Last Message Read Online Free PDF

Jean’s grandfather had been a postman in the area and a bit of a drinker who loved to spend evenings in the Arles cafés, making friends. Jean always laughed when he turned to the subject of the painting. He mimed how it was so bad he had wanted to throw it out, but had put it up in the pen to amuse the pigs and chickens, and lo and behold, they seemed to like it. In fact, ever since it had been hung there, the chickens had laid bigger eggs and the pigs had tasted even better than before. Jean never laughed louder than when he told that story.
    I tried not to show my astonishment. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
    Then I made the decision that shamed me for the rest of my life.
    I decided to steal the Van Gogh.
    â€œWhat!?”
    â€œOkay, Adam, stop it. Just stop it.”
    I knew that the Van Gogh, sitting in their pigpen, grime-covered and hidden from the world, was worth a whole lot of money. And in a few years, in decades, it might be worth millions.
    I lay awake at night in my grave, rationalizing. The painting was small for a Van Gogh, small enough that I could conceal it under my bomber jacket. When operatives from the French Resistance came to get me out of there and back to freedom, I could take it with me. It was worthless to Jean. He had let the grime build up over it. He wouldn’t even miss it.
    Back in Canada, it could eventually turn me into a millionaire. I would hang on to it for a while and then sell it in the United States. To make myself feel better, I reasoned that I could send money to the Noels after the war, lots of money, more and more as the years went by, to make up for what I had done. They wouldn’t be surprised, since it would be to thank them for saving my life. I told myself that they didn’t need a million dollars, that it would spoil them, that a hundred thousand or so would make their lives very comfortable, just perfect. And so, I rationalized my sin away.
    But the devil’s plans don’t always work out.
    I had assumed—in fact the Noels and the local Maquis (that’s what the French Resistance people were known as in France) had assumed—that getting me out of the Arles area would be part of a well-orchestrated plan. In fact, the day that everything happened, three Maquis men were at the house, putting that plan in place.
    It was not unusual for farmers to sell or share a wagonload of hay with a neighbor, so the Maquis came that day, dressed in their peasant clothes, and worked in the field at first, getting a full load of hay onto a wooden wagon. Then they spirited me out of the barn and we all sat around the kitchen table, plotting my escape. But in the middle of things, a truckload of Milice came roaring up the road toward the farmhouse. The road approached from the far side of the barn, and so I was trapped. If I had rushed back to my grave in the barn, the Milice would have seen me. But in seconds they would be inside the house.
    I saw flashes of fear cross over my comrades’ faces, matching the terror inside me. But they were brave and able and used to functioning well in moments of great danger, and instantly hit upon a solution to our situation. With Yvette holding her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream, I was bundled out the back door of the house at just the right moment, toward the nearby wagonload of hay. The house momentarily blocked the Milice’s view of us and in seconds I was shoved under the mountain of hay. With a calm, lazy crack of the whip, the three Maquis drove the wagon slowly away, moving us back down the road, waving goodbye to our hosts after a hard day’s work in the field. Miraculously, the Milice didn’t suspect us. We didn’t stop until we reached Spain—the Maquis couldn’t risk unloading me anywhere. Everything happened very fast. I never again saw the Noels or that Van Gogh painting.
    You are probably wondering what I want you to do. It is a task that I am