The Young Lions

"Fifty francs," said the old man, leaning horribly over Christian, his hand still cautiously on the glass.

For a moment Christian thought of arguing with the old thief about the overcharge. The French, he thought, making a good thing out of victory and defeat, advance and retreat, friend and enemy. God, he thought, let the Americans have them for a while, see how happy they'll be about it. He tossed the fifty francs, worn scraps of paper printed by the German Army, on the table. He would have little use for francs, soon, anyway, and he thought of the old man trying to collect on the printed, flimsy German promise from the new conquerors.

Hazily, Christian remembered that other bar in Re

He sipped gently at the cognac. It was raw and probably not even cognac. Probably made three days ago and doctored with plain spirits. The French, the miserable French. He looked at the old man behind the bar, hating him. He knew that the old man had been dragged out of doddering retirement for this week's work. Probably a sturdy fat merchant and his plump, sweaty wife owned this place, and had run it until now. But when they saw how things were going, had seen the first scum of the German tide racing through the town, they had resuscitated the old man and put him behind the bar, feeling that even the Germans would not take out their venom on such a poor specimen. Probably the owner and his wife were tucked away somewhere in a safe attic, eating a veal steak and a salad, with a bottle of strong wine, or they were climbing into bed with each other. (Remember Cori

He stared at the old man. The old man stared back, his little pebbles of eyes black and insolent, secure and defiant in the rotting, ancient face. Old man with thousands of printed, useless francs in his pockets, old man with bad teeth, old man who felt he would out-live half the young men sitting silently in his daughter's establishment, old man roaring within him at the thought of what dire handling lay ahead for these almost-captured and almost-dead foreigners huddled around the stained tables in the dusk.

"Monsieur wishes…?" the old man said in his high wheezy voice that sounded as though he were listening to a joke no one else in the room had heard.

"Monsieur wishes nothing," Christian said. The trouble was, they had been too lenient with the French. There were enemies and there were friends, and there was nothing in between. You loved or you killed, and anything else you did was politics, corruption and weakness, and finally you paid for it. Hardenburg, faceless in Capri in the room with the Burn, had understood, but the politicians hadn't.

The old man veiled his eyes. Yellow, wrinkled lids, like old dirty paper, hooded down over the black, mocking pebbles of his pupils. He turned away and Christian felt that somehow the old man had got the better of him.

He drank his cognac. The alcohol was begi

"Finish your drink, Sergeant." It was a low, remembered voice, and Christian looked up, squinting through the increasing evening haze at the figure standing before his table.

"What?" he asked stupidly.

"I want to talk to you, Sergeant." Whoever it was, was smiling.

Christian shook his head and opened his eyes very wide. Then he recognized the man. It was Brandt, in an officer's uniform, standing over him, dusty, thin, capless, but Brandt, and smiling.

"Brandt…"

"Sssh." Brandt put his hand on Christian's arm. "Finish your drink and come on outside."

Brandt turned and went outside. Christian saw him there, standing against the cafe window, with his back to it, and a ragged column of labour troops trudging past him. Christian gulped down the rest of the cognac and stood up. The old man was watching him again. Christian pushed the chair away and carefully grabbed hold of the handle-bars of the bicycle and wheeled it towards the door. He could not resist turning at the door for one last encounter with the Frenchman's pebbly, mocking eyes, that remembered 1870, Verdun, the Marne and 1918. The old man was standing in front of a poster, printed in French but inspired by the Germans, of a snail horned with one American flag and one British flag, creeping slowly up the Italian peninsula. The words on the poster ironically pointed out that even a snail would have reached Rome by now… The final insolence, Christian felt. Probably the old man had put the poster up this very week, straight-faced and cackling, so that every fleeing German who came by could look and suffer.

"I hope," the old man wheezed, in that voice that sounded like laughter heard in a home for the aged, "that Monsieur enjoyed his drink."

The French, Christian thought furiously, they will beat us all yet.

He went out and joined Brandt.

"Walk with me," Brandt said softly. "Walk slowly around the square. I don't want anyone to hear what I am going to say to you."

He started along the narrow pavement, along the shuttered row of shops. Christian noticed with surprise that Brandt looked considerably older than when last they met, that there was considerable grey at the photographer's temples, and heavy lines around his eyes and mouth, and that he was very thin.

"I saw you come in," Brandt said, "and I couldn't believe my eyes, I watched you for five minutes to make sure it was you. What in God's name have they done to you?"

Christian shrugged, a little angry at Brandt, who, after all, didn't look magnificently healthy himself. "They moved me about a little," Christian said. "Here and there. What are you doing here?"

"They sent me to Normandy," Brandt said. "Pictures of the invasion, pictures of captured American troops, atrocity pictures of French women and children dead from American bombing. The usual thing. Keep walking. Don't stop. If you settle down anywhere, some damned officer is liable to come over and ask you for your papers and try to assign you to a unit. There are just enough busybodies about to make it unpleasant."

They walked methodically along the side of the square, like soldiers with a purpose and under orders. The grey stone of the buildings was purple in the sunset, and the lounging and restless men looked hazy and indefinite against the shuttered windows.

"What do you intend to do?" Brandt said.

Christian chuckled. He was surprised to hear the dry sound come out of his throat. For some reason, after the many days of ru