wide, the man Christian had been chasing was on his bicycle, and, with the other man, was spurting out from behind the protection of the dune, down the black, b.u.mpy road. Christian fired a last shot at them. It must have been close, because he saw the pair of boots drop from the handlebars of the second bicycle, as though the man had been frightened by the whistle of the bullet. The Frenchmen did not stop. They bent low over the handlebars of their bicycles and swept away into the lavender haze that was beginning to obscure the road, the pale sand of the beach, the rows of barbed wire, the small yellow signs with the skulls that said: Attention, Mines.

Then Christian looked down at his friend.

Behr was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, with the last crooked expression of terror on his face, the blood a sticky marsh under his chin, where the Frenchman had made the long, unnecessary slash with his knife. Christian gazed down at Behr stupidly, thinking: No, it is impossible, just five minutes ago he was sitting there, putting on his shoes, discussing the future of Germany like a professor of political science ... The Englishman gliding down spitefully in the fighter plane, and the French farmer on his bicycle, carrying the hidden knife, had had their own notions of political science.

Christian looked up. The beach was pale and empty, the sea murmured into the sand in a small froth of quiet waves; the footprints on the sand were clearly marked. For a moment, Christian had a wild idea that there was something to be done, that if he did the single correct thing, the five minutes would vanish, the plane would not have swooped down, the two men on bicycles would not have pa.s.sed by, Behr would even now be rising from the sand, healthy, reflective, whole, asking Christian to make a decision ...

Christian shook his head. Ridiculous, he thought, the five minutes had existed, had pa.s.sed; the careless, meaningless accidents had happened; the bright-eyed boy, going home to his pint of beer in a Devon pub after an afternoon of cruising over France, had spotted the two tiny figures on the sand; the sun-wrinkled farmer had irrevocably used the knife; the future of Germany would be decided with no further comment by Anton Behr, widower, late of Germany, late of Rostov, late coast-walker and philosopher.

Christian bent down. Slowly, panting heavily, he pulled first one boot then another from the feet of his friend. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, he thought as he worked, at least they're not going to get these boots.

Then, carrying the boots, he scuffed heavily through the sand toward the road. He picked up his own boots, which the Frenchman had dropped. Then, carrying all four boots against his chest in the crook of his wounded arm, he plodded, barefoot, the road feeling smooth and cool under his soles, toward Battalion Headquarters five kilometers away.

With his arm in a sling, not hurting too much, Christian watched them bury Behr the next day. The whole company was out in parade dress, very solemn, with their boots polished and their rifles oiled. The Captain took the occasion to make a speech.

"I promise you men," the Captain said, standing erect, holding his belly in, ignoring the thick North-coast rain that was falling around him, "that this soldier will be avenged." The Captain had a high, scratchy voice, and spent most of his time in the farmhouse where he was billeted with a thick-legged Frenchwoman whom he had brought to Normandy with him from Dijon, where he had been stationed before. The Frenchwoman was pregnant now and made that an excuse to eat enormously five times a day.

"Avenged," the Captain repeated. "Avenged." The rain dripped down his visor and onto his nose. "The people of this area will learn that we are strong friends and terrible enemies, that the lives of you men are precious to me and to our Fuehrer. We are at this moment at the point of apprehending the murderer ..."

Christian thought dully of the English pilot, probably sitting this moment, because it was a wet day, unapprehended, in a snug corner of a tavern, with a girl, warming his beer between his hands, laughing in that infuriating, superior English way, as he described the crafty, profitable slide down the Norman sky the day before, to catch two barefooted Huns, out for their const.i.tutional at sunset.

"We shall teach these people," the Captain thundered, "that these wanton acts of barbarism do not pay. We have extended the hand of friendship, and if in return we are faced with the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife, we shall know how to repay it. These acts of treachery and violence do not exist in themselves. The men who perform them are spurred on by their masters across the Channel. Beaten again and again on the battlefield, the savages, who call themselves English and American soldiers, hire others to fight like pickpockets and burglars. Never in the history of warfare," the Captain's voice went on, growing stronger in the rain, "have nations violated the laws of humanity so completely as our enemies today. Bombs dropped on the innocent women and children of the Fatherland, knives planted in the throats of our fighting men in the dark of night by their hirelings in Europe. But," the Captain's voice rose to a scream, "it will avail them nothing! Nothing! I know what effect this has on me and on every other German. We grow stronger, we grow more bitter, our resolution increases to fury!"

Christian looked around him. The other men were standing. sadly in the rain, their faces not resolute, not furious, mild, subtly frightened, a little bored. The battalion was a makeshift one, with many men who had been wounded on other fronts, and the latest culling of slightly older and slightly disabled civilians and a heavy sprinkling of eighteen-year-olds. Suddenly, Christian sympathized with the Captain. He was addressing an army that did not exist, that had been wiped out in a hundred battles. He was addressing the phantoms that these men should have been, the million men capable of fury who now lay quietly in their graves in Africa and Russia.

"But finally," the Captain was shouting, "they will have to come out of their holes. They will have to crawl out of their soft beds in England, they will have to stop depending upon their hired a.s.sa.s.sins, and they will have to come to meet us on the battlefield here like soldiers. I glory in that thought, I live for that day, I shout to them, 'Come, see what it is to fight the German like a soldier!' I face that day," the Captain said solemnly, "with iron confidence. I face it with love and devotion. And I know that each one of you feels the same identical fire."

Christian looked once more at the ranks of soldiers. They stood drearily, the rain soaking through their synthetic rubber capes, their boots sinking slowly into the French mud.

"This Sergeant," the Captain gestured dramatically to the open grave, "will not be with us in the flesh on the great day, but his spirit will be with us, buoying us up, crying to us to stand firm when we begin to falter."

The Captain wiped his face and then made place for the Chaplain, who rattled through the prayer. The Chaplain had a bad cold and wanted before it turned into pneumonia to get in from the rain.

The two men with spades came up and started shoveling in the dripping fresh mud piled to one side.

The Captain shouted an order, and marching erect, trying to keep his behind from waggling too much under his coat, he led his company out of the small cemetery, which had only eight other graves in it, through the stone main street of the village. There were no civilians on the street, and the shutters of all the houses were closed against the rain, the Germans, and the war.

The SS Lieutenant was very hearty. He had come over from Headquarters in a big staff car. He smoked little Cuban cigars one after another and had a bright, mechanical smile, like a beer salesman entering a rathskeller. There was also a smell of brandy about him. He sat back in the comfortable rear compartment of the car, with Christian beside him, as they sped along the beach road to the next little village, where a suspect was being detained for Christian to identify.

"You got a good look at the two men, Sergeant?" the SS Lieutenant said, nibbling at his cigar, smiling mechanically as he peered at Christian. "You could identify them easily?"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian.

"Good." The Lieutenant beamed at Christian. "This will be very simple. I like a simple case. Some of the others, the other investigators, grow melancholy when they are in an open-and-shut case. They like to pretend they are great detectives. They like to have everything complicated, obscure, so that they can show how brilliant they are. Not me. Oh no, not me." He beamed warmly at Christian. "Yes or no, this is the man, this is not the man, that is the way I like it. Leave the rest of it to the intellectuals. I was a machine operator in a leather-goods factory in Regensburg before the war, I do not pretend to be profound. I have a simple philosophy for dealing with the French. I am direct with them, and I expect them to be direct with me." He looked at his watch, "It is now three-thirty P.M. You will be back at your Company by five o'clock. I promise you. I make it fast. Yes or no. One way or another. Good-bye. Would you like a cigar?"

"No, Sir," said Christian.

"Other officers," said the Lieutenant, "would not sit in the back like this with a Sergeant, offering him cigars. Not me. I never forget that I worked in a leather-goods factory. That is one of the faults of the German Army. They all forget they ever were civilians or ever will be civilians again. They are all Caesars and Bismarcks. Not me. Plain, open and shut, you do business with me and I'll do business with you."

By the time the big car drove up to the town hall, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of which the suspect was locked up, Christian had decided that the SS Lieutenant, whose name was Reichburger, was a complete idiot, and Christian would not have trusted him to conduct an investigation of a missing fountain pen.

The Lieutenant sprang out of the car and strode briskly and cheerfully into the ugly stone building, smiling his beer salesman's smile. Christian followed him into a bare, dirty-walled room, whose only adornment, besides a clerk and three peeling cafe chairs, was a caricature of Winston Churchill, naked, which was tacked on a piece of cardboard and used by the local SS headquarters detachment as a dart board.

"Sit down, sit down." The Lieutenant waved to a chair. "Might as well make yourself comfortable. After all, you must not forget, you have been recently wounded."

"Yes, Sir." Christian sat down. He was sorry he had told the Lieutenant he could recognize the two Frenchmen. He detested the Lieutenant and didn't want to have anything more to do with him.

"Have you been wounded before?" The Lieutenant smiled at him fondly.

"Yes," said Christian. "Once. Twice really. Once badly, in Africa. Then I was scratched in the head outside Paris in 1940."

"Wounded three times." The Lieutenant grew sober for a moment. "You are a lucky man. You will never be killed. Obviously, there is something watching over you. I do not look it, I know, but I am a fatalist. There are some men who are born to be merely wounded, others to be killed. Myself, I have not been touched so far. But I know I shall be killed before the war is over." He shrugged and smiled widely. "I am that type. So I enjoy myself. I live with a woman who is one of the best cooks in France, and on the side, she also has two sisters." He winked at Christian and chuckled. "The bullet will hit a well-satisfied man."

The door opened and an SS Private brought in a man in manacles. The man was tall and weather-beaten, and he was trying very hard to show that he was not afraid. He stood at the door, his hands locked behind him, and, by an obvious effort of the muscles of his face, wrestled a trembling look of disdain to his lips.

The Lieutenant smiled fondly at him. "Well." the Lieutenant said, in thick French, "we will not waste your time, Monsieur." He turned to Christian. "Is this one of the men, Sergeant?"

Christian peered at the Frenchman. The Frenchman took a deep breath, and stared back at Christian, his face a dumb combination of puzzlement and controlled hatred. Christian felt a small, violent tick of anger pulling at his brain. In this face, laid bare by stupidity and courage, there was the whole history of the cunning and malice and stubbornness of the French-the mocking silence in the trains when they rode in the same compartments with you, the derisive, scarcely stifled laughter when you walked out of a cafe in which there were two or more of them drinking at a corner table, the 1918 scrawled arrogantly on the church wall the very first night in Paris ... The man scowled at Christian, and even in the sour grimace there was a hint of dry laughter at the corners of his mouth. It would be most satisfactory, Christian thought, to knock in those raw, yellow teeth with the b.u.t.t of a rifle. He thought of Behr, so reasonable and decent, who had hoped to work with people like this. Now Behr was dead and this man was still alive, grinning and triumphant.

"Yes," Christian said. "That's the man."

"What?" the man said stupidly. "What? He's crazy."

The Lieutenant reached out with a swiftness that his rather chubby, soft body gave no evidence of possessing, and clubbed the heel of his hand across the man's chin. "My dear friend," the Lieutenant said, "you will speak only when spoken to." He stood above the Frenchman, who looked more puzzled than ever, and who kept working his lips over his teeth and sucking in the little trickles of blood from the bruised mouth. "Now," the Lieutenant said, in French, "this is established-yesterday afternoon you cut the throat of a German soldier on the beach six kilometers north of this village."

"Please," the Frenchman said dazedly.

"Now, it only remains to hear from you one more fact ..." the Lieutenant paused. "The name of the man who was with you."

"Please," the man said. "I can prove I did not leave the village all afternoon."

"Of course," the Lieutenant said amiably, "you can prove anything, with a hundred signatures an hour. We are not interested."

"Please," said the Frenchman.

"We are only interested in one thing," said the Lieutenant. "The name of the man who was with you when you got off your bicycle to murder a helpless German soldier."

"Please," said the Frenchman. "I do not own a bicycle."

The Lieutenant nodded to the SS Private. The soldier tied the Frenchman into one of the chairs, not roughly.

"We are very direct," said the Lieutenant. "I have promised the Sergeant he will get back to his Company for dinner and I intend to keep my promise. I merely promise you that if you do not tell me, you will regret it later. Now ..."

"I do not even own a bicycle," the Frenchman mumbled.

The Lieutenant went over to the desk and opened a drawer. He took out a pair of pliers and walked slowly, opening and closing the pliers, with a squeaking, homely sound, behind the chair in which the Frenchman was tied. The Lieutenant bent over briskly, and seized the Frenchman's right hand in one of his own. Then, quite briskly, and carelessly, with a sharp, professional jerk, he pulled out the fingernail of the man's thumb.

The scream had no connection with anything that Christian had ever heard before.

"As I told you," the Lieutenant said, standing behind the Frenchman, "I am very direct. We have a long war to fight, and I do not believe in wasting time."

"Please ..." moaned the Frenchman.

The Lieutenant bent over again, and again there was the scream. The Lieutenant's face was quiet and almost bored, as though he were working the machine back at the leather-goods factory in Regensburg.

The Frenchman sagged forward against the ropes that bound him to the chair, but he was fully conscious.

"This is merely standard procedure, my friend," the Lieutenant said, coming around in front of the Frenchman, "merely to give you some idea that we are in earnest about this matter. Now, will you kindly give me the name of your friend?"

"I don't know, I don't know," the man moaned. The sweat was streaming off his face, and all expression had left it, save the reflection of pain.

As Christian watched, he could not help feeling a little weak, a little dizzy, and the screams seemed insupportable in the small, bare room, with the cartoon of Winston Churchill, naked and porcine, adorned with feathered darts in his private sections, on the wall.

"I am going to do something you won't believe," the Lieutenant was saying, speaking a little louder than ordinary, as though the Frenchman's agony had built a wall that was hard to pierce. "I told you I was a direct man, and I am going to prove it. I have no patience for slow examinations. I go from one step to another promptly. You may not believe this, as I said, when I tell you, but unless you name the man who was with you, I am going to tear out your right eye. Now, my friend, this minute, in the room, with my own hands."

Involuntarily, the Frenchman closed his eyes, and a low, gasping sigh crackled through his dry lips.

"No," he whispered. "It is a terrible mistake. I don't know." Then, with a crazy logic, "I do not even own a bicycle."

"Sergeant," the Lieutenant said to Christian, "there is no need for you to remain."

"Thank you, Sir," Christian said. His voice was not steady. He went out, closing the door carefully behind him, and leaned against the corridor wall. There was an SS Private with a rifle, standing expressionlessly near the door.

The scream, after thirty seconds, made the back of Christian's throat ache and seemed to be heard and collected in his lungs. He closed his eyes, pressing the back of his head against the wall.

He knew that things like this happened from time to time, but it seemed impossible that it could happen here, on a sunny afternoon, in a dusty, plain room, in a small, run-down village, across the street from a grocery shop in the window of which hung loops of sausage, in a room in which a cartoon of a fat man with a bare, ruddy behind was hanging ...

After a while the door opened and the Lieutenant came out. He was smiling. "It worked," he said. "Direct. It is the best way. Stay here," he told Christian. "I will be back very soon." He disappeared into another room.

Christian and the other soldier leaned against the wall. The Private lit a cigarette, without offering one to Christian. He smoked, closing his eyes, as though he were trying to sleep, standing up, leaning against the cracked stone wall of the old town hall. Christian saw two soldiers come out of the room that the Lieutenant had entered, and start down the street. From behind the door against which he was leaning, Christian heard a whispering, sobbing, rising and falling, wordless praying noise.

Five minutes later, the two soldiers came into the town hall, with a small, round hatless bald man, whose eyes kept sweeping in an ecstasy of fear from side to side. The soldiers took him, holding his elbows, into the room in which the Lieutenant was waiting. A moment later one of the soldiers came out into the hall. "He wants you," the soldier said to Christian.

Christian walked slowly down the hall and into the other room. The little fat Frenchman was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands, weeping. There was a dark puddle around him, to show that his bladder had failed him in his hour of trouble. The Lieutenant was sitting at a desk, typing a letter. There was a clerk in the room, making out a payroll, and another soldier standing easily near the window, looking out at a young mother carrying a blonde child into the epicerie.

The Lieutenant looked up as Christian entered. He nodded in the direction of the Frenchman on the floor. "Is this the other one?" he asked. Christian stared at the Frenchman, sitting in the middle of his own water on the dusty wood floor.

"Yes," he said.

"Take him away," the Lieutenant said.

The soldier left the window and went over to the Frenchman, who was staring dazedly up at Christian. "I have never seen him," the man said, as the soldier grabbed his collar and pulled him limply to his feet. "As G.o.d is my judge, I have never seen this man before ..."

The soldier dragged him out.

"Now," said the Lieutenant, smiling cheerfully, "that is finished. Now ... the papers will go to the Colonel in the next half hour, and it will be out of my hands. Now ... do you wish to go back to your Company immediately, or would you like to stay here tonight-we have a fine sergeant's mess-and see the execution tomorrow. It will be at six tomorrow morning. Whatever you say."

"I would like to stay," Christian said.

"Good," said the Lieutenant. "Sergeant Decher is next door. Go to him and tell him I sent you and that he's to make arrangements for you. I will see you here at five forty-five tomorrow morning." He turned back to his letter as Christian went out the door.

The execution was in the cellar of the town hall. There was a long, damp bas.e.m.e.nt, lit by two bare, bright bulbs. The floor was made out of hard-packed earth and there were two stakes knocked into it near the wall at one end. There were two shallow coffins, made out of unpainted wood, that gleamed rawly in the harsh light, lying behind the stakes. The cellar was used as a prison, too, and other condemned men had written their final words to the living world in chalk and charcoal on the sweating walls.

"There is no G.o.d," Christian read, standing behind the six soldiers who were to do the shooting, and "Merde, Merde, Merde," and, "My name is Jacques. My father's name was Raoul. My mother's name was Clarisse. My sister's name was Simone. My uncle's name was Etienne. My son's name was ..." The man had never finished that.

The two condemned men shuffled in, each between two soldiers. They moved as though their legs had not been used for a long time. When he saw the stakes, the smaller man made a low, whimpering sound, but the man with one eye, although he could not make the proper movements with his legs, tried to remember how to pull the muscles of his jaw to fashion an expression of scorn. He was almost successful, Christian noticed, as the soldiers quickly tied him to the stake.

The Sergeant in command of the squad gave the first order. His voice sounded strange, too parade-like and official for the shabby cellar.

"Never," the one-eyed man shouted from behind his bandage, "you will never ..."

But the volley cut him short. The shots cut the small man's cords and he toppled forward. The Sergeant ran up hurriedly and put the coup de grce in, first to the small man's head, then to the other man's. The smell of the powder for a moment obscured the other, damp, corrupt smells of the cellar.

The Lieutenant nodded to Christian. Christian followed him upstairs and out into the foggy gray light, his ears still ringing from the rifles.

The Lieutenant smiled faintly. "How did you like it?" he asked.

"All right," said Christian, evenly. "I didn't mind it."

"Excellent," said the Lieutenant. "Have you had your breakfast?"

"No."

"Come along with me," the Lieutenant said. "I have breakfast waiting. It's only five doors up."

They walked side by side, their footsteps m.u.f.fled in the pearly fog off the ocean.

"The first one," the Lieutenant said, "the one with one eye, he didn't like the German Army at all, did he?"

"No, Sir," said Christian.

"We're well rid of him."

"Yes, Sir."

The Lieutenant stopped and faced Christian, smiling a little. "They weren't the men at all, were they?" he said.

Christian hesitated, but only for a moment. "Frankly, Sir," he said, "I am not sure."

The Lieutenant smiled more broadly. "You're an intelligent man," he said lightly. "The effect is the same. It proves to them that we are serious." He patted Christian on the shoulder. "Go around to the kitchen and tell Renee I told you she's to feed you well, the same breakfast she brings me. You speak French well enough for that, don't you?"