The young woman hesitated a moment before bending over the name on the plaque again and turning around in astonishment.
“Yes, it’s me. Not altogether dead, as you can see,” said Samuel.
All three of them ended up in the kitchen of a nearby house, drinking Pernod and eating baguettes and sausages. Clotaire Martineaux was short and stocky, with a resounding laugh and the smell of garlic. He embraced them both and was happy to answer Samuel’s questions, calling him mon frère and refilling his glass time and again. As Samuel could confirm, he was not one of those heroes who appeared as if by magic after the end of the war, as he knew all about the plane brought down near the village, the rescue of a crew member, and knew two of the men who had hidden him, as well as the names of the rest. He listened to Samuel’s story, drying his eyes and blowing his nose on the same kerchief he wore around his neck, also employed to wipe sweat from his brow and grease from his hands. “My grandfather has always been a crybaby,” his granddaughter said by way of explanation.
Samuel told his host that his nom de guerre in the Jewish Resistance was Jean Valjean, and that he’d spent months in a state of confusion from the brain trauma he suffered when the plane came down, but that little by little he had begun to recover at least part of his memory. He had sketchy recollections of a great house with maidservants in black aprons and white caps, but none of his family. He thought that if there was anything still standing at the war’s end, he would seek out his Polish roots, because that was where the language in which he did sums, swore, and dreamed came from; somewhere in that country the house etched in his memory must exist.
“I had to wait until the war was over to discover my own name and my family’s fate. By 1944 it was already possible to foresee the defeat of the Nazis, do you remember, Monsieur Martineaux? The situation started to turn around on the eastern front, where the British and the Americans least expected it. They thought the Red Army was made up of ill-disciplined peasant bands, poorly nourished and worse armed, incapable of confronting Hitler.”
“I remember it all perfectly, mon frère,” said Martineaux. “After the Battle of Stalingrad, the myth of Hitler’s invincibility began to crumble, and we could start to have hope. It has to be said that the Russians broke the morale and the backbone of the Germans in 1943.”
“The defeat at Stalingrad forced them to withdraw to Berlin,” added Samuel.
“Then came the Allies’ Normandy landings in June 1944, and the liberation of Paris only two months later. Ah, what an unforgettable day that was!”
“I was taken prisoner. My group was decimated by the SS, and my surviving comrades were executed with a shot to the back of the neck as soon as they surrendered. I escaped by chance, because I was away searching for food. To be more exact, I was scouring the nearby farms to see what I could lay my hands on. We even ate cats and dogs, whatever we could find.”