In This Hospitable Land (18 page)

Each day on his way to and from their field, Alex stopped at the café to gather the latest on the war. The Germans were concentrating attacks on British airfields but the British claimed to be getting the better of them, destroying two or three German aircraft for each RAF fighter lost.

Meanwhile Vichy France implemented rationing of certain staples. Adults were restricted weekly to 135 grams of sugar, 100 grams of margarine, 200 grams of spaghetti, and 50 grams of rice. That wasn’t an impossibly heavy burden but it confirmed the need for Alex and Geneviève to continue to grow and preserve as much of their own food as possible including beets, onions, squash, carrots, and barley. Struggling to wash bunches of carrots as Alex worked the pump, then cutting the root vegetables into long strips she set to dry in the sun, Geneviève complained, “I still hate doing this. I wasn’t made to be a gardener. I miss Brussels.” She wiped a moist forearm across the sweat beading up on her forehead, leaving a long, thick, muddy smudge above her eyebrows.

“At least we have something to eat every day,” Alex said gruffly.

“I know I should count my blessings,” Geneviève continued miserably, “but I’d still rather buy these carrots than grow and pick and wash them.”

“That would be fine until we run out of money and have to sell our precious diamonds.”

Geneviève felt bad about provoking her husband into one of his darker humors. She was very surprised when he stepped toward her and put an arm around her waist consolingly.

“We’ll get used to this,” he told her, melting her heart.

But she couldn’t help thinking he was expressing hope, not confidence. Geneviève suddenly realized
she
had to be
his
confidence.

From that moment on, she decided, no matter what she might be forced to face and endure, she would try to be as optimistic and strong as Denise. If ever she faltered she would picture her sister and take comfort and encouragement from that beautiful, inspiring image.

Entering the tiny hamlet of Soleyrols, three kilometers west of Vialas, one of a half-dozen recommended by the notary, André decided to take a break. His search had proved fruitless so far. Plenty of farms were available but none André could convince himself would do. Most had fields which, like Lucien Mauriac’s plot in Bédouès, had long gone untended, but since so much more land was involved it was a much more considerable problem. And the houses were much too small for ten. Some didn’t even have roofs, which had collapsed due to neglect exacerbated by the weight of thick-falling snows in winter and the beating of heavy rains in other seasons.

Most farms had no springs and water coming only from irrigation trenches presented a major challenge. André understood spring-fed water was not often found along these rocky hillsides but he had no desire to depend on the runoff from another property, although ancient right allowed the use of such water. His family’s health was the overriding consideration.

Parking beside a small café opposite the only house on the road, André looked over the small gathering of homes of Soleyrols ranged down the valley side below, their red-tiled roofs sticking up through the trees. Breathing in the loamy smell of summer’s end, he could readily imagine almost nothing had changed since these buildings were erected two or three hundred years ago when families much like his own had come to this remote locale to escape persecution and attempt to scratch out a precarious existence on this marginal land.

Perhaps a bite to eat and a cup of coffee would restore his energy and lift his spirits. The café’s proprietor might know something about the farm suggested by the notary that supposedly sat on the mountainside well above the road. The café looked inviting: a two-story building with a single front door opening directly onto the roadway, flanked by three windows, the shutters of which had been flung wide open. Smoke drifted up from the chimney in white wisps curling in the gentle breeze. André entered the larger of two rooms containing a few tables bare of any setting but salt and pepper shakers and an ashtray. A woman stood beside the counter up front. Several older male customers who were hunkered over glasses of wine stopped speaking when André appeared.

“You’re new here,” Madame Brignand announced, introducing herself as a member of the family that owned and ran the café. In her early forties, Madame was ample but firm and wore her blonde hair pulled tight, tied in a knot at the back of her head. As her arms reached out to serve the coffee André requested, her sweater pulled up enough to reveal a hint of belly. Her fingers were red and cracked from constantly washing and drying dishes and from carrying in wood to feed the small fireplace. Her teeth were straight and white. Little crow’s-feet poked out from the corners of her blue eyes.

Smelling the soup simmering on the stove in the back room and the round, earthy bread sitting out on a cutting board with butter, cheese, and country pâté laid out beside it, André asked if he might also have some of these. Madame Brignand nodded assent and led him to a table. The clientele resumed their talk.

Then Madame brought him his big bowl of soup and asked, “What brings you here?”

Blowing across the surface of his dipped spoon to cool the soup, André answered, “I’m looking for a farm known as La Font. Suggested to me by the notary in Vialas as a place where my family might live.”

“Refugees?”

André acknowledged his situation. “Perhaps you can tell me about the place.”

It might not have been discreet to ask directly but he hoped Madame Brignand or one of her patrons would say more about the property than the notary had. But Madame and the others held back until André explained how he had come to be there, including a brief reference to Mr. Turnip. Then Madame Brignand underwent a remarkable transformation.

“That crazy brother of Suzanne Maurel’s?” she asked excitedly, and when André confirmed that by asking in turn, “The high school teacher?” Madame began chattering on familiarly about what a wonderful person Madame Maurel was and what a shame that they saw her in Soleyrols so rarely—though that was understandable, her poor husband having gone blind.

Silently she led André by the hand to the front door and pointed across the road.

“That house is ours,” she said with obvious pride, “and it’s available.”

André complimented her on the attractiveness and quality of the dwelling but explained it was simply too small for so many Sauverins and sat on a plot too tiny for farming on the scale he anticipated. At best it would accommodate an herb garden. His family could not live on herbs.

Grasping André’s real need, Madame suggested hiking up the slope behind the café. “I’ll show you the way.” After bringing him back through the café into the storage room, she opened a small door hidden from the road and indicated a path leading uphill to and through trees. “You might find what you’re looking for there. At La Font.” She smiled and gave him a little push. “You can pay up when you come back to tell me what you think,” she said, winking. “And when you do? Call me Albertine!”

The next day Denise hid her trepidation, keeping an encouraging smile on her face because André was so excited—more excited even than after solving the plum problem. He couldn’t wait to take her to Soleyrols and the farm he hoped they’d move to.

It would be good if she agreed this was “the right farm,” to end André’s wearying search and because Louis, Rose, and the children were restless after a week and a half week at the Hotel Guin. But she was worried. André acknowledged that the property was a little rundown and he hadn’t met the owner yet. What if the owner, like Claude de Montfort, proved a brute?

Approached from the east Soleyrols seemed pleasant but wasn’t particularly distinguishable from other little hamlets nearby. But its tiny size and anonymity were appropriate for people who wished to blend undetectably into the landscape.

André led Denise into the crowded café. The clientele consisted mostly of older gentlemen dressed in traditional farming garb. Two young women in their late teens—nicely built light blondes wearing matching floral-print cotton dresses draped just above the knee—skittered about responding to constant calls for “a bit of marc.”

Emerging from the café’s back room, Albertine Brignand explained, “Marc is our locally made brandy. Goes with coffee!”

André greeted Albertine as he would an old friend and she—effusively delighted to meet Denise—expressed her hope that Madame Sauverin would be as enthusiastic about La Font as her monsieur. She informed them the farm’s owner, Gustave Chatrey, would be up there soon. But there was no reason André and Denise couldn’t hike up the hill to look around. The hillside was steep enough to make Denise grateful for her athletic youth and the enduring strength of her legs. She could just make out the property some twenty minutes away.

Soon she could see the place more clearly. Impressively large, it consisted of an exceptionally long farmhouse and four outbuildings all made of stone. The house and two small barns had roofs but the other structures had lost theirs.

It was the highest residence on the mountainside. Denise could just make out the extent of the pasturage.

As they got closer the farmhouse looked even more massive. The stone walls stood tall and straight—solid, enduring testimony to the hard and thoughtful work of the farmhands and masons who had set these great weathered stones in place long before.

The farmhouse was built against the slope of the hill which rose through various mountaintops to the peak of Mont Lozère. “The highest mountain in all the Cévennes,” André said. Huge horseshoe arches undergirded the stone veranda that ran the length of the house. Underneath, where the ground sloped up and away, the arched areas were filled with brush and other remnants of the distant time when this had been a working farm.

“Shelter,” André enthused, “for chickens and rabbits, maybe even pigs.”

With the pride of possession André showed his wife the other buildings and described their potential uses: a big barn with large rafters divided into two sections (“One for goats and sheep, the other for hay and feed”), a smaller barn (“Good for winter storage: potatoes, turnips, cabbage, carrots, beans, and maybe more in the loft”), and a small woodshed presently empty apart from rusting hoes, rakes, and pitchforks. Beyond the woodshed lay the main gardens and the grave of the Chatrey family’s older brother. The depression was never filled in, Albertine had explained to André, after the surviving brother and sisters moved off the farm and took the body with them.

At the rear of the main house a back door led to what had been kitchen gardens and into the pasture sloping up the mountainside. Farther beyond, a few apple trees had been planted in careless rows. Then came the chestnut trees which covered land too steep to cultivate and unsuitable for haying. Above that the soil gave out leaving only scrub, scraggly grasses, and isolated, thinly wooded copses.

“There are some old fallen trees up there,” André said, “with naturally hollowed-out trunks that house beehives—so we’ll even have honey. If we take the place, I mean.”

What pleased André most was the freshwater spring uphill, not far from the house and from which the house derived its name, short for
la fontaine,
“the fountain.” The water came clear and cold from the mountain above, running untouched down the hillside to La Font before coursing on to provide water to the café, farms, and houses below.

“The only farm of all I’ve seen with its own source of pure water,” André proclaimed.

They mounted the front steps to the stone-paved veranda of the farmhouse and entered through a simple wooden door. The walls of the house were two feet thick.

Left rough, the outside walls had weathered over the centuries to look like the surrounding mountainsides. Inside wood partitions defined the rooms, guarded against cold drafts and exemplified the simple, modest style of the place.

The four rooms were laid out railroad-style. Each had one small window set high. At one end of the house was the storage room, its walls and rafters lined with hooks.