He gives a bitter laugh. “It’s a nineteen-twenty-four Delahaye. It stopped working at the beginning of the war and there are no parts to fix it. C’est un objecteur de conscience!”
“Conscientious objector?”
“Oui.”
Suddenly, I hear Élodie give a cry of alarm. “Henry!”
I turn. “What?”
“Look!” She points to the road which runs straight into the village from the north. I look and see a small convoy of vehicles about a mile away. Even from this distance I can tell one of them is a light Panzer tank from its squared body and its upthrust gun. Several of the others are motorcycles.
“As I predicted,” says Abbé Basc. “But even sooner than I thought.”
“Hurry! We must hide the children,” Élodie says.
“Yes,” I reply. “But where?”
“In the rectory,” says Abbé Basc as he helps us gather the children. “The fire is mostly out, but we’ll keep the water coming. The Boche will never think to go inside.”
“This is going to be hellish for the children,” says Élodie.
“We have no choice.”
Within minutes, Élodie and I are huddled with the children—all, except Adrien, who is still with Monsieur Clérisse—inside the rectory’s pantry which is just off the alcove. The floor is littered with glass from canning jars shattered by thermal shock. Tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, applesauce and several other fruits and vegetables drip from shelves and puddle on the floor. “Be careful of the glass,” Élodie says quickly in three languages. “And please, please be as quiet as possible.” She nods to Aron who translates for the Polish children. She encourages the children to reach out and touch each other, and to stay touching, and she spreads her arms and touches as many as she can.
I feel the fear in Mitzi’s rigid body. I kiss her forehead. I hold her tightly wrapped in my arms but lean to the side so Jerzy Godowsky can feel my body pressed against his and he, in turn, clings to Elżbietá who has an arm around Klará. We are in hiding, but we are connected.
I hear the rumble and clatter of the motorcycles and the tank. Through a small crack in the outside wall, I see there are also two light armored cars. I flinch when a splash of water hits my ankle. Apparently, Abbé Basc is trying to persuade the Germans the fire in the rectory is still alive and dangerous. I look around at Élodie and the children. Everybody must have grabbed onto the charred pantry door frame as we scampered to our hiding place, for, in wiping at their tears, the children have smeared soot all over their faces through which tears have etched channels. Élodie’s face also is blackened and I assume I am the same way. We look like coal miners coming to the surface at the end of our shift.
Several of the children are weeping. I grind my teeth because it sounds so loud to me, but I think the rumble and clatter of the idling German vehicles will keep the children’s whimpering from the ears of the soldiers. Also, there is much crying and sobbing from the villagers. Indeed, I hear a German officer, who is standing just on the other side of the wall, say, “So schade! So viel Weinen und Jammern! Aber denken Sie daran: Es waren die britischen Schweine, die Ihnen das angetan haben.”61
The German starts to pace up and down the street, examining the effects of the bombing. From my low angle, I see his boots stop beside the body of Madame Cazenave, pause for a moment, then stomp on one of the chestnuts that fell from her hands. It shatters, and he kicks the fragments away. Finally, he strides back to his armored car, gives an order, and they leave. As soon as I can no longer hear the clanking and grinding of the Panzer’s sprockets and tracks, I lead Élodie and the children out of the pantry, out of the rectory, and into the street. Upon seeing us, Abbé Basc says, “And fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire … but the innocent angels escaped.”
“Thanks to your ruse,” I say.
“It’s a good thing we have buckets.”
Élodie and I spend the next hour cleansing the children with buckets of water in the open. Since the barn is destroyed, we are forced to sacrifice all modesty. No longer whimpering, they stand silent and shivering as the water cascades over their bodies. When, one-by-one, the children emerge clean, Abbé Basc dries them off with sacerdotal robes. Finally, with Abbé Basc improvising a modesty screen by holding a sacerdotal robe between outstretched arms, like Moses parting the sea, Élodie and I strip out of our clothes, dump buckets of water over ourselves, then dry each other off with an alb discretly passed over the screen to us.
All through that night, the children are inconsolable. Adrien, in particular, has withdrawn even deeper into himself. Élodie and I huddle with Abbé Basc and quietly discuss the situation, at last deciding to give the children time to recover as much as possible before continuing on.
After two days rest, we leave Sainte-Aimée for the second time. Soon, we pass a dairy farm where the gate of the sheepfold has been left open. There is only one un-shorn Lacaune sheep in sight.
“I’d expect to see a flock,” I say. “Where are the rest of the sheep?”
“Probably confiscated by the Boche and slaughtered for mutton,” Élodie says. “I fear this one is next. They’ll no doubt be back. I wonder where the farmer is. He wouldn’t leave the gate open like that.”
A bad feeling sweeps over me. “Maybe he resisted when the Krauts came. Perhaps we should check it out.”
“No,” says Élodie, shaking her head vigorously. “There’s probably nothing we can do. It’s likely he and his family are dead. It would be putting the children at too great a risk if there are Boche close by. Besides, if the family is dead, we don’t want the children seeing that. They are far too vulnerable, too nervous, and they are always our first responsibility. Always!”
Suddenly, we hear a cry of “Nein!”62 and we turn to see Aron Klotz running across the field toward the lone sheep. Several of the Polish children are running after him.
“What the hell is he doing?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but we must stop him before somebody sees or hears him.”
We set out at a run after Aron and the Polish children. When we catch up to him, he has already reached the sheep and is pushing it toward the open sheepfold gate.
“Aron, what are you doing?” asks Élodie.
But I already know the answer. “Look,” I say, and point to the ground where there is a single, wild, red rose. “He was stopping the sheep from eating the rose.”
Élodie takes a deep breath. Smiles.
I look past the sheepfold to the stone farmhouse. “Since we’re here—” I still have that bad feeling.
Élodie nods. “Yes, I agree. But let’s be quick about it. I’ll tell the children to stay back. They’ll watch Mitzi for a few moments.”
We advance toward the house. There is no sign of life. We go around to the back where we find an open door and we enter the house. The first room is a kitchen. We enter the kitchen and find two bodies, a man and a woman, lying on a blood-soaked floor, and we see that both have been shot in the back of the head, execution style, and that the blood has oozed into the cracks of broken floor tiles and dried, and we see a trail of blood leading from the kitchen to an adjoining room, and we follow the trail, and we find two children also murdered with bullets to the back of their heads.
I feel the sorrow and the hate and the bile rise up in my throat and manage to croak out a rough, “Shit!”
And then comes a child’s scream.
Élodie and I whirl around to see the children standing in the doorway to the house. Probably too afraid to stay alone even for a few minutes, they are now staring at the blood-soaked scene in the kitchen.
“Merde! We must get the children away from here!” She moves to herd the children together and roughly pushes them out the door. Several are sobbing. “Now!” Élodie shouts. “Outside!”
Whimpering, Elżbietá whispers, “Mamusiu! Tatusiu!” Her sister, Klará, hugs her.
Élodie looks
to Aron Klotz. “She said, Mommy, Daddy.” His voice cracks as he says it.
Élodie turns to me. “I guess we now know what happened to their mother and father. Quickly, let’s go away from this place.”
“But, should we leave the bodies like that?” I ask.
“We’ll tell people in Le Fossat as soon as we arrive. We must get the children away from here this instant. This instant! I saw … during the exodus from Paris … children … after the bombing … their innocence, their happiness, gone, probably forever. We can’t allow that to happen to these children.” She chokes back a sob. “Though I fear it already has.”
I sweep Mitzi up in my arms and we stride so quickly away from the gruesome scene that some of the children must jog to keep up. We don’t stop until we are well out of sight of the farmhouse. Here, we rest at the edge of the forest. Most of the children have stopped crying, but I still hear a few sniffles. Aron comes and stands before Élodie and me. He wipes a sleeve across his face and says, “The sheep didn’t eat the rose.”
Élodie gives a feeble smile. “No, Aron, you stopped the sheep from eating the rose, and we are proud of you for that. Well done, you.”
After a half hour rest, we set out again for the next safe house in Saint-Lizier. By now, we are in the foothills of the Pyrénées and walking is becoming more difficult. We pass areas where limestone has erupted from the earth like broken bones through flesh and the stone seems to have a memory of the castles that used to mottle this land with some vertical outcroppings giving the illusion of turrets. For long stretches, the limestone cliffs hide the sky in all directions except immediately overhead where clouds sit heavy over the hills like clotted cream. But then we come to a break in the escarpment where we can see the sky to the west and what we see is voiced by Max Jäger in both German and French. “Ein Gewitter! Un orage!”63
“What is it?” I ask.
Élodie nods toward the west where a heavy wall of clouds with a ragged base, the kind, sailors and meteorologists call ‘shelf clouds,’ is advancing on us. “It looks bad,” says Élodie.
“More than an ordinary thunderstorm,” I say. “That’s a giant. We need to find shelter right away.”
“There’s a cave not far from here,” says Élodie. “To the east, less than a kilometer. Let’s hurry.” As she rushes, violin case strapped to her shoulder like a rifle, Sten gun cradled in the opposite arm, and hustles the children before her, she shouts to me breathlessly, “There’s another large cave nearby called Béideilhac that the Boche use as an airplane hangar. That might be what the Brit planes were targeting.”
What the hell? “An airplane hangar?”
“Yes. It’s very large. But the cave we’re going to is much smaller. There shouldn’t be Boche there.”
“Shouldn’t be?”
“Won’t be. I’m sure of it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The air becomes noticeably cooler. As I jog, my thigh screaming in agony, Mitzi bouncing on my back, I feel the chill on my arms. Mitzi must feel it, too. She snuggles closer to me. The cold slash of air is followed instantly by the ozone smell of rain, an aerated odor peculiar to thunderstorms that I remember from days of sailing during Maine summers. I look behind me, past Mitzi’s frightened face. She has just started saying ‘Papa’ again, and I hope this doesn’t set her back. The wall of cloud stretches across the sky until it disappears in mist at both ends. The jagged bottom of the leading edge goes from gunmetal gray to black. Behind it, a bloom of lightening creates a ghostly cast on the atmosphere. Suddenly, the west wind backs violently to the south and hits us with a ferocious gust. The wind increases in strength. Limbs fall from trees. A savage ripping sound rends the air, and a white pine topples over as its roots erupt through earth like an extracted tooth through flesh. Day becomes dusk as the cloud wall passes over us and unleashes crackling hail. A flash of lightening casts everything in a surreal glow and is instantly followed by the crash of thunder. Mitzi buries her face in my shoulder and several of the other children cry out.
“There it is!” Élodie shouts.
I look to where she points and see a huge, crescent opening, almost hidden by bushes and trees, and bigger than the arched spans of the Longfellow Bridge in Boston. Élodie and the children make a final sprint and are swallowed into the maw of the cave. Mitzi and I reach the opening just as a second bolt of lightning strikes only a hundred yards away. The crack of thunder is deafening and is still ringing in my ears as I drop to my knees and lower Mitzi to the cave’s floor. She still has her hands pressed to her ears. Her eyes are wide with fright, and she is panting. She uncovers her ears, and waves her arms frantically, and starts running in tight circles. I gather her up into my arms and hug her close. “It’s alright, Mitzi. It’s alright.”
Élodie says, “I must calm the other children.” Starting with the youngest after Mitzi, she goes to each child in turn and speaks soft words. When she comes to twelve-year-old Max Jäger, he says, though with a tight throat, “I’m not frightened.”
“Yes, you’re very, very brave,” Élodie replies, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps you will help me pass around food to the children. We have lots of bread that Abbé Basc gave us. And some chestnuts.”
As Élodie and Max distribute bread, I hold Mitzi tight, and scan the inside of the cave. It runs deep and is filled with stalactites and stalagmites. Unlike many of the caves in this region of France, there is no sign of primitive art on the walls. I turn to Élodie. “How far is it to the next safe house? Le Fossat is it?”
“Only a few kilometers,” she replies. “But the children have been through too much. We should stay here the night.”
“Yes. That’s wise. We can build a fire.”
Élodie nods. “It should be hidden by the bushes and trees. It will be safe.”
Ten minutes later, a consoling fire is snapping and throwing flickering shadows on the walls of the cave. The reflected red glow in the faces of the children mimics the blood red atmosphere of the storm outside. I see the flames twitching in Élodie’s eyes and I place a hand on her cheek and I brush aside the hair the rain has plastered to her forehead and I say, “It will be alright. We’ll take shelter here for as long as necessary.”
She kisses me on the cheek. “Agreed,” she says. Then, after a pause, she adds, “You know, we join a long list of people seeking shelter in these caves. It’s like joining a guild of the oppressed.”
“What do you mean?”
“All the caves around here have been used forever as shelter from enemies. Just a few kilometers away is the Grotte du Mas d’Azil, a giant cave used by the Cathars to hide from the Christian Crusaders, and again later by Huguenots hiding from Catholics, and recently by Spanish Republicans escaping Franco. No doubt others. Perhaps local citizens hiding from the Romans and later the Visigoths. Who knows?”
A bloom of lightning lacerates the air. More thunder reverberates in the cave. The children’s eyes are wide with fright.
“I think we should have a song,” Élodie says. She gathers the children round and teaches them the words to “Frère Jacques.”
“Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.”64
After she repeats this a few times, the children join in, one after the other. All except Adrien, who sits by himself in a far corner of the cave. Seeing this, I get a sudden inspiration. I go to Élodie and say, “Tell me how to say, ‘I want to be your friend’ in French.”
“Adrien?” she asks.
I nod. “We need to try something.”
“You say, ‘Je veux être ton ami.’”
I repeat it several times until I think I have it, then ask, “Now, how would I say, ‘Will you teach me French?’”
“You say, ‘Apprends-moi à parler français.’” She shakes her head. “It won’t work.”
“I’ve got to try. Wi
ll you watch Mitzi?”
“Of course.” She extends her arms to Mitzi, but the child only clings tighter to me.
I smile at Élodie, shrug, and carry Mitzi over to Adrien, and I sit beside the boy, and I place a hand on his shoulder, and I say, “I wish I could speak French, Adrien. I wish I could make you believe everything will be alright.” And then I try my French. “Je veux être ton ami.”
No reaction.
“Apprends-moi à parler français?”
Again, no reaction. Adrien only squirms his shoulder away from my touch. I try for another five minutes until Mitzi insistently tugs at my arm to signal she wants my undivided attention, and I’m finally forced to give up.
This is where the Queen Mary 2 is. She is at latitude 43 degrees, 2 minutes, and 32.04 seconds, north, and longitude 50 degrees, 1 minute, and 14.38 seconds west, steaming on a great circle course of 78 degrees magnetic at 26 knots. She is 1,092 nautical miles out from New York. Southampton, England is another 2,027 nautical miles off her bow. This position places her 76 nautical miles northeast of, and 12,500 feet above, the carcass of RMS Titanic and about a thousand miles southwest of Nanortalik at the southern tip of Greenland. Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, is 25.05 light years above, shining in a field of an infinity of stars, some living, some dead but with their light lingering. Also, in the northeast sky flies a British Airways Boeing 747-400 heading east and cruising at 37,000 feet, its wingtip lights blinking green and red.
As I sit at the captain’s table, I see the young son of one of the other guests and think again, as I often do, about Adrien. If only things could have turned out differently those seventy years ago. If only I could have elicited a reaction to my clumsy French.
“Papa, did you hear the captain’s question?”
It’s Callie’s voice. I turn to look at her. “Huh?”
“The captain asked you a question.”
I look at the captain. “I’m sorry. I was distracted. What was your question?”
“My navigator tells me you were eager to know our precise position. I was just wondering where your interest in navigation comes from.”
The Light from the Dark Side of the Moon Page 23
