LA SECTE POPINCOURT

To the munitions factory I delivered ten warm baguettes, some brie wrapped in waxed paper, and a large tub of olives. The workshop droned and banged; it smelt of oil and sweat and metal, and seemed to pulsate with the kind of camaraderie, borne of common sufferance, that as a callow young delivery boy I craved. The workers may not have ruffled my hair so affectionately with their manly, calloused hands had they seen my blouson pockets bulging with bullets as I slipped out. I clattered across the cobbled yard, footsteps echoing through the exit arch, and out onto the bright everlasting avenue: “Cedric! Jacques! I am coming for you!” Until that moment my life had been a failure for I had been unable to match the cold-eyed audacity of my older friends: the previous week Cedric had sliced a gendarme’s tyres open with an ivory-handled hunting knife he had stolen from his grandfather; Jacques had shown us a hessian sack containing three baby moles that he had drowned in the Seine; they both boasted of possessing a gun, but lacked ammunition. But now I ran, and the running shook music from the bullets, and the bullets would admit me, at last, into their notorious, glorious brotherhood, and we would become comrades, bound together for life - for ever!