What Jean did then made me more than a little tense. He grabbed a spade and started digging a grave. Or at least that was what it looked like. We were right at the back of the chicken pen. The ground didn’t have much grass on it—the chickens had seen to that—but the earth was thick and chocolate-colored. Jean set to work. And when Jean worked at anything, he went whole hog. He put his back into it, as well as his huge hands and arms, and about ten minutes later had dug a shallow grave about six feet long and two or three feet deep.
It was for me.
He motioned for me to lie in it. At that very moment we heard the hum of an engine—it sounded like a truck—coming up the little road toward his house.
“Vite!” he cried, and I got down and he began to throw the dirt and sod onto me. His eyes had grown to the great size they had been when he first saw me—the fear had returned. I lay flat and let him cover me. We could hear men getting out of the truck and then entering the house without knocking; we heard angry, accusatory voices and Yvette’s frightened one-word answers. Then we heard footsteps approaching the barn.
“Anything interesting?” asked Mom.
“Mom, just let me read!”
Jean worked frantically, patting down the sod over me. He reached into the straw, found a large hollow strand and handed it to me, motioning for me to put it in my mouth and hold it up. I did. Then he mimed closing my eyes and mouth and began to throw the dirt, then sod, right over my face. I gasped, closed my nostrils with two fingers and breathed through the straw. I could hear the voices calling out his name, more straw being tossed on top of my grave and then several empty wooden feed buckets jammed into place near my head and inches from the end of the pen, so the straw that I breathed through was between them and the wall. The chickens wouldn’t step on it or peck at it there.
Then I heard the spade being flung away and Jean stepping over the wired fence into the pigpen, addressing his visitors as he went.
“Je suis ici.”
“Ah, Monsieur Noel, bon soir.”
It was a sickly sweet voice, with about as much sincerity as the devil might have.
“Bon soir,” said Jean.
“Vous admirez les cochons, je pense.”
“Non, je travaille.”
“Nous recherchons un Américain. Un aviateur, un pilote, un ennemi de la France, un diable. L’avez-vous vu?”
“Un Américain? Non.”
Jean’s voice was shaky. That wasn’t good.
They began to search the barn. By that time, the chickens were scratching around on the ground right over me. I tried not to breathe through my nose, into which I had thrust my fingers. It wasn’t easy. But you can do that sort of thing when your life depends on it. The Milice men didn’t come near me. They obviously didn’t fancy entering the pigpen, didn’t want to dirty their gleaming jackboots in the manure or be run at by the big sow. Moments later they were gone, but then I heard them smashing things in the house, shouting something about the fireplace, yelling at the Noels. Yvette cried loudly and her children screamed as something—a hammer maybe, or an ax—whacked their stone floors.
But the Noels revealed nothing…for me.
And they stayed quiet for the better part of the month. Yvette resented me at first, but in a week or two she grew less frightened and then doted on me like a sister. I spent most of every day in the barn, often buried in the grave, but she would bring me breakfast, lunch and dinner, wonderful French peasant food of homemade bread and tasty soup and chicken and eggs and sometimes even her sweet homemade pastry. Yvette couldn’t read or write, and neither could Jean, but they were the nicest human beings I ever met. Sometimes, when it got dark, they would even sneak me into the house to play a game of checkers or so we could converse in our fractured way, using lots of hand signals, Jean sitting at the little front window with the shutters open wide on another warm Provençal summer evening, watching for any movement along the dirt road toward his house.
And all the time I was there, at least after the second day, I felt terrible. I felt as guilty as if I were helping Hitler.
“Guilty?” I said out loud.
“Did you say ‘guilty,’ buddy?”
“No.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Don’t lie,” said Mom.
“I guess I did, yeah, but I didn’t mean to. I was just surprised.”
“Surprised?”
“This is getting a little weird. Just let me read.”
Why, you ask, did I feel guilty?
Because of what happened the second morning I was in the barn. It has stayed with me for the rest of my life.
I had been so frightened, so emotional that first day that I hadn’t moved an inch throughout the night. I just lay there, breathing through the straw, too anxious to sleep. In the morning, when Jean came and uncovered me and gave me breakfast, I was exhausted. We were both so scared that he covered me up again. I must have slept for about fifteen hours after that. I had lost my watch in the crash, and the Noels told time by the sun. I woke in terror, thinking I had been buried alive. But then I remembered where I was and pushed myself up and out. I sat there, leaning against the wall, looking at the chickens, who turned their heads in their jerky fashion so they could gawk at me with their slow-witted eyes. The pigs snorted and watched too, peeking through the gaps in their pen. I looked at them and they looked back. But the sow occasionally glanced up and beyond me, and when I turned to see what seemed to be catching her attention, I saw a crude painting nailed to a board above me, with a thin film of grime on it. It was hard to tell what it depicted, but it had a great deal of yellow in it, great slashes of glowing yellow, contrasted with startling reds and oranges and a blue as bright as the French sky. I couldn’t turn away. I stood up and brushed the grime off the painting and at that instant I could clearly see what I was looking at, and I nearly fell facedown into the manure.
I knew what the painting was.
“What? What was it?” I said out loud.
“You are doing it again,” said Dad, “and it’s pretty annoying.”
“Either tell us what he is saying or be quiet,” added Mom.
“I’ll be quiet. It’s just that…you’d understand if you were reading it.”
“Well, clearly, we are not.”
Your great-grandfather McLean may have been a farmer, toiling hard on his land in southern Ontario, but he made sure all his children knew about literature and art. He often took us to galleries in the city and, as you know, turned me into a lifelong fan of the great artists. I knew then, and I know now, when a painting is worth a fortune.
I know a master’s original when I see one. I know a Vincent Van Gogh.
That was what was hanging in that pigpen in Arles.
“Holy crap!”
Mom and Dad both turned around and looked at me. She even took her hands off the steering wheel for a moment. I glanced up at them, muttered “Sorry” and then went back to the letter and continued to read.
The Noels were about as ignorant of the world as a young family could be in 1944. They had no running water, no electricity, and had certainly never been anywhere near an art gallery.
My mind began to race. How could a Van Gogh sunflower be in this pigpen? How could this be? Then I thought about what I knew of the great artist.
He was as famous for his insanity as he was for his genius. I had heard the story of him cutting off his ear. I tried to remember what else I knew about him. And then I remembered—Van Gogh had lived in southern France…in Arles!
A shiver went through me.
I quickly thought of what else I knew. After the gruesome self-mutilation, he had been put into an insane asylum nearby. All his friends in the area were ordinary people, some of them peasants. They pitied him and often accepted his “horrible” paintings—the worthless works of a lunatic—as gifts.
The first day the Noels had me into their home, I tried to ask them about the painting. It was hard going. I didn’t learn much. But as
the days passed, Jean was able to convey to me that his father had given him the painting, that it had been in his grandfather’s woodshed for many years before the turn of the century, and that he had been told that it had been done by a crazy man with red hair and beard, who knew his grandfather. Once or twice, Jean picked up a pencil and paper and drew what he was trying to say. That helped with details. Apparently, Jean’s grandfather had been a postman in the area and a bit of a drinker who loved to spend evenings in the Arles cafés, making friends. Jean always laughed when he turned to the subject of the painting. He mimed how it was so bad he had wanted to throw it out, but had put it up in the pen to amuse the pigs and chickens, and lo and behold, they seemed to like it. In fact, ever since it had been hung there, the chickens had laid bigger eggs and the pigs had tasted even better than before. Jean never laughed louder than when he told that story.
I tried not to show my astonishment. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
Then I made the decision that shamed me for the rest of my life.
I decided to steal the Van Gogh.
“What!?”
“Okay, Adam, stop it. Just stop it.”
I knew that the Van Gogh, sitting in their pigpen, grime-covered and hidden from the world, was worth a whole lot of money. And in a few years, in decades, it might be worth millions.
I lay awake at night in my grave, rationalizing. The painting was small for a Van Gogh, small enough that I could conceal it under my bomber jacket. When operatives from the French Resistance came to get me out of there and back to freedom, I could take it with me. It was worthless to Jean. He had let the grime build up over it. He wouldn’t even miss it.
Back in Canada, it could eventually turn me into a millionaire. I would hang on to it for a while and then sell it in the United States. To make myself feel better, I reasoned that I could send money to the Noels after the war, lots of money, more and more as the years went by, to make up for what I had done. They wouldn’t be surprised, since it would be to thank them for saving my life. I told myself that they didn’t need a million dollars, that it would spoil them, that a hundred thousand or so would make their lives very comfortable, just perfect. And so, I rationalized my sin away.
But the devil’s plans don’t always work out.
I had assumed—in fact the Noels and the local Maquis (that’s what the French Resistance people were known as in France) had assumed—that getting me out of the Arles area would be part of a well-orchestrated plan. In fact, the day that everything happened, three Maquis men were at the house, putting that plan in place.
It was not unusual for farmers to sell or share a wagonload of hay with a neighbor, so the Maquis came that day, dressed in their peasant clothes, and worked in the field at first, getting a full load of hay onto a wooden wagon. Then they spirited me out of the barn and we all sat around the kitchen table, plotting my escape. But in the middle of things, a truckload of Milice came roaring up the road toward the farmhouse. The road approached from the far side of the barn, and so I was trapped. If I had rushed back to my grave in the barn, the Milice would have seen me. But in seconds they would be inside the house.
I saw flashes of fear cross over my comrades’ faces, matching the terror inside me. But they were brave and able and used to functioning well in moments of great danger, and instantly hit upon a solution to our situation. With Yvette holding her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t scream, I was bundled out the back door of the house at just the right moment, toward the nearby wagonload of hay. The house momentarily blocked the Milice’s view of us and in seconds I was shoved under the mountain of hay. With a calm, lazy crack of the whip, the three Maquis drove the wagon slowly away, moving us back down the road, waving goodbye to our hosts after a hard day’s work in the field. Miraculously, the Milice didn’t suspect us. We didn’t stop until we reached Spain—the Maquis couldn’t risk unloading me anywhere. Everything happened very fast. I never again saw the Noels or that Van Gogh painting.
You are probably wondering what I want you to do. It is a task that I am reluctant to ask of you but one I dearly hope you can achieve.
I have spent many nights over the past sixty-five-plus years thinking about that painting, and what I did or was planning to do. I could never bring myself to tell the Noels about the fortune I found in their barn. I sent them money after the war, but I was too ashamed to do anything more. If I told them my secret, they would know I had wanted to deceive them, that I had wanted to keep the money for myself. But now, after my death, the truth can be told, not just to you, but to them.
Please, Adam, go to France and find them or find where their children or grandchildren live and tell them what I never had the courage to tell them myself. Their little farm is likely long gone now, along with the painting. They lived in the countryside, ten miles or so northwest of Arles, halfway to Nîmes. The closest place was a village called Bellegarde.
I know this is a very difficult assignment, and not just because the family will probably be hard to find after all these years. But if you can do this for me, I know I will rest much easier…forever.
And then you can go on to try the next task.
We weren’t far from the border. The US officials always asked you lots of questions when you crossed over—everyone was a suspected terrorist these days. I was wondering if I would even be able to speak if they grilled me. But inside, I had no doubts. The contents of the letter had thrilled me. I knew I would do everything I could to accomplish this first task. I had to. I had to be the one who restored my grandfather’s honor.
FIVE
VANESSA ENCHANTED
I could hardly wait for school to be over for the year so we could go to France. The only thing that made it bearable was Vanessa Lincoln. I remember that first day back at school, after I’d received my task, as if it were yesterday. It started out the way it always did: I took the long way to my locker, making sure I passed by hers. I’m sure many guys did that. I moved quickly so Shirley wouldn’t catch up to me. I don’t think she knows why I take that particular route each morning, though sometimes I wonder if she does. Girls seem to know a lot of things.
And there was Vanessa, wearing those tight jeans (as usual) and a form-fitting sweater (she seemed to have a boatload of them). Her blond hair was doing that blowing-in-the-wind thing in the dead air of the hallway, and she was ignoring everyone except her few close girlfriends and that guy who looked like that tennis star, Rafael Nadal, and played in the school’s coolest alt band. I hated his guts. His locker was only about five away from hers. She seemed to adore him and he barely talked to her. There was something wrong with him.
Anyway, I walked by and she didn’t even notice me. But then, something occurred to me.
“Vanessa,” I said.
No response.
“Vanessa, my grandfather is sending me to France.”
She looked up. Those blue eyes were the color of the sky on a perfect summer day.
“I thought he died. It’s so sad.”
“Yeah, well, he was ninety-two.”
“And a war hero.”
“That’s, uh, kind of why he’s sending me to France.”
She looked around, as if she were gauging whether or not she wanted to be seen talking to me for this long.
“What do you mean?”
I can tell a pretty mean story when I want to. Must be something I inherited from Grandpa. It’s the only thing I do well around girls. I laid the basic idea out for her, told her many of the things I wasn’t even supposed to tell my parents. But I had to. It was the only truly effective ammunition I had with her.
I could see her falling for it as I moved into the more dramatic stuff, so I gave it everything I had. I shaped things so that Grandpa didn’t look so bad, because if I killed off his reputation in the process then this just wouldn’t work. I said that he had intended to sell the painting for the Noel family and give them all the money, but that he had failed on all counts because of th
e Nazis. I was charged with the romantic mission of making things right. By the end, those beautiful blue eyes were looking kind of moist.
“That’s amazing,” she said quietly. She was actually glowing. The Nadal look-alike walked by, and she didn’t even turn her head. I could have sworn that he was a little annoyed. “If you accomplished this, Adam (she’d never called me by my first name before), that would be so…heroic.”
Bingo.
Over the following days, I kept up the pressure, toying with the emotions of one Vanessa Lincoln, babe of my dreams. I purposely hadn’t told her about the other two tasks. That’s because the key to telling a dramatic story is the pacing. You can’t give your listeners all the candy right off the bat. You have to dole it out bit by bit, making the payoff even better and better, until you get them to the story’s climax.
I couldn’t, of course, tell her exactly what the other tasks were because I didn’t know myself, but I came up with all sorts of World War II intrigue involving spies and dangerous endeavors, speculating that I might have to put myself in real danger, perhaps bring to justice people who did terrible things during the Holocaust, perhaps right some significant international wrongs. I made it seem like there might be some women in danger.
I got her, hook, line and sinker. I kept reminding her of my schedule as time went by, sort of putting her on a countdown during the days before I was to leave on my mission. She was pretty intrigued by the way Grandpa had set things up, the idea of having to accomplish one task before going on to the other. She was dying to know what was in the last letter. “That sounds just like him!” she said.
Shirley found out that I was talking to the Big V a lot more than I used to—I think girls have spy networks—and she wasn’t very pleased. Not that she said much. Shirley isn’t like that. But I wasn’t getting as many kisses as before and they weren’t delivered with nearly as much feeling. I was getting the message, and it bothered me. Like I said, I really like Shirley. Actually, she’s pretty awesome. She’s in good shape, and she’s on the school basketball and volleyball teams even though she isn’t that big, and she has these really kind dark eyes and short dark hair that I’ve heard the other girls tell her is “cute.” Her last name is Sandoval—she has some Spanish in her, which makes her seem kind of exotic. And she’s a great person too. Rarely gives me a hard time and gets even better marks than me in school. She helps me with a guy named Leon Worth who has a degenerative muscle disease and is in a wheelchair. He stopped growing a while ago and is awfully small. His muscles are just fading away. It’s pretty sad, so last year I volunteered to help him out whenever I could by getting him from class to class and making sure he has his meals. I find myself thinking about him a lot, wishing he had a better life. Shirley says she started liking me when she saw me spending so much time with Leon. Now, she probably helps him even more than I do. My parents just love her.
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