A Purpose True

by Gail Kittleson

  Somehow, he’d become an explosives expert—ah well, he could follow instructions. Leave the motorbike in Figeac, behind the city hall.

  Follow the rails toward Espedaillac. Reconnoiter before dark at an abandoned farmhouse three kilometers east.

  Outside Figeac, he cut the motor and made for the city hall by a little-used back route. With the cycle hidden, he slipped into a tree-covered ravine that circled the buildings, for the Gestapo kept watch on the railroad depot. An afternoon breeze blew, reminding Domingo how his muscles ached from riding. The twenty-kilometer hike to Espedaillac seemed short, compared to the distance he’d covered with Katarin.

  And she’d kept up with him without complaint, even with blistered heels. That knowledge fluttered as close to his heartbeat, along with the look in her eyes when he’d left her.

  Pushing his way through a narrow foliage-covered path parallel to the railroad, he made good time. The sun sank lower, so he stopped to fill his canteen beside a frothing spring bubbling from a gash in a rock. At the Espedaillac signpost, he veered westward until a stone house, with windows like hollow eyes, emerged from among the trees. Finding a sheltered spot, Domingo leaned against a broom tree and gnawed bread and cheese.

  A peasant near Almont-les Junies had supplied the same food when he and Katarin had followed the Rousseau de Limo. In his haste to get home, he’d barely noticed her until she bathed her sore feet in an icy rivulet.

  He recalled one other time, before France’s surrender to Germany in November, ‘41, when he’d traveled the same road. Probably he’d run an errand for Père before leading pilots over the Spanish border.

  Even before the Nazi occupation cast its shadow over France, Père Gaspard sometimes asked Domingo to perform tasks a distance from Lot. That time, during the Junhalmontois harvest celebration, he’d feasted on estofinado and garlic potatoes. Even now, the spicy taste of potatoes cooked with fish, herbs, and crème fraîche would cause his stomach to rumble.

  Finally, as dusk ushered in evening, something moved in the meadow, and a human being prowled below him like a lynx.

  Wait for four low whistles, bowed out like a dove’s call.

  When another partisan found the first one, Domingo crept beyond the broom tree and advanced behind a thicket, thankful he’d avoided this foraging existence for the war’s first years. Leaving the sheep in Gabirel’s care had occurred gradually, for a day or two at a time, then a few more.

  And then Katarin fell from the sky. Somehow he sensed this parachutist was a woman. He tamped down his concern for her dangerous mission—the worst Gestapo stories involved radio operators.

  Only natural to think of her, especially now that I know her past, and that came about because ...

  As he awaited another sign, the events that reunited them unfolded in his mind. Returning from a trip across the Spanish border, Domingo and his comrade Petra were diverted to attend a supply drop on a plateau west of Albi.

  There, Katarin waited with messages for the pilot. He and Petra accepted separate missions after the drop, Domingo’s to deliver her to a train station. Of course, he had no idea she was the one he’d met back in December.

  But that night, they witnessed the railroad bridge near Albi blown to bits, and she recognized him. Her whisper still sent a shiver over his shoulders. “You met my drop. You nursed my sprained ankle and carried me all the way to that haystack.”

  Later, word came of her circuit’s blown cover. It was impossible to leave her alone in the wilds with the Gestapo on the hunt, so they trekked on. Then, scrabbling up a mountain trail in a murky pre-dawn, they found a wounded agent, Monsieur le Blanc, sprawled in the path.

  Who but the Almighty could have arranged for Katarin to hear his deathbed confession that he was her uncle? Without question, Père Gaspard would pronounce this a divine appointment.

  While he turned over the last morsel of cheese in his hands, Domingo turned that experience over in his mind like a many-faceted jewel. Père might tell such a story during Mass to relate how the Almighty reunited people and fulfilled their deepest desires.

  Monsieur’s deathbed scene, like the moving pictures Domingo first experienced during his teacher training, defied logic. Yet he himself watched Katarin’s transformation as she witnessed Monsieur’s last feeble breath. Perspiration grazed Domingo’s hairline at the memory of comforting her with Maman’s sorrow song.

  He’d never held anyone but Sancha so close, and could still feel Katarin quake in his arms. If not for those intense hours, he wouldn’t be thinking of her so much. Surely he wouldn’t.

  Trill ... trill ... trill ... trill ... Domingo jolted upright. Two more fellows from opposite directions joined the first ones, so he shinnied down the hill. A gruff-faced partisan nodded toward a steep incline.

  “From up there, the bridge rises only a kilometer away. Follow me.” The earth shook as a train crossed the bridge, and from higher ground, the leader pointed out the wooden trestle. “The next train is due around three in the morning with tanks and munitions for Normandy.”

  After wending their way through a scree of oak and blackberry bramble, a dilapidated cottage came into view, crowded by the growth of young saplings. A sulfur smell permeated the building where a younger man waited, so obviously weary that he seemed old. Plastic cylinders and other apparatus covered a rickety table, so everyone gathered around.

  “Welcome. Observe our blasting caps, Bickford lighters, detonators, and TNT.” He rotated a safety fuse. “Familiarize yourself with the Bickford. At this end sits a glass ampoule of gunpowder.” He ran his finger along the edge. “A spring-loaded striker. And here...” He unrolled a small paper with numerical columns.

  “Note the delay times for various temperatures. We set the charges at ten p.m., up on that ridge, estimating eleven degrees Centigrade.

  “See the color-code? Check the inspection hole like this, then the condition of the ampoule end before crimping a blasting cap to the fuse. Next, insert the well of a TNT block like this, crush the ampoule and recheck the striker. Then and only then, remove the safety tab and run.”

  He studied each man. “We have a two-hour climb. We leave in half an hour.”

  Everyone scattered. Domingo walked a short distance, surrounded by rough, rocky beauty. Deep undulations peppered the landscape like human fingers, with caves where the Jews found refuge. Père Gaspard told of priests who led them to abbeys, so they could navigate the mountains to Spain, or in some cases, where they still awaited the war’s end.

  A footfall sounded, and the leader touched his shoulder. “I remember you. From Figeac? You have experienced demolition?”

  “Last night.”

  “Ah. Decazeville. Then you’ll light the charge at the north end.”

  Dark eyes flashed before Domingo’s inner vision. Once, those dark eyes belonged to Sancha, his betrothed. But the Gestapo murdered her more than a year ago, along with innocent children. The hills where she died, close to the refuge city of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, seemed a world away.

  But these eyes before him now flashed gold flecks—Katarin’s eyes. He liked the feel of her name on his tongue, like flowing water.

  How strange for Père Gaspard to have guessed her name. Stranger still that she stirred emotions Domingo had secreted away after Sancha’s death. He shook them away once again and considered his rag-tag partners.

  Perhaps one wrenched the neck of a German guard last night or drowned a collaborator, in spite of London’s rules—until the l’invasion occurs, avoid direct contact with the enemy.

  Tonight, he would take life, for these trains bound for Normandy carried guards. He must believe Père Gaspard—war turned things around. As if to prove that concept, two partisans discussed a Dutch inventor who moved to Amerika long before the Great War.

  “His bombsight is so accurate it can drop a bomb in a pickle barrel, taking into account the wind, human error, and other interferences. The inventor knew war’s waste of precious life, and hoped an accur
ate bombsight would prevent thousands of deaths.”

  A meadow bird launched its last evening call, and the story quieted Domingo. This bridge blowing would in the end save many Allied soldiers, and hopefully shorten the war.

  The leader gathered the group. “Tomorrow night, we expect a shipment of Nobel’s # 8 waterproof plastiques. They’re pliable, easy to work into any crack or hole, but I’m glad for what we have. The plastiques’ stinky fumes cause headaches.”

  Another partisan, older than the rest, joined them. “Who lights the fuses?”

  “We work in three teams, one at either trestle end, one in the center. The best runner goes with me.” The men pushed forward a lean young fellow wearing espadrilles from Dordogne.

  “One man guards, while the other lights the explosives. At the north, La Foudre over there will do the lighting.” He flicked his thumb toward Domingo.

  So this was how a man acquired a nickname. Suddenly, someone called him Lightning—La Foudre. Gabirel, even more of a natural at tracking than Domingo, would smile at this some day.

  “Keep low to the ground. Our pay is nothing, but at least it’s equal, the Communist ideal.” The leader snorted. “Disperse in separate directions when we’re finished, unless one of you travels toward Figeac.”

  “I’ll find you, La Foudre.” He handed the first explosives box to Domingo. “No stumbling.”

  The gritty wooden carton scraped Domingo’s fingers. At the top, some of them set to work with the explosives, but the leader sent Domingo and one other member sidewinding below the trestle.

  “Check for anything amiss. Meet us here in twenty minutes.”

  Domingo let the other man lead. They halted once, their backs to the trestle posts.

  “Not a German for kilometers.”

  “I hope.”

  “You from around here?”

  “No, from Lot. You?”

  “Toulouse. Student turned woodcutter.” Domingo might have asked how he ended up here, but kept silent. The young man’s smile showed in the growing moonlight, and a story brewed in his eyes.

  “My uncle, a priest, saved my neck when I turned refractaire because of the German deportations. My parents told me to hide in the hills until the gendarmes made their quota, so I made my way to my uncle when our band began to starve.

  “He decked me in an extra robe and took me with him on his rounds. When the Gestapo stalked us, he intoned prayers, so they didn’t even ask for our identity cards.”

  “Sounds like a priest I know.”

  “Père Gaspard, from Terrou originally. You know him?”

  “My parish priest. So now you blow bridges?”

  “That’s the only way I know to get back to law school, if any law remains when all this is over. And you blow bridges as well, I see.”

  “Mais oui. What else is there to do?”

  Chapter Seven

  Slowing the lorry for a gaggle of geese, Père turned studious. “The main road and Parisian rail-links still connect us with the far southwest. Our peasants took in refugees who swarmed here in ‘40 as Vichy demanded young men for German work camps. They now work for La Résistance.

  Exactly as Kate’s instructors described the growth of the Resistance effort, and this morning’s breeze reminded her of their predictions concerning the weather, too. Beautiful, like spring in Iowa.

  “The plateau’s forests couldn’t be better suited to hiding defectors. The Ségala’s chestnut groves, trout streams, and small villages provide food, and the heights offer a wide view, plus natural niches to store supplies.”

  “The gendarmes avoid those areas?”

  “Yes.” He gestured to the road, where a clutch of innocent goslings followed their mother. “To be honest, sometimes I feel sympathy for them. On the one hand, as French police, they must earn their pay to feed their families, though the Nazis force superhuman tasks on them.

  “How could Vichy possibly agree to produce a million workers for the Fuhrer? Surely they know the Massif Central, the Pyrenees, and the Ségala hide every man of age who ventures here, and the Maquis eagerly accepts every new registration in an effort to win back their own pilfered land.”

  When the last goose straggled across, he bumped the lorry down a hill and over a rickety bridge. “There, you see the homeland of our Maquis.” Père pointed high on the eastern side where sheep speckled sparse vegetation.

  Kate’s shoulder rammed into her door when they hit a bump. “How do these people make a living? They must be very poor.”

  “One might say so, but the Maquis find them rich in support and friendship.” He gunned the engine around an uphill corner. “Many camps stay on the move, except for the group we supply today. But you understand that well?”

  “Oh yes. Since I parachuted in, I’ve lived in—let me see—three villages, and slept in far more beds.”

  “Many have helped you along the way?”

  “Oh, yes. In le-Chambon-sur-Lignon, at the Presbytery, then in Clermont-Ferrand and to the south, when Domingo led me away from Albi and we discovered the Gestapo had infiltrated my circuit." Her gut clenched at the memory.

  “Ah, Le Chambon? I understand that city shelters many.”

  “Oui. Banished Jews, defectors, and so many children separated from their families.”

  “France desperately needs such safe havens. What did you learn there?”

  “The pastor’s wife welcomed me so heartily, I felt at home right away. She had room in her heart for everyone. And the children—I’ve never witnessed such innocent, beautiful faces and smiles. Le Chambon showed me a bold kind of love—and honesty. The citizens band together to protect all those little ones, and do their work in the open.”

  “They don’t lie to the authorities?” The priest raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “I don’t think so. Of course, they hide the children if there’s danger. That’s a level of trust I’ll probably never reach.” Probably? More like definitely. She changed the subject. “Have you visited many Résistance camps?”

  “Several closer to the southern border, near Aveyron, with their fair share of shadowy participants, to be sure. But Jean-Jacques Chapou relegates those types to the fringes. Even so, I fear all control will soon cease. Anyone who can manage a weapon...” Père swerved to avoid a rabbit.

  “If I had the desire to escape the priesthood for a life of crime, it would be easy. But the bulk of partisans became refractaires for conscience’s sake rather than support the Nazi war machine in factories here or in the motherland.”

  “You mean when Vichy issued the Service du Travail Obligitoire edict?”

  “Oui. The STO instigated an impossible choice: obey Petain’s new ruling, enforced by Laval, who also signed away French Jews to deportation and death, or obey the call to freedom for France. You can imagine how our ranks swelled.”

  He goosed the engine around a sharp curve and sent Kate crashing forward.

  “Sorry—I never learned the finer points of handling this machine.” Père scrunched his forehead in contrition, but returned to his topic. “How could my countrymen in good conscience support Hitler? At that time, I visited a curé near Cahors, where our own Maquis originated.

  “He supported those unorganized young defectors even then. When Chapou doubled the group to eight, living like Saint John the Baptist, eating off the land, the curé continued his work. Later, the STO brought in far more fighters. We had had enough of Pierre Laval’s so-called Relève. Do you know about that?”

  “The exchange of French workers for prisoners of war from the 1940 invasion?”

  “Your training serves you well. Before that, the Maquis struggled, and many came to me for counsel. Under the circumstances, becoming a refractaire seemed the most moral choice.”

  “You guided them into the Résistance?”

  “For better or for worse. You understand that many guides pay with their lives. La Résistance highly values Domingo’s abilities, but if anything were to happen to him, it would kill hi
s mother. And I would bear responsibility.”

  “But having him work in Germany would have devastated her, too.”

  “True. In that so-called Relève exchange, no prisoners returned until August, and then the Bosche released a mere nine hundred. City folk fell for the enemy’s lies because they formed soup lines. Feed me and I’ll obey you.”

  “Obeying the STO order would have meant aiding the enemy?”

  “Indeed, even though we had no idea if ‘work’ meant actual labor or detainment. If Domingo had gone, he would have deserted on his first leave, like many others. Later, regulations tightened again, doubling the gendarmes’ work.

  “They already searched for refractaires who refused to fill their prefects’ new quotas, but last summer they had to search for deserters, besides. In September, Vichy demanded that women work as well, promising they would stay in France. But in October, one local gendarme confided in me his new orders.

  “Suddenly, Laval offered amnesty to refractaires in exchange for working here. That unfairness enraged families whose sons had complied with the original STO.”

  “So, Vichy cannot win?”

  “Exactly. Imagine a parent whose son went to work in a German factory, now watching other young men and women laboring here with no punishment. People wrote to Petain en masse, and Vichy failed to raise the Nazi quota.”

  Père Gaspard swerved again, this time for what Kate thought might be a mink. He wiped his forehead. “In the midst of vast human carnage, our hearts still reach out to a hapless animal, don’t they?”

  “So you sympathize with the gendarmes?”

  “The Reich makes a hard taskmaster, and Laval signed unrealistic quotas. Surely General Petain couldn’t have believed our young men would volunteer. Their fathers fought against Germany in the Great War—why should their sons slave for the Nazis?”

  The red in his cheeks heightened with each argument. He released the clutch and braked before a hapless young marmot squatting in the middle of the road. Père yelled out the window, but the dazzled creature hopped only a few feet away.