The World That We Knew(68)
He was marched out to the road, where he was stunned to see a line of other prisoners, all of whom had been forced to drop their pants so the police could tell whether or not they had been circumcised. Those who had been marked as Jews were sent to one line, those in the French Resistance to another. Only a few of the men in line bothered to look when Julien showed himself, but the embarrassment he suffered made him seethe with fury. With a gesture, one of the officers sent him to the longer line.
“What difference does it make if we’re in one line or the other?” Julien asked the fellow in front of him. They were all going to Montluc Prison in Lyon after all, that notorious place where the beast in charge was known to torture people for days.
“Their line is sent to a forced labor camp when they leave the prison, we go to a death camp.”
“We should run,” Julien said firmly.
His companion glared at him as though he was an utter fool as he muttered under his breath. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. They’d be happy to beat you if you do.”
But Julien was already devising a plan. His studies with his father had made him into an individual who could solve abstract problems, and his current situation was such a problem. He ignored his emotions and refused to give in to the panic that had set in. A man in their line was silently crying. Julien looked away from him and counted odd numbers to calm himself. The sky was gray, filled with mottled clouds. April could feel like winter when the wind came up, as it did now. After a while, Julien was able to think clearly. When he narrowed his eyes he saw the slit in the universe through which light shone through the darkness. He again thought of his father’s theory of how the night sky could be broken into segments. Then he took it a step farther. Everything could be divided into pieces, a street, an hour, a life, a death march.
Close your eyes and see, his father had always told him at the Chateau de Villandry. A blindfold never hindered him. He could feel the space around him, the objects near and far. It took practice, but after a while there was never a time when he couldn’t find his way.
He would treat this escape as if he were caught in another maze. Everything he had ever learned from his father as he sat in his study, annoyed and disinterested, came back to him. If he looked at his current situation as a mathematical equation, taking into account that there were fifteen men and boys in one line, twelve in the other, it was clear that it was best to be at the end of the longer line, an uneven number the police might fail to factor into their accounts. If nothing more, being last gave Julien more time to think of how to escape, and it made his presence less noticeable.
They walked all that day, without food or water or protection from the elements. In the afternoon it rained buckets and they slogged through a field where the mud was past their ankles. Julien continued to think of the maze. He closed his eyes as they walked. He saw the world inside of his head, at the backs of his eyes, in a lace of logic where everything was made up of numbers and everything made sense.
It was dusk when they reached a village. The night was cold and the prisoners were shivering. By then Julien’s clothes were soaked from the rain, and mud-splattered, and his bad leg was throbbing. Still, he was focused. Time was growing short. The lines of men would be herded into the town hall ahead of them and locked inside for the night. He was lagging behind by now, using his leg as an excuse, when a police officer came to shout at him.
“Keep up,” the milicien demanded.
“Of course.” Julien was warily polite. “No problem.”
It was dark and therefore difficult for anyone to see when he once again slowed his pace. As they entered the village, Julien leaned down to scoop up a handful of rocks. It was a trick often used when navigating a maze. He dropped the rocks as they walked on, marking the path so that he could retrace it or avoid it, depending on what was best in order to escape. When they reached the center of the village, tiny cobbled streets led out in all directions, like the petals of a flower. Julien grinned and felt his heart lift. The village was clearly a maze, and that was something he could manage. He mustn’t overthink, he had to act quickly and leap into the labyrinth as if throwing himself into a well. He made certain to fall back on his heels as soon as the soldiers threw open the doors to the town hall. Right then, without taking a breath, he dashed into the closest alley. It was narrow in the alleyway, and pitch black, so he used another trick of running a maze; he kept his right hand on the walls of the buildings to lead him forward. He heard a shout behind him and a shot fired, but he continued to navigate the alleyway, faster now, as fast as he could go, as if his leg was perfect and no longer throbbed with pain.
The village was circular; many of these mountain villages were built to surround a chateau, in this case one built in the twelfth century. Julien dodged off as fast as he could. He felt a surge of nerves as he heard more shots. To calm himself, he imagined his father waiting for him. He had always been there at the end of the maze in the gardens at the Chateau de Villandry, where he’d been blindfolded, forging on when he heard his father call his name.
Finally, he came to the last street in the village. He slipped past a tumbledown house, then jumped over a low stone wall. His leg didn’t matter. He was unwilling to think about it or feel any pain. He was flying now. He had left the village of stones, where everything was made of the local gray granite, all of the houses, and the stairs that led from one tiny street to another, the maze he had been through. He had not come upon a single stone that he had left to mark his path into the village. Here was the solution to his problem right in front of him. There was a stretch of woods, and he dove into the trees in the pitch black, cutting his face and hands on some thorny branches, and not giving a damn. He was glad there was no moon. That was a bit of luck. He ran even though breathing was coming so hard it hurt his chest. The forest was a maze as well, but he saw the North Star and knew to follow it and all the while he did, he heard his father call his name.