He stamped up and down the floor, looking at his watch. It was almost dark. In just four hours’ time he would risk going into Lavaurette to find Benech; he thought he knew where to look. He wore the battered leather jacket that had accompanied him on so many night-time errands, but still the cold was sinking into him. He had made a bed from the lagging that would be used to insulate the boilers and now he took a strip of it from the floor to wrap round his shoulders.
Outside he could hear the builders packing up for the day. At least that meant he could go above ground and have a change of scene. He had let himself into the fenced-off site with his own key, then made a deal with the foreman, who agreed to say nothing provided Julien stayed out of the view of the other workmen.
He heard the shovels being thrown into metal barrows, the weary calls of farewell, and at last the padlock rebounding off the metal gatepost and rattling briefly against the chain-link fence. Julien opened the door of the cell and climbed the stairs. Outside, he watched as the lorry’s tail lights vanished and the red glow from the last bicycle lamp shrank into the January mist. He wandered down the cloister to the abbot’s office, which had its own bathroom attached.
Relieved but still shivering, he lit a candle and looked down the bookshelves, whose contents had still not been packed up. He pulled out a copy of Pascal’s Pensées and began to flick through it, hoping for some consolation. Much of it seemed to be about Abraham or the Jews or to concern Pascal’s own reactions to Montaigne. ‘Sound opinions of the people,’ Julien read. ‘The greatest of evils is civil war . . .’
He moved on through the pages. He lifted the book to his face and sniffed the yellow dusty paper. ‘Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are clearly murdered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.’ He remembered this melodramatic passage from his school days.
He carried the volume over to the desk. What he wanted was some sort of confirmation that a greater good could excuse an apparent evil. In war, presumably, killing was permitted, if it was a just or holy war, as when priests had come to bless his father at Verdun. What if the war was not declared, what if the war was internal? All Pascal seemed to offer was that ‘the greatest of evils is civil war.’ Perhaps the words ‘Sound opinions of the people’ were in italics to show that the view expressed was second-hand or null, like an entry in Bouvard and Pécuchet’s Dictionary of Received Ideas.
Thought 526 read: ‘Evil is easy; it has countless forms, while good is almost unique. But a certain sort of evil is as hard to find as what is called good, and this particular evil is often on that account passed off as good. Indeed, it takes as much extraordinary greatness of soul to attain such evil, as to attain good.’
Was that ‘greatness of soul’ his or Benech’s? Neither, he suddenly saw. It was Pétain’s.
When it was time to go, Julien walked back down the icy cloister, obliquely admired the new stone fountain they had installed in the middle of the quadrangle, and went down to the cell to retrieve the rifle and his bicycle. He tore off some lagging and stuffed it down inside his jacket to keep out the wind, slung the rifle across his chest by its webbing, then wheeled the bicycle to the gate, let himself out, relocked the site and set off for Lavaurette.
It took twenty minutes before he arrived at the silent factory on the outskirts of the village, where he turned down a narrow side road and left his bicycle. He felt absurdly conspicuous with the rifle, even in the unlit streets. Luckily, the cold was serious enough to deter people from leaving their houses. Julien hoped it would not have been too much for Benech.
As well as the aching in his face and hands he was aware of the pain of hunger in his stomach. It was almost two days since he had eaten, buying eggs and some ham from a remote smallholder who supplied wood for the fires in his apartment building. As he approached the square which held the Café du Centre, he went down a path to the back, where an untidy yard, full of boxes, dustbins and bits of defunct agricultural machinery, was faintly illuminated by a light from the steamy kitchen. He laid his rifle down against a wall, crept across the open space and peered into the wooden crates. From one of them he pulled out a tin, and, looking furtively round, slipped it into his pocket. Just next to the back door was a crate of lumpy objects he thought could be vegetables. The mud of the courtyard was frozen hard beneath his feet as he edged forward; a thin piece of ice on a puddle cracked beneath his step. He could make out the sound of a wireless playing inside as he inched up to the building. With his eyes fixed on the glass of the back door, he lowered his hand into the crate and pulled out what felt like a potato, then made his way quietly back across the yard to his rifle and went out into the dark path that led back to the street.
He squatted on the ground and stuck his torch between his teeth to examine his stolen dinner. It was a potato, with diamonds of frost in its muddy skin; the tin had no label on it. When he had peeled the potato with his pocket knife, he sat on the grass verge and, by hammering the knife with a stone, was able to open the tin far enough to pull out part of the contents. He stuck a piece in his mouth. It was a sliced pear. The starch on the surface of the peeled potato stung the soft inside of his lips and he pushed another piece of pear into his mouth to counteract it. In this way he crunched through the freezing potato and the sleepy grey pear.
The front windows of the Café du Centre gave on to the square, but the side of the bar overlooked a narrow street that led up to the main part of Lavaurette. It was here that Julien made his way. He laid his rifle on the ground by the outside wall of the bar and looked cautiously in.
How strange his peering, unshaven face would look to anyone inside, he thought. He could make out the bar and could see Gayral himself polishing a glass, his mournful moustaches bent to the repetitive task. There were two figures at the bar, one of whom, he was fairly sure from the back view, was Benech. He wondered what he could be drinking, now that alcohol was almost impossible to obtain. It was so quiet in the bar that Julien could make out some of the words of the wireless broadcast. The announcer introduced a government minister, Monsieur Darquier de Pellepoix, the head of the General Council of Jewish Questions, whose ranting voice was quickly subdued by Gayral’s hand. Julien could still make out the phrases: ‘Killed by London, Washington, Moscow, and Jerusalem . . . England, the hereditary enemy . . . the ideological war desired by Israel . . . Allied Victory would mean more of what we have already seen in North Africa: the return to power of the Jews and Freemasons . . . who for half a century lived on the backs of the settlers and natives until the Marshal cleared them away.’
The Marshal’s name always made Julien think first not of Vichy but of Verdun, the glorious context in which, when he was a child, it seemed to have been for ever fixed. He remembered the soft awe of his father when he spoke the name, then thought again with a shiver of Pascal’s words: ‘. . . It takes as much extraordinary greatness of soul to achieve such evil.’
Then he saw Benech. He turned to offer his cup to Gayral to refill – a cup, not a glass, Julien noticed, as Benech’s features came for a moment into his view: perhaps, for lack of wine, he was drinking Viandox or some meat-drink substitute. He must value the social aspect of his visits to the bar very highly to think it worth the cold walk from wherever it was he lived.
Julien had to move quickly into the shadows, down the side of the building, when he heard footsteps on the street coming from the village, but he was back at his place by the window in time to see Benech put on his coat and hat and make his way towards the front door of the café. Julien pulled back into the darkness and waited. It was almost certain that Benech would come past him to go up to the centre of Lavaurette. His only concern was that he would be on a bicycle, but he had seen none left outside the front of the café. After a few moments, he heard footsteps and saw Benech’s figure, his shoulders hunched against the cold, his hands thrust down inside his coat, go swiftly past him up the hill. Julien picked up the rifle and followed. If he went too close, Benech might hear him; but if he hung too far back, Benech might vanish down an unlit street. He tried to conceal the rifle from anyone who might be looking from their window by holding it upright between his side and his arm.
The shutters of Lavaurette were all closed. His and Benech’s were the only footsteps on the street. Julien walked as soundlessly as he could manage, once pulling back into a doorway when he thought Benech was about to stop. When he peered out, it was to see Benech turning off the main street, and he had to run to the junction. Benech was a short way down the road and was feeling in his pocket, presumably for a key. Julien moved as swiftly as he could along the walls of the houses until he was only a few paces away. Benech pushed the door open and reached inside for the light. Julien ran the short distance to the door, where Benech turned in alarm at the sound of footsteps. In the light of the electric bulb in the hallway he looked into Julien’s face with a terrified recognition.
He tried to slam the door, but Julien had stuck his foot in the way. The door rebounded, shuddering on its hinges.
Julien raised his finger to his lips, then showed Benech the rifle. He mouthed the words, ‘Where’s your apartment?’
Benech breathed in, as though to shout for help, but Julien stuck the muzzle of the gun beneath his jaw and once more raised his finger to his lips. Benech turned to lead the way through the hall.
It was a house divided into rooms rather than an apartment block. Julien noticed a light beneath the door on his right on the ground floor. There could be four or five separate flats, he thought.
On the bare-boarded landing Benech took another key and let them into his apartment. The sitting room was large and tidy, the comfortable home of a professional man, but seemed to be unheated.
‘What do you want?’ said Benech.
Julien held the rifle pointing at his chest. He looked at Benech’s face, the grey and floury skin, the features regular and almost handsome in their way, but made plain by his fear.
‘You said something to me the other night. I want you to explain. You said, “I’m a schoolmaster. It’s my business to know the whereabouts of children.” What did you mean?’
Benech turned his back on Julien, walked over to a table and sat down. When he turned round he was smiling.
‘You know very well what I mean. I know about you and your father. I know about the English servant-girl, the mistress you share with him. I know about your little escapades at night. People like you can’t understand what’s in front of them.’ He gave a short, derisive laugh. ‘You’re like the children I teach. Time and again you explain some simple fact, but they’re incapable of understanding.’
‘Who else have you told about the boys? Did you tell that man Pichon?’
‘Never you mind. My organisation can have you arrested any time I like. I’m working for the Government.’ He put his hand into the drawer of the table and pulled out a piece of paper. ‘My membership of the Milice. Look.’
As Julien moved over to the table to take the paper, Benech put his hand in the drawer again and pulled out his revolver. Julien threw himself to the floor.
The noise of the shot was so loud that it took Julien a moment to realise he had not been hit. The sound and recoil of the gun seemed momentarily to have stunned Benech as well. He was staring at the thing in his hand as though it had somehow fired itself. Julien stood up and rammed the butt of his rifle into Benech’s mouth, knocking him backwards off the chair, then wrenched back the rifle and ran out of the apartment. The door of the ground-floor flat was opening in the hall as he went past, causing him to step aside. With his back to the wall he looked up to the landing above him, where Benech was standing, leaning on the banister rail, blood dripping from his mouth. Julien raised his rifle and shot him through the heart, causing the revolver to drop from Benech’s hand as his body folded at the waist and fell over the rail, a dead weight slamming down and shaking the insubstantial wooden staircase below.
Charlotte reached the address Julien had given her late in the afternoon. It was a street in a medium-sized town, and the house appeared to be unoccupied. She returned at hourly intervals until, at about eight o’clock, a light came on.
With the memory of Antoinette in the back of her mind, she had been expecting that ‘Zozo’ would be a woman. The door was in fact opened by a corpulent man in braces. They went through the formalities swiftly and Zozo ushered her into the hall.
‘I expect you’d like some dinner,’ he smiled.
‘What a wonderful idea.’
‘Bring your bicycle in.’
There appeared to be no Madame Zozo, and after a dinner of soup and some noodles, Zozo said; ‘Do you want me to send a message? I have a scheduled transmission tomorrow.’
‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘Not yet. I want you to find me somewhere to stay.’
Zozo nodded. ‘I can manage that. At your own risk, of course.’
‘Then I need to borrow your telephone.’
‘And that’s all?’
Zozo’s plump face split into a smile. ‘You’re very easy to accommodate, Madame. The telephone’s through there.’
Sylvie’s voice answered almost at once. Charlotte was excited.
‘Hello? Hello? Sylvie? Can you talk? Have you heard from our friend? And he’s all right? I have a message. He must find out where his father is and leave the answer with you. Do you understand? It’s vital. Tell him it’s a matter of life and death. I’ll call again.’
It would be difficult for Julien to make contact with people, but she knew that he had ways of finding things out: friends, contacts, even Communists. In the meantime, she would wait.
Peter Gregory was sitting in a borrowed dressing gown, enjoying a cup of what tasted quite like coffee. He had his feet up on a stool in front of him and was looking down through the window to the narrow street below.
On the other side of the room sat Nancy, her half-moon glasses stuck below the bridge of her nose, inspecting the newspaper with occasional murmurs of dismay.
The telephone began to ring on a table in the corner and Nancy went over, paper in hand, to answer it.
Gregory found French in Nancy’s Pennsylvanian accent considerably easier to understand than any of the other regional variants he had encountered, though on this occasion she said very little as she scribbled a note on the margin of her paper while the voice at the other end dictated.
Gregory now felt impatient to be on his way. It was as though his fatal weariness had been purged; the feeling that replaced it was a cold and energetic hope. When he thought about Charlotte he felt sure that what had held him back was fear. He was scared of her clarity of mind and the intensity of her feeling for him; it had taken him time to see that she could love him as he was – that the peculiar shapes and deformities of his personality were not just entrancing but necessary to her. Again he felt blessed by a prodigally generous fate that this should be the case. To be worthy of her he had needed to do just one thing: to want to live. And having accomplished that, he thought with a smile, I have one other small task: to get back.
‘That was an Italian friend on the telephone,’ said Nancy, sitting down in her chair and resettling her glasses. ‘Looks like there’s a chance of a little action at last.’ She spoke quietly, with her head slightly averted. She said, ‘Ever heard of a felucca?’
‘Is sounds like a blister on your feet.’
‘It’s like a Portuguese sardine boat. Kind of uncomfortable, I guess, but you won’t be going far.’
‘What’s this Italian friend got to do with it?’
‘East of the Rhône, France is occupied by the Italians. You knew that? Well, this guy, this friend of mine, Gianluca, he’s gonna help you. He’ll go with you. I’m not sure at this moment exactly what his plan is, but he’s never let us down before.’
‘But if we cross the Rhône, won’t we run into Italian soldiers?’
‘I’m not so sure about that, Peter.’ When she approached a topic of real urgency, Nancy sometimes had a way of becoming oblique, like a college professor who is still quietly thrilled by the complexity of something she is about to reveal to her students.
‘As I understand it, there’s some give and take with the Italians. Ask yourself what looks like the easy way out for them. I guess it’s been the same with the French, hasn’t it? We’re all scared of the Vichy police, but it’s not all like that, is it?’
Gregory thought of his old couple in the farmyard. ‘Not at all.’
‘You’re supposed to go on Thursday, but it’s a movable feast.’