No city was more crowded than their cell, and week by week Chavel learned the lesson that one can be unbearably lonely in a city. He would tell himself that everyday brought the war nearer to an end-somebody must sometime be victorious and he ceased to care much who the victor was so long as an end came. He was a hostage, but it seldom occurred to him that hostages were sometimes shot. The death of his two companions only momentarily shook him: he felt too lost and abandoned to recognize the likelihood that he might himself be picked out from the crowded cell. There was safety as well as loneliness in numbers.
Once the wish to remember, to convince himself that there was an old life from which he had come and to which he would one day return, became too acute for silence. He shifted his place in the cell alongside one of the clerks, a thin silent youth who was known for some reason to his companions by the odd soubriquet of Janvier. Was it an unexpected touch of imagination in one of his fellow prisoners that saw him as something young, undeveloped and nipped by the frost?
“Janvier,” Chavel asked, “have you ever traveled-in France, I mean?” It was typical of the lawyer that even when he tried to make a human contact he did so by a question as though he were addressing a witness.
“Never been far out of Paris,” Janvier said, and then by a stretch of imagination he added, “Fontainebleau. I went there one summer.”
“You don’t know Brinac? It’s on the main line from the Gare Montparnasse.”
“Never heard of it,” the young man said sullenly, as though he was being accused of something, and he gave a long dry cough which sounded as though dry peas were being turned in a pan.
“Then you wouldn’t know my village, St. Jean de Brinac? It’s about two miles out of the town to the east. That’s where my house is.”
“I thought you came from Paris.”
“I work in Paris,” the lawyer said. “When I retire I shall retire to St. Jean. My father left me the house. And his father left it to him.”
“What was your father?” Janvier asked with faint curiosity.
“A lawyer.”
“And his father?”
“A lawyer too.”
“I suppose it suits some people,” the clerk said. “It seems a bit dusty to me.”
“If you had a bit of paper,” Chavel went on, “I could draw you a plan of the house and garden.”
“I haven’t,” Janvier said. “Don’t trouble anyway. It’s your house. Not mine.” He coughed again, pressing his bony hands down upon his knees. He seemed to be putting an end to an interview with a caller for whom he could do nothing. Nothing at all.
Chavel moved away. He came to Pierre and stopped. “Could you tell me the time?” he said.
“It’s five to twelve.”
From close by the mayor grunted malevolently, “Slow again.”
“In your profession,” Chavel said, “I expect you see the world?” It sounded like the false bonhomie of a cross-examiner who wishes to catch the witness in a falsehood.
“Yes and no,” Pierre said.
“You wouldn’t know by any chance a station called Brinac? About an hour’s run from the Gare de l’Quest.”
“Never been on that run,” Pierre said. “The Gare du Nord is my station.”
“Oh, yes. Then you wouldn’t know St. Jean… ” he gave it up hopelessly, and sat down again far from anyone against the cold cement wall.
It was that night that the shooting was heard for the third time: a short burst of machine-gun fire, some stray rifle shots and once what sounded like the explosion of a grenade. The prisoners lay stretched upon the ground, making no comment to each other: they waited, not sleeping. You couldn’t have told in most cases whether they felt the apprehension of men in danger or the exhilaration of people waiting beside a sickbed, listening to the first sounds of health returning to a too quiet body. Chavel lay as still as the rest. He had no fear: he was buried in this place too deeply for discovery. The mayor wrapped his arms around his watch and tried in vain to deaden the steady old-fashioned stroke: tick tock tick.
3
IT WAS AT THREE THE NEXT AFTERNOON (ALARM CLOCK TIME) that an officer entered the celclass="underline" the first officer they had seen for weeks-and this one was very young, with inexperience even in the shape of his mustache which he had shaved too much on the left side. He was as embarrassed as a schoolboy making his first entry on a stage at a prize-giving, and he spoke abruptly so as to give the impression of a strength he did not possess. He said, “There were murders last night in the town. The aide-de-camp of the military governor, a sergeant and a girl on a bicycle.” He added, “We don’t complain about the girl. Frenchmen have our permission to kill Frenchwomen.” He had obviously thought up his speech carefully beforehand, but the irony was overdone and the delivery that of an amateur actor: the whole scene was as unreal as a charade. He said, “You know what you are here for, living comfortably, on fine rations, while our men work and fight. Well, now you’ve got to pay the hotel bill. Don’t blame us. Blame your own murderers. My orders are that one man in every ten shall be shot in this camp. How many of you are there?” He shouted sharply, “Number off,” and sullenly they obeyed, “… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” They knew he knew without counting. This was just a line in his charade he couldn’t sacrifice. He said, “Your allotment then is three. We are quite indifferent as to which three. You can choose for yourselves. The funeral rites will begin at seven tomorrow morning.”
The charade was over: they could hear his feet striking sharply on the asphalt going away. Chavel wondered for a moment what syllable had been acted-“night,” “girl,” “aside,” or perhaps “thirty,” but it was of course the whole word-“hostage.”
The silence went on a long time, and then a man called Krogh, an Alsatian, said, “Well, do we have to volunteer?”
“Rubbish,” said one of the clerks, a thin elderly man in pince-nez, “nobody will volunteer. We must draw lots.” He added, “Unless it is thought that we should go by ages-the oldest first.”
“No, no,” one of the others said, “that would be unjust.”
“It’s the way of nature.”
“Not even the way of nature,” another said. “I had a child who died when she was five…”
“We must draw lots,” the mayor said firmly. “It is the only fair thing.” He sat with his hands still pressed over his stomach, hiding his watch, but all through the cell you could hear its blunt tick tock tick. He added,
“On the unmarried. The married should not be included. They have responsibilities….”
“Ha, ha,” Pierre said, “we see through that. Why should he married get-off? Their work’s finished. You, of course, are married?”
“I have lost my wife,” the mayor said, “I am not married now. And you…”
“Married,” Pierre said.
The mayor began to undo his watch: the discovery that his rival was safe seemed to confirm his belief that as the owner of time he was bound to be the next victim. He looked from face to face and chose Chavel-perhaps because he was the only man with a waistcoat fit to take the chain. He said, “Monsieur Chavel, I want you to hold this watch for me in case…”