The Avion My Uncle Flew (12 page)

Ahead were the ruins of an old maison. Two sides of the walls were standing, with enormous empty windows and a great door. Mon oncle halted. “Voilà,” he said. “Voilà. C'est la maison de ta mère.”

It had belonged to my great-great-great-grandfather. It was hundreds of years old. The Langres family had lived here all that time, generations of them. They had been lawyers and soldiers. Here my mère had been born. Here mon oncle had been born. This great stone house had been what is called a château—that isn't actually a castle, but it was something like a castle. It had overlooked the valley. Many of the people in the village de St. Chamant had worked for my grandfather; and, I assume, from what mon oncle Paul told me, for my grandfather's grandfather, too.

When the Germans came down from Paris they had taken the Langres maison. Before they had departed, they had burnt it. I can't explain how I felt. Mind you, I hadn't seen this maison before. But the minute I saw the ruins, it was as though I'd been here many times and knew about it. I know that sounds funny. For nearly half an hour we walked around the grounds. Mon oncle explained the reason he was working so hard on his avion was he hoped to sell it for much money and he planned to use the money to restore the maison and the grounds. Just as I wanted my bicycle with the high gear and the low gear and the electric lighting dynamo, so mon oncle also wanted something—he wanted to rebuild the family home. I could understand now. I could understand a lot more things. I wanted him to get his avion completed and sold. No longer was his avion an ordinary glider, not very important. I felt the urgency of what he wanted.

By and by he glanced at his watch. “Ah!” he said. “It is nearly two-thirty. I'm late, Jean. I told Monsieur Niort I would return to the workshop by two-thirty. Instead of taking the path we came up on, I zink I shall descend straight down the mountain. It is quicker.”

“But—” I was worried. “I'm not sure I can descend straight down a mountain without crutches.”

He cocked his head at me, something like a quick lively fox who listens a minute before darting away. He shrugged. “Then you must descend by the path,” said he. “Descend by the path, mon neveu. You will not become lost. You do not require crutches. It is confidence you require. Au revoir!”

“Wait!” I called—but he was gone.

He leaped over the wall and ran toward the trees and vanished. I hadn't ever expected him to do a thing like that to me.

For about ten minutes I was so stunned I didn't do a thing. This was what came of having mon oncle and me montent sur la montagne. I simply sat where I was. The breeze was soft and warm. It was the finest jour we'd had yet. I could sight across the meadow to the edge of trees. Beyond the trees, the montagne dropped away, sloping into the valley below. Across to the west was a range of lower montagnes, purple and green in the distance. Voici Jean, I thought—stuck. I got madder and madder.

By and by I grabbed hold of the rough bark of a tree and pulled myself up. Butterflies floated above the flowers. I limped to the stone wall surrounding the ruins. Here I sat for a time, almost forgetting my leg as I tried to imagine ma mère as a young girl, playing in the grounds when the grounds were smooth and even and tended to, with the noble old house high and stately on the side of the montagne. No wonder she had always thought of France and loved it. In a way, I was glad she wasn't here to see her family's house—her family's maison, I mean, destroyed by the Germans.

The big front door was still here. It had pillars on each side. It was almost as if ma mère was waiting for me, on the other side of that door. I never saw such a friendly, inviting door. I slid off the stone wall, taking it easy on my leg, gritting my teeth. I got as far as the door and my leg still stayed whole; it hadn't dropped off. It hurt, yes. It hurt off and on but at least it had carried me to the door. I decided I'd stay here and wait. After I didn't show up in le village de St. Chamant, my oncle would begin to worry. I'd teach him a trick, too. He could come for me.

I entered the house, hearing my steps echo. The roof was gone. Part of a big stairway lifted upwards—and ended, abruptly, pointing to the open side. It was sort of fun exploring la maison de ma mère. The wood was blackened from the fire, charred through in places. I followed along the hall, with the sun shining down upon me. I got as far as the stairs and rested and started again around the rear of the stairs. Here, under the stairs was a door. It was on its hinges. The fire hadn't eaten through it at all. I tried the door; it opened, just as if it had been waiting there for me and was inviting me to open it.

When I opened it, something flung around and smacked me in the face. You can imagine how surprised I was. I wasn't scared; at least, I don't think I was. Everything here was so peaceful and friendly, as if I was coming back almost to another home of my own, there wasn't anything frightening at all about the place. I wasn't nervous, or anything like that, either. I was mad—sure; but, now I'd determined to teach mon oncle a leçon, I was recovering from being mad.

So, when that thing flung around and hit my face I stepped back, nearly falling, because I'd stepped back on my punk leg. On the other side of the door leading down into the cellar was swinging a dirty gray knapsack. That was what had hit me, swinging around as I opened the door. I thought perhaps this was a knapsack that might have belonged to mon oncle. I looked more closely at it. Words were printed on it. They were foreign words. And—they weren't French words, either.

One of the words was “Panzergruppe 156.” As if from a long ways off I remembered panzer was a German word from reading about the German panzer columns of tanks in our newspaper back home. If the words were German—why, then this was a German army knapsack! It was like having a cold wind blow clean through me. My hands were shaking when I opened the knapsack. Inside was an old tattered dirty paper-covered book titled “Mein Kampf.” Underneath the title evidently was the name of the author: “Adolf Hitler.” Well, I knew
that
name all right. Last I'd heard of
that
name was quite a few months ago when our papers back home had a couple of lines about him on the inside pages saying he was dead, probably having killed himself.

Nothing else was in the knapsack but a whole loaf of French black bread. I touched the loaf of bread, expecting to find it old, solid as a brick. It wasn't old. It was still soft. It couldn't have been more than a jour or so old. That meant the owner of this knapsack hadn't hung it behind the door more than a jour or so ago, perhaps even this morning. Whew! At that thought, I just dropped the knapsack and started to shove out of this place. I didn't want any Nazi holing up in these montagnes to come upon me; I'd had all the experience with them I needed with that Monsieur Simonis to last me the rest of my life.

I was limping away, when I heard a second and softer clunk. I looked back. The knapsack had spilled open after being dropped. The loaf of bread had rolled out—and do you know what? That loaf evidently had been broken in two pieces when fresh and stuck back together again. The second clunk I'd heard was when the long ugly black pistol hidden inside the scooped out portions of the loaf had rolled on to the charred wooden floor.

7

THE PIG OF THE MAYOR

I limped back and gingerly picked up that big German pistol. In Wyoming, old Jake had taught me about guns. This German pistol wasn't much different from an American automatic, except that the muzzle was longer.

The thing was loaded. I saw that.

I skinned through the door, starting across the long bare stretch of meadowland to the stone wall. I had the feeling that German was somewhere in the house, right now,
watching me
. I'd whirl—but, no—I didn't see anyone. The ruins of the place were unchanging, gaunt and huge, not a sign of anybody.

Clouds had swept across part of the sky, hiding the sun. The wind came up, blowing the leaves in the trees beyond, rattling the branches and ruffling the long grass behind me exactly as if a man was crawling along, quiet and careful, not wanting to be seen.

The weeks I'd practiced walking came in helpful now. Probably being scared clear down to the bone helped too, the fear pouring along through the muscles and temporarily making me forget my bum leg.

I flung myself over the stone wall, panting, landing on the bad leg. I felt the jab of pain as I landed. I squatted on the grass, turning my head back and forth, hanging on to that loaded pistol, determined to let blaze with it at the first sign of someone.

Everything came back to me now, about Monsieur Simonis in Paris, meeting him on the train. The police must have been wrong. Monsieur Simonis probably had followed me as far as St. Chamant. Now he was hiding in the ruins of la maison de ma mère and this could be
his
gun.

I don't know how long I crouched against the stone wall. You've seen animals, small ones, when they're scared? Some of them will halt instead of running and try to burrow into the ground. That always had puzzled me, why they did that instead of trying to escape—but now I understood. I had the same impulse. It seemed to me that I
couldn't
move.

I forced myself to crawl away from the wall. I had to get to le village. I found I'd lost my way to the lane down the mountain. Ahead of me was nothing but the dark forest. The moving shadows of clouds passed along the meadow and the ruins. Over toward the east, in the brambles growing to one side of the ruins, it seemed to me as if something had moved—and dropped—and was wriggling toward the wall.

I gave a jump. I snaked through underbrush, crashing away, with the branches reaching for me, trying to grab at me as if they were the long dry fingers of Monsieur Simonis. The land began to slope. The trees became thicker.

I ran into a tree and stopped, winded, my leg hurting more. I laid flat, hanging on to the pistol. The leg was throbbing. It was like having a charley-horse—you know how that is, an awful sort of cramp.

Presently, I heard a rustling from behind me.

The brambles and long green grass were dense, like moving screens. The rustling came again, louder. I hugged the ground, about paralyzed. For a moment everything was silent, the way a silence comes into a forest. You hear little sounds, the birds, perhaps a chipmunk. In between there isn't anything except perhaps the wind—and all that, somehow, makes a bigger silence than ever, a sort of lonely silence. Next, the rustle was there once more, off through the brambles, exactly as if some tall big thing was crawling forward on hands and knees.

In a minute or so I expected to see Monsieur Simonis' white head thrust itself through the bushes, his teeth grinning at me, with a hand reaching out for me. I hauled up the German pistol. I'd forgotten the cramp in my leg. I dragged to another tree and from there limped to a second tree, zig-zag style. It was as though everything in the forest was watching and holding its breath and looking to see if I was going to be nabbed by the Germans tracking after me.

By now I recognized there wasn't any chance of it being my imagination, either. Every time I halted, straining my ears, by and by, I'd catch a sound of something soft, sliding closer and closer to me through the brush under the trees. The branches overhead were so thick they shut out a lot of light. It was gloomy here, with the ground all slanting, uneven, hidden by brush, the trees high and dark like pillars in some enormous old church.

The next minute I saw a dark thick shape about twenty yards away, above me, on the slope. I shoved my pistol forward—I said, “Don't move another step or I'll shoot!” It had the great enormous head of a man, peering at me. I pulled the trigger.

The pistol didn't go off. I'd forgotten it was an automatic and that you had to jerk the slide back to cock the trigger. I just stood, holding that pistol.

The thing came on through the bushes. When I saw what it was all the tension broke. I was so relieved and weak I laughed in a silly fashion and lowered the pistol and had to lean against a tree to keep from falling.

It was the same French pig I'd seen a few weeks ago in the rue—the one to whom I'd called, the one that hadn't noticed me. It was a well-fed pig standing a little higher than my knees. It had a long bristly snout, and tiny eyes. Looking at it head on, in a way it did resemble a man crawling on his hands and knees. Now the pig gave me a glance. It marched toward me, showing its fangs. I moved backwards—tripped—fell. The pig shoved its snout against the roots of the tree, where I'd been standing, and began to push at the dirt, no longer interested in me.

I got up. I wiped dirt off the pistol, slipping the pistol through my belt and pulling my jacket down. I started moving off when from somewhere behind the trees a man's voice sounded, “Oh, Hippolyte! Où es tu? Où es tu?”

I stopped. That was a French voice. I figured if a Frenchman was up here I'd be safer with company. I started shivering again, waiting for whoever it was to come. In about four minutes Monsieur Capedulocque pushed his way through the bushes, halting when he saw me, scowling. He was wearing a corduroy coat hanging nearly to his knees, with enormous pockets. Today he had wooden shoes stuffed with straw to keep his ankles warm instead of the black leather shoes he usually wore in le village.