Lisette's List

by Susan Vreeland

  It would have taken only the breath of God to blow that lethal German projectile off its course, or to prevent that evil plane from emerging from the smoke-filled sky, or whatever it was that had killed the man I loved. What part of the field was He succoring the instant André was hit? Was God so absorbed in protecting some German noblewoman’s son whose head was filled with melodies yet to be written, the next Beethoven composing his own “Ode to Joy,” that He forgot the common man whose simple joy was to make picture frames? Or was it that even God could do nothing to deflect the wave of hatred, the hunger to hurt? Sister Marie Pierre would chastise me for thinking that. Hot shame for doubting rose up in my throat.

  It was over at last, and the processional moved downhill to the war monument on avenue de la Burlière. Names and dates were inscribed on a stone monolith: 1870, 1871, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918. Léon LaPaille, François Estève, Paul Jouval, and two dozen more who had left wives, children, mothers behind; vineyards and orchards untended; fields unplanted; projects unfinished. Maybe one of them had also intended to repair the kneelers.

  Mélanie handed me a wreath of pruned grapevines that she had soaked and curved into a circle and decorated with acorns and lavender. It was a loving gesture. I leaned it against the pedestal. Father Marc said a benediction, and all of Roussillon joined the chorus of “Amen” for this man who was not their native son.

  Maurice was so choked up he could not speak. Odette held my one hand, Louise the other. Aimé Bonhomme said to me in a fatherly way, “I’m sorry it had to be you. It was wrong to be you. It should have been one of us.”

  Perhaps he understood how alone I was feeling in a place I had not chosen. Perhaps the priest and the constable did also. Certainly Maurice and the women did. Nevertheless, inadvertently, Aimé’s sentiment made me feel like an outsider, un autre. A stranger. I would be watched. People would gossip about how I carried my bereavement. However kindly he meant his awkward little speech that expressed kindness but no logic that I could see, it separated me from this village, which I had been trying, for André’s sake, to love.

  AT HOME, REELING IN A FOG of excruciating sadness, I added an incomprehensible sixth item to my List of Hungers and Vows:

  6. Learn how to live alone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PATRON SAINTS

  1940

  ON MY WAY HOME FROM THE BAKERY, I READ DE GAULLE’S speech, which was posted on the coral stucco wall of the mairie. As the leader of the Free French, operating in London, he was resistant to German victory, while Pétain’s government in Vichy accommodated German rule. I appreciated the hopefulness of the speech but was afraid the day would come when some German officer would rip it right off the building and plant some Nazi slogan there instead.

  Alongside de Gaulle’s speech, a new placard had been mounted: NATIONAL REVOLUTION—WORK, FAMILY, FATHERLAND. MARSHAL PÉTAIN. Apparently Mayor Pinatel was adopting a neutral position.

  Since it was September, there was also a handwritten announcement of the Fête Votive de la Saint Michel, the patron saint of Roussillon, on 29 September, only a few days away. Saint Michel meant nothing to me; he had done nothing to protect André, grandson of a Roussillonnais. Instead, de Gaulle’s appeal rang in my ears: Unite with me in action, in sacrifice, and in hope. Let us all strive to save her. But what could I do, one lone woman in an isolated village?

  I marched straight into Louise’s hairdressing salon. I had seen her scribbled note in the window the day before: Hair clippings collected for the making of inner soles.

  “Cut it all off,” I told her.

  “But you have such beautiful long hair, the color of dark chocolate.”

  “All the more for inner soles. The Résistance fighters need good boots. Give me a short bob.”

  She braided my hair and cut it at the nape of my neck in a hank—it looked like a snake—then shaped what was left.

  “No one will recognize you at the fête. You are going, aren’t you?” Louise said, trimming scissors aloft in one hand, comb in the other, waiting for my answer.

  André and I had enjoyed the fête votive weekends of parades, games, boules tournaments, music, dances, and fireworks, and we had even gone once to the fête votive of the nearby village of Gordes, but I was afraid my going to the fête now might appear unseemly, as if I were seeking gaiety and recreation. If I were really honest, however, I would have to admit that I didn’t want to be so intoxicated with mourning that I couldn’t have a few hours of respite from my dark thoughts.

  “Maurice will pout if you don’t come.”

  “What’s to celebrate now, after the surrender? The crowd will probably be pretty sparse.”

  “That’s exactly why you should give it your support.”

  I had been so unbearably lonely, rattling around in that empty house, that I said, “All right. I’ll go to some of it.”

  THE MORNINGS OF THE FÊTE, there would only be the pétanque and boules tournaments. They didn’t interest me. Since a votive meant an offering or act performed in accordance with a vow, I preferred to stay home and make my own votive. It would have to do with André. I added to my List of Hungers and Vows:

  7. Find André’s grave and the spot where he died.

  Would I fall apart if I saw either one? Despite my qualms, I let it remain and wrote another vow:

  8. Forgive André.

  The heaviness of forgiveness descended the moment after I wrote the words. He could have postponed going until he was conscripted. Maybe then he would not have had to fight at all, but oh no, off he had gone with Maxime.

  Yet holding a grudge against the man I loved felt terribly wrong. It was entirely against my conscience and would only compound my grief. I would have to forgive him anew each day, in a surge of love, perhaps even begrudgingly at times, until I forgot what I’d needed to forgive him for. At the moment, I could not imagine that day ever coming, though I resolved to try.

  WITH THAT HOPE, I went downhill to the church and arrived in time for the processional. It began with a choir of ten giggling girls positioned on the church steps singing the Litany of the Saints. Father Marc led the processional, and behind him an acolyte carried a huge wooden image of Saint Michel, so top-heavy that he lost his balance going downhill on the uneven cobblestones and almost fell, to the gasps of the girls following him.

  I was sure the girls had been told to walk solemnly, but the littlest one, Mélanie’s daughter, Mimi, wearing a yellow dress and a single sock, couldn’t restrain herself and skipped down the road out of line. Could that teetering statue deliver me from the depths of despair? No, but seeing Mimi frolicking along like a ray of sunshine did, for a moment. If I could follow Odette’s advice, I would string such moments together into a new life.

  As soon as the processional reached place du Pasquier, where the statue would be erected, the girls ran to the schoolyard to watch the boys’ wrestling matches and to play the bottle game, the three jumps, and the strangle-cat. Crank-handled Victrolas at every food booth issued forth a tangle of melodies, each defiant voice singing loudly to prove that the Provençaux had not lost their joie de vivre just because the north was occupied.

  People came from farms and vineyards, from Apt, Gordes, Saint-Saturnin-lès-Apt, and Bonnieux. Their odd dressing amused me. Wooden clogs with a suit. A bowler hat with a workman’s smock. A peasant’s straw hat with a jacket and wrinkled, shapeless trousers. Dresses in old styles and plain fabrics. Even so, I recognized a dignity in their unpretentiousness.

  Merrymakers greeted those they hadn’t seen for a few weeks with the same exuberance they showed for those they hadn’t seen for years. Yet their gaiety seemed forced, and they soon fell into quiet conversations beneath the plane trees or strolled up to the cemetery to visit their departed.

  The advertised symphony concert was performed by a guest orchestra from Apt consisting of nine instruments. I had hoped for the Brandenburg concertos, but hoped in vain. No Bach. No Handel. No Beethoven. Only French compose
rs. Debussy, yes. “Clair de Lune.” Berlioz, yes. The ball scene from Symphonie Fantastique, very popular in Paris. And Bizet’s Carmen—the sensual “Habanera,” the moving and dreamy pastoral of the smugglers’ trip into the Pyrénées, and the “Toreador’s Song.” Even though the sound was thin, I loved hearing the melodies, and the finale, “La Marseillaise,” made me proud to be French.

  Tambourines signaled that the dance was about to begin. Maurice and Louise scooped me up from behind into the salle des fêtes, Louise admiring the new hairstyle she had created for me.

  “You can’t escape, Lisette. Louise agreed to share me with you for the polka and the waltz. Imagine, a man as round-bellied as I dancing with two beautiful ladies. Even Maurice Chevalier would be jealous!”

  Maurice’s knightly bow was charming, but I declined. He pouted, of course, though I knew he understood. I actually enjoyed watching him waltz with Louise. He was surprisingly light on his feet.

  Constable Blanc approached me, holding out his hand, palm up.

  “You can’t escape, Lisette,” he said, echoing Maurice, but there was a sharper edge to his voice.

  “No, thank you. I prefer watching.”

  He continued to hold out his hand. Was that politeness or insistence? Shouldn’t he have known why I didn’t want to dance? Did I have to spell it out for him? A grieving widow does not dance. I turned away, and he did a quick about-face and disappeared into the whirling crowd.

  I watched the polka and the gavotte from the sidelines for the rest of the evening, not unhappy that I wasn’t dancing. I was honoring André and remembering how smoothly we used to dance together, and that felt right.

  Under other circumstances, I would have enjoyed the farandole, a Provençal dance that started with everyone holding hands and skipping in a circle, giving a little kick and stomp on every fourth skip. The leader called for le serpent, and a line broke off and made tight, snakelike turns around the salle. L’escargot was announced next, and the line made a spiral in ever-decreasing circles.

  Mélanie called out to me when she passed, “You look like Kiki now.” I smiled back. I hadn’t realized that people this far south would know Kiki de Montparnasse—an artist’s model, cabaret singer, actress, and painter. I had idolized her, so Mélanie’s comment pleased me.

  No fireworks lit the evening sky as they had done the year before. It would have been too much like the explosives of war. There was no bonfire either. A waste of wood. There was only a tray of candles that Father Marc supplied. Slowly the crowd dispersed. People lingered under the trees of the square saying lengthy good nights as though they wouldn’t see each other for a year, when in actuality, they would gather again the next day for the morning boules tournament, the parade of the Apt bugle corps, and the afternoon dance. Since there was no moon and there were no streetlights, not even gaslights in Roussillon, Maurice insisted on walking me home, five houses past his.

  He bowed at my doorway, and I went in and lit a gas lamp. Shock ripped through me. The house had been ransacked—chairs upturned, the yellow sunflower tablecloth in a heap on the floor. André’s cabinet had been moved away from the wall, its doors flung open and the contents scattered. Dishes lay broken on the tile floor. I called out to Maurice. He came back, took one look, and ran off downhill in his funny gallop to get the constable. Before he returned, Constable Blanc arrived.

  “Just doing my nightly rounds when I heard you call and saw your door ajar. Is everything all right, madame?”

  “No!” I opened the door wider for him to survey the salle.

  He shook his head, which made his thickly pomaded hair gleam in the lamplight.

  “Did you see anyone leave?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “There were many here today from beyond Roussillon.”

  “But why my house?”

  “Do you have anything hidden here that someone would want?”

  I knew he meant the paintings, so why didn’t he say so? He had seen them. André’s first reason for not telling me the location of the paintings flashed through my mind. I could look at Constable Blanc dead in the eye and say, “No. Nothing,” because it was true.

  “Do you mind if I look upstairs?”

  We both went up and found that the bedding and mattresses had been pulled off the beds in both rooms, the armoire and bed moved away from the wall in my bedroom, clothes dumped on the floor, the chest of drawers at an angle in Pascal’s room. The constable put the mattresses back on the beds and moved the furniture into place. Downstairs, he walked André’s cabinet back against the wall.

  “Thank you, Constable.”

  “Call me Bernard, please. Be sure to report anything missing.”

  “To you or to the mayor?”

  “To me, of course. I am the arm of the law.”

  “All right.”

  “Be on your watch for strangers. Germans, I mean. They aren’t likely to be in uniform. They are scouting out spoils and resources. Listen carefully in the streets. They may be speaking French, but not like we do. Whoever ransacked your house has friends, and they know more than we think they do.” He moved two steps closer to me. I tensed, and he noticed. “Those paintings aren’t worth endangering yourself. Give them up if you need to.”

  The comment about the paintings’ worth struck me as harsh, but the similarity of his words to André’s last letter startled me.

  “Take care what side of the bread you butter, madame. Think ahead. Take care of yourself. Good night.” He ducked out through the doorway.

  I checked the olive jar. My money was still in it. Then it wasn’t money the thief wanted.

  In a few minutes Maurice returned, fretful that he hadn’t found the constable.

  “Who wants my paintings?”

  “I don’t know, but someone definitely does.” He put his arms around me in an avuncular way. “Your dishes may be broken, but you will not be.”

  I STAYED AWAY FROM the fête the next day, unable to free my mind from the violation of an intruder in my house. The ransacking justified the hiding of the paintings. Passing between the windows where the painting of the little factory of pale yellow stone had hung, I felt a pang. That painting had meant so much to Pascal. Then I turned to the opposite wall, where there had been four paintings, Red Roofs, Corner of a Village, Winter, the largest, was near the center of the wall. He often called it Le Verger, Côtes Saint-Denis à Pontoise, which made it seem like this painting had four names. He had said that the roofs were red-ochre, the branches where light hit them a dark golden yellow that was surely made from ochre—he would have said the proper name for them—and the ground, the color of pumpkins. I turned in a circle, trying to bring to mind each of the paintings, wondering which one had been André’s favorite. Regret pricked my conscience. I had never asked him.

  Above André’s cabinet, Cézanne’s still life had hung. André had said it was the perfect spot for it. Maybe that had been his favorite painting. He loved apples. I moved a white bowl of three apples, two early pears, and one Spanish orange from the table to André’s cabinet. The dark red of Cézanne’s top apple was a self-assertive red, full of boldness in assuming its imperial position. André would have liked my mimicry of the painting. In placing the fruit on his cabinet, I had performed an act of resistance against the intruder; more important, I had performed an act of love for André.

  In Cézanne’s painting, were there three apples? Four? Three oranges? Or were they peaches? My memory of them was already fading, just as the memory of André eating his last apple was fading. Was he standing in the courtyard rolling his shoulders after bending over the last of the popes’ chairs? Had he said anything when he finished, knowing that with the last chair, our time together was growing shorter? I could not remember. I hated it that I could not remember. I understood now Pascal’s desperation to tell someone, me, so that his memories would not be lost forever. I had to hold on, to cherish every word André had said to me, every smile. I had not cherished enough. I had
been too self-absorbed. It was excruciating not to know everything he had said to me our last week, our last day.

  LOUISE HAD INVITED ME to a gathering of friends to take place the evening after the second day of the fête. She called it a veillée. I was grateful. I had spent too many hours alone in that house.

  Besides André and Maxime, I’d had only a few friends in Paris—Sister Marie Pierre, of course, and Jeannette, the other counter girl at the pâtisserie. Jeanne d’Arc I had called her, because she claimed that she heard voices and that she had Gypsy blood. Whenever Maxime came in to buy a pastry, she leaned over the counter to show her breasts and flirted outrageously. He may have flirted back, but he always gave the pastry to me. That threw her into a temper, and with rough words, naughty gestures, and the evil eye, she would shoo him out of the shop. Maxime and I always laughed at those episodes later. What I would give for a day with her now!

  Here in Roussillon, I had more friends than I’d had in Paris. Three other families were already at the Chevets’ house when I arrived—Émile and Mélanie Vernet, who had a vineyard, and their darling Mimi; Henri Mitan, the blacksmith, and his wife, who must have developed infinite patience with his stuttering; and the Gulinis, Odette and her Italian husband, René, their daughter, Sandrine, and Sandrine’s husband, Louis Silvestre, whose uneven gait and shortened leg had kept him out of the war. Louise must have run out of real coffee, because she served the faux café made of hickory nuts, and everyone followed Mélanie’s lead and took just one cube of sugar instead of the usual two, sugar being rationed now. Maurice offered a small glass of marc to the men, who drank it straight, sipping a few drops now and then to make it last the evening.

  “There will be two events tonight,” Louise announced. “I’m in charge of the first, the chestnuts. Maurice is in charge of the second.”

  She lay two chestnuts for each person in a pan so old that there were holes in the bottom and roasted them in the fireplace while Émile opened a bottle of his rosé.