Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  I heard more talking and then, all at once, machine gun fire directly over my head, as if they were shooting at the woods to the left of me. I turned and started scrambling forward like a crab, arms and legs grabbing at the ground, kicking up dirt and rocks. My knees were scraped raw against the ground, and I could smell the vinegary scent of blood where I’d cut my hand. There was a blast and then another, louder than a machine gun.

  Another blast followed and then, from the ground, a wailing that made my hair stand on end. It was the wailing of a person or people being murdered. The air was filled with a great humming roar, and suddenly a plane soared past, low to the ground. Even in the dark and even with its blacked-out belly, I could tell it was a Royal Air Force Beaufighter, which was a double-engine long-range bomber.

  The Beaufighter circled once more before it disappeared over the fog bank, climbing higher and higher, pointed toward home. I waited another minute and then I raised myself up on my elbows and then on my hands, and I peered over the edge of the ditch. The motorcycles sat in the road, single eyes gleaming, but I couldn’t see the men. I sucked at the place on my thumb where it bled.

  I stood up slowly, as if I had all the time in the world, ready to throw myself back into the ditch or hurl myself over the hedgerow or across the road toward the village of Cambremer. My eyes went to the first bike and then to the ground where, flat on his back, the driver lay in a heap, covered in blood from his head to his waist, the red seeping across the dirt of the road, shining black in the dying beam of the headlight. His machine gunner was half in the ditch and half on the road. His head had been blown right off. On down the road, it was more of the same—a body here, a head there, an arm, a leg.

  The only dead body I’d ever seen was my own mama’s. I remembered standing by her coffin, up on a step stool, while everyone else was asleep. I’d reached inside and touched her skin and it had been hard and rubbery.

  I looked at those men and I thought, I’m glad they’re dead. And this made me feel like the worst kind of person, like a criminal. I wondered if they had families back home in Germany who were saying prayers for them right now, hoping they would return safe.

  Then I said out loud, “Mama, if you’re watching, I’m sorry for what I’m about to do.”

  I walked across the road to the dead German soldiers and I bent down over the first driver. He wore a gun on a holster strapped to his hip, and I pulled the gun out and then I took the holster too. Because I didn’t have anything else, I wrapped the gun in Delphine’s sweater and I put it and the holster into my bag, even though I wanted to wear it right then. Someone might see me, though, and I knew the last thing I was supposed to do was call attention to myself.

  The driver’s eyes were open the whole time, like he was watching me—staring up at me, at the sky, at God. I thought of a thousand things I wished I could have said to him in life, and then I fixed the bag across my shoulder and laid my hand on top of it, just where the gun was, bumping against the hunk of bread, and walked into the fog.

  TEN

  Cambremer sat on the top of a steep hill, and its streets were silent. The half-timbered houses and storefronts were closed tight like fists, and the town had the look of a place that had been interrupted in the middle of something. Some shop windows were boarded up and others were half-boarded or open but bare, nothing inside them, and others were picked through as if someone had come by in a hurry and taken what they wanted.

  I took off my shoes, even though the ground was wet in places from the rain that had been falling off and on since we’d crashed. The street felt cool and damp on the bottoms of my feet. The central square went sloping down the hill. I paused against the face of a hat shop, the hats in the window as grand and beautiful as wedding cakes and covered in a layer of gray-brown dust.

  Where were the Germans? Signs were posted around the village, stuck to shop windows and lampposts, that showed they’d at least been here or maybe were still here. Some of the signs were in French and two or three were in English: “All persons of the male sex who should aid directly or indirectly the crews or personnel of enemy airplanes dropped by parachute will be shot on the spot. Women who are guilty of a similar offense will be sent to concentration camps in Germany.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck bristled, like someone was blowing on them, and I realized it wasn’t just the signs that were spooking me. It was that suddenly I knew I wasn’t alone.

  I slid around the side of the hat shop, into an alleyway of shadows. I pressed myself into the cold stone of the building, willing myself invisible. From here, I could see almost everything—my eyes went up the street to the left and then down the street to the right and then straight ahead, from ground level to the windows above. One window was cracked open, just a couple of inches. The breeze blew the curtain. Or had someone moved it?

  There you are, I thought. I slid against the building, deeper into the alley. In the distance, I could hear the cracking of gunshots. I froze until it stopped, counting the seconds till it started again, as if I were counting the seconds between thunder and lightning. Twenty-six seconds later, it started again, and I wondered how many miles away it was, how far sound could carry in the night. I couldn’t see the Germans, but I thought not seeing them was worse than if they had been marching up and down the village streets.

  I thought I would slink down the alley and come back behind the buildings so that I could approach the house with the open window from the other side of the street. I slid back, back, back into the shadows until I was out of sight of the open window. When I was deep enough in shadow, I turned around, quiet as a little brown mouse, and found myself nose to nose with Gravois.

  “Bonsoir,” he said.

  Before I could scream, he clamped a hand over my mouth. “Idiot girl,” he whispered. “Do you want to get us killed?” I thought about biting him, but I was too frozen. I glared at him over his hand and he glared back at me.

  Finally he said, “Okay?” I nodded. He took his hand away. “You should not have come.” He took my arm and dragged me deeper into the alley.

  I said, “Where are the Germans?”

  “They do not go out alone because they are afraid of being killed in the streets. Or perhaps they have already come and gone. Moved on to the bigger villages.” He stopped and motioned for me to stop too. He peered around the edge of a building and then he started pulling me along again.

  “But why are the people still hiding?”

  “Curfew.”

  “How did you find me? I was coming to find you.”

  “When O’Connell left the map for you, I knew you would come after us.”

  “You’re not sending me back, are you?”

  “Yes.” He led me down another alley and although I didn’t want to, I admired the way he moved, so soundless—even loaded down with his gear—like it was second nature. We went back the way I’d come, through alleyways and over the humpback bridge where the rivers met. We walked through the fog bank that surrounded the town and then through the woods just on the outskirts, only a mile or so from where I’d run into the Germans. There was a ruin of a farmhouse, as if the place had burned long ago and all that was left was the shell.

  I said, “Please don’t send me back. Please keep me with you. I’ll stay out of the way. I’ll do what you need me to do. Just please don’t send me back there to strangers.”

  He said, “Je suis désolé.” I’m sorry. But I could tell he wasn’t, not one bit.

  Gravois and I crept back over the hedgerows that lined the road and through the woods, back past the murdered German motorcycle patrol, stopping only so Gravois could loot the bodies for ammunition and supplies. He was leading the way and he wasn’t saying two words. We walked in silence, and every now and then he held up his hand and we stopped. We would hear the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire in the distance, and then we would press on. He walked so fast sometimes I had to hurry to keep up with him. He didn’t need a map, and seemed to know the way by heart
.

  The whole time we walked, I was trying to think of a way to get him to let me stay with them so that he wouldn’t leave me at Marcel’s farmhouse.

  Finally I stopped walking. I thought, Let’s see how far he gets if I just stand here. He kept on, broad through the shoulders, black hair gleaming under the moon. I thought he had the look of a wolf about him.

  He turned, his eyes flashing at me. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” We talked in whispers. “I’m just not going any farther.”

  He shook his head at this and said, “Come,” like he was talking to a dog. And he kept walking.

  I didn’t move.

  He turned back and said, “We must go.” His voice was cold. “It is not safe for us to keep you. We are on a mission, and we cannot pull you into it; we cannot let you ruin it. If we’re captured, we will be executed, and because you are with us, you will be executed too.”

  I said, “Please don’t leave me there.” We stood looking at each other—the guns rat-a-tat-tatting in the distance, the breeze gusting through the trees, making the limbs and leaves dance, blowing my hair across my face. He sighed and I thought: He’s going to back down. He’s changed his mind. And then he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder and kept right on walking.

  Ten minutes later, he set me down and grabbed my hand and dragged me along behind him. Half an hour later, I could tell that we were getting closer. I recognized a rambling barn, a cluster of trees, a sign on the road, which I could see just beyond. We crept closer to the tree line, and I could smell something burning. He said, “Merde,” very low, and he stopped walking.

  Before I could ask what we were doing, what he had seen, I saw explosions of red in the distance and I heard the sharp rattling of a jackhammer, which sounded as if it were coming from just a few hundred yards away. Gravois pulled me down so that we were crouching. He said, “No, no, no,” and it was a whisper. We walked like this a few more feet and then we stopped again. “Damn.”

  He was looking through the trees and across the road at a great, raging fire. Germans were everywhere, crawling in and out of tanks and Jeeps and shouting at one another. Hundreds of them. It took me a minute to realize where we were and what we were looking at—that the bonfire was coming from Marcel’s farmhouse and barn.

  Gravois said, “They will be searching these woods.”

  We started creeping in the other direction, back the way we’d come, still hunched down, still low to the ground, as silent as could be.

  The jackhammering machine guns got farther and farther away, but I could still feel the heat of the fire, still smell the smoke, which was in my nose and in my skin and in my throat. There was a snapping of twigs to the right of us, and we froze.

  Gravois said, “Get behind me. Behind that tree,” and he reached back and pushed me away.

  I ducked into the shadow of a wide tree trunk, and Gravois stepped forward, silent as a cat. Suddenly, I could see the outline of someone against the dark, and he was wearing a helmet and a uniform. Even in the night, I could see he was German, and I thought, I don’t want to die.

  The German had his weapon drawn. He called out something to someone I couldn’t see, and then he turned around, right in place, slow, steady, as if he knew we were somewhere nearby. I reached into my bag and pulled out the Luger. He said, “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” and he was saying it to us. I held my breath.

  I didn’t even see the knife until it was over and the German was lying on the ground, blood spurting from his neck, hands at his throat, trying to stop the bleeding. Blood was everywhere, flowing across the ground toward my feet. I backed away so I wouldn’t have to step in it, and this made me feel horrible and cruel.

  I stared at the man on the ground and then at the Frenchman. He said, “Where did you get that?” He was pointing at the Luger.

  “Off one of the dead German soldiers, back when I was following you. There was another man—just now.” I looked down at the man on the ground. “He was calling to someone.” We listened to the voices in the distance.

  Gravois said, “We must go.” And he grabbed my hand and we ran through the woods, away from the fire and the Germans and the man that he’d killed.

  Suddenly Gravois pulled up short. From nearby, a snapping of twigs, a rustling. I grabbed his arm, and he pulled out his knife again. Then someone stepped out of the trees and said, “Ne me tuez pas!” Do not kill me. It was a man, or a boy, and he was holding up his hands.

  Gravois said, “Êtes-vous seul?” Are you alone?

  “Oui,” and then the boy came forward and it was Henri, and he was crying.

  According to Henri, three German soldiers had stopped at the farmhouse to ask for directions and one of the Resistance fighters opened fire. He killed two of the men but only wounded the third, who was able to leave the house and report what had happened. Hours later, the Germans came back to the farm—some three hundred of them—shooting and killing everyone and burning the buildings to the ground. Henri said they were paratroopers, which were the best combat troops Germany had in France.

  We pressed on, past Cambremer, past another little village and then farm after farm. We walked on the outskirts so as not to cut through the towns in case the Germans were patrolling after curfew. Gravois said we needed to keep our distance from villages and farmhouses because the Germans would be conducting searches. Every now and then we could see, in the distance, a few of the French people who lived on the farms or in the villages, but they didn’t see us, or if they did they pretended not to, and I remembered the signs in Cambremer.

  We left Henri at the farm of his sister and her family. I decided I wanted to go with Henri because he was young and innocent and had probably never killed anyone, but Gravois took my hand and dragged me off and then we went deeper into the bocage, which was what he called the hedgerows of shrubs and trees, some as high as twelve feet, that bordered the fields and the roads.

  To fight aloud is very brave….

  I yanked my hand away. Gravois said, “Take my hand. It will go faster and I need to keep track of you.”

  I said, “No.”

  “You are still upset then.”

  He stopped and turned and I could see right into his eyes, right into the dark brown-green that circled the black dot of the iris. He said, “For your own sake, you need to understand this. You must do things in war that you would not do otherwise. It is a different world with different rules, and you must adapt or you won’t live to tell the story,” and then he turned around and kept walking, not even bothering to see if I was there.

  I thought about going in the other direction, about trying to find my way back to Henri, and then I started after the Frenchman before he disappeared into the trees.

  We walked for hours. We headed north, following an old forest road. German rifle and machine gun fire from the west forced us to turn eastward. At one point, I stumbled and lost my footing and grabbed onto his jacket so that I wouldn’t fall on my face. He glanced back at me and instead of looking annoyed or angry, he gave me a look of concern. He took my hand and led me onward, his palm rough and warm and strong.

  As we went, I said, “What’s your first name?”

  “Émile,” he said.

  Émile Gravois.

  He said, “You have a nice voice. Have you always sung?” He was making polite conversation, probably to help me stay awake and keep me going. “My mother had a lovely voice too. She would sing us asleep and sing us awake. There was one song in particular. ‘Qui a mordu dans la lune, Il n’en reste qu’un croissant, Où donc est la pleine lune, Toute en or et en argent….’”

  His voice was rough but good, like the swinging of a sturdy wooden gate.

  I said, “What do the words mean?”

  “I am not sure of the English. Something like ‘Who took a bite of the moon? There’s just a crescent moon left. Where oh where can the full moon be, All dressed in gold and silver, So much of it disappeared, That soon there’ll be
nothing left.’”

  I said, “We have a song we sing to that same tune.”

  Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

  How I wonder what you are….

  My voice sounded thin and small when you compared it to the tall, tall trees and the night sky, but even though it was my own voice, hearing it made me feel less alone and less far away from home.

  Then the traveler in the dark

  Thanks you for your tiny spark;

  He could not see which way to go,

  If you did not twinkle so.

  I sang all four verses, and then Émile Gravois said, “I like your words better. There is more hope in them.”

  Early the next morning, before the sun came up, we reached the outskirts of Lisieux, which Émile said was the largest town in the Pays d’Auge. He said we would meet the rest of the men outside the city—from there we would all go to Rouen—and so we only circled the town, picking our way through the farms and woods that surrounded it. The faded smell of smoke and death lingered in the air. Whole patches of trees were missing, burned to the earth, and farmhouses were crumbled, just three walls or a chimney or a pile of wood on the ground to let you know they had ever been there at all.

  Tanks ground up and down the narrow roads, and groups of German soldiers walked together and drove together. This time local people were mixed in with them, going about their business as best they could. If it wasn’t for the tanks and the burned-up woods and the bombed-out houses, I could see it was probably a charming place, a beautiful place. I wondered what it would have been like to be here before the war, holding the hand of a strong and sexy Frenchman because we were in love and happy and not running for our lives.