Amandine (32 page)

As you proceed
. Her voice, her words, over and over during that night I felt something like envy, I think that’s what it was. Envy of these others, how they are living out the war with purpose. Raison d’être. All my energy was taken up in trying to keep us fed. Out of harm’s way.
Once we are home, I will be able to help. Of course we could stay here and join them. We could do that. I think that’s what Magdalen and even Lily want us to do, expect us to do, and yet, as alluring a prospect as it seems right now, I am too weary of living in other people’s houses, living other people’s lives. I want to take Amandine home. I think for right now that’s my job in this war
.

Though Amandine pleaded to take Claude with us, she, too, was ready to return to our journey by the time we’d stayed three nights at La Châtaigneraie. Each in our way, we knew that staying longer would be staying too long. On the evening when I told Magdalen that we’d be starting off in the morning, she said, “As you wish.”

She walked about the kitchen, hands on her hips. “This is not bicycle country. Leave it here. Leave most everything here except your clothes. I knew you wouldn’t stay. I’ve found some heavier things for both of you. Coats, boots. From here on you won’t need to walk much. Each place where you’ll stay, the people will take you on to the next. I can’t show you the route on a map or even talk you through it. The shortest, fastest way will never be yours. But you know all that by now. A little progress north, then to the west, back to the south, a better road north. Weather,
boche
movement, changes in our ranks, food and petrol supplies—routes and timing change according to these. You might be driven only a few kilometers one day, thirty or forty another. If the snows come early, you’ll have to stay put. For a while.
You will not always be warm or even comfortable, but you will always eat. Always be welcome. People will do the thinking, the deciding, the contacting for you. In some way, you’re part of us now. You may be asked to take along a parcel to the next place, deliver a verbal message. Nothing more.”

“No white, blowsy rose?”

“No Luger either.”

“And what if I want to do more?”

It felt strange to tumble into the back of an auto or to climb up into the bed of a truck driven by someone whose name we didn’t know, whose face we saw only in shadow for a morning’s desolate expedition. Breasting black volcanic hills one after another until shreds of chimney smoke heralded our destination, we would stop then, leave the auto or the truck in a blind and trek to some ancestral farmhouse or hunting lodge or bunker. The women whom Magdalen said we’d find were always there. Sometimes in groups, sometimes alone with their children, they barely broke stride to greet us, feed us, bed us down. We’d stay for a day, sometimes for a month. I did as Magdalen said I should, I let them decide. Around their oilclothed kitchen tables, in attics and cellars, and in the hides where they kept grain and aged their cheese, they plotted shelters, organized their stores, made pallets where other people’s children could sleep. They worked the fields, stirred the soup, suckled their babies, oiled their guns, nursed the wounded, reddened their lips with the ash of crushed bricks, and rimmed their eyes with a shard of charcoaled wood pulled from the fire.

April 1941: A Village in Bourgogne

S
OLANGE LOOKS ABOUT AS THOUGH SHE HAS ONLY JUST AWAKENED
, uncertain of where she is, even with whom she has been talking. Or if she has. She looks then at the woman who sits on the small sofa facing her, a meter or so across the rose and blue carpet from the chaise longue where she lies.

Of course, the woman. This Dominique. Brown curls clipped like the short mane of a carousel horse, pale skin, brownish eyes full of light like tea in a thin white cup. Wide-legged trousers and a jacket, black leather worn to brown, her bare feet tucked under her on the sofa. Dominique
.

“What time is it? How long have we been sitting here? I, forgive me, it’s only that—”

“Nothing to forgive. You slept a bit. And when you awakened, you began to tell me of your journey. I was content to listen.”

“Our position, I know that we’re in Bourgogne, but will you tell me more precisely where we are?”

“Six kilometers from Auxerre. On the river Yonne. A hundred
souls live in the village. Our rations are almost always full. The church, the elementary school, and, to some degree, the
mairie
, all function quite normally. The
patron
of this house was the village doctor. A Jew. When the
boche
requisitioned it, he and his wife were, they were ‘relocated.’”

Solange rises, walks about the room, takes up a photo from its place on a small table, looks at it, puts it down. Everything seems in order, perhaps just as it was when the doctor and his wife lived there.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” asks Dominique. “The house. The garden, especially the garden, we’ll walk out there later. And down to the river, if you’d like.”

“Yes, Amandine will like—She hasn’t awakened? All this time?”

“Not a sound from her. I went to check earlier, and she hadn’t even changed position. She was, you both were so tired.”

“May I ask you something? Our driver, when she left us at the edge of the village this morning, she told us to cross the square, said that, on the other side of a small pinewood, we would find a house. Find you. It was just before noon, I think, and, as we hurried along we saw what looked like a flower seller’s cart overturned under the trees, near the gazebo. Violets and iris and white roses. Amandine ran to where the flowers lay, began to gather them, not to take but to save. She’d righted the cart, you see, and had set about to put things in order, but I told her that it would be best for us to find the house first. That surely someone else would see about the flowers. I’m not certain how to explain it, but I felt fearful there. No, that’s not it.… It was as though
fear
was all about the place. As though everyone had run away. Loaves set to cool on a windowsill, the flowers strewn on the cobbles, but no one about. I looked up at the windows, nothing. Not a sound. Amandine had to run to keep up with me. I couldn’t wait to find you. I was grateful that the house was so close by. What was it there? What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s only that everyone was at table or already under the covers, resting. You’ve been too long in the hills. Everything is tranquil enough here. A model occupied village. You know they were billeted here for months, the
boche
. Some right here in this house. Most of them in the village center. When they left, the
women waved handkerchiefs from their upstairs windows, the men shook hands with them.”

“And you, a
résistante
, were you here when they were?”

“I was cook and housekeeper to the
boche
. A good story, which I’ll save for another time. Should we meet again after all this is finished.”

“You were a
collabò?”

“I might have given that impression. We shall not speak of anything more about me. Will you agree to that? By now you must be at ease with omissions, silence.”

“Yes. At ease.”

“The armoires and commodes in the rooms upstairs are full of clothes. Help yourself. Once in a while, I wear Madame’s things. A blouse, lingerie, a nightdress. In the room where Amandine is sleeping, you’ll find something there. There are some sweaters that might do for her, though—”

“Thank you. I’ll wake her so she can bathe. She’ll be happy to walk to the river. We’ll be down in just a while.”

“No reason to rush. We have cheese and bread. A jar of apricots. The kitchen is cold, so I’ll stir up the fire and set us up in here. I have some information about the next part of your journey.”

“Will we leave tomorrow?”

“I think it will be the day after. Sunday. All the way north from what I understand. The rest of the way. Though you know not to count on …”

“I do.”

“I hope that you’ll rest well here, Solange. Things are somewhat different than they were in the places where you’ve been staying. The only things anyone hunts around here are wild hares.”

“Where are you from? I mean, now that they’ve gone, why are you still here?”

“Nothing about me. Remember?”

“Dominique said that we might find something to wear. After baths, shall we have a look?” asks Solange.

“I’ll choose for you and you choose for me, okay?”

Wrapped in a towel, her hair in another, Amandine drags a small upholstered chair up to the open doors of an armoire, climbs upon it, considers each dress and jacket and blouse, pushing aside the satin-padded hangers faster and faster until, “This is it. Look, Solange. Look here. This is the dress I want you to wear. You’ll be beautiful as the ballerinas in
Swan Lake.”

She climbs down from the chair and, over her arms, carries an icy blue chiffon evening dress. In front of the mirrored door to the bath, she holds it against herself and dances about.

“Solange, you must—”

“What in the world?”

“Say yes, please say yes. Try it, you must try it.”

How strange this laughter sounds. Is it us, laughing and screaming as though …

“Too big,” says Solange even before the dress is settled into place.

“Not so much … hold still.…”

“It fastens with these little hooks. Be careful or you’ll tear it. It is lovely, isn’t it, but we’re going down to the river and then coming back to eat cheese and apricots by the fire. It’s hardly the dress for—”

“Just show Dominique. Please, please.”

“And you, what will you wear, little one? Your tulle skirt is practically in shreds, and none of Madame’s things will do for you.”

“I’ll just wear my sweater and the corduroy pants. They’re still sort of clean.”

Solange says, “I have a better idea. The tulle skirt with my yellow sweater. I haven’t worn it since the day we left the convent, and it will cover most of the damaged parts of the skirt. You’ll be a vision.”

For each satin loop Solange fastens over a pearl button on the yellow sweater, Amandine kisses another part of her face.

“Hurry, hurry, I want to see.”

“Be patient, little one, these loops are so small and you keep moving.”

How thin she is. Thinner than she was always? Perhaps not. Taller, though, far taller over these ten months, and what flesh she has is taut and hard, good muscles in her calves, her thighs. But so thin
.

“There, go to look.”

The yellow sweater falls to Amandine’s knees, and a wide ruffle of tulle—shirred by the tight band of the sweater—shows beneath it. The effect pleases Amandine, and she runs to find her well-seasoned socks and the old-fashioned high-top oxfords that Madame Aubrac had given her.

Solange wears her boots and a hand-me-down
résistante
jacket. Still laughing as they descend the stairs, they find Dominique by the fire, and they twirl and curtsy for her approval, then fall upon the rose and blue rug, the chiffon and the tulle bouffant about them.

“I’m honored to be dining with two such splendid creatures. Had I known we were dressing, I would have—”

“You’re already perfect,” Amandine tells Dominique.

“At least let me put my boots on before I offer you aperitifs. And surely we need music. And I think Amandine should have some flowers in her hair.”

Dominique places a record on the gramophone. “Folk songs from the Poitou,” she announces as she pours yellow gentiane into two small, thick glasses. For Amandine, cassis syrup and water.

“I’ll return in a moment. Just a moment in the garden,” promises Dominique.

“Why didn’t we have aperitifs in the convent?’ Amandine asks Solange. “And why weren’t our uniforms made of chiffon? We could have done good deeds and prayed and sung plainsong in chiffon just as well as we did in gray serge, don’t you think we could have, Solange?”

“Perhaps. Yes, I think we could have. Can you imagine how chiffon might have changed us all? Who could be cruel in a dress that billows?”

“I think Mater might have tried.”

“Yes, she might have tried. If Paul were here, perhaps we would have found a dress for her. Yes, a dress for Paul. You in your tulle and I in my chiffon and she, what dress would you have chosen for Paul?”

Dominique enters holding out a branch of pussy willow, which she is bending into a circle. A wreath. Holding it in one hand, with the other she opens the drawer in a small table, rummages about, pulls
out a short length of string. Winds it about to fasten the two ends of the branch together. She bites the string. Holds out the wreath to Amandine. “Let’s try it,” she says.

A bit too large, it falls to the middle of her forehead, exulting her eyes. Amandine runs to see herself in a mirror, says, “It looks like the crown Jesus wore on the cross.”

Amandine begins to pull at the pussy willows already tangled in her hair.

“No, no, leave it, please. It’s like the corona that held Beauty’s wedding veil, do you remember?” asks Solange.

Dominique has begun to sing along with a sad voice coming from the gramophone, and Amandine, forgetting about her crown, goes to sit next to her.