Author: Timothee de Fombelle
Category: Childrens
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/timothee-de-fombelle/page,9,65660-the_book_of_pearl.html
In the nightmare of the prison camp, he had always imagined escaping. It had become an obsession. But now he knew that he couldn’t leave without uncovering the mystery revealed to him by his friend. The only true escape was the one that would lead him back to where he belonged. If Kozowski’s scale really did exist, then it must have traced a path between this world and the story world. The mermaid’s scale would surely lead him back to the Kingdoms.
“Where’s the doctor?” asked Pearl.
“Inside that hangar.”
“What about Kozo?”
“Just behind you.”
The sickly man and his two guards passed by very close to them. He spat in the snow.
Pearl just had time to glimpse his face.
15
LIKE A LITTLE SNAKE
The next day, Joshua Pearl was taken to the infirmary. He looked all done in, half his face covered by a bloody bruise. El Fassi had eventually given in and punched his friend in the face.
He certainly hadn’t missed his target.
Situated at the end of the camp, the inside of the hangar looked like a place where people went to die, even though the most serious cases, those patients suffering from tuberculosis or typhus, had been isolated in other buildings.
Pearl was pushed to one side and made to wait in line for the only doctor who spoke French.
He waited for some time, assaulted by the smell of ether and the complaints of the sick. German guards moved between the rows of beds.
Finally, the doctor appeared.
“A fight?”
“Yes.”
He examined the eye by lifting the eyelid with his thumb.
“Who did this?”
Pearl remained silent.
“You can tell me, I won’t repeat it to anybody. I’m a prisoner myself. Who hit you?”
“A soldier called El Fassi.”
The doctor wrinkled his nose.
“I know him. He doesn’t hit.”
“Unless a friend asked him politely.”
This time, the doctor took his hands away from Joshua Pearl’s face.
“I have come to speak with you about Bartosz Kozowski,” his patient went on.
The doctor glanced around at the sick and ailing prisoners on their mattresses: most of them looked asleep.
“If it’s the cornea, I need to take a proper look in the daylight.”
Pearl followed the doctor towards the door.
“He’s more powerful than me,” the doctor muttered under his breath as he walked.
“I know.”
“He often dines with the camp commander. He paid a high price for his power.”
“Using what?”
A German soldier passed by close to them.
“Sorry?”
“What did he pay with?”
“Kozo intercepts the French parcels,” replied the doctor with a shrug.
Only the French were allowed to receive parcels, because of an agreement between the governments of the two countries.
“Tins of sardines won’t buy you the commander of this camp.”
The doctor stared hard at Pearl.
“Well, did your friend El Fassi tell you?”
“Yes.”
Only Joshua Pearl’s direct gaze and honest voice could explain the trust of a man who’d met him for the first time moments earlier.
“What if the scale is a fake?” asked Pearl, now that they were outside the hangar.
“I saw it, around his neck…”
The doctor lowered his eyes and seemed to grow more distant.
“I’ve travelled a great deal,” he went on. “I’ve followed archaeologists, looking after them in Egypt and elsewhere. I’ve seen real treasure. But this time, I know that it’s not from this world.”
The doctor still seemed to be haunted by his sighting of the scale.
“Does he frighten you?” asked Pearl.
“I see what happens to those he didn’t appreciate, when they pass through here, and it’s a good reason to be frightened.”
The doctor was in two minds about whether to carry on.
“There’s something more serious.”
This time, he turned around to check that nobody was hiding in the mud-streaked snow.
“Kozo is sick,” he whispered. “I’m the only person who knows. He doesn’t want to be locked up in Block T, the building for tuberculosis sufferers: he’s contaminating the whole camp.”
“I can get rid of him for you, with your help.”
The doctor went back inside the hangar, and Pearl followed as they passed close to the sickbeds.
“Well?” asked Pearl, when the doctor stopped at a basin to wash his hands.
“There doesn’t appear to be any serious damage to the eye, but I’ll bandage it up for you just in case. Come back to see me tomorrow. You can never be too careful.”
Pearl returned the following day, having already obtained permission to change dormitory and barracks. After the fight with prisoner El Fassi, he didn’t want any further contact with him. The staging of this separation was very painful for the two friends, but it was key to their plan. Kozo mustn’t suspect any collusion between them.
Three days later, during their secret early morning consultation, the doctor informed the fearsome Bartosz Kozowski that a prisoner had found out about his illness and was threatening to reveal it.
The squat man turned deathly pale.
“And you let him get away?” he demanded, grabbing the doctor’s throat.
“A second prisoner is also in the know. He claims he’ll tell all, if anything happens to the first one.”
Never before had Kozo been victim to this kind of blackmail. He didn’t give anyone the chance to dictate the terms. It was simpler that way. With both thumbs, he increased the pressure on the doctor’s windpipe.
“Are you his messenger?”
“I could have chosen to keep quiet and not mention it to you.”
“Except that if I fall, you fall with me.”
“Another reason to be on your side,” said the doctor. “In keeping your secret, I may have allowed men to become contaminated. I’m as guilty as you are.”
Kozo let him fall back into his chair.
“I’m not guilty of anything,” he declared, wiping his hands on his coat.
They were in a tiny office with a window at the top of a staircase, looking out over all the rows of stretchers. Kozo coughed and leant against the glass with his shoulder: the little cogs of his minuscule brain were clicking back into action.
“What are they asking for?”
“An escape plan…”
“The swines!”
“One other thing…”
“What?”
“They want that.”
The doctor was pointing at the middle of Kozo’s chest.
“Me?”
“No, the scale. And they want to know where it comes from.”
Bartosz Kozowski began to cough very loudly indeed, leaning with both hands against the wall. He then made several attempts to ask a question that clung stubbornly to the bottom of his lungs, before emerging as a whimper.
“Who is it?”
“He’s called El Fassi. Brahim El Fassi.”
In the days that followed, Pearl noticed that El Fassi was being tailed closely by a small group of Polish prisoners who watched his every movement.
They must have been rather disappointed by their subject. El Fassi had been requisitioned to repair a roof that had caved in under the weight of the snow, he didn’t say a word to anyone and he never stopped working. The men shadowing him were tasked with discovering the identity of his accomplice. But for now, El Fassi’s only accomplices were his hammer and his bag of nails.
Joshua Pearl watched at a distance, touched by what his friend had agreed to do for him. They had long since developed an unconditional solidarity. They no longer kept a tally of who had last taken a risk for the other. They simply did what they felt needed
doing.
At nine o’clock in the evening, just as Pearl was due to return to his dormitory, he ran into El Fassi being dragged off by two men. They didn’t dare exchange glances. From curfew and throughout the rest of the night, Pearl was convinced he could hear cries from the other end of the camp.
At dawn, however, El Fassi was back at work on the roof with his tools and pine planks.
This time, as Pearl passed down on the path below, he dared to smile at the regular beat of the hammer. No response. This troubled Joshua. Then he spotted a young man in a hat, posted a few metres away, who never took his eyes off El Fassi. He understood that they mustn’t put a foot wrong. A smile could prove fatal. The pact uniting them had to remain invisible.
Visiting the infirmary for the last time, to get the dressing replaced on the wound that had long since healed, Pearl found out what had happened during the night. The doctor had been present throughout.
El Fassi had arrived at nightfall, led by two burly Polish men. Kozo was waiting behind the hangar, near a mound of coal. He had asked his men to step aside. The doctor had remained close by.
Kozo had pointed out the mound of coal to El Fassi.
“If I bury you in there, nobody’ll find you before the spring.”
He spoke perfect French.
“Indeed,” El Fassi answered calmly.
Kozo walked right up to El Fassi, who thrust his hands deeper into his coat pockets before continuing.
“But if you bury me in there, you’ll be buried just a bit further off, and well before the spring…”
The confidence with which he expressed every word had the effect of making his desert accent disappear.
“Tuberculosis sufferers don’t survive two weeks when they’re locked up in Block T.”
Kozo froze.
“Who says you really have an accomplice?” he asked eventually.
“I do.”
“And if you’re lying?”
“That’s a risk you’ll have to take,” El Fassi shrugged. “You can always kill me, then wait to see what happens.”
Kozo felt the net tightening around his body. Sometimes the simplest traps are the most deadly. He couldn’t touch a hair beneath this man’s turban without another prisoner spreading the rumour somewhere else in the camp. The link between Brahim El Fassi and the unknown prisoner made them invincible.
“You’re lying,” said Kozo. “I can tell you’re lying.”
El Fassi didn’t respond. The doctor followed the scene with a mixture of terror and gratitude. For as long as he’d been the only person who knew, he was powerless against Kozowski. But the two friends might finally rid the camp of this bully.
“And the scale?” asked Kozo.
“I want to know where it comes from.”
All that was visible was the silver cord inside the coat collar, below Kozowski’s ear.
“Well?” Pearl asked the doctor, who was relaying the previous night’s encounter while removing the young soldier’s dressing.
“Nothing. He hasn’t revealed anything yet.”
When he leant over the boy’s face, the doctor noticed how pale he looked. Why was he so interested in this mermaid’s scale?
“If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about such things,” he advised Pearl. “In the pyramids of Egypt, I witnessed men losing their minds in the quest to grasp such mysteries. Be very careful. If something has come from another world, then it may also have deadly powers.”
Joshua Iliån Pearl didn’t respond. How could he talk to this man about his kingdom, and about the love that perhaps awaited him there? Iliån had been abandoned in the great woods of our planet. And any tiny pebbles or scales that came from the Kingdoms might represent his only way of return.
That same evening, at midnight, the prisoners were woken by the sound of boots kicking at the hut doors. Pearl sat up in bed. It was cold, but the men around him were starting to get dressed. One of the German guards barked out a list of prisoners.
A one hundred year-old oak had fallen on the railway line a few kilometres from the camp, bringing down ten trees with it. The train carrying passengers from Berlin was stuck on the rails. The prisoners were ordered to leave at the double in order to free the railway line.
On hearing his number being called out, Pearl got up and groped for his shoes in the dark. A few prisoners fell in alongside him. He was astonished that the summons only applied to half his dormitory. Usually there was no selection process: conscription was by whole huts at a time.
Outside, he saw other soldiers filing out of different buildings in the glare of the tower’s searchlights. The prisoners were drawn up four by four. There must have been about thirty of them, guarded by twelve soldiers and their dogs. Saws and axes had already been loaded into two lorries, as the prisoners clambered onto the wooden benches at the back.
In the midst of all this commotion, Pearl spotted El Fassi climbing into the other lorry. This time their eyes met, and the soldier saw the corporal putting his hand on his heart to show him something. As he did so, a torch swept across El Fassi’s face and Pearl saw something glinting around his friend’s neck like a little snake: it was the silver cord. Then El Fassi disappeared beneath the lorry’s tarpaulin.
16
THE TRAIN
As they trooped alongside the train to reach the fallen trees, the prisoners couldn’t help peering inside the halted carriages, like children gazing at a life-sized Christmas nativity scene.
It was all lit up inside. Ladies with immaculate hairdos were wrapped tightly in blankets. Steaming drinks were being passed from hand-to-hand. The men were reading newspapers, while small children could be glimpsed sleeping in the luggage racks above the windows. A few older gentlemen were smoking by the doors as they watched the shadows of the convicts filing past.
As far as all the passengers were concerned, this incident represented the height of discomfort and adventure. Would they reach their friends in Dortmund on time? Would they have to ration their cigars until they reached the next station? Above all, how could they keep the children from being frightened? They could hardly have imagined that, at the same time, the prisoners outside their windows were dreaming of a crust of bread in tomorrow’s soup, or working out the best way to squash a flea between two frozen fingers.
Two worlds were rubbing shoulders in the night.
But Joshua Pearl hadn’t even glanced at the carriages. His eyes were firmly on El Fassi’s turban, twenty metres ahead. He had to speak with him. The men immediately in front were walking in single file, since straying from the stones of the railway track meant sinking into the mud.
They had all heard the word “sabotage” being repeated in German by two passengers at a window. When they arrived at the trees blocking the way, the rumour was confirmed.
The great oak had been chopped cleanly at its base. This could only be an act of terrorism. Luckily, the train had slowed down for a level crossing, grinding to a halt in time.
The axes could already be heard thudding into the trunks. Spotting that El Fassi had picked up a saw, Pearl stepped over a branch to join him, but the corporal rushed towards another prisoner who was standing idly by. Pearl understood the warning: they mustn’t be seen together.
Dogs could be heard barking a little way off, beyond the noise of sawdust and wood-shavings being produced. Meanwhile, the guards had formed a ring around the thirty prisoners, caught in the beam of the engine headlights.
Pearl had chosen an axe, and they made swift progress as sections of trunk were rolled into the ditch.
Suddenly, El Fassi was next to him, tugging at the same branch that formed a screen of pine needles.
“To the right, look.”
Pearl turned his head.
“The guard with two dogs has been tipped off: he’ll let us through. There’s a hut five hundred metres from here with clothes and a map.”
“We shouldn’t trust Kozo,” Pearl hissed through gritted teeth. “Let’s head in the opposite
direction.”
“He wouldn’t lie. He has nothing to gain from us getting caught; otherwise he’s a dead man.”
The branch they were dragging got stuck in the brambles.
“Why trust him?”
“I have the scale.”
“Where did he find it?”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
They were approaching a heap of boughs by the edge of the ditch, and beyond the beams of light. A guard was positioned there with two dogs that panted as they strained on their leashes.
“Follow me.”
They took a few more steps and lifted up the pine branch. Before it hit the ground, El Fassi had dived into the undergrowth with Pearl quick on his tail. The dogs growled, held in check by the soldier who was looking the other way.
The two fugitives crawled through the foliage and pine needles. They could hear the axe-blows and the shouts behind them, mingled with the steamy breath of the train. El Fassi was the first to emerge on the other side. Seeing that the path was clear, he held out his hand to Pearl, who pulled himself up next to his friend. The first trees beckoned, only two steps away.
The fugitives were running side by side in the dark now. Pearl was thinking about the secrets that Kozo had revealed to El Fassi. Where had the scale come from? Was there an opening back to the Kingdoms? His answer was just at his shoulder, darting between the tree trunks.
“Who made the trees fall on the line?” asked Pearl.
“He did. He set everything up.”
A feeble light glimmered ahead of them in the woods. Pearl slowed down.
“Is someone expecting us?”
“He organized for a lamp to be put in the house.”
Pearl’s instincts were telling him to head in a different direction. To get away from there. The scale, the secret and their freedom: it was all too much at once. They couldn’t trust in anybody or anything now, not even luck.
“Wait,” he whispered to his friend.
They stopped, gasping for breath under the pines. The hut was in the middle of a tiny clearing, twenty or thirty metres off.