MONSIEUR LAVIGNE, THE CAFÉ owner, and Monsieur Varin, the teacher, were quietly talking beside the small cellar window that gave onto the vacant lot adjoining the Bloch villa. Despite the commotion caused by the killing of the Hauptmann Seeler, half a dozen boys were playing football there as usual. One was Jean-Paul, the teacher’s young son. Occasionally the ball bounced back off the brick wall of the Bloch villa.
The teacher, a shortish man, took a small wooden box and found he could see plainly through the window. A helmeted sentry with a fixed bayonet stalked back and forth before the house. Monsieur Varin looked at his watch. It was an old-fashioned timepiece, a thick, gold affair that once had belonged to his father and his grandfather. He treasured it and wore it attached to his trouser pocket by a worn leather strap. He soon discovered that the sentry walking back and forth in front of the house was out of sight of the cellar window for about twenty-one or twenty-two seconds, eleven going and eleven returning.
“Pssst... pssst... psst.... Jean-Paul... Jean-Paul!”
The boy hearing his name, yet not sure where the sound of his father’s voice came from, stood perplexed with the ball under one arm. Then he saw that face framed by the little cellar window.
“Papa....”
“Sssh... don’t look. For the love of God don’t look this way,” cautioned the teacher. “Wait until the Fridolin gets past. Play! Kick that ball!”
The boy instantly obeyed. As soon as the sentry vanished from sight, he kicked the round balloon almost up to the window and leaned down.
“Papa!”
“Sssh, a message. I’m giving you a message for Madame Borel, out on the road to Varengeville. Understand?”
The boy understood. He gulped. “Ouai, ouai. I understand,” he panted, now frightened at the sight of his father behind the barred window. He took the ball, whirled, kicked it high into the air and raced after it.
The sentry turned, stomped his heels, and went into his act. Except for the little cellar window which the man had failed to notice, all the windows of the Bloch villa giving onto the empty lot had been bricked up. Hence he paid little attention to the band of boys at play. As soon as he disappeared, Jean-Paul grabbed the ball, kicked it toward the window, ran after it, and knelt down to hear his father’s instructions.
“Listen carefully. Go get your bicycle. And your fishing pole. Go to the end of town and tell the sentry if he stops you that you are going fishing. Then get to Madame Borel’s house as soon as you can, and explain what has happened. That we have been taken by the Fritz.”
The lad rushed away as Monsieur Varin stepped down from the wooden box. His face was wet with anxiety. Would the boy get through? Could Madame Borel summon help in time? Is the old truck available?
“Whoof! At least there is a chance. If they get here before the hour is up. How much left?”
“Thirty-six minutes.”
“Eh, juste! If they get that old Berleit truck they used to derail the train at Montford. The sides are armored. This will take time. Also men and guns to tackle these Silesians. But boldness must pay off. With the old truck they can make it here in fifteen, eighteen minutes. Unless they run into a German patrol.”
Everyone listened with attention. Nobody in that cellar had suspected that Monsieur Varin was so close to the Resistance, yet no one was greatly surprised. He seemed to assume leadership.
At this point the door above opened and a helmeted soldier entered, followed by another who stood at the top of the stairs watching with a gun. The first man handed each of the hostages a pencil and a pad of paper. No words were spoken. Nor were any necessary. Each one turned the pad over, examining it. The pads were blocks of old German army orders, blank on the back.
The soldiers left, relocking the cellar door, leaving the six looking down at those ominous squares of paper. Still nobody said a word. Nothing the Herr Oberst could have done would have been so utterly final.
“Ah—” A kind of sob came from young René Le Gallec, curled up on the dirt floor. “Ah, mon père,” he addressed the priest. “Once you said that someday I would be good enough to play for France. You should know; you played for France long ago. Now I shall never, never...” he cried.
“Chut!” The priest leaned down and placed his hand on the shoulder of the boy. “Come, René, we are not lost yet. We are alive. They may send us to Germany, but we shall return. The Fridolins are beaten; they know it themselves. See, the Herr Oberst is now commanding the garrison. They cannot find an officer to relieve him!”
In a little while everyone except the farmer Marquet was writing. The teacher, crouched against the wall, had his pad on his knees. He wrote clumsily with the aid of his magnifying glass, forehead wrinkled, eyebrows raised in the air.
By ancestry I am at least partly a Jew, although not by religion, for in all honesty I have never attended any synagogue or professed any creed. Yet I feel neither pride nor shame in my origins; indeed I never think about them save in the presence of an anti-Semite, of whom there appear to be many in my beloved France today. First of all, I am a Frenchman. Second, a teacher of French youth. Third, a Marxist, something that, like my origin I have never attempted to conceal. Why should I? My great great grandfather served as a soldier of Napoleon at Austerlitz. My grandfather was wounded in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. I, myself, was twice wounded in the battles along the Somme in the campaigns of 1917 and 1918. I fought through the disaster of 1940. Because of this or because of my decorations—for the Germans like the French have a military tradition and a respect for soldiers, even their enemies—I have not been sent away from my home here in Nogent-Plage. Hence this France, from which today some of my compatriots would like to exile me, remains the land where my emotions are fixed, my being is centered. I have drunk her culture. I have done my best to defend her honor with my body, to help train her youth. I breathe fully only when in her climate. Next to my wife whom I adore, and my dear son Jean-Paul who is my pride and joy, I count my country as my nearest and dearest.
Adieu La France,
Georges Varin
Across the room, Marcel Deschamps the fisherman was kneeling before the priest. René Le Gallec waited his turn. The farmer Marquet, his head between his hands, sat motionless on the bench. He had written nothing and was muttering to himself.
For how can you write a letter of farewell to a horse named Sebastian?