The Children of Freedom. Marc Levy

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СКАЧАТЬ and only then, you can head back.

      I had lost all desire to be distracted and I knew my lesson by heart, well almost: the one thing I didn’t know at all was how to shoot at a man.

      Charles came back from his workshop with my bicycle, which had undergone some serious transformations. The important thing, he said, is that the pedals and chain were reliable. Boris signalled to me that it was time to leave. Claude was still sleeping. I wondered if I ought to wake him. In the event that something happened to me, he might sulk again because I hadn’t even said goodbye to him before I died. But I decided to leave him sleeping; when he awoke, he would be famished, with nothing to eat. Each hour of sleep was the same amount of time gained over the gnawing pangs of hunger. I asked why Emile wasn’t coming with us. ‘Drop it!’ Boris muttered to me. Yesterday, Emile had had his bike stolen. That idiot had left it in the corridor of his apartment building without locking it up. It was all the more regrettable that it had been a rather fine model with leather grips, exactly like the one I’d nicked! While we were in action, he’d have to go and pinch another one. Boris added that Emile had hit the roof over the matter!

      

      The mission proceeded as Boris had described. Well, almost. The Nazi officer we had spotted was coming down the ten steps of a street staircase, which led to a small square where a vespasienne sat imposingly. This was the name given to the green urinals that were found in the town. We called them cups, because of the shape. But as they had been invented by a Roman emperor who answered to the name of Vespasian, that’s what they’d been christened. In the end, I might perhaps have got my baccalaureate, if I hadn’t made the mistake of being Jewish during the June 1941 exams.

      Boris signalled to me that the place was ideal. The little square was below the level of the street and there was no one around. I followed the German, who suspected nothing. To him, I was just someone with whom – although we looked different, with him in his impeccable green uniform and me rather shabbily turned out – he shared the same desire. As the vespasienne was equipped with two compartments, there was no reason for him to object to my walking down the same staircase as he was.

      So I found myself in a urinal, in the company of a Nazi officer into whom I was going to empty my revolver (less one bullet, as Boris had specified). I had carefully taken off the security catch, when a real problem of conscience passed through my mind. Could one be a decent member of the Resistance, with all the nobility that represented, and kill a guy who had his flies undone and was in such an inglorious posture?

      It was impossible to ask comrade Boris for his advice; he was waiting for me with the two bikes at the top of the steps, to ensure a safe getaway. I was alone and I had to make the decision.

      I didn’t fire, it was inconceivable. I couldn’t accept the idea that the first enemy I was going to kill was in the middle of taking a piss as I carried out my heroic action. If I could have talked to Boris about it, he would probably have reminded me that the enemy in question belonged to an army that didn’t ask itself any questions when it shot children in the back of the neck, when it machine-gunned kids on the corners of our streets, and even less so when it was exterminating countless people in the death camps. And Boris wouldn’t have been wrong. But there you go, I dreamed of being a pilot in a Royal Air Force squadron; well, I might not have a plane, but my honour was safe. I waited until my officer had restored himself to a condition fit to be shot. I didn’t allow myself to be distracted by his sidelong smile when he left the urinal and he paid me no further attention when I followed him back to the staircase. The urinal was at the end of a blind alley, and there was only one exit from it.

      In the absence of any shots, Boris must have been wondering what I was doing for all that time. But my officer was climbing the steps in front of me and I certainly wasn’t going to shoot him in the back. The only way of getting him to turn around was to call him, which wasn’t all that easy if one considers that my grasp of German was limited to two words: ja and nein. Which was unfortunate, since in a few seconds he would reach the street again and the whole thing would be a failure. Having taken all these risks to be found wanting at the last moment would have been too stupid. I filled my lungs and yelled Ja with all my strength. The officer must have realised that I was addressing him, because he immediately turned around and I took advantage of this to shoot five bullets into his chest, that is, face-on. What ensued was relatively faithful to the instructions Boris had given. I stuck the revolver in my trouser belt, burning myself in the process on the barrel, which had just fired five bullets at a speed that my level of mathematics didn’t enable me to estimate.

      Once at the top of the staircase, I mounted my bike and lost my pistol, which slipped out of my belt. I put my feet on the ground to pick up my weapon but Boris’s voice shouting at me: ‘For God’s sake get the hell out of here!’ brought me back to the reality of the present moment. I pedalled at breakneck speed, weaving in between the passers-by, who were already running towards the place where the shots had come from.

      As I pedalled, I thought constantly about the pistol I had lost. Weapons were rare in the brigade. Unlike the Maquis, we didn’t benefit from parachute drops from London; which was really unfair, for the Maquis members didn’t do a great deal with the boxes they were sent, apart from storing them in hiding places in preparation for a future Allied landing, which apparently wasn’t imminent. For us, the only means of procuring weapons was to get them from the enemy; in rare cases, by undertaking extremely dangerous missions. Not only had I not had the presence of mind to take the Mauser the officer was carrying in his belt, to make things worse, I’d lost my own revolver. I think I thought especially about that to try and forget that in the end, even though everything had happened the way Boris had said, I’d still just killed a man.

      

      Someone knocked at the door. Claude was lying on the bed. His eyes fixed on the ceiling, he behaved as if he hadn’t heard anything; anyone would have thought he was listening to music, but since the room was silent I deduced from this that he was sulking.

      As a security measure, Boris walked towards the window and gently lifted the curtain to glance outside. The street was quiet. I opened the door and let Robert in. His real name was Lorenzi, but among ourselves we were content to call him Robert; sometimes we also called him ‘Death-Cheater’ and this nickname was in no way pejorative. It was simply that Lorenzi had accumulated a certain number of qualities. First, his accuracy with a gun; it was unequalled. I wouldn’t have liked to find myself in Robert’s line of fire, since our comrade’s margin for error was in the region of zero. He had obtained permission from Jan to keep his revolver permanently on him, whereas we – because of the brigade’s shortage of weapons – had to give them back when the operation was over, so that someone else could have the benefit of them. However strange it may seem, everyone had their own weekly diary, containing, for example, a crane to be blown up on the canal, an army lorry to be set on fire somewhere, a train to be derailed, a garrison post to attack – the list is long. I shall take advantage of this to add that as the months passed, Jan imposed an ever-faster pace upon us. Rest days became rare, to the point where we were exhausted.

      It’s generally said of trigger-happy types that they’re excitable, even to an excessive degree; it was quite the opposite with Robert – he was calm and level-headed. Much admired by the others, with a warm personality, he always had a friendly, comforting word, which was rare in those times. And also, Robert was someone who always brought back his men from a mission, so having him covering you was really reassuring.

      

      One day, I would meet him in a bar on place Jeanne-d’Arc, where we often went to eat vetch, a vegetable that resembles lentils and which is given to livestock; we made do with the resemblance. It’s crazy what your imagination can dream up when you’re hungry.

      Robert dined opposite Sophie and, from the way they were looking at each other I СКАЧАТЬ