“Is it true, what you’re telling me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“If you’re lying, boy, I can have you shot.”
I shuddered. “I swear I’m not lying to you!”
The man’s face softened a little. He took a long, deep breath.
“So you love this girl?”
“Yes.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
The man continued staring at me. A gust of wind set the leaves rustling. It was a pleasant sound, contrasting with the gravity of the situation. The man smiled sadly, absorbed in his thoughts. What would he do? Kill me or let me live? Perhaps he wanted to talk a little before lodging a bullet in my brain and burying me in the woods. The disappearance of the Vertune boy would forever remain an enigma. I shivered, thinking about Mama. She had already lost a husband; the loss of a child would be too much for her. The German captain seemed finally to believe my story. There was a glimmer of light in his eyes.
“You know, boy, I’ve got a daughter in Germany,” he said, keeping half an eye on the other soldier a little way off.
The man clearly wanted to unburden himself, tired of fighting invisible enemies, chimeras conjured by the imaginations of the men pulling the strings of this war. The men doing the actual fighting had been obliged to abandon their families and grit their teeth as enemy bullets whistled overhead, a situation not dissimilar to when we took refuge in the farmhouse cellar as the bombs exploded outside. Though enemies, we were really not so different from each other, battling windmills like modern-day Don Quixotes. War is nothing but the bloody projection of a pained soul lashing out. Because when everything is going wrong, it’s easier to hate than to love, easier to pick up a weapon than to open one’s arms.
“Do you know how long I’ve not seen my daughter?”
“No.”
“Three years. Three long years. I miss her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Catherine,” he replied with a smile, as if pronouncing her name could somehow summon her presence.
“That’s a pretty name,” I said, moved by his words.
“It’s French. My wife loved France, before all this chaos.”
“I’m sorry for you,” I said with a compassion that clearly touched him.
“It’s not your fault. It’s that Hitler,” he whispered, glancing over at the other soldier.
“I know, my schoolmaster told me. His father was killed in the trenches at Verdun.”
He stared at me with his blue eyes. There was a connection between us, a human link that crossed simplistic nationalistic divisions. He sighed.
“My father also died over there,” he confided.
“Then why are you here?” I asked, not comprehending.
“To avenge him.”
“Avenge him?”
“Yes. When war broke out, I went to the front to kill Frenchmen.”
“And . . . have you killed . . . many?”
“None. I’ve never had the courage. And now I’m a prisoner of my revenge, when I should be with my daughter.”
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked, impatient for a resolution.
“Nothing,” he replied sadly.
“You’ll let me return home?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The man looked me right in the eyes.
“Your face reminds me of Catherine’s. And everything that reminds me of my daughter at the moment warms my heart.”
“You’ll see her again, I’m sure of it.”
“Do you never stop hoping, boy?”
“No.”
“You better scram before someone raises the alarm. I never want to see you around here again, is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
I got up and headed back to my bicycle, happy to still be alive, when the German officer called out to me: “Hey, boy!”
The blood froze in my veins. Had he changed his mind?
I turned to him, fear in my stomach. “Yes, sir?”
“Good luck with the girl from the farm,” he said with a smile.
“Thanks,” I answered, then ran to my bicycle. The German officer watched me scamper through the thickets without a word. He was undoubtedly thinking of Catherine, and his abandoning her in the hope of reconnecting with his father on the battlefield. Yet in the end he was incapable of taking anyone’s life. Men can be paradoxical creatures. They strive to pursue paths of action that they ultimately find too terrible to complete, prisoners of their fears. My life would be different. Nobody would force me ever again to do anything against my will. I looked back at the Blanchart farm as I cycled away and felt a pang in my heart. Missed opportunity or valiant attempt? It all depends on how you look at it. At least I didn’t have any regrets. Better to quietly wait until the war ended, if it ever did.
* * *
1 Translation: “Stop! It’s just a child.”
10
A year later, on August 6, 1944, Vannes, the nearest large town, was liberated by the Americans, who fought their way down through northern Brittany. The enemy withdrew to the east, but the war was far from over. Still, we were glad to smell the scent of freedom in our corner of the world, after four long years of occupation. Monsieur Blanchart, the mayor, had got wind of the news through official channels. We heard the joyful clamor in the village as we returned from the fields. We couldn’t believe our ears. We dropped our tools and ran to join the jubilation. The men sang to the glory of the Americans, and the women danced in a circle, wearing their traditional garb, accompanied by Breton bagpipes blown by some of the older folk, who remembered the armistice celebrations of the previous war. Twirling among them was my mother, her late husband momentarily forgotten, smiling like I hadn’t seen her smile in years. Every face was beaming, lit up with wide grins pulled by muscles that hadn’t been used in a while. I watched this wave of fervor and I sang too, proud to belong to a great nation like France. People in the village were usually staunch Breton regionalists, but now they brandished the national flag of blue, white, and red, for when people taste liberty anew, there is no place for local rivalries or even class struggles. Everyone kissed and hugged each other, the mayor and the laborer, the grocer and the farmer.
At the center of the crowd stood Monsieur Blanchart, a proud smile on his face. For this elected representative of the French Republic, the liberation of his village tasted particularly sweet, for he had been obliged to tread a fine line during the years of occupation, continuing to oversee the local municipality out of a sense of political duty while collaborating with the Germans as meagerly as he could. Unlike most village mayors in the occupied zone, he had not resigned his post. And though he had shared power with the enemy, he had kept a watchful eye over his community and attempted to influence the occupiers’ decisions as best he could. When the Germans requisitioned his barn, there was much talk of his collaboration, rumors he quashed by supplying strategic information to the Resistance, at great risk to his life. This information had enabled the Resistance to carry out acts of sabotage, which, although they contributed little to the enemy’s eventual capitulation, kept alive the hope that they would eventually surrender. Monsieur Blanchart was a brave man, and the villagers knew it. I scanned the crowd for a glimpse of his daughter, but Mathilde was nowhere to be seen. Clearly she was still locked up like a nun in her cell, not allowed even to join in this day of rejoicing. My heart twinged as I thought of her.
There was a sudden disturbance in the midst of the celebrations. We heard shouts, and people began to scatter. A group of men appeared, pitchforks in hand, yowling like wild beasts. Among them were my uncle Louis and his brothers. I smiled at first, thinking they had come to join the joyful throng, but then I saw that a bunch of German soldiers were behind them, bound together and covered in blood. All eyes turned on the group. The wailing bagpipes and the singing ceased, and the women stopped dancing. The soldiers shuffled forward, heads bowed. T
hey had clearly been beaten and dragged through the dirt. I shuddered. Was there no limit to human cruelty? Not satisfied with having conquered the enemy, it seemed my countrymen would now publicly execute a few inconsequential Nazi pawns.
My uncle pulled roughly at the rope. The soldiers collapsed together on the ground with the hoarse screams of animals being taken to the abattoir. The villagers yelled with rage, death in their eyes, demanding vengeance for those who had fallen in combat, their lives cut needlessly short. These Germans would never see their country again. They would never hold their loved ones close, smell their scents, or stroke their skin. The crowd moved in and began lashing out blindly, kicking a head here, a leg there, spitting on the soldiers and cursing at them. Monsieur Blanchart, good democrat that he was, respectful of the values of the French Republic, tried to intervene but was shoved aside. Shocked, he stared at the faces of these men and women he governed, now unrecognizable in their hate, and took a step back, terrorized. Then he turned and pushed his way through the crowd. I followed him.
After extricating myself from the heaving mass, I saw her. She was sitting on the low wall surrounding the village square, her gaze fixed on the murderous ecstasy unfolding. Mathilde Blanchart. As delectable as ever, her long hair flowing over her shoulders. I fell in love with her all over again, as if the passage of time had altered nothing, corrupted nothing. Her face hadn’t changed. She was still the girl with the fair complexion I had briefly glimpsed a year earlier. When she saw her father, she waved. As soon as he reached her, he wrapped his arms around her comfortingly, protectively. Then he turned his head in my direction, clearly surprised at my apparent indifference to the surrounding pandemonium. I had eyes only for his daughter. Mathilde stared at me too, doubtless captivated by my impudence. She gave me the very first smile I was to receive from her, and I blushed. There we were, lost in each other’s eyes amid the bloody chaos—a paradox of barbarism and love. Her father realized what was happening and beckoned me to come over. I did so without a word, never taking my eyes off his daughter, embarrassed at his knowing my feelings for her.
“Stay with Mathilde until I come back,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t leave her!”
He ran off toward the town hall, and I found myself alone with my beloved, my cheeks as red as a beet. We looked at each other shyly, two complicated teenagers, sharing glances, neither of us daring to break the silence. And what could I have said to her anyway, a farm boy like me? Sure, I was educated, but from a poor family nonetheless. The Blancharts, on the other hand, owned land all over the peninsula. No need for them to get their hands dirty—tenant farmers like the Vertunes would do that for them. I was a little ashamed of my social status, though at fifteen years old, love is limited only by one’s imagination.
Monsieur Blanchart reappeared on the steps of the town hall holding a rifle. I initially thought he intended to shoot into the crowd and take out the troublemakers, but he kept the weapon pointed skyward. A deafening shot rang out. The crowd immediately froze, as surprised as I was, and looked up at the mayor. Smoke drifted from the muzzle, spreading a pleasant, light odor of burnt powder.
“Move back, give them some air!” yelled the mayor in a tone of voice I’d never heard him use before.
“Kill them!” replied a man in the crowd.
“Move back or I’ll shoot!” screamed Monsieur Blanchart.
The crowd swiftly drew back, forming a circle around the battered soldiers, who lay still.
“Don’t be as barbaric as them!” he yelled. “It was a thirst for vengeance that started this war in the first place!”
“They’ve slaughtered our men! Now it’s our turn to slaughter them.” This from a woman in the crowd.
The mob began wildly beating the inert bodies again. Monsieur Blanchart fired another shot.
“Stop, I beg you! Enough blood has been spilled on our land! Go home!”
“Out of the question!” shouted another man. “They won’t leave here alive!”
“Shut your mouth!” yelled the mayor.
The crowd suddenly grew silent, the villagers frustrated in their diabolic aim. Hate was written across their faces, as flushed as those of drunkards. A long moment of silence followed. As the anger gradually subsided, everyone lowered their gazes, avoiding others’ eyes for fear of glimpsing the same madness. Monsieur Blanchart walked toward the crowd, sickened by the villagers’ brutality. He contemplated the shapeless mass of soldiers on the ground, a tangle of arms and legs, their uniforms daubed with blood. One of them managed to raise a hand, as if to beg the man with the gun to spare him. He groveled on the ground, the strength ebbing from his smashed-up body.
I took pity on the man and rushed to help him before the villagers’ astonished gaze.
“What’s he doing?” asked a man, taken aback.
“I don’t know,” replied a woman beside him.
I took the soldier’s hand. His skin was cold as ice. The man turned to look at me, his head covered in a mixture of golden hair and blood. When I saw his face, I thought I would faint. It was the soldier with eyes as blue as the sea, those eyes I would never forget, the German officer who had spared me in that forest clearing a year before, the soldier who had wanted to avenge his father but had never had the courage to kill another man. He was slowly dying, a thin stream of blood trickling from his damaged mouth. But there was still humanity in his eyes. He recognized me. His broken jaw moved into something like a smile. Comforted by my presence, he tried to speak a few words.
“Catherine . . . Catherine . . .”
“Yes,” I replied, my voice barely audible.
“Tell her . . . that . . . I love her,” he stammered feebly.
His head dropped again to the ground, and his back swelled with difficulty as he tried to breathe. Rasping, he managed to take a breath and choked, spitting out blood on the dirt, half suffocating. He exhaled what little air remained in his lungs, then his eyes slowly glazed over and began to close. The German officer, Catherine’s father, died in front of me. He would never again set eyes on the daughter whose memory had kept him going. She would grow up without him, like my schoolmaster whose father had perished in the trenches of Verdun.
The crowd dispersed, hands stained with German blood, the blood of revenge. Monsieur Blanchart sat on the low wall that ran around the town hall, rifle in hand. He stared at the ground for a few minutes, shaken by the brutality, the cold-blooded murder of the soldiers. We glanced at each other without a word. The bodies of the soldiers lay on the ground a short distance away.
“Humanity’s going to hell in a handbasket,” he said, looking at his daughter.
“Yes, Papa,” Mathilde politely replied.
Monsieur Blanchart stood up and took his daughter’s hand.
“Thank you, Paul. Come by the house whenever you like.”
His words expressed the sincere gratitude a father would accord his son. I was incredibly moved. Clearly, he saw that I had not been blinded by a thirst for vengeance that would lead me to commit the unspeakable. Mathilde also seemed moved. Her gaze seemed even deeper, more penetrating. She smiled at me again and said, “See you soon!” I blushed, my heart pounding in my chest, watching them walk away hand in hand.
The farmers began to drag away the soldiers’ bodies to be thrown into a hastily dug pit and covered with earth without even a prayer or marker stone, their only company the worms that would soon devour them.
I approached the body of the German officer and crouched down. Before breathing his last, the man had entrusted me with a mission: to find his daughter and tell her that her father loved her with all his heart. He may have been my enemy, but in that forest clearing I had been moved by his sincerity, so much so that I thought it normal to do all I could to speak with his daughter. After all, none of this was her fault. Catherine had the right to know the truth about what happened to her father, and I was the only person likely to be able to tell her. But I knew nothing about Catherine. I had no address, no p
hysical description, nothing that could point me in the right direction.
I searched the dead officer for any clues. Reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket, I found a folded card. Turning it over, I saw that it was a black-and-white photograph of a little girl, about ten years old, with a sad smile. Catherine, I thought. She had his eyes, the same humanity in her gaze. Was why life so unfair? All he had done was follow the orders of a tyrant whose mental health had been corrupted by the specters of his youth. And now he was dead. I too should have despised the invader, but my heart was resistant to any form of hate. On the back of the photograph was written: Catherine. 31 August 1940. Frankfurt. I searched the other pockets and found his ID: Gerhard Schäfer, it said. Died for Germany, I thought.
I slipped the photo into my pocket, taking care not to damage it. The officer’s lifeless body was as inert and limp as the dead animals that sometimes washed up on the Breton beaches. I whispered a thank-you to him for sparing my life, and I promised to find his daughter. As preposterous and unrealizable as this quest seemed, given my financial and logistical means, I clung to this idea like a child lost in the dark searching for the light. I ran back to the farm, frightened by the deaths I had witnessed, but proud of having finally found a meaning to my life.
11
It is an implacable fact of life that everything—except, perhaps, time and the universe—has a beginning and an end. My childhood was over. Pierre had left us for two years to do his military service in Rennes. Guy was exempted for his nearsightedness. It’s true he could hardly see a thing, poor kid. It would soon be my turn. Even though I hated the slightest thing to do with the army, I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to leave the fields far behind and go explore my country. As educated as I was, I could only imagine the picturesque landscapes of France, the steep slopes of the Alps, the beauty of the Alsatian forests, and sophisticated Paris with its huge monuments—such a contrast to the world I’d grown up in. I was eager for adventure and discovery, like the sailor I still intended to become one day. But I dreaded moving far from Mama and Mathilde.
Seasons of the Moon Page 5
