The Baker's Secret

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  She lifted her gaze. As if by design the men had lined up for her, left to right: Thalheim, the Kommandant, the Field Marshal, the officer with the pencil-thin mustache. Here stood every one of the men that she wanted to die. Forget the knife on her thigh. It was messy and slow and she would be overpowered. One grab of the rifle, however, one lift to her shoulder, one long squeeze on that trigger, and she would lay them low.

  Nothing could stop her, until it was too late.

  Of course the other officers, after a stunned moment, would annihilate her, a dozen guns, a hundred bullets, her existence blasted upon the bluff above where she had played childhood games and learned to swim and sometimes strolled with Philippe for romance. But then, what better place? It would happen too quickly for her to feel pain. All she needed to do was seize it: the gun, her destiny, the opportunity, and she would change the course of history. All she needed to do.

  Yet Emma did not act. The scene of slaughter replayed itself in her mind, the power of it, the certainty of success, while her arms hung dully at her sides. Despite years of occupation and oppression, despite the deaths of people she loved, still her desire for revenge remained frozen. Emma genuinely wanted those men to die, but she lacked the capacity to kill.

  The moment passed. The young guard returned to collect his weapon, handing Emma the empty canvas sack with no idea of the danger that had passed. The officers recommenced their tasks, arguing over maps or attending to the Field Marshal, while Emma thought of Uncle Ezra, of Guillaume, of Philippe and her father and the others taken away, of the many villagers who had shown so much courage, and knew with lacerating shame that she herself possessed none.

  Thalheim swaggered back, speaking with his mouth full. “I’ll grant you have talent in bread, but our nation’s rule will last one thousand years. What do you say to that?”

  “I think you are probably right,” Emma said, the first words she had uttered to him without bite in her voice. “I think that from here on, everything that happens to me, I deserve.”

  As she spoke a gust of wind swept in from the east, driving rain under the canopy so that the officers turned away. The air also caught Emma’s umbrella, snatched it tumbling across the bluff.

  As she hurried after it, Thalheim called out, “I wouldn’t chase that if I were you.” He chuckled. “That whole area is mined.”

  Emma halted where she stood, at the height of land, rain pelting her back. The umbrella cartwheeled twice, then toppled over the side.

  “Ha.” Thalheim chortled. “Are you upsets at losing your umbrella?”

  “No.” Emma continued to gaze over the bluff. “I am upset at being so weak.”

  As she watched, though, Emma had to admit that there was an elegance to the umbrella’s fall: like a trapeze artist, swaying close to the bluff and then away, a flower thrown overboard from a ship, smoothly back and forth, a feather fallen from a nest, gliding down to a place on the sand, where it landed without a sound.

  Chapter 21

  The laboring men received sunburns indeed, some more severely than others depending on complexion, but which swiftly became symbolic. Within days, people far from the construction site, farmers and shopkeepers, janitors and magistrates, had left their hats at home and cultivated a burn. Red skin manifested solidarity. Freckles became fashionable.

  As May arrived and the sunlight strengthened, people standing in the rations line could not resist the temptation to compare their tans. Odette was least darkened, because of her hours in the kitchen. Pierre had mottled skin, perhaps due to age. Monkey Boy was golden from his days in the trees. Mémé’s face had grown dappled, which made her eyes seem brighter.

  The darkest arms of all belonged to Emma. Her circuit of the town, its farms and forests, placed her in daylight hour upon hour, every day. Yet her most important work, the fuel that powered her entire engine of deceit and survival, took place before the sun was up.

  On each day following the Field Marshal’s visit, Emma continued to knead and shape and mark with a V her dozen compulsory baguettes, plus the two that were the baker’s secret. As the weeks passed, had the loaves been stacked together, they would have made a pile to feed multitudes.

  But then the fifth of June arrived. At dawn, Emma roused herself from a sleep so deep it allowed her a respite from hunger. As she crossed the barnyard, silenced Pirate with a bribe of barley, and put herself to work, she had no way of knowing that this day’s baguettes would be the last ones she made in her life.

  Straw is sinewy, like gristle. It takes strong wrists to grind the grass down. But Emma had mixed the dough so many times she barely noticed the effort. She paused now and then, only to tuck back a rebellious strand of hair. Soon the baguettes lay in their places, tanning as they baked, and Emma noticed the first daylight leaking between boards in the barn’s eastern wall. She went to the doorway, saw the pinking sky, and allowed herself a brief wander down the lane for a better view.

  At just that moment, the sun found an opening in the clouds. Daylight poured down on the barnyard, illuminating the old stone house, casting shadows through the hedgerows, making grass glint and crows rise, flooding the village square and every house along the way. It brought the warmth of awakening.

  The Goat stirred in the hog shed, having slept so hard on the shelf the planks left an impression in his cheek. The stink of the air was enough to make his eyes water. But around him stood all those wooden boxes he had smuggled there, two by two, for months. His legs lay across one stack as a miser sleeps atop his gleaming hoard. The captain in the house would never find these boxes. He was too concerned with keeping his fingers clean. The Goat sat up and rubbed his face with both hands.

  Pierre finished sharpening a pencil, packed the curls of wood into his pipe and wished for fresh tobacco as fervently as he had once wished for a bride. He squinted in the morning light, accepting that neither desire would be granted that day. Ambling into the side yard, where his girls stood awaiting milking, he held a match to his pipe and blew gray smoke into the sky.

  Fleur, the veterinarian’s daughter, dressed without speaking, tied the blue apron around her waist, and plunged her hands into the patch pockets to confirm that certain somethings were still in there. Then she went to wake her mother. Marie had all but ceased eating, ever since the day three soldiers took her behind the woodshed and she ordered Fleur to stay away. Perhaps a rind of cheese would appeal to Marie today.

  The war could not prevent an early June morning from glistening with dew. Hedgerows rang with the gossip of birds. In later years many villagers insisted they could not remember hearing any birds during the occupation, but of course they were there, flitting through the branches and calling over the fields.

  Cats prowled barns, Apollo wandered in search of Neptune, and Mémé clasped a pottery bowl with both hands, trying to recall whether her grandmother had made it, or her granddaughter. Time had grown so untrustworthy.

  Monkey Boy was skipping down the lane by the western well when he entered a tunnel of light, his shadow tall on the ground at his feet. At once he made his gait stiff-legged, lumbering like a giant, arms spread as though he were a tree. “Whishhh,” he sang, flourishing his fingers like leaves.

  The clouds closed, the sun vanished, and Emma broke from her reverie. She crossed the barnyard, knotting her hair. Pirate strutted alongside, quieter now that day had begun. She peered into the house to see Mémé at the stove making tea, the sight calming Emma for a moment.

  Then she heard a noise from the baking shed, realizing with a start that she had not yet put certain things away. She dashed across the barnyard, and there was Captain Thalheim, squatting beside her basin of ground straw. Emma pulled up short, skirt bunching around her legs.

  “Good morning, mademoiselle,” he said, straightening. As usual he was freshly shaven, his uniform neat. He nudged the mortar and pestle with his boot. “What we have here?”

  “Grain,” she said, swallowing hard. “A special grain. I use it to add body t
o the loaves.”

  The captain bent to pick up the bowl. “A special grain.”

  Emma’s heart fluttered. “A kind of grass, like wheat.”

  “To add body? What does this mean?”

  “So the loaves travel well, with a toothy crust,” she said.

  He sniffed the bowl’s contents. “You add this every day?”

  “If the dough feels weak, I do.”

  “We cannot be giving officers of weak bread.”

  “Of course not.”

  He nodded, considering. “You will eat some.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I do not know if it is poison, or filth, or some clever idea, but I do not trust this special grass. You will eat some now.”

  Emma had not swallowed one sip of water yet that day. Her throat was already parched. There was no way she could swallow straw, no matter how finely ground. She would gag, or possibly choke.

  But the captain had a spoon. Where had he found it? He motioned for her to sit on the stool where she’d been grinding earlier. He held a heaping spoonful in front of her face.

  “Now,” he said.

  And Emma opened her mouth.

  Chapter 22

  No deception lasts forever. Truth rises like good bread dough. Emma collapsed to the baking barn’s dirt floor, her breath blocked by a knot of yellow powder. Captain Thalheim stood with the spoon in his hand, his expression blank while the straw choked her. Emma’s vision became a tunnel, surrounded by gathering dark. Finally she hooked a finger in her mouth and scooped the dry knot out, coughing, wheezing relief through a cramping throat.

  “As I thought,” Captain Thalheim announced, his voice flat. He squatted beside her. “I must now report for duty. When I have made return, we will hear more about this special grass that chokes the baker.”

  His motorcycle gargled into life, and sped off with a flatulent clatter. Emma staggered to the barn door, and who was standing there but the Goat. He held a bucket of water.

  Emma wobbled past him toward the house, then fell to her knees. In an instant the Goat was beside her, one hand on the back of her neck, the other ladling water into her mouth. She swallowed and rinsed and spat to one side, then gulped greedily. Finally she caught her breath, and worked herself back to her feet. “Your hands are filthy.”

  He remained there on the ground, not answering.

  Mémé appeared at the farmhouse door. “Gypsy? Do we Gypsy now?”

  Emma scooped herself more water. Without turning her head she asked, “Do you have shoes on?”

  Mémé looked down at her stocking feet and laughed in surprise. “Shoes,” she said, holding up one finger as she vanished back into the house.

  Emma collected herself, scrutinizing the Goat as he knelt. His sleeves were worn at the elbows, his beret streaked with mud. He stank of pig. He fixed his gaze on the bucket, as though it would be wrong to look at her. Yet he had shown the audacity to offer help, and in a moment of weakness she had accepted it. At the notion of being indebted to the Goat, Emma reared back as a horse does from a snake in the road.

  A windup timer rang in the barn. The Kommandant’s loaves were ready. Emma swatted dirt from her dress as though it were an old rug, splashed her face from the bucket, and assessed the Goat once more. Still he knelt at her feet.

  “Do you have anything to say?”

  He touched his beret. “At your service, Emmanuelle.”

  “Oh, stand up,” she said, turning away. “Where is your self-respect?”

  Not an hour later, Emma had composed herself sufficiently to hand the Kommandant’s aide his dozen loaves indifferently, and he puttered off on his motorbike. The dust from his departure still hung in the air as she organized her daily cart of tricks: containers and loaves, items for barter or salvation, tools and necessities, all under a pile of cloth and jackets and means of concealment. She had nearly choked, and the captain had found her out, but the work could not wait.

  “Gypsy Gypsy,” Mémé cried, rapping the knuckles of one hand against the other, harder and harder until Emma reached over to calm her.

  “Are you coming with me today?” she asked. “Or do you want to water the garden?”

  “Garden,” Mémé said with a fierce expression.

  “Lovely.” Emmanuelle lowered a tin watering can from a hook inside the barn and handed it to Mémé. The old woman hugged the can to her chest with both arms. Emma caressed her grandmother’s cheek. “Can you keep out of trouble? I’ll be back for the noon dinner.”

  “Come. I want.”

  “Then please do,” Emma said. Shoving the cart’s clutter aside, she placed a pillow in the middle. Mémé settled her rump there. Emma went to the front and slipped the harness around her shoulders, Mémé’s feet dangling half a meter off the ground.

  “Gypsy,” the woman sang to herself, squeezing the watering can with her thighs. “Gypsy.”

  And they set off to keep the village alive.

  Emma’s habit was to distract Mémé during the actual exchanges, lest she blurt something later in front of Thalheim. It meant inventing games to occupy the old woman’s mind—count-the-birds proved a favorite, as was how-many-flowers. It would have been pleasant if Emma had not possessed such strong memories of her grandmother at the peak of her intellect. Wise Mémé had gone simple, aged Mémé had become childlike. Sometimes Emma returned from a transaction to find her grandmother sitting straight-legged on the ground, petting a frog or contemplating a grasshopper. Once Mémé was toying with a wasp, yet inexplicably went unstung.

  That June day there were no birds in sight, and the hedgerow lacked blooms for anyone to count. At the base of a knoll, Emma poured a bit from her canteen into the watering can in Mémé’s lap. Swirling the liquid within, she tapped the side with her fingertips. It made a wobbling, musical sound. Mémé’s face brightened. She hoisted the can near one ear and tapped it for herself.

  “That should keep you for a bit,” Emma said, kissing her grandmother’s brow, then hurrying up the rise to see. Yes, the red scarf flew from Michelle’s upper window like the national flag of indecency. The motorcycle stood in the yard, leaning on its stand like a braggart on a lamppost. Emma angled a small brown egg into the cleft of the chestnut tree. Then with one hand she raised her dress a few inches, the easier to bustle up the hill. With the other hand, she held a large glass jug. In a swift motion she uncapped the fuel tank, poked one end of the black hose she had stolen from the army’s truck into the opening, covered the other end with her mouth, and sucked.

  There was an art to siphoning which Emma had yet to master. Sometimes she pulled exactly long enough, moving her mouth away at the perfect moment while pointing the tip of the hose at the jug. More often she sucked for too long, earning herself a sip of the petrol. No amount of spitting, nor any food she ate for the rest of the day, would rid her of the rancid flavor. It tasted like deceit.

  That morning the fuel had just reached her mouth when she spun the hose away, only a trace touching her lips. Good thing she had no kissing planned, Emma mused, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. The jug made a musical tinkling as it filled.

  Faintly, too, she could hear Mémé tapping the watering can down the hill. It provided a reassuring rhythm. By contrast the bungalow behind her remained silent. Emma did not bother to imagine what might be taking place within. It served her purposes and that was enough.

  The other technique she had not yet learned was how to stop the flow before the tank was empty. After all, the lusty lieutenant needed to drive several kilometers back to the motor pool, where the motorbike’s next rider would fill the tank not knowing the machine had sat unused nearly the whole time it had been gone. If Planeg ran out of gas on the way back to duty, it would reveal what had been stolen. But Emma had no way of telling how full the tank was, or when to stop. Eventually she settled on draining it completely, then pouring a portion back in from the jug. Better not to arouse suspicion.

  Emma straightened, rubbing a sore place on her
neck. Was that the sound of an airplane? She squinted north, the sky blank, when the source of the noise revealed itself: another motorcycle, burning a trail of dust uphill toward the place where she stood.

  She yanked out the hose—no time for a partial refill—capped the tank, and scurried for the woods. Had the rider seen her? Emma could not run with the jug, but she hugged to the edge of the brush, working her way down toward Mémé. This motorcycle was larger than Planeg’s, and roared up to the front of the bungalow. The soldier hopped off, leaning the bike on its stand but leaving his engine running.

  “Planeg?” he shouted. “Plannn-eg.”

  There was no response. Emma inched farther down the hill, fringing the rough bracken. If she were caught, how would she explain being in this place? With a jug of petrol? And would there be enough in the tank for the lieutenant’s return trip?

  “Damn it, Planeg,” the soldier yelled. He pounded the blue door with the side of his fist.

  An upstairs window opened and the lieutenant’s head poked out. His arms and shoulders were bare. He and the soldier exchanged bursts of words, the new arrival’s gestures expressing urgency and Planeg’s tone one of reluctance. The soldier outside gave a last volley of anger, scuffing his boot in the dirt before climbing on his machine and barreling down the hill. He did not notice Emma, bent small at the edge of the woods.

  Moments later Planeg burst out of the house buckling his belt. He wore his uniform jacket but the shirt beneath was open and untucked. Kicking the motorcycle into life, he popped a helmet on his head. Michelle appeared at the doorway, but whatever she called to him was lost over the engine’s grumble.