Resistance (23 page)

“You'd let the children go over the cliff?” he asked, alarmed by her answer.

“The crew is for the war, yes? To fly the planes. And you have job to get crew to planes.”

“But what's the point of getting the crew to a plane to go up in the air to theoretically save the lives of people in another country if in the process you kill twenty children?”

“Is obligation,” she said. “In war is no choice.”

He shook his head slowly, unwilling to concede her point—even though he knew that she, too, was part of a military operation. One with very different equipment and personnel, perhaps, but a military operation all the same.

“I didn't do it,” he said. “I couldn't do it. I was supposed to ditch in the Channel, try to make it if I could. But I had two wounded on board, and I couldn't make the decision to kill them outright. As it happened, they died anyway. And a lot more besides.”

“Is like the triage,” she said quietly. “I am sometimes doing the triage.”

As he looked at her, he saw a boy coming from the opposite side of the square on a bicycle. The figure barely registered; but then something, the hand-knit cap perhaps, made Ted turn his head. The boy, sensing this movement, looked at Ted and, with a brief expression of astonishment, recognized the tall stranger in the woolen coat. Possibly the boy's hand came up off the handlebars. The front tire hit an uneven stone. The bicycle stopped short; the boy was catapulted over the handlebars and onto the stone square.

Ted began to rise. Claire, with pressure on his arm, stopped him. Ted watched as Claire ran to the boy. When she lifted the boy's head, Ted could see a bloody scrape on the forehead—but the boy was conscious and able to speak.

Several other people were at Claire's side. With attention now focused on the boy, Ted stood, limped quickly to the side of the café, rounded the corner into a dark alleyway. He flattened his body against the side of the building, raised his head. Above him was a slit of sky, of light.

From somewhere he could hear the drone of a plane. An engine, it seemed to him, was straining. He waited for the plane to cross his narrow window. The engine was in trouble, he decided, listening to its stutter. A bomber. But the plane did not cross his vision, and he could no longer hear it. Some poor son of a bitch lost and going down? Trying to make it to the Channel?

He knew he had to leave her. Now. His presence was for her a death sentence. Twice in ten minutes he had been identified. And even if the two sightings were benign (one, the boy's, he was almost certain of), what of others in the square who might have seen him? A man, perhaps, whom Ted never even noticed?

She would have the truck, but she would search the village first. He had to try to remember the route back to the woods—then head southwest, toward France. With luck, he'd be found again by friendly French or Belgians, sent quickly across the border.

His head hurt from the knowledge that he had to leave her. There was never a future for them together, and she had understood that all along, just as she had known all along that the schoolbus had to go over the cliff. And he was certain they would both go mad if they had to listen to the clock tick away the minutes until Friday. Far better to leave now—swiftly and without words.

He found himself, after wandering alleyways and lanes, at the edge of the village, exposed. Some hundred yards away was the beginning of the wood, a small cottage in between. A dog—a short, fast, yipping terrier— came running from behind the cottage and barked at

Ted's heels, creating a sudden commotion in the silence. Frozen, Ted waited for a face at a window, a door opening. But there was nothing; the mutt must be alone. More quickly now, Ted dragged the leg into the forest. He thought that he would give his other leg for another pint of that Belgian beer.

He had been using the sun as an imperfect compass, and was aware that if he didn't make better progress, he'd be spending the night in the wood. He had been avoiding, the old logging road, even though the muck and brambles of the wood made the journey difficult, because he knew she would have to stick to the logging road in the truck. But when he saw the road off to the left, he told himself he'd take it for just a few minutes, give the leg a rest.

From the angle of the sun, he estimated the time now at about three o'clock. He realized he couldn't now go back to Claire's even if he wanted to. He had no idea where her house was. With his free hand, he clutched the front of his coat. He wished he'd thought to wear a sweater. As it was, he had on only an open-necked shirt and Henri's inadequate coat. He was aware of a hollow sensation in the wake of the beer without food. He wondered if it would end as it was meant to. With himself crawling under a bush for warmth and dying there.

She would know why he had gone. And if she were in his position, he knew, she'd have done the same. He was sure of that. Always, from the very beginning, she had known that what there was between them was the story of a few days and nights within a larger drama—one over which they had no control. She would go on riding to Madame Omloop's, making the white sausage with no meat, listening to the BBC at night. She would stand at the window as she did, smoking, one arm cradled under her breasts. And himself? America seemed almost incomprehensible, something experienced in a distant childhood. Six months ago he was in Texas, waiting to be sent overseas. Now it seemed that all the important events of his life were behind him.

He rounded a bend and saw the truck, with its mottle of black and rust. It was parked in the middle of the logging road. The engine was not running. There was no one in the cab. Where the hell was she?

He moved as fast as his leg would allow. He called her name once sharply, pulled himself up onto the running board of the passenger side. Startled at the sudden sound, she looked up at him through the window. She had been bent over, her head against the steering wheel. Her face was wet.

He swung open the door, climbed up onto the leather seat, heard the door close behind him. He reached for her head and kissed her. She could not get her breath. Her hands rose to his face.

“I am so frightened. I cannot find you,” she said.

He repeated her name. The Germans or the Belgians would have to shoot him—he would not leave her now. Their embrace, inside the truck, was clumsy, like that of two teenagers. He bent her head into his chest, held her tightly against him. Her hair fell in sheets at the sides of her face, and he remembered this, from the first time he ever saw her. He lifted her chin with his hand and traced the outline of her mouth with his fingertip. Her upper lip was wet. He used his thumb then to wipe away the tears under her eyes, but his hands were dirty from his trek in the woods, and he made half-moon smudges on her cheekbones.

“The boy is all right?” he asked.

She nodded.

“We'll take the truck now,” he said. “To France.”

She averted her eyes and kissed him. “No,” she whispered, sliding off his mouth.

“You know the way. We'll stop at the border. Go on foot.”

Another whisper, the same word.

“People in France will hide us. We'll make it to Spain. Gibraltar. Hundreds have done it.”

She could no longer say the word to him, but she shook her head. He kissed the top of her head, her hair warm under his mouth. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes. The comfort of holding her was exquisite. He could not imagine now a life without her.

“Claire, listen to me.”

She pulled away slightly and turned her head as if to speak to him, and instantly her face changed. He felt the shudder that traveled the length of her body. She was perfectly still, as if she had been shot. She was not even breathing.

He tried to focus on her face. He twisted around to discover what it was she had seen outside the back window.

At the bend in the road, not a hundred feet behind them, was a man. His face was obscured by dirt, his hair grown long over his ears. He was standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the truck.

“Henri,” Claire said.

Monsieur Gillian, the owner of the café, had made him put his bicycle in the back of the small van. Jean had protested. He was fine, he said; he could easily walk the bicycle home. But even he, looking at the mangled front wheel, knew that it would be a journey of hours, that it would be long past dark, long past the evening meal, perhaps even near to midnight, before he made it to the farmhouse. He'd had to accept the ride in the van then, his confusion making him nearly mute no matter how much Monsieur Gillian tried to coax him into a bit of conversation.

Everyone, it seemed, knew about the flogging by the Gestapo. Adults were no better than his friends when it came to wanting all the facts, he thought. Even when it was a terrible story, one they knew shamed you or caused you pain, they wanted the details: How had he been discovered? Had he really fainted? Had he tried to flee? How many lashes? Did he still have scars?

Oh, yes, he still had scars, he could tell them. Sometimes in the morning, when he rose from the bed under the eave, he saw thin stripes of blood on the sheets. He would remember the pain then and wonder when the wounds would heal. And then he would turn the sheet over or, if he had time, try to wash out the stains so that his mother would not see.

Madame Daussois had lifted his head from the street. His vision was blurry, and there was blood in his eye. She held his head gently with her hands and, as she was calling for help, turned his face to her chest. The gesture left a bloodstain on the front of her coat.

He was dizzy, disoriented. He tried to tell her once, just before Monsieur Gillian carried him into the cafe, that he wouldn't tell about the pilot. But she shook her head quickly to silence him.

How fast does such a thing happen? he wondered. He was crossing the square, thinking of beginning the long journey back to school, when the face turned toward him, and he knew at once. It wasn't possible ever to forget those eyes—the green with the light behind them. Were it not for the eyes, he might not have recognized the man. A beret that was too large for him hung over the man's ears. The coat was that of a peasant. When he'd last seen the pilot, near death though he was, he'd been in uniform, and a uniform never failed to convey authority—no matter how torn and dirty that uniform was.

Monsieur Gillian asked him what he had been doing in Rance.

“A parcel, sir. For my aunt.”

Monsieur Gillian nodded. The truth was that Jean went there every day now, at the noon hour, unable to bear the sight of the center of Delahaut. He could not look at the balconies of the terraced houses without seeing the faces and twitching bodies of the hanged. He saw this even in his dreams. And he could not enter the square without his eyes being drawn, against his will, to the balconies. It was a kind of self-torture.

So he went to Rance every noon hour, and sometimes was late getting back to school for the afternoon classes. If he didn't go to Rance, he'd bicycle to the woods, or even to St. Laurent, though that was riskier since the Germans were still at L'Hôtel de Ville.

“Here, sir. If you please. I can go the rest.”

They were on the road to the Benoît farm. Jean did not want to be seen emerging from the van.

“But you are injured, no? I must take you to your house.”

“No, please, it's best here. Please.” Jean heard the sudden begging in his voice. So be it. Better to humiliate himself now than to excite his father's ànger even more than it would be.

Monsieur Gillian stopped the van. Jean quickly hopped out of the passenger side before Monsieur Gillian changed his mind. Reluctantly, the café owner walked to the back of the van and opened the paneled doors.

“You're sure you don't want me to go in with you, speak to your mother?” Monsieur Gillian offered, as he lifted the bicycle to the ground.

“I am certain. Thank you for the ride.”

Monsieur Gillian hesitated, looked puzzled.

“You're all right?” he asked.

Jean nodded, tried to smile.

“You're all right at home, I meant,” Monsieur Gillian added.

Jean wondered for a moment if Monsieur Gillian knew about his father. Then, to reassure Monsieur Gillian, Jean nodded eagerly, quickly. He was anxious to be gone now.

“Well then, I’ll be off. But I can't say I like this.”

The boy watched the café owner climb up into the driver's side, shut the door and reverse the van into a turn. Jean waited until the van was on its way back to Rance, and then waved. A hand shot out of the window and waved back at him.

Slowly he turned in the direction of his house. It would become visible around the next corner. The wayward front wheel of the bicycle made forward progress impossible. Jean had to lift the front wheel, then guide the back wheel as if it were a unicycle. He was glad now that he'd accepted Monsieur Gillian's offer to drive him home.

She'd put the plaster on his forehead. Monsieur Gillian had given her iodine for the cut. After the forehead was tended to, she'd ordered milk for him and a roll.

“I have to go now,” she'd whispered to him when Monsieur Gillian had gone to fetch the milk. “You understand?”

He understood she meant the pilot. She had to go to him. He badly wanted to ask her so many questions: How was the American? How was the wounded leg? Did the American remember the night in the forest and in the barn? When was he leaving? How were they getting him out of the country? But he asked her nothing.

Then she'd done a strange and wonderful thing. She'd bent forward and kissed him. The kiss landed somewhere between his left eye and cheek. His face flushed. She said thank you to him—twice quickly, in a whisper—when it was he, really, he thought, who ought to be thanking her.

He brought a hand up now to touch the place where she had kissed him.

He left the bicycle in the gloomy barn, out of sight. His father would go on about his carelessness when he saw it. Tentatively, he pushed open the kitchen door. His mother, at the sink, had her back to him.

She turned, her eyes widening at the sight of him. And what amazed him, even then, was how her face went from boredom, to surprise, to alarm when she saw the plaster, and then immediately to fear as her eyes darted sideways to the door of the parlor. It meant his father was home. It meant there would have to be questions and explanations—questions that would be confusing and impossible to answer; explanations that would be inadequate no matter how hard he tried, how careful he was. He took a step forward, and she looked at him again. He knew what she was thinking. If only they could hide the plaster.