Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  Johnny Clay laughed, and then, together, we sang the rest of the song straight through, just like old times, just like we were sitting up on Mama’s porch or walking home from Deal’s.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  By morning, the fog and the rain were gone and the sun blinked through the clouds. I was on watch, climbing an iron ladder that led up to the highest tower. At the top, I stood in the small, round space, no wider than a well, my gun in my hand. I could see now that the castle didn’t just sit on top of the hill, it was built into the rock of it, and that the hill was high and covered in dark green pine trees in every direction. From where I stood, I could see down into the valley beyond the trees, across a winding river and red sandstone gorges and fat stone houses dotted here and there through fields and farms, but these things were probably miles away because the forest itself was so big. Beyond all of this were mountains.

  I sat on the ledge, my legs straddling the wall, and I looked down. I thought: What if I fell? After all I’ve been through, what if I just fell right off the side? I looked out toward the river and the houses and wondered about the people there.

  A voice said, “Are you all right?” Émile’s head appeared above the ladder and he came climbing up. In the daylight, I could see the bruises and cuts on his arms and face, and the dried blood over one eye.

  I knew what he meant: Was I all right after all that had happened—Fresnes, Romainville, the train, the explosion, and whatever else had happened to me that he didn’t know about or couldn’t imagine.

  I swung my legs over so that they were on the same side of the ledge, so that they were resting on the stone floor of the small round space. “Yes.”

  He sat down beside me, his leg an inch from mine. I thought about moving my leg over just enough so that they touched. His hands rested on the ledge and there was blood and dirt underneath the nails and a long, jagged scar on the back of the right one. “If anything had happened to you, I would not have forgiven myself.”

  “But nothing did.”

  “I tried to reach you before they sent you anywhere, but by the time I found out where they were taking you, you were already at Fresnes.” He sounded angry, and I knew it wasn’t just at the Germans; it was at himself. “I’m sorry. I should never have asked you to do this.”

  I said, “I’m not sorry.” I’d already decided I wasn’t going to let myself think about all that had happened to me and to the others I’d met. I wasn’t going to worry about the people I couldn’t save. I wasn’t going to think about them. I wasn’t going to let any of them in because there was nothing I could do.

  “This new agent.” He nodded his head down toward the rooms below us where my brother slept. “He is very brash and very young.” I wanted to laugh because here he was talking about Johnny Clay just as Johnny Clay had talked about him. “Who is this man to you, Clementine?”

  I thought: He’s going to kiss me again. I could almost feel his mouth on mine. Without thinking, I reached up to touch my bottom lip, where there was still a split down the middle from where the German guard had slapped me. Émile’s eyes followed my hand and then he looked away.

  I thought about teasing him, about letting him go on for a while thinking whatever he was thinking about Johnny Clay.

  I said, “He’s my brother.”

  He stared straight ahead, and his face didn’t move an inch. “Your brother.”

  “Yes. He’s the one I came here to find. I thought he was missing.”

  “He is your brother.”

  “Yes.” He crossed his arms and frowned out at the trees.

  I said, “I thought you would be happy.”

  I stared at him and he stared at the trees, and then he stood and I thought he was going to climb back down without a word, but instead he leaned in, his arms on either side of me, hands resting on the wall. His mouth was just inches from mine.

  He said, “When I saw you again, I thought that you are like that star you told me about, the one in the song. The one that lights the way for a traveler in the dark.” And then he kissed me.

  When we broke apart, he smiled, from his mouth, from his eyes, and I thought how nice it was to see him peaceful, almost happy, even for a moment.

  I said, “Why did you say that like it’s a sad thing?”

  “Because no good can come of us, Clementine.” And, just like that, the smile was gone.

  Without thinking, I said, “Don’t you believe in magic?”

  “Magic? Like Harry Houdini?”

  “Like stars that light the way. Like destiny.”

  “Destiny?”

  “Like my brother being here right now. All this time, I was looking for him, and then he found me, right here in Germany. Of all the men they could have sent, they sent you a team that my brother was on, and he thought he was just doing his duty blowing up that train, and it turned out I was on it. I was the person he was trying to free, even though he didn’t know it. That’s what I mean.”

  He straightened so that he was looking down at me. His hands reached for mine. I looked at our hands, twined together. There was dirt and blood under my fingernails too.

  I said, “Maybe we were supposed to meet.” My heart rushed a little as I said it.

  “I am glad we met, Clementine. But I don’t know that it was fate. I think maybe it is a happy moment, in the middle of a war, and that it was a lucky thing for me, but that is all.” He smiled his cat-with-the-canary smile, dangerous and sincere at the same time, so different from the smile that had come just before.

  I studied Émile as if I were studying a map—strong, stubborn profile, full lips, dark liquid eyes, wide, broad hands that carried so much. I told myself he’d been hurt too often by too many people. I wondered what I would be like if I’d been through all the things he’d been through. I wondered if I would see the world the way he saw it, without magic or destiny or anyplace to go after you died except right into the ground.

  He lifted a hand and ran his finger over my lips, barely touching them, resting on the split. He said, “Do not love me, Clementine.”

  Before I could say anything, before I could push him away or tell him to go to hell, a voice said, “About time we headed off, ain’t it?”

  I looked up and there was Johnny Clay, arm thrown over the top rung of the ladder.

  I stood, dropping Émile’s hand. I said, “Hey, Johnny Clay.” I was so happy to see him, my heart just filled right up. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring right at Émile, like he was Hitler himself.

  The land grew flatter and the trees thinner, and then they started filling in again and the earth rose into green hills that grew higher and higher. We’d been traveling for six days when we entered the Vosges Mountains, which would take us into France. We drank water from the creeks and rivers and we gathered berries and nuts and hunted fish and rabbits and, once or twice, squirrels. At night we made camp under the trees and cooked the food over a low fire, which we stamped out as soon as we were done. By morning, my stomach would be growling and carrying on as if it hadn’t been fed at all.

  As we entered the Vosges Mountains, Johnny Clay walked beside me. He’d been keeping his eye on Émile and me, studying us like a hawk, even though there was nothing to see. Émile had told me not to love him and I was keeping my distance good and far even though I lay awake each night wanting him, knowing he was just a few feet away.

  Johnny Clay started telling me about his plans for after the war. He said he’d already decided he was heading to the Gold Coast, down in Africa, to mine gold. He was going to marry a Negro girl with skin as black as night and buy himself a mine and then buy up all the other ones too so he could own all the gold in Africa.

  Just as he said it, I spotted a flash of gold on the ground. I thought: That’s funny. Maybe there’s gold right here in this forest. I bent down to pick it up and it was an empty shell casing.

  I brushed off the dust and the dirt, and Johnny Clay said, “What you got there?” I held it out so the oth
ers could see it. We all looked left and right and all around. The breeze blew my hair so that it tickled my cheek.

  Johnny Clay studied the casing. He said, “German. Maybe someone broke away from his unit.” He fingered his gun.

  Émile took the casing from me and said, “It’s Allied. From one of our fighter planes.”

  Johnny Clay said, “Why aren’t there more of them then? You can track the path of a plane by the shell casings.”

  Émile said, “It does not mean there aren’t more ahead.”

  He and Johnny Clay stared at each other. They made me think of two dogs about to get into a scrap fight. Eleanor said, “For God’s sake. We’ve lost enough time because of the fog.” She kept on walking.

  The next day and the next we came across more shell casings, one after another. The casings littered the ground like bread crumbs. At first, I wondered if someone had dropped them there to mark their way home.

  Émile frowned at Ty’s compass and said, “I think we should travel the rest of the way down below, on the edge of the tree line.”

  Johnny Clay said, “We’d risk being seen. The Germans are fleeing France. The border towns will be thick with them, not to mention the borders themselves.”

  Émile slid the compass into his jacket pocket. I suddenly didn’t want him touching it anymore. Before I could ask for it back he said, “We’ll still be inside the trees, but we need to get off this path.”

  Johnny Clay said, “I say we’re better off up high, even higher than this, where we can see around us, see what’s coming.”

  Eleanor said, “Let’s just keep going. The casings aren’t fresh. Some of them have been covered by the dirt and leaves for a while.”

  Émile looked at me. Johnny Clay looked at me. They were waiting for me to decide it, and I knew by deciding it I would be choosing one of them over the other. I looked back and forth between them. I thought about how Émile had led me through France, and I trusted him, even though I didn’t much like him, much less love him, right now. But I’d known my brother my whole life and I trusted him too. He was my very best friend. Émile thought things out but Johnny Clay usually jumped right in, headfirst, without thinking much at all.

  I wanted to choose Johnny Clay over Émile, but I knew Émile was right about this. So I said, “I think we should leave the path and go to the tree line.” I wouldn’t look at Émile. I didn’t want him to think I’d said it because I loved him.

  Johnny Clay glared at me but I stared at him in a way that showed him I wasn’t going to back down, and then I followed Émile and Eleanor off the path and down the hill, picking my way through the brush and the trees and the carpet of leaves that had fallen recently.

  From behind me, I heard a sharp popping sound and I turned, looking up. It was the sound of a tree limb cracking and dropping from a great height, but the trees were still except for the breeze, which shook the leaves so that they danced.

  As I was turning back around, my eyes dropped from the tree tops to the ground, and I watched, just like time slowed down, as Johnny Clay fell. It seemed to take him forever to fall, and at the same time it happened so fast I didn’t have time to think.

  The next thing that happened was that Émile shot the German dead so that he fell faster than Johnny Clay. And then Eleanor picked up Johnny Clay’s gun and shot the German who came up behind him. All the while, I leaned over my brother, trying to find where the bullet had hit him. His eyes were closed and he lay so still I was afraid he was dead.

  Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Please, please, please don’t be dead….

  His eyes fluttered opened and he said, “They got me, didn’t they?”

  The bullet was in his leg, right above the knee. I still wore the same skirt and blouse I’d been wearing weeks ago when they picked me up and sent me to Fresnes. I had Eleanor’s bloody scarf tied around my leg, and I tore this off and wrapped it tight around him. There wasn’t time to treat it any more than that. I said, “Can you stand?”

  “Of course I can stand.” He pulled himself up to his feet and I helped him when he couldn’t come up all the way. He swore a blue streak. He looked at Eleanor and said, “I’ll take my gun back.”

  Émile said, “There are probably more of them. They’ve heard the shots and they will be coming.”

  As if they were listening and waiting, two more Germans appeared out of the trees. There was a hard, loud pop that seemed to go right through me, and I watched as one of the Germans fell, the red blooming out of his chest. Then another pop, and the German behind him fell too. My brother and Émile stood, guns pointed, like some sort of movie cowboys.

  Johnny Clay said, “You think that’s it?”

  Émile’s head was still but his eyes were scanning the woods. He said, “No.”

  It was hard to tell which way the Germans had come from, ahead of us or behind us or maybe somewhere from the left or right.

  I said to Johnny Clay, “Can you run?”

  “Faster than you, faster than anyone.”

  The four of us ran through the woods, along the side of the hill, up the hill, down the hill, heading all the time toward France. I wondered if somehow we were in France without knowing it, if maybe we’d already crossed the border, or if I would know it when we did.

  Up ahead, built into the side of a hill, was another castle, or what used to be a castle. We pushed through sticker bushes, tree limbs snapping in our faces, not bothering to look where we were going, just going, going, heading for the castle walls. We were just rounding the side of it when I heard the Germans. I couldn’t tell if they were in front of us or behind us or what side they were coming from. They might have been coming from all directions. Shots were fired off in the woods, then there was machine gun fire and the hard, wild shouting of male voices.

  We hid behind the castle walls, which were crumbling and tilted like old tombstones. They seemed to be sinking into the earth. Then we waited. The breeze shook the leaves. I could hear my brother’s breathing over my own. Johnny Clay pulled a grenade out of his bag and tossed it to Émile, then my brother pulled out another, his finger on the split pin. Émile handed Eleanor a small pistol—a .32, just like the one I’d taken from Barzo’s bag. I held my gun, resting it on top of the wall, scanning the trees. The woods had gone quiet except for the sound of our breathing.

  I thought: Maybe they’re gone. Maybe that was it and we got them all. Suddenly, there was a rumble to the east of us that grew louder and louder until it was a roar. We turned our faces to the sky, and there was the green-gray belly of a plane almost directly overhead.

  And then, through the trees, I saw the green-gray of uniforms and the dull green of helmets, and they were coming toward us. Johnny Clay and Émile looked at each other and then, at the same time, tossed the grenades. We covered our heads and waited for the explosion, and the earth and the trees shuddered. We started shooting as men rushed out of the smoke. Some fired back at us and some dropped on the spot, and I didn’t have time to think that one of my bullets might have killed a man.

  We went running on, away from the castle, higher up the hill, pushing through the trees, until suddenly there was a clearing, more like a field, and we came up short at the edge of it.

  I said, “What do we do?” There we were out in the wide open, nothing to hide behind, moving targets.

  Émile said, “Cross the field to the trees.” On the other side of the clearing, the woods grew up again, thick and dark.

  Johnny Clay said, “Stay low.”

  I said, “How many are there?”

  No one answered me because there was no way of knowing.

  I said, “Can we make it to France?” What I wanted to know was could we outrun whatever was left of the Germans? Was France close enough to run to?

  Émile said, “It’s on the other side of these mountains.”

  I looked at my comrades then—Eleanor’s face was flushed and angry; I could see Émile thinking, planning, two steps ahead of me, of the Germans;
Johnny Clay looked fierce as an Indian warrior. I wondered how I must look, standing there with the rifle in my hand, dressed in a skirt and blouse, bag slung over my chest. I caught Émile’s eye and he smiled at me, but I knew he was really somewhere else, thinking ahead, getting us to France.

  I said, “No prisoners.”

  “No prisoners,” he said.

  We ran down the hill and across the field in a line going across, heading into battle together. We ran low as we could and every now and then I looked behind me to see if the Germans were coming. The field was empty except for us. To the right of us was a road, and up in the distance, on the edge of the road, was what looked like a village. We kept running until I thought my legs were going to fall off and my lungs were going to give in. I looked at my brother, running alongside me, long legs flying, and you couldn’t even tell that he’d been shot.

  Johnny Clay fired his gun back toward the woods, the ones we were running from. We all turned and fired as a handful of Germans appeared. One of them carried a machine gun, and he started shooting. Johnny Clay grabbed me and yanked me down, and while I was down I reloaded my gun.

  Johnny Clay said, “Run. I’ll cover you.”

  I said, “No you will not. We stay together.”

  The Germans were shooting and we were shooting, and then more of them spilled out of the woods, guns raised. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure I would get out of this, not even with Émile to lead us, not even with Johnny Clay. A bullet hit Émile in the shoulder and he swore. Another one hit him in the arm, the ribs, I couldn’t tell which. A bullet whizzed by Eleanor’s ear, so close she had to duck. She put her hand to her ear and came away with blood, and I thought: Where’s the one that’s going to hit me? Where’s mine?

  There was nowhere to hide out there, in the middle of the field. We crouched as low as we could and then Johnny Clay said, “Goddammit.” And he stood straight up and pointed his gun and fired three rounds. Three Germans fell until there was just one more, coming straight for my brother, who was reloading his pistol. I raised my gun and shot the German square between the eyes.