They crossed the village on the double. At the entrance to the doctor’s house, Erich took out his pistol.
“This way you’ve always got the upper hand,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll hit upon a big bunch of helpful attitudes. We’re going inside now, and I’m not coming back out without the goddamn pills, even if I’ve got to turn the whole house upside down.”
Beatrice sent a quick prayer up to the heavens and followed him.
He had cursed, ranted and raged, he had waved his pistol around, had had every dresser opened, had thrown the contents of drawers through the room and had even peered inside the rabbit hutch in the yard, as if he suspected something could be hidden there. He had thrown the doctor’s family into a state of fear and terror. Mrs. Wyatt had looked like she would have a stroke at any moment. Mae had gotten out of bed and had been quivering like a leaf.
“What’s going on with him?” she had whispered, directed at Beatrice, but before she could answer, Erich had already spun around and pointed his gun at Mae.
“Nobody says a word!” he roared. “Understood? One more word and I shoot!”
Edith Wyatt pulled Mae to her. By then Mae was over half a foot taller than her mother, but Edith held her in her arms as if she was still the little girl she once had been.
Dr. Wyatt had tried to calm Erich down, but Erich hadn’t been interested in being placated. “I want the medicine,” he kept repeating. “I want the goddamn medicine!”
Beatrice looked at Dr. Wyatt pleadingly, but he shrugged his shoulders regretfully and with his mouth formed a mute I really don’t have anything!
It was a miracle that Erich didn’t find the roof hatch. In his obsession he couldn’t have been prevented from climbing up and continuing his search up there. But in fact he failed to look up at the ceiling when he was upstairs. He stormed around, rather than keep calm and look everything over. He rummaged through the wardrobe in the Wyatts’ bedroom, threw Mrs. Wyatt’s underthings on the bed, then turned over the mattress and stared at the iron frame, as if it could reveal some secret to him if he only gazed long enough at the same spot. After that, he searched around in Mae’s room, then ran back down the stairs. Beatrice saw that Edith was struggling not to faint. Death sentences were still being handed down and carried out on the island. Edith knew that her whole family would probably be shot if Erich found Julien.
By then Erich was so exhausted that the hand he held his gun with was shaking. His face had lost its red splotches and was now very pale. He had dark brown shadows under his eyes, looked like he was suffering from some illness.
“God, Wyatt,” he exclaimed hoarsely, and looked at the doctor full of hatred. “You’re finished if I ever get word you’ve been lying. If it turns out that there’s medication for me in this house, I’ll shoot you myself, I swear!”
“I have nothing, sir,” Wyatt replied calmly, and Beatrice admired the doctor for the unruffled air he gave off. His heart must have been in his throat too, but no one would have noticed anything to look at him. “I assure you, for months now I, too, have received only the most essential supplies for my practice, and what you need isn’t among them.”
With his last bit of strength, Erich crept back home, barely managing the steep hill they had to climb. In the last hours he had fully drained himself. Beatrice hoped he would spend the rest of the day in bed.
And in fact, no sooner had he arrived at home than he went to his bedroom without a word and locked himself in. Helene peered through the kitchen door.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Dr. Wyatt couldn’t give him anything either,” Beatrice answered. “But I’m hoping he’ll be calmer now. He’s utterly exhausted. He’ll probably sleep for hours.”
“Things are getting worse and worse with him,” said Helene. Her eyes were red from crying. “I don’t think he’ll let things stay quiet today either. He’ll sleep for awhile, and then he’ll start all over again.”
“All we can do is wait,” said Beatrice. “And in the meantime we should try to clear some of the mess in the dining room.”
“He’s not normal anymore,” Helene whispered. It hardly seemed possible to move her to any sensible action. “He’s just sick. He belongs in treatment. What’s supposed to happen when the war’s over?”
Beatrice hoped that Erich would land in prison after the war and would be kept away from society for many long years. But she said nothing. There was no sense in getting Helene unnecessarily upset. She was doing badly enough already.
“Is there anything for breakfast?” Beatrice asked.
Helene raised her shoulders hopelessly. “We don’t have a single crust of bread left. We have no more canned fruit, nothing more. I boiled some ersatz coffee, but that’s all.”
Beatrice drank a cup of the coffee, which tasted like water. They had no more sugar and no milk either, and so there was nothing with which she could have added some flavor to the brownish liquid.
Helene sat at the kitchen table, arms hanging down at her sides, complaining about Erich and about the death by starvation that loomed over all of them, and then said she basically didn’t care if there was something to eat or not, she couldn’t have gotten a single bite down anyway.
Beatrice sat on the porch and looked out at the garden where Pierre was weeding a bed under the guard’s supervision; he worked slowly, kept pausing again and again and taking deep breaths. He too had received no breakfast and stood on the verge of collapse. The guard chewed on a piece of bark and stared wearily into space.
The sun was already high above the eastern horizon, and promised a hot day. We should really clean up, thought Beatrice, but she too felt so deeply exhausted that she didn’t know how she’d be able to pull herself to her feet. A voice within told her that this time Helene’s grim prediction was probably right: Erich wouldn’t let the calm that day last.
It was a day that seemed heavy with the promise of a storm. This sense didn’t come from the weather, which was hot and dry, not humid. Rather, there was a peculiar tension in the house, a subtle vibration under what appeared to be an entirely calm surface, that recalled the rumble of distant thunder. It was the famed calm before the storm. Nothing stirred. But it was a deceptive stillness that had fallen over people and nature. It wasn’t real. Beneath it, disastrous events were brewing.
Early in the afternoon, just after three o’clock, the guard passed out. The whole time he had been sitting on a tree stump, steadily finding new pieces of bark to chew on. Like all of them, he had also not had anything to eat that day. His face was pale, but since nobody was running around rosy-cheeked, it wasn’t noticeable any longer. Basically, no one paid attention to him. Since midday he had stopped commanding Pierre to work, and Beatrice thought it was compassion that was causing him to behave more humanely, since Pierre looked so bad off and was so visibly at the limit of his strength that only a monster could have forced him to perform hard, physical labor. Pierre cowered in the shade of an apple tree, wiped the sweat from his forehead every now and then and kept his eyes closed. His breathing was shallow.
The guard stood up — he might have wanted to get something to drink — went a shade paler and sank to the ground. He made no sound, his fall seemed to happen in slow motion. He lay there, no longer moving. Beatrice, who was still sitting on the porch and herself fighting a feeling of growing faintness, stood up.
“What’s with him?” she asked.
Pierre raised himself up with an effort, lumbered over to the guard and knelt down beside him. “A fainting spell,” he said. “He’s unconscious.”
Beatrice stared at him. Pierre smiled wearily. “No, mademoiselle, thank you.” He had understood her unspoken offer. “I’m not running away. I don’t know where I’d go, and I’m too weak. I’m staying. It won’t be much longer anyway.”
“We should get him into the shade,” sa
id Beatrice. With their combined strength — and neither had much left — they pulled and shoved the unconscious man under the apple tree where Pierre had been sitting before. Beatrice brought a pitcher of cold water. They sprinkled it on his forehead and his wrists.
“I think we have to call a doctor,” said Beatrice fearfully. “He’s just not waking up!”
At that moment he opened his eyes, stared at Beatrice and Pierre without comprehension. His eyelids fluttered.
“What happened?” he asked.
But before Beatrice could answer, he lost consciousness again with a soft sigh.
“I’m calling Dr. Wyatt,” said Beatrice firmly, and jumped to her feet. She had been too quick and she staggered. She saw black spots, a wave of sweat flooded over her body. Searching for a support she grabbed onto the trunk of the apple tree, held herself up there and waited for the dizziness to pass. When she opened her eyes again and the world around her stopped spinning, she saw Erich, who had appeared on the porch. He was as pale as a ghost. He had his pistol in his hand. Behind him, like a tiny, slender shadow, stood Helene, with a face that seemed frozen in fear.
Things happened so quickly that it was only later that Beatrice really understood their sequence, only later that she was able to make clear to herself what exactly had taken place.
Erich went down the stairs that led from the porch to the garden. He had his gun aimed at Pierre, who still crouched, unmoving, next to the guard in the grass.
“Not you,” said Erich. “You won’t escape me.”
Pierre was so obviously not making even the slightest attempt to flee that Erich’s cold rage, his resolve, could only have rested on his delusions and his hysteria.
Helene let out a sound of terror. It sounded like the caw of a bird, and resounded, unnoticed.
Beatrice thought, Don’t do it! She sensed the tragedy that would run its unstoppable course, and yet she couldn’t say a word, there was no move she could make that would have prevented anything. Except for Erich, they were all frozen, unmoving, held captive to the hate that could be seen in Erich’s eyes.
Erich shot, but he missed his target. The bullet hit the ground right next to Pierre. Pierre didn’t move.
“Run away!” Beatrice screamed. “Just run away!”
Erich shot again. This time he hit Pierre in the leg. The young Frenchman cried out in pain, pressed his hands to the wound. Erich had got him right below the knee. Finally he came to life, he tried to crawl away in the grass, but he didn’t have a chance. Before him lay only the garden, wide and sunlit, and for many yards he would make the perfect target.
“The pistol!” Beatrice screamed. “Pierre, the pistol! Shoot back! Shoot back at him!”
Despite his panic, Pierre understood what she meant: the gun of the still unconscious guard. He turned around.
Erich shot again. Again he hit Pierre in the leg, and the shot spun the Frenchman, who had just gone to take the pistol from its holster, around, threw him to the ground.
Erich came two steps closer.
He’s enjoying it, thought Beatrice, who watched the expression on his face, he’s enjoying it, like it’s some exciting game.
He waited. He waited until Pierre, gray with pain, had hauled himself up again and turned around, until he reached a second time for the pistol, which was right in front of him. He even waited until Pierre had taken the gun out and taken the safety off, until he turned around again and pointed the barrel at him.
They both shot at the same time.
This time Erich missed his target, the bullet hit the ground far away from Pierre.
In the same moment however Erich toppled like a falling tree. He lay on the ground and moved no more.
No sound broke the silence. Even the birds, frightened by the shots, were still. The silence was unreal, as if the whole world was holding its breath. The sun shone down on a ghastly scene, on three men who lay in the grass, on two women who stood by and clearly could not comprehend what had happened, on two pistols that had fallen to the ground and looked like props that someone with very precise specifications had placed exactly where they now lay.
A stage set, climax of a dramatic play. And for the moment, none of the actors knew what was supposed to happen next. The director had forgotten to give further instruction. They remained where they were and did not move.
3
“So it was Pierre who shot Erich!” Franca said. “He didn’t shoot himself.”
“He didn’t shoot himself,” Beatrice confirmed. Candles had been lit all over the restaurant’s garden. In their pretty, warm light, Beatrice no longer looked as wretched as she had earlier that evening, but in her eyes there was still sadness and profound pain. “Pierre had acted in self-defense, but that wouldn’t have helped him. By law he would have been shot had anyone from the occupation force caught wind of it. We had to see to it that we quickly got a handle on the situation.”
“Erich was dead?”
Beatrice shook her head. “No. This part of the story was still true. Erich wasn’t dead, but it was clear that without medical help he wouldn’t have a chance. The shot had hit him right over his heart.”
“The guard …”
“… Hadn’t been aware of any of it, thank God. Otherwise we’d have been through.”
“What did you do? How did you take control of the situation?”
“Pierre was losing a lot of blood,” said Beatrice, “and I said we had to get a doctor at once. Pierre started to panic; we hadn’t yet given any thought to how we would present the course of events, and Pierre feared for his life if a doctor were to appear to whom we’d have to give some story or other. Helene and I carried him into the kitchen, and while Helene tied his leg above the two wounds in order to slow the bleeding, I ran back outside to check on Erich. He was moaning softly, but he wasn’t really fully conscious. The guard still wasn’t moving, but it was clear that he’d come to again eventually, and we had to come up with something before then. I ran back in the house and told Helene she had to help me bring Erich inside. It proved harder to transport him; Pierre had been able to stumble along, but Erich’s full weight hung on our shoulders. Luckily, he didn’t weigh all that much any more; we’d all been starving long enough. I no longer know how we managed it, but eventually we got him into the dining room. He lay there on the rug looking like he was already dead. He was losing blood too, but not as much as Pierre, who was bleeding profusely, despite the bandage on his thigh. Helene and I were still debating what the best thing to do was when I happened to see the guard staggering through the garden towards the house. If he came in and saw the field hospital we’d set up in there by then, he’d raise hell, and so I had to go outside and head him off. I ran out.”
“Wasn’t there blood in the garden?” Franca asked. “After all, you’d dragged Pierre over the field, and …”
“Of course there was blood in the garden,” Beatrice nodded. “And someone with a sharper eye would have noticed it, too. But this man was at the limit of his strength. His pulse was slack and he was on the verge of passing out again. He was reeling. He couldn’t walk a straight line. If he’d seen the blood, he would have taken it for a hallucination.”
“Wasn’t he worried about where the prisoner had gone?”
“Of course, but at the same time he was constantly struggling with the threat of another fainting spell. He was really extremely bad off. Luckily, he couldn’t even manage the four steps leading up to the porch. He sank down onto the bottommost step, put his head in his hands and groaned. I told him he shouldn’t worry, Erich had everything under control. He’d be picked up in just a moment and taken back to his lodgings. He should just keep sitting there.” Beatrice was silent for a moment while images from that day came alive again before her mind’s eye. “I should at least have brought him a glass of water,” she continued, “but I was
afraid that if he was to suddenly get his strength back, then he’d walk inside the house. Pierre was lying right there in the kitchen. He’d have tripped right over him.”
“How did you get him taken away?”
“Helene called Will and asked him to come over. Will was there at once. I had to come to a split second decision about whether or not we should tell him the truth. I knew it would be difficult to just saddle him with care of the guard and send the two of them off. Will would want to know where Pierre was, who was watching him, whether Erich knew what was happening. He’d want to speak with Erich. I took the risk. As quickly as I could, I described for Will what had happened.”
Franca looked at the old woman thoughtfully. “You went a good deal beyond what a sixteen-year-old girl is usually capable of handling,” she said.
“The situation demanded it,” Beatrice replied. “I couldn’t just sit down and start crying. And as usual, I couldn’t count on Helene. She’d kept it somewhat together long enough to help me get the two wounded into the house, but then she fell apart. She didn’t dare go into the dining room where Erich lay, and so she lingered at Pierre’s side in the kitchen, kept changing the useless bandage on his leg, stared as if hypnotized at the pools of blood around him and shook like a leaf. Her nerves were completely shot.”
“On some level,” said Franca. “I can understand that.”
“Yes, of course. Only now the problem was hanging solely on me. I had to take care of everything, and if I’d made a mistake …” She gave a shudder. “Pierre would have been a dead man. Even though the war was practically over, and had long been decided, shootings were still taking place. The Germans raged on up to the end.”
“How did Will react to the story?”
“I’d calculated correctly. Will was no Nazi. He’d basically told me so already at the start of the occupation, in the summer and fall of 1940, when we’d sat together in his quarters and he’d taught me German. I was assuming that he had no interest in handing Pierre over to the firing squad. I told him what had happened, and that we were now going to try and get a doctor as fast as we could. ‘And what are you going to tell the doctor?’ he asked, and I told him we still had to think of something. First, it was important to get the guard away, and while he still couldn’t think quite clearly at that. Will went along with it, and he took an enormous risk upon himself. He never should have taken a guard off at the request of a sixteen-year-old girl, he should have asked to speak to Erich. But he wouldn’t be threatened with a death sentence, that he knew, and plus, he could have hope that the Nazis really would be finished before anyone could hold him accountable.”
The Rose Gardener Page 55