The Resistance

by Peter Steiner

  They approached a great stone building with enormous wooden doors suspended from rollers on metal tracks. The count unlocked the padlock and slid the doors aside. The tractor was parked just inside, covered with a tarpaulin. The two men pulled the tarpaulin aside. Onesime climbed onto the seat of the tractor, pulled out the choke, and pressed the ignition switch. After several tries, the engine started with a roar. Gray smoke belched from the exhaust stack.

  Outside, the count pulled a cover from the mower bar while Onesime drove the tractor from the barn. The two men maneuvered the bar into place and secured the hitch. “Off you go, Onesime,” said the count.

  “Oui, monsieur,” said Onesime, and saluted. The tractor sputtered and bucked a bit, and he closed the choke. He put the tractor in gear and drove away as the count stood and watched. Onesime drove through the trees and past a small pond. A heron stood peering into the water. It took flight as the tractor approached.

  When Onesime broke from the trees, the sun nearly blinded him. The hay lay before him, a sea of various greens with bits of color where wildflowers were in bloom. Onesime drove to the edge of the field. He pulled the lever that lowered the mower bar until it hung close above the ground. He pushed another lever, and the mower blade started slicing back and forth. He put the tractor in gear and began cutting.

  The grass collapsed in apparent ecstasy as the mower touched it, as though it had been waiting for this moment. The sweet aroma of the hay filled Onesime’s nostrils. He closed his eyes briefly and smiled to himself. He did not breathe too deeply or the dust would make him sneeze. The seat of the tractor was heavily sprung, and Onesime bounced up and down easily as he mowed up one side of the field, around the edges, and down the other side. He went around the field, moving in toward the center after each circuit.

  It was a large undulating field, and it took him the rest of the day to cut it all. Mowing with the horses would have taken longer. The new hay lay on the ground like a great, fragrant blanket. Birds came from everywhere to feast on the insects he had stirred up. He drove back to the barn and dropped the mower bar where he had picked it up. He left the tractor inside the barn. He found his bicycle where he had left it and rode home.

  The next day he was back early to get the tractor and mow the other fields. He stopped at the château, and Maurice again accompanied him to the barn. He filled the tank with petrol from a great, black storage tank at the back of the barn. Again the count helped Onesime mount the mower bar. Then he rode with him to the front gate.

  Maurice stood lightly on one foot on the tractor step and held on to the handle at the top of the engine cover. When they reached the gate, he hopped down and unlocked the gate. He swung one side of it open and waved Onesime through. “I will leave it unlocked until you get back,” he said. Onesime touched his hand to his cap and drove off down the road.

  The day was as beautiful as the day before had been, and Onesime was happy to be out on the tractor. The fields he would cut today lay two kilometers west of town, just below the Beaumont vineyards. This was a parcel of smaller fields. They adjoined one another but were separated by fences or by the Dême, which wound its way through and between them. Mowing here was more complicated but also more amusing. And Onesime could take his lunch beside the small river or in the shade beside one of the maisons des vignes, the small huts scattered here and there in the vineyards overlooking the fields.

  The cutting went well. Onesime maneuvered the tractor along the bank of the river by the poplars. He mowed around the periphery of the field. Then he went back and forth across the field inside the border he had cut. The delicious smell of the cut grass almost made him giddy.

  He decided to have his lunch at the hut just above where he had been cutting. He pulled the tractor up beside it and opened the hamper, where his mother had put half a baguette, a small round of goat cheese from old Monsieur Courbeau, and a jar of tea. There were radishes from the garden too and a peach.

  Onesime spread his jacket on the ground in the shade in front of the little house. He could see the entire valley spread out before him. There was Saint-Léon in the distance, up against the ridge that formed the other side of the valley. Off to the north was the village of L’Homme and its network of farm roads. Someone was cutting hay by L’Homme. Onesime could not tell who it was, but the air was so dry and still that he could hear the clack-clack of the sickle bar and the clucking of the driver as he urged his horse along. In another direction two men were cutting a small field with scythes. It looked like the Livrists, Marie Piano’s brothers, even though they too were too far away for him to be sure.

  Maurice de Beaumont had been the first farmer in the valley to have a tractor, and there were still only a few of them around. Everyone else mowed behind horses or by hand. It still made sense to cut hay that way. The fields were small, and you could get more of the hay than you could with a tractor. With a tractor there was more waste. And now there was the problem getting petrol.

  Some had already managed to rake their hay into windrows, and in one field—he thought it must be Bandot; they always managed to be early—they had already mounded the hay into long coils ready to be loaded onto wagons and taken into the barn.

  A truck lumbered along the main road that passed through L’Homme in the direction of Le Mans. Onesime heard the bells on the church in L’Homme and then a minute later those in Saint-Léon. It was noon. He sat with his legs drawn up and his arms around his knees.

  A small convoy of dark green trucks came slowly down the highway. They turned up a narrow road in his direction. Onesime did not know why he did it exactly, but he slid farther back into the shade to be out of sight. As the trucks reached the Bandot place, they turned south. Each truck had to stop and back up several times to negotiate the narrow turn between the house and barn. They proceeded slowly and then stopped maybe four or five hundred meters from where he sat. The drivers turned off their engines and stepped out of the cabs. He could hear their voices as they hollered to one another.

  “I could have understood their words if I had known German,” he said to Jean that evening as they were clearing the supper table. “They unloaded something.”

  “Bandot’s cave?” said Jean.

  “Either his or the one next to it. I think that one belongs to the count, but I’m not sure.”

  “The count has lots of caves,” said Jean. “I doubt that he even knows where they all are.”

  “Do you?” said Onesime.

  Jean laughed.

  “I had my binocs,” said Onesime. “I got the truck numbers.”

  “What are you boys going on about?” said Anne Marie Josquin from the next room.

  “Oni needs me to help him with Beaumont’s hay,” said Jean.

  * * *

  The next day the beautiful weather continued and so did the hay making all over the valley. Onesime and Jean went out to turn the hay Onesime had cut.

  “Shall we do it by hand?” Onesime asked.

  “Take the tractor,” said the count.

  They attached the rake behind the tractor and drove out to the fields. They took turns driving the tractor. The rake had many long legs, like a row of grasshoppers. The legs contracted and rotated on springs that released them so that they tossed the hay in the air. Whoever was walking behind caught the hay on a large wooden fork and shook and turned it and spread it on the ground so that it would dry more quickly and more evenly. It was important to have the hay completely dry. Two years before, a farmer in the next valley by Bueil-en-Touraine had taken his hay in too soon. As it settled in the barn, the moisture still in the hay caused it to begin decomposing, which caused it to heat up. A week after he had taken it in, the smoldering hay burst into flame, and an hour later the barn was in ruins.

  After a few hours Onesime and Jean sat in front of the hut and ate their lunch. The convoy Onesime had seen arrive the day before was gone. He trained the binoculars on where the Bandot cave must be, but the angle from here was bad, and there was n
othing to be seen.

  “Let me look,” said Jean. He peered through the binoculars. “There are quite a few caves down there,” he said. “Including Bandot’s, which is pretty shallow, and some Beaumont caves. I don’t know how deep they are.”

  “Have you been in them?”

  “Bandot’s, once,” said Jean. “To taste his wine. That whole lane there—you see where the willow is?—has caves all along it.”

  “Look at that,” said Onesime. Jean lowered the binoculars and looked in the direction Onesime was pointing. “It’s Beaumont’s car, isn’t it?”

  Jean lifted the binoculars. “It is.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “He’s alone.” They watched the car approach and then turn where the trucks had turned.

  “He’s stopping right by Bandot’s cave. Right where the Germans were.”

  “What’s he up to?” said Jean. “He’s getting out. He’s by himself. He’s carrying something.”

  “Can you see what it is?”

  “No. It looks like something long, something rolled up. Like a carpet or something.”

  “Let’s go see,” said Onesime.

  Jean lowered the glasses. “You mean sneak up on him?”

  “No. We don’t have to sneak. He knows we’re here. We can just go down. It’s perfectly normal.”

  They stopped the tractor behind the gray sedan. There were tire marks in the dust where the German trucks had stopped the day before. The count was nowhere in sight. The heavy wooden door to one of the caves was open, and they could see that an electric light was on. Onesime walked to the door of the cave. “Monsieur,” he called. “Are you there? Monsieur?”

  There was no answer, so Onesime stepped inside. He called again.

  “Who is it?” said Beaumont, coming from farther inside. “What do you want?” Onesime and Jean were silhouettes against the open door.

  “It’s me, Onesime Josquin, monsieur. Jean is here too. Is everything all right? Do you need any help?”

  “Ah, Onesime,” he said. “It’s you. No. No, thank you, I don’t need any help. Thank you.” He stepped into the light. His pants were dusty, and he brushed them off. “What are you doing here? Hello, Jean.”

  “Hello, monsieur,” said Jean, and removed his cap as though they were in the count’s home.

  “We were having lunch at one of the huts. We saw you drive up and wondered if you needed a hand,” said Onesime.

  “And we wanted to tell you,” said Jean, looking at Onesime. “We’re only about a third done, so we’re not going to finish.”

  “That’s right, monsieur. It’s thick, and it’s taking more time to rake and turn than the earlier crop. There’s more hay than last year. It’s a good year, isn’t it, Jean? So I don’t know how long it will take, and once it’s ready I don’t know whether it will fit in the second barn. You should probably open the third barn, just in case. And we might need some help to get it in. I can get two others to help, and we can get it done faster.”

  “We already talked about that, Onesime,” said the count.

  “I know,” said Onesime, “but not about the extra barn. I wanted to ask you about that specifically.”

  “It’s empty,” said Beaumont. “I’ll open it and clean it out.”

  “I know the roof is fixed,” said Onesime. “Do you want any help cleaning it out?”

  “The roof is fixed,” said the count. “It’s mostly cleaned out already.”

  “All right then; thank you, monsieur,” said Onesime. “If you need any help with it, let us know. We’ll get back to raking then, right, Jean? The weather is perfect, so we better get back to it.”

  They were about to leave when Onesime stopped and turned. “By the way, monsieur, there were some Germans here yesterday. A convoy. I thought you should know, monsieur.”

  The count stood silently for a moment before he spoke. “A convoy, you say? Here?”

  “Oui, monsieur. They seemed to unload something into one of the caves. I couldn’t tell which one. But since your cave is here, I thought you should know.”

  The count paused again before he said, “Well, that doesn’t concern me, does it? And don’t let it concern you.” Another pause. “But thank you for telling me.”

  “Very well, monsieur. Well, Jean, let’s go. We have some hay to cut.”

  The count watched the two men turn to leave. Then he said, “Wait a minute. Before you go, there is something you can help me with. Come with me. Both of you. There are some timbers I’ve got stored here that I wanted to move eventually. And since you’re here, I can’t do it by myself, and since you’re here … follow me.” He turned and walked into the cave.

  An electric line looped along the ceiling, and every fifteen meters or so a bare bulb was attached to the top of the rough stone vault. The light they put out was dim, and so the three men moved mainly in darkness between islands of twilight. They walked on for two hundred meters and then turned abruptly to the left. A locked door blocked their way. The count took a large key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. They stepped inside.

  They found themselves in an enormous rectangular room lit by one bare bulb suspended from the center of the ceiling. There was a large fireplace in one wall. The floor was partly covered with huge stone tiles. There was a pile of timbers in the center of the room. A large wooden tablet was leaning against the wall opposite the fireplace. There were a table and some chairs beside the tablet. What looked like a rolled-up carpet lay across the table.

  “I want to move these timbers to the side of the room,” said the count.

  “Where do you want us to take them, monsieur?” asked Jean.

  “Just over there and against the wall,” said the count. “Out of the way.”

  “And what about all this,” said Onesime, pointing to the tablet and the furniture.

  “That stays where it is,” said the count.

  The men carried the timbers to the side of the cave.

  “Did someone live here once?” said Onesime, looking at the carved fireplace and the high ceiling.

  “During the revolution. Some of the Beaumonts hid here.”

  “You could almost live here now,” said Jean.

  “I doubt it,” said Beaumont. “And why would you want to?”

  * * *

  “Who locks a cave inside a cave?” said Onesime as they drove the tractor back up the hill. “And what was on that big wooden tablet?”

  “A map,” said Jean.

  “You saw it?”

  “One corner was pulled away from the board. It looked like a map.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know. But it was a map. It was white with green and red roads.”

  “Was it a military map?” Onesime had seen military maps that used those colors.

  “I couldn’t tell,” said Jean.

  “And what about his reaction to the Germans?” said Onesime.

  “Seemed normal to me,” said Jean.

  “Maybe. But was it that he didn’t care or already knew? I have to think, if the Germans were doing something next door to my cave, I’d be interested.”

  “Maybe he already knew. Would your reaction be any different if someone told you the Germans were in Grandfather’s cave? I mean, you don’t know how to react, do you? If you’re too interested, they might think … one thing; if you’re not interested enough, they’ll think something else. Since the Germans arrived, words have lots of meanings they didn’t have before.”

  “It was like he wanted us to see the room, to know it was there,” said Onesime.

  When they had turned all the hay, Onesime climbed down from the tractor. He took a rake and joined Jean raking the hay into windrows. Insects rose everywhere, and birds darted to and fro. Swallows swooped close to the two men as they worked their way up the field and then back down again. Some years you had to wait days before you could take in the hay. But it had not rained for two weeks, and the weather was hot and dry. Th
e hay would be dry enough in one more day to put in the barn.

  The next morning when Onesime and Jean arrived, Jacques Courtois and August Pappe were already waiting. Their bicycles were leaning against a post. They stood with their rakes under their arms. They put out their cigarettes in the dust, pulled their caps down low over their eyes, and the four men began working, turning and collecting the windrows and shaping them into stacks two meters high and two meters wide. When one stack was finished they moved down the row and began the next. Most people in this part of the country put their hay in coils, but the count liked his hay stacked just in case rain came before they got it all in, even though no rain was expected. They worked quickly, and by the end of the morning they had finished stacking two-thirds of the hay.

  Onesime looked across the rest of the field. “We can get some into the barn yet today,” he said. “But tomorrow looks good too.”

  The men sat in the shade by the wine hut. They would have avoided the climb if they could have, but it was hot and there was no deep shade anywhere else. They looked out over the fields. Someone was cutting a small field. You could see three men swinging scythes. It looked like Bandot and his sons. In the clear air you could hear them whet their blades every few minutes, first one then another. It sounded like birds calling back and forth.

  Nothing was going on at the caves. The four men ate their lunch, tearing chunks off loaves of bread, cutting pieces of cheese, and pulling at a bottle of wine they shared. Except for Onesime, who drank tea from a jar. “What’s that you’re drinking?” said Jacques, even though he knew Onesime drank tea. “You might as well be a goddamn Englishman.” Onesime did not answer.

  “And what,” said Jacques, making what he took to be a fancy gesture, “is with the napkin?” Onesime had tucked his handkerchief under his chin. Wearing a napkin when he ate was a habit he had carried over from childhood, and because it was slightly eccentric, it pleased him and he continued to do it. Again Onesime did not answer and Jacques let it rest.

  “What do you make of Renard?” said August, looking for something to talk about. Jacques’s teasing had made him uncomfortable.