Two Crosses (13 page)

“But wouldn’t they be welcomed back to France? After all, they’re French citizens.”

David had been talking easily, but at her question he grew silent, brooding. Suddenly he slowed the car to a stop, pulling off the road so he could look at her directly.

“Don’t you understand, Gabby?” There was anger in his voice. “Nobody wants the pied-noirs. Algeria will kill them if they stay there. France wants Algeria’s oil, but the pied-noirs? As far as France is concerned, they can go to—” He started over. “There’s no place for them. Just one more burdensome minority.”

“But you care about them, David?”

“Hah. I’ve already told you. I care about my own skin. But yes, somewhere in my troubled soul I have a soft spot for minorities. I understand the Algerians who long for independence from their strict mother, France. But I have lived among the pied-noirs who only want to keep their land. They are perhaps idealistic and naive, but I understand them.

“They both have good reasons, Gabby, to fight and to want what they want. It’s too bad that war is so complicated. Too bad that we can’t always tell who are the good guys and who are the bad.” He looked out toward the vineyards. “Like a bottle of wine—you don’t know the quality of the vine until the fruit is picked and fermented and tasted. And sometimes, we would judge too quickly.”

Gabriella reflected on David’s words, appreciating the silence and the scenery. She focused on the vineyard in front of her. Each knotty plant was no more than four feet tall, twisted, with branches that now boasted only variegated leaves. Presently she said, “I am the Vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.”

“That sounds rather biblical,” David said lightly. “Where’s it from?”

“The gospel of John. Jesus talking to His disciples.” Gabriella smiled. “He was probably sitting near the vineyards with His disciples, contemplating their beauty, just as we are doing.”

“Could be.” He shrugged.

“Never mind. It’s true what He said. No matter the minority, the position, the color of the skin. In Him the fruit is good. You know what the next verse says?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”

“You’re getting theological, Gabby. And very narrow. Sounds like a lot of bad fruit to me.”

“There is. But the good fruit doesn’t depend on where you were born or your society. It just depends on God and you. He won’t throw you out because of a troubled past.”

“That is good news indeed. Amazing what we can learn from the vineyards.”

She heard the slightly sarcastic tone in his voice and suddenly had no desire to say anything more.

David started the engine and pulled back onto the road. They drove for a long time between the tall plane trees that lined the narrow country roads like rows of soldiers saluting their advancing general. Gabriella relaxed in the beauty of the setting sun, which played its light across the canvas of the landscape. Monet would have enjoyed this ride. She was determined to enjoy it too, even seated beside this man who kept his heart locked away in some painful past.

Saturday morning Gabriella had promised to help Mother Griolet plant pansies. She arrived at the stone house at nine o’clock, exhausted after maneuvering through the cobblestone streets on her crutches.

“Are you sure you feel up to this, child?” Mother Griolet asked.

“Quite sure. It will do me good to be outside in this gorgeous weather.”

“Very well then. Come along.” She led her through her apartment and out the door that opened from her den into the courtyard. “I like to plant my pansies early. The middle of October is just right. Gives them time to get used to the soil before the mistral sweeps down in all its fury. Usually. M. Mistral came a bit early this year.”

Mother Griolet had purchased three cardboard trays of pansies. She took out one plant and pushed the loose earth through her fingers. “I usually plant them on each side of the courtyard. One and a half trays in front of the dining hall and the other one and a half in front of the dormitory. Unless you have another idea.”

“Oh, no. I’m not much of a gardener myself. You decide.”

“All right then.” Mother Griolet handed Gabriella a trowel and a tray of flowers, and they walked toward the dining hall. The old woman knelt on the cool soil with the agility of someone who had been kneeling for many years. She held a bunch of yellow pansies in her hands. “I love the feel of the earth on my hands. It’s therapeutic.”

Gabriella watched and nodded.

“And what have we here?” Mother Griolet was talking to the flowers. “My, but aren’t you splendid in that bright yellow frock. A regular sunflower in disguise.” She laughed and held the flowers toward Gabriella. “You see, there is a face in each flower, delicate and full of promise.”

Gabriella gasped. “Why, that’s just what Mother used to say! ‘A face in each flower, delicate and full of promise.’ We didn’t plant pansies, but Mother has this art book, and it has the most wonderful still life of pansies by Fantin-Latour. That’s what she used to say.”

“Did she?” Mother Griolet was amused. “I’m surprised she remembered.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that many years ago, your mother knelt in this very courtyard with me and planted pansies. I suppose I told her the same thing.”

“You and Mother were good friends then?”

“I guess you could say circumstances drew us together.” A cloud passed across Mother Griolet’s face, but then she brightened. “A lovely person. Such a woman of faith. And so smart! I believe she must have memorized half her Bible. There are few people who can find scriptures quicker than I, but your mother had me beat.”

“Tell me about when we were here in Montpellier. Mother always talks fondly of getting to know you, but she never speaks directly of our time here.”

“Well, there really isn’t that much to tell. You were staying in the mission house over on the west side of Montpellier. Your father couldn’t leave Senegal at the time, so they postponed their furlough to the States, and your mother brought you and your sisters here for three months. We met by accident.” Then the old nun looked up at Gabriella and smiled. “Not by accident. It cannot have been a simple coincidence when I see you here with me, helping an old woman who won’t retire. No, it was just another thread in the tapestry of God’s work. She was here, and now you are here. Another instance of God weaving our lives in and out to bring about His good will.”

“But how did you meet?”

“I was at an interchurch seminar. Very radical in that day, but I went. And there was your mother, sitting strong and tall in the pew beside me. She spoke easily, like you, my dear. And like a flower, our friendship bloomed so quietly and simply.”

“And did you know my sisters and me too? What were we like?”

“Precious, absolutely precious. You had that curly red hair, and Jessica was a little towhead. Henrietta was just a baby. She crawled around this courtyard more than once, that little rascal. Quite a handful.”

Gabriella laughed and nodded, but her eyes were wet.

“Oh my! I’ve made you homesick, I fear.”

“It’s nothing,” Gabriella said, brushing away the tears. “We must have been so happy then.” She did not look at Mother Griolet when she spoke. “You know, we had another sister. She was born the year after we returned from Montpellier.”

“Yes, your mother wrote me about her. Ericka,
n’est-ce pas
?” She pronounced the name with difficulty, a knot catching in her throat.

“Ericka. Beautiful little Ericka. Henrietta was all mischief, but Ericka was an angelic baby. The biggest brown eyes you ever saw. And jet-black hair. She didn’t look a thing like the rest of us. Thick black hair and long eyelashes and …” But Gabriella could not go on. She dropped the trowel and buried her face in her dirty hands and cried.

Mother Griolet knelt beside her, arms encircling the young woman’s thin shoulders. “There now, Gabriella. It is too hard, too sad to remember.” She pulled Gabriella close, and the girl sobbed on her breast.

“It was hard … so awful. She was my favorite sister. My favorite sister for six years. And then she was gone. The sickness took her in four days.”

“You go ahead and cry. Sometimes it is the only thing that helps. We can plant the pansies later.”

11

Malika Abdel was short for her eleven years, but what she lacked in height she made up for in common sense. “Streetwise,” they called her. She knew everything about what men and women did together in bed, and she knew other things that happened behind closed doors when an angry argument was followed by a slap and then a fist, and later a bruised eye. Malika had grown up fast and stood strong between her cruel father and her younger sisters.

Her father was always mad about something, and these days it was Algeria. “Someday we will go back home,” he promised his girls.

Malika knew that money was one thing that appeased her father’s temper, at least for a while. And she had a way to earn some. The skinny Frenchman with the thin moustache had approached her ten days ago with a simple request: make friends with the little girl who lived with the old man above the épicerie down the street.

Four hundred francs he would pay her to bring the girl to him. But Malika had not yet met her. Every day she made up an excuse to go to the shop, where she browsed for fifteen or twenty minutes, but the girl never appeared. The thin Frenchman was getting impatient.

He grabbed her arm as she left for school that morning. “You will earn nothing if you don’t bring her soon. Tomorrow night there is a march to the prefecture. Bring her along, and you will have your four hundred francs.”

Malika didn’t normally show her fear, but she shivered as she left the school building at noon to walk home. Once again she stopped by the épicerie.

The old shopkeeper looked up from the counter. “
Bonjour, mademoiselle.
You are back again today?”

“Yes, I brought some marbles for your granddaughter.”

“My granddaughter?” He looked at her suspiciously.

“Yes, the little girl who is sick. I have seen her, but she never goes to school. She is sick, your granddaughter?”

“Yes, yes, she is sick.”

As if on cue, the girl came down the back stairs, coughing loudly. The old man turned toward her. “Ophélie. What are you doing downstairs?”

“I wanted a
pastille
, please.”

Malika caught her eye, and the girls smiled at each other.

“Here is your cough drop. Now go back upstairs.”

“Please,
monsieur
. May I give Ophélie these marbles?” Malika held out her hand and displayed the small glass balls.

“Oh! They’re pretty!” Ophélie came around the corner and stared at the shining gift. “May I have them, please, M. Gady?”

She reached for the gems, and Malika took her hand. “I’ll teach you to play, okay? Tomorrow afternoon, when I get back from school.”

Ophélie took the marbles and placed them in her pocket, an eager look in her eyes. Malika left the store before M. Gady could refuse her offer.

David walked into the garden in the interior of the old school building where Gabriella sat, her head bent intently over a thick book. The bright afternoon sun caught the red in her hair and made it glisten like sparks flying from a soldering iron.

She gasped. “Oh, David! You startled me.”

“I have to go to Aix this weekend on some business. Would you like to come? We’d leave early Saturday morning and be home in time for you to get your studies done on Sunday.”

“I-I don’t know. Let me think about it, please, and I’ll let you know tonight. You are coming to eat at Mme Leclerc’s, aren’t you?”

He was now sitting beside her, his arm brushing lightly on hers. “I would never pass up a free meal, especially with such delightful company as Miss Thrasher and Miss Harland.” He touched her hand. “And you, of course.”

Gabriella blushed, but she was careful to keep her head buried in her anthology of English literature.

“I’m leaving on the night train for Paris right after dinner, and I’ll be there for a few days. M. Vidal has agreed to take my classes. But please come with me to Aix on Saturday. It would give me something to look forward to while I’m away. You’ll be off those crutches by then. We can celebrate.”