Lisette's List (27 page)

I ventured a question. “How did you lose your teeth? Do you mind talking about it?”

“I didn’t do it falling down a flight of marble stairs at the Lutetia, that’s for sure.”

“I’m guessing something a far sight worse.”

“The camp was run by storm troopers who brutalized the weaker prisoners. Day after day they found ways to satisfy their hunger to hurt. It enraged me to see one of them kick and beat a sick man for not being able to stand. The prisoner had vomited, and the guard made him lap it up like a dog. That was one cruelty
too many. I cursed him and shouted for him to leave the sick man alone, in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, which we had learned about in our training. He struck me in the mouth with his rifle butt.”

He told it without rancor, a mere fact of life. I would try to do the same when I would tell him about my encounter with the Germans.

“I know it’s not pleasant to look at. There’s a long delay to see dentists in Paris. I couldn’t wait until then to see you.”

“That’s what I mean about being a hero! You stood up for a comrade, unarmed. The missing teeth are evidence of your courageous resistance.”

“Or a mark of my stupidity.”

“No. Maxime. Please don’t think that way.”

When he finished eating, he said, “I’ve come to tell you about André. You have a right to know.”

“Tell me only what you are able to.”

At that encouragement, he could not bring up speech from his throat. He took a deep, faltering breath and looked away from me, as though reconstructing the scene of battle, as he had probably done a hundred times.

“We were stretched thin north of the Maginot Line of cement defenses, with only four anti-tank placements to the kilometer where there should have been ten. And only one anti-aircraft battery in the whole area.”

How strange and alien to hear him speak of military matters.

“From our position up there on the Marfée Heights, we had a splendid view of the beautiful Meuse River, which sparkled in the morning sun.”

Relief! That was a glimpse of the Maxime I knew.

“Early one morning, it was the thirteenth of May, waves of German dive-bombers—Stukas, they’re called—began screaming toward us, hundreds of them, Lisette. The sky was peppered with them hurtling down, shrieking their sirens above the engine noise,
and shattering our nerves. Whenever a rain of bombs fell, we flattened ourselves in the bottom of the trench, amazed when they landed even a kilometer away and we still felt the impact through the earth. Explosions came so close together that there was no time in between. Blasts hammered at us all day. Seconds after each one hit, we marveled that we were still breathing but were certain the next one would be the end of us.

“Nothing had prepared us for the fury of this assault. Some of the men in our platoon were already running to the rear. One man was crying. We were all dazed, cowering against our earth embankment, or recklessly rising above it to let loose a round of machinegun fire at a diving plane, or even just to aim rifle fire at the pilot, hungry to see one black swastika plunge nose-first into the ground.” Then, in a softer tone, he said, “For better or for worse, in those hours we were transformed from our former selves.

“André and I kept a constant watch for each other, asking with gestures toward the sky why our planes weren’t there defending us. Being undefended from the air made us all half-crazed. It was our first glimpse of defeat.

“As soon as the aerial pounding lessened, the German troops were on the move, launching rubber dinghies into the river. We had good results firing on them, but a few got across, and their loads of men attached a makeshift floating bridge to our bank so their armored personnel carriers could come across. They emptied out their infantry, giving us more targets than we could handle.”

It appalled me to hear him speak of human beings as
targets
, and of killing as
good results
.

“One by one, their explosives took out seven sod bunkers to the left of us, with the explosions coming our way. Then, just as we had dreaded, a line of panzers appeared, German tanks carrying small mounted cannons. Apparently they had crossed to the north out of sight and were heading toward us along a ridge, and another line was coming from the south. Their shells blasted across great distances, leaving gaping pits.”

He choked up, and it took him several minutes before he continued. “They were coming at us from all directions, behind us too, close enough to lob grenades. I could hardly believe what I saw when the sod bunker to the right of us exploded, a direct hit, spewing out metal and propelling bodies into the air. Another shell tore into the end of our own trench, sending sharp metal fragments flying into flesh. Our friends …”

He stopped and shook his head vehemently, as though trying to obliterate a memory. Neither of us dared to move while he gathered the strength to continue.

“I came here fully intending to tell you everything.”

“I can wait.”

Some long moments passed. Looking only at the floor in front of him, he resumed, “I was firing our squadron’s machine gun, which was mounted on a tripod, so I had to raise my head to keep the barrel level over the sandbags, and André was feeding it ammunition and could stay low in the trench. We had been trading off positions because one was more dangerous. It was futile, but we fought on anyway. A grenade landed right next to him, the side opposite from me.”

Max’s voice tightened to a high pitch. “His body shielded mine.”

I let him weep silently until he gasped back his voice enough to say, “Sharp metal fragments riddled …”

He held out his scarred hand. A fit of coughing racked his chest. I brought him a glass of water.

“The lieutenant waved a white flag, and eventually the explosions stopped. I spit out dirt. ‘Hold on,’ I said to André. ‘It’s over. Hold on.’

“He was trying to say something. I could make out ‘Lisette … Lisette …’ ”

A hot current coursed through me.

“He … I …” Maxime’s face contorted, and again he couldn’t speak for some time.

“Everybody laid down their weapons and was forced at gunpoint
to walk away, into an open field, and lie flat on the ground in rows. I had to leave André lying sprawled, so I gestured to a guard for permission to go back to him. He nodded and came with me, his rifle drawn on me the whole time. I laid André right and searched in his clothes for anything the guard would let me remove. I allowed our blood to mingle.”

Maxime laid in my hand a worn, folded scrap of paper, brown with dried blood, containing a single line:

Dearest Lisette, my own true love, my life

“This is enough for today,” I murmured.

W
E CLIMBED THE STAIRS
, and I showed Maxime to Pascal’s bedroom. When he was finally breathing the rhythm of sleep, I went into my own room, peopled now with the images from his words.

I woke hearing screams from the next room and rushed to Maxime’s side. I grabbed his flailing arms and tried to quiet him.

“Finish,” he cried, thrashing in the bed. “Finish …” The rest became muffled, with his face in the pillow.

“Wake up, Max. Wake up. It was only a dream. Leave it behind. You’re safe. You’re with me. Lisette.”

Words were inadequate to wash away his visions, so I lifted his hand to my cheek, which set off a trembling through his body. Awake now, he pulled up his legs into a fetal position and moaned.

I stroked his head, his temple. “Shh, Max. It’s all right. You can be calm now.”

“Calm! I spent five years in hell, burning in fury that I was kept out of the war and couldn’t retaliate for his death, and now you expect me to forget it all and be calm?”

Great sputtering sobs issued from his throat, and I was mortified for having said something so shallow. I had relegated his inner battle to a child’s nightmare. All I could do was sit on the bed, lean
down over him, hold him, and hope that the closeness of my presence would quiet his agony.

Eventually exhaustion allowed him to breathe naturally. I moved away from the bed and brought a chair alongside it to keep watch all night, fighting off a nightmare of my own. The room was filled with blackness such that I could see no limit to it, no end of pain, no respite from sorrow.

I
WAS AWAKE TO
see the morning star wink its pale light in the predawn gray. Maxime’s nightmare must have exhausted him, because he slept late. He finally came downstairs, one hesitant step at a time, humbly, as though he doubted I would want to see him.

“Come. Sit down.” I poured him a hot drink. “It’s made from the rose hips of sweetbriar. It grows wild around here. Goat’s milk is good in it.”

A wan smile told me that he appreciated my chatter.

“I am at a loss to explain how terrible I feel about last night. I thought I could control it, but telling you brought it all up.”

“Don’t berate yourself, Max.”

“Was I screaming?”

“Yes.”

“Words?”

“Just one that I could make out.
Finish
. You said the rest into the pillow.”

“I don’t suppose you know what I meant?”

“No.”

Maxime leaned toward me, waiting for me to figure it out, willing me with the intensity of his eyes to comprehend it.

“He asked for his quietus, Lisette, his finishing stroke. He said, ‘Do it.’ ”

The rest of André’s plea exploded into sudden clarity.
Finish me off
.

“There was no time to reason out right and wrong. The Germans
were bearing down on us. That was the moment to do it. I couldn’t stand to leave him suffering. The white flag went up. Enemy soldiers ordered us to the surrender area. If I had stayed with him until he died … on his own—”

“You would have been killed too.”

I
MUST HAVE GONE
upstairs to be alone, because I found myself lying on my bed in a stupor. Slowly new images emerged, raw, vivid, unspeakable. I wrestled with the question
How could he?
and rose and fell on waves of hurt as on an angry sea. After some time, I broke onto the shore and arrived at the thought I needed: No matter how horrifying, Maxime’s deed had made André’s end easier. It was an act of love. In that split-second decision, Maxime had begun his soul’s dark journey, and for that instantaneous act of love, I ought to be grateful.

I found him downstairs, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the tile floor. At the sound of my presence, he drew in an agitated breath but would not look up.

“You must hate me. You have every right to hate me.”

I sat down in front of him and put my hands around his.

“No, Max. How could I? He would have died anyway. You fulfilled his final wish.”

“Do you think being a prisoner was my punishment?”

“We don’t get punished for acts of mercy, Max. It was a moment of grace between friends. You sacrificed your peace for his. Thank you.”

He did not weep outright. There was no sound, just a tear slowly filling each eye and tumbling. After some minutes he raised his head.

“I wish it had been me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

PROMENADE

1945

L
ATER THAT MORNING, WHILE RIPPING MORSELS OFF A BAGUETTE
, we began haltingly to speak of other things. Only then did Maxime notice the bare walls.

“You never found the paintings?”

“No. Just the frames in the root cellar.”

His knit brow told me he was thinking something out.

“If I had not told André to hide them, you would still have them.”

“Don’t do that to yourself. They would have been stolen. In fact, they were.”

Then I told him about the encounter with
Herr Leutnant
.

“There was only a blank piece of canvas, which he must have used to cover them. We have our own woodpile in the courtyard. I used up all the wood he had piled up. There was nothing beneath it either.”

“How about under the ground beneath it?”

“It’s worth a look, but then why was his canvas at the communal woodpile?”

Without an answer to that, we went outside, and I said to Geneviève, “This is my friend Maxime, from Paris, your city.” I told
Max, “Maurice, the bus driver, and Louise, his wife, gave her to me. When I’m sad she leans against my leg to comfort me. And this is Kooritzah Deux. She’s Russian and likes to be carried around.”

“Of course. Russian chickens are like that.” He indulged me with a wry smile. “I see that rural life has beguiled you.”

I arched an eyebrow at that, and he chuckled. I went down to the root cellar and got the shovel, then went back out to the courtyard and started to dig.

“Let me,” he said. “I’m used to digging. I don’t want you to get dirty.”

“Dirty! I am a countrywoman now.”

Gently, he took the shovel out of my hands. “You’ll always be a
Parisienne
to me.”

We traded off digging but found nothing.

I slumped onto the bench in the lean-to. “It would have been so simple if they were here, so wonderful to see them again with you, to have you put them back into their frames and hang them.”

“It’s been a long time since life has been simple for either of us.”

I
SUGGESTED THAT HE
rest and then we would take a short promenade around the village. There was nothing else to do here, and only the horrible things to speak of again. We stayed in the upper village at first, stopping to sit on benches in the shade, and climbed up to the Castrum, the high plateau at the north end of the village, which was a camp and lookout of Roman soldiers in former times. I didn’t tell him that. We could see the Monts de Vaucluse to the north and, beyond them, the white limestone sliver of Mont Ventoux. I explained that it was where the mistral came from.

We descended through the Gothic arch to place de la Mairie and sat awhile at an outdoor table in front of the café. I told him about being the first woman to enter the café at
apéritif
hour and how that had spread to other women.