by Anita Shreve
The Belgian began to shake violently. An awful sound came from his body. He threw down the knife, as if it had a life of its own, as if it might turn itself against him. Then, thinking better of this gesture, he picked it up again. He bent and wiped the blood from the blade as best he could on the coat of the guard who had been eating sausage. How was it they had posted all three guards at once? Or had the old soldiers simply been camping out here—a kind of sorry outpost?
He had expected to feel something—if not triumph exactly, then at least success. He had done what he set out to do. So he was confused for a moment to discover that what he felt was a kind of numbness, a terrible hollowness in his bowels, perhaps even a small seed of dread. He moved away from the plane, looking at the work of seconds, the bodies of the three old Germans in the firelight. He turned and stumbled then back to the forest.
Madness.
Antoine shook his head, put his head in his hands. Angrier than Henri had ever seen him. A small lantern, shrouded with a cloth and set in the center of their circle, was the only light in Chimay's barn. Each had been called from sleep. Underneath his coat, Henri still wore his nightshirt. Emilie had not undone the braid she wore to bed. At this unforgiving hour, roused abruptly as if there had been a fire, Emilie, without her lipstick or her hair framing her face, looked years older than Henri had imagined her to be—fifty possibly, perhaps fifty-five. Her face still bore the greasy traces of her night cream.
Léon Balle smoking, coughing quietly into his gloved hand. Dussart hunched, trembling inside his thin coat. Where was the boy's enthusiasm now? Dussart had forgotten his beret, and his hair bad separated over the place where he had lost his ear. Henri, who had never really examined the scar, was fascinated.
Antoine trying to control himself. Speaking in this slow, deliberate manner only when he was enraged and was trying to remain calm. He smoked fast, with short pulls and exhales, as if that, too, might contain his anger. Antoine had waited for them all to arrive, had spoken to no one until he made his pronouncement. Madness, he had said.
Henri waited. Antoine stubbed out his cigarette on the dirt floor with a sharp twist of his boot heel.
Finally, Antoine's announcement. Someone has killed the three Germans guarding the plane.
A long silence in the barn.
Jesus God. Emilie whispering.
Léon Balle leaning back, looking at the ceiling of the barn. Bastien, a small, pinched man with pointed teeth that reminded Henri of a rodent, shaking his head in disgust. Dussart, the boy, trembling inside his coat. Henri thought he must be ill. The young man rubbing his hands along his arms as if to warm them.
They'll think it was us. Antoine now.
Léon then. There'll be reprisals.
Reprisals. Henri bent over. He felt heat on the surface of his skin.
Emilie spoke as if from a great distance.
The reprisals will be catastrophic, Antoine said slowly, giving weight to each word. The house searches have already begun. They've taken Madame Bossart from her bed.
Mother of God, this is not possible. Emilie shaking her head in bewilderment. Madame Bossart is nearly seventy-five. What could they possibly want with such an old woman?
Her farm is nearest to the plane. They think she may have hidden the assassin, or one of the Americans.
This is insane.
It's what they do. We knew that.
Will it be like Virelles? Bastien talking, but everyone knew the horror of Virelles. Every male in the village, including the boy children, had been rounded up and shot in the village square in front of their wives and mothers. The SS had even worked out an equation: For every German wounded, three Belgians would die; for every German killed, ten Belgians would die.
When were they killed? asked Emilie.
The bodies were found tonight by a sentry delivering the evening meal.
Silence settling upon the circle. The light flickering in the lantern.
Antoine turning to Van der Elst. Adrien. You and Elise should get out at once. The Germans have been suspecting you for some time. Don't return to your apartment. I’m going to put you through the lines tonight.
Elise starting forward at the news. Van der Elst clenching his jaw.
Antoine turned to Henri.
Henri felt his stomach spasm. Unlike Van der Elst and his wife, he knew, he and Claire could not leave Delahaut. They had the American. He thought suddenly of Jean Burnay of nearby Florennes. The Belgian had sheltered five British aviators in his home. One of the aviators was caught further dowm the line in France and talked. Burnay and his wife were beheaded by the Gestapo.
Henri, your risk is probably less than Adrien's. But if they can take Madame Bossart, they can take anyone. Emilie will go to Claire, tell her to hide herself inside the house.
Henri nodded. But he wondered why Antoine was not sending himself, Henri, to tell Claire. His mouth felt dry. He ran his tongue over his lips. He felt another severe spasm in his gut; he needed badly to find a toilet. He thought of Claire, alone at home with the injured American. Perhaps even now the Gestapo were raiding the house, dragging Claire from her bed.
Are there always reprisals? Dussart asked in a thin voice from his seat. It was the first the young man had spoken.
Antoine looking at Dussart. There are always reprisals, he said slowly. And it's worse. Tonight I have received additional intelligence that the escape routes are now the primary focus of the Germans in southern Belgium.
Thérèse must be told, said Emilie.
And Dolane.
And Dolane. And Hainaert. And Duceour.
In Charleroi, at least they have the tablets. Léon talking, his head in his hands.
A stillness in the barn. Henri felt a throbbing in his right temple. They all knew what Léon meant. In the cities, where the Maquis was better organized and had more funds, more access to matériel, each Resistance fighter was given a single tablet of cyanide. To contain the damage in the event of torture. Few men or women, no matter how brave, could withstand the prolonged and creative torture of the Gestapo—he'd heard it all—the electric prods and needles to the testicles, the gouging of the eyes. Without the cyanide, every man was a traitor.
Henri put his hands against the hay bale on which he sat, to give him leverage, to help him stand. His legs felt weak, and he did not want to stumble in front of the others.
Léon Balle looking up. White-faced with anger. Who gave a shit about the three guards? Was there a reason? Was anything taken from the plane?
Antoine answering. There was nothing on the plane of any real value. The guns had been seized long ago.
Léon shaking his head as though he could not process this unthinkable information. Coughing suddenly and violently, and reaching for a handkerchief in his pocket.
Antoine turning to Henri, who had managed to stand. I’m sorry, Henri, Antoine was saying. It's not safe to move the American. There's a chance it could blow the whole Eva line.
Henri nodding stiffly. If the Eva line were blown, the denunciations, like a lit fuse that ran out from Delahaut in two directions—north to Charleroi and south to France—would be massive. Dozens, maybe hundreds, might be arrested and executed.
You'll stay here with me, Antoine was saying now. There's a lot to do.
Antoine himself, for the first time Henri could remember, looking afraid. Despite the cold, his thinning white-blond hair lay matted with sweat against his pink scalp.
We won't meet again for a while. Antoine speaking, looking away from Henri, then to each of the others in turn. Henri realizing then, with the shock of an absolute truth, that before they met again, some of their number would be dead.
Antoine bending down, removing the cloth shroud and the glass from the lantern. Blowing out the light. Léon Balle asked a question in the darkness.
Did someone really imagine that killing three old impotent men would change the course of the war?
She awoke feeling better than she had for days, perhaps we
eks. The sun, which they had not seen since before the day the plane fell on the Heights, shone through the lace at the windows, making a filigree on the polished floor. Claire turned in the bed, felt immediately its emptiness, and remembered that Antoine, sometime in the night, had come for Henri.
She thought of the American beyond the flower-papered wall—a silent, sleeping prisoner. Or perhaps he wasn't sleeping. Possibly he was already sitting, waiting for her to greet him with his breakfast. Yes, the sunlight had doubtless wakened him as well, she decided, shining as it must be through the rectangle.
She slipped from the bed and knocked on the wall that separated them. He knocked back and said, in a voice that was surprisingly distinct, even through the wall, “Bonjour Madame.”
She shook her head. His accent was atrocious.
“Bonjour Monsieur. Je pars au village pour chercher de l'eau potable à la fontaine. Je reviens tout de suie. Pouvez-vous attendre?”
She smiled and waited.
“I never had a chance,” he said finally.
“I am going to the village for drinking water from the fountain. Can you wait? I am not being long.”
“Sure. But hurry. I’m starved.”
Claire dressed quickly, saw to the fire in the stove, and collected her bicycle. She wondered again where Henri was, when he would arrive home. His hours lately had become increasingly erratic. She seldom knew when to prepare a meal for him, or even if he would spend the night. The two of them were all right as long as it was winter, when there was less to do about the farm. But when spring came, he would be needed. Claire wondered how they would manage then.
Most of the ice along the rue St. Laurent had melted or had been scuffed with dirt so that the ride to the village was not as hazardous as it had been in days past. Before she got the drinking water, she would stop at Madame Omloop's for the flour and potatoes and sugar and salt. With each day, the American's appetite had increased. It was not even the middle of the month yet, and it was clear Claire's stamps would not extend until the thirty-first. Madame Rosenthal had barely eaten at all and had not taxed the Daussois rations.
It was exhilarating, the sun. Odd how it could lift the spirits, she thought. She passed the Marchal farm and the Mailleux. The stone was pale in the early light, and though there were no people about yet, it was just possible to imagine that there was no war, had never been, that soon the narcissus and hyacinth would pop above the soil and that the man in her attic was merely a convalescing visitor.
She reached the outskirts of the village proper, began to pedal along the rue de Florennes. And it was somewhere along that narrow street, with its uneven cobblestones, that she realized something was different, amiss. She stopped before she reached the corner, before she would then turn into the- rue Cerfontaine, and then at the following corner, into the public square. She listened closely. Yes, that was it: There were no sounds. No voices, no shouting of schoolchildren, no doors opening and closing, no clatter of bicycles, no vehicles negotiating the narrow side streets, sending cyclists careening into the brick walls. No cursing from those cyclists.
Something was wrong, but she didn't know what. Had a curfew been imposed, and she and Henri, so far from the village, failed to hear of it? On foot, she pushed her bicycle, hugging the wall. The water jugs rattled in the pannier. She peered around the corner and saw nothing. She would have to advance to yet another corner to see into the village square.
Instinct warned her to retrace her steps and her ride, to pedal back to the house as quickly as she could. But she had no water! Surely there would be activity at the fountain. Or at Omloop's. The Flemish woman never closed her shop, not even on the saints’ days.
She walked her bicycle to the next corner and, standing as close to the wall as she could, bent her head and looked into the village square. Now there could be no mistake. The square, with its steepled church, its village hall with the wide stone steps, and the old monastery that was now a school, was barren. Not even the pigeons, huddled in the eaves of- the church, had bothered to descend to its cobblestones. The fountain bubbled unattended.
A chill settled low in her back. Fumbling with her bicycle and pannier, she turned around, intending now to return home. She hoped only that she would not be seen. There must have been a curfew imposed: No other explanation seemed plausible. She would have to wait for information, wait for Henri to return. Perhaps she could get food, enough for the three of them, from the Marchal farm, if Marie-Louise would open her door to her.
She was nearly to the comer of the rue de Florennes when she heard a faint sound. She stopped, stood astride her bicycle. It was the unmistakable hum of a motor— but from which direction? She listened again, knowing she might be wasting precious moments. The motor—a car? a truck?—was coming from the direction in which she wished to go.
Chancing a sighting, she pulled her scarf forward over her head to hide her face, bent low over her handlebars and pedaled as fast as she could past the rue de Florennes. She knew the back streets and alleys of Delahaut well. If she could make it to the rue de Canard, she knew of an alley there that permitted a bicycle, but not a four-wheeled vehicle. It wouldn't prevent a sentry from noticing her and requiring her to halt, but she would be free of the motor. For to Claire, in the eerie silence of the village, the motor suggested only one thing: Germans.
Having not dared to look up, she didn't know if she had been spotted. Surely, she thought, a lone cyclist would be observed from behind the ubiquitous lace curtains at every window. Why did no one call to her, allow her to hide herself and her bicycle in one of the stone vestibules found behind each streetfront door?
When she reached the alley, she was struggling for breath. She had not pedaled so hard since she was a girl. Still astride her bicycle, she allowed herself to rest a moment, leaning against the back brick wall of a villager's terraced house. The icy air, taken in large gulps, hurt her lungs.
Perhaps, she thought, as she rested, she could reach Omloop's via the same kind of twisting route by which she had reached the safety of the alley. Even more than food now, Claire needed information and possibly somewhere to hide. Madame Omloop could not fail to help Claire, even in the extraordinary event that the shop was not open for business.
More cautiously now, Claire proceeded, listening hard at each blind turn, sticking to the alleys and to the narrow pathway that ran behind the cemetery. Once she saw a figure, not a soldier, run from one side of the street to the other, then disappear.
Her journey took her fifteen minutes, and when she reached Madame Omloop's, she was no longer surprised to see its door shut tight. Along her way, Claire had not observed a single open shop. Looking up and down the narrow lane on which Omloop's was located, Claire quickly rapped on the glass pane of the door. In the distance she could hear again the sound of a motor.
She rapped again—short, fast taps on the stained glass.
She rapped a third time.
There was a minute movement of the door's lace panel.
Claire bent close to the glass. “Madame Omloop,” she whispered as loudly as she dared, “it's Claire Daussois.”
The door opened -quickly. Madame Omloop tugged sharply at Claire's coat sleeve, pulled her inside, and shut the door.
“Are you crazy?” Madame Omloop asked angrily. “You cannot come here. Can you not see the shop is closed? Go home at once.”
“I don't know what has happened,” Claire said.
“The reprisals! My God! Do you not know about the reprisals?”
Reprisals. Claire now understood the eerie silence of the village. She thought at once of Henri.
“Reprisals for what?” Claire asked.
“Someone has killed the German guards who were by the plane. The Gestapo have taken nearly the entire village,” said Madame Omloop. “They have put everyone in the school. All the men and boys, and they are even taking women and babies.”
Madame Omloop's fear was electric, contagious.
“God save us,�
�� Madame Omloop said. “It was a terrible day when that plane fell on our village. You must go at once back to your house, lock yourself in. Hide if you can.”
“Henri,” Claire said. “Henri has not come home.”
Madame Omloop looked at the younger woman. “Wait here,” she said.
In less than a minute the Flemish shopkeeper returned with three rashers of bacon, a large wedge of cheese wrapped in cloth.
“I have this food, and now it cannot all be eaten. Take this and go. Quickly.”
The alley past the cemetery led, Claire knew, to a footpath that soon entered the wood on its eastern side. It was a footpath she had sometimes taken as a schoolgirl— a shortcut between the village am the river, but normally a roundabout way to reach her house. It would mean that she would have to push the bicycle the entire way and that it might take as long as two hours to get home. But it would keep her off the main road. She walked briskly, trying to stifle her fear. The American would wonder what was taking her so long. She prayed that when she got back, Henri would be there to help her.
He waited as long as he could. He thought he might be able to manage it. He wanted to try.
He dragged himself through the attic opening and then through the armoire. Alone, on the floor of Claire's bedroom, taking in its contents for the first time, he turned and rose to the one good knee, looked for something upon which to brace himself. The footboard of the bed would work, he thought.
Not only was his right leg useless, he discovered, but his arms were also weak. He managed a standing position, holding himself against the slanted roof of the room. Gingerly, he put some weight on the bad leg, was answered immediately with a jolt of hot pain that made him dizzy. Hopping with the good leg and bracing with his hands, he made his way to the top of the stairs, and then with the aid of the bannister to the floor below. He leaned against the wall and rested. He felt momentarily light-headed. How was he supposed to plan an escape— or participate in an escape plan—if he couldn't even limp?
