In This Hospitable Land

by Jr. Lynmar Brock

  “Thank you for coming, Pastor,” Denise said. “We were hoping not to be forgotten.”

  The pastor looked perplexed, so André explained, “We knew it would come to this. We just didn’t know when.”

  Alex declared angrily, “But it was clear what would follow after Vichy recruited thirty thousand toughs into their mini-SS.”

  “And even clearer earlier this month,” André added, “when the government established Le Service du Travail Obligatoire. Once they were forced to call up whole age-groups of native-born citizens for obligatory work in Germany, how long could it be before they finally came for us?”

  “How did you learn about tomorrow?” André asked the reverend.

  “Let me just say ‘friends,’” Marc Donadille offered reluctantly. “I would prefer not to be so mysterious but it’s better this way. You understand: too much knowledge is dangerous. One must guard against such information falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Bastards,” Alex snorted. “Traitors.”

  Pastor Donadille shook his head. “It’s a sad day when the French throw in with the Germans. Have we learned nothing from so many wars, so much bloodshed, so many lives lost?”

  “What happens now?” Denise asked, trembling.

  Rounding on the brothers again, the pastor explained, “I will escort you to others. They will take you to safety some little distance from here. But hurry. We have no more time to lose.”

  “What about our family?” André begged. “Will they be safe too?”

  “The Resistance will see to them,” the pastor replied. “Don’t you have reason to believe? Because of someone else you know?” He looked deeply, knowingly, into André’s eyes.

  “Perhaps,” André said vaguely.

  “Then let us begin our journey.”

  Denise clasped her husband. “It’s cruel and unjust,” she said sorrowfully. Then she released him.

  “Just one more minute,” André said to the pastor. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small velvet pouch, and handed it to Denise. “The diamonds,” he told her. “You know where to go and who will help if you need to sell them.”

  Alex went to the mantel above the fireplace and returned with a thick leather notebook he gave to Geneviève. “Our livestock records and the plan for the garden that has worked so well. If you’re still here when spring comes, just follow this schedule of plantings.”

  Geneviève listlessly turned the pages. “So meticulous,” she said, her voice husky with unshed tears. “February twenty-first. You made your last entry today.”

  “Ready?” Pastor Donadille prodded gently.

  “Just let me kiss the girls,” André pleaded.

  “Don’t wake them,” Denise counseled. “We’ll give your love to them and Rose.”

  “Come quickly,” the pastor urged, looking at the clock showing close to midnight. In an instant they were gone, as Marc Donadille led André and Alex out the door into thick snow. The night was still and cold. The sky was filled with a multitude of stars but only a thin sliver of moon.

  “Can you see well enough?” the pastor whispered to the brothers.

  “Just,” André responded for both.

  “Best make do,” the pastor insisted. “Who knows who might be up even at this hour?”

  Lapsing into silence, they picked up speed going downhill.

  “Careful not to dislodge any rocks,” the pastor cautioned. “Make no unnecessary noise.”

  They reached the darkened café at the base of the hill, turned west, and went on. After leaving the main road, André wasn’t certain where they were. But the night was intensely beautiful. He could just discern the peaks of the nearby mountains standing out against the sharp night sky. Little villages and small clusters of houses half-hidden in the gloom loomed, sheltered by trees nestled along the mountainsides.

  No lights could be seen. Only the occasional bark of a dog disturbed the tranquility.

  “You’re sure of the way?” Alex asked the pastor anxiously. “This path is safe?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Monsieur,” Pastor Donadille said gravely. “Men have died of the cold in these mountains, falling and freezing in the snow. So watch your step.”

  They tramped uphill and down, around bend after bend. Despite Pastor Donadille’s familiarity with the terrain, his ability to find his way surely on a lightless night was remarkable.

  The three approached yet another road. The pastor stopped short and softly whistled a strange distinctive series of notes like the call of an exceptionally musical bird. All listened intently. Another low whistle sounded the same notes as the pastor’s.

  He led them forward again slowly. André could just make out a shadow breaking away from some deeper dark, shifting direction and growing larger as it neared.

  “Donadille?” the shadow called softly.

  The pastor motioned the shadow forward. It assumed the silhouette of a man.

  “Christophe Brett,” Donadille intoned, “I leave these brothers in your capable hands.”

  “I will do all I can for them,” Christophe promised. “You take care.”

  The pastor shook hands all around then drew away into the night.

  “Come,” the new guide said, motioning and leading the Sauverins across the road.

  “Where are we going?” Alex asked once the new guide had gotten them onto a wooded path.

  Christophe Brett made no reply so André said quietly, “I’m sure we’ll be there soon.”

  “How far must we travel?” Alex persisted. “I don’t like being kept in the dark.”

  Not catching the joke, Christophe said somberly, “Those who will hide you live about three kilometers from Soleyrols. But it’s down then up so it takes longer than it should.”

  They walked on quickly but slowed when the way fell into the deep shadow of trees. Water could be heard streaming down the mountainside into the broad valley they traversed, helping to direct Christophe. Far away another mountain could barely be discerned.

  They came to an old mill perched on the side of a dam long since breached. The spillway was empty now and water the dam could no longer contain rushed by some feet below.

  The brothers followed Christophe across the mill’s threshold. What once had been a door had crumbled against the stone wall inside years or even decades before.

  “What now?” Alex demanded.

  “We wait,” Christophe answered serenely. “Someone will come for you soon.”

  Only a few of the roof beams were still intact. The small building itself was solid stone. Some fallen timber gave the men a place to sit. Christophe took off his knapsack and tossed it into a corner. André and Alex set down their duffel bags.

  “It’s safer to talk here than outside,” Christophe told the brothers.

  He was very young, fresh out of the lycée. Roughly the same middling height and build as the Sauverins and fairly good-looking, Christophe had light brown hair and pale blue eyes, his angular face dominated by a prominent, whisker-free chin. His movements were notably quick.

  André asked, “Why would you risk your life to help strangers like us?”

  “I am Cévenol,” Christophe responded in a voice rich with sympathy. “My family lives here. My ancestors are buried here. We have always been a strong people who value independence of thought, conscience, and action and who cherish freedom—not just from ignorance and harassment but from laws that protect the few and degrade the many.” Christophe spoke more and more quickly, his voice rising in pitch but not volume. “Now the Germans have come and our cowardly French authorities and police have sold out our heritage, pride, and very name. But I am not one of them and neither are most of us in the Lozère. So I resist, working with others of like mind. I know how to write and I’m good with figures, when I dress like a shopkeeper I can blend in, and I have legs strong enough for the longest walks, so I serve as a courier for the pastors and the growing Resistance. But it is dangerous. Too many cooperate with the
Germans hoping to get into their good graces. One needs to be careful.”

  “More careful than that,” a deep voice sounded unexpectedly from the doorway, startling Christophe and the Sauverins. Then the large shadowed man chuckled warmly and Christophe relaxed visibly. Something about this fellow seemed eerily familiar but the Sauverins couldn’t place him. “Remember, my young friend,” the big man continued, “for now they have the upper hand so we must be stealthy and cagey—do all we can but hold our tongues and wait patiently.”

  “For what?” Christophe asked.

  “Opportunities. Organization. Direction. Right now we’re too fragmented, too weak to take action. We’re lucky we can do as much as we already do: protect people.”

  “Like us?” André said.

  “Like you,” the other agreed. “By the by, I’m Émile Brignand.” He laughed his deep warm laugh. “Don’t look so surprised. My brother and I look alike but not as alike as you two!” Émile squatted down beside them. “I’m here to take you the rest of the way. But don’t thank me. I’m glad to help but I’m more glad to do something against the Germans.” He stood again. “We should go before it gets too light.”

  Striding to the door he glanced about then motioned all to follow. At the threshold the brothers looked at Christophe and tapped their berets as they would have tipped their hats in Brussels. Then they followed Émile one way as Christophe went the other.

  They leapt rocks to cross the stream. Émile led them through a grove of chestnut trees interspersed with oak, poplar, and ash which formed a leafy canopy over sparse underbrush.

  Climbing upward on paths lined with ancient stone walls, they finally came to an opening on a level plain. As the sky lightened with the approach of dawn, they saw the gray shapes of stone houses crowded close together along a path wide enough for an ox cart.

  “Here,” Émile whispered gently, lifting the door latch of one of the larger houses, next to a barn. The three slipped inside almost silently.

  “There,” Émile said. “We’re home.”

  Standing awkwardly, Alex muttered, “Thanks.”

  André quickly added, “We will never be able to express our appreciation adequately.”

  Émile waved off their words in embarrassment.

  “I don’t want to light a lamp yet,” he told them gruffly, covering his emotion. “Someone might see and it wouldn’t do for anyone to suspect I’ve changed my routine.”

  Émile hovered over the broad, deep fireplace of the house he shared with his mother. The fire had been banked to smolder overnight but Émile wielded a poker, disturbing ashes and exposing a soft red glow. He fed in a few small sticks and as tongues of flame licked them added some larger chunks of wood. Shortly warmth crept out, taking the edge off the profound cold.

  Outside a dog began barking. Then the rooster started in, waking the hens and some fifteen residents of a settlement too small to call itself a village.

  The sun began rising behind the mountains, casting long shadows onto the clustered houses of the farmers of this difficult but much-loved land. How beautiful it was: the trees close together on the sheltering hillside, the gently sloping fields, the careful stonework of the old masons who had deployed their skills as no contemporary could match. Émile wondered whether the Sauverins would cherish the way those men had worked the rock into homes that would last for generations—how though driven by hard necessity they had been proud enough to take the time to create lovely arches over doors and passageways. Would these city-bred brothers even notice the painstaking care taken in carving the moldings around windows and doors?

  Smoke rose through the tall chimney to the open sky. Even in this remote habitation people felt compelled to shut their doors at night against the threat of the hated German interlopers and their French lackeys. Still, Émile believed this place was secure for the moment.

  In this hamlet everyone knew everyone else as their parents and grandparents had and on and on. Émile believed each of them felt the same troubled way about the latest in the region’s long line of oppressors. Nevertheless the history and hard experiences of the Cévenols had bred a preternatural caution into him. He knew nothing could be taken for granted.

  Having dozed uneasily for a few short hours on a wooden bench and three rush-seated chairs pushed together, Émile’s guests blinked, rubbed their eyes, and looked confused.

  “It’s okay,” Émile called out. “Coffee’s on its way.”

  “Where are we?” André asked sleepily.

  “Le Massufret,” Émile replied, reaching past pots, crocks, and trivets hooked over the fireplace to the coffeepot held above the flames by a crane. “Too small to find on a map. With luck too small to find at all.” He poured the brew into tin cups that grew hot instantly but the handles were cool enough to hold. “It’s not much,” he admitted, offering the cups to the brothers, “and not real, but better than nothing.”

  André shook himself, stretched, and stood up to take his cup. Alex remained motionless.

  “I can’t stop thinking about our family,” the younger brother said anxiously.

  “We can’t control the situation.” André sounded stiffly professorial. “Their safety, like ours, now rests in the hands of others.”

  Émile held out the second cup again. Alex accepted it wordlessly.

  “I’ll be just a minute,” Émile said flatly, stepping over to the front door to give the brothers a minute to themselves and to take a precautionary look outside.

  He pulled the solid wooden door to and was immediately revived after his own sleepless night by the fresh mountain air. Le Massufret appeared peaceful. He didn’t see a single soul until the door to the next house opened and Pasqual Platon emerged.

  “Morning,” Pasqual called cheerfully, heading straight Émile’s way.

  “G’day,” Émile offered—his standard reply.

  Pasqual was small but strongly built. His shirt and brown sweater with holes at the elbows were a too-tight fit. Like Émile, Pasqual wore the blue cotton pants common to the region—comfortable, easy to wash, and not very costly.

  “So?” Pasqual asked.

  “Yes,” Émile responded.

  “Where?”

  “In there.”

  Émile returned to the dark interior. Pasqual followed in his wake and welcomed the Sauverins, smiling enthusiastically, taking each one’s hand in turn and giving it a short hard shake.

  “Friend?” André asked Émile, puzzled and slightly unnerved.

  “Brother-in-law.”

  “Good,” Alex said relaxing his tensed shoulders. “Family.”

  “So you know about us too,” André said to Pasqual.

  “We all do in Le Massufret,” Pasqual explained. “Which I assure you is okay. You can trust us. As for the other little villages hereabouts—well, most are like us. Some are a little strange and may have funny ideas.” He began muttering in a Cévenol accent so thick the Sauverins couldn’t understand much but could make out “Fascists” and “bastards.”

  “You must be hungry,” Émile told the brothers, changing the subject.

  “I’m too nervous to be hungry,” Alex complained.

  “It’s fine to be nervous or hungry but not at the same time, eh?” Pasqual joked.

  “You still have to eat,” Émile insisted, glaring at his brother-in-law.

  Going over to the cupboard he brought out a round loaf of crusty bread blackened by baking in the beehive oven at the back of the fireplace. Then the bedroom door flew open.

  “You’re making an awful noise for men who are supposed to be secretive.”

  The rotund, wizened woman, white hair tied loosely into a bun at the back of her loose-fleshed neck, shuffled forth with a broad smile of welcome.

  “Mother,” Émile said. “Did we wake you?”

  “I’ve been up for hours,” she said. “You know I never sleep much anymore.”

  Émile presented Lucille Brignand, who said with satisfaction, “So these are th
e famous Sauverin brothers.” Wearing a faded blue dress and a lighter blue-checked apron securely fastened around her ample waist, she was pale and wrinkled but her fine brown eyes were clear and bright. “So what do you think of my boy?” she asked, reaching a hand to tousle Émile’s thinning black hair. “I keep telling him to do something about this mop. It’s ridiculous, no?—growing out like a great big bush at the sides and the back. No wonder he’s never found a woman.” She gave a little laugh to show she didn’t mean it. “But I love the blue of his eyes, don’t you?—even if those brows are too bushy. He’s got good color too—ruddy from long hours in the sun and from the wind that always blows down into this valley. Here,” she said, taking the loaf out of her son’s hands, which seemed too large for the rest of him and were spoiled by dirty uneven fingernails. “All of you sit,” Lucille commanded, motioning to the single large table. “You can stay too,” she told sheepish-looking Pasqual. Then she shot him a sharp look. “Unless you have something better to do.”

  “I’d better get back to my wife,” he said meekly.

  “My daughter, you mean.”

  “I’m sure she’s got breakfast ready now,” Pasqual said, backing out the door.

  Émile’s mother cut the bread into large slices then fetched a crock of butter from the small room off the kitchen and returned to spread a small amount onto each slice. She also brought back a jar of blackberry preserves, with which she was more generous. Not bothering with plates she just handed out the slices.

  Émile tore off a piece and dipped it into his coffee. Lucille stoked the fire muttering, “You’d think a grown man would know how to get more warmth into this place.”

  After some minutes André asked quietly, “Now what do we do?”

  Émile shrugged. “Stay here for a bit. Then we’ll take you someplace safer.”

  “Believe it,” Lucille said, patting Émile’s head. “Such a good boy.”

  “I just can’t get to sleep.” Denise returned to the kitchen drawing a blanket around her shoulders.

  Geneviève, staring blankly, gathered her shawl about her. The stove was already cold though embers glowed softly under ash in one corner of the firebox.