I waited for the response. It didn’t come. Suddenly, to my utter stupefaction, I saw Thomas, about ten yards or so from me, get to his feet. He was standing there quite relaxed, one hip leaning against the little wall, gun resting along his forearm. If it is possible to yell in a whisper, that’s what I did: “Get down!”
“They’re waving a white flag,” he said calmly, turning his head in my direction with infuriating slowness.
“Get down!” I shouted in a furious voice.
He did as I said. I crawled back to the peephole and took a look at the wall opposite. The bow, now almost completely visible, was being waved to and fro, though it was impossible to see the hand doing the waving, and from its upper extremity there hung a white handkerchief. I took out the binoculars and examined the top of the wall very carefully along its entire length. I could see nothing. I lowered the binoculars, made a megaphone of my hands, and said in patois, “What do you want, you over there with your white rag?”
No reply. I repeated the question in French.
“Give myself up!” a young-sounding voice answered.
I shouted, “Hold up your bow with both hands behind your head, and walk toward us.”
There was a silence. I raised the binoculars again. The bow and its white flag were in exactly the same position. Thomas rubbed one foot against the ground as he shifted position. I signaled to him to stay still and listened as hard as I could. I couldn’t hear even the slightest sound. I waited a full minute, then without lowering the binoculars I shouted, “All right, what are you waiting for?”
“You won’t shoot at me?” the voice answered.
“Of course not.”
Another few seconds went by, then I saw the man stand up on the other side of his wall, very big in the binoculars, bow behind his head, held in both hands as I had ordered. I lowered the binoculars and snatched up my gun.
“Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“When he gets here, move to the peephole and keep watch. Don’t take your eyes off that wall.”
“Right.”
The man grew steadily larger. He was walking very quickly, almost running. To my great surprise he was young, with a great mane of reddish blond hair. Unshaven. He stopped on the other side of our wall.
I said, “Throw your bow over here, then climb over yourself, clasp your hands behind your head, and get down on your knees. I have eight shots left in my magazine. Remember that.”
He did as I said. He was a big, thickset lad, dressed in very faded jeans, a mended checked shirt, and an old brown jacket coming apart at one shoulder and with one pocket half torn off. Face pale, eyes lowered.
“Look at me.”
He raised his eyelids and the look in his eyes was a shock. Not at all what I was expecting. Nothing cunning or malevolent there. On the contrary. Limpid golden-brown eyes, almost childlike in their innocence, and all of a piece with his rounded features, his good-natured nose, his wide full-lipped mouth. Nothing shifty about him either. I had told him to look at me. So he was looking at me. Frightened, ashamed, like a little boy expecting to be told off. I squatted down two yards from him, gun pointed in his direction. Without raising my voice, I said, “Are you alone?”
“Yes.” It had come far too quickly.
“Listen carefully. I’ll ask that again. Are you alone?”
“Yes.” This time an almost imperceptible hesitation.
I suddenly switched subjects. “How many arrows did you have left?”
“Up there?”
“Yes.”
He pondered. “A dozen,” he said. But there was uncertainty in his voice. Then he added, “Perhaps a few less.”
An odd kind of bowman, if he hadn’t bothered to count his arrows! I said, “Let’s say ten then.”
“Yes, ten. Perhaps ten.”
I looked at him, then in a quick, harsh voice I suddenly asked, “So if you had ten more arrows why did you surrender?”
He blushed, opened his mouth, but was unable to find his voice. There was panic in his eyes. He hadn’t expected that question. It had caught him on the wrong foot. He just knelt there dumbfounded, incapable of thinking up an answer, incapable even of speech.
In an even harsher voice I said, “Turn with your back to me and put your hands on the top of your head.”
He lurched clumsily around on his knees.
“Sit back on your heels.”
He obeyed.
“Now listen. I’m going to ask you a question. Just one. If you lie, I shall blow your brains out.” I pressed the barrel of my gun against the back of his head. “Have you got that?”
“Yes,” he said in a scarcely audible voice. I could feel his head quivering against the gun.
“Now listen carefully. I shan’t ask you the same question twice. If you lie, I fire.” I paused, then in the same quick, harsh voice, I said, “Who was with you behind the wall?”
In a voice I could only just hear, he said, “My father.”
“Who else?”
“No one else.”
I pushed the gun hard against his head. “Who else?”
He answered without hesitation, “No one else.” This time he wasn’t lying. I was sure of that.
“Does your father have another bow?”
“No. A gun.”
I saw Thomas turn to look at us, mouth open in shock. I signaled to him to go back to keeping watch and said, “He has a gun?”
“Yes. A double-barreled shotgun.”
“So your father had a gun and you had the bow?”
“No. I didn’t have anything.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t let me touch the gun.”
“And the bow?”
“Nor the bow neither.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t trust me.”
A jolly family they sounded. A certain image of the troglodytes’ home life began to take shape in my mind.
“And it was your father who told you to surrender?”
“Yes.”
“And to say you were alone?”
“Yes.”
Of course. And the battle over, relaxed and confident, we would have stood up, poor fools, set off to collect our Amarante, and walked straight into dear Papa’s line of fire, while he waited for us cozily behind his wall with his double-barreled shotgun. One barrel each.
I tightened my lips and said harshly, “Unbuckle your belt.”
He did as he was told and then, without waiting to be given the order, placed his hands back on his head. His docility made me feel a little sorry for him—despite his size and his broad shoulders, a kid. A kid terrorized by his father, and now by me. I told him to put his hands behind his back, then fastened them securely with the belt. It was only when I’d finished that I remembered the cord in my pocket. I used it to tie his feet, then removed his handkerchief from the tip of the bow and gagged him with it. I did it all decisively and swiftly, but at the same time I was standing outside myself and watching my own actions as though I was an actor in a film. I went over and knelt beside Thomas. “You heard all that?”
“Yes.” He turned to look at me. He was looking pale. In a quiet voice, and with what in him amounted to emotion, he added, “And thanks.”
“Thanks for what?”
“For making me get down just now.”
I didn’t answer. I was thinking things over. By now the father must know that his trap had been sprung, but a little thing like that wasn’t going to stop him trying again. So we weren’t out of the woods yet. We couldn’t stay where we were and we couldn’t just get up and go.
“Thomas,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“You stay and watch the wall, the cliff, and the hill. I’m going to try and get behind him up the hill.”
“You’ll be in the open.”
“Not at first. And as soon as you see anything from down here, even the barrel of his gun, shoot. And go on shooting. At least it will make him keep his
head down.”
I set off along the wall, crawling toward the hill. After a few yards the hand holding my gun began sweating, and my heart was thumping. But I was pleased with the way I’d spoiled the troglodyte’s little trick. I felt confident and clearheaded.
The hillside to the south of the no man’s land between the two walls jutted out in a kind of spur, terminating in a rounded buttress falling steeply to the little plain. I was counting on this spur to conceal me from the father until I was high enough to sight down on him. But what I hadn’t counted on was the difficulty of the actual climb. The slope was very steep, the ground crumbly and covered with pebbles, and now that there was no vegetation left, every handhold and foothold was insecure. I was forced to sling my gun over my shoulder and use both hands. After ten minutes I was drenched in sweat, my legs were trembling, and I was so out of breath that I had to stop and rest.
I stood there for a moment, holding on with great difficulty, even using both hands, one foot lodged against a small outcrop of rock. A few yards above me I could see the top of the spur, or rather the place at which it merged with the line of the hill. Once I reached that point I would be visible to the man behind his wall below, and I wondered with dread in my heart how I was going to keep cool enough to pull my weapon over my shoulder and take aim without losing my balance. I was clinging there, the sweat dripping over my eyes, my limbs shaking with the tremendous effort I had made, chest heaving in order to get back my breath, and so disheartened that I was on the verge of giving up my plan and climbing down again, when suddenly, I had no idea why, with the blood thundering in my temples, I thought of Germain. Or more precisely, I suddenly saw Germain in my mind’s eye, shirtsleeves rolled up, sawing wood in the yard of Les Sept Fayards. He was a tall, heavy man, and because he suffered from emphysema, when he pushed himself too hard physically his breathing took on a very particular note—jerky, choking, and whistling all at the same time.
And as my own breathing quieted down and my temples stopped thudding, I suddenly became conscious of a fact that shook me to my boots. I was actually hearing Germain’s breathing. It wasn’t my own, as I had at first thought before it calmed down. I could hear it quite distinctly, and it was coming from the other slope of the spur, from a point separated from the spot where I was standing by no more than the thickness of a few feet of scree. The father, on the far side of the spur, was climbing a path that would converge with mine at the top.
Sweat sprang from every pore in my body, and I thought my heart was going to stop. If the father reached the top before me, then he would see me first. I was done for. Whatever happened I was caught; there was certainly no time to get down again. I realized in a flash that my life depended on the next two or three seconds, and that my only chance was to rush headlong forward and attack at once. I began climbing again, with the savage energy of the mad, no longer even noticing the fragments of rock I sent skittering down behind me, certain that the man on the other side, deafened by the noise of his own breathing, would never hear me.
I reached the top. I was in despair, almost certain that I was going to find myself looking into the barrel of his gun, so close did the forge-bellows rasp of his breathing sound. I was up there. Nothing to be seen. It was as though a ton weight had been lifted off my chest. And then, coming right on top of my sudden relief, I had another utterly incredible piece of luck. Only a yard away I saw a fairly large and solid tree stump that enabled me to jam my left knee firmly on the ground in front of it and guarantee my balance on the slope, my right leg stretched straight behind me with my foot against a stone. I pulled the sling of the gun up over my head, thumbed off the safety catch, and held the rifle in front of me, butt under my arm, ready to shoulder it and fire. I listened as the raucous, choking sound drew nearer. I kept my eyes fixed on the precise spot, scarcely ten yards away, where the man’s head was going to appear, resisting a sudden temptation to glance back down to the little plain below and Thomas behind his wall. I concentrated my whole being on remaining still, relaxing, and keeping my breathing smooth.
The wait, which I think must have lasted several seconds at the most, seemed interminable. My left knee jammed against the stump was going numb, and I could feel all my muscles, even those in my face, gradually and painfully tensing as though I was slowly turning into stone.
The head appeared, then the shoulders, then the chest. Entirely absorbed by sheer physical effort, or else because he was searching for footholds, the man kept his face lowered and did not see me. I brought the rifle up to my shoulder, nestled the butt firmly into the hollow below my collarbone, lowered my cheek against it, and held my breath. At that moment something happened that I had not intended. I found myself looking along my sights straight at the father’s heart. At that distance I couldn’t miss. But my finger remained inert around the trigger. I couldn’t bring myself to fire.
The father raised his head, our eyes met. Immediately, and with incredible swiftness, he brought his gun up to his shoulder. There was a series of cracks and I actually saw the bullets go through his shirt and tear it. A gush of blood, unbelievably copious and powerful it seemed to me, spurted from the wound, the eyes rolled upward, the mouth gaped in a frantic effort to suck in air, then the whole body swayed backward and fell. I heard him tumbling back down the slope he had just climbed amid a great rattle of stones dislodged by his fall, echoing and re-echoing up the gorge beyond.
As I climbed back down I saw that Thomas had climbed our little wall, crossed diagonally through the little meadow, his gun under his arm, and was about to inspect the corpse. Once down on the flat, I went over to untie the son. When he saw me, his eyes widened with stupefaction and fear. His belief in his father’s invincibility had been so deeply anchored in his mind that he just couldn’t believe I had come back alive. Nor was he able to believe me when I told him that his father was dead. “All right then,” I said, gently pushing him in front of me with the barrel of my gun. “Come and take a look.”
As we made our way toward the body we met Thomas on his way back from his inspection. He had removed the father’s cartridge pouch and shotgun, which he was carrying slung over his left shoulder, the right one being already occupied by his own. In the heart, he said, looking pale. Several bullets in a tight group. As he spoke I removed the magazine from my rifle. It was empty. So I’d fired five shots. But Thomas shook his head when I said I thought I’d seen them pierce the skin. At the speed with which they left the barrel my eyes couldn’t conceivably have followed them. What I had seen were the successive tears in the shirt after the bullets had perforated it, one by one.
“You can rest easy,” he said. “He died instantly.” Then he added, “I’ll leave you here. I must go and pick up the arrows. Don’t forget I’m the storekeeper around here.” And after making a rather unsuccessful attempt at a smile, he walked off.
He was pretty shaken, and I was too when I saw the body. What a hash the chest was! And that white face, drained of blood, I shall never forget it. Try as I might, I could find not the slightest common denominator between the insignificant pressure of my finger on the trigger and the destruction it had unleashed. I told myself that the swine who had pressed the button to unleash the atomic war must have been feeling the same sort of thing, at least if he had survived in his concrete bunker.
The troglodyte must have been about fifty. Tremendously strong. A big heavy man with reddish blond hair, dressed in a filthy pair of brown corduroy pants and a tattered jacket of the same color. I looked down at that great body, so full of strength and so empty of life. I looked across at the son too. He was clearly not feeling the slightest trace of grief. He looked just stupefied and relieved. Suddenly he turned toward me, gazed at me with frightened respect, then grabbed my right hand and bent down to kiss it. I pushed him away. I didn’t want any part in that kind of transference. However, when I saw the fear and bewilderment that appeared in his eyes, I asked his name. His name was Jacquet (the diminutive of Jacques).
&nb
sp; “Jacquet,” I said in a flat voice, “go and help Thomas collect up the arrows.”
It was high time he went away. I thought I was going to faint. My legs were cotton, my eyes swimming. I sat down at the bottom of the slope, three yards away from the troglodyte, then when the dizziness still didn’t go away I lay down full length on the rising ground and closed my eyes. I felt very bad. Then suddenly the sweat came. I experienced an incredibly strong and delicious sensation of coolness. I was reborn. Still as weak as ever, but it was the weakness of something just born, not the weakness of death.
After a moment I sat up again and looked at the troglodyte. Uncle Samuel had compared him to Cro-Magnon man. There was some truth in it. Underhung jaw, low forehead, jutting eyebrows. But after all, think of him washed, shaved, manicured, hair cut short, his well-muscled body tightly belted into a new uniform, and he wouldn’t have looked any more primitive than many a good commando officer. Or any more stupid. Or any less skilled in that compendium of elementary animal ruses that used to be termed the Art of War: the booby trap, the ambush, the pseudo capitulation, holding an adversary in the center in order to outflank him on the right.
I stood up and walked over to join the others. They hadn’t noticed my nausea. They just assumed I’d been getting my breath back. Thomas held out the bow, and I examined it. It was a good six feet high and looked to me much more elaborate in its construction than the one I had once given Birgitta as a present.
Thomas had finished his collection. He was making all the arrows into a little bundle and tying it with the nylon cord.
“Over there,” Jacquet said, eyes on the ground, apparently too ashamed to allude to Amarante more directly.
We climbed up the narrow meadow with its tufts of yellowish grass dotted here and there, and ugly though they were, it was still a pleasure to see them. I looked at Jacquet, at his big head with its red-blond mane and his good-natured features. I caught his childlike eyes staring at me. As I said, they were golden brown, but the odd thing about them was that the irises were so big, leaving almost no room at all, as it were, for any white, so with his eyebrows raised, as they were at that moment, he had the humble, sad, pleading look of a dog. A dog that’s done something wrong and longs for you to forgive it and talk to it. He was positively brimming with willingness to please, with submission, with affection, if only he could be allowed to show it. He was also brimming with physical strength, a strength that he himself seemed barely conscious of as it radiated from his bull neck, his broad shoulders, and his long, slightly simian arms, knotted with muscles and held with a perpetual slight bend at the elbows. His big hands were the same, always half clenched around an invisible handle, never quite managing to open flat. He walked between Thomas and myself with a slightly rolling, musclebound gait, looking at one, then at the other, but especially at me, because I was more or less the same age as his father.