by Perrat, Liza
My mother said nothing; she simply shook her head and kept gazing about her.
My heart heavy, I plodded upstairs and attempted to climb the attic ladder but my injured arm was useless, and I could not know if Max’s paintings were safe. I returned to the kitchen, and heard Maman’s shriek, from her herbal room.
They’d smashed every bottle, jar and container, the contents leaking across the floor in one great mangle of liquid, glass and mulched plant. She stood amidst the mess, one hand fussing with her chignon, the other clamped over her mouth.
‘Oh God no …’ I clutched my wounded arm, which ached even more. ‘I’m sor ––’
‘Don’t keep apologising, Célestine. I do understand you only did what you felt you had to … up at the school. I know you had to do something –– anything –– not to end up like your embittered mother.’
‘Still, I never thought the Germans would … But I’ll fix it, Maman. I’ll help you gather more stocks. You’ll see, one day I’ll make it the same again.’
‘At least they didn’t find my stash,’ she said, nodding at the intact parquetry floor. ‘It seems we’ll need every last franc to repair this damage.’
Uncle Félix appeared in the kitchen.
‘We’ll get the old place right again, Marinette.’
‘Yes we will, Maman.’
My mother nodded. ‘L’Auberge des Anges has survived uprisings, revolutions, war and every caprice of nature,’ she said. ‘It has been our family home for centuries. These walls of stone, their legends and secrets, are our family. Without it, we have nothing.’ She made a move towards the door, to take an apron from the hook. ‘I’m not about to let it crumble in the face of a few Nazi thugs. We’ll start cleaning up right now.’
Uncle Félix laid a hand on her arm. ‘Not now, Marinette. Céleste needs to rest and there is so much else …’ he waved an arm in the direction of Lucie, ‘so much more to deal with. We’ll come back another day.’
We climbed back into the trap and rode away, back to Julien. The Germans may have devastated L’Auberge but it was still there, perched on the hill like a great timeless being, its stony face twisted in defiant scorn at the cruelty of mankind that had destroyed an entire village.
Summer 1944 – Summer 1946
51
It was a hot June morning, two days after the massacre, the wind gusting in from the Massif Central. The chestnut trees on the square of Julien swayed like a troupe of mad dancers, as two thin figures plodded into Uncle Félix’s clog shop, clots of hair matting their sun-bronzed cheeks.
Olivier’s face seemed twisted in an odd shape and, in an instant, I saw that he knew. I spread my arms to him. He collapsed against me and, through the thin layer of flesh, I felt his bones shudder with the sobs.
‘We heard,’ Patrick said. ‘I imagine the whole of France knows about this.’ He clamped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘He’s been all right, up till now …’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s beyond evil.’
Of course, I didn’t mention the part I might have played in that evil, despite Dr. Laforge assuring me the carnage was most likely nothing to do with my pathetic act of revenge. He claimed newspapers like Libération, Résistance and La Marseillaise were publicising the massacre as a Nazi reprisal for Resistance activities, and that that should soothe my conscience. He even said people were calling me a heroine. A heroine! That only heightened the guilt that shadowed my every move.
There was no escape in sleep either, because it entered my dreams; dreams which became nightmares, which startled me into wakefulness and left me feeling exhausted, my heart beating fast. As I bolted upright in the bed, bathed in an icy sweat, my mother would hurry into the room and hold a beaker of something sweet to my lips.
‘You cried out again,’ she’d say. ‘Drink this, you’ll feel better.’ But I didn’t feel better –– not better at all. I wouldn’t feel better until I could, somehow, gouge the guilt from my heart and my skull.
Patrick and Olivier quickly became heroes. Julien-sur-Vionne buzzed with talk of the brave Maquisards, and the villagers –– proud as if they were their own sons –– patted their shoulders and shook their hands when they walked past them on the square.
That they’d managed to avoid German bullets fed the peoples’ craving for miracles and boosted their sense of justice. It seemed all the mothers, like Aunt Maude, who still had no news of their imprisoned sons, felt new hope beat within their breasts.
***
On a sultry August morning two months later, the Allies crossed the Seine River, bringing the Allied invasion to a successful close. The day Lyon was liberated –– 2nd September –– Maman proclaimed that since the city was free, we would all return to L’Auberge des Anges and free our home from the final bonds of its Nazi grip.
In the wake of the massacre, my mother had gathered Anne-Sophie Primrose and Séverine Dubois beneath her newly-spread maternal wings. She welcomed not only the two five-year old survivors to L’Auberge’s hearth, but Olivier too, and Séverine’s sister, Miette.
‘She takes care of those kids better than she ever took care of us,’ Patrick said. ‘She even seems to be enjoying mothering them. Whatever happened to change her?’
I shrugged, smiling too, at that side of her motherhood we’d rarely seen. I’d not told my brother about a German army deserter named Axel, or my own bitter secret. I sensed they were things Maman and I would keep between us.
Besides, after the darkness that had struck Lucie-sur-Vionne, Karl and Fritz’s attack had paled against the shocking tragedy my friends had suffered.
Even as the cold hard voice of reason told Miette otherwise, she still clung to the hope that the bodies of her sister, parents and grandparents would be identified, but we both knew they’d simply been piled together in a mass grave with all the other dead of Lucie. She told me how she and Séverine felt like stray dogs; and how from one day to the next there was suddenly nobody to sit with in the evenings, at midday, on weekends.
I stayed close to her, trying to scrape together comforting words, but I never knew what to say to help ease the pain that ploughed creases into my friend’s face. There were no words for what had happened to our village. I think we were still suffering from the shock, the tragedy too fresh in our minds; the spirits of the dead still trapped in their charred homes.
Throughout those autumn months, during which I turned twenty-one, the leaves fading to yellow, crimson and ochre, and falling to the damp ground, many willing hands worked in L’Auberge kitchen garden, dragging down tangles of mistletoe, and pruning the orchard trees. It seemed we were all as determined as my mother to restore the farm to the thriving, homely place it had once been.
The silence about the fates of Félicité, Papa and the Wolfs stretched into the short bleak days of December and January. As a cold numbness descended from the Monts du Lyonnais, the hillsides thick cotton-wool beds, we scrubbed L’Auberge, scouring away every last trace of the occupier. We repainted and hung wallpaper, and Patrick used his carpentry skills to mend and replace the furniture the Germans had either burned or broken.
Throughout the iciest part of winter, the scent of woodsmoke in our nostrils, we gathered around the fireplace and Patrick and Olivier regaled us with tales of their wild Maquis days. I think they made up half the stories, simply to keep our anguished minds off those absent from the fireside, but they spoke with such excitement that I wondered if they didn’t miss the action, the adventure and the danger.
One morning in early March the new spring birdsong startled me from a dream of Martin Diehl and me standing side by side, skimming stones from the gravelly shore of the Vionne. It almost escaped me but I clutched onto the images, holding them fast in my fisted hand, beneath the eiderdown. I lay there, thinking about him, then I rolled back the covers, flung the window open and inhaled the fragrant scents.
Winter had retreated across the hills for another year and I looked out onto the tulips, crocuses an
d daffodils awakening from their earthy beds and trembling in the breeze. Beyond the splash of spring colour, the fields glittered silvery-green with morning dew. The birds continued to shriek, competing with the bleat of young goats, the squeak of piglets from their beds of hay, and the neigh of the new horse.
I glimpsed little Anne-Sophie and Séverine in the meadow, squealing in delight as they plucked young dandelion leaves from the moist earth –– for Maman’s pissenlit jam no doubt.
‘Eight hundred,’ Anne-Sophie said to her little friend. ‘Not one more, not one less, otherwise the jam will be ruined.’ I smiled at my mother’s words falling from her innocent lips.
The spring days lengthened, and in May of 1945 we finally had the first news of the deportees.
***
‘Come down, girls,’ I called to Anne-Sophie and Séverine, perched on a high branch of the poplar tree. ‘It’s dangerous; you’ll fall and hurt yourselves.’
Patrick and Olivier looked up from the stakes they were sawing to build a new hen house. ‘Dangerous?’ Patrick said with a grin. ‘As if that ever stopped you.’
‘Thank God she was so determined to climb trees better than us,’ Olivier said, giving me a wink. ‘Or she’d never have got herself, or anybody, out of … of that inferno.’
Crouched over, tending her infant herbs and flowers, my mother glanced up. ‘Let the girls be, Célestine. Hounding children only makes them more determined to chase after what’s forbidden.’
I ignored Maman’s smirk, as Dr. Laforge’s Traction pulled up at the gateway of L’Auberge. The doctor opened the back door and helped two figures from the car.
My mother stood and wiped an arm across her brow, streaking it with soil. I ran across the cobblestones. So ghostly and fragile were the two figures, I feared they’d break at the slightest touch, and I had to stop myself flinging myself at them and showering them with kisses.
‘Céleste.’ Sabine’s voice was little more than a ragged whisper. Beside her, Talia seemed to stare straight through us, as if not seeing anything at all. The girl hugged a scrap of paper to her chest.
‘We could never return to Julien-sur-Vionne,’ Sabine said to my mother. ‘The memories … you understand. My daughter and I will live in one of the village houses, once they’ve finished building the new Lucie-sur-Vionne.’
I hated being reminded of the massacre, of which we rarely spoke those days; to recall that terrible afternoon, a part of me still convinced I had taken the lives of five hundred and six people.
The handful who’d escaped the carnage were temporarily housed in make-shift barrack-huts –– ghost-town guardians existing in minimum comfort, for, with the widespread destruction of war, humanitarian help was almost impossible. A committee was busy planning the new Lucie-sur-Vionne, to be constructed close to the original village, the charred ruins of which would be preserved as a memorial. At first I could hardly believe any sort of new world could be born from that burnt-out cadaver; that any kind of life could spring from such bloodstained earth, but then I saw how important it was to freeze the terrible afternoon of June 8th in time. A testament to our suffering under the German occupation, so future generations would never forget.
My mother kept wiping her palms down her apron. ‘You and Talia are welcome at L’Auberge for as long as you wish.’
I wrapped my arms around Talia and gave her a gentle hug. ‘I’m so happy to see you.’
Talia stared at me from sombre, vaulted eyes. She kept clutching the sheet of paper to her chest, without uttering a word.
‘Talia fell silent one day,’ Sabine said. ‘I haven’t heard the sound of my daughter’s voice for over a year. The sanatorium doctor said it was the shock. He said she may never speak again.’
‘I have something that might help,’ Maman said. ‘In my special room.’
As my mother gently pushed dark strands of frizzy hair from Talia’s eyes, my heart ached for the haunted little creature who bore not the slightest resemblance to the talkative, bright-eyed girl we’d known.
‘I tried to find out about you, Sabine,’ I said. ‘And … and the others. I went back to the prefecture over and over but they couldn’t tell me anything.’
‘They told us people were trickling back,’ Patrick said. ‘That they were being taken to the Hôtel Lutétia in Paris but it might take a long time for them all to return.’
‘We saw photographs,’ I said. ‘Terrible pictures, in Le Figaro. It seemed the rumours we’d heard were true. We thought … ’
‘What of your husband, and your boy?’ Maman asked.
‘My little Jacob.’ Sabine shook her head and looked away. She didn’t cry, and I thought perhaps she’d already used up every last tear.
‘My husband was taken on a different train,’ she said. ‘I do not know where he …’
‘Do you know about …’ Patrick took a breath. ‘… about anyone else?’ I was certain my brother was as anxious as I to know about our sister but he too, was afraid to say her name.
‘Talia has something for you,’ Sabine said, laying a hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘A picture she painted while we were at the sanatorium.’
Talia pushed her paper into my hands. Instinctively, I gripped my mother’s arm as I looked down at the little girl’s painting of a golden-winged creature in a flowing robe. A halo circled the dark hair, and the face was tilted skyward, gazing into a great, gleaming sun. In the bottom right-hand corner, Talia had printed her name, just as Max had done.
I read the caption beneath her name: Sister Marie-Félicité. The Wolfs’ angel.
I kept a grip on my mother’s arm, afraid I would pass out.
‘It’s the most beautiful painting ever, Talia,’ Maman said, and I caught the sound of the sob that snagged in her throat.
‘She was much weakened,’ Sabine said. ‘Like the rest of us. But she found strength in her soul, in her beliefs, to give us all comfort. The courage to go on. They were to send me to …’ She took a breath and focussed her dark, sad eyes on us. ‘Marie-Félicité took my place, sacrificed herself to save a little girl’s mother.’ She cast a glance at Talia, standing motionless beside her.
‘March thirtieth, it was,’ Sabine said her voice dropping to a reverent kind of whisper. ‘Our Good Friday angel.’
***
It was a warm overcast day towards the end of May when the tramp shuffled beneath the wooden gateway of L’Auberge. Anne-Sophie and Séverine were feeding carrots to the baby goats whose mothers Miette and I were milking. Out in the orchard, the strawberries were fat and almost ripe, the fruit trees in full blossom. Maman was working in her kitchen garden, arranging her plants in ordered rows, each one bearing its own nametag as it either reached for the sky or crawled along the earth. The breeze carried the smell of the lavender bushes, and the citrusy-mint perfume of the lemon balm, across the cobbles.
My mother must have seen the tramp too, for she came around through the gate and into the courtyard, the wind lifting the hem of her dress and snatching her herbal scent.
I stopped my milking and eyed the tramp’s long, straggly hair, his unkempt beard and hunched-over frame. As he crossed the courtyard, a dagger of sunlight pierced the clouds and I saw he was filthy, and painfully thin.
Maman was walking across the cobblestones towards the man, wiping her hands down her apron and patting her chignon.
‘You’ll see,’ I said to Miette. ‘My mother will chase that tramp away quick smart.’
‘Maybe he’s a prisoner of war on his way home?’ Miette said. ‘The government is encouraging us all to receive returning workers with open arms, whether they are family or not.’
‘Oh yes! While that same government doesn’t even give most of them a fresh set of clothes or a homeward bound train ticket,’ I said. ‘It’s scandalous.’
My mother was hurrying to the tramp, who spread his arms wide.
In all the years before they’d sent Papa to Germany, I couldn’t recall seeing my parents touch each other, b
ut then they hugged and kissed like impatient young lovers. For the first time ever, I think, I heard the sound of my mother’s laugh. A real laugh, from the heart.
52
On a scorching summer day of 1946 I married Olivier Primrose. It was a double wedding, with Patrick and Juliette Dubois.
Miette insisted the ceremony take place in the charred remains of Saint Antoine’s church. ‘So my mother, and Amandine, will be with us,’ she said. ‘And so many of our friends.’
When Rachel Abraham had learned of the planned nuptials, she limped up to L’Auberge from her home in the new Lucie-sur-Vionne and presented my mother with a bolt of cream-coloured cloth and a skein of exquisite antique lace, from which Maman fashioned two beautiful gowns.
Aunt Maude and Uncle Félix arrived in the trap from Julien, with my cousins, Jules and Paul.
‘Come on, Félicité,’ my father said. ‘We’ll be late for the wedding. You know Céleste’s getting married today.’ His face spread in a silly grin, his arms stretched wide towards his beloved invisible daughter. ‘And your mother’s prepared such a feast. You’ll have to feed yourself up, look at you, how much weight you’ve lost. Oh what lovely days we’re going to spend together, Félicité, now the war is over.’
My father never uttered a word about those lost years, and we heard the Germans had allowed prisoners to send letters home only until July of 1943, to boost morale and control the anxiety of those back home. After that, they’d forbidden any correspondence.
He’d been back from the labour camp only a few days when we noticed his mind had gone astray. The visions of Félicité began as soon as we told him how his daughter died a heroine, and he began to resurrect treasured memories, recalling certain words she’d said, gestures made with a little girl’s hand. He spoke of the pink smock she wore as a child, and the way she cried and held out her arms to him when she’d been stung by nettles.
But for the most part he was still lucid, quite aware his daughter was gone, as he was then, as the wedding party stood on la place de l’Eglise, before the ruins of Saint Antoine’s church.
