The Children of Freedom

The affair was an important one. A police superintendent answering to the name of Caussié took over, and for days Marcel was beaten. He didn’t let slip a single name or address. The conscientious superintendent went to Lyon to consult his superiors. At last the French police and the Gestapo had a case that they could use as an example: a foreigner in possession of explosives, and what’s more he was a Jew and a Communist too; in other words a perfect terrorist and an eloquent example that they were going to use to stem any desire for resistance in the population.

Once charged, Marcel was handed over to the special section of the public prosecutor’s department. Deputy Public Prosecutor Lespinasse, a man of the extreme right who was fiercely anti-Communist and dedicated to the Vichy regime, would be the ideal prosecutor; the Marshal’s government could count on his fidelity. With him, the law would be applied without any restraint, without any attenuating circumstances, without any concern for the context. Scarcely had Lespinasse been given the task when, swollen with pride, he swore before the court to obtain Marcel’s head.

In the meantime, the young woman who had escaped arrest had gone to warn the brigade. The friends immediately got into contact with Maître Arnal, one of the best lawyers at the court. For him the enemy was German, and the moment had come to take up position in favour of these people who were being persecuted without reason. The brigade had lost Marcel, but it had just won over to its cause a man of influence, who was respected in the town. When Catherine talked to him about his fees, Arnal refused to be paid.

The morning of 11 June 1943 will be terrible, terrible in the memory of partisans. Everyone’s leading their own lives and soon destinies will intersect. Marcel is in his cell. He looks out through the skylight at the dawn; today is the day of his trial. He knows he’s going to be convicted, he has little hope. In an apartment not far from there, the old lawyer who is in charge of his defence is putting his notes in order. His domestic help comes into his office and asks him if he wants her to make him some breakfast. But Maître Arnal isn’t hungry on this morning of 11 June 1943. All night he has heard the voice of the deputy prosecutor demanding his client’s head; all night he has tossed and turned in his bed, searching for strong words, the right words that will counter the indictment of his adversary, prosecuting counsel Lespinasse.

And while Maître Arnal revises again and again, the fearsome Lespinasse enters the dining room of his opulent house. He sits down at the table, opens his newspaper and drinks his morning coffee, which is served to him by his wife, in the dining room of his opulent house.

In his cell, Marcel is also drinking the hot brew brought to him by the warder. An usher has just delivered him his citation to appear before the special Session of the Toulouse Court. Marcel looks out through the skylight. He thinks about his little girl, his wife, down there somewhere in Spain, on the other side of the mountains.

Lespinasse’s wife stands up and kisses her husband on the cheek. She leaves for a meeting about good works. The deputy prosecutor puts on his overcoat and looks at himself in the mirror, proud of his fine appearance, convinced that he will win. He knows his text by heart, a strange paradox for a man who really doesn’t have one – a heart, that is. A black Citroën waits outside his house and is already driving him to the courthouse.

On the other side of town, a gendarme chooses his best shirt from his wardrobe. It is white, and the collar has been starched. He is the one who arrested the accused and today he has been summoned to appear. As he ties his tie, young gendarme Cabannac has moist hands. There is something not right about what is going to happen, something rotten, and Cabannac knows it; what’s more, if it happened again he would let him get away, that guy with the black suitcase. The enemies are the Boche, not lads like him. But he thinks of the French State and its administrative mechanism. He is a mere cog and he can’t be found wanting. He knows the mechanism well, does Gendarme Cabannac; his father taught him all about it, and the morality that goes with it. At the weekend, he enjoys repairing his motorbike in his father’s shed. He knows full well that if one piece happens to be missing, the whole mechanism seizes up. So, with moist hands, Cabannac tightens the knot of his tie on the starched collar of his fine white shirt and heads for the tram stop.

A black Citroën moves away into the distance and overtakes the tram. At the back of the carriage, sitting on the wooden bench, an old man rereads his notes. Maître Arnal looks up and then plunges back into his reading. The game promises to be a hard one but nothing is lost. It is unthinkable that a French court could sentence a patriot to death. Langer is a brave man, one of those who act because they are valiant. He knew that as soon as he met him in his cell. His face was so misshapen; under his cheekbones, you could make out the marks of the punches that had landed there, and the gashed lips were blue and swollen. He wonders what Marcel looked like before he was beaten up like that, before his face was punched out of shape, taking on the imprint of the violence it had suffered. They are fighting for our freedom, mused Arnal; it really isn’t complicated to work that out. If the court can’t see it yet, he’ll do his damnedest to open their eyes. Say they sentence him to prison for example, OK, that will save appearances, but death? No. That would be a judgment unworthy of French magistrates. By the time the tram halts with a screech of metal at the courthouse station, Maître Arnal has recovered the confidence necessary to plead his case well. He’s going to win this case, he’ll cross swords with his adversary, Deputy Prosecutor Lespinasse and he will save that young man’s head. Marcel Langer, he repeats to himself softly as he climbs the steps.

While Maître Arnal walks down the Palais’ long corridor, Marcel, handcuffed to a gendarme, waits in a small office.

The trial takes place in camera. Marcel is in the dock, Lespinasse stands up and doesn’t even glance at him; he scorns the man he wants to convict, and the last thing he wants is to get to know him. A few scant notes lie in front of him. First, he pays homage to the gendarmerie’s perspicacity, which ensured that a dangerous terrorist was prevented from doing harm, and then he reminds the court of its duty, that of observing the law and seeing that it is respected. Pointing at the man on trial without once looking at him, Deputy Prosecutor Lespinasse voices his accusations. He enumerates the long list of murder attempts the Germans have suffered, and he recalls also that France signed the armistice in honour and that the accused, who is not even French, has no right to call the State’s authority into question again. To grant him extenuating circumstances would be tantamount to scorning the Marshal’s word. ‘The reason the Marshal signed the armistice was for the good of the Nation,’ Lespinasse continues, with vehemence. ‘And a foreign terrorist has no right to judge to the contrary.’

Finally, to add a little humour, he reminds the court that Marcel Langer was not carrying firecrackers for the fourteenth of July, but explosives destined to destroy German installations, and so disturb the citizens’ tran-quillity. Marcel smiles. The fireworks of the fourteenth of July are a long way away.

Should the defence put forward arguments of a patriotic nature, with the aim of granting Langer extenuating circumstances, Lespinasse again reminds the court that the defendant is a stateless person, that he chose to abandon his wife and little girl in Spain, where he had previously gone to fight, although he was Polish and a stranger to the conflict. That France, in its indulgence, had welcomed him in, but not to come here, to our homeland, bringing disorder and chaos. ‘How can a man without a homeland claim to have acted according to a patriotic ideal?’ And Lespinasse sniggers at his own witticism, his turn of phrase. Fearing that the court may be afflicted with amnesia, he reminds them of the act of accusation, lists the laws that sentence such acts to capital punishment, and congratulates himself on the severity of the laws in force. Then he pauses for a moment, turns towards the man he is accusing and finally consents to look at him. ‘You are a foreigner, a Communist and a partisan, three separate reasons, each of which is sufficient for me to ask the court for your head.’ This time, he turns away towards the magistrates and in a calm voice demands that Marcel Langer should be sentenced to death.

Maître Arnal is white-faced. He stands up at the same moment as the smug Lespinasse sits down. The old lawyer’s eyes are half-closed, his chin tilted forward, his hands clenched in front of his mouth. The court is motionless, silent; the clerk barely dares lay down his pen. Even the gendarmes are holding their breath, waiting for him to speak. But for the moment, Maître Arnal cannot say anything, overcome as he is with nausea.

He is therefore the last person here to realise that the rules have been rigged, that the decision has already been taken. And yet, in his cell, Langer had told him he knew that he was condemned in advance. But the old lawyer still believed in justice and had kept on assuring him that he was wrong, that he would defend him as he should and that the judgment would be in his favour. Behind him, Maître Arnal feels Marcel’s presence, thinks he can hear him murmuring: ‘You see, I was right, but I don’t blame you, in any case, you couldn’t do anything.’

So he raises his arms, his sleeves seeming to float in the air, breathes in and launches into a final speech for the defence. How can the gendarmerie’s work be praised, when the defendant’s face bears the stigmata of the violence he has suffered? How can anyone dare to joke about the fourteenth of July in this France that no longer has the right to celebrate it? And what does the prosecutor really know about these foreigners whom he accuses?

As he got to know Langer in the visiting room, he was able to find out how much these stateless individuals, as Lespinasse calls them, love this country that has welcomed them in even to the point where, like Marcel Langer, they will sacrifice their lives to defend it. The accused is not the man the prosecutor depicts. He is a sincere and honest man, a father who loves his wife and his daughter. He did not leave Spain to join the fighting, but because, more than all, he loves humanity and human freedom. Yesterday, wasn’t France still the land of human right? Sentencing Marcel Langer to death means sentencing the hope for a better world.

Arnal’s plea lasted more than an hour, using up his last reserves of strength; but his voice rings out without an echo in this court that has already given its verdict. Today, 11 June 1943, is a sad day. The sentence has been pronounced, and Marcel will be sent to the guillotine. 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 (#ulink_a356df70-ebe6-5038-8dd1-28ca9283419a)

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?’