Marlena de Blasi

by Amandine (v5)

  Along our route we find burned farmhouses, new graves. Slaughtered animals. Silence. The boche take the wheat and the potatoes from the field, fruit from the trees, wine from the cellars, they take horses and petrol and autos. They take the women when they can. Mostly they can. They leave the lavender along the paths to the farmhouse doors though. And the rosebushes. Gentlemen conquistadors. And what the boche don’t take the French keep. To themselves. Go away. All those hissed voices from behind the wide warped doors of the landed gentry. From behind the toile de Jouy drapes of the bourgeoisie in the towns. Go away.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  THERE ARE DAYS AND DAYS OF THIS PAST YEAR THAT I HARDLY RECALL while, of some, I see and feel and hear everything. The day we met Aubrac. It was still September. Toward the end, though, since the air was cool and it had that green smell of ripening corn. The leaves on the beeches were already yellow, already trembling in the soft nibbles of wind. My self-rebuke rearing itself once again, I’d thought that I should be trembling, too, for the folly I’d wrought. Our advances had been so tentative, small progresses canceled if we’d see a prettier road, heard the gushing of another river. But that day, I remember that I was too tired to pedal and so walked the bicycle while Amandine slept and snored in her wooden chair, Philippe’s hat having slid down to the bridge of her nose. She slept, and I looked back upon our procession across France. Phantom trains, résistants’ trucks, a rickety bicycle, our feet. Our own kind of march. I saw a tower ahead—a church? the mairie?—in the village where we would stay the night. Almost there. Find a place for us. Wash, eat, sleep. Absorbing thoughts of hot water and bread and wine shattered when, spitting up stones, a small truck sped toward us. I moved us into the ditch, stayed still, waited for it to pass, and, when it did, it swerved to the side, stopped. A man stepped down, leaving the door swung wide.

  “Bonjour, bonjour.”

  Loping in quick strides over the few meters that separated us, blue cotton trousers and shirt, a corduroy jacket buttoned high on his chest, thick, dark hair mostly covered by his basque, eyes slits of steel blue fire. He wanted to know, “Are you near your destination?”

  “Yes, the village ahead.”

  “Do you know it?”

  “No, but I’m certain we can—”

  “I am going to Le Puy-en-Velay. An hour or so north. You’ll have a better chance there.”

  “But the Loire, I’ve been told it’s—”

  “You were told correctly, ma petite. Just as it is everywhere else in France. Dangerous. Do you have papers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you Jews?”

  “No.”

  By this time Amandine had come to stand next to me, her forehead printed in cross-hatchings from Philippe’s hat, her eyes round and dark. Intrigued by this rare social encounter, she’d wanted to please the gentleman and so asked me, “Are you sure we’re not Jews?”

  “Very sure.”

  Looking at me and then at Amandine, back at me, the man said, “Well, if you were, I could take you to a safe house.”

  “We’re not running from anything really. Just trying to get home.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Reims.”

  Like the woman in Aubenas, he laughed. He laughed so long and hard that Amandine began to laugh, and then I did.

  “J’adore les femmes françaises. All of you kin to Sainte Jeanne. There are more boche up there than there are in Germany. No French left in Reims, haven’t you heard? From a quarter of a million last year, now three or four thousand, fewer every day.”

  “It’s not to the city that we’re going. To a small village in the countryside. My family will not have fled. They’re there.”

  Wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, he said, “And the beauty is that they probably are if they’ve bred the likes of you. Where do you plan to cross the line?”

  I looked at him, understood that he meant the demarcation line, which separates the occupied north from the unoccupied south but, since I had yet to consider this particular of our journey, I looked down, shook my head. “Our papers are in order. Why would it matter where we cross?”

  “Because there is nothing constant about those who guard it. No hard-and-fast rules about who shall be detained, who shall pass through, who shall be taken into the woods and shot. It all depends on what sort of boche you find. There are points that are better than others.”

  “I can’t be concerned with that now. The line is still far off. I must think of where we’ll sleep tonight.”

  “Of course.”

  Moving his hand about his mouth as though trying to wipe away the words he’d just said, he looked at me then, his eyes half beseeching. “Come with me now. I’ll get you to Le Puy by suppertime. And I know where you can find what you need. Besides, it’s beautiful, high on a plateau, and there are hostels in the churches and lace in the windows and lentils on the table. Your road is long, the war longer.”

  And as if Aubrac and Le Puy and the lace and the lentils had not been enough, the next morning he sent us his daughter.

  Of course I didn’t know that was who she was when she whispered something to the woman behind us in the ration queue and then slipped in front of her. A small, thin girl slouching in a long, loose dress, black suede sabots with wooden heels on her tiny feet, smooth black hair cut like a helmet with a short fringe, she cannot be more than seventeen, I’d thought. Having barely nodded in my direction, she was attentive to Amandine, complimenting her tartan shirtwaist, her beautiful eyes. The girl seemed to study her. Just as it was our turn to enter the store, she looked at me, said, “There’s a bar in the Place du Plot called L’Anis. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  As though she’d said everything and everything she’d said was understood and agreed upon, she walked quickly away from the queue.

  When we arrived, she was already sitting at a small table. Gesturing to us to join her, she spoke softly, quickly.

  “If you would like, I can offer you passage to the area near Vichy. Tomorrow. There’s room in my truck. For you, your things. If it would help.”

  “Vichy? Right at the heart of the—”

  “I said ‘near’ not ‘in.’ We can leave you in one of the surrounding villages, from where you could continue on the smaller roads. I’m not trying to convince you, you understand. Only if you … It’s just under a hundred and fifty kilometers.”

  “A month’s walk for us.”

  “Yes. That’s what I—”

  “I, we have no route in mind, generally heading north.”

  “I know.”

  “The man who gave us passage yesterday?”

  “Yes. He asked me to look out for you this morning. My father. He thinks your little girl is Jewish.”

  “She is not.”

  “Sometimes people believe that a good set of false papers will suffice, will—”

  “Amandine is not Jewish.”

  As though she had neither believed nor heard me, she opened another argument. “We have a place in a village outside Vichy.”

  “The cooperative government—”

  “No, not cooperative, not even collaborative. The French veneer is thin on the boche machine. But our place is remote enough to be of little interest to anyone but us and our neighbors.”

  She smiled for the first time, and I saw her father’s face in hers. From the pocket of her jacket, she took a single cigarette, tapped both ends on the table, excused herself, walked into the bar, returned puffing hungrily at it. There was a tremor in the hand that held it.

  “I will share this with you if you like,” she said, holding out the cigarette.

  I shook my head.

  “The house is in a small village. People stay with us.”

  “You mean that you hide people.”

  “We shelter them. Sometimes only for a few days, sometimes for much longer. My mother, five village women. We work with, we work with others to help people on their way.”

  �
��On their way?”

  “To a place where they can wait out the war. Sometimes to Switzerland—”

  “But we’re not hiding, and we don’t want to go to Switzerland.”

  “I know. The Champagne. My father told me. He tried to contact some people there last evening, to see if there was a route, a line into which our friends could ‘insert’ you but … nothing. Not right now. Even the government of Reims has established itself somewhere else. In Nevers, I think. Have you communicated with your family?”

  “I’ve heard all this before. I understand that nothing and no one will be as, as before. But that’s where we’re going.”

  “How long have you been on the road?”

  “Nearly three months.”

  “Where did you begin?”

  “Montpellier. I know, not even halfway yet.”

  “You cannot be thinking to continue on the road for much longer now. The weather—”

  “No, no, of course not. I have a general letter of introduction from my bishop in Montpellier, which I shall present at a convent, a monastery. I will ask to trade work for room and board. Amandine grew up in a convent, and we are familiar with the religious life. I was once a postulant myself.”

  “A well-trained pigeon returning to the flock—”

  “It’s not that at all. And what if it were? I don’t know what you’re after with us but—”

  I stood to leave, took Amandine’s sweater from the table where she’d placed it, held out my hand to her.

  “You could stay with us. There’s room. We pool our rations, we work a small farm outside the village. Everyone helps. Less comfortable than a convent, perhaps, but then again, I’ve never lived in a convent.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “I’m called Lily.”

  “And to cross over into the occupied zone?” I hoped to sound savvy.

  “Vichy and our village are in the free zone. On the edge.”

  “I didn’t, I don’t know my geography as well as—”

  “When the time comes for you to make a crossing, you must go with passeurs, men who know the woods. Entry without barbed wire and checkpoints. Without boche. But tomorrow we shan’t need—”

  “Why would you make such an offer to us?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Even though Amandine is not Jewish?”

  “Even though.”

  “Where shall we meet you?”

  “I’ve arranged for you to stay again at the place where you were last night.”

  “But this morning I was told that there would be no room.”

  “There’s room for you. Be outside the house at five. I won’t wait.”

  Five bells ring from the tower of Notre-Dame and, Amandine sleeping in my aching arms, I wait because Lily will not. Tempted to climb back to our little attic bed and forget this adolescent Valkyrie and her offer, I see rather than hear a truck moving toward us. A lumbering beast, its motor spent, it trolls silently over the downward pitch of the cobbles. Stops in front of us. A troupe of agile circus tumblers, Lily and two men descend wordlessly, set to work stowing our rig and us into one part or another of the truck. One of the men climbs into the driver’s seat, starts the engine, curses the creaking gearshift, and we are off.

  The men speak neither between themselves nor to us three who are settled in a wide, deep well behind the front cab, a makeshift sort of space with a folded-back canvas roof. A hiding place? What had I agreed to this time? I feel nothing of fear though and, from the beatific gaze she throws at me, less does Amandine. Wedged between us, she looks from Lily to me with a closed-mouth smile, trying to contain glee. Lily hugs her repeatedly and, now and then and without looking at me, stretches her arm behind Amandine’s shoulders to touch mine. I close my eyes, nod to the Fates, invite them to have their way with us for the next few hours. By afternoon we’ll have arrived in this place, this village near Vichy, and I shall resume my sway. We shall thank them for the passage, offer to pay them, be on our way. That is exactly what we’ll do.

  “If we’re stopped at any point, please don’t offer information. Answer questions if they are asked. But nothing more. Do you remember the name of the village where we’re going?” Lily’s soft, urgent voice wakes me.

  “I don’t know that you’ve told me its name.”

  “Lagny. Not on the boche map. A group of houses, a church, a few shops. If you are asked, we are going to Lagny. You are cousins. Displaced, in need. That’s all.”

  “Yes, Lagny.”

  It’s nearly nine when the driver turns onto a broken, rutted road and soon after turns again, onto a dirt path that leads into a vineyard. He stops, and the two men descend, walk a bit down among the vines, their somber voices resounding in a monotone chant to where we sit under a stand of chestnuts. From the canvas bag she wears like a bandolier over her sweater and trousers, Lily takes a small cheese wrapped in what looks like a roughly torn length of old sheet.

  “Our bleu. Bleu d’Auvergne. Cow’s milk. We have no sheep.”

  From the pocket of her trousers, she takes a knife, unfolds it, carves thin, crumbling slices from the wheel, lays the cheese on chestnut leaves, and passes it to us. Two long thin brown pears she peels with finesse, holds out a slice to each of us from the point of her knife, licks the juices from the blade before slicing again. Repeats the rite until the pears are finished. Another round of cheese. Stowing the remains of the cheese, the knife, she rises, gathering the fruit peelings and stamping them into the earth around the trees. She walks between two rows of vines, parts the wide, succulent green leaves at a certain point to find the right bunch of grapes. An expert snap, and she returns, a fat mass of dark blue Gamay dangling in her hand. From her open palm, we pluck them from the stems, crush the grapes between our teeth, the sweet, potent juice filling our mouths. One grape at a time under the chestnut trees, sitting on the stubble and the stones of the Auvergne.

  “This next part of the ride will be a bit different. Off the roads. A little rough. Are we ready?” she wants to know.

  As she slips the canvas bag into place over her chest, I see the outline of the Valkryie’s pistol under her sweater.

  Raised up in a small forest of pines and chestnuts, it is tall and wide and made of stone. Eight chimneys bolt like pillars above the thin slate tiles and give the roof the air of a ruined temple. Faded wine red wooden shutters ornament the three rows of windows, and over the great black door, with its iron handles and knockers, “La Châtaigneraie 1628” is engraved, barely readable, upon what remains of a marble cornice. The Chestnut Grove. Our things deposited on the flags of the terrace, the men having driven off, we stand behind Lily as she enters her family home.

  On either side of a long, dark hallway, sweaters, coats, hats of all sizes and conditions are hung on iron hooks while sabots, soft boots, shoes are lined up on shelves below them. I am preparing my exit lines while Amandine is running ahead, her hand in Lily’s.

  “Everyone will be working. Harvesting, picking. I’ll show you where you can …”

  To her back I say, “Lily, listen, I appreciate your kindness in having given us passage, but I’ve decided that …”

  She opens the hall door onto a wood-smoke-scented salon with a hearth great enough to roast an elk.

  “Is this a house?” Amandine asks.

  “A rather ancient one. Do you like it?”

  The high walls of the salon are papered in purple and mustard stripes, and edged in a wide border of red roses and dark green leaves. The colors startle before they please. Like a long, narrow spit of land in a wavy red sea of waxed tiles, a table is flanked by twenty mismatched chairs. Sofas are arranged about the hearth. Yellow-flowered porcelain tureens and pewter pitchers sit on starched lace doilies along the lengths of two wooden dressers and, in the depths of armoires with no doors, there are stone crocks covered in brown paper and tied with string and bottles and jars of fruits and vegetables, preserved. In a corner, baskets of walnuts and c
hestnuts spill out over a large round table, and dried mushrooms and berries and small, silver-skinned onions are festooned everywhere. As though twilight was shaken down upon it all, there is something both of gloom and of radiance. Lyrical, haunting.

  I shall not say how lovely the room is or sit or even stop to talk, I tell myself. We must go now, or perhaps we never will.

  “As I was saying—”

  “Why don’t you stay the night and get a fresh start in the morning? Some of the people you’ll meet might be able to help you with your route. They’ll know more than we do about the state of things farther north. And someone will offer passage if they can. Or you could remain.”

  Standing behind Lily, Amandine looks at me, says nothing aloud.

  “Thank you. We’ll stay. For a night. Thank you very much.”

  Lily shows Amandine and me to a cold room on the third floor. Feather beds upon pale blue wooden frames. A hearth with a fire laid, a wood basket, an armoire painted with a country wedding scene. The small rippling panes of a curtainless window give an undersea luster to the treetops and a steeple and the heaped-up roofs of the village, and we sit on the ledge, pressing our foreheads to the glass. We rest.

  We are eleven at table that first evening. Nine women, two girls: Amandine and a five-year-old named Claude with small gray eyes and skin the color of caramel just before it burns. And Magdalen, of course. Taller and with a sculpted face perhaps more beautiful than her daughter’s, she is pale and blond as Lily is dark. From one of the tureens with the yellow flowers, she ladles soup into shallow bowls already laid with roasted bread.

  “Pumpkin and onion and wild sage,” Magdalen says and breaks into a round, heavy loaf of dark bread, giving the piece to the woman beside her, then passing the loaf itself to her. The woman then breaks off a piece of the bread and passes it and the loaf to the woman beside her. Around the table. Pewter pitchers of water and wine.