The Children of Freedom. Marc Levy

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