ELEVEN
At dusk we found the men on the outskirts of Lisieux. By then it was drizzling, and my hair hung around my face, soaked through. Inside an old church, we huddled under a corner of the choir loft, the only place where there was roof left. I tried not to stare at the bombed-out walls, the piles of stone. I missed my flight boots and my flight jacket. My feet were blistered and sore and Delphine’s shoes soaked up the water like a sponge.
Captain O’Connell stood by himself under the roofless sky, water beating down on him, catching on his eyelashes so that his eyes looked even more like pools. He said, “Why is she here?”
Émile gave the captain a cold little smile, like a cat swallowing a canary. “She had a map.” Then he told him about the farmhouse and about the Germans.
Coleman waved his hand, as if he were swatting away a fly. “We will drop her with the first Americans we see.”
I said, “You’re not leaving me with strangers.”
Coleman looked at the captain. “It’s a mistake to take her.”
They were talking about me like I wasn’t even there. I said, “Half your team is dead and I’m guessing that’s put you all in a bind, but I’m here and I’m strong and I may not be a paratrooper or an agent, but I was trained by the military just like you were, and I went through a lot to do that training from men who didn’t want me to fly and men who thought they would teach me a lesson and make me go home where I belonged. But I didn’t go home. I came here, and I can help.”
I stared at them and they stared at me until Barzo said, “There’s no time to leave her anywhere unless it’s right here.”
Émile said, “She won’t be left.” He walked over to me and said, “Give me your bag.”
“I’m not giving you my bag.”
Émile opened the bag himself, right there on my hip, and pulled out the Luger. I said, “Hey!”
He held up the gun. “It is best not to be caught with a German weapon.” Then he found a corner of the floor that had been blown away, where the earth rose up through the stone. He sat on his heels and dug a hole with the end of his rifle and dropped the Luger into it.
Barzo said, “Maybe we can use her.” I wasn’t sure I liked the way he said it.
Ray said, “Can you shoot a gun?” His voice was low and soft, but the sound of it threw me because he hardly ever spoke.
I said, “Yes, sir. My daddy taught me to shoot when I was eight years old. And then I learned all over again in the WASP. I’ve got three older brothers, so I know all about shooting and protecting myself and fighting back. I grew up in the mountains, so I know how to live off the land and walk through the woods by moonlight as quiet as you can, so quiet not even a panther can hear you. And if one does, I know what to do about that too. I also know how to find my way by the stars and by a compass. If you remember.”
No one said a word, and the men took their time looking back and forth at one another. The captain folded his arms across his chest and said, “There are other things you need to know. Better French, for one.” He looked at Émile. “Can you help her?”
Émile stood up. He was lighting a cigarette. He stopped, the match still lit, the cigarette in his mouth. He said around it, “I will try.”
We walked through the night and most of the next day, stopping when the Germans came too close, hiding in the shade of a tree or the ruins of a building, waiting them out, sometimes an hour or two at a time. The rain fell as if it had always fallen and always would. The roads and fields were mud, and the earth was churned up and piled with stone and rubble, some of the piles as high as hills. Finally, we came upon a drainage ditch, which looked empty and wild, covered up by a thicket of spiny, prickly shrubs. One by one, we crawled inside. I tried not to think about what kinds of animals might live in there. Instead I pulled out the chunk of bread I’d taken from Marcel’s house and I offered it to the men. They shook their heads and said no thank you because they had their own supplies—rations from their kits, water collected at Marcel’s—and so we sat, eating and not talking. Every so often Captain O’Connell passed me his canteen because I didn’t have one of my own. As soon as he finished his meal, Émile disappeared.
Ray handed me a submachine gun, a plain, compact, old-looking thing that looked as if he might have made it himself. It had a wooden butt, a pistol grip, and a bayonet lug. He said, “Sten gun. Already loaded. It can take German nine-millimeter magazines. So easy, even the dumbest man in France can shoot it. Remember—never hesitate. Never freeze. If you’re going to shoot, shoot. A man’s second best friend over here is his gun.” And then he lay down on the cold, wet concrete of the ditch, as if he were tired from talking so much, and closed his eyes.
I said, “What’s his first best friend?”
“Luck.”
One by one, the rest of the men lay down, so I lay down too. As I closed my eyes I wondered what would happen if the Germans decided to look in here themselves, taking shelter from the rain and the wind. Then I decided that I would keep watch if no one else would, and so I crept across the ditch to the opening, Sten gun across my shoulder, and sat down.
The night was still except for the tanks. One would pass by and then there would be nothing for a good while, only silence. No crickets. No birds. No breeze. Only rain falling, soft and steady. When a shadow came walking up sometime later, I trained my gun on it, and before I could cock the hammer the shadow whistled, a bright little song, like the one I’d heard in the woods when I’d waited with Barzo and the others for the captain to come back. A voice—French with something else mixed in—said, “Are you on watch?”
I said, “Yes. Someone had to be.”
Émile squatted down next to me. I wanted to ask where he’d been, but I didn’t. I hadn’t heard any tanks for a while now. The night was quiet. In the shadows, I could only see half his face. He said, “Did you know Joan of Arc died in Rouen?” His voice was low. “Rouen was under English rule then. Victor Hugo called it the city of a hundred bell towers.”
In the wet and the dark, his voice gave me the spooks. I thought, Telling stories for him is like singing for me—it helps us to think; it makes us feel better.
Émile was saying something about the river Seine and Joan of Arc’s ashes being scattered to the winds.
I said, “Tell me your favorite poem or song, but tell it to me in French.”
He said, “You won’t understand.”
“I don’t care. Just tell it to me. Maybe I’ll understand some of it.”
Inside the drainage tunnel, someone began to snore. The sound of it mixed in with the rain and the splashing of the pools, and it was almost like music.
Émile narrowed his eyes at me like he was thinking. At last he said:
Un petit cochon
Pendu au plafond
Tirez-lui le nez
il donn’ra du lait...
He kind of half-talked, half-sang the words. His voice was warm and soft, as if he had just painted a memory and he wanted to be as delicate, as gentle as possible so as to get it right and not disturb it.
He said, “It is the song my mother sang to me each day when I awoke. It is just a silly little song, a simple children’s nursery rhyme, but when I sing it I can hear her voice.”
I said, “It’s beautiful.” The rain fell harder. I watched it splashing against the earth and the pools that were collecting there. I thought of Émile’s mama, who must be waiting for him to come home, and of my own mama.
He said, “It is a song about a pig.”
“A pig?”
Émile started to laugh, hardly making a sound, his shoulders shaking. When he laughed his entire face changed. He ran his large hands, strong and wide and skinned at the knuckles, through his hair, and then he looked up at me, gypsy eyes tearing. When he smiled his face didn’t seem so proud or so full of itself. He looked almost handsome. He said, “It is a song about a pig that lays eggs if you hang it from the ceiling. If you pull hard enough on its tail, it lays some gold.”
It took me a moment to let this sink in, but then I started laughing too.
He said, “French makes everything beautiful, no?”
At the same time we said, “Even pigs.” I thought, Even you.
Above us, on the bridge, I heard the sound of walking. It took me a minute to realize where it was coming from. I couldn’t tell if it was one set of footsteps or several. I laid my hand on Émile’s arm. He went still and quiet.
I whispered, “Is it the Germans?”
“Yes. I want you to wake the men and tell them to move, and then I want you to stay close to me.”
I ducked back into the tunnel and shook the men awake, putting a finger to their lips so that they would know to be quiet. We gathered our things and crawled to the door. From above, there was the sound of heavy boots.
Émile signaled to us, and I knew enough to know it was code to tell us how many men were out there and where they were.
From the bridge, a blast of gunfire exploded, so loud it hurt my ears. Coleman crept out of the tunnel, away from the bridge, from the sound, from the footfalls, his gear over his shoulder. He gave a hand signal of his own and then a salute. He said, “Whatever happens, lads, we do not get caught.”
The men looked at each other, from one to the other. Barzo said, “No prisoners.”
“No prisoners,” Émile said, followed by Perry, by Ray. I didn’t like the way this sounded, and suddenly Coleman was gone.
“Where is he going?” I could barely hear my own voice.
Émile held up his hand, which I knew meant to be quiet. The gunfire blasted again, this time to the left of us. He said, “We need him alive. In many ways, he is the most important of us all. He is taking his equipment and going as far as he can.”
Perry pulled out his carbine.
Émile said to me, “If I say shoot, you shoot.”
I said, “No prisoners.”
Ten seconds later, the five of us left the tunnel and half-ran, half-crawled to the woods. Up on the bridge, I could see dark, outlined figures moving across and down along the river and then off into the forest till it was hard to tell which of the tall, straight shadows was a soldier and which was a tree. We ran right for a briar patch, dropping to our hands and knees and crawling into the center until we were sliding across the dirt on our stomachs. I could feel the thorns tugging and tearing at my face and hair, at my clothes. I kept crawling. I heard gunfire and then a cry, the sound of someone being shot.
I said, “Coleman!”
Émile said, “No, the Maquis, the Resistance.”
We flattened ourselves against the earth, which smelled like fresh-cut grass and dirt and mud and cows. My head went dizzy from the smell and the sound of gunfire getting closer, but I couldn’t tell what direction it was coming from—the left, the right, front, back. We were surrounded.
More shots, more cries. Through the thick, wiry branches of the bramble I could see bodies hitting the ground. Then I could see heavy hobnail boots, the boots of German soldiers, and they were coming toward us. There was talk, very low, and they called out, “We know you are there.”
They came closer, closer, till they were in front of the bramble bushes. They were talking to one another, to us. They fired off shots into the bushes, trying to flush us out. On either side of me, Ray and Émile raised their weapons, holding them steady, pointed at the hobnail boots. I raised my Sten gun, my hand shaking. Never freeze.
A shot went off and I heard something buzz past me. Then another buzzing to my right, just in front of Émile. Another over my head, so close I could feel the wind from the bullet.
Suddenly I heard a voice, cool and British. It said, “Why don’t you speak English, you bloody Krauts?”
Coleman.
He said, “Or are you as daft as you appear?”
“Was ist los?” Silence. Then another German shouted, “Was ist los?”
The hobnail boots were turning. They were walking away. One man stood alone now, and he fired his gun once more into the bramble before going after the others.
“What’s he doing?” I whispered it to either Ray or Émile, whichever one. It didn’t matter. We were all the same. They were all the same.
Barzo said, “Bastard’s letting us go.” I could see the hobnail boots gathering together. Forty pairs of them. Maybe fifty. Maybe more. I could see the bodies of the Resistance scattered on the ground.
Émile said, “Does he have the detonators?”
Barzo said, “He must have hidden them.”
I said, “We have to save him.”
Ray said, “I can pick them off.” He was squinting through something that looked like a telescope attached to the top of his rifle. He moved the gun from one German to another. “One by one by one.”
Perry said, “You shoot that gun and every last one of them will be on us.”
I looked to my right, to where Émile was studying the Germans over the muzzle of his carbine. He had his finger on the trigger. After a minute he let it go. “Merde, alors.” His eyes darted this way and that, taking it in, trying to figure out what to do, how to take on fifty Germans by himself.
Finally he said, “He is saving us.” And he yanked me with him—harder than he needed to—as he backed away, silent as a snake on the earth. Ray was the last to follow. I waited for a gunshot, for the sound of a body hitting the ground, but the Germans were going away now, away from the bridge and away from us. And they were taking Coleman with them.
We ran through a field, down a winding road, and into a valley filled with wildflowers. We didn’t stop running till long past the sun came up, sometime the next afternoon. We came to a hill surrounded by trees, and in the distance I could see the tall spires and bell towers of what must have been Rouen.
At the very top, with views across the valley, was a tiny building with walls of rough stone laid out unevenly, as if the person who’d built it had done so quickly and used what he could find. Two narrow towers rose up on either side, and a chimney in the middle was made of the same crumbling stone. The roof was thatched, and a few yards away was a waterwheel and a spring. A bicycle lay on its side in the grass.
The captain walked to the door and knocked once, then again, two sharp raps. The men cocked their guns. We waited. The captain knocked again—once, twice—and this time the door swung open. A woman stood, framed by the candlelight that spilled out from inside. When she saw us, she smiled, a perfect gap between her two front teeth.
TWELVE
Delphine lived in the house with her mama and daddy and little sister, Mathilde, who was ten. Her father, Monsieur Babin, was a neat, trim man with a gray mustache and a small cap of gray hair in the center of his head. He invited us to stay with them for as long as we needed to.
After a supper of bread and butter, Perry checked his watch. He nodded at the others and they stood, gathering knives, guns, ammo. I stood too, wondering why we weren’t staying.
Monsieur Babin took out a pipe and a bag of tobacco, which had been folded and refolded, and said, “Other than a radio, do you have everything you need?”
Perry pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. “We need to get this message to the Allies. Without a radio, it’s our only way to let them know our status and to let them know Coleman’s been taken.”
Monsieur Babin said, “As far as I know, the nearest Allies are east of Caen, one hundred kilometers from here.”
Delphine took the paper from Perry. “I will deliver it for you. There is a professor in Rouen. He works with the Resistance. He is British by birth and is said to be in close touch with the British army.”
The men seemed to be hurrying, collecting the last of their gear, throwing their rucksacks over their shoulders. Barzo bent over the fireplace and stirred his hand around in the coal and ash. He smeared streaks of black on his face like war paint. When I reached for my own bag, he said, “Not this time, kid.”
“But—”
Émile looked at Monsieur Babin. “Make sure s
he does not leave.”
Perry said, “Someone will be back for you, Velva Jean. You have my word.” Then he picked up his bag and paused at the door, blinking back into the room, as if he were trying to remember something—as if he were trying to remember himself from a long time ago. He smiled at Delphine’s mother and touched his forehead in a kind of salute. “A lovely meal, madame. Merci.” I thought that even with shadows under his eyes, Captain Perry O’Connell looked like a knight or a king who had temporarily lost his way. I wondered if I could fall in love with him, if we were in a different place and there wasn’t a war going on.
Perry opened the front door and, one by one, the men filed out. I stood watching from the doorway as they crossed the grass before disappearing down the hill. Émile was the last, walking backward so that he was facing me, and then turned around without a word.
The Babins and I spent the evening reading and talking. While I played a game called Bilboquet with Mathilde, Delphine and her father spoke in low voices about the professor in Rouen. His name was Alain Fontenay, and he was retired from teaching history at the city’s university. He lived at the very end of Rue de la Seille, in the shadow of a great cathedral, with his wife. Delphine would go in the morning to deliver the message.
Monsieur Babin had heard through the Resistance network that the Germans were moving southeast, toward Paris, west toward the Normandy beach towns, and east toward Germany, but a few of them still lingered around the area of Rouen, so Delphine promised to be on her guard.
I wanted to help, to prove that I could be part of things, and not just some girl in everyone’s way. That was when the idea came to me: If I couldn’t go with Perry and Émile, there was no reason why I couldn’t take that message to Rouen in Delphine’s place.
After everyone went to bed, I untied the map scarf and spread it underneath the candlelight. Here was Rouen, eleven kilometers away, and there was Rue de la Seille. I wouldn’t take my Sten gun because it was too bulky and big, but I would take the knife with the pearl handle that Delphine had given me. I pulled the paper out of Delphine’s bag and tucked it into my pocket. It was nothing but numbers and symbols, a kind of code. I would leave at dawn.
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