After the War

by Hervé Le Corre

  I thought my heart was going to explode. I sucked in a mouthful of air and breathed “No.”

  He sat back in his chair and turned his face towards the light that was flooding the garden. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He told me he would have preferred it if I hadn’t come back. Especially just to tell him that.

  “You thought I was dead . . . That both of us were dead, didn’t you?”

  He put his glass down, poured himself more wine.

  “It’s not the same thing. Sometimes it’s better not to know. But since you’re here . . .”

  So I told him. Olga had fallen ill in Drancy. A nasty cough that tore at her throat. A fever that wouldn’t abate. Then three days on the train. We held each other close and talked like we’d never talked before. I felt as if I were recapturing all those years that I had evaded, fled from. The years when I had cheated on her. She said we were going to make it, now that we had been able to talk about all that. That we would find Daniel again, grown older, and that life would start again. We remained locked in an embrace. She let herself fall against me, exhausted. I could feel the sick heat of her body on mine, the fever that made her tremble and shake. And still our sleepless words, her mouth on my neck, my lips in her hair. The small space I managed to clear for her so she could sit down and sleep for a while. And the arrival at the camp, the S.S. selection process. Her tired eyes that spent a long time looking for me, without finding me.

  Out of breath, I stopped talking. Birds were singing in the garden. That carefree life took me by surprise. I felt as if I had just been cured of deafness, as if I had emerged from a glass cage. Abel stared at me with his dark eyes that shone from the depths of his face. He coughed, and spat into a handkerchief. Tears ran down his cheeks while he tried to catch his breath. He asked me why I had waited so long to come back. He said, “And Daniel?” He spoke aloud all those questions that had been lacerating my mind for years, questions to which I had no answers. Perhaps that was what they call the moment of truth.

  “How could I? I didn’t do anything for them. Wasn’t even capable of protecting them. Darlac had promised that he’d warn me; he knew there was going to be another round-up. And I believed him. And I kept playing cards and running after women as if everything was fine. Olga and my son would sleep in their clothes for fear of being arrested in the middle of the night and I would get angry with them when I got home and saw that. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

  “So you think time will just wipe away your sins? Why exactly did you come back?”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  I was about to continue, but he lifted his hand to silence me.

  “What I had to say to you, I told you back then. About Olga, about the kid. You know perfectly well what I thought of you: you were just a womaniser, a gambler. An insignificant little shit. I told you that, didn’t I? You weren’t very happy about it, usually. You’d get all angry and redfaced. Or you’d swear that you were going to turn over a new leaf. And you were so full of yourself, the cock of the walk, so proud of your supposed friendship with Darlac. I used to meet him in Andernos, just to keep him at a distance from my business: he knew what I did, and I knew what he was: a shithead of a cop with no morals at all. But I wasn’t worth the bother for him, even if he got me later on. And you believed that he would protect you. And you fell for his cop bullshit cos he wiped out your gambling debts by busting anyone who you owed money? I warned you about that too, didn’t I? And when the wind changed, and he went over to the other side, I told you to be careful, didn’t I? For Olga and the kid . . . I wasn’t much better, but I could see beauty in other people . . . and I don’t just mean a pretty face, I mean whatever was precious inside them. Whatever was priceless. I used to rip off pricks and bastards: I could spot them a mile off, remember. But I could recognize good people like that too. And Olga was undoubtedly one of the best people I ever knew. And I hated you for treating her the way you did, with your whores and all the worthless tarts you used to fuck on the sly. I should have beaten the shit out of you.”

  He stopped, almost panting. Spots of color had appeared on his gray cheeks. His hands were trembling with rage.

  I stood up. It was a knockout. I had no reply for any of that.

  “And then you come back to tell me that Olga’s dead . . . It’s the living you should embrace. You live with your dead, with all the people you saw die in Poland . . . But what’s the point? The dead never come back. Ghosts are only good for books or films.”

  “I live with whoever I can. I didn’t come back to whine or to hear you lecture me. You don’t know what I feel, you don’t know what I went through over there. You can’t know. I came back for Darlac. It’s all I’ve been thinking about for months.”

  He laughed so hard he started to choke, and was overcome by another coughing fit.

  “What do you want? To kill him? Put a bullet in his head? What would that change? There are dozens of cops in Bordeaux who slipped through the net. They caught Poinsot and some of those bastards who worked for him, but the others? And that’s without even mentioning the prefects and their underlings, all those common or garden shits who served the Krauts. Darlac’s commissaire now. He rules half the city. Untouchable. If you want to be a righter of wrongs, you’re going to need weapons and ammo.”

  “I’m not a righter of wrongs. I couldn’t care less about justice. I want Darlac.”

  “What about your son? You know you have a son?”

  I didn’t know if I was still his father. I didn’t even feel I had the right to talk about him. For him, I was dead, and it was undoubtedly better that way.

  “I wouldn’t even dare approach him.”

  Abel struggled to his feet. His legs wobbled slightly and he faced me and stared into my eyes. He said there was no point discussing any of this. He told me he’d done what he had to do: he’d helped Maurice get the little boy down off the roof, as soon as the neighbors had been able to warn him. He drove the car, armed just in case. Afterwards he’d taken him to Maurice and Roselyne’s house. I’d only ever met them four or five times. The way they lived their lives was so different to mine. Olga and Roselyne worked together at the factory; they were friends, they thought the same way. They didn’t like me either. I think they were making an effort for Olga, who probably hoped I would change, that I would become like them. Abel gave me their address, in Bacalan, over that way, beyond the wet dock, then he walked over to the door. When he opened it, he offered me his hand. I went to shake it. It was bone-dry and extremely hot. I noticed that his forehead was glistening with sweat. I walked down the two steps to the sidewalk and turned back to face him. He was leaning against the door frame, staring vacantly towards the end of the street.

  “About Darlac,” he said, “I know a cop who’s worked with him for a long time. Maybe you remember him? You must have seen him occasionally back then; he was always hanging around Darlac, looking conspiratorial. He’s a bastard, but not as bad as the others cos he chose the right side during the Occupation. He’s got scores to settle with Darlac. Detective Mazeau, he’s called. Ask to speak to him, and tell him I sent you. He owes me. I don’t know what he’ll be able to do, but at least he can fill you in. It’s up to you what happens after that. And now, forget me.”

  Mazeau. I found it hard to remember what he looked like. And then it came back to me. A tall man with pale eyes and chestnut hair, fearful-looking, shifty, who would straighten up whenever he was around his boss, Darlac.

  I started to thank Abel, but he had already closed the door. I stood there for a while, unsure what to do, my mind empty, dazed by the sunlight that poured down on the street. I had probably never felt so alone in my life. Even my ghosts, as Abel called them, had left me. I knew they weren’t far away, were still watching me, but I could no longer feel them pressed around me, whispering. So I started walking, driven onward by a sort of dizziness that threatened with ever
y step to send me hurtling to the ground.

  33An enclosed garden combining vegetables, fruit and herbs with flowers, traditionally grown for decorating the church altar.

  23

  It never rains but it pours. Commissaire Darlac thinks about this pearl of popular wisdom—not the kind of wisdom he’s ever given much of a toss about. But all night, after being woken by madame’s gentle snoring, he has been absorbed by meditations over the validity of clichés. This is about as philosophical as he ever gets. Tonight he surprises himself by carefully weighing up the meaning of each word, contemplating abstractions, and this makes him feel as if he is rising above the mundane. It also gives him a gnawing migraine that makes his head heavy and sometimes splits it with searing pain, forcing him to close his eyes and ball his fists with the urge to kill someone.

  So Jean Delbos is back, as an avenging angel. Back from the dead. So the ghost that had seemed to be stalking him a few weeks ago is real. And if he doesn’t do something, Darlac knows that sooner or later the spectre will appear one night at the foot of his bed pointing a gun at him, or holding a petrol can in one hand and a match in the other. The superintendent understands why, of course. But if every person he’d betrayed came back to demand justice, there’d be a queue snaking out to the sidewalk. And if the dead joined in too . . . well, then he’d just have to find a way to kill them all a second time.

  On top of that, Francis has been unresponsive for the past week. Not answering his phone. Not at home. No trace of him in the places he usually hangs out with his whores. No-oneknows anything—not the fences he does business with, not the girls who work for him down on the docks or in the center of town. The clowns propping up the bars don’t know either. Darlac gave one of them—René Tauzin, aka the Cyclops—a good going-over because he seemed to be hiding something, but it got him nowhere. He threatened to gouge out his other eye, to lock him up for pimping and drug-dealing, because that pathetic wretch dabbles in powders and exotic herbs that he palms off on the girls and on a handful of rich bastards who picked up the habit in the colonies. But . . . nothing.

  One who’s come back, the other who’s disappeared. Darlac doesn’t know if he should be looking for a link in all this coming and going. All he knows is that you solve your problems one after another. Or eliminate them.

  For now, stunned by the rhythmic throbbing of every painful artery in his brain, he is resting against the side of a front-wheel drive, smiling as he watches Mesplet, the owner of this garage with its stink of oil and petrol, its chaos of cars and spare parts and tires stacked in teetering piles ready to collapse on any careless visitor. He hates this dark, grimy disorder almost as much as he hates the impassive man who stands in front of him, arms crossed, leaning on the door of a Renault Juvaquatre, this man who has been lying to him for the past ten minutes.

  “So you maintain that Delbos has not been here? That he hasn’t tried to get in touch with his son?”

  “I already told you.”

  “You hung around with him in ’43, you gave his son a job, and you expect me to swallow that?”

  “Swallow what you want, I don’t care. Me and Maurice and Roselyne, we were friends with Olga, not him, cos of the union and all that. The factory brings people together, you know. Well, no, obviously you don’t know . . . But Jean wasn’t one of us. He was a great guy to have a laugh with, but he didn’t take anything seriously, apart from his little business deals. He never even took his wife seriously, or his kid, later on. We liked him well enough, but we didn’t really know him. We couldn’t understand what Olga saw in him. Well, I mean, he was a good-looking fellow of course . . . elegant and all that . . . Always cheerful, in a good mood. And apparently he was really good to her . . . That’s what she used to say all the time anyway. Everyone knew he was cheating on her all over the place. Even she must have guessed. In fact, I reckon she knew, but she put up with it. We couldn’t understand that. We thought that if Olga loved him that much, he couldn’t be completely bad, but that’s not enough to make him a friend. Anyway, my point is that he wouldn’t be likely to come here for help.”

  “You realize that if I manage to prove that you’ve been protecting a criminal, I can get you locked up for ten years? You do realize that?”

  Mesplet shrugs. He grabs a long screwdriver and bends over the Renault’s engine. Darlac hears him swearing through gritted teeth, grunting with the strain.

  The cop turns to Norbert, who is putting a bumper back on a Dauphine.

  “What about your apprentice? Doesn’t he have anything to tell me?”

  Crouched in front of the car, the boy doesn’t blink, but Darlac can tell that he has stopped moving, that he’s waiting, not daring to turn around. The boss stands up, red-faced and breathless.

  “Fuck off out of here. We have nothing to say to you. All that is in the past. Everyone thought Jean Delbos had died in the camps, and maybe it was better that way. Go look for him somewhere else.”

  Ignoring this, Darlac moves closer to Norbert. He picks up a hammer from the hood and bangs it hard against the metal, and the kid, as if knocked backwards by the noise, falls on his ass, dropping the bumper, and looks up, frightened, at the cop. Darlac hits the car again, twice. The steel shell caves in under the blows, and the entire car shakes, and he holds the hammer high in the air, ready to smash up something or someone. Claude takes a step forward, then stops. He tightens his grip on the screwdriver and his chest rises, probably trying to suck more air into his lungs, but he doesn’t move.

  “So, lad? Nothing to tell me? You want me to hit you in the face with this thing?”

  The boy tries to see his boss, and finally gets to his feet. Shifty-eyed, fearful.

  “Name and address?”

  The cop writes it in his notebook.

  “And you didn’t see anything either, I suppose? You don’t know anything?”

  “No, I . . . The boss, he doesn’t tell me anything. He’s the one that talks to the customers. I don’t know anything.”

  Darlac sniggers. He makes a sort of squealing noise that screws up his face and throws the hammer across the garage. Then he walks to the door, open wide on the street, and turns around:

  “Alright! You know, I like it when people treat me like a fucking idiot. It makes me angry, and anger makes me sharper, it gives me energy. Understand? That’s the way I am. Basically, I like it when people resist, at the beginning. Eh? Like the Resistance, Claude. Ring a bell? You know all about resistance, don’t you? But what exactly can you resist? Like the hood of some old rust bucket—hit it with a hammer, and it starts to cave after the second blow. Hit it five times and the whole thing’s smashed to pieces. Beyond repair! You cocksuckers will be hearing from me. And you’re going to pay—you and all the others who are covering for this piece of shit. So long, and good luck. You’ll fucking need it!”

  His voice echoes under the iron framework and the two mechanics stand motionless, watching him walk towards his car, parked haphazardly on the curb.

  Behind the wheel, Darlac moans or wheezes or laughs. Even he can’t tell what the sounds are as they come out of his mouth: the screeches and rumbles of an animal, cries of pure rage, as if it’s about to smash open its own head because it’s just been plunged into a vat of boiling water. So he winds down the windows, violently yanking at the handles, and waits at the end of the street behind a post van, and when it moves off he heads towards the station and charges into a crowd of nobodies carrying luggage and they yell and whine because he drove over their suitcases and he tells them to go fuck themselves. He screams at them to shut their traps, dickheads, bitches, fucking queers. He leaves behind him a wake of indignant cries and insults and as he turns into the cours de la Marne he sees a constable, looking dazed, eyes wide under the visor of his cap, thinking, should I?, lifting the whistle to his mouth, and then deciding to turn a blind eye because, after all, no-one got killed.

&
nbsp; Darlac does not go home—he doesn’t feel like meeting those dark blue eyes—so he calls her and says he’s working, she says O.K., which means she couldn’t care less, that it would be all the same to her if he was killed by a maniac wielding a kitchen knife, wading through the blood of his entire family. He hangs up, hissing insults, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. Nothing can console him now for the glass wall that separates them: you betrayed me and we’re both going to die, but you first.

  He hangs around a few bars, sees a few ugly mugs that he knows, one of whom is on a département blacklist, and ends up eating some tepid, overcooked food, washed down with cheap wine, at the counter of a bar near the Saint-Pierre church and asking the owner if he’s taking advantage, treating his customers to this kind of slop. When the man gets on his high horse, Darlac tells him who he is, what he is, and reminds him that his bar was shut for six months in ’55 because six or seven of his waitresses were on the game and there were two pimps propping up his bar, one in the mornings, the other in the afternoons. Sure, but that’s ancient history, the owner says. He’s not involved in anything like that anymore; he learned his lesson the hard way, back then. Darlac knows that Crabos got back into the business on the sly, between two cancers, and dealt some drugs too, as a way of paying off his debts more quickly. The commissaire says that, if he gets a sniff of even the slightest thing wrong in this place, he’ll order the team from Hygiene to come down and inspect him, and those weirdos always find something wrong when they want to, enough to justify disinfecting the whole hovel with flamethrowers, from the cellar to the roof. The owner stammers that there was a mistake in the kitchen—worse, that they were negligent—and the chef will hear about it, of that you can be sure, and then insists on offering him a coffee. Darlac leaves him to his percolator and walks out into the damp night.

  An idea has been running through his head for a while now, so he decides to go and see what he can do about it. He thinks about that apprentice again, that little crankshaft jerk-off, who’s either two-faced or chickenshit, he can’t tell which. Probably both. The kind of man that can’t withstand pain very long, so you can make him pass out or sell his own grandmother without too much effort. He’s seen a few like that in his time, and they’re easy to spot, these men who have a raw nerve somewhere or an open wound, so all you have to do is twist it a little or rub a bit of salt in it, and their will is instantly broken, every principle they’ve ever had instantly betrayed. On the docks he turns south, towards the station and then Bègles. He drives through the hesitant suburban night, scattered small islands of light under attack from obscure depths, and soon he is lost amid empty streets where the shadow of a cat sometimes slips by and vanishes.