The Road Between Us (33 page)

Anselm looks around in vain for the Commandant, but he cannot see him. Where has he gone?

A mattress is brought out and placed on the scaffold. A woman with long brown hair and a rounded figure is escorted over from the camp brothel, the one used by the guards. She removes her dress
in a resigned way, revealing large, tubular breasts and a dark, curly pelt of pubic hair. Once on the mattress she opens her legs wide. Anselm finds himself filled with curiosity about her. What would it be like to have sex with a woman? He has never entertained such thoughts before.

A prisoner Anselm recognizes from the experiments is escorted over from the infirmary. He too is made to undress.

‘This homosexual has been cured,’ the doctor announces, indicating the man, who is now covering his genitals with his hands. ‘And he is about to take the renunciation test.’

The guards give an ironic cheer.

‘You may mount her now,’ the doctor says to the man, making impatient circular motions with his hand.

The guards form a semicircle around the scaffold as if it were an amphitheatre. They stand legs akimbo, watching expectantly. The Valkyrie is one of them. Though it is not yet dark, a guard in a nearby watchtower directs his spotlight at the couple, making them look eerie and two-dimensional.

The prisoner lies on top of the prostitute, his thin physique barely making an impression on hers. He does not move.

The Valkyrie climbs up the scaffold steps and holds the handle of her whip to the prisoner’s chin. ‘Come on then,’ she says. ‘Don’t be shy.’

The man makes thrusts with his hips but it is obvious that his member is not co-operating. The doctors talk among themselves before shaking their heads and walking away. The guards are laughing now and also walking away. The woman does not look at the prisoner as she pushes him off and gathers her clothes. She waits until she is off the scaffold before she gets dressed and walks with a side-to-side gait back to the brothel.

With the matter-of-fact air of one who is carrying out a dull, domestic chore, the Valkyrie spools out her whip and then brings it down hard on the man’s back. Half a dozen lashes later, she signals the Ukrainian over to finish the job. He strides up to the prisoner and beats him unconscious with the butt of his rifle, delivering three smart blows to the back of his skull.

As the Valkyrie is making her way back down the steps and catching her breath she sees Anselm and shouts: ‘Hey, Artist! You next, eh?’

He remains standing to attention as she marches up to him and brings her whip across his face. As he staggers back clutching the welt he looks up to see the Ukrainian approaching. There is blood on Anselm’s hands now and, as he stares at them as if they are not his own, he feels the barrel of a rifle being pressed into his chest. The Ukrainian holds it there for a few seconds as if considering whether to pull the trigger, then he withdraws it and turns the rifle around so that the barrel is in his hand. Anselm can still feel the sharp pressure made by the muzzle. It lingers on his skin like hot wax. Then the butt of the rifle slams into his solar plexus, driving the breath from his lungs. As he doubles up, he feels the butt hit the skin over the bone on his shoulder. Between waves of pain, he is aware of the Valkyrie speaking again, saying through her laughter: ‘No Commandant to protect you now, Artist.’

The landing craft hits the beach with a bang that causes Charles to lose his footing. A crunching sound follows, shingle against metal. But as the door cranks down and he braces himself for a whip of bullets, he sees instead a smiling Frenchman with reddish hair holding out a tray of champagne. The others scramble past him, their boots heavy in the wet sand, but it is soon obvious that there are no targets for them, only wisps of smoke in the treeline, a grove of lolling palms. Apart from an occasional crackle of small-arms fire in the distance, a sound like a dry log on a campfire, it seems the Germans are not putting up a fight.

Sections of the beach are blocked by double rows of barbed wire. Flail tanks are clearing minefields. An old woman, the shape of a bell, now appears with a tray of crepes and omelette. Bewildered, the soldiers take off their heavy packs and bandoliers and throw them on the beach along with their rifles and entrenching tools. Some laugh in relief as they sprawl in the sand and signal the old woman over. Others look around for the red-haired man with the
champagne. Charles clenches and unclenches his good hand. His fingertips are remembering the hairy texture of the rope that served as a rail around the side of the landing craft. He had been clinging to it so hard his knuckles still ache.

He takes off the US M1 helmet he has borrowed, tugs the beret from his shoulder strap and puts that on instead, positioning it two fingers above his left eye. He wants the Americans to know he is British.

A command post is being set up on the beach, a folding desk, a radio transmitter and a chair. An officer is pointing and shouting and, at his command, some men begin unreeling telephone wire while others dig foxholes. A line of about a dozen men are on their knees prodding their bayonets in the sand to check for mines.

Charles looks back out towards the Mediterranean and sees, about fifty yards away, what looks like a single uniformed body washing ashore. The ships are shimmering several miles out, firing occasional volleys that are signalled not by a bang but by a puff of smoke. The noise comes moments before the shell arches overhead, its destination a couple of miles inland.

Along the entire length of the Riviera, tens of thousands of men are now pouring ashore unopposed. Charles overhears from a radio operator that the only resistance encountered in this sector has been from two anti-aircraft coastal batteries supported by a German garrison of a couple of hundred men, but they have now surrendered.

He looks around for Major Lehague but, unable to see him, he gets out his sketchpad. Holding his pencil awkwardly because of the bulging wet bandage on his thumb, he sketches a group of GIs who are clearly spoiling for a fight and feeling disappointed not to find one. Behind them a jeep is stuck in the sand. As it grinds its gears, two fighters patrolling low over the beach drown out its noise.

As he is backing down the steps of the scaffold, helping another prisoner carry the body of the homosexual who failed the
renunciation test, Anselm slips. For a moment he thinks he has sprained his ankle, but, to his relief, he finds he can still put weight on it. A sprained angle is a death warrant in this place. He turns to see if the Ukrainian has noticed. It’s fine. He takes hold of the wrists again and lifts, but not high enough to prevent the bony buttocks from being grazed as they descend.

The body is light and, as they carry it in the direction of the crematorium, it swings between them like a hammock. There are already two corpses stacked outside it, in differing stages of decomposition, so they add this one to the pile. They are walking away when they hear someone shout at them.

‘You there.’

They turn and see an SS doctor standing next to a handcart stacked with crates that are about two feet square. He is signalling them over with impatient hand gestures.

‘You are to take these to the Commandant’s house,’ he says.

Anselm and the other prisoner take one shaft each and, as they pull, the iron-tyred wooden-spoked wheels make a crunching sound against the small rocks hidden in the dirt.

Half a dozen prisoners are shuffling in and out of the château as they load more of these crates into the back of a three-ton truck. A guard sees Anselm and barks an order for him to take his crates inside.

Coming from the kitchen there is a distinct smell of meat being boiled. Anselm is directed through to the drawing room. All the paintings, records and Persian rugs have gone. The only evidence that the Commandant was ever here is one of the photographs of a Fräulein holding a baby. It is lying flat, the glass in its frame broken.

‘Bring them here!’ Anselm follows the voice. It belongs to another SS doctor. He places the two crates he is carrying on the desk as instructed. The doctor takes two handfuls of sawdust from a bag on the floor and uses them to line one of the crates.

When Anselm returns with the next two crates he sees the doctor carefully placing something that looks like a large egg in
the crate packed with sawdust. As he moves closer he sees it is a skull. The doctor is now removing odd small chunks of flesh and gristle from it with tweezers.

By the time Anselm has returned with his last two crates, another skull is being delivered from the kitchen. Steam is rising from it and he realizes it has been boiled, presumably to remove its skin and hair. The first crate has now been nailed shut and the doctor is writing a number across its lid.

Anselm lowers his eyes, as if to persuade the doctor he has not witnessed this scene. He notices the ink stain on the wooden floor.

The residents of Saint-Tropez have come out on their balconies to stare. Chairs have been arranged and parasols opened so that the events below can be followed by entire families, from children in striped swimming costumes to elderly men resting their chins on walking canes.

To Charles, as he sits sketching them from a café on the promenade, it is as if they dare not take their eyes off the thousands of American troops occupying their boulevards and squares, for fear that, if they do, these invaders will slip away to their landing craft and head back out to sea.

Some of the soldiers, leather-faced men from the 45th Infantry Division, are marching, to where and what purpose it is not obvious. Others have stripped off their shirts to enjoy the sunshine, sitting on low walls, dangling their legs like bored teenagers. Others still are shaving, smoking, listening to bebop on their radios, chewing gum, or dealing cards as they lounge in doorways. Most are milling in a directionless way, unsure what to do next, now that they are here.

The soporific clank of halyards against masts, audible even above the noise of engines, seems especially inappropriate to Charles.

As his gaze shifts to the chaos of the beach, he has a sense of déjà vu. A bulldozer is churning out bluey-black smoke as its driver, an engineer stripped to his waist, tries to rescue a tank abandoned in the sand. German prisoners are being herded on to the beach for
removal by ships. They have pieces of card tied around their necks as if they are items of luggage. Two cranes on caterpillar tracks are gathering jeeps and artillery equipment in their nets and unloading them from a barge docked in the bay. Not far away from this there are yachts moored, and, an even stranger sight, fishermen selling their catches to American soldiers, while herring gulls circle, mewling as they wheel.

In front of them, a hundred-foot pontoon causeway is being dragged on to the beach. Further out, a second one is being lowered into the water. They remind Charles of the makeshift jetty he saw at Dunkirk. Two events five years apart, one at the top of France, the other at the bottom. The main difference between them, he thinks, between an evacuation and an invasion, is the expressions on the faces. The Thunderbirds, as the US veterans of Sicily, Salerno and Anzio are known, look relaxed. Relieved.

Having had a decent night’s sleep in a hotel, Charles, too, is feeling calm. He smiles to himself, takes a sip of black coffee that tastes of chlorine and then frowns. The caffeine has made his thumb start throbbing again. He searches for the bottle of antibiotics the doctor had given him, but cannot find it.

As his thoughts return to Dunkirk, his positive mood changes and he feels a tug of melancholy. This war has been grinding on for too long, he thinks. All those years of hoping, of convalescing, of painting, of running to stand still, of pretending to be things he isn’t, of making promises to himself, of waiting to get here, gun in hand, within touching distance of Anselm … all these things have left him feeling exhausted and frustrated.

‘We’ll meet again, Don’t know where, don’t know when …’

Vera Lynn’s words are drifting up from a radio somewhere and they seem to be directed at him. The sensuous memories they evoke flow unresisting through him, teasing him, weakening his resolve. All he has had to keep himself going is a photograph, and a couple of letters, and a few memories. And now all of these things have worn thin, to the point of irritation.

He is not irritated with Anselm but with himself, with his own
company, with the crushing pointlessness of his personal crusade. He takes out Anselm’s letters and starts to re-read them, only to be distracted by the sound of someone running. He looks up. A soldier has a jerrycan in each hand and, with an awkward, rocking motion like that of a penguin, is hurrying away, as best he can, from the scene of his crime. Two GIs notice what he is doing and sidle over to the fuel depot, apparently to do the same. An MP sees them and blows a whistle.

The rumours are true, then. The large German garrison at Marseille is putting up a token fight only. And because the Allied invasion plan assumed that German resistance would be tougher at the ports, lasting weeks rather than days, the immediate need for transport and fuel has been woefully underestimated. Already VI Corps has secured a beachhead twenty miles long and nine miles deep. And Charles has overheard two American officers talking about an advance on Grenoble by ‘Arrowhead’, the 36th Infantry Division. It has been so rapid that they have run out of fuel and have had to halt. The ships carrying new supplies, meanwhile, are not expected for several days.

At midday the American uniforms in the port are joined by Free French ones, a steady stream from the French First Army, which is only now, on D-Day plus one, coming ashore. Charles keeps scanning the faces to see if he can see Lehague.

Half an hour later he does see him, but coming from the opposite direction to the troops arriving from the azure water. He is wearing tank goggles over his kepi and is behind the steering wheel of a green, open-top jeep, one that has a large white encircled star on its bonnet. When he sees Charles he waves and, with a crunch of gears and a brake squeal, comes to a halt.

‘
Bonjour
, Artist!’ Lehague says. ‘Had your fill of champagne yet?’