by Anita Shreve
The ten prisoners were led out, hatless and coatless, their hands tied behind their backs. Most of the prisoners had been beaten, and some had bloodstains on their clothes. The sun, slanting into the square and into the eyes of the condemned, harshly illuminated the black and purple swellings on the faces. Monsieur Balle, who looked to Jean odd and somehow naked without his spectacles and beret, had to be carried under the arms by two guards. The mother of one of the men rushed forward, screaming, to embrace her son. A guard hastily beat her back with his machine gun. She grasped the arm of another woman, then half fell, half staggered, to the cobblestones.
Jean picked up his pencil and tried to record the names of the ten condemned prisoners in his notebook: Sylvain Jacquemart, Emilie Boccart, Philippe Jauquet, Léon Balle, Roger Doumont … But Jean's hand began to shake so badly his penmanship became nearly illegible. Looking down at his violently shaking hand, the boy was suddenly afraid he might drop the pencil altogether, that it would slip through the pillars of the balustrade and clatter to the cobblestones, giving away his perch and catching the eye of one of the two dozen sentries surrounding the crowd with machine guns at the ready. Carefully, he put the pencil and notebook down, then slowly rose once more to peer around the wall.
The ten condemned were led to the stepladders, ordered to climb the steps. Monsieur Balle presented a problem, however, as he could not stand on his own. He was hoisted up the stepladder by an irritated guard, who held him in place like a marionette. The boy's eyes widened in disbelief as he saw that Jacquemart, in a bizarre twist of fate, would be hanged from his own balcony.
Father Guillaume, his broad priest's hat hiding his face, the skirts of his long robes sweeping over the cobblestones, stood before each of the condemned and made the sign of the cross. Only Balle, though he could not stand, summoned the will to resist this tainted blessing and spat at the priest.
At a signal from the officer in charge, sentries mounted each stepladder to place the nooses around the necks of the prisoners. Each guard then descended the stepladder and retrieved his machine gun. Jacquemart was looking for his wife in the crowd and calling her name; Doumont and Jauquet had their heads bent. Léon Balle was held up only by the noose itself. He seemed already to have lost consciousness. Emilie Boccart, startling the crowd, called out in her raspy voice, Vive la Belgique! The officer gave a command. At the signal, each guard jerked away a stepladder. There were gasps and wails from the villagers. The nine men and one woman were simultaneously hanged.
Jean watched as several of the bodies twisted and twitched. Shit ran down the trouser leg of Jacquemart and soiled his sock and shoe. Jean felt light-headed; he was certain he would be sick. The men who continued to twitch were beaten with machine guns by the guards. Jauquet's guard, infuriated by the Burghermaster's refusal to die quickly, sprayed the man with a burst of bullets, nearly severing the body.
The world, which for Jean Benoît had always held its share of treachery, now spun out of control beneath him. He fainted to the cold floor of the covered walkway, bruising his face in the fall, and dislodging a small brick that clattered onto the cobblestones.
A silence had settled over the house and, perhaps, she thought, the entire village. It was the deep hush of a heavy snowfall, a snowfall such as she had sometimes experienced as a girl in the Ardennes. Once, on a holiday, her father borrowed two pairs of skis, and together she and her father made long trails in the snowy woods.
The silence seemed so profound that even the usual ghosts were silent tonight: She could not summon the voices of the young men and the old women who had stayed in her attic, could no longer hear Madame Rosenthal calling for her lost husband.
Henri had been gone—how long? Eight, nine hours? Was it two in the “morning? Three? She had no idea. There was still moonlight through the window, but it told her nothing. Was it possible, she asked herself, that she would never see Henri again? She tried to absorb that fact, feel it, but the blanket of silence had enveloped and cocooned her as well. Earlier, after Henri had gone, Claire had gotten up from the bed, washed herself and fixed her clothes, and prepared, as she knew she must, an evening meal for the pilot. It was much the same meal as before—the bread and cheese and terrible coffee—and she found herself longing for a piece of fruit, an apple or a pear or, more exotic, an orange or a mango. When she took the tray up to the pilot, he accepted it, but for the first time since he had regained consciousness, he would not meet her eyes. He announced that he would eat the meal in the kitchen—with or without her help, with or without her permission. Normally, she'd have protested: Of all the days or nights to be outside the hiding place, surely this was the most risky. But she no longer felt the desire or the strength to resist him.
She helped the pilot to crawl out of the attic and; once in the bedroom, to stand. He used the armoire and her shoulder to brace himself, and he stood carefully, in increments, as might an old man getting up from a chair. His head grazed the slanted ceiling, and the top of her own head barely reached the collar of his shirt. His features had altered as well since she had seen him last—or rather, she thought, her perception of his features. His eyes were more deep-set than she'd thought them before, the shape of his mouth more distinct and pronounced: the straight lower lip, the full and curved upper lip. He bore the beginnings of a mustache and beard, and with his longish hair, needing a wash and combed with the fingers behind his ears, and his-ill-fitting civilian clothes, he looked not like an American aviator, but rather more like a laborer. His right leg had atrophied—she had seen and bathed the pale shin—and he could barely put his weight on it. He worked his way to the top of the stairs and, using the bannister, he, hopped down the first step. She realized then the distance he had already put between them: He did not want her help.
She followed him down the stairs—he hopping on the good leg, resting all his weight on the bannister. In the kitchen, she gathered a towel, Henri's razor, and a basin, and set them by the stove. She boiled water, and from the deepest recesses of a drawer in the cupboard, she collected a parcel: clean, newly tailored clothes that had been made for his escape. She put them on the table.
She left him alone then and went up to the bedroom. She removed all the bedding from the attic, swept and cleaned the tiny area, lay clean bedding on the floor, and replaced the photograph of the pilot's fiancée and the book of English poetry. Leaving the door to the attic ajar, she opened the two windows in the bedroom. The room filled immediately with cold, clean air that she hoped would wash out the stale air of the attic as well.
When all of these tasks had been accomplished, and she thought she had given the American enough time, she carried the old bedding down to the kitchen. There she found the pilot, his hair still wet, his face newly shaved, sitting at the kitchen table. The trousers that had been made for him nearly hid the bandaged calf. The cotton shirt, collar-less as yet, was opened two or three buttons at the neck. He sat with one leg draped over the other, one arm resting on the table. She paused at the doorway. He no longer looked like a laborer. With his thumbnail, he was tracing the grooves on the old oak table.
He heard her and looked up. He met her eyes for the first time that evening.
“Is your husband all right?” he asked.
She dropped the bedding into the laundry basket. “He is going into the hiding,” she said.
There was a long silence between them as she stood near one end of the table.
“And you'd have gone with him if it hadn't been for me,” he said.
“No. Is safer for me here. If I go with him, I am a”—she searched for the word—”heavier package?”
“I doubt it,” he said, turning away. “Anyway, I’ll be leaving tomorrow. I’ll need a warm coat if you can spare it.”
“No,” she said quickly. “You cannot be leaving this house until the escape is made ready. And it will not be tomorrow or the next day or the next day. Is for my safety, too, that you are remaining here.”
“Well, we'll see,
” he said quietly.
“Your dinner is growing old on the floor upstairs.”
“I’m not hungry.” He turned his face back toward her. He smiled slightly. “But I’d love a cigarette.”
She sighed. “My cigarettes are finished.”
She thought for a minute, then took her coat from the hook.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I have something,” she said.
The night air was frigid and hurt her chest. She was glad, however, to be beyond the American's gaze. She had felt herself to be shy in front of him and was angry with herself for succumbing to shyness. It was evident the pilot had overheard Henri in the bedroom, heard the awful coughs of the crying, perhaps even the gruff sounds of the lovemaking. Yet that was not the word, she knew, for what had passed between Henri and herself in the bedroom. It had possibly been an act of love on her part, or more precisely an act of generosity, but for Henri it was a necessary act to forget what he had seen, to move beyond what he had seen. She thought of the way an animal shook another in its teeth; the way a cat, in a sudden burst of animal frenzy, climbed the bark of a tree.
The moon was rising and luminous. Her father had said that under certain moons one could read a newspaper at midnight. When she reached the barn, she left the wide door open so that she could see her way. She found what she had come for in the wooden boxes. She took three brown glass bottles—all she could easily carry on her own.
On her way back to the kitchen, she was alarmed by the thin threads of light around the edges of the blackout curtains. Once inside, after she had taken off her coat and set the bottles down, she switched off the light, fumbled in the dark for the curtains and drew them open. A rectangle of blue light fell across the floor and the table. “We are being safer when I am turning out the light,” she said. “The moon is very much bright tonight, and we will be able to see.”
She handed a bottle to the pilot.
“Is beer my husband is making. Is for me”—she made a gesture with her hand—”very strong. Is better with the cheese and bread.”
She went upstairs to retrieve the tray of food, and when she'd returned, the American had removed the wire fasteners and corks of two of the bottles. She placed the bread and cheese on the table, tore the bread into four pieces, cut slices from the cheese. She felt safer, more comfortable, in the relative darkness of the kitchen. It was difficult to see the American's eyes now, even more difficult to see if he was watching her. She brought two glasses to the table, but he ignored his and drank straight from the bottle. She poured herself a glass of the dark beer, waited for the foam to subside.
“Very good,” he said, raising the bottle,
“Yes.”
He ate from the tray of cheese and bread. The moonlight, in its way, made the American seem blue, translucent. She was hungry herself, ate from the tray as well and took a swallow of beer.
“I think you have a radio, don't you?”
The question surprised her. Perhaps he had heard the radio on other nights, through the floorboards. “Yes, I have it,” she said.
“Can we listen to it?”
She thought for a while. His voice was rich and easy, and had a kind of lilt. Though the accent was different, it was not unlike that of a Welsh flyer she'd once sheltered. It would be risky to listen to the radio with the Gestapo in the village. But perhaps they could if they kept the sound low; and perhaps just for a minute or two.
She got up from the table, worked the bricks loose. She brought the large, heavy radio to the table and set it down. She unwound the thick brown cord and plugged the radio in. When she turned it on, the sudden static shocked her, and she quickly turned down the volume. Unable to read the tiny dial in the moonlight, she turned it slowly through a variety of languages: Parisian French, Walloon French, which was her own tongue, Flemish, Dutch, German, Danish. Then the BBC in English. She sat down and inclined her head toward the radio.
They listened intently. The Germans, besieged at Stalingrad, were ignoring an appeal to surrender. A busload of children, being taken to the English countryside from London in order to escape the bombs there, had overturned into a ditch just outside Oxford. Then, seemingly in a non sequitur, the BBC announcer spoke about a man who had enjoyed a rabbit, cooked in a red-wine sauce, and who would like to thank his hosts.
“There,” she said. “Is the code.”
“Code?”
“Sometimes I am listening and writing this down for… for others. When the aviators … mmmm … when the aviators are returning to England from Belgium, from falling from their planes, they are telling their … superiors, yes? … the name of their last meal with their hosts … and this information is being told to the BBC, who say it over the radio—’The rabbit in the wine tasted good tonight’—and that is how the Maquis are knowing the aviator is making it home.”
The pilot pondered this. “So if I were to leave tomorrow and make it back safely, you would one day hear on the radio, ‘The beer was heavy and delicious.’ “
She smiled.
The announcer stopped talking. A tune was played on the radio.
“Glenn Miller,” the pilot said.
They listened to the music in silence. He had sat back in his chair so that his face was in darkness beyond the reach of the moonlight. He drank two bottles of the beer. She drank half of the third bottle. They listened to Aaron Copland and Irving Berlin. Each time he told her, before the announcer did, the name of the song and the composer.
“Do you like to dance?” he asked.
“Is a very long time since I am dancing,” she said finally.
“Did you go to dances before the war?”
“Not so many. Once in Charleroi, my husband is taking me to a dance hall, but here in Delahaut? We have the dancing when we have the weddings or the festivals. But you? Do you have the dances?”
“In school,” he said. “And there were a few in England at the base. There was one just before Christmas. There was supposed to be another the day after we crashed. New Year's Eve.”
“You are missing your plane?”
“The plane? No.”
“No, I am meaning, are you missing the flying?”
He took a long swallow, set the bottle on the table. “I suppose I miss flying. I enjoy that. But what we were doing up there”—he gestured toward the ceiling—”that wasn't really flying, at least not to me it wasn't. It was, I don't know, a kind of engineering job. An engineering job under pretty awful conditions.”
“Yes.”
“When I get back, they'll probably put me in another bomber. Perhaps one day, I’ll fly right over here again.”
“And not fall.”
“And not fall.”
“I think you should be preparing yourself for the long waiting. Is probable that the escaping will not be soon. My husband is telling me that. And now is not safe at all for any strangers in Delahaut.”
“These reprisals,” he said. “What will happen to the villagers who have been taken?”
“I am not knowing this. Is usual in the reprisals …” She stopped.
“Go on.”
“Is usual in the reprisals, there are the executions.”
He made small circles with the bottle on the tabletop. “Have there been reprisals here before?”
“No, not in this village, but in other villages, yes.”
“Maybe there won't be executions this time,” he said.
She was silent.
He lifted the bottle from the table, held it for a moment, then brought it down hard. She thought that it might break.
He saw that she was watching him. He shifted in his chair.
“You haven't wanted children?” he asked, changing the subject. “I’m sorry, that's none of my business.”
“No, is all right. I am not wanting children. Not during the war.”
“And after?”
“I am not knowing.”
There was an awkward silence between them.
/>
“And you?” she asked finally. “You are being married to the woman in the picture after the war?”
He leaned forward into the light. “I suppose so. That's what we planned. Seems like an awfully long time ago. It bothers me that no one back home knows what has happened. I don't like to think of them worrying.”
“When is safe, I will write your fiancée.”
“Yes, thank you. Actually, I’d rather you wrote my sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Frances, yes. It was she who brought me up, acted as my mother, I mean. I think she'll be worrying the most.”
“Then is done,” she said. “I will be writing to Frances. Before you are going, you will give to me the address, yes?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And when you get safely home, you must write to me to tell me that you are safe, yes? But maybe is not safe to write me here until after the war is over.”
He nodded slightly.
She stood up and turned off the radio. She rewound the plug. She listened for sounds outside the house, heard nothing. She carried the heavy radio to its hiding place, carefully replaced the bricks.
“You are finished?” she asked beside him.
“I love your voice,” he said. “It's very deep for a woman, but it's beautiful.”
She held the bottles in her arms. It didn't matter the language, she thought; there was a line one couldn't cross, and he was straying too close to it. There could be no reply to what he had said. She took the three empty bottles to the pantry.
