The Cyclist (16 page)

‘I’m sorry. I heard a noise outside.’

‘A noise?’

‘Yes. And I saw a light by the outhouse.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who? Who could it be?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m not going back to sleep. If I hear them again, I’ll phone for help.’

‘I won’t sleep without you. Coffee?’

‘Chicory you mean.’

‘Yes, but we can pretend.’

They pretended. They toasted each other and Auguste told her about his day and about Himmler and his plans. He even explained why the meeting broke up. All the time, he listened and glanced out of the window, insecurity still gripping him. He fingered the pistol.

‘You vomited on a SD official?’

‘Yes, it was an accident.’

He listened. Nothing. He kept his eyes on his wife but his attention was elsewhere.

In the candlelight, he saw her smile. He sipped his drink still listening. Then he searched in the drawer of the kitchen table.

‘What?’

‘Cigarettes.’

‘You stopped.’

‘I had some here, I’m sure of it.’

‘In the drawer by the range Auguste. I hid them away.’

Auguste smiled and his stool screeched behind him as he pushed it back. His bare feet slapped on the cold stone floor though it was not cold in the kitchen. He stared out of the window but all he saw was the dark misty wood. His hand groped in the dark and finding what he sought, he turned, still smiling.

He dropped the cigarettes. He had left his gun on the table and he stepped forward, groping towards it.

‘Not a wise move, my friend.’

The voice was deep and local. All Auguste could see was a silhouette, faint and dark in the doorway. What stopped him in his tracks was the outline of the rifle in the man’s hand. Odette turned.

‘Pierre?’

‘Is it safe?’ Pierre said.

‘Safe?’ was all Auguste could manage.

‘Would you shoot an old friend? Have you slipped so far into the Nazi life?’

‘Shoot you? Of course not. Don’t be stupid.’

‘Can I trust you?’

Odette stood up; she walked to Pierre and put her arms around his neck. She hugged him as only a close friend could. When the embrace broke, Pierre stepped forward reassured.

‘What are you doing here?’ Auguste said, ‘have you come to take Monique?’

‘No. I just wanted... wanted...’

Odette said, ‘I understand. I’ll get her.’

‘No. Wait,’ Pierre said.

‘I needed news of her. Don’t wake her. It will break her heart.’

Auguste said, ‘Haven’t you done that already, you fool. I got the letters of transit. I had them for you. An adult and a child. You could have gone to Switzerland. Where have you been?’

Pierre said, ‘Been? I’ve been where you and every other self-respecting Frenchman should have been. I’ve been with the Maquis, the real soldiers. The ones who will drive these swine from our country.’

He pulled the beret from his head and sat. His long brown hair dangled about his ears and his full beard.

Auguste said, ‘Pierre. I was a fool. I never believed they wanted to exterminate all your people, until today that is. I heard it from the lips of Himmler himself. I’m sorry.’

Pierre slammed a fist on to the table.

‘Sorry. Sorry? You help these murderers from hell and you now say you are sorry. You Catholics! You are all the same. You give your confession and they absolve you, then you can sin all over again even if it means the deaths of thousands.’

‘I need to get a message to the Jewish families. I have their names and addresses. They must be warned and given a chance to escape. Can your new friends help them?’

No one spoke.

‘I need their names and details.’

‘I have a list upstairs in my jacket. I will get it when you go. Pierre. I was wrong. I believed there could be no human being who would want to destroy a whole nation. I never understood.’

His voice broke. He felt tears forming in his eyes and he drew a deep breath to prevent it.

‘Pierre,’ he said, ‘I will make good. I will protect Monique and will get her away if it is what you want,’ he said.

‘Auguste, how can you make good? You are helping murderers and afterwards saying you will make good. You cannot bring back the dead. The slaughter has already started.’

Odette placed a hand on Pierre’s shoulder.

‘Pierre,’ she said, ‘don’t be too hard on us. How could Auguste stop being a policeman? He believed the Germans told the truth. We know now. We will get away and help in any way we can.’

Auguste said, ‘I have something to do first.’

Pierre said, ‘You have?’

‘You remember that horrible road accident in which the plumber Leclerc was killed?’

‘Yes. The wife was injured too.’

‘The daughter, Bernadette was murdered. I think Brunner, the SD Major did it. I want to prove it and have him guillotined before we escape.’

‘Leave it with me. We will put a bomb under him and teach him to fly.’

‘And the reprisals? Can you live with them?’

‘Of course. You maybe never read Lenin. If you want to make an omelette you have to break eggs.’

‘These eggs you talk about are the people you grew up with. Your neighbours, your friends.’

‘They were never friends. I never had many of those. I’m a Jew and always was. I could see it in their faces every time I went to the market. It was a look in their eyes if nothing else.’

‘Pierre,’ Odette said, ‘you are so unfair. What about us? Murielle was my closest friend. I was there for you when she died. You know it.’

He turned towards her, his eyes slit-like and dark in the candle-light.

‘Odette. You were Murielle’s best and closest friend. There was no one else who was there for me. You and Auguste. I will never forget it but I have to defend our country. I have to fight for my people.’

‘Which people?’ Auguste said, ‘French or Yiddish?’

‘You know the answer. It is the same answer you would give in my place.’

‘Yes, Pierre. I do know. I just...’

‘Papa?’

Monique’s small treble cut the atmosphere, like a hawk descending on its prey.

Pierre, startled by the sound, turned and his arms opened wide. She ran to him.

‘Ma Petite, my little one, Bubeleh. Oh how your daddy missed you.’

She said nothing. Auguste could see how she drank in his presence, his embrace; it drove all his doubts away. He knew where his first duty lay. He had to save his family and Monique was now his family too. And Pierre? He was as close to Auguste’s heart as anyone else was in the world. Like a brother. Like his alter ego, who had become the man he should have had the strength and courage to change into. Why had he never believed Pierre, never tried to change it all?

He saw Odette reach out to stroke Monique’s little hand, as the child held on to her father. Monique clutched him, squeezed his hair, his coat. It was a hopeless grip; a hand clenched in desperation holding onto all she loved in the world. Auguste knew Monique recognised how fleeting it had to be; for her years, she had a strangely adult view of things. Pierre’s very presence here put them in danger and they all knew it.

2

Time passed and no one spoke. Auguste retrieved the cigarettes and lighting one, pondered their predicament. Even if Pierre had the list of Jews, shifting all of them abroad would require resources even the Maquis could not boast. Internment for many would be inevitable. He hated the thought he would be responsible, yet he could not run away like Pierre. Brunner had to pay with his life.

‘Papa?’ a small voice interrupted his thoughts. Then, ‘Uncle Pierre!’

It was Zara. She ran across the stone flags and Pierre reached out his free arm to embrace her too.

‘Does no one sleep in this house?’ Auguste said, ‘Zara, what will we do with you?’

Extricating herself, Zara came to him and sat upon his knee. As the predawn light began to show itself, they sat enjoying an island of time as two families, combined into one. Auguste felt the scene was one of normality in a very abnormal world. It was a moment stolen from the clutches of an evil future and he knew it could not last.

‘Pierre, it is getting light.’

‘I know. I must go.’

‘Papa,’ Monique said, ‘can’t you stay? We can hide together when the bad men come.’

Pierre stroked her cheek.

‘Bubeleh, if I do not go, I cannot fight for us. It must be so. Auguste and Odette will look after you until it is time.’

‘What if they kill you?’

‘They won’t kill me. I am like Joshua. I will blow my trumpet and their walls will fall down. You remember?’

‘Yes, Papa. Will it be soon?’

He brushed away a tear at the corner of her eye.

‘No, not soon. Perhaps years.’

Auguste swallowed away the lump in his throat as he watched Monique cuddling her father.

Zara said, ‘Uncle Pierre, who are you fighting?’

Pierre said, ‘Why, the Germans, of course, Zara.’

‘But they said in school the Germans would not hurt us if we do what they say.’

‘No, my little one. They won’t hurt you. They hate Monique and me because we are Jewish. They want us dead, so I fight.’

‘Why do they hate you?’

Auguste said, ‘Now, now, ma fleur. Enough questions. Pierre, I will see you out. I need to give you the list.’

He went upstairs and searched his uniform jacket. He was glad to escape. He found it hard to witness the goodbyes. If he had to part from Zara under similar circumstances, he wondered how he would cope.

Pierre stood at the back door when he came down the stairs. Auguste handed him the list.

‘You will warn them?’

‘Of course.’

‘Will they listen?’

‘Who knows? They may not believe me. We can help them get out but if they won’t go there is nothing we can do.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘You have done a good thing here. When all this is over, I will remember.’

‘That is not why I have done it.’

‘I know.’

‘I will go out first and check around. I don’t want to know where you are going. It’s safer so.’

Auguste checked the grounds and came back.

‘It’s safe I think. Go through the woods. No one is up I think.’

‘Auguste,’ Pierre said, ‘you’ll take care of my little one?’

‘Pierre, we are brothers. I would never allow her to come to harm.’

‘No Auguste, we are not brothers. I am a Jew. You are a Catholic and yet we are as close as friends can become. I’m sorry I misjudged you.’

‘You did not misjudge me. You were right about everything. I have learned the truth and I will fight in my way, but I will also escape with our children.’

‘Go with God, yours or mine, I don’t care anymore.’

They embraced. Slinging his gun over his shoulder, Pierre turned and jogged away towards the tree line. Auguste stood watching as his friend disappeared into the wood. They both knew the place as well as if it was the old schoolyard, where they had played as children. Turning to the back door, he could not help but wonder if he would see Pierre again. He supposed in some way it did not matter, he had shouldered the responsibility of protecting Monique in any case and he knew he would fulfil it.

Chapter 13

1

The church of St Jacques de Compstelle was not popular with many of the inhabitants of the city. Most preferred the larger and more recently built church of Notre Dame. Auguste liked St Jacques because it was old and the sense of being where worship had taken place for hundreds of years had always fascinated him.

The yellow stone building, restored a hundred years before, stood near the river and Auguste felt nothing but relief as he climbed the rough stone steps, holding Odette’s hand with his left and Zara’s with the other. No military vehicles were parked nearby and no ominous black cars stood in the street to herald concern.

Père Bernard greeted them at the door. His white robes seemed a mockery of the dark times to Auguste, but he smiled to his priest and they entered the church. Each of them knelt and dipping their fingers in the holy water by the aisle, they made the sign of the cross. They advanced, looking straight ahead along the red carpet. It put Auguste in mind of the carpet in the Medical College and he found it hard to shrug off the image in his mind of Himmler and his talk about the final solution. He wondered what Pius XII would have said if he had been there. He was sure he would have fought, using all the church’s weight to protect the innocent. Was it not the Church’s teaching over the centuries to protect them, whether they were Jews, Pharisees or Samaritans?

Auguste smiled and greeted the members of the congregation with whom he was familiar. They sat at the back of the church and he hoped Zara was invisible from the door. He still had an irrational fear Brunner, in some absurd way, might appear in the church or be watching outside.

When the service began, he listened to the liturgy and he knew he should not take communion. He became convinced he was guilty of mortal sin. He dredged up feelings of guilt and remorse too. He was sure the church would not condemn him for a crime never openly condemned by the Pope, but the guilt was for a sin in his heart, in the fibre of his being.

Odette stood to take communion. He felt the tension build. He could not remain seated yet he knew he was wrong to partake. The struggle made him sweat. He had not been strongly religious but the church had been part of his life and he felt taking communion now was a betrayal of his own beliefs. He wondered how many betrayals he could commit in his life; the Jews, Bernadette and now his faith. Had he lost faith? Had he succumbed to the evil Brunner and his fellows spread and promulgated?

‘Come,’ Odette whispered as she took his hand. Like a lamb to the slaughter, like his Lord led to Calvary, he allowed Odette to lead him from his seat, as he heard the Lord’s Prayer. Through the Agnus Dei thrusting itself into his hearing, he felt like crying aloud ‘this was a sin.’

He stared as father Bernard broke the host and placed it in the main chalice. He felt remorse again as he heard the words.

‘This is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’