The heartsick Sauverins sat in the inn’s small breakfast room joylessly eating croissants.
“It’s my birthday tomorrow,” Katie whined. “Will I still get presents?”
“Tomorrow is tomorrow,” her mother said sadly.
“Drink your milk,” her father ordered.
A radio crackled in the kitchen. The innkeeper brought a fresh pot of coffee and news.
“Yesterday the Germans broke through the Dyle Line,” he said.
The Dyle Line had been constructed between Antwerp and Namur after the Great War to protect the eastern border of Brussels. Without it the Belgian capital was defenseless.
“And today the Belgian government removed itself to Ostend,” the innkeeper continued grimly. “Also the French-Belgian border has been closed.”
“It was only open for a day,” André breathed.
“Lucky we made it through,” Alex said, sounding more glum than grateful.
“We’d better be going,” Denise said.
Silently, hurriedly, the Sauverins finished up, settled the bill and checked out of Les Andelys. Squeezing themselves back into their big Buick they started south, having no idea what road conditions or how much refugee-bearing traffic they might meet.
“You think your friend will still have us?” Denise asked Geneviève. “You never answered her telegram.”
“I didn’t have a chance. But I’m sure it’s all right. Lilla is a very good friend.”
“She’d better be!” Alex groaned.
André, driving again, peeked furtively at Alex and asked, “Do you think there’s another way to go? I can’t help thinking it would be faster and safer to stay off the main road.”
“There ought to be a country road close by, along the Eure,” Alex said. Finding a narrow road running parallel to the river, André turned onto it.
Its quiet was a relief. The road wound up and down undulating hills higher than any they had seen since entering France. The sight of woods of chestnut and oak trees covering land too steep to cultivate and streams that ran down little valleys into the river coursing steadily toward the Seine and the sea some two hundred kilometers west were a soothing contrast to the turmoil of war. Sweet-smelling fertile fields cleared of rocks in an earlier age bordered the river. The grasses were deep and wildflowers grew in pockets of abundance undisturbed by the numerous brown-and-white-speckled cows browsing the profusion of green shoots—source of the fat-rich milk that gave a unique savor to the soft, flavorful cheeses the Sauverins had sampled at breakfast.
“Look,” Louis said hoarsely after a while, weakly pointing through a line of trees to a far road. “Flames.”
“That must be the main refugee route,” André guessed. “But what…”
A fighter plane marked with the dreaded German cross swooped low. Flying just above the traffic to the west, it began firing machine gun rounds. Then more fighters zoomed into view shooting bursts at the highway below.
“Watch out!” Alex shouted.
A German fighter plane dead ahead lined up along the Sauverins’ road, aiming straight at them. As it flew toward the Buick and dropped low, André swerved violently off of the road onto the grass shoulder. The big car and trailer bounced bone-jarringly under a row of trees, jostling the Sauverins against one another while André struggled fiercely to retain control as the trailer, dancing behind, jerked one way and the other.
The fighter plane disappeared into the distance. Shaking, André slowed the car to a stop. All the children cried.
“That was close,” Alex said angrily.
André’s voice quavered with shock. “I guess one car isn’t worth that many bullets.”
After the coast was clear, André managed to pull the Buick back out onto the road. The Sauverins slowly came back to themselves, aided by the distraction of the lush, ever-changing landscape. But André kept glancing up at the sky with trepidation.
Vineyards stretched down the hillsides toward the river. Louis pointed out the orderly staked lines of grapevines shooting out from the stalks cut and pruned above the roots. The grown-ups spoke of the promise of the new growth and the vintage that might result—the distinctive smoky intense acidity of the wines for which this region was justly famous. Passing through Orléans they drove up the Loire River valley, finally arriving in the little town of Pouilly late in the afternoon. Farther on they came to a crossroads and a small sign they followed to an ancient abbey and the Tirouens’ château, Bourras L’Abbaye, which dominated the small collection of farm buildings standing to one side.
André drove through the ornate gates of the sizable estate. The château was set in the heart of a well-tended park, itself in the midst of fields of wheat and vegetables and orchards ripe with an abundance of fruit. Cattle ranged the pastures. Trees stood in small clumps as if guarding the quiet, meandering streams that burbled throughout the property.
“At last,” Denise sighed.
“Thank God,” Louis said.
“What ‘God’?” Alex demanded.
Geneviève declared, “I won’t feel right until I see Lilla.”
CHAPTER FOUR
BOURRAS L’ABBAYE
MAY 17, 1940
The long gravel drive’s red and tan stones matched the elegant château that loomed around the bend, built of shaped stones from the same quarry. An inviting terrace fronted great double doors framed by four large windows on either side, mirrored by matching windows on the upper floor. A steeply slanted roof made of soft red tiles completed the façade’s perfect symmetry.
As the Sauverins stepped stiffly out of the Buick, Lilla Tirouen appeared at the top of the broad expanse of stone steps. “Welcome!” she gushed, rushing down to Geneviève’s outstretched arms and kissing her repeatedly. “How wonderful to see you! I’ve been so worried!”
Small, trim, vivacious, enthusiastic Lilla, like Geneviève, was in her mid-twenties. Her short, soft, brown hair curled about her ears. Her cute little nose turned up. Her mouth was pert and full-lipped. Her dark eyes shone brightly against clear, light skin.
“And which of these handsome gentlemen is your husband?” she asked charmingly.
Alex stepped forward and was treated to the same affectionate reception as his wife. Then Lilla greeted each Sauverin, paying special attention to the littlest ones, who hid behind their mothers.
“What a beautiful family!” Lilla enthused. “And you all look so alike even these cousins could be siblings! But come meet my parents and refresh yourselves. Food and drink await! I’ll have our houseboy gather your bags and park your car and trailer by the garage.” She started up the steps briskly then looked back at the stragglers sympathetically. “I want you to make yourselves at home. Bourras L’Abbaye will be what it has always been: a refuge.”
The presence of the Sauverins was a relief. Even with her parents in residence Lilla needed distraction. She couldn’t stop thinking about her husband, Francis, who had been mobilized into the French army after the Germans invaded Poland. It had been many months since Lilla had heard from him. She kept visualizing in ugly detail all possible causes for his silence.
Learning of Katie’s sixth birthday, Lilla and the household staff improvised a small party for the displaced girl. Katie was very good about receiving no presents beyond some freshly cut flowers and a birthday cake everyone enjoyed, but the celebration was almost ruined by the news that the Germans had taken Antwerp and that all the territory ceded to Belgium by the Treaty of Versailles had already been reincorporated into the Fatherland.
After the children bedded down for their second night Lilla had a good long laugh with Geneviève, who reported a conversation she’d had with Katie, who had unearthed one of the few flaws in this paradise.
“‘Maman,’ my sweet child asked, ‘are the French really poor?’
“‘Darling,’ I replied, ‘I only wish we were well enough off to live as they do at Bourras L’Abbaye!’
“‘But I like it better at home,’ Katie whined, f
ighting back tears, ‘where you just flush your business away. Here it drops down a hole!’
“‘Now Katie,’ I replied, struggling to keep a straight face, knowing the children will have to get used to new experiences, ‘the customs here are different, that’s all.’
“Then she prayed, ‘I hope they’re not all so different like this!’”
Denise busied herself with the children. Louis and Rose kept company with Lilla’s parents and the two older couples found enormous pleasure in watching the little ones frolic. Lilla and Geneviève took an extended “constitutional,” overjoyed to have a chance to talk as they hadn’t since they were schoolmates. André also strolled about the grounds, musing on the war and mulling actions his family might shortly have to take. Alex joined André when he was able to tear himself away from the radio.
The progress of German attempts to overrun France was seriously worrisome. In short order German forces had reached Cambrai, vanquished Péronne, and occupied Amiens, about one hundred kilometers north of Paris. Rapidly advancing south they might soon directly threaten Pouilly and Bourras L’Abbaye.
Changes in the French government seemed hopeful. Prime Minister Reynaud appointed the much-decorated General Weygand as chief of the general staff and commander-in-chief for all theaters of operations and named Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain, the celebrated hero of the Battle of Verdun, deputy prime minister. Everyone in the château interpreted these as good signs.
But Monday morning while everyone breakfasted at the table overlooking the park, the butler brought Lilla word that her brother-in-law—who like her husband served in the French army—had been killed defending his country.
“I need air,” Lilla gasped, turning paper-white.
Her parents and the Sauverins rose and stood silently as she rushed from the room.
“Excuse me,” Geneviève said, hurrying after her.
After several awkward moments Monsieur Thiern invited them all to sit and finish their meal.
“I hope the south of France will serve to protect you,” he told the Sauverins.
Geneviève spent hour after hour with Lilla. The two women had corresponded for a decade but Lilla wanted more detail about Geneviève’s life, particularly the way she and Alex courted and married.
“You lived in Antwerp, the Sauverins lived in Brussels,” she said. “How did you meet?”
“Suzanne Freedman—the wife of father’s younger brother Maurice—felt inspired to play matchmaker for the first and only time in her life. She alerted father to expect a call from André. To this he readily agreed—as long as I went along as a chaperone. Then André decided to bring Alex for support.”
“Were you all instantly smitten?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Geneviève said, blushing slightly, “but Denise and I were impressed by the striking figure they cut, so well-dressed for the first of many evenings on the town.”
“Then when did you fall in love?”
“It happened gradually, but there was a definite turning point when André announced he had given up his mistress to remove any possibility of embarrassment.”
“What?”
“Lilla! Don’t pretend to be shocked! You’re French!”
“Yes, but…”
“It’s commonplace in Belgian society for young men to keep mistresses they ‘see’ once a week.”
“André seems too elevated to engage in such a practice.”
“But he is a man,” Geneviève laughed. “And at least he had the good sense to end it!”
“What about Alex?”
“He never said anything and I never asked. I just assumed he didn’t behave like that. So in September 1932 André and Denise got engaged. Everyone was surprised when Beatrice Herz, our disagreeable grandmother, insisted on throwing an elaborate engagement party. In the midst of it she hobbled over to Alex and myself on her ever-present cane and said, ‘You’re obviously in love. Since all your friends and family are already gathered don’t let me stop you from announcing your engagement too.’”
“Wait!” Lilla demanded. “You didn’t say…”
“Alex and I were already betrothed, but to this day we don’t know how Granny Beatrice guessed. Then the double wedding—a civil ceremony as per Belgian law—was held at Antwerp’s city hall on September 11, 1933. André and Alex were decked out in full formal dress complete with tails, striped pants, spats, and top hats. Denise and I wore cream silk dresses and little flowered caps bordered with heirloom antique lace of the finest Belgian workmanship. The ushers were attired as formally and attractively as the grooms, the bridesmaids looked lovely in simple silk dresses, the little girls were darling in white dresses sashed with large bows, and the little boys charmed, decked out in sailor suits with hats to match. Afterwards the entire wedding party proceeded in horse-drawn carriages to the grand Salle du Centenaire—the centerpiece of the 1931 celebration of Belgium’s first hundred years of nationhood—for a Jewish religious ceremony.”
“Wait wait wait!” Lilla interrupted. “A Jewish ceremony? But I thought…”
“Believe me,” Geneviève said, “it was odd, but grandfather insisted even though he’s hardly religious himself. As founder of the family fortune he has certain rights and deserves our respect, and since many others in our large extended families are observant in varying degrees he felt it was important that their feelings be acknowledged. In any event it wasn’t that bad for Denise and me, but imagine poor Alex and André who had to don yarmulkes, march around the vine-twined chuppah, and stomp on and shatter a glass to cries of ‘Mazel tov!’ Later Alex told me all he could think the whole time was, ‘Don’t any of you know what’s going on in the world? Don’t you realize that by publicly declaring our Judaism today we may have signed our own death warrants for tomorrow?’”
“What a horrible thought for a wedding day!”
“For any day. Happily we were distracted by immediately going on our honeymoon together to Majorca and then moving into brand-new twin apartments on the Avenue Émile Duray. I can still see the façades of the four-story apartment houses down the way with the intricate swirls of their Belle Époque molding framing green lawns, the restful ease of their rooflines and the white-gloved doormen at each entrance. Then there were the formal jardins of L’Abbaye de la Cambre with stone paths between clipped hedges, their flower beds precise and stark in the late fall and the uniformed man standing guard over all. In the years to come we would stroll through those same gardens every day, weather permitting, with infants of our own.
“I first realized I was pregnant—probably since our wedding night—in mid-October 1933, just after Germany withdrew from the League of Nations’ international disarmament conference and just before it left the League itself. At the end of January 1934, Denise announced her own pregnancy. It was the same month that Germany signed a nonaggression pact with Poland and André asked, ‘If aggression isn’t intended, who needs a pact?’”
The birth of Katie on May 18, 1934, had been a blissful occasion. Then late in September Ida was born to Denise.
“The girls brought us such joy,” Geneviève explained, “we pretty much sleepwalked through the next several years like all our fellow Belgians. If not, how could Denise have gotten pregnant again? How could I?
“With Katie and Ida and then the births of Christel and Philippe, we were distracted by happiness and proceeded as if all were well. The girls laughed and played on their walks in the gardens of L’Abbaye de la Cambre, skipping past the hedges, splashing in the shallow central pool to which all paths led. The spring bulbs flowering, poking up above the rich brown earth as the weather improved, lifted our spirits despite the growing troubles in the world. The yellow of the daffodils, the red, orange, and purple of the tulips and the pale pink and light blue of the hyacinths: all these brought such relief and release from the gray and damp and fears of that last long winter.”
Tears welled in Geneviève’s eyes. Lilla thought it best to change the subject aga
in. “What news of your baby brother?”
“Oh, that scamp!” Geneviève laughed as she wiped away tears. “Charming, charming Francis. Maybe too charming. After Poland was invaded,” Geneviève continued somberly, “he went to England and enlisted in the Royal Air Force. Now we know as little of his fate as you do about your Francis.”
All the adults now felt compelled to follow the war’s progress closely on the radio. Commentators from Parisian radio stations offered up every scrap of good news they could find, but little they said could produce optimism. The war was being lost on all fronts.
On the second Saturday morning of the Sauverins’ stay, Lilla tried to divert herself with one of her favorite pastimes: cutting fresh flowers and placing them in the wicker basket she carried on one arm to distribute later throughout the château. But she stopped clipping when she overheard a conversation coming from the other side of a hedge.
“Alex and I are deeply concerned about the increasing southward flow of refugees,” André said. “The war is just beginning and we suspect it’s going to get worse. Much worse.”
Lilla started to cry as she had every day—sometimes every hour—since receiving the terrible news about the capture of her husband, Francis. Blinking and wiping away her soundlessly falling tears she gazed across a lush green pasture. Cattle grazed by the far-distant fence, shaded by great oak trees.
André went on. “French authorities can force us to go back to Belgium anytime.”
“They wouldn’t. They couldn’t!” Denise declared desperately.
“They can and they may. Their army is disintegrating and the government is falling apart too. There is less and less logic to their actions.”
“But what will we do?” Denise asked, her voice tinged with fear.
“I do not want to fight,” André said slowly and firmly.
Peeking through the hedge Lilla saw Denise glow as she squeezed her husband’s hand.
“That’s only one of the oh-so-many reasons I love you.”
In This Hospitable Land Page 7
