In This Hospitable Land (37 page)

“Why?”

“I don’t ask why, Madame,” the brigadier replied. “I get my orders and follow them.”

“I don’t know where they are or when we’ll see them again,” Denise replied truthfully.

“We don’t doubt you, Madame,” Pellet said, “but may we look inside? We must make a report no matter what. So we must see with our own eyes.”

Salager added, “Almost all the men searched for in the Lozère are not home. But it’s not our problem if your men have gone. And the authorities are not interested in women or children. Today, anyway.”

The officers went through La Font rapidly then returned to the veranda.

“Just as you say,” Officer Pellet affirmed. “They’re not here.”

“If and when you do see your men,” Brigadier Salager admonished, “tell them they must report to the police in Vialas immediately without fail.”

The gendarmes walked down the path more rapidly than they had come up. When they rounded the bend and disappeared among the trees, Denise breathed a sigh of relief.

The Resistance got it right,
she thought.
We can trust what they say.

The first few days underground passed slowly for the Sauverin brothers. They ate. They caught up on lost sleep. They fretted about their loved ones and the future. They talked with Émile, his mother, and his brother-in-law until there was nothing left to say.

“It’s no good! I’m worried about our family!” Alex exploded one morning.

“But we’ll know in good time,” Émile said, perplexed by this unprovoked outburst.

“What? What will you know?”

“When they might be in danger.”

“How?”

“How did we know about you?” Turning abruptly, Émile snarled, “I’m going out,” and stormed off.

Émile’s departure exacerbated Alex’s agitation. Émile could step out whenever he liked but the Sauverins were trapped in the house because of a barium mine across the ravine, from which they could be seen. They knew something of the mine because of Sebastian and Emmanuel.

“Some of the miners come every day from Vialas, La Planche, even Génolhac,” Émile had told them. “They don’t concern us. But many live in small houses close by. Mostly they support the Resistance but some we’re not sure about. I think at least one is a collaborateur, so we have to be very careful, especially at this time of year. With the leaves off the trees everyone and everything is plainly visible.”

“I miss the fresh air and sunlight,” André confessed to Alex after Émile had gone out. “Of course we had those in Brussels too but never experienced them in such abundance as here in the Lozère.”

Alex grunted, sitting in the corner by the fire, trying to stay warm. “I just don’t see how Geneviève and Denise can keep up with all the work at La Font while taking care of five little ones. It’s not as if Mother can help much at her age, apart from minding the children—when they’re on their best behavior.”

“At least the chestnuts are dry and peeled. And there are plenty of root vegetables and jellies, jams and canned goods. And they still have Emmy to butcher.”

Alex tensed up again. “But turning the soil and starting the spring plantings…”

“Why worry now? Who knows where we’ll be when the ground melts?”

Alex got up and paced. “Everyone thinks selling stamps is a tedious business but I can’t remember ever being this bored,” he complained. “Anything would be better than just sitting.”

“We could be ‘just sitting’ in a camp like Drancy,” André reminded him. “Here at least we’re among friends, friends we’ve never met before who are taking a terrible risk by hiding us.” He lowered his voice hoping not to be overheard by Lucille in the kitchen. “The Brignands don’t have much yet they feed us three meals a day without complaint or compensation. All we have to do is withstand a little monotony.”

When Émile came back for lunch, Alex assaulted him verbally the moment he stepped through the door.

“What are we going to do?” Alex demanded. “I’ll go mad if I stay inside much longer.”

“We have some ideas.” Émile rubbed his big hands together, as fed up as Alex with the present situation and just as anxious for a change.

They ate their meager meal of coarse bread and watery soup in silence. Then Émile pushed back from the table and jammed his blue beret onto his head, completely covering his large round bald spot but leaving tufts of hair as a fringe around the rim of the cap.

“You stay inside another day or so,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

Émile opened the door, looked about cautiously, shut the paneled door behind him, set the latch securely and left quickly.

“Now what do we do?” Alex whined.

“Wait,” André said tonelessly. “Just…wait.”

Hours later Émile returned in better humor and announced, “It’s settled. Up and over the ridge. Past the road that runs along the crest line of the mountains and down into the next valley there’s a couple by the name of Guin…”

“Guin?” André interrupted. “Like the Hotel Guin in Vialas?”

“Related,” Émile replied, smiling. “But these Guins live in the little village of Le Tronc—well, not really a village anymore because the five homes are empty except for the Guins’. All the fields and barns are theirs now since everyone else either died or moved away—including their son, who was taken into the army. Sadly, like so many they don’t even know where he is. So they’re on our side and they’ll be happy to have you. Plus if you’re willing to help out on the farm you’ll be able to work outside again and the Guins will be grateful.”

“When do we leave?” Alex asked, hoping it would be immediately.

André turned his most serious gaze on Émile. “You believe it’s safe for us?”

“As safe as we can make it,” Émile answered compassionately. “As long as the Germans occupy France there’s danger everywhere. But I’m convinced you’ll be safer there than here, maybe safer than ourselves.”

Again Alex asked, “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow night should be good. The partial moon will provide enough light to see by but not so much that we’ll be spotted easily, especially if we keep to the shadows, as we’ll have to when we get close to the mine. They have some dogs down there—not fearsome but they do like to bark and we don’t want them announcing us.”

“Will you come right back?” his mother asked from the kitchen entrance, the tremor in her voice betraying worry.

“I’ll have to stay over,” Émile replied, “but only for one night. Le Tronc is too far for me to get home before daylight breaks. You wouldn’t want me to be discovered would you?”

As Émile looked out, a chill crept down the mountainsides, swirling silently among the trees, backing and filling around the buildings, pressing the last of the day’s warmth deep inside the interiors of the outbuildings of Le Massufret. The stars were shining, crisp in their mottled patterns across the sky, some brighter than others, all pulsing faintly, irregularly. A sliver of moon had just appeared above the deeply dark horizon.

Shutting his front door Émile felt the cold push against the closed shutters of his house. He knocked lightly on the door to the back room where André and Alex had spent nights sleeping on thin, narrow beds.

“Time,” Émile called, feeling an odd mix of anticipation and regret.

The door cracked open. André stood, fastening his coat. Behind him Alex finished lacing up his boots. Each brother picked up a canvas duffel bag and slipped its large corded handle loosely over a shoulder. Neither spoke as Émile led them into the kitchen.

“Here,” Lucille said, handing out packets containing bread, a large piece of hard cheese, several slices of cold ham and a small cake. “You take care. All of you.”

Émile opened the front door again, glanced out, and led the Sauverins into the night.

They walked quickly along the side of the house then ducked into the small passageway between the Brignand barn and the village wall that held the slope of the earth in place. Frost was just beginning to form on the outlying rocks.

At the end of the barn, Émile hesitated then started again, giving the Sauverins a slight encouraging wave from a hand held close to his waist. They moved rapidly across the open area in front of the last abandoned house of Le Massufret before slipping into the shadows of the path leading down into the valley. Émile slowed down so as to not disturb stones that were not set firmly in the path. Though he could negotiate them safely even in the dark, the brothers Sauverin could not.

Despite the slower pace, the frozen gravel tended to slip out from under the brothers’ feet. Following Émile’s lead, they felt for the sides of the surrounding walls at regular intervals, maintaining their balance as the trail wound down one way and then another in the steeper places, gradually straightening as the slope leveled out.

Coming to a mountain stream, Émile listened to the soft noise of branching rivulets and the plunging of water starting its long journey to the Rhône River and thence the Mediterranean. Then he led them carefully across a narrow footbridge that offered no support railing. As all three climbed up and away from the streambed, they reached the dirt road to the barium mine. The outlines of the workers’ houses set into the hillside looming above and to the right appeared in the dim light.

All was quiet, the mine’s machinery having been shut down as sunlight faded and the exhausted miners having gone to bed soon after. Suddenly a dog barked. It growled and barked again, louder this time. The door to its house opened and a man stood framed in the doorway by the light of the lantern he held above his head as he peered out into the dark.

Émile and the brothers crouched down instinctively and stayed motionless, hardly daring to breathe as the dog gave one more short sharp bark and came close, its excited panting and the scrabble of its paws on the cartway stones audible as it neared. Émile picked up a large rock but just then the dog’s master gave a whistle and a call, stopping the dog in its tracks. The miner gave another stronger call and the dog hesitated, caught between its determination to seek out the strangers and its desire to obey.

At last the dog turned around and slowly trotted back to its doorway, scrambled up the wooden steps, and ran back through the open door. Then the door shut and darkness enveloped the cartway again.

The Sauverins released their long-held breath.

“I don’t like other people’s dogs,” Émile whispered heatedly. “No telling what they’ll do.” He put down the rock carefully and stood up stiffly. “Let’s go,” he commanded, “before that dog needs to come out again.”

They ran to the left, sheltering behind small trees and wagons, then moved faster still, the rut of the road having been smoothed by the passage of carts down the sloping hillside. Émile took a path that turned off the road and led up the mountainside. The travelers scrabbled up the embankment, passing through grasses and brittle brown broom bushes. Before long the path was surrounded by trees. Émile kept going until shadows hid them and the road they had left behind and below was fully obscured.

“We’re safe now,” he whispered breathlessly, “at least from the miners.” His chest heaved as he gulped and gasped for air, bracing himself against a tree.

André took his bag off and set it down, breathing as deeply as Émile. Only Alex appeared to have taken the effort in stride.

Several minutes later Émile forced himself to say, “We’d better be going.” Without complaint André shouldered his burden again and all started back up the path, which grew steeper and steeper, zigzagging back and forth as they staggered toward the ridge. Trees gave way to broom bushes again and to short clumps of heather dotted occasionally by stunted trees permanently bent away from the wind.

At the crest it was easier to see. Three-quarters high in the sky, the moon caused the silhouettes the men cast alongside the path to stand out more clearly. As they came close to the highest point, Émile whispered, “Let’s rest here.”

He picked out a large rock outcropping on which they all sat gratefully. They opened Lucille’s packets and ate hungrily.

Émile left the Sauverins to scout out the route carved more than two thousand years before by the Romans during their conquest of the Gauls. The thinly layered gravel road ran from mountaintop to mountaintop overlooking the valleys below. The headlights of any approaching vehicle would be visible from far away but Émile knew to be cautious. Before the war he had gone wherever he liked, altogether unafraid. Now he had to guard against assumptions and overconfidence.