In This Hospitable Land (9 page)

The children jumped out eagerly. Lined up alongside the road they watched with wide eyes the steady flow of warriors and war matériel passing by. French soldiers leaned out of their canvas-covered transports and waved. The Sauverin children waved back enthusiastically. Philippe even received a salute, which he manfully if unsuccessfully returned.

The older Sauverins gazed at the canal running parallel to the road and at the hedgerows surrounding the fields where cows lazily grazed.

Denise, glad the children now considered the soldiers their friends, asked André, “Where should we go? We can’t cross the border and we can’t stay here.”

“And we can’t go back to Le Coq.” André gestured at the impossibly congested road east.

“What’s wrong with here?” Rose asked gamely. “It’s a lovely spot and the weather’s quite pleasant.”

As if to demonstrate the practicality of the notion Denise immediately brought a blanket and some food and drink out of the car and laid them all out on the ground picnic-style. She cut bread and cheese into little sandwiches and shared them around.

Everyone sat down and ate hungrily.

“Thank you, Denise,” Louis said gravely. “But where will we sleep?” He tremulously remembered André’s promise that they wouldn’t have to sleep in the mud. “I can’t stay out here all night.” He put an arm protectively around his wife. “And neither can Rose.”

“You and Mother can stay in the car,” André suggested, “along with Denise, Geneviève, and the children. There’s room enough if you’re willing to snuggle. Alex and I can stay outside to serve as lookouts. If anything happens, we’ll hop in the car and race away.”

The sun began to set. The family spread blankets on the car’s front and back seats and on the floor in back too, after restoring the jump seats to their storage positions.

“Mother,” Ida said softly as Denise gave her a good-night kiss. “This really is an adventure!”

“I’ll say it’s an adventure,” Alex called testily, leaning against the Buick’s hood.

“But Mother, where will we do our business? I’m not like the little ones. I don’t wear diapers anymore.”

“Big girls like you sometimes have to make do. That’s what the hedgerow is for.”

“Oh!”

As the night wore on it was only Christel who couldn’t sleep due to the unnatural angle huddling required. She began to whimper.

“Stop being such a spoiled brat!” Alex exploded outside. “This is hard on everyone but I don’t hear the rest complaining!”

“Come here, sweetheart,” Denise called softly, picking up a blanket, placing Christel over her shoulder and leaving the car to lie down on the least steep part of the slope.

Christel hugged her mother closely. “Mama, what if I roll into the canal?”

“You won’t if you hold on to my skirt.”

Christel clutched the fabric tightly through the night. Denise slept fitfully, unable to block out the intermittent drone from the constant stream of outmoded Berliet trucks slowly carrying military forces past the many stranded refugees. In an irregular progression, airplanes passed noisily overhead.

But she was glad to have helped Christel slip into a long, deep sleep, as if she had purged her darling’s fears by adding them to countless fears of her own.

As the morning sun broke through the early mists, it was strangely quiet beside the canal. The military had largely passed far into Belgium while the Sauverins struggled to sleep.

Louis Sauverin, the earliest riser, felt impossibly stiff, scrunched up with his wife on the front seat of the car, the Buick’s steering wheel pressed into his back. He listened as the children wriggled and talked in their sleep. Lying there quietly so as not to disturb the others he realized he’d been wrong to worry about staying in Adinkerke.

André and Alex stood up beside the car. The others grumbled and groaned into consciousness then emerged to stretch awkwardly and complain of the difficult night.

Alex climbed the ridge to see what he could learn from other stranded refugees.

“André!” he called suddenly as André marched his way. “Look!”

The striped wooden barrier at the border crossing had been raised. Large groups of fleeing Belgians came to life and revved their engines to cross into France.

“We’d better go,” André said. “This might be our last chance.”

“Everyone!” Alex shouted. “Back in the car! Hurry!”

The Sauverins joined the bumper-to-bumper traffic with André driving. It took an hour to reach the checkpoint. The little ones quickly grew restless.

“This is a bad sign,” Alex said grumpily.

Belgian officials thoroughly checked passports before stamping them with exit visas. The prim mustachioed border guard of short stature and cold demeanor handed back the Sauverins passports. He had no difficulty with the Dutch and British citizens nor even with Rose’s Belgium one. But he gave André a dubious glance.

“You prefer running away to staying and fighting?”

Blood drained from André’s face.

“Don’t even think about it,” the border guard said, stamping and handing back the passports, smiling almost imperceptibly. “Take your family to France. The war in Belgium is already lost.”

Though he was flustered, André didn’t hesitate. He eased his foot from the brake to the gas and rolled the Buick into the no-man’s land adjoining French soil. The Sauverins clapped and cheered.

While they waited for the French authorities to approve their entry André asked Alex anxiously, “Should I go back? Does my nation really need me?”

“Not if you’re not willing to take up arms,” Alex replied blithely.

“Is Papy afraid?” Ida asked her mother. “Is he a coward?”

“No,” Denise declared instantly, definitively, startled to realize Ida knew such words and concepts. “Your father is very brave. He’s a pacifist.”

“What’s a
pastafitz
?” little Christel asked.

“Someone who doesn’t believe in killing,” André said firmly. “Someone who thinks it’s never right to take another person’s life.”

“Oh,” Ida said very quietly.

“Relax, André,” Alex told him, trying to do so himself. “Didn’t you understand the border guard? Belgium’s done for. Better save your family than risk your own skin on a losing battle.”

Waiting and watching with some concern the uniformed men who would determine the Sauverins’ fate, André considered the two years he had spent in uniform himself as part of the combined Belgian and French forces occupying the Ruhr Valley. The heart of Germany’s coal, iron, and steel industries had to be “overseen” to enforce compliance with the onerous reparations payments required by the Treaty of Versailles. But what had André’s service amounted to? Observing Frenchmen and Belgians mistreat Germans so badly it had inevitably led to the present mess. Exercising the Belgium general’s horse on the long rides through the countryside had exposed André to the misery and anger of the sorely put-upon German people. He had watched in horror as leading industrial and investment interests organized a campaign of passive resistance, grinding production to a veritable halt, leading to arrests, prison sentences, and ultimately the collapse of the German economy, complete with huge numbers of unemployed and inflation on a hitherto unknown scale.

A pall of gloom spread over the Sauverins. They looked a sorry sight to the French guards who examined their passports next. This time Louis and Alex’s nationality caused comment.

“Have you heard the latest?” one Frenchman asked, leaning in through the passenger-side window. “Yesterday Rotterdam fell and the government went into exile in London.”

“Terrible,” Louis said, shaking his head. Not that he was surprised.

And that was that. Geneviève held her telegram from Lilla Tirouen at the ready should proof be needed that the Sauverins had a place to stay but the immigration officials handed back the passports, not even bothering to stamp them, and quickly sent the Sauverins on their way. With one caution.

“Remember to register as soon as you reach your destination.”

Moments later André watched the border crossing recede into the distance.

“I suppose the French don’t much care who enters the country,” he speculated, “as long as the roads stay clear.”

Smartly dressed auxiliary police directed the flow of Belgian vehicles. Strikingly, businesses all across the northern coast were open for business as usual. How strange after the panic in Belgium to see French citizens sitting easily at outdoor cafés, drinking their
cafés au lait
and eating
petites gateaux
as if they hadn’t a care in the world.

Traffic was orderly and steady, allowing the Sauverins to make real progress. At Dunkirk they turned south for the longest leg of the journey.

The children settled into a routine, with Ida and Katie reading books they had brought along and Christel regaling Philippe with fairy stories she invented. The adults focused on the changing scene of low hills green with long-tilled crops planted in narrow fields, speckled by grazing cows and sheep. Alongside the roadway, lining the hard surface of black macadam, scraggly weeds flitted between straight and ordered trees.

After traveling several hours, they found themselves just south of Abbeville, at Blangy-sur-Bresle. André signaled his intention to turn off for a road heading further west of Paris.