Will
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up to him and given that little boy a kick up the arse… unbelievable. We see him literally sliding over the ice like a sled until he slams headfirst into a lamp post and lies there motionless. The Germans crack up and it would be a funny sight if not for the mother shrieking as if somebody’s twisting a jagged-edged knife into her guts. She collapses on the spot. Her crying husband puts his hands together and raises them up, as if the Almighty might descend on his request to re-establish order with his flaming sword, or at least rise from his slumber to see what’s going on. ‘Aufstehen!’ the Germans shout, at both the mother and the boy a little further along. The lead German starts to stride towards him, but Lode beats him to it. It’s like he’s wearing skates, he’s that fast. He reaches the little fellow, goes down on his knees and curls his whole body around him like a cocoon, like a shell of muscle. He doesn’t let him go, not even when prodded by the still-smiling gendarme, who now says, ‘Schon gut,’ a little more quietly. The German pokes him again, and then kicks at Lode’s backside almost playfully. Lode roars, ‘Fuck off, you bastard!’ From his voice I can hear that he too is now crying. I see part of his red cheek, his handsome, brilliantined hair falling in black arrows over the boy’s face, his white helmet a little further along, lying upside down in the snow like a gaping thunder pot. The German loses his sense of humour, swears and reaches for his rubber truncheon. Before I’ve even realized it, my own hand has shot forward and clamped the field gendarme’s wrist in a vice-like grip. We look at each other, me and the German. What saved me, son, was the momentary astonishment on that field arsehole’s face. He can’t believe this is happening in this ridiculous country they have occupied almost effortlessly. For a few seconds he can’t quite process it: in this city they’ve plonked their fat arses down on so easily. A stupid toerag like me in my ridiculous uniform grabbing him by the wrist and staring him straight in his arrogant mug is a scene that feels like it’s taking place on another planet. Anyway, I let go and he doesn’t do a thing. He keeps staring while his mate jerks the mother up onto her feet while keeping the children at bay. The father too is watching Lode and me, seeing how I pick the helmet up out of the snow, put my hand on Lode’s shoulder and gently help him up with the boy in his arms. He watches while I pat the snow off Lode’s back and sees Lode, still crying, wipe the blood from his son’s forehead and use his thumb and index finger to purse the boy’s half-open lips, as if he’s fished him out of the water and is about to save him by performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Then the boy half opens his eyes and Lode sighs deeply while hugging that skinny body closer to his own. He doesn’t want his helmet. Without saying a word or giving us a second glance, he walks on with the boy in his arms and his head held high and we follow him in silence, the Germans too, like after a family row that has suddenly cleared the drunken father’s boisterous head, struck him dumb and left him to quietly appraise the havoc he’s created. The two policemen on watch at the entrance to the old army bed depot, final destination of this wild walk, don’t speak either. They haven’t seen any of it, though they might have heard the shouting. They stand there pale and rigid at the sight of a helmetless Lode with a child in his arms, like an embodiment of the now probably almost forgotten Hollywood hero Errol Flynn, even forgetting to salute the Germans. Before being dragged inside with his family, the father carefully takes his son out of Lode’s arms, looks in my friend’s eyes and mutters something. And then they’re gone, swallowed up by the hollow darkness inside the building as if they’d never existed. We stay outside, Lode and I. It would be wisest for us to make ourselves scarce, but my mate doesn’t feel like it yet. He swallows, tidies his hair, takes his helmet back, and then calmly asks the sentries if they have any cigarettes on them. We smoke while the snow makes a half-hearted attempt to start falling again. One of the sentries, a cop in his thirties with a walrus moustache who’s known to everyone as Gus Skew because his eyes start turning in all directions once he’s had five stouts, says that the whole pack of them, everyone they’ve got locked up inside, is going on the train to Limburg tomorrow, Saint-Trond to be precise. Nobody asks what they’re going to do with them there. ‘And I have to go on the train with them,’ Gus Skew adds. ‘Fun and games. Anyway, there’s a bonus in it, so I’m not complaining.’ Lode sucks the smoke deep into his lungs and asks how much. ‘Forty-five francs,’ Gus replies. ‘Not bad,’ says Lode, flicking his butt into the snow.The chief looks at us from behind his desk and sighs. He pulls out the incident log, a thick book with blue horizontal lines and a big red line down one side, and dips his pen in the ink. Together with him, I listen while Lode tells the story, his rage flaring as he progresses, which makes me, in turn, more and more nervous. Finally the chief lays down his pen, takes off his goggles and gives me a weary look.
‘Do you agree with what your chum here has to say?’
I tell him it’s true that the Germans never once said what the Lizke family was accused of.
‘Your mate here says