Two Testaments (10 page)

The coffee sat untouched in the dainty demitasse cups that Monique Pons used for her daily visit with Yvette Leclerc. The steam curled between them as they talked.

“Well, I am sorry to say it, but she is asking for trouble, bringing all those other orphans here at this time,” Monique declared.

“Yes, but Mother Griolet has been so good for the town. I don’t see how she does it all.
Ooh là!
She’s a good five years older than I, and heaven forbid that I would have to take care of all those wild orphans
and
the young women. Three American girls are enough to keep my hair graying!” Yvette finally noticed her cup of coffee and took a sip mechanically. “But you’re right, of course, Monique. Castelnau does not need to be invaded by pied-noirs, even if they are only children. Goodness knows we’ve enough problems of our own.”

“And it isn’t just pied-noir children, mind you,” Monique said. “I’ve heard from a reliable source that there are Arabs there too. Arabs! They can stay in their soon-to-be-independent country. There are enough of them swarming around France already.” She shook her head forcefully, and the loose skin under her chin jiggled back and forth.

“But, Monique, these aren’t just any Arabs. They’re the orphaned children of the harkis. They did fight for us, you know.”

“Humph! It’s all the same to me. Let them patch things up between themselves, the Arabs. We don’t need them in France. Stealing our jobs, producing a brood of kids that drains the government! It’s a mistake, and I don’t mind if she hears it from me.”

“Oh, don’t you worry. Mother Griolet has already heard it from half the town, I’m sure.”

Monique picked up her china cup and regarded it intently. “Tepid coffee! Useless!” She bustled to the sink, where she washed the coffee down the drain. She poured herself another cup and sat back down at the table, satisfied.

The sky was clear, and from the deck of the ferry Anne-Marie counted the stars, laid out brilliantly without the lights of a city to obscure them. It looked as if a gleeful painter had taken his brush filled with creamy paint and flicked it time and again across the black canvas of sky.

Every part of her body ached, but especially her legs. She wondered if they would support her when she finally forced herself to rise in the morning. For the moment six-year-old Samuel Cebrian lay curled in her lap asleep. Once he had cried out, talking to some unseen person in his dream and then laughing loudly so that those seated around her had frowned and stared.

Eliane sat beside her, propped up against her two suitcases. Her daughter, Rachel, leaned on one shoulder while Eliane held the baby to her breast. Everyone slept.

The ferry was crammed with pied-noirs. There was no comfort and certainly no couscous. Anne-Marie smiled wryly, thinking of Moustafa’s comment. She was thankful for the sandwiches she had been able to share with the Cebrians earlier in the evening.

She shivered involuntarily and wished she could fall asleep. The night was chilly, and her coat was wrapped around Samuel. She placed her hand on the boy’s hair, stroking it gently, and for a moment she imagined it was Ophélie in her lap. Just for tonight she let herself think of Ophélie, not with fear and apprehension but with a hope that seemed sure. A hope that tomorrow she would hold her daughter in her arms. Seven cruel months of separation. If she thought long enough about Ophélie, she knew the other ache, the painful longing for Moustafa, might disappear.

She was somehow peaceful, thinking of David there with him. Alone, each one of these men wielded a power that amazed her. Together they would surely be indestructible. She would not believe that she might never see them again.

The small distant spots of white, so silent and steady, made her envious. They were always in their place. Even when light made them invisible to her eyes, they were there. Did they have decisions to make? Did they choose between two places in the universe and blink good-bye to neighboring stars, drifting off to another corner of the sky? She thought they did not.

But man was made to choose. It was the constant breath of life, the daily struggle: always a choice, even in not choosing. This pitiful lost flock of humanity drifting on the sea was being flung out like the stars to fill another spot of earth. But no one was guiding, no one pointed the way. Their destiny was as random as the galaxies.

When light finally did paint the skies with streaks of orange and yellow, Anne-Marie opened her eyes, squinting to enjoy the changing picture before her. Somewhere in the night she must have fallen asleep.

“You aren’t too cold?” It was Eliane whispering beside her. “Look at you, Anne-Marie! You’re icy to touch! Take back your coat. Samuel will be fine.”

Obediently Anne-Marie lifted the light wool coat from the boy’s shoulders and wrapped it around herself. She rested her arms on the boy’s back, hoping he would not awaken.

Rachel slept still, but baby José stared wide-eyed at Anne-Marie, a smile forming on his lips. Then he screwed up his face, and his skin wrinkled like that of an old man. She could see the wail of hunger coming, but before he uttered a sound, Eliane put him to her breast.

“It won’t do to have you wake the whole ship, wee one.
Mais non!
We need all the friends we can get right now.” She flashed a smile at Anne-Marie. “Do you know where you’ll be going then, once we land?”

“I have a number to call when we get to Marseille. Ophélie is staying at an orphanage near Montpellier. I’ll just go there, I suppose. And you?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea! Well, hardly. Rémi said I should stay in a hotel in Marseille until I can get a place of our own.”

“And when will Rémi come?” Anne-Marie asked cautiously. She was not used to exchanging information so freely.

Eliane’s face clouded. “I don’t know. He wants to try and save the farm from the looters. To see what the situation is like after independence on July 2.”

“You hope to return then, to Algeria?” Anne-Marie wondered if her voice betrayed her surprise.

“Hope, yes, but of course no one knows.” Eliane cleared her throat. “May I ask you a question, Anne-Marie?”

“Yes, I suppose,” she answered softly. There was something in the cheerful, kind voice of Eliane that pleased Anne-Marie.

“I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation with the young boy and what he said about you providing a safe place in France. And the slip of paper with the cross. That was the Huguenot cross,
n’est-ce pas
?”

“Yes, but it has no spiritual significance. It was only … only a sign for us, you see. A way to communicate.”

“And the tall young man. He’s quite handsome. I’ve seen him before, haven’t I? Years ago at your father’s house. He was a good friend to you then?”

Anne-Marie felt the color rise in her cheeks. “Yes, a friend …”

“I’m prying. It’s a bad habit. Forgive me.”

“No, no. It isn’t that.” Anne-Marie looked into the soft, round face of Eliane, and suddenly she wanted so badly to tell this kind young woman what life had been like for her these past years. “If I tell you my story, will you keep it for yourself?” she whispered.

Eliane smiled and patted her arm lightly, as if Anne-Marie were another of her children. “I won’t breathe a word, Anne-Marie.” Her eyes filled with compassion. “Whom should I tell anyway? I know no one in France. Your secrets are safe with me.”

For hours the two women talked. They spoke of the past, of the farms that had been in their families for years. Of the wealthy landowner who rented them the land. Of their Arab friends. Anne-Marie felt suddenly free as she explained to Eliane what she had never been able to explain before, not even to Moustafa or David. The baby, the pain, the impossibility of telling David.

She spoke of Ali’s brutality and how she had become his pawn, collecting valuable information for him. She let each detail tumble forth, afraid that if she stopped talking she would never again have the courage to tell it all. And each time she looked into Eliane’s eyes she saw compassion and at times tears.

“So you see, I’m a soiled woman. And yet Moustafa loves me still. We know it cannot work, but it is all I hope for. Moustafa and Ophélie.”

“And this man David? You have no feelings anymore for the father of your child?”

“Yes, I do. But they are feelings that torment me, feelings of the past. And he loves another woman. He’s not right for me, Eliane. I cannot explain it, but I know.”

Eliane looked away, waving to Samuel and Rachel, who were grasping the railings, laughing as the seawater sprayed their faces. “Be careful, you two.
Attention, eh?
”

José slept peacefully, bundled in a coat on Eliane’s lap. It seemed to Anne-Marie that she was weighing her words, choosing them carefully in her mind before she pronounced them out loud.

“Anne-Marie,” she said finally, “there are things that you brought on yourself. But there are many other things that happened to you, terrible things. You must not carry the guilt. Don’t stay a victim all of your life. It will do you no good.” Suddenly she took Anne-Marie’s hand, clasping it tightly in her own. “You have a chance to start over. It will be better now. I’m sure of it.”

She spoke with such assurance that Anne-Marie felt she could almost believe it.

“Aren’t you afraid, Eliane? Doesn’t the unknown make you afraid?”

“Oh, yes, yes.” She laughed, and her bobbed hair swung around her head. “I look at all of us on this wretched boat, and the rest of the pied-noirs, and I think,
No one wants us
. The French don’t see us as one of them. And somehow I think they blame us for this awful war.”

Eliane stared in front of her, but Anne-Marie was sure she was seeing something else besides the sea.

“I am afraid at times,” she continued, “but then, I have my faith. You know. Like your father.” She seemed embarrassed to say it. “I know you didn’t agree with him, but it is that faith I trust in now.”

“You liked my father, didn’t you?”

“Your father was a wonderful man. There was such a tenderness beneath that rough military exterior.”

“He gave me this,” Anne-Marie said softly, pulling out the Huguenot cross from under her blouse. “We decided to make it our password for saving the children. But it was so much more to him. It was a symbol of what he believed.”

“You have your father’s courage, Anne-Marie. You’ve helped save lives. I hope one day you will share this faith.” She looked at Anne-Marie quietly, penetratingly. Then she changed the subject. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you ever since you found me. Your father left you a will. I was the executor, but you have never seen it because we didn’t know how to find you. Rémi will send other trunks as soon as I get settled, and in one of those trunks I have stored your father’s will. I’ll bring it to you then, just as soon as I find it.”

“His will? I never even thought of it. I couldn’t even come to the funeral—everything happened so fast.” She blinked back tears. “Yes, that would be nice, to have his will. A memento. Although I’m sure there is nothing left now.”

Eliane nodded sadly. “You’re right. Nothing at his farm, nothing in the banks in Algiers. I’m afraid we have lost it all. Not just you. All of us. We’ve lost our heritage.”

A sadness had crept into her voice, but she brushed it aside.

“But we can start over. In just a few hours, you’ll see. This is a chance to begin again. God will see us through.”

Anne-Marie admired the young mother with the sunny disposition, but she knew that no God of Eliane or of her father would stoop down to help her. It was okay. She had grown used to being alone.

6

The Washington papers ran big headlines on the first of April 1962. Women and men alike still idolized John Glenn for his three orbits around the earth in February. The Americans might beat the Russians in the space race after all.

Troops were headed to Vietnam, but rumor had it that the war would soon be over. A little more American support, a few more troops shipped over, and the whole thing would be done with.

But on the home front, here in America, the situation looked sticky indeed. Whites and blacks were not getting along, and the South was protesting any rise toward equality. Crazy “freedom riders,” intent on having the same rights as whites, were actually pushing their way onto buses. And the white lawmakers didn’t respond graciously. Racial tension could be tasted in the air.