Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  The last thing that went through my mind before I drifted off, just before the sun came up, was, You’re not leaving me anywhere.

  SEVEN

  When I woke, I thought: I am not alone. Someone is watching me.

  Suddenly, I knew where that feeling of being watched was coming from. I opened my eyes and looked down as if I were looking at my feet, only I wasn’t looking at my feet—I was looking past them at a grove of trees. The trunks were all lined up, and with them, just like trunks, were two dark trousered legs. I inched my gaze up the legs till I saw that they belonged to a man.

  This man was not Perry O’Connell or any of the others. This was a man who was standing as still as I was lying, and he was looking right at me.

  Before I could scream or pull myself up to run away, he took five long strides in my direction, till he was standing over me, blocking out the sun. He said, “Vous êtes allemand?” You are German? I blinked up at him. With the light behind him, he was just a giant shadow, tall and dark as a monster. He was carrying something, an axe. “Vous êtes boche?” He shouted it.

  I told myself to be calm, to not give myself away, because people, like animals, could smell fear. I stammered, “Je ne parle pas français.”

  He leaned over me then and I thought, To hell with being calm. I raised up my foot and kicked him as hard as I could, aiming for the spleen. I’d learned self-defense in my WASP training, even though I’d never had to use it. He staggered backward, and I started to run. Suddenly I heard a stream of French, and Gravois pushed me behind him so I went flying into the captain, who caught me and then stepped in front of me like a shield. Gravois and the stranger went at it, back and forth in rapid French, until I was waiting for the stranger to chop him down with his axe just to get him to be quiet. Then Gravois turned to us and said, “He will take me to a house near here.”

  Captain O’Connell said, “I’m leader of this team.” The other men stood around in a half circle. A knife glinted on Ray’s belt, and his hand rested near the handle, as if he were ready to grab it at any minute, even though he looked like he could kill a man bare-handed. In the daylight, these men looked fierce—like warriors—and I wondered what kind of mission they were on.

  Gravois said, “My French is better.” He looked at the captain without blinking, and I wondered who was really in charge here.

  Captain O’Connell said, “We’ll both go.”

  Coleman said, “They might be Milice.”

  I said, “What’s Milice?”

  Barzetti said, “Goddamn cowards.”

  Coleman polished his glasses with a small green cloth. He said, his voice quiet, “Soldiers and farmers and shopkeepers and convicted criminals, all working for the Germans against their own people. They are the worst kind of traitor.”

  Gravois said, “We are going to have to take a chance. We need a radio and supplies. We don’t know where we are, but we need to find out. If anything happens, take the girl and get out of here.” And then he and the captain followed the stranger out of the woods without waiting for anyone to say another word.

  The men gathered up the few things we had and then we sat or stood, waiting. I looked at the faces of the men I was left with and thought, Not a one of them wants me here.

  Coleman sat off by himself, resting against a tree trunk, eyes closed. His spectacles were pushed up onto his head. He had the narrow, shrewish look of a bookkeeper, but I knew sometimes this was the most dangerous type of man. Ray sat still as could be, and I thought if he were a dog his ears would be tilting in the direction of every noise. Except for the scars and the weather-beaten skin, worn as an old glove, he would have been almost handsome. Five minutes later, he got up and walked off without saying a word. I watched as he went creeping into the trees, and I thought that as good as Johnny Clay and I were at sneaking about, I’d never seen someone walk so soundlessly.

  I turned to Barzetti then, who scared me most of all because I’d known men like him back home. They were the men you never could predict, except that they were always the first to start a fight and the first to end it. He was studying me, just like I’d seen a cat study a fox or a squirrel, something it was hunting. He said, “You kicked that guy right in the spleen.”

  I said, “Yes, sir.”

  “You were aiming for it.”

  “That’s right.”

  He didn’t say anything, just kept studying me.

  I said, “How did he get the scars on his face?”

  “Ray?”

  I nodded. I thought: If you try to kill me, I’ll fight you back.

  He said, “Prisoner of war. Depending on who you ask, he was captured two, maybe four times. Maybe more. Prison camps, a German death camp. He escaped each time. When they were forming these teams, they went after him. I mean, the guy’s a fucking bulldozer. Strong as a tiger, able to outmaneuver whole German platoons.”

  “Did you train at Camp Toccoa?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “How do you know about Toccoa?”

  “My brother’s a paratrooper. He was at Toccoa and then at Camp Mackall in North Carolina.”

  Coleman opened his eyes, small and squinty and deep set, and looked at me. After a moment, he closed them again.

  Barzetti said, “I was at Camp Tombs and Camp Mackall too.”

  My skin went prickly. “Then you must know him. Technical Sergeant Johnny Clay Hart.”

  Barzetti took his time answering, making me wait. He said, “There were a lot of fellas at Camp Tombs. You really only knew the ones in your platoon.”

  Something rustled in the brush and I almost grabbed his arm, but stopped myself before I touched him. Barzetti’s hand flew to his gun. He hissed, “Stay here.”

  He slid into the trees, pistol out and ready, and I watched him as long as I could before the woods swallowed him whole.

  Barzetti’s rucksack was a few feet away. I glanced at Coleman, who sat, eyes closed, not doing a thing to protect either of us. I reached a hand for the bag, trying not to make a noise. I inched over to it, thinking I might find a gun or something to defend myself with. Inside there were eight books, all the same—Cipher Codes, they said on the cover. There was a box as big as a book that held batteries. There was some clothing, a few rations, and a canvas belt that had some U.S. dollars and something that must have been French money. ID papers with Barzetti’s picture, only the papers said his name was Claude Lessard. A .32-caliber pocket pistol, which I picked up and held by my side, just in case. The gun was cold in my hand. I didn’t know if it was loaded or not, but I was hoping that wouldn’t matter, that I could just point it at anyone who might come at me and scare them away.

  Each moment passed like a funeral, each minute taking longer than the next. Even though the pistol was light, my hand started to cramp and even shake a little. I counted each second as it went by, starting over with each new minute. I was up to six minutes when something cracked in the brush to my right. I decided to keep the gun at my side, to wait and see if I would need it at all. Two more minutes went by, and then I heard another cracking, followed by a rustling, and suddenly Barzetti came out of the trees, and, just after him, Ray, looking big as a giant, a rabbit dangling in one hand, his rifle in the other. There wasn’t a single drop of blood on the rabbit, but it was as dead as a Christmas goose.

  Barzetti said, “It’s just us, sister.” He saw the pistol at my side and said, “Did you go in my rucksack?”

  Coleman said, “Yes.” I looked at him and saw that he had drawn his gun too.

  Ray didn’t say a word through any of this. Instead he threw the rabbit onto the ground in front of me and took out a knife. Before I could look away, he began to skin it in long, sweeping strokes. The body was probably still warm. After a moment he looked up, his eyes cool—the darkest eyes I’d ever seen. He said, “Lunch.”

  An hour later, we heard a whistle, a bright little song. Barzetti whistled back and the captain and Gravois ducked toward us through the trees. They weren’t alone. A
figure came along behind them, slight and quick. It was a girl, not much older than me, and she was carrying a basket.

  The girl said, “Call me Delphine.”

  Delphine wore her hair short, just above her shoulders. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had the darkest lashes I’d ever seen, and a sprinkling of freckles—like stars—on her nose. She said, “Bonjour,” and then she started pulling things out of her basket: apple cider, bitter and strong, and chunks of bread covered with butter and cheese. We couldn’t risk making a fire, but Ray peeled long pieces of meat off the rabbit and offered them to us on the point of his knife. Everyone but Barzetti said no, and then he and Ray ate piece after piece until they’d finished the whole thing.

  I ate my bread and cheese, trying not to watch them. When Barzetti was done, he said, “You never know when you’ll eat again.” For some reason, he said this right at me.

  While we sat underneath the trees, Delphine told us she was a schoolteacher. She said, “The schools are closed right now, but because I am a teacher I can travel on my bicycle around Normandy. It seems, how do you say, natural.”

  At the word Normandy, my heart beat a little faster. Normandy was where Johnny Clay was supposed to have been dropped with the 101st Airborne. Just because he hadn’t dropped with his unit didn’t mean he wasn’t here and that he couldn’t have gotten here some other way.

  She said, “I carry messages from one Resistance group to the next, sometimes for a hundred miles or more. We are like a chain, linked from one city to another, one village to another, one forest to another. It is like a telephone line, passing information and sharing supplies and weapons, the things we need to fight.” She smiled, and I saw that she had a gap between her two front teeth. She said, “I hide the messages in my seat stem or in the handlebars of my bicycle.”

  I suddenly wished for a gap between my own front teeth. I thought: Who would I be if my old ancestor Nicholas Justice and his family hadn’t left France for Ireland way back when to escape the Huguenots? I might be sitting here in these very woods with these very people, only I would be the one serving up cider and bread, with a charming accent and freckles like stars.

  While Delphine talked, Gravois sat on his haunches, watching the woods. Perry handed him something—a patterned scarf, a brilliant blue—and Gravois smoothed it on the ground. It took me a minute to see that there was more to the pattern, that behind the little leaves and flowers was a map of France. He said, “We are here.” He pointed to a dot on the map, about twenty or so miles northwest of Lisieux: Beuvron-en-Auge. “Delphine tells us this area is crawling with enemy patrols.”

  Delphine said, “You must wait here until after dark. I will come back then and take you to the leaders of the Resistance.” As she said it, I glanced at Captain O’Connell and the other men, one by one, trying to see how they felt about this. What if she was planning to take us to the Germans instead?

  After Delphine had disappeared through the trees, I said to the men, “How do we know we can trust her?”

  Perry O’Connell said, “We don’t.” He folded up the scarf and stuffed it in his pocket. “But we need to trust someone, and we’re going to have to choose whether to trust the people we meet here or kill them.” I thought about the way Ray had killed the rabbit, the way he’d skinned it and eaten it raw. Something must have crossed over my face or behind my eyes because the captain said, “It’s wartime, love.” And he smiled, but it was a hollow smile, dimples and all. The way he said it carried the weight of the world, as if he’d suddenly aged fifteen years.

  EIGHT

  Delphine returned an hour after sunset. “Suivez-moi,” she said. Follow me. She led us out of the woods and along the dirt road, which wound through the countryside. The night was bright with stars, and the moon hung low in the sky. We went along like this for miles, until we came to a blanket of fog so thick you couldn’t see two feet in front of you. In a low voice, Delphine said, “Here is where the Orbiquet, Cirieux, and Graindain rivers meet, which is why there is always this fog.” The mist made her voice seem as if it were coming from as far away as England.

  We formed a chain, Delphine leading the way. I could hear the sound of running water, and suddenly we were in the middle of a village. It sat in darkness, not a single light or streetlamp to show that anyone had ever lived there. All at once, the fog cleared so that I could see half-timbered houses and storefronts, one blending into another, all attached, sitting around a market square. Behind me, Coleman said, “‘Germelshausen,’” and at first I thought this must be the name of the village, but then he began to sing a song, his voice as low as a brook, and it wasn’t any language I recognized.

  Finally, we turned off the road and cut through some trees, and there, standing on a little rise in the ground, was an ancient-looking farmhouse, two stories, partly made of stone and partly thatched, with a steep roof, like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Flower boxes lined the windows and flowers sprang up in beds on either side of the front door. The windows were dark, but Delphine pushed the door open and by the dim light of candles we could see a group of men sitting around a table. I counted twelve of them, and they were all ages—the youngest around fifteen, the oldest around sixty. They were dirty and bearded, and as Delphine closed the door behind us, every single one of them stopped talking and stared. I recognized the stranger with the axe, the one from the woods.

  Thick black curtains hung across the windows, pulled tight so that no light could get out or in. Delphine said, “I must go.” Then she said something in French to the men. She looked at me with her dark-lashed eyes, and said, “I wish you luck. Bonsoir.”

  As she left, one of the younger men stood and shook our hands. He said in English, “I am Marcel. We have been waiting. Come—sit, eat, and let us plan.” He had a nose like a beak and smelled like wine.

  Before I could think about it, I was sitting on a hard wooden chair in between Gravois and the man with the axe, who didn’t seem to have the axe right now. The man looked at me and I looked at him, but I didn’t say I was sorry for kicking him because I wasn’t. I thought Gravois seemed out of place among these men, the only Frenchman with eyes like a gypsy’s and a cultured, scornful voice. He didn’t look or sound anything like them. He was like something out of The Arabian Nights.

  Marcel said, “The Allies are advancing, yes? Carentan, Saint-Lô, Caen. You are part of the advance party that we have been waiting for.”

  Another man said, “There are four hundred enemy troops in the area. They are fanning out and moving into the forest. They have been here once, but they are coming again.”

  Another said, “We have more than thirty organized Maquis groups, and other people from Lisieux, from here, who want to help. Gregoire Auvain, the butcher. François Ledeux, that runs the music hall. André Mael, who has a restaurant. We are ready for the fight. But they tell us wait, wait.”

  And another, “We are cutting the lines for telecommunications. We are blowing up railroads and ambushing the Germans on the roads. But we can do more.”

  And then all the men started talking at once, voices rising, asking Captain O’Connell what the plan of action was, where were their supplies and guns, and when did they need to round everyone up, when could they start the fight and kill the boche, the nasty Germans.

  Suddenly Gravois slammed the table with both fists so that the plates jumped ten feet in the air. The men fell silent, staring at him. Gravois stood and said, in a voice so cool and calm it sounded as if he were measuring each word, “We were supposed to drop in Rouen, but the Germans intercepted us. We have men there we need to meet. We cannot wait here with you, do you understand?”

  He plucked a lit cigarette from the mouth of the man next to him. He took a long drag and then he blew three perfect smoke rings into the air. He handed the cigarette back to the man, who sat staring dumbly, and then he walked outside. The door swung closed but didn’t catch, and I could see him standing on the step, arms crossed, glaring off toward the w
oods.

  The men stared after him and you could have heard a pin drop. There was a bristling in the room, at the table, which set me to thinking of the way the air felt—charged and electric—before a tornado.

  Captain O’Connell said to the table, “As soon as we have a radio, we’ll ask them to send another team.”

  Marcel said, “I know a man in Cambremer that might have a radio. But we have this one here, not one you can transmit from, but one you can listen to.” He checked his watch and flicked it on so that we heard a fuzzy sound of static. He said, “There are Germans, but not so many as in the other towns. Henri will take you if you wish.” He waved at the youngest of the men, a boy of fourteen or fifteen.

  The captain said something about how we didn’t have time to go for the radio, how we must be moving on because we had a date to keep, and then Barzetti started arguing with him about how the radio would help them. What if the date had been changed? What if there was something they needed to know before they got to Rouen?

  Marcel said over them, “Let me know what you decide,” and then he rolled the dial on the radio back and forth, and suddenly an English-sounding voice announced that we were listening to the BBC. Everyone leaned in as the news was read. It was all war related, of course, listing which Allied troops had entered Rome or France or North Africa. Afterward, the French-language BBC service came on and the men seemed to pay particular attention to this. They leaned in closer, as if they were waiting for something, but it didn’t sound like anything more than silly personal messages—“Marie-Claire Sezanne wishes to be remembered to Monsieur Jordain.” “Bernice Troyes and Maurice Theureux report that the roses are in bloom in Arles.” And so on. They are coded messages, I thought.

  Marcel clicked the radio off, and they all began to talk at once again, in French and in English, and as they did I watched the flame of the candle flickering and waving. Coleman said something about needing supplies, the light glinting off his glasses. Did they have acid, vinegar, black ash, sulfide, sugar? He said baking soda and bicarbonate would work too.