In This Hospitable Land (64 page)

More German soldiers deserted to join the Resistance. Somehow having heard what had happened to Christel, one stopped by to cheer her up. A very nice man—caring, courteous, circumspect—he frightened the Sauverin children simply by having been in the Wehrmacht. Despite his concern for Christel’s thumb, the children were mean to him. Embarrassed by their children’s reaction, Denise and Geneviève apologized to the poor, perplexed young man.

Reminded of the terrible early days of May 1940 when Katie and Ida had been terrified by the attentions of rifle-toting Belgian soldiers on the beach in Le Coq, the mothers explained to the younger Sauverins that this soldier had probably only been thinking of his own sons or daughters back home. Though the children were not mollified by this at least the German had so upset Christel that she forgot about her thumb.

When André and Denise decided to return to Brussels, their offspring were very excited. Ida claimed she remembered everything about the city and tried to lord that over Christel. But Christel didn’t believe Ida remembered the land of their birth any better than she did. Whenever she asked for details Ida spoke vaguely about flowers and a big park.

“So?” Christel challenged. “There are plenty of flowers right here. And now that we can go out into it the whole valley seems like a great big park to me.”

Did Brussels have real mountains like the Cévennes? Denise told Christel no, but it did have streetcars and buildings as many as five stories high.

The children became upset when they realized Katie and Philippe weren’t leaving too. Alex and Geneviève had decided not to run the risk of returning home until the Germans surrendered and the war was truly over. Meantime they hoped to find a place smaller than La Font to farm but large enough for Rose to live with them.

One night Christel complained to Ida, “I thought the war was over.”

“Hitler isn’t dead yet,” Ida explained, “and not enough Nazis have been killed. I guess they still haven’t had enough of the destruction of their own country.”

On the day of departure, André walked back to the house from the Hugons’ barn where he had delivered his few books to Alex. Finding his wife upstairs in the midst of their half-filled suitcases, he said, “Better hurry and change.”

“And you?” Denise teased. “What about those pants?”

André glanced down at the woolen pants that had served him well but had seen better days. “I’m going to miss these sturdy pants.”

“Can’t we take several pairs?” Denise suggested. “You might be a professeur but isn’t it better—even in Brussels—to be a warm, rustic professor than a cold, fancy one?” Beginning to get dressed, she added, “There’s a lot I’ll miss about this region, starting with the people.”

“I’ll miss them too,” André agreed, doing likewise. “Still it will be good to be back where I can do what I was trained for. Besides, life is easier in a city—or at least it used to be.”

The imminent departure of André and his family was making Alex more than grumpy and dour. He was depressed though he tried not to show it, attempting to alleviate and mask his feelings by throwing himself into helping André carry three packed dufflebags up to the road along the crest of the mountain. There in the lee of a small group of sheltering trees, Denise, Ida, Christel, and Cristian waited with Geneviève, Katie, and Philippe, who meant to keep them company until the last possible second. Farewells had already been said to Mamé and Tata Irene.

The homeward-bound Sauverins also carried a fair quantity of food given them by the many Cévenol friends not unreasonably concerned about them starving on the trip back to Belgium. Though the sojourners wouldn’t spend too long on the bus, there was no telling how many hours the legs of the train trip would take since some places where tracks had been wrecked, tunnels blocked, and bridges blown up had yet to be repaired. And there might not be any food decent or otherwise available onboard. Nor could they expect working toilets.

Alex didn’t feel like idle chit-chat and André seemed more self-absorbed than usual. Geneviève and Denise didn’t say much either—just clung to each other, tears streaming down Geneviève’s cheeks as Denise tried with intermittent success to keep from crying too.

But the children chattered and gamboled. Impressively two-and-a-half-year-old Cristian participated fully. Having grown fond of the little tyke, Alex worried about how Cristian would fit in in Brussels with his soft, sibilant Cévenol accent. How long before he would understand, let alone speak, the tongue he had rarely heard: Flemish?

The old red bus came around the far bend. Suddenly family members frantically hugged, kissed, wept, and called out, “Take care!” “I love you!” “See you soon!”

André and Alex shook hands solemnly then gave each other the traditional embrace of the Cévennes, simultaneously kissing each other on opposite cheeks three times in succession—once more than the similar practice in Brussels. Finally, with a general clattering and commotion, the Sauverins clambered aboard the bus. When Ida, Christel, and Cristian reached their seats they leaned out a window, waving and calling good-bye.

On the side of the road, Alex gathered his family into a protective embrace. They waved encouragement and regret to those they would miss terribly. Alex silently wished those leaving the Lozère a safe journey home and inwardly determined to follow when circumstances allowed.

Denise felt her heart would break. She was excited to return to Brussels but also afraid. And to be torn so soon again from her beloved Geneviève…

How strange after four and a half years to watch all the familiar houses and terraced slopes of her host country pass from view. In her mind Denise bid adieu to every meter. Here again was Soleyrols: the Brignands’ café, the house in which Louis and Rose had lived, and, at the top of the hill, La Font…

Entering Vialas, Denise was surprised by the strength of her reaction. She hadn’t spent much time there but as the bus stopped to let passengers off and on she relived Louis’s funeral and pictured the horrible Easter-time scene of German soldiers and machine guns Tata Irene had described so vividly…

Denise’s mind snapped back to the present when she heard André cry, “Fela! Max! What are you two doing here?”

“Going with you as far as Génolhac,” Max explained, laughing, as he and Fela offered hugs all around.

“You can’t leave the Cévennes without a proper farewell,” Fela said sweetly.

“I was among the first to meet you in our part of the world,” Max offered seriously. “I need to complete the cycle by being the last.”

Fela enjoyed the company. She’d spent so long in hiding that much as she loved Suzanne, Rose, Françoise, and Fernande Velle, she had felt isolated.

But now this interlude too was coming to an end. When Génolhac hove into view, sorrow welled up within her. Soon the bus pulled up behind the dreary station.

As she and Max assisted the Sauverins off the bus and into the terminal, Fela noticed paper littering every corner of the waiting room and small piles of dry leaves that shifted and grew with the wind and passing trains. No fresh paint had been applied to the peeling ceiling since before the war. The walls were covered with posters and graffiti first applied by Pétain’s Vichy officials, then by the Germans, and finally by Americans and the Free French—each set of “rulers” supplying different, often diametrically opposed visions of the future. None had proved trustworthy, not even the latest, for there were still unresolved conflicts between the victors. The Communists who had had the greatest influence in the local Resistance now competed with the Maquis, who were supported by de Gaulle…

After purchasing tickets the Sauverins went outside to await their train on a bench on the one platform. Max and Fela stood close by.

“It’s strange,” André remarked perplexedly, “not to have to look around for collaborators. But I keep scrutinizing faces anyway out of nervous habit.”

Denise grasped her husband’s hand. “I’m sure everyone will take time to adjust.”

Fela wondered whether the Sauverin children felt the new spirit in the land. They didn’t seem sufficiently confident of their safety to separate from their parents by even a few meters.

“It’s coming!” Christel cried, hearing the chug-chug of a train and racing to the edge of the platform.

Puffs of smoke—steam and soot—shot up into the sky as the old engine rolled into view pulling several aged passenger cars and three small boxcars in its wake. When it squealed to a halt, few people got off. Everyone was heading to Paris.

A flurry of activity ensued as everyone tried to kiss, hug, and say good-bye one last time. Afraid the train would depart without them, André helped Denise up the stairs to the first car and pushed the girls on after her. With Max’s help he lifted the baggage and bags of food into the vestibule. Then he took Cristian from Fela, handing him up into his mother’s outstretched arms.

Impatient passengers crowded and pushed from behind. Fela looked through the car windows and could just make out André and Denise squeezing down into seats and gathering their children onto their laps. The Sauverins looked out and waved.

Max waved back with one hand while sliding his other arm lovingly, easefully, comfortingly around Fela’s shoulders. Then the train started up.

How strange it must be for them,
Fela thought,
to be going home after all this time.

Everything was strange for Fela too. As the train disappeared from view she realized as never before that nothing would ever be the same for her. She knew she would never go home to Poland. France was her home now—with Max, whom she loved beyond all measure.

Denise explained to her overexcited children that they would only be in Paris long enough to sleep before catching the early morning train for Brussels. The six hundred twenty-five kilometer journey would take far longer than before the war since everyone would have to get off periodically to go by army truck around bombed-out bridges and such.

André guessed it would take twelve hours or more. The children were horrified.
Twelve hours on a train?

Once again Ida was interfered with—this time by a grown man. Even she could never explain how it happened with her family nearby. But when they were all taken around a blocked tunnel on a crowded truck she somehow ended up sitting on the man’s lap…

Fortunately it only lasted seconds. Ida didn’t like it and the man seemed disappointed. She couldn’t believe he got right onto the train that met them on the other side as if nothing had happened. She thought about telling someone but doubted even her parents would take the word of a ten-year-old girl over a full-grown man’s.

How good to have ham, sausage, bread, cheese, butter, and honey. There was even a bottle of wine for André and Denise. No one could abide the chestnuts, though. They thought about giving them away but who would take them? Everyone from that part of the world had had more than their fair share.

Dusk came on. Amazing colors shone through the windows: pink, orange, purple, then gray.

Drawing close to Paris, they could see more and more lights. But it still seemed a long way away with no way to relieve themselves.

The monotonous rocking of the train lulled them to sleep. Sometimes the brakes, the uneven roadbed, or the train whistle woke them slightly but they drifted right off again.

When the engineer slowed the train for the signals and control blocks near the end of the line they couldn’t sleep. There was a violent braking until the engineer eased off so the train could glide the rest of the way with very little power.

Ida felt strange, as if something was dripping onto her forehead. Reaching up to brush back whatever it was she felt her hand came away sticky and sweet-smelling and bolted upright.

It was honey. The last of the food had been put in a sack on the rack overhead. All the jolting must have opened the container above Ida’s head. The honey leaked into her hair.

“Maman!” she shrieked, panicking.

“Oh, my dear,” Denise cried, shaking still-slumbering André’s arm to wake him. She settled Cristian onto her seat, reached up to the sack and pulled out the leaking jar. Honey had gotten all over the rest of their food. Even the cheese was coated. There was a thin line running down the side of the compartment.

“I don’t like it,” Ida wailed between sobs. “I can’t put my head anyplace!”

“I’m not sure what to do,” Denise told André. “We have so little water. How can I clean her up before we reach the station?”

Then Christel piped up, “Just stick her head on a piece of bread!”

The train pulled into Paris after midnight. With all their possessions, the crowds even at that hour, Christel half asleep, and Cristian asleep entirely, it wasn’t easy for the Sauverins to get off.

Denise piloted her brood to the restrooms. Everyone had to go badly and she had to deal with Ida’s honey mess. Anxious to see to accommodations and to make certain of the morning train schedule, André first had to carry all their bags and take Cristian to the men’s room.

The attendant in the ladies’ room offered to help Denise with Ida’s hair for a few francs. Despite concerted efforts, Ida could not possibly be made comprehensively clean without full bathing facilities and lots of shampoo.

The war had taken its toll on the great station, where time seemed simply to have stopped in May 1940. Numerous light bulbs had burned out and not been replaced, making the terminal poorly illuminated.

André led his little family through streams of people on the grand concourse, surrounded by still-open shops and cafés. He longed for a cup of real coffee and Denise urged him to indulge himself. Unfortunately the “coffee” was mostly chicory—a step up from soybeans but too small a step for André to bother with it. He hoped for better luck in Brussels the next day.

Pushing on toward the hotel information booth, André disappeared into a shoving throng clamoring for rooms—any room if cheap enough, though most would pay whatever it took. On the outer edge of the crowd, surrounded by children and luggage, Denise could tell by André’s puzzled discouraged expression that finding lodging would be difficult. The city was full up since refugees from fighting in the east sought safety in the capital and many French citizens were returning home via the hub of Paris.

When André, squeezed left and right by others, got to the counter, the woman in charge smiled wanly in a resigned matter-of-fact manner. Bored by constant demands from the never-ending slew of new arrivals and resentful of being blamed for the lack of available rooms, the housing agent followed André’s despairing eyes to his dead-tired family. Shrugging, she spoke and pointed. André nodded and hurried back through the crowd.

“This way,” he said. “The YMCA may have something.”

As André lifted all three suitcases and began marching toward the Y’s waiting area, Denise said, “This is as crazy as when we arrived in Millau.”

André gazed woefully at the lone surly-looking person working the desk and asked, “Do you have a room for us? Just for tonight?”

“There are no rooms,” she said regretfully, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. “The best I can offer you is space right here—a bench, a table, some chairs.” She pointed to the small waiting area for passengers caught between trains. “I won’t ask you to leave.”

Denise looked at the dull, dusty partitions of stained wood that set the area apart from the main concourse. They would provide no privacy.

“There’s nothing else to do,” André said, reading the struggle in his wife’s features.

Abruptly Denise sat down on a chair next to a bench thinking,
We’ve slept in the car. We’ve slept beside a canal. We’ve slept in confined quarters in hiding. We’ve even slept in a graveyard. We’ve survived so much for so long we can manage this minor inconvenience.

“Come, girls,” she said quietly, motioning gently. “Lie down on this bench.”

“But it’s not comfortable,” Christel complained, instantly popping back up again.

“It will just have to do,” Denise said, bunching her scarf into a small pillow for Christel.

Ida climbed up beside her sister. “I don’t like it,” she said, unable to hide how upset she felt. “My scalp is still sticky.”

“But we won’t be able to wash it thoroughly till we’re back in Brussels.”

Noticing tossed-aside newspapers, Denise retrieved them and spread them out for Ida to lie down on. Even black ink would be less messy than the worn, dirty bench.

Upright on a chair at one end of the bench, across from the chair Denise slept in with Cristian in her arms, André kept nodding off. He meant to stay awake since he suspected Paris was full of dark, dangerous characters ready to take advantage of anyone. The black market continued to flourish and the train station was rife with dubious dealers of questionable merchandise.

“Cigarettes, Monsieur?” an unshaven man asked softly, happening by in the middle of the night, his long topcoat covering but not concealing bulges alongside his legs.

André jerked around. Now completely awake and preternaturally alert, he appraised the intentions of this disheveled, disreputable-looking man who gave him a gray dirty smile, his upper lip peeled back in a disturbing rictus that revealed a missing front tooth. The man opened his coat slightly to display cartons of American-made Lucky Strikes.

“Good price. Quick. Name your own.”

“I don’t smoke,” André protested. It wasn’t entirely true but it had acquired real resonance during the years of deprivation in the Cévennes. André wasn’t willing to renounce the soothing habit of smoking altogether, but this didn’t seem the moment to start up again. Besides, he doubted he should part with any of the small sum of cash he had left. He and his family might need every franc to ensure their safe passage home.

“With an offer like this,” the man said, letting his coat flap close dramatically, “you should become a smoker now. Maybe you don’t know how scarce these really are.”

“Then how do you happen to have them?”

“American soldiers. They had what I wanted and I had what they wanted.” The unpleasant man winked and gave André a truly disgusting leer. “Okay, so you don’t smoke,” he said shifting gears. “Do you need stockings? Chocolate? Cognac?”

“Maybe no one’s told you there’s a war on,” André spat.

“It’s over, or hadn’t you heard?” The illicit salesman kicked up a quick soft shoe. “I don’t know about you but I plan on living again, starting now.” He gave his coat a twirl and turned around swiftly. His scarf went flying out behind him as he all but skipped away.

A pigeon fluttered against the dirty windows up high. Swiping by it gave a glass pane a thump before flying off and finding a way out of the terminal—only to be replaced by another lost, confused pigeon.

Somehow André found himself thinking of his last train ride from Brussels to Le Coq on that fateful May night four years before. How unnerving and unpleasant that had been. At least on this strange mirror journey he would have his family with him.

Denise startled awake stiffly, quickly realized Cristian was sound asleep in her arms, and sat very still while trying to remember where she was. The train station! Of course! Dreary. Grim. But even at a very early hour Monday morning, increasing human activity gave life to the sterile, vaulted concourse.

André appeared and placed a hand over the hands clutching Cristian. “The train leaves in two hours,” he said. “We need to line up early if we hope to find seats together.”

Denise glanced up. “It will be so good to get home.”

“To our
new
home,” he reminded her, thinking of the apartment the university had arranged for them. “I’ll wake the girls.”

Cranky, Ida and Christel sat up laboriously and lazily dangled their legs over the side of the bench.

“I’m hungry,” Cristian said before his mother realized he was awake.

“Soon,” Denise said looking to André imploringly. “We’ll eat soon.”

“Let me see what I can find,” André suggested, marching away.

Denise reached into their small sack of food. “Here, little one,” she said, breaking off a piece of honey-covered cheese which was all that was left, hoping Cristian would either not notice or care.

Cristian didn’t mind the unusual mix of flavors. That encouraged Christel to ask if she could have some cheese too. But Ida had had enough of honey.

Looking about for André, Denise spotted men in baker’s outfits making deliveries to small stands and cafés. Pastries? Morning breads? How comforting a simple slice would be.

Croissants! That’s what Denise smelled! So different from the coarse brown butter-free bread the Sauverins had lived on for years.

Then Denise saw British and American soldiers walking about. Were they waiting to be sent to the front? Some looked so young it would have to be their first taste of combat.

“Look!” Ida cried out pointing.

André pushed through the growing mass of flesh. His expression was glum until he saw them. Then he smiled triumphantly and held up his precious catch: a baguette.

The train was late but was the only one going to Brussels that morning since there was still fighting in the east. Ida kept huffing and puffing because of the honey in her hair. Denise suggested that the children run around a little since André estimated that the three hundred kilometers to Brussels would take six hours or more.

It might only be half as long as the previous day’s train trip. But that would still be an awfully long time for little ones to stay cooped up.