God Speed the Night (22 page)

The morning’s move had brought the harvesters twenty kilometers closer to the border. The patrols were more frequent, the examination of papers more careful despite Colonel von Weber’s promise of non-interference. Marc, working near the dwarf, where he pranced and danced over steps and platforms like Quasimodo in the tower of Notre-Dame, found his nerves on edge by the end of the day. Artur delighted in announcing the imminent arrival of a Nazi patrol by jumping up and down on the iron seat atop the thresher and shaking his fist in the air. Then at the last minute, Marc cursing at him, he would plop down on his plump little backside and bury his legs from sight. Between them, Marc and Jacques, who was hauling the grain from machine to storeroom, composed a litany of abuses which delighted the dwarf. He begged them remember and write them down for him…A two-stemmed mushroom, sawed-off and hammered-down, Napoleon the half…

When the machine was silent at last and Marc could shake the dust from his head as from a mop, he went out from the yards of this estate called Champs des Corbeaux, and stretched himself on the ground where he could look down to the far fields and see the others starting in. The
marquis
, their host-employer, saw no reason to send a horse to carry men and women who, he said, were better able to carry his horses. They were a sorry lot to look at, his half-dozen horses, but an old man who had long worked on the estate, told Marc that the master had sold his good ones to the Germans at a fine price. Marc prophesied a thin soup and watered wine. So he fed himself on the setting sun. He could not get enough of sky. He rolled over on his back and stared up at it trying to fathom its depth for stars.

She had wanted to stay apart from him so that she would not need to talk, of course. Or was it that she could no longer bear the nearness of him as he was finding hers too painful, being that near and no nearer? He turned onto his side and watched her come, the last and most solitary, not only alone but with the mists of evening threatening to overtake and vanish her. On the next day, according to the map, they would come into a more hilly terrain, and within two days they would near the mountains, and after that day’s work the harvesters would swing away in another direction. Two days.

Gabrielle saw him and raised her hand. Marc rose from where he lay and all the weariness flowed out of him as he ran toward her, leaping with but a touch of the hand for balance over the stone hedge. And yet she did not speak when he came abreast of her, nor even look up to meet his eyes, nor let him take the pitchfork from her.

And so they walked, side by side, up the lane. It was not enough, Marc thought, but it was something. At the end of the lane they found the St. Hilaire prefect of police waiting for them. He offered his hand to Gabrielle as she came over the stile. Now she gave the fork to Marc, and at the last moment, her hand into Moissac’s. His was as soft as putty and as coldly moist. In the days when hands were meaningful, such a hand would have made her uncomfortable, making her think of dead and slimy things. Once as a little girl she had dreamt of hands, hundreds of them floating in the pond without arms or bodies or meaning. “They intend you no harm,” her father said, so that she must have told him of the dream or wakened crying. She remembered saying, “But what will the people do without them?”

Marc took his time getting over the stile. After the day’s encounters with the Nazis, Monsieur Moissac was even more difficult to deal with. The Nazis were strangers, Moissac a native. Nor did the policeman’s greeting reassure him.

“Your father asked me to give you a message, young Belloir.”

“I hope no one is ill.”

“Who would be ill?”

“People when they get old are often ill,” Marc said.

Elusive as a fox, Moissac thought. “He said to tell you that the cow had calved, a fine bull calf.”

“Thank you,” Marc said. “I am glad to know it. It is good news, Marie.”

Gabrielle was not sure: was he asking her to respond? She did know why a farmer would rejoice in a good bull. “It will be good for the herd, is that not so?”

“Yes,” Marc said, but what the message was meant to convey to him he had no idea at all. American slang sometimes referred to the police as “bulls,” but it still made no sense, except to tell him that Moissac had gone to see the elder Belloir. And the fact that Moissac brought the message seemed to mean that Belloir had covered him. “I am most grateful to you, monsieur. I hope it did not bring you out of your way?”

“On the contrary,” Moissac said, quite as amiable.

“We ought to go up,” Marc said. “They will serve the meal soon and I doubt there will be very much of it tonight.”

“I have been asked to dine,” Moissac said, starting up alongside Marc.

“But with the
marquis
, so you will not need to hurry.”

“I will eat at the harvesters’ table,” Moissac said. “I am a humble man.”

Marc could think of nothing to say to that. He found himself again commenting on the meal and its provider. “I’m told the old boy is a miser.”

“Your father made me a gift of a goose.”

“Which one?” Marc said, an absolute inanity, he thought immediately, but he had done enough mumbling.

The question, of course, threw Moissac off-balance. Indeed it made him wonder for the moment at the accuracy of his Paris informant. He said, “No. Not Monsieur Hercule.”

Marc got off the subject. “Will you wish to wash up, monsieur?”

“Thank you, but I will talk with madame.”

“She too must wash,” Marc said. “We can all talk afterwards.” He nodded to Gabrielle to go.

Moissac curbed his temper, but not his authority. “One minute, madame. You will tell me, please, why you gave me the wrong address of your family in Marseille.”

Gabrielle said, trying to make her consternation seem surprise, “They are not there, monsieur? It will be the Germans then.”

“Why should the Germans be interested?” He did not want to ask that. He had not even wanted to question the address yet, but the insolent husband had provoked him.

“My father is a strong man,” Gabrielle said. Her father had been strong, and that day she had listened to the story of Philomène’s husband and the German labor camps.

Marc said, “We plan to go to Marseille afterwards if we can get travel permits. It has been much too long, as we said yesterday, since Marie has seen her parents.” To her he added, “I think it is simply a matter of their having moved. We must not worry until we know for certain.”

Again Moissac felt he could almost believe them. He needed more certainty, and until he had it, he too must be disarming. “You wonder why I checked the address, madame: the photographer you visited is under suspicion of black-market activities. It is my duty to check on him in every way possible.”

Marc, leading Gabrielle to where the other harvesters were washing, considered the plausibility of Moissac’s backing down. Or was it the truth? Rene had said in the loft, stripping their ration books of coupons, that if he were picked up they would think him on his proper business, the black market.

“Is it true, what he said about checking on Monsieur René?” Gabrielle asked when they were by themselves.

“We must believe it,” Marc said, “until we know otherwise.”

Her face had the glow of two days’ sun, and there were flecks of gold in her eyes. Marc said, “I don’t suppose I ought to say this to you, but I will: I missed you today.”

“You must not say it.” Then, her eyes wide so that he saw the beginning of tears, “And you must not miss me. You must not!” She turned and ran from him.

Moissac, watching covertly, was troubled again by his own deductions. Surely two people on the run would not quarrel at such a time. Something was not right in the way he saw them, but what? What? He decided to learn what he could by ingratiating himself with the harvesters. The young people would barely give him the time of day, but Jacques and Philippe were men who liked to talk. They sat on the lowest of the wagons, stretched themselves and watched the night come down on them. Jacques, reminded by the mists of a fog at sea, told of a phantom ship he saw come out of every fog, the same ship no matter where on the seven seas he was sailing. Philippe told of watch duty once in the army when a stump crept up like a wolf in the moonlight. Artur came and sat among them and Moissac tried not to see his legs. When the women came Moissac got down and helped Philomène and Céleste aboard. He then insinuated himself between them which made them giggle.

The first stars had come out when the dinner-bell sounded, and the harvesters, as well as tenants and neighbors of the
marquis
whose grain would be threshed in the early morning, went up the graveled path to the chateau. It was a procession of some thirty people and they were led by a servant of the house with a torch.

“It is medieval,” Marc said. “I’ve not been here before, if you know what I mean.”

Gabrielle had rejoined him at the ringing of the bell. “I know.”

“Will there be music, do you think?” Jules asked.

Marc glanced back at him. “Where’s the guitar?”

“I hid it.”

“It will be a long walk if the
marquis
asks you to play.”

“I do not intend to entertain him. He contracted to feed us, and we to do his field work only.”

Marc remembered his rebellion the night of the feast at Madame Fontaine’s: that too now seemed a part of far history. Then as he stooped to enter the arched passageway that lead through the cellars and servants’ quarters of the chateau, a passageway lit by torchlight, Marc underwent an experience that shook him badly: he was afraid, but in the context of the Inquisition. It was such self-consciousness, such awareness of his Jewish origins as he had not experienced ever before. He hung back and Gabrielle turned to him, and what he remembered of her at that moment was also flame-lit and terrible: she and her partner leaning over Rachel, the sense of ritual somewhere deep in him as suggesting a life for a life, the primary sacrifice.

“It is too terrible,” he said.

“No. It is only strange to you. To me it is like going home.”

“You do not understand.”

The others were crowding in behind him, wanting to see what lay ahead, and hungry. Some of the boys pushed past him, looking back and grinning as though he were merely awestruck with the place.

Gabrielle held out her hand to him. The palm was down as she might offer it to a child. “Come,” she said, and her eyes coaxed him as well. It was at that moment that Moissac came up also behind Marc. “You must not stand and gawk, Jean,” she said.
“Monsieur le Préfet
wishes to pass.”

It took but a few seconds all, in happening. Moissac would have prolonged it, seeing her. The man was no more than a shadow between them. Moissac closed his eyes. The prayer was habit, but the content new: Please, God, let her be a Jew. The dwarf skittered past him, and then past Marc and caught Gabrielle’s hand where it was outstretched. He put it to his lips, his cheek.

As nothing else would, this sprung Marc into motion. He caught the little man by the collar and pushed him behind him, going on then with Gabrielle although her hand was no longer there for him to take. Moissac put his hand into the face of the dwarf, his thumb beneath the chin. He flung the creature backwards with all his might. Nor did he look back hearing the thud of flesh and bone as Artur hurtled into the wall. Artur lay and whimpered, but when no one who passed stopped and then no more came, he picked himself up and scurried after the procession.

They moved through the kitchen, where the cook and her staff looked them over contemptuously. On they were led over the flagstoned floors into the great dining hall, where as in centuries past, the family table was on a dais, and the long table for guests and workers below. A fire roared in the hearth beside which a man could stand his full height and scarcely reach the chimney. There were areas of darkness in the room and the dampness prevailed despite the fire.

“You see,” Gabrielle whispered, “except for the hearth—and once there was one but it no longer works—this is like the place where I live.”

Everyone spoke in hushed tones.

“Do you miss it very much?” Marc said.

They stood beside benches at the table. Gabrielle frowned, trying to be honest with herself at least. She nodded, knowing the answer she must give to him. She was not sure that her vocation was not being taken from her for this abuse of it. There were times when she had spoken and it was not necessary. And she had sung, and laughed aloud. Away from Marc she had missed him too. But all day she had told herself that that was because she missed the responsibility he was to her, and it was so. She would not have put her hand out to him except to help him. Poor little Artur. God’s littlest messenger—could she not call him that? He had come and snatched her hand, and she had been reminded of the rule she now seemed to so easily violate.

Leaning forward a little and putting her fingertips on the table, she closed her eyes and remembered how the refectory was on the last night she had been present, the sisters from Normandy had come and Sister St. André had spoken when the lights went out. What came to her, just letting her mind roam at random, from Sister Marguerite and her rheumatic shuffle to Ursula and her stomach’s noisiness, to Sister Agathe whom she loved, to Reverend Mother whom she loved more than anyone on earth—what came to her was a feeling of kinship, of family. She did miss them and it was good.

She opened her eyes. The
marquis
had entered the hall, followed by his family, a very old woman whom he helped to the table himself, a younger one who doubtless was his wife, and numerous children. Gabrielle started to count them, but the
marquis
made the sign of the cross and began the blessing in a deep voice that echoed in the cavernous room. It was a long blessing of his own composition.

Moissac came and asked if he could sit with Jacques and Philomène. They made room for him, and he was opposite the Belloirs. Even as he had blessed himself, he had noted the awkwardness or—as he corrected his own impression—the too careful way in which madame made the sign. That she should do it at all filled him with pleasure. Her husband had stood, his arms folded with the expression on his face of someone about to spit.