In This Hospitable Land (38 page)

No lights were on in the buildings far below where a few families lived. Even small birds and hawks had abandoned this high ridge for the night.

Émile returned to the brothers and reassured them. In single file they climbed to the high road and walked rapidly several hundred yards.

“We’ll go down here,” Émile announced, gesturing toward a cartway that diverged from the route along the crest.

They walked through flickering starlight filtered through trees that grew wherever the mountainside provided shelter from the wind. The farther down the mountain they went, the more normal the height and the angles at which the trees had grown. Still short by lowland standards, these oaks were large for the mountains of the Cévennes, with thick trunks indicating great age.

A small stream worked its way down the mountain seeking the valley floor. As the moon reached its apogee, Émile saw a cluster of buildings in the cup of the tilted valley.

Le Tronc was far more remote than Le Massufret. Surrounded by bushes, with grassy slopes and rocky outcroppings instead of trees, Émile felt sure the Sauverins would be less subject to exposure there. As far as he knew, département officials in Mende weren’t aware it existed let alone that Léon and Yvonne Guin still managed to scratch a modest living out of the hard, unforgiving ground. Perhaps the mayor of Saint Frézal-de-Ventalon knew about them but he never interfered. How could he? Léon Guin held no truck with governmental obstruction or dictates. He lived as he chose.

Moving through the last turnings of the cartway and along the walkways that divided the buildings of Le Tronc one from another, Émile rounded the last corner and felt relieved seeing geraniums flowering in pots arranged alongside a doorway. The plaster on the house’s front façade was still in place after three centuries. The wooden door’s lion-headed knocker was strangely ornate for this obscure place.

Émile rapped with his knuckles since the big brass knocker would sound throughout the valley. It made no sense to announce their arrival at an unseemly hour to anyone but the Guins.

A voice called from the other side, “Yes?”

“I’m here with the brothers,” Émile said as loudly as he dared.

The door’s bolt drew back and a very thin face peered out. Light from a lantern set on a table inside cast a pale yellow glow onto the new arrivals.

After examining the three faces closely, Léon Guin stepped back. The men entered without further invitation and Léon quickly shut the door, slid the bolt into place, walked back to the kerosene lantern, and adjusted the wick to burn more brightly.

“You made good time,” Léon said crustily. “We weren’t expecting you for hours.” Solemnly he put out his hand to offer strong handshakes all around. “Welcome,” he said, as if taking in two refugees in the middle of the night was just ordinary hospitality.

Léon was a spare, rustic gentleman, thin and angular, of medium height, with wisps of white hair floating above ruby cheeks and a prominent nose bent at the tip as if the Romans had left behind a reminder of their former dominance. An impish smile broke across his face.

“Come, Mother,” he called cheerfully to his wife. “I don’t think they’ll bite.”

Yvonne Guin emerged from the next room, a greatcoat wrapped around her nightgown. Her bare feet made her appear even shorter than her five feet. She too was thin. Her soft, sparse, graying hair was tied back in a tight bun, leaving only a few straggling strands to dance across her forehead. She offered her welcome with an unmistakable warmth that contrasted powerfully with her husband’s inscrutability.

“Good to have you,” Yvonne said, holding out her hands for her new guests to take in turn. “Come sit. You’ve had a long walk.”

Léon shot Émile a look of deep concern. “Any problems?”

“No. Though a dog by the mine gave us a start with its barking.”

At Yvonne’s cheerful insistence each man pulled a chair up to the large, well-lit table which was used, as was the custom in the region, for everything from preserving fruits and vegetables to butchering sides of meat, from kneading dough to sewing.

“These are the Guins,” Émile said, properly introducing the parties he had brought together. He hadn’t thought to do so sooner since everyone knew everyone else in the area, making introductions unnecessary. “And these are the Sauverin brothers. One is André and the other is Alex. Even after spending five days together I still can’t tell them apart.”

That was Émile’s way of letting Alex know all had been forgiven.

André identified himself. Yvonne, turning, said, “Then you must be Alex. And you must all be hungry.”

She brought several pieces of three-day-old bread out of the cupboard. From the small pantry at the back of the house—below ground-level since, like La Font, the house had been built into the slope of the land—she retrieved butter and raspberry preserves.

“Émile,” she asked invitingly, “you’ll stay?”

“Just for a bit of rest,” he sighed. “I was going to wait a day to go back but there’s no danger in me walking around mid-afternoon. Only at an hour such as this could my appearance arouse suspicions.”

Late winter lay about La Font with the cold, sometimes snowy, broken by occasional warmer days in which clouds from the west broke open to reveal bright blue skies. Every now and then a gentle softness breezed in from the Mediterranean forcing bitter Atlantic air north. But even when new-fallen snow melted quickly, the ground remained frozen. Would this winter never end?

Denise and Geneviève swiftly settled into constant work and worry. They took comfort in Albertine’s assurance that the greater part of the local gendarmerie was friendly, sympathetic, and resistant to distant authorities. But official orders wending their way from Mende to the post in Le Pont-de-Montvert and then on to Vialas came directly from the Gestapo, making them impossible to ignore. Thanks to secretaries sympathetic to the Resistance, most times the police knew before the orders were sent out and did their best to help the intended victims.

Unfortunately, the treacherous, devious, merciless Milice thugs acted on behalf of the Gestapo independently of the police. So the postman kept Geneviève and Denise abreast of the Milice’s latest movements by hinting and winking and starting sentences he never finished.

They also got the idea from him that the Resistance was daily becoming larger, better organized, and more reliable. Old-timers at the café agreed, insisting the enemy weakened as the resisters—newly dubbed “Maquisards”—grew stronger and more numerous.

Overwhelmed by their tasks and fearful of their fate the Freedman sisters still did their part to fight the Fascists by listening to the BBC each night after the children had settled down to sleep. Denise faithfully remembered what she could—say, the fighting in Tunisia with von Arnim’s Panzer attack on British positions at Maj
z-al-B
b, or Montgomery’s assault on Rommel’s position along the Mareth Line—and then passed it along to the postman as André and Alex had done.

Denise and Geneviève were now barely distinguishable from the other hardworking women of the Cévennes who also suffered from the enforced absence of their men. Denise was particularly struck by what Geneviève had become capable of doing and putting up with.

“I don’t mind the smell of the animals anymore,” Geneviève told Denise one day in early March, “not even the goats. Maybe because now we all smell pretty much the same.”

But neither could get used to not hearing from their husbands.

“I should be stoic and bite my tongue,” Geneviève complained, “but you’re my sister and I have to tell someone: I’m constantly worried about Alex. André too, of course.”

“The postman says they’re safe.”

“Too vague,” Geneviève keened. “If only he could tell us where they are.”

Before Geneviève could upset her too, Denise said, “What we don’t know we can’t reveal.”

“Madame Denise!” the postman called out hurriedly. “Madame Geneviève!”

As he reached the veranda stairs, Ida came around the farmhouse followed by the other children.

“‘Madame’ is in the field,” Ida called out gaily, skipping and running. Excited and bright-eyed, she asked the postman, “Anything for us?”

“Let me check,” he said, playfully feeling around in his leather pouch. “Oh dear. Sorry. But as long as I’m here may I please speak with your mothers? Run and get them for me, won’t you? Quickly now, my darlings. I’ve still got a long way to go.”

Ida and Katie ran off to the upper field and the postman strolled over to sit on the stone wall by the barn, glad for a moment to rest. Christel and Philippe followed and Christel asked, “What do you want to say to Maman?”

The amused postman chucked her under the chin. “Nothing that would interest you two. Grown-up news maybe. Or just thoughts. Yes, that’s it. Just thinking.”

“We think too,” Philippe asserted.

“And what do you think about?” the postman asked.

“About when the rabbits are going to have little bunnies again. Also about our chickens and why they don’t lay as many eggs as they used to.”

“We’re the ones who feed them,” Christel added proudly.

“But Ida is the one who writes it all down in the book my father used to keep.”

Philippe scuffed his wooden shoes on the grass alongside the gravel path. He had outgrown his last pair of leather shoes and since leather was hard to come by had switched to wooden clogs, common footwear throughout the Lozère.

“I’m glad you think,” the postman told him. “Not enough people think—not for themselves at any rate. As they should—and must.” He leaned down, bringing his face close to Philippe’s to make an impression. “Never stop thinking for yourself.” He slowly straightened up and looked down at Christel, who peered up at him intently. “You too, little girl.”

Then he spotted Ida and Katie racing back down from the field that stretched above the house and its collection of outbuildings. Their mothers followed.

“Mesdames,” the postman called politely, standing. When they were within range of his speaking voice he said, “Perhaps we could talk for a moment? Away from the children?”

“Children,” Denise called, suddenly apprehensive. “Back to your chores.”

As the young ones left reluctantly the postman quickly said, “The Germans are preparing the Milice for another sweep of refugees. This time they’ll also search for women.”