We were now halted and made ready for being led back to the cells. First, each man had to collect his can from beside the first pump. I acquired one of my own in the following way. Since I was the last in the line and had brought no can with me up to the courtyard, I was empty-handed. One of the guards, however, snatched away the can belonging to the prisoner with the crushed hand and presented it, almost with courtesy, to me. ‘Prenez!’ he said. Then added, in German: ‘Er hat die letzte Scheisse gehabt.’ Guffaws arose from the other guards. Later that day (if day it still was), shots were heard — the first of several fusillades I was to hear from my cell — and at the next morning’s ‘muster’ the prisoner with the crushed hand was missing.
(I remembered a story Mathieu had once told me about another Gestapo establishment in Dijon, which I had thought was a joke: ‘They only have so many cans. So when there are not enough to go round they shoot one of the prisoners.’)
We were now marched back to the cells. I was anxious to know if they would return us to the same cells from which we came. They did — now and on subsequent occasions. They made a mistake here.
After only a brief respite in my cell, I was dragged up again by the guards to grey-hair and fat-cheeks; then to ‘le goret’s’ room; then back to my cell for another brief period; then to grey-hair and fat-cheeks again. And so on.
At some time later — how long I could not say — I found myself mercifully left to languish. It was then that I heard the shots from the courtyard. I was so numb and fatigued that I heard them almost with indifference. I slept — not the deep, oblivious sleep of exhaustion, but a fitful sleep, broken by the noise of scuffling in the corridor and screams from ‘le goret’s’ room. Then — at dawn again, as it turned out: grey-hair and fat-cheeks.
During those twenty-four hours, as my neighbour at the water-trough had predicted, we received no food — at least, I received none. On the second day a bowl of something was shoved into my cell. An unspeakable swill. We were given no drinking-water save what we gulped at the trough.
At the next muster in the courtyard my companion murmured under his breath: ‘They shot Fernand’ (the name, I gathered, of the prisoner with the broken fingers). ‘Now he is out of his misery. Sometimes they shoot you in the courtyard; sometimes they say, “Please, take a walk in the garden.” Among the roses, a machine-gun.…’
I could not help forming a dislike for this friend of mine and his grim brand of phlegm. His remarks did nothing to help morale, and I even suspected him of having some sort of double role. But then I realized that his way of seizing on me like a new boy and attempting to scare me was his means of gaining a little power and authority, and this in turn gave him the will to survive. A brief lesson in prison psychology.
Sometimes during these morning musters we would hear, on the air, the distant sound of shell-fire. Our captors put on unperturbed looks and so betrayed inward unease. The sound gave us all a flutter of hope, but, at the same time, if anything, it loaded the balance of fate against us. The chances of our captors abandoning the Château without first herding us all together and executing us were a thousand to one.
On the fourth morning (I believe it was the fourth morning) the Germans adopted a new ruse. In the courtyard, by the washing trough, we were told to strip. Our clothes were put in a heap. We were made to parade in the usual way, unclad, and were led back to our cells naked. From then on, at all times and in all circumstances, we were without clothes. A small matter, on top of so much; but of all the humiliations and cruelties — more intricate, more painful — we had to endure, none, I think, was more demoralizing, more appalling than this nakedness.
This was the pattern — but pattern is hardly the word — of our life at the Château. What remains? What more can be added? Memory provides its own, thankful censorship. If one dominant impression stays with me, it is that — the everyday man in everyday circumstances does not know what it means — of being absolutely in the power of another. This ought to be a condition of the utmost seriousness. But it is not. You feel yourself to be the mere pawn, the mere dehumanized toy that you are. Many times as I huddled naked in the dark in my cell, when even the redeeming will to escape had deserted me, I thought, nothing matters, I am in their hands: all this is a game.…
I look up from the book. Outside, the long June evening has grown dim and I realize that for some time, in my absorption, I have been straining to read without a light. But it is as though I have been straining not so much against the dark but to discern some hidden things behind the words. I switch on the light. From upstairs I can hear the sounds of Marian’s bath running and the noise of the water in the pipes. What happened in ‘le goret’s’ room, and in those interrogation sessions with fat-cheeks and grey-hair? Why do I need to know these things — to eavesdrop on my Dad’s suffering? So as to become like one of his tormentors? To become like Dad? With so much of Dad’s book I have to struggle to make it real, to wrest it out of the story-book realm into the realm of fact. Because I know I could not have done half those things Dad did in France, and so for me it has always seemed not wholly real. And yet in these last chapters there is more of the flavour of reality, because there is also more mystery — and more misery. Why should that be? I can believe in these scenes of cruelty and deprivation. I can believe that they happened. Is that shocking? Sometimes they can actually seem one, that silent dummy in the hospital ward and that figure in his pitch-dark cell. And not only this, but because I believe in these passages, I can put myself into them, I can imagine myself in that dark cell, in those passage-ways, that courtyard. Why does it seem that I know that Château? So that sometimes in my mind — it is like this tonight — it almost seems that Dad and I are one too. But I must know everything. I must know every detail. So whatever Dad endured, I will know if I could endure it too; what is expected of me too.
But that is not the only mystery. There is the mystery of X. This only makes things more tangled and obscure. Dad doesn’t mention him. He even says explicitly at one point: ‘French was the only language I heard amongst the prisoners … the only Britisher at the Château.’ Perhaps X was not there, or there but at a different time — or in some part of the Château where Dad would not have seen him. Perhaps it is all the work of my over-ripe imagination: X, ‘Arthur’, the golf course.…
But I have been making notes while I have been reading — just as I would when going through one of Quinn’s files at the office. I have been jotting down those words, those little additional comments, those inconsistencies, which most seem to draw me into the mystery — and closer to Dad:
I made a mental note of everything.
I only recall … there is much I simply do not remember.
Memory provides its own censorship.
From the outset I had resolved on escape …
… the redeeming will to escape …
… in such a condition you would not be able to escape.
The spy’s duty is to tell nothing.
All this is a game.
… lawns silvered with dew … doves preening … tangy,
woody, late-summer air …
… impossible … mirage … illusion …
… a way of gaining a little power and authority, and … in
turn … the will to survive …
… absolutely in the power of another … in their hands …