The Devils of D-Day (7 page)

‘You mean all of them were possessed?”

‘It seems likely. Why were they all painted black? Why
were they all
sealed down?

You have said yourself that the Germans felt as if the devil
was on their heels. I don’t know whether you have yet had time to read your
friend’s history of the war, but the
Orne
Valley was
taken at record speed – far more quickly than any of the surrounding
countryside. Caen was shelled flat. But here – the tanks came through at top
speed, and nobody short of Our Lord Himself could have stopped them.’

I blew out smoke. ‘What you’re suggesting is that this
special division was made up of demons? I don’t see how that’s possible. Demons
are – well, dammit, they’re demons. They’re medieval. They’re imaginary. They
don’t fight wars.

‘On the contrary,’ said Father Anton. That’s precisely what
they do
do
.’

‘But how come nobody ever heard of this special division
before? How come the Army even allowed it to happen? That’s supposing it did
happen, and all this isn’t some kind of hoax.’

‘Much that happened in the war is still secret. And, anyway,
what were thirteen tanks among hundreds? Perhaps your government decided on a
little experiment with black magic.’

‘Father Anton, this doesn’t seem real. If there’s one thing
that the Pentagon is not involved in, it’s black magic!’

Father Anton went across to the tall window and looked down
on his courtyard.

Although it was mid-morning, it was as dark as late
afternoon, and a few flakes of snow were tumbling idly across the village. The
church clock struck eleven.

‘What people forget,’ he said, ‘was that the war was mystic
and magical in the extreme. Hitler set great store by magic, and made a
particular point of confiscating the Spear of Longinus, the very spear that
pierced Christ’s side on the cross, from the
Hotburg
Museum in Vienna, because he believed that whoever possessed it could control
the destiny of the world. On the side of the Allies, many experiments were made
in sending messages by telepathy, and in levitation, and there was a Dutch
priest who claimed he could invoke the wrath of the ten divine
Sephiroth
to bring down German planes with bolts of fire.’

I listened to this patiently, but I felt weary and sick. I
said: ‘Father, this is all very well, but what are we going to do about the
tank?’

Father Anton turned towards me. ‘There is nothing we can do,
monsieur
. Wiser men than us have
sealed that evil entity away, and it would be foolish to disturb it. It’ the
authorities will not remove the tank,
then
it will
have to stay there.’

‘And the
Passerelles
will have to
suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives?

You know that Madeleine believes the tank killed her
mother?’

The old priest nodded. ‘She didn’t tell me, but I guessed as
much. I wish there was more that I could do. All I can say is that I am very
thankful we were left with only one tank, instead of many.’

I took a last hot drag of my
Gauloise
,
and stubbed it out. ‘Well, I think you’re being too cautious,’ I told him.
‘Maybe it’s time that someone gave the
Passerelles
a
break, and maybe it’s time the Pentagon got their dirty washing back.’

Father Anton looked at me and crossed himself. ‘I can only
warn you,
monsieur
, that to open the
tank would be more than foolish. It would be tantamount to suicide.’

I stood up, and brushed ash off my pants. ‘The tape-recorder
was I89 francs,’ I said.

‘But I’d be more than happy with half of that. It was kind
of a joint venture, after all.’

Father Anton slowly shook his head. ‘Perhaps one day I will
understand Americans,’ he said. ‘And, perhaps one day they will understand
themselves.’

I met Madeleine for a glass of wine at lunchtime, in a small
smokey
cafe unappealingly called the Bar Tour-
istique
. A grossly fat woman in a floral housecoat served
behind the bar, and occasionally forayed out to slap at the red
formica
-topped tables with a wet rag, as if they were
disobedient dogs who kept playing up. The house wine was robust enough to clean
your family silver with, but I’d managed to find a stale pack of
Luckies
in the local tobacconist’s, so my palate wasn’t
complaining quite
so
vigorously as it had this morning.

Madeleine came in through the plastic-strip curtain looking
very pale and waif-like, and when she saw me she came across the bar and put
her arms tight around my neck.

‘Dan, you’re all right.’

‘Of course I’m all right. I’ve only been talking to Father Anton.’

I took her speckled tweed coat and hung it up next to a sign
that warned Defense de Cracker. She was wearing a plain turquoise-blue dress
that was probably very fashionable in Pont
D’Ouilly
,
but in Paris was about eight years out of style. Still, she looked good; and it
was a lift to meet someone who really cared about my welfare.

Ten-ton Tessie behind the bar brought us our wine, and we
clinked
glasses like onetime lovers meeting in a seedy bar
at the back of Grand Central Station.

‘Did you play Father Anton the tape?’

‘Well, kind of.’

She touched my hand. ‘There’s something you don’t want to
tell me?’

‘I don’t know. I guess we’re at a crossroads right now. We
can
either open the tank up, and
find out what’s in
there, or we can forget it
for ever
, just like
everyone else has.’

She reached up and stroked my cheek. Her pale eyes were full
of concern and affection. If I hadn’t been feeling so goddamned sick last
night, lying doubled-up in the
Passerelle’s
draughty
spare bedroom, I think I might have tiptoed along the corridor and tapped on
Madeleine’s door, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that making
love is the last thing you feel like after puking a mouthful of maggots; and I
guess that even those who love you dearly find it kind of hard to give you a
wholehearted kiss.

She sipped her wine. ‘How can we leave it there?’ she asked
me. ‘How can we just leave it there?’

‘I don’t know. But the mayor and the civic authorities and
even Father Anton himself seem to have managed to leave it there for thirty
years.’

Madeleine said: ‘You must think that I have a bee in my
bonnet.’

‘Where did they teach you to say that?
The
school of colloquial English?’

She looked up, and she wasn’t smiling. ‘The war was over
years and years ago.

Didn’t we lose enough?
Enough fathers and
brothers and friends?
They still sell postcards of Churchill and
Eisenhower at the seaside resorts, and that makes me angry. They saved us, yes,
but there is nothing glorious to celebrate. To fight wars is not glorious, not
for anyone. It is better to forget. But, of course, they have left us their
tank, and we can never forget.’

I sat back in my cheap varnished chair. ‘So you want to open
it up?’

Her eyes were cold. ‘The thing itself said that it wanted to
join its brethren. What can it want with us? If we let it out, it will go to
meet its friends, and that will be the end of it.’

‘Father Anton said that opening the tank would be as good as
committing suicide.’

‘Father Anton is old. And anyway, he believes that demons and
devils have power over everything. He told me that once, in catechism class.
“Madeleine,” he said, “
if
it weren’t for Jesus Christ,
the whole world would be overrun with demons.” ‘

I coughed. ‘Supposing we open it up and there is a demon?’

She leaned forward intensely. ‘There must be something, Dan.
Otherwise we wouldn’t have heard that voice. But demons don’t have horns and
forks. There’s probably nothing inside there at all that the human eye can
see.’

‘Supposing there is?’

‘That’s what we have to find out.’

I drank some more wine, and I could almost feel it put hairs
on my chest as I sat there. I said: ‘What do they put in this stuff? Rust
remover?’

Madeleine answered: ‘
Ssh
. Madame
Saurice
used to entertain an American sergeant in the war,
and she knows English well. All the slang English, like shucks.’

‘Shucks? You sure it wasn’t the war of I8I2?’

Madeleine said, ‘I never wanted to open the tank before,
Dan. I never met anyone who gave me the strength to do it. My father wouldn’t
have touched it; nor would Eloise. But Eloise will tell us how to ward off
demons and evil spirits while we do it, and I’m sure Father Anton will give you
help if you ask him.’

I lit another cigarette. ‘I don’t see why it’s so important
to you. If you dislike the tank that much, why don’t you move away? There isn’t
anything to keep you in Pont
D’Ouilly
, after all.’

‘Dan, it’s important because it lies on my father’s farm,
and my father’s farm has always been home. Even if I go away
for ever
, that farm will still be the place where I was
brought up, and that tank will still be there.’

She drank a little wine, and looked at me intently. ‘And,
anyway,’ she said, ‘I have dreamed about that tank ever since I was a little
girl. That tank has given me terrible dreams.’

‘Dreams?
What kind of dreams?’

She lowered her eyes. ‘They were cruel dreams.
Nightmares.
But they were exciting as well.’

‘Sexually exciting?’

‘Sometimes.
I dreamed of being
forced to have sex with bristly beasts and strange creatures. But sometimes the
dreams were different, and I imagined that I was being mutilated or killed.
That was frightening, but it was exciting, too. Pieces were being sliced off
me, and there was lots of blood.’

I reached across the table and held her thin wrist.

‘Madeleine.
. . you know this tank
isn’t a joke. What’s in there, whatever it is, is something really malign.’

She nodded. ‘I have always known it. But I have also known,
all my life, that one day I would have to face up to it. Of course, I tried to
evade my responsibility. I tried to persuade you not to go down there to make
your recording. But I am led to the conclusion that the time has probably
come.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it looks as though we’ve talked ourselves
into it.’

She gave a fleeting,
humourless
smile.

Later that afternoon, I telephoned Father Anton and told him
what we were planning to do. He was silent for a long time on the other end of
the line, and then he said: ‘I cannot persuade you otherwise?’

‘Madeleine’s set on it, and I guess I am, too.’

‘You’re not doing this out of a mistaken sense of affection
for Madeleine? Because it can only do her harm, you know. You must
realise
that.’

I looked across the polished floor of Pont
D’Ouilly’s
post office, marked with muddy footprints where
the local farmers had come in to draw their savings or to post their letters.
There was a tattered poster on the wall beside me warning of the dangers of
rabies. Outside, a thin wet snow was falling, and the sky was unremittingly
grey.

‘It has to be done sometime, Father Anton. One day that
tank’s going to corrode right through, and that demon’s going to get out
anyway, and maybe someone completely unsuspecting is going to be passing by. At
least we have some idea of what we’re in for.’

Father Anton was silent for even longer. Then he said
hoarsely: ‘I’ll have to come with you, you know. I’ll have to be there. What
time are you planning to do it?’

I glanced up at the post office clock.
‘About
three.
Before it gets too dark.’

‘Very well.
Can you collect me in
your car?’

‘You bet. And thank you.’

Father Anton sounded solemn. ‘Don’t thank me, my friend. I
am only coming because I feel it is my duty to protect you from whatever lies
inside that tank. I would far rather that you left it alone.’

‘I know that, father. But I don’t think we can.’

He was waiting for me at the front door of his house,
dressed in his wide black hat and black button-up boots, his cape as severe and
dark as a raven. His housekeeper stood behind him and frowned at me
disapprovingly, as if I was particularly selfish to take an old man out on an
afternoon so cold and bleak; probably forgetting that it was colder inside his
house than it was out. I helped him to climb into the front passenger seat, and
smiled at the housekeeper as I walked around the car, but all she did was scowl
at me from under her grubby lace cap, and slam the door.

As we drove off across -the slushy grey cobbles of the
priest’s front courtyard, Father Anton said: ‘Antoinette is what you probably
call a fusspot. She believes she has divine instructions to make me wear my
woollen
underwear.’

‘Well, I’m sure God cares about your underwear as much as He
cares about anything else,’ I told him, turning on the windshield wipers.

‘My friend,’ replied Father Anton, regarding me solemnly
with his watery eyes, ‘God will take care of the spirit and leave the underwear
to look after itself.’

It took us about ten minutes to drive the back way around
the village to the
Passerelle’s
farm. The trees all
around us were bare, and clotted with rooks’ nests; and the fields were already
hazy and white with snow. I beeped the Citroen’s horn as we circled around the
farmyard, and Madeleine came out of the door in a camel-hair duffel-coat,
carrying an electric torch and an oily canvas bag full of tools.