An Owl's Whisper (20 page)

Eva lifted a lantern from its hook on the wall. She took a wooden match from the tin drinking cup hanging on a nail and closed the door. She struck the match on a wall board, and its flare momentarily illuminated the space. She lit the lantern, then shook the match out.

They climbed a flexing, wooden ladder to the loft. As his head rose above the floor of the loft, Smithwycke saw modest living quarters carved out in one corner. The neatness of that space and the furniture there were all that partitioned it from the hay-strewn rest of the loft. Eva helped Smithwycke to the single chair at the tiny table in the corner. She hung the lantern near the bed and draped her gray flannel coat so it covered the lone window. Eva struck another match and lit a small kerosene burner supporting a white, enameled kettle.

Smithwycke looked around. The yellow glow from the lantern and the stove filled the rustic loft space. There was a bed on a homemade frame near the window; it was covered with a thick duvet. On the wall above the bed was a crucifix. Otherwise the walls were bare. Outside the living space, unbaled straw covered the floor and climbed up the walls. Where most of the straw was piled, in the opposite corner, there was a pitchfork. And a living shadow—a black cat. Smithwycke’s gaze went to the table on which his elbows rested. There was a copy
Cyrano de Bergerac
, an English language phrasebook, a wedge of coarse bread on a blue plate, and a basket of small, green apples.

Eva noticed Smithwycke’s stare at the bread. “I’m sorry. The crust is all I have for you. That and tea. Food is short these days. For everyone except Merlin.” She looked at the fat black cat sleeping on the hay across the loft. “He has his fill of the mouses.”

Smithwycke smiled. “And how does
Monsieur
Merlin get along with your dog?”

“Oh, I have no dog…” Eva looked like she might cry. “…not anymore.”

The water boiled and Eva made dandelion tea. Afterward, she poured hot water in a bowl and gave it to Smithwycke with soap and a cloth. “Clean your injury. I wish I had medicine, but there is none. You will sleep in the bed. In the morning there will be milk and a few crumbs more.
Monsieur
Micheaux will arrive on the tenth hour to fetch you.”

Eva blew out the lantern and instantly the loft’s air of honeyed warmth vanished. She took down the coat that had been covering the window and moonlight, cold and silvery, poured in. Eva held the coat close to herself. “The moon’s light is enough for you?”

“Yes. Thank you for everything and goodnight.”

Eva replied, “Goodnight,
Monsieur
Smithwycke.” She swung the coat over her shoulders and settled into the hay on the other side of the room, next to Merlin.

When Smithwycke woke in the morning, Eva was gone. But she was back soon with country bread, sour cheese, and a cup of milk. She made mint tea.

Just before 10:00 there was the sound of a truck on the approach, then a horn. Eva ran outside and told Micheaux to park so the view of the truck from the farmhouse would be obscured. He backed his old crate up to the far side of the barn. There were already four metal barrels, a rusty gate, and a pile of sheet metal on the truck bed. Micheaux jumped up on the vehicle’s deck, looked around, and nodded. Smithwycke hobbled to the truck.

He looked Eva in the eye. “My dear, I won’t forget what you’ve done. I swear I won’t forget you.” A smile washed across his face and he gave her a long embrace. He turned, took Micheaux’s extended hand, and was hoisted up onto the flatbed.

Micheaux asked about the payment, and Smithwycke handed over a string-tied wad of bills. The trucker stuffed it into his pocket without counting and turned to untie the rope securing the sheet metal. He moved several of the sheets to reveal a wooden coffin. A paper glued on the lid read, “
Monsieur
Le Bec, Esneux.” Micheaux removed the lid and wiggled his finger through one of the three air holes drilled into the side of the coffin on the head end. He grinned at the doubtful Smithwycke and shrugged as if to say,
Take it or leave it
.

Micheaux traded Smithwycke’s uniform coat and hat for a frayed blue canvas jacket. He tossed a rag into a bag of ashes and shook it. He used the rag to pat Smithwycke’s face and hands a deathly gray. Then he handed the pilot a glass jar. “It’s fish heads fermented with shits. If the
Boche
stop the truck, open it. I promise they won’t inspect your corpse too closely.”

Smithwycke broke into a hearty laugh and said, as he climbed into the wooden box, “A corpse heading home in a coffin, eh? Wouldn’t that hoist my wife’s hopes, if she heard it?” Micheaux replaced the lid and the metal sheets. Eva threw a gunnysack of empty food tins onto the truck bed as Micheaux swung down and bounded into the cab. He started the truck and winked at Eva. Then he was off.

Eva watched the truck get smaller as it hurtled down the driveway and onto the road. In a moment it was gone round the bend. She thought,
Getting away from here. From the Germans, from the Belgians, from the hunger…from the memories. A new life. How good that sounds. Some day it will be me getting away.

The Changing Tide

The autumn of 1943 ground slowly into winter and that in turn trudged into spring of 1944. Food and coal became ever scarcer.

In April, Louis Ducoisie died of pneumonia. No one who knew the man and his wife would have thought them particularly close, especially in the last half of their fifty-two year marriage. Eva had seen it.
Monsieur
Ducoisie liked to slip away in the company of his apple brandy.
Madame
Ducoisie nagged at him to stick around. Eva always wondered if the drinking caused the nagging or
vice versa
.

In spite of that,
Madame
Ducoisie’s extreme reaction to Louis’s death astonished Eva. When she commented how different it would be without him around, the widow blurted back, “Different! Thank God, yes. No more of those bowels of his groaning all night long; it was like trying to sleep inside a windmill during a gale. And I’ll finally breathe, free of the old windbag’s incessant farting.”

Losing her husband transformed
Madame
Ducoisie. Old donkey became prancing pony. Throwing the windows open. Singing. Bringing field flowers by the armload into the house. Polishing, a quasi-religious conversion bringing salvation to her home’s every surface of brass, enamel, or wood. And spending, taking the bus to Liege to buy herself a new hat, new shoes, and new dress—all red velvet!

Eva wasn’t getting along at all with Henri. His visits were marked by sharp words and pointed looks. Eva was happy that he hadn’t been around all spring. It was a surprise in mid-May when he burst into the barn early one morning while Eva and
Madame
Ducoisie were milking the goats.

Henri presented his customary gifts. “For
Monsieur,
two bottles of Calvados from Normandy and for you
Madame,
Dutch flowers and cigarettes.” When he was told of
Monsieur
Ducoisie’s death, he seemed angry. “Ah, my dear Eva, you let down your old uncle when you don’t keep him informed,” he hissed through a forced smile. “Come outside. There’s something we need to discuss.” He took Eva’s arm above the elbow and pulled her through the door.

Outside, Henri’s smile was gone. “I should have you skinned for this blasé attitude. When is the last time you reported something important?”

“There’s nothing important to report these days. Shall I invent things to tell you?”

“Don’t be smart with me, girl. In any case, the past is past. What matters is the future, and shortly your work could become crucial. Our enemies prepare their assault in the west, probably at Calais. It isn’t likely to succeed—Rommel will see to that. But we must be prepared for every eventuality. If they do get this far, our work becomes ever more critical. As in 1940, the key is controlling the Meuse bridges. Your first priority is keeping the
Pont de Pierre
closely surveilled. And aircraft counts—I need them. Also, keep your ears open for information on saboteurs. Those rats are my biggest worry. As I explained before, it all boils down to maintaining our freedom of movement. That’s what’s crucial. Understand?”

Eva looked off to the west. The faintest flicker of a smile glistened on her lips and was gone. She looked back at her uncle out of the corner of her eye. “I’m happy to have a crucial role. For a chance to make a difference. You know that, don’t you, uncle?”

Henri’s eyes narrowed as if he were studying a fine detail of Eva’s face. “You’d better hope I do.” He turned on his heel and stomped scowling to the car. He sped off as Eva walked back in through the barn door, whistling the tune of
la Marseillaise
.

Madame
Ducoisie had been watching the pair from the barn door. When Eva returned, she shook her head. “Eva, can’t you see your uncle’s upset? He’s the one keeps flesh on our bones, you know. You
could
treat him with respect.”

Eva stared back. Her look was laced with pity and contempt. “If a crocodile wore white feathers, should I treat him as a dove?” She turned and walked off.

“A crocodile with feathers? Whatever are you talking about?”
Madame
sighed. “Teenagers! Always moody.” She poured the milk from Eva’s bucket into hers. “I wasn’t that way.” She lit a Dutch cigarette. “And I had no rich uncle showering me with kindness.”

The weather in May was pleasant and Eva spent many afternoon hours sitting on the grass at Mother’s Elbow, reading her English phrase book and gazing off, dreamily, expectantly, toward the western horizon. At night, she sometimes sat in the same spot, but with very different emotion. Nights her attention was pulled to the eerie northeast, pulled by the thunder rumbling from the orange-glowing horizon. The rail yards of Liege were under Allied air assault.

On June sixth just before lunch Eva was collecting the day’s eggs, three of them, when
Madame
Ducoisie came to the back door of the house and shrieked, “Eva, come quickly. Hurry! They’re coming.”

Eva thought,
The Gestapo? Why would they be coming here?
She dropped the eggs and ran to hide the shotgun, which she had used the day before to bag a small rabbit and had carelessly left leaning on the wall, just inside the barn door. She slipped the gun inside its oilskin bag and buried it under the manure pile behind the barn. That done, she ran to the farmhouse. Before she opened the screened door to the kitchen, Eva could hear the scratchy static of a radio broadcast.

Madame
Ducoisie was there in the parlor, listening to a broadcast by German radio news, the DNB. She could understand just a word here and there but she knew it had to do with an Allied invasion. Together they listened. She was amazed that Eva seemed to understand everything being said.

After lunch, Eva rode her bicycle to Lefebvre to learn more. She returned in the late afternoon telling
Madame
Ducoisie, “The town’s buzzing. Everywhere groups of people talk, but mostly in whispers, though there are no Germans around. I guess caution is hard to forget. I heard
Monsieur
Micheaux telling the tobacconist that Americans were already parachuting into Germany. But the mayor’s wife said her husband heard from Brussels that forty thousand British had been trapped and captured on a French beach.”

The old woman scoffed, “The idea that stuffed shirt Mayor Beaugarde would be privy to war developments is laughable. None of them know anything. For truth we’ll wait for the BBC broadcast this evening. Until then, I’ll pray it’ll be the truth I want.”

Eva added, “And the one I want.”

At 9:00 p.m., through veils of swoon and static, came the nightly French-language broadcast of
BBC Londres
. In tones excited and grave, the announcer proclaimed, “The Allied Expeditionary Force has this day begun an invasion of continental Europe, striking on the Normandy coast. Elements of the Force have already established themselves on French soil.” The report concluded with a message for the occupied peoples of Europe, delivered in English by the Allied Commander, an American with the German-sounding name Eisenhower. The general ended his statement with words of hope for desperate ears. “The hour of your liberation is approaching.” To Eva, it was if the sentence was said directly to her. She went to the calendar on the kitchen wall and wrote under the date, June 6, 1944, the two words, “
Début. Fin
.”

Even before the Allied invasion, the cancerous occupation of the rural Meuse valley had gone latent. By April most of the German troops who had been stationed in
Province de Liege
were moved west to bolster units deployed in the
Pas de Calais
. The late summer brought the surreal pageant of the cancer’s excision.

One August day Eva witnessed an excision firsthand. She was walking along a hilltop overlooking the river valley. Off in the west she saw a cloud over the country road that paralleled the river. The cloud was approaching and as it got near, Eva could see it was dust and smoke made by a convoy of fast-moving vehicles.