Amour Provence (14 page)

A sort of white heat coursed through her that made it difficult to breathe but at the same time filled her with energy. She remained perfectly still, reminding herself that the only person she'd ever seen across the ravine was the boy Lapin. They had been in
école primaire
together in the one-room schoolhouse located in the lower village that still served a dozen or so children each year. Lapin, a farmer's son, had been a talkative and intelligent boy. When he clattered on his wooden clogs into the schoolyard in the morning, he always slicked back his long blond hair with a comb made of horn that he wetted in the basin at the entrance. This hairstyle would last until the end of the first period, when it would again flop forward, a glasslike curtain hiding his eyes. In those days Lapin would frequently accompany Euphémie home for lunch, having been invited by her father. Because he was mayor, Augustin d'Éstang knew everyone in the village and had immediately taken a shine to
the young Charles-Henri Le Lièvre, whose gaiety illuminated his round child's face.

“Why do you find that strange little boy so interesting?” Euphémie's mother, Huguette, had asked her husband. After all, Lapin was nothing more than a
paysan
despite his noble name.

“He's not strange; in fact, he's the most interesting boy in the class,” her father replied. “Besides, Euphémie could use a friend.”

Huguette had spoiled both children with small cakes and the local sweet,
pâté de coing
, a delicacy that she made in huge batches in late autumn when the quinces were harvested. She insisted on calling Lapin by his given name, Charles-Henri, even though everyone else called him Lapin because of his prominent, slightly crossed front teeth, and because his family name, Le Lièvre, meant hare.

“Come, boy,” her father said to Lapin when he was eight. “It's time you perused things other than those lugubrious schoolbooks.” And Augustin had taken him and Euphémie into his library and chosen a volume for each of them, old favorites that had pleased him as a child. Euphémie liked to read, but she didn't devour books the way Lapin did. He finished each one within days and returned what he'd been lent for something new, always chosen by her father.

“He's precocious, your friend Lapin,” Augustin said to her one evening when she and her father were lounging together on the Récamier sofa he kept in his study. “If he can manage to stay in school and get an education, he'll do well. But his father's an odd sort. I don't know what he expects for the boy, if anything.”

And then, at the end of summer vacation, just as Euphémie's class was about to enter the larger middle school in the
neighboring town, Lapin had an accident. No one was sure what happened, but he wound up in the hospital with a cast up to his waist. Euphémie and her father visited him several times in his hospital room, where for months he lay in his girdle of plaster of paris. Augustin tried to arrange to have Lapin transported to their home, but a misunderstanding ensued between him and Lapin's father, so the transfer was never achieved.

When school began that September, Lapin did not appear in Euphémie's class. She thought he might simply have needed more time to recuperate and would rejoin them later in the year, but he did not, and without proximity their friendship fell away as easily as the autumn leaf.

It had to be Lapin across the stream. He'd once come sliding down the ravine right in front of her. Even so, they hadn't said a word to each other. The war didn't facilitate communication among villagers. In fact, distrust had arisen between formerly friendly neighbors when denunciations were made over petty things like an extra scrap of meat here or a bicycle tire there. People had become fearful under the occupiers since anyone could be accused of the smallest infraction and shipped off to a labor camp or simply executed. Besides, Lapin had changed. Like so many isolated farm people, his grinding life had obliterated the garrulous, clever boy she'd once known. He saw no one except his father, who made a tenuous living keeping a few pigs and growing a crop of potatoes that Lapin would bring to the tiny Thursday market in the neighboring town of Beaucastel.

When the foliage stirred slightly, Euphémie scrambled to her feet. “Lapin?” she peeped, but there was no answer. A kind of sickness came over her when she made out the silhouette of a uniformed man squatting in the deep undergrowth. For a long,
groaning moment she believed that it must be the young Nazi come back to harm her. But almost immediately she realized that the color of the cloth was different. It couldn't be a German. And then the person stood, raising a hand in greeting and she saw him clearly. His jacket was stained a dangerously fresh red at the shoulder and he'd rigged some sort of tourniquet. A belt kept his arm suspended across his chest. Perhaps he was one of the Americans that Agnes had said were on their way! Euphémie knew that she couldn't possibly respond or help him. Instead, she bent low and scampered through the undergrowth to the stairs, not wanting to bring further trouble to her household. But as she dashed up the steps, the soldier bolted across the water and grabbed hold of her ankle. His was a gentle grip and she knew she could easily break away. But she halted and gazed down at him.

“Je suis un ami!”
He had a soft voice, and as he explained that he was a pilot who had been shot down only an hour or so ago, he used an old-fashioned French vocabulary that reminded her of the novels of Balzac or Zola. His face looked as if it had been carefully sculpted by someone aiming for a masculine ideal: fine cheekbones in a thin face, a strong but not too prominent chin, and a clean beardless jaw. He must be very young. His brown eyes seemed to be carefully taking her and everything around her in. Finally he said,
“Je m'appelle Harry.”
When he slumped down on the lowest of the steps, Euphémie realized he was at the end of his tether. She was well aware that a person who looked like he'd been superficially wounded could actually be at death's door. Perhaps he'd already lost too much blood, or had sustained other injuries that weren't visible.

“I can't hide you,” she told him in a firm voice. “Our house is full of German soldiers. They're everywhere!”

He nodded and leaned his head against his good arm as if he might go instantly to sleep. For a long time Euphémie had convinced herself that she was a girl who was incapable of doing anything against the great force of the enemy. But as she stood over the wounded aviator she felt for the first time something within her of which she'd heretofore been unaware. She reached down and touched him on the head to make sure he was awake and could hear her. He lifted his face, eyes perfectly alert. Perhaps it was his training that made him seem in control and in command even though he very likely wasn't.

“I'll think of something,” she told him. “Go! Hide yourself there.” She pointed into the grassy tunnel from where she'd come.
“Je reviendrai!
I'll come back when I can!” The soldier nodded and then disappeared into the green maze of reeds and twisting vines.

Euphémie flew across the field, knees high, and then slowed, knowing that if one of the Germans saw her in an all-out sprint, she risked being shot. But there was still a blessed silence, uninterrupted by motor sounds or the shouting of rough voices. On the way, an idea came to her of where she might hide the pilot Harry.

At home, all was silent. Agnes must have gone to the
mairie
to deliver something to eat to her father. Through him, they were often privy to confidential information, information with which it was becoming increasingly hard to cope as the violence and brutality of the German army increased. It was certain that the Germans knew an American plane had crashed, and Euphémie wondered if there was more than one plane downed and more than one airman seeking shelter.

In the ground-floor hallway, she searched through her father's desk until she found the key to the house where old Monsieur
Painlevé had died over the winter. The key had been turned over to her father by the town notary, who was well aware that it was unlikely that any distant family member would come to claim the Painlevé property while the area remained occupied. In a hallway cabinet Euphémie found a bottle of disinfectant and wrapped it in a clean linen towel that she tucked into her pocket.

It was a stroke of luck that the Nazis had left so abruptly. The morning's bread sat uneaten on top of the
pétrin
in the pantry. Agnes usually made several large loaves, but that day there was an extra. Two small ones had been pressed together and baked in the form of a heart. She tucked the loaf under her arm and was searching for a bottle to fill with water when she heard Agnes's feet scuffing down the stairs in the fleece-lined pantoufles she always wore.

“What are you doing,
mon enfant
?” Her clean, checkered apron reminded Euphémie of summer meals eaten in the courtyard before the place had become an army barracks, and their beautiful, wrought-iron dining table had been shipped to Germany as scrap metal. She didn't know what to say to Agnes, who eyed her and suddenly lifted her plump fingers to her mouth before exclaiming, “The plane crashes! You haven't found someone, have you?”

Euphémie clutched the bread against her rib cage and said, “He's wounded!”

Agnes dragged her into the kitchen, where the southern sun streamed through the wavy panes of the small window, and said in a low voice, “How badly?”

“I don't know. I'm bringing bandages and disinfectant.”

“Well, let's give him something to build up his
force.
” From a covered bin beneath the table Agnes took out a half bottle of red
wine, perhaps hidden there for medicinal purposes or to contribute to Agnes's own fortitude. How she had come by it Euphémie didn't know, as the Germans had purloined every bottle in her father's cellar within a month of their arrival. Agnes uncorked the wine and picked up a jug of water, filling it the rest of the way. “We want him revivified, not inebriated.” She chuckled. “And what else?” She turned around. “Ah!” From a low cupboard she removed some empty canning jars and, getting to her knees, withdrew a small pot that she held up as if it were a just-caught, prize fish. Puffing as she got back to her feet, Agnes handed Euphémie the last
rillettes de porc
that she'd made when precious meats like that were still available. She piled everything into a burlap bag and handed it to Euphémie with a smile. When Agnes asked, “Where are you hiding him?” the girl pressed her lips together. Euphémie knew instinctively that she shouldn't tell. For the first time it occurred to her that since she was no longer a child cowering in her chicken coop, but an individual who had sided with the Allied forces, she could be a casualty of war as others had been. She must remain silent to protect Agnes in case she was questioned.

“You deliver that and come right back!” Agnes commanded without asking for further explanation. Euphémie nodded in her docile way and cast her eyes down so Agnes wouldn't notice the gleam of determination that she felt must now be obvious.

Carefully clutching the sack, she went through the barn. At the back window, she unhooked the piece of fabric that bound her breasts and stuffed it into her pocket. She could use it as an extra bandage if need be. Then she opened the window and made her way across the field before descending the steps into the ravine.

She found Harry asleep in her special place, his head on the little mound of grass, but he awakened as soon as she was within several meters of him. “You must be hungry and thirsty,” she said, kneeling. He immediately drank a third of the watered wine and then broke off a morsel of bread. A hint of color came into his face as he ate. Euphémie pulled out the linens and disinfectant and asked if she could make him a new bandage. He shook his head; instead he took the antiseptic, soaked the fabric, and with a wince, shoved the whole thing beneath the bloody uniform and onto his wounded shoulder. When he'd eaten a bit more, she told him about the abandoned house. He nodded as if he was willing and she packed up what was left of the food. Before leaving, he told her she had
“du courage.”
She shook her head no, but it was true that she felt a new sensation that seemed to exclude fear.

They crossed the stream, and as they climbed up the rocky embankment, she noticed that the pilot was breathing heavily. She wondered if he was in pain. Maybe pilots were trained to ignore injury or suffering, just as she'd learned to hide the signs of her developing body.

“Is it much farther?” Harry asked after they had skirted several fields, staying at the edge where ditches of canebrake grew.

“Another kilometer or so,” she told him. But as they ascended through an apricot orchard, Euphémie realized that his strength was flagging. The mistral had begun to blow, leaving the sky cloudless, but it made walking harder, pushing them back at every step with its wild gusts. She clenched the key in her pocket and wished the little house was closer.

“Do you need to rest?” she asked Harry when she saw his face had gone completely white.

“Ça va!”
he said. And then, at the edge of a field, a figure appeared wearing the blue overalls and clumsy wooden clogs of a
paysan
. Euphémie pulled the pilot back into the shadow of the tree line. You never knew whom you could trust, and whom you couldn't. But then she saw the curtain of straight yellow hair blow across his forehead and she realized who it was.

“It's my old school friend Charles-Henri,” she told the pilot, who had turned quite rigid at the sight of this new person. She thought Lapin might run away when he saw the soldier, but instead he approached steadily, with only the smallest evidence of a limp. And when he arrived next to them he offered his hand for the pilot to shake, just like a grown man would.