apocalypse watch | Page 7

Not confirmed?"

“You're very quick, Jean-Pierre,” observed Catherine.

“You listen, that's why you're a great actor.”

“To hell with that, Mother! What did you mean, Father?”

“It was not the policy of the Germans to kill the families of R@sistance fighters, real or suspected. They had more practical uses for them-torture them for information, or use them as bait for others, and there was always forced labor, women for the Officers Corps, a category in which your natural mother would certainly have fallen.”

“Then why were they killed? .. . No, first me. How did I survive?”

"I went out to an early dawn meeting in the woods of Barbizon.

I passed your house, saw windows broken, the front door smashed, and heard an infant crying. You. Everything was obvious and, of course, there would be no meeting. I brought you home, bicycling through the back roads to Paris."

“It's a little late to thank you, but, again, why were my -my natural mother and my brother shot?”

“Now you lost a word, my son,” said the elder Villier.

“What?”

“In your shock, your listening wasn't as acute as it was a moment before, when I described the events of that night.”

“Stop it, Papa! Say what you mean!”

“I said 'executed,” you said 'shot."

“I don't understand.. ..”

“Before Jodelle was found out by the Germans, one of his covers was as a city messenger for the Ministry of Information-the Nazis could never get our arrondissements straight, much less our short, curving streets. We never learned the details, for as impressive as his voice was, Jodelle was extremely quiet where rumors were concerned -they were everywhere. Falsehoods, half truths and truths raced through Paris like gunfire at the slightest provocation. We were a city gripped by fear and suspic'on-”

“I understand that, my father,” broke in the ever more impatient Jean-Pierre.

“Please explain what I don't understand. The details that you were never given, what did they concern and how did they result in the killings, the executions?”

“Jodelle said to a few of us that there was a man so high in the R@sistance that he was a legend only whispered about, his identity the most closely guarded secret of the movement. Jodelle, however, claimed he had learned who the man was, and if what he had pieced together was accurate, that same man, that 'legend,” was no great hero but instead a traitor."

“Who was he?” pressed Jean-Pierre.

“He never told us. However, he did say that the man was a general in our French army, of which there were dozens. He said if he was right and any of us revealed the man's name, we'd be shot by the Germans. If he was wrong and someone spoke of him in a defamatory way, our wing would be called unstable and we would no longer be trusted.”

“What was he going to do then)”

"If he was able to establish his proof, he would take the man out himself. He swore he was in a position to do so.

We assumed-correctly, we believe, to this day that whoever the traitor was, he somehow learned of Jodelle's suspicions and gave the order to execute him and his family.

“That was it? Nothing else?”

“Try to understand what the times were like, my son,” said Catherine Villier.

"A wrong word, even a hostile stare or a gesture, could- result in immediate detention, imprisonment, and even, not unheard of, deportation. The occupation forces, especially the ambitious middle-level officers, were fanatically suspicious of everyone and everything. Each new Resistance accomplishment fueled the fires of their anger. Quite simply, no one was safe.

Kafka could not have invented such a hell."

“And you never saw him again until tonight?”

“If we had, we would not have recognized him,” replied Villier pre.

“I barely did when I identified his body. The years notwithstanding, he was, as the English say, a , rackabones' of the man I remembered, less than half the weight-and height of his former self, his face mummified” a stretched, wrinkled version of what it once was."

“Perhaps it wasn't he, is that possible, my father?”

“No, it was Jodelle. His eyes were wide in death, and still so blue, so resoundingly blue, like a cloudless sky in the Mediterranean....... Like yours, Jean-Pierre.”

“Jean-Pierre..... ?” said the actor softly.

“You gave me his name?”

“In truth, it was your brother's also,” corrected the actress gently.

“That poor child had no use for, it and we felt you should have it for jodelle's sake.”

“That was caring of you-”

“We knew we could never replace your true parents,” continued the actress quickly, fialf pleadingly, “but we tried our best, my darling. In our wills we make clear everything that happened, but until tonight we hadn't the courage within ourselves to tell you. We love you so.”

“For God's sake, stop, Mother, or I'll burst out crying. Who in this world could ask for better parents than you two I will never