In This Hospitable Land

by Jr. Lynmar Brock

  Sweetened only by a few precious granules of rationed sugar, the coffee was ersatz. Fortunately for these old-timers the marc was still real.

  The men were real too—real men—but the Germans and the French authorities who served the Germans neither understood nor appreciated their value. To the Gestapo these men were too old to work—worthless but harmless. Yet the foolish Fascists could not have been more wrong. These old men were more robust than most men half their age, their bodies having been strengthened by long years of strenuous farming which they continued to this day. And despite their indulgence in marc their minds were clear. They were cunning, alert, and thoroughly aware of everything going on around them and—insofar as possible given their remote location—in the outside world too.

  Word of the latest events had reached them as it always did. No one could explain how news passed from one to another for nobody could ever be seen or heard talking about the Resistance, the Maquisards, or the present movements of the police and the Milice. Yet all the old men knew what they needed to.

  Which was why they listened so attentively that morning. From afar they heard the coughing motor of a small van winding around the curves the road cut into the side of the mountain. The sound got louder and then softer, muted by the shoulder of the mountainside, and then it gradually got louder again until the van they all expected rolled slowly into view, stopping in front of the café.

  Two men climbed out and entered wearing the blue uniform of French gendarmes. Everyone eyed them warily, measuring their every move. But Albertine remained unperturbed.

  “Good morning,” the older of the two said immediately.

  “Good morning,” Madame Brignand replied, ready to begin an elaborate charade. She recognized the policemen as Officer Pellet and Brigadier Salager. She knew from Pastor Donadille that they were the ones who had warned of the danger to the Sauverin men and they had probably sent word about the women too. But she would pretend she knew nothing of them. It was important not to give the game away so the game could continue.

  “Coffee?” she asked Pellet.

  “If you please.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not very good,” she said, drawing it. “There’s a war on you know.”

  No one laughed or cracked a smile. A couple of old-timers rose without a word and shuffled to the back, leaving a table open for the police. But none of the regulars was about to leave. The appearance of these gendarmes was a momentous event in Soleyrols. Everyone wanted to see what would happen.

  The gendarmes took the seats politely vacated for them. Albertine brought over small white cups of coffee. Brigadier Salager took the first sip.

  “Very good,” he said without irony or flattery. “Better than the stuff in my own house, which we only drink Sundays because bad as it is that’s all we can afford.”

  Officer Pellet sipped his coffee too but instead of commenting on it asked Albertine, “Can you please tell us if and how we might drive our van up to the farm known as La Font?”

  Albertine’s customers glanced at each other knowingly but the policemen’s eyes remained focused on her.

  “Turn off the road just up here,” she said, pointing, “then take the first gravel track off to the right. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, especially at this hour when it’s slick from melted frost.”

  “I suppose we must risk it,” Pellet told Salager, finishing his coffee with a smack of his lips. “Duty is duty.”

  “The bill please,” the brigadier requested, slipping into patois—thereby tipping his hand to the regulars. “A cold morning,” he said as Albertine handed him l’addition on a little tray. “But no snow. Which is good. Our van’s tires are too smooth to hold a snowy road.”

  The officer placed a few coins into the tray but neither he nor the brigadier made any effort to go.

  “We have orders to bring in the Sauverin family,” the brigadier said heavily and softly enough to simulate confidentiality. No one else talked or missed a single word.

  “Do you know them?” the officer asked.

  “Everyone knows everyone else in Soleyrols, Monsieur,” Albertine allowed.

  “Are they up there?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Maybe we could have a little glass of brandy?” Pellet asked his superior. “To protect us against the cold.”

  The brigadier nodded.

  “Right away,” Albertine said smiling.

  She brought the gendarmes their marc. All eyes were trained on them as they lifted and slowly drained their glasses in one fluid motion. Salager shook his head a little as the warm sharp spice of the local brandy coursed down his throat. Then he licked his lips as if to capture the smallest drop that might have attempted escape and finished by smoothing down his well-trimmed handlebar moustache with his fingertips. Meanwhile the younger officer put a little more money into the tray to cover this extra fortification.

  “Now we must be off,” the brigadier announced easily as he stood, straightened his belt, and pulled his greatcoat tightly about him. “Madame,” he said to Albertine, bowing formally.

  When the officer and the brigadier stepped back outside, the inhabitants of the café listened attentively as the van stuttered back to life and shuddered off. When it had achieved a safe distance, the café came alive with chatter and laughter.

  “What was that all about?”

  “They certainly took their time.”

  “I think they know more than they let on.”

  “Madame Brignand, what do you think?”

  Albertine said nothing, but she couldn’t keep a sweet, pleased smile from pulling up the corners of her mouth. She hummed quietly to herself as she washed out the grounds that had settled and dried hard in the bottoms of otherwise empty coffee cups.

  The old men lingered, anxious to learn what would happen next. But as the minutes ticked by, habit reasserted itself, and the hardworking men of Soleyrols gradually left the café to resume the familiar routines that filled their every working day.

  Forty-five minutes later Albertine heard the van roll back down the road. The brigadier opened the café door and she stepped over to him since he seemed reluctant to cross the threshold.

  “Madame, there were only a couple of Spaniards there and we weren’t sent for them.” The brigadier sounded relieved but Albertine knew he would never admit it. “I still need to make a report.” He pulled a small notepad and a special pencil out of his coat. “Do you know where the Sauverins are?”

  Albertine shrugged her shoulders. That was all the answer she was willing to give and it was all the answer the brigadier needed or expected.

  “Well then,” he said making note of it, “another family has disappeared.” He sighed so ostentatiously Albertine felt certain it was intended for show—in case some other official came by to inquire into the tenor of the brigadier’s investigation.

  Salager gave Albertine a little salute and turned to go. As the van shifted into gear again, Albertine looked out the window and watched it putter off. She could have sworn the brigadier allowed her to see the hint of a grin.

  The following morning the café was as busy as ever with the same old men in their accustomed seats. But this morning the conversation was much livelier than usual.

  “I hear the Sauverin women’s RAF fighter pilot brother came in the middle of the night and flew them away.”

  “I heard a racket that disturbed my sleep some nights back.”

  “I bet he put the plane down in the valley to pick up their husbands too.”

  “Those Brits are very clever.”

  “Surely they’re all safely in London now.”

  Albertine listened with enormous satisfaction. She knew better than to believe what she heard—and she knew that her customers knew better too. They were very very clever—more clever than they suggested the British must be—because they had a tremendous talent for generating and spreading useful rumors. Far better that the authorities in Mende believe the Sauverins were living
in England than to suspect them of hiding out in the nearby mountains—like Roux the Bandit.

  Denise awoke unknowable hours later still terribly tired but unable to get back to sleep. She dressed again, threw on her coat, and slipped back down the stairs.

  “Sleep well?” Georgette asked much too energetically.

  “I suppose. I hardly remember lying down.”

  “You had a long day and there’s another ahead as always.”

  Georgette brought out coarse mountain bread, a little butter, a pot of honey, and a cup of coffee for her guest and spoke of awaking early despite going to bed so late because the work of the farm had to go on. Simone had also gotten up early for school.

  Brushing aside ash to start up the morning fire, the mistress of the house chattered about bleating goats and chickens that spent their days scratching around the outbuildings for grubs and bugs and the remnants of dry brown grasses revealed beneath the recently melted snow.

  “What happens next?” Denise asked in a subdued tone. “Do we stay here? Do we go?”

  “You stay here for now,” Georgette said in a sympathetic hush, “till someone tells us otherwise or you can’t stand me and Simone one minute more.”

  “I’m sure that won’t happen.” Still not eating, Denise walked to the fire to stop herself from shivering. “So my sister and I won’t be able to get back together?”

  “Not immediately, no.”

  Denise took her hands out of her coat pockets and extended her cold fingers toward the fire. “Will our husbands know we have left La Font for Villaret?”

  “I’m sure they’ll be told something.” Georgette stepped over to Denise and put her arms around her. “It will all be all right. You’ll see.”

  “I just keep thinking how fortunate Albertine is to have her husband with her.”

  “And our other brother’s still around too,” Georgette said, lighting up. “Émile.”

  “Brother? Isn’t your last name ‘Guibal’?”

  “Married name, yes. But I was born a Brignand.”

  Just then Ida inched down the steps trailed by Christel. Both rubbed their eyes.

  “Maman,” Christel said proudly and sheepishly at once. “I have to go pee-pee.”

  “Here,” Georgette said reaching into a small side room and bringing out a glazed clay object. “Use the chamber pot.”

  Ida looked scandalized, Christel simply horrified.

  “But Maman,” Christel complained, “can’t we go outside?”

  “Not unless Georgette says so,” Denise replied. “You know we have to be much more careful now than ever before.”

  Reluctantly but bravely, Ida and Christel trooped into the side room to take their turns using the new facilities. Meanwhile Denise went to get Cristian as Georgette started warming the bajana, adding a few new ingredients to the pot that was always available in the fireplace.

  Ida returned from the side room first. “Can we go out to play?”

  Denise looked to Georgette who shook her head no, reminding Denise of the warning she had issued the previous night.

  “But Maman,” Christel whined as she also returned, “we went potty like good girls!”

  Denise looked at her daughters helplessly. She had run out of ways to explain.

  Georgette swung the great pot out on its crane and gave the soup a stir. With infinite patience and concern she explained again about going outside only at night and never being seen at the windows. Then she served out the soup.

  That evening after the children were once more in bed, the sun quickly set across the range of mountaintops to the west and the deep gray shadows of night surrounded the ancient stone buildings of Villaret. Georgette led Denise out of the house at last, and in the pale light of stars shining through a haze of clouds Denise could just make out the little passageways between the several houses and the many small barns and outbuildings. The two women stood quietly, hidden in the lee formed between the corner of the house and the adjoining barn, listening to the Guibals’ livestock bedded down beneath their two-story stone house just as the Sauverins’ animals had been at the much-larger La Font. Creatures of the night crept out of their daylight hiding places, scurrying here and there in search of life—another’s for their own. This led Denise to dark thoughts of human hunters.

  “It’s all right though,” Georgette said, as if she had read Denise’s mind. “They can’t see us from the mines when it’s dark like this. Besides,” she added with a confidence born of long years in the hamlet, “I can hear anyone coming from across the way. We’re safe here for the moment.”

  Denise stood silently in the dark corner, sheltered from the wind but keeping her coat buttoned up against the cold.

  “I’ll go back in now,” Georgette said thoughtfully, appreciating the delicacy of the moment. “You stay out as long as you like.”

  Denise stared up into the dark, searching for the invisible moon. She tried to count her blessings. Though it was terribly sad she wouldn’t be able to be with Philippe when he turned four, she was glad at least some of the family had had a chance to celebrate his birthday together.

  Le Tronc is hard, Alex reflected, forking manure out of the lower level of the barn he and his brother lived in—less comfortable and more monotonous than La Font. But he preferred sleeping in a barn and working outdoors to confinement in a prison camp.

  The stone barn would have been too cold if not for the built-in fireplace that due to the stone could be used without fear of conflagration if one made sure every last wisp of hay was far enough away to prevent stray sparks and cinders from igniting it. With the fire bright and the Guins’ limited livestock gathered in the nearest stall, the smallish barn was fairly warm.

  There were a couple of chairs and a rough table but no beds. The brothers slept on piles of hay they regularly reformed into usable shapes which weren’t as comfortable as La Font’s uncomfortable beds but were better than the hard barn floor or the unheated ground outside.

  The Guins were almost the only people Alex and André saw. Food was in very short supply and basic—simple and none too tasty despite Madame Guin’s best efforts.

  As for the brothers’ work—gathering firewood, feeding sheep and goats, shoveling manure—Alex preferred it to doing nothing or moping about the Brignand house in Le Massufret. In the cold air of early spring, he, like André and Léon, wore heavy wool pants, a white cotton shirt grown faintly brown from dust and dirt that refused to come out despite repeated washings, and a wool suit coat, its three tightly sewn buttons buttoned in hopes of preserving as much body heat as possible. Not that forking mounds of manure over a stone wall didn’t make Alex sweat.

  “Amazing,” Alex muttered to André laboring beside him, “how so few creatures can produce so much stuff. We’ve been pitching it for days.”

  “I don’t think Léon has ever cleaned out this barn,” André said.

  Surveying the dark mass of animal defecation, Alex shook his head. “Now I know why he wanted helping hands.”

  “I don’t have much,” was Léon’s favorite phrase. “Just my animals and my land. At least the authorities are far away—though they’re never far enough away.” Whenever he spoke of “the authorities,” Léon coughed and spat derisively. But he always followed this display of disgust by growling pleasurably, with a twinkle in his eye, “Of course I have Yvonne.”

  Very much her husband’s opposite, Madame Guin was always smiling, helpful, and supportive. She could ameliorate Léon’s nastiest moods, and she sent him out to the brothers every few hours with warming mugs of some mixture of beans, tea, and goat’s milk she contrived in her kitchen.

  “Here,” Léon said each time, thrusting steaming mugs into the brothers’ hands. “This will help. Though it’s not like Brussels, eh?”

  Alex had been drinking ersatz concoctions so long he had almost forgotten the taste of real dark-roast coffee. Every now and again he could trick himself into believing charred beans of undistinguished mixed pedig
ree supplied a hint of civilized satisfaction.

  In late March—three weeks after Émile Brignand had dropped off the Sauverin brothers at Le Tronc—Alex took a brief break from his dung-removal efforts. Wiping away the sweat beneath his beret, he looked out over the valley stretching far away below to the slope of the mountains rising up on all sides. From here he could see a great distance, making it difficult for anyone to approach unnoticed during the day. So when he saw Pastor Donadille bicycling down the path to the Guins’ isolated farm, he and André raced to the Guins’ door to greet him.

  “Marc Donadille, what brings you here?” Léon demanded, stepping out of his house.

  Panting, the pastor said, “I want to let the brothers know about their families.”

  “Are they okay?” André asked anxiously over the pastor’s gasping.

  “Yes yes,” Pastor Donadille answered weakly, “but they had to leave La Font.”

  “When?” Alex felt his heart thump against his rib cage and pound in his ears.

  “Last week. The police were coming for them as they had come for you.”

  “Where are they now?” André asked.

  “Madame Denise and your three aren’t far. They’re staying with the Guibals—a good woman and her daughter—in Villaret, a hamlet rather like this. Off the main road.”

  “The Milice don’t like to get off the main roads,” Léon spat, “and the Gestapo like it even less. We make it dangerous for those cowards.”

  “Where is my family?” Alex demanded. “Why aren’t they all together?”

  The pastor put his hand over his heart as if to apologize.

  “No room at the inn,” Léon chortled.

  “Or in Villaret,” the pastor explained. “Seven Sauverins in one tiny hamlet would have made for too much activity and visibility.”

  “So where are they?” Alex insisted.

  “Two places,” Donadille revealed regretfully. “Madame Geneviève and your daughter are in the next valley over, in L’Herm, also with a nice family, that of Pierre Guin.”