The Cyclist (33 page)

‘You see, Père Jean. I am so mired in mortal sin, I cannot be forgiven.’

‘What makes you say this? Have you lost your faith?’

‘No father, I have lost my soul. The Church teaches that to take another’s life knowing beforehand one is going to do it, will lead to eternal damnation.’

‘But you were an instrument of justice. God’s justice. Were you not?’

‘I thought so. I did not do it for a personal grudge. I did it because he was evil, despite anything the church may say to the contrary.’

‘Of course he was evil. All of these Nazis are evil. They commit their atrocities and their genocide in full view of the Lord God. Such things cannot go unpunished or unresisted.’

‘But the Church does not speak out against them.’

‘My son, there has been more evil perpetrated in the name of the Church than I care to think of. It is not the dogma that matters; it is what is in your heart and in your mind. Did you know when the knights went on crusades, there was always a priest to bless them when they boarded ship? He would say that it is not a sin to kill an infidel, it is the path to heaven. If it was wrong, then many went to hell unknowingly. They were good Christians too.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘My point is this, soldiers of Christ have fought evil for a thousand years, or at least what they perceived as evil. You have only done the same, perhaps not for God, but before God. It is no worse in God’s eyes than a soldier in a war.’

‘But I killed those two young soldiers too.’

‘You defended yourself and your family Auguste. I do not know you, but I understand your motives and I bless you for them. Whatever my Church’s dogma may say, you have not sinned and I will give you absolution.’

‘But you do not represent the Church in this?’

‘Of course I do, I am an ordained priest.’

‘Are you not condoning my sins?’

‘Not condoning. You care, you see. If you did not, it would be hard to absolve you. Let me give you absolution.’

Père Jean spoke the Latin ritual and for Auguste it was as if it washed over him. The words flowed and although he hungered for it to end, Auguste felt, layer by layer, his sin stripping away. Deeds, words, choices, circumstances, slipped from him. Doubt, anxiety, uncertainty were replaced by a conviction he had been right. When he emerged from the confessional it was as if he was reborn, a weight lifted and his mood elevated. All his ruminant thoughts seemed wasted now. He wondered whether the purging of his soul would make his remaining life safe.

Looking at the priest, his eyes moistened. It was involuntary and he heard Pierre’s voice in his head saying ‘of all the men I know, you are the most readily brought to tears.’ He wondered whether it came from childhood or recent times. Pierre did not understand. It was a matter of soul and conscience. How could a man be unemotional about that? It was a matter of the soul foremost, his very being, according to his beliefs.

 Would his soul now rest secure in the arms of this reprieve? Forgiveness was something he believed in but he could still find no trace of it in his heart for Brunner. He remembered the look on Brunner’s face when they hanged the five Frenchmen. He pictured how the man licked his lips, the smile at the end and his wish to celebrate. Brunner had been a demon and Auguste knew the truth of it now; he had fought God’s good fight and now, absolved, he was free. He felt liberated as never before.

He took the priest’s hand and looked him in the eyes.

‘Père Jean, I am truly grateful.’

‘Bless you my son, but I am only fulfilling the role thrust upon me by God. I will carry your burden for you. Put all those troubles behind you.’

Auguste turned away and as he walked towards his wife, he thought her face shone with the love he felt for her. He felt he was now free to love her, as she deserved, without the fetters of his darkened conscience, without a tarnished soul.

Odette smiled at Auguste as she stood to approach the priest. Auguste touched her shoulder, reassuring and gentle. She smiled and approached Pére Jean. Auguste watched as she crossed herself and entered the confessional. She gave her confession and Auguste noted she prayed for half an hour afterwards. He stood looking at her from the doorway and he wondered what she could have confessed. He could not imagine her to be a sinner. He concluded love alters the way you see other’s actions and words.

A hand on his shoulder interrupted him.

‘Is your soul cleansed now, my friend?’

‘Pierre, you are such an irritating bastard.’

‘I’m no bastard. I’m a Jew,’ Pierre said, grinning from ear to ear.

They rested for the remainder of the night and Auguste slept deeply, as if the absolution from this renegade priest had taken away his burden of guilt over the killings. When he woke, he began to doubt again whether this priest could, in reality, forgive his crimes. He was certain the larger crime, the internments and arrests under his orders, could not be forgiven and he realised he had never mentioned these to anyone except Odette.

Midmorning came and went and the girls seemed rested. He walked out but there seemed nowhere to go. A hundred yards along the road, he stared back at the church. A picture came into his mind of bodies, lying haphazard in death, limbs twisted and tangled. Above a figure swung, hanged from the spire. The picture disappeared in a second and did not come again. He wondered at the vision and thought his overwrought mind played tricks on him. He said nothing but he knew he was still under pressure.

Then he heard the trucks. From where he stood, there was a good view of the northern road and upon it, he saw three military trucks approaching. The pitch of the engines rose and fell as the trucks negotiated the pitted and uneven road and they seemed to Auguste to be moving at a ponderous pace. He ran. He had to warn his family. Where could they hide in the village? If it came to a fight, he resolved they would not take him alive. But what of the children? His heart raced, he sweated and he arrived at the church steps too breathless to speak.

2

‘Auguste. What’s wrong?’

Odette came to his side, Pierre behind her.

Breathing hard, Auguste said, ‘Soldiers. Trucks. Three of them, coming this way.’

Pierre turned. He ran to the back of the church to the vestry. In a moment, Père Jean appeared signalling them to come. Odette and Auguste roused the children. Bewildered as they were, the whole group stood with the priest in front of the altar. Père Jean leaned forward and pushed. The silence gave way to a grating sound and the altar pivoted back revealing stairs to an underground cellar.

‘Quick, hurry,’ the priest said and without thinking further they descended to the damp earthlined space below ground.

In seconds, the darkness enveloped them. It felt like jumping into a dark pool and realising there would be no light, only movement. Auguste lit one of his remaining matches. It provided enough illumination to find a small oil lamp standing against the far wall. He lit the lamp and by its poor illumination, they could see they were in a hollowed out space capable of holding twenty or so people.

Auguste held the lamp aloft but there was nothing else to see.

‘Dowse the light,’ Pierre whispered, his voice conveying the urgency they all felt. August doused the lamp. They stood still and listened. August became aware of a small hand grasping his and he squatted down and picked up the child. He was uncertain at first whether it was Zara or Monique.

‘Shh,’ he whispered.

Monique whispered back, ‘Yes Uncle.’

The sibilant sounds of their voices resounded in the cellar-space and all of them realised the walls amplified every sound. They stood in silence. Monique shivered in Auguste’s arms and he held her tight.

There was a sound above them. Auguste could hear booted feet clacking on the flagstones. He felt for his gun, with his left hand still clutching Pierre’s daughter. His eyes became accustomed to the dark and he identified a chink in the otherwise perfect blackness above him, where they had descended. The ray of light blinked at him and he knew there were men walking back and forth.

In the silence, they stood waiting. Auguste sweated. He racked his brain trying to recall whether they had left any trace of their night’s sleep in the church. He trusted the priest to have checked, but in his policing experience, he had learned to check things himself. He felt his heart beating against his ribs and his breathing quicken.

Auguste found himself praying. He began with, ‘Hail Mary Mother of God...’ the line repeating itself in his head over and again. Silence reigned all around him. No one spoke and no one moved.

It seemed an age before anything happened. In reality Auguste knew it could only have been half an hour or so, but the time seemed to pass with such dreary sluggishness the little girl he was holding began wriggling and squirming. He let her go and she must have felt her way to her father for he heard the word ‘bubeleh’ whispered soft and deep. He was on the verge of panic. He wondered if at any moment, the altar would slide away and German rifles would cast a threatening silhouette against the daylight. Worse still, a grenade would be enough to finish them all for good.

He heard the grating sound of the moving altar. The gun in his hand weighed heavy. With legs apart and both hands on the pistol, he stared hard, forcing himself to see despite the bright white threatening to blind him.

No guns, no soldiers. Only Père Jean smiling down at them.

‘Come up now my children, come up. They have gone away. They came in, they looked around as they always do. What they hope to find in a church I cannot conceive. They ransacked a few houses and then they went away again. It is a minor annoyance we have to put up with from time to time. Please, come.’

Auguste hesitated. In his mind, he pictured soldiers, guns and threats forcing the priest to call them up. His brain worked as he tried to plan how he would defend them against so many. A police officer not a soldier, he was untrained in such things. Glancing over his shoulder, Pierre seemed relieved and reassured.

The priest’s proffered hand and smiling face seemed to pacify, to beckon. They emerged into the church and saw the priest was right, no soldiers were in evidence and Auguste heaved a sigh of relief. He wondered if all the constant stress had made him paranoid, but understood it was caution not some fictitious imagining.

In the late afternoon, Père Jean brought food and they made ready to depart. A clear sky above them and a red sunset ahead, they set off south and east. Luck had brought them this far and Auguste’s imagined trek, hiking though unknown woods and forest seemed a long dream away from the realities of travelling with Pierre.

Chapter 29

1

They by-passed Autun and kept on farm tracks and small roads, hoping to go unnoticed as they travelled. Auguste concentrated on keeping the little Citroën on the road. A light sprinkling of snow lay around them. Frost began to spread icy tendrils across the tracks and paths. Dark pine forest alternated with desolate unploughed farmland. High up now, the temperature plummeted and the icy journey continued. The travelling was less easy than Auguste had imagined; the ice and frost made some of the roads slow and dangerous.

He knew German soldiers could stop them at any time. They had only to reach a checkpoint and try to flee and it would be enough. Shots would be fired, military vehicles would follow them and it would all end. The border seemed an intangible goal to him then, a holy grail to which he looked for safety and salvation. He said nothing to the others but his anxieties rose and fell almost like the undulating roads upon which he drove.

No more checkpoints barred their way and an hour before dawn, travelling down a forest track; they came to a dead-end, close to the small village of Le Crêt, a kilometre from the Bellegarde bridge. He had driven two hundred kilometres since dusk. It was here they realised the car could go no further. Whether there were reports of their escape or not, the chance of the soldiers recognising the car was a real one and neither Auguste nor Pierre felt the risk was worthwhile.

They stayed parallel to the road, trudging through sparse woodland and fields until houses began to be more frequent.

‘How far Pierre?’ Auguste said. He was carrying both rifles and a backpack, one hand holding Zara’s and Odette beside him.

‘I would guess half a kilometre. We have to part at the main road if Odette and Zara are to get across safely.’

‘Are there soldiers?’

‘Of course there are soldiers. There is a large checkpoint on this side of the river. No one gets across in daylight. We have little time now before dawn.’

Trudging now along the road, they came to a crossroad signposted ‘La Route de Chapelle’. There were no cars, and no lights lit the road. They took the westerly road until the road curved to their right. Trees marched either side of the road here and they walked until they could hide in sparse woodland with dense scrub and bushes.

They had almost reached their goal. Could it still go wrong? Auguste dared not voice his fears. He knew both Odette and Zara needed support but he had a growing feeling deep inside there were more dangers to face. He worried the boat might not be there. He knew the guard on the bridge could turn Odette and Zara away, leaving them with the fierce and dangerous choice of the river crossing by boat. It was clear to him if the soldiers spotted them getting into the boat, the entire garrison would be taking aim at them. He pinned his hopes on the letters of transit. Even though Brunner was dead, his signature and the SD stamp on the letters, should add enough weight to the documents. They had to be enough.

Odette had not spoken since they left the car. Auguste looked at her face as they set down their gear in a thicket under a large elm tree. He knew all the way from the car what she must feel. He had a feeling akin to despair and his chest felt tight as if his heart weighed heavy in his chest.

‘You and Zara must go. You have the letters of transit?’

‘Yes,’ she said.