Julien raised his rifle and shot him through the heart, causing the revolver to drop from Benech's hand as his body folded at the waist and fell over the rail, a dead weight slamming down and shaking the insubstantial wooden staircase below.
Charlotte reached the address Julien had given her late in the afternoon. It was a street in a medium-sized town, and the house appeared to be unoccupied. She returned at hourly intervals until, at about eight o'clock, a light came on.
With the memory of Antoinette in the back of her mind, she had been expecting "Zozo' would be a woman. The door was in fact opened by a corpulent man in braces. They went through the formalities swiftly and Zozo ushered her into the hall.
"I expect you'd like some dinner," he smiled.
"What a wonderful idea."
"Bring your bicycle in."
There appeared to be no Madame Zozo, and after a dinner of soup and some noodles, Zozo said; "Do you want me to send a message? I have a scheduled transmission tomorrow."
"No," said Charlotte.
"Not yet. I " want you to find me somewhere to stay."
Zozo nodded.
"I can manage that. At your own risk, of course."
"Then I need to borrow your telephone."
"And that's all?"
"For the time being."
Zozo's plump face split into a smile.
"You're very easy to accommodate, Madame. The telephone's through there."
Sylvie's voice answered almost at once. Charlotte was excited.
"Hello? Hello? Sylvie? Can you talk? Have you heard from our friend?
And he's all right? I have a message. He must find out where his father is and leave the answer with you. Do you understand? It's vital. Tell him it's a matter of life and death. I'll call again."
It would be difficult for Julien to make contact with people, but she knew that he had ways of finding things out: friends, contacts, even Communists.
In the meantime, she would wait.
Peter Gregory was sitting in a borrowed dressing gown, enjoying a cup of what tasted quite like coffee. He had his feet up on a stool in front of him and was looking down through the window to the narrow street below.
On the other side of the room sat Nancy, her half-moon glasses stuck below the bridge of her nose, inspecting the newspaper with occasional murmurs of dismay.
The telephone began to ring on a table in the corner and Nancy went over, paper in hand, to answer it.
Gregory found French in Nancy's Pennsylvanian accent considerably easier to understand than any of the other regional variants he had encountered, though on this occasion she said very little as she scribbled a note on the margin of her paper while the voice at the other end dictated.
Gregory now felt impatient to be on his way. It was as though his fatal weariness had been purged; the feeling that replaced it was a cold and energetic hope. When he thought about Charlotte he felt sure that what had held him back was fear. He was scared of her clarity of mind and the intensity of her feeling for him; it had taken him time to see that she could love him as he was that the peculiar shapes and deformities of his personality were not just entrancing but necessary to her. Again he felt blessed by a prodigally generous fate that this should be the case. To be worthy of her he had needed to do just one thing: to want to live.
And having accomplished that, he thought with a smile, I have one other small task: to get back.
"That was an Italian friend on the telephone," said Nancy, sitting down in her chair and resettling her glasses.
"Looks like there's a chance of a little action at last." She spoke quietly, with her head slightly averted. She said, "Ever heard of a felucca?"
"Is sounds like a blister on your feet."
"It's like a Portuguese sardine boat. Kind of uncomfortable, I guess, but you won't be going far."
"What's this Italian friend got to do with it?"
"East of the Rhone, France is occupied by the Italians. You knew that?
Well, this guy, this friend of mine, Gianluca, he's gonna help you.
He'll go with you. I'm not sure at this moment exactly what his plan is, but he's never let us down before."
"But if we cross the Rhone, won't we run into Italian soldiers?"
"I'm not so sure about that, Peter." When she approached a topic of real urgency. Nancy sometimes had a way of becoming oblique, like a college professor who is still quietly thrilled by the complexity of something she is about to reveal to her students.
"As I understand it, there's some give and take with the Italians. Ask yourself what looks like the easy way out for them. I guess it's been the same with the French, hasn't it? We're all scared of the Vichy police, but it's not all like that, is it?"
Gregory thought of his old couple in the farmyard.
"Not at all."
"You're supposed to go on Thursday, but it's a movable feast."
Levade arrived in the concentration camp at Drancy at ten minutes past four on a Monday afternoon, and for a few moments he felt nothing but relief. To be in the open air was a benediction to his lungs, which were seething from the atmosphere of the closed railway truck. The brief bus journey from the station had offered no respite, and he sucked down the freezing air until he began to cough in long, rib-stretching spasms that made him double over.
When he could stand up, he found himself among a crowd of bewildered, dirty people staring at the unfinished housing complex that lay in front of them.
It was in the shape of a rectangle, more than a hundred yards long and about two thirds that distance in width, with buildings of four storeys on three sides. The fourth side was open, though fenced with barbed wire into which was cut a gate at the bottom right-hand corner. There were raised guard posts at either end of this open side, where gendarmes stood with machine guns pointed over the courtyard enclosed by the rectangle. Levade could see a tower to one side, the construction of which seemed to have been abandoned.
His relief passed, as gendarmes pushed among them, shouting orders; it became, as it had been throughout the journey, an effort of will to confront the fatigue that weighed him down.
All round were surly, muttering voices, recalcitrant in different languages German, Yiddish, Polish, or French spoken with a variety of foreign accents. The gendarmes worked them through the gate, funnelling them into the narrow opening, so they were once more forced into the bodily contact that repelled them. Levade half-walked and was half-carried among the slow tide of people being prodded and marshalled down the length of the rectangle.
For a moment he raised his eyes and saw faces pressed against the windows all round the yard, their gazes wide and expressionless as they swept over the figures of the latest convoy.
At the far end was a wooden barracks, set in from the main buildings, outside which a queue was forming. Levade clutched the handle of his suitcase and leaned against a pillar which supported a shallow flat roof that ran round the three sides of the rectangle to provide shelter above the walkway beside the buildings.
Pushed by the baton of a gendarme, Levade stumbled into the gloom of the barracks where long trestle tables were set up in the bleary light of hurricane lamps. A German officer was sitting at one of these, with a French policeman to his right; but most of the work in the barracks was being done by local gendarmes, who were making the prisoners empty their luggage on to the tables while removing anything that was forbidden by their rules. They threw what was confiscated over their shoulders, where shabby creatures wearing white armbands collected it into piles.
The gendarme opposite Levade unrolled the canvas Charlotte had packed, glanced at it briefly and hurled it behind him. He searched Levade all over, tearing off his jacket and shirt in his hurry to get done; he wrinkled up his nose as his fingers touched the purple scar on Levade's shoulder. He emptied the suitcase on the table, chucked some of the contents over his shoulder, and thrust the rest into Levade's arms.
"Move," he said. At the doorway, Levade was given a piece of yellow cloth in the shape of a star.
"Read this." The gendarme pressed a notice against Levade's face.
"Any internee seen within camp bounds not wearing the insignia of the star will be imprisoned and automatically included in the next transport.
"The same sanction will be taken against any internee found on the women's staircases. Only those issued with a white arm band are allowed on those staircases.
"The orderlies are responsible for seeing that these orders are carried out."
Beneath these words was another proclamation, signed by the Commissioner of Police, which detailed the imminent punishment of two people who had breached the rules; despite being married to "Aryans', they were to be deported at once.
Levade felt his wrist taken by a young man wearing a white arm band They walked along the side of the building among a small group of stumbling new arrivals, some of them weeping with fatigue and fear.
Levade found himself climbing a stairway with difficulty, as he was finding it hard to breathe, and people were jostling him from behind.
Then he was in a large room, filled with panic and loud voices. He sat down on the floor, sweating into his shirt despite the cold, and leaned his back against the wall, clutching his few spared clothes to his chest.
Eventually, a hand rested on his shoulder and he opened his eyes to see the face of a man of about forty, clean-shaven, looking earnestly at him.
"Are you all right?" The man spoke French in a native, educated accent.
Levade smiled and nodded.
"I'm the head of your staircase. I'll try to help you, but it's always chaos when people first arrive. Have you got a knife and fork, or a bowl?
No? All right, I'll see you get them."
Levade looked round. It had grown dark outside, and the room was lit by naked bulbs hung from the ceiling. He saw rows of makeshift wooden beds piled one on top of another to make bunks. From many of these hung coats, shirts, jackets, saucepans and bags that had escaped the search in the barracks.
"My name's Hartmann," said the man, still kneeling by Levade.
"You can stay sitting here if you like. I'll get the head of the room to find you a bed." He smiled for a moment.
"We're very bureaucratic here head of this, head of that. There'll be some soup later. Make sure you get some."
Levade nodded and tried to thank the man, but his mouth and throat were too dry for words to pass.
He closed his eyes again and thought of the Domaine. He had struggled there with the limits of himself, pressing against the restrictions of what was left to him by age and temperament. He had considered himself unhappy. Yet he could see now that in the north light of that studio, disappointing though the results may have been, there had been a certain pleasure in his work.
And the presence of the English woman that too had been a comfort.
In the time since he left the Domaine the smell of excrement and unwashed bodies had never left him. At the first camp, Beaunelarolande, it was bad; but here, in this place, the air was almost as rank as in the train. It was hard to love your fellow-man in these circumstances.
"Do you want a bed? Come with me." Levade was addressed in French by a plump, grey-haired man with an accent that sounded Polish or Hungarian.
He took Levade by the arm to the corner of the room.
"You'll have to climb up. Let me take the clothes."
He helped Levade up to a bed that was in the middle of a rack of three.
"Sorry about the crush. The room's only supposed to have fifty people and we've got over a hundred. By the way, you're not allowed to smoke."
Levade lay down and turned his face to the wall. There were thick electric cables that had not been plastered over but hung loosely from the grey cement; further down the wall was a cavity in "which he could see a number of unconnected pipes and other signs of aborted plumbing.
On the other side of the room, a long sheet of zinc had been attached to the wall to act as a wash basin, fed by half a dozen tap less pipes.
The window, a foot or so from Levade's face, had for some reason been painted blue perhaps to stop them looking on to the world outside, he thought. It was of the type that slides along metal runners, and although it had been nailed shut, it did not fit flush with the frame.
Levade was grateful for the slim icy draught because it helped against the smell of people in the room. He pulled the pile of his clothes on top of him and huddled down to sleep.
Later, a voice tried to interest him in soup, but Levade shook his head and pulled the clothes higher up over his shoulders. He heard the sound of a whistle and sensed the lights being extinguished.
Then, at last, for the first time for many years, Levade dreamed rich, sensuous narratives expanded at beguiling length; visual revelations of remembered places; a total habitation of other fully realised worlds.
When he awoke in the morning, he found it impossible to believe that he was back in the room at Drancy. Surely the more powerful existence in which his dreams had so ravishingly placed him should have prevailed over this reduced reality.
It was seven o'clock and one of the orderlies with white armbands had brought a pail of coffee into the room. People crowded round him with their mugs outstretched while the head of the room tried in vain to make them form a line.
Levade stirred beneath the pile of clothes. He could feel an intense irritation in the skin of his chest and legs. It was a familiar sensation that for a moment he struggled to place. Then it came back to him: lice. He had not felt this tormenting itch since he burned his service shirt in Paris after being demobilised in 1918.
He struggled from the bed and asked the head of the room where the lavatory was.
"You have to wait. Our turn in the Red Castle is in five minutes. Wait here."
Men were washing in the cold water that gushed from the pipes above the zinc trough. Some stood naked and performed their intimate ablutions with unhurried care; some furtively splashed and dabbed, revealing as little of themselves as they could. A father, a religious man, agonisingly hid his nakedness from his son. Levade found that Charlotte had put a toothbrush and some paste in the pocket of his jacket and he waited his turn to use them.
The Red Castle was a block of latrines made from a temporary barracks set near the main gates. When his room was detailed to use them, Levade went down with his fellow-men, herded by the orderly. In the courtyard, they had to keep to the edge of the buildings; they were not allowed to step into the open space, but had to huddle back like shadows on the wall. The latrines were inadequate for the numbers; the paper in the cubicles had been used by previous rooms, and when Levade pulled his plug there was no water in the cistern. The smell and the filth were not new to him; everything reminded him of the earlier war, when he had lived in such conditions. In those days, they had been told there was a reason: the glory and the honour of the country were at stake, and their sacrifices would be honoured when they returned from the front. This time, Levade did not think he would be going home.
The inhabitants of all the staircases in due course assembled in the cinder-covered courtyard for the roll call. Levade marvelled at the variety of his fellow-prisoners. There were sleek and shaven men in heavy overcoats who might have stepped out of an important business meeting for a quiet cigar; there were vagrant people in whose faces the grime was long ingrained; there were bare-legged women fussing over families, trying to keep threads of order; and there were children, large numbers of dark-eyed, lethargic infants, some barely able to stand from fatigue, some with their mothers but most of them isolated and stunned, beyond speech.
The roll call of the thousands gathered there took an hour and a half.
Levade leaned on his young neighbour for support and, when it was over, went trembling back to his bed where he coughed until he thought his ribs would crack. A noisy argument was taking place between a group of Frenchmen and some Poles. The French were blaming the Poles for their own plight in being rounded up by the police, while the Poles complained that the French were given privileges by the police who ran the camp.
After all, they argued, are we not all Jews?
"Yes," a Parisian accent turbulently shouted back, 'but we're not all French.
At eleven in the morning some bread was brought to the room, where it was divided into portions of one seventh of a loaf to each man. The head of the room was scrupulous in his division, as it was carelessness in this task that had once led to two men being immediately deported.
Levade had no appetite, but kept his piece of bread and gave it to the young man on whose shoulder he had leaned at roll call. At midday, the pail that had earlier brought up coffee arrived with what was described as soup a broth of cabbage shavings and hot water, which was hungrily received by the other inmates.
"Don't you want your soup?" It was Hartmann, the head of the staircase, who had helped Levade when he arrived.
Levade shook his head.
"You don't look well."
"It's my chest. I haven't been well for a few weeks. I don't think the conditions are a help."
Hartmann smiled.
"I'll see if I can get the nurses to look at you. We had a doctor on this staircase but he was deported."
"These deportations," said Levade.
"Where do they go?"
"Pitchipoi'. That's what we tell the children. It's a name they made up in the infirmary. They go to Poland."
"And what happens there?"
Hartmann raised his shoulders and spread his hands a little. Levade looked into his face: his eyes, Levade noticed, were of a remarkable deep brown with a thin bar of light at the centre.
"In theory," Hartmann said, 'they work. In fact. In fact, I don't really know.
But there are rumours, there are stories you'll hear in the camp."
"And what do they say, these rumours?"
Hartmann shook his head slowly.
"I don't think it matters. I think we'll find out, you and I."
Levade was lying on his bed, with Hartmann standing next to him.
Levade said, "Why are you here? What was your crime?"
"My crime... aah. So many crimes. As far as they were concerned, the problem was that I wasn't wearing a star. I lived in a little town in Brittany, in the Occupied Zone, and someone informed the local police that I was a Jew and was refusing to wear the star."
Levade smiled.
"Like me. My papers weren't stamped with the right word."
"My mother's family isn't Jewish anyway," said Hartmann.
"My father was an atheist. But they needed people to make up numbers.
I've been here six months now. That's how I got appointed to this elevated position, and because I'm a lawyer. The authorities like lawyers for some reason. I suppose they think we're intelligent. Or honest, perhaps." He laughed.
"Who was it that chose you?"
"The gendarmes. They run the camp really. Officially, the national police are in charge, and it's their commissioner who's the commander of the camp.
But they keep at arm's length, they feel happier that way, being the guardians of public order, doing the bidding of the Government but allowing the gendarmes to do the dirty work."
"And these people with the armbands. Who are they?"
"There's a sort of Jewish administration, too. The gendarmes get us to run the place as much as possible. These people are orderlies. It's the same principle as the Germans using the French police. But if you're the head of a staircase, you can do some good, you're not just working for the enemy.
You can help people, you can try to keep their spirits up. We have times of bad morale. Before a deportation there are a lot of suicides. People throw themselves from the windows."
Levade closed his eyes. Perhaps it was illness as much as religious stoicism that was keeping him at a distance from the circumstances he was in; or perhaps they were simply too strange to be fully apprehended.
He said, "How long do people stay here before they're deported?"
"Not long," said Hartmann.
"We had a lull during the winter when no trains seemed to leave, but now it's starting up again. It's a few weeks for most people, and for some just a few days."
"And who chooses the people?"
"To some extent the Jewish authorities choose. They try to send foreigners before the French, and they try to keep back veterans of the war. But the police can throw in anyone they like, and so can the Germans. In the end it's a matter of chance."
"And the children?"
"Yes, they can go, too. Once they were ruled out, but not any more."
"I see. And are you a veteran of the war?"
"Yes, but only at the end, from 1917. I was too young to go in before.
And you?"
"Yes. Four years. Verdun. The smell here ' " I know," said Hartmann.
"It takes you back."
Levade had closed his eyes again. He felt the other man's hand on his wrist.
He said, "I'll get someone to come and examine you. Perhaps you should sleep now."
But Levade was already dreaming.
Sylvie Cariteau took her bicycle from the square and set off into the countryside. The post office was closed on Wednesday afternoon, so she had plenty of time, but she wanted to be back before it was dark.
It took her an hour to reach the farm where the boys were being kept.
She felt unsure of her reception as she pedalled down the muddy track; she never really knew if they regarded her as their saviour or their gaoler, and Andre had become sensitive and strange in the course of the long months without his parents.
Andre turned out to be in his best mood, skipping and talking incessantly, eager to share with Sylvie the marvels of his new home.
He was, or could be, the most delightful child, she thought, and little Jacob never complained, but just tagged along in his own time.
Anne-Marie's mother was in the kitchen, a woman of the same generation as Sylvie Cariteau's own mother, and of a similarly reticent character.
She was not pleased at having two extra mouths to feed, but her husband had told her it would work out for them in the long run. He had given Sylvie a mysterious and conspiratorial look.
In the course of the afternoon, Anne-Marie herself came back from work in her cafe and joined in the games Sylvie was playing with the boys.
Then she set to work to make a large omelette with eggs she sent Andre to gather from the hen coop. She even had butter to set foaming in the blackened skillet she put on the stove.
They were halfway through the meal when Anne-Marie suddenly raised her finger to her lips.
"Ssh. I can hear a car. Quick. Upstairs. Quick!"
Andre and Jacob scrambled up the ladder while Anne-Marie gathered their plates into the sink.
"It's not your father's van?" said Sylvie.
"No. He has no petrol. Wait here."
Anne-Marie, a slight woman beneath her lumpy winter clothes, went to the door and stood with her hands on her hips.
Coming into the yard was an open-topped German military vehicle with four men in it, their rifles pointing skyward from between their knees.
Anne-Marie stayed where she was as they climbed out and crossed the muddy farmyard.
The tallest of the four men stepped forward.
"You have Jews here," he said in French.
"We take them. Jewish boys."
"I don't know what you're talking about. There are no boys here. Just my mother and me. And a friend."
"Move." The German sergeant pushed past her, followed by the corporal and the private who had been at the Domaine, and another private who was part of the detachment at Lavaurette.
The sergeant shouted an order to the other three, who began to move about the kitchen, turning over the furniture, opening cupboards.
"What do you want?" said Anne-Marie's mother.
The sergeant stopped at the door to the next room.
"The French police say there are Jews here. Two boys. We take them."
A cry from one of the privates brought the other three over to his corner of the room. He was pointing to a padlocked door that led into a back storeroom.
"Where's the key?" said the sergeant.
Anne-Marie shrugged.
"No key."
The sergeant hammered at the lock with the butt of his rifle until he broke the housing off the door frame.
While all four men were in the back room the women looked at each other.
Sylvie Cariteau held her hand across her mouth. Anne-Marie's eyes darted back and forth between the other two, her lips set resolutely together.
The soldiers returned.
"Where are they?" The sergeant grabbed Annemarie by the lapels of her thick woollen jacket and Anne-Marie spat in his face. He pushed her back on the table, ripping the cloth of her coat and the dress beneath, half baring the breasts she had for so long exposed to Levade.
He paused for a moment, then seemed to recollect himself. He pointed to the ladder in the corner of the room and gave another order. The three others climbed up, and Sylvie Cariteau watched their boots disappear into the gloom above. She heard their footsteps overhead and wondered how well the boys were hidden.
The sergeant turned away from Anne-Marie and began to look round the kitchen again.
Anne-Marie leaned over and whispered in Sylvie's ear, "If you and I can detain them, perhaps Maman can get the boys out at the back, through the window." She said the word 'detain' in a way that made its meaning clear to Sylvie Cariteau, who hesitated for a moment, then mournfully nodded.
Anne-Marie whispered to her mother, who pursed her lips.
"What's this?" The German sergeant was holding up a book he had found on the floor by the sink. It was the story of the crocodile who lost her egg.
He raised his eyebrows as he advanced once more towards Annemarie. He spoke softly this time.
"Where are they?"
"There's no one," said Anne-Marie, though her voice had begun to tremble.
The two privates and the corporal came back down the ladder.
The corporal shrugged and spoke briefly in German. The sergeant smiled sceptically and shook his head, too, as he held up the book.
The private who had been overpowered by Julien at the Domaine stepped forward and grabbed Sylvie Cariteau by the hair, twisting her head.
She screamed in pain as she turned her body round in the chair.
She pulled herself free from his grasp and stood up. She glanced for a second at Anne-Marie, as though for confirmation, and then, to the private's visible amazement, embraced him.
He pushed her back, but then seemed to think again, as though it was not so much what was offered as the way in which it was being made available that displeased him. He muttered to the corporal, who took Sylvie Cariteau by the arms while the private wrenched at the waistband of her skirt. As it tore, he began to shout at her and slap her in the face.
The sergeant watched indifferently as her clothes were ripped. Beneath the skirt there was a pair of silk drawers with a satin edge of daisies and forget-menots.
The sergeant turned back to Anne-Marie and said something to the other private, who held her arms while the sergeant pulled away the clothes from her chest. His movements were slow and quite deliberate, unlike those of the corporal, who was slapping Sylvie Cariteau in a frenzy.
Both had loosened their belts and were fumbling with the fastenings of their trousers, pushing the women back against the kitchen table, while the other two men held them down.
Anne-Marie's mother was screaming.
"Stop it, stop it, stop it, you pigs. They're upstairs. I'll show you.
Stop it." She battered the sergeant's shoulder with her small fists.
"The boys. I'll show you.
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