by Michael Smth
Waiting for things to begin, Mother Catherine considered the scene before her—how it teemed with contradiction. On the one hand, the Nazi dais leering at her. On the other, reflected off cobblestones still wet from the early morning rain, the impressionistic image of the colorful shops lined up to the west—for Mother, an airy watercolor like ones she’d done as a girl in Paris. The first debauching the second like an animal carcass rotting in a glacial mountain stream. It was ugly and beautiful. Filthy and pristine.
Mother’s thoughts were interrupted when Mayor Beaugarde scurried up. “Oh Mother Catherine, your little angels sang so beautifully as you approached the square. I am to say Monsieur Le Deux invites you and your girls to stand around the speakers’ dais and serenade our distinguished guest, Herr Reeder, before the program.” The mayor turned to Le Deux seated on the dais and bowed. Le Deux smiled broadly and nodded back. “You see, he sends a greeting to you and your lovely charges. For the sake of Lefebvre, may I say you’ll do it, Mother?”
Mother Catherine put a hand on the mayor’s shoulder and drew him near. “See how nicely he shows his fangs. Please tell Herr Le Deux that I would sooner swallow a bucket of broken glass than sing for his German master.”
The mayor turned pale. “Oh please, Mother. It will only get more difficult for—”
The nun cut him off. “Tell him we’re fresh out of songs.” The steel in her voice made clear the discussion was over.
The mayor slinked back to the dais. He spoke timidly to Le Deux. For a moment Le Deux did nothing. Then he glared darkly at Mother Catherine.
At noon, Le Deux strode to the front of the dais. His festive look had returned. After a moment to relish the scene, he gave a sharp nod to the Wehrmacht officer standing next to the dais. The oberleutnant, a fish-faced man with an empty left sleeve pinned to his side, unholstered a Luger pistol and fired a signal shot. Every neck tensed as the report dashed out to each corner of the square and returned, a hollow pop.
At the far end of the square, next to the church, the canvass back covers on two transport trucks flew up and out poured twenty-one German soldiers. They formed four tight columns, a massive sergeant with a ceremonial sword in front and to the right. In quick succession the sergeant brought his troop to attention, had them shoulder their rifles, and moved them forward toward the assemblage. Half-way across the square, the sergeant bellowed a command, and as one, the unit changed from their quick time march to the high step parade march. Mother shuddered, thinking they’d been choreographed carefully as a Russian ballet, a group of men moving with the menace of a single predatory beast. She mentally dissected the elements that combined to wield such power: The black and red swastika banner out front. The uniforms tight and gray. Black helmets glittering in the midday sun. Shiny bayonets pointing skyward, threatening even the heavens. Polished, black jackboots swinging up in their ominous goosestep and slamming back down onto the cobblestones, each slam making a single report. And the soldiers’ carriage—bodies rigid, except for the machine-like legs and the swinging right arms.
Mother Catherine turned to nod encouragement her students. Her gaze fixed on Françoise and Eva standing together—Françoise struggling to hold back her sobs and Eva with her arm around her friend’s shoulder. Mother prayed, my little Eva, always so strong, always so confident. Lord, give me Eva’s strength. Eying the she-fox, she whispered, “Liberté, en garde! The weasels approach.”
When the phalanx was close, Mother could see faces under the helmets. They looked young as altar boys, she thought. Young, but without youth. With each left stride, right fists pumped up to strike left breasts in perfect unison, almost like her girls saying their mea culpas. But rather than acts of contrition, she knew these were intended to strike fear into the hearts of onlookers. And she could see by the hopeless looks on the townsfolk’s faces that the show was effective. Faces tell it all. Even the soldiers’ taut faces, which moved only in a twitch of the cheek flesh, each one a shock propelled up through the body by the percussion of boot on stone. It was for her a grim reflection of the vile shocks being felt by Lefebvres all over Europe.
The troop took positions on each side of the dais, and Le Deux, his chin jutting, spoke again. “My fellow Belgians, Heil Hitler! I tell you forthrightly, we are in for changes, just as is the rest of the world. But I believe, and I think you must believe also, that these will be changes for the better. I am pleased to introduce Herr Eggert Reeder, the Fuhrer’s Militarverwaltungschef-ernannt, designated head of the Military Administration. His message is important. Listen carefully.” With a grand sweep of the arm, Le Deux handed the stage to the man with the dark eyes. “Herr Reeder!”
Reeder moved cautiously to the fore, sizing up the people of Lefebvre. He began with a stiff arm salute. “Heil Hitler! Today dawns a new era for your most charming village, just as events in the west signal the dawn of a new Europe. A cleansed Europe. Even as I speak, Panzer units of the Third Reich are breaking through French defenses.” Reeder’s French was technically perfect, but his German accent made it succulent mussels ruined by too much salt. “People of Lefebvre, you all know society needs rules. New, better rules will replace some of the old ones. But a few new rules aren’t such a big deal, are they?”
In the students’ ranks, Françoise turned questioningly to Eva, who gazed serenely ahead.
The speech continued with a summary of the changed chain of authority, the rationing programs, and other elements of the new order. Finally Reeder concluded, “These rules are for our collective good. I close with a warning. Do not oppose the course of history. We deal especially harshly with certain offenses: black marketeering, harboring enemy persons, and resistance to proper authority.” Mother thought she saw Reeder glance toward St. Marc’s. “A complete set of the new rules will be promulgated. Make yourself aware and ensure compliance. Heil Hitler!” Reeder’s eyes darted over the crowd, judging the spirit with which his comments were received.
It was just as Reeder turned away to shake hands with the others on the dais that it struck Mother Catherine—she hadn’t seen Father Celion in the square. She had been so concerned with her students that she hadn’t thought to look for him.
Mother’s thoughts raced back to the last time she’d seen him, when the balding old man with large, bulging eyes had come to St. Sébastien to celebrate Sunday Mass. He’d voiced his opposition to the occupation and reacted vigorously to her admonition to be careful. “Mother, I’ve already been given a long and good life. I have no interest in buying more time if the cost is my honor. Anyway, I won’t flatter myself. I know that to them, Father Celion and his complaints are no more than a fly and its buzzing.”
Mother had countered, “But Father, you know what happens to pesky flies.”
The priest had crossed her forehead with his thumb and chuckled, “Oh Mother, bless your care for an old man.” He wagged a finger. “But don’t you forget, as they certainly won’t, that this fly wears the collar of Rome.”
Mother Catherine’s eyes darted around the crowd, just now walking off in small groups, cautiously whispering among themselves. Her thoughts darted too. A bald head! No, it’s Bertrand, the chocolatier. The man next to Madame LeClerc? No, that’s Monsieur Herche. Mother raised fingertips to her lips and her breathing quickened. No Father Celion. Maybe he boycotted! It would be just like him. She peered at the church, hoping to see a pair of bulging eyes peeking scornfully from a window or a cracked-open door. She saw nothing. Boycotting? Yes. Please be quietly boycotting, you stubborn old fly.
Sister Arnaude tapped her shoulder. “Mother Catherine, shall we take the girls back now?”
Mother stammered, “Yes, of course. Sister, have you seen Father Celion today?”
“Gracious, I don’t believe I have. But you know my eyes, Mother. I’m not the one to ask.”
“Thank you, Sister, do take the girls back now.”
Father Celion was never seen in Lefebvre again. The constable’s bigmouth wife claimed her husband whispe
red that the priest had been picked up the midnight before the assembly and sent to Germany to labor in Bremerhaven’s submarine works. Only the Germans knew for sure.
Roller Coaster Ride
After the fall of France in June 1940, the war in the west that for a few weeks had been a roaring blaze burned down to glowing embers. With the men and machines now steadily pouring westward like coal through a chute, it seemed clear that the furnace of Europe would soon erupt again, belching skyward a bridge of fire and black smoke that would jump the English Channel and consume Britain.
With the tumult of the war’s opening days past, Eva hoped the dread she saw consuming her classmates’ spirits would subside, but for many of them it didn’t. In those summer weeks, the roads were clogged with convoys, the troop trains seemed endless and the sky was dark with planes—an endless, unnatural migration of transmuted birds, sullenly trekking east to west. The German military pouring through was too close, too constant. Too present.
Eva tried to bolster spirits, telling her friends one June night after lights out, “You must admit, boredom is suffocating, and whatever else they’ve done, the Germans crushed boredom faster than they did France. I know it’s frightening to hear an army rumble by, but it can be thrilling, too. A mix of fear and thrill—sounds like a roller coaster ride to me. Give it a chance. You might like it.”
When she saw angst still roosting in the dormitory, Eva tried to use the war itself to blunt it with a game. She told the Owl Club members, “When I traveled with my mother and time started to drag, we’d play a game called I Spy in which I got points for spotting various specific things along the way—you know, men carrying umbrellas, baby carriages, ladies in red hats, white dogs. We’ve got the Luftwaffe’s flying circus overhead, so how about it if we Owls have a game in which points are awarded for spotting and classifying them? We could give three points for big bombers, two for light bombers and one for those zippy fighters up there. On August first, the girl with the most points gets a prize.” Eva pulled a crisp five franc note from under her mattress and waved it in the air. “I’ll keep score. Who wants to play?” Everyone did.
The most points awarded in a day was forty-six, going to Clarisse LaCroix, the redhead from Thieux. She feigned illness in theater class and was sent back to the dormitory. Instead she sat on the convent roof, smoking cigarettes stolen from Sister Arnaude’s desk and watching the Luftwaffe’s aerial parade. That evening she bragged, “What a day for spotting! Heavens clear as a hawk’s eye and busy as a one-armed Flamand trying to count to six. In just an hour, I saw it all. First I heard the rumble of heavies, and squinting hard, a moment later I spied them, crawling along, high as clouds, leaving a pencil smudge of smoke across the sky.” She pointed to the ceiling, moving her finger slowly overhead. “My flock of six Heinkels makes eighteen points. Then I tallied a skein of seven small bombers, those angular Stukas, loping along, sounding that grinding whine of theirs. Fourteen points. And I scored a squadron of fourteen fighters, sleek Messerschmitt 109s flitting like yellow-headed swallows, low enough to trim your bangs.” She whizzed her hand just over Dani’s head. “Fourteen points, for a grand sum of forty-six. Voilà! And you donkeys had to sit in class, feigning amusement at Moliere’s antique humor.”
On one July Sunday, one hundred eleven planes were tallied by Whispering Owls. In the end, Clarisse won the five francs with a total 309 points. A few girls grumbled that she’d probably cheated but Eva ruled that without proof of that, her winning count stood.
As the swarms of warbirds passed overhead, the highways were a westbound ribbon of trucks, loaded with troops and equipment. And there were the trains. Trains steaming west. Trains filled with soldiers—shiny young faces, exuberant in the moment and looking ahead to the adventure and glory they were sure would soon be theirs. Those centipedes of iron and wood all stopped at the tending station outside of Lefebvre for coal and water. As the trains were serviced, the girls up the hill at St. Sébastien couldn’t see the shiny faces but they heard the shouting, the laughter, and the buoyant singing, “Wir fahren gegen England.”
With the other girls at least partially freed from their fears, Eva went on with her routine, her morning walks, as if nothing remarkable—nothing surprising—was happening in the world around her. She seemed to be guided by what Mother Catherine had said the night of the assembly in Lefebvre, “My flowers, though we shan’t violate the occupiers’ rules, we shall in no further way restrict ourselves. We are occupied, but we will not be prisoners. Our tongues are bound, but our minds are free.”
Though she had promised that, for safety’s sake, she would confine her walks to the boundaries of the convent’s extensive property, Eva didn’t really do so. Henri had shifted her assignment to watching and listening for resistance efforts, especially sabotage directed at the Pont de Pierre bridge. That meant getting out, covering ground. When Mother finally questioned the amount of time she was away, Eva admitted she strayed and reminded her of her own words: “in no further way restrict” and “not prisoners.” She said, “Before the Germans came, I went far and wide, and I won’t let them take that away from me. Besides there are few soldiers around, and they’re easy to avoid, always singing and sticking to the roads as they do.”
Mother was about to object when her conscience scolded, Oh come now, Catherine, it’s just what you would have said—and done—at her age. She squeezed Eva’s hand. “Just be careful.”
Under the Occupation, milk had been first to disappear from the shops. Milk, then butter. Then there was no meat. Then no cheese. No flour. No sugar. No coal. These staples could be had under the table, but people feared going that route, initially at least, since black marketeering was a crime. Eventually, gnawing hunger came to trump those fears.
Through the summer of 1940 and into the autumn, the nuns and students of St. Sébastien were comfortable. There was the warmth of the season and the bounty of the convent’s garden, ample enough to share with the local townsfolk. But in November, all that changed. The weather turned cold and damp, and cellared apples, leeks, and carrots were all that was left of the garden.
It was December when Eva first noticed the thinness of Françoise’s arms. Noticed the hollowness in the cheeks of the other girls and the darkness around their eyes. And the nuns’ worried silence. She felt her optimism flagging. Before she’d been confident that her strides carried everyone to a rich new future. Now she had been shunted into a grim alleyway, overhung with menace and getting darker with every step. The kind of place that, for the first time in her life, gave her doubts.
In the week before their December monthly meeting, Eva was uncharacteristically anxious to see her uncle. She was waiting at the convent gate when his Mercedes phaeton pulled up and she jumped into the back seat before Pruvot, the chauffeur, could come around to open the door.
In the car, Eva took Henri’s hand and peered into his eyes. “Uncle, it’s not supposed to be like this. We have to do something.”
Henri grimaced and jerked his hand from hers. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“Food’s become so short, uncle. There’s never enough. And the school’s always cold. Mother says there’s no coal to buy. At night the dormitory sounds like a tuberculosis ward.”
“There’s a war going on, child.” He stared at Eva. “What’s come over you?”
Eva bit her lip. “It’s the girls … everyone’s so cold and hungry.”
“From what I’ve seen, a few of them would do well eating less. Besides, the way the war’s going, it’ll be over soon. Then things will be better.”
“I don’t know how long some of the girls can hold out. They’re so frail, uncle. So afraid. You must do something now.”
Henri rapped Eva’s knee with his crop. “Don’t ever tell me what I must do, young lady.”
“I’m not telling, uncle, I’m pleading.” Eva clenched her fists. “I’ll do anything you say if you’ll do what you can for my friends.”
Henri sneered,
“You’ll do anything I say whether or not I help your friends.”
“Certainly, uncle.” Eva lowered her eyes. “But consider this. What I’m doing for the cause is important. And so near to Lefebvre and her bridge, St. Sébastien is the perfect place for me. You’ve said that from the start. Things are getting bad so fast—without your help how long can the school survive? For the sake of our work, I’m asking you to do what you can to save it.”
Henri sat back in the seat and groomed his moustache with his thumb. After a moment he said, “I’ll see what I can do. Now let’s see your notebook.” He took the volume from her. “Night before last, someone dynamited the main rail line this side of Liege.” He opened the notebook and scanned Eva’s recent entries. “Any of the girls ever mention our friends in the Resistance?”
“No, uncle.”
Henri scowled. “Then loosen their tongues. Catch them off guard. Tell them, I don’t know…your cousin in France firebombed a panzer or publishes an underground newspaper or something. I’m counting on you to be smarter than they are.”
Eva looked down. “I’ll try, uncle”
“With all that’s at stake, you say you’ll try?” He slammed the notebook closed. “Dammit, don’t just try. Do! Get out at night—that’s when you’ll see something.”
“It’s risky, uncle. It would be hard to explain if I got caught.”
“Christ, tell them you couldn’t sleep. I can’t do everything myself, you know.”
“I’ll try to do more. To be smarter, as you said.” She glanced at Henri.
“See that you do.” Henri tapped Pruvot’s shoulder with his crop. “Back to the school.”