“This animal needs no ointment,” Pierre lamented. “You must end her misery.”
The farmer tried to lead his horse from the path into the open. Neptune gimped and squealed, tossing her head until he relented.
“Perhaps I can heal her,” DuFour told Pierre.
“Perhaps I can fly like a crow,” the old man responded. “She has a broken leg. Do what you must, I prefer not to watch.”
Pierre hobbled back toward his house, bent with grief. It was a slow and quiet walk across two wheat fields, which gave him time to think about his other draft horse. Apollo and Neptune had pulled beside one another, cutter and tedder and plow, for fifteen years. As Pierre’s strength had dwindled over time, and the land he farmed therefore diminished, those two animals made his life possible. He had not needed to steer them at the plow in years, for example. They knew when to turn and how to follow the previous row.
But one horse? Worthless. Apollo would eat and require medicine, he would wallow and sicken and resist, the whole time missing his work twin, imbalanced as if a leg had been amputated, not trained to work by himself, not strong enough to pull alone. And in wartime the odds of finding, much less affording, a partner horse were as low as a repeat of the miracle of fishes and loaves.
There was, too, the inescapable reality of age. That winter Pierre had been unable to draw the wood-splitting ax higher than his shoulder. It was as clear a signal as the bell ringing in the spire of St. Agnes by the Sea: he simply did not possess enough remaining life to train a new animal. Neptune’s mishap aside, a draft horse typically lived beyond twenty years. The farmer knew he himself would be lucky to survive another five, and that was without considering the effects of the occupation, which were unlikely to lengthen the count of anyone’s days.
Pierre approached the barnyard across from his tiny stone house. Sorrow over Neptune pierced him. He imagined an identical pain would afflict Apollo once he came to understand what had happened—and do not tell a farmer that animals do not comprehend death; they know it as fully as any human, and often mourn with greater dignity.
Now Apollo stood before him, a deep-breathing giant. The horse scratched his flank on the fence, which leaned from his weight, then he ambled nearer to be petted.
“Funny thing, Neptune getting in this scrape,” Pierre told him, scratching along the horse’s mane, under his massive jaw. “You were always the one who wandered.”
The last of the thunder rumbled from the east, and an idea came to him. The very notion gave him a sense of relief. Biting down on his pipe, Pierre slipped the loop of rope off a fence post and opened the gate. And that was that. He turned away, leaving the gate wide.
At first the enormous animal did not move. Pierre took his sadness and shuffled into the house, closing the door quietly. That way he would not hear the pistol shot for Neptune. What an admission for a man, to acknowledge that his days of horses are done. His mother, rest her soul, had often made a point of telling people that he had learned to walk by holding a mare’s tail for balance. Now, at long last, the time had come to let that tail go.
Apollo ventured two steps out of the corral, turning his huge head to survey in all directions, before crossing the dooryard to a temptation he had desired countless times from inside the fence: Pierre’s herb garden, which flourished behind a circle of small rocks. Rosemary, lavender, thyme, all sweeter than ordinary grass. Bending his long neck, and with dainty bites, Apollo began to eat.
Back in the hedgerow, DuFour could not bring himself to finish the animal. It was like felling a tree: in which direction would Neptune tip? Probably into the path, blocking the way. And what was he to do with the carcass? He had no idea. Taking out the pistol, he opened it and loaded the chambers. Then, reasoning that he would only need one round, he unloaded it completely. Over the hours he repeated these actions several times while rain dripped from the leaves and a pair of finches chased one another down the path. The horse whimpered and shook. DuFour marched off, stopping a few hundred steps away before returning to stand beside Neptune. She had closed her eyes, holding her broken leg bent at the knee.
As the sun set, still DuFour had not acted. When night fell and no one could see, he took his broken umbrella and went home, returning at dawn to find the horse still there, of course, still suffering, of course. Traffic along that hedgerow was nil, such that no one came along to share DuFour’s hesitation, to commiserate, to buck up his courage or help him do the job.
Neptune had drawn within herself, silent and unmoving, as fixed as a commandment, and DuFour began to hate the horse for its predicament. The torment continued for two full days, the veterinarian’s assistant keeping vigil without taking action, until the blue bicycle returned.
“Where have you been?” DuFour demanded as the veterinarian pedaled up the lane. “It has been an agony here.”
“Did I not leave you with my gun?” he replied.
“Here it is, the vile thing.” DuFour held out the pistol. “I did not know what to do. You told me not to treat anything.”
Guillaume ran his gaze along the horse, her lowered head, the broken leg now drawn high against her haunch. He murmured to Neptune, then turned to speak through clenched teeth. “You are no longer my apprentice.”
He took the satchel of medicines away from DuFour’s feet, finding a round and loading the gun. “Your empathy for a creature in pain should have overcome my orders.”
“I did what you told me. I did what you said.”
“Neptune,” Guillaume called loudly, the huge horse lifting her head out of a fog of pain. “I am sorry you suffered so long.”
He pressed the pistol to the horse’s ear and fired. She collapsed knees-first, then fell on her side with a sigh. DuFour stood there, not making a sound.
“You are in exile from me,” Guillaume said, pressing two fingers under Neptune’s jaw to confirm that there was no pulse. “Never come near me, never speak to me.” He stood to his full height. “You have one last task, though. Go fetch Odette, and tell her to bring butchering tools. We shall all have meat tonight.”
Chapter 8
Within a month of Neptune’s death, old Émile, the town clerk who had avoided conscription at the last moment, died in his sleep from heart failure. Immediately DuFour took his place. His title was assistant to the acting mayor, himself a puppet from another town installed at the Kommandant’s direction. Now all papers passed through DuFour’s hands, all requests landed on his desk.
At first people considered this change an improvement, because Émile—might he rest in peace, but truth be told—was afflicted with savagely bad breath, as though he breakfasted on rotted garlic, and wore black coats whose shoulders were always distractingly snowed with dandruff. Also Émile moved at the pace of a snail, laboring out of his chair with a sigh, bending over a filing cabinet with one hand at the small of his back, and maintaining a pace such that a job which required at most three hours’ work would instead occupy the entire day.
By contrast, DuFour was as sharp as a map pin. Stamping forms and filing papers, after each transaction he rang a little bell. His efficiency compensated for his lack of charm.
Soon enough, however, the people of Vergers realized that DuFour was the worst sort of person to install in this position, because it gave him power. A request for increased rations because a child had been born, an application for permission to travel, formalization of a marriage license—everything passed within his bureaucratic jurisdiction. He was the waist of the hourglass, the throat of the bottle, and one thumb could stop the entire flow. After Mass one Sunday, Marguerite the tobacconist remarked that not even Saint Peter in heaven made so stinting a gatekeeper.
But there were consequences. A rations paper delayed meant hunger for a child, a travel form ignored thwarted the opportunity to visit an ailing relative before death arrived, and DuFour calculated with expert accuracy the villagers’ desperation for such things. He extorted shamelessly, scorned personal appeals, proved impervious
to pleas for mercy or haste.
One Monday morning when he arrived at work, Odette stood at his office door, wanting compensation for damage three drunken soldiers had done to her café on Saturday night.
“Wait,” he said with a sneer of superiority, turning to fumble with keys and unlocking his office door with a flourish. As Odette followed him through the open door, DuFour stopped in her path. “Wait.”
She paced in the hall, though there was no one ahead of her, while he pulled the door nearly closed. After some minutes passed, she peered through the opening. DuFour stood over the piles of paper on his desk, moving this stack here and that one there, then rubbing his hands together as if warming himself by a fire. More documents cluttered the windowsill.
“You worm,” she cried, throwing the door wide so that it banged against the wall cabinet. “These drunken oafs broke five of my chairs. Who the hell made you prince? I knew you before you wore trousers.”
DuFour drew himself up with a haughty sniff. “The compensation solicitation form,” he drawled, offering a long sheet of paper. “Complete it in triplicate and it will be processed in due course.”
“I see how it is.” Odette nodded. “Each of these pages is a little game for you, isn’t it?”
“The mayor and his advisers are pleased with my work.”
“So I fill out your form, and you take your sweet time processing it.”
He tented the fingertips of one hand on the fingertips of the other. “Naturally we give priority to the most urgent requests.”
“Naturally.” Odette tugged down on her shirt, by which she intended to convey a businesslike air, but which also inadvertently emphasized her large bosom. She leaned forward, palms atop all of his collected papers.
“Careful,” he warned. “These are my responsibilities.”
She lowered her voice to the range of a man’s. “Here is an invitation, you crawling beetle. Come to my café sometime, if you please. I will give you fine food and strong drink, free of charge, on the house. And when you are most at ease, full, drunk, most smug in your little power, I will plunge a knife into your neck.”
As she left the town hall, Odette passed Guillaume bicycling homeward, probably from some all-night vigil with a stricken animal. He studied her expression, then stopped, calling out to her, “What on earth are you so happy about?”
Chapter 9
Odette was not alone in having wants. In fact Emma began to suspect that the single animating energy of Vergers was want.
The spiral of desire included every villager—but the origin, the starting place, was Emma herself, who, on the anniversary of Philippe’s conscription date, found herself missing him so desperately she struggled to breathe, she could not sit still.
It was October, normally an interval of backbreaking labor as each farm brought in its harvest, but that year a quieter time for the villagers, and one of melancholy. With the beach forbidden by the occupying army, Emma could not visit the places she and Philippe had whispered and kissed. Because of an officers’ tent, she could not sit on the bluff where he had held her while she wept over Uncle Ezra. Due to mine placements, she could not hide in the gulch where on his last night she had allowed him parting favors—his hands on her skin, her softness at his touch a discovery only the two of them knew—that recurred so often in her daydreams.
As if she were the most confident woman who ever lived, that night Emma had opened the upper buttons of her dress to display herself for him. Philippe’s eyes bulged, but then he surprised them both by leaning forward and kissing her breasts. Her head swam with pleasure and surrender, and the ocean crashed at their feet. The memory still made her blush, though in the many months since then, the thrill in her heart had been replaced entirely by longing.
On that particular anniversary of remembrance and desire, Emma was meandering by the harbor, a stork soaring past without one flap of its wings, her yearning broadcasted like a beacon across the landscape, because when it comes to the ache of love, few places are superior to the seaside in October. Yves the fisherman trotted down the dock in her direction. In no mood for conversation, she began to move away, but he called out.
“Emmanuelle, one moment please.”
Everyone knew that Yves had the best singing voice in the village. Early risers heard his shanties as he set out in the gray dawn. Afternoon strollers eavesdropped on his humming while he repaired his nets. Odette confessed to entertaining unreligious thoughts when he rang the rafters during hymns at St. Agnes by the Sea. Thus his call from the docks was musical enough to hold Emma in place. He hiked up his foul-weather overalls and hurried down the gangplank to where she stood.
“How may I help you?” Emma asked, more out of manners than desire to assist.
“Well, that’s it, you see.” His cheeks were raw from the sea, his hands thick and callused. “Help is exactly what I need.”
Emma could not imagine how she could possibly aid a man such as this, his life rough and hardened. But after a glance over his shoulder, Yves continued.
“Each day now the soldiers are waiting when we come in, to confiscate our catch. They leave us only enough to live for another day, so we can continue to supply them.” Yves leaned closer. His forearms were huge. Somehow he managed to have no smell of fish on him, only rubber and faint motor oil. “If I had a bit more fuel, I could try a second haul later in the day, keeping all of the catch for our village. Every fin and gill.”
“How am I to help?” Emma asked, crossing her arms. “I have no fuel.”
“No.” Yves smiled. His teeth were bright and straight, a rarity in a town whose dentist had been conscripted with the others. “But you are friends with Pierre, the dairyman. He receives a ration for his tractor, though I have not heard it running in years. Also I passed by there the other day. He is down to three cows, so the crop work must be minimal.” Yves spied down the docks again before leaning closer still. “If he could spare a jug or two, it would mean cod for him, haddock for you, bream for the rest of us. On a good day, anyway.”
Emma heard her stomach growl. She knew an excellent recipe for tarragon cod. She also knew that Pierre had a fuel tank behind one of his barns, though she had never considered how much it held. “What do you want me to do?”
A soldier swaggered down the dock, rifle at his hip. “What’s the delay?” he snapped. “Leave your sweetheart and we finish the counting.”
“Right away.” Yves stepped back. “Bring fuel, Emmanuelle,” he whispered. “If I can fish, we can eat.”
The next morning Emma visited Pierre as he milked Antoinette, perched on his stool and all the while chewing on the mouthpiece of his pipe. Mémé sat on a huge rock in his dooryard, picking at the lichen that yellowed its northern side. Emma waited to ask—the yoke for draft horses wearing a cobweb, the ladder to the loft on its side like a man on vacation, the sack of chicken feed dusty from lack of use—until Pierre’s bucket was sufficiently filled that it no longer rang with each squeeze, but made a satisfying frothy thrum. Fuel? Why, yes, mademoiselle, his tank was nearly one quarter filled.
“It is my bank account,” Pierre explained. “My savings, in case times become more difficult before our rescuers come. The army gives me a tiny ration, mere drops, but over time it accumulates. Just like milk does, from a good girl.” He caressed the flanks of Antoinette, who flicked a fly from her ear with an expression as if she had winked. “However.”
Emma waited, rubbing the cow’s long nose. One quarter of a tank would not catch many fish. “Yes?”
“I might consider trading a portion, for a pouch of tobacco.” He paused his milking to frown into the bowl of his pipe. “You’ve no idea how I long for a decent smoke. It aches all the time, like a sore tooth.”
Next Emma sat in the parlor of Marguerite the tobacconist, her store long closed for lack of inventory. She nodded her aged head, confiding in Emma that she had heard rumors about a smuggling operation in Cherbourg. British tobacco, in small leather pouches to pr
event mold. Strong, peaty stuff. Marguerite was an obedient citizen, though, whose law-abiding ways extended to include the whims of the occupying army.
She sighed and smiled, displaying the gaps in her grin, tobacco stains on the remaining teeth. At age seventy-seven, she explained, her eyes were beginning to fail. It was to be expected, it was to be endured. However.
Her need was for a combination of light and faith. Marguerite could not last the long week between the Monsignor’s Sunday sermons. She needed her daily verses. But a candle flame was no longer sufficient for reading the Bible after supper. Could Emma somehow, miraculously, find her a lightbulb?
It was a circle of want. Emma pondered on these things as she wandered the village and missed her Philippe. Like a sad song, walking sharpened her sorrow, yet soothed it as well.
During her travels Emma came to notice that no one was wearing yellow stars anymore, and not because the occupying army had relaxed any regulations. The grocer, the rail-yard worker, two of Yves’s fellow fishermen, they were all gone.
She saw Monkey Boy, though, ambling along the hedgerows and whistling his little tune. She saw the draft horse Apollo, a huge-hooved giant wandering the world in search of Neptune, his partner under Pierre’s yoke for fifteen years, exerting identical power, at the identical pace.
Apollo stood observing at the edge of a ditch while five soldiers of the occupying army shoveled under a sixth one’s supervision, and Emma thought the horse did not look well: large-eyed, his ribs showing, his slow breathing as he took it all in. She came up and patted his giant flank, saying, “I know exactly how you feel.”
Later that day Emma passed a field above the sea, where barbed wire coiled not only along the top of the bluff, but in a long arc out to the dirt road. A soldier was nailing a sign to a thin post, then using the side of his hammer to pound the post into the clay. The sign bore a skull and crossbones, and a single word which provided as complete a declaration as any literate person would require: minen. There were four more signs, identical, in an arc around the field.
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