“I made myself useful.
The commandant was a decent chap and he knew I was a good worker and honest.
They soon found out they could leave me in a house by myself when they wanted a job done and I wouldn’t touch a thing.
He got me permission to go back to France when I still had two more years to go of my time as a libere.”
He gave his friend a touching smile.
“But I didn’t like to leave that young scamp.
I knew that without me to look after him he’d get into trouble.”
“It’s true,” said the other.
“I owe everything to him.”
“He was only a kid when he came out.
He had the next bed to mine.
He put up a pretty good show in the daytime, but at night he’d cry for his mother.
I felt sorry for him.
I don’t know how it happened, I got an affection for him; he was lost among all those men, poor little chap, and I had to look after him.
Some of them were inclined to be nasty to him, one Algerian was always bothering, but I settled his hash and after that they left the boy in peace.”
“How did you do that?”
The little man gave a grin so cheerful and roguish that it made him look on a sudden ten years younger.
“Well, you know, in that life a man can only make himself respected if he knows how to use his knife.
I ripped him up the belly.”
Charley gave a gasp.
The man made the statement so naturally that one could hardly believe one had heard right.
“You see, one’s shut up in the dormitory from nine till five and the warders don’t come in.
To tell you the truth, it would be as much as their lives were worth.
If in the morning a man’s found with a hole in his gizzard, the authorities ask no questions so as they won’t be told no lies.
So you see, I felt a kind of responsibility for the boy.
I had to teach him everything.
I’ve got a good brain and I soon discovered that out there if you want to make it easy for yourself the only thing is to do what you’re told and give no trouble.
It’s not justice that reigns on the earth, it’s force, and they’ve got the force, the authorities; one of these days perhaps we shall have it, we the working-men, and then we shall get a bit of our own back on the bourgeois, but till then we’ve got to obey.
That’s what I taught him, and I taught him my job too, and now he’s almost as good an electrician as I am.”
“The only thing now is to find work,” said the other.
“Work together.”
“We’ve gone through so much together we can’t be parted now.
You see, he’s all I’ve got.
I’ve got no mother, no wife, no kids.
I had, but my mother’s dead, and I lost my wife and my kids when I had my trouble.
Women are bitches.
It’s hard for a chap to live without any affection in his life.”
“And I, who have I got?
It’s for life, us two.”
There was something very affecting in the friendship that bound those two hapless men together.
It gave Charley a sense of exaltation that somewhat embarrassed him; he would have liked to tell them that he thought it brave and beautiful, but he knew he could never bring himself to say anything so unusual.
But Lydia had none of his shyness.
“I don’t think there are many men who would have stayed in that hell for two long years when they could get away, for the sake of a friend.”
The man chuckled.
“You see, over there time is just the opposite of money; there a little money is a great deal and a lot of time is nothing very much.
While six sous is a sum that you hoard as if it was a fortune, two years is a period that’s hardly worth talking about.”
Lydia sighed deeply.
It was plain of what she was thinking.
“Berger isn’t there for so long, is he?”
“Fifteen years.”