The Children of Freedom
Translated from the French by Sue Dyson
Marc Levy

For my father for his brother Claude, for all the children of freedom.

For my son and for you my love.

I am very fond of that verb, ‘to resist’. To resist what imprisons us, to resist prejudices, hasty judgements, the desire to judge, everything that is bad in us and cries out to be expressed, the desire to abandon, the need to make people feel sorry for us, the need to talk about ourselves to the detriment of others, fashions, unhealthy ambitions, prevailing confusion.

To resist, and…to smile.

Emma Dancourt

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Epigraph

Prologue

PART ONE

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

PART TWO

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

PART THREE

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by Marc Levy

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Tomorrow I shall love you; today I don’t yet know you. I began by walking down the staircase of the old apartment building where I lived, a little hurriedly, I confess. On the ground floor, my hand gripped the handrail and felt the beeswax that the concierge applied methodically as far as the bend on the second-floor landing on Mondays, and then up to the other floors on Thursdays. Although light was gilding the fronts of the buildings, the pavement was still glistening from the dawn rain. Just think: as I walked along lightly, I as yet knew nothing, nothing at all about you, you who would one day assuredly give me the most beautiful gift that life gives to human beings.

I went into the little café on rue Saint-Paul; I had time on my hands. There were only three people at the counter – not many of us had an abundance of leisure on that spring morning. And then, hands behind his raincoat, my father came in. He rested his elbows on the bar-top as if he hadn’t seen me, an elegant mannerism that was all his own. He ordered a strong coffee and I caught sight of the smile he was hiding from me as well as he could, which wasn’t that good. He tapped on the counter, signalling to me that ‘all was quiet’ and I could at last approach. As I brushed against his jacket, I felt his strength, the weight of the sadness crushing his shoulders. He asked me if I was ‘still sure’. I wasn’t sure of anything, but I nodded. Then he pushed his cup towards me very discreetly. Underneath the saucer was a fifty-franc note. I refused it, but he set his jaw very firmly and muttered that in order to make war, one had to have a full belly. I took the banknote and, from the look he gave me, I realised that it was time for me to leave. I adjusted my cap, opened the café door and walked back up the street.

Walking past the window, I looked at my father inside the bar, a little stolen glance, that’s all; and he gave me his final smile, to indicate to me that my collar wasn’t on straight.

There was a look of urgency in his eyes that it took me years to understand, but all I have to do today is close mine and think of him for his last expression to come back to me, intact. I know that my father was sad that I was leaving, and I guess also that he sensed that we would never see each other again. It wasn’t his death he was envisaging, but mine.

I think back to that moment in the Café des Tourneurs. It must demand a lot of courage on the part of a man to bury his son while standing right next to him, drinking a chicory-blend coffee, to remain silent and not say to him, ‘Go home right now and do your homework’.

One year earlier, my mother had gone to fetch our yellow stars from the police station. This was the signal for our exodus and we left for Toulouse. My father was a tailor and he would never sew that filth on a piece of fabric.

On that day, 21 March 1943, I was eighteen years old. I caught the tram and I left for a station that doesn’t feature on any map: I went to seek out the Maquis.

Ten minutes ago I was still called Raymond; since I got off at the terminus of line 12, my name is Jeannot. Nameless Jeannot. At that still-gentle time of day, many people in my world have no idea what is going to happen to them. Dad and Mum don’t know that soon a number is going to be tattooed on their arms; Mum doesn’t know that on a railway platform, she will be separated from this man whom she loves almost more than us.

As for me, I don’t know yet either that in ten years’ time, I will recognise, in a heap of pairs of spectacles almost five metres high at the Auschwitz Memorial, the frames that my father slipped into the top pocket of his jacket, the last time I saw him at the Café des Tourneurs. My little brother Claude doesn’t know that soon I will come looking for him, and that if he hadn’t said yes, if we hadn’t faced those years together, neither of us would have survived. My seven friends, Jacques, Boris, Rosine, Ernest, François, Marius, Enzo, don’t know that they are going to die shouting ‘Vive la France’, and almost all of them with a foreign accent.

I strongly suspect that my thoughts are confused, that the words will tumble over each other in my head, but from that Monday noon onwards and for the next two years, my heart is going to thump ceaselessly in my chest to the rhythm imposed by fear; I was afraid for two years, and sometimes I still wake up in the night with that same bloody feeling. But you are sleeping beside me, my love, even if I don’t know it yet. Anyway, here is a little of the story of Charles, Claude, Alonso, Catherine, Sophie, Rosine, Marc, Emile, Robert, my Spanish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian and Romanian friends, the children of freedom.

PART ONE

1

You must understand the context within which we were living; context is important, as in the case of a sentence, for example. Once removed from its context it often changes its meaning, and during the years to come, so many sentences will be removed from their context in order to judge in a partial way and to condemn more easily. It’s a habit that won’t be lost.

In the first days of September, Hitler’s armies had invaded Poland; France had declared war and nobody here or there doubted that our troops would drive back the enemy at the borders. Then the flood of German armoured divisions had swept through Belgium, and in a few weeks a hundred thousand of our soldiers would die on the battlefields of the North and the Somme.

Marshal Pétain was appointed to head the government; two days later, a general who refused to accept defeat launched an appeal for resistance from London. Pétain chose to sign the surrender of all our hopes. We had lost the war so quickly.

By swearing allegiance to Nazi Germany, Marshal Pétain led France into one of the darkest periods of her history. The Republic was abolished in favour of what would henceforth be called the French State. The map was divided by a horizontal line and the nation separated into two zones, one in the north, which was occupied, and the other in the south, which was allegedly free. But freedom there was entirely relative. Each day saw its share of decrees published, driving back into danger two million foreign men, women and children who now lived in France without rights: the right to carry out their professions, to go to school, to move around freely and soon, very soon, the very right to exist.

The nation had become amnesiac about the foreigners who came from Poland, Romania, Hungary, these Spanish or Italian refugees, and yet it had desperate need of them. It had been vitally necessary to repopulate a France that, twenty-five years earlier, had been deprived of a million and a half men who had died in the trenches of the Great War. Almost all my friends were foreigners, and they had all experienced the repression and abuses of power already perpetrated in their country for several years. German democrats knew who Hitler was, combatants in the Spanish Civil War knew about Franco’s dictatorship, and those from Italy knew about Mussolini’s Fascism. They had been the first witnesses of all the hatred, all the intolerance, of this pandemic that was infesting Europe, with its terrible funeral cortège of deaths and misery. Everyone already knew that defeat was only a foretaste; the worst was yet to come. But who would have wanted to listen to the bearers of bad news? France now no longer needed them. So, whether they had come from the East or the South, these exiles were arrested and interned in camps.

Marshal Pétain had not only given up, he was going to collude with Europe’s dictators, and in our country, which was falling asleep around this old man, they were all already crowding around: the head of the government, ministers, prefects, judges, the police, and the Militia; each more eager than the last to carry out their terrible work.

2

Everything began like a children’s game, three years earlier, on 10 November 1940. The unimpressive French Marshal, surrounded by a few prefects with silver laurels, came to Toulouse to start a tour of the free zone of a country that was in fact a prisoner of his defeat.

Those directionless crowds were a strange paradox, filled with wonder as they watched the Marshal raise his baton, the sceptre of a former leader who had returned to power, bringing a new order with him. But Pétain’s new order would be an order of misery, segregation, denunciations, exclusions, murders and barbarity.

Some of those who would soon form our brigade knew about the internment camps, where the French government had locked up all those who had made the mistake of being foreigners, Jews or Communists. And in these camps in the South West, whether at Gurs, Argelès, Noé or Rivesaltes, life was abominable. Suffice to say that for anyone who had friends or family members who were prisoners, the arrival of the Marshal felt like a final assault on the small amount of freedom we had left.

Since the population was preparing to acclaim this very Marshal, we had to sound our alarm bell, awake people from this terribly dangerous fear, this fear that overcomes crowds and leads them to throw in the towel, to accept anything; to keep silent, with the sole, cowardly excuse that their neighbours are doing the same and that if their neighbours are doing the same, then that’s what they should do.

For Caussat, one of my little brother’s best friends, for Bertrand, Clouet or Delacourt, there’s no question of throwing in the towel, no question of keeping silent, and the sinister parade that is about to take place in the streets of Toulouse will be the setting for a committed declaration.

What matters today is that words of truth, a few words of courage and dignity, rain down upon the procession. A text that is clumsily written, but that nonetheless denounces what ought to be denounced; and after that, what does it matter what the text says or doesn’t say? Then we still have to work out how to make the tracts as broadly balanced as possible, without getting ourselves arrested on the spot by the forces of order.

But my friends have it all worked out. A few hours before the procession, they cross Esquirol Square with armfuls of parcels. The police are on duty, but who cares about these innocent-looking adolescents? Here they are at the right spot, a building at the corner of rue de Metz. So, all four slip into the stairwell and climb up to the roof, hoping that there won’t be any observer up there. The horizon is empty and the city stretched out at their feet.

Caussat assembles the mechanism that he and his friends have devised. At the edge of the roof, a small board lies on a small trestle, ready to tip up like a swing. On one side they lay the pile of tracts that they have typed out, on the other side a can full of water. There is a small hole in the bottom of the vessel. Look: the water is trickling out into the guttering while they are already running off towards the street.

The Marshal’s car is approaching; Caussat lifts his head and smiles. The limousine, a convertible, moves slowly up the street. On the roof, the can is almost empty and no longer weighs anything; so the plank tips up and the tracts flutter down. Today, 10 November 1940, will be the felonious Marshal’s first autumn. Look at the sky: the sheets of paper pirouette and, to the supreme delight of these street urchins with their improvised courage, a few of them land on Marshal Pétain’s peaked cap. People in the crowd bend down and pick up the leaflets. There is total confusion, the police are running about in all directions, and those who think they seek these kids cheering the procession like all the others don’t realise that it’s their own first victory that they’re celebrating.

They have dispersed and are now going their separate ways. As he goes home this evening, Caussat cannot have any idea that three days later he’ll be denounced and arrested, and will spend two years in the municipal jails of Nîmes. Delacourt doesn’t know that in a few months he will be killed by French police officers in a church in Agen, after being pursued and taking refuge there; Clouet is unaware that, next year, he will be executed by firing squad in Lyon; as for Bertrand, nobody will find the corner of a field beneath which he lies. On leaving prison, his lungs eaten away by tuberculosis, Caussat will rejoin the Maquis. Arrested once again, this time he will be deported. He was twenty-two years old when he died at Buchenwald.

You see, for our friends, everything began like a children’s game, a game played by children who will never have time to become adults.

Those are the people I must talk to you about: Marcel Langer, Jan Gerhard, Jacques Insel, Charles Michalak, José Linarez Diaz, Stefan Barsony, and all those who will join them during the ensuing months. They are the first children of freedom, the ones who founded the 35th brigade. Why? In order to resist! It’s their story that matters, not mine, and forgive me if sometimes my memory fails me, if I’m confused or get a name wrong.

What do names matter, my friend Urman said one day; there were few of us but we were all one. We lived in fear, in secrecy, we didn’t know what the next day would bring, and it is still difficult now to reopen the memory of just one of those days.

3

Believe me, I give you my word, the war was never like a film; none of my friends had the face of Robert Mitchum, and if Odette had had even the legs of Lauren Bacall, I would probably have tried to kiss her instead of hesitating like a bloody fool outside the cinema. Particularly since it was shortly before the afternoon when two Nazis killed her at the corner of rue des Acacias. Since that day, I’ve never liked acacias.

The hardest thing, and I know it’s difficult to believe, was finding the Resistance.

Since the disappearance of Caussat and his friends, my little brother and I had been brooding. At high school, between the anti-Semitic comments of the teacher of history and geography, and the sarcastic remarks of the sixth-form boys we fought with, life wasn’t much fun. I spent my evenings next to the wireless set, listening for news from London. On our return to school for the autumn term, we found small leaflets on our desks entitled ‘Combat’. I saw the boy slip out of the classroom; he was an Alsatian refugee called Bergholtz. I ran at top speed to join him in the schoolyard, to tell him that I wanted to do what he did, distribute tracts for the Resistance. He laughed at me when I said that, but nonetheless I became his second-in-command. And in the days that followed, when school was over, I waited for him on the pavement. As soon as he reached the corner of the street I started walking, and he speeded up to join me. Together, we slid Gaullist newspapers into letterboxes; sometimes we threw them from the platforms of tramcars before jumping off while they were in motion and running away.

One evening, Bergholtz didn’t appear when school ended; or the next day, either…

From then on, when school ended I and my little brother Claude would take the little train that ran along beside the Moissac road. In secret, we went to the ‘Manor’. This was a large house where around thirty children were living in hiding – children whose parents had been deported: Girl Guides and Scouts had gathered them together and were taking care of them. Claude and I went there to hoe the vegetable garden, and sometimes gave lessons in maths and French to the youngest children. I took advantage of each day I spent at the Manor, to beg Josette, the woman in charge, to give me a lead that would enable me to join the Resistance, and each time, she looked at me, raised her eyes to the heavens, and pretended not to know what I was talking about.

But one day, Josette took me to one side in her office.

‘I think I have something for you. Go and stand outside number 25, rue Bayard, at two o’clock in the afternoon. A passer-by will ask you the time. You will tell him that your watch isn’t working. If he says to you “You’re not Jeannot, are you?” It’s the right man.’

And that’s exactly how it happened…

I took my little brother and we met Jacques outside 25, rue Bayard, in Toulouse.

He entered the street wearing a grey overcoat and felt hat, with a pipe in the corner of his mouth. He threw his newspaper into the bin fixed to the lamp-post; I didn’t pick it up because that wasn’t the instruction. The instruction was to wait until he asked me the time. He stopped beside us, looked us up and down and when I answered that my watch wasn’t working, he said he was called Jacques and asked which of us two was Jeannot. I immediately took a step forward, since the name was definitely mine.

Jacques recruited the partisans himself. He trusted no one and he was right. I know it’s not very generous to say that, but you have to see it in context.

At that moment, I did not know that in a few days’ time, a partisan called Marcel Langer would be sentenced to death because of a French prosecutor who had demanded his head and obtained it. And nobody in France, whether in the free zone or not, doubted that after one of our people had brought down that prosecutor outside his home, one Sunday on his way to mass, no court of law would dare to demand the head of an arrested partisan again.

Also, I did not know that I would kill a bastard, a senior official in the Militia, a denunciator and murderer of so many young resistors. The militiaman in question never knew that his death had hung by a thread. That I was so afraid of firing that I could have wet myself over it, that I almost dropped my weapon and that if that filth hadn’t said, ‘Have mercy,’ this man who’d never had any for anyone, I wouldn’t have been angry enough to bring him down with five bullets in the belly.

We killed people. I’ve spent years saying it: you never forget the face of someone you’re about to shoot. But we never killed an innocent, not even an imbecile. I know it, and my children will know it too. That’s what matters.

At the moment, Jacques is looking at me, weighing me up, sniffing me almost like an animal, trusting his instinct, and then he plants himself in front of me: what he will say in two minutes will change the course of my life.

‘What exactly do you want?’

‘To reach London.’

‘Then I can’t do anything for you,’ says Jacques. ‘London is a long way away and I don’t have any contacts.’

I’m expecting him to turn his back on me and walk away but Jacques stays in front of me. His eyes are still on me; I try again.

‘Can you put me in contact with the Maquis? I would like to go and fight with them.’

‘That is also impossible,’ Jacques continues, re-lighting his pipe.

‘Why?’

‘Because you say you want to fight. You don’t fight in the Maquis; at best you collect packages, pass on messages, but resistance there is still passive. If you want to fight, it’s with us.’

‘Us?’

‘Are you ready to fight in the streets?’

‘What I want is to kill a Nazi before I die. I want a revolver.’

I had said that proudly. Jacques burst out laughing. I didn’t understand what was so funny about it; in fact I even thought it was rather dramatic! And that was precisely what had made Jacques laugh.

‘You’ve read too many books; we’re going to have to teach you how to use your head.’

His paternalistic question had annoyed me a little, but I wasn’t going to let him see my irritation. For months I’d been attempting to establish contact with the Resistance and now I was in the process of spoiling everything.

I search for the right words that don’t come, words that testify that I am someone on whom the partisans can rely. Jacques figures this out and smiles, and in his eyes I suddenly see something that might be a spark of affection.

‘We don’t fight to die, but for life, do you understand?’

It doesn’t sound like much, but that phrase hit me like a massive punch. Those were the first words of hope I had heard since the start of the war, since I had begun living without rights, without status, deprived of all identity in this country that yesterday was still mine. I’m missing my father, my family too. What has happened? Everything around me has melted away; my life has been stolen from me, simply because I’m a Jew and that’s enough for many people to want me dead.

My little brother is waiting behind me. He suspects that something important is afoot, so he gives a little cough as a reminder that he’s there too. Jacques lays his hand on my shoulder.

‘Come on, let’s move. One of the first things you must learn is never to stay still, that’s how you’re spotted. A lad waiting in the street, in times like this, always arouses suspicion.’

And here we are, walking along a pavement in a dark alleyway, with Claude following close on our heels.

‘I may have some work for you. This evening, you’ll go and sleep at 15, rue du Ruisseau, with old Mme Dublanc, she’ll be your landlady. You will tell her that you’re both students. She will certainly ask you what has happened to Jérôme. Answer that you’re taking his place, and he’s left to find his family in the North.’

I guessed that this was an open sesame that would give us access to a roof and, who could tell, perhaps even a heated room. So, taking my role very seriously, I asked who this Jérôme was, so that I’d be well-informed if old Mme Dublanc tried to find out more about her new tenants. Jacques immediately brought me back to a harsher reality.

‘He died the day before yesterday, two streets from here. And if the answer to my question, “Do you want to come into direct contact with the war?” is still yes, then let’s say he’s the one you’re replacing. This evening, someone will knock at your door. He will tell you he’s come on behalf of Jacques.’

With an accent like that, I knew very well that this wasn’t his real first name, but I knew too that when you entered the Resistance, your former life no longer existed, and your name disappeared with it. Jacques slipped an envelope into my hand.

‘As long as you keep paying the rent, old Mme Dublanc won’t ask any questions. Go and get yourselves photographed; there’s a kiosk at the railway station. Now clear off. We’ll have the opportunity to meet up again.’

Jacques continued on his way. At the corner of the alleyway, his lanky silhouette vanished into the mist.

‘Shall we get going?’ asked Claude.

I took my little brother to a café and we had just what we needed to warm ourselves up. Sitting at a table by the window, I watched the tramcar moving up the high street.

‘Are you sure?’ Claude asked, raising the steaming cup to his lips.

‘What about you?’

‘Me? I’m sure I’m going to die, but apart from that I don’t know.’

‘If we join the Resistance, it’s to live, not to die. Do you understand?’

‘Wherever did you dredge that up from?’

‘Jacques said it to me just now.’

‘So if Jacques says it…’

And then a long silence ensued. Two militiamen entered the café and sat down, paying us no attention. I was afraid that Claude might do something foolish, but all he did was shrug his shoulders. His stomach rumbled.

‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘I’m fed up with being hungry.’

I was ashamed of having a seventeen-year-old lad in front of me who didn’t have enough to eat, ashamed of my powerlessness; but that evening we might finally join the Resistance and then, I was certain, things would eventually change. Spring will return, Jacques would say one day, so, one day, I will take my little brother to a baker’s shop and buy him all the cakes in the world, which he will devour until he can eat no more, and that spring will be the most beautiful of my life.

We left the little café and, after a short stop in the railway station concourse, we went to the address Jacques had given us.

Old Mme Dublanc didn’t ask us any questions. She just said that Jérôme mustn’t care much about his things to leave like that. I handed her the money and she gave me the key to a ground-floor room that looked out onto the street.

‘It’s only for one person!’ she added.

I explained that Claude was my little brother, and that he was visiting me here for a few days. I think Mme Dublanc had a slight suspicion that we weren’t students, but as long as she was paid her rent, the lives of her tenants were nothing to do with her. The room wasn’t much to look at, with some old bedding, a water jug and a basin. Calls of nature were answered in a privy at the bottom of the garden.

We waited for the rest of the afternoon. At nightfall, someone knocked at the door. Not in the way that makes you jump; not the confident rap of the Militia when they’re coming to arrest you, just two little knocks. Claude opened the door. Emile entered, and I sensed immediately that we were going to be bound by friendship.

Emile isn’t very tall and he hates it when people say he’s short. It’s a year since he embarked on a clandestine life and everything about his attitude shows he’s become accustomed to it. Emile is calm and wears a funny kind of smile, as if nothing were important any more.

At the age of ten, he fled from Poland because his family were being persecuted. Aged barely fifteen, watching Hitler’s armies parading through Paris, Emile realised that the people who had previously wanted to take away his life in his own country had now come here to finish their dirty work. He stared with his child’s eyes and could never completely close them again. Perhaps that’s what gives him that odd smile; no, Emile’s not short, he’s stocky.

It was Emile’s concierge who saved him. It has to be said that in this sad France, there were some great landladies, the sort who looked at us differently, who wouldn’t accept the killing of decent people, just because their religion was different. Women who hadn’t forgotten that, immigrant or otherwise, a child is sacred.

Emile’s father had received the letter from police headquarters telling him he must go and buy yellow stars to sew onto coats, at chest level and clearly visible, the instructions said. At that time, Emile and his family were living in Paris, on rue Sainte-Marthe, in the tenth arrondissement. Emile’s father went to the police station on avenue Vellefaux; there were four children, so he was given four stars, plus one for him and another for his wife. Emile’s father paid for the stars and went back home, hanging his head, like an animal who’d been branded with a red-hot iron. Emile wore his star, and then the police raids started. It was no good rebelling, telling his father to tear off that piece of filth, nothing was any use. Emile’s father was a man who lived according to the law, and besides, he trusted this country, which had welcomed him in; here, you couldn’t do bad things to decent folk.

Emile had found lodgings in a little maid’s room in the attics. One day, as he was coming downstairs, his concierge had rushed up behind him.

‘Quick, go back up, they’re arresting all the Jews in the streets, the police are everywhere. They’ve gone mad. Quickly Emile, go up and hide.’

She told him to close his door and not answer to anyone; she would bring him something to eat. A few days later, Emile went out without his star. He returned to rue Sainte-Marthe, but there was no one now in his parents’ apartment; neither his father, nor his mother, nor his two little sisters, one aged six and the other fifteen, not even his brother, whom he’d begged to stay with him, not to go back to the apartment on rue Sainte-Marthe.

Emile had nobody left; all his friends had been arrested; two of them, who had taken part in a demo at porte Saint-Martin, had managed to escape via rue de Lancry when some German soldiers on motorcycles had machine-gunned the procession; but they had been caught. They ended up being stood up against a wall and shot. As a reprisal, a resistor known by the name of Fabien had killed an enemy officer the following day, on the metro platform at Barbès station, but that hadn’t succeeded in bringing back Emile’s two friends.

No, Emile had nobody left, apart from André, one final friend with whom he had taken a few accountancy lessons. So he went to see him, to try and get a little help. It was André’s mother who opened the door to him. And when Emile told her that his family had been taken away, that he was all alone, she took her son’s birth certificate and gave it to Emile, advising him to leave Paris as quickly as possible. ‘Do whatever you can with it; you might even get yourself an identity card.’ The name of André’s family was Berté, and they weren’t Jewish, so the certificate was a golden safe-conduct pass.

At the Gare d’Austerlitz, Emile waited as the train for Toulouse was assembled at the platform. He had an uncle down there. Then he got into a carriage, hid under a seat and didn’t move. In the compartment, the passengers had no idea that behind their feet a kid was hiding; a kid who was in fear for his life.

The train set off, but Emile stayed hidden, motionless, for hours. When the train crossed into the free zone, Emile left his hiding place. The passengers’ expressions were a sight to see when this kid emerged from nowhere; he admitted that he had no papers; a man told him to go back into his hiding place immediately, as he was accustomed to this journey and the gendarmes would soon be carrying out another check. He would let him know when he could come out.

You see, in this sad France, there were not only some great concierges and landladies, but also generous mothers, splendid travellers, anonymous people who resisted in their own way, anonymous people who refused to do as their neighbours did, anonymous people who broke the rules because they were shameful.

Into this room, which Mme Dublanc has been renting to me for a few hours, comes Emile, with his whole story, his whole past. And even if I don’t know Emile’s story yet, I can tell from the look in his eyes that we’re going to get on well.

‘So, you’re the new one are you?’ he asks.

‘We both are,’ cuts in my little brother, who hates it when people act as if he isn’t there.

‘Have you got the photos?’ asks Emile.

And he takes from his pocket two identity cards, some ration books and a rubber stamp. Once the papers have been sorted out, he stands up, turns the chair around and sits down again, astride it.

‘Let’s talk about your first mission, Jeannot. Well, as there are two of you, let’s call it the first mission for both of you.’

My brother’s eyes are sparkling. I don’t know if it’s hunger that’s gnawing away at his stomach or the new appetite for a promise of action, but I can see clearly that his eyes are sparkling.

‘You’re going to have to steal some bicycles,’ says Emile.

Claude goes back to the bed, looking downcast.

‘Is that what resisting means? Pinching bicycles? I’ve come all this way for someone to ask me to be a thief?’

‘So, do you think you’re going to carry out your missions in a car? The bicycle is the partisan’s best friend. Think for a moment, if that’s not too much to ask of you. Nobody takes any notice of a man on a bike; you’re just some guy who’s coming back from the factory or leaving for work, depending on the time. A cyclist melts into the crowd, he’s mobile, he can sneak around everywhere. You do your job, you clear off on your bike, and while people are still wondering what exactly happened, you’re already on the other side of town. So if you want to be entrusted with important missions, start by going and pinching your bicycles!’

So, that was the lesson for the day. We still had to work out where we were going to pinch the bikes from. Emile must have anticipated my question. He had already done some research and told us about the corridor of an apartment building where three bicycles slept, never chained up. We’d have to act fast; if all went well, we were to come and find him early in the evening at the house of a friend. He asked me to learn the friend’s address by heart. It was a few kilometres away, in the outskirts of Toulouse; a small, disused railway station in the Loubers district. ‘Hurry,’ Emile had insisted, ‘you must be there before the curfew.’ It was spring, darkness would not fall for several hours, and the apartment building with the bikes wasn’t far from here. Emile left and my little brother continued to sulk.

I managed to convince Claude that Emile wasn’t wrong and also that it was probably a test. My little brother moaned, but agreed to follow me.

We made a remarkable success of our first mission. Claude was hiding in the street; after all, you could get two years in prison for stealing a bicycle. The corridor was deserted and, as Emile had promised, there were indeed three bikes there, resting against each other, and none of them chained up.

Emile told me to nab the first two, but the third one, the one against the wall, was a sports model with a flaming red frame and handlebars with leather grips. I moved the one in front, which fell with a horrifying racket. Already I could see myself having to gag the concierge, but by a stroke of good luck the lodge was empty and nobody disturbed my work. The bike I fancied wasn’t easy to capture. When you’re afraid, your hands become clumsier. The pedals were caught up and whatever I did, I couldn’t separate the two bicycles. After a thousand attempts, all the while trying to calm my pounding heart as best I could, I finally succeeded. My little brother peeped in, finding that time dragged when you were hanging about on the pavement, all alone.

-Good grief, what on earth are you up to?

-Here, take your bike and stop moaning.

-Why can’t I have the red one?

-Because it’s too big for you!

Claude started moaning again, and I pointed out to him that we were on an official mission and that this was not the time for an argument. He shrugged his shoulders and mounted his bicycle. A quarter of an hour later, pedalling flat out, we were following the route of the disused railway line in the direction of the small former railway station at Loubers.

Emile opened the door to us.

‘Look at these bikes, Emile!’

Emile assumed a strange expression, as if he wasn’t pleased to see us, and then he let us in. Jan, a tall, thin guy, looked at us and smiled. Jacques was in the room too; he congratulated us both and, seeing the red bike I’d chosen, he burst out laughing again.

‘Charles will disguise them so they’re unrecognisable,’ he added, laughing even louder.

I still didn’t see what was funny about it and apparently neither did Emile, in view of the expression he was wearing.

A man in a vest came down the stairs. He was the one who lived here in this little disused station, and for the first time I met the brigade’s handyman. The one who took apart and reassembled the bikes, the one who made the bombs to blow up the locomotives, the one who explained how, on railway flat wagons, you could sabotage the cockpits assembled in the region’s factories, or how to cut the cables on the wings of bombers, so that once they were assembled in Germany, Hitler’s planes wouldn’t take off for quite a while. I must tell you about Charles, this friend who had lost all his front teeth in the Spanish Civil War, this friend who had passed through so many countries that he had mixed up the languages and invented his own dialect, to the point where nobody could really understand him. I must tell you about Charles because, without him, we would never have been able to accomplish all that we were going to do in the coming months.

That evening, in that ground-floor room in an old, disused railway station, we’re all aged between seventeen and twenty, we’re soon going to make war and despite his hearty laugh just now when he saw my red bike, Jacques looks worried. I’m soon going to find out why.

Someone knocks at the door, and this time Catherine comes in. She’s beautiful, is Catherine, and what’s more, from the look she exchanges with Jan, I’d swear they’re a couple, but that’s impossible. Rule number one: no love affairs when you’re living a secret life in the Resistance, Jan will explain while we’re sitting at the table, as he introduces us to the way we must behave. It’s too dangerous; if you’re arrested, there’s a risk that you’ll talk to save the one you love. ‘A condition of being a partisan is that you don’t get yourself attached,’ Jan said. And yet he feels an attachment to each one of us and I can work that out already. My little brother isn’t listening to anything, he’s devouring Charles’s omelette; at times, I tell myself that if I don’t stop him, he’ll end up eating the fork as well. I can see him eyeing up the frying pan. Charles sees him too, and smiles. He gets up and goes to serve him up another portion. It’s true that Charles’s omelette is delicious, even more so for our bellies, which have been empty for so long. Behind the station, Charles cultivates a kitchen garden. He has three hens and even some rabbits. He’s a gardener, is Charles, anyway that’s his cover and the people around here like him a lot, even if his accent makes it clear that French isn’t his native tongue. He gives them lettuces. And besides, his kitchen garden is a splash of colour in the dreary area, so the people around here like him, this improvised colourist, even if he does have a terrible foreign accent.

Jan speaks in a steady voice. He is hardly any older than I am but he already has the air of a mature man and his calm commands respect. What he tells us thrills us, there is a sort of aura around him. What Jan says is terrible: he talks to us about the missions carried out by Marcel Langer and the first members of the brigade. They’ve already been operating in the Toulouse area for a year, Marcel, Jan, Charles and José Linarez. Twelve months, in the course of which they’ve thrown grenades at a dinner party for Nazi officers, blown up a barge filled to bursting with petrol, burned down a garage for German lorries. So many operations that the list alone is too long to tell in a single evening; Jan’s words are terrible, and yet he exudes a sort of tenderness that everyone here misses, abandoned children that we are.

Jan’s stopped talking. Catherine is back from town with news of Marcel, the leader of the brigade. He’s incarcerated in Saint-Michel prison.

His downfall was so stupid. He went to Saint-Agne station to collect a suitcase conveyed by a young woman in the brigade. The suitcase contained explosives, sticks of dynamite, of ablonite EG antifreeze, twenty-four millimetres in diameter. These sixty gramme sticks were put aside by a few Spanish miners who were sympa-thisers, and who were employed in the factory at the Paulilles quarry.

It was José Linarez who had organised the mission to collect the suitcase. He had refused to let Marcel get on board the little train that shuttled between the Pyrenean towns; the girl and a male Spanish friend had made the return trip alone as far as Luchon and taken possession of the package; the handover was to take place at Saint-Agne. The halt at Saint-Agne was more of a level crossing than a railway station proper. There weren’t many people in this undeveloped corner of the countryside; Marcel waited behind the barrier. Two gendarmes were patrolling, looking out for any travellers transporting foodstuffs destined for the region’s black market. When the girl got off, her eyes met those of a gendarme. Feeling she was being watched, she took a step back, immediately arousing the man’s interest. Marcel instantly realised that she was going to be stopped, so he stepped in front of her. He signalled to her to approach the gate that separated the halt from the track, took the suitcase from her hands and ordered her to get the hell out of it. The gendarme didn’t miss any of this and rushed at Marcel. When he asked him what the suitcase contained, Marcel replied that he didn’t have the key. The gendarme wanted him to follow him, so Marcel told him that it was a consignment for the Resistance and that he must let him pass.

The gendarme didn’t care about his story, and Marcel was taken to the central police station. The typed report stated that a terrorist in possession of sixty sticks of dynamite had been arrested at Saint-Agne station.

The affair was an important one. A police superintendent answering to the name of Caussié took over, and for days Marcel was beaten. He didn’t let slip a single name or address. The conscientious superintendent went to Lyon to consult his superiors. At last the French police and the Gestapo had a case that they could use as an example: a foreigner in possession of explosives, and what’s more he was a Jew and a Communist too; in other words a perfect terrorist and an eloquent example that they were going to use to stem any desire for resistance in the population.

Once charged, Marcel was handed over to the special section of the public prosecutor’s department. Deputy Public Prosecutor Lespinasse, a man of the extreme right who was fiercely anti-Communist and dedicated to the Vichy regime, would be the ideal prosecutor; the Marshal’s government could count on his fidelity. With him, the law would be applied without any restraint, without any attenuating circumstances, without any concern for the context. Scarcely had Lespinasse been given the task when, swollen with pride, he swore before the court to obtain Marcel’s head.

In the meantime, the young woman who had escaped arrest had gone to warn the brigade. The friends immediately got into contact with Maître Arnal, one of the best lawyers at the court. For him the enemy was German, and the moment had come to take up position in favour of these people who were being persecuted without reason. The brigade had lost Marcel, but it had just won over to its cause a man of influence, who was respected in the town. When Catherine talked to him about his fees, Arnal refused to be paid.

The morning of 11 June 1943 will be terrible, terrible in the memory of partisans. Everyone’s leading their own lives and soon destinies will intersect. Marcel is in his cell. He looks out through the skylight at the dawn; today is the day of his trial. He knows he’s going to be convicted, he has little hope. In an apartment not far from there, the old lawyer who is in charge of his defence is putting his notes in order. His domestic help comes into his office and asks him if he wants her to make him some breakfast. But Maître Arnal isn’t hungry on this morning of 11 June 1943. All night he has heard the voice of the deputy prosecutor demanding his client’s head; all night he has tossed and turned in his bed, searching for strong words, the right words that will counter the indictment of his adversary, prosecuting counsel Lespinasse.

And while Maître Arnal revises again and again, the fearsome Lespinasse enters the dining room of his opulent house. He sits down at the table, opens his newspaper and drinks his morning coffee, which is served to him by his wife, in the dining room of his opulent house.

In his cell, Marcel is also drinking the hot brew brought to him by the warder. An usher has just delivered him his citation to appear before the special Session of the Toulouse Court. Marcel looks out through the skylight. He thinks about his little girl, his wife, down there somewhere in Spain, on the other side of the mountains.

Lespinasse’s wife stands up and kisses her husband on the cheek. She leaves for a meeting about good works. The deputy prosecutor puts on his overcoat and looks at himself in the mirror, proud of his fine appearance, convinced that he will win. He knows his text by heart, a strange paradox for a man who really doesn’t have one – a heart, that is. A black Citroën waits outside his house and is already driving him to the courthouse.

On the other side of town, a gendarme chooses his best shirt from his wardrobe. It is white, and the collar has been starched. He is the one who arrested the accused and today he has been summoned to appear. As he ties his tie, young gendarme Cabannac has moist hands. There is something not right about what is going to happen, something rotten, and Cabannac knows it; what’s more, if it happened again he would let him get away, that guy with the black suitcase. The enemies are the Boche, not lads like him. But he thinks of the French State and its administrative mechanism. He is a mere cog and he can’t be found wanting. He knows the mechanism well, does Gendarme Cabannac; his father taught him all about it, and the morality that goes with it. At the weekend, he enjoys repairing his motorbike in his father’s shed. He knows full well that if one piece happens to be missing, the whole mechanism seizes up. So, with moist hands, Cabannac tightens the knot of his tie on the starched collar of his fine white shirt and heads for the tram stop.

A black Citroën moves away into the distance and overtakes the tram. At the back of the carriage, sitting on the wooden bench, an old man rereads his notes. Maître Arnal looks up and then plunges back into his reading. The game promises to be a hard one but nothing is lost. It is unthinkable that a French court could sentence a patriot to death. Langer is a brave man, one of those who act because they are valiant. He knew that as soon as he met him in his cell. His face was so misshapen; under his cheekbones, you could make out the marks of the punches that had landed there, and the gashed lips were blue and swollen. He wonders what Marcel looked like before he was beaten up like that, before his face was punched out of shape, taking on the imprint of the violence it had suffered. They are fighting for our freedom, mused Arnal; it really isn’t complicated to work that out. If the court can’t see it yet, he’ll do his damnedest to open their eyes. Say they sentence him to prison for example, OK, that will save appearances, but death? No. That would be a judgment unworthy of French magistrates. By the time the tram halts with a screech of metal at the courthouse station, Maître Arnal has recovered the confidence necessary to plead his case well. He’s going to win this case, he’ll cross swords with his adversary, Deputy Prosecutor Lespinasse and he will save that young man’s head. Marcel Langer, he repeats to himself softly as he climbs the steps.

While Maître Arnal walks down the Palais’ long corridor, Marcel, handcuffed to a gendarme, waits in a small office.

The trial takes place in camera. Marcel is in the dock, Lespinasse stands up and doesn’t even glance at him; he scorns the man he wants to convict, and the last thing he wants is to get to know him. A few scant notes lie in front of him. First, he pays homage to the gendarmerie’s perspicacity, which ensured that a dangerous terrorist was prevented from doing harm, and then he reminds the court of its duty, that of observing the law and seeing that it is respected. Pointing at the man on trial without once looking at him, Deputy Prosecutor Lespinasse voices his accusations. He enumerates the long list of murder attempts the Germans have suffered, and he recalls also that France signed the armistice in honour and that the accused, who is not even French, has no right to call the State’s authority into question again. To grant him extenuating circumstances would be tantamount to scorning the Marshal’s word. ‘The reason the Marshal signed the armistice was for the good of the Nation,’ Lespinasse continues, with vehemence. ‘And a foreign terrorist has no right to judge to the contrary.’

Finally, to add a little humour, he reminds the court that Marcel Langer was not carrying firecrackers for the fourteenth of July, but explosives destined to destroy German installations, and so disturb the citizens’ tran-quillity. Marcel smiles. The fireworks of the fourteenth of July are a long way away.

Should the defence put forward arguments of a patriotic nature, with the aim of granting Langer extenuating circumstances, Lespinasse again reminds the court that the defendant is a stateless person, that he chose to abandon his wife and little girl in Spain, where he had previously gone to fight, although he was Polish and a stranger to the conflict. That France, in its indulgence, had welcomed him in, but not to come here, to our homeland, bringing disorder and chaos. ‘How can a man without a homeland claim to have acted according to a patriotic ideal?’ And Lespinasse sniggers at his own witticism, his turn of phrase. Fearing that the court may be afflicted with amnesia, he reminds them of the act of accusation, lists the laws that sentence such acts to capital punishment, and congratulates himself on the severity of the laws in force. Then he pauses for a moment, turns towards the man he is accusing and finally consents to look at him. ‘You are a foreigner, a Communist and a partisan, three separate reasons, each of which is sufficient for me to ask the court for your head.’ This time, he turns away towards the magistrates and in a calm voice demands that Marcel Langer should be sentenced to death.

Maître Arnal is white-faced. He stands up at the same moment as the smug Lespinasse sits down. The old lawyer’s eyes are half-closed, his chin tilted forward, his hands clenched in front of his mouth. The court is motionless, silent; the clerk barely dares lay down his pen. Even the gendarmes are holding their breath, waiting for him to speak. But for the moment, Maître Arnal cannot say anything, overcome as he is with nausea.

He is therefore the last person here to realise that the rules have been rigged, that the decision has already been taken. And yet, in his cell, Langer had told him he knew that he was condemned in advance. But the old lawyer still believed in justice and had kept on assuring him that he was wrong, that he would defend him as he should and that the judgment would be in his favour. Behind him, Maître Arnal feels Marcel’s presence, thinks he can hear him murmuring: ‘You see, I was right, but I don’t blame you, in any case, you couldn’t do anything.’

So he raises his arms, his sleeves seeming to float in the air, breathes in and launches into a final speech for the defence. How can the gendarmerie’s work be praised, when the defendant’s face bears the stigmata of the violence he has suffered? How can anyone dare to joke about the fourteenth of July in this France that no longer has the right to celebrate it? And what does the prosecutor really know about these foreigners whom he accuses?

As he got to know Langer in the visiting room, he was able to find out how much these stateless individuals, as Lespinasse calls them, love this country that has welcomed them in even to the point where, like Marcel Langer, they will sacrifice their lives to defend it. The accused is not the man the prosecutor depicts. He is a sincere and honest man, a father who loves his wife and his daughter. He did not leave Spain to join the fighting, but because, more than all, he loves humanity and human freedom. Yesterday, wasn’t France still the land of human right? Sentencing Marcel Langer to death means sentencing the hope for a better world.

Arnal’s plea lasted more than an hour, using up his last reserves of strength; but his voice rings out without an echo in this court that has already given its verdict. Today, 11 June 1943, is a sad day. The sentence has been pronounced, and Marcel will be sent to the guillotine. When Catherine hears the news in Arnal’s office, her lips purse tightly and she takes the blow. The lawyer swears that he has not finished, that he will go to Vichy to plead for clemency.

That evening, in the little disused railway station that serves Charles as lodgings and a workshop, the table has grown. Since Marcel’s arrest, Jan has taken command of the brigade. Catherine sat down next to him. From the look they exchanged, I knew this time that they loved each other. And yet the look in Catherine’s eyes is sad, and her lips can barely utter the words she has to tell us. She is the one who announces to us that Marcel has been sentenced to death by a French prosecutor. I don’t know Marcel, but like all the comrades around the table, I have a heavy heart and as for my little brother, he has completely lost his appetite.

Jan paces up and down. Everyone is silent, waiting for him to speak.

‘If they carry it out, we shall have to kill Lespinasse, to scare the hell out of them; otherwise, these scum will sentence to death all the partisans who fall into their hands.’

‘While Arnal is lodging his plea for clemency, we can prepare for the operation,’ continues Jacques.

‘It will take a lot more time,’ mutters Charles in his strange language.

‘And in the meantime, aren’t we going to do anything?’ cuts in Catherine, who is the only one who’s understood what he was saying.

Jan thinks and continues to pace up and down the room.

‘We must act now. Since they have condemned Marcel to death, let’s condemn one of their people too. Tomorrow, we’ll take down a German officer right in the middle of the street and we’ll distribute a tract to explain why we did it.’

I certainly don’t have much experience of political operations, but an idea is going around in my head and I venture to speak.

‘If we really want to scare the hell out of them, it would be even better to drop the tracts first, and take down the German officer afterwards.’

‘And that way they’ll all be on their guard. Have you got any more ideas like that?’ argues Emile, who seems decidedly mad at me.

‘My idea’s not bad, not if the operations are a few minutes apart and carried out in good order. Let me explain. If we kill the Boche first and drop the tracts afterwards, we’ll look like cowards. In the eyes of the population, Marcel was judged first and only then sentenced.

‘I doubt that La Dépêche will report on the arbitrary condemnation of a heroic partisan. They’ll announce that a terrorist has been sentenced by a court. So let’s play by their rules; the town must be with us, not against us.’

Emile wanted to shut me up, but Jan signalled to him to let me speak. My reasoning was logical, I just needed to find the right words to explain to my friends what I had in mind.

‘First thing tomorrow morning, we should print a communiqué announcing that as a reprisal for Marcel Langer’s death penalty, the Resistance has condemned a German officer to death. We should also announce that the sentence will be applied that very afternoon. I will take care of the officer, and – at the same moment – you will drop the tract everywhere. People will become aware of it immediately, while news of the operation will take a lot of time to spread through the town. The newspapers won’t talk about it until tomorrow’s edition, and the right chronology of events will appear to have been respected.’

One by one, Jan consults the members seated at the table, and eventually his eyes meet mine. I know that he agrees with my reasoning, except perhaps for one detail: he raised an eyebrow slightly at the moment when I mentioned in passing that I would kill the German myself.

In any event, if he hesitates too much, I have an irrefutable argument; after all, the idea is mine, and besides, I stole my bicycle, so I’ve complied with the rules of the brigade.

Jan looks at Emile, Alonso, Robert and then Catherine, who agrees with a nod. Charles has missed none of the scene. He stands up, heads for the cupboard under the stairs and comes back with a shoe box. He hands me a barrel revolver.

‘Be better if you and brother here sleep tonight.’

Jan approaches me.

‘Right, you’ll fire the gun; Spaniard,’ he said, designating Alonso, ‘you will be the lookout; and you, young one, you’ll hold the bicycle in the direction of the getaway.’

There. Of course, said like that it’s quite anodyne, except that Jan and Catherine went away again into the night, and I now had a pistol in my hand, with six bullets, and my cretin of a little brother who wanted to know how it worked. Alonso leant over towards me and asked me how Jan knew that he was Spanish, when he hadn’t said a word all evening. ‘And how did he know that the shooter would be me?’ I told him with a shrug of my shoulders. I hadn’t answered him, but my friend’s silence testified that my question must have gained the upper hand over his.

That night, we slept for the first time in Charles’s dining room. I lay down completely knackered, but never-theless with a massive weight on my chest; first my little brother’s head – he’d acquired the bloody awful habit of sleeping pressed up against me since we were separated from our parents – and, worse still, the pistol in the left pocket of my jacket. Even though there weren’t any bullets in it, I was afraid that in my sleep, it might blow a hole in my little brother’s head.

As soon as everyone was properly asleep, I got up on my tiptoes and went out into the garden behind the house. Charles had a dog, which was as gentle as it was stupid.

I’m thinking of it because that night, I had a desperate need for its spaniel muzzle. I sat down on the chair under the washing line, I looked at the sky and I took the gun out of my pocket. The dog came to sniff at the barrel, and I stroked its head, telling it that it would definitely be the only one in my lifetime allowed to sniff the barrel of my weapon. I said that because at that moment I really needed to put on a bold front.

One late afternoon, by stealing two bikes, I had entered the Resistance, and it’s only now, hearing my little brother, snoring like a child with a blocked nose, that I really realised it. Jeannot, Marcel Langer brigade; during the months to come, I was going to blow up trains, electricity pylons, sabotage engines and the wings of aircraft.

I belonged to a band of partisans that was the only one to have succeeded in bringing down German bombers…on bicycles.

4

It’s Boris who wakes us. Dawn has scarcely broken and cramps are gnawing my insides but I mustn’t hear its complaint; we won’t be having any breakfast. And I have a mission to fulfil. It is perhaps fear, rather than hunger, that ties my stomach into knots. Boris takes his place at the table, Charles is already at work; the red bicycle is transformed before my eyes. It has lost its leather grips; they are now mismatched – one is red, one blue. Too bad for its elegance, I see reason; the important thing is that nobody recognises the stolen bikes. While Charles is checking the derailleur mechanism, Boris beckons me over to join him.

‘The plans have changed,’ he says. ‘Jan doesn’t want all three of you to go out. You’re novices and, if something bad happens, he wants an old hand to be there as a reinforcement.’

I don’t know if that means the brigade doesn’t yet trust me sufficiently. So I say nothing and let Boris speak.

‘Your brother will stay here. I’m the one who’ll accompany you, and ensure you get away. Now listen to me carefully; this is how things must happen. There is a method for bringing down an enemy, and it’s very important that you respect it to the letter. Are you listening?’

I nod. Boris must have noticed that for the space of an instant my mind is elsewhere. I’m thinking about my little brother; he’s going to sulk when he finds out he’s been sidelined. And I can’t even admit to him that it relieves me to know that, this morning, his life won’t be in danger.

The thing that doubly reassures me is that Boris is a third-year medical student, so if I’m wounded in the operation he may be able to save me, even if that’s completely idiotic, because, in an operation, the greatest risk isn’t being wounded but quite simply being arrested or killed, which in the end comes to the same thing in most cases.

All that being said, I must admit that Boris wasn’t wrong. My mind was perhaps slightly elsewhere while he was speaking; but to be honest, I’ve always had an annoying penchant for daydreaming; at school, my teachers said I had a ‘distracted’ nature. That was before the head of the school sent me home on the day I turned up for the baccalaureate examinations. With my name, it really wasn’t possible to take the diploma.

Right, I’m focused now on the operation to come; if not, at best I’m going to be ticked off by comrade Boris, who is taking the trouble to explain how things are going to proceed, and at worst, he’ll remove me from the mission for not paying attention.

‘Are you listening to me?’ he says.

‘Yes, yes, of course!’

‘As soon as we’ve spotted our target, you will check that the revolver’s safety catch is definitely off. We’ve already seen friends have serious disappointments by thinking that their weapon was jammed, when they’d stupidly forgotten to take off the security catch.’

I did indeed think that this was idiotic, but when you’re afraid, really afraid, you’re much less skilful; do believe what I say. The important thing was not to interrupt Boris and to concentrate on what he was saying.

‘It must be an officer, we don’t kill ordinary soldiers. Did you get that? We’ll follow him at a distance, neither too close, nor too far. I will deal with the neighbouring perimeter. You approach the guy, you empty your magazine and you count the shots carefully so that you have one bullet left. That’s very important for the getaway – you could need it, you never know. I will be covering the getaway. You think only of pedalling. If people try to step in front of you, I’ll intervene to protect you. Whatever happens, don’t turn back. You pedal and you pedal hard, do you understand me?’

I tried to say yes, but my mouth was so dry that my tongue was stuck to it. Boris concluded that I was in agreement and went on.

‘When you’re quite a long way away, slow down and mess around like any lad on a bike. Except you’re going to ride around for a long time. If anyone has followed you, you must be aware of it and never run the risk of leading him to your address. Go around the docks, and stop frequently, to check if you recognise a face you’ve encountered more than once. Don’t trust coincidences; in our lives there never are any. If you’re certain that you’re safe, 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 could have sworn that they too were in love. But I must have been wrong since Jan had said that partisans didn’t have the right to fall in love, because it was too dangerous for security. When I think back to the number of friends who, the night before their execution, must have hated themselves for respecting this rule, it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

That evening, Robert sat down on the end of the bed and Claude didn’t move. One day I shall have to have a word with my little brother about his character. Robert took no notice and stretched out a hand to me, congratulating me on a mission accomplished. I said nothing, torn by contradictory feelings, which, on account of my absent-minded nature, as my teachers said, instantly plunged me into the total silence of deep reflection.

And while Robert stayed there, right in front of me, I mused that I had entered the Resistance with three dreams in my head: to join Général de Gaulle in London, to join the Royal Air Force and to kill an enemy before I died.

Fully comprehending that the first two dreams would remain out of reach, the fact that I had at least been able to fulfil the third ought to have filled me with joy, particularly since I was still not dead, while the operation was now several hours earlier. In reality it was quite the opposite. It gave me no satisfaction to imagine my German officer who, at that time, for the needs of the investigation, was still in the position where I had left him, stretched out on the ground, arms at right angles to his body on the steps of the staircase, with a view downwards to a public urinal.

Boris gave a little cough. Robert wasn’t holding out his hand to me in order to shake it – although I am certain he would have had nothing against it, with his natural warmth – but by all accounts he wanted his weapon back. The barrel revolver I had lost was his!

I didn’t know that Jan had sent him as a second line of protection, anticipating the risks linked to my inexperience at the moment of the killing and the getaway that was to follow. As I said, Robert always brought his men back. What touched me was that Robert had entrusted his weapon to Charles the previous evening so that he could give it to me, when I had scarcely paid attention to him during dinner, far too absorbed as I was by my share of the omelette. And if Robert, who was responsible for my rear and Boris’s, had made such a generous gesture, it was because he wanted me to have the use of a revolver that never jams, unlike automatic weapons.

But Robert mustn’t have seen the end of the operation, nor probably the fact that his burning pistol had slipped out of my belt and landed on the road, just before Boris ordered me to get the hell out of there.

As Robert’s gaze was becoming persistent, Boris stood up and opened the drawer of the room’s sole piece of furniture. From a rustic wardrobe he removed the long-awaited pistol and immediately handed it back to its owner, without a word.

Robert put it back in its proper place and I took advantage of this to learn the correct way to slip the barrel under the belt buckle, to avoid burning the inner thigh and having to deal with the ensuing consequences.

Jan was happy with our operation; we were now accepted into the brigade. A new mission awaited us.

A guy from the Maquis had had a drink with Jan. During the conversation, he had committed an involuntary indiscretion, revealing among other details the existence of a farm where a few weapons parachuted in by the English were stored. It drove us crazy that people were stocking weapons with a view to the Allied landings, when we went short of them every day. So apologies to the Maquis colleagues, but Jan had taken the decision to go and help himself from their stocks. To avoid creating pointless quarrels, and to avert any blunders, we would leave unarmed. I don’t say there weren’t a few rivalries between the Gaullist movements and our brigade, but there was no question of risking wounding a ‘cousin’ partisan, even if family relations could sometimes be a bit strained. Instructions were therefore given not to resort to force. If we blundered we’d clear off, and that was that.

The mission was to be conducted with artistry and savoir-faire. What’s more, if the plan Jan had devised worked without a hitch, I defied the Gaullists to report what had happened to them to London, at the risk of coming across as real twits and drying up their source of supply.

While Robert was explaining how to proceed, my little brother behaved as if he didn’t give a damn, but I could see that he wasn’t missing a single word of the conversation. We were to report to this farm, a few kilometres west of the town, explain to the people there that we had come on behalf of a guy called Louis, that the Germans suspected the hiding place and would soon turn up; we had come to help them move the goods and the farmers were supposed to hand us the few cases of grenades and submachine guns they had stored there. Once these were loaded onto the little trailers attached to our bikes, we’d do a bunk and the whole thing was in the bag.

‘We’ll need six people for it to work,’ said Robert.

I knew quite well that I hadn’t been wrong about Claude, because he sat up on his bed, as if his siesta had just come to an abrupt end, there and then, just by chance.

‘Do you want to take part?’ Robert asked my brother.

‘With the experience I have now in bicycle theft, I suppose I’m also qualified to nick weapons. I must have the face of a thief for people to think of me automatically for this kind of mission.’

‘It’s quite the opposite. You have the face of an honest lad and that’s why you’re particularly well qualified. You don’t arouse suspicion.’

I don’t know if Claude took that as a compliment or if he was simply pleased that Robert had addressed him directly, offering him the consideration he seemed to lack, but his features instantly relaxed. I think I even saw him smile. It’s crazy how the fact of receiving recognition, however tiny it may be, can hearten a person. In the end, feeling anonymous among the people you’re with is a much greater pain than people realise; it’s as if you’re invisible.

It’s probably also because of this that we suffered so much from living clandestinely, and for that reason also that in the brigade, we rediscovered a sort of family, a society where every one of us had an existence. And that meant a lot to each of us.

Claude said, ‘I’m in.’ With Robert, Boris and me, we were still two short. Alonso and Emile would join us.

The six members of the mission must go at the earliest opportunity to Loubers, where little trailers would be attached to their bikes. Charles had asked that we should take turns; not because of the modest size of his workshop, but to avoid a procession of bikes attracting the neighbours’ attention. We were to meet up at around six o’clock on the way out of the village, heading for the countryside and the place called the ‘Côte Pavée’.

5

It was Claude who was first to introduce himself to the farmer. He followed to the letter the instructions Jan had obtained from his contact with the Maquis.

‘We’re here on behalf of Louis. He told me to tell you that tonight, the tide will be low.’

‘Too bad for the fishing,’ the man replied.

Claude didn’t contradict him on this point and immediately delivered the second half of his message.

‘The Gestapo are on their way, the weapons must be moved!’

‘My God, that’s terrible,’ exclaimed the farmer.

They looked at our bikes and added, ‘Where’s your lorry?’ Claude didn’t understand the question, and to be honest nor did I and I think it was the same for our comrades behind. But he’d lost none of his talent for repartee, and immediately replied, ‘It’s following us, we’re here to start organising the transfer.’ The farmer took us to his barn. There, behind bales of hay piled several metres high, we discovered what would later give this mission its codename: ‘Ali Baba’s Cave’. On the ground were rows of stacked-up boxes, stuffed with grenades, mortars, Sten guns, entire sacks of bullets, fuses, dynamite, machine guns and more that I can’t remember.

At that precise moment, I became aware of two things of equal importance. First, my political appreciation regarding the point of preparing for the Allied landings had to be revised. My point of view had just changed, even more so when I realised that this cache was probably only one arms-dump among others that were being built up in the country. The second was that we were in the process of looting weapons that the Maquis would probably miss sooner or later.

I was careful not to share these considerations with comrade Robert, the leader of our mission; not through fear of being judged badly by my superior, but rather because, after further thought, I agreed with my conscience: with our six little bicycle trailers, we weren’t going to deprive the Maquis of much.

In order to understand what I was feeling as I looked at those weapons, knowing better now how much a single pistol meant within our brigade and at the same time comprehending the meaning of the farmer’s well-meaning question, ‘But where’s your lorry?’, all you have to do is imagine my little brother finding himself, by magic, standing in front of a table covered with all kinds of goodies when he was unable to eat.

Robert put an end to our general excitement and ordered that, while we waited for the famous lorry, we should begin loading what we could into the trailers. It was at that moment that the farmer asked a second question that was going to leave us all stunned.

‘What do we do with the Russians?’

‘What Russians?’ asked Robert.

‘Didn’t Louis tell you?’

‘That depends on what it’s about,’ cut in Claude, who was visibly gaining confidence.

‘We’re hiding two Russian prisoners who escaped from a prison camp on the Atlantic wall. We have to do something. We can’t take the risk of the Gestapo finding them, they’d shoot them on the spot.’

There were two disturbing things about what the farmer had just told us. The first was that, without intending to, we were going to cause a nightmare for these two poor guys who must already have had enough on their plate; but even more disturbing was the fact that not for a single moment had the farmer in question thought about his own life. I shall have to think about adding farmers to my list of magnificent people during that inglorious period.

Robert suggested that the Russians should go and hide in the undergrowth overnight. The peasant asked if one of us was capable of explaining this to them, as his attempts at their language had proved less than brilliant since he took in these two poor devils. After closely observing us, he concluded that he would rather do it himself. ‘It’s safer’, he added. And while he rejoined them, we loaded up the trailers to bursting point. Emile even took two boxes of ammunition that we couldn’t use, since we didn’t have a revolver of the corresponding calibre, but we didn’t know that until Charles told us on our return.

We left our farmer with his two Russian refugees, not without certain feelings of guilt, and we pedalled for all we were worth, dragging our little trailers along the road to the workshop.

As we entered the outskirts of town, Alonso couldn’t avoid a pothole, and one of the bags of bullets he was transporting was jolted over the edge. Passers-by stopped, surprised by the nature of the load that had just emptied itself all over the roadway. Two workmen came over to Alonso and helped him to pick up the bullets, replacing them in the little cart without asking any questions.

Charles made an inventory of our booty and found a good place to put it. He returned to us in the dining room, offering us one of his magnificent toothless smiles, and he announced in his own very special language: ‘Sa del tris bon trabara. Nous avir à moins de quoi fire sount actions.’ Which we instantly translated as: ‘Very good work. We have enough there to carry out at least a hundred operations.’

6

June was progressively fading away with every operation we carried out, and the month was almost at its end. Cranes whose foundations had been uprooted by our explosive charges had bowed down into the canals and would never be able to raise their heads again. Trains had been derailed as they travelled along the rails we had moved. The roads that German convoys used were barred by electricity pylons that we had brought down. Around the middle of the month, Jacques and Robert succeeded in placing three bombs in the Feldgendarmerie; the damage there was considerable. The regional Prefect had once again made an appeal to the population; a pitiful message, inviting everyone to denounce any who might belong to a terrorist organisation. In his communiqué, the chief of the French police in the Toulouse region launched a scathing attack on those who claimed to represent a so-called Resistance, those troublemakers who harmed public order and the comfortable lives of French people. Well, the troublemakers in question were us, and we didn’t give a damn what the Prefect thought.

Today, with Emile, we collected some grenades from Charles’s place; our mission was to hurl them inside a Wehrmacht telephone exchange.

We walked along the street, Emile showed me the windows we must aim at, and on his signal we catapulted our projectiles. I saw them rise up, forming an almost perfect curve. Time seemed to stand still. Next came the sound of breaking glass, and I even thought I could hear the grenades rolling across the wooden floor and the footsteps of the Germans, who were probably rushing towards the first door they could find. It’s best if there are two of you when you’re doing this kind of thing; alone, success seems improbable.

At this time of day, I doubt that German communications will be re-established for quite some time. But none of this makes me happy, because my little brother has to move out.

Claude has now been integrated into the team. Jan decided that our cohabitation was too dangerous, not in accordance with the rules of security. Each friend must live alone, to avoid compromising a fellow tenant if he happened to be arrested. How I miss the presence of my little brother, and it’s now impossible for me to go to bed at night without thinking of him. If he’s taking part in an operation, I’m no longer informed. So, stretched out on my bed with my hands behind my head, I search for sleep but can never find it completely. Loneliness and hunger are rotten company. The rumbling of my stomach sometimes disturbs the silence that surrounds me. To think about something else, I gaze at the light bulb on the ceiling of my room and soon, it becomes a flash of light on the canopy of my English fighter plane. I’m piloting a Royal Air Force Spitfire. I fly over the English Channel. All I have to do is tilt the plane and at the ends of the wings I can see the crests of the waves that are running away, like me, to England. A scant few metres away, my brother’s plane is purring; I glance at his engine to check that no smoke is going to compromise his return, but already we can see the outline of the coast and its white cliffs. I can feel the wind entering the cockpit, whistling between my legs. Once we’ve landed, we’ll enjoy a delicious meal around a well-laden table in the officers’ mess…A convoy of German lorries passes by my windows, and the grating of their clutches brings me back to my room and my loneliness.

As I hear the convoy of German lorries fading into the darkness, despite this confounded hunger that gnaws away at me, I finally succeed in finding the courage to switch off the light on my bedroom ceiling. I tell myself that I haven’t given up. I’m probably going to die but I won’t have given up, in any event I thought I was going to die a lot sooner and I’m still alive, so who knows? Perhaps in the final analysis it’s Jacques who’s right. Spring will return one day.

In the small hours I receive a visit from Boris; another mission awaits us. While we’re pedalling towards the old railway station at Loubers to go and fetch our weapons, Maître Arnal is arriving in Vichy to plead Langer’s cause. He’s received by the director of criminal affairs and pardons. This man’s power is immense and he knows it. He listens to the lawyer distractedly; his thoughts are elsewhere. The end of the week is approaching and he’s anxious to know how he’ll occupy it, if his mistress will welcome him into the warmth of her thighs after the fine supper he has in store for her at a restaurant in town. The director of criminal affairs swiftly skims the dossier that Arnal begs him to consider. The facts are there in black and white, and they are grave. The sentence is not severe, he says, it is just. The judges cannot be criticised in any way, they did their duty by applying the law. He has already made up his mind, but Arnal continues to persist, so – since the affair is a delicate one – he agrees to call a meeting of the Pardons Committee.

Later, before its members, he will continue to pronounce Marcel’s name in such a way as to make it understood that he is a foreigner. And as Arnal, the old lawyer, leaves Vichy, the Committee rejects the pardon. And as Arnal, the old lawyer, steps aboard the train taking him back to Toulouse, an administrative document also follows his little train; it heads for the Keeper of the Seals, who has it sent immediately to the office of Marshal Pétain. The Marshal signs the report, and Marcel’s fate is now sealed: he is to be guillotined.

Today, 15 July 1943, with my friend Boris, we attacked the office of the leader of the ‘Collaboration’ group in the Place des Carmes. The day after tomorrow, Boris will attack a man called Rouget, a zealous collaborator and one of the Gestapo’s top informants.

As he leaves the courthouse to go and have lunch, Deputy Prosecutor Lespinasse is in an extremely good mood. The slow train of bureaucracy finally reached its destination this morning. The document rejecting Marcel’s request for a pardon is on his desk, and it bears the Marshal’s signature. The order of execution accompanies it. Lespinasse has spent the morning contemplating this little piece of paper, only a few square centimetres in size. This rectangular sheet is like a reward to him, a prize for excellence granted to him by the State’s highest authorities. It’s not the first Lespinasse has hooked. As early as primary school, he brought back a merit point to his father each year, gained thanks to his assiduous work, thanks to the esteem in which his teachers held him…Thanks…Yes, thanks to him Marcel would never obtain a pardon. Lespinasse sighs and picks up the little china ornament that has pride of place on his desk, in front of his leather desk blotter. He slides over the sheet of paper and replaces the ornament on top of it. It must not distract him; he must finish writing the speech for his next lecture, but his mind wanders to his little notebook. He opens it and turns its pages: one day, two, three, four, there – that’s the one. He hesitates to write the words ‘Langer execution’ beneath ‘lunch with Armande’, as the sheet is already covered with meetings. So he contents himself with putting a cross. He closes the diary again and resumes writing his speech. A few lines and here he is again, leaning towards that document, which sticks out from underneath the ornament. He opens the diary again and, in front of the cross, writes the number 5. That’s the time he has to arrive at the gate of the Saint-Michel prison. Finally Lespinasse puts away the diary in his pocket, pushes away the gold paper knife on the desk, and lines it up, parallel with his fountain pen. It is noon and the deputy prosecutor is now feeling hungry. Lespinasse stands up, adjusts the folds of his trousers and walks out into the corridor of the courthouse.

On the other side of town, Maître Arnal sets down the same sheet of paper on his desk; the sheet he received this morning. His cleaning lady enters the room. Arnal gazes fixedly at her, but no sound emerges from his throat.

‘Are you weeping, Maître?’ murmurs the cleaning lady.

Arnal bends over the waste paper basket and vomits bile. The spasms shake him. Old Marthe hesitates, not knowing what to do. Then her good sense takes the upper hand. She has three children and two grand-children, does old Marthe, so she’s seen quite a bit of vomiting in her time. She approaches and lays her hand on the old lawyer’s forehead. Each time he bends towards the basket, she accompanies his movement. She hands him a white cotton handkerchief, and while her employer is wiping his mouth, her gaze lights on the sheet of paper, and this time it is old Marthe’s eyes that fill with tears.

This evening, we’re at Charles’s house. Sitting on the floor are Jan, Catherine, Boris, Emile, Claude, Alonso, Stefan, Jacques and Robert; we all form a circle. A letter passes from hand to hand; everyone searches for words but cannot find them. What can you write to a friend who is going to die? ‘We will not forget you,’ murmurs Catherine. That’s what everyone here is thinking. If our fight leads us to recover freedom, if a single one of us survives, he will not forget Marcel, and one day he will say your name. Jan listens to us, he takes the pen and writes in Yiddish the few phrases we have just said to you. This way, the guards who lead you to the scaffold cannot understand. Jan folds up the letter, Catherine takes it and slides it inside her blouse. Tomorrow, she will go and give it to the rabbi.

Not sure that our letter will reach the condemned man. Marcel doesn’t believe in God and he’ll probably refuse to have the almoner present, as well as the rabbi. But after all, who knows? A little shred of luck in all of this misery wouldn’t be too much. May it ensure that you read these few words written to tell you that, if one day we are free again, your life will have counted for a great deal.

7

It is five o’clock on this sad morning of 23 July 1943. In an office within the Saint-Michel prison, Lespinasse is slaking his thirst along with the judges, the director and the two executioners. Coffee for the men in black, a glass of dry white wine to quench the thirst of those who have worked up a sweat putting up the guillotine. Lespinasse keeps looking at his watch. He’s waiting for the hand to finish travelling around the face. ‘It’s time,’ he says, ‘go and tell Arnal.’ The old lawyer didn’t want to mix with them; he’s waiting alone in the courtyard. Someone goes to fetch him, and he joins the procession, signals to the warder and walks a long way in front.

The morning alarm bell hasn’t rung yet but all the prisoners are already up. They know when one of their own is about to be executed. A murmur builds up; the voices of the Spaniards melt into those of the French, and are soon joined by the Italians, then the Hungarians, the Poles, the Czechs and the Romanians. The murmur has become a song that rises, loud and strong. All the accents mingle and are proclaiming the same words. It is the ‘Marseillaise’ that echoes within the cell walls of the Saint-Michel prison.

Arnal enters the cell; Marcel wakes up, looks at the pink sky through the skylight and instantly realises. Arnal takes him in his arms. Over his shoulder, Marcel looks at the sky again and smiles. He whispers in the old lawyer’s ear: ‘I loved life so much.’

Then it’s the barber’s turn to enter; he has to bare the condemned man’s neck. The scissors click and the locks of hair slip to the beaten-earth floor. The procession moves forward; in the corridor the ‘Song of the Partisans’ replaces the ‘Marseillaise’. Marcel stops at the top of the stairs, turns around, slowly raises his fist and shouts: ‘Farewell, comrades.’ The entire prison falls silent for one short moment. ‘Farewell, comrade, and long live France,’ the prisoners answer in unison. And the ‘Marseillaise’ fills the space once more, but Marcel’s silhouette has already disappeared.

Shoulder to shoulder, Arnal in a cape, Marcel in a white shirt, they walk towards the inevitable. Looking at them from behind, you can’t work out which one is supporting the other. The chief warder takes a packet of Gauloises from his pocket. Marcel takes the cigarette he offers, a match crackles and its flame lights up the lower part of his face. A few curls of smoke escape from his mouth, and they continue walking. On the threshold of the door that leads to the courtyard, the prison governor asks him if he wants a glass of rum. Marcel glances at Lespinasse and nods.

‘Give it to that man instead,’ he says. ‘He needs it more than I do.’

The cigarette falls to the ground and rolls away. Marcel signals that he is ready.

The rabbi approaches, but Marcel smiles, indicating to him that he has no need of him.

‘Thank you, rabbi, but my only belief is in a better world for men, and perhaps one day men alone will decide to invent that world. For themselves and their children.’

The rabbi knows very well that Marcel does not want his help, but he has a mission to fulfil and time is pressing. So, without further ado, the man of God jostles Lespinasse aside and hands Marcel the book he is holding. He mutters to him in Yiddish: ‘There is something for you inside.’

Marcel hesitates, attempts to open it and flicks through it. Between the pages, he finds the note hastily written by Jan. Marcel skims the lines, from right to left; he closes his eyes and hands it back to the rabbi.

‘Tell them that I thank them and above all, that I have confidence in their victory.’

It is a quarter past five. The door opens on one of the small, dark courtyards of Saint-Michel prison. The guillotine stands to the right. Out of consideration, the executioners put it up here, so that the condemned man would see it only at the final moment. From the tops of the watchtowers, the German sentries are entertained by the unusual spectacle that is playing out before their eyes. ‘Funny people, the French. In principle we’re the enemy, aren’t we?’ one says with irony. His compatriot is content to shrug his shoulders and leans forward to get a better view. Marcel climbs the steps of the scaffold, and turns one last time towards Lespinasse: ‘My blood will fall on your head,’ he smiles, and adds: ‘I am dying for France and for a better humanity.’

Without any help, Marcel lies down on the plank and the blade swishes down. Arnal has held his breath, his gaze is fixed on the sky woven with light clouds, for all the world like silk. At his feet, the paving stones of the courtyard are reddened with blood. And while Marcel’s remains are placed in a coffin, the executioners are already setting about cleaning their machine. A little sawdust is thrown on the ground.

Arnal will accompany his friend to his last resting place. He climbs up to ride at the front of the hearse, the prison gates open and the team of horses sets off. At the corner of the street, he passes the silhouette of Catherine but doesn’t even recognise her.

Hidden in a doorway, Catherine and Marianne were waiting for the cortège. The echo of the horses’ hooves is lost in the distance. On the door of the prison, a warder sticks up the notice confirming the execution. There is nothing more to do. White-faced, they leave their hiding place and walk back up the street. Marianne is holding a handkerchief in front of her mouth, a paltry remedy against nausea and pain. It is scarcely seven o’clock when they join us at Charles’s house. Jacques says nothing, just clenches his fists. Boris draws a circle on the wooden table with his fingertip. Claude is sitting with his back to a wall; he’s looking at me.

‘We must kill an enemy today,’ says Jan.

‘Without any preparation?’ Catherine asks.

‘I’m in agreement,’ says Boris.

At eight o’clock on a summer evening, it’s still full daylight. People are walking about, taking advantage of the opportunity now that the temperature has dropped. The café terraces are bustling with people, a few lovers are kissing on street corners. In the midst of this crowd, Boris seems to be a young man like all the others, inoffensive. But in his pocket he is gripping the butt of his pistol. For the last hour he’s been searching for prey. Not any prey though: he wants an officer to avenge Marcel, some gold braid, a uniform jacket with stars on it. But so far he’s only encountered two German ship’s boys out for a good time, young guys who aren’t malicious enough to deserve to die. Boris crosses Lafayette Square, walks up rue d’Alsace, paces up and down the pavements of Place Esquirol. In the distance he can hear the brass section of an orchestra. So Boris allows the music to guide him.

On a bandstand a German orchestra is playing. Boris finds a chair and sits down. He closes his eyes and tries to calm his racing heart. No question of returning empty-handed, no question of letting down the friends. Of course, it isn’t this kind of vengeance that Marcel deserves, but the decision has been taken. He opens his eyes again, and Providence smiles at him. A handsome officer has sat down in the front row. Boris looks at the cap the soldier is using to fan himself. On the sleeve of the jacket, he sees the red ribbon of the Russian campaign. This officer must have killed men, to have the right to rest in Toulouse. He must have led soldiers to their deaths, to take such a peaceful advantage of a gentle summer’s evening in the south-west of France.

The concert ends, the officer stands up, and Boris follows him. A few steps away from there, right in the middle of the street, five shots ring out, and flames shoot from the barrel of our friend’s weapon. The crowd rushes forward. Boris leaves.

In a Toulouse street, the blood of a German officer flows towards the gutter. A few kilometres away, beneath the earth of a Toulouse cemetery, Marcel’s blood is already dry.

La Dépêche reports Boris’s operation; in the same edition, it announces Marcel’s execution. The townsfolk will quickly make the link between the two matters. Those who are compromised will learn that the blood of a partisan does not flow with impunity, while the others will know that, very close to them, some people are fighting.

The regional Prefect made haste to issue a communiqué to reassure the occupiers of the goodwill felt towards them by his departments. ‘As soon as I learned of the killing,’ he announced, ‘I made myself the mouthpiece of the population’s indignation to the general chief of staff and the German Head of Security.’ The regional police chief also added his hand to the collaborationist prose: ‘A very substantial cash reward will be paid by the authorities to any person making it possible to identify the author or authors of the odious murder committed by firearm on the evening of 23 July against a German soldier in rue Bayard, Toulouse.’ Unquote! It has to be said that he had only just been appointed to his post, had Police Chief Barthenet. A few years of zeal with the Vichy departments had hewn his reputation as a man who was as efficient as he was formidable and had offered him this promotion that he had dreamed of. The chronicler of La Dépêche had greeted his appointment by welcoming him on the front page of the daily. We too, in our own way, had just given him ‘our’ welcome. And so as to welcome him even better, we distributed a tract all over town. In a few lines, we announced that we had killed a German officer as a reprisal for the death of Marcel.

We won’t wait for an order from anyone. The rabbi told Catherine what Marcel said to Lespinasse before dying on the scaffold. ‘My blood will fall upon your head.’ The message had hit us full in the face, like a will left by our comrade, and we had all decoded his last wish. We would have the deputy prosecutor’s hide. The enterprise would demand long preparation. You couldn’t kill a prosecutor like that in the middle of the street. The lawyer was certainly protected. He didn’t move about unless driven by his chauffeur and our brigade considered it out of the question that an operation should cause the population to run any risk, however small. Unlike those who collaborated openly with the Nazis, those who denounced, arrested, tortured, deported; those who sentenced to death, executed; those who, free from all constraints and with their consciences draped in the togas of pretended duty, assuaged their racist hatred; unlike all of these, we might be ready to soil our hands, but they would remain clean.

Several weeks before, at Jan’s request, Catherine had established an information cell. This means that, along with a few of her friends, Damira, Marianne, Sophie, Rosine, Osna, all those we were forbidden to love but whom we loved all the same, she was going to glean the information necessary for preparing our mission.

During the months to come, the girls of the brigade would specialise in tailing people, taking photographs on the sly, noting down itineraries, observing how time was spent, and making neighbourhood enquiries. Thanks to them, we would know everything – or almost – about our targets’ actions. No, we wouldn’t wait for orders from anyone.

Deputy Prosecutor Lespinasse now headed their list.

8

Jacques had asked me to meet Damira in town; I was to pass on an order regarding the mission. The meeting had been fixed in that café where the friends met up a little too often, until Jan forbade us to set foot in it, as ever for security reasons.

What a shock, the first time I saw her. Now, I had red hair, and white skin dotted with red freckles, so much so that people asked me if I’d been looking at the sun through a sieve, and I was a four-eyes to boot. Damira was Italian and, more important than anything to my short-sighted eyes, she was a redhead too. I figured that this would inevitably create special bonds between us. But well, I’d already been wrong in my appreciation of the importance of the stocks of weapons the Gaullist Maquis were building up, so suffice to say that when it came to Damira, I wasn’t sure of anything.

Sitting at a table with our plates of vetch, we must have looked like two young lovers, except that Damira wasn’t in love with me, whereas I was already a bit besotted with her. I gazed at her as if, after eighteen years of life spent in the skin of a guy who’d been born with a bunch of carrots on his head, I’d discovered a kindred being, and one of the opposite sex at that; a kind of opposition that for once was bloody good news.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Damira asked.

‘No reason!’

‘Is somebody watching us?’

‘No, no, absolutely not!’

‘Are you certain? Because the way you were staring at me, I thought you were signalling a danger to me.’

‘Damira, I promise you we are safe!’

‘Then why is there sweat breaking out on your forehead?’

‘It’s incredibly hot in this café.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You’re Italian and I’m from Paris, so you must be more used to it than I am.’

‘Shall we go for a walk?’

Damira could have suggested I should go for a swim in the canal; I’d still have said yes immediately. Before she’d finished her sentence I was already on my feet, pulling out her chair to help her get up.

‘A chivalrous man, that’s nice,’ she said with a smile.

The temperature inside my body had just climbed even higher and, for the first time since the start of the war, my cheeks must have been so colourful that you might have thought I looked really well.

The two of us walked towards the canal, where I imagined myself frolicking with my splendid Italian redhead in affectionate, loving water games. Which would have been totally ridiculous, since swimming between two cranes and three barges loaded with hydrocarbons has never had anything really romantic about it. That being said, at that moment nothing in the world could have stopped me dreaming. Moreover, as we were crossing Place Esquirol, I landed my Spitfire (whose engine had given out on me while I was looping the loop) in a field beside the delightful little cottage where Damira and I had been living, in England, since she became pregnant with our second child (which would probably be as red-headed as its elder sister). And, just to make my happiness complete, it was tea-time. Damira came out to meet me, hiding a few hot biscuits straight from the oven in the pockets of her green and red checked apron. Unfortunately, I would have to set to work repairing my plane after afternoon tea; Damira’s cakes were exquisite; she must have had a terrible job preparing them just for me. For once, I could forget my duty as an officer for a moment and pay her homage. Sitting in front of our house, Damira laid her head on my shoulder and sighed, overjoyed by this moment of simple happiness.

‘Jeannot, I think you fell asleep.’

‘What!’ I said, with a start.

‘Your head is on my shoulder!’

I sat up, my face crimson. Spitfire, cottage, tea and cakes had vanished, leaving only the dark reflections of the canal, and the bench where we were sitting.

Searching desperately for some semblance of composure, I gave a little cough and, although I didn’t dare look at the girl sitting next to me, I did try to get to know her better.

‘How did you come to join the brigade?’

‘Weren’t you supposed to pass on a mission order to me?’ Damira answered rather sharply.

‘Yes, yes, but we have time, don’t we?’

‘You may have, but I don’t.’

‘Answer me and afterwards, I promise, we’ll talk about work.’

Damira hesitated for a moment, then smiled and agreed to answer me. She must certainly have known that I was a bit taken with her, girls always know that, often even before we know it ourselves. There was nothing indelicate in her behaviour, she knew how heavily solitude was weighing on everyone, perhaps on her too, so she just agreed to please me and talk a little. Evening was already upon us, but night would still take a long time to arrive, so we had a few hours ahead of us before curfew. Two kids sitting on a bench, beside a canal, in the middle of the Occupation; there was no harm in taking advantage of the passing time. Who could say how much each of us had left?

‘I didn’t think the war would reach us,’ said Damira. ‘It came one evening via the path in front of the house: a gentleman was walking along, dressed like my father, like a workman. Papa went out to meet him and they talked for quite a while. And then the man went away. Papa went back into the kitchen and talked with my mother. I could see perfectly well that she was crying. She said to him, “Haven’t we had enough already?” She said that because her brother was tortured in Italy by Mussolini’s Blackshirts, like the Militia here.’

I hadn’t been able to take my end of school exams, for reasons you know already, but I was well aware of who the Blackshirts were. Nevertheless, I decided not to take the risk of interrupting Damira.

‘I realised why that man was talking to my father in the garden; and with his sense of honour, Papa had been expecting it. I knew he had said yes, for himself and for his brothers too. Mother was weeping because we were going to enter the struggle. I was proud and happy, but I was sent to my room. Where I come from, girls don’t have the same rights as boys. Back home, there’s Papa, my cretinous brothers and then, and only then, there’s Mother and me. Suffice to say that when it comes to boys, I know it all by heart – I’ve got four back home.’

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