The Tenth Man Read Online Free PDF

lawyer.’
    ‘And his father?’
    ‘A lawyer too.’
    ‘I suppose it suits some people,’ the clerk said. ‘It seems a bit dusty to me.’
    ‘If you had a bit of paper,’ Chavel went on, ‘I could draw you a plan of the house and garden.’
    ‘I haven’t,’ Janvier said. ‘Don’t trouble anyway. It’s your house. Not mine.’ He coughed again, pressing his bony hands down upon his knees. He seemed to be putting an end to an interview with a caller for whom he could do nothing. Nothing at all.
    Chavel moved away. He came to Pierre and stopped. ‘Could you tell me the time?’ he said.
    ‘It’s five to twelve.’ From close by the mayor grunted malevolently, ‘Slow again.’
    ‘In your profession,’ Chavel said, ‘I expect you see the world?’ It sounded like the false bonhomie of a cross-examiner who wishes to catch the witness in a falsehood.
    ‘Yes and no,’ Pierre said.
    ‘You wouldn’t know by any chance a station called Brinac? About an hour’s run from the Gare de l’Est.’
    ‘Never been on that run,’ Pierre said. ‘The Gare Montparnasse is my station.’
    ‘Oh, yes. Then you wouldn’t know St Jean …’ He gave it up hopelessly, and sat down again far from anyone against the cold cement wall.
    It was that night that the shooting was heard for the third time: a short burst of machine-gun fire, some stray rifle shots and once what sounded like the explosion of a grenade. The prisoners lay stretched upon the ground, making no comment to each other: they waited, not sleeping. You couldn’t have told in most cases whether they felt the apprehension of men in danger or the exhilaration of people waiting beside a sick-bed, listening to the first sounds of health returning to a too quiet body. Chavel lay as still as the rest: he had no fear: he was buried in this place too deeply for discovery. The mayor wrapped his arms around his watch and tried in vain to deaden the steady old-fashioned stroke: tick tock tick.

3
    IT WAS AT three the next afternoon (alarm clock time) that an officer entered the cell: the first officer they had seen for weeks, and this one was very young, with inexperience even in the shape of his moustache which he had shaved too much on the left side. He was as embarrassed as a schoolboy making his first entry on a stage at a prize-giving, and he spoke abruptly so as to give the impression of a strength he did not possess. He said, ‘There were murders last night in the town. The aide-de-camp of the military governor, a sergeant and a girl on a bicycle.’ He added, ‘We don’t complain about the girl. Frenchmen have our permission to kill Frenchwomen.’ He had obviously thought up his speech carefully beforehand, but the irony was overdone and the delivery that of an amateur actor: the whole scene was as unreal as a charade. He said, ‘You know what you are here for, living comfortably, on fine rations, while our men work and fight. Well, now you’ve got to pay the hotel bill. Don’t blame us. Blame your own murderers. My orders are that one man in every ten shall be shot in this camp. How many of you are there?’ He shouted sharply, ‘Number off,’ and sullenly they obeyed, ‘… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.’ They knew he knew without counting. This was just a line in his charade he couldn’t sacrifice. He said, ‘Your allotment then is three. We are quite indifferent as to which three. You can choose for yourselves. The funeral rites will begin at seven tomorrow morning.’
    The charade was over: they could hear his feet striking sharply on the asphalt going away: Chavel wondered for a moment what syllable had been acted—‘night’, ‘girl’, ‘aside’, or perhaps ‘thirty’, but it was of course the whole word—‘hostage’.
    The silence went on a long time, and then a man called Krogh, an Alsatian, said, ‘Well, do we have to volunteer?’
    ‘Rubbish,’ said one of the clerks, a thin elderly man in pince-nez, ‘nobody will