In This Hospitable Land

by Jr. Lynmar Brock

  But based on Alex’s reading, charting, and planning there was reason to hope some of the rabbits born at the end of February would be ready to provide a fresh taste sensation soon.

  “Shall we have rabbit for Philippe’s birthday dinner?” Alex asked Geneviève, surprising, pleasing, and relieving her.

  Immediately after lunch Alex went out to ready the chosen rabbit for roasting. The least squeamish Sauverin did his bloody work behind the barn so no one else had to see.

  Grabbing the pudgy creature by its ears and using steady pressure from his boot on its hind legs he held the rabbit on its back on top of the great chopping block then drew a six-inch knife across its throat, letting the blood drain out onto the ground. It was a quick business.

  He sliced the knife down the underside of the dead rabbit’s soft, still-warm body, priding himself on his skill at skinning. To use almost the whole animal he only cut off the tail and the bottoms of the feet, making it easy to pull the skin down and even to bare the head so it too was available for the pot. Methodically scraping the carcass down to the meat, Alex saved the abundance of fat for André to make into soap—now a scarce commodity.

  It was not a pretty job but the results were delectable. Fortunately Alex’s newly prattling son had not yet connected the “rabbit” they would eat with the “rabbits” he helped feed and loved to pet.

  A few days later, the brothers began working the terraced garden plots to prepare for planting. Even if a tractor had been available gas was hard to come by and the hill to La Font was too steep. What they really needed was one of those sturdy Brabant draught horses from Belgium.

  But they persisted by hand and got the job done. Then they prevailed upon a neighbor to part with some pig manure that they mixed with hay to make high-quality fertilizer. Disking it into the poor soil was a laborious, nose-holding chore that got worse as the days grew warmer.

  They planted Swiss chard, green and yellow beans, tomatoes, beets, lettuce, and even some corn purchased in Vialas. They cut up potato seed stock and implanted each eye in a small mound of soil. They drilled their two dozen soybeans into the ground.

  The change in the weather also changed the family’s social life. Everyone in the little hamlets thereabouts could finally get out after the long, hard months as virtual shut-ins. Many strolled up to La Font to make sure the Sauverins had survived the winter.

  The farmers were intrigued by the brothers’ agricultural “experiments.” None of them had ever considered planting soybeans. The corn rows were also a curiosity because only a little corn was ever planted in the Cévennes and then the green stalks were fed to the cows since the ears never matured.

  All knew the Sauverins’ status as “Israelites.” Many commented on the recently established Commissariat General aux Questions Juives designed to assist the Germans with “Aryanization” of Jewish businesses in the occupied zone. Some decried this further despicable evidence of Vichy collaboration but others insisted it was an effort by Pétain’s government to make sure matters got no worse.

  Each day after Philippe turned two Christel grew more excited because her birthday came next. She couldn’t wait to be three. Knowing this milestone was approaching made her feel bigger than ever—so big she wanted to go to school with Ida and Katie more powerfully than before. She begged and pleaded until one morning her mother told the two older girls to take Christel with them. They were embarrassed to be saddled with a child too young to attend school but Denise would not be denied.

  Christel was excited but the schoolmaster Patrick Molines was not. Given the great disparity in the ages of his students he already had his hands full. He didn’t wish to be mean to Christel but told her to sit on the bench on one side of the classroom and stay quiet.

  This was miserably hard for Christel, who was used to running around freely and to speaking whenever she wished. Determined to prove she was ready for school she tried hard and did well. But Monsieur Molines never smiled at or talked to her once.

  When Christel needed to relieve herself she was afraid that if she said anything Monsieur Molines wouldn’t let her come back. So she kept her mouth closed and had an accident. She was wet everywhere. The teacher just made her sit there.

  “Monsieur Molines says she can go to school,” Katie explained later at La Font, “but she’ll still have to sit on the bench and he’s not going to teach her anything.”

  “It’s not fair,” Ida said, trying to comfort her little sister, who was weeping with abandon. “She’s so young and Monsieur Molines only wants to work with the older kids. He’s not even interested in me and Katie!”

  “You must understand,” Denise said, stroking Christel’s hair. “His honor and a promotion depend on his students passing tests and obtaining their certificates.”

  Christel wailed more so Geneviève suggested, “I could teach Christel since I spend less time working outside than you, Denise. I’d be delighted to help her learn to read and write.”

  Ida and Katie jumped up and down chanting, “Good for Christel!”

  “And good for us,” Katie concluded. “Without her it won’t take so long to climb back up the hill!”

  On May fifth, the Sauverins celebrated Christel’s birthday, during which she displayed her ability to write her name. “I like having school at home,” Christel proclaimed proudly. But Christel’s joy was overshadowed for the Sauverins, who still hadn’t heard directly from Jack Freedman, which worried Geneviève to distraction. She and Denise had taken turns writing to him in England but they had no way of knowing whether any of their letters got through. And they knew that André’s anonymous letter about evading jamming had reached the BBC—because they had responded in one of their broadcasts!

  “We acknowledge the letter from PHOTON,” was the cryptic response. The Sauverins never knew whether or not André’s advice was taken seriously. The radio signals from Britain remained as obstructed as before.

  Shortly after mentioning PHOTON the BBC aired instructions for those in Nazi-controlled lands who wished to write to England. “Don’t use exact postage,” the announcer recommended. “Either add too much or affix too little.”

  The postman when next he arrived explained that exact postage implied to French postal authorities the writer’s British sympathies since he knew the precise cost of such communications. Inexact postage suggested greater ignorance and therefore lesser danger.

  “You’d be surprised at the different tricks people employ now,” he elaborated. “For example, I know of other Belgians who send letters to London via Léopoldville in the Belgian Congo. It sounds crazy but it can be easier to send a letter through Africa than across the English Channel. And if you put your postage stamp on upside-down it might not mean a thing to the Nazis but tells local postal workers the writer is against the Germans. They make sure the letter gets through.”

  The Sauverins obtained a new goat Ida and Katie named “Louise” after the grand Avenue Louise in Brussels. Louise needed milking every day—a job Geneviève took on even though it was lots of hard work for limited results.

  The goats’ odor added to the challenge. All the animals in the great space beneath the house smelled, but the goat stench was so noxious Geneviève insisted they be moved to the barn, where she would sit on a little stool with a bucket between her legs and gently stroke the milk out of the udder—an activity which gave her mind time to wander.

  One morning, a sound in the rafters distracted Geneviève. Looking up she suddenly saw a gigantic disgusting rat clinging to the underside of a wooden beam, carefully making its way backwards to just above her head.

  Geneviève screamed and jumped up involuntarily, accidentally spilling the bucket of milk and frightening poor Louise as she ran out shrieking.

  “I’m not going back in there ever!” she shouted to Denise, who had rushed to her screeching sister’s aid.

  Geneviève told her about the rat. Denise put her arm around her quivering sister.

  “Poor darling!�
� Denise said soothingly. “That rat was probably as scared as you.”

  “Then it was plenty scared!”

  Denise gently rubbed Geneviève’s back and spoke calmingly. Slowly Geneviève settled down.

  “I’ll tell you this,” Geneviève laughed. “Louise better get used to being milked outside!”

  May eighteenth, Katie’s seventh birthday, André left La Font for a walk after lunch and came back hours later with a surprise for everyone—most enchantingly for Katie, who loved animals and spent most of her free time looking after the chickens and rabbits; most disturbingly for Alex, who thought his brother had gone mad with a whole flock of sheep complete with a sheepdog.

  Everyone ran to see. Petting the sheep the children declared themselves smitten.

  “They’re cuter and softer and more cuddly than the goats,” Katie cheered.

  “And they smell a little better too,” Ida added, “though still not good.”

  Their instant love for the dog was unalloyed.

  “Sheep,” Alex spat. “So stupid. Don’t even know to come in from the cold when it gets dark. André, forget about lamb! Let’s stick to chicken, rabbits, and goats. They’re as stupid as sheep but a lot less trouble. Tell me you don’t expect that sheepdog to do all the work!”

  André explained that the old man who had sold him the sheep and sheepdog had assured him all he ever had to do was send Touté into the fields and the sheep came trotting right back.

  “Touté?” Alex barked.

  “The dog,” André said. “Touté.”

  “So it’s a pet,” Alex grumbled. “The children will get more out of ‘Touté’ than we will.”

  “The only problem is he doesn’t seem to understand my commands.”

  Happily petting the dog stretched out at her feet Katie said, “Maybe he only speaks patois. I wonder what ‘Touté’ means in Cévenol?”

  Alex groused, “Now we’ve got to learn the local dialect to speak to a dog.”

  “Well we don’t want Touté to realize we’re not from around here,” André said amiably. “In fact if we don’t learn Cévenol anyone coming here will realize we’re not natives.”

  “Please, Papy, may we keep Touté?” Katie begged her father. “We’ll do all the looking after him, I promise! Please? For my birthday?”

  “Well,” Alex agreed though the concession pained him, “it is your birthday.”

  “I don’t know about you,” André said with a funny little grin, “but I really like lamb.”

  “So do I,” Alex admitted. “If they fatten up before next winter they’ll make good food for us—or someone else if we decide to sell any. But if we have to keep them over the winter, stuffing them up with chestnuts, they’ll just be old mutton. I hate mutton.”

  Alex shook his head with disgust. But if it made the birthday girl happy…

  Occasionally André would take a break from backbreaking labor and walk uphill to a shaded spot to rest and think. Usually the sheep were cropping grass nearby. As soon as André sat with his back braced against a tree, Touté would lie down and place his head in his lap.

  The dog was far more attentive to the sheep than Alex had feared. But no one could communicate with him verbally even though Touté was an enormously affectionate and clever mutt. Every weekday morning he accompanied Ida and Katie to school and then ran home to tend to the sheep. Just before four o’clock each afternoon he somehow knew to race back to the one-room schoolhouse in time to trot home beside his pair of scholars. Incomprehensibly Touté never failed or showed up so much as a minute late.

  André liked these little breaks for the chance to meditate cooled by fresh breezes. Frequently he pulled out his faithful notebook to review notes or make new ones. Recently he had taken to jotting down Cévenol words. These private moments were perfect for practicing his vocabulary and accent without fear of mockery—from his brother, who doubted men their age could acquire new languages, and from the children, who picked up the dialect easily.

  Sometimes though—as on June 2, 1941—André couldn’t keep focused because of disturbing news. In this instance Vichy had published more anti-Semitic legislation, banning Jews from public office and placing all Jews under “administrative arrest.” A census of Jews was also to be taken, many suspected as a prelude to deportation.

  Soleyrols was sufficiently removed from the immediate reach of the Vichy government that it wasn’t likely anything would happen to the Sauverins anytime soon. Still it had been a difficult couple of weeks for all anti-Vichy French and especially for Jewish residents of France, occupied and unoccupied alike. In mid-May more than three thousand Jews had been arrested in Paris, and Pétain had announced the replacement of the Franco-German armistice with a whole new set of economic-collaboration agreements—agreements so pleasing to the Germans they agreed to release and repatriate one hundred thousand French prisoners of war.

  Roosevelt had condemned this collaboration and had informed Vichy France it must choose between Germany and the United States. Vichy’s reaction had been to pass more laws restricting the movement and activities of Jews within France. The Nazi Göring had ordered that no Jew be allowed to emigrate from any occupied territory “in view of the imminent final solution.” (“Final solution”? André had no clear idea what this new, vile phrase meant but it seemed deeply menacing.) Then a Vichy military court had sentenced in absentia, to hard labor or death, fifty-six noncommissioned officers and privates allied with de Gaulle. Orders were issued to confiscate all property in unoccupied France belonging to Free French fighters.

  André shook his head. Revolving dreadful thoughts in his mind could do no good so he decided to concentrate on the Cévenol words in his notebook. How hard it was to twist his Brussels French into the patois of the mountains, to emulate its gentle susurrations!

  Suddenly Touté raised his head sharply and his ears stood up straight. André tried to pronounce several more local words. Touté began to whimper and whine.

  Had André stumbled upon words sufficiently familiar that the mutt could understand them despite André’s mangling? What if Touté could be made still more useful with the sheep, helping them file out into the proper field mornings and back down to the barn late afternoons before snuggling up with the children at night?

  For the first time it struck André that in coming to Soleyrols he had inadvertently ended up where he truly belonged. Or perhaps God had arranged it.

  Alex enjoyed breaking up rock-hard ground, chopping down and lugging away dead trees—all farm labors. But he was troubled about doing nothing to help bring down the Nazis and their collaborators. Sure he listened to the radio and passed on news that could be valuable to the Resistance. But how much effective resistance was there when the Vichy government was able to announce mid-month the arrest and internment in concentration camps of twelve thousand Jews purportedly engaged in a “Jewish plot” to hamper Franco-German relations?

  Those actions reminded Alex of nothing so much as the Phony War. And phoniness struck him as a major factor in the mid-June denial by Tass, the official Soviet news agency, of widespread rumors of the massing of German troops along the Russian border.

  Those rumors proved true. The world-at-large proclaimed astonishment and shock as the Nazis launched an attack on the Soviet Union that made prior Blitzkriegs look like warm-ups—just what Alex expected of Hitler.

  And what did the Americans do? Offer to send “assistance.” Churchill announced a similar intention: “Any state who fights Nazism will have our aid.”

  Undeterred by these threats of “aid,” Finland, Hungary, and Albania declared war on Russia. Less bold, Vichy France merely broke off diplomatic relations.

  By the end of June the Germans had the Russians on the run. But believing Hitler had finally overreached, Alex actually felt elated. By attacking Mother Russia, Hitler, like Napoleon before him, had signed a death warrant for his dream of world domination.

  Others panicked, but feeling celebratory, Alex purch
ased a pig. If André could buy sheep and a sheepdog without discussion surely Alex need feel no compunction about pursuing his porcine predilection! Besides, they could unquestionably use a pig. The previous winter they had all learned the value of a little fatback or a bit of bacon in making bajana more substantial and palatable. Thanks to the lush results of their plantings, they were now learning the value of pig-manure-based fertilizer.

  When Alex brought the porker home and placed it in the third space beneath the archway of La Font’s open-air basement, Geneviève complained about the stench. The warmth of the pig rising along with the smell was equally unwelcome at that time of year.

  “It’s so offensive,” Geneviève sniffed.

  “The smell or the heat?” Denise wondered.

  “They’ll always be together,” André reminded them.

  “Just think how glad you’ll be for extra heat,” Alex shouted, “when cold weather comes!”

  Realizing how disappointed Alex was by their response Denise quickly agreed. “I guess we’ll get used to the smell just like that of the rabbits, chickens, and goats.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Geneviève pouted. “I’ll never get used to the stink of goats.”

  “How about this?” Alex said angrily. “Whenever the pig stench bothers you, think ‘ham,’ ‘bacon,’ ‘sausage,’ ‘pork chops.’ Then the smell won’t be so bad, will it?”

  Alex focused his outrage by naming the pig “Adolph.” Adolph turned out to be a dirty pig, only adding to fastidious Alex’s revulsion for the animal.

  At first Alex only let Adolph gorge on water to enlarge his stomach and increase his capacity for food. Then Adolph’s diet was leftover chestnuts and kitchen scraps. He gained weight rapidly but became fussy about the grub, so Alex tried a mix of grain and chaff boiled into paste-like flour. This gruel pleased Adolph for a while but then he turned away from it in disgust. Soon he would only eat bits of greens from the bounty of the garden.