Liquidate Paris (13 page)

'Let's see what you've got,' he said, tersely.

The landlord beamed.

'Lobster,' he said. 'Several tins of it. I got it'--he waved a vague fat hand--'from the Americans. We've been waiting for the Yanks ever since the war began, and now that they're here, what do they do? Drink themselves senseless in every town and village from Caen to Paris. You call that war? I call it----'

What he called it we never knew, because he was interrupted by a savage howl from the bar and the sounds of shattering glass.

'Mille diables!' The landlord snatched up a rubber truncheon from the kitchen table and waved it over his head. 'All the same, you soldiers! Nothing but drink and fight!'

We surged back into the other room, leaving Porta busy with a tin opener. We found Little John and Heide locked together on the floor in a death grip. The Old Man was resignedly drinking whisky in a corner; Barcelona and the American were sitting at the ringside, cheering. The Legionnaire, as usual, was aloof. Two accurate swings of the rubber truncheon, straight between the eyes, were sufficient to part the fighting couple. They fell back insensible and the spectators loudly applauded.

'That's pretty good,' I said, admiringly. 'But I should keep out of Little John's way when he comes round.'

'Merde!' said the landlord and marched stolidly back to the kitchen with me at his heels.

Porta, dressed up on a chef's cap and a butcher's apron, looked up and waved a floury hand at us.

'What was all that about?'

The landlord unleashed a stream of French, and Porta and I exchanged puzzled glances.

'I suppose you don't speak German?' asked Porta, casually. 'My French is none too hot.'

'What?' The man glanced at him, suddenly suspicious. 'How long have you been in the Legion?'

'A couple of years, but I don't have any gift for languages. Besides, we all tend to stick to our own tongue. You don't find you learn too much of other people's lingo.'

'Well, it's true they call it the Foreign Legion,' agreed the landlord, scratching his crutch. 'All the same, it seems odd, somehow----
'

'Very odd,' said Porta, briskly, 'but I can't be bothered with that sort of thing at the moment. I'm more interested in getting this bouillabaisse under way. Vegetables, please!'

Distractedly the landlord began handing them up to me. Tomatoes, carrots, onions, potatoes. I passed them over to Porta in his new role of chef. He was plainly enjoying himself.

'I shall want thyme and bay, as well. And then lemon and parsley, if you've got it.'

While the landlord and I and the two disgruntled women ran about the kitchen, fetching and carrying, cutting and scraping, Porta happily mixed things in a vast saucepan and sang in a foreign language at the top of his untuneful voice.

'Hungarian sailors' song,' he explained, in the face of our total lack of enthusiasm. 'They're mad about bouillabaisse in Hungary. That's where I got the recipe, years ago.'

'What's the bloody sailors' song got to do with it?' I said sourly.

I had scraped my thumb on a nutmeg grater and cut off half a finger with a carving knife and was beginning to resent my role of skivvy.

Five minutes later, the landlord found it necessary to separate the two of us with hi

'Gentlemen, please! Should we not continue with the bouillabaisse?'

'You're quite right,' said Porta. 'This is a matter of the utmost importance. It needs peace and quiet and great skill... Either stop interfering, Sven, or go back to the bar and get pickled... landlord, give me some white wine! Two bottles at least!'

He not only wanted the wine, and the lobster and the shrimps, and the vegetables and the herbs and the lemon, he also demanded saffron and cinnamon and fish and rum. What was more surprising was that he actually got them.

Fifteen minutes later, boiling furiously and stinking to high heaven, the mixture was pronounced ready for consumption. I preceded it through the doorway and found everyone sitting-up at the bar like a row of school kids waiting for dinner. Little John and Heide had regained consciousness. Even our drunken American had dragged himself on to a bar stool and was making a determined effort to remain there. His nostrils twitched greedily as Porta began serving out his bouillabaisse.

'I'm darned if this isn't the best damn thing that's happened to me since I arrived in this country.' He gave us a slow, sly smile. 'But I have to tell you boys something: I been watching you pretty closely and I reckon I've just about got your number... Foreign Legion, for crying out loud!'

He swayed guffawing on his stool and probably never knew how close he was to death. I saw Little John's hand go to his pocket and Barcelona half rise from his seat.

'What do you mean by that remark?' asked the Legionnaire, coldly.

The American slewed round on his stool and nodded in a knowing fashion.

'I got your number, Mac... I got your number!'

There was a strained silence. Then Porta, very casually, pulled out his heavy P.38 and fired two shots into the ceiling. The landlord screamed and thumped on the counter in a fury.

'No harm done,' said Porta, dipping into his bouillabaisse. 'Just a warning, that's all.'

'I've had my eye on you,' continued the American, with the obtuse persistence of the dead drunk.

'Give it a rest!' snarled Heide. 'You're canned!'

'Canned, stoned, pissed, what the hell, I still been watching you. I come to the conclusion you're a load of queens... don't know how to hold your liquor, that's your trouble.'

The Legionnaire raised a frosty eyebrow. Little John rose up with a great roar of anger. The rest of us, realizing that the American was in fact too drunk to talk sense and had no suspicion at all of our true identity, returned with relief to the bouillabaisse.

'Who's calling me a queen?' shouted Little John, advancing upon the hapless American with clenched fist.

'Oh, for Christ's sake!' snapped Porta.

Picking up an empty whisky bottle, he gave Little John a businesslike blow on the head and for the second time that evening he was laid out cold. For a while we existed peaceably enough, eating our way steadily through the stinking stew, which tasted slightly better than it smelt, drinking our way through the landlord's supply of whisky. The Old Man was quietly sick through an open window,. Barcelona and the American lay with their heads resting together, the Legionnaire had a glazed expression on his face. They had all obviously been drinking hard while we were preparing food in the kitchen, and I lost no time catching up with them. Porta soon lost ground, being distracted by the sudden reappearance of the less middle-aged of the two disgruntled women. He sat her on his knee and began experimentally sliding a hand beneath her skirts. His expression changed suddenly to one of surprise and gratification.

'Hey, she hasn't any pants on! ' he yelled.

The American woke up and held out an empty glass.

'Here's to women that don't wear pants! Here's to America! Here's to the war! Here's to dead Krauts, and thousands of 'em! Here's to----'

He was interrupted by a roar of baffled rage from Little John, who had again recovered consciousness.

'What shit clobbered, me?'

'Here's to the Frogs! Here's to the British!'

Porta went into a huddle with his captured lady. Barcelona spewed up his ring down the back of the landlord, who was himself too drunk to notice. Heide let his head fall into the stewpot and half drowned before the Legionnaire lifted him out. The American turned hopefully towards me.

'Say, Mac, are you guys going to Paris by any chance?'

'Did you ever hear of a journey through France that didn't end up in Paris?' I parried.

'I have to get there before the lousy war ends," he told me, stertorously breathing whisky fumes over me. 'I have to make sure those damned Krauts haven't blown up the Ritz bar. I'd surely appreciate it if you guys could take me along.'

Fortunately his attention was distracted by the sight of Little John pouring a mixture of rum, whisky and cognac into the stewpot, and for a few moments it was touch and go whether any of us would survive till morning: the concoction went screaming down your throat like a tongue of flame and lay simmering in your stomach like red-hot coals. Little John snatched up a soda syphon and sprayed himself with it, and the landlord fell sobbing and screaming beneath the counter. Only the American seemed unaffected. He returned, annoyingly, to the subject of Paris.

'If any of you guys have a jeep you'd care to sell----'

'We've got a tank,' said Porta, suddenly tiring of feminine company and tossing his rejected lover into a heap on the floor. 'It's outside, parked in the square.'

'Parked in the squayer?' The American rose to his feet with surprising agility and moved across to the door. 'Jesus, I sure hope it's still there. The local gendarme's awful hot on parking offences. Two shakes of a duck's arse and he'll have you towed away.'

We followed him out to the street. The Puma was still there and the American gazed at it enraptured. It took him along while to notice what had struck me instantly.

'Say, what's the idea of that damned Kraut cross painted on it?'

All eyes turned to the incriminating swastika.

'Someone's idea of a joke,' said Porta, bitterly. 'It may surprise you, Yank, but not everyone over here likes the idea of being liberated by the Americans.'

'Well, to hell with that, we'd Better get some white paint and do something about it. I can't drive around the country looking like a damned Kraut.'

The landlord was picked up from beneath the bar and ordered to produce white paint. He did so. Porta and the American solemnly obliterated the offending swastika, then sat side by side in the gutter, smoking cigarettes and smugly surveying their handiwork.

'O.K.,' said the American. 'That's settled: you take me along to Paris with you. The minute we get there, I'm going to send off a dispatch to my newspaper. Know what headline I'm thinking?' He raised his right arm and spelt out the words several metres high in the air. '
War Correspondent and Tank Driver Liberate Paris: A Million Krauts Surrender
. How's about that? You know how to take pictures, brother?'

'Of course,' said Porta, boastfully.

'Fine. In that case we'll line up all the Kraut generals and snap them in the Ritz bar before kicking them out into the gutter head-first. C'mon, kiddoes, let's get going!'

He bounded to his feet, took two strides towards the Puma, then collapsed in a final and definitive heap in the middle of the square. His capacity for alcohol must have commanded anyone's respect, but even Americans, it seemed, had their limitations. We left him lying there and ourselves climbed stiffly back into the tank. Porta took us on a crazy zig-zag course across the square and up the village street. I wasn't too sure whether it was me or the road that was, lurching up and down; whether the brightly spinning Catherine wheels before my eyes were illusions or a new type of enemy weapon. Barcelona was snoring with his head on the Legionnaire's knee; the Old Man was pressing his hands to his temples, Little John was alternately belching and bellowing unmusically. To begin with I thought Heide was also attempting to sing, although he was not a singing sort of person, and it wasn't until we were some way out of the village and he suddenly doubled up with his hands clutched to his side that I begin to have doubts.

'What's up with him?' demanded Porta, impatiently.

Heide groaned a few times, then noisily deposited the entire evening's intake of food and drink over the floor of the tank.

'It's that damned American whisky,' he muttered.

The stink was so hideous that sympathy was quite out of the question. We turned on him, cursing, and Heide doubled himself into a ball and screamed a few times.

'Ignore him,' advised Little John.

We did our best, but the man was persistent and it's difficult to ignore someone who's screaming down your left ear every few seconds.

'You don't think he's really ill?' I ventured, at length.

Everyone turned and critically regarded the huddled figure.

'Stop the car,' said the Old Man. 'Let's have a closer look at him.'

Porta brought us to a halt beneath the shelter of some trees at the roadside and it took four of us to extricate the screaming Heide and lay him out on the grass.

'Put a bullet through his head,' suggested Little John. 'Put him out of his misery. Far simpler in the long run.'

'Shut up,' said the Old Man. 'Help me get his clothes off.'

We tore his jacket open, wrenched his trousers down. The Old Man prodded cautiously here and there and Heide gave a great yell of pain, and began to use abusive language.

'Appendicitis,' said the Old Man, dryly. 'He needs an immediate operation if the thing's not going to burst open... Trouble is, the only place they'd operate is behind the American lines. How do you feel about it?'

'Risk a bullet for that shit?' asked Porta, horrified. 'Not bleeding likely! I say balls to his appendicitis!'

The Legionnaire shook his head.

'It's naive to think the Americans would go to the trouble of operating on a German soldier. They're too busy winning the war, they can't spare, the time or the men. Chances are they'd shoot the lot of us.'

'Put him out of his misery,' urged Little John.

We stared down at the twitching Heide. Porta found a marijuana cigarette in one of his pockets and stuck it between the blue lips. Little John fingered his naga, Barcelona looked uncomfortable. The Old Man was rubbing his nose, a sure sign that he was worried. Heide began muttering feverishly to himself and we caught the word 'God' once or twice.

'It's a bit late to start thinking of him,' said Porta, severely.

The Old Man came to a decision.

'We'll try to get in radio contact with one of our units. There must be one somewhere within reach of us, though God alone knows where. Just keep on trying until we get hold of someone.'

The Legionnaire hunched a shoulder, picked up the headphones and began twiddling the knobs on the radio receiver. A series of spits and crackles and then a voice spoke: