The Resistance

by Peter Steiner

  Onesime took a blank piece of paper from the pad. He opened his paint box and took out a pencil. He sharpened it to a fine point. He used a ruler to draw a grid on the page. Then he drew the several streets of town in the center of the page. He drew carefully, paying attention to the scale of the drawing. He drew the roads leading from town, including the road leading to his mother’s house, where he and Jean lived. He drew the lane to his grandfather’s house and marked the cave where the two trucks had gone. He made a small 2 beside the cave, to signify the two trucks. He wished he had noticed the numbers on the trucks, so that he could write them on the map. He drew other roads and other caves he knew about.

  “Oni,” said Jean. He was standing in the doorway. Onesime quickly slid the map inside the pad. “What are you doing?” said Jean.

  “I’m drawing,” said Onesime. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “I didn’t sneak up. Don’t be so touchy.”

  “Yes, well. I just don’t like to be surprised like that.”

  “What are you drawing?”

  “It’s not finished. I’ll show you when it’s finished.”

  “What do you think the Germans are doing in the cave?” said Jean.

  “How should I know?”

  “But what do you think?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Onesime.

  Jean paused. “Did you ever go all the way in?” he asked.

  “Grandfather walled it up. What do you mean, ‘all the way in’?”

  “All the way in. Past the wall.”

  “Once.”

  “How far?”

  “Not far. Did you?”

  “I did. But from the other end.”

  “The other end? Really? Where was it, the other end?”

  “You won’t believe it.”

  “Tours?” said Onesime.

  Jean laughed. “Closer,” he said.

  “Show me,” said Onesime, and pulled his map from the drawing pad.

  Jean bent over the map. “Where’s the Beaumont château?” His finger wandered around on the paper.

  “Wait,” said Onesime, and drew a square at the edge of the village. “Here. And here’s the tower.” The château had a tall, narrow tower of brick, built in the nineteenth century more as a folly than for any practical purpose.

  “Then the end of the cave is right … Draw the wall.” Onesime drew the wall around the château, closer on one side than the other. “It’s just inside the west wall … here. There’s a huge bush of lavender, or there used to be.”

  “It’s still there,” said Onesime.

  “And when you pulled it aside there were stairs that went down. I used to sneak down there with Janine Girault.”

  “They keep their wine in that cave,” said Onesime.

  “I know. One day we were down there, and someone started coming, so we went inside and hid until they left. It didn’t seem to end, so I went back later with a lamp and followed it. And it ended at the wall at the back of Grandfather’s cave.”

  They looked at the map. “So how far was it, do you think?”

  “A thousand meters, maybe. Twenty minutes, maybe. I don’t know exactly. I wish I had measured it. It was pretty easy going.”

  “Grandfather said—”

  “Yeah, well,” said Jean. “That was Grandfather.”

  “Does it come up anywhere else? Are there branches going off from the main cave?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t think so. It was a long time ago.”

  Onesime drew a dotted line from the château to his grandfather’s house.

  * * *

  Count Guillaume de Beaumont had built the château in the fifteenth century on land given him by King Charles VII in gratitude for his service in the war against the English. Beaumonts had lived there ever since. The current count, Maurice de Beaumont, lived there with his wife, Alexandre, and their two small children, along with a housekeeper, Silvie Josquin, Onesime’s cousin.

  Onesime had begun working at the Beaumont estate while he was still in school, and when he left school, the count hired him full time. Onesime mended fences, cut firewood, plowed, cultivated, and harvested wheat. He did whatever needed doing. And when there was too much work for him, he found others to help. He worked for the count until he was called into the army, and when he returned from the war his old job was waiting for him. “If you still want it, Onesime.”

  “Oui, monsieur. I am glad to have it.”

  Onesime rode his bicycle toward town and turned up the lane that went along the west wall. He stopped and unlatched the large wooden gate, swung it aside, and pushed the bicycle inside. He could see the house and tower through the trees. All the windows were shuttered. One of the Beaumont cars was in the drive in front of the house, but that did not mean that anyone was home. The Beaumonts had other properties where they spent time, including an apartment in Paris. Onesime leaned his bicycle against the wall. He heard the sound of a cuckoo. He stood still and listened until it stopped.

  He found the stone stairs behind the lavender bush. He went down and pulled on the iron gate. It was unlocked. He took two steps into the dark cold and switched on his flashlight. Its beam swept around to reveal a narrow vault. There were stacks of wine bottles lying on their sides against the left wall. They had no labels on them. Labels were useless here; they would be devoured by the damp in no time. Each stack of bottles had a roof slate stuck behind it telling in chalk letters what it was: 1929 Yquem; 1937 Tallon Noir; 1924 Pouilly-Fuissé. A thick gray blanket of mold had grown over the Pouilly so that the bottles seemed transformed into some grotesque geological formation.

  The floor of the cave was level, and the ceiling was high enough so that Onesime could walk upright. He moved carefully past the wine and then quickened his pace, shining the light left and right ahead of himself. Shallow passages led off to either side. The main passage continued straight ahead. After a few minutes the floor of the cave became more uneven; the walls narrowed and the ceiling dropped until he had to walk in a half-crouch to avoid hitting his head.

  Because there were no familiar points of reference—no markers, no sky, no earth—Onesime did not have an exact sense of his direction or changes in elevation. His light did not penetrate far into the darkness. And though his line of march seemed to be straight ahead, when he pointed the light farther on, he could see that the cave ahead veered gradually out of sight.

  Time does not seem like a spatial concept. But, in fact, we often count off the minutes and hours of a journey by means of geographic landmarks, an intersection of roads, a building, a village, an ancient tree. Without landmarks, with only the light passing along the chalky vault above him, time disappeared for Onesime. He thought he had only been walking a short while when he found himself standing at what he took to be the back wall at his grandfather’s cave. Blocks of stone had been stacked to fill the passage, and the uneven spaces around the edges had been stuffed with stone scraps and dust. There was no mortar holding it all together. It stood as it had for many years.

  Onesime pressed his ear to the stone and listened. He heard only the sound of water dripping behind him. He extinguished the flashlight and stood in the utter darkness. He spread his legs slightly, to keep his balance, and stared at where he knew the wall to be. He saw only blackness.

  Onesime turned on the flashlight again and examined the edge of the wall until he found a spot where a block of stone came very close to the side of the cave. He picked at the dust that had been wedged into the gap, and it came away easily. Bits of stone fell at his feet with a soft sound like falling water.

  After a few minutes he could feel he was nearly through the wall. He stopped and extinguished the light. This time he saw little splinters of dim light coming through the wall where he had been digging. He leaned closer but heard nothing. Now he scraped carefully at the dust and gingerly lifted the last small stones aside. He did not want to dislodge anything that would clatter to the ground on t
he other side. But no sooner had he had this thought than it happened. A stone the size of his head crashed to the ground, and light flooded into the passage where he stood.

  Onesime tried to lean back into the shadows. He held his breath and listened. There was still only the dripping water behind him. Carefully he leaned toward the hole he had opened and peered through. He saw an empty cave ahead of him. It was wider and taller than the cave where he stood, and it was in better repair.

  The light puzzled him. If the wall behind which he stood was only a hundred meters inside the mouth of the cave, then the light should have been brighter. He recalled the mouth of the cave being broad and tall, and the wall being straight back from the mouth. Even at a hundred meters, there should have been more light. He looked again. They have built a door, he thought. Or there was something blocking the entry and the light. Trucks or crates or something.

  But the cave wasn’t straight. In fact, it was sufficiently curved so that the front half of the cave was out of his sight. Onesime was peering intently through the small opening when suddenly the light changed and he heard voices. He almost fell over backward trying to get away from the opening he had made. The voices came closer. He hurried away until, looking back, he could no longer see the opening. He leaned against the side wall and waited. All he could hear now was the pounding of his heart.

  He no longer heard the voices. He returned to the wall and, after waiting for a while, carefully filled in the opening he had made.

  When he climbed the stairs at the other end of the cave, there was the count, Maurice de Beaumont, striding in his direction. “Ah, it’s you, Onesime.”

  “Oui, monsieur. It’s me.”

  “I saw your bicycle, but I didn’t see you.”

  “I didn’t see you anywhere, monsieur.”

  “I was in the house, Onesime.”

  “I knocked, monsieur, and the gate here was open, so I thought you might be inside.…”

  “You knocked?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Before.”

  “Not very loudly.”

  “I suppose not, monsieur. I came to see about the hay.”

  “Yes,” said Maurice. He was studying Onesime. “The hay.”

  “Yes,” said Onesime. “It’s ready, I think. I thought we could take it all at the same time this time. If we let the field out by the Dême go another few days, then the vineyard field”—he gestured beyond the château—“will be ready too. It looks like a nice stretch of good weather. Jean will help me. Others if we need them.”

  “Yes, that’s fine,” said Maurice, still looking at Onesime a little too hard. Onesime looked down at his feet. “The gate was open?”

  “Oui, monsieur. Open.”

  “And you locked it?”

  “No, monsieur. Should I?”

  “Onesime, look here. When you come to cut hay or to do other work, no matter what it is, I want you to always knock at the house first. Do you understand?”

  “I knocked, monsieur.”

  “Yes, well. I want you to always knock and to let someone know you are about.”

  “Oui, monsieur. I knocked.”

  “That’s clear then, is it?

  “Oui, monsieur. Quite clear.” But he was speaking to Maurice de Beaumont’s back, because the count was already striding toward the house, his tall black boots crunching in the gravel. Onesime watched him all the way to the terrace. Then he turned and walked to his bicycle.

  * * *

  The thing about a cave is that it is no darker at night than it is by day. Once you are inside, it is all the same, so you might as well visit it at your convenience. Onesime, Jean, and their mother had finished supper. The three of them cleared the table and put things away.

  “I’m going out,” said Onesime. Neither Jean nor his mother said anything. Onesime had always been one to wander about at odd hours, and since he had come back from the war, his peculiar habits had only gotten more peculiar. Sometimes it seemed as though he had become a night creature. Jean would wake up in the middle of the night and look out the window to see Onesime sitting in the garden. It would be three in the morning and he would be there in the dim moonlight, his pad on his lap, drawing something.

  Onesime took his cap and closed the door behind him. After a few minutes Jean got up and went upstairs. He stood in the hallway for a while listening and then went into Onesime’s room. He closed the door without a sound. He found Onesime’s drawing supplies. After searching for a while, he found the drawing pad. But the map was not inside. He could not find it anywhere.

  Onesime found the château’s west gate locked. He climbed the wall easily and dropped silently to the ground. He paused and listened. He heard a fox barking in the woods. He wondered whether the count had locked the cave. He was about to go down the stone steps when he heard the faint sound of laughter coming from the house.

  Onesime approached the house through the trees and saw that there were quite a few cars parked in the driveway. He studied them from behind the thick trunk of an ancient cedar. He recognized two Beaumont cars and two other cars. Several cars were unfamiliar to him. There was also a German military sedan. He was about to try to get closer so that he could note the numbers of the German car, when a figure stepped from between the cars and drew on a cigarette, which he held cupped in his hand. A German soldier.

  Onesime backed up carefully and circled back into the trees. He hesitated a moment and then went around the house to where the great room looked out on a broad stone terrace. He kept to the shadows and made his way over the balustrade to a window. The heavy curtains were drawn, but they were not quite closed. He could see between them into the room.

  The count, Maurice de Beaumont, stood with his back to the window. Facing him was Colonel Büchner. Both men held champagne flutes and were leaning forward listening to a third person, whom Onesime could not see. Beyond them he could see other people. He recognized some of them. Alexandre de Beaumont, the count’s wife, was there, beautiful and very elegant. She had a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She stood alone with a half smile on her face. Monsieur Dupont, the owner of a small factory in town, a balding, round man with wire glasses and a little mustache, was talking to Madame Terterrain. She was taller than Dupont and leaned over him as he spoke. It was her high laughter Onesime had heard. Monsieur Terterrain must have been there somewhere, but Onesime did not see him. There was a priest he had seen before.

  The count tapped on his champagne glass with his ring. He made an announcement Onesime could not hear. He put his free hand on the colonel’s back and ushered him to the left and out of Onesime’s sight. The others also turned and walked to the left. Onesime slipped over to the next window. But the curtains in that window were drawn completely, as they were in the next one. He looked across the terrace and around the yard, to make certain no one was there, before he moved farther to his left.

  There were no curtains over the door leading into the drawing room. The bright light poured from the room and fell onto the stone terrace in golden squares. Onesime could not easily look in without revealing himself to those inside. He retraced his steps back past the windows, went back over the low balustrade and around the terrace, where he could remain in the shadows and still have a view through the doors. As he moved along, stooped down and peering between the concrete balusters, a piano began to play.

  He could see the backs of the guests seated in chairs, looking to his left toward the piano, which was out of his sight. He moved to his right and watched through the balusters. It was as though he were seeing a flickering movie. Someone started to sing.

  Du bist wie eine Blume,

  So hold und schön und rein;

  Ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmut

  Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.

  There was no mistaking that sweet voice. Onesime moved farther right, but he still could not see Marie Piano. When she had finished the song in German, she sang it in French. Ever
yone applauded enthusiastically. There was a brief pause, and then she began playing again. She did not sing this time. Onesime had heard the music before, but he did not know what it was.

  Back at the mouth of the cave, Onesime hesitated before descending the stairs. He did not know how long he had been inside the château walls. He had failed to check whether the German soldier was still with the cars. He felt that he should still go into the cave, but why? What was he looking for? The count, who was friendly with the Germans, was already suspicious of him. Why was he putting himself in danger this way?

  Onesime could not find answers to these questions. All he could come up with was the sound of Marie Piano singing a German song. She played and sang like an angel. So why shouldn’t she sing anything and everything, and for anyone and everyone? Even the Germans?

  The memory of her singing rang softly in his head. The door was not locked. He pushed it open and hurried through the cave to its walled end, counting his steps as he went. Once again he cleared a small space at the edge of the wall and looked through the hole as best he could. The cave was lit as before, but this time he could see rows of wooden boxes stacked on pallets. He had seen boxes like this before. They contained artillery shells. He could see what looked like a small table beside the far wall. He listened but did not hear any sound coming from the other side of the wall. He filled the hole he had opened and opened one on the opposite edge of the wall.

  From this vantage he could see the table more clearly and the chair beside it. He could just make out the edge of the heavy door that had been installed at the mouth of the cave. Again he watched and listened and heard nothing. He studied the wall. If you were to remove one of the tuffeau blocks, a man could easily get into the cave through the space. But it would take two men to lift the block down from the wall and then to replace it.