In This Hospitable Land (26 page)

In the family room they connected it to the single electric cord that ran through the house. Astoundingly their position on the mountain allowed them to pick up British stations without static. They were immediately rewarded with an address by General de Gaulle urging his countrymen to take heart: Free French forces now numbered thirty-five thousand trained troops and one thousand airmen. He promised operations would begin soon. Soon the true French would once again rule all of France.

Katie and Ida were still awake and listening.

“Now girls,” Alex warned the excited children, although he doubted they understood what they heard, “don’t repeat this or anything else you hear on our radio, especially not at school. Don’t even mention our radio. And don’t touch that dial ever!”

Over the next several nights the Sauverins heard the Germans jam portions of BBC broadcasts. Aware that many listeners were foreigners, the British announced the news first in English and then in French. The Germans almost always jammed both. Within half an hour the same program would be broadcast unimpeded in Flemish by Belgian exiles in London.

Alex grinned. “I guess the Germans know nothing about Belgians. They don’t realize how many of us speak Flemish as well as French.”

“Still,” André said, “the jamming is frustrating.”

After Sunday supper on the first of December the adult Sauverins gathered in the family room to listen to a live report about the Blitz from U.S. correspondent Edward R. Murrow.

“I can’t stand it,” Alex bristled.

“War is so terrible,” Denise agreed. “And sad.”

“I mean these Americans,” Alex scoffed. “Their viewpoint is childish and stupid. And they’re dangerous. Everyone else is careful about what they reveal but the Americans don’t realize they’re giving away important clues about strategic Allied positions.”

The next morning the postman appeared at La Font far earlier than usual not to deliver letters but to gather the news. Thanks to the radio La Font was now the first stop on his rounds.

Alex told him about the latest bombings in Britain and the postman startled him by saying, “I hope your brother-in-law is all right. So brave, flying with the RAF.”

Alex eyed him suspiciously. The family had made no secret of Francis Freedman’s activities but hadn’t spoken freely of them either.

“There’s no privacy here so far as correspondence is concerned,” the postman said amiably. “The Vichy government checks every letter, censoring what it doesn’t like. But there are others who open the mail too”—here he lowered his voice and his eyes—“on
our
side. Pro-Nazi messages sent to Vichy and Germany don’t reach their destinations intact either.”

So the rumors Alex had heard in Bédouès were true: there was some kind of Resistance—a growing underground. Now it was mostly a conduit for information but it would surely become increasingly active as German abuses and atrocities inevitably mounted. The Brignands, the bus driver, and the postman were all obviously part of this underground.

The Germans understood and continued to jam the BBC. Accurate uncensored information was the yeast that would grow the Resistance. And the Fascists had reason to fear a homegrown opposition for they knew the Vichy government had been weak from its inception.

Someday,
Alex thought,
with or without André, I will join this Resistance.

On St. Nicholas Day Eve, Denise and Geneviève did their best to recreate the feel of Brussels. They even helped the children put little wooden shoes with their names on them onto the mantel. Hard not to think of Louis at a time like this.

Denise managed to make speculaas too, though she didn’t have the wooden molds for the shapes the children liked best. At least they tasted like home.

By then André had attended services at the Protestant temple in Vialas several times and at Ida’s request had taken her with him. Having tired of her children’s books, Ida read the Bible. She enjoyed the stories and she liked Pastor Burnard’s sermons, as did André. André explained about his search for God and Ida decided she would look for God too.

Then she asked if she could participate in the Christmas pageant at the temple. With Denise’s permission André agreed. Excited, Ida told her sister and cousins and they wanted to be part of the pageant too.

Getting Alex to let his children go to the temple took some doing. Denise was able to convince Geneviève that it would be good for all the children to be better integrated into the community and André made two points that proved telling to Alex: first, participation would help conceal their background; and second, since André would take the children to and from the temple for services and rehearsals, Alex would have some time to himself.

“Without the children underfoot and in my hair you mean?”

Naturally he gave his consent.

After the first batch of chestnuts had been thoroughly dried the Sauverins began spending evening hours with specially adapted little knives to peel the outer husks and scrape the dark brown skin from the rock-hard meat—a difficult, tedious, slightly disfiguring labor: one’s hands took on a chestnut-colored stain. Working at the chestnuts long and hard they desperately needed distraction, which mostly came from the radio, though the news could be distressing, heartbreaking, and—due to the jamming and resultant static—headache-inducing.

There were the usual reports of back-and-forth bombings (the British bombed Düsseldorf, the Germans bombed Sheffield; the RAF bombed Naples, Mannheim, and Berlin, and the Luftwaffe bombed Liverpool, Manchester and London). There were ongoing stories from North Africa and the Mediterranean. America seemed irreconcilably divided, with the public against getting involved in the war even as President Roosevelt initiated actions supportive of Britain’s struggle against Nazi tyranny.

In a very different way France was more seriously divided. Six months earlier Marshal Pétain had appointed pro-Nazi Pierre Laval foreign minister and then had sacked and imprisoned him only to free him days later thanks to the German ambassador’s intervention. Many pre-war Socialist and Radical-Socialist leaders had been indicted for “war guilt” though they had been among the precious few to stand up for France in the face of the Fascists.

“It amazes me,” Denise stated ruefully one night over a great bowl of shelled chestnuts, “that such heroic figures would be persecuted. Isn’t it the state’s responsibility to foster and maintain the integrity of the individual?”

“I’m afraid,” André countered with an equal measure of rue, “Pétain would say it’s the individual’s responsibility to sacrifice himself for the cohesiveness of the state.”

“That policy works wonders,” Alex said sardonically.

“All the more reason for us to enjoy the freedom we have within the walls of La Font,” André said, “for as long as it might last.”

Startled, Denise pleaded, “Don’t say that. I’m just beginning to feel settled in.”

“Every day the world is less certain and more dangerous,” André replied levelly. “How can we guess what the French will do next? When they laid down their arms they surrendered their souls.”

“Pétain tries to maintain national unity and French pride,” Alex added, “but with half a country at his disposal, subject to German authority, how long will that last?”

“All I want to do is cry,” Geneviève declared.

“Now is the time to look to our own souls,” André counseled, “to stay true to ourselves and all that we cherish of our human dignity.”

“I don’t know about these ‘souls,’” Alex grumped.

“Think of it ethically then,” André insisted, “or politically. It’s too easy to forget oneself, to take comfort in becoming part of the great amorphous mass of the thoughtless, the spineless, the soulless, as I would say. To go along with the wrong instead of standing up for what’s right. To become nothing because so many are nothing and being nothing takes less effort than becoming something worthwhile. Of course we all must die eventually but to die for nothing—
as
nothing—is too cruel to contemplate. To lose one’s way and remain forever lost. To participate in the dissolution of society and the degradation of all human worth.”

“That’s pretty talk,” Alex complained, “but what nobility do you perceive in our running and hiding? What is this ‘something worthwhile’ we’re doing besides saving our skins?”

Without hesitation André replied, “Maintaining sanity in our world however small or circumscribed it may be.” André took out his large white handkerchief to wipe his brow and polish his glasses reflexively. “It may be a ‘Thousand Year Reich’ as Hitler has proclaimed. He may win the war but not the hearts and minds of the people. Not totally. Not forever. People like us and the descendants of the Huguenots who shelter us keep the promise of humankind alive.”

“Please!” Geneviève cried. “If we can’t talk about something else I swear I’d rather do this tiresome work in silence!”

“Maybe one of us can read as the others peel,” Denise suggested, dropping her scraper and reaching for a book on the mantelpiece.

“I’ll do it,” Geneviève declared, snatching
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
from Denise’s hand and beginning to read. “‘The journey which this little book is to describe was very agreeable and fortunate for me…’”