God Speed the Night (24 page)

Your mother is safe as long as Labrière is safe. Do not give him to the
Boches.

That was all. No signature, the handwriting as simple as a child’s. Maman had been taken hostage for René. He stood for a moment trying to grasp it. Then he laughed aloud. He put on his coat and returned to the prefecture, this time however using his bicycle to conserve the fuel in the Peugeot.

René had managed to clean the wall, and he had stretched himself face down on the table, protecting his eyes from the glare of light.

Moissac said, “Wake up, my friend. I have news. Maman has been taken hostage for you. How do you like that? Her safety for your safety. René, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Théo, her safety for my safety.” He sat up and swung his legs off the table.

“You are fond of Maman, are you not, René?”

“I like her.”

“Is that all?”

René shrugged.

“Let me tell you something, René. I am not jealous. It is quite the opposite.”

René just blinked trying to look at him.

“It is you who are going to have to save Maman. The kidnapping of Maman is not going to save you. They say in their note: Do not give him to the Boches. Which is an admission that the Boches would be interested in having you. Is that not so, my friend?”

“What do you want of me?”

“I want proof. I want the identity of the Jew and his wife.”

“His name is Marc Daridan, and he has enough trouble without you, Théo, so try to have a little pity on him. Or have you sunk so low that you would turn a man over to the
Milice?”

“Why do
they
want him?”

“He infiltrated them on behalf of a Paris Resistance group.”

“A Jew in the
Milice?”
Moissac said after a moment.

“Didn’t you think yourself he was Gestapo?”

“So I did. I was right: he is a chameleon. Tell me the rest.”

“That is all I know. I did not want to know more.”

“But you do, René, and you will tell me. Listen to me and stop shaking your head. From what you have told me, I am not going to raise a hand against him. I am going to help him escape. Yes, René, I am going to help him escape. The
Milice
are filth. They deserve to have a Jew in their midst.”

“Let me out of here, Théo. I am going to be sick.”

“Soon, my friend, soon. It would not have been under his own name that he enlisted in the
Milice
. Under what name?”

“Renard. Claude Renard.”

“Renard,” Moissac repeated. “And they got this far under the identity of the Belloirs?”

René did not answer.

“I will keep my word.”

“Yes, the Belloirs. Now may I go home?”

“As soon as I have checked on this fox and his vixen.”

“You will find no record of the wife. He was not married until a week ago.”

“Thank you, René. Now I believe you.”

“I am a brave man,” René said, and buried his face in his hands.

“You did it for Maman’s sake,” Moissac said as though to console him. “It is understandable.”

“For my sake,” René said.

“That also is understandable—as Maman would be the first to say.”

T
HERE HAD BEEN AN
incident that morning on the highway just two kilometers from the
marquis’
gate: a bullet had dented the helmet of a German patrol officer. Since the gun had been fired from the
marquis’
property, the patrol as well as contingency troops from the nearest post all converged on the chateau. The harvesters proceeded in their threshing of the tenants’ grain, but they were surrounded by the soldiery who lingered in the yards awaiting the outcome of the meeting between their officers and the
marquis.
The women were not working that morning, the smallholders having reaped their own fields and stored the sheaves for threshing, so that the idle soldiers sought out their company. The
marquis
sent them wine.

Marc, aware of the general tension, did what he could to hold the morale of the harvesters steady. He sent Jacques topside, to keep Artur in place and out of mischief. He put Antoine on the grain spout and left himself free to ward off emergencies. The feeling that one was imminent was very strong.

One after another of the
marquis’
employees, then his tenants, was summoned before the council. Those who left off work to go and later returned said among themselves that they did not think the
marquis
would give sanctuary to anyone who could not clear himself of suspicion. Marc would have guessed that most of them were in agreement with the
marquis’
policy.

The return of Moissac was but one more aggravation. Marc intended to ignore him as long as possible. Then he looked up and saw Artur with his thumbs in his ears, his hands wagging, and his tongue stuck out at the prefect of police. Jacques was making his rounds with the oil can. Marc himself climbed up, dug his fingers into the shoulder of the dwarf and leaned close to his ear. “You little bastard,” he said. “If you don’t sit up here and behave yourself, he’ll get you on some charge or other. We can’t save you. Don’t you know that?”

“Why not?” the dwarf shouted over the roar of the machine.

“Because he has the whole Nazi regime behind him and they don’t like dwarfs.”

Artur began to grin and nod at someone below. Marc looked around. It was Moissac who was also smiling and nodding. Marc found himself doing the same thing.

He turned around to see one of the German soldiers beckoning to Jules to come to him. When Jules ignored him, continuing to spread the unshucked grain as it passed along the conveyor, the soldier shouted at him, “
Kommen Sie hier!”

Marc went down as quickly as he could. Jules had started toward the soldier with a pathetic swagger and the brushing of his nose with the back of his hand, a gesture straight out of American films. What in God’s name made them all feel invincible, this little band of cripples? Marc leaped down the last few feet, landing between them.

“Go back to work,” he ordered Jules.

To the German in his own language he said, “I am sorry, sergeant, but we are working on a schedule. It is important that he stay at the belt.”

“Who are you?”

“Jean Belloir, a student. He also is a student.” He indicated Jules.

The sergeant, a young man with a round, chubby face whom Marc would have supposed a baker’s or butcher’s apprentice, said, “I also am a student—of music. Before the war, at the folk festival at Bâle…” He nodded toward Jules.

The conversation was never resumed, for Jules, glancing around, was suddenly jerked backwards. He began to scream. One of the rotary prongs had come down on his hand, not merely piercing it, but forcing it down on the metal cleats, dragging it and him toward the maw of the machine.

Marc shouted up to turn off the machine. Artur was prompt: he threw the gear stick.

Jules lost consciousness, slumping over the conveyor, his hand still prisoned. Marc lifted him and held him while the German soldier with his bare hands lifted up the prong and bent it. Marc eased the hand free. The back of it was as torn as the crucified Christ’s, and the palm mangled. Gabrielle had come. She took over the support of the hand wrapping it in the handkerchiefs both Moissac and the German soldiers gave her as Marc carried the boy a few feet and laid him on the ground.

“Get a doctor,” Marc said. “I am not competent to deal with this.”

The German soldier kept saying over and over, “He is a musician. I know he is a musician.”

“Give him first aid,” Moissac said. “I will see that he gets to a hospital.”

Someone had already gone to the steward’s office for the first aid materials.

And Marc knew this much also: he said to the German sergeant, “Do you carry sulfa powder?”

“Yes, yes.”

In the end there could have been no better first aid possible than the ample dusting Marc did with the sulfa. Cheesecloth was brought from the dairy, and a great loose bandage was made, and then a sling. Jules gained consciousness when Marc spooned brandy down his throat, Gabrielle cradling his head.

Perhaps he was also a medical student, this Daridan, Moissac thought, but he was more likely the chameleon who could manage the disguise the occasion demanded. He was beginning to understand the survival of the race.

Everyone was standing by now, even the Germans, in a bemused admiration, as though the boy’s opening his eyes was the signal that all was healed. Gabrielle stroked his head. The boy put up his good hand, trying perhaps to reach his own forehead, but instead his hand seemed to cup her breast before falling back on his own. Moissac fairly leaped, seeing the way so marvelously, so simply open to him.

“Monsieur—madame, I will bring my car to the platform. Madame will ride in the back seat with him and we shall get him at once to the hospital.” He did not wait for their reaction, turning to the German soldier who stood, still wringing his own hands: “If you please, sergeant: get a message to the hospital in St. Hilaire to have a surgeon standing by, Dr. Lauzin if it can be managed. And you may say the prefect of police so ordered.”

The way was opened for Moissac as the parting of the waters, and the feeling of his own power was exquisite.

It would not have been easy in any case to question so reasonable a proposal, but when Jules murmured, “Please, madame,” the matter was sealed for Gabrielle.

Marc dreaded to see her go, fearing she would not return, yet wanting to tell her the choice must be hers. “Perhaps it would be better,” he started, then amended, “it would be safer…”

Gabrielle reached across and touched her forefinger to his lips. She did not dare make the sign of silence by raising it to her own. Marc moved his head quickly and managed to brush her hand with his lips.

“You are making it difficult,” Gabrielle whispered, and the color flamed in her cheeks.

“That is my intention.”

He stood up. Above him on the platform of the machine, Jacques waited, one hand on his hip and the other on the shoulder of Artur where he sat on his perch. Marc nodded and Jacques passed the signal to resume work.

Marc and Antoine between them carried Jules to the car where Gabrielle was already waiting. Moissac held the door. The German sergeant had run alongside them. He shouted in to Jules, just before Moissac closed the door, “I will pray for you.”

Moissac said to Marc, “Where do you go from here, monsieur?”

“Lacroix,” Marc said. “It is a village on the Adour river.”

“We shall find it, never fear. Your wife will make a reliable navigator.”

J
ULES BEGAN THE JOURNEY
sitting up, but with the jogging of the car, for Moissac drove as though the fire were behind and not inside him, he again became faint. Gabrielle made him stretch out on the seat, his knees in the air. She sat on her heels on the floor, and made sure his arm was secure. Her discomfort was its own solace, and she was grateful to travel with her back to Moissac. The prefect, outside of an occasional inquiry as to the boy’s condition, did not try to talk to her. Nor was she questioned at the several checkpoints where they stopped on command.

Jules began to cry, and his mind wandering, he called for his mother. Over and over. Then, lucid again, he would beg Gabrielle, “Don’t tell my mother, don’t let them tell Maman, please…”

“For the love of God, talk to him,” Moissac shouted back to her. “Say you’re his mother. You say you are a Christian, say you’re his mother. He’ll believe you.”

Gabrielle glanced over her shoulder at the prefect. His face was a dark red, the color starting in his neck where it bulged at his collar.
You say you are a Christian
…

She brushed the boy’s forehead with her hand, and she said, close to him, “It will be all right. There will be a doctor waiting to fix your hand. Everything will be all right. Jules, would you like me to pray out loud? We could pray together.”

“No, do not pray…I do not want to die…”

“Yes,” Moissac called back. “Fray. I want to hear you pray.”

The man sounded mad, and again she thought:
You say you are a Christian.
She was confused: to pray now seemed a betrayal of Marc. A Catholic prayer and the policeman would know…What would he know? What did he know?

“He does not wish it. I will pray quietly,” Gabrielle said. To Jules she said, “I was not going to say the prayers for the dead. You are not going to die. You must be brave. Your mother would want that. My brave little Jules,” she crooned.

And then the boy himself was praying, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women…”

She said the words to herself.

Gabrielle felt rather than saw their approach to the Convent of Ste. Geneviève. She tried to keep her eyes averted, concentrating on Jules’ face, a sweet face really, the pain strangely softening it…but at the last moment, catching sight of the wall out of the corner of her eye, she looked, and then strained to see through the gate when they passed it. There was no one in sight, not a solitary figure. “Thank you, God,” she murmured.

Moissac caught her just before she turned away. “That’s a convent,” he said, “nuns…sisters. The Sisters of Ste. Geneviève. Did you ever hear of Ste. Geneviève?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

She was saying it to please him, to placate him. “One of the sisters died at the hospital the other night. I was there. I helped get her to the hospital, I got the doctor out of bed, I brought the Reverend Mother, and then afterwards I drove her out here again…”

Gabrielle listened as though to a voice in a dream. He had spoken of Reverend Mother but she could not even bring that revered face to mind. Then for an instant she had it: as she had looked round at her in the barouche on the way to the station.

“…The nun…She was a novice actually—that’s a young nun, a nun before she takes the vows—she was going to be all right. Then something happened at the hospital and she died.” He maneuvered the mirror to get her in view. “Maybe it was the will of God, but I have the feeling somebody at the hospital didn’t care if she lived or died, her being a nun.”