He spoke in his language, tensely as if breathing hurt him, and pointed at his legs. Emma knelt beside the man, her face still swollen like an overinflated balloon, and instructed Monkey Boy: where to find scissors in the wagon, how to cut away the ropes, when to lift the branch that lay across the man’s ribs.
Monkey Boy studied the parachute tangled overhead. As the trees leaned in the wind, he considered climbing to pull the fabric free, which branches he would have to grab. The soldier continued speaking intensely, a ring of dried saliva around his mouth, until Emma pressed a finger to his lips to shush him. After that he only watched them with his strange white eyes.
Emma wrapped his legs in old sacks, using a bit of rope to pull them straight, which caused the soldier to growl and thrash his head from side to side.
When eventually he was breathing normally again, Emma held his legs while Monkey Boy took the rest of him, and they hoisted him out of the ferns. He made a yelp with each breath, and it reminded Monkey Boy of the sounds he heard a dog make once, when an occupying soldier had shot her in the leg.
But this paratrooper went silent, eyes closing as they settled him into the wagon. Monkey Boy held his palm over the soldier’s mouth before turning to Emma. “Still breathing.”
After nesting the wounded man in among bags and blankets, he strode to the front to take his place again, but found that Emma had done the same thing on the other side. They each slid an arm into a harness.
“We didn’t see the captain anywhere,” she said. “And I am out of ideas. This man is someone we can help.”
She paused, and Monkey Boy waited, marveling at the notion that they would be pulling the wagon together. The greatness of the day was beyond his imagining.
“It’s time,” Emma said. “Nowhere left to go but home.”
Chapter 37
They came with rifles raised, shouting. Mémé made no sound. The invaders pulled her away from the house, yelling as they pointed at her feet and the ground she stood on, and she knew to stay put. Two men guarded her while others charged into the house. She could hear them shoving furniture and pounding up the stairs. It grew silent for a moment, then they charged down and out again. One of them threw a shirt at her feet; it was from Captain Thalheim’s uniform.
They began shouting again, pointing at Thalheim’s flag on the corner of the house. They waved their arms in front of Mémé. One of them aimed his rifle at her chest. The others spoke to him harshly, but he did not lower his gun.
One soldier quieted them, a short, freckled one, giving Mémé a moment to defend herself. She made a gruff snort, as if suppressing a sneeze. Then she spat on Thalheim’s shirt.
A few soldiers cheered, the one threatening her lowered his gun, and they began discussions among themselves. At that moment three more men entered the barnyard, and the sight of one of them made the others straighten and salute. That officer asked a question, then pointed at the others, who answered him one by one. Mémé was astonished: it seemed they were introducing themselves. What kind of an invasion involves men who do not already know one another?
Then the officer was speaking to Mémé. In her language. Yet she barely heard him, the pace of events was so swift. She wanted to go back inside and resume the nap she had been awakened from, the sleep she had entered to avoid her hunger, and to stop her mind from dwelling on Emma’s promise to be home by midday, now that the sun was low in the west. Yet the man continued talking while Mémé weighed all of these concerns, so that when he paused, and she realized he had asked her a question, she had no idea what to say in reply.
“We have maps, you see,” he said, pulling papers from his jacket pocket and unfolding them. “But the road signs do not agree with them. We don’t know where we are.”
Mémé stood before him, mute as a mule. To her ears, this man made no sense.
“Am I speaking the right language?” he asked. “And when do you expect the enemy officer to return?”
She began to wring her hands and make a mewing sound.
The officer turned to the men. “Maybe she’s deaf.”
“Not deaf.” Emma stood at the barnyard door, looped in the wagon harnesses with Monkey Boy. “Only shy. I can help, if you’ll lend a hand for a moment.”
Some soldiers had turned guns on her, but as she wheeled forward they saw the paratrooper in the back.
“We found him in a hedgerow, tangled in the trees.”
The man was awake, sitting upright. He said a few words to the others, and they laughed and gathered near the cart.
The officer offered a handshake to Emma. “Captain Arnie Schwartz, McLean, Virginia. Thank you for helping this soldier.”
Emma took his hand in both of hers. “You came for us.”
“Well, yes.”
She continued to hold his hand. “I never thought you would.”
The captain smiled. “During training, I sometimes thought that, too. Now, about this soldier here—”
“Both of his legs are broken,” Emma said, turning. “And he may have other injuries. He needs a doctor.”
“Five hundred and fourteen is enough,” Monkey Boy cried.
“Shush now,” Emma said, and he shrank as if she had thrown cold water on him.
“Um,” the captain said. “Let’s debrief for a minute here.”
He leaned on the wagon’s side and began asking questions. As the paratrooper replied, Schwartz translated for Emma. She knew he was giving only part of the story, but she considered it good manners that he told her anything. Mostly she marveled that he was actually standing there, in her barnyard.
“He says the fires in the village were drawing in oxygen,” he said. “So they sucked some of our jump fighters in, too. Others landed in flooded fields—”
“That would be Pierre’s land,” Emma interjected.
“—where they drowned from the weight of their gear. This man you helped here, Corporal Mark Bronsky from Portland, Maine, saw from above as two dozen men went under.”
Emma nodded. That explained the previous day’s ditch digging.
“He pulled hard, to pilot away. But bad luck put him in a crosswind, and he wound up in the trees.”
“It was good luck, though,” Emma replied. She slid out of the wagon harness. “I saw another one caught in trees near the village. The occupying soldiers had cut him apart with bullets.”
Captain Schwartz put his hands on his hips, regarding her frankly. “We’re a hodgepodge right now, ma’am, I have to say it. Men from different units who’ve met up in the crazy woods here.” He pointed at some of them. “He’s a hundred and first like me, those two are eighty-second, we’ve got three marine companies represented here, a radioman with no radio, a sniper with an enemy rifle. Good fellows, but real scrambled eggs.”
He unfolded a map. “If you could explain the geography here, it would be a good start for us.”
“I will help,” she said. “There is one thing, though.” Emma’s tongue was sandpaper in her mouth.
“What’s that?”
He looked so healthy, eager, worried but not afraid. Emma pictured herself as he saw her: face battered, hair bedraggled, sweat marks on her clothes where the harness straps had been.
“I hate to ask for anything,” she said.
“If you’re going to do it, now’s the time.”
She picked at the scab on her chin, saw that her finger came away bloody. There was a chance she might fall over. Instead Emma steeled herself and whispered, “Do you have any food?”
“Oh.” The captain straightened with a smile, as if seeing her clearly for the first time. “Oh, sure.”
He gave an order, and men came forward with rations. Emma tried to eat slowly, with at least a show of restraint, while Mémé wolfed the food down, glancing sidelong as if someone might take it away at any moment.
Captain Schwartz studied them before turning to his men. “You fellas seeing this?” The soldiers all nodded.
Emma noticed Monkey Boy watchi
ng her eat, and gave him her tin of food. She took a long drink of water, then handed the jug to Mémé. “You are outside of this small farming and fishing village, here,” she told the captain, pointing with her good hand at a spot on the paper. “Five kilometers from Longues-sur-Mer.”
“Then why did I see a sign that said we were—what, eight miles from Honfleur and five from Caen? My map says they must be a good twenty miles apart.”
“I don’t know miles,” she answered. “But Caen to Honfleur is more than sixty kilometers.”
He swatted the map with his hand. “Makes no damn sense.”
Emma drew herself up. “Your papers are correct, sir. The signs are a lie.”
The pleasure it gave her to say that sentence surged through Emma like a blush. It felt as if she were reclaiming her native countryside, the unimpeachable jurisdiction of her hometown.
“I can tell you more than this,” she continued. “I have lived here all of my life. I know where their machine guns are located, the mortar installations. I know their fuel depot, where the barrels are stacked three and four high.”
“I’m listening,” he replied, and indeed all of the men were leaning closer.
“They travel the main roads,” Emma said. “But I can show you shortcuts they know nothing about. They possess many weapons and no mercy, so you must not underestimate them. But they are also vain and self-important, and therefore vulnerable.”
Captain Schwartz gave her a long appraising look. “Are you some kind of spy? Or with the Resistance?”
“I am a survivor. Who helps others to survive.”
He nodded. “What is your name?”
“Emmanuelle.”
“I can see what they did to you, Emmanuelle.” He gestured at her face. “Maybe you are too smart for them?”
She stood straight, shoulders back. “Let us all hope so.”
He smiled. “You are one plucky gal.”
“Very,” Mémé growled, and when they turned to look at her she glared back as if she might charge at any moment.
The captain began giving orders, directing his men one way or another. As they organized, he turned back to Emma.
“We’re going to establish a perimeter east and west on the town road, and in the pucker brush by the well over there.” He pointed past the barnyard door. “When we get back, I’m hoping you could identify those forces you described on these maps, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Mémé pointed at the paratrooper in the wagon. “Him?”
Captain Schwartz scratched his jaw. “Look, we don’t have a medic among us, or a radio to call for one. We’ll help you get him set up. After that, I don’t know. I have orders. If you could stabilize this soldier for the time being . . .”
They did, Monkey Boy hovering as they carried Corporal Bronsky inside and laid him on Mémé’s couch. The paratrooper kept thanking everyone, but he grimaced when anyone moved him. As soon as he was settled, Bronsky closed his eyes. Monkey Boy sat by the wounded corporal, taking his hand. And did not leave his side till morning.
Emma and Mémé went back to the barnyard, watching as the soldiers divided in groups.
“We will be back in fifteen minutes,” Captain Schwartz told Emma. “And not sixteen.”
He gave the command, and one group headed up the town road, the lane by which the Kommandant and his aide always arrived, another marched down the road in the other direction, from which the convoys typically came, and the third struck out past the eastern well and down the hedgerow beyond. In a few seconds, they were all swallowed by dusk.
“They came,” Emma said.
Mémé drew near and they fell into each other’s arms, embracing as if one of them had spent a year at sea.
Thalheim’s timing could not have been luckier, to find them that way. Three minutes earlier or twelve minutes later, and Captain Schwartz’s men would have welcomed him. As he slunk through the barnyard door and hugged the wall like a shadow, Emma thought for a moment that the Goat was still alive.
But when he stepped out of the darkness, she eased Mémé aside. “Dear one, leave me with him.”
Instead her grandmother moved between them, raising her fists. Thalheim hesitated, his helmet gone and uniform untucked, then clasped his hands as if in prayer.
“Hide me,” he said. “Conceal me in the hayloft. Please.”
Mémé gave one cold laugh and sneered. Emma shook her head as if to clear it. “You are asking us for help? After all you have done?”
“I was following orders.”
“Look at my face.” She stuck out her chin. “Was this an order?”
“I lost control. And don’t say you didn’t provoke me.”
Emma snorted. “You said you were going to kill me.”
“A threat only. You are so insolent. Any other officer—”
“You promised to rape me.”
“I did not want your body, I wanted your obedience.” He snuffled. “I could not have done it anyway. I am a virgin.”
Emma surprised herself then, by calming, and scrutinizing him. Without his helmet, Thalheim was revealed: a boy. Perhaps younger than she. Now she understood why he shaved with such care: to conceal the fact that he had no whiskers at all. He was too young for a beard.
Mémé paced the barnyard, a scowl darkening her face.
“My given name is Hans,” he continued. “Named after my grandfather, a brewer. I was compelled by my families to join of the army, to enlist before I was drafted, and I am their great pride for having attained rank of captain. Before the war I was study chemistry.”
Emma marveled to learn after all this time that behind the bravado and doctrine, there was a human being. Did he deserve to die? Was his life without worth or redemption? Perhaps Thalheim had another role left to play. If he surrendered, and repented of his fanaticism, what good might he prove capable of committing?
Or was this speculation a sign of weakness once again, her inability to kill? The way Mémé stalked around them, opening and closing her fists, Emma thought she might just be too soft.
“At least help me escape,” Thalheim pleaded. “Dress me in your father’s clothes.”
The image offended Emma so deeply she drew back several steps. “Absolutely not.”
“Do something, please. I am beg of you.”
Emma shook her head. “No.”
His expression hardened. “You will not aid me in any way?”
She crossed her arms. “No.”
Thalheim hammered his fist against her forehead. Again Emma had not seen it coming, and again she tumbled to the earth.
“Enough of this,” he snapped, reaching to unclip his holster. The captain drew his pistol and took aim.
Emma had time for a single thought: Philippe.
All at once Thalheim’s eyes widened, then went still. He must have died standing, Emma imagined, because all of his joints—knees, elbows, waist—collapsed at the same time, like a marionette whose strings have been scissored. He fell on his face in the dirt, the handle of Guillaume’s knife visible in his back, just below his ribs.
Mémé stood as tall as a monument, tapping her chest with a hand that glistened from blood. “My conscience,” she said. “Not yours.”
One of the Allied soldiers asked if he could have the dead man’s flag. Emma said she would be glad to see it go. He lowered it from the house, careful not to tear, folding it away in his pack.
Captain Schwartz stood over Thalheim, muttering, “We weren’t gone ten minutes. What the hell happened?”
“She saved me,” Emma said, pointing at her grandmother.
The officer directed two men to remove the body. They dragged it away up the road out of sight.
The invading soldiers were weighted down with gear—canteens, bandoliers, grenades—yet they didn’t seem burdened by it. They looked fit and well fed, chatting easily while Mémé ate more of their rations. Emma sat at the kitchen table, penciling hedgerow shortcuts and occupying army posts onto the cap
tain’s maps. With her writing hand in a splint, the best she could do was make Xs, and explain what each one meant.
“Here you follow the animal trails, you’ll see them in the tall grass, until it opens onto a dirt road.”
Captain Schwartz nodded. “How do we take that church? The steeple is visible from a distance, so it’s a key rendezvous point.”
“There is a machine gun.” She tapped the page with her pencil. “It faces the village, so you can surprise them from behind.” She handed him the paper. “If your men are quiet, that is. A map won’t do the fighting for you.”
“This is all incredibly helpful.” The captain sat back, though he continued scratching his chin.
“But?”
He shrugged. “Ammunition. Nothing to be done, but we could sure use more of it.”
Emma stood, despite her injuries feeling stronger by the minute. “Follow me.”
When the captain saw the stacks in the old hog shed, he danced a little jig. Then he called his men; they opened some boxes and took turns equipping themselves.
Emma stood by, surprised to feel herself moved at the sight. “I am glad this supply will not go to waste.”
“It’s a gold mine,” Schwartz answered. “Bringing this here must have been incredibly dangerous for you.”
“Not me,” Emma began, her throat tightening as she recalled her disdain for the Goat, years of it, while he had sweated and carried and taken risk after risk. “A friend.”
Suddenly four soldiers dropped to one knee, rifles to their cheeks. Emma glanced around, not seeing anything as the captain pushed her into the shed. The stink of pig made her eyes water.
Then they all heard the sound of crickets, and the soldiers relaxed. Captain Schwartz shouted, and a group of new men came forward, with someone huddled behind them.
“I don’t understand,” Emma said.
The captain held up a wooden trinket, thumbing it rapidly to create an almost cricket sound. As the troops greeted one another, Schwartz interrupted to question the new arrivals. Then he turned to Emma. “I’m afraid I have to leave you with an additional responsibility. These men found one of your villagers near the conflict. Can you please take care of him?”
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