The Champagne War by Fiona McIntosh

Author:Fiona McIntosh [McIntosh, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

17

HEIDELBERG, GERMANY

June 1918

The new young guard looked at the prisoner in surprise. ‘How come you speak good German, Bouchon? Convenient to have you as a translator, of course.’

The man who had become known as Jacques Bouchon shrugged. ‘I must have learned it.’

‘You use our slang well, so you have obviously spoken it since you were young.’

‘Perhaps my family lived on the border. I have no memories of my past.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he admitted, in a slightly grudging tone. ‘I get flashes. Voices in my dreams. I sometimes have snaps of scenes in my mind like single photographs, but they leave as fast as they arrive.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t hang on to them.’

‘Like what?’

‘There’s a woman.’

Rolf’s eyes widened with intrigue. He laughed suggestively.

‘I never see her face, but she has dark golden hair to here,’ Jacques said, tapping a finger just below his shoulder. ‘It’s thick and it shines glimpses of fire when the sun catches it . . . and I hear her voice. It’s slightly raspy.’

‘What does she say?’

‘I can’t hear the words, but she beckons to me. I see other people now and then but they’re all strangers in my mind.’

‘You’re lucky that other French soldier recognised you as an officer or you’d have been sent to a much tougher prison.’

Jacques nodded. ‘I wish he’d lived and I could have asked more, but he was vague even in his recognition of me. He knew me as an officer and said he thought I was Jacques but he had no surname; it was hard enough to get that much from him. I’m grateful but I don’t trust it.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t feel like a Breton.’

His companion laughed.

‘And if I am, why am I not speaking the language of Brittany?’

‘How should I know? I’m German! You’ve probably forgotten it. The shock they talk about in the trenches took it away.’

‘But left me with French, German, English? Pfft!’ he said dismissively.

Being able to translate had made him popular with everyone, especially the German guards, who between them had very little English. There were no other French prisoners left here.

‘I was in Belgium,’ Jacques explained, taking a drag on the final centimetre of his cigarette.

‘Gassed?’

‘You can tell?’ he asked the guard, expelling smoke into the air.

‘Your cough,’ Rolf admitted. ‘I recognise it from others. It was far worse in the prison I worked at before. That cough of yours is not from the tobacco. It is distinctive. What did gassing feel like?’

‘What a callous question.’ Jacques shook his head with a soft smirk. ‘I wouldn’t even wish it on my enemies. Curiously, it’s something I do remember. It burned my throat and I felt like I would suffocate and die there in the mud, gasping for breath.’ He gave another shrug. ‘I was one of the lucky ones to survive but I was told the best I could hope for was damaged lungs for life and being susceptible to respiratory problems. It may still kill me.’

The man looked curious rather than moved.

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