What echo is this? thought Christian vaguely. When was this said before? Then he remembered the morning on the ski slope with Margaret Freemantle long ago, and his own voice saying the same words for another reason. How confusing and tiring it was, he thought, that we always reshuffle the same arguments so that we get the different answer we require from them.
"… we can help right here," Behr was saying. "We have connections with many people in France. Frenchmen who are trying to kill us now. But, overnight, they would become our most dependable allies. And the same thing in Poland, in Russia, in Norway, in Holland – everywhere. Overnight, we would present the Americans with a single, united Europe, with Germany at the centre, and they would have to accept it, whether they liked it or not. Otherwise… otherwise, merely pray that you get killed early in the game. Now," Behr said, "there are certain specific things that will have to be done. Can I tell my people that you will be willing to do them?"
Behr sat down suddenly in the sand and began putting on his socks. He moved with meticulous care, smoothing the wrinkles out of the socks and brushing the sand off them with detailed, unhurried movements of his hands.
Christian stared out to sea. He felt weary and baffled, weighed down by a thick, nagging anger at his friend. What choices you get to make these days! Christian thought resentfully. Between one death and another, between the rope and the rifle, the poison and the knife. If only I were fresh, he thought, if I had had a long, quiet, healthful vacation, if I had never been wounded, never been sick. Then it might be possible to look at this calmly and reasonably, say the correct word, put your hand out for the correct weapon…
"You'd better put your boots on," Behr said. "We have to get back. You don't have to give me an answer now. Think it over."
Think it over, Christian thought, the patient thinking over the cancer in his belly, the condemned man thinking over his sentence, the target thinking over the bullet that is about to smash it.
"Listen," Behr looked up thoughtfully from the sand, a boot in his hand, "if you say anything about this to anyone, you will be found with a knife in your back one morning. No matter what happens to me. I like you very much, I honestly do, but I had to protect myself, and I told my people I was going to talk to you…"
Christian stared down at the calm, healthy, guileless face, like the face of the man who would have come to repair your radio before the war or the face of a traffic policeman helping two small children across a road on their way to school.
"I told you you don't have to worry," Christian said thickly.
"I don't have to think anything over. I can tell you now, I'll…"
Then there was the sound, and Christian automatically hurled himself to the sand. The bullets went in with short, whacking thuds, into the sand around his head, and he felt the strange, painless shock of the iron tearing his arm. He looked up. Fifty feet above him, with the engine suddenly roaring again after the long glide down out of the sky, the Spitfire was shivering through the air, the colours of the roundel gleaming on the wings and the tail assembly bright silver in the long rays of the sun. The plane climbed loudly out over the sea, and in a moment was a small, graceful shape, no larger than a gull, climbing over the sun, climbing into the green and purple of the clear, surprising spring afternoon, climbing to join another plane that was making a wide, sparkling arc over the ocean.
Then Christian looked at Behr. He was sitting erect, looking down thoughtfully at his hands, which were crossed on his belly. There was blood oozing slowly out between the fingers. Behr took his hands away for a second. The blood spurted in uneven, jagged streams. Behr put his hands back, as though he were satisfied with the experiment.
He looked at Christian, and later, remembering the moment, Christian believed that Behr had been smiling gently then.
"This is going to hurt a great deal," Behr said in his calm, healthy way. "Can you get me back to a doctor?"
"They glided down," Christian said, stupidly, gazing at the two twinkling, disappearing specks in the sky. "The bastards had a few rounds of ammunition left before going home, and they couldn't bear the thought of wasting them…"
Behr tried to stand up. He got on to one knee, then slipped back again, to sit there in the sand once more, with the same thoughtful, remote expression on his face. "I can't move," he said. "Can you carry me?"
Christian went over to him and tried to lift him. Then he discovered that his right arm did not work. He looked at it, surprised, remembering all over again that he, too, had been hit. His sleeve was sodden with blood, and the arm was still numb, but already the wound seemed to be clotting in the cloth web of his sleeve. But he could not lift Behr with his one good arm. He got the man half-way up, and then stopped, gasping, holding Behr under the armpit. Behr was making a curious, mechanical noise by this time, clicking and bubbling at the same time.
"I can't do it," Christian said.
"Put me down," Behr said. "Oh, please. Oh God, put me down."
As gently as possible, Christian slid the wounded man back to the sand. Behr sat there, his legs stretched out, his hands back at the red leak in his middle, making his curious, bubbling, piston-like sound.
"I'll get help," Christian said. "Somebody to carry you."
Behr tried to say something, but no words came from his mouth. He nodded. He still looked calm, relaxed, healthy, with his sturdy blond hair in a clean mat over his sunburned face. Christian sat down carefully and tried to put his boots on, but he could not manage it with his left hand. Finally he gave it up. After patting Behr's shoulder with a false reassuring gesture, he started, at a heavy, slow, barefooted trot, towards the road.
When he was still about fifty metres from the road, he saw the two Frenchmen on bicycles. They were going at a good pace, in their regular, tireless pumping rhythm, casting long, fantastic shadows across the marshy fields.
Christian stopped and shouted at them, waving his good hand. "Mes amis! Camarades! Arretez!" The two bicycles slowed down and Christian could see the two men peer doubtfully at him from under their caps. "Blesse! Blesse!" Christian shouted, waving towards Behr, a small, collapsed package now, near the edge of the gleaming sea. "Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!"
The bicycles nearly stopped and Christian could see the two men turning inquiringly towards each other. Then they hunched lower over their handle-bars and quickly gained speed. They passed quite close to Christian, twenty-five or thirty metres away. He got a good look at them, worn, brown, cold faces, expressionless and hard under their dark blue caps. Then they were gone. They made a turn behind a high dune, which obscured the road for almost two kilometres on the other side of it, and then the road and the countryside all around Christian was empty, falling swiftly into the rich blue of twilight, with only the rim of the ocean still violent clear red.
Christian raised his arm, as though to wave at the two men, as though he could not believe that they were not still there, as though it were only a trick of his wound that had made him think they had merely pedalled away. He shook his head. Then he started to trot towards the cluster of houses he could barely see in the distance.
He had to stop after a minute, because he was panting heavily, and his arm had begun to bleed again. Then he heard the scream. He wheeled round and stared through the gathering darkness at the place where he had left Behr. There was a man crouching over Behr, and Behr was trying to crawl away in the sand, with a slow, dying movement. Then Behr screamed again, and the man who had been crouched over him took one long step and grabbed Behr by the collar and turned him over. Christian saw the gleam of a knife in the man's hand, a bright, sharp slice of light against the dull shining silver of the sea. Behr started to scream again, but never finished it.
Christian tore at the holster on his belt with his left hand, but it was a long time before he could get the pistol out. He saw the man put his knife away, and fumble at Behr's belt for the pistol. He got the pistol and stuck it in a pocket, then picked up Christian's boots, which were lying near-by. Christian took his pistol out and laboriously and clumsily got the safety-catch off with his left hand. Then he began firing. He had never fired a pistol with his left hand before and the shots were very wild. But the Frenchman started to run towards the high dune. Christian lumbered down the beach towards Behr's quiet form, stopping from time to time to fire at the swiftly running Frenchman.
By the time Christian reached the spot where Behr was lying stretched out, face up, arms spread wide, the man Christian had been chasing was on his bicycle, and, with the other man, was spurting out from behind the protection of the dune, down the black, bumpy road. Christian fired a last shot at them. It must have been close, because he saw the pair of boots drop from the handle-bars of the second bicycle, as though the man had been frightened by the whistle of the bullet. The Frenchmen did not stop. They bent low over the handle-bars of their bicycles and swept away into the lavender haze that was beginning to obscure the road, the pale sand of the beach, the rows of barbed wire, the small yellow signs with the skulls that said: ATTENTION, MINES.
Then Christian looked down at his friend.
Behr was lying on his back, staring up at the sky, with the last crooked expression of terror on his face, the blood a sticky marsh under his chin, where the Frenchman had made the long, unnecessary slash with his knife. Christian gazed down at Behr stupidly, thinking: No, it is impossible, just five minutes ago he was sitting there, putting on his boots, discussing the future of Germany like a professor of political science… The Englishman gliding down spitefully in the fighter plane, and the French farmer on his bicycle, carrying the hidden knife, had had their own notions of political science.
Christian looked up. The beach was pale and empty, the sea murmured into the sand in a small froth of quiet waves; the footprints on the sand were clearly marked. For a moment, Christian had a wild idea that there was something to be done, that if he did the single correct thing, the five minutes would vanish, the plane would not have swooped down, the two men on bicycles would not have passed by, Behr would even now be rising from the sand, healthy, reflective, whole, asking Christian to make a decision…
Christian shook his head. Ridiculous, he thought, the five minutes had existed, had passed; the careless, meaningless accidents had happened; the bright-eyed boy, going out in the evening to his pint of beer in a Devon pub after an afternoon of cruising over France, had spotted the two tiny figures on the sand; the sun-wrinkled farmer had irrevocably used the knife; the future of Germany would be decided with no further comment by Anton Behr, widower, late of Germany, late of Rostov, late coast-walker and philosopher.
Christian bent down. Slowly, panting heavily, he pulled first one boot then another from the feet of his friend. The curs, he thought as he worked, at least they're not going to get these boots.
Then, carrying the boots, he scuffed heavily through the sand towards the road. He picked up his own boots, which the Frenchman had dropped. Then, carrying all four boots against his chest in the crook of his wounded arm, he plodded, barefoot, the road feeling smooth and cool under his soles, towards Battalion Headquarters five kilometres away.
With his arm in a sling, not hurting too much, Christian watched them bury Behr the next day. The whole Company was on parade, very solemn, with their boots polished and their rifles oiled. The Captain took the occasion to make a speech.
"I promise you men," the Captain said, standing erect, holding his belly in, ignoring the thick north-coast rain that was falling around him, "that this soldier will be avenged." The Captain had a high, scratchy voice, and spent most of his time in the farmhouse where he was billeted with a thick-legged Frenchwoman whom he had brought to Normandy with him from Dijon, where he had been stationed before. The Frenchwoman was pregnant now and made that an excuse to eat enormously five times a day.
"Avenged," the Captain repeated. "Avenged." The rain dripped down his visor and on to his nose. "The people of this area will learn that we are strong friends and terrible enemies, that the lives of you men are precious to me and to our Fuehrer. We are at this moment at the point of apprehending the murderer…"
Christian thought dully of the English pilot, probably sitting this moment, because it was a wet day, unapprehended, in a snug corner of a tavern, with a girl, warming his beer between his hands, laughing in that infuriating, superior English way, as he described the crafty, profitable slide down the Norman sky the day before, to catch two barefooted Huns, out for their constitutional at sunset.
"We shall teach these people," the Captain thundered, "that these wanton acts of barbarism do not pay. We have extended the hand of friendship, and if in return we are faced with the assassin's knife, we shall know how to repay it. These acts of treachery and violence do not exist in themselves. The men who perform them are spurred on by their masters across the Channel. Beaten again and again on the battlefield, the savages, who call themselves English and American soldiers, hire others to fight like pickpockets and burglars. Never in the history of warfare," the Captain's voice went on, growing stronger in the rain, "have nations violated the laws of humanity so completely as our enemies today. Bombs dropped on the innocent women and children of the Fatherland, knives planted in the throats of our fighting men in the dark of night by their hirelings in Europe. But," the Captain's voice rose to a scream, "it will avail them nothing! Nothing! I know what effect this has on me and on every other German. We grow stronger, we grow more bitter, our resolution increases to fury!"
Christian looked around him. The other men were standing sadly in the rain, their faces not resolute, not furious, mild, subtly frightened, a little bored. The Battalion was a makeshift one, with many men who had been wounded on other fronts, and the latest culling of slightly older and slightly disabled civilians and a heavy sprinkling of eighteen-year-olds. Suddenly, Christian sympathized with the Captain. He was addressing an army that did not exist, that had been wiped out in a hundred battles. He was addressing the phantoms that these men should have been, the million men capable of fury who now lay quietly in their graves in Africa and Russia.