by Cyrus Fisher
That morning about nine o’clock we changed a second time at a city called Tulle. We were right in the mountains now. We waited at a long gray stone railroad station for our next train. While we were waiting two French policemen walked by with a short, thick, sullen-looking man between them, unshaven and grimy, with a wild furious glare in his eyes. He was chained to one of the police and the other kept his hand near his revolver. As they walked by, several French women made frightened noises. Men in the crowd started talking and pointing and there were angry shouts. A couple of boys ran after them, carrying stones in their hands. The policemen threatened the boys and the boys waited, while the prisoner was shoved into a big blue car and carried away.
I’d never seen people yell at a prisoner before. It seemed wicked. All my sympathies were for the prisoner. I asked mon oncle, “What’s the matter? What are they yelling at him for?”
Mon oncle hesitated. “Because he is a German.”
“German?” I said. “I thought all the Germans had been captured.”
“Not all,” said mon oncle. “When the war ended, a few ran away and hid in these mountains instead of giving themselves up. They have caused the country people much trouble by appearing suddenly at night and stealing and—” Once again, he hesitated. “And killing some of our people, too, I am afraid. They are very bad, mon neveu. Very bad.”
I hadn’t realized Germans were still around here. I asked if many remained.
He smiled. “Ah, but Jean, it is nothing. They will not molest you. Only a few remain and soon they will be found.”
I stuck my crutches under my arms and slowly followed mon oncle along the station platform. Behind us lifted the towers and the buildings of the old city of Tulle. It was located in an oval valley in between the dark montagnes, and was different from any of the cities we have back home. The buildings were of stone, mostly, high and narrow, with small windows. The streets were paved with cobblestones or with big rough bricks. I saw the automobile carrying the German go up a long street.
I was glad they’d caught the German. It wasn’t right for Germans like him to hide out in the montagnes and cause trouble and become no more than robbers or bandits. Seeing the prisoner reminded me of something. I asked mon oncle, “Do you think by now they’ve caught Albert to question him?”
“I zink so. Oui.”
I asked, “I don’t suppose you could make sure?”
He nodded. “Oui, if you wish. When we reach St. Chamant I will write to my friends of the police in Paris, but you must not worry. The police will assuredly have caught Albert by now. Pouf!” He snapped his fingers. “They have him fast and in a few days we shall learn the truth.”
We didn’t have time to see much of Tulle because our train arrived. The engine was about the size of a switch engine back home. It had an enormous funnel and puffed out clouds of black smoke. Mon oncle explained this was a little montagne train. The engine probably was fifty or sixty years old. Behind it were four cars only, all small and old. Mon oncle helped me climb upon the rear car. He followed, carrying our bags. In ten or fifteen minutes the whistle tooted. We started chugging up into the montagnes. These were real montagnes, nothing like those we had come through earlier in the morning.
We wound around curves. We pushed up higher and higher. The sun was warm and bright. The montagnes were covered with oak and chestnut trees and every now and then we’d cross a shaky trestle and see for miles below into valleys, dark green. I had the strange feeling I was being taken years and years back into history, into the time of my grandfather. The people who got on the train wore old-fashioned clothes. Most of them had wooden shoes. They’d go for a few stops and get off again. One girl had a small pig under her arm. In a basket, a woman was carrying a live duck.
The houses we passed weren’t like houses I’d ever seen before. They nestled down into the trees, and were of stone and had thatched roofs—roofs of woven straw and hay. Mon oncle became more and more excited. Every few minutes he’d look at his watch. Finally he said, “Voici le village de St. Chamant!” The train halted. Here we were.
I don’t know what I was expecting but whatever it was—it wasn’t at all like what I found. Le village de St. Chamant was located on the side of a huge montagne and consisted of about twenty or thirty houses on each side of a single road, with the small brick railroad station about one fifth of a mile to the south of this road. Waiting at this little station was a sort of reception committee, composed of three men and one woman.
While the train halted, mon oncle threw out the bags and the men caught the bags. I was awkward with my crutches. Mon oncle never once helped me, either. He got down—and he waited. And so did the men and the woman. They didn’t say a word; they were grave and composed, as if it was the most usual thing in the world for them to see a strange boy trying to get off a train with two crutches under his arms.
Right after that, the woman and two of the three men gathered around mon oncle. Instead of shaking his hand they kissed him on the cheek as was the French custom.
The third man hung back, scowling. He approached mon oncle and took him off to one side, talking to him in a loud angry tone. Mon oncle merely shook his head, speaking briefly, cold and polite. After that, the third man lifted his hat about one inch above his pink bald head, disdainfully said, “Bon jour!” and marched off. He wore real leather shoes and a black coat with black braid on it and he had gray gloves on his hands, although the jour was warm.
Mon oncle nudged me. “You see? C’est le maire, Monsieur Capedulocque, whom I told you about. I zink he is angry I have come.”
He introduced me to Madame Graffoulier, a tall angular woman with kind eyes, who owned the hotel where we were to stay. After her, I was greeted—French style, always, being kissed on the cheeks—by Monsieur Niort, the blacksmith. He was wide as a barrel and when he laughed it sounded like thunder. The second man was Dr. Guereton, the local physician, gray and small and cheerful.
When he finished greeting me, same as the others, he peered over his spectacles at mon oncle and said, “C’est un bon garçon, ton neveu.” It was nice of him to say that, which meant: “It’s a good boy, that nephew”—or as we’d say it, “He’s a good lad, that nephew of yours.”
As I used my crutches, mon oncle Paul assisted me along. We reached the main street—the only street, for that matter. We marched down this street until we came to a crossroad, which came south from the meadows and led around an old stone church and north toward the montagnes. Next to the church was the biggest house in town. It had a fair-sized whitewashed tower in front, and a wall around the whole place. Inside were more whitewashed buildings with a lot of chickens and ducks squawking and goats bleating away. Mon oncle pointed to it; he said it was the house belonging to Monsieur Capedulocque, the mayor whom I’d just met. He explained in France farm people lived differently than he understood we did in America.
He said this village was composed of farmers—that is, people who owned vineyards and little fields in the mountains. While a few people lived on these fields, most of them moved into a village to be close to each other, and kept their animals within the courtyards. Often, the animals would live downstairs in the same house while the people lived upstairs. That was hard to believe. I laughed. I thought mon oncle was joking. But it was an actual fact—because later I saw homes with donkeys and goats on the downstairs floor and the family comfortable as anything, living upstairs. They claimed that was the only civilized way, too. They said if they wanted fresh milk all they had to do was step downstairs and a goat would give them all that was required. It saved time. It was efficient. That may be true, but the French method increases the variety of smells in a house.
We continued down the street. For the most part the houses were of two stories, of stone and plaster, with a crisscross of timbers on the upper floors. Shutters would open. Men or women would stick out their heads and call, “Ah, Paul. Bon jour, Paul!” and he’d call back to them. All of this had a strangeness to me
. Perhaps it was because I was almighty tired after using my crutches for such a distance—although, of course, it wasn’t really very far. But I wasn’t accustomed to going even part of a mile on my own, remember. It was like being in a dream, with the wet mist coming down and separating everything from me.
We came to a building longer than the other buildings, of three stories, all of stone and plaster, with green shutters over the windows. None of the buildings had porches or any decorations as buildings back home had. They came square up against the road, with absolutely plain bare fronts except for the shutters. This big building was like all the others in St. Chamant, plain and bare and simple in front. You’d have taken it for a poor mean miserable stone barn back home. Above the doorway was a sign: “Hôtel du Commerce.”
This was the hotel belonging to Madame Graffoulier. She was about fifty, I’d guess; her husband, I later learned, had been killed in the war. Paul had made arrangements for us to stay here. We entered the hotel and it was more like stepping inside a barn than in what I’d call a hotel. The big front room was right off the street, and for a floor—they had brick. True, the brick was swept clean and had been waxed. But still—a brick floor! In this room were long wooden tables and chairs and that was about all.
Waiting for us were two kids, a boy about seven and a girl of five or six. Both of them were dressed in the blue smocks all French children seem to wear, boy or girl. Shyly, they came forward. Mon oncle said they were Philippe and Jehanne, the nephew and niece of Madame Graffoulier. I looked around hoping there might be a boy at hand, near my age—but there wasn’t.
Madame Graffoulier accompanied me upstairs to my room. Upstairs it was more like a home. Carpets were on the floors. Through the rear windows opening into the upstairs hallway I could sight down upon a courtyard, where flowers and vegetables were growing. Beyond the courtyard wall was the old stone church. It was having everything reversed from what we have at home: we have a front yard, pretty and attractive. In St. Chamant the front of the houses were bleak. Their gardens and trees and flowers were hidden behind, in little courtyards. Madame Graffoulier showed me into a large corner room with a great bed in it and a chest of drawers and round faded blue rugs scattered over an uneven oak floor. She smiled. She pointed to that bed. “Va, au lit, mon garçon.”
That bed was about the most wonderful thing I’d seen. I was pretty much done for. Even if I didn’t know much French, I understood what she meant. I va-ed to that lit and I dropped the crutches and climbed into the lit and pulled up the covers and shut my eyes.
Later, mon oncle and Dr. Guereton came in to look at my leg. Dr. Guereton examined it, tapped it, making little chirping noises like a cricket. He finished and evidently was satisfied I hadn’t overstrained it. For dinner that night I had a big bowl of hot goat’s milk, more black bread, slices of thick yellow country cheese, and fresh figs. I was more hungry than I’d been for a long time and stuffed myself.
With the rest, my leg felt better, too. I came downstairs for a time and met people who’d filed into the hotel to see mon oncle. I went to bed early, about seven-thirty or eight, and was too sleepy to write any letters. I don’t know what time it was when I was awakened. The room was black as pitch. I lay there in bed and had the feeling something was wrong, not knowing why I’d started up from a sound sleep, finding myself sitting in bed, grabbing on to the quilts, my heart pounding.
My room was a corner room, the front windows overlooking the little narrow street, the side window above a kind of narrow alley, with a bleak dark stone house half a dozen yards distant, invisible now in the dense darkness.
Mon oncle had taken another room, off in back of the hotel, under the roof. It was a small, cramped room. I was surprised he wanted to sleep there but he explained after his experience in the army, living mostly out of doors, he liked being in a room small enough so he could reach out and touch the walls. Later on, I discovered the real reason he’d taken that room was because it was the cheapest.
As I sat there in my room, all at once I heard something again rattle softly against the side window, exactly as if someone was climbing up the wall to the window. You know how shadows change things in a room at night. I managed to turn my head. Over by the window, where the faint moonlight came through, I saw a white hand reach upwards and grasp the wooden sill. I let out a yell. I let out another and leaped out of the bed and fell.
Next thing I knew both Madame Graffoulier and mon oncle were holding candles over me, and I was in bed. I tried telling mon oncle somebody had attempted to climb into my room. He went to the window. He was patient and kind, explaining I must have been mistaken.
My window was a good fifteen feet above the street. He leaned out, holding the candle, examining the plaster walls. He said there wasn’t a mark or sign of any ladder. Anyone attempting to get into my room would require a ladder. He wriggled the big iron handle on the window. The window opened outwards—French style—like a door, instead of going up and in like our windows. In the moonlight, that handle did resemble a hand. He said that must have been the thing that frightened me—and the wind blowing against the window had rattled it.
Well, I was mortified nearly to death. In French he spoke to Madame Graffoulier. Probably he was telling her I’d been sick, and was still nervous and jumpy. She offered through him to bring me up another bowl of hot goat’s milk, to help me go back to sleep. But I said I didn’t need it. I was sorry I’d awakened them by shouting. I told mon oncle, “For a second I figured Monsieur Simonis had got to St. Chamant and was coming in after me.”
Very gently he assured me, “My dear nephew, you must not let the thought of that Simonis individual any longer disturb you. He has failed in his task, and if my suspicions are true, I zink he will take great care not to be seen by you and me when he reports to the mayor. Perhaps he will not come to St. Chamant, but goes only to Tulle and has the mayor visit him there. Have no fears. If I ever catch him skulking in the village, myself, I will ask him what he wished from you. And in a few days, I zink my friends of the police in Paris will have found Albert and from him learn the truth. You will see. Bonne nuit.”
“Bonne nuit,” I replied.
His common-sense attitude was calming. I shut my eyes, hearing the wind rattle at the window. Pretty soon I fell asleep, and dreamed of Monsieur Simonis trying to climb through hundreds of purple windows, each time falling back and landing on Wyoming spiked cactus plants.…
I spent the next morning in the workshop with mon oncle and Monsieur Niort, le forgeron, where they were beginning to build the avion. St. Chamant was deserted. The men were in the vineyards or fields. I asked mon oncle if there weren’t any boys around my age and he asked Monsieur Niort, “Où est Charles Meilhac?”
Le forgeron replied.
Mon oncle asked, “Où est Jules Lemaitre?”
Le forgeron again replied.
With a baffled expression, mon oncle asked, “Où est Pierre Guillaume? Henri Brinz? Guillaume Dufourché? Honoré Yvald?” and le forgeron would shrug and reply in about the same words every time. By now I appreciated mon oncle was naming boys he knew, asking where they were.
Mon oncle told me, “Jean, I do not know what to say. Because so many families of St. Chamant became poor during the war, the blacksmith tells me the five or six boys of your age or older have taken jobs in Tulle and Brive to earn money for the winter. Perhaps later on in the summer they will return.”
I tried not to let him see how discouraged I felt, hearing that. In an attempt to cheer me up, he assured me in a day or so he would take us up to the montagne where the Langres family place was and I could see that. I’d find things to do, too, in St. Chamant as soon as I began to walk more and got more strength.
Le forgeron said something.
Mon oncle turned to me again. “The blacksmith tells me he has forgotten. The factory where Charles Meilhac is working may close soon. Then Charles will be here. Ah, you will like him very much, I zink.”
“Who’s
he?”
“You will see, soon. He is a little older than you, maybe. Six months. His father was killed in the war. They are old friends of the Langres, the Meilhacs. There are now only the mother and the sister, the twin of Charles. When Charles comes home I promise to take you to the Meilhacs’. That is better now, non? I zink soon you have a friend—two friends,” he added. “Suzanne you will like, aussi.”
One thing, also—aussi—I knew I wasn’t going to like any girl. And at the moment, I didn’t have anything to do. I was tired of watching mon oncle and le forgeron. I lumped back to the door, looked along the deserted street. The montagnes were dark. The sky overhead was all blue and empty. That wind which had rattled my window last night still blew down from the montagnes with a low moaning sound. The pig walked back along the street. It eyed me as if it knew I didn’t enjoy being in its village. I called, “Here, pig.” It went right on, proud and haughty, not having any truck with me.
6
LA MAISON DE TA MÈRE
That nuit I wrote my first letters from St. Chamant: one to my mother, one to my father, and a third to Bob Collins, back in Wyoming. I told my father I’d walked all the way from the station and everything was going fine although at present there weren’t any boys my age to play with. I asked him if he’d had time to look at any English bicycles with high gears and low gears.
In the letter to my mother, I wrote about le train and the trip down, although I didn’t mention seeing Monsieur Simonis on the train. The fact is, now I was away from them, I’d had time to think over how I had been acting in the past. I was ashamed. I wanted them to believe I was growing up and recovering from being so easily scared and I was determined to make my letters to them cheerful if I choked doing it. They had worries of their own. I hoped mon oncle wouldn’t write them, either, and inform on me, how I’d been frightened by the wind blowing against a window. I should have asked him not to—and I decided tomorrow to ask him if it wasn’t too late.
