Checkpoint Read online

  “And how do you shatter a coal face?” asked Maud, who was beginning to see what might be at stake.

  “With explosives.”

  She turned to Alex. He met her gaze and she understood.

  “And getting explosives to the mine is even more difficult than getting coal there, I imagine?”

  “It’s not even an issue. The Serbs wouldn’t want to know.”

  She was staring at him and suddenly she got the impression that he was a complete stranger, trying to manipulate her.

  “However,” he hastened to add, “they’re not military explosives. They’re sticks you drive into a hole and which cause simple cracks to appear in the rock. They can serve no other purpose. You can’t blow up just any old thing with them.”

  “But they are explosives.”

  “There’s no other word for it but in fact they’re nothing like military devices. They’re used on construction sites.”

  “And you have stashed some in our trucks, is that it?”

  He nodded, like a little kid caught red-handed.

  “You put explosives in our cargo!”

  She had gotten to her feet and was looking at him, her eyes full of rage.

  “You put explosives in our cargo! You are out of your mind! Do you realize the danger you’ve put us in! You have dragged an entire association into your bullshit plot. And you don’t give a damn that three people who are completely innocent will end up in jail?”

  She started walking toward the quarry. Alex leapt to his feet, caught up with her, and grabbed her by the arm. She pulled away and spun around. It was always the same thing with men. There was no trusting them, even when they seemed sincere. Maud felt betrayed. She was angry with herself for letting her guard down. Despite his angelic face, Alex was just like the others. Lionel had been right to put him in the same bag as his colleague.

  “Calm down. If I’m talking to you, it is precisely because—”

  “Because you think you can just turn on the charm and wind me up inside your stupid plan. You think I can’t tell what you’re up to?”

  Alex looked down.

  “I thought you might understand.”

  There was real disappointment in his voice. Maud went on walking toward the campsite, but she didn’t run. He followed her in silence. She was thinking about the situation, and the farther she went, the slower she walked. She felt torn, undecided. Her rage was draining away, and now she could imagine what would happen. The only thing for it was to denounce Alex and provoke an explanation. In spite of everything, this option disgusted her. He had trusted her. Whatever his ulterior motives might be, she was the one he had turned to. She didn’t want to behave stupidly, like some apparatchik—like Lionel, in other words. It was at least her duty to hear him out, and to try to understand.

  “Why didn’t you put your own convoy together to transport it?” she said to herself, not expecting any answer. “After all, there are private individuals who send aid to Bosnia. What was the point dragging a real humanitarian organization into it?”

  Alex let her express her disgust, expel the tension that his revelation had caused. Then he collapsed by the side of the road, his head in his hands, and not obviously answering her, he began talking in turn.

  6

  Once you’ve spent some time with these people,” said Alex, not addressing anyone in particular, “you no longer see things the same way.”

  Maud shot him a sharp look. He was going to whine, and talk about his girlfriend, and try to arouse her pity through his emotions. She was prepared to add some pity to her anger. But what would that change?

  “In fact they don’t give a damn about what we can bring them,” he continued. “They’re really tough, it’s incredible. People like us are lost without our supermarkets and drugstores. But they’ve never been spoiled.”

  Maud wondered why she was listening. And yet, he’d struck the right chord, perhaps just by chance. She’d asked herself the same question, in fact. There was this war; there were atrocities being committed. And what was she doing? She was bringing them chocolate and bandages. She had eventually come to accept this state of things as a particular sign of the times. That’s just the way it was and, basically, she didn’t know what else she could do. But that didn’t stop her feeling uneasy, and even ashamed.

  “They know the war will end one day,” said Alex. “There have been a shitload of wars in this part of the world. They always come to an end.”

  A cart drawn by a mule was coming down the road. A wrinkled peasant held the reins, slumped on the wooden seat. He didn’t even look at them as he went by. It was as if he had come there deliberately, to illustrate Alex’s words. You could tell that, since birth, the old man had accepted his fate, a fate that called for both resistance and submission. The very notion of offering him material assistance was ridiculous, completely out of place. Maud joined Alex on the grassy embankment.

  “What they want,” continued Alex, “is simply to go on living.”

  The pale sun caressed them. They turned their faces to the light.

  “For me, that’s what humanitarian work means.”

  Alex had suddenly regained his energy. He looked at Maud.

  “When the war is over, they mustn’t be left with a country that is completely devastated, don’t you see? People have to be able to go on living. This country has no resources in energy, they have no source of warmth or work, and the most important thing is to preserve what little there is. This industry is their only wealth.”

  He paused for a moment then delivered his conclusion, his tone full of passion and enthusiasm; there was nothing guilty about it.

  “Believe me, the most useful thing in this convoy is those little explosives; they will make it possible for them to save the mine.”

  Maud didn’t like received ideas. She had always deplored the fact that most people could not grasp the complexity of things. She was fascinated by paradoxes. Paradoxes nourished intelligence. The thought that humanitarian work might not be what everyone thought it was—herself included only a few moments earlier—was a troubling discovery, a kind of challenge. She would be angry with herself if she failed to take up that challenge.

  “Do you think that aid work should consist in transporting explosives?” she asked, not so much to ridicule Alex’s words as to encourage him to go on with the intellectual game he had started playing with her.

  “I think that humanitarian aid means a lot of things. And there are also a lot of players in the field. For major organizations like the UN to stick to bringing supplies, that’s normal. Those supplies are needed, and the UN can’t take any initiative beyond the mandate the member states have given them. But NGOs aren’t bound in the same way. They’re free. What’s the point of their freedom if it doesn’t allow them to go one step further and do things that technically are not allowed?”

  “Provided it’s what they’ve decided and their people in the field accept the risk. You said nothing. You put your explosives on our trucks and you didn’t say a thing.”

  “Well, we’re telling you now.”

  Maud shrugged.

  “That’s too easy. We no longer have any choice in the matter.”

  “Whatever; we’re telling you now,” said Alex again, looking her straight in the eye. “We’re telling you: this is what we intend to bring. And this is why. The only question is, do you think it can help, yes or no?”

  She stood up, wiping the dust from the back of her jeans.

  It was odd: she felt like laughing. This business with the explosives was the first interesting thing that had happened since they left Lyon. She hadn’t wanted to admit as much to herself, but she was bored in the convoy. Other than the excitement to be had driving a truck, there was nothing that thrilled her. The routine of their days and nights was grim, the atmosphere was leaden, the landscape was monotonou
s. Without realizing, she had had been hoping for an event, anything, provided it was unexpected. And this one exceeded anything she could have imagined.

  “What do we risk if we get caught?”

  “Not much. They’ll take the trucks and put us in jail for a few days. France will send a civil servant, a consul or someone like that, and they’ll let us go. Otherwise it would make the lead story on the evening news and the Serbs don’t want that.”

  Maud laughed to herself, imagining her mother weeping by her TV set. What difference would it make? Her mother was already convinced she’d gone off to her death. If her daughter really got into trouble, she wouldn’t be any more worried than she already was. At least she would have the satisfaction of knowing she was right.

  “But I watched you at the checkpoints. You didn’t look all that calm . . . ”

  “Because you guys didn’t know about it. That’s what I feared more than anything. If we are all on the same page, there’s less risk they’ll find anything, and if by chance they do, we’ll have agreed beforehand about what to say. They’re no big deal, these little explosives. Unless we stumble on some specialists, we could even say that they’re, I don’t know, that they’re medical supplies . . . ”

  “Why? What do they look like?”

  “Sticks wrapped in aluminum foil.”

  “Are there many?”

  “Two hundred. But they’re spread through several boxes.”

  “Are you the ones who hid them before we left?”

  “Yeah, it was Marc. He managed to get himself locked inside the garage at La Tête d’Or and he opened some of the boxes.”

  “On both trucks?”

  “No, on the one he’s driving.”

  They had been walking fairly slowly but were absorbed in their conversation and before they knew it they were in sight of the quarry.

  “So what do we do?” asked Alex.

  He was actually asking Maud, because he himself had no choice.

  “I don’t know,” she said, walking faster.

  And if she were being completely honest, she really did not know.

  The atmosphere was tense. Marc and Lionel were tightening the ropes on the tarp at the back of the first truck. Vauthier was busy at the cooking stove, looking grumpy.

  “Where did you get to, the pair of you?” said Lionel. “This is no time for embarking on some romance.”

  His stupid remark was destined to annoy Maud. Since she was hesitating about which side to choose, all it took was an innocuous detail for the scale to tip to one side. She was vaguely aware, even though she thought it was ridiculous, that Lionel’s thoughtless utterance might actually be deciding everything.

  “We’re going to start on the second truck,” said Lionel. “But let’s have some lunch first, that way we can take off again right away afterwards.”

  “It’s too early for lunch,” said Alex.

  “Well, we’ve been working. We’re hungry.”

  Maud lifted the lid on the casserole that was simmering on the stove. Ratatouille from a can was bubbling underneath the sausages Vauthier had tossed in. They passed around the poorly washed plastic plates, still sticky with smudges of sauce from last night’s dinner. Maud served everyone with a tin ladle, and they went to sit on the ground at some distance from each other. Just the thought that this routine would go on, day after day, with this tension in the air, all this unvoiced hostility conveyed in every gesture, she began to hope that suddenly everything would blow sky high, that things would be out in the open, even if it meant a violent reckoning.

  She quickly finished eating and wiped her plate with a crust of bread, then took it over to the basin full of dishes.

  “Is there any coffee left?”

  This was Marc’s strong point. Every morning, he made two liters of coffee that he poured into thermoses. The little Maud knew about him was that he was from the north of France and ran all day on coffee.

  “The big plastic thermos is empty, but there’s still some in the stainless one,” he said.

  Maud poured a cup. It was a pale liquid, not even black, that looked more like tea than coffee, and took on the taste of the receptacle it was kept in.

  The others came over to help themselves as well.

  “Did you find anything in the boxes?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Is there really any point in searching the other vehicle?”

  “We’re going to finish what we’ve started,” said Lionel firmly.

  Drawn by the cooking smells, two crows sat watching them from a distance. Maud noticed that Marc was looking at Alex. She got the impression that Alex was raising his eyebrows, as if to express his bewilderment.

  “Okay, shall we get on with it?” grumbled Vauthier.

  He was the most determined. For all that he acted high and mighty, Lionel was just following Vauthier. Maud, influenced by the early stages of the journey when she was still in the lead truck, had thought Marc was the most troublesome in the group, with his dark airs and silence. But she was beginning to realize that the constant atmosphere of subdued violence in the group came from Vauthier.

  “Let me finish my cigarette and then we’ll get started,” said Lionel.

  “Stay where you are!”

  Maud had almost shouted. She surprised even herself with her reaction. They all stared at her.

  “Stay where you are, we need to talk.”

  They hesitated, standing there, coffee in hand. Finally they came closer, and as Maud was sitting on the ground, they also sat down, one after the other.

  “There’s no point opening the boxes,” she started.

  Suddenly she was afraid, and wanted to rewind the clock, not to interfere. But they were all staring at her. A childhood memory came to her. She was at the swimming pool with her brother. They had been diving off the edge, and then at one point her brother challenged her to jump from the big diving board, the thirty-foot one. Children were not allowed to use it. They had climbed up, both of them. From up there the pool seemed tiny. It was an outdoor pool. The sun was playing on the water, sparkling white flashes of light. Her brother had made as if to go forward, but no sooner did he arrive at the end of the diving board than he came back at a run, white with terror. So then Maud walked out to the edge. She was absolutely frozen with panic and wanted to desert her own body. Someone down below had spotted them and sounded the alarm. She heard faraway shouts but inside her there was only a great silence. She had decided: she would not go through with it, she would follow her brother back down the ladder. But just then she saw the people looking at her. Dozens of fearful gazes staring right at her. More than fifteen years had gone by but she was still convinced that it was because of those gazes that she had jumped. For all that she had ended up in the hospital for ten days with a fractured vertebra that could have left her paralyzed, she never remembered that moment without thinking, with a secret pride, that it had determined the course of her entire life.

  “Let me tell you what you’re going to find in those boxes,” she declared.

  Vauthier, who had stayed to one side, came nearer. Marc and Alex looked at each other again. Lionel was puffing nervously on his cigarette.

  “Some of the boxes contain explosives.”

  “Bastards, I knew it!” shouted Vauthier.

  “Let me finish, will you?”

  They were stunned by what Maud had said but even more by her sudden air of authority.

  “They’re not military explosives. They’re small construction explosives, for extracting coal.”

  Perfectly clearly, without being interrupted, she explained it all: the mine, the pumps, the tunnels that would be flooded. And she finished by giving her opinion, and felt as if she was discovering it for the first time, although it echoed Alex’s words:

  “It is probably the most useful t
hing we can give those people. I’m prepared to take the risk.”

  An ominous silence greeted her closing words. And indeed, once she finished, the storm broke.

  “Explosives!” shouted Vauthier. “You want us to transport explosives? I don’t believe it!”

  He got quickly to his feet.

  “I’m going to open these boxes right away, and we’re going to leave your crap here.”

  He was beside himself. You could see he wanted to grab the two soldiers by the scruff of the neck, but he seemed to focus most of his hatred on Marc.

  The crows flew away, shrieking, a sudden emphatic contrast to the thick silence that reigned in the quarry.

  And then something unexpected happened: Vauthier realized he was alone.

  Lionel, even though he had been under his influence, was too sensitive to the balance of power not to realize that he was in the minority. Maud and the two soldiers didn’t move. Vauthier’s agitation was ineffective in light of the strength they emanated.

  “Let’s stop and think,” said Lionel at last.

  Maud knew this meant that she had won this round.

  And it was all the more disturbing in that she was not sure she was right. She had jumped off the diving board with no idea what, upon landing, the consequences of her fall into the unknown would be.

  As a matter of form, the discussion lasted nearly two more hours. The aim was to dispel any objections, to weigh the risks and distribute the roles. But each of them felt more and more clearly that their decision, in principle, had already been made.

  Alex went to get some explosive sticks from his things, a bundle he had kept out on purpose in case he needed to show the others what they looked like. And indeed, you would have to be a specialist to know what they were. They looked like some sort of marzipan wrapped in shiny paper. The interior had the consistency of a candle wax, with a little twisted wick poking out. Alex suggested they should say it was a gift for a church in the region. Lionel regained some of his self-assurance and declared learnedly that, in any case, he had never seen any paramilitaries open boxes at checkpoints. They might, on the other hand, confiscate one or two. So if they left a few boxes open at the back, they might be content just to rummage through those. Marc confirmed that the sticks were well-camouflaged and that they’d really have to go through the load with a fine-tooth comb to find them. Vauthier, off to one side, had begun smoking. No one paid him any attention. The others had vaguely expected him to declare that he wouldn’t continue the journey with them and that he’d manage to get home on his own, but he didn’t say anything of the sort. Maud wondered if he was really as brave as he made out.