by Amy Stewart
Do you know what Norma said to that? “They should fight because they’re ordered to. They’re soldiers. If pretty girls were required to keep an army going, Pershing would’ve sent for a battalion of them. In fact, I believe he’d like the troops to spend a little less time looking at girls. That’s why he doesn’t let them go to Paris any more.”
(If you haven’t heard—and why would this be in the papers, anyway?—the troops are no longer allowed Paris leave and go instead to a new encampment in the countryside, where the YMCA girls fry doughnuts, organize dances, and play cards with the boys. It’s meant to be more wholesome than the sinful streets of Paris, and more of a proper rest. The soldiers don’t complain, at least they don’t complain to us. I’ve been told by dozens of them that they’d rather see a girl from Wisconsin than a Parisian dancer any day. I’ve decided to believe them. We all have our little lies that we cling to in war-time.)
Back to Norma: I told her that Forrest has been asking about her. He’s interested in those pigeons of hers. He used to keep canaries, he told me, and he wouldn’t mind having a bird for company again, especially if it was hand-raised the way the last one was.
Norma insisted that her pigeons were no more pets than they were pie filling, and said that he wouldn’t be allowed to keep a bird in the hospital anyway.
“Oh, he knows that,” I told her. “He wants to take one to the front. We’re sending him back on Tuesday.”
Norma won’t let me say too much about her . . . let’s use the word “predicament” . . . but suffice it to say that only a few days ago, she very much wanted to hand out pigeons to soldiers returning to the front. Apparently she wasn’t able to convince anyone to take a bird, and now she’s working on another plan that she’s keeping secret even from me.
Somehow, though, I managed to convince her to return to the scene of her most recent failure and to give Forrest Pike a pigeon that she raised herself, an exceptionally good flyer with a friendly disposition. She named it Mon Chou because of me. I found it so confusing, at first, that the French would call someone they loved “my cabbage” as a term of affection. You hear it every time a lady walks down the street with a baby. Everyone stops and coos, “Mon chou, mon chou.” Finally Norma told me that the villagers are most likely thinking of a chou à la crème, a cream puff. It makes much more sense to call a baby “my little cream puff” than “my little cabbage,” although just thinking about it does make one hungry for cream puffs, which even Madame Bertrand cannot conjure just now.
The point is that Norma happened to be ready to name a pigeon on the very day she explained to me the difference between cabbages and cream puffs, so Mon Chou was the name this little bird received.
Yesterday, when Forrest Pike was to depart, we went down to the station together to see him off and to deliver Mon Chou to him. I often go to kiss the soldiers good-bye. It means the world to them, poor souls. Norma didn’t seem interested in kissing any of them, but she did shake a few hands, and the men accepted that good-naturedly.
I happened to be carrying Norma’s pigeon in a basket as I made the rounds. You should’ve seen how many men were jealous that I’d brought a bird only for Forrest. They’re just so eager for any little keepsake! They probably would’ve accepted a basket of mud-pies if I’d handed them out with a smile.
We found Forrest already on board, looking mournfully out a window, but he hopped off when he saw us on the platform. He took Norma’s pigeon basket with all the excitement of a child opening his Christmas stocking.
“What happens if he gets loose?” Forrest wanted to know. “He won’t go to headquarters and tell on me, will he?”
“He’ll fly right back here,” Norma assured him. “It’s the only home he’s ever known.”
“But that could be two hundred miles! Maybe more.” Poor Forrest didn’t know where, precisely, he was being sent. It must all seem a million miles away from the safety and comfort of our little village.
Norma told him that she’s sent her birds five hundred miles away, and they came straight back within a day or two.
Forrest whistled. “They must really want to get home. I’d fly all night too, if I thought it would get me home.”
“But not until your job was done,” Norma said. (She’s not terribly sympathetic to longings for home, your sister.)
Anyway, she handed over a month’s worth of rations and a little booklet she’d painstakingly typed herself, with all of her instructions in it. I can’t imagine a booklet lasting a day in the trenches, but Forrest took it politely nonetheless. He really is a very sweet young man, quick with a joke and eager to please.
“Does the bird eat cooties?” he asked. “If he does, he’ll get fat in the trenches.”
“Ground beetles and grubs, more like,” Norma said. “If you do send him back, write me a note with the date and time of release, and your location if you can give it. At least I’ll know how far and fast he flew.”
“Happy to. But I’d rather keep him with me, if it’s all the same to you.”
“You might as well,” Norma told him. “All my best flyers are sitting around in their loft, getting fat and lazy. At least Mon Chou will see the front.”
That’s all I can report for now. I’m sure you’re breathless for the next thrilling installment. If we get word from either Forrest or Mon Chou, I’ll write to you immediately!
Tendrement—
Aggie
Aggie to Constance
August 10, 1918
Dear Constance,
Your sister nearly wept when she opened your box and found Bessie’s trench cake inside. (I’m going to call it a raisin cake, because “trench cake” sounds so unappetizing, and this is delicious.) You can’t imagine what these packages from home mean to all of us. It is as if we’re opening a portal into the dear familiar world we left behind.
Norma is reading over my shoulder and insists that she was not “nearly weeping.” I’m quite certain I heard a sniff. She claims she was merely inspecting the cake for mold. (Is she this argumentative at home?) She found no mold, in case you’re wondering. It traveled quite well.
Please give our love and thanks to Bessie. We’ve shared her cake all around and are the most popular girls at the Hôtel de la Poste tonight. Thanks also for the “practical necessities” you enclosed. I would hate for you to know what a foul and grubby bunch we are, because you might not want to associate with us at all. Suffice it to say that soap is every bit as much a luxury as sugar, and that sweetly scented talc will make us all a little easier to be around. I didn’t share it with everyone in the hotel, because it would’ve been gone in a minute, but I did dole some out to the other girls who use our bathroom. They send their appreciation as well.
Norma won’t let me say a thing about what’s been happening at the fort. Please don’t worry, it’s nothing she won’t survive, but just know that she’s having the most trying time and the cake arrived when we needed it most. In fact, after what happened at the train station with Forrest Pike a few days ago, she’s come up with a new plan to win the war (I’m only exaggerating a little), and I have a role to play again. Naturally I agreed to do anything I could to help, if only to cheer her up. You know Norma much better than I do, and you must know that “cheerful” isn’t a word that aptly describes her on the best of days. But when she has a definite mission, something that involves plans and lists and bouts of skilled labor and technical expertise, she is, in her own way, happy. She was just that way tonight, telling me the intricacies of her plan and the many steps ahead as she puts her ideas into action. I hope to report back soon on our success.
I’m handing the pencil to your sister now and insisting that she think of something she’s allowed to write about. She says she’s already told you everything there is to know about this place. But in the note Bessie enclosed with the cake, she asked what we have in the way of bakeries here. In fact, there is a story to tell about our town baker. I’ve made it Norma’s responsibility to tell it.
Tendrement—
Aggie
Norma to Constance
August 10, 1918
Dear Constance,
Very well, I’ll tell you about the baker, as Aggie gives me no choice. But don’t speak of her as the town baker. She’s never been recognized as such and probably never will be.
The Patisserie Confiserie is located on the town square, just around the corner from our hotel. Until recently, it was owned by Monsieur Bertrand, the present baker’s brother.
He died a month before we arrived, and the village has not yet stopped mourning him. He was apparently the sort of man who told jokes and sang songs to children and gave away as much as he sold. It doesn’t sound like any way to run a business to me, but these small French villages like their irregular little shops. To this day his portrait hangs in a place of honor in the bakery, behind the counter. His sister—I’ll get to her in a minute—tried to take the portrait down, claiming it grieved her to see his face every day, but the villagers nearly came after her with pitchforks and torches. She was forced to leave it up.
From his picture I can tell you that he possessed a high, intelligent forehead, lined with wrinkles caused by laughter, and a mouth that turned habitually up at the corners. He was exceptionally gaunt for a baker, a characteristic attributed to the fact that he was diabetic.
It is Aggie’s belief that he was poorly treated for his diabetes. He avoided sweets except when he desperately needed them: if he was ever seen nodding off behind the counter, a customer would break a corner off a tarte à la frangipane, push it through his lips, and that would bring him around.
It was the diabetes that killed him. One evening he dropped off in his chair, and no one was there to resurrect him with sugar. (In case you’re wondering how he had any sugar at all in war-time, Monsieur Bertrand was a notorious hoarder of hard-to-find ingredients. He brought in a supply of beet sugar and fruit preserves at the very beginning of the war, in anticipation of shortages. He was not about to let the village go without its treats.)
Since Monsieur Bertrand had never married nor had any children, his nearest living relation was his never-married sister, Madame Bertrand, who traveled from Toulouse when news of his death reached her.
Madame Bertrand is nothing like her brother. Where he was lean, she’s round, with enormous dimpled arms and thick ankles that she soaks in cold water after lunch and in the evenings. Where he had only just started to go bald, she has had the misfortune of losing all the hair around her forehead, so that she is bald nearly to the top of her head. What hair remains she combs back in thick black strands and pins up in a flat bun, but this is, of course, wholly inadequate at concealing the truth.
She does own a wig, so dark and coarse that I’ve often wondered if it’s made of horsehair. She detests the wig. It’s hot, she says, and it itches and interferes with her work. The wig spends most of its time on a mannequin’s head, high on a shelf alongside the flour canisters. In the time that I’ve known her, she’s worn it only twice, when she heard that the generals were expected in town. The generals do not, as a rule, visit bakeries. She had however heard that General Pershing was partial to strawberry cream, so she had reason to hope.
As far as Aggie and I can tell, Madame Bertrand was greeted sympathetically, but not particularly warmly, by the villagers. She possesses a temperament exactly the opposite of her brother’s, which is to say that she believes she is running a business, not a cabaret, and doesn’t see any reason to tell a joke or sing a song or know a customer’s name. She has no friends in town and seems disinclined to make any. A few of the baker’s old chums have invited her to dinner, out of a sense of duty, but she always declines those invitations, claiming that she’s far too busy getting her brother’s shop in order (it seemed perfectly in order to the villagers) and learning his recipes (which would, the villagers acknowledged, take time).
However, in short order, she did learn to turn out cakes that nearly rivaled her brother’s. When the villagers expressed surprise that she could master a brioche or a flan pâtissier so quickly, she merely brushed them away in disgust and reminded them that she and her deceased brother were both taught by the same mother.
I’m sure you’re wondering how a bakery is allowed to turn out anything in the way of cakes and pies in war-time. Even Paris is doing without its profiteroles and its éclairs. Of course we’re subject to the same rationing as the rest of the country. Her brother, as I said, hid quite a bit away in his cellar before the rationing began. Here in the countryside, there’s always an informal trade in eggs, butter, and honey. There are preserves tucked away in cellars. There are sweet liqueurs in cabinets. One way or another, Monsieur Bertrand put his hands on what he needed, and his sister seems to do the same.
The trouble is that after serving the Americans, she rarely has anything at all left for the villagers. This town has been entirely commandeered by the United States Army for its training schools, and we have an appetite. The restaurants and hotels, serving American officers and visiting dignitaries, still expect their desserts and buy all that she can bake.
In this way, Madame Bertrand has come to be thought of as the official American military baker. She saves her best for the officers, and sells her scraps to the villagers. That’s how I’m able to knock on her door, late at night, and persuade her to turn loose of one miserly slice of a tarte aux fruits. She tries to keep the Americans fed. We’re the ones with a bit of money in our pockets, and sometimes an Army shipment of Karo Syrup to barter. (We’ve seen her carting boxes over to the post office, in which she packs cakes for a sister in Belgium—apparently Monsieur Bertrand had another sister he never told anyone about, and she, too, benefits from the secret stores of sugar while the villagers go without.)
Of course, there’s still the bread. Madame Bertrand is obligated to bake the national bread, whose recipe is abhorrent to the French. It seems to contain quite a bit of rice flour in addition to wheat, and turns an unappetizing gray when baked. She supplies it to the hotels and the hospitals. The villagers line up mournfully for their ration, too (which they call pain de Boche, out of spite), and when they do, they both see and smell the treats she’s turning out—but not for them. In this way their resentment grows. She won’t even bake for a special occasion: not a wedding, not a birthday. The villagers are sent home with only their loaves of gray bread, while the Americans get madeleines.
That’s why the villagers don’t like her. That, and the fact that when she took over the shop, she fired her brother’s sole employee, Fernand Luverne, who had been in his employ for twenty years and rented a room above the shop alongside Monsieur Bertrand’s own apartment. No one looked kindly upon Madame Bertrand for putting Fernand out of both home and work at once. It’s a small village and people take sides. Most everyone has sided against her.
As ever,
Norma
Constance to Norma and Aggie
August 11, 1918
Dear Norma and Aggie,
I was just over at Francis and Bessie’s for dinner. All the talk is of war, and I confess I’d like to call a halt to it. I miss the old days, when world affairs rarely encroached upon our Sunday dinners. But even the children are swept up in it. Little Frankie (I’m not supposed to call him little, as he’s now eleven) is, of course, fascinated by news of the war, and reads over his father’s shoulder every night. They spread out maps and cover them with marks as the troops advance and retreat. That boy can draw a perfectly accurate picture of every aeroplane, rifle, and ship deployed in Europe’s defense. He saw in the newspaper that we’re sending a million horses to France, because apparently those autos you detest so much can’t roll over the soggy, uneven ground around the trenches. He took a length of butcher’s paper and tried to draw a million horses on the march. I’m not sure he managed more than a hundred, but it was an admirable effort.
Still, none of us can imagine everyday life in France. Your letters mean more to us than any newspaper article. Lo
rraine just turned thirteen—can you believe it?—and doesn’t seem to know what to make of the war, or her place in it. But these dispatches from you give her the idea that women have a part to play. She doesn’t seem to look at her aunt Constance as any kind of a role model, which is to say that she has no interest in wearing a badge or carrying a gun, and why should she? It isn’t for everyone. But in your letters, she obviously finds something that interests her. Keep writing them, for that reason alone.
I can tell you something about a case I worked earlier this summer, now that it’s going to trial and the papers have the story. I was sent over to the Curtiss North Elmwood plant in Buffalo to look into allegations of sabotage. What made the case unusual was that the man accused, David Rogovin, had been reported by two German men who worked alongside him. Mr. Bielaski seemed, at first, more alarmed about the Germans making the report than about the man they were reporting.
The Germans had never caused any trouble nor raised suspicion among the supervisors at the plant, but Mr. Bielaski wanted them interrogated in their native tongue to make sure that not a word was lost in translation. As German-speaking agents are something of a rarity, I was sent along with another man to make the inquiries.
The Germans, when I spoke to them, claimed to have been in the country for over ten years and to have no loyalty to the Kaiser. In fact, they were both eager and proud to work on the aeroplanes that would help bring an end to the war. I interviewed them for nearly an hour while my fellow agent, in disguise as a new man on the line, observed Mr. Rogovin as he went about his work. In no time at all he witnessed the act of sabotage.
Mr. Rogovin was hammering wood-screws into the aeroplane frames rather than screwing them.
It’s impossible to believe that he didn’t know better. When interrogated after his arrest, he denied everything and said that the two German men had it in for him, then claimed he’d lost his screwdriver, and then claimed that he didn’t know the screws could be so easily pulled out. (He showed some surprise when the agent demonstrated for him, but his surprise rang false.) He later claimed he’d fallen into a fit of abstraction over worry for his ill child, and that made him careless, but when I visited the family, I found nothing the matter with any of them.
