Resistance (7 page)

Jean tried again.

“Germans,” he said, pointing to the trail the soldier had made, leading to the pasture and the plane. But the American stared blankly at him.

“Ted,” Jean said urgently, pointing to inside the brambles.

The American nodded.

“Jean,” Jean said. He again pointed to the north, then back. He repeated the gesture. In exasperation, the boy said in French, “Hide yourself. I will return for you.” And the American seemed to catch in the sentence a word that sounded familiar.

“Return?” the aviator asked slowly.

Jean, too, heard the word in his own language. He nodded vigorously and smiled, nearly exultant.

The flyer began to smile too, then suddenly blanched with pain. Jean looked at the leg, at the flight suit, which in his attention to the man's face and eyes he had missed. One leg of the flight suit was covered with blood, dried brown blood. Jean felt lightheaded, dizzy.

“Quickly,” he urged the American, pointing to the brambles. “Quickly.”

The tone of the boy's voice, rather than the word itself, seemed to reach the American. Carefully, he lowered himself, used his forearms to pull his body into the hiding place.

Jean studied the hidden American. The Germans would find him, just as Jean had, he was sure. Unless he could outwit them.

He scooped up handfuls of pine needles and bark and dried leaves and buried the American's protruding feet in mulch. But that wouldn't be enough.

The extra minutes his idea would take were critical, Jean knew, yet it had to be done.

The boy retraced the matted trail, running until he was fifty meters from the pasture. He could hear voices, though he could not make out the words or even their nationality. He began to destroy, backwards toward the bramble bush, and as best he could, the existing trail. But when this proved impossible—the matted grasses would not rise up; the broken branches could not be mended— he devised another plan and was momentarily excited by his own cleverness. He made other paths, diversionary spokes, leading out from the central hub. In a kind of madness, he dragged himself on his back, bending branches and twigs, scuffling leaves with his feet. He tried to calculate the odds that the Germans would enter the forest at the correct point and then would choose the precise spoke to the American.

He surveyed his work.

Whatever else happened, he told himself, he had at least done this.

Turning north, he bent his head to protect it, put out his arms, and scrambled at a near run through the forest. It was December, and darkness came early.

The bicycle shuddering, the tire nearly flat. Shit, why hadn't he paid attention to the tires earlier? People in doorways, hanging out of windows. A plane in the village, fallen from the sky like an omen. Head down, keep the head down, blend into the stone, look inconspicuous. Antoine should slow down; people would notice they were racing. Antoine in the kitchen with Claire. Antoine stank of pigs. He was ugly with his pink face, his small eyes, and that greasy, thin, white-blond hair.

Claire in the kitchen. Did she know he had been drinking in the barn before he'd gone into town? Her breasts in her rose sweater, the way she stood with her arms folded under them. If she died before he did, he would remember her that way. And the way she was able to make a meal out of nothing. It was a trick, a gift she had. Like her silence, the quiet of her. She was from his mother's side of the family. Sometimes too quiet. Though he'd rather have that than what Antoine had got himself—a shrew with a high-pitched voice. That terrible whine. You could hear it all the way to Rance. How did the man stand it? Maybe it was why Antoine had been so quick to go with the Maquis. Get away from the old woman.

The brakes squealing from lack of oil. A dull ache up the back of his neck from the beer. Heavy, flat beer; maybe it was going bad, that's why he had the headache. How many bowls had he drunk? He wished he hadn't, but who knew a plane was going to fall out of the sky?

The drink took the edge off the cold, made the hours move. The drinking was illegal, the beer contraband, all, that is, except for the weak beer that tasted like cat piss that they let you have in the cafés. All the real alcohol was supposed to go to the German front. But Henri, like Antoine and Jauquet, made his own beer and then kept it hidden in the barn.

Every morning the same routine: the bread, the awful coffee, the fricassee that no longer had any bacon. Then the frigid air of the barn, where he pretended he had work to do. When the war was over, if it ever ended, the farm would be exposed for what it was—a ruin. Nearly sixty head of dairy cattle gone, the Germans would get the rest before the winter was out. His father's legacy— his father's father's legacy—slaughtered. He'd keep the house, get a job in the village, maybe Rance or Florennes. But what was there to do? What could he do except make repairs to nonexistent machinery?

But nothing would ever be the same again, so what was the point of worrying? Who knew what would be left when the Germans were through with them? He'd known nothing would be the same since the day Antoine had come with the news Belgium had fallen, and then had asked him to join the Maquis. You couldn't say no. If you were asked, you had to join. He didn't like to think too long about what might have happened to him if Antoine hadn't asked. Ride the war out is what he'd have done. And there would have been some shame in that. If he had any motivation, and it wasn't much, it was that when this goddamn war was over he wanted to have done the right thing. Not the same as wanting to do the right thing. Not like Antoine. Not like Claire. With her nursing and her languages.

The truth was, say it, he was scared, scared shitless every day they had a Jew or an aviator in the house, scared just to be in Antoine's presence. He'd heard the life expectancy of a Resistance fighter was three months. Then how had he and Antoine made it so long? And didn't that mean their time was up? You knew you would be caught one day, shot. It was the only way you could get out.

When Antoine had asked, Henri had known he couldn't say no.

Léon now. Léon had courage. Léon had nothing left to lose. His son dead in the single week of fighting when the Germans had trampled over Belgium. Léon, angry, still grieving, but too sick for heavy work. He waited at the Germans’ tables at L'Hotel de Ville and listened to the talk, sometimes brought Antoine messages. Léon with his steel glasses and his workers’ cap. It was a wonder the Germans hadn't killed him already. He looked like a Bolshevik.

Henri didn't want to find an American flyer. He didn't want to have to hide an American flyer in his attic. If the Germans caught him at this game, he would be shot, and the American would be given a beer.

Shit, it was cold. The cobblestones made his teeth hurt. The sky the color of dust. Days like this, the cold seeped in, stayed through the night. You couldn't get rid of it no matter what you did. A young girl in a doorway. Did she wave at him? Was that Beauloye's daughter? The girl in dark lipstick. How old was she, anyway? Fifteen?

Antoine parked his bicycle behind the church. Henri did the same. Antoine knew how to look around and see everything without moving his head. They would go in separately, Antoine first, then a minute later, himself. Smoke a cigarette, lean against the wrought iron railing, stub it out, sigh, curse maybe, as if you were thinking of having to go home to a woman like Antoine's wife. The heavy wooden door squeaked open. The gloom was blinding.

Shivering already. Fear or cold? He didn't know. He swore the stone was set. High stone, a small candle flickering in the distance. He touched the water in the font, crossed himself, genuflected. He moved toward the altar, genuflected again, slipped in next to Antoine, Léon just beyond them.

Base Bail.
The words said precisely in English behind him. Emilie Boccart. It was the cigarettes, that voice. He didn't turn, but he wanted to. She was what, forty, forty-live, and still he wanted a look at her. Long, low-slung breasts; her nipples would be erect in the cold. Her coat was open, he had seen her from the back coming up the aisle. If he turned, he could look at the outline of her breasts through the cloth of her blouse. She was Jauquet's lover. Jauquet, who had a wife and five children.

It's a game. An American game, she said. Léon coughed.

Then Léon whispering to Antoine, so that Henri could hear too. And any minute the words could change to a prayer. Emilie would be watching, begin to pray in an audible voice. Hail Mary, Mother of God … A simple signal.

Lehouk found two of the Americans already. One has a wound to the arm. The other's in shock, no memory of anything, not even his name. They've already been taken to Vercheval.

And the wounded man from the plane? Antoine speaking.

With Dinant. She's keeping him. He's too badly hurt.

Antoine angry now. She was told …

Léon raising a hand. There's no persuading her, Chi-may. I tried.

The other?

With Bastien.

Where's Jauquet?

St. Laurent.

Telling the Germans, Henri thought, shifting his weight.

Again the hoarse voice behind him.

He's afraid he'll never play
Base Ball.

Who's afraid?

The man with the broken arm. He says he's a
Base Ball
player.

We don't have much daylight, Antoine said. We've got to cover the woods.

I’ll go. A thin voice from behind and the left. Dussart. The boy with the missing car. An accident in the quarry. Pale and thin and blond, the hair grown long to cover the bad ear. He volunteered for everything. A wild streak in him that bore some watching. If it hadn't been for the war, Henri thought, the boy would have fled Belgium, gone to Marseilles, Amsterdam.

Dussart. Then Henri. Then Dolane, another dairy farmer. Van der Elst, the butcher. Van der Elst hid Jews above the shop. Once he had been raided, but his wife, Elise, had sent the refugees over the roof to Monsieur Gosset.

Any other planes? Antoine again.

No, just the one. The pilot was trying for the Heights.

Antoine considered. Antoine could kneel only on the left knee, the right injured in an accident with explosives. A tiny candle in a red glass. Jesus hanging from the cross, the blood in exaggerated drops on the Saviour's side. As a kid, it made him ill. The smell was mildew, he was sure of it. Even in the summer, the place was damp.

Emilie, tell Duceour and Hainaert. Léon, go back to the hotel.

I can't.

Why not?

I sent Chiméne this morning to say I was sick.

Tell them you're better.

Léon coughing and rising. His breath making small puffs on the frigid air.

Antoine turning now to Henri. Can you take another? He meant in addition to the old woman from Antwerp. Henri nodded. The old woman was going to die anyway. Maybe even today. A scuffle of shoes behind him. Emilie, Dussart, Dolane leaving. He heard the sharp report of high heels on the stone floor; he loved that sound. It was worth the Mass on Sundays.

The candle still flickering. Who had lit it? Emilie for herself? For them all? For the children she never had? For her sins with Jauquet? Would he and Claire have children? Four years and nothing. He didn't understand it. Was there something wrong with his seed? With Claire somewhere deep inside her? There'd been nothing like that with anyone on his side of the family; his mother had reassured him. They waited in the pew. He couldn't pray. If he prayed, it would be
not
to find an American flyer. To go home and have his noon meal instead. To go to bed.

But probably he should pray he thought. Pray to be relieved of his fear. To want to do the work he was given. To have courage like Antoine did, and not hate this war so much. He blew on his hands to warm them. Antoine farted quietly. Antoine was a pig. And a hero in the Maquis. He had blown up a bridge. Killed two German soldiers with his hands.

Henri waited his turn, the last to go but for Antoine. He wished now he could eat. He would probably not get food until late tonight. Antoine said a word. Henri rose, slipped along the pew. His own boots caused echoes in the sanctuary. Outside, the light, though muted by thick cloud cover, hurt his eyes. He looked all around the square. The members of the Delahaut Maquis had already disappeared into the gray stone.

Sometimes, when his father slaughtered his animals, when his father sold to the Germans not just the grain, but also the meat, Jean saw, in the barn, the odd bits left on the filthy table, odd bits crawling with maggots. A sight as sickening as anything he had ever witnessed, and now, with the barrow, with the dark seemingly sinking through the tall beeches like fog or cloud, that was the image Jean had of the forest. His forest, crawling with maggots, the Germans with their high black boots and revolvers, searching for the Americans.

The route Jean decided to take was an old hunter's route, and he doubted the Germans knew of it, though they could stumble across his path and demand to know what he was doing in the wood with a barrow. And if they went to his father, to query him about his son and the forest, his father would tell them of the hunter's path—not visible from the perimeter, but not so overgrown it couldn't be used to gain access to the interior of the forest without losing one's way. Even so, Jean didn't think anyone knew the wood as well as he—not even his father. It had been, for years, his playground; now it was his home, a place to which he could escape the unhappiness and shame in the farmhouse where his parents lived.

Steering the barrow was sometimes more difficult than he had anticipated, and occasionally Jean left the trail when two straight oaks refused to let him pass. He was not at all sure he would be able to make his way back with the American, but several months ago, in the summer, he had carried a large sow from Hainaert's farm to his own. Could the American possibly weigh more than the sow? he wondered. The man had seemed lean inside the sheepskin, tall but not heavy. Jean remembered clearly the American's face—the eyes still, not afraid, nearly smiling when he and Jean had hit upon the word they shared—and changing just the once, going white from the pain. He didn't want to think about that pain, or the cold of the forest floor, or the odds that when he arrived at the bramble bush the American would still be alive. He didn't know which he feared more—to find the American dead, or to find him gone, taken by the Germans.