Odette stood. “What did I do to deserve this treatment? Serve the Kommandant undercooked eggs?”
“It has nothing to do with deserving.”
“Where’s the justice in that?”
He lowered himself back on the stool. “Making you people obey is more important than justice.”
“What do you think he will do with me?”
He shrugged. “Guess.”
It was as though he had dropped a rock into her stomach. Which was worse, her fate or his indifference to it? Odette paced the cell, trying to imagine options. Was there anything she could offer the Kommandant? Would any negotiation be possible? Would he have any interest in the facts?
She knew the answer. She had witnessed the occupying army’s methods for four years. There were no exits, no escapes. To be suspected was to be guilty, and to be guilty was to be dead.
She must leave the cell, and town hall, and village entirely. Take the bag of cash hidden behind the stove, and at least until the end of the war, abandon the life she had known. But how? This guard was as simple as a pudding. She guessed his age at twenty, perhaps twenty-one. What did boys that age desire? She remembered all too well what they had desired of her, back in that day. With breasts developed larger and earlier than most, Odette used to joke that not a fellow in town could say what color her eyes were. Why would this guard be any different, except perhaps to feel more desperate after life in a garrison?
There was one move left to make, and if it failed then the game was over. Odette stood with hands on her hips. “Soldier, what is your name?”
“Kreutz.”
“Corporal Kreutz?”
“Private.”
“Well, Private Kreutz, I would rather not die as an example to scare my friends into behaving themselves.”
He opened the bolt on his gun, squinting into the opening. “So?”
“So.” She came to the front of her cell, leaning against the metal until the bars pressed her flesh. “So a woman would do anything to survive. You know that, I believe. In the end, this is what we can offer to save our lives. This is what we can give.”
Kreutz stared at Odette directly for the first time, her mannish body, her giant breasts, and he burst out laughing.
“Ha ha,” Odette said, tentatively.
But the soldier laughed easily, swinging his arms a bit as he swaggered over to the cell. “What are you offering?”
Odette swallowed hard. She had hooked him, that easily, but with no next step in mind, only to get the cell door open. “Does the captive dictate the terms of negotiation?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Kreutz said, still chuckling. As he reached the cell door, however, his face grew serious. “When I was ten my grandmother died, and I had to help my mother clean out her apartment.”
Odette was surprised by this turn, but she drew nearer. “God rest her soul.”
The guard made an annoyed face before continuing. “At one point I moved a table that had stood against the wall for as long as I could remember. Behind it I found a head of garlic, turned black. Who knows how many years the thing had been rotting back there?”
He leaned closer, hooking a finger over one of the cell bars, as though he were playing the low note on a harp. Odette moved across from him. “Yes?”
“That,” the soldier said. “That is what women smell like in your country. Unwashed. Disgusting.”
Odette winced, but the soldier had grown talkative. “And you?” He laughed again, rocking back on his heels. “Do you even have a sex in there, with all of that smelly garlic blubber? Ha.”
Odette felt a wave of shame the length of her body. How could she have forgotten that her mother was the only person ever to call her beautiful? Idiocy it was, to attempt a seduction. What had been impossible at twenty was doubly impossible now.
“You don’t have to be cruel,” she said, retreating. “I am still a human being, you know.”
He sneered. “I would rather mate with a dog.”
The woman curled up on her bunk, hugging her knees to her chest. No jail could equal the iron bars in the heart.
Kruetz returned to the trash basket and dropped in two fistfuls of papers. He bent forward as the flames turned his face yellow and then brilliant red.
The night was one long fever of hallucination. Emma saw jellyfish in the sky, their bodies like overturned bowls, their tentacles dangling. Next she dreamed of Mémé, who grunted like a sailor hauling anchor as she dragged a body across the barnyard and away. Where had a body come from, to lie in the dirt like that, and who had showed such inconsiderate manners to leave Mémé with the chore of removing it?
Lucid moments visited at intervals. When dawn came, so would the captain and his revenge. What wrong she had done him, Emma could not recall. It did not matter. He would kill her. He had pledged himself to it.
Emma did not dwell on her own extinction. It was difficult enough to breathe through a nose clogged with dirt and blood.
The Goat, Didier, that was the body. Now she remembered. Mémé had found the knife, too, wiping it on her sleeve before tucking it into the folds of her tunic. Emma heard the sound of splashing water. Opening one eye, the other apparently unwilling, she saw Mémé empty a bucket of suds against the side of the baking shed. Why was she washing those boards, how silly, while the water made a rivulet that flowed toward her, another bucket thrown and a little puddle began to form on the ground near her face, it made the shape of a paisley.
We are as temporary as clouds, Emma thought, lolling onto her back. Lovely and high and sunlit, then gone on the next wind to some other place and shape. Oh, the barn was dirty with Didier, that’s right. The mess of his execution. So much information in his final glance, too. And then she returned to the darkness.
A jolt of pain startled Emma awake. She sucked air, gasped, felt her lungs inflate as though she had exhaled hours ago, and it brought a sharp stab to all of her left-side ribs. Emmanuelle was not finished yet.
With her second breath came worry. If she died, who would care for Mémé, putting up with her stubbornness and calming her with tenderness? Who would straw the dough to make extra loaves? Who would bring Michelle her egg and Yves his fuel and Pierre his tobacco and more eggs to Fleur and her damaged mother, Marie, on and on, Odette, the priest, and Monkey Boy? No one. If you want to know your worth in this world, make a list of the people who will starve when you die.
Who should come to mind then, like a memory of school letting out on a child’s spring day, but Philippe. How she loved him, Emma admitted it now: his earnestness, his quiet voice, the inability to hide his desire. How they had wanted one another, of course it had always been mutual. It all seemed so small and young and long ago. How frightened they had been of each other. Now they both knew real fear, the ways it changed people, hardened them. Would the war grind all of Philippe’s innocence into dust, as it had hers?
Emma remembered the sight of the top of his head, on that night when he bent to kiss her breasts while she watched in excited disbelief. Now her dress was torn wide, her body nakedly exposed. Probably the captain had seen her, but the nearness of death overwhelmed any modesty. Her consciousness faded again for some time.
In the hour before dawn Emma’s fever broke. She felt pain for real then, but her mind had calmed and she knew the ground beneath her. One eye was swollen shut, but with the other she saw Mémé, sitting near in the dirt, keeping watch.
The old woman saw the eye open, lifted her granddaughter’s head with care, and brought a glass of water to her lips. Although some spilled on Emma’s face and neck, she gulped greedily.
What was better than water? Elixir, life-giver, healer. With each swallow she felt the dirt washed not away, but deeper into her body, sluicing the dust and blood until she could breathe.
With a soft cloth Mémé washed Emma’s face, jerking away at the least wince, wiping her nostrils clear and dabbing around her damaged eye. The air grumbled from the direction of the village
, the sky glowed with fires, but in that barnyard there was a moment’s peace. Then Mémé raised Emma’s head and scooted her lap underneath, making a pillow of her thighs.
Emma stared at the sky, feeling the return of clarity. Where could she go to avoid the captain? Should she take Mémé, too? How much of a journey was she capable of making?
Before any answers had come, Emma began hallucinating again. Those jellyfish in the sky had returned. No, they were the white seeds of a blown dandelion, swept by the wind. Or no again, they were parasols. Like so many fine ladies had gone boating on a summer’s day, parasols here and there all over the sky.
She remembered her umbrella on the beach, how artfully it had swung in the wind, and these hallucinations did the same thing. There were dozens, hundreds, all over the predawn sky.
Something was different, though, in her one-eyed vision. At the end of the handle, in the place of a hook these umbrellas had some unusual shape, what was it?
All at once she knew, and the whole world was revealed. On all of those umbrellas, in the place of a hook, there was a man. Descending ever so slowly in the June night sky, hundreds of men, thousands, each riding his silken jellyfish down to her village, and it was no dream.
And with the advent of these strange angels, the world became exactly as the Monsignor had foretold.
Part Five
Hell on Earth
Chapter 32
Dawn on the sixth of June delivered the loudest day in the history of the earth. Planes, bombs, responding ground fire, engines of tanks and trucks, all created a din so constant it seemed as if the hedgerows were shouting from their crowns.
The last hours of the night performed a departing trickery, too, as fires on the horizon snapped and climbed, and the sky oranged before Tuesday had actually begun. Emma lay on the kitchen floor facing east, thinking the colors were strangely beautiful, a halo on the land, when the sun rose, bringing a day too bright for the flames to be seen across a distance as anything more than wavering air beneath rising billows of black.
With that, the source of the roar appeared to be the sea. What strange monster had been unleashed? What appetite must it possess? Whom would it devour on this day?
Thalheim feared the quartermaster, but then, everyone did. Fat as a zeppelin, unflappable, aware of every nut and bolt in his beehive warren of supplies, he maintained order from his throne—a metal office chair atop a pile of wooden pallets—through sheer intimidating bulk, plus a whistle with which he was famously communicative. Despite the deep-of-the-night hour, soldiers of every need and disposition stood in respectful single file, waiting for the quartermaster’s attention. With the air battle under way and the invasion imminent, no one wanted to find himself low on ammunition. Thalheim stepped past them all, pulling rank because of his new assignment. Yet he had never dared to ask the quartermaster’s name.
But that whistle shrieked, and the man was scowling down at him. “State your business.”
“Message delivery for the Kommandant,” Thalheim said, waving the envelope with its official seal. He used his good arm, the other one sore and bandaged where Emma had slashed him.
The man-blimp took out his whistle long enough to spit on the ground, then point with a beefy arm. “Bike R7H has fuel. Return immediately. No joy rides today.”
Thalheim reached the armed checkpoint before daybreak, declared his business, spoke the password, and parked his motorcycle by the front door of a palatial villa. Moments later a corporal ushered him into a room with ornate wallpaper and fine furnishings, where he saluted despite the pain in his shoulder.
The colonel sat sipping tea. A bald man, who kept his monocle in place by maintaining a constant sneer, he nonetheless drank with pinkie erect. Setting the delicate teacup in its saucer on a table, he held out his hand for the envelope.
Normally Thalheim would have no idea what the contents of an officer’s communication might be, but in this case the colonel made it no secret. His eyes went wide as he read, the monocle falling to dangle from a strap clipped to his collar.
“Now he wants tanks?” he scoffed. “Now he wants me to bring tanks?”
Thalheim knew better than to speak, especially as the colonel stood and began to pace.
“Does he have any goddamn idea whose permission I must ask before I can do that? Does your imbecile commander have any idea?” He crumpled the paper and threw it on his desk, then spied the teacup, and swept his arm so that cup and saucer smashed on the far wall.
The maroon blotch on the wallpaper reminded Thalheim of something, though he could not say what. He waited until the storm had passed and the senior officer came to rest by the window, monocle restored. The captain clicked his heels together. “Sir, will there be a return communication?”
The colonel spun, as if surprised to discover the messenger still present, but then he spoke quietly. “Tell him it is far too late for such politics,” he said. “Tell him I said to go to hell.”
Thalheim saluted, and hurried from the room.
The engine of the motorcycle was loud enough that he did not notice anything special on the return trip. But when he paused between two fields to relieve himself, Thalheim heard the explosive roar of battle in the distance. He switched on his staff radio.
At first it crackled and buzzed. Then the anonymous authoritative voice, which he’d heard deliver announcements countless times, now declared flatly: the invasion had begun. While moving his arm in small circles to test where the knife wound was tender, Thalheim listened to the full report. Enemy maneuvers were now under way along nearly ninety kilometers of coastline. All troops were ordered to shoot any person seen cooperating with the invading forces, as well as any person giving shelter to enemy soldiers, sailors, or airmen.
Thalheim expected orders on where to report, the usual instructions unit by unit. Instead the broadcast ended. He waited, but there was nothing more. He raised his head, finding himself astride a motorcycle with broad fields on either side. He checked his pistol to be sure it was fully loaded. Then he started up, riding full throttle back toward the garrison.
Thalheim’s first stop was the mess tent, where he found a mystery. Normally at that time of day the area would be crowded and loud, hundreds of soldiers stuffing their bellies before the morning change of the watch. But now? No one present, not so much as a punished private peeling potatoes. One feral cat prowled by the serving tables, then spied him and darted out of sight. Tent flaps rose and billowed in the breeze.
He piloted to the supply depot to return the motorcycle. But the controlled place he’d left hours earlier had descended into chaos. The quartermaster was attempting to bring order but it was futile, his waving arms and shrill whistle ignored while senior officers shouted orders, lower ranks and privates ran like kitchen bugs exposed by an overhead light, trucks, machine-gun-mounted cars and half-tracks left without the driver fueling, or signing out, or performing any of the usual formalities.
The captain stood observing, waiting to see if a line would form or hierarchy coalesce. But no, the quartermaster continued to bellow, and departing troops continued to ignore him.
Thalheim rode past a cluster of arguing soldiers, reaching the place where his unit’s vehicles parked. The space, normally filled by three transport trucks, a mobile machine gun, and a command car, was as empty as an old man’s mouth. Whatever glory they were to accomplish that day, he would not be part of it.
Riding back to the motorcycle’s designated place, Thalheim struggled to stifle a surge of shame. He had done nothing wrong. He had followed orders and done his duty, as a good soldier should. The only question was what step he ought to take next.
As if in answer, a shell screamed overhead, clearing the commissary and landing hundreds of yards farther inland—but with an explosion so loud it concussed the air.
What could one man do? He could seek his place, and find his duty. Thalheim checked the fuel in several motorcycles, till he found one with a full tank, whereupon he gave
himself authority to commandeer it. The colonel’s reply contained nothing that the Kommandant needed to hear. And Thalheim had to go to the water. He had to see for himself.
Odette sat in her cell, wishing she had possessed the presence of mind before leaving the kitchen to snatch the cheese cutter. A strong thick wire with wooden handles on each end, it would have made a perfect tool to garrote the contemptible Kreutz. The idea of it gave her a bleak satisfaction as she passed the night awake on the bunk, hours elongated because without a window she could not tell when dawn approached.
Yet she must have dozed at some point, because when a fraction of daylight did sneak down the stairwell into the basement, a new guard occupied the stool, and he with soft cheeks and slender, hairless wrists: a boy. The gun and uniform did not matter. With every detonation from above, she saw clearly, he flinched. What use could she make of his youth?
Pierre sat milking the first of his girls, wondering if a soldier would come to collect the pails that day. He patted his wool vest’s pockets again, trying to remember where he had left his pipe. Not in the hayloft, thank heaven. He remembered filling his bowl later, over by the eastern well. But where?
DuFour splashed water on his face, rinsed his mouth with anise, breakfasted on acorn tea. How was it that his loyalty to the occupying army did not merit rationing him some actual tea leaf? He dressed in professional fashion, set his beret in place, all while considering the documents he must process that day, the dispositions and requests, while making sure to allot time for a gloating visit to the café woman in jail.
DuFour paused in the entry of his home, relishing that particular prospect, how humbled she would be. And how pleased the Kommandant, possibly impressed at how his humble clerk had caused the woman to entrap herself. DuFour opened his door with a snap to his step. It lasted only a moment, gone before he had reached the street, as a gust brought thick smoke over the grass, the foul smell of rubber burning. Only then did the old man’s nighttime visit return to disquiet his mind. Should he actually go to work?
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