‘So,’ Theo prompted him. ‘The SS arrived. What did you do?’

He groaned. The memory demanded another drink. ‘A terrible anticlimax. Everything countermanded; everyone home. There was a lot of grumbling about it at the beginning. They, the others, wanted action. Even some of our guys argued that it was time to face them, that if everyone, all over France, rose at once, the Germans could not hold on. They wanted to reverse forty, you see. But I told them, look, the Nazis aren’t defeated. And look, they’re not defeated yet; it’s March and we’ve only just crossed the Rhine. Henri always said, if we can’t protect our people, we can’t take risks with them. And he meant the villagers, not the fighters.’

‘What was the SS unit actually doing here?’ Theo asked.

‘They were supposed to clear the countryside of the Maquis, but they didn’t have the manpower. All they could do was to try to cut off our support, to threaten the local people with such terror that they were too afraid to give us any help. And they had to keep the main roads open. That took up a lot of their time. That’s really where we did good work. We held them down here for two and a half months. But they were dangerous, believe me. Bit by bit we won certain areas. At Lavallade the FTP took over running the commune, with a new communist mayor. They loved it, the communists; committees for food supply, sanitation, refuse collection, national festivals, committees for everything.’

‘So what happened to Henri? Was he betrayed? Or was it just chance?’

‘Ah, there’s the question that I’ve asked myself every night since that day in August. But first, food. I can’t tell about that day without food in my belly.’

He drained his glass of the teardrop of liquid in its base and, staggering slightly, led Theo into the kitchen. Eventually, emerging from the indescribable filth, they sat down again beside the fire each with a plate piled high with fried onions and chicken, a wedge of bread. A new bottle of vodka nestled on the floor against Nikola’s calf.

‘By August last year,’ Nikola spoke through a mouthful of onion, several strands hanging from his lip, mingling with his beard, ‘the frustration was building up. We knew that there must be an invasion from the Mediterranean coming soon. So there was a big debate in the Resistance here about what to do with our Germans, still dangerous, more dangerous than ever because they could see as well as us how their position was deteriorating. Perhaps they would be left like the Sixth Army at Stalingrad, abandoned to the enemy, swallowed up by the Maquis, who didn’t always take prisoners.

‘I didn’t take part in this debate, you understand. I didn’t attend these meetings. I just heard what Henri told me. What he said was, we’ve got the countryside, more or less. Let them keep the towns; when they retreat, we take over without bloodshed. But the others, the FTP, wanted to drive them out. They were action men. The FTP was dominant on the regional committee where Vernhes was the boss and he made this plan to capture the SS officer commanding the unit at Bonnemort. They were going to lie in wait for him at Longas. Henri was against it, but the plan was agreed and given the go-ahead. We had superb intelligence, from Madame Ariane. She was a sort of double agent, you see. She passed on to us anything she could learn about the Germans’ movements. And she fed them false information, too. She was part of this kidnap scheme, I remember. The hours we spent planning it. And what for? Did anyone mention, apart from Henri, what would happen afterwards? What they would do, the Nazis, when we’d taken their officer hostage?’