The stitches crisscrossed drunkenly; Magali would have laughed. Magali wasn’t here. It was only the second time he’d mended anything. The first had also been this shirt. He couldn’t really tell himself he had to be more careful. When you heard boots you went in the ditch. You got used to it, he had heard. He wasn’t yet.
This part, though. He would never get used to this part. Not till the day he was waiting for.
He made the last stitch and tried to remember how Mama and Magali would have tied it off. He should have paid more attention. Too late now. He attempted a double knot and tested the resulting snarl for fastness. He stood up and with trembling hands began to change into his Scout uniform. He did not allow himself to go to the window. He prayed, though not with words. God knew. He saw in a brief flash his home as he’d last seen it: the bedrooms stripped and made up for strangers, Papa’s study gutted. The spot on the kitchen table where Mama’s Bible had always lain, glaring empty like the gap of a missing tooth. The low rumble of a nameless ally’s automobile down in the street, like a great purring cat in the night. He remembered Magali taking his hand in the dark, as the taillights moved slowly away.
He tied his kerchief on, pulled on his socks. He folded the black night-crossing shirt, tucked it into the bottom of his Scout bag, and started the check. Full change of clothes. Money. First aid kit. Papers. He glanced at the clock. He walked slowly over to the window, keeping his breathing steady, and looked down into the street, finally, to see whether his group was there yet, and whether one of the people he was waiting for was in it.
Next moment he had both hands pressed flat against the glass, breathing shallowly.
They both were.
He knew Benjamin’s clothes like his own. He knew his walk. He knew Élise’s—everything, he knew her hair, the set of her shoulders, the lift of her head, he could feel his soul go out to her like a shining thread strung between them, feel the tension in her body as his own. A third person walked behind them—Tova? No, it was a stranger. She’d come alone. He didn’t ask himself what that could mean; she would answer that. He only thought: Both of them. Tonight. And leaned his forehead against the window, praying.
Then he went down.
He stood on the bottom step of the stairs, listening for their knock, eyeing the dining-room table where the parcel had been opened and left: a copy of Calvin’s Institutes. It would be Collonges then, without the monks and their ladder to do the crucial last two minutes’ work for him. Collonges, where he would lift up the barbed wire for his friends himself. His mouth was dry. Pastor Cantal was in the doorway of his study, stepping forward as soon as the knock came. And there they were.
Three young people in dark clothes, empty-handed, eerily alike for the fear in their faces. Élise came in last, dark wisps of hair curling out of her bun, her eyes like the others’. Pastor Cantal closed the door. Julien stepped off the bottom stair, and they saw him. Benjamin came to him with a hand held out, and he shook it silently.
Élise said, “Karl and Tova are in Switzerland.”
He let out his breath. “When?”
“A week ago. The OSE.”
“Thank God.”
The third girl stood silent and stared at him.
“He’s the passeur,” Benjamin said to her in German, his voice coming out hoarse.
“Come into the kitchen and eat something,” said Pastor Cantal. “My wife is making breakfast. You’ll have two or three hours here. Eat and rest.”
Benjamin looked at him, but Julien said, “I’ve eaten. I have to go out and see someone. To get the go-ahead. I’ll be back.”
The girl was still looking at him. So were the other two.
“You’ll be in Switzerland tomorrow,” he said.
Confirmed. The priest was ready for them, the right bus driver was on duty, all was ready. At the Cantals’ table when he opened his mouth to give the others their instructions, it was the passeur’s voice that came out. Even and calm. The core of a pear lay on Élise’s plate, beside the breadcrumbs on the others’. When they got to the rectory he would ask the priest’s housekeeper to make something she could eat.
The sun was bright in the deep August sky as they went out of the house to the bus stop, Julien in his Scout uniform twenty paces ahead. He was a boy, hands in his pockets, a Scout going up to Collonges to help a priest for a few days. He did not know the people boarding the bus behind him, though he felt them in the pulse of his blood. There were no police, no patrols. He sat and watched the houses go by, and the trees; he rang the bell for his stop and stood, swaying with the motion of the bus.
He heard them get down behind him. He did not turn.
He did not turn as he went down the path, footsteps behind him. He did not turn till he had knocked, and given the priest the signal, and gone into the house.
They were all there.
He didn’t follow them up the attic ladder. He spoke with the priest about the patrols—still consistent, still twenty minutes apart—then with the housekeeper about roasting potatoes in hot coals to keep them kosher. He thanked them both and went out. It was only his fourth crossing here. He couldn’t afford mistakes. The wind had risen in the west, carrying clouds; the poplars on the Swiss side swayed. The barbed wire did not move. He noted the crossing place and its landmarks, the little house, the ditch, the spot where the wire was loosest. The French barbed wire, then the Swiss. He walked on, his hands in his Scout uniform pockets, and nodded to the patrol he passed.
He climbed back to the attic. Élise sat on a blanket, her legs folded under her, between dusty boxes; the nameless girl lay on the worn-out couch that lined the south wall, very pale. Benjamin sat on the floor at her feet. “She came from Mulhouse a week ago,” he told Julien softly. “Stuttgart before that. Her name—” Benjamin broke off and shook his head. The girl looked up with bloodshot eyes, her head turning wearily toward Julien. Benjamin’s eyes went to hers, then tore themselves away. “She thinks her sister might be in Switzerland. She’s not sure.”
“We’ll be here till nightfall,” Julien told him. “She should try to get some sleep. You all should.” They turned to him with a look he knew well. “It can be done,” he said. “I’ve seen it.”
They ate the lunch the housekeeper brought, the woman’s face brightening at Élise’s thanks for the blackened potatoes. He gathered them by the little east window and gave them their instructions, showed them the place. “There are Swiss soldiers just behind those trees,” he told them. “They’re there to keep the enemy out, not you. Go toward them, show them your hands, and tell them who you are. Don’t turn back for any reason, ever. If there’s any trouble on this side, just run.”
They looked at him. It hurt to see their eyes. “There’s never been trouble yet,” he said.
He laid out blankets for them, told them to close their eyes for a while at least. The girl from Stuttgart slept, her mouth open, her breathing deep and even. He believed Élise slept too. He drifted awhile as the slanting light entered through the west window and lengthened. When he came to himself Élise was beside him, knees drawn up beneath her skirt, propped against the east wall.
As he sat up she met his eyes and said nothing, but drew a small object out of her pocket and held it out to him in the palm of her hand. It was his whistle.
“Are you giving it back?”
“If you want it.”
He shook his head.
“I thought … if you didn’t … I could keep it. To remember you by.”
He waited till he could trust his voice. “Please.”
She looked at his empty hands resting on his knees. “I don’t have anything for you. They didn’t let us pack—I don’t have anything.”
“It’s all right,” he whispered.
“No.” The light from the west window fell on her neck, her mouth, as she shook her head. Tiny dark curls escaped from her bun. “The—the Thibauds have my knife, if you want it—I—do you have a knife with you, Julien?”
He gave her his Scout knife, handle first. She took it and laid it beside her on the floor, and reached both hands up behind her head to unpin her hair.
It fell in a dark cloud around her face and shoulders, half in sunlight, half in shadow. He did not breathe. Her eyes met his as she lifted the knife to the crown of her head and carefully sawed off a long dark lock near the roots. “Here,” she whispered. It was soft in his fingers, in his fingers that did not quite touch hers. The slanting gold light was on all her face now; he could see all the browns in her eyes, colors from deep in the earth where the roots drank water. It was more than he could bear. Her soul lay on her face like sunlight on a field, and he sat with her gift in his hand, the other hand digging its fingernails into the bare pine boards beneath him, because it was all he could do.
She turned away, looking down at the floor. He remembered her turning, that spring night under the moon, walking away from him under the streetlamps alone. Her hand lay on the boards five centimeters from his; stray strands of her hair brushed his shoulder. He remembered brushing it out of her face; he remembered taking that wrist in his fingers for one brief moment: the softness, the warm beat of life within. He could still feel it. She was looking at his hand too. He was shaking.
“That officer,” she whispered thickly. “I got his address. From Madame Delaure at Les Genêts.”
“You did?” He tried to breathe slowly, to still the blood pounding in his ears.
“I couldn’t go and talk to him,” she whispered. “But maybe someday.”
“Élise,” he said, “why did you save him?”
She was silent so long he thought she would not answer. “He didn’t come to kill me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. Not really. Julien …”
“Yes?”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
His voice was so low and hoarse he could barely hear it. “Anytime.”
Their gaze broke. He followed her eyes to the west window. The sinking sun had touched the hills. He drew in a long breath and straightened, as she twisted her dark hair back up and pushed the pins in, one by one.
It was like the other crossings, more and more, as the night came on. The same fog of fear, filling the attic, seeming to curl out through the cracks in the little window frames like smoke; thickening with the setting of the sun.
They sat together, backs against the wall, as the clouds rolled over the sun, their edges turning the color of gold and blood. They ate together, when supper came, almost in silence; there was so little left to say. Even between him and Benjamin. How are your parents? I don’t know. After a while the girl from Stuttgart put her face in her hands, and Benjamin whispered to her in German. The attic was dimming, the clouds edged in paling rose and yellow. Night was coming. He sat next to Élise. Even through the air between them he could feel how taut she was, like a bowstring. She lifted her head, her lips moving silently, and he looked where she was looking, up into the darkness between the rafters. Behind him, outside the window, he heard the rain begin. He got up on the balls of his feet to look out; it fell softly and steadily, on France, on Switzerland, on the narrow space between. “Rain,” he said quietly but aloud. “It’s good. Rain is safer.” He saw them all turn to him in the near dark.
They sat in silence after that. He knew this moment. He felt them winding tighter and tighter, growing brittle and agonized with fear. Like the last group. Like the next. He listened as their breathing grew shallower and quicker in the dark. Felt the rough boards under him with his fingertips and prayed, soundlessly, wordlessly, a thin thread of pleading rising up fragile as a bird lifted on the wind. He heard the wind rise in the trees, and the rain come harder. He checked his watch and buttoned the sleeves of his black shirt. He heard the downstairs door open quietly and close. He checked his watch again, took it off and slipped it into the Scout pack beside him, and rose. Three shadowed faces looked up, breaths drawing in at the same instant. “Downstairs now,” he whispered. “When the priest comes back, we go.”
They stood to follow him, unsteady on their legs. The housekeeper had the ladder up for them; Julien took it first and stood below Benjamin as he came down. In the sudden light downstairs his friend’s face showed pale, almost greenish. As Benjamin reached the bottom of the ladder he turned and whispered urgently to Julien, “I want you to send me through last.” He grabbed Julien’s wrist as he hesitated. “Say you will.”
Julien nodded.
He put the others by the wall as the housekeeper put the ladder away, and stood at the window watching. Through the rain at the top of the path he could just see the dark figure of the priest returning; the first patrol had passed. Now. He beckoned the others and they started forward, staring. The housekeeper turned out the lights. He opened the door, and together they slipped out into the night.
The rain was steady, blurring the darkness and the lights of the few houses, the sprawling lights of Geneva in the distance ahead. The others were right on his heels as he came down the path carefully, quietly, listening for boots ahead on the paved road, scanning the watery dark, hearing the footfalls behind him clumsy with fear. The wet road shone palely; no figures moved on it to the east or to the west. All clear. “In the ditch,” he whispered, taking Élise by the arm and pointing. “Lie flat.”
He crouched in the wet grass as they went down one by one, the road still clear at both ends, his heart going like a snare drum. Then he slid in himself, belly in the mud and water. Breathing softly through his mouth, listening. He could hear only the rain. He felt it running through his hair, soaking the back of his neck, he could feel the wet night all around him for a kilometer in every direction, he could almost feel the slow approach of the second patrol. There: boots on the road to the east, a far and rhythmic sound. He prayed silence, silence, not a muscle in his body moving, his heart hammering as the boots came closer; he could feel the thud, thud, thud down the back of his neck. Closer, closer, right beside them, steady, steady, not a pause. The sound receding, step by endless step, away down the Collonges-Annemasse road.
When it was fully gone, he stood.
In silence he reached down to them, each of them, and pulled them up, scrambling out of weeds and mud. On the other side of the road the barbed wire gleamed in pale lines and points, the tall shapes of the poplars behind it silhouetted against the far lights of Geneva. They crossed the road; they crossed the other ditch; he crouched by the barbed wire and lifted it as high as he could, beckoning.
The girl from Stuttgart came first, the whites of her eyes in the darkness huge with fear. Down on her belly, crawling with her elbows, agonizingly slow. He watched the east, he watched the west. Nothing. She was through. Benjamin was pushing Élise forward. He saw her eyes for one split second as she went down, then she was squirming her way through. He strained against the barbed wire, lifting it higher for her as she came up to hands and knees to make the last centimeters. Benjamin was right on her heels, face almost in the dirt, belly-crawling frantically. The road was still clear in both directions. Élise had turned and was holding up the barbed wire with him, looking at him. Then Benjamin was through and Julien swung himself under sideways, quick as he could. The lights of freedom ahead were blinding as they crossed the narrow no-man’s-land, as he knelt to lift the Swiss barbed wire.
The girl from Stuttgart, down and crawling. Through. Silence on the road behind, and dark. Élise, Élise, down in the mud and crawling for her life, and through. Benjamin, last of the three, eyes flashing wild for a moment in his wet white face, down and inching his desperate way forward as Julien hauled the wire up as high as it could go.
And through.
“Go,” he whispered, “go!” And he was already turning away, the road was clear, clear to the east, clear to the west, and he was back across the no-man’s-land and taking the wire in one hand, doing the swift sideways roll under it that Marcel had taught him, feeling it catch and tear the shirt again, coming up on his hands and k
nees back in France. He could hear nothing but his own rustling in the grass, intolerably loud; he flung himself down in the ditch. He was panting for breath, his heart stuttering; he was trembling all over. He thought he heard boots to the east.
He lay still and heard them coming, eyes open to the dark, one cheek in the muddy water, the beating of his heart so loud anyone could hear it. He lay still and listened, listened, till he heard, louder than the far boots, another sound. From the other side, where the far lights blazed, a sound he had heard before: the Swiss soldiers behind the trees, calling out challenge and welcome to those who had been saved, and voices answering.
He closed his eyes.
He lay in the ditch and breathed as the patrol passed by. Thank You, he breathed, thank You. The rain ran down his face, dripped from his hair, and he listened to the boots passing, and thought of them there, saw in his mind their faces, their eyes staring at each other, just barely beginning to believe. It’s real. It’s done. He saw Élise, her black hair shining in the rain, walking away through the darkness and the pale pools of light, not turning back.
The boots receded into silence. He pulled himself up out of the ditch and crouched a moment by the empty road, looking at Switzerland. Then he turned away. The rain fell and fell as he walked, watering the earth, soaking deep into the thirsty roots on both sides of the barbed wire, and between. It wasn’t till he’d reached the house that he realized they had never said goodbye.
Historical Note
A GREAT DEAL of this really happened.
Julien, Elisa, Benjamin, and Magali are fictional; their stories, their choices, are invented. But many of the events surrounding them are real. Tanieux is based on a real town; Pastor Alexandre and Julien’s father are based on real people.
I’m going to do something unusual in this historical note. I’m going to let the town and the pastors keep their aliases. I have reasons for this. One is that I’ve given the assistant pastor’s wife an extremely fictional episode of brief reactive psychosis, and I don’t want that associated with the name of the steadfast woman she stands in for in the novel.
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