The Children of Freedom. Marc Levy

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