In This Hospitable Land (50 page)

Alex added, “Thomas Vignie made a terrible mistake. He paid with his life because life is serious business. But now the serious business of life must go on. And it’s up to you to keep the rest of your students from making the same mistake.”

André clasped Max’s hand and said, “Alex and I will go to Le Tronc as you so wisely suggest. But we shall be ready to help again. Please call on us whenever necessary.”

Alex shouldered his rifle. “Agreed.”

Pierre Jabot struggled to his feet and said gravely, “I’m going home now too. And first thing tomorrow I will go back to school. After all, I can’t leave the children sitting there waiting for me. I’m their teacher.” He smiled wanly. “But like André and Alex, I say get word to me when you need me again. I’ll do my part. You can count on that.”

Now Max knew what he too must do. Shaking off the last of the long night’s chill he left for the camp’s command center to discover what the chief had in store for him next.

Léon and Yvonne were laboriously gathering chestnuts when André and Alex returned.

“Back so soon?” Léon asked, as if their comings and goings and the rifles on their shoulders were as common as chestnuts. “Success?”

Neither brother answered.

“You look tired,” Yvonne told them kindly as she continued her labors uncomplainingly. “Why not go to the barn and get some rest? We can talk later if you like.”

Before they could move, Léon said, “Fine-looking weapons. Know how to use them?”

“No!’ André answered abruptly—vehemently—sounding terribly upset.

“Well, I’ll show you,” Léon said with uncharacteristic gentleness. “No sense having them if you can’t use them properly. May I?” He gingerly removed the rifle from André’s yielding hands. “Hmn. Better than my rusty old thing.”

“It’s just for self-defense,” André said, abashed.

“Not mine,” Alex countered. “I’m ready to use mine for its intended purpose.”

“Either way,” Léon told them, “you’ll need to learn the proper care and cleaning and the internal mechanism in case it jams. Doesn’t look too hard to figure out.”

“Léon,” Yvonne counseled. “Let them rest.”

“Oh, all right,” Léon grumped. “Come back later. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

André startled awake in late afternoon, daylight already fading. His brother continued to sleep.

As he moved his feet from straw pallet to hard floor, cold stunned André more fully awake than the nightmare that had jolted him into unwelcome consciousness. He rubbed his eyes and looked around blearily. There were the rifles in one corner, standing on their stocks. André flashed back to the previous night. The crack of pistol shots. The blood.

He had hoped a decent sleep would bury these memories. But they haunted his dreams and came back now with the intensity of the present. Against his will he found himself remorsefully reviewing and reliving the killings. Even when he tried to conjure his beloved wife and children, a spectral vision of Maurice and Thomas Vignie, first alive and then very dead, appeared before his eyes and could not be wiped away.

Pacing uncontrollably, André couldn’t stand it anymore. He strode to Alex and shook him by the shoulder. Before Alex forced his eyes open André said, “I have to go to Le Salson to see Denise, if not to rid my mind of what happened yesterday at least to gain some distance.”

Alex sat up massaging his scalp and pounding temples. “Yes, well,” he mumbled, “I want to see Geneviève too. But not yet I guess. Damn it! I need to be with her and I will!”

André put on his shoes and coat and pulled his dark blue beret to one side because he thought it looked jauntier that way—though “jaunty” was the last way he expected to feel anytime soon.

André hiked briskly, purposefully, up the path, protected by the encroaching night. A wearying hour and a half later he approached the house he now knew so well. Mercifully the light was still on.

When the door flew open and André moved to step inside, Denise came right out, closed the door behind her, and, before André could question her, wrapped herself in his arms and placed her lips on his in a kiss that lasted a long, wonderful time. At its end they clung closely to one another.

After a great silence and a profound sigh, Denise murmured, “I’ve missed you so.”

“And I’ve missed you more than I can say.”

André kissed her again trying to imply a great deal. Another long moment passed before Denise gently released herself from his embrace, took him lovingly by the hand, and led him to the nearby stone wall.

He lifted her up onto it then sprung up beside her. The dark stones were cool, slowly losing the last of the sun’s heat. Side by side husband and wife luxuriated in each other’s presence and the sense of peace supplied by the early-autumn night in the Cévennes.

Much as André wished to unburden himself, he couldn’t utter a word about the Vignies’ execution. Even as waves of guilt disturbed his mind and spirit, it seemed wiser to suffer in silence than to draw poor Denise into his moral morass.

Fortunately she chattered away lightly, brightly. “Ida and Christel get along so splendidly now, perhaps because Cristian demands so much of me that Christel has learned to turn to Ida as her chief comforter and protector—a role Ida has taken on with amazing grace and facility. They play make-believe endlessly—in the house, in the enclosed courtyard, even behind the wall of the terrace that runs alongside the garden. They’re sad that all the sugar is gone and we need our honey to make bread and to sweeten our tea. But their imaginations have grown so vivid they easily substitute fantasy sugar for the real thing. Christel even planted a small row of wild seeds she claims are special sugar seeds which will grow up to be candy trees. Ida plays along, helping to water and weed. Oh, and Cristian has begun to talk! Only a few words and only one at a time, but he’s only sixteen months old. That’s fairly remarkable, especially for a male child.”

“I bet his first word was ‘maman,’” André said, grinning with pride in both his wife and son. How he wished he would soon have a chance to hear Cristian’s prattle.

“Yes, it was,” Denise laughed. André thought he saw her blush in the little light provided by the moon and stars. “But listen to me going on and on about trivial homely things when I know you have far greater matters on your mind.”

Charmed and delighted by the activities of his son and daughters as never before, André was glad to be distracted, however briefly, from the terrible tale he held within himself. He said, “How much the war has changed me. It’s true that I missed the first steps and words of both our girls without giving it a thought, but now…Now I care very much about every aspect of our children’s lives. Every day it becomes clearer it’s life itself that matters most in this world.” Then he thought, but did not say,
Especially after yesterday.

“I love you so much,” Denise said spontaneously. It was as if she had read André’s freighted mind and couldn’t wait to mouth what he most needed to hear.

Stretching herself to lean up against him, Denise rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder. She may have spoken of love this way only rarely but André never expressed his deepest emotions so simply or directly. He wished to now but found he could not. Thankfully he knew his wife understood and had no need for him to give utterance to what he felt for her.

Long before he wished to, André felt compelled to say, “I have to go.”

“I know.” Though melancholy, Denise had long since learned and accepted that this was the way things had to be for now. There was no point in objecting.

André dislodged himself from the stone wall and helped his wife down. They kissed again and André hugged her passionately. Almost suffocatingly.

Full of longing and regret, André released Denise and walked back up the path. At the bend of the road he stopped and turned, unsure whether his wife watched from the Bastide house or could see him if she did. He waved, hoping she would at least sense and appreciate the gesture just as he trusted she had sensed and appreciated all he could not say.

He had hoped this visit would lighten his emotional load, but the farther he got from his family the heavier his heart felt.

In the bright sunlight of Monday morning, Denise felt exhilarated as her children played in the Bastides’ courtyard. Still glowing with the memory of André’s unexpected visit, she imagined she could feel the imprint of his touch, his clasp, his kiss. But she was also painfully aware something troubled her husband, something far beyond the now-habitual worries.

Then a sound froze her heart and propelled her to move protectively toward her offspring. A man’s voice was so unusual that Denise couldn’t help but be alarmed. She warned her daughters to play quietly and they obeyed since both were old enough to understand their presence needed to be kept secret. Little Cristian was too young but his sisters hushed him as necessary. Ida especially had a gentle way with him.

Feeling foolish, Denise suddenly remembered what day it was and realized the male voice belonged to the postman paying his weekly visit. He wasn’t the mailman she knew from La Font but Irene and Ernestine had vouched for his trustworthiness.

Curious, since the conversation sounded livelier than usual, Denise tiptoed back into the house and toward the front door that stood partially ajar. Listening from behind it she heard the letter carrier say, “Sometimes there’s a letter inside, sometimes it’s a rope.”

“A rope?” Irene asked.

“So they get the message and hang themselves,” Ernestine lisped.

“They send them through the mail?” Irene continued incredulously.

“Sometimes,” the mailman allowed. “Sometimes it’s hung in a tree or over the front door.”

“Good,” Ernestine spat. “Those traitors deserve what they get. Why, some of them tell the authorities where young men have hidden themselves, young men who believe they have something better to do with their lives besides sacrifice them for the benefit of Nazi dogs.”

Irene said, “I still don’t understand where they get those little wooden coffins.”

Now Denise understood. Since early summer, rumors had circulated about collaborators receiving miniature coffins. No one knew precisely where they originated but their message was clear:
We know you inform on resisters. We know you traffic in black market goods.

“Carpenters make them,” Ernestine shot back. “Carpenters the true French can trust.”

“Have you heard the latest?” the mailman asked excitedly. “About the Vignies?”

“What?” Ernestine demanded. “Who?”

Denise wracked her memory but—nothing.

“Maurice Vignie, a shopkeeper from Vialas, and his teenage son. Both shot dead.”

After an extended silence Irene said, “Terrible. Think of the poor wife and mother.”

Ernestine said sharply, “Ask yourself what they did to deserve it.”

“No one deserves such a thing.” Irene sounded heartsick.

“The village is full of Milice,” the mailman said, “asking whether anyone heard or saw anything suspicious.”

“You think the Resistance killed him?” Irene asked in a hoarse anxious whisper.

“Has to be,” her mother clucked triumphantly. “The Maquis.”