Lisette's List (13 page)

This turning of art lovers and craftsmen into killers doesn’t sit well with me. It’s against our natures, but being here in this atmosphere, a person can’t help but get caught up in the importance and necessity of it. In a month, we’re supposed to be hardened soldiers—ha!—and will go to the front, somewhere, to repel the Germans. In the interim, all I want to do is to repel mice. I suppose my rifle isn’t the appropriate instrument
.

I miss you terribly, and think of you in every quiet minute we’re not being yelled at
.

Forever, my love, I am yours
,

André
                                  

Anxiety shaped itself into a piteous memory I couldn’t shake. The horror and sadness I had experienced as a little girl seeing a
man leaning on a single crutch with half a body slid uninvited into my mind. No left arm, no left leg, no left ear. Left eye sunken, half-closed. His face sewn together in a lumpy purple seam below the left eye and across the jaw. “Dry him off and bring me someone who has half a chance,” I now imagined the surgeon saying. But he did survive. This soldier from the Great War had done one more courageous thing. He had come to see his son, who lived where I was living, in a home for unclaimed children. I felt only awe for his bravery.

If André came home in a similar condition, I was certain I would still pour out my love for him from a bottomless well.

N
O LETTERS CAME WHILE
he was on the move. Then this:

6 MARCH 1940

Mon petit trésor
,

I pray that you are warm and well. I can say that at least the latter is true for me
.

En route to our position, we had our first view of the Maginot Line of concrete fortifications and wicked-looking tank obstacles. We are not told how far they stretch, but rumor has it that in one form or another there are emplacements from Switzerland to Luxembourg. We hear that some units are connected by underground passageways and even a rail line and telephones, with comfortable living quarters
.

Nothing so grand for us here. Max and I learned how to make a bunker of wood and cement to shelter a big gun. We made a splendid trench for ourselves, connecting one bunker to another. With the woods behind us, we get afternoon shade, which we dread this time of year. The humane thing would be that by international law, all winter wars would be called off. Last week the ice in our canteens never thawed. I can’t tell you where, but from the ridge behind our trench home, we have a grand view of a beautiful frozen river a short distance away, German ice and French ice indistinguishable
.

As new recruits, we have been scattered among the reservists. Max and I hope that means that they know what to do in a moment of truth and we can just follow their lead. Simple, right?

Nothing new here in this phony war. That’s what our lieutenant calls it in disgust, he who wants it to start so we’ll all be heroes and he will be decorated. Other than that, he never talks about the reasons for war
.

The days pass, empty and interminable, and the enemy hasn’t poked their noses in our business. Busy elsewhere, I suppose. We huddle around a makeshift stove and speculate until all we do is repeat each other’s words, like crows. Any day now, we expect, they will try to cross the river and get at us. This waiting sets our nerves on edge at every sound. We hear rumbles and trucks and tanks and, in our sardonic moments, alpenhorns and bassoons and Dudelsacks. Max swore he heard sleigh bells
.

Some fellows brag about how many Boches they’re going to kill. I stay away from them. It’s that silent one with the vacant eyes I worry about. Waiting and wondering whether we’ll distinguish ourselves or turn coward and run preys on everyone’s mind. Our lieutenant boasts about a quick victory. I wish we had more men and more artillery. To my mind, we’re spread too thin—just like the beans in our bean soup. I wouldn’t mind having some thick goulash, even if it’s Prussian
.

The waiting isn’t the worst thing. Missing you is the worst thing. Imagine that I’m holding you tonight. I’ll do the same
.

With a full heart
,

André
                  

Despite his levity, I worried that the man with the vacant eyes might be André himself. Or Maxime.

T
HE WAITING WAS HARD
on me too. I hated not being able to do anything other than send him letters. If I could just discover where the paintings were, take a peek at them, and leave them there, I would feel closer to him again. I would touch the stones or boards or plants or earth he had touched.

But where to start?

The bell tower, ostensibly to see the view. Father Marc gave me the key, and I searched on every landing, in every crevice, to no avail. Sandrine let me look around the post office, in case a letter from André had been put in the wrong cubbyhole. While there, I peeked behind doors and in large cabinets. I asked Aimé if I could look in the
salle des fêtes
for a lost scarf. Could André have hidden the paintings in the café? He went there every night. I asked outright if I could watch Madame Voisin prepare
fricassée de poulet
. “No,” Monsieur Voisin said crossly, turning his back to me while he did something behind the bar.

“Would you permit me just to look in your kitchen?”

“Certainly not!” He whirled around. “There’s nothing here that would interest you.”

“There might be, monsieur. I just thought—”

“Don’t think. You’ll be better off that way.”

And that was that, for the present.

A
NDRÉ
’
S THIRD LETTER HAD
no date, which was disconcerting because I couldn’t tell how long it had taken to reach me.

Dearest Lisette
,

I hope that the wood I banked alongside the house has lasted the winter. You should be receiving my army pay warrants by the time the Palais des Papes money runs out. Then you’ll have enough to buy from the communal woodpile, and to eat as well as rationing allows
.

This waiting is deeply frustrating, and the incessant drilling and marching is a bore. The ice on the river has broken up into fanciful icebergs. Max drew the scene on his canteen with a piece of charcoal. After that, he did a good likeness of me on mine. Now everyone in our platoon wants a portrait on their canteen. Some of the men pose with exaggerated dignity, while our overzealous lieutenant bares his teeth and puts on an expression like an angry bulldog. Interesting, the personalities in our platoon
.

Our armored tanks are big and heavy but slow, only twenty-five kilometers an hour. It remains to be seen how they will fare when they face the Panzer II
.

I have rethought my decision not to tell you where I hid the paintings. I didn’t tell you because I thought your innocence would protect you, but it might be just the opposite. If, God forbid, the Germans take France and if it’s known to them that we have paintings and some German officer comes to the house to seize them before I get home, you could come to harm for not telling him where they are. I would never forgive myself for that. What I mean is, if there is any trouble, give up the paintings. They are not worth bringing injury to yourself, my darling. They are under the big woodpile
.

Keep safe, my love. I am expecting to be showered with your kisses the moment I see you
.

With love and infinite devotion
,

Your André
                             

I was both relieved to know where he had hidden them—what an odd hiding place—and worried that behind his change of heart, he had some doubt that he would come home.

W
INTER HERE HAD ENDED
with a three-day mistral, and a vivid spring sunset that faded to reveal a full moon rising. The hills below the village were just becoming fragrant with flowering wild arugula. Plump Odette Gulini, old enough to be my mother and wise in the ways of the country, told me I could use the leaves in a salad, so we went to gather them. It would be a pleasant diversion from thinking about the war.

On the way, she pointed out her favorite wildflower, aphyllanthes, which had six narrow lavender petals with a purple stripe down each. I picked one and threaded it through her hair. Looking at her, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she had moved her beauty mark from her right cheek to her left. When I questioned her, she said, “We think our son, Michel, is somewhere near the Belgian border. He’s left-handed. I cannot betray him.”

That seemed as reasonable as anything else these days.

We found primroses in a clearing in the woods. Pascal would have called the pale yellow of their petals
jaune vapeur
. The thought coming so unbidden made me miss him.

Suddenly in my pathway I saw the lacerated body of a rabbit, the ears and feet still intact, the breast torn and bloody, the casualty of an attack by a hawk. I grew quiet.

Back in the village, our arms laden with arugula and primroses, we stopped on the road in front of Odette’s house. She gave me a kind look and turned my collar down, a maternal gesture.

“You seem particularly quiet today. Is it because of the news?” she asked, gently introducing the only subject of importance.

“What news?”

“Germany invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands the day before yesterday.”

The shock of it made me shudder. “Three countries in one day? How did you find out?”

“René went to the café and heard the news. The men were arguing about who would be next, and when.”

“Did he say more?”

“I suspect there was more to say, but he didn’t tell me.”

Hating not being able to hear the news directly, all the news, I went home in a daze and flung the arugula into the sink, spilling my primroses too. If I were living in Paris, I could go into any café, day or night, alone if I wanted to, and have
un petit crème
, enjoy its frothy milk and listen to the news on the radio, or a musical program, but oh no. Not here in this hinterland.

That evening at
apéritif
time, I put on a high-necked white blouse and my maroon suit, conservative enough for Roussillon but stylish enough to say
This suit came from Paris, and so did this woman
. Nobody needed to know I had bought it at a secondhand shop across the street from the synagogue in the Marais district. Brushing my hair in front of the mirror above the dresser, I had a thought. André was right-handed. I twisted the point of my eyebrow pencil on my right cheekbone.

I marched downhill to the café and paused to square my shoulders before parting the beads that hung like a curtain separating me from the world.

The proprietor, Monsieur Voisin, was ranting about something to anyone who would listen. “It’s not my fault if you’re going to be cold in here this winter. Mayor Pinatel took all the wood that was left in the communal woodpile.”

Just the word gave me a start. Was that the woodpile André meant, or did he mean our own, in our courtyard? I listened more attentively.

“That’s hard to believe,” said Constable Blanc, standing a head above every other man at the bar. “He could afford to pay his own wood gatherer.”

“Don’t tell me!” said Monsieur Voisin. “I saw him with my own eyes, the bourgeois poser. He never comes here. Thinks he’s too
good to socialize with farmers, even though his father was a farmer just like yours.”

That seemed like exaggerated bluster to me. My chin held high, looking directly ahead, I took a few steps in. All those hunched old men straightened up in their chairs, as if accosted by an enemy. Silence descended around me. I walked boldly to a table near the radio and sat down, in an effort to get as close as I could to where the fighting was happening in the north, one quavering radio wave linking me to one beating heart. No. Two hearts.

Some of the men ignored me and turned back to the bar while others stole squinty-eyed glances at me. Maurice acknowledged me with a small nod, but distress carved tight little wrinkles around his eyes. Most of the others, including Monsieur Voisin, glared at me outright, as though trying to make me feel guilty for breaking some time-honored rule. I had intended to order a
café crème
, but Monsieur Voisin did not approach me to take my order.