The Baker's Secret

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  Finding herself bolt upright sometime later, however, Emma knew she must have slept. The candle had burned out and Pirate was in full cry, though it was still deep night and outside there was some form of commotion.

  Mémé lay on the couch like a pharaoh in his tomb, face inscrutable and breathing so slow it seemed almost as if she had stopped. But her grandmother was fully dressed, Emma noticed, which meant she expected to be awakened before the night was through.

  Again the outcry from the barnyard, a confusing tumult as Emma splashed water on her face to clear the fog of sleep. Surely it was not time to knead the dough already.

  She stepped outside to what appeared like two men dancing. Back and forth they parried by the hog shed, until one of them flung a wooden box on the ground. “Explain this, you lying spy.”

  The box broke open on impact, spilling shining cylinders. Emma drew closer before she recognized them as bullets, hundreds of rounds, dull brass casings and their bright steel tips.

  “I am as surprised as you are,” answered the Goat. “I wonder who stored ammunition in that shed.”

  “What kind of an idiot do you think I am?” shrieked Thalheim, giving the Goat a shove.

  “Oh, a complete one, I’m sure,” the Goat cackled.

  “A comedian,” Thalheim snarled, and he surprised the ragamuffin with a kick in the groin that dropped him groaning in a ball to the ground.

  From there the Goat noticed Emma and made a hand motion, warning her away, but it caused Thalheim to spin on his boot heel and shout, “You.” He pointed at her. “You’ll have to answer for this as well.”

  “For what?”

  “Your shed is filled with ammunition, and don’t pretend to know nothing about it.”

  “But I don’t. I haven’t been in there in years—not since your army took my father’s last pig.”

  The captain unclipped his holster. “I should shoot all of you.”

  “For what possible reason?” Emma asked.

  “She knows nothing about this,” the Goat said at the same moment. He had come to his knees and was working to regain his breath. “We would never confide in her. She is too proud.”

  “I am what?”

  “Don’t bother trying to protect her,” Thalheim said.

  “Why did you look in the sty anyway, after all this time?” the Goat asked, coming to his feet, reclaiming the captain’s attention. “That stockpile took months to build.”

  “So you admit it?”

  “Why deny what you can see with your own eyes? I am not without some pride myself.”

  Thalheim seemed to relax a degree, resting a thumb on his pistol grip as though he welcomed the conversation. “One of our excellent snipers bagged a homing pigeon at sunset, headed north, back to our enemies. Its papers showed exact location of our communication center. It also had mention of ammunition supply near the eastern well.”

  “God in heaven.” The Goat shook his head. “All that work, lost because of a bird.”

  “You will tell me more,” Thalheim said. “And perhaps I will spare your life. How did you get that matériel here?”

  “On my back,” the Goat said, having regained his swagger.

  “I already recognized you as a donkey,” Thalheim scoffed. “I meant to this region.”

  “Why not tell you?” the Goat said, scratching his battered coat. “On trains.”

  “Our army searches every railcar thoroughly.”

  The Goat smiled. “No one opens a cabinet that says ‘Danger: sixteen thousand volts.’ Once I’d carried the ammunition here, I could count on your obsession with order. Racist cleanliness is a weakness, you know.”

  “It is a strength,” Thalheim said. “As valuable as discipline.”

  “No one from your army searched this completely obvious hiding place, including you with it right under your nose, because you didn’t want to soil your boots. All it will take to defeat your so-called excellent army is people willing to endure a little dirt.”

  “You are see our army’s weakest element here,” Thalheim insisted. “Boys who have never thrown of a punch, and old soldiers sent to recover from the Eastern Front. All they do is fall in love with the sun and ocean and wine.” He wagged a finger at Emma. “And of you harlots. An army built to blitz grows bored easily. This is why we need discipline, to protect the fatherland’s high ideals.”

  Something about that last phrase caused Thalheim to recollect himself, standing in a barnyard, pistol drawn, carrying on to the conquered about his nation’s supremacy, while the man smirked and the woman calculated her escape so visibly he could hear her wheels turning. “Also you never bathe, any of you. It is disgusting. Why am I speaking to you?”

  “I’m finding it educational,” the Goat said. “Please continue.”

  “Enough. The guns that belong to these bullets, where they are hidden?”

  The Goat made a face. Perhaps it was intended to show courage or scorn, but to Emma it appeared as if he had finally become aware of his own scent.

  Thalheim advanced on him. “Conversation is ended. Now you tell me location of guns.”

  “Not in a hundred thousand years.”

  Thalheim cocked his pistol. “I am out of patience. And I am due at the command post to report.”

  The Goat made a little sweeping motion with his fingers. “Better hurry along, then.”

  The captain waved his gun in the air. “You think this is some joke?”

  “No.” The Goat shook his head. “Not in any way a joke.”

  “You tell me of where guns are, or I shoot you now.”

  “That’s it?” the Goat said, nearly a whisper. “This is the moment?”

  “Tell, or die.”

  “What the hell.” The Goat shrugged. “It is a small thing to leave an unhappy life.”

  “Damn you stupid bumpkin fools,” Thalheim said. He raised the gun, holding it inches from the Goat’s nose. “Contemplate your mortality.”

  Emma knew this moment too well, the horrible pause. But the Goat did not blink, nor scowl, nor squint at the pistol barrel. He only looked at Emma until their eyes met, his expression revealing the inner softness he had attempted to conceal all of his life, and with frank knowledge of what was about to happen to him, no escape, that softness contained their full history, the lifetime of it, how they had nursed while their mothers sat together, how they grew and fought and strove like brother and sister, and now in the moment when it all fell away, all of that time was reduced to this strange, powerful, tender sibling affection, one fraction of a second of recognized love, a thunderbolt, then the pistol’s trigger pulled, obliteration, the maroon splash of his existence on the barn wall and a body crumpled on the earth like one more ruin.

  “Dear God,” Emma said, rushing forward but helplessly and too late. And Thalheim had not holstered his pistol yet.

  “You were colluding with him.”

  “No. I know nothing about these bullets.”

  “I saw the look he gave you.”

  Emma could not help seeing the Goat’s body, his legs in an awkward position. “It was old friendship. Not conspiracy.”

  “What about the poison powder you put in the officers’ bread?” He stood squarely. “Explain.”

  Those legs were distracting. She wanted to put them in a comfortable posture. “It wasn’t poison. I was—”

  “I saw you gagging on it with my own very eyes. Also explain of the rations you stole, which made extra loaves when the Field Marshal was here. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  “That was for my neighbors—”

  “And the fuel you stole today?” Thalheim interrupted. He holstered his gun. “From an officer?”

  “I can explain all of these things. But the Goat—Didier, that is—Didier and I grew up together.” Emma waved a hand at the hog shed. “Honestly, I had no idea about—”

  “You lie.” He advanced on her.

  Emma retreated, talking faster. “Our mothers were friends. We were
schoolmates. I am not in the Resistance. I am just trying to keep people alive.”

  He poked her chest with a hard finger. “I said you lie.”

  “The powder for baking is not poison.” She backed into the barnyard wall. She was trapped, pinned.

  Thalheim grabbed both of Emma’s arms and shook her. “Tell me the truth,” he shouted into her face.

  But if he had intended to frighten Emma, or persuade her, it backfired because he had touched her. That contact brought forth the full measure of her disgust, rising like bile for this man who taken so much from her: food, home, loved ones, peace of mind for two years. But he had never possessed her obedience, and she was not going to oblige him now.

  Emma looked down her nose and spoke in a voice dripping with contempt. “You are not worth lying to.”

  His stung expression showed that her insult found its mark, but she had not expected him to answer it by punching her in the face. The force of it sent her spinning, her body a vine winding around itself though he grabbed her chemise before she hit the ground, jerking her halfway back.

  “Your smelly friend was right,” he growled. “You are too proud.” And he smashed her forehead with the heel of his hand, snapping back her neck. It hurt spectacularly. She raised an arm to shield herself as the captain punched her face again.

  The man was wearing gloves, Emma noticed. What kind of a man wears gloves in June? A breakthrough had arrived for Thalheim, though, some dam of restraint broken, and he surrendered to its flood, pounding her repeatedly, relentlessly, so that Emma was reminded of a thresher crossing a hay field, blades spinning to pummel the wheat. No one would save her, no one would stop his hard-knuckled hand, because no protectors were left and her only friend was the ground below, yet the captain refused to let her fall against it.

  After two years of frustration, two years of enduring her sarcasm and scorn, he needed four fists to express the frenzy in his heart. Instead one of his hands gripped her torn shirt, keeping her in ideal range, while the other went left and right on her face—but untidily, wildly, sometimes striking her neck or ear, the ear stung especially.

  But then Emma could not distance herself any longer, because of the pain. Out of the mayhem of blows an idea came, a recollection. She reached down for the knife against her thigh. The handle felt solid in a world of blurred confusion, the knife seemed to jump from its sheath, and she managed to slash sideways once.

  Thalheim grabbed at his shoulder. “You monstrous bitch,” he cried, tromping his boot on her wrist.

  Then his gloves were throttling her throat and the knife fell away as Emma felt for the first time in her life the weight of a man on her body—while she thrashed till her strength turned to vapor, and the hands wrung her life away, and the world closed down to a small dimming darkness.

  Yet he let her live. A motorcycle had come into the barnyard and the strangling paused. While Emma gasped for air a young voice spoke rapidly, it was a message of some kind, and she recognized the word “Kommandant.” Thalheim opened his hand, dropping her as he snarled a reply. The young voice answered, and the motorcycle rattled away.

  Thalheim bent over, yanking Emma up by her hair. “Am I a sergeant tonight, clever bitch?” His face leered close, eyes bulging like a horse in panic. “Say my rank or I kill you now.”

  Emma tried to answer but her tongue was stuck in her throat. A strained garble came out.

  “Say it or you die.”

  “Capt—”

  “Yes.” He threw Emma’s head back. “Yes.” He stood, brushing dirt from the knees of his pants. “Lucky for you I am called to important duty.” Thalheim took out his pistol-cleaning cloth, pressing where she had cut his shoulder. “Now you listen: when this air attack has passed, and failed as it is certain of fail, Captain Thalheim will return, and he will take his pleasure from the clever bitch. Yes he will. Then he will finish of her, and of her idiot grandmother, and burn this filthy peasant place to ashes.”

  Emma shook her head, gurgling, but the captain had stepped away. He lit a match, and she could smell tobacco. Thalheim put on his helmet, neatened his gloves, straightened his uniform to perfection—taking his time, the pride of his kind. Emma lay unmoving.

  Eventually he ground the butt out in the dirt. “Consider it kindness, that I give you longer than the others,” he said. “Contemplate your mortality.”

  With the final word he stomped again on her wrist, all of his weight. It made a snapping sound like kindling for the fire, a lightning bolt of pain and Emma knew that a part of her was damaged inside, though to her numbed mind it seemed to be somewhere far away.

  Thalheim climbed aboard his motorcycle and roared off, a spout of gravel thrown in her swollen face. Emma lay there, her mouth full of blood and dirt. It tasted like dread.

  Chapter 31

  Odette paced the rectangle of her cell, corner to corner to corner. She was dismayed to learn how much confinement galled her. Life was all about constructive use of time: minutes left in a recipe’s broiling, hours till the café opened, days till the beet greens sprouted. Before the occupation, when women wore tight belts and dandy hats, she had favored blousy aprons and a big watch on her wrist. She was a person of activity, working every waking moment. Between the café, caring for older villagers, and relaying information gleaned from overly talkative soldiers, Odette had not experienced a stationary moment in years. This forced idleness felt like claustrophobia.

  Now that she had passed the better part of a night, inactivity goaded her like five too many cups of tea.

  Worse, the basement contained neither window nor clock. Odette knew by the grumbling of her stomach that the dinner hour was long past, and she shook her head to think of all the hungry customers arriving at her café to find the windows dark, the lost revenue, the lobster now spoiling in its pot. At home she slept by the window, and waking at any hour could estimate the time by the light in the sky, and where the moon hung. But in that cell, night stretched long. Dawn might come in a minute, or two weeks. With the air rumbling from bombs, the ground trembling, Odette felt like she was being held in a tomb.

  Yet the guard seemed nothing other than bored. He inspected every inch of his rifle, polishing certain favored spots with the cuff of his sleeve. He examined his fingernails. When the lights flickered after certain bombs, his reaction was limited to raising his eyes to the fixtures. Once the light stabilized again, he wagged his boot side to side while observing closely, as if trying to decide which angle showed it to greatest advantage.

  “You aren’t quite the army’s brightest, are you?” Odette asked him at last.

  “You speak my language.”

  “You noticed.” She crossed her arms. “And they had told me you were as clever as a cow.”

  He did not answer. It was difficult to appear strong while caged, but Odette felt power rising from the soles of her feet. This war seemed a decidedly amateurish affair: the guard was present, for example, because the cell lacked a proper lock. From a certain point of view, he was as imprisoned as she. “My mother’s people were from Düsseldorf.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, a conversationalist of rare ability,” she muttered. “Where is your home town?”

  He remained on his stool, sliding a hand up and down the stock of his rifle. “Munich.”

  “I’ve been there. Lovely cathedral.”

  He shrugged.

  “Not a churchgoer? Well, I also remember a square flooded with ice, and my grandfather rented me a pair of skates.”

  The soldier stood. “How about you stop talking?”

  “I think your Kommandant wants me to do a great deal of talking.”

  The guard wandered down the hall. “Save your chatter for him.”

  The lights went out, simultaneously with the roar of a bomb quite close. The building shuddered. Odette felt dust fall from the ceiling onto her face. Something in the manner of the darkness gave her a sense that this outage would not be temporary.

  The so
ldier remained in place, waiting. Odette watched his gray silhouette. When the lights did not return for several minutes, she heard the knocking of his heels on the floor. A door whined on its hinge, then his boots clanked up the stairs.

  He returned carrying something metal, she could tell by the sound it made when he set it down. The soldier poured papers out onto the floor, crumpling some. There was a metallic scratching sound, twice, then a small flame. He brought a cigarette lighter to the paper, and it filled the hall with a cheery orange light. The guard held the crumpled page as long as he could before releasing it into the basket. A glow remained, and he tossed another crushed sheet in on top.

  Odette leaned on the bars. “DuFour will burst into flames himself when he finds out you touched his papers.”

  The guard raised an eyebrow at her, then returned to feeding the fire. For a while the corridor brightened as he burned page after page, but smoke began to roil along the ceiling. Odette found it growing difficult to breathe, yet she did not make any complaint. She felt she was being tested, so she sat on her bunk and kept her head low. The soldier remained upright on his stool. Although he had not said anything, she knew they were in a contest to see who could endure the smoke longest.

  Soon her eyes hurt. Her throat pinched. Her nose began to run. The guard rubbed his hands together over the flames. Odette leaned lower, trying to catch the good air below. The guard dropped in several pages at once, his fire tonguing higher than the wastebasket’s brim, billows of gray rising and curling down the ceiling. As they clouded around his head, the soldier sneezed.

  “Yes,” Odette hissed, but he only stood, passed his eyes over her with reptilian indifference, and strode to the hall’s far end. There he pushed the door wide till it held, providing the smoke with the chimney it desired, while Odette felt cooler air pour in around her feet.

  “What do I get for winning?” she said.

  The soldier trod back down the hall. “We will soon see.”