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.
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 he finds out he’s been sidelined. And I can’t even admit to him that it relieves me to know that, this morning, his life won’t be in danger.
The thing that doubly reassures me is that Boris is a third-year medical student, so if I’m wounded in the operation he may be able to save me, even if that’s completely idiotic, because, in an operation, the greatest risk isn’t being wounded but quite simply being arrested or killed, which in the end comes to the same thing in most cases.
All that being said, I must admit that Boris wasn’t wrong. My mind was perhaps slightly elsewhere while he was speaking; but to be honest, I’ve always had an annoying penchant for daydreaming; at school, my teachers said I had a ‘distracted’ nature. That was before the head of the school sent me home on the day I turned up for the baccalaureate examinations. With my name, it really wasn’t possible to take the diploma.
Right, I’m focused now on the operation to come; if not, at best I’m going to be ticked off by comrade Boris, who is taking the trouble to explain how things are going to proceed, and at worst, he’ll remove me from the mission for not paying attention.
‘Are you listening to me?’ he says.
‘Yes, yes, of course!’
‘As soon as we’ve spotted our target, you will check that the revolver’s safety catch is definitely off. We’ve already seen friends have serious disappointments by thinking that their weapon was jammed, when they’d stupidly forgotten to take off the security catch.’
I did indeed think that this was idiotic, but when you’re afraid, really afraid, you’re much less skilful; do believe what I say. The important thing was not to interrupt Boris and to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘It must be an officer, we don’t kill ordinary soldiers. Did you get that? We’ll follow him at a distance, neither too close, nor too far. I will deal with the neighbouring perimeter. You approach the guy, you empty your magazine and you count the shots carefully so that you have one bullet left. That’s very important for the getaway – you could need it, you never know. I will be covering the getaway. You think only of pedalling. If people try to step in front of you, I’ll intervene to protect you. Whatever happens, don’t turn back. You pedal and you pedal hard, do you understand me?’
I tried to say yes, but my mouth was so dry that my tongue was stuck to it. Boris concluded that I was in agreement and went on.
‘When you’re quite a long way away, slow down and mess around like any lad on a bike. Except you’re going to ride around for a long time. If anyone has followed you, you must be aware of it and never run the risk of leading him to your address. Go around the docks, and stop frequently, to check if you recognise a face you’ve encountered more than once. Don’t
