A Fifty-Year Silence: Love, War, and a Ruined House in France

by Miranda Richmond Mouillot

  “Move in with me,” Julien said. “There’s no point in your freezing down there by yourself.”

  So I swept the house, covered the furniture, and turned off the electricity and the water at the mains. Then I shut the door, wondering if I’d ever come back to live there again. I picked up my bags and called for Minus the cat, whom I had adopted, and, just as Julien had predicted several months before, was moving back in with him.

  The house wasn’t entirely secure yet. I was still waiting for a new terrace door to replace the one that had rotted away. So every couple of days I’d walk down to La Roche to check that everything was all right. Every time, I’d stare up at the dark walls and feel a strange mix of guilt, surprise, and defeat. Why hadn’t I managed to stay? Why had I ever wanted to? Now that I had left it, the house would retreat right back into bleakness.

  I watched my grandparents slip away from me, my grandfather before my very eyes and my grandmother on paper. “I am too tired to write more than a few lines,” she’d tell me. “My hands are shaky—can you read this?” I should have felt a greater sense of urgency. But it was still too much a fairy tale to me, a blend of truth and magic, and though I’d given up on the house in La Roche, I kept sifting through the information I had, convinced that if I brought their stories to life in writing, I would be able to locate the secret password, the magic formula, the right question to unlock their silence.

  In my grandmother’s account, the days in December 1942, between her, Armand, and Erna’s departure from St. Paul de Fenouillet and their arrival in Switzerland, were like the dayenus our family said at the Passover seder every year: “It would have been enough for us.” Just like the miracles of the Exodus from Egypt, my grandmother recounted each of the miracles that had enabled them to cross the border as amazing in its own right: the miracle in which my grandmother was helping an old peasant lady in a train station and was passed over during an identity check because the gendarme thought she was the old lady’s daughter; the miracle in which my grandmother recognized the same gendarme checking papers as she was leaving St. Paul with Armand and Erna and got them to run away in time; the miracle in which she and Erna dressed up as prostitutes to get to the convent in Lyon where the nuns were giving out the address of a group of passeurs on the Swiss border; the miracle in which they weren’t arrested in the train because they were sharing a compartment with a Catholic priest; the miracle in which they weren’t arrested on the bus because the police chief was moving that day and had corralled all his men to help him—on and on, over the mountain.

  Now I wanted specifics, as if pinpointing their geographical coordinates would help me decipher their feelings.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t say,” my grandfather responded when I asked how exactly he had traveled from St. Paul de Fenouillet to the place where they had crossed into Switzerland.

  “You took the train from Lyon.”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “And Gran—weren’t you riding in a train compartment with a priest, so the milice man didn’t check your papers, because he thought you were together?”

  He smiled. “Who told you that?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “Well, we did ride with a priest, yes. But I don’t know whether it did us any good.”

  “And where did you take the train to?”

  “I couldn’t be certain.”

  “And then where did you go?”

  He looked vague. “I’m afraid it has escaped my memory.”

  “Near the Col de Coux?” I asked hopefully. That was all my grandmother could remember. “The name of the village escapes me now,” she had written me, “but it was near the Col de Coux.”

  “Perhaps.” He looked thoughtful. “It’s in a book. I told it to a woman who was writing a book.” He pulled a slim red paperback off the shelf in the dining room and held it up for me to see. It was called Passer en Suisse: Les passages clandestins entre la Haute-Savoie et la Suisse, 1940–44 and featured a pencil drawing of a round-faced and ragged refugee tramping through a barbed-wire fence. Grandpa opened to a chapter called “Les points de passage,” skimmed through it, and then handed the book to me.

  The journey, though long, was relatively safe. But it was reserved for the hardy.… Most of the time [refugees], having resorted to taking this route,… found a passeur or “safe” person whose address they knew, without really realizing how difficult the trip would be, or perhaps convinced they’d be able to make it through anyway. Once they had started out, when fatigue began turning to discouragement, they repeated to themselves that it would be foolish to stop now, that the goal was in sight, that their life depended on it. Armand Jacoubovitch told me of his journey. Father Philippe of Les Gets, whose address he had been given in Lyon, took him, his companion, and an Austrian refugee into his care. With the help of two young men from Morzine, they started off toward the Col de Coux:

  “We left very early, around six in the morning. The young men hiked an hour or two with us. They explained that we had to hike in a big curve—instead of walking due north, we had to make a big detour to the east, to avoid the patrols. After we had doubled back, we would arrive at the passage. This was in December 1942.”

  My grandfather had underlined in pencil the words “young men from Morzine” and put an asterisk beside them. At the bottom of the page, he’d added a footnote of his own: “Constant and Albert BAUD, woodworkers from Morzine.”

  I knew this part of the story from my grandmother. That morning they slipped their warmest socks onto their feet and laced up their thin shoes. They ate a little, sitting quietly and looking into the precrepuscular dark, and packed the rations of food the innkeeper and his wife had given them. They crept down the stairs and out the door and walked to the meeting place the village priest had assigned them the previous day. With their guides, they began the ascent through the thinning woods. The ground was the color of breadcrumbs, covered in places with patches of snow, which lent some brightness to the leaden sky and the dirty-cobweb smudge of the bare deciduous trees, but as they moved upward, the pine trees sucked all the light into the depths of their dark green needles. Occasionally, they crossed a pasture, where the only cover was the tenuous protection of the dim dawn. It was steep going, breathless, an immense effort to lift one foot and plant it in front of the other, push with all their might, repeat. They looked up once, from a narrow glen, to see the reedy figures of German soldiers walking far above them, with mushroom-helmets and twig-like rifles, and the little group pressed down behind the rocks and held their breaths.

  By the time they reached the tree line, the weak daylight was leaching out of the sky. Tiny snowflakes landed on their clothes. The guides pointed out the Col de Coux and went over the little map they had drawn, enumerating the things the travelers should remember: customhouse, barn, the smugglers supposedly waiting near the border to accompany adventurous refugees—for a fee—into Switzerland. Not much farther to go, the guides assured them. And while the bareness of the mountaintop made them more visible, there would be nightfall and snowfall to cover them. The walking would be a little easier. There was a round of hurried well-wishing, thank-yous, and clasped hands, and then Anna, Erna, and Armand were alone.

  The snow, which had begun to fall with a rapid hush, blew around them like a cape as they trudged to the pass. Before long, they were pushing through waist-high drifts that slowly soaked through their shoes. The wet and cold crept through everything, through gaps in their clothing they hadn’t known existed. It softened the tops of Anna’s shoes so that they scarcely clung to their thin wood soles. Erna, an experienced mountaineer, kept them on the path. It was slow going, leg after leg, hard-pushing steps up, careful stumbles. Erna first, then Anna and Armand behind, sometimes one before the other, sometimes the other way around, the three of them groping their way with cold-blinded feet. The pass was not very far away for longer and longer, first fifteen minutes, then half an hour, an hour, another hour after that.

&nbs
p; Suddenly, Anna fell. She landed sideways, in a snow-filled hollow in the ground. Like a nest. She peered up at the landscape, and it seemed to bend down all around her, like a mother toward a child. The snowflakes, if chilly, were soft on her face; all told, she thought to herself, she felt quite comfortable. The back of her mind asked the front of her mind how it was possible for everything to feel so agreeable, with her pack poking at her back through her wet clothes, and her arms and legs twisted around in a funny way. How was it, the back of the mind persisted, that she didn’t feel cold? She was reminding herself that damp wool was a very good insulator, thinking of sheep, and watching Armand and Erna standing over her, shouting at her. She struggled to listen. They were telling her to get up. In a minute, in a minute. She would get up. Soon. Not quite yet. I need a rest, she thought. It’s so restful, with the snow all around.

  Anna’s face looked like a hasty assemblage of shadows to Armand as he bent over, tugged at her, watched her, shouted, thinking she looked so dark in all that white, so lost. The snow had already begun to accumulate on her body. Far off in his mind, questions began to ring, would they have to leave her, how would she die, would she suffer, tucked into the snow like a sleepy child. He stood over the little hummock and called to her. He tugged at her.

  “She has to get up on her own,” Erna insisted. Gently, she pulled him away and then leaned her face down to her friend. “Anna,” she barked, like a cop talking to a loiterer, “get up.”

  Anna looked up at her with a soft, silly smile.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Erna snapped. “You know you’ll die if you keep lying here.”

  Armand twisted his hands. How long could this last? Still, he hung back. Erna’s sudden transformation was unsettling. Her normally clear, pleasant voice had been replaced by a raucous snarl.

  Anna shook her head, still smiling. Erna leaned closer to Anna’s face. “Son of a bitch!” she bawled. She pulled back, then leaned in again. “Get out of that goddamn hole, you feebleminded cunt!” The smile disappeared from Anna’s lips. She whimpered.

  Armand came closer to Erna and touched her arm. She brushed his hand away as a horse gets rid of a fly. Leaning as close as she could to her friend without losing her balance, she roared, “Motherfucker! You listen to me, Münster.” Anna lifted her head. “You lazy piss-ant! Good-for-nothing piece of shit! You whore—”

  “Erna!” Anna pushed herself up on one arm, offended that her repose was being disturbed by this sudden change in ambience. What had gotten into her friend?

  “I could give a sheep’s asshole,” her friend interrupted her. “Right now it is colder than a witch’s tit, and we have a motherfucking mountain to climb, and I will shit on my own parents’ graves if I’m going to watch you lie there in the snow like some old drunk.”

  “Erna, stop it,” Anna murmured, struggling to sit. She had to make Erna stop. What was wrong with her?

  Erna ignored her. “I will spit on my own grandmother. I would spit on your grandmother, if she weren’t too busy—” Clumsily, suddenly shivering, Anna got to her feet, and Erna grabbed her arm.

  Armand choked up with relief. He rushed over to her.

  “Let me go,” Anna said to Erna. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Get moving,” Erna urged.

  Anna obeyed. It was hard. She couldn’t go very fast. She felt aged and tired.

  “Keep moving,” Erna commanded, walking with her, pushing a little, brushing the snow off her briskly.

  Anna stopped and looked around her, disoriented. “What happened?”

  “You fell. You had to get up on your own. Now keep moving.”

  “It was so comfortable,” Anna reflected, brushing a snowflake off her cheek. “I couldn’t imagine how it could be so comfortable, lying in that position.”

  “Keep moving,” Erna repeated. “Don’t stop. Stomp your feet, and rub your hands together. You could have died.”

  Anna looked back at where she had been lying and down at her bag in the snow. The awful realization flooded into her faster and heavier than the cold. She was overcome with remorse. “I’m sorry.” She felt two sharp stings on her cheek.

  “Don’t cry. It’ll leave marks on your face.” Erna reached out and gave Anna’s arms a last rub. “Let’s just keep moving. It’s almost dark.”

  Armand moved closer to the two women. He brushed snowflakes from Anna’s hair. “I’ll take your bag,” he offered. They started moving again.

  “Where did you learn to curse like that?” Anna asked.

  “Taxis. Viennese taxi drivers have the foulest mouths in the world.”

  They walked in silence, five minutes, ten, twenty. The snow accumulated under the darkening trees, their feet speaking to themselves in the silent language of snow steps.

  “Look!” The two women followed Armand’s finger to a low oblong shape. “That must be the customhouse.”

  They pushed through the snow faster, with Erna in the lead. They had nearly reached the low building when Erna pulled up short. She nodded her head, indicating something ahead of them to the right. It was a man. He was waving at them. He waved harder. Cautiously, they stepped closer, a footfall, then another, until he gestured at them to stop. With no words, he pointed toward the customhouse. He pantomimed guards on patrol, then shook his finger, no. He motioned them to come back tomorrow. They nodded big exaggerated nods to show they had understood. He turned away and melted off into the rapidly dimming afternoon.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We go to that barn, I guess.” Erna pulled out the scrap of paper their guides had used to sketch a map. “It should be down behind those rocks.” They followed it, but there was nothing there.

  “Are you sure you went the right way?” Anna questioned.

  “Positive. Besides, there’s a clearing here. It’s the logical place for a barn to be.”

  They walked around the clearing, kicking away the snow, as if the barn might somehow be hidden under it. Erna walked over to what looked like a dead tree trunk and examined it. She kicked at it gently with her foot. Pieces crumbled away: black charcoal. “Looks like someone burned it down.”

  A little bird of fear fluttered in them. The silence dilated; the night began to open its eyes; the mountain, hard and high, gathered snow. What do we do? None of them wanted to say that question aloud so they listened to the snow instead.

  “We’ll have to go back to the customhouse,” Erna decided.

  After an hour’s stumbling through the waning daylight, the three of them made it back. It was shut tight. They each felt their way around it, checking doors and windows, hoping against hope. The light was nearly gone when Armand felt a handle different from all the other ones he had tried. It moved. He wiggled it and pushed down, and it gave. His heart beat faster. It was open. It had to open. He pushed down again, and the door opened. A stench, like an unfriendly animal, slunk out and filled his nose. He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and found his matches, struck one, and peered in. He called out for Anna and Erna.

  “Well,” he said, when they’d made their way to him. “It looks like they left the outhouse open.” He lit another match. “There’s even a cover on the latrine.”

  “Will we all fit?” Anna asked.

  “We have to.” Erna took off her bag and carried it inside. She set her bag down.

  “If we stack them,” Armand pointed out, “we can keep them in here with us.” They all squeezed in, Armand last. He rested his bag on top of the others, fumbled it open, and pulled out a candle, which he lit.

  “Anna, can you give me your watch?”

  Anna pulled it off her wrist and handed it to him.

  Armand held his thumb up to the candle, sliding it down the candle’s length and moving his lips as he counted thumb measurements. They all watched the flame, as if observation might encourage it to burn all night, as if its burning all night could keep them warmer.

  Anna bunched up her toes in her shoes. She knew her shoes were we
t; logically they were wet. She thought she was curling her toes. She couldn’t really feel them. They had hurt a lot, then nothing really, a low burning sort of hum—frostbite symptoms. She knew from her medical textbooks that if she took off her shoes, her toes would be white. Not that she would take off her shoes. She concentrated on the candle.

  I considered that candle, too. The night in the outhouse was the first story my grandmother ever told me about her experiences during the war. And now that I thought about it, my grandfather had featured prominently, with his calculations of how long they could burn the candle each time they lit it, so it would last through the night. “Smart man,” I remembered Grandma saying.

  The next morning, at first light, Erna found what looked like a path, and they struck out again. As they scrambled and lurched their way down the mountain, the snow turned to sleet, and finally to a steady, heavy rain.

  Just as the sleet was turning liquid, and hitting their skin a little less sharply, Anna felt a change in the air. Someone. She looked up—at least in her telling of the story—and spotted a man in a dark, heavy coat walking toward them. Though my grandfather always had claimed that he was the one who spotted the passeur, I liked to think of Anna jabbing Erna, tugging at Armand’s sleeve, stopping them in their tracks with a barely audible “Look.”

  No one ever told me whether they hesitated before making their way toward the man, advancing with their feet turned sideways so they wouldn’t slip in the mud, whether they fully considered that he might hold their fate in his hands.