Resistance (24 page)

The smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. He saw his father in the doorway.

“I fell,” the boy said at once. “It was an accident.”

His father was unshaven. The man didn't shave but twice a week. He was wearing a grease-stained blue work-shirt that opened midchest.

“What accident?”

“On my bicycle. I fell off my bicycle.”

His father leaned forward to look out the window. “Where's the bicycle now?”

“In the barn.”

“So why aren't you in school? School's not out yet.”

“They thought I should come home,” he lied.

His father's eyes narrowed. He seemed to smell the lie. He always did. Jean's mother wiped her hands on the dishtowel. She took a step toward him. “I’d better see to that plaster,” she said.

“Leave him be.”

His mother stopped.

“Where'd you get the plaster?”

Jean hesitated. He'd better leave the school out of this. That was shaky ground. “It was in the square. The accident. And Madame Daussois fixed it.”

“Madame Daussois?”

Jean winced, cursing himself silently.

“What were you doing with Madame Daussois?”

“I wasn't exactly. It's just that she ran to me when I fell, and it was she who put the plaster on.”

“Madame Daussois was in the square?”

Jean looked down. His mind raced. Where was this going? Where would he trip himself up? How could he have been so foolish as to mention Madame Daussois's name?

His father moved closer to him. Jean could smell once again the stale breath of the drinking.

“Madame Daussois was in the square?” his father repeated more loudly.

“Yes, yes,” the boy stammered.

“The square of Delahaut?” His father was almost shouting.

In his thoughts, the boy panicked. He could not mention Ranee—he would never be able satisfactorily to explain why he went to Rance. Oh God, why had he mentioned the name Daussois?

Always later, when Jean was alone, he tried to reconstruct the argument, tried to figure out where the trigger was, what it was that had set his father off. But it was like an endlessly repeatable science experiment that never produced the same results.

The hand to the side of his face came sooner than he'd expected. He heard his mother exclaim. He put his hands up over his head. In doing so, he fell back against the wall, couldn't keep his balance, slid to the floor. His father stood over him.

“You think this is a game? You think I don't know what you're doing sniffing around Madame Daussois? You want to be with the Maquis, maybe? The Partisans?”

Jean brought his knees up, sheltered his head with his hands. It was always the same.

His father pointed a finger and shook it. “You want to fight the Germans, do you? You want to be a hero? A Resistance fighter?”

Jean was silent. It was no good shaking his head no. That would only further enflame his father.

“Well, I’ll tell you something, you sniveling little shit, you're going to get yourself killed. That's what's going to happen. I ever catch you near the Daussoises’ again, I’ll beat you to a bloody pulp.”

Jean wanted to laugh. If you don't get killed first, I’ll kill you. His father kicked him. His father's rages often ended with a kick. But the toe of his father's boot connected only with the wooden sole of Jean's shoe, and the boy didn't feel the blow. For a minute he was afraid that, having missed, his father would kick him again.

Instead, mercifully, his father went out the kitchen door, slammed it.

Jean brought his hand to his cheek. It was the same cheek she had kissed. He felt the skin with his fingers.

Claire brought her hand to her mouth. Ted didn't know if the gesture was for having been seen together, or if it was simply horror for the state Henri was in.

Ted thought of the Depression bums and the hoboes who had sometimes come to the back door of the house in Mount Gilead. He remembered how Frances would make cheese sandwiches and wrap them in wax paper and give them to the men who knocked at all hours of the day. It was seldom the same man, but the word seemed to have gone out: You can get a sandwich and a cup of hot coffee in that kitchen. Ted, barely a teenage boy, would watch in fascination, trying to imagine such a life. At the time, the thought of sleeping by the tracks and riding on railroad cars, not knowing one's destination, was a promise of infinite adventure.

Henri had grown a beard. His hair lay in greasy strands across his forehead. His eyes seemed sunken in hollows that might have been caused by grime or by lack of sleep. His trousers were frayed at the hems, and his coat no longer had buttons. His shoes had given out. Ted wondered what had happened to the man. He wondered how he could walk.

Claire got down from the truck, her kerchief untying itself and fluttering to the ground. He watched her walk toward her husband, put a hand on his arm, speak to him. He felt the touch of Claire's hand on her husband's arm like the blow of a baseball bat to his gut. Barely aware of what he was doing, he opened the passenger door of the truck and stumbled down. He walked to the other side of the truck and picked up Claire's scarf. He held it loosely in his fingers, staring at the pattern, as if he had come upon an important artifact and did not know what it meant. Then he folded the scarf and put it in his pocket.

When he looked up, Henri and Claire were approaching him. She was not touching her husband now. Henri studied Ted, then said, remarkably, “Bonjour.” He removed from his pocket a crumpled pack of cigarettes, shook one loose, offered it to Ted. Ted, anxious to break the tension, to have something to do, took the proffered cigarette and bent his head as Henri lit a match. The man smelled foul, as if he had not bathed in weeks, and Ted supposed he hadn't. Cupping his hands around the flame in Henri's hand, Ted glanced up at Henri's face. Within the sunken sockets, Henri's gaze was steady—not sullen, not wounded—and yet there was an unmistakable sense of deep exhaustion, an exhaustion that puts a man beyond the range of normal feelings. Henri looked at Ted's face, then examined the length of him to his feet. Claire stood with her hands in the pockets of her coat. She bit the inside of her cheek. Her hair was loose over the shoulders of her coat. Oddly, Henri lit a cigarette for himself, but did not offer one to his wife. Ted watched as Henri put the packet away inside his buttonless coat.

Ted took a long pull, turned his face, and blew the smoke away. He caught Claire's eye as he turned. Henri, who held his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, took a quick drag, looked again at Ted. Ted left them then and walked to the truck bed. He climbed onto the back, leaned against the metal side. He rested the hand with the cigarette on a raised knee. He smoked quietly, a kind of desperate humming in his ears. What was preventing him from taking Claire, putting her in the truck and heading for France? he asked himself. He wanted to tell Henri the truth of what had passed between himself and Claire, but he couldn't even speak to the man without forcing Claire to translate. It would have been laughable, he thought, if it hadn't been so serious.

But Henri, he realized with a sudden jolt, watching the man walk slowly around the truck bed to the passenger side, already knew. He hadn't needed a translation. It was why he'd offered Ted the cigarette, he thought now; it was the cause of the steady gaze, the cause of the prolonged scrutiny from Ted's face to his feet. It was a curious kind of knowledge on Henri's part, Ted thought, a
knowing
without precisely having been told. A knowing not just of the facts, but of what lay behind the facts. Ted had sometimes seen this on Claire's face as well.

Claire drove. The truck bounced over the ruts while Ted hung on to the side to keep from banging helplessly around the back. At the house, Henri went immediately inside. Ted stood by the rear of the truck, unsure of what to do.

Claire came to speak to him. She glanced briefly at him, looked away.

“I am to go for Dussart,” she said. “My husband says you will leave this house tonight.”

Ted reached forward, caught the sleeve of her coat.

She shook her head quickly.

He released the sleeve.

Ted did not enter the house. Henri was there, somewhere inside, perhaps washing at the pump, perhaps lying on the bed. The image of the latter made Ted almost ill. Or maybe the man was eating. Ted felt a gnawing at the bottom of his stomach that was distinctly not hunger. He had the sense that he had only minutes left, that something was about to happen to him over which he had no control. In the near dark, he looked down at his hands. They were raw from the cold, and shaking. He remembered the half-moon smudges on her cheekbones.

The sun was just setting across the fields. A wind was blowing, making a faint whistle. For a moment, just before it set, the sun lit up the landscape and turned everything—every tree, every matted piece of straw, the barn, the gray stone of the house—to a pink salmon that seemed to have a life of its own, to imbue the world around him with beauty. The straight furrows of the fields, only minutes ago just barren troughs, were luminous arrows pointing toward the west. A large bird overhead was a black silhouette with a golden wing. Even his hands, which had been a mottled red, seemed now to glow with the pink light. He felt-exhilarated by the sudden light. It was an exhilaration he'd sometimes known before—in a Tiger Moth 2,000 feet over East Anglia; at 15,000 feet at dawn, leaving the Channel behind him. It was impossible to believe, at such moments, in the decay of war or in a world that did not contain the possibility of joy. He imagined then the search after the war for Claire, their reunion. He saw this as a certainty. He shut his eyes to contain the vision, to seal it.

When he opened them, the sun, directly west of the house and the stairs on which he sat, sank abruptly—and just as abruptly the pink light was gone. Like a swift cloud, the air around him darkened; color left the landscape. Two bicycles entered the drive, stopped in front of him. An odd-looking man, not much older than a boy, swung a leg over one of the bicycles. Claire dismounted from the other. Ted saw that the man was missing an ear. His name, said Claire, was Dussart. He and Henri were taking Ted that night to meet with two other aviators— not from his own crew, she added quickly; then the three would be transferred to the next stop-further down the line. They would leave when it was fully dark, in one hour. Now she would make some food for all of them, she said. She climbed the steps beside Ted. Dussart followed her. She hesitated at the top. She asked Ted to come in to have the meal with Henri and Dussart. Ted shook his head.

For a time he heard muffled sounds emanating through the shut kitchen window. Men speaking. The chink of crockery. He wondered occasionally as he sat on the stoop—shivering badly now from the cold; the beret had been lost in the woods, and he had no gloves—if he ought to go inside, eat the meal that had been offered him. It might be some time before he'd get another. And he wondered, too, if he shouldn't allow himself to watch Claire at the pump and the stove, experience the last few minutes they would have together for some time as well. But the thought of sharing the small room with Henri and the young man with the missing ear stopped him.

He heard the door open. She had her coat on and sat on the step with him. She lay the book between them, the photograph of Stella peeking out of the top. In her hands she held some papers, which she gave to Ted. They were, he saw, his identity cards. He could not read his new name in the darkness.

“I am bringing you these,” she said.

He glanced quickly at the book, looked away. He didn't pick it up.

“Has he said anything to you?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded.

“He knows, doesn't he?”

She was silent. Again she nodded.

“I love you,” he said.

She didn't answer him, and he was momentarily stung by her silence. And then he sensed that she was trying to speak, but couldn't. Was it that she didn't know the precise words, or was it something she simply couldn't say?

He rubbed the toe of his good foot against the hard dirt. She shifted so that she was facing him. He could barely see her in the darkness. She put a hand on the book, and he covered it quickly. Her hand was so warm— his must feel like ice to her, he thought. Neither of them moved. He closed his eyes, concentrated on her hand. He tried to memorize the feel of it—the skin like kid beneath his own. He felt her wedding ring, the hard gold band, left it alone. He felt the tips of her fingers, the short slices of nails.

They heard voices just beyond the door.

“Non,”
she said quickly, with a kind of strangled cry. She pressed her forehead to his face—a frantic gesture. “I am …,” she began, then was stopped.

The door opened noisily, shut against its frame. Henri, after bathing, looked a different man. Claire withdrew her hand and stood up. Ted did likewise. He looked for her face in the darkness. What had she been about to say?
I am … loving you? I am … afraid?

Henri spoke to his wife.

Claire put her hands in the pockets of her coat. She said: “They are taking you now. My husband is telling me you are walking between them, and when is time, my husband will say to you
courage….
” She turned to Henri. “
Courage?
” she asked. He nodded. She looked back at Ted. “He will say
courage,
which is to you courage, and you are then walking forward alone to the automobile which will be there. They are not walking with you, because they are not wanting to see the faces of the persons in the next cell, yes?”

Dussart and Henri walked a few feet away and stood waiting for Ted.

He tried to say, “I want to thank you,” which was true, and which he could say to Claire in front of Henri and Dussart, but his voice left him. He felt a hand on his arm. She kissed him once on each cheek. She said quietly into his ear, “I am remembering you.” He felt her hand linger on his arm. And then the touch was gone.

Ted watched the door close behind her.

He thought then that it was the hardest thing he'd ever done—harder even than the belly landing in the pasture, which had brought him to this place. He looked toward Henri and Dussart. Henri's eyes slid away from Ted's. He realized then, with the shiver of an absolute truth, that not only had Henri known about himself and Claire, but the whole village had also known. The affair, the allowance of the affair, had been a gift to him and to Claire. To him because he was the American. To Claire because she was Resistance.