Aftershock (12 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“Ah, don’t be slick with me, boyo. I’m trying to help you out. You ain’t a Brit. I can smell a Brit at a hundred yards. And you damn sure ain’t Irish. Not
raised
there, that much I know. And one thing you can’t be is French. What’s that leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay with me, son. I wasn’t trying to pull any info out of you. Just tipping you that it wouldn’t be all that hard. If a numbskull like me could do it just by listening a little, anybody who
wanted
could do it even easier.”

I shrugged.

“You came a long way,” he said.

“I don’t know,” I told him, fighting my envy of all those who
did
know. At least Patrice could mourn the loss of a childhood friend. How could I mourn the loss of a childhood?

Patrice went real quiet when I said that. We were each on our third smoke when he said, “You really
don’t
know, do you? Damn! It’s sorry I am. Truly sorry.”

“Ne signifie rien.”

He smiled at that. “You learned their talk quick, huh?” He looked at me for what felt like a long time.

Then he said, “Well, I can tell you two things for sure. One, if you’d come from Ireland, you’d have been a Tinker. Probably you didn’t think so at the time, but that broken beak of yours is a blessing now. The whole Gypsy clan has big noses, and yours sticks out a lot less now.

“And, two, no matter what you ever heard, or where you heard it, the curse of the Irish isn’t booze, it’s revenge. Believe me on that.”

“I do.”

“Just like that.”

“I don’t think you would lie to me.”

He started to say something, then he stopped himself. “I guess you’ll be leaving for the same reason as anyone with half a brain on them would. Like serving a five-year sentence, this is. They’re happy enough to use you for their dirty work, but don’t fool yourself into believing you’ll ever be good enough for them. Men who fight for cause or country, they’ll always look down at a man who fights for pay.”

“I won’t be going to any home.”

“Don’t ever say things like that to anyone here. Only Gypsies say they don’t have homes, and the French hate them almost as much as they hate the Jews.”

“Thank you. I will not make such a mistake again.”

He crushed the glowing embers of his cigarette between thumb and forefinger—the officers made all the recruits they caught smoking learn to do that; it only hurt the first few times. Even in the dark, I could see his eyes were wet when he said:
“Ah, que le bon Dieu te garde, mon petit.”

I
don’t know if the saints have been watching over me, as Patrice had asked. He never made it back to where he said he’d always be welcome. I know, because I’d carried his shredded body for more than three kilometers until we were both back with our unit.

The officers praised me for that. And by then, I’d learned enough to say only,
“J’ai fait mon devoir, monsieur.”

Sure, my “duty.” In truth, had it been anyone but Patrice, I would have left them where they fell. I didn’t understand then, but later it came to me—finally having someone to mourn was more important to me than my own life.

It had been Patrice who had explained to me that this whole
esprit-de-corps
thing was what he called a “user’s lie.” It was another whispered conversation, under the blanket of darkness, far away from the other men, but still well inside our perimeter. “You look at any operation, I don’t care if it’s the Legion or the Unione Corse, loyalty only flows in one direction—up. Loyalty from the men who risk their lives, that all belongs to the men at the top. You rarely even get the privilege of meeting the man who owns your life.”

“You guys enjoying yourself?” It was a man who called himself Hondo, a big, beefy Rhodesian who never stopped bragging about how his country knew the right way to deal with “original” Africans.

“I always enjoy a conversation with one of my mates,” Patrice said, his voice as light as a titanium knife.

“Well, when you get done mating with that kid, I hope you’ll let me have a turn.”

“I’m done already,” Patrice said, as he got to his feet. “Mind your training,” he said to me.

Hondo turned to watch Patrice leave. His last mistake. I had my dagger planted in his kidney before he realized that turning his back on me had cost him his life. He never made a sound.

Patrice spun around, flick-knife open in his hand. When we finished slicing up Hondo, Patrice pulled out a pint of rotgut and told me to cut a couple of pieces of cloth from the dead man’s uniform.

“Always make sure you clean your steel, boyo,” he said, pouring a little bit of the alcohol on one of the rags and wiping down his blade. Then he held his knife pointed upward, poured another few drops into the place where the blade met the hilt, and lit them afire. I copied his every move.

“When they find him in the morning, they’ll know it was one of us who did him for. But nobody will have a word to say.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The man’s been watching us—watching you, especially—for weeks. There’s only one way something like that ends, so I took a little precaution.”

“Yes?”

“I made sure all the other lads knew he was grassing on us. That’s how the bosses always seem to know stuff that’s none of their business. Nobody’s going to miss an informer. And who ever heard of giving a rat a funeral?

“It’s no secret that I don’t love the Brits, so you’d think I wouldn’t be saying such a thing about a man from another country like mine—one that the Brits refuse to recognize. That gave my talk what they call the ring of truth, see? Remember that always. It’s a treasure I was taught as a boy—if you have to lie, make sure the icing on that cake is the truth.”

“Aren’t they going to put us each in one of the hot boxes until somebody talks?”

“Why do you think I bashed him all over every single wound with that edged piece of rock? I got my knife off a fellow in a pub. He said it was Filipino—they’re the best knife-men in the world. That little curve to the blade makes it go in easy and come out hard, so it leaves a real distinctive trail. But now there’s no way for them to tell who did it, or even what weapon they used. All we have to do is strip down and carry him a few hundred yards. That way, there won’t be a drop of blood on our uniforms to give us away. Hell, they won’t even know that sick dog is gone until the count. And even then, they’ll probably think he deserted.”

“He might have run from enemies he made here, too,” I said.

Patrice gave me a long look. “You don’t miss much, do you, now? A man stupid enough to say ‘kaffir’ around Idrissa isn’t cured of his disease. Why else would he leave a country that hates the blacks as much as he does unless they wouldn’t tolerate the dirty little pederast?”

That was true enough. Idrissa was Senegalese. His English wasn’t as good as his French, but he knew what “kaffir” meant. He was
a fearless giant who often charged the enemy armed with nothing but the long blade he always carried. He could use it hard or soft. His sentry-kill was a two-handed stroke; his night-kill of sleeping soldiers was a single surgical slice through the larynx, his other dark hand stifling the death rattle.

The night-kills were especially admired, because they were so valuable to all of us. Waking up to find that the man next to you had been dead for hours would plant fear so deep into the enemy that he’d be no good in combat after that.

I
hadn’t lied to Patrice. I ran away from that hospital in Belgium, where they were trying to fix me. Or cure me. Or … I don’t know.

They told me I had
“l’amnésie rétrograde.”
I didn’t understand much French then, but most of the doctors spoke English. Still, “retrograde amnesia” didn’t mean anything to me.

But I knew someone had to be paying the bills. It was such a nice, clean place, and the people there were really trying to help. All of that wouldn’t have come cheap.

I guess they never expected a little boy to run away. There were no guards or anything. The fence around the grounds was for privacy, not control.

After that, I don’t know what would have happened if Luc hadn’t found me.

“Q
u’est-ce que tu fais, tu bouffes les restes?”

By then, I knew enough French to say what I always did:
“Laissez-moi tranquille!”

“Ça fait combien de temps que tu traînes tout seul dans le coin? C’est dangereux, tu sais.”

The only word I understood was
“dangereux.”
And an Arab kid who was a little older than me had warned me about old men who are kind to runaway little boys.

So why did I go with Luc? I was cold; I was always cold. I was hungry—I was
always
hungry. And Luc wasn’t just old, he was frail. If he turned out to be one of those men I’d been warned about, I was pretty sure I could deal with it. I’d never had a fight in the hospital, but I’d had plenty since I left.

Luc lived in a tiny little dump in the Belleville section, more like a cave with two small windows at street level. And those windows were so blackened with soot that they might as well have been part of the wall itself.

But it was warm, once you got a fire going. And cooking over that fire worked fine.

Luc only went out after dark. I always went with him. He was like a tour guide, pointing out the car-hailing whores, the circling pimps, the hashish dealers, the doors to places I should never go into, the alley gamblers.… All the night people were making a living, but none would ever have a job.

I didn’t start stealing until Luc was sure I was ready.
“Faire les poubelles, c’est bon pour les animaux. Mais faire les poches ou les serrures, ça, c’est la marque d’un homme qui a reçu de l’éducation.”

By then, I had learned enough to understand what he was saying: “Picking up garbage is for animals. But picking a pocket, or picking a lock, that is work for a man, an educated man.”

That’s when my “education” started. The war was long over. What the Nazis left behind was a sewer-rat culture, with the criminal class as its rulers.

Membership in La Résistance was a badge of honor, but far more claimed it than deserved it. The old man didn’t have to claim it—he hated
les collaborateurs
so fiercely that it was assumed.

I knew he had been a jeweler before the war, and a smuggler
during it. He knew that people fleeing the Gestapo had to travel light, and he could pull apart any kind of jewelry so that only the most valuable parts were left.

Luc went underground just before the Nazis came in and took everything that had been in his shop. He was an old man even then—past seventy. His wife had died a few years before. He had nothing to do except work as he always had. La Résistance had many uses for a man with a jeweler’s eyes and hands, be it building bombs or opening safes. But when the war was over, no one had any use for a jeweler without jewels.

Paris was ruled by crime. The old man fit into crime as if born to it. He was careful to live small. Small but proud.
“Une maison, pourquoi faire? Les gens se débrouillent toujours pour te prendre ce que tu posssèdes. Mais qui va venir emmerder un vieux clochard? Ceux que je vais dépouiller, ils me donnent la pièce quand je fais la manche et m’occupe de surveiller leurs maisons.”

I translated in my head, feeling the guile and hate under what was meant to sound like philosophic acceptance of his fate: “What do I need with a house? Whatever people know you have, they will try to take from you. But who bothers with an old beggar? Some of those I plan to steal from put a little coin in my cap as I sit on the sidewalk and watch their houses.”

Even then, I knew there was no wisdom to be found in the cafés. Always this pretentious garbage, like
“Le concept de la liberté individuelle chez l’homme est une illusion absolue.”

I didn’t need the self-named intellectuals to tell me that individual human freedom was an illusion. For me, I had been free since the moment the old man plucked me from the gutter. To him, I would always listen. And always be obedient.

I never questioned Luc about why he had taken me home with him. And I didn’t question him when he told me it was time for me to go. He spoke in English, to make sure I never forgot a word.

“La Légion Étrangère is the only way for you, my son. Listen very carefully, now. You know where their recruiting office is, that
place I showed you. I don’t know how old you are, and they won’t, either. You are a good size, you shave, you tell them you are eighteen, they will not argue.

“But they will ask questions, and you must know the answers. So! Why do you want to enlist? Because you want to be a professional soldier.
‘Parlez-vous francais?’
You answer
en anglais:
‘Only a little bit.’ Where are your parents? You are an orphan. And you didn’t want to stay with the caravan. They will understand from this that you are at least part
gitan
, a Gypsy. Probably a runaway, but that will not concern them.

“Then they will test you. How far can you run before you collapse? Will you get up and run some more if they order it? Physical pain will be your daily diet.

“But the hardest test will be the strength of your mind. That, they will test again and again. You will go without sleep for days at a time. For them, ‘adaptability’ is all. When they see how easily you can accomplish this, they will not ask where you learned, or who taught you—a stolen knife cuts as sharply as any you buy in a store.

“Whatever name you give them cannot be the truth. For you, this is natural—you don’t know your real name. But this you must never admit. So, to the recruiter, your name is Luca Adrian. It is the only version of my name that I can give to you—mine might still call in the hounds.

“If they accept you, they will let you pick a new name. Your
nom de guerre
. When you finish five years, you will be able to claim French citizenship. If you try to leave before that, they will either let you go or not, as they choose. You must never put them to that choice.

“The policy of
anonymat
is a century old, but still in place. Perhaps not as it was originally, but for you good enough. Because this much is still true: no matter who asks about you, no matter their status or their reason, La Légion will ask your permission to disclose. If you do not give it, they will consider the matter closed.