In This Hospitable Land

by Jr. Lynmar Brock

  Albertine placed a call and that very day the aged and mysterious figure of the faith healer of Soleyrols appeared at La Font.

  “Snake, yes,” the old woman confirmed examining the goats. “There’s never any infection but we still must drive the snake away!”

  All Geneviève could ever say was that the faith healer “used her powers.” Next morning when Geneviève went into the barn there beside the goats was a dead snake.

  The flow of milk returned to normal. The problem never arose again.

  On the tenth of April, Pastor Donadille returned with several members of the Resistance and a bit of equipment. The mayor of Saint-Michel-de-Dèze had agreed to sign new false identity cards for the Sauverins, but since the small village was some thirty-seven kilometers distant, the terrain somewhat treacherous still at that time of year, and Denise seven months pregnant, a roundtrip had been deemed impractical. So the Resistance had come to the Sauverins and they proceeded to photograph them, take their fingerprints, and obtain their signatures on the official documents in question. “Sauverin” became “Milard” and the visitors went away.

  The Sauverins fretted through the weekend: what if their photos, fingerprints, and fake signatures somehow went astray, subjecting them to investigation? But their fears were allayed early on Tuesday the fourteenth when Donadille returned with the properly executed identity cards, duly stamped, attested by the mayor and dated 13 avril 1942.

  In late April, with the snows gone from even the farthest reaches of the Lozère, André resumed regular attendance of Sunday services at the Protestant temple in Vialas. Pleased to see him again Pastor Burnard greeted the news of Denise’s pregnancy as a sign of divine favor.

  The pastor was excited to introduce André to another occasional visitor: Irene Bastide, who lived in Le Salson, an even more isolated hamlet than Soleyrols. André and she shared a common interest: Irene was one of the few Quakers in all of the Cévennes.

  Irene was thrilled by André’s fascination with her faith. “There’s always room for one more,” she said, going on to describe their infrequent gatherings: the veillée as she called it—an evening gathering around a fire. She invited André to attend the next, though she couldn’t say where or when since the meetings were held in varying locations.

  André wondered aloud whether he couldn’t offer La Font for the purpose. The suggestion pleased Irene and they picked a date. André hoped to convince Alex to leave during the session, for even if Alex kept his mouth shut, his skepticism could permeate and poison the atmosphere.

  The planned evening in early May more than fulfilled André’s hopes and expectations. Sitting in a circle of thoughtful caring Friends silently communing with each other and their God brought peace and hopefulness into his soul such as he had only dreamed possible. Denise and Geneviève, though in their rooms, were impressed with the way La Font felt throughout the veillée. Even the children were wordlessly responsive to the atmosphere created by meditating Quakers.

  Afterward Irene thanked the Sauverins profusely and offered her very best wishes to Denise, whom she would keep in her prayers. Then Irene caressed little Christel’s face and told her she hoped they would have a chance to spend some time together someday.

  The baby seemed certain to arrive in late May but the Sauverins had still not made arrangements. Max had agreed to help if available, but that couldn’t be counted on.

  “You should go to aunts Leonore and Regine in Aubenas, Denise,” Alex insisted after dinner one evening. “Surely you’d be welcomed by your aunts.”

  Geneviève agreed. “It would be a mistake for us to try to deliver the baby up here without a doctor,” she said gently, looking at her sister with large, sad eyes. “We both know how hard labor is and how dangerous confinement can be. If there are any complications…”

  “But I don’t want to leave the farm, you, André, or the children!” Denise responded subbornly.

  “Sweetheart,” André said softly but firmly, “it will be much safer for you and the baby in Aubenas. The aunts will see to you and we know they have a doctor who cares for Beatrice.”

  Denise focused a look of trepidation on André. Geneviève knew the baby was kicking.

  “It’s settled then,” André announced with quiet authority. “I’ll go down to the café in the morning and make the call.”

  The bus was cramped for the very pregnant Denise but the train from Génolhac to Aubenas was more comfortable. Though terribly excited, the girls were well behaved. Their first view of Aubenas was an impressive thirteenth-century castle, the tallest structure on the highest point in the center of town, surrounded by narrow, crooked streets. Silk pennants flew before resort hotels crowded onto little open squares, many perched above the town walls, overlooking the river below.

  Aunts Regine and Leonore and Cousin Pierre waited for them at the station and proved as gracious and accommodating as could have been wished in their pleasantly appointed apartment.

  Pierrot was busy that summer drawing and studying for his baccalauréat exam. But with his older brother away—presumably a prisoner of war in German hands—Pierre was the man of the house, a role he fulfilled admirably despite his relative youth.

  Grandmother Beatrice was on her deathbed so she couldn’t terrorize the children as she had at weekly teas in Brussels by crooking her cane’s handle around one of their ankles or knees. When Denise asked why no one had told her how ill her grandmother was, Aunt Leonore bit her lower lip and said, “We were afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  Leonore led Denise into the dimly lit back room. Ida and Christel followed timidly. The elderly woman—once so strong, stern, and determined—rested almost motionlessly in a tall bed, her beautiful white hair spread out on the pillow.

  “Ah, Denise, Ida,” she said softly. “Is little Christel with you?”

  Still at the door Christel strode forward boldly as if no longer afraid of the family’s ill-tempered matriarch. Going straight to the bed she rose up on tiptoes, presented herself, and called loudly and distinctly, “Great Grandmother, are you going to die like Tante Fanny?”

  Aunt Fanny? Toward the end of the Sauverins’ life in Brussels, the death of Jack Freedman’s sister may have been mentioned in Christel’s presence but no one would have guessed the words would hold any meaning for her, that she would remember them from such a tender age, or that she would bring them up in such a circumstance.

  “It’s all right,” Aunt Regine said later, making Denise feel better about the embarrassing incident. “Mother’s well aware of her condition and Christel has always been a favorite.”

  Then Denise presented Regine the monogrammed tablecloth brought out of Belgium and said, “A small token of appreciation for taking us in at a time of need.”

  “It’s lovely,” Regine said, clutching it to her chest and crying softly.

  Oddly, being a Jew or the descendant of Jews could be beneficial as well as dangerous. The Nazis had only banned Jews from practicing medicine in occupied France so the Vichy government didn’t even acknowledge the few Jewish doctors who hadn’t yet fled the unoccupied zone, such as the one caring for Beatrice Herz. The doctor, a member of the small Hebraic community that had lived and thrived in Aubenas for generations, now attended to Denise too.

  He recommended “little walks in the park” as a daily regimen and assured her his clinic wasn’t far. “It won’t be a long ride when the moment arrives,” he told her. “And if you have problems getting a taxicab, phone and I will come get you.”

  Late Friday the twenty-ninth of May, Beatrice Herz passed away quietly. The Sauverins’ great tablecloth served as the dead woman’s shroud.

  Denise went into labor the next morning. Life and death so close together! Aunt Leonore took Denise to the clinic. Pierrot looked after Christel and Ida. Aunt Regine arranged the funeral.

  The phone call to the Brignand café—late Saturday, May thirtieth, brought André news of the birth of Cristian Louis Sauverin and the death of Beatr
ice Herz. Since he couldn’t ascertain that a train would be running from Génolhac to Aubenas on Sunday, he borrowed a bicycle from Louis Brignand. Louis worried that eighty kilometers over very rough terrain would be too much for André but André laughed, remembering his bike ride from Brussels to Le Coq—a longer trip in much worse circumstances. And André was much stronger now.

  After a grueling ride with many steep hills and hairpin turns, André went straight to the clinic, where he was asked to sign his son’s birth certificate in a great leather-bound book. Reading his son’s name for the first time, André flushed with pride and then suffered a brief spasm of panic: had he and Denise chosen rightly to assume that it would be safe to use the name Sauverin instead of Milard, which now appeared on their identity cards? But Aubenas and Vialas were in different départements and there was more than enough distance between them to make communication between officials of the two towns unlikely if not impossible. There had been no need for Denise to declare any residence other than Brussels.

  Then André noticed with surprise and relief that no religious affiliation had been listed. Reassured that his newborn’s safety had not been compromised, André signed the birth register with the deepest feeling and a fine calligraphic flourish.

  In Denise’s private room, healthy, gurgling, sleepy-eyed Cristian rested his full head of shimmering dark hair on his mother’s chest. André held and kissed Denise’s hand. The doctor stopped in to ask if they wanted him or the rabbi to perform the circumcision.

  André and Denise agreed circumcision made medical sense. André couldn’t explain why he wanted the rabbi to handle it but Denise didn’t object.

  “Samuel Freedman would insist,” she said mischievously.

  When Ida and Christel saw their baby brother for the first time later that day, Ida said, “I love him. But will he always look like a frog?”

  The next day André rode back to La Font and Denise brought Cristian back to the aunts’ apartment, where they stayed in what had been her grandmother’s room.

  Within a week the Jews of occupied France were ordered to wear yellow armbands with the Star of David whenever they appeared in public.

  “Will they make us wear a star too?” Leonore asked nervously.

  Regine considered then slowly answered, “If the Germans want the star worn in the north of France it won’t be long before Pétain makes it the law in the south as well. I’m sure it betokens worse to come.” She turned her eyes on Pierrot. “You must be more careful than ever. I don’t want you and your friends hanging around in public places anymore. Avoid downtown. Stay away from theaters.”

  Each time an aunt ran an errand she returned with news of increased gendarme presence.

  “We almost never hear from the family in Belgium,” Leonore said dolefully one evening, “but now mail from friends in Paris has stopped. I don’t want to think what that means.”

  Both aunts believed Aubenas had become too dangerous for Denise and the children.

  Denise agreed sorrowfully. “We’ll leave soon.”

  On June twenty-second, the government enunciated a new policy: relève—“relief.” One French prisoner of war would be released for every three skilled French workers who went to Germany.

  “Three for one,” Leonore said disgustedly. “How does that help France?”

  Secretly Aunt Regine prayed that one of the ones released would be her other stepson.

  In early July the BBC relayed a London Daily Telegraph report that more than one million European Jews had already been killed by the Nazis. Almost simultaneously a letter arrived from André couched in terms that, read by Vichy authorities, would suggest nothing out of the ordinary but nevertheless conveyed to Denise that he had learned definitively (from one of the pastors? the mailman? Max Maurel?) that after a person went to “camp” (Drancy) they were sent on “vacation” (out of the country) “permanently” (no interpretation necessary). He also wrote, “Touté is not the only dog about to round up some sheep,” and by “sheep” Denise understood he meant foreign Jews in Vichy France.

  Denise told the tantes they should come with her to La Font since Soleyrols was safer than Aubenas. But the aunts still believed their age and sex would protect them.

  “Pierre, though,” Aunt Regine said tearfully, “should go with you.”

  But Pierre insisted on staying with his friends. They had agreed to share their fate.

  “They’re not all Jews,” his stepmother said fearfully. “And you’re the only foreigner.”

  “So that brings you up to date,” Denise concluded. She was glad to be back but worried about her aunts and Pierrot—until they appeared at La Font in mid-July to check up on Denise, Cristian, and the rest of the family. Distressingly, aunts Regine and Leonore had drifted into lethargic despair. Pierrot had become rebellious as never before, spending more and more time out and about with his friends.

  They found no relief at La Font.

  “We’ve been listening to the radio,” Alex told the visitors soon after they arrived. “During the night police rounded up all the foreign Jews registered with the authorities in Paris and shipped them off to Drancy. Even those who had lived in France for years and years.”

  A few days later the guests had gone back to Aubenas the reports were confirmed: almost thirteen thousand Parisian Jews had been arrested and interned during one long night. Then the newspaper said that on the fourth of August nearly a thousand Belgian Jews had been deported to Auschwitz.

  But the worst news for the Sauverins arrived mid-month by telephone. Pierrot had been taken away. He had gone out with friends, then stopped into a pharmacy on the main street to pick up medicine for Leonore. After making the purchase, Pierre and his friends had spotted police herding men into a van at the end of the block and Pierre had led his friends into a movie theater to hide. The movie stopped almost instantly, the lights came on and policemen blocked all exits. The gendarmes told the women to leave and told the men to show their identity cards. Then they ordered the men to drop their pants. Any circumcised man was declared a Jew and taken away—including Pierre.

  The Sauverins were inconsolable and terribly afraid.

  “We should try to leave,” André told Alex. “There’s still an American embassy in Vichy. We could try to get permission to emigrate to the United States.”

  Alex was stunned. “You really think that would work?”

  “Probably not. But it’s worth a try.”

  From the Protestant temple in Vialas, André knew a teacher named Leo Rousson. Having seen him talking privately with the pastor, André was convinced he was part of the Resistance. Via nods and winks the postman had suggested Leo sometimes went to Vichy on “business.” So André went to Vialas to ask Pastor Burnard whether Leo could be trusted to go on a mission for the family.

  The pastor was impressed by André’s choice and arranged for Leo to meet him at the Brignands’ café. There André handed Leo a dozen of Jack Freedman’s diamonds—part as payment, the rest to convince the Americans the Sauverins were solvent.

  One week later André and Leo Rousson met again at the Brignands’ café. But Leo’s effort had failed. Approaching the American embassy in Vichy he had spotted a collaborateur from Vialas so had walked around the block and gone to lunch in a café. Each time he returned the collaborator was there. Leo hadn’t dared enter the embassy.

  Expressing his regret and sorrow, he returned all of the Sauverin diamonds. “Never before have I had so much value in my pocket. And never again, I know.”

  On the beautiful sunlit first Monday of September 1942, Pastor Robert Burnard walked the winding road between Vialas and Soleyrols, a newspaper tucked under his arm, his dark clouds of thought a confused and sorrowful contrast with the clarity of the sky. He had spent the previous afternoon at a conclave of Protestant pastors of the Cévennes gathered in the hamlet of Mialet to discuss what to do about the “final solution.” Recently the Grand Rabbi of France had sent a letter to Cardinal Pierre-Marie
Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon, informing him that Jews weren’t sent from France to Germany to work. They were sent to be exterminated.

  The pastors knew they had to do everything in their power to save their local refugees.

  André apologized to Pastor Burnard for himself and Alex being so sweaty and dirt-smeared. They had just come from working the upper field, slicing through row after row of hay with great, wide swings of their scythes. The hay would be left to dry in the sun for two days then turned, gathered into piles, and brought down to the barn for storage.

  “I never knew how many muscles I had,” André stated uncomplainingly.

  Skipping past pleasantries, the pastor unfolded his newspaper and handed it to André, who adjusted his glasses and set his beret more evenly on his head before starting to read.

  “Another new law has been passed,” Pastor Burnard said, not waiting for André to finish, “allowing the Vichy government to conscript specialists and send them to Germany. All French men are required to register.”

  “We’ve already heard about this,” Alex groused.

  The pastor shook his head. “I suppose you have also heard about the roundups.”

  “Yes,” André said gravely, adding hoarsely, “I can’t believe I had Cristian circumcised.”

  “You need to know,” the pastor said softly, “that many of our young men are leaving their homes and going into the mountains.”

  “Yes, like…”

  Alex made a quick gesture cutting André off. Best not to name names. But the Sauverins knew from the young man’s sister that Max Maurel had left Alès for a mountain redoubt.

  “You know these young men?” Alex asked.

  “Some of them have come to me,” Robert Burnard replied evenly, “seeking advice. Should they obey the law and sign up with the gendarmes? I suggest that they consider their actions carefully.”

  “That’s very noncommittal of you.”

  “I choose my words carefully,” Pastor Burnard allowed, “but my message gets across.” Averting his eyes, he continued quietly, “I believe the danger to you is growing. The gendarmes know you are here and it appears that government agents in Vichy will soon attempt to rid themselves of all refugees, particularly Jews—practicing and nonpracticing alike.”