The Children of Freedom

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 (#ulink_4ae6831f-d135-5d74-8896-de73e023af11)

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.’