Philippe Claudel - Brodeck

Besides, the most important fact, the one necessary for understanding the rest, was that those troops who were coming to our village, helmeted, armed, and emboldened by the crushing victories they’d inflicted on every force they’d encountered, were much closer to the inhabitants of our region than the great majority of our own country’s population. As far as the men around here were concerned, our nation barely existed. It was a bit like a woman who occasionally reminded them of her presence with a gentle word or a request, but whose eyes and lips they never really saw. The soldiers entering our village as conquerors shared our customs and spoke a language so close to ours that a minimum of effort sufficed for us to understand and use it. The age-old history of our region was mingled with that of their country. We had in common legends, songs, poets, refrains, a way of preparing meats and making soups, an identical melancholy, and a similar propensity to lapse into drunkenness. When all’s said and done, borders are only pencil strokes on maps. They slice through worlds, but they don’t separate them. Sometimes borders can be forgotten as quickly as they’re drawn.

The unit that took over the village comprised about a hundred men under the command of a captain named Adolf Buller. I saw very little of him. I remember him as a man of small stature, very thin, and afflicted with a tic that caused him to jerk his chin abruptly to the left every twenty seconds or so. He was riding a filthy, mud-covered horse, and he never let go of his riding crop, a short riding crop with a braided tip. Orschwir and Father Peiper had stationed themselves at the entrance to the village to welcome the conquerors and implore them to spare its people and its houses, while doors and shutters were closed and locked everywhere and all the inhabitants of the village held their breath.

Captain Buller listened to Orschwir’s muttering without getting off his horse. A soldier at his side bore a lance at the end of which a red-and-black standard was attached. The following day, that standard replaced the flag mounted atop the village hall. You could read the name of the regiment the company belonged to, DER UNVERWUNDBARE ANLAUF (“The Invulnerable Surge”), as well as its motto, HINTER UNS, NIEMAND—“After Us, No One.”

Buller didn’t reply to Orschwir. He jerked his chin twice, gently moved the mayor aside with his riding crop, and advanced, followed by his soldiers.

One might have thought he was going to demand that his men be given beds and warm lodging within the thick walls of the houses, but he did no such thing. The troop moved into the marketplace, unpacked some large tents, and pitched them in the twinkling of an eye. Then the soldiers knocked on all the doors with orders to collect and confiscate all weapons, which mostly turned out to be hunting rifles. They did it without the least brutality and with the greatest politeness. By contrast, when Aloïs Cathor, a crockery mender who always liked playing crafty, told them there were no weapons in his house, they aimed theirs at him, ransacked the rabbit cage he lived in from top to bottom, and wound up discovering an old rifle. They waved it in front of his nose and brought them, Cathor and the rifle, before Captain Buller, who was sipping an eau-de-vie in front of his tent while his orderly stood behind him with the flask, ready to serve a refill. The soldiers explained the affair. Cathor adopted a mocking tone. Buller sized him up from head to foot, drained his glass of brandy, suffered his little nervous tic, pointed his riding crop to summon a lieutenant with pink skin and hay-colored hair, and whispered a few words in his ear. The young man assented, clicked his heels, saluted, and left, taking with him the two soldiers and their prisoner.

A few hours later, a drummer passed through the streets, crying out an announcement: The entire population, without exception, was to gather in front of the church at seven o’clock in order to assist at an event of the greatest importance. Attendance was obligatory for all, under pain of sanctions.

Shortly before the stipulated hour, everyone left his house. In silence. The streets were soon filled with a strange procession; no one said a word, and people didn’t dare to raise their heads, to look around them, to meet others’ eyes. We walked along together, Amelia and me, holding hands tightly. We were afraid. Everyone was afraid. Captain Buller was waiting for us, riding crop in hand, on the parvis in front of the church, surrounded by his two lieutenants, the one I’ve already mentioned and another one, squat and black-haired. When the little church square was full, everyone was standing motionless, and all noise had stopped, he spoke.

“Villagers, ladies and gentlemen, we have not come here to defile or to destroy. One does not defile or destroy what belongs to him — what is his — unless he is afflicted with madness. And we are not mad. As of today, your village has the supremely good fortune of forming part of the Greater Territory. You are in your homeland here, and this homeland is our homeland, too. We are henceforth united for a millennial future. Our race is the first among races, immemorial and unstained, and so will yours be, if you consent to rid yourselves of the impure elements which are still to be found among you. Thus it is imperative that we live in perfect mutual understanding and total frankness. Lying to us is not good. Attempting to deceive us is not good. One man has made such an attempt today. We trust that his example will not be followed.”

Buller had a delicate, almost feminine voice, and the curious thing was that the uncontrolled chin movement that made him look like a robot gone haywire disappeared while he spoke. He’d hardly finished his speech when, with flawless protocol, as if everything had been rehearsed numerous times, Aloïs Cathor was brought into the square, escorted by the two soldiers who had him in their charge, and led before the captain. Another soldier walked close behind them, carrying something heavy that we couldn’t make out very well. When he placed it on the ground, we could see that it was a timber log, a section about a meter high cut from the trunk of a fir tree. Then everything went very fast. The soldiers grabbed Cathor, forced him to his knees, laid his head on the log, stepped back. They were quickly replaced by a fourth soldier, whom no one had yet seen. A big apron of dark leather was strapped to his chest and legs. In his hands he held a large ax. He moved very close to Cathor, raised the ax, and — before anyone even had time to catch his breath — brought the blade down forcefully on the pottery mender’s neck. The cleanly severed head hit the ground near the block and rolled a little. A great stream of blood gushed out of Cathor’s body, which jerked about spasmodically for several seconds like a decapitated goose before all movement ceased and the corpse lay inert. From the ground, Cathor’s head looked at us. His eyes and mouth were wide open, as if he’d just asked us a question and none of us had answered it.

It had happened so quickly; the awful scene had transfixed us all. Stunned as we were, the sound of the captain’s voice cleared our heads, only to plunge us into even greater astonishment: “This is the fate of those who wish to play games with us. Think about it, villagers! Ladies and gentlemen, think about it! And in order to assist your reflections, the head and the body of this Fremdër will remain here! Burial is forbidden under pain of suffering a similar punishment! And one further word of advice: Cleanse your village! Do not wait for us to do it ourselves. Cleanse it while there’s still time! And now disperse, go back to your houses! I wish you a good evening!”

His chin gave a little jerk to the left, as if to shoo a fly. He smacked his riding crop against the seam of his trousers, did an about-face, and departed, followed by his lieutenants. Amelia was trembling against me and sobbing. I held her to my chest as best I could. In a very soft voice, she kept repeating, “It’s a bad dream, Brodeck, isn’t it? Isn’t it just a bad dream?” She kept staring at Cathor’s headless body, slumped against the block.