In This Hospitable Land (57 page)

Denise could barely breathe. “So you really think this nightmare’s finally going to end?”

“Of course. But not quite yet. Terrible things still keep happening. I’m afraid I’ve heard Belgian Jews are in great danger now of being arrested by the Brownshirts.”

“Oh, André. Our family!”

“I know. But you must believe we’ve got the Germans on the run.”

Denise shivered. “Irene was in Vialas when they entered the town square.”

“Right after we derailed that train outside of Génolhac.”

Denise gasped.

“Don’t worry, we got all the French passengers off at the station. Then when the train reached the tunnel north of town we set off explosives on the tracks putting that line out of commission for some time to come.”

“You and Alex were involved?” Denise asked fearfully.

André chuckled. “I use the term ‘we’ very loosely.”

Having gone this far, Denise asked, “That rifle. Can you use it?”

“I’ve only fired at targets,” André said huskily. “Never a person.”

“Would you?” Denise breathed.

“I hope not.”

“I hope not too. I hope you never have to.”

André pulled her close and kissed her lovingly. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes.

As André drifted into a light doze, his steady breathing helped steady hers. The sky was beginning to lighten faintly but Denise still couldn’t see her husband’s face clearly. Even so, in that dark moment, she thought she could feel him smiling.

With the coming of dawn the small crowd stirred and grew restless. Alex was glad of the company. All night he’d been distracted, amazed, and mildly disturbed by the occasional methane flares, their multihued luminescence dancing in the dark. Had Alex, like his brother, been of a more metaphysical turn of mind, he might have been seduced into speculating about an afterlife. Were he not so exhausted and on edge, he doubted he would have given such nonsense even passing consideration.

Every now and again children cried. Together with the final hoots of a night owl perched in an overhanging branch, they served as a wake-up call for the few remaining sleepers.

Christel jerked awake and grabbed for her mother instinctively. Then Ida returned to consciousness, shivering and looking frightened as the searchlights swung down and around from the crest. Denise’s eyes popped open wide and André’s body startled. Only blanket-clutching, finger-sucking Cristian snoozed on.

André stood up slowly, stiff after a couple of hours huddled against the wall and on ground that had grown more damp and cold throughout the night.

“All right?” he asked, joining his brother.

“All right.”

The moon had run its course and the first edge of the rising sun peeped over the farthest mountains. German trucks started up one after another, engines sputtering and catching, churning out a steady growling beat. The searchlights were extinguished. Then the trucks began to roll, slowly heading up toward the pass at Saint-Maurice-de-Ventalon—away from Vimbouches.

Everyone gathered to stare in hopeful fascination at the curious procession.

“They’re leaving?” Denise asked, carrying the still-drowsy Cristian.

“Looks that way,” Alex said flatly.

“It looks like a retreat,” André agreed.

Alex snarled, “My guess is the Nazis never meant to come after any of us and certainly didn’t wish to stay the night. One of their trucks must have broken down. Unfortunately for us it took them this long to make repairs.”

“I bet they were as afraid as we were,” André concurred. “Which explains why they kept their searchlights circling all night—not to locate us but to keep the Resistance away.”

“Where do you think they’re going now?” Denise asked.

“No way to know,” Alex spat. “Let’s just hope it’s miles and miles from here.”

“And that they never come back,” André sighed.

The crowd stared for what seemed hours. But the great blinding ball of the sun was still only half-visible over the mountaintops by the time the German trucks finally disappeared definitively among the trees lining the valley to the west. Then even the rattling of their engines faded away.

The pall lifted all at once from the involuntary cemetery guests. Suddenly it felt like the morning after a slumber party. Everyone began chattering loudly at once, their voices betraying relief. Then the bigger children started running around like dogs let off the leash, playing tag and hide-and-seek amidst the headstones. One of the infants set up a wail of hunger in her mother’s arms and the mother didn’t bother to hush her.

“What now?” Ernestine asked gruffly, startling Alex.

André grinned. “As promised, Alex and I will go get food.”

“Hurry up then,” Mamé grumped. “I’m famished.”

For the next several weeks, the Sauverin brothers labored steadily and contentedly on the Guins’ farm and visited their families in Le Salson and L’Herm. But one evening as the two sat listlessly in the barn, André obsessed about the fact that it was now more than four years since he had peered out of his top-floor apartment in Ixelles to see German dive-bombers bearing down on him. He wondered what could be causing the delay in the Allied invasion of France.

All signs suggested the war was going well for the Allies and for the Resistance. He and Alex hadn’t been called on by the Maquis for quite some time.

Even as he thought this, a sharp knock on the door made the Sauverins scramble for their rifles. But they relaxed when they saw a young, familiar Maquisard who apologized for disturbing them after dark.

The chief wanted to see André the next day. At another new camp: Champdemergue.

In the predawn gloom of Friday, May twelfth, André stopped by the farmhouse to inform Léon and Yvonne that he would be going away again.

“But you’ll be back?” Léon asked querulously.

“Let’s hope so,” Yvonne said kindly.

“Soon I trust,” André agreed.

Starting off along the familiar trail, he soon diverted himself to a little-used pathway following directions to the recently installed camp.

Approaching the new facility he was first startled then relaxed seeing Max Maurel sitting on the side of the road, waving happily to him.

“Morning, André.”

“Max. What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

“I have no idea,” André answered shaking his head. “The chief always wants me to come to him before I know what I’m in for.” They laughed and André asked, “What have you been hearing? We have plenty to eat at the Guins’ but we’re starved for information.”

“Still expecting the Allied invasion any day,” Max replied, “but it’s impossible to say when that day may be. Bombing runs continue against German sites in the north: the coastal batteries in Normandy, marshaling yards and railway workshops in Juvisy-sur-Orge, Noisy-le-Sec, Rouen, Tergnier…Meantime rumors have swirled for months that Hitler was either dead or in an insane asylum since he hadn’t been seen in public for a time. Then he showed up at a funeral in Munich but didn’t speak. Maybe something’s seriously wrong with him—besides mental and moral degeneracy I mean.” Then Max asked, “What did Denise say about her stay at Villaret with Madame Guibal and Simone?”

The question struck André as odd since Max had delivered André’s family into the care of Georgette Guibal. “I know Denise was grateful, and fond of them,” he said. “But she certainly prefers Le Salson. More freedom of movement.”

Max poked at the dirt and stones around his feet with a long stick. “Yes, but at Villaret…did she feel safe?”

Was Max embarrassed? His manner seemed so strange.

“Denise felt she and the children were as safe at Villaret as they could be,” André told him. “Why do you ask?”

Hesitantly Max said, “I’m thinking about moving Fela there. She’s been happy with Françoise at La Planche but it seems the worse things get for our enemies, the farther afield the Milice and Gestapo go.”

“As we have seen,” André agreed. “But why would La Planche be less safe than Villaret? Has anything happened?”

“Perhaps.” Max drew a straight line in front of his boots then stabbed at it several times. “At the end of April, twenty Maquisards escaped from the prison in Nîmes. The Germans had four or five hundred soldiers, police, and Milice fan out all the way to Vialas to control the populace and search for resistants.”

“Again?”

“This was a bigger show of force than at Easter. Now they’re gone but I can’t help feeling it would be best to get Fela out of there. A neighbor of Madame Guibal’s—Fernande Velle—will gladly take her in.”

“Sounds like you’ve decided.”

“I’ve also received discouraging word from the same sources that tipped us off about you.”

“Then you must move her. When?”

“This evening.” Max got up and clapped André on the back. “But you’d better go. You know how the chief hates to wait.”

Roger was glad to see André. Seated at his table with several associates, including two from a camp north of the mountains with whom he’d been discussing a variety of needs over several days, Roger depended entirely on the man he now rose to greet to solve a vexing perplexing problem.

“Thanks for coming,” the chief said, shaking André’s hand heartily. “This is André,” he told the others, not naming them. “The chemistry professor.”

The others rose now too, each one exclaiming, “Ah.”

Roger pulled out a chair for André and told him, “We Maquis face a difficulty we hope you can help us with. We need to send messages to and from other camps, some on the far side of the mountains.”

“I’ve done this for you many times,” André quickly put in, “and I’m happy to help again. Usually you send me with my brother.”

“This time we don’t need your legs. We need your mind. We need a way to write down things that can only be seen by those in the know—a new kind of invisible ink that only we know how to make reappear. That way even if one of our messengers gets stopped by an enemy patrol he won’t be able to betray or be betrayed by potentially dangerous secrets. With the Free French and the Resistance working more and more closely together, it’s harder and harder for the leadership truly to know each and every one and trust them fully. We’ve been getting more and more German-army deserters, mostly from the troops stationed in Mende. Ethnically they tend to be Armenians who have felt the tug of turning tides. But could one or another of these fresh recruits be a spy? Wouldn’t it be better all around if messengers did not personally know and could not detect the contents of an important message? Besides, the information we need to exchange has become much more technical and complex. Perhaps a highly educated man such as yourself could be relied on to understand, remember, and transmit such messages faultlessly. But seriously, André, we have very few like you.”

Roger didn’t say that camp commanders had been experimenting with shortwave radio communications for months or that the Gestapo had caught on almost immediately and were becoming more successful daily at blocking such transmissions. More dangerously, they sometimes listened in, as the otherwise inexplicable betrayal of some secret operations proved.

André sank deeply into thought. One of the men from over the mountains soon demanded snappishly, “Well, can you do it?”

“I’ll need a supply of particular chemicals,” André said distantly, still pondering.

“You give me a list,” the chief said firmly and gratefully, “and we’ll get you what you need. We know of a pharmacist in Génolhac.”

The lieutenant handed André a pen and paper. Everyone watched intently as monsieur le professeur began to write.

He took his time with the list, thinking through every element repeatedly because retrieving chemicals entailed great danger. It could prove disastrous if a raid needed to be restaged because André left off even one significant compound.

When he was finished he took his leave. Though it was only late morning he felt exhausted. Finding a free space in one of the outbuildings, he drifted heavily into sleep.

Deep in the afternoon he startled awake in a sweat, realizing he might have made a dreadful mistake—not by leaving something off the list but by neglecting to consider that some of the chemicals he needed would likely be labeled under different names in a pharmacy than in a laboratory. Besides, there were potentially significant differences in nomenclature between Belgium and France.

Hurrying back to the chief’s office, he interrupted yet another meeting to say, “I’ve got to go with you on the raid.”

Roger laughed pleasantly. “I can’t run the risk of losing you now.” André explained his concern but Roger was adamant. “Your accent might give you away.”

“I won’t say a word.”

“Your glasses…”

“I’ll take them off until you’ve led me into the pharmacy.”

Roger stroked the stubble on his jaw. “It’s dangerous but I’ve put you in danger before.” Pointing to a young man he said, “You were raised in Génolhac, yes? You’ll stick with the professor. He’s yours to protect.”

First thing the next morning, the young Maquis brought André a crust of bread with a piece of cheese and some sausage sliced onto it. The chief, impressed because the young Maquisards ordinarily showed such deference only to him, had rewarded the youth with one of his own pistols to take on the mission.

Bouncing around well past Vialas, the truck that the chief, André, André’s bodyguard, two other young men, and one of Roger’s lieutenants traveled in joined cargo-laden carts and bicycles also heading toward the market of Génolhac. It was still quite early when the men from Champdemergue reached the outskirts of town.

“There,” Roger told the lieutenant behind the wheel, pointing out a bridge.

The lieutenant stopped the truck, applied the handbrake, carefully took hold of a small package on the front seat, and slipped out of the cab.

“What’s going on?” André asked through the small opening between front and back.

“We want to create a little diversion,” Roger answered easily. “With explosives.”

“Explosives?”

“The charge isn’t great enough to create real damage,” the chief assured the chemist. “Just enough noise and smoke to distract any lurking police from our primary mission.”

The lieutenant leapt back into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine, and roared off.

“Slow down,” Roger commanded. “This is supposed to be an unthreatening rattle-trap.”

The lieutenant reduced speed. Several minutes later they heard a muffled blast. Then they saw the police race past.

Upon entering town they eased onto a side street from which they could see the pharmacy distinguished by a green-cross sign. The elderly pharmacist unlocked the front door and turned on the lights. The Maquisards were in within seconds.

The pharmacist understood immediately. White-haired, with the ruddy face and jelly-like jowls of someone long accustomed to eating well and drinking too much, he whined about losing money but one look at Roger’s implacable face silenced him. Why risk health as well as wealth?

André slipped his glasses back on and went right to the shelves in the rear as if he knew just where to find what he was looking for. Examining labels with professional assiduity he handed the bottles he wanted to his young protector, who placed them carefully into a produce carton.

When a customer came in Roger slid behind the counter and whispered heatedly to the pharmacist, “Tell her to come back later.” Flustered, the pharmacist hesitated. “Tell her now. And make it sound normal,” Roger hissed, pushing the terrified pharmacist forward.

As the customer drifted back out, André grabbed one last bottle from a high shelf.

“Okay,” he announced. “I’ve got everything.”

“I hope so,” Roger said. “I don’t think we’ll be shopping here again.”

Back in the truck André began to sweat. “It all went by in a flash,” he said wiping his brow with both hands. “I didn’t have time to feel nervous. But I sure feel nervous now.”

Everyone laughed sympathetically, knowing just how he felt.