I
.
MICHEL TOURNIER
331
down in the valley, what did we see? A column of enemy tanks . The
captain didn't hesitate: Draw swords! Cavalry charge! For the honor
of the Regiment!
We charged. The krauts picked us off with their machine guns .
Ayesha got a bullet in her chest. I went crashing into the alfalfa,
stunned but unhurt. All my pals were massacred. I was the only one
safe and sound. Why? Because I was wearing my little fetish around
my neck. I wasn't even parted from it when I got sent to a camp in
Silesia with thousands of others. I must tell you that Antoinette and I
had come together in a way through our families being neighbors.
Antoinette had become what they call a wartime godmother to me .
She wrote to me and sent me chocolate, sugar, jam, and undercloth–
ing too. But it was underclothing for me, men's stuff. I didn't ever
dare write and tell her the sort of underclothing I would really have
liked.
Men's underclothing.. . . That was the most sinister thing of
all in the stalag, all those men with their ragged clothes that they
spent their time patching up as best they could. A uniform. That's
really something! Naked under the shower, an officer, a noncom–
missioned officer, an enlisted man , they're just three men, no more,
no less, whether ill-favored or well built. What's more, the Germans
and us, the conquerors and the prisoners , without our uniforms we
were all alike . They say that the tailor makes the man. How true! A
naked man is a worm without dignity , without a function, he has no
place in society. I've always had a horror of nudity. Nudity is worse
than indecent - it's bestial. Clothes are the human soul. And even
more so than clothes, shoes .
Shoes.... I learned a lot about shoes when I was a prisoner.
Every evening, in the huts, they used to confiscate our shoes. That
was to stop us from escaping. Without shoes we were submen, hu–
man wrecks, the scum of the earth. And in any case, the main dif–
ference between our conquerors and ourselves was in our shoes, or
rather, boots . .. . Yes, the whole of Germany at the time, Nazi Ger–
many, was contained in its boots. You know, right after the war, they
shot a whole lot of S.S . torturers. That was an extreme solution and
very crude. All they had to do was confiscate their boots . Yes really,
I mean it! No more boots , no more torturers! Take the most sadistic
Nazi torturer , deprive him of his boots, give him a pair of slippers
instead , great big peasant felt slippers with buckles . You'll turn him
into a lamb. It's like a tiger if you extract his teeth and claws: then all
he can do with his paws is caress you, and with his jaws, kiss you .
