Genevieve's War

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  I climbed the stone wall and went through the trees until I saw the small house in front of me. The door opened before I could raise my hand to knock.

  “Louis heard you.” The woodcutter pulled me inside. “Are you all right?”

  “The German is gone,” I said.

  Louis was right behind him, looking up, whining, his tail wagging hard. I leaned over to run my hand along his back.

  “Ah,” the woodcutter said. “I’m glad. The dog has been sad, wanting to go home.”

  But Louis had been well cared for. A thick mat was in front of a table, a bowl of water and a plate with bits of food was left in the corner.

  The woodcutter had been carving what looked like a chess set. Small figures lay on that table: a queen, maybe, and a row of pawns. I wanted to stop and look, but Louis stood at the door, tail down, worried that he wouldn’t get to go home.

  “Thank you,” I told the woodcutter. “We’re grateful. More than you can know.”

  I leaned over the dog. “Time to go home.”

  Louis bounded out, looking back at me, almost as if he were telling me to hurry.

  Mémé waited at the door, and he rushed to her, crying. Her arms went around him, and I saw that she had tears in her eyes. But she said only, “Time for bed.”

  twenty-one

  For the next few days it was as if the war had never been. School had begun again after the holidays, and I could almost ignore the soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. I couldn’t ignore Herr Albert, though. He strutted around the room or stood in front, hands behind his back. I watched him, wondering what he was like before the war when he didn’t have to act his way through the day.

  In the late afternoons Louis lay under the table, his muzzle on my feet, content to be home, while Mémé crocheted a sweater from old wool, interrupting herself to show me cable stitches for the socks I was knitting.

  And yet we were wary. Things seemed almost too quiet. Wouldn’t the Germans still be searching for Rémy?

  Today I’d managed to stop at Philippe’s to find out what was happening with the courier, then went back to Rémy and Mémé. Philippe had said, “Soon. It’s dangerous work; it takes time.”

  My hands were fists. “It’s taking too long. I don’t believe him.”

  “Oh, Genevieve.”

  “Philippe lies. I know he does.”

  Mémé leaned forward. “What is this all about?”

  “He has André’s sweater.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “Oh, it can be. I think I saw it. Really.” I waved my hand in front of my face. “Somehow he saw André doing something that summer, and told the Germans. Maybe André never got to the ship; he could be in prison now, right here.”

  “Ah, Genevieve, your imagination is boundless.” Mémé sighed. “Let me tell you about the Great War. Gérard sat exactly where you are. We’d both been up all night. Remember, our village was German then, and the French needed to take it because of the garrison filled with soldiers at the edge of the square. They needed guides.”

  I sat up. My father in this chair, as tired as I was.

  “We waited until it was dark and managed to sneak through the village. Philippe stood at the window, watching. We went toward the mountains, Gérard and I, and two others. We were seen and the Germans came after us, yelling: ‘Traitors!’ We knew if they caught us . . .”

  She broke off, staring up at the ceiling, tears on her cheeks.

  “What happened?”

  She shook her head. “Another time. We have to have dinner.”

  We sat there, eating until we were full. But as we finished, I heard the sound of a motor. A truck? Mémé and I pushed our chairs back from the table. Rémy stood, almost like a deer, ready to run.

  Mémé pointed. “The cellar.”

  He moved quickly; his footsteps on the stairs were whispers of sound. His winter jacket was looped over his chair; I threw it under the table.

  The armoire was still away from the wall, but there was no time to do anything about it. Mémé slid Rémy’s plate under hers. We sat there, frozen, as the sharp rap came on the outside door.

  Mémé raised her head, straightened herself, then opened it.

  Two soldiers came into the kitchen, looking around. One reached across the table, sweeping plates and food onto the floor. “Where is he?”

  Mémé’s face was calm. “My husband has been dead for many years.”

  The other soldier went behind the armoire. “They’re hoarding food,” he said. “A good find. We’ll take it all with us.”

  At the table, the soldier leaned forward. “We know he’s here.”

  Mémé looked around. “There are only the two of us.”

  One of the soldiers climbed the stairs toward the bedrooms. The painting!

  His partner opened doors: the pantry, the bedroom and then the stairs to the cellar. He pulled a flashlight off his belt and started down.

  The cellar was huge, I told myself, and even with the flashlight, maybe Rémy was hidden. I leaned forward against the table, my knees tight together to stop their trembling, my feet on his jacket, pushing it farther under the table.

  Across from me, Mémé sat unmoving, her thin hands clenched.

  The soldier who’d been upstairs clattered into the kitchen, shaking his head. “We’ll find him,” he said, his boots on the food we’d been eating. The rest, which would have lasted us until the next harvest, would be gone. But he hadn’t seen the painting, or if he had, he wasn’t interested.

  And like a miracle, the second one came up from the cellar. “No one is there.”

  They went out the door, the motor started up and the sound of the truck gradually faded away.

  I tried to stand, but I felt as if my legs wouldn’t hold me. And so we sat at the table waiting, thinking Rémy would appear.

  But he didn’t come.

  Mémé sighed. “Genevieve, perhaps . . .”

  On shaky legs, I went down the stairs, calling his name softly. The cellar was the width of the house, with many small rooms almost like caves. I went back and forth, stopping, listening. But even in the darkness, I could tell he wasn’t there. And in back, over my head, an open window rattled, pulling in cold air.

  How had the German not seen it? I shook my head. They hadn’t seen the jacket either.

  Rémy had saved himself, and us, and was somewhere outside in the shelter of the trees, or maybe at the woodcutter’s place.

  Back up in the kitchen, I pulled his jacket out from under the table. “I’m going to look for him,” I told Mémé.

  She looked doubtful, but she said, “Yes. Go slowly. Watch.”

  As the sky inched toward darkness, I slipped between the trees, until I saw the dim shape of the woodcutter’s house. The door was open.

  I stood there, shocked. The woodcutter was gone, and inside the room the quilt had been thrown from the bed onto the floor, the rocking chair splintered, the table with carved figures overturned. Small carving knives were on the floor, along with a cup of blue paint, which had splashed over the table legs.

  I thought of the happy day with Rémy and André, riding the bicycles in the sun, the tower with its storks’ nest, the blue-gray house nearby.

  Shirmeck Prison was in my mind, or worse, Struthof, the terrible concentration camp that people whispered about.

  I went out the door, hurrying through the forest, fearful now that soldiers still might be watching the woodcutter’s house. Philippe, I thought bitterly.

  We spent the next hour cleaning up the food on the floor and pushed the empty armoire back against the wall. Then we waited. Would Rémy come back? I was sure he wouldn’t.

  I hoped he’d found a warm place to stay. But I couldn’t imagine what to do with his jacket. If the Germans came again, if they found it, what trouble we’d be in.

  I wrapped it in a small quilt that was old and frayed around the edges and stood with it in my arms.

  “Bury it,” Mémé said.
>
  “Suppose Rémy comes back for it?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll find something else for him. We can’t take a chance.”

  I knew she was right. I found a shovel in the barn, but outside the ground was rock-hard, still frozen from the snow.

  I went back to the barn and climbed the ladder to the loft, pushing the jacket ahead of me, and buried it deep under the hay.

  The best I could do, I told myself.

  Inside, Mémé was waiting. Tired and worried, we climbed the stairs to our old rooms.

  Where was Rémy? Where was the woodcutter?

  And then, surprisingly, I slept.

  twenty-two

  Early the next morning, I awoke suddenly, heart pounding. Something terrible had happened. I jolted up, my mouth dry as dust, my knees shaking. It was only a dream, I told myself, only a nightmare.

  Rémy.

  The woodcutter.

  Not a dream.

  I dressed, braided my hair with trembling fingers and went downstairs. Mémé was stirring a few oats in a pot of boiling water.

  “We have to tell Philippe,” she said.

  “Philippe! How can we trust him? He might have betrayed us.”

  She closed her eyes. “The Great War. Germans shooting at us, your father down on the ground. I knew I had to have help. I ran to the village, ran as I never had before, straight to Philippe.

  “When we got back to your father, blood had soaked his sleeves, his shirt. Philippe carried him to the farm, good, strong Philippe, telling me he wouldn’t let him die. ‘Hold on, Gérard,’ he’d said. ‘Almost home.’ ”

  Mémé looked down at her hands. “Here, in this kitchen, we wrapped Gérard’s chest with cloths, and Philippe pressed his hands against the wound until the bleeding stopped. Know this, Genevieve. I’d trust Philippe with my life. With your life.

  “He made it possible for us to go on with our work. Gérard healed slowly, still in pain, but we were able to lead the French into villages we knew and fight against the Germans.”

  I sat there, picturing her young, as fierce as I saw her now. I had to do something too. “Oh, Mémé. I have to look for Rémy.”

  “You can’t do that. You have to go to school. It must seem that you hardly knew Rémy or the woodcutter.” She leaned forward, the lines deep in her forehead. “Someone has betrayed them, and us, just as someone betrayed your father that night long ago.”

  I closed my eyes.

  Katrin?

  Was that possible?

  “I will go to Philippe myself,” she said, “and tell him . . .”

  “I could . . . ,” I began. But suppose it had been Katrin? How could I leave her on the way to school to go to the bookshop?

  I went outside and walked toward her house. She was the only one who knew that Rémy was with us. Our friendship was over. I’d tell her that.

  Katrin called from her doorway. “Genevieve? I’m not going to school today.” Her voice was filled with tears. “My brother is being sent to work in a factory somewhere. We’ll go to the station with him.”

  Blowing up the tracks had all been for nothing. The Germans had forced men to repair them.

  I ran across the field, back to the kitchen, to tell Mémé I was early, that I’d go to Philippe. And then I was on the road, hurrying to the village square.

  The sign on the bookshop door read CLOSED. It was early, after all.

  I flew around to the back. Through the window, I saw Philippe at the table and rapped hard enough to hurt my knuckles.

  He opened the door; I stumbled in and slid down at the table, too breathless to say a word.

  He went back to the window, pulled down the shade and sat awkwardly, almost as if it were an effort to fit his huge bulk in that narrow chair. He stared at me, waiting.

  “Mémé trusts you,” I said.

  “And why not? We grew up together, fought underground during the Great War . . .”

  “They came for Rémy last night.”

  He leaned forward.

  “They didn’t find him, I think. But the woodcutter . . . I’m not sure. They’ve ruined his house.” My voice trembled as I raised my shoulders.

  Philippe shook his head. “Perhaps the courier will come. He is on his way back from . . .” His voice trailed off. He went to the window and raised the shade just enough to peer out.

  “Finish what you started to say,” I said, stopping myself just before I banged my fist on the table.

  “The less you know, the better. How do we know we can trust you? An American—”

  I held up my hand to cut him off. “I know what I am.”

  He sighed. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.” Not true, of course, but I was tall for fourteen, and how would he know what class I was in?

  He shrugged his huge shoulders. Then he sighed. “The couriers know the way to Switzerland, or even west to Spain. They’ve learned which houses are safe. But still, it’s dangerous. We just have to wait, to hope.”

  He went to a small stove at the side of the room and poured hot water into a cup. “Would you like coffee?”

  “Coffee?” Where had he gotten coffee? It had disappeared months ago.

  “Coffee without coffee.” He poured hot water into two cups.

  He reached for the door of a cabinet and pulled out a sweater. He shoved it across the table in front of me.

  It wasn’t André’s. It wasn’t even the same sweater I’d seen the other day: not a zipper in front, but wooden buttons, no raveling at the hem. It was meant for a large man, a man like Philippe.

  “A lie,” I said bitterly, pushing the sweater away from me.

  “Like your age.” For the first time he laughed, a dry laugh, almost without sound. “Go to school, Genevieve. Forget about war for a while.”

  I went out to the alley, slamming the door behind me, with enough force that I almost broke the window.

  That afternoon, on the way home, I saw Katrin and her mother walking all the way from the railway station. I remembered Madame Moeller saying, We were Germans before. We’ll have to be Germans.

  And their names hadn’t been changed. German names: Katrin. Karl. Moeller.

  How had I told Katrin everything?

  I caught up with them as they turned onto the path toward their farm. “Katrin?”

  Her mother kept going. Maybe she was crying.

  “Will we ever see Karl again?” Katrin said. “Will we ever see any of them? Dozens of boys on the train platform . . .”

  “You told someone.”

  “About Karl leaving? Everyone knows that.”

  “About Rémy and the woodcutter. About all the things I told you.”

  She looked away. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “You’re lying.”

  She turned back to me, her face shocked.

  I grabbed her arm, held it hard. “Who?”

  She was really crying now. “I didn’t—”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I have to go inside.” Her cheeks were blotched. “My mother is waiting for me.”

  I moved in front of her, blocking the way. “We’ll stay here forever, until you tell me.”

  “You’re as bad as the Germans.”

  “Worse,” I said.

  “The only one I told was Liane.”

  Liane, who played an imaginary piano on her desk.

  “And maybe Claude.”

  Madame Jacques’s son from the pâtisserie.

  “You can trust them,” she said. “They’d never—”

  I let go of her arm. “Go inside to your mother. You’re not my friend. I’ll never walk to school with you again. Never tell you . . .” I took a breath. “Never tell you anything.”

  I went back down the path. It was beginning to rain, and even in my warm coat I was shivering.

  twenty-three

  Mémé was outside, her hair wet, her jacket soaked, staring at the field, which was only now beginning to thaw.

  “Com
e inside,” I said.

  She looked up, wiping her hands on her apron, and we went across the gravel path into the kitchen. I tossed my coat and hat on an empty chair and my books on the countertop. “I’ve done something terrible,” I said.

  She slid the teakettle over the flame and stood there waiting for the water to boil.

  “You’re not paying attention to me. I’ve done something terrible.”

  She turned. “How can I not pay attention to you, Genevieve? You are everywhere. Your books, your clothes, even your bathrobe can be found in every room of this house.”

  She pulled two of the Strasbourg cups from the armoire. “In the beginning,” she said, “I thought I’d go out of my mind. An old woman used to a neat house, to a quiet house. Instead I have dishes in the sink; there’s clattering on the stairs, doors slamming.”

  I bent my head. I wanted to tell her that at home our house wasn’t like a tomb, that Aunt Marie sang, recited poetry in French, that sometimes I had friends over and we made fudge.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have time.

  Mémé put the steaming water in front of me. “But after a while, I remembered your father, the noise he made, the messes!”

  I closed my eyes: His notebook with the terrible marks, the doodles, the list of his classmates, Suzanne the tattletale, the initials G.M. cut into the attic floor, my father, meringues his favorite.

  “I told Katrin everything,” I said. “And she told Liane and Claude. It’s my fault. All of it.” I swiped at the tears running down my cheeks.

  Mémé bent her head so I could see that stiff part in her hair. “Sometimes things happen that we’d never expected, that we never thought about,” she said slowly. “But the important thing is to begin again.”

  She went into the hall and brought back my father’s picture. “You see how sad he looks. He had to leave everything he loved. Some of our friends had been taken away, but he had managed to escape, and would cross the country to Spain.” Her lips were unsteady. “And then to America.”

  Sad? All the times I’d looked at the picture. Grim. Angry. Unfriendly. Miserable. Never once had I thought sad. But there it was exactly. His dark eyes staring out, his hands clenched.