Jacques Dorme knows it is impossible. A man is not killed like this without a trial. It must be a blank cartridge, to inspire fear. You cannot kill a man in front of this table, in this sunlight… Witold falls. The man in black leather puts away his pistol, and the solders drag the body in through the open door of one of the barrack huts.
When he finds himself out there on the bench, Jacques Dorme has the strange sensation of not having left his observation post behind the hangar wall, of continuing to observe the scene, of there being quite simply this other man, himself, who will now talk for several minutes, then die. The one looking through the crack ought to do something: hurl himself at the man in black leather, wrest his pistol from him, shout, alert a commanding officer. The man repeats his question; one of the soldiers thrusts the barrel of his submachine gun into the back of Jacques Dorme's neck, prompting him to speak. He replies, is amazed at the automatic correctness of what he is saying, realizes he is speaking Russian and that it is the first time this language has been quite as useful as this to him. He also has enough presence of mind to appreciate the strangeness of this first time. To appreciate that his replies will not ward off what awaits him and that this knowledge of Russian is the gravest charge against him, against this "spy," parachuted in by the Germans, and trying to pass himself off- a likely story! – as a French pilot. In particular, he believes he has identified the man in black leather, not him but the men of this type, whom he came across in Spain. Men in black leather. The Russian airmen, he recalls, used to break off their conversations when one of these men approached, and Jacques Dorme could not for the life of him understand this fear in pilots who confronted death ten times a day. They would stiffen and the only explanation they gave was a combination of letters: GPU – or else NKVD…
The scream of planes going into a nosedive obliterates all words. They face one another in silence, staring into one another's eyes. Suddenly Jacques Dorme senses that the man in leather is very frightened, that these narrow brown eyes are squinting with fear. An aircraft flies over the hangars, dives down on the infantrymen in the next street who are preparing to pull out. There are shouts, the stampeding of a crowd. Jacques Dorme looks up, notices the notched silhouette of another plane, and in an automatic and instant computation, assesses the angle, the distance, the approach speed… He has an impulse to warn the man in leather, but the latter is already running, running slowly, caught up in the stiff panels of his greatcoat, his hand gripping the holster of his revolver. He ought to get down, throw himself behind a wall, beneath this bench under which Jacques Dorme slides, but the dive-bomber is already passing overhead, bursting their eardrums with its roar, firing.
There is still the same table in the middle of the courtyard, the same sunlight, the ice melting into long, iridescent drops. And now, close to the truck's running board, this body in its black leather, huddled up, the smashed head fallen forward on its chest. "The man who wanted to kill me…" Jacques Dorme says to himself, without yet grasping the sense of his words – "The man I wanted to save…"
He has no time to realize what is happening to him. A cross-country vehicle pulls up in the courtyard, and the officer who escorted them this morning gets out and claps him on the shoulder. "So that's it. He's checked you over, our spy catcher?" Jacques Dorme indicates the truck with a jerk of his chin. The officer emits a long whistle, followed by a torrent of oaths. He goes to look at the corpse, stoops, retrieves the pistol and explains with a wink: "He's killed more Russians than Germans with this. Only don't tell anyone I said so…" Jacques Dorme tells him about Witold. The same whistle, a bit less long-drawn-out, the same oaths: "Poor goddamn Polack! Just his luck… No, we haven't time. The Fritzes will be here before nightfall. Get in quick. We need to see Colonel Krymov." Jacques Dorme refuses, argues. The officer insists, becomes angry, waves the pistol he has just taken from the dead man. Jacques Dorme smiles: "Go ahead. Shoot. At least that'll be one who's not Russian." In the end they load Witold's body into the vehicle and drive off, weaving a path between the bomb craters and the skeletons of burning trucks.
Colonel Krymov is nowhere to be found. At the command post they shrug their shoulders; his aide-de-camp advises them to wait. They decide to inspect all the houses, few in number, where lights are visible. The last one they visit is this izba where the windows sparkle with a flickering radiance. Before knocking they go up to the window and look in. The room is lit by the ruddy glow from the fire in the big stove. A hefty, naked man can be seen heaving about on the bed, apparently alone; he lets himself fall, full length, rears up again, falls back once more. Suddenly his hand plunges into the hollow of the bed, extracts from it a heavy female breast and kneads it between his fingers. The bed is very deep, much sunken by the weight of the lovers, and the woman's body is buried in the depths of this nest. The man collapses, emerges. This time his hand fishes out a broad thigh, pink from the fire. It is a bed on casters; at each thrust it moves forward, then backward, but not as far. A military greatcoat looks as if it is sitting bolt upright on a chair.
They see Krymov at the command post an hour later. He shows them the road to take the next day and advises them to set off very early, because "We'll be in for a merry time here soon." The dour melancholy with which he says this surprises Jacques Dorme. Merry… He does not understand. "My Russian doesn't stretch to it," he says to himself.
The frost that night is very light and there is soft earth in the corner of an orchard. When the grave is filled in Jacques Dorme sinks a cross into it: two planks of wood fastened together with wire. "At long last," sighs the officer, "that was well done," and fires three shots into the air with his pistol.
The pulsing of this new life, saved as it was in the nick of time, keeps him from sleeping. One thought is uppermost: he will never be able to explain to anyone that the war was part of all this too.
MORE ECHOES OF THE WAR COULD BE HEARD the next day in the tones of his latest escort. (Jacques Dorme was getting the feeling that his successive mentors simply did not know how to get rid of him.) This lieutenant informed him with a little dry laugh: "By the way, Krymov's regiment… Mincemeat. Not a single one got away. And the village. Not a single house left standing. It was a meat grinder." A gesture emphasized his words.
The day after, they traveled back through the same village – since then recaptured from the Germans – and came upon a young signalman lying dead on the road, close to the length of wire, severed in an explosion. His arms torn to pieces by shrapnel, he had clamped the two ends of the wire together in his teeth. What seemed to amaze the lieutenant more than anything was the soldier's ingenuity.