A Coming Evil

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Aunt Josephine came running out to hug Lisette and her father both. "Oh, Lisette, you've grown so tall since last summer," she said as Lisette climbed stiffly down. "And you won't believe how grown-up Cecile is since the last time you saw her. She's been so eager to have you here. She's been asking about you all day."

  That was exactly what Lisette had been dreading, but she smiled politely.

  "Maurice," Aunt Josephine called, "come in the house. I still have enough coffee to make us each a cup."

  "I'll just stay here and read the paper," Maurice said. But he took out his pocket watch as a reminder to Papa that he only had a few minutes before they'd have to go back to the station so Papa could catch the return train to Paris.

  As soon as Lisette crossed the threshold, ten-year-old Cecile threw her arms around her and practically knocked her over. "Lisette! Lisette! Come and read to me," Cecile began chanting.

  "Cecile," Aunt Josephine said, "say hello to Uncle Arnaud."

  "Hello, Uncle Arnaud," Cecile said, never glancing at Papa but tugging on Lisette's sweater, pulling it all out of shape. "Lisette, come and read to me."

  "Give her a chance to put her things away," Aunt Josephine said. "She'll have days and days to play with you later."

  Lisette tried not to sigh. The handle of her suitcase hurt her hand, so she put the bag down. "Where will I be staying?" she asked. She had been to the farmhouse only once before; usually, she and her parents visited Aunt Josephine and Uncle Raymond at their apartment in Nice. But Nice was in the unoccupied zone, and people weren't allowed to cross the border. Still, she remembered that there were a lot of rooms here, and she hoped to get whichever one was at the farthest end of the house from Cecile's.

  But, "With me!" Cecile squealed. "You'll be with me!"

  Lisette assumed that was just wishful thinking on her cousin's part, but Aunt Josephine was nodding. "Yes, you'll be sharing Cecile's room. Won't that be a special treat?"

  Lisette looked to her father for help. He knew how irritating Cecile could be; surely he would defend her.

  But before Papa could say anything, a little girl of about three peeked around the corner from the kitchen. Her eyes were so dark, they were almost black, and she wore tiny little earrings. As soon as she saw Lisette and her father, she ducked away.

  "It's all right," Aunt Josephine called after her. "We're coming in."

  "Who was that?" Papa asked.

  "I'm not sure," Aunt Josephine admitted. "One of the twins, Emma or Anne."

  Which didn't clarify matters one bit.

  "Emma," Cecile said. "Anne spilled milk on her dress this morning and now she smells awful, like throw-up. Come up to my room, Lisette."

  Aunt Josephine said, "Let's go in the kitchen first and meet the others."

  "Others?" Lisette said.

  "Others?" Papa said.

  In the kitchen there were five children. The one Lisette noticed first was a boy who looked no more than five, who had a gas mask pushed up on top of his head like an ugly, lopsided hat. At the moment he was busy trying to fit himself into one of the cupboards. He had already pushed several of the pots and pans out onto the floor, and now he kicked aside a colander.

  "Etienne, stop that," Aunt Josephine said.

  The boy took her command to mean nothing else should be removed, so he climbed into the cupboard over the remaining pots and pulled the door shut behind him.

  The girl Lisette had seen earlier was sitting on the floor with another girl, who looked just like her but who did, indeed, smell awful. Both girls had pot lids on their heads.

  "You know how you can tell Anne from Emma?" Cecile announced. "Anne cries if you make this face at her." Cecile rolled her eyes up so that only the whites showed, then pulled down on the skin beneath her eyes and stuck her tongue out.

  One of the girls began to howl.

  "Cecile!" Aunt Josephine said.

  Cecile talked over Anne's noise. "And that's Louis Jerome, holding his sister, Rachel."

  Louis Jerome looked seven or eight years old. He was holding what Lisette had taken for a baby doll, but as Anne continued to howl like an air raid siren, the baby woke up and began to scream also. Wonderful, Lisette thought. The one advantage she'd seen to leaving Paris was that there would be no babies. Now here there were five of them. Plus Cecile. Emma, the twin who wasn't yelling, started banging pots together and Etienne opened his cupboard to shout, "Quiet! Quiet! Too much noise!" He slammed the door shut then reopened it immediately to shout again for quiet. Then once more he slammed it shut. Open, shout, slam. Open, shout, slam.

  Aunt Josephine clapped her hands, the way Lisette's teachers sometimes did to get everyone's attention. Lisette's teachers, however, never had a group like this.

  It was Papa who took charge. He picked up baby Rachel from Louis Jerome and began bouncing her. With his free hand, he took the pots away from Emma. The next time Etienne opened his cupboard, Papa wedged his foot in the door. "That's enough," he said. "Come out of there at once." Then he told Anne, "She's stopped making faces, now you can stop crying." It didn't work right away, but eventually, all five children were quiet once again.

  Then Papa turned to Aunt Josephine. "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded of her.

  Aunt Josephine put on the same stubborn look Cecile usually wore. She was the youngest of the Beaucaire family siblings and was used to getting her own way. "What do you mean?" she asked.

  "These children are all Jewish, aren't they?" Papa asked.

  "Nonsense," Aunt Josephine said. "Anne and Emma are Gypsies, not Jews. And they're all the children of various friends."

  Papa's voice was almost a whisper. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is?"

  Aunt Josephine shrugged. "Louis Jerome, come take your sister."

  Papa handed the baby to the young boy.

  Cecile said to Lisette, "Will you read to me now? Or should I read to you?"

  Aunt Josephine swept out of the kitchen. Papa followed her and so did Cecile, with Lisette hurrying to catch up. Lisette wasn't going to remain behind with all these children, even if she had to be with Cecile to get away from them.

  "If the Germans find out—" Papa started.

  Aunt Josephine interrupted, "Yes, I know. If the Germans find out. We've become afraid to do anything for fear the Germans will find out. Don't let the French fleet join the British or the Germans will occupy all of France instead of just the north. Don't fight back or the prisoners of war will be executed. Complain and your neighbors might suffer for it. I've seen enough of German tactics to understand."

  "Josephine!" Papa said in exasperation.

  "Arnaud!" she answered, sounding just as put out.

  He shook his head.

  Aunt Josephine said, "The Germans won't examine every single household. Arnaud, nobody knows about them, not even Maurice. Here they'll have food, and they'll stay out of the work camps."

  Papa looked at Lisette.

  "And it will be safer for her, too," Aunt Josephine said. "Between the German execution squads and the English bombing us while they're trying to hit the Germans, we'll be lucky if Paris is still standing by the end of all this."

  Papa gave her one of his not-in-front-of-Lisette looks.

  "It's up to you," Aunt Josephine said. "Leave her here or take her back to Paris, but I won't send the others away."

  "How can you take care of all those children?" Papa demanded, just as Lisette began to wonder which had come first: her parents asking Aunt Josephine to take her, or Aunt Josephine offering.

  But Aunt Josephine didn't mention her. She only said, "They're not that much trouble. And Cecile is a big help. She loves babies."

  Eventually, after Maurice had begun honking the horn, Papa finally agreed. He kissed Lisette good-bye, told her to help Aunt Josephine with the children, and whispered into her ear not to let Cecile make her crazy. "Be careful," he told everyone. And then he was gone.

  Cecile tugged on Lisette's sweater. "Do you want
to put your things in my room?" she asked. "Then you can read to me."

  Lisette wanted to be alone, to try to get rid of the empty feeling inside. But she followed Cecile up the stairs and down the hall. "Are those two little girls really Gypsies?" she asked.

  Cecile nodded.

  Lisette had never met any Gypsies. Once, on the way to school, she'd seen a wagon stopped under a bridge. Two Gypsy women wearing a multitude of long, bright-colored skirts were arguing with the police, who were trying to stop them from doing their laundry right there on the banks of the Seine in the middle of Paris. The women were yelling and waving their soapy hands and only occasionally using French. That was the only time Lisette had ever seen Gypsies; all she'd ever heard of them was that they were dirty—which clearly wasn't true even if they didn't pick the best location to wash—and that Gypsy women told fortunes and Gypsy children begged. Obviously the twins she'd just seen were too young to do either.

  In her room, Cecile opened the armoire and indicated the last two inches of the rod. "Maman made me clean out one whole drawer for you." She must have had seventeen others. But she said, "It was hard. I had to move my ballet outfits in with my party dresses. Don't I have a lot of nice clothes? Maman wouldn't let me wear my nicest things last time we went to visit your family. She said what's the use, since they'll only get cat hair on them. Do you still have your cat?"

  "Yes," Lisette said.

  "Your parents will probably have to eat it. Are you ready to read to me now?"

  "No," Lisette said, "I'm going for a walk."

  "I'll go with you," Cecile said. "We can go anywhere except on that hill past the barn that overlooks the field with the chrysanthemum farm."

  "Why can't we go there?" Lisette asked.

  "Well, we can go there," Cecile said, "but I won't because it's haunted."

  "Oh," said Lisette. "That's too bad, because that's where I'm going."

  4.

  Sunday, September 1, 1940

  "Maman!" Cecile wailed, clambering down the stairs. "Maman, Lisette is being mean to me!"

  Lisette took the stairs at a run also and reached the lower hall a mere two steps behind her cousin.

  Cecile headed for the kitchen, no doubt assuming that Lisette would follow to give her own version of the story. Cecile was a born tattletale and wouldn't have passed up the opportunity if their positions had been reversed. But Lisette veered off to the right and flew out the front door. Her white patent leather shoes were meant for looking stylish, not for running outdoors. Lisette could feel the stones and twigs and bumps in the ground through the thin soles, and she knew she'd never get the grass stains out. But for the moment she only worried about not slipping and falling.

  Behind her, she heard Cecile shouting, "Lisette! Lisette! Maman says you have to play with me! Lisette!"

  The last was an angry, frustrated, giving-up wail, which was a surprise. Lisette had been afraid that Cecile, wearing more sensible shoes, might actually be able to catch up despite her disadvantage of three-years-younger legs.

  Lisette didn't dare look back since her best defense would have been, 'What? Cecile wanted to play? I couldn't hear her.' But, as she started up the hill, she had to go partway around the barn and she glimpsed Cecile at the edge of the lawn. Cecile had stopped, apparently when she realized that Lisette had been serious about her destination. "Lisette," she called, her voice faint because of the distance, "come back or the ghost will suck your brains out through your ear!"

  Childish trick to get her to come back. And besides, Lisette didn't believe in ghosts.

  The hill was steeper and taller than it had looked from below. And once Lisette reached the top, she realized that it was bigger, too. Big enough to get lost on. But then, Lisette got lost easily.

  She didn't stay at the edge, where Cecile would be able to see her and might get up enough courage to join her and make more hateful remarks about Mimi becoming somebody's dinner. Instead, she went in among the trees.

  If I walk in a straight line, I won't really get lost, Lisette thought. And if I do get lost, well that's a good excuse to be away from Cecile.

  Lisette walked in a straight line and in about five minutes came to where the ground jutted out from one of the surrounding limestone cliffs. It was unclimbable without ropes and special training. Lisette followed the wall of stone until she came to the edge of the hill.

  From here she could see the south part of the chrysanthemum field and another section where a different crop, some sort of long grassy grain, was growing. There was a sprawling house with an orange-tiled roof in the distance beyond the grain field, probably belonging to Maurice and his family. If he had a family. Lisette didn't know anything about him, except that he was returning Papa to the railway station and she might never get back to Paris again. Beyond the house she could catch occasional glimpses of glitter, where the Dordogne River played peekaboo among the surrounding hills.

  She went back into the trees, except this time she didn't walk in a straight line but headed for the middle, where the trees grew close together. They stretched tall toward the sky, their trunks thick and gnarled and incredibly old.

  When she estimated she was in the exact center of the old woods, she stretched her arms out. "I hate this place!" she shouted, turning slowly to include everything. "I hate every centimeter of it! And nobody's going to eat my cat!" Then, more softly, "I want to go home."

  It didn't help. If anything, she felt worse. She couldn't avoid Cecile for the next six months—and she estimated it would take at least six months for the war to end, even if the Americans joined in tomorrow. And what if they didn't join in—or what if they did and the Germans conquered them, also? Everyone said that wouldn't happen, but they'd said Paris was safe, too.

  Lisette sat down on the ground with her knees drawn up close to her chest. Maybe thirteen years old wasn't that wonderful after all. Maybe there was an advantage to being a younger child and not knowing what was going on around you. But thinking of younger children reminded her of the Jewish family on the train, and once she thought of them, she couldn't get their faces out of her mind. She rested her head against her upraised knees and tried not to feel sorry for herself.

  A cold breeze touched the back of her neck.

  Which was odd, since her hair covered her neck.

  Lisette straightened up. Slowly.

  The icy touch was gone, but she had a strong sensation that someone was watching her. She turned around quickly.

  Nothing.

  Silly, she told herself. Anybody trying to sneak up behind her—and by "anybody," Lisette was thinking of Cecile—anybody would have given herself away for there were no paths up here and a great deal of undergrowth. She couldn't imagine Cecile getting this far without making a lot of noise. Little children tried to be sneaky, but they just weren't very good at it.

  So then why did she suddenly feel sure that there was someone standing behind her?

  She whipped around.

  Nothing.

  Except...

  Except the possibility that one of the branches right at the edge of her sight had moved. Maybe.

  Lisette scrambled to her feet and faced that area. "Stop it, Cecile," she demanded.

  She hugged herself for warmth and realized that her nice sweater that she had been so worried about Cecile pulling out of shape now had leaves and twigs stuck to it. She tried to brush them away and left a dirty smudge. Her dress would need to be washed, and her white shoes were all scuffed and stained, too. She hadn't been here more than a half-hour and she'd already ruined her clothes. Cecile would be pouty and miserable about being left behind, and Aunt Josephine would be annoyed both about the clothes and about Cecile. Not off to a good start at all.

  "I'm going back now, Cecile," Lisette said, although she didn't really believe that Cecile was watching her from the bushes. Nobody was.

  She was stupid to let Cecile's brain-sucking ghost stories make her so jumpy.

  She pushed her way throug
h the branches, refusing to look back despite the prickly sensation between her shoulder blades. There was no reason to look back because there was nobody there. But she did let each branch go with a snap, just to discourage anybody from following too closely, just in case there was somebody following, even though she knew there wasn't.

  That made her feel better for about fifteen minutes, until she realized that she was hopelessly lost.

  5.

  Sunday, September 1, 1940

  The hill was at least twice as broad as it was long, but Lisette had walked across the shortest part in five minutes. Even given that she was walking at half the speed because this section was overgrown with tree roots and prickly bushes and fallen branches from years gone by, surely she should have reached the edge by now.

  All she had to do was keep walking in a straight line.

  But it was hard to walk straight when she had to keep circling around trees and clumps of bushes; in fact, it was hard to tell what was straight when she could only catch occasional glimpses of the sun because the trees were so tall and the branches frequently intertwined.

  Lisette took her sweater off. She considered tying it around her head to keep the bugs out of her hair, but she decided if she was going to die here of starvation and exposure, she didn't want the search party that eventually found her body to think she looked ridiculous.

  Don't be silly, she told herself. You can't die of starvation and exposure on a hill that's barely bigger than the groundfloor at I'Ecole Louis Pasteur. Somebody's bound to find you before then. But she didn't put the sweater on her head.

  What people would find ridiculous was that she could have gotten herself lost in such a small area. They'd probably send ten-year-old Cecile to find her.

  But then she remembered that Cecile wouldn't come here. Cecile believed the hill was haunted.

  Lisette thought she caught a movement off to the left. "Who's there?" she demanded.

  Nobody answered.