In This Hospitable Land

by Jr. Lynmar Brock

  There were only a few other refugees and a handful of cars with Belgian license plates on the streets. Rooms at the city’s best hotel were available, for Florac was also a resort destination and it was still too cool this high in the mountains for casual visitors.

  After a relatively relaxed and comfortable night, André felt agitated at breakfast on Wednesday. He and Alex agreed they couldn’t long afford such fancy accommodations. They needed a more permanent, less expensive place to stay.

  Imagining that official arrangements must have been made for accommodating refugees, they decided to pay a call on the mayor even though that seemed risky. They could always hope the orders they had heard in Millau hadn’t yet penetrated this far. And doing nothing was risky too.

  “Why do you come here?” Florac’s mayor demanded irritably. “Other departments are reserved for Belgians like you. We want nothing to do with refugees!”

  Alex stepped forward aggressively, staring into the gaunt official’s rapidly reddening face. “Lot and Aveyron are filled and this département is now open ‘for Belgians like us,’” Alex asserted, biting off each word. “Understand we don’t want charity from you or anyone else. We need a place to stay and we can pay.”

  “We’re not even allowed to let you pay.” The spiderweb of blood vessels in the mayor’s cheeks pulsed a sickly blue-green against his continuing flush. Rudely he pulled a great gray handkerchief out of his pants pocket and blew his nose loudly. Then he wiped his mouth with the same handkerchief, balled it up, stuffed it back in his pants, then slicked down the ends of his mustache with careful strokes of enormously long, fat fingers. “Damn war,” he growled, stepping back behind his desk. “How many of you are there?”

  “Ten,” André answered.

  “Ten! Are you Jews?”

  André paused to consider but Alex demanded, “Why do you ask? No one anywhere else in France has.”

  The mayor glanced up from under an instantly furrowed brow. “Until now you’ve stayed in hotels and they’re not required to obtain such information. But when you seek authorization for a more permanent situation the law demands that we know a good deal more about you.”

  The brothers stood silently absorbing this discouraging information.

  “Well, are you?” the mayor badgered. “You must be or why flee Belgium?”

  “We come from a Jewish family,” André allowed, hoping this formulation skirted the complicated details.

  “Many more like you,” the gruff mayor huffed, “and there won’t be room for the people who belong here.” Turning his back on them, going to one of the shelves lining the walls of his small office, and pulling out a large black ledger, the mayor flipped through a number of heavily marked pages. “Such a large family,” he whined. Then he stopped, stared, and let a little grin steal across his lips. “Yes,” he hissed. “There is a small village not far from here—Bédouès—where the former governor of Djibouti has a large villa—a small château really. You’re familiar with Djibouti, in Eritrea, on the Red Sea? A prestigious posting. And the ex-governor is a formidable personage. Space at his place has been reserved for the likes of you. Name?”

  André gave it, praying the ex-governor of Djibouti was far more pleasant and less overtly prejudiced than this miserable man.

  The mayor wrote “Sauverin” into his ledger laboriously and appended the term “Israelite.” Then he went to the door, gestured dismissively in the general direction of “down the road,” and could barely bring himself to say, “Bédouès.”

  Alex left abruptly, enraged.

  “Thank you for your guidance,” André said, mustering the last remnants of his manners to show that the Sauverins were superior to such rude treatment.

  “Damn war,” the mayor grumbled. Then he slammed the door behind them.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BÉDOUÈS

  JUNE 5, 1940

  Alex felt so resentful he could spit. His respect and appreciation for the French had just descended several significant degrees. Nevertheless he realized he and André had no choice but to explore the single option offered. What he really wanted was to go back and punch the mayor of Florac in the nose.

  André drove slowly uphill, about four kilometers over the rocky terrain of a very narrow road. The tall spire of a Catholic church immediately ahead reached up to the heavens. The stone church sat prominently on a small bluff overlooking the single-lane road that bisected the little village of Bédouès and its small grouping of huddled homes.

  One dwelling stood out dramatically. The grand villa, taller than any building besides the church, was constructed of massive, brown corner-cut stones placed squarely up to the roofline. The walls in between had been freshly stuccoed a lighter color so that the whole contrasted with the gray slate of the roof. The front of the complex structure was anchored by a large square tower, rising three floors to its own pitched roof. Green vines straggled up the walls and tower, softening the severity of the design. Behind was a serene private park filled with ash, plane, fir, and oak trees.

  All together the château announced the importance of its owner. It was utterly incongruous with the other, much smaller homes and shops of the village discolored from long years of weathering and neglect.

  As the Buick and trailer pulled up to the villa the curtains in the front window shifted slightly. A featureless shadow appeared behind them.

  Anxiously the brothers walked up and tugged at the large, round bell pull. After an unnerving few moments the huge ornate hand-carved door opened very slowly. A woman considerably past her graceful years stood silent. Her severe face was lined and wrinkled, the straight gray hair clinging tightly to her ears emphasized the sharpness of her nose, and lips drawn tightly across her narrow mouth bespoke the reluctance of her manner. There was no smile or other indication of greeting or welcome.

  André and Alex stated their business and the woman said shortly, “Wait here,” retreating behind the door she closed partway.

  From someplace within a harsh male voice called out, “Who is it?”

  “Refugees from Belgium,” the woman answered meekly.

  A brief silence was followed by a heavy approaching tread.

  The door swung back again and an imposing gentleman squinted at the brothers, formally inspecting them. Much taller than André and Alex, he had a broad cavernous chest, hands like meaty mitts, and a roughhewn face covered with a full carefully groomed white beard disguising either a weak or too-pointy chin.

  Stepping forward menacingly to within an uncomfortable distance he declared, “I’m Claude de Montfort, former governor of Djibouti. What do you want?”

  Alex thought de Montfort expected them to fall to their knees and salaam.

  “We were told to come,” André said forthrightly, “because you have room for us.”

  Unused to being challenged, the ex-governor spluttered, “He would do that to me,” referring to the mayor of Florac. “We were told to anticipate people like you sooner or later.”

  There it is, Alex thought. He doesn’t like Belgians, he doesn’t like Jews, and encountering both on his doorstep at once makes him apoplectic!

  “I’d prefer that it would have been later,” de Montfort continued in so self-pitying a tone he sounded as if he had lost all stature with himself. “It’s such an imposition. Why come here when plenty of other houses are available?”

  “We have the means to pay,” André said, knowing he didn’t have to but doubting the Sauverins would find another place anywhere near as large as this.

  The ex-governor exchanged a meaningful look with the woman, who was his wife, and then acknowledged, “We do have space on the top floor. That we don’t use, I mean.”

  “And it’s out of the way,” Madame de Montfort assured her husband, leaning into his shoulder and lowering her voice. “We won’t even have to see them.”

  “Yes—right—okay then,” de Montfort harrumphed, signaling he had made a great and beneficent concession.

 
Exasperated, Alex stepped aside while his brother completed the negotiations. The ex-governor knew full well that both moral responsibility and the law demanded that he welcome refugees from the German onslaught rent-free. Alex watched with revulsion as de Montfort ungraciously pocketed his first payment in cash.

  The brothers were led to the attic by the rickety back stairs that kept the Sauverins away from the de Montforts’ front door. The stairs did not inspire confidence, but both brothers held their tongues. Spacious rooms ran the length of the château. They were not only unused but shamefuly filthy. Dust and cobwebs hung over windows, on doors, and all over the beds, chairs, and tables scattered haphazardly through out. The children didn’t notice. They ran from room to room laughing and shrieking with glee. The de Montforts’ attic was depressingly unkempt but also remote—a serviceable retreat in which the Sauverins could safely contemplate how to live out the war.

  “Appalling,” Geneviève spat.

  Recovering from the initial shock, Denise said, “We’d better straighten up right away.”

  Asked for some brushes, rags, and soap, Madame de Montfort sneered but offered the much-appreciated help of her cook. Removing the copious dirt took all day. It also exposed flaking paint, grayed and crumbling plaster, and the tooth marks of mice and squirrels along the edges of doors and baseboards. Somehow the space was made livable—barely.

  André and Alex went to the general store most days for foodstuffs, supplies and the newspaper, so the villagers soon learned of the Sauverins’ presence. The people of Bédouès expressed nothing resembling the hostility of the de Montforts and the mayor of Florac. Neither did they go out of their way to make any neighborly gesture, let alone extend friendship. Alex surmised they feared harboring émigrés might eventually subject them to Nazi retribution.

  Passing the time wasn’t easy. The children frequently played outside the large windows, on the flat porch roof spanning the center of the château, where a small border around the edge kept them from tumbling to the ground. Rose kept a watchful eye out for them anyway. Louis kept her company.

  Denise was occupied with cooking and cleaning for ten and engaging her ever-resentful sister in those domestic chores. How strange to see Geneviève wield a scrub brush!

  The brothers concluded the family would have to remain in France for quite some time so they started thinking about providing food for themselves as a cost-saving measure and to guard against inevitable shortages. André jotted down in his notebook thoughts, plans, and information on local crops and farming techniques he gleaned from talking to the mayor, who ran the general store, and farmers he met on daily outings. He had taken to stopping at small fields to admire the locals’ efforts and politely ask questions. Most of the men were pleased to pass on knowledge handed down by previous generations.

  With little to do besides review his homeopathy book and sit in the Buick listening to the radio, Alex was restless, distracted, and notably more short with the children than ever. “Stop running!” he cried. When they laughed he muttered, “Be quiet!”

  De Montfort’s original demands for his “hospitality” as landlord were outrageous, but when the Sauverin brothers inquired if he would accept British pounds so that they could conserve their supply of French francs, they were alarmed when he swiftly and cheerfully agreed—and imposed an excessive exchange rate.

  “He’s hoarding it too,” Alex exploded, “to conceal that he’s charging rent at all!”

  “Best not offer him our diamonds,” André agreed. “That would increase his rapacity.”

  Word of the Germans’ ongoing daily successes on the fields of battle filtered into Bédouès. The Sauverins’ sense of isolation and peril increased. One bright spot was Nichette, the hard-bitten middle-aged maid at the château who felt for the family. Nichette didn’t like her employers either and—careful not to let the de Montforts see—stole up to the Sauverins’ rooms late afternoons cradling bread and leftover meats and vegetables. She always made sure to secret some sweets or fruit tarts in her apron for the children.

  “I like it when you bring us these,” Christel said with a two-year-old’s enchanting guilelessness, sidling up to and hugging Nichette around her knees.

  “Come look what I found,” Alex called out one morning, bounding upstairs after a visit to the village. “Now you can take the children out for a stroll.”

  He had pushed a cart into the backyard. Though nothing like the wicker baby carriages of Brussels, its simplicity, coarse-grained handles, and iron wheels were perfect for Bédouès.

  Immediately after lunch Denise and Geneviève placed little Philippe into the cart. The three little girls walked, hopped, and ran around it as the mothers and children set off down the road.

  The dirt road to Bédouès meandered through a gentle valley, passing between small fields crowded against the slope of a hill that curved up gently into the dominating mountain which was rocky and spare with pine trees growing spottily on outcroppings and ledges. The fields were thick with tall grasses and lined with rocks long since piled into low borders.

  The people who lived there plainly cherished their carefully tended gardens with vegetables showing through waving stalks of cultivated wheat and rye, their sheaves already turning a rich coppery brown. Orchards were lush with the first fruits of the season just now ripening under the increasingly strong late-spring sun.

  As they approached the first houses of the village, the mothers’ pulses quickened. They had never walked into the heart of Bédouès and they worried about their reception.

  The village was much smaller than they had realized. Strolling along they nodded their heads and smiled at each villager who happened by.

  The women of Bédouès nodded back politely but never with a welcoming expression. One harrumphed. Another answered Denise’s sprightly “Bonjour!” mutedly.

  Some of this coldness was due to an age-old distrust of outsiders, but part was caused by the Sauverins’ obvious “difference,” apparent in their very clothes. The longstanding residents dressed in interchangeably shapeless dun-colored frocks. Denise and Geneviève owned nothing resembling these simple dresses. And though the children’s outfits were mostly handmade, the fabrics, patterns, and sewing were so advanced stylistically they seemed to mock and shame the village women’s habitual dowdiness.

  By the time the family reached the church at the end of the street, turned around, and started back again, Geneviève was incensed and Denise’s strength had begun to falter. Then they heard disquieting news from people conversing heatedly on the sidewalks. The bad tidings were confirmed by a radio playing in the sole café.

  Back in the attic the mercifully oblivious children raced to Louis and Rose to share their excitement about visiting town. But Denise and Geneviève took their husbands aside to tell them Mussolini’s Italy had declared war on France.

  Events swiftly followed Il Duce’s announcement though his forces never actually deployed against the French. On Tuesday, June 11, Paris was declared an open city and the principals of the French government fled for Tours. Much of what remained of the population left amidst a pounding of the outskirts by the Luftwaffe. General Weygand ordered French forces to retreat. Three days later the Nazis captured Paris. The government left for Bordeaux.

  Yet the Sauverins’ lives improved slightly. Denise and Geneviève persisted in taking the children into town and one day the most talkative woman in the village—a short, squat housewife in her fifties distinguished by a thick, red gash of lipstick—made the first friendly overture. Soon other housewives became more friendly.

  “Can you imagine?” Denise told André one night as they rested abed in each other’s arms. “Madame de Montfort told everyone she couldn’t take in refugees because we’re relatives living here for free! When Nichette got wind of it she was good enough to deny it. The villagers don’t hold the ex-governor in high esteem. When they learned we actually pay a very high price they said, ‘That’s not right!’ and began treating us as
if we’ve lived here all our lives.”

  On Monday the seventeenth André and Alex decided to experience the family’s newfound popularity by joining the now-routine stroll to Bédouès. The weather was so agreeable the family extended the walk all the way to Florac. Along the path the brothers debated the implications of that morning’s news. Prime Minister Reynaud had resigned and Marshal Pétain had been asked to form a new government. Would the old war hero rally his fellow countrymen to fight on to victory despite the long odds or was Pétain being positioned to sue for peace?

  The Sauverins stopped to rest at Florac’s central fountain. There was a sudden eruption of voices mingled together with a thin cry from across the way in a bustling café. Some patrons raced out. The rest sat stunned, silent.

  The proprietor turned up the radio to so great a volume the fateful fearsome words could be heard over the pooling of water and the peals of laughter from the children’s especially energetic game of tag: “France surrenders!”

  The adult Sauverins looked at one another in horror and confusion. The war had lasted little more than five weeks.

  “Can this really be happening?” Alex asked incredulously. “Did we abandon Belgium only to be trapped in another vanquished country?”

  Alex spent much of the next melancholy day in the Buick listening to the BBC as if to an oracle. Churchill had made a great brave speech to the House of Commons insisting that the British would “defend their island home and fight on until the curse of Hitler is removed.” French General Charles de Gaulle, having fled to London immediately upon the installation of Pétain, broadcast an appeal to French soldiers to keep fighting despite anything their discredited, subjugated government said or did.

  This was cold comfort in Bédouès. The Sauverins now had no choice but to stay where they were and endure whatever the new circumstances brought.