An Owl's Whisper

by Michael Smth

  It was two days before Christmas when Sister Martine scurried from the kitchen to answer the doorbell. She pulled open the door and there was Henri Messiaen with his chauffeur Pruvot standing behind him.

  She bowed. “Ah, Monsieur Messiaen, good day. Shall I fetch Mother Catherine?”

  “No, no, good sister, don’t bother her, for it is you I call upon today.” He winked.

  Sister Martine covered her lips with her hand as if Henri had asked for a kiss.

  “I’ve brought a few little things for your pantry,” Henri said, pointing backward with his thumb, “in the rear of the truck I hired. May we drive around to the kitchen entrance?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s just there.” She motioned to the north side of the convent building. “But sir—”

  Henri’s hand shot up. “We’ll meet you in a moment at the kitchen door.”

  Sister Martine closed the door and skittered off. Henri said a word to Pruvot who dashed down the steps, jumped on the driver’s side running board, bracing an arm inside the open window. He told the driver, “Micheaux, pull around to the rear entrance.”

  Henri was waiting when Sister opened the door. Micheaux, handsome with his long eyelashes, dimples, and a moustache like Clark Gable’s and wearing blue worker’s coveralls, was at the rear of the truck, tugging at a gray canvas tarpaulin. When the cover slipped off, racks of milk bottles, wet with dew, sparkled in the sunshine. Under Pruvot’s watchful eye, Micheaux carried in the clinking racks, six bottles each, two at a time. It took four trips.

  “But no one can get milk!” Sister gasped.

  Henri stood at the threshold with his arms crossed Mussolini-style and shrugged.

  Next Micheaux brought in bread—four dozen baguettes, bundled like sheaves of wheat, and a huge burlap sack stuffed with round loaves of country bread. He piled it on the large kitchen worktable. He brought in three blocks of ice for the icebox.

  Mother Catherine came to the kitchen to investigate the commotion. She blinked at the bread-covered table and the racks of milk bottles. She looked at Henri and shook her head in disbelief. “Oh, Monsieur!”

  “We do have a bit more,” Henri said, as Micheaux struggled in with five dachshund-sized sausages.

  By the time Micheaux lugged in a wheel of Norwegian cheese huge as an automobile tire, the windows of the dormitory were filled with the excited faces of students. On the walk back for another load, he blew a kiss and bowed like a matinee idol to his audience. It brought squeals and waves from the girls.

  Micheaux carried in a wooden tub of butter. Then a box with ten kilograms of nuts and ten kilograms of chocolate. Then one with twenty kilos of flour. Then one with twenty of coffee.

  Next to the icebox, Sister Martine sat speechless, tears rolling down her tiny cheeks.

  Micheaux’s last load was the size of a valise and wrapped in waxed paper. Mother pulled back the wrapping to reveal bacon—slabs, thick and hard, with fat the color of cream and meat the color of blood. She could only marvel, “But these things, they’ve all disappeared from the shops. It is truly a miracle.”

  “Miracles are a specialty of mine.” Henri laughed, tipping his bowler hat. “And now I must depart for my dining engagement in the city. Pruvot, pay Micheaux and dismiss him.” He turned back to the nuns. “Mother Catherine, Sister, au revoir and bon appétit!”

  The miracles continued for almost a year. At least once a month Henri Messiaen would bring or have delivered similar stocks of food—somehow. For, though no one had fuel, his car was running. Though no one could get meat, he found a way. In wintertime, when everyone shivered, Monsieur Micheaux showed up every so often at St Sébastien with lovely coal. And when no one could get cigarettes, even on the black market, he brought them, sometimes English ones no less, for Sister Arnaude. The nuns speculated that he must be a bootleg kingpin, but they never asked questions. One didn’t ask questions in those days.

  Red and White

  With the arrival of improving weather in April 1941, a number of members of Le Cercle de la Chouette Chuchoteuse at St. Sébastien contracted spring fever. At night, those Whispering Owls regularly snuck out of the dormitory and occasionally even off the convent grounds. And those who went began to sniff the subtle odor of change in the war’s course. Sitting with nineteen other nightgowned girls in a circle around a single candle in the dormitory, Camille reported one night, “It’s strange. Last night I saw a train of flat cars loaded with tarpaulin-covered tanks and cannons. And it was heading east.”

  Camille’s cousin Chloe, who spent weekends at a nearby farm helping tend the orchard, whispered, “You know the highway running by the farmhouse? It was clogged Saturday night with convoys of troop trucks hauling Boche soldiers back toward Germany.”

  Isabelle from Paris said, “Perhaps they’re leaving France, too. Surely they are. Mamam will be so happy to have their filthy boots off the Champs-Élysées.” She looked around the circle like she’d said too much. “It’s not just Germans. She’d say that about any foreigners, mind you. It’s just a fact that the Île de la Cité should be for Parisians. Just for us.”

  Eva smiled sweetly. “My uncle says Paris would be the best city on earth were it not for Parisians.”

  “Then your uncle can sit on a tack.” Isabelle crossed her arms. “We won’t ever leave.”

  That night, lying in their beds, the girls heard waves of warbirds droning overhead. Like what they’d heard nine months earlier. Only now they were heading east, back from the Channel.

  In the Owl’s circle a week later, with the nightly movement of men and machines increasing, Simone, the girl nicknamed Trout, steered the talk to reasons for the change. “So, sitting here in our little circle around our little candle we know that the Boche are turning their noses east; we just don’t know why.”

  “Maybe they need to go home,” Bébé snickered, “to wash out their stinky old underwear.”

  “Bébé, shush!” Chloe swished a quick sign of the cross. “There’s to be an armistice.”

  “An armistice?” Nathalie’s eyes got wide. “Father’s saved a magnum of champagne to celebrate the peace. When it comes, I get to go home for the week and get tipsy drunk with him.”

  “Nathalie, please!” Chloe scolded, “I’ve been praying for peace, and I think God’s listened. He’s granting us an armistice.”

  Bébé threw her chubby arms into the air and looked up toward heaven. “Praise the Lord!”

  Clarisse poked Bébé in the ribs. “Hate to burst your balloon, Mademoiselle Avoirdupois, but God and Herr Hitler don’t talk much. Want to know what I think? There’s no way the Boche are giving up. Look, they gassed my uncle in the Great War. He said they fled from the front just before they sent the mustard gas. I think that damn Hitler is planning to do it again, drenching England in the stuff, and he wants his precious SS safely away when he does.”

  Laetitia grimaced. “I like Chloe’s idea better.”

  “Believe as you wish.” Clarisse resumed brushing her hair. “But remember, when it comes to misbehavior, the Boche wrote the book.”

  “You must have studied with them, LaCroix,” Isabelle stuck out her tongue at Clarisse.

  Clarisse jumped to her feet and struck a belligerent pose, but the girls’ attention was drawn elsewhere. Eva stepped into the center of the circle and switched on a flashlight pointing up from the tip of her chin. The shadows it cast on her face and her bushy moustache, made by holding a black comb under her nose, were eerie. “Good evening, comrades. I am Josef Stalin,” Eva said with a Russian accent. “Allow me to offer a hypothesis for your observations. Observations my spies would have made if they weren’t all IDIOTS.” Eva looked away from the circle and called, “Beria, have all my spies shot. While you’re at it, shoot yourself, too!”

  The girls were laughing as Eva turned her shadowy face back to them, her eyes wide and darting from girl to girl and her Russian accent even heavier than before. “It’s oh so clear. Unbowed Britain still rules waves and
clouds in the west.” Eva made her eyebrows jump. “The German beast’s appetite is insatiable. So Hitler turns his hungry eyes elsewhere. Eeek! From Berlin, my socialist union must look tempting as a big bowl of borscht with sour cream.”

  Camille raised her hand. “Sorry to interrupt, comrade.”

  “Nobody interrupts me,” Eva said. She pointed to Cami. “Have her shot!”

  “Just one question before I die, comrade,” Cami giggled. “I thought Hitler was your dear friend. Is there no honor among you despots these days?”

  “Us, friends? Just because we dined together on Polish sausage? I never trust a man who won’t drink vodka with me.”

  Cami said, “Is there anyone you do trust, comrade?”

  “Didn’t I have you shot?” Eva laughed. “Anyway, the trains, the trucks, the troops, moved in secret under the cover of darkness—it proves my case. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a sleeping bear to rouse.” She switched off her light.

  When the laughter had died down, Isabelle from Paris said, “But really, it’s all so silly. Germany and the Soviets are allies, and Hitler can’t fight England and Russia at once.”

  Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s siccing of an army of 3.6 million on the unprepared USSR in June 1941, marked an explosive upturn in the war in the east. Changes that summer in the war’s impact on western Europe were more evolutionary. By September, not only was the evening’s light fading earlier at St. Sébastien, so too was food becoming increasingly scarce.

  The district’s farmers had always been generous, but now their livestock and crops were inventoried and distribution of their produce was restricted. They still did what they could for Mother Catherine, but it wasn’t much. And with the town of Lefebvre starving, it had nothing to share with St. Sébastien.

  Toward the end of summer 1941, Eva’s trips to visit her uncle became less frequent, for he was away from Liege much of the time. When Henri was home and wanted to see her, Pruvot was sent to the convent to fetch her. After those visits, Eva returned with provisions for the kitchen of St. Sébastien, but there seemed to be less each time.

  Less from the local sources. Less from Uncle Henri. Finally, in late September came the third blow. Early one afternoon, a detail of three German soldiers arrived at the convent unannounced. A sourfaced corporal rang the bell. When Sister Martine answered, he held out a document, official-looking and written in German, and demanded in a distant cousin of French, “I am Corporal Schweinslauter. Make present the lands-master.”

  Sister could not read the document and she interpreted landsmaster to mean the mayor of Lefebvre. With pointing and pantomime, she indicated the way to the village.

  The soldier was first confused, then exasperated. He lapsed into German. “Nein, nein. Wo ist irher Bauer?” Then in French. “Your farmer. Where?”

  Mother Catherine came to the door. The soldier repeated his clumsy demand.

  Mother had heard rumors of food confiscation. She saw the shovels and baskets in the soldiers’ truck and immediately knew the importance of putting them off. She sized-up the corporal: The sloppy shave. Missing button. Twitching eye. This one shouldn’t be so difficult to cow. If I can buy just a few hours, we can harvest and hide much of the garden. She snatched the document and looked it over for less than five seconds. “Ha! Absurd.” Wagging her finger, she scolded the corporal. “No, no, no, Monsieur. Where is your officer?” She had the corporal backpedaling. “Your officer. Here. Bring him!” Mother flicked her hand, as if shooing a fly. She stomped her foot and pointed to the gate. “You. Out of my sight!”

  The befuddled soldier was stumbling backward when his comrade called, “Herr Corporal, I found the garden in back. Come on. Forget the witch.”

  As the driver backed the truck toward the garden, Schweinslauter pushed past Mother. He ran behind the vehicle to the rear of the convent building. Mother followed, shaking the document and demanding the soldiers leave.

  Barking came from the barn. As the truck lurched to a stop near the garden, Eva’s dog Caspar jumped through an open barn window and charged the soldiers, yapping angrily. The growling dog chased one of them onto a cement bench. He used an empty bushel basket to fend off Caspar’s bared teeth.

  The ruckus drew the girls in Sr. Arnaude’s literature class to the window. Terrified, they watched Schweinslauter stride to the cab of the truck and snatched a rifle. Laughing, he aimed. “Don’t move, Franz,” he hollered. “I’ll save you from the wolf.” At that, Eva bolted from the window, running out of the classroom and down the stairs that led to the school’s back door.

  Outside, before the corporal could fire, Mother scooped Caspar into her arms. She glared at the soldiers. “Cowards! You’d shoot a helpless animal? You’d steal food from the mouths of starving children?” She shook her head. “Stop and think what you’re doing!”

  Schweinslauter leveled the rifle at Mother Catherine. He used the barrel to indicate, Get inside now, or else.

  With the struggling dog in her arms, Mother walked to the convent door. Each step was unrushed, even stately. Her arrival at the door was simultaneous with Eva’s.

  Eva was trembling. “I saw from the window, Mother. I was so afraid.” She pulled Caspar to herself. Scratching under his ear, Eva quieted him. Then she squeezed Mother’s hand. “I’ll never forget you risked your life to save my Caspie.”

  Mother glanced at the hand on hers and smiled. Her gaze returned to Eva’s face. “But my dear, I didn’t risk my life just to save your dog. Mostly I risked it for those men. To show them that courage and grace are possible, even in these dark days. That life can always be respected.”

  Eva huffed. “And what do you think the chances are that such men will grasp your lesson?”

  “I don’t know, Eva. I only know I did all I could, unveiling a truth for them to see, if they’ll look honestly.”

  For a moment, Eva peered silently at the floor. When she looked up, her face was streaked with tears, for a veil before her own eyes had momentarily lifted and the truth she glimpsed shook her bedrock beliefs. She turned and ran, holding Caspar tight to her breast.

  In two hours, Schweinslauter and his men took most of the root vegetables, the potatoes, the ripe apples and green pears. They made sure to tromp much of what they didn’t harvest before driving off to the station in Lefebvre. That night the food was on a train bound for Germany.

  With the chill winds of November howling, the outlook was for a cold and hungry winter. And as food supplies went, so did the spirits of the St. Sébastien girls.

  One frosty December night just after lights out, the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas, the girls were in bed, each with a towel-wrapped, oven-warmed brick at her feet.

  Isabelle from Paris pulled her tasseled nightcap over her ears. “I dreamed last night of my mother’s bouillabaisse. Wherever I was in the house, its aroma would seek me out. So rich, smelling was almost tasting. Mama used to make it on cold winter evenings, like tonight. And she baked crusty bread to go with it. Her bread smelled of yeast and wheat, and she served it oven-warm so that the butter melted into it and dripped onto the plate in a yellow pool.” Isabelle burst into tears. “It seems so long ago—in another life.”

  Camille climbed into Isabelle’s bed to comfort her and ended up crying too.

  Bébé pulled her knees tight to her chest. “Mirella and I’ve been talking about something for weeks now. Planning it. When the stinking war’s over, we’re going to make the world’s biggest confection. For all of us. It changes with every day, but right now it’s layers of chocolate, cherry, and génoise gâteau, with butter cream frosting. We’ll hollow it and fill the hole with glacéed walnuts, marzipan, licorice, honey, sugarplum, strawberry jam.…Let’s see. And pineapple gelato and hazelnut praline. Oh, and penuche crumbled on top. Did I forget anything, Mirella?

  “Uh-ha,” Mirella said. “Blancmange and whipped cream.”

  “Oh, yes. Blancmange and whipped cream piled on till it spills down the sides.” Bébé broke
into soft sobs.

  Simone blew on her hands. “I’ve gone beyond thinking of food to thinking of hunger. Days I can push it from my mind, but at night, lying in bed, it’s always here, like a worm gnawing my insides. And nights like this, when I can see my breath, I shiver ‘till my body aches.”

  Clarisse LaCroix brushed her long, red hair. “When Mom died, my aunt moved in with us. She was an awful cook. I lived on bread and jam in those days. But her cuisine was like something from Maxim’s compared to the shit we’re served here, these days.”

  “So you dined at Maxim’s often, did you, LaCroix?” sassed Isabelle from Paris.

  Soleil scolded, “Clarisse, you know Sister Martine does her best with what little she has. Don’t be so critical.”

  Clarisse shot back, “Sister Martine is a ninny. Everything she makes tastes like dishwater. So she doesn’t have a full larder? For variety, she could have Sister Eusebia dangle her stinking feet in the soup for a few minutes—at least that might flavor it.”

  Camille groaned. “Oh, Clarisse, you’re a sick bitch. I wish you’d just shut up.” She ducked as Clarisse’s hairbrush flew by her head.

  Eva jumped out of bed. “Girls. Girls! Please. Maybe it’s time for a meeting of the Whispering Owls. Françoise, light a candle. It may not give off much heat, but its glow will distract us from the thermometer’s mischief.”

  With blankets pulled over their shoulders, the girls in their white flannel nightgowns formed a tight circle around the candle.

  Eva gave them a moment to settle. “When I’m hungry and cold, it makes me feel better to think of the story of Bottomwobbles’ soup. Does that work for you, too?”

  The girls looked at each other and chorused that they didn’t know the story.

  “Don’t know the story of Bottomwobbles’ soup? Well then, you must listen.

  “During the time that the geese occupied the forest of the school of St. François D’Assisi, food there became scarce. At first, Mother Swan’s boyfriend, Monsieur Ermine, brought gifts of food, but he proved to be an unreliable weasel. The wrens cried that they were hungry, for all they had to eat was watery soup and a few grains of corn. Sister Mouse, the cook, said she had nothing else to prepare. Mother Swan would not take food from others in the forest, who were all hungry too, and certainly would never ask the geese for help. As always, it was old Sister Tortoise who came up with a gem of an idea, without knowing it.