"No," Michael said. "This man is our prisoner and we don't shoot prisoners in our Army."
"Doctor," said the boy on the cobbles.
"Kill him," said someone from behind Mrs Dumoulin.
"If the American doesn't want to waste ammunition," another voice said, "I'll do it with a stone."
"What's the matter with you people?" Michael shouted.
"What are you, animals?" He spoke in French so that they could all understand, and it was very difficult to translate his anger and disgust in his high-school accent. He stared at Mrs Dumoulin. Inconceivable, he thought, a plump little housewife, an Irishwoman improbably in the middle of the Frenchmen's war, violent for blood, outside the claims of pity. "He's wounded, he can't do you any harm," Michael went on, furious at his slow searching for words. "What's the sense in it?"
"Go," Mrs Dumoulin said coldly, "go look at Jacqueline over there. Go see Monsieur Alexandre, that's the other one, lying there, with a bullet in his lung… Then you'll understand a little better."
"Three of them are dead," Michael pleaded with Mrs Dumoulin. "Isn't that enough?"
"It is not enough!" The woman's face was pale and furious, her dark, almost purple eyes set maniacally in her head. "Perhaps enough for you, young man. You haven't lived here under them for four years! You haven't seen your sons taken away and killed! Jacqueline was not your neighbour. You're an American. It's easy for you to be humane. It is not so easy for us!" She was screaming wildly by now, shaking her fists under Michael's nose. "We are not Americans and we do not wish to be humane. We wish to kill him. Turn your back if you're so soft. We'll do it. You'll keep your pretty little American conscience clean…"
"Doctor," the boy on the pavement moaned.
"Please…" Michael said, appealing to the locked faces of the townspeople behind Mrs Dumoulin, feeling guilty that he, a stranger, a stranger who loved them, loved their country, their courage, their suffering, dared to oppose them on a profound matter like this in the streets of their town… "Please," he said, feeling confusedly that perhaps she was right, perhaps it was his usual softness, his wavering, unheroic indecision that was making him argue like this. "It is impossible to take a wounded man's life like this, no matter what…"
There was a shot behind him. Michael wheeled. Keane was standing above the German's head, his finger on the trigger of his carbine, that sick, crooked smile on his face. The German was still now. All the townspeople stared quietly and with almost demure good manners at the two Americans.
"What the hell," Keane said, grinning, "he was croaking anyway. Might as well please the lady." Keane slung the carbine over his shoulder.
"Good," said Mrs Dumoulin flatly. "Good. Thank you very much." She turned, and the little group behind her parted so that she could walk through it. Michael watched her, a small, plump, almost comic figure, marked by childbearing and laundering and endless hours in the kitchen, rolling solidly from side to side, as she crossed the grey square to the place where the ugly farm girl lay, her skirts up, now once and for all relieved of her ugliness and her labours.
One by one, the Frenchmen wandered off, leaving the two American soldiers alone over the body of the dead boy. Michael watched them carry the man with the bullet in his lungs into the hotel. Then he turned back to Keane. Keane was bent over the dead boy, going through his pockets. Keane came up with a wallet. He opened the wallet and took out a folded card.
"His paybook," Keane said. "His name is Joachim Ritter. He's nineteen years old. He hasn't been paid for three months." Keane grinned at Michael. "Just like the American Army." He groped inside the wallet and brought out a photograph. "Joachim and his girl." Keane extended the photograph. "Take a look. Juicy little piece."
Dumbly, Michael looked at the photograph. A thin, living boy in an amusement park peered out at him, and next to him a plump blonde girl with her young man's military cap perched saucily on her short blonde hair. There was something scrawled in ink across the face of the photograph. It was in German.
"For ever in your arms, Elsa," Keane said. "That's what it says. In German. I'm going to send it back to my wife to hold for me. It will make an interesting souvenir."
Michael's hands trembled on the glossy bit of amusement-park paper. He nearly tore it up. He hated Keane, hated the thought of the long-faced, yellow-toothed man fingering happily over the picture later in the century, back in the United States, remembering this morning with pleasure. But he knew he had no right to tear up the photograph. Much as he hated the man, Keane had earned his souvenir. When Michael had faltered and fumbled, Keane had behaved like a soldier. Without hesitation or fear, he had mastered the emergency, brought the enemy down when everyone else around him had been frozen and surprised. As for the killing of the wounded boy, Michael thought wearily, Keane had probably done the correct thing. There was nothing much they could have done with the German, and they'd have had to leave him, and the townspeople would have brained him as soon as Michael left. Keane, in his sour, sadistic way, had acted out the will of the people whom they had, after all, come to Europe to serve. By the single shot, Keane had given the bereaved and threatened inhabitants of the town a sense that justice had been done, a sense that, on this morning at least, the injuries they had suffered for so long had been paid for in a fitting coin. I should be pleased, Michael thought bitterly, that Keane was with us. I could never have done it, and it probably had to be done…
Michael started back towards where Stellevato was standing by the jeep. He felt sick and weary. This is what we're here for, he thought heavily, this is what it's all been for, to kill Germans. I should be light-hearted, triumphant…
He did not feel triumphant. Inadequate, he thought bruisedly, Michael Whitacre, the inadequate man, the doubtful civilian, the non-killing soldier. The girls' kisses on the road, the roses in the hedge, the free brandy had not been for him, because he could not earn it… Keane, who could grin as he put a bullet through a dying boy's head at his feet, carefully folding away a foreign photograph in his wallet for a souvenir, was the man these Europeans had feted on the sunny march from the coast.
… Keane was the victorious, adequate, liberating American, fit for this month of vengeance…
The man with the Red Cross armband came roaring past on his motor-cycle. He waved gaily, because he had two new guns and a hundred rounds of ammunition to take to his friends behind the improvised barricades of Paris. Michael did not turn to watch him as the bare legs, the absurd shorts, the stained bandage, bumped swiftly past the overturned car and disappeared in the direction of the eight hundred Germans, the mined crossroads, the capital of France.
"Holy man," Stellevato said, his soft Italian voice still husky, "what a morning. You all right?"
"Fine," Michael said flatly. "Fine."
"Nikki," Keane said, "don't you want to go over and take a look at the Krauts?"
"No," Stellevato said. "Leave them to the undertakers."
"You might pick up a nice souvenir," Keane said, "to send home to your folks from France."
"My folks don't want any souvenirs," Stellevato said. "The only souvenir they want from France is me."
"Look at this." Keane took out the photograph again and shoved it in front of Stellevato's nose. "His name was Joachim Ritter."
Stellevato slowly took the photograph and stared at it. "Poor girl," Stellevato said softly. "Poor little blonde girl."
Michael wanted to take Stellevato in his arms and embrace him.
Stellevato gave the photograph back to Keane. "I think we ought to go back to the Water Point," Stellevato said, "and tell the boys there what happened. They must've heard the shooting and they're probably scared out of their boots."