These children have lost so much and that is why I give them what I can, everything out of the baskets that is not absolutely essential to me. I even break up the soap bars into pieces and wrap them as presents. How proud the children are to take these home to their mothers, who themselves have so little to make do on, what with the government distributing nice cookbooks to us women entitled: How to Cook Without Meat, or How to Cook Without Butter or Oil. Maybe the next book can be, How to Cook Everything You Need with Air.
I worry about you my darling, how you manage to eat. You were never one to cook, not wanting to spoil the magic of it all, as you used to say. You had a reverence for cooking not unlike that which you had for your painting, a respect for the soulful magic of it, the blind science, the problem solved not by trying to find the right answer, but by intuitively discovering the right solution, measure for measure. I can’t imagine how you cope with these endless ration cards for vegetables, cheese, bread, a coupon stamp for everything. And everything weighed with those damn metal ciphers, as if they are weighing out the blood of a country, one gram at a time. And to top off the insult no alcohol is allowed to be sold three days a week. You must have drunk yourself through the wine cellars of all your friends by now.
I worry about you. I worry about the reports of tuberculosis in Paris, how rampant it is. Even here, many of my children have it. They should be in the hospital, but hospitals are for soldiers. I try as best I can to keep my schoolroom warm, using my own ration coupons for coal—one precious lump can go a long way. I try to keep myself warm as well, since the poor children are always sick with this and that, many of them dressed in pathetic rags. I would give them the clothes off my back if it weren’t for my baby, and if it weren’t for my baby I wouldn’t give a damn about tuberculosis. But I must stay healthy.
Today at school a girl came to me in hysterics. She couldn’t be consoled and it took me the longest time to coax from her what the great calamity was. She tearfully confessed that the boys told her that the Eiffel Tower had been torn down and made into tanks. A thoughtless prank on the boys’ part, but it could be true, the way they want us to save the scraps of anything that can somehow be transformed into a weapon. Maybe they will tear down the Eiffel Tower to make more of those badges with the image of Marshal Pétain in full military regalia stamped on them. The badges are given as rewards to the children who memorize the recent books about the new French state, extolling the secular virtues of school, work, family, and most important, allegiance to Pétain the father. People must return to the earth and plant their gardens for the ultimate victory. All good children should plant potatoes so farmers can use their time making hand grenades. The Marshal is everywhere, in his red cap, gold-braided uniform, and chestful of medals; his framed picture hangs in every classroom. His face is on calendars, clocks, thermometer gauges, even stitched into commemorative honeymoon pillows—not by mandate, but by patriotic fervor. There is nothing more dangerous than an old warrior unless it is a young fool. I teach my children what I am instructed to: the importance of family and state. But in my small way I try to make them accountable to each other first, that no selfishness goes unpunished, that no selflessness goes unrecognized. They ask for so little, these children. They have been handed the suffering of so many. It is important that they understand how all this came about.
It is also important for me to remember how this came about, that I am here because of you. I do what I do with Royer because of you. I pass many houses with tables newly placed outside, covered by black tablecloths and set with burning candles, bowls of bitter olives, open books of condolences to be signed by family and friends of the recently deceased: a soldier imprisoned last year in the East, a sister taken months ago to Lyon for questioning, a child who began spitting blood days before. I have to keep reminding myself how simply this all came about. It’s not the swirling morass that people claim it to be. It is a small pinprick of recognition that life will go on with or without us, but the steps we take on the road we walk will echo long after our passing.
Now I will tell you what road I have taken, but it will be written in a kind of shorthand, a code, if you will, for what I do is actually part of a code that no one person fully understands. As for using real names, I will not, for their protection. They all have, already, aliases and noms de guerre, but I will change them again, in the event these letters are ever discovered. I will also change the locales where things happened. But they did happen, that I can assure you. And those on the other side, soldiers, militia, secret police, does it really make any difference if I name them? What difference does it make to a rabbit if it is hunted by an eagle or a weasel? The only name you already have is that of Royer, and let us say, for the future, since he has not ever been described as being involved in anything criminal, that he will be appropriately designated. When I write to you of these things you will not know my voice, it will be the voice of the night letters. Do I write these night letters to you alone? No. Because we are no longer alone. Divided or not, there is a child. So these night letters are written for my baby as well. When you next hear of certain matters the names of the participants will be shielded, and my name will be Lucretia. What happened to Lucretia is not opera. There is no orchestra, and all the singers are without tongues. Lucretia is the nightingale, her sound rises from the earth to the sky in a song not of her making but only of her hearing, resonating through the long winter of occupation in the garden that was once called Provence.
LOUISE
Lucretia?
Lucretia?
Lucretia, do you hear me?
The train to Nice rattles through the winter night as cold sweat beads on my brow. What is in the basket I carry balanced precariously on my knees as I sit in the crowded train compartment? I am the only woman. Is that why the men avoid me with their eyes? All of them look at me by not looking at me. If even one looked at me, then I would exist, flesh and blood in a skirt and sweater, big gray coat with a woolen scarf wound around my neck. I’m not showing any skin, except my face. My face is exposed and on it I think they can read me, their gaze collectively pulling away the skin to the bone of truth. And what is their truth? All are in uniform; most speak the language of the new emperor, a language I can’t understand. Would I feel less violated in my own country if I understood their language? Or would I feel even more betrayed? Do they see in me the field where wheat once grew and the earth now lies fallow, its farmer far off in a foreign prison, or dead as a turnip, or working in the factories once worked by the uniformed men surrounding me? If one of them looks at me then they all will, so no one dares. They know I am Lucretia, they know they have already raped me and torn the soul of my country.
The train rattles, it is like the chattering of teeth. There is a faint ticking. My heart or my baby’s heart? Can I really hear it, or is it a ticking in the basket? Does the basket have a heart of a bomb timed to explode on this train full of soldiers before I ever arrive in Nice? Royer said, “Here are your instructions. Do not question them, do not ask, only obey. Take the train to Nice. These are your papers, false identification, all in perfect order. You will be asked to show them along the way, but you will pass through with no problem, because you have the proper authorization to travel, because you have an innocent face, because you are a woman. They will ask you what is in the basket and you will answer, a loaf of bread. They will say you are not supposed to have a loaf of bread, that the bread ration is less than two ounces a day per person. You will answer that you know this, and you know that cakes and croissants and brioches are classified as luxuries and are illegal to have. But you have only a loaf of bread. You have saved up two ounces of flour a day for weeks to bake a loaf of bread for your sick mother in Nice and you are taking it to her. You know that this is not strictly legal, but you hope they understand. They will not understand. They will demand to see the bread. You will pull back the cloth and they will see a lovely loaf, baked to perfection, snuggled in its basket content as a baby pig. And t
hey will say, okay, you may pass. And they will watch you, still suspicious. But they will leave you alone because you have an innocent face. And you will keep your face turned to them at all times, shining like a beacon, your skin scrubbed and faintly pink with a pearlescent glow, and this face will shame them from investigating further, for they know its truth, they know the pain it masks, and they will let you continue unmolested, so they can claim they never laid a hand on you, or threatened with a violating gesture. So that they can go home at night and pretend they are not guilty. Even though they are all the ones who raped you.”
I was stunned. How did he know I had been raped?
“Because,” he answered, “after you proved you could be trusted with matters demanding the utmost secrecy, when I told you that a new name was required—a name for the night world where all move anonymously to protect the true identity of the collective resistance—you chose the name Lucretia. You chose the name of a woman who was raped in ancient Rome. Through history this tragedy shook the guilt of all men. They wrote poems about Lucretia, staged plays, sang operas, all to prove they were not the guilty ones.”
What he said was true, but I quickly reminded him that Lucretia killed herself after the rape. I was still alive.
He smiled. “There is still time. For what is war but a mass unconscious desire for suicide?”
“It’s not so simple.”
“Everything is simple; the lie is the truth.”
“So everything you are asking me to do has another purpose?”
“Precisely, which is why you must always follow my instructions, never veer from the lie or you will derail the truth. The fly hunts the eagle.”
“Flies don’t hunt eagles.”
“And eagles don’t hunt flies … in a normal world.”
“Tell Lucretia what you want her to do.”
“Here is the basket of bread you will take to your sick mother in Nice.”
“I don’t have a sick mother in Nice.”
“You do now.” He handed me a slip of paper. “Here is her address.”
“And what do I say to her?”
“The fly hunts the eagle.”
“It’s a lie.”
“It’s the truth.”
* * *
THE TRAIN CONTINUES to rattle. Is it an even louder chattering of teeth, or a ticking in the basket balanced on my knees? Do the uniformed men around me hear the ticking? Is that why they avoid looking at me, afraid I will blow up their compartment if they approach? The train lurches to a squealing stop in the Nice station. I still hear the ticking. My heart? The soldiers must hear it too. They stay where they are, not moving, letting me make my way down the narrow aisle between them. I feel like a little girl walking in a forest of tall trees with a picnic basket of poisoned food. Red Riding Hood carrying a bomb?
I am not prepared for what I encounter after I manage to push my way through the crowd in the train station. This is no longer the Nice I remember. No longer the glittering Baie des Anges, with its broad sandy beach and hotels frosted with pink stucco. In winter light a grey film coats everything. Windows are painted blackout blue, walls are covered with thick camouflage netting, coils of barbed wire block the seaside promenade. Menacing concrete and steel struts line the shore, and spoked black balls of surface mines float in the sea.
The city streets are not filled with fashionable summer visitors, but with the homeless seeking shelter, a restless mob with everything they own tied in pitiful rag bundles or suitcases held together with rope. The air echoes with accents from all over Europe. Begging hands are held out everywhere, dirty hands with deeply creased palms. Men, women, and children cough and shiver in the cold. The scent of summer perfumes and suntan creams has given way to the stench of the unwashed, the stale sweat of defeat. Following the gaze of downcast eyes I see shoes worn through with holes, exposing festering feet. How far have these people journeyed, walking with blood in their shoes? Did they flee here from other countries or from a house just around the corner? It makes no difference now. I have been instructed not to stop nor reach out a comforting hand, not even to a small girl, slumped alone before a high stone wall with a boarded-up mansion behind. The girl’s whimpering cannot be drowned out by the shouted pleas of others around me. I continue, still seeing the stain of urine on the dirty sidewalk beneath the girl, feeling her shivering body in my own bones.
I look at the address on the slip of paper Royer gave me. Can this be right? There are nothing but fancy hotels here, protected by banks of sandbags and patrolling soldiers. Two soldiers stop me; one asks for my identity papers. I hand them over. He reads them carefully, then hands them to the other soldier, who quickly walks away with them.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, trying to keep the alarm out of my voice.
The soldier does not answer. He looks down at my basket as he puts his hand on the holstered gun at his hip.
The other soldier returns with a tall blond man. The man wears a leather trench coat and expensive dress shoes shined to a high gloss; he is not a soldier. When he speaks I am relieved that his language is not foreign, but French.
“Madame has a reason for traveling so far from home?”
“Aren’t my papers in order?”
“Travel in this area is restricted.”
“My mother is ill. I’ve brought her a present.”
“A present? May I see it?”
“I have nothing to hide. Nothing at all.”
“I’m certain you don’t.”
“Look.” I pull the cloth cover off the basket.
The two soldiers draw their revolvers and point them at me.
My hand stops, but I cannot prevent my fingers from trembling.
“Madame is nervous?”
“No … no.” I continue to pull the cover back, exposing the loaf of bread.
“Ah, Madame has only bread! She has saved her coupons to get enough flour to make her sick mother a present. How quaint.”
“It’s only bread. I assure you of that.”
“May I,” the blond man bends over and touches the crust of the loaf, “just have a closer look?”
“Yes, of course.”
He pulls the loaf from its basket and holds it above his head, looking underneath as if expecting to see dangling wires. Could he hear a ticking from the loaf, or was it the pounding of my heart? He spins the loaf around, assaying it from every angle, verifying its shape and weight like a judge in a baking contest.
He hurls the loaf onto the sidewalk. It hits with a hollow thud and smashes into crumbs at my feet. I am surprised the loaf contains nothing inside, that he has taken such a chance. But was it a chance? He must have known the loaf was harmless. He hands back my papers.
“Madame should be aware that she has only one hour before her permission to travel through this area expires. She must be on the last train leaving today.”
“Yes … I’m aware.”
He turns and walks rapidly away with the two soldiers on his heels.
Surrounding me is a sudden clatter of grey wings and deep-throated gurgles as hungry pigeons descend in a rush to the crumbs on the sidewalk, pecking and jostling. Then, just as quickly, they fly up as children gather around, stomping their feet to scare off the birds. The children fight one another for the crumbs, snatching bits of bread and shoving them into their dirty mouths. Among them is the girl I passed earlier, the little rag doll slumped in her own urine. I want to reach down and stroke her matted hair, to soothe her pain, but my time is short. I am not to call attention to myself, even though my loaf has been lost; I have instructions to follow and a rendezvous to keep.
I glance again at the address written by Royer. I am surprised to see the number is the same as the gilded gold number above the ornate entrance of a hotel. Can this be right? It seems a mistake. But I am to follow instructions. The hotel attendants swing open the heavy doors, bowing solicitously as I pass.
I feel I have entered the grand salon of a luxury ocean liner at sea,
so far removed is this world from the one outside. I am transported into another reality as I step onto the plush carpeting. Glistening marble walls soar upward; the crystal brilliance of chandeliers high overhead casts an expensive glow onto a shadowless realm. I become lost among the velvet-flocked pillars of the vast lobby. I search for a way out. Royer must have given me the wrong address. Or is this another test?
“I can assist you.”
The words float toward me through the forest of pillars. I try to adjust my eyes to the rich light. Then I see a man dressed in a black tuxedo and white shirt. He stands on the far side of a granite counter; behind him rises a wall of message boxes holding silver room keys. How can he assist me? I see him looking at my basket. My basket! I carry no luggage; I must be someone to be quickly ushered out.
He comes from behind the counter and beckons me to follow: “Right this way.” He leads me down a broad hallway lined with potted palms and stops at the entrance to a formal dining room.
An imperious maître d’hôtel, standing guard at a desk with an open reservation book before him, glances at me skeptically. “Is this she?”
“Yes.” The man in the tuxedo nods and walks away.
“Your table is ready.” The maître d’hôtel picks up a leather-bound menu and starts into the dining room.
The Day of the Bees Page 16